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New York, 6:56 AM
Sun Nov 29
12 posts in the last 24 hours
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09/14/09
09/13/09
I've gotten quite good over the years at politely deflecting these requests. It's a matter of laying down the rules firmly and politely. As in, "I'd love to help you, but I have two primary professional rules, namely, I never work for free and I don't work for friends or family members".
If the request goes beyond that, and sometimes it does, I give them a real market-rate quote for whatever it is they're requesting. Once they see that their "little idea" is going to cost them $20K/day to produce, they tend to vanish, and quickly.
09/13/09
Badcog, ya done good, and I'm thrilled for you.--Amersham
He has definitely not lost his voice.
On another note, I have written many books (all published, by real publishers, not vanity publishers), and the same thing happens to me--people who have written, for the most part, lousy excuses for stories ask me to read their work (often hundreds of pages!) and comment on it. Even more delightful are the people who say they have a story idea and want me to write the story and then we'll split the profit, which of course will be HUGE.
Um, no.
09/12/09
"I wish you luck in all your endeavors, and it would thrill me no end to hear that you had sold your screenplay, and that it had been made into the best movie since Godfather Part II."
Sure you would be happy if that person made a better movie than you. I don't buy that for one minute, sorry. It's more like you would be ready to cut out his cojones with a dull paring knife if that person walked away with the Academy Award for Best Screenplay.
If you're going to be honest, at least be VERY honest.
09/12/09
*shakes head*
Whoever in this long thread said that people who don't understand this craft think it's about "the hook" and not the endeavor of honing words as a poet would, you hit it dead on.
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09/12/09
Anyhoo, it was curious to read the statements from script editors who state that they see so many bad scripts and how the majority of people cannot write.
Considering the amount of absolute garbage that makes it to the big screen, what makes these script editors any more insightful or talented??? They approve that crap yet they criticize other people's work??
09/12/09
09/12/09
And with that, sir, you become the problem.
The "absolute garbage" that makes it to the screen makes a lot of money. And the fact that it's not to your taste (or mine) doesn't mean the people who read scripts for a living don't know what they're talking about when it comes to getting asses in the seats. And it doesn't mean the people who wrote it aren't terrific writers with wonderful, innovative screenplays they used as writing samples to get them that gig on Transformers 2. We've all gotta eat.
09/13/09
I'll give that a minute to sink in.
1 page of a script= 1 minute of screentime. That's 8 minutes of narration, at the beginning of a movie, about space football.
Before I read it, the writer explained to me that they really didn't know anything about football. They planned to write the football parts in later. Did I know anything about football?
No. I did not know anything about football.
These are things that were in this script;
The space football comissioner, based on Kim Jong Il (I knew this, because in the script they wrote, "This character is based on Kim Jong Il.")
A 3 page montage of the space football locker room.
Blank spaces where football would go (I knew that was where football would go, because it said "Football goes here").
A love scene.
So basically, I read a 220 page dramatic and sexy retelling of Space Jam with an alien North Korean dictator, thousands of typos, and no formatting to be seen.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, fuck you.
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09/12/09
Let's not, then. What the fuck does being a woman have to do with this? An asshole is an asshole, whatever the bits in front of it.
09/12/09
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09/11/09
In fact, we have no way of knowing if there's even a real guy, or if he's created a distillation of a larger set of experiences into something more digestible. Like the liberties he took with the Picasso anecdote. Like what screenwriters do for a living.
09/11/09
Interviewer: How's the screenplay going?
Interviewee: How did you know?
It was claimed there were no misses, not with masseuses, bartenders, cab drivers, service station attendants. That's a lot of opportunity to be burdened with a reading project.
09/11/09
Whenever my friends would ask me to read their scripts, I would inform them that there was no way I would like it. I will cross out entire chunks of dialogue. I will write mean things in the margins, and I will not pass it on to anyone for them. Basically, I will treat them like they're paying me to tell them every single thing wrong in the script. Only I will not be getting paid, so I will be in a worse mood. No one asks me to read their scripts anymore.
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