I will not read your fucking script

Below is one of the best articles I've ever read about what it's like to be on the receiving end of an aspiring writer soliciting feedback on their screenplay... and why that person is in the wrong to ask their professional film friends to offer feedback as a favor. Josh Olsen states it exquisitely: "...when you ask a professional for their take on your material, you're not just asking them to take an hour or two out of their life, you're asking them to give you—gratis—the acquired knowledge, insight, and skill of years of work. It is no different than asking your friend the house painter to paint your living room during his off hours."

I get a lot of people asking me for my opinion on their scripts. Actually, I don't mind reading their work—especially if I know they can handle brutally honest criticism—but the sad fact is that I'm a slow reader and I've got about a gajillion things on my plate at any given moment. So I started offering free feedback on just 10 pages and anything more than that I charge a hefty consultation fee. That cut out almost all feedback requests, presumably because when people see how much I charge for the time I spend on their work, they start respecting my time by not intruding on it, either.

My favorite section from this article:

It rarely takes more than a page to recognize that you're in the presence of someone who can write, but it only takes a sentence to know you're dealing with someone who can't.

(By the way, here's a simple way to find out if you're a writer. If you disagree with that statement, you're not a writer. Because, you see, writers are also readers.)

I can always tell in the first sentence or paragraph whether the writer really appreciates the technique of writing and the storytelling craft—and I'm never wrong. If the first sentence—the very first thing introducing the script—is clunky, has typos, or rambles incoherently, then what hope is there for anything that follows? The first page, the first paragraph, the first sentence, even the first few words are the most important things the reader will read. Will these few words propel the reader to the next sentence, the next paragraph, the next page? For half-hour TV dramas, you only get three pages before your script gets shitcanned.

Everyone can write, so everyone thinks they can write screenplays... but to write well enough to maintain a reader's interest? Extremely difficult. I'm no master, by any standard, but I wish more "writers" would embrace that same degree of humility. It would make it a shitload easier to give them the kind of feedback they so desperately need.

I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script
Wednesday, Sep. 9 2009 @ 10:00PM

We know you've been working very hard on your screenplay, but before you go looking for some professional feedback, you might keep in mind the following piece by A History of Violence screenwriter Josh Olson.

​I will not read your fucking script.

That's simple enough, isn't it? "I will not read your fucking script." What's not clear about that? There's nothing personal about it, nothing loaded, nothing complicated. I simply have no interest in reading your fucking screenplay. None whatsoever.

If that seems unfair, I'll make you a deal. In return for you not asking me to read your fucking script, I will not ask you to wash my fucking car, or take my fucking picture, or represent me in fucking court, or take out my fucking gall bladder, or whatever the fuck it is that you do for a living.

You're a lovely person. Whatever time we've spent together has, I'm sure, been pleasurable for both of us. I quite enjoyed that conversation we once had about structure and theme, and why Sergio Leone is the greatest director who ever lived. Yes, we bonded, and yes, 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.

But I will not read your fucking script.

At this point, you should walk away, firm in your conviction that I'm a dick. But if you're interested in growing as a human being and recognizing that it is, in fact, you who are the dick in this situation, please read on.

Yes. That's right. I called you a dick. Because you created this situation. You put me in this spot where my only option is to acquiesce to your demands or be the bad guy. That, my friend, is the very definition of a dick move.

I was recently cornered by a young man of my barest acquaintance.

I doubt we've exchanged a hundred words. But he's dating someone I know, and he cornered me in the right place at the right time, and asked me to read a two-page synopsis for a script he'd been working on for the last year. He was submitting the synopsis to some contest or program, and wanted to get a professional opinion.

Now, I normally have a standard response to people who ask me to read their scripts, and it's the simple truth: I have two piles next to my bed. One is scripts from good friends, and the other is manuscripts and books and scripts my agents have sent to me that I have to read for work. Every time I pick up a friend's script, I feel guilty that I'm ignoring work. Every time I pick something up from the other pile, I feel guilty that I'm ignoring my friends. If I read yours before any of that, I'd be an awful person.

Most people get that. But sometimes you find yourself in a situation where the guilt factor is really high, or someone plays on a relationship or a perceived obligation, and it's hard to escape without seeming rude. Then, I tell them I'll read it, but if I can put it down after ten pages, I will. They always go for that, because nobody ever believes you can put their script down once you start.

