Pre-Braggers

From 2010...

You just want to say, “Hey buddy, keep it in your pants!”

Message boards are full of them. People who brag about things they have yet to do. Accomplishments they have yet to accomplish. “I have written a great screenplay.” “My script is better than (current hit feature film).” “When I win my Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, I’m going to...” “Anyone can write a stupid script like that, I’m going to write ART!” And hundreds and hundreds of other boasts of things that have not yet happened. It is so easy to say the script you have not yet written is better than the script that was written and sold and made and distributed and just opened at #1 over the weekend. But how can you possibly prove that?

Pre-Braggers always join a message board and come on strong - they post all kinds of stuff about how great they are and how bad everyone else is moments after signing up. They never spend any time lurking on the boards and reading past posts to see who everyone is and get a hang for what is going on, because the other people on the board do not matter - only *they* matter. Whatever subjects were being discussed before they arrived do not matter. This often becomes amusing, because they have no idea how many pro writers are on the boards or how many other writers are *way* ahead of them on their journey to becoming a professional writer. They are the only important ones! And eventually they say or do something stupid to a pro who could probably help them if they weren’t the center of the world and no one else matters.

Pre-Braggers also *start topics* rather than add to existing topics, because what they want to talk about is more important than what anyone else is talking about. Mostly, they want to talk about themselves. Instead of being part of the group conversation, they want everyone to be part of their conversation (as long as other people agree with them, if they disagree - they snap). And the Pre-Bragger’s conversations tend to be about how great they are, or how awful Hollywood movies are, or how wrong headed someone who actually knows what they are talking about is. They are experts without experience. When they start a thread, it is not about *discussion*, it is about *them* - it is bragging disguised as whatever subject is in the thread title. They believe *their* opinion about some popular film is what is right, and your opinion is wrong... and any facts that do not support their beliefs are wrong, no matter how many there are. They will dismiss every fact other posters bring up, and support their theory with... nothing. Just their opinion. Which is more important than everyone else’s opinion because they are a brilliant writer and everyone else is not.

And that’s a big problem with Pre-Braggers - they believe they have some sort of amazing talent that the rest of us do no have, so they will just waltz in and succeed while the rest of us who have worked our butts off will fail. Because for the Pre-Bragger it is not about all of the hard work we have done, it isn’t about hard work at all... it is about them being special. Them being the chosen one. If we are working so hard and have not cracked it, yet, there must be something wrong with us.

SELF CONFIDENCE

A Pre-Bragger is brimming with self confidence... in fact, they have way too much self confidence. That can be very irritating. Now, I do not think self confidence is a bad thing - without it we would never venture from our homes. But, like in all things, there needs to be a balance. You can have too much self confidence and be an arrogant prick (many Pre-Braggers are) and be completely blind to your faults. Pre-Braggers never realize how much work their scripts need, because there is no room for improvement if you are already perfect. I believe that you need enough self doubt to make you do that extra rewrite before you give your script to your best contact... but enough self confidence to give your script to that best contact. The problem with the Pre-Bragger is that they seem to have no self doubt at all - and way too much ego!

Can I tell you what is completely unfair about all of this? Hollywood is full of crap, so when someone steps forward who is full of crap... people listen to them. There is usually that moment on a messageboard where people believe the crap the prebagger is dishing out... and this carries over into the real world as well. So, as much as I might hate those arrogant prick Pre-Braggers, they are the ones who push me aside to get *their script* into the hands of my best contact. When someone tells me they have written the greatest script in the history of cinema, red flags raise all over the place... but some executive might think they need to read that script, because what if it really is the greatest script in the history of cinema? Can they afford *not* to read it? When you have a producer whose career may be built on a big-old-pile-of-dung, they may hear a Pre-Bragger’s BS and think “This kid may have something!”

Of course, most of the time that script is dead on arrival - the thing is so awful that it gets cut down by negative coverage and that’s the end of it. When you have no self doubt, you don’t do those rewrites the script requires. On rare occasions there is a good idea in that dreadful script, and it may last a little longer... but in my experience with the scripts of Pre-Braggers they tend to have those ideas the rest of us throw away because they are too bland or silly. Because a Pre-Bragger believes in their absolute genius writing abilities, little things like having a good idea are often not part of the equation. Or they have one of those Cloning-Jesus-From-The-Shroud-Of-Turin plots that every other first time writer comes up with. To the no-self-doubt Pre-Bragger these ideas are brilliant!

I have no idea what happens on tracking boards, but I suspect any Pre-Bragger script that gets read is discussed... and word gets out about them. They may end up having very few people interested in their “genius script”. What you want as a writer is to develop “fans” of your work who will champion you to their bosses and remember you or your script when they end up in some situation where they need a great script. Without “fans” you don’t get very far, and probably a third of my income is due to “fans”. A Pre-Bragger might be able to do the sales spiel for a script and get someone to read it, but we are in a buyer’s market and the script itself has to be something they want to buy. They don’t make a movie from the sales spiel. (Okay, sometimes they do - if your name is Michael Bay or Steven Spielberg or Tony Scott... and those guys are not Pre-Braggers, they have done a bunch of stuff they can brag about.)

The rest of us, who are waiting until something actually happens before we start bragging, have a better chance of finding those “fans” because we really are working our butts off trying to make the script better before we show it to anyone. We know our shit stinks, so we try to remove all of the shit from the script before we let anyone read it. Hey, we also know we aren’t prefect and there may be some smelly stuff we missed this time around, but we will catch it on the next rewrite. I just had a producer request a script, so I did a quick rewrite on it before sending it to him. I have no idea how many times that script has been rewritten over the past 15 years, but this time I removed one line of dialogue I never really liked and added one line of dialogue that I think really improves a scene... plus many many small changes - better words or phrasing and sometimes a quick trim of a scene that seems to go on too long when I read it this time. It’s all honing the script... and I think you stop doing that when the script gets filmed. Though, I once did post production dialogue tweaks for ADR on one of my scripts. It’s not over until it’s on the shelf at Blockbuster or airing on TV or up there on the screen in front of a paying audience.

MY ENORMOUS TALENT

At which time, a Pre-Bragger sees your film and says on some messageboard that they are a hundred times more talented than you are. That they will break in with *art* that will not be compromised because everyone will see the brilliance of their work and will not wish to change it. They are geniuses! If they only got that lucky break like I did, we could all see that their scripts are true art because their enormous talent is larger than that of the writer of that script that was bought and filmed and is in wide release this week. But how can you prove that?

You can’t... which is the safety net for Pre-Braggers.

Pre-Braggers often believe in that “Crap Plus One” theory of Terry Rossio’s - they see some awful film that has gone through the big meat grinder of Hollywood and think that anyone can do better than that... but they have not read the version of the script that sold. They think being better than the worst means you are better than everyone... but you are just better than the worst - and no one buys the worst (well, sometimes bad scripts do sell, but there is some amazing backstory involved in those sales that the Pre-Bragger doesn’t take into account). When people trash some “new writer” they often don’t realize how hard they have worked to get to that point - they might look at their IMDB listing and not realize that’s the tip of the iceberg. If only 10% of *sold* scripts end up on screen, for every credit listed there is a very good chance of 9 other “phantom credits” that don’t show up anywhere... but the writer still worked their butts off on them. The guys who wrote TOP GUN had been working as professional writers for 10 years before getting their first credit... that’s a lot of scripts that aren’t on IMDB, and a lot of actual hard work that those guys did. They may seem to just show up and sell a script, but they’ve really been working very hard “off camera”, and their scripts have gotten better and better.

