Conan The Barbarian screenwriter shares his thoughts on what it's like to suck
After this weekend’s fourth-place finisher Conan The Barbarian failed to excite anyone besides bloggers eager to pull out their “lamentations of the…” gags, Q&A site Quora posed a follow-up question to Sean Hood, one of four writers tasked with transforming Robert E. Howard’s epic tale into 112 minutes of sword stuff: “What’s it like to have your film flop at the box office?” As it turns out, it’s not that cool, bro, thanks for asking. Unfurling a lengthy, emotionally charged analogy, Hood compares the “devastating” loss to the feeling of “disappointment and disillusionment” that a campaign worker must feel when their candidate loses a presidential bid, saying, “Any film production, like a long grueling campaign over months and years, is filled with crisis, compromise, exhaustion, conflict, elation, and blind faith that if one just works harder, the results will turn out all right in the end.” Apparently this is true even if your candidate is just a dumbed-down rehash with no new ideas, be it a Conan The Barbarian remake or Rick Perry.