But hell, this was a two page synopsis, and there was no time to go into either song or dance, and it was just easier to take it. How long can two pages take?

Weeks, is the answer.

And this is why I will not read your fucking script.

It rarely takes more than a page to recognize that you're in the presence of someone who can write, but it only takes a sentence to know you're dealing with someone who can't.

(By the way, here's a simple way to find out if you're a writer. If you disagree with that statement, you're not a writer. Because, you see, writers are also readers.)

You may want to allow for the fact that this fellow had never written a synopsis before, but that doesn't excuse the inability to form a decent sentence, or an utter lack of facility with language and structure. The story described was clearly of great importance to him, but he had done nothing to convey its specifics to an impartial reader. What I was handed was, essentially, a barely coherent list of events, some connected, some not so much. Characters wander around aimlessly, do things for no reason, vanish, reappear, get arrested for unnamed crimes, and make wild, life-altering decisions for no reason. Half a paragraph is devoted to describing the smell and texture of a piece of food, but the climactic central event of the film is glossed over in a sentence. The death of the hero is not even mentioned. One sentence describes a scene he's in, the next describes people showing up at his funeral. I could go on, but I won't. This is the sort of thing that would earn you a D minus in any Freshman Comp class.

Which brings us to an ugly truth about many aspiring screenwriters: They think that screenwriting doesn't actually require the ability to write, just the ability to come up with a cool story that would make a cool movie. Screenwriting is widely regarded as the easiest way to break into the movie business, because it doesn't require any kind of training, skill or equipment. Everybody can write, right? And because they believe that, they don't regard working screenwriters with any kind of real respect. They will hand you a piece of inept writing without a second thought, because you do not have to be a writer to be a screenwriter.

So. I read the thing. And it hurt, man. It really hurt. I was dying to find something positive to say, and there was nothing. And the truth is, saying something positive about this thing would be the nastiest, meanest and most dishonest thing I could do. Because here's the thing: not only is it cruel to encourage the hopeless, but you cannot discourage a writer. If someone can talk you out of being a writer, you're not a writer. If I can talk you out of being a writer, I've done you a favor, because now you'll be free to pursue your real talent, whatever that may be. And, for the record, everybody has one. The lucky ones figure out what that is. The unlucky ones keep on writing shitty screenplays and asking me to read them.

To make matters worse, this guy (and his girlfriend) had begged me to be honest with him. He was frustrated by the responses he'd gotten from friends, because he felt they were going easy on him, and he wanted real criticism. They never do, of course. What they want is a few tough notes to give the illusion of honesty, and then some pats on the head. What they want--always--is encouragement, even when they shouldn't get any.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to tell someone that they've spent a year wasting their time? Do you know how much blood and sweat goes into that criticism? Because you want to tell the truth, but you want to make absolutely certain that it comes across honestly and without cruelty. I did more rewrites on that fucking e-mail than I did on my last three studio projects.

My first draft was ridiculous. I started with specific notes, and after a while, found I'd written three pages on the first two paragraphs. That wasn't the right approach. So I tossed it, and by the time I was done, I'd come up with something that was relatively brief, to the point, and considerate as hell. The main point I made was that he'd fallen prey to a fallacy that nails a lot of first timers. He was way more interested in telling his one story than in being a writer. It was like buying all the parts to a car and starting to build it before learning the basics of auto mechanics. You'll learn a lot along the way, I said, but you'll never have a car that runs.

(I should mention that while I was composing my response, he pulled the ultimate amateur move, and sent me an e-mail saying, "If you haven't read it yet, don't! I have a new draft. Read this!" In other words, "The draft I told you was ready for professional input, wasn't actually.")

I advised him that if all he was interested in was this story, he should find a writer and work with him; or, if he really wanted to be a writer, start at the beginning and take some classes, and start studying seriously.

And you know what? I shouldn't have bothered. Because for all the hair I pulled out, for all the weight and seriousness I gave his request for a real, professional critique, his response was a terse "Thanks for your opinion." And, the inevitable fallout--a week later a mutual friend asked me, "What's this dick move I hear you pulled on Whatsisname?"
So now this guy and his girlfriend think I'm an asshole, and the truth of the matter is, the story really ended the moment he handed me the goddamn synopsis. Because if I'd just said "No" then and there, they'd still think I'm an asshole. Only difference is, I wouldn't have had to spend all that time trying to communicate thoughtfully and honestly with someone who just wanted a pat on the head, and, more importantly, I wouldn't have had to read that godawful piece of shit.

