“I yam what I yam, and that’s all what I yam.” – Popeye the Sailor Man
Popeye, a 1980 live-action musical comedy, was directed by Robert Altman and starred Robin Williams and Shelley Duvall. It was based on the popular Popeye comic strip.
King Kong, that big lovable ape, made his second appearance on the big screen in 1976 alongside Jeff Bridges, Charles Grodin, and the very shiny and brand new out-of-the-box Jessica Lange. It was a remake of the classic 1933 film.
“Young Frankenstein” is arguably one of Mel Brooks’s greatest pictures. It was released in 1974 in black and white and starred Gene Wilder, Teri Garr, Cloris Leachman, Marty Feldman, Peter Boyle and Madeline Kahn. It was a critical and box office success.
“1941” was an action/adventure period comedy directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale (of “Back to the Future” fame). It was released in 1979 and even though it sported an incredible cast of characters (Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, John Candy, Ned Beatty, Christopher Lee, Toshiro Mifune, Robert Stack, Treat Williams, the list goes on) it was considered one of Spielberg’s weakest films, both critically and financially.
As any true Star Wars fan knows by now, George Lucas’s first draft of “Star Wars” was radically different than what we eventually saw on screen. And I mean radically different! I think it’s the perfect example of why you don’t shoot your first draft and serves as a lesson to all writers that the real writing begins with the rewrite.