A script about Orson Welles’ ill-fated trip to Brazil is a quarter-finalist in WriteMovies, a contest that has been revealing screenwriters since 1999.
It’s All Lies was written by Zé Dassilva, a Brazilian Emmy International winning screenwriter for Imperio, created by Aguinaldo Silva and chosen the best telenovela worldwide in 2015.
The title, It’s All Lies, is a play on It’s All True, the name of the movie that Welles was shooting in Brazil, in 1942.
The script tells how RKO Radio Pictures and the U.S. and Brazilian governments wanted the film to be a friendly travelogue, but Welles started to film a more substantive movie about black and poor people in favelas, which shut down the project and damaged his career in Hollywood, Dassilva said.
“Orson went to Brazil as a star and left as an accursed filmmaker,” Dassilva said.
Dassilva said that every scene in his script has a reference to a film made by Welles or one of his quotes.
He said he read about 20 books on Welles and the world at that time, and he did the outline with the help of Sundance Collab, a community platform at the Sundance Institute.
In the notes about the script, a WriteMovies staffer wrote, “It’s All Lies is an entertaining read with a fascinating premise and intriguing story, often overlooked, and definitely has the potential to be developed into a strong, commercially viable script.”
The WriteMovies winners will be announced on August 14.
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