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Writer shares his Hollywood story
By STEPHANIE HAYES
Published December 1, 2005
TAMPA - Michael France's audience oohed and aahed in all the right places.
The audience, several hundred University of South Florida students, oohed while watching a clip of the movie Cliffhanger, which France wrote.
And they really aahed when he threw around Tinseltown dollar figures.
"There's a lot of mayhem in the stuff that I write, but I have to keep it down to a level where it's feasible to shoot it for under $200-million," he said, drawing gasps from mass communications students packed into a USF auditorium Wednesday.
France, known for writing action flicks like GoldenEye, The Hulk, The Punisher and Fantastic Four, brought a bit of Hollywood to USF, giving advice on breaking into the film industry.
"It sounds like something you can do overnight, but it doesn't work that way," he said.
France knows. After time at the University of Florida and Columbia University's film school, the 43-year-old spent five years working as a script reader in Hollywood - a gig just superior to pond scum, to hear him tell it.
Sick of reading other people's scripts, France buckled down to write Cliffhanger. He figured the script would be a portfolio piece, not a big budget movie starring Sylvester Stallone, as it turned out.
France lives on St. Pete Beach. His love for Marvel comic books shone on his vintage Fantastic Four T-shirt.
France is working with Marvel creator Stan Lee on a television project. He's also writing a World War I movie and is preparing to sell a big movie he described as Raiders of the Lost Ark meets War of the Worlds.
[Last modified December 1, 2005, 14:04:03]
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Fifty years ago, they were screwed-up kids sent to the Florida School for Boys to be straightened out. But now they are screwed-up men, scarred by the whippings they endured. Read the story and see a video and portrait gallery.
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