Letters to the Editor
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Having A Life
This fanciful history doesn't explain why every Tom, Dick, and Dorothy who can put two words together (before and after film school) wants to be a screenwriter. Compared to other "writing" forms it's not especially challenging. Try writing plays, novels, or poetry--the media that most demonstrates ones capacity with the written word--and the screenwriters are the most fortunate of the lot.
The mere fact that they have a union and somebody who cares (they hope) if they walk out puts them in another category. Look at all those sit-coms that need jokes--all the internet sites that need film critics, all the grad schools that need teachers, all the re-writes nobody uses but they still pay good money for. (And yes, there is always advertising.)
If it wasn't for the fact they're fellow writers, I wouldn't have much sympathy. They know what they're getting into. It is not and never was a writer's media--unless you do the Woody Allen route, or the Europeans, or the Indies who give one at least a little hope that God is not totally evil.
Try acting, directing, nepotism, or marrying a rich spouse if you are serious about getting into the movies and still having a life.
P.S. Did I mention journalists--the hardest working/lowest paid of the lot if they didn't go to the right schools and can't play dumb to get a corporate gig.
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Only provocateurs excite me
Most writers are crap hacks.
Hollywood is flooded with junk product nobody really wants to see.
Then you look at Traffic or Syriana or Idiocracy, these are movies that excite and provoke, move the argument forward.
Look at The Aviator or Royal Tenenbaums or Lost in Translation, these are films where the dialog creates a palpable space within the film. They are not just words, but characters themselves, with dimension. To be respected.
Europe is better at the dialog between filmmaker and audience. Writers have value there. They MAKE value.
In America, writing for film is like some palliative, something to fill the next ten seconds with succor for the idle mind to remain idle. Then ten more seconds of idling. Don't forget to throw in the laugh track to remind people this shit is funny. God forbid you make them think or lust or despair-- might throw people into the loony bin then.
'Provocation' and 'Hollywood' are mutually exclusive ideas. Hollywood is an organ of the elites. The last thing they want to do is to rough up the waters.
No wonder the writers there lack value, they're just whores.
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Screenwriting typically happens AFTER the decision is made to produce a film
Best-selling books or the rights to previous hit films or old TV series are optioned; big directors and stars are attached. THEN a writer is hired to do a draft. And then a second writer hired to fix the first draft. And a third writer. And so forth.
If enough money and commitments have been thrown at the project, often nobody will be inclined to put a stop to it -- even if a decent screenplay never does emerge from all that rewriting.
The general assumption is that "it all starts with a script" -- but that is rarely the case.
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I'm a screenwriter and...
Everytime I'm asked to write a feature, I refuse. I refuse beause as far as I can tell - writing features is a thankless job that's brutally hard on the ego. In the feature world, the director is king, the writer a nuisance.
Aside from Charlie Kaufman, no one can name a famous feature writer. But throw out David E. Kelly, Aaron Sorkin or Joss Whedon's names at a dinner party and you'll get smiles and nods of appreciation. Those men are writers who've said to hell with features and turned to television.
And it's not hard to understand why. In TV land, the writers are producers and showrunners and the directors come and go and do what we say. Many people would agree that some of the best screenwriting today is turning up on TV. Look at The West Wing, Deadwood and The Sopranos - people love these shows because the writing is brilliant.
I will never understand why my friends and collegues continue to bash their heads against the wall, working in film.
TV is well paid, increasingly well respected, and the only place to be if you want to have any power at all.
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Oh yeah, well ---
the bottom line is that EVERYBODY in tinselville is making way too much --- little wonder why the drive-ins & bijous have vanished into the elephant graveyards --- who out there truly believes that 90 - 120 minutes of Ha-Haa' or Oh-oh's or Ho-Hum's is worth 10 smackers ?
whatever disparaging crud you'd like to launch against tinseltown writers who work for the "canned-laffs" idiot-box industry is okay by me ---
but truth be told --- EVERY SINGLE half-way decent flick to make it to the big screen ... depends heavily on some screenwriter to create the seed that will eventually bloom.
Sure a lot of hanger-on's will in time jump aboard like $$ barnacles to a ship --- afterall, millions are at stake.
What is most disturbing about the Outlay lies in the $$ paid to the "Actors" who are paid to Parrot words given them by the screenwriter ---
Mister Pitt $$$ & angelie jollie $$$ "read the lines" of some screenwriter --- the girlies in the theater seats get all weepy -- less because of the Parroting --- and more because of the Mood Lighting folks (underpaid) and the MUSiC chumps (underpaid) all led up to the BRINK of the tear-cracking moment that the screenwriter & his little buddy in the director's chair plunged them into.
why are actor's given the Top Heavy credit $$ they clearly don't deserve ??
then they get up on a soap box & spew their shallow understandings of how the world works ---- a world in which they are merely a shallow veneer of glamor.
miss jollie goes to the african basketcase to adopt some Unfortunates that she can advertise at her cocktail parties -- thereby dismissing the guilt for not adopting the poor kids who are Leaned On in the LA neighborhood nextdoor --
Veneer --- $$