Gray Matter

Aurora and her mother are super-powered fugitives, always on the run, never staying in one place for too long, hiding from the evil organization that wants to capture and exploit them, until finally, Aurora makes a terrible mistake that brings their quiet lives to a sudden and frightening end.

Project Greenlight is a reality show/contest where a director is chosen by actual Hollywood people, who then finance a feature film by the winner, all while the reality show films the production. Originally running for four seasons, the show was started by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, who hoped to give unknown creators a chance to follow in their Good Will Hunting footsteps, it was meant to become a way for people who were outside of the Hollywood nepotism system to break in. There were mixed results, and the show was eventually cancelled. It has now been relaunched, and is headed up by Issa Rae, with an eye toward lifting up diverse voices, all while holding to the original mandate of giving unknown creators their first big shot.

This year, Project Greenlight is making a film titled Gray Matter, a sci-fi project painted in shades of Firestarter and X-men. This kind of genre project is a first for the show, and this year’s winner is a young director named Meko Winbush, who had some very promising submissions.

Unfortunately, like most of the Project Greenlight films, there’s some big time script problems. Everything else, the look, the feel, the performances… that’s all fine, but the story? It’s all in unconnected pieces, like separate intents awkwardly welded together, where the connective tissue is just too thin, and way too many unearned moments just happen. The story lacks snap, there’s no pizazz, there’s too much empty chatting, and not enough razzle-dazzle.

It feels like they were aiming for Looper, but ended up with Freejack. It’s not bad really, it’s just... basic cable. It’s the CW. Is that bad? I mean, yeah, it is, but then I’ve also watched literal years worth of CW shows, so maybe not? Maybe sometimes? Whatever. I’m watching season three of Star Girl after posting this, so fuck all y’all.

But like I said, the film looks good, the performances are fine, but the script is just not there. That’s the whole issue, and I don’t think it’s fair to lay all of the blame for that on the director.

Yes, they worked on the script, and a good chunk of it was done by them. That’s obviously true, In fact, there’s whole episodes of Meko struggling to “fix” the script, all while the Production Team hounds them…

BUT…

The thing is, using undercooked scripts is a consistent Project Greenlight issue, and I can’t figure out why. Do they not want the show’s experiment to work? Why would you saddle your untested and unknown director with a half-baked script, one that they have no connection to at all—forget about having any love for—days before shooting starts, for a project that is their one big shot, one that may turn out to be their only shot, should they fail?

Or is that the point?

Is the actual point of Project Geenlight to prove that the Hollywood nepotism system is the way things should actually be? Because otherwise, I can’t think of a good reason to shove someone into a massive production, and just toss a half-done script blindly into their lap. “Here’s some turds. Polish them. You have two weeks. Fuck you. Good luck.” Talk about setting up your “already under huge amounts of pressure and on a ridiculously tight schedule” first-time director for failure, right?

So, while I can’t recommend checking out Gray Matter, at the very least I don’t believe the film’s issues are wholly the fault of the director, as much as they are just more of Project Greenlight’s usual failure to provide the proper tools the creators need to succeed, quite possibly on purpose.

Alas, Hollywood.