Many Pre-Braggers haven’t even finished one screenplay - they are still working on it, because it is a work of epic brilliance. If you haven’t finished your script, it’s easy for it to be better than a script that is finished - because the script itself is still mostly fantasy. Whatever is in your head is much better than what is on someone else’s pages. Once we take those perfect fantasies from our minds and turn them into actual words, they always lose something. Which is frustrating. Why can’t my scripts be as great on the page as they are in my imagination? Well, as time goes on we get better at finding the best words and stringing them together into better sentences and putting those sentences in a better order - and our scripts get a little closer to the brilliant story sparking through our synapsis. But the fantasy of the script will always be better than reality... and those Pre-Braggers will continue to be legends in their own minds.

The thing about Pre-Braggers is that right out of the gate they insist that they are brilliant - before they have done anything! The most difficult thing for *any* writer is getting that stuff from their heads onto a page in some form that doesn’t stink. Name your favorite writer and they work hard. Sure, after a while things get easier due to practice and experience (two things a Pre-Bragger does not have), but writing is never easy. Who was it that said easy reading is damned hard writing?

The more you write, the more you learn. If you have not finished your first screenplay, or have only written one script, you are probably still in the learning phase and not the earning phase. If a Pre-Bragger has actually written 2 or maybe even 3 scripts, they often believe all 3 are *brilliant* because they haven’t learned enough to know how bad they probably are. When you’ve written a few scripts and go back and read your first, it may read like the work of a talented amateur - but you will see all of the places where it could be better based on *what you have learned*.

We learn from our mistakes, and if you don’t think you have ever made any mistakes... you are probably a Pre-Bragger. You might want to be a little more self-critical, because everyone you tell that you are faultless, will soon begin tearing you apart to find your faults. Human nature. Right now there are Pre-Braggers writing about what a blow hard I am in the comments section, because I obviously don’t see their genius. As one guy on a message board said recently, “You’ve never met anyone like me, you’ve never read a script as good as mine!”

Trust me when I say he will never let us read his script in order to prove this. What if I stole his idea? What if I stole his brilliant dialogue? “We can’t let the Russians see the big board!”

HANDJOB SEXPERTS

My favorite type of Pre-Bragger reminds me of that guy in the Monty Python Flying Circus “Nudge Nudge Wink Wink” routine - they come on strong but are a little short on experience. They want to write a sex manual, but they’ve never gotten any more than a handjob. These Pre-Braggers explode onto message boards with news that they have just been signed by some big agency or had a script go out wide that resulted in a bunch of meetings or may have even optioned or even sold some script to someone. They land an assignment and think they are king of the hill. So they start a bunch of topics that are all about how great they are - or they write some pseudo article about how to sell a script or write great stuff based on their experience... except the article is really all about how brilliant they are. Almost no practical information. Because *you* can’t achieve the brilliance that *they* have achieved because *you* are not an amazing genius like they are. They start these threads but the only real advice in them seems to be: “Be Me”. They aren’t about helping other writers, they are about bragging about their handjob...

But as the late great Bill Kelley (WITNESS) once said, you don’t really know anything until you’ve had a script filmed. Not to piss on your success, but there are all kinds of steps along the way, and even though you may have just optioned a script, and I congratulate you on that accomplishment, there are some more steps ahead of you. And even once you’ve had a film made, you have to figure out how to get the next film made... and then get a *good* film made. I’m still working on the last part. Most people realize that once you have optioned a script you still have a ways to go, but a Pre-Bragger thinks they have reached the top of the stairs and are above everyone else. So they start a thread to look down on all of us.

What is always amusing is when some Pre-Bragger pops up on the message boards as king of the hill because they got an option or an assignment... and fail to realize that a bunch of other people on the boards have also achieved this. So while they are bragging like crazy about their option, they don’t realize that some of the people they are bragging to have accomplished this long ago and often many times and don’t think it’s much to brag about... especially if the Pre-Bragger has the normal condescending attitude and occasional insult.

If you option a script or land an assignment and announce it on the boards, we will all congratulate you. If you start throwing your weight around and your ego is out of control... you are a Pre-Bragger and I am going to have fun sitting back and watching you self destruct. And you will. Because you can’t claim to be a sex expert if all you’ve had is a handjob. That handjob may put you ahead of some people, but not others. And that handjob isn’t intercourse, and we all know it - even the virgins. The more you claim to be the sex expert when all you’ve had is a handjob, the more you are setting yourself up for a big fall when the handjob is as far as it goes. You may be imagining that handjob is going to lead to a page-by-page reincatment of the Kama Sutra, but wait until you actually do that reinactment before you start bragging about it. Lots of people get the handjob and nothing else.

THE MAN IN THE MIRROR

Now, some of you may be wondering how the hell the writer of crap like CRASH DIVE and VICTIM OF DESIRE and BLACK THUNDER can be writing this without being the very Pre-Bragger that he’s talking about. Hey, good point! I am not an Oscar winning screenwriter, and never claimed to be. But I done it... and with a woman... and more than once! I’ve had sex 19 times so far (more like - I’ve been screwed 19 times), not with hot lingerie models, but with those gals who are still in the pick up bar at last call. The woman parts are still the same with those last call girls, so it still counts as sex. And those last call girls are drunk and have been around and are probably harder to satisfy - you really have to work at it! And you need to have skills that you may not need with those hot lingerie models - things the guy who has only had a handjob can’t even imagine.

It’s difficult enough to write a screenplay where a name actor will play the lead and they will throw a ton of money on FX and stunts, and a reasonably good director will be calling the shots... but I have to write a script for a guy whose skill is kicking people in the head, that has to be made for the catering budget of a studio film, with some idiot directing. Um, part of my job is to write a screenplay that takes all of that into account and still is tolerable to watch if you have had enough alcohol. Easy for a Pre-Bragger to think they can do better, but they may not realize all of those obstacles are involved. You have to be able to jump the hurdles that Pre-Braggers don't even know exist.

And I almost never start a thread on a messageboard, I mostly jump in with an answer or opinion as part of the discussion. Hey, I have this blog for my opinion, but I usually do not link blog entries unless they are educational (like the LEOPARD MAN entry). When I post on a messageboard I often include a signature link to my website, and if you are interested you can click on it... but I’m not going to post a whole Script Tip on some messageboard (to be honest - I *have* done this on MWS when my site moved from .com to .net - just to get the word out that I was still alive - and *yes* that was spammish). But I do not think any messageboard is my private blog that is all about me. Um, these are places for *discussions*... not posts that are all about a Pre-Bragger’s genius.

Plus, whenever I am in a *discussion* that is out of my pay-grade, I realize that I am not the expert and always back up whatever I say with some link to some article or statistics or corroborating evidence from a trusted source. I’m not going to try to pass myself off as an expert on some subject that I know something about but not everything about. And because these are *discussions* other people may call me wrong and pull out their evidence. It’s not all about me, it’s all about the subject and trying to figure out how to further our screenwriting careers... yours and mine. You may know something that I do not... and I want to hear that and figure out how to use it!

BREAK IN, STAY IN, SURVIVE

One of the things Pre-Braggers don’t realize is that even if they have gotten a handjob, the most difficult part of screenwriting is to continue working when you are not flavor of the month. Breaking in is close to impossible, staying in when everybody on that message board wants your job is even more difficult... And if years later you are still working as a screenwriter? Well, you are probably doing something right. And I extend that to all of the screenwriters that I have ever trashed in my life - Akiva Goldsman may have written the film version of LOST IN SPACE, but he’s still working in the biz and still writing popular movies. Pre-Braggers often discount the “popular” part, because they are geniuses and true artists, but we are writing for an audience. If the audience keeps buying tickets for movies written by Akiva Goldsman, that means he has something that other writers do not have. We need to look at his films and figure out what that thing is! I’ve had a couple of meetings with Akiva’s company and met him, and he’s a nice guy who reads science fiction novels and seems like he really cares about his work. Those things that I don’t like about his scripts are obviously not as important as the things that the audience *does* like... and I just hope that isn’t nipples on the Bat Suit.

