Catwoman Writer Admits Movie Is Bad, Internet Loses Mind
Long long ago in the ancient time of 2004, John Rogers worked as co-writer on Warner Bros’ disastrous bomb Catwoman. He didn’t remain on the project to its completion, but his name is prominent in the credits. This is important to know because this week journalist D.C. McAllister openly asked a very dumb question on Twitter: “If Black Panther is getting all this credit for black representation, why didn’t Catwoman get the same credit?” He was serious.
And he got an immediate response from Rogers:
As one of the credited writers of CATWOMAN, I believe I have the authority to say: because it was a s*** movie dumped by the studio at the end of a style cycle, and had zero cultural relevance either in front of or behind the camera.
This is a bad take. Feel shame.
It was less McAllister getting owned and more validation for everyone who can’t stand Halle Berry’s incoherent striptease take on a classic character (basically everyone, including Rogers and Halle Berry herself). The writer admitted it was bad! Rogers’ tweet was reposted on Variety, Entertainment Weekly and every other major website with a slight focus on entertainment news (including this one now).
And he is thoroughly baffled.
What the hell is going on with this CATWOMAN tweet? There are *articles* on the
@EW and a half dozen other sites about me “admitting” the movie was bad. Like it was a secret. Like I hadn’t confessed I was on the grassy knoll before now.Did … did people not know it was not well-received? Did they think we were all sitting around silently fuming that nobody understood our genius? Is the act of somebody in Hollywood saying “Well,that was unpleasant,” so rare? 40k retweets, 100k Likes. This is madness.
Whether he’s aware of it or not, it really is rare. Maybe pride gets in the way or it’s just delusion, but you almost never hear a Hollywood director, writer or actor admit they laid an egg, no matter how much time has passed.
Rogers went on to state that it’s not like the movie ended his career — he was on the writing staff of Transformers one year later, which made a gazillion dollars even if it was barely better than Catwoman. He’s also since created the TV shows Leverage, The Librarians and, in comics, the Jaime Reyes version of Blue Beetle.
Win or lose: you get up, you type, you make pages, and you try to be decent to people you work with. And 23 years later, you have a career.
Sadly, that’s the lesson I wish got 40k RT’s but won’t: do the work. Do your best. Get back up. Move on when it sucks. Life is short, make something. Make a LOT of somethings. Some of them might actually be what somebody, somewhere, didn’t even know they needed.
Well, we passed along this part. Do him a favor and pass it along yourself. Also, thanks for The Librarians, John.
Man, all my new followers looking for hot Hollywood dirt are going to be really puzzled by my normal feed of role-playing game rules minutia. “Wait, is there a movie called ‘DICE POOL’? Who was in it? Why does he hate it so much?”