You are not owed a read from a professional, even if you think you have an in, and even if you think it's not a huge imposition. It's not your choice to make. This needs to be clear--when you ask a professional for their take on your material, you're not just asking them to take an hour or two out of their life, you're asking them to give you--gratis--the acquired knowledge, insight, and skill of years of work. It is no different than asking your friend the house painter to paint your living room during his off hours.

There's a great story about Pablo Picasso. Some guy told Picasso he'd pay him to draw a picture on a napkin. Picasso whipped out a pen and banged out a sketch, handed it to the guy, and said, "One million dollars, please."

"A million dollars?" the guy exclaimed. "That only took you thirty seconds!"

"Yes," said Picasso. "But it took me fifty years to learn how to draw that in thirty seconds."

Like the cad who asks the professional for a free read, the guy simply didn't have enough respect for the artist to think about what he was asking for. If you think it's only about the time, then ask one of your non-writer friends to read it. Hell, they might even enjoy your script. They might look upon you with a newfound respect. It could even come to pass that they call up a friend in the movie business and help you sell it, and soon, all your dreams will come true. But me?

I will not read your fucking script.

Josh Olson's screenplay for the film A History of Violence was nominated for the Academy Award, the BAFTA, the WGA award and the Edgar.Link.

A romantic drama... about chess?

I had a small epiphany last week. I have neglected my writing. Sure, I write reams of stuff, but it's either business plan writing, blogs, IMs, emails, tweets, or Facebook status updates, but for over a year, none of it has been the soul-nourishing fiction writing. I miss that.

So I kick-started a story I've been thinking about this last year. It's a romantic drama set in the world of chess. That might sound pretty boring to some people, but I like to think of it as a sports film in the tradition of Wind. You don't have to know much about sailing to get wrapped up in Wind, and though the rules of chess remain firmly in the realm of the metaphysical, I do have some ideas on how to position chess in a far more appealing setting.

I'm already on page 9 of the first draft, which is 10% of a typical script. Watch this space!

Piracy is a Hydra

I went to a workshop on copyright the other night. It was extremely informative, but even the lawyer giving the lecture acknowledged that something major needed to be done to address the current situation of massive pirated downloads. Having worked as counsel for Tower Records, she represented them in that famous lawsuit against Napster because Napster had been dumb enough to specify in their business plan, "We're going to put companies like Tower Records out of business." Well, Napster went under, but then so did Tower Records. Ironically, Napster was reincarnated under a subscription-based model.

One attendee mentioned The Pirate Bay, which is an anti-copyright organization run out of Stockholm, Sweden. The Pirate Bay hosts a server indexing all BitTorrent files currently available, which means that if you go to their web site, you can find an "index" link to any film, movie, or song they have. When you use BitTorrent on that index link, it finds all the people who have a small fraction of that song on their computers and assembles all those parts into a complete file for you to watch or listen to. This is called, "hyperdistribution". As an American, by using BitTorrent, you have almost certainly infringed the copyright of the artists and their producers... but that doesn't seem to stop anyone from doing it. The Pirate Bay has gotten a lot of heat from the MPAA and record companies, and their offices were even raided by Swedish police in 2006. After that raid, however, The Pirate Bay was up and running again only three days later.

A few months ago, I discovered a site that goes a step farther—Watch-Movies.net. You don't even need BitTorrent to use this site. All you do is go to their site, type in the movie you want to see, and find the file that works the best for you. Invariably, these files are made from illegal camcorders in movie theatres, so you can see films still in general release. The quality is not always high, but if you're willing to sacrifice quality, then you can see practically any movie you want, for free, as long as you have access to the internet. Even though watch-movies.net stopped working quite suddenly (due to someone complaining, no doubt), Watch-movies-links.net Watch-Movies-online.tv Watchmovieslinksonline.com was started up not long thereafter.