There was a Pre-Bragger on a messageboard I frequent who came on strong because he’d had a handjob, and trashed all of the pros on the board because it was so easy for him to get this handjob, and we were all talking about how difficult the business is. Well, his handjob actually lead to a produced low budget film. Congratulations! Except after that - nothing. And I don’t think the low budget film was ever released. Now, he avoids that message board because he would just be saying all of those things he trashed us for - this is a difficult business! It’s easy to brag when things are going well, but when you hit that big brick wall we all hit eventually? When things go completely wrong? Again, the problem with Pre-Braggers (even the ones with a credit) is that they get their bragging ahead of their career. They think once they make that first sale, and it gets made, it’s smooth sailing from then on. Well, maybe it is - but you can’t brag about the “smooth sailing from then on” until you have gotten to some point in the “then on”. When you brag about something that hasn’t happened, you will always get in trouble because you don’t know what the future will bring. None of us does. Those of us who have struggled in this biz are still trying to figure it out.

It’s okay to brag about your accomplishments, but don’t get ahead of your accomplishments. Don’t brag about what has yet to happen. Do the work first. If you are a nice person online who doesn’t put down everyone who is not you, and you have some success (even a handjob), everyone will congratulate you. I know I will. If you are an @hole online who insults everyone and posts things that are all about your genius? If you win an Oscar, many people will still think you’re an @hole.

Don’t be an expert without experience! Don’t brag about things you haven’t done yet! Don’t substitute ego for talent and hard work!

- Bill

IMPORTANT UPDATE:
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: The Pitch Reveals! - your pitch exposes all of the flaws of your screenplay.
Dinner: Del Taco in NoHo down the street from the dollar cinema.
Pages: Some work on an article for the First 10 Pages Blue Book Expansion.
Bicycle: Yes - a medium ride.
Movie: NEED FOR SPEED at the dollar cinema. Worth every penny (and not a cent more)!

Random Thoughts On Art

From ten years ago...

There’s this sculpture on the corner of Buena Vista and Victory in Burbank of an all American ten year old farm boy in over-alls dancing with joy hand outstretched to the sun. Kind of Norman Rockwell kitsch. Inoffensive, and 99% of the time I drive by it and don’t even notice it. The last time I went past I was on my bike and hit the stop light and had a minute to look at it and think about it. Someone had taped an American flag in the boy’s out-stretched hand. It looks like he’s celebrating America, wholesomeness, and that 1950s version of pure patriotism.





But when I thought about this Norman Rockwell piece of art I wondered if it even was art. Adding the American flag made it even more on-the-nose and obvious - even more bland and invisible. It’s expected - like a plastic pink flamingo on a suburban lawn. It doesn’t catch your eye. It’s not really interesting - you don’t really think about it. Something else you drive by at that intersection, like the sign for the Radio Shack in the strip mall or the marque for Ralph’s Groceries with this week’s deals... Actually, I often look at the Ralph’s marque, because it changes constantly. It’s *different* and often unpredictable - How can they sell ten ears of corn for 99 cents? That’s downright *provocative*! I might have to pull in and see that for myself! But the fake Normal Rockwell kid? Booooring! It’s *expected*. I don’t think art can be expected... so maybe it is not art, just decoration. Manufactured, like millions of identical Halloween skeleton decorations which are not a bit scary.

I wondered what kind of reaction this same decoration would get if someone had taped a Soviet flag in the dancing boy’s hand. Red. Hammer & Sickle.

Now, we have something interesting. Something that is probably art. It’s no longer bland. Because it forces you to think. It’s shocking. It may even offend some people. It’s different. Unexpected. No way we could drive past that without thinking about it, wondering what it means - is this a ten year old *Soviet* kid? Or some sort of innocent and idyllic traitor? I’ll bet there are hundreds of different ways this could be interpreted! Even if you are deeply offended by it, you would be *thinking* about it and *feeling something*. It would not be some passive experience - just a decoration. And I think that makes it art.

There is a conflict between our image of that dancing ten year old kid and the hammer & sickle flag. An incongruity. You can’t just absorb it - you need to process it first. To think about it. To figure out what it means, and what it means to you. We take art personally - we love it or hate it. It provokes us.

TIME WILL TELL

Now, my normal opinion is that what makes art is the test of time. If we still think the movie is great 50 years from now, it is art. There are many movies that people claim are art... that just vanish in a couple of years. Films that were called a work of genius, and a decade later we aren’t even thinking about. I think those films are often “surface art” - they seem provocative on the surface, but they don’t touch us deeply... and don’t stick with us. There are movies that I will never forget... and others that I see in the cinema and don’t remember seeing the next day! And many of those are artsie indie films where the film maker was trying to provoke me with things on the surface of the story, instead of digging deeper and *really* screwing with me. And there are mainstream studio films that seem inoffensive on the surface, but go straight for your heart and that unevolved insect part of your brain... and stick with you. One of the reason why I love those BOURNE movies is that they dig deep into the protagonist’s motivations and get into the icky things we don’t like to think of: am *I* the monster?

One of the things that makes horror films work is the connections to our subconscious. Great horror films are often completely politically/socially incorrect. They deal with the things we don’t ever want to think about - the things we fear are true, but have created this concept of society to contain and control those thoughts. I watched THE MIST on 9/11 - it seemed fitting. I think that film might have reached a much larger audience with a different ending... but would not have been nearly as powerful. The nightmares in that film aren’t what the monsters do to people, it is what people do to people. And how people think they are doing the right thing... and they are wrong, and must live with that for the rest of their lives. Good horror movies give characters impossible choices - things that haunt the characters for the rest of their lives, and haunt the audience as they leave the cinema. “What would I have done? Only 4 bullets...”

As a million people have said before me, a beloved Christmas film like IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE sticks with us because it’s a bleak, ugly, nightmare! It’s not some bland story about nice characters who never engage in conflict with each other - it shows us both the good side of humans and the bad side... and I think the bad side gets a lot more running time! It provokes us. It challenges us. That film even *scares us* more than many pre-fab horror movies that get turned out by Hollywood. IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE has passed that test of time - we are still watching it today.

I think there are two things required for a film to pass the test of time:


1) Enough people must have seen it so that it *can* be remembered decades later. Even though IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE was not a box office hit, it was a big wide release movie that many people saw, and later in its life became a staple on TV at holiday season for a couple of reasons... at least one of which was that it had fallen out of copyright for a while and any TV station could show it for pocket change. The other reason being that it had a big name star and a big name director and a story that - despite its darkness - was accessible. Many arty indie films often have stories that are *not* accessible to a wide audience, and those films may become nothing but memories when one black-beret wearing audience gives way to the next. They are *temporary art* instead of something that we will be watching and talking about for decades to come - over 70 years in the case of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. A movie must be seen by large numbers of people to be remembered.

2) The film must be memorable. No matter how many people see a film, if it is bland and doesn’t touch them; they will not remember it. I did not see PRINCE OF PERSIA or SORCERER’S APPRENTICE, but many people didn’t see them. The reason why *I* decided not to see either is that they seemed generic - nothing provocative or dangerous about either. Now, that may be because they failed to include those elements in the trailers, but I suspect traces of dangerous material would still show up in whatever scenes they picked for the trailer. Those things are in a story’s DNA (hey - read my article in this current issue of Script Magazine for more on this!). If cut a trailer to BOURNE IDENTITY you can’t help but put in something about how the lead is searching for his identity and is afraid he is a very bad person. You can’t cut a trailer to THE MIST without including the conflicts between the people trapped in the market - even if you were trying to make it look like a monster movie. I will eventually get around to finishing the Fridays With Hitchcock on REBECCA, and there is no way to make a trailer to that movie without Max deWinter having some dark secret... and maybe even giving away that he may have killed his first wife. These provocative elements are *part* of the story and can not be removed or hidden. The Micky Mouse cartoon of SORCERER’S APPRENTICE is more dangerous and provocative than any of the 3 minute trailers to the Nic Cage film. Cute little Micky does the forbidden - he uses magic, and it gets out of control. He’s like that Norman Rockwell 10 year old dancing with glee with a Soviet flag in his hand.

