Orphaned Ideas

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Even if you've read Sean Kennelly's interview with Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio in Creative Screenwriting, don't skip the online version. It's a spillover, not a duplicate, with comments on theme, character risks and the exploration, semi-development, and abandonment of more ideas than will ever fit into a screenplay.

Interviews with T&T abound right now (rightfully so) but a couple of obscure articles you may have missed are in Box Office Mojo where Ted comments on Jack Sparrow being perceived as less likeable and in Latino Review written prior to the release of POTC2, in which Terry humbly discusses the "daunting" nature of his job --

...we can’t predict box office for Pirates 2 or 3 and you have to face reality that it’s nonsensical to make these movies. It doesn’t work, it’s not fiscally responsible to go out in the Caribbean, to build sets, to have actors out there that cost a lot of money... Terry Rossio

That's another idea Terry can orphan since we now know how it turned out -- $258 million in ten days. It may not be fiscally responsible to make POTC films, but like any gamble, the pay off can be -- um, word, word, word, somebody give me a word that hasn't already been used to describe this phenomenon -- neato? Sorry, all the superfluous ones have been used.