A Whois lookup on Watch-movies-links.net returned this:

Registrant:
Name: Private Protection Co.LTD
Organization: Private Protection Co.LTD.
Address: NO.1111 Chaoyang Road, Beijing
City: Beijing
Province/state: BJ
Country: CN
Postal Code: 100000

Administrative Contact:
Name: Private Protection Co.LTD. Zhuhai Branch
Organization: Private Protection Co.LTD.
Address: NO.1 Meihua Road
City: Zhuhai
Province/state: GD
Country: CN
Postal Code: 519000
Email: ad9ad10c6983b7ffe00bb2a6fac1fdf4@domain-private.com

Dispute Contact:
Name: Todaynic.com,Inc.
Organization: Todaynic.com,Inc.
Address: 6B XIHAI Building, No.221 Renmin E Road, Xiangzhou District,
City: Zhuhai
Province/state: GD
Country: CN
Postal Code: 519000
Phone: +86.756-2281763
Nameserver Information:
ns3.01isp.com
ns4.01isp.net

As expected, Watch-Movies-Links.net is based in China, one of the largest violators of copyright. In doing research for my movie business plan, I learned China permits only 20 foreign movies to be shown annually in their country. If the tables were turned, and the best movies were always made in China, and the American government said I could only see 20 foreign movies per year—of which only a fraction were Chinese—I'm sure that I, too, would be a pirate without any ethical reservations. Since China is still under the yolk of communism, an ideology which divorces the individual from private property, I'm unsurprised when I hear Chinese citizens (proudly) call their country, "The nation of fake."

The ability for companies to brazenly violate copyright reminds me of the Hydra from Ancient Greek mythology. Hercules' Second Labor was to kill the Hydra, but "upon cutting off each of its heads, he found two grew back, an expression of the hopelessness of such a struggle". In this case, the MPAA, music companies, and the world's police are Hercules, and the Hydra is both the Pirates and the consumers who use BitTorrent. Try as they might, authorities can't seem to kill hyperdistribution. Shut down Napster? Here's BitTorrent. Shut down The Pirate Bay? They're up three days later. Shut down Watch-Movies.net? They switch domains. Sue consumers? You get a consumer backlash.

Why does piracy continue to flourish despite the continued assault from authorities? Because piracy at its core isn't a legal or technical matter, and thus cannot be solved with legal or technical tools. Piracy is in its essence a social problem only catalyzed by an unenforceable (and thus unrealistic) legal code and an astonishingly efficient delivery system. Rampant piracy is really just a symptom of users who want to consume content, and who aren't particularly interested in the hassle of paying for it. Sure, if it's easier to find content and pay for it than to download it over BitTorrent, they'll pay (thus the success of iTunes). But here's the bitter pill nobody wants to swallow: if a user goes out of their way to watch a pirated copy, they probably weren't a paying customer to begin with. Far from being a curse, users who watch pirated shows and movies and listen to pirated songs possess one unique benefit—a user who watches or listens to a pirated copy might like it enough to buy it on CD or DVD and/or recommend it to others... which is impossible if they never even watched or listened to it.

Sites like Hulu.com and ABC.com with its own media viewer show how the entertainment industry is evolving to come to viewers. Instead of not showing content online and "forcing" viewers into downloading episodes illegally, they're creating user-friendly parameters to make it easier for people to get the content they want, whenever they want it. The theory goes something like, if they're going to dally about with a mistress, at least we want to control who and where that mistress is... because we can make money off of that.

Lawrence Lessig makes an excellent point about copyright. The way the law is currently set up makes it too hard for providers to let users share, remix or use content. In an internet digital culture where sharing is the norm, copyright law is so restrictive that it's now stifling creativity. That's why I've become a fan of the Lessig's Creative Commons License.

My friend Nik said it best when talking about the pervasiveness of spam: "As long as you have a backwater country that doesn't crack down on spammers, you're always going to have spam. The only way to really fight spam is to manage it." Maybe one day, every country in the world will indeed have a police authority able and willing to protect the rights of every content producer around the world. I fear, though, that such a day will be long after my children have already grown up... and during that time, our culture will have since become accustomed to violating copyright as the norm.

Selecting a Screenplay

This is one of my favorite stories from NYU film school.

Our screenwriting teacher, Mary, used to write for a half hour drama TV show in the 60s. One day, her boss pulled her aside. "Janice chooses the scripts we shoot every week, but she's out sick today. Can you fill in for her?"

"Me? I don't really know the first thing about sorting through scripts."