*INTELLIGENT* CAUTION
vs.
*INTELLIGENT* INNOVATION

No one wants to ride a roller coaster where the tracks just end - and the cars shoot off into the amusement park to crash into the merry-go-round.... nor do they want to ride a roller coaster that is mostly straight-aways and gentle hills. We want the thrill of danger without the actual danger. That means a good movie is going to be a little dangerous - sure, we leave the cinema with all of the limbs we came with, but we may have a little scar tissue we didn’t have before. We don’t go to the cinema for a safe and bland experience - we want to *almost die*. We want to see a movie that leaves a mark. When the roller coaster ride is over, we want our hearts to still be racing in the memory of how close to death we came... and survived.

The problem with the business side of entertainment is that it's stupid. They are afraid of doing anything that might offend some segment of the audience - they are afraid of doing anything that is too different than the norm - they are afraid of doing anything that will anger advertisers. Now, as businesspeople they want to protect their investments, and that means they need to be cautious. They need to make sure they aren't going to produce some TV show or movie that people will not watch. That makes sense...

But at the same time, they need to be intelligent about their caution. They can't just say NO to everything that is different and always play it safe - because that leads to boredom. Part of entertainment is the novelty of the show or movie. That often leads to I SURVIVED A JAPANESE GAMESHOW and crap like that... but it doesn't have to. By the way, how many of you even remember HOW I SURVIVED A JAPANESE GAME SHOW? It was a TV series on summer of 2008 - only 2 years ago. Hey, it was strange, weird, wacky... and all surface. Nothing that left a scar. Novelty without art.


But novelty can also lead to interesting and innovative shows that stretch the medium - look at how 24's concept of one hour of TV = one real hour of the story was an interesting innovation or how LOST’s concept of starting in the middle of the story - the plane crashes on an island - then zipping back in time to tell us who these survivors really are and what their secrets are... as the continue forward and things just get stranger and stranger on the island. If we rewind time and look at what network execs were thinking before the first seasons of those shows aired, I'm sure they secretly thought they would be huge failures. And screw them up big time - because if it failed after 5 episodes, they would have this dangling unfinished story. This is a business run by fear - no one wants to greenlight the unusual TV show that could flop big time, or greenlight the movie that challenges the audience or makes them feel things that might be unpleasant.

But as those suits become more conservative - more interested in *not* taking a risk... they take a greater risk by giving us either crap or shows and movies that are so tame they are not novel. They are not original. They are not interesting. They offer us nothing we haven't experienced before... and that's when networks and studios make nothing but flops. They play it safe - not realizing that safety is really dangerous. No one wants to ride on a roller coaster with only moderate hills and no big scary turns. A safe roller coaster where you never worry that you might die.

To a certain extent TV and movies needs to "color within the lines" - TV has to make shows that run a half hour or an hour and follow the basic things we expect... stories that make sense and have some sort of conclusion at the end of the episode (though in the case of shows like 24, maybe not *the* conclusion). Movies need to be something that tells a coherent story about characters that we can understand and maybe identify with, and probably stay within the basics of drama those Greek dudes identified 2,400 years ago and hopefully run under 2 hours so that we can get a 7pm and 9pm showing on weekdays and 1pm, 3pm, 5pm. 7pm, and 9pm on weekends (or 12, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10).

But just because we have a certain framework doesn't mean we can only use 8 pack of Crayolas to color our pictures... in fact, because we have that framework, we need the full 120 pack of Crayolas... and we need to find ways to combine and shade and use those crayons in ways they have never been used before to color those pictures. The more we color within the lines, the more we need to be creative about colors and do wild bold things that no one has done with Crayolas before. We have to give the audience that near-death experience of the roller coaster... even though they know they will survive intact at the end. We can’t make our Crayola drawing bland and predictable - we need to make it exciting and inventive and maybe even frightening.


And here's where things go wrong - those Studio Execs and TV Execs think they need to play it safe in all ways, when they only need to play it safe in *some* ways - and be dangerous as hell in others. But knowing where to be cautious and where to be innovative takes intelligence - not computer print outs and business plans. I think that's the thing that may be missing in Hollywood these days - the old Moguls, for whatever reason, had that strange ability to know what elements required caution and what elements required anarchy. Or maybe they didn't - maybe they just knew what required caution and didn't care about the other elements at all - and the writers and directors were allowed to go wild (as long as they colored within the lines). Whatever the case - there was that blend of popular story and innovation. And I think Robert Evans at Paramount may have been the last of that line. GODFATHER PART 2 is one of my favorite films, and it is both art and potboiler. It's a gangster soap opera and an examination of morals and family. There was a time when - for whatever reason - we could have a TV show or a movie that was both innovative and interesting *and* popular. But that required the person in charge to know what elements needed to be treated with caution and what elements needed to be innovative.

I think the big problem with the suits in current Hollywood is that they are trying to make safe choices in all things - when a movie really needs to be dangerous and frightening like that roller coaster. A movie needs to be more than “decoration”, it needs to be provocative. It needs to scare us. Challenge us. Make us think. These people use intelligent caution but have no idea what intelligent innovation is. They want to bland down anything that might offend any audience member. Instead of making “sharp” movies, they want to make dull ones... and I think the reason why movies like PRINCE OF PERSIA fail is because they are dull or seem to be dull from the trailer.

Saw what you want about INCEPTION - you may hate it - but that end sure starts a conversation doesn’t it? And when it is revealed who killed his wife... not a safe bit of plot at all! Hey, that film sold some tickets!

And so did TOY STORY 3 - the darkest of the series. A movie that left a scar on me. The amazing thing about Pixar movies is that they aren’t afraid to make the roller coaster frightening, and at times really uncomfortable. They make films where the protagonist may be completely wrong, where the protagonist may have caused the problem, where the protagonist’s problems may self-inflicted. Pixar makes dangerous movies. Movies that stick with you. Movies that leave a mark. Hey, and what film sold the most tickets this year?

One of the things that pisses me off about writing scripts is that they always want me to sand down the rough edges. That's the first rewrite - the "caution" rewrite. Anything that might snag something needs to be removed. And that's where things go wrong - because if there is nothing rough to snag on the imagination, nothing to rip into the viewer, the story becomes "harmless" and smooth and boring. The roller coaster with gentle hills and no sharp turns. Boring. And they think this makes it better!


Think of the moments in films that you remember - the scenes that snagged you - and chances are, those are the scenes with the rough edges. Think of the films that left their mark on you - chances are those are films that may have looked like entertainment on the surface, but cut deep into you... causing you pain or discomfort at times. The films you remember are the ones that made you feel something you did not expect to feel. People love CASABLANCA because he *doesn’t* get the girl (sorry - spoiler). All of the test audiences and focus groups and marketing idiots who might look at that ending and think that the film might have been more successful if Bogart and Bergman ended up together at the end are just plain wrong. The audience might have “liked” the film more when they initially viewed it... but it would never have stuck with them and it would not have survived to become art had Bogart actually *not* been good at being noble.

For something to become art, it must stand the test of time. To stand the test of time, it must be seen by enough people to be remembered, and have enough rough edges to snag their memory. A movie has to be more than a decoration that we see and forget, it must be dangerous and provocative.

I think I’m going to buy a Halloween plastic severed head, and the next time I’m stopped at that intersection near that Norman Rockwell-like sculpture, tape it in the hand of that all American ten year old farm boy in over-alls dancing with joy.

- Bill

LIMITLESS! Take a pill & scripts write themselves!

From about 7 years ago...

