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From the "Aren't these crazy Hollywood types five flavors of nutty?" file, Sharon Waxman of the NY Times profiles screenwriter Tom Benedek, who has taken to artistically repurposing his unproduced screenplays by firing bullets into them and photographing and/or bronzing the results:

After 20-plus years of a middling career as a Hollywood screenwriter, Mr. Benedek, 56 - the brother of Peter Benedek, a partner in the United Talent Agency - is forging a new path in the field of fine arts, using the raw material of his past failures for a canvas. Having shot the "Ivory Joe" script, which he wrote in 1992, Mr. Benedek will make it into a bronze sculpture, or take photographs with a special camera for striking jumbo prints. He will show these and other pieces this month in an exhibition at the Frank Pictures gallery in Santa Monica titled "Shot by the Writer - Works on Paper: 1982-2004." [...]

But he prefers to call it closure rather than catharsis. "Sometimes it's fun," he said, as the harsh smell of gunpowder still lingered. "Sometimes it's sad. When I look at the exit wounds, and the paper and the words exploded by the bullets as I photograph them, it feels like I'm taking the words back."

Blasting away at a unrealized script may produce "art," but if it's true closure, emotional truth, and commentary on the movie business the writer is looking for, maybe that gallery show could feature some truly envelope-pushing performance pieces, like a room where patrons can fire bullets into the producers themselves. We bet the anguished cries of a (semi-)human target would be far more cathartic than hollow-points striking a stack of three-hole-punched paper.