He leaned closer. "Trust me, it's easy. Come on, I'll show you." He led her down the hallway to the Script Room.

The Script Room was a smallish room, probably 10 by 10 feet, but felt much smaller because it was stacked from floor to ceiling with screenplays in US Letter-sized envelopes. Mary reeled back, eyes wide. "My God, there must be 10,000 scripts in here... there's no way I could read all of them!"

He smiled. "Don't worry. Take this script, for example." He grabbed the first envelope in arm's reach, raising his eyebrows at its 2 inch thickness. "Too many pages. If 1 page is 1 minute of screen time, and we only do 30 minute dramas, this is War and Peace." He threw it out.

"You're not even going to open it?"

"What for? They obviously sent it to the wrong producers." He picked up another script. "And this one has a coffee stain on the outside. This tells me, 'breakfast writer'—we don't work with breakfast writers." Trash.

He held up another, gently bouncing it in the air. "Ah, this one is about right."

"Sorry?"

"The weight. If the envelope is the right thickness and the writer used the correct paper stock for a 30 page script, then the envelope should be a certain weight." He set it aside. "This one is probably a legitimate script. Next you open the envelope. If it's not typed—"

"—I throw it away."

"Right." He picked up another envelope and opened it, smiling. "Blue cover", he said, and slid the script back inside, dropping it in the bin. "If they don't use screenwriting format, throw it away. If they use binder clips instead of brads, throw it away. If they use 3 brads instead of 2, throw it away. If it's a comedy, throw it away. After all that, you should only have about 100 scripts left. Of those 100, read the first 3 pages of each, which is about 10% of the entire script. If you're not immediately taken in by those 3 pages, then you're reading 3 minutes of dead screen time—which means viewers will have changed channels, meaning: throw it away. Finally, you'll end up with 10 scripts you've read from page to page and you'll love only 5 or 6. Of those, recommend your favorite 3 scripts and we'll choose 1 to produce."

Moral to the story: when submitting a screenplay or a manuscript, no problem is too small to fix. Typos on the first page are strictly verboten!

On Writers & Strikes: Richard Cox reply

Over on Myspace, fellow novelist Richard Cox posted this response to last night's blog about the WGA strike. I had a lengthy reply I'd prefer to not get lost in the Myspace ether, so I'm reposting here for posterity.

Richard's reply:

Even after reading your blog I'm not sure I understand the situation well enough to comment.

However, as a novelist, I don't incur any risk when selling my novel to a publisher. The publisher shells out the money to print the book and market it (although in my case, they didn't shell out much for marketing, haha.)

And yet I am still paid for each book sold, assuming I earn out my advance.

It boggles my mind that you could write a brilliant screenplay or teleplay and be paid a flat fee no matter how well it performed.

From my uneducated position, writing suffers when you treat it as a commodity. I realize producers believe they can take any high-concept piece of junk screenplay and, with the right actors and director, turn it into a moneymaker.

But why don't they learn from the lessons of really awesome movies that are well written that become juggernauts? Why do they accept mediocrity?

And then there is the whole argument of how a brilliant screenplay becomes a lump of generic mashed potatoes after studio people muck it up with test screening results. In trying to minimize risk, they ruin the chance to make a mint. And the original writer probably doesn't want to claim those mashed potatoes, anyway.

Posted by Richard on Thursday, November 01, 2007 at 8:00 AM

And my reply:

I did gloss over a few points to make the issues more palatable, but the gist is there. Perhaps the most important point I did not make is that there isn't One True Way to offer financial remuneration from producers to writers—there is only precedent, and precedent is always rooted in historical and cultural contexts. In Europe or Asia, they may treat this issue in an entirely different way. Nevertheless, all that is really moot: what matter is what has been done in the past and how the present deals on the table relate to past precedent.

In the past, writers have been offered what's called "scale", or a salaried pay, which is agreed upon three years advance in a document called the Schedule of Minimums (which you can find online here). Much like an advance for novelists, it has to be done this way because what happens if the final product, for whatever reason, does not get produced? At least the creator's time has been appropriately reimbursed. Writers do get residuals from DVD sales (see the car/idea analogy above), but writers feel like they got screwed 20 years ago on that deal. Internet residuals are on the table and they're not making the same mistake twice.