Okay, I hate the trailer for the new movie LIMITLESS, because it looks like some slacker’s fantasy. Bradley Cooper takes a pill and can access 100% of his mind and - after not writing a single word on his novel - pounds the thing out in 4 days and renegotiates his deal for more money! No hard work involved. Okay, is there anyone left in the world that believes that crap about only being able to use 10% or 20% of their brain? It comes from an advert for a self help book from 1936, and it’s complete bull shit. Though we can’t use 100% of our brain to *think* with, that’s because a large part of our brain is being used for unimportant activities like remembering to breathe and making sure your heart beats and blood flows and limbs move when you want them to move. If you really want to use 100% of your brain for thinking, that would be at the expense of your heart beating and stuff.




But, if we can get past that completely wrong fact, there already exists a pill that will allow you to work to your full potential - and it’s *free*! It’s called Get Off Your Ass And Do Something, and no prescription is required. Nothing prevents you from working at your full potential... except you. The problem with this pill is that it’s bitter and hard to swallow. Most people avoid it. Can you blame them? There’s nothing fun or easy or stylish about Getting Off Your Ass And Doing Something. It’s, well, WORK. That’s the four letter word most people hate. Would you really want to watch a movie where Bradley Cooper sits at his desk every day and *types*? Even if he did it shirtless, I don’t think many people would find that very exciting.

Can I be honest with you? I don’t much like that Get Off Your Ass And Do Something pill myself. I’ve taken them now and then, and it’s not pleasant. That work thing is boring and sweaty. Plus, I look silly typing in Starbucks with my shirt off.

There are lots of people on message boards who think they will sell their first screenplay for a million bucks and date underwear models while sipping champagne and floating around in Spielberg’s pool. That’s the LIMITLESS version. The more realistic version involves writing a stack of scripts, rewriting them, doing all kinds of hard work and networking, and maybe landing an assignment that never gets made. Sure, I know a couple of people from messageboards who worked their asses off and actually sold their scripts (not the first scripts for either one) and the scripts actually got made into theatrical movies with stars. Cool. Those are the couple that I know who *seem* like overnight successes - and I know a whole lotta people.

There’s a great guest blogger entry on John August’s site who tells her story of working her ass off and becoming a professional writer. She’s done some series work on the 90210 reboot and wrote the sequel to MEAN GIRLS. It’s a great story, an inspiring story.... and a bunch of LIMITLESS people in the comments section are tearing down her accomplishments. You see, in the LIMITLESS fantasy land, earning a living as a screenwriter is just a bunch of crap if you aren’t floating in Spielberg’s pool with those underwear models. It’s not about the reality (work) it’s about the fantasy (being a rich and famous writer). To the LIMITLESS crowd, you start at the top! And there is only the top!

OVERNIGHT SUCCESS!

Okay - I’m maybe not impartial, here, because I’m not floating in Spielberg’s pool, but the percentage of screenwriters who write big blockbuster movies is small. Look at all of the movies made every year for cinemas, TV, Cable, DVD, etc... now add in all of the TV episodes... now add in all of the stuff you may not think of like reality shows and game shows and talk shows and soap operas and upscale online content and... well, there are a lot of working writers in the biz who will never write a summer tentpole movie starring Will Smith or even Bradley Cooper. They are still professional screenwriters and still earn a living doing what they love to do. None of them are likely to be floating in Spielberg’s pool, unless it’s some sort of SUNSET BLVD. thing, and they’re face down. (Sorry - a moment imagining Spielberg walking down the stairs in that slinky Salome dress, asking if they’re ready for his close up.) Hey, we all dream of writing that script that sells for millions and makes us suddenly attractive to underwear models, and that’s okay - but we also dream we will wake up and gremlins will have rewritten our Act 2 overnight. Unfortunately, neither has happened to me. I have to do that damned rewrite myself, and underwear models still don’t seem to care about me.

But I’ve been writing scripts for a living for the past 20 years, now.

And it’s a lot of work.

But I get paid for doing what I love to do - mentally playing “dress up” and being a spy or a tough cop or whatever cool fantasy *I* come up with. So I love my work (even though some days I don’t really like it). Would be nice to have the millions and underwear models, but at least I’m not cleaning the bathrooms at the Rossmore, CA Safeway Grocery Store. And I’m not stacking pallets in a warehouse. I’m not working any sort of day job - just writin’.

But if you were to find one of those people who might be floating in Spielberg’s pool surrounded by underwear models, that Cinderella story of their that sounds a lot like LIMITLESS? Fiction. 99.9% of those overnight success stories had some very long and very dark nights. The LIMITLESS people like to point to those folks... without ever digging very deep into their legends to find out of they are true or not. LIMITLESS people would rather believe the fantasy than search for facts they’d rather not know...




Hey, Frank Darabont got to direct his first sale SHAWSHANK, so can I! Except, Darabont co-wrote NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3, and THE BLOB remake, and FLY 2, and then worked on a bunch of TV shows writing numerous episodes, and had already directed a TV movie before SHAWSHANK. But for PR purposes, we’ll just start with SHAWSHANK.

Stallone and ROCKY? Myth! Complete PR fabrication - the hot script was PARADISE ALLEY, not ROCKY... and Stallone had done 13 acting gigs before ROCKY including *starring* in two films... and he was a writer on LORDS OF FLATBUSH made two years earlier. But we’ll just start with ROCKY for PR purposes, and sweep the whole PARADISE ALLEY thing under the rug.

My favorite of all of these overnight success stories is Jeff Maguire who wrote IN THE LINE OF FIRE. If you haven’t heard the PR version of that one, he was broke and Tom Cruise wanted to buy IN THE LINE OF FIRE and star in it, but Maguire turned that down because Cruise was too young, and the script got to Eastwood and the rest is history. Overnight success. Cinderella story. LIMITLESS! Except, Maguire had something like a dozen *produced credits* before IN THE LINE OF FIRE, including one starring Stallone (VICTORY - directed by John Huston!). The PR people have erased all of these films from his bio, but his first produced credit was a horror movie called VAMPIRE LUST.

There was no overnight success for these people - they worked hard! They took that other pill and Got Off Their Asses And Did Something. I think it’s disrespectful to ignore all of the work they did before that overnight success (even if their PR people have erased it... like those missing days from Bradley Cooper’s life in LIMITLESS). But it’s crazy to think the fictionalized version will happen to you, when it didn’t even happen to them. It’s difficult enough to sell a script or get an assignment, let alone start at the top!

MY APPLICATION TO BE CEO

Love him or hate him, Paul Haggis is the only screenwriter to write back-to-back Oscar Best Picture Winners, and he picked up a Best Original Screenplay Oscar while he was at it. He’s got that new film on DVD - THE NEXT THREE DAYS - and lately he’s been in the news for dumping Scientology and talking about it in the press. But he’s another overnight success, right? He took the LIMITLESS pill, right? Well, before CRASH, Haggis was a TV writer - and the *creator* of WALKER, TEXAS RANGER. He often jokes that he makes more money on Walker rerun residuals than on CRASH and his other movies combined. So, if you’re one of those people who commented on John August’s site and don’t think you could ever write something like WALKER, TEXAS RANGER... that’s a route to an Oscar! Haggis wrote on a bunch of TV low-profile series like DUE SOUTH (that Mountie show on CBS that usually aired over summer) and YOU TAKE THE KIDS and FACTS OF LIFE and DIFFERENT STROKES and WHO’S THE BOSS... also some good shows like LA LAW and EZ STREETS and THIRTYSOMETHING. But he didn’t even start on those junky TV sit-coms... he started on Saturday morning cartoons writing SCOOBY-DOO. Because that’s where the doors open for a TV writer. I know a bunch of people who started out writing animation TV or syndicated stuff - things that are not glamorous and underwear models have no interest in. But it’s a start. It’s a foot in the door. It’s writing for a living. And if you end up with a career like Paul Haggis’ *before* CRASH and that’s all there is? Hey - you have earned a living writing screenplays for a living... and those WALKER, TEXAS RANGER residuals are pretty good!

