There is perhaps no other talent in the filmmaking industry who has attracted as much praise and condemnation simultaneously as Hollywood royalty screenwriter and director Max Landis has over the course of his ten-odd years in the game. After his breakthrough success in writing the original screenplay for director Josh Trank's debut film Chronicle in 2012, Landis has since gone on to write the scripts for such movies as American Ultra and Victor Frankenstein - in addition to directing his own feature-length effort Me Him Her and working on the new TV series Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.
Love him or hate him, Landis is a presence in the entertainment industry that is here to stay, thanks in no small part to his active social media presence that has often been the source of a lot of animosity and contention. And with his remake of the classic horror-comedy An American Werewolf in London officially in the works - based on the original movie from 1981 written and directed by his own father, John Landis - those less than pleased with Landis' success aren't going anywhere either. On that note, the latest word has one Black List script that allegedly satirizes Landis' person and character drawing the attention of the man himself.
Screenwriter Seth Spector has been getting a lot of attention following the release of an original screenplay titled "Untitled Lax Mandis Project" bearing the log-line, "A freshman film exec at odds with the state of his industry is forced to work with the one person who is making him question everything," made its way online courtesy of The Black List of best unproduced scripts in Hollywood. In response, Landis took to Facebook to unleash his own retort to what he sees as being, "A self indulgent, masturbatory 100 something page troll tweet." You can check out his Facebook post in full HERE.
Coming out to respond to anyone who would criticize his actions as a prominent person in Hollywood is certainly nothing new, but the fact that Landis took special offense to the fact that Spector's script will "take the spot of some other actual script with an actual story" in the eyes of the public is interesting, to say the very least. It's always nice to know that someone as prominent as Landis has a sense of self-deprecating humor - as evidenced by his enthusiasm for a prior screenplay that featured a "Max Landis" character who got "killed as a joke in a terrorist attack on a gay orgy" - though many are no doubt wondering if Landis had any particular screenwriters of promising talent in mind over Spector.
Landis will probably continue to draw attention and ire from fans and critics alike, and his consistent use of social media will undoubtedly propagate his fame and notoriety even further. On that note, maybe the "Untitled Lax Mandis Project" - or something else like it - will finally get made in order to lampoon the Hollywood icon in much the same way that Funny or Die did to Donald Trump in Donald Trump's The Art of the Deal: The Movie.
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Source: Max Landis