However, producers paying scale mean they're shouldering the cost and that means financial risk until the product makes money. For novels, there is relatively low cost incurred compared to films because a publisher can issue multiple prints to gauge market interest whereas only one film or set of TV episodes is "published" at once. Movie producers have a lot at risk, financially speaking, and when money comes into the picture, people tend to get gunshy. (The solution here is obvious: make all writers producers by forcing them to invest their own money up front. That would change their toon pretty bloody quickly!)

Novels are also a low collaboration medium, compared to movies. As Orson Welles said, "A poet needs a pen, an artist, a brush, and a filmmaker—an army." So the payout structure for films calls for a lot of employees to make the product, whereas with a novel, you need three people: the novelist, the publisher, and the printer; in some cases, the novelist is even the publisher, too. It would be pretty cheeky for a publisher to pay a novelist $100,000 for a novel and then make $10,000,000 without any kind of royalties since the novelist is the TOTAL creator of his medium. Comparatively, a screenwriter is just a blueprint maker, since actors, directors, and even producers can add their 2 cents along the serpentine path to the movie theatre. Should the actors, directors and producers then receive a residual based on their input? It's a slippery slope.

The answer to your question about why producers don't learn from the lessons of well-written films is simple: it's about money. Producers want to make hits, so their initial intent is to make the next American Beauty, but along the way, producers (or more accurately, producers' employees) have second-thoughts—what if the script I'm gunning for doesn't do well?—and thus the truly original writing self-selects out. In this respect, literary writers will always hold a trump card over screenwriters. If a novelist or journalist fails, they wipe egg off their face, but if a screenwriter fails, their producer's very career is at stake.

Thanks for posting! It's good to have another writer's perspective. I neglected to mention that the National Writers Union (nwu.org) recently supported the WGA strike; they are a "United nationwide local of the United Auto Workers representing (at this point) about 2000 freelance journalists, book authors, PR writers, etc."

On Writers & Strikes

After living in France, I really hate strikes. French workers seem like they'll strike if you look at them funny. Going on strike always felt like a form of blackmail, yet it can be an effective, and legal, tool to get things done. You can't talk from a position of power if you don't have a loaded gun readily visible... and the willpower to use it, even as a last resort after every attempt at amicable resolution has failed.

The Writers' Guild (WGA) is on the brink of a massive strike, so of course, I've got mixed feelings about it: if this strike goes ahead as planned, and continues until January, TV programs will start to get pushed around. After that, movies at the theatre will become affected. Basically, it's equal opportunity nastiness for everyone involved.

There's an old story about two children fighting over who should get the last slice of pizza. A parent overhears the argument and suggests they share the slice. But whoever cuts it, someone is probably going to get a larger slice... so the parent suggests that the first child cuts the pizza, and the second child selects which slice the first one gets. The result: both slices are exactly the same size.

This is the essence of any equitable negotiation—if each side can place themselves in the shoes of their adversary and design a solution preferable to their adversary, but solution which also seems fair for themselves, then the pizza has been cut exactly down the middle.

Thus, I've been following the WGA's conflicts with the AMPTP with great interest. Is one side asking for more of a pizza slice than the other? From what I've read, I don't think so, but then I haven't read what the AMPTP is saying about the negotiations. Obviously, as a writer, I'm biased towards the WGA's point of view, but if the WGA is only asking for what's fair and reasonable, why haven't they already gotten it? The AMPTP aren't villains with curly mustaches—they're people like anyone else and people always act to forward their own interests. Unfortunately, that approach doesn't always forward everyone else's interests. Why isn't the AMPTP agreeing to the WGA's demands?

I read this a half hour ago, from the WGA's Contract Captain Laeta Kalogridis:

I like the industry I work in. I have great respect for the men and women on both sides of the table—people I work with, and the people I work for. I get crazy with it, we all do, but at the end of the day I get to do what I love, and I’m grateful for that.

I’m also a working mother of two young boys, and the sole breadwinner for our family. I take my financial responsibilities very seriously, because they are serious.

This means, obviously, that I don’t want a strike.

But I also don’t want a terrible deal.

And for the last 27 years, here’s what’s happened to us as writers: slowly but steadily, we’ve lost, or had gutted, our rights on every new platform. VHS, DVD’s, cable, reality.