I think the reason why people on August’s boards poo-poo this professional writer’s career is that it’s the unglamourous hard work stuff - no fantasy! And they don’t want to even consider that they might have to dirty their hands writing MEAN GIRLS 2 or something. That’s *work*. They just want to take that LIMITLESS pill and skip all of that.

CUT TO: THE CHECK

The thing that amazes me is the LIMITLESS fantasy people. It’s as if they want to just cut to the Spielberg pool thing and avoid that whole *writing* part... and to me the writing is the fun part (well, you know what I mean). I didn’t want to become some generic form of rich and famous, I wanted to be a professional screenwriter - to write screenplays for a living. To make up stories and great lines of dialogue and cool scenes. I wanted to write! The part they don’t show in LIMITLESS, because it involves a lot of work typing and stuff. I may fantasize about cutting to: script finished, but I suspect if that really happened I would hate it. I love coming up with that killer line or story twist or bit of character. If I was in life just for the money I’d be doing something with much better odds of making a pile of money - I’ve joked that the guy who was hired as a bagger the same day as I was at Safeway is now a Regional Manager for the West Coast and probably making much more than I am and maybe working less. But I would not be happy doing that.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t aim high and try to be floating in Spielberg’s pool surrounded by underwear models (I hope they can swim) - always do great work and always aim for the stars - but allow for a bit of realism: know that you may not sell your first script for $2 million... instead you may end up getting a gig writing DVD sequels to movies or some other non-glamourous and non-famous gig... And you want to do your best work when you get those gigs and *enjoy them* (even though there’s a lot of typing involved) because professional writers don’t only write those Will Smith blockbusters, they also write SCOOBY-DOO cartoons, and TEEN WOLF TV show on MTV, and UNDISPUTED 3, and all kinds of other jobs where you get paid to write. All of that is *work* - no fantasy pill that you take and suddenly have the finished screenplay and a pile of money.

BLUE PILL OR RED PILL?

So, here’s is the pill: bitter and hard to swallow...




You need to look at your life. You probably have a family and kids and a job and all sorts of other responsibilities. You may not have much free time. Well, figure out just how much time you can spend writing every day - an hour? Half an hour? 15 minutes? Your lunch hour at work? Whatever you can spare. You know your life. You may have to organize your time better to find that half hour or whatever. But once you’ve figured it out, stick by it - that is your writing time. You are going to focus on *writing* during that time. Explain to the kids how important this is, and lock a door if you have to. But once you commit to that writing time - write (with a shirt or without - your decision). I’ve said this before - if you write 1 page every day, you have 3 first drafts by the end of the year. You know what the hard part is? Writing a page a day. Keeping that going. You will fail at first... or, more likely, you will get a page done every day for a while and then fail. Guess what? That’s okay. There is no such thing as permanent failure. Miss a few days (or months) and you can still go back to writing every day. If you keep screwing up and don’t write for two weeks for every week you do write? That’s a screenplay by the end of the year. How is that failure? You have given birth to a screenplay! But the more you stick to writing every day (yes, you can take weekends off if you want), the better. Everything is a habit. If you writing every day, when your time comes to write - your brain is ready to write.

Some people find that rituals help - I don’t mean sacrificing goats, I mean background music, having a beverage ready, maybe even wearing certain clothes. Whatever tells your mind that this is writing time. The important thing is to take that writing time and use it for writing. When I worked at the warehouse, I thought about my scene all day while I was on the clock, so that I could spend my writing time doing as much writing as possible - scenes already in my head. If you can find those moments in your non-writing time that allow you to think out a scene or exchange, that helps in many ways. For me, getting pages done is a form of reward. Momentum is a big thing. If I can write my pages today, it helps me write my pages tomorrow. I think it also helps if you can look forward to your writing time - if you can get excited about the scene you are going to write later that day or tomorrow morning while everyone else is asleep. If you find yourself spending your writing time *not* writing, you need to figure out why that is happening and change something. If you only have an hour a day, or 15 minutes a day, you need to spend that time putting words on paper (or computer screen).

I’m not going to lie to you and say that the Get Off Your Ass And Do Something pill tastes great and you’ll want to take one every day - it’s *work* - but in the real world we need to use the rest of our brain for stuff like breathing and making sure our heart keeps beating, so that LIMITLESS pill is probably not a good idea in the first place.

Maybe the film will address this?

In a speech where Bradley Cooper is not wearing his shirt.

- Bill

All Work And No Pay...

From 2012... the Mayan End Of The World year...

A while back the WGA sent out a survey on whether producers had asked for that extra (unpaid) rewrite or “sweepstakes development” or a producer asking for the writer to spec a script for the producer (often for a sequel or remake or adaptation - what would normally be a paid assignment) - which seems to indicate that these practices are on the rise.

Though I have always been against working for free on someone else’s script (why not work for free on *my* script?) I have written that free extra rewrite on occasion to fix some development mistake or keep them from going to some other writer who will just screw up my script. And my policy has always been that I’d rather write another 15 page treatment than have to do a major rewrite that throws 110 pages away to start from scratch. And part of this business is endless meetings where I pitch my take or pitch some stories - and am sometimes asked to have a one page leave behind in the event they like my pitch and want to “send it upstairs” to some network or studio or the guy I probably should have been meeting with in the first place.

But you know what? That business-as-usual free stuff can easily be abused.

Here’s the thing - I get miffed when some script *I was paid to write* doesn’t get made. That gets depressing after a while. You feel like you are doing a lot of work for nothing - and when you write a scene or character or bit or dialogue that you really love and are proud of... no one will ever see it. If a tree falls in the forest...?

SCHRODINGER’S SCREENPLAY

Last year looked like it was off to a great start: I had a bunch of potential deals circling, including some where deal points were being negotiated. I have a script that keeps almost selling and getting me meetings every once in a while at studios – and someone wanted to buy it! That someone was the co-producer of an Oscar winning film! Plus, I had one of the stars of a big theatrical action flick who was interested in a screenplay (well, the producer on the project was interested – the star seemed uninterested in anything). And the producer of a new film from the director of a big Bruce Willis film you have seen was also interested in a screenplay. Things were *happening*! Then, one by one, all of these deals fell apart. And so did *everything* that was going to happen last year.

My Big Theatrical Remake Project seemed to be officially declared dead (or at least dead to me) last year. That was a project where I did several extensive treatments (free) before we went to screenplay, and I really thought we had a great script. There were studios who were interested in the project... but somehow decisions were made not to go with any of them. There was a better deal over the horizon somewhere. One of the things that is “business as usual” in this town is the page one rewrite on an “old” screenplay that everyone loved just to make it “new” and “fresh” so that it can be resubmitted to the same people who loved the old version. This seems completely backwards to me, since you risk making changes that will turn off the people who loved the first version. But this is a common way of reviving a stalled screenplay - and films like SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE which began as a big budget Julia Roberts movie at Universal get a rewrite by another writer when it stalled out in order to become a modest budget Miramax film with Gwyneth Paltrow. When a project dies - no matter what the reason - they rewrite the script. On my project, the rewrite notes sounded like they were taking the script in the wrong direction and I bailed rather than have a really bad version of the script exist with my name on it. Yeah, the producer will just hire someone else - and have to pay them... but maybe that makes them think twice about those notes?

On TREACHEROUS I did a strange version of this a few times - a free rewrite every time we approached a new star. In the Mickey Rourke draft he was a boxer. In the Rutger Hauer draft he was a soccer player. Each time I personalized the script for the star the producer was going after... and all of the old versions were garbage. I suspect at this time, if my script on the Big Theatrical Remake Project isn’t completely dead by this point in time, *my* script is garbage and they actually have hired some other writer to “take it in a new direction”... which will be farther away from what made the original film great and farther away from the version a handful of places seemed eager to make... but much closer to never being made. So, does that screenplay exist in the box or not?

