Stranger Than Fiction, Pt. 2

So someone slipped me a copy of the screenplay for "Stranger Than Fiction", which I glanced at, not wanting to ruin the movie for myself.

But I'm happy to report that indeed, most of the scenes in the trailer are from the first act -- the writer tackles the story head on. The toothbrush bit is on page 5; the scene in which Harold learns that he is meant to die soon is on page 23.

So I don't think the trailer gives away much at all, other than the set-up. Hot damn.

The screenplay is written by Zach Helm, who is basically living the dream at this point; not only does he have this already-getting-great-reviews movie coming out, but he just got to direct his next script, "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium", which stars Natalie Portman.

Can't beat that.

According to research I just did (in which I'm essentially cribbing from a June 2005 Variety article), Zach Helm is 31, a former DePaul University theater student/aspiring playwright who was recruited by a Fox 2000 initiative aimed at "under the radar writers".

Helm wrote "Mr. Magorium", got an agent, sold the script to Fox, and spent the next three years "going to film school", as he puts it, which in his case meant that "anytime someone offered me a job, I took it. I doctored, I adapted, I did page-one rewrites, I developed TV shows, all of which were bad ideas. I spent three or four years killing projects right and left. Maybe I saved the world from some bad movies."

Not until he realized that his fate wasn't in script doctoring did Helm discover his knack for spec screenwriting. "I'm much happier and they're much better movies" he said.

Helm has another well-received screenplay, a comedy called 'The DisAssociate", set up at Warner Brothers.