Now, for the first time in more than a quarter-century, we are refusing to back off of a new platform. We want to share in the new media and internet revenues that we are already helping create. They don’t want to share with us. It’s about that simple. Link.

I spoke to Hans about this a while back and he offered this insight on how a producer sees things: say you've spent 50% on overhead and you've promised 30% to residuals, and you keep 20% for yourself. What happens if your overhead rises to 70% or 80%? You go out of business. Obviously, producers want to make money in entertainment, but more importantly, they want to stay around long enough to do it. Residuals for a producer equal money out the door and that means less financial stability. I can't say I disagree with that perspective.

It got me thinking about the structure of financial remuneration in general. If you're a business owner, you put in sweat equity and your financial backers put in financial equity. You invest time, they invest money. Whatever profits are left over are usually split down the middle. But if your business requires employees, do they split that profit with you, too? After all, they worked for it as well. Right?

No. Employees are work-for-hires, and as such are given a static fee in exchange for their time. They work 40 hours per week, they go home, you pay them X amount, and they don't share the profits with you. But you work 100+ hours per week to make the business a success and split the profits of your hard work with your investors. It's like slicing that pizza.

The question is, are writers work-for-hire employees or business owners? They're acting as if they're business owners, but they're taking a salary check like work-for-hire employees.

Now, finally, we're at the core issue of this new world of distributing digital entertainment: ownership vs. licensing. If I bought a car from you, I would own the car and could do whatever I want with it and you can't say squat. Instead of a car, though, I'm buying your time, and when your time is up, you go home and you don't get to tell me what I do with the product you helped me create—that's the structure of a work-for-hire arrangement.

With licensing, everything changes. You retain ownership, but I control the car. I can't destroy the car without being accountable to you, but you can't tell me where I can and can't drive the car. Most importantly, if I make money with my new car, you are entitled to share in a small amount of those profits, otherwise known as residuals.

The clash of ideals is intrinsic when selling art. Is it still art after you sell it? Is art a commodity if you never sell it? Writers are artists, but the rules of commerce insist a price tag is put on their intellectual creations as if their property were a car.

So is the car bought outright? Or is it licensed?

Hollywood doesn't want business partners to split their profits... they want work-for-hires, even if a long tradition exists of offering back end points ("monkey points") on projects so bad that the producer can't get a proper budget to pay writers as work-for-hires. The movie business isn't like other businesses. How many other professions offer their employees back end points?

Furthermore, the car analogy breaks down when looking at the question of scale. For example, I can only buy a car from you once and sell it once, but I can buy an idea from you once—for $1—and then sell that idea a million times for a penny. If I sell it a million times and I own the idea, am I legally obligated to offer you a residual payment? I might be ethically obligated, but legally? Of course I wouldn't be legally obligated—because you had no obligation to sell me the idea at the price I was asking. But you did. And once you did, it became my idea, not yours.

And there's the issue.

The WGA is arguing (among other things) to be paid residuals for the reuse of their content... even though writers are work-for-hire employees. As Mark Kemp always used to say, "Perhaps I don't understand—you want to share the rewards, but you don't want to shoulder any of the risk? Can you please tell me how that's fair?"

Writers have the trump card, though. Their position is pretty reasonable: if a film they write makes no money, writers get paid no residuals. Yet if the film is wildly successful, writers should get a small slice of that pizza. They don't want the whole slice, but they would like something. This structure doesn't bankrupt producers, and it provides writers incentive to create wildly successful projects. Everyone wins.

Even so, producers will still grab whatever they can get, and they have a powerful reach. Case in point, Terry Rossio talks about his experience with Disney, and after reading this, it's really hard not to see the AMPTP as greedy zombies drinking the blood of newborn babies:

We are told, regarding royalties, that Disney's position on merchandising is that the characters, items, ships, locations, etc., are not described in enough detail in the screenplay in order to be considered anything other than generic. This allows them to sell a Jack Sparrow figure, dressed like the character from the movie, with scenes we created referenced on the packaging, and when you press a button Jack actually speaks six different lines of dialogue straight from the film—but that's really just a 'generic' pirate, and so you pay the writers nothing. (The way the legal definitions work, only the 'look' of the item matters, not what is spoken, and payments are made on the spoken words only if they are part of the separated rights agreement, such as a live performance.) My flight of fancy would be to manufacture the exact same figure saying the same lines and watch how fast Disney would sue for copyright infringement. Somehow they are able to hold the contradictory positions that the same figure that is indeed unique enough to be protected via copyright is somehow also not quite unique enough to qualify for merchandising payments to the writers.