Another recent Genre Assignment that was supposed to shoot crashed and burned – which I had seen coming from a mile away. It was a weird situation from the start. I don’t really think the producer wanted to make it, it seemed like the *investors* wanted to make it. This is a problem in the indie world – a producer wants to make something that has little chance of making a profit so no one will give him or her money for that project... but some genre film that will make money is easy to get funding for. So the producer starts to make the genre film (hires a writer) but their heart isn't in it, and they don't push it hard enough. They lose interest... because they really want to make whatever their passion project is... one time it was a serious drama about astronomy. I think I may have been partially at fault in these cases – I always try to make the genre story into something better than the title and logline given to me and this often makes the producer think the genre script maybe could be changed into the more artistic project they wanted to make... and it just can't be that. For that astronomy producer I actually included astronomy as part of the genre story - which may have actually caused more problems than it solved. Instead of simply making the great version of some silly genre film, they want to make something the project can never be... and ended up making nothing. Another script that may or may not exist in the box. Dead or alive?

So last year had some assignments I got paid for that just stalled out, and some spec sales that just stalled out, and that’s frustrating. I’m in the business to *tell stories* and that means the scripts have to go all the way to screen. I know the odds of that happening even once money has changed hands are about 1 in 10... but I still *try* to target companies that actually make movies rather than develop projects that are either alive or dead - we have to open the box and look inside to be sure.

FIELD OF DREAMERS

Add to that a number of projects that were “If you write this, they will come!” and then nothing came. These are kind of the sneaky Write On Spec deals because it’s *my* script. I’m just writing my own script on spec... because someone says they will buy it. If they *don’t* buy it, I have just written a screenplay I was going to write anyway. Sounds good to me... and I’ve done this several times. Weird problem - I don’t think a single one of those deals came through. I still own every single script I’ve written on spec because someone is interested.

The ultimate version of this was a meeting I had ages ago on a sequel in a popular horror series. The first couple of films had been theatrical, but now they were being funded by the home video department of the studio. I pitched my sequel idea and the producer loved it, but... It would be much easier for *him* to pitch to the studio if there was a treatment - something fleshed out. Hey, I’ll write treatments for free - so I wrote up the treatment for him. He read it, gave me some notes, I rewrote the treatment... We worked on this for months - back and forth, fine tuning that treatment until it was amazing. And then he submitted it to the studio. The studio decided *not* to make another film in the series, and I was stuck with the treatment. Later I wondered if the producer *knew* they didn’t want to make another film in the series and my treatment might have been his way to get them to change their mind. Nice if I had known that ahead of time.

Years later, I had a producer looking for horror projects, and I pitched that same idea as a stand alone non-sequel (a couple of changes and a slightly different killer) and he loved it and wanted to read the treatment. So I did a rewrite on the treatment to remove the series elements (and improved the heck out of it) and let him read the new treatment - and he loved that, too. But... See, he couldn’t afford to develop the script, but he needed a completed script to get the funding (might have even been the same studio home video division as before) so - could I write the screenplay for my idea for free? Sure. Oh, and because of a financing window closing soon - could I have it finished in 3 weeks? Sure. So I worked my butt off and delivered a shootable first draft in 3 weeks that would knock the socks off the funding source...

And what I did not realize is that there was a bit of “sweepstakes” writing going on here, and he had several writers specing their ideas for him... and he submitted a half dozen scripts and let them pick and they picked someone else’s. Though I still own that screenplay and it almost gets made every once in a while - the producers who told me if I wrote it they would buy it? Did not buy it.

There’s a treatment somewhere on my website called THE GHOST which began with a producer who claimed he owned the rights to a comic book series, and he wanted me to write a treatment (free) to securing financing so that they could pay me to write the screenplay. This was a slam dunk deal, I was told. I wrote the treatment, did some free revisions... and somewhere in there the producer dropped the bomb that he did not actually own the comic book rights, and my treatment was to get his financiers to pony up the money for the comic book rights. Great! I do work so that someone else can get paid! Except (as usual) it didn’t work out - some other company had already bought the rights to the comic book. The lesson I learned here was - make sure the producer ACTUALLY owns the rights before you do any work. So that lesson was applied to both the NYT Best Seller I adapted (they owned the rights) and ANGELS & DEMONS (they owned the rights). But the comic book thing? I ended up making some major changes to my treatment so that it could be a stand-alone story that maybe I could sell to someone else. So far, no luck.

WIMPY’S BURGERS

Last year I had a similar situation - a treatment that everyone loved... but in this economy producers are not developing things like they used to. If there was a script, there was a sale. Now, you might think by now I would have learned this lesson - but since this was *my story* and the treatment was always popular, when they told me they would buy a completed script (but not pay me to write it) I wrote the script. If nothing else, situations like this get me off my lazy butt and cranking out pages. I think when I look at my emotional conflict that the “We’ll Gladly Pay You Tuesday For A Screenplay Today” physical conflict brings to the surface, it’s that I am a lazy person who is motivated by *hope* that some damned script will sell and get made into a film. Without the *hope* I get burned out and do less work...

And that is the big problem, here - the giant asteroid headed towards Earth.

If I begin to believe I’m writing for the trash can with no *hope* of having the script made, I lose my motivation for writing, and begin that downward spiral. I think we all feel this way. We hit that point where we wonder if writing screenplays is pointless. If we seem to always get the stick and never get the carrot, we lose our enthusiasm for writing. And it seems to be one damned stick after another. The tough part of this job is to self motivate - to keep plugging away even after you feel that it may end up a waste of time. Part of that is actually *enjoying* the writing process - and that’s usually what keeps me going. Though it may end up that not a single living person ever reads this screenplay, that line on page 27 is something I’m proud of, and the characters and story were fun to write. Though sometimes writing can be torture, I guess I’m a masochist.

But last year I wrote another screenplay because someone said they’d buy it... and nothing happened. Though they didn't buy it, I still own the script and have since had another producer interested in it as a much bigger film... but then not go forward because they were really looking for something in another genre but really liked my script. I'm sure that script will sell eventually, but it didn't sell last year... and it didn’t sell to the people who got me to write it. Is it alive in the box or dead... and why the hell did I spend my time (time is money) on that script instead of some other script? The problem with these Wimpy Deals is that they trade on hope - they *abuse* my hope.

Someday has to be Tuesday, right?

STRAWS AND CAMELS

But here’s the thing about all of these free spec things - even if it’s my treatment and I planned on writing it eventually, I did it *now* as a favor to the producer. Every free rewrite is a favor to the producer. Those free treatments that radically change the story every time - a favor to the producer. And just like any favor (helping you move, taking you to the airport) eventually there needs to be reciprocation. Now, here’s the thing - I owe lots of people favors and will eventually pay them off. I do lots of favors for people, and if they pay it forward or thank me, we’re even. I don’t tally favors I’ve done for people (but am aware of favors others have done for me - weird, huh?). But there comes this point where I realize I am doing all of the favors and getting nada. Not even a “Thank you”. The favors become *expected*. And that’s when I start to feel like maybe I’m owed something.

There is a company I've pitched to every year for probably a decade – but has yet to buy anything. What pisses me off the most about this company is that every year some script of mine gets me a meeting where they want me to pitch ideas for their current specific needs... and then they pick about 3 or 4 of those ideas and ask if I would type up a page or three on each because it will make it easier for them to pitch to the studio... so I do this, and then nothing happens. Sure, I’ll do free treatments and free synopsis... but these are *favors*.

This has been going on for *a decade* with these guys. I have typed *hundreds of pages* of treatments and synopsis. There were times when they were looking for projects in 3 different genres, so I would come in with a bunch of ideas in each genre, they would like 3 or 4 in each and I would type up a short treatment on each, and then nada. Zip.

All work and no pay, makes Bill an angry boy.

Last year I pitched one they really liked – which had franchise possibilities – and they wanted me to type up a treatment for free so that they could go to the studio... and I did that... and then nothing happened. That ended up being the last straw with those guys, because I had typed hundreds of pages for projects that never happened and I could have just as easily written a few screenplays. Oh, and these are always hurry up we need them tomorrow morning at 9am things.

I am never going to pitch to them or write them anything again.

Screw them.

The next time someone passes them one of my scripts and it gets great coverage and they go, “Hey, that’s Bill! We love Bill! Let’s get him in here!” and they call me, I’m going to tell them to go eff themselves. They will probably be confused by that response, but they have had ten years to find some project to actually pay me for - and haven’t done that yet. And they have had open assignments that they filled with other writers. Writers with agents or managers who closed the deal - or who had other clients they wanted to work with. The worst part of this is that some of these films have sucked big time.

But I wonder if the writers on those open assignments wrote the scripts on spec? That may be why they didn’t “throw me that bone” - they know I won’t spec a whole screenplay for them. Which means that “bone” does not exist. For all I know they end up with the bad scripts because they *still* don’t spend any development money even once they have gone to script. Maybe I am *lucky* they never hired me when they needed a screenplay written? But if that’s the case - it’s worse than I thought... everyone was doing work for free. Those deals may have been like the scripts of my own I speced for people that I’m still stuck with. Dead in the box or alive? DEAD.

THE BUCK STOPS WHERE?

The problem is money... and it seems like over the past few years things have gotten worse. There isn’t the development funding there used to be - so producers either need to find that *perfect* script that they can just shoot tomorrow, or find writers who will work for free. When the producer is looking for something specific, they would rather have it written on spec to their specs than spend the time searching for one that already exists. The producer can’t afford to pay for the treatments or rewrites or whatever - and so that *cost* is passed on to the writer. And it *is* a cost. Time is money. The time I spend writing a bunch of free treatments could easily be used to write some script that *I* want to write, and that I think will have a better chance of selling. The time I spend doing that free rewrite that screws up the script because the producer “isn’t quite sure what’s wrong with the story so let’s make them cowboys and see if that works?” is wasting **my** time on a draft that doesn’t have a chance in hell... But no matter how much I discuss the reasons for the odd changes with the producer - he can not articulate why he’s *sure* the cowboy draft will be the one that gets the financing or that he can take into the studio. But it’s just a waste of my time, and I know it.

Part of the job is pitching your take on projects - and that burns up a ton of time for the writer. You have to read the material (book, comic book, watch the original film, etc) and then formulate the new version of the story - and that really means write a beat-by-beat treatment or outline and figure out the characters and find a bunch of great scene ideas - just so you can go in and pitch... and you are one of a couple dozen writers who do this. All so that the producer can hear a bunch of different takes and decide on one. Hey, wasn’t there a time when a writing assignment was just *assigned* to some writer after reading their material? The producer finds the writer they believe fits the material and hires them. Now, instead of the *producer* making that decision it gets passed down to the writers - a bunch of us basically write different versions of the same movie and then the producer picks the one they like. So they hear 24 pitches and pick one and the other 23 writers go home empty handed after reading a 478 page book and figuring out how to turn it into a 110 page script.

It's "auditioning" for a job - an actor doesn't get paid to audition, do they?

That would make sense if I could do an audition or two every day to try to land a job... but these things take *weeks* to put together. And after a good actor that everyone loves who keeps getting call backs auditions over and over again, the casting director tends to go out of their way to find them a role on something. They get thrown a bone.

Look - if the producer is the one who can’t pay me, the producer needs to GET THEIR SHIT TOGETHER and figure out *exactly* what needs to be done in the free rewrite to trigger the money flowing to *me*. No experiments. No whims. No giving me notes without *thinking* first. No asking me to write some treatment that has ZERO chance, or is the producer trying to get a door open using *my* work. The producer needs to be responsible. If you ask a writer to do a treatment or synopsis or - heaven forbid - a screenplay for FREE, you’d better be damned sure that it has a 80% chance of turning into money so that you can pay the writer. Asking writers to do a bunch of work you’re going to just throw against a wall to see what sticks is having the writer finance your incompetence.

For me the biggest issue is - no Thank You. No acknowledgment that I have done this production company that loves my work a bunch of major favors for the past decade. I have done a pile of unpaid labor for them, but they have done nothing for me. And I am not the only one. I’m sure there are other writers who have written a stack of free treatments and pitched takes on projects where they had to read some 478 page novel for them and never even got a thank you for it. The reason anyone does free work is to eventually get paid, and if that eventually never happens - well, you feel used and screwed over. I know I do.

Now, this is coming from a guy who is constantly saying that’s just the way the business works. No one in Hollywood has time to be polite. I’m not some new guy who gets miffed when some script that has traveled all the way up stream to the top gets a pass and no one tells me. No one owes me a rejection note or phone call. I’ve been doing this for 22 years, now - I know how the business works. But the unacknowledged favors seems to be getting worse.

That is the real problem. The WGA survey shows that this is not an isolated thing. *Many* producers seem to be asking for favors without reciprocating. As writers, we think “Hey, this might be the way in!” and it’s only writing a few pages, right? But that survey means writers have been complaining. They have reached the point where they are getting angry about the free work without even being thrown a bone. No eventual pay for all of the work - and that leads to complaints to the union... or at least whispers loud enough that the union is sure to overhear. Other writers may have already given that “Go eff yourself” response - or be one free treatment or one pitch or take away from it.

The solution is actually simple - when a producer asks a favor of a writer, and the writer delivers... the producer needs to realize that they now *owe* that writer a favor.

Or at least a Thank You.

When the producer is deep in “favor debt” to a writer? Time to pay them with real money. Hey, I know that your budgets have been cut and things are worse now than they were a few years ago... but they are worse for *all of us*. There seems to have been more abuse in the past few years than ever before... and it's time for that to stop.

Know when it’s time to throw the writer a bone... and if you owe too many writers too many bones? That’s a serious problem - what are you going to do about it?

What the hell did Harlan Ellison say?

- Bill (probably burning a bridge or two)

IT'S BACK!

*** SECRETS OF ACTION SCREENWRITING *** - For Kindle!

*** SECRETS OF ACTION SCREENWRITING *** - For Nook!

Why pay $510 for a *used* copy of the 2000 version when you can buy the Expanded 2011 Version - now over 500 pages - for $9.99? NEW Chapters! NEW Techniques! NEW Examples! It's the book pro screenwriters recommend! An Oscar Winner and the co-writer of FOUR of the Top 20 Box Office Movies Of All Time recommend it! (which is probably why someone is selling a used copy for $510.) Filled with techniques you will not find anywhere else!

Only $9.99 - and no postage!

NEW!

*** DIALOGUE SECRETS *** - For Kindle!

*** DIALOGUE SECRETS *** - For Nook! (coming soon)

Expanded version with dozens of ways to improve your dialogue! Print version is 48 pages, Kindle version is almost 200 pages!

Only $4.99 - and no postage!

NEW!

*** YOUR IDEA MACHINE *** - For Kindle!

*** YOUR IDEA MACHINE *** - For Nook!

Expanded version with more ways to find great ideas! Print version is 48 pages, Kindle version is around 175 pages!

Only $4.99 - and no postage!

NEW!

*** CREATING STRONG PROTAGONISTS *** - For Kindle!

*** CREATING STRONG PROTAGONISTS *** - For Nook! (coming soon)

Expanded version with more ways to create interesting protagonists! Print version is 48 pages, Kindle version is once again around 208 pages!

Only $4.99 - and no postage!