To date, the WGA has a 90% strike authorization vote, and the Teamsters have decided to informally stand with the WGA (the Teamsters can't order their drivers not to cross picket lines, but their union can't punish anyone for individually deciding to cross the line). SAG has also voiced support for the WGA. That's bad news for the AMPTP.

I hate strikes, but in this case, it seems like the writers make a very good case, and AMPTP really hasn't been listening. Even if the AMPTP is right about the specifics of these negotiations, too many writers have been taken advantage of for way too long. Payback's going to hurt. Can you hear the world's smallest violins?

Further reading about the WGA, the AMPTP, and other entertainment news:
The Artful Writer
United Hollywood
Deadline Hollywood Daily

My Shortest Apposition, Part 1

If you want to spend more time with your friends, do a project with them. —Josh Mehler

I've been quiet about this next film project I'm working on because there hasn't really been a need to talk about it, but I'm in the final stages of preparation for a short I'm directing a week from today. My old friend Hans, a highly talented still photographer, was finding himself spending an alarmingly disproportionate amount of time listening to DVD director commentaries. Finally, earlier this year, he emailed me with this singular resolute sentence: "Dude, we've got to make a film together."

Of all the people I know, Hans is certainly the most meticulous and I know he'd take the studying of, and the craft of, cinematography very seriously. Naturally, I was stoked he wanted to shoot something for real. The plan is one day to do features, and hopefully many of them.

Instead of horsing around with random shooting experiments, we decided to do a short film and learn about each stage of the filmmaking process. I strongly believe in the power of experiential learning: you can read a million books, take hundreds of lectures, even do correspondence clsses, whatever—in the end, the only way to gather and retain life lessons is to go out and make actual mistakes. Some schools embrace this philosophy by offering hands-on experience before you make expensive mistakes in the real world, but too often schools teach children to avoid making mistakes. Thus, Hans and I decided to use an experimental short film to make a bunch of mistakes and not feel too guilty about them. (NB: Depending on the goal of a short film, i.e., whether it's a souped up home movie vs. striving to win an Academy Award or some other prestigious award, I have firm opinions about how much money should be invested on short films.)

Initially, we were going to do this whole short in miniDV to let our hair down and really experiment, but then Hans bought a 16mm camera and we starting thinking of ways to experiment shooting with film, too. The problem is, film is expensive. It's expensive to develop, it's expensive to transfer to a digital format, and—if you go that route—it's expensive to transfer an edited digital version back onto film. Plus, adding sound into the equation is another financial headache. Video is an infinitely better medium to get your feet wet in filmmaking without completely jumping in. Nevertheless, Hans and I were moving in the direction of shooting a feature on celluloid, so why not learn sooner rather than later?

Great! I thought. This short will look beautiful if we shoot it on film. After all, shooting a film with celluloid is how Vin Deisel made his superb breakthrough short Multi-Facial (which Steven Spielberg saw and instantly hired him for Saving Private Ryan). But shooting in film would also skyrocket our budget... could we combine the financial advantages of video with the sublime beauty of film? More importantly, how could we shoot in 16mm without blowing so much money that we'd start to get gunshy? If our goal were to be experimental, we couldn't constantly be worried about burning film; it would kill any desire to embrace our mistakes and thus stifle our ability to learn.

As many of you know, I'm a huge fan of integration—if something doesn't belong in the story, it's gratuitous. If the bulk of your film is shot in video, you don't just shoot film because you can. It's weird and distracting and isn't true to the nature of weaving a compelling narrative spell. If you put something in, it needs to serve a purpose.

My next thought: shooting in film is expensive. That's its weakness. Film is also troublesome when doing synch sound, especially since the 16mm camera Hans bought was quite noisy. So if we shot anything in 16mm, it would have to be MOS (silent), or the camera would have to be so far away that the mic wouldn't pick any of the noisy reel clatter. How could we turn this weakness into a strength? And how could we integrate these two formats seamlessly?

Tune in tomorrow to find out...

Pink Pages

I was an Associate Producer on a feature about six months ago and way too many script changes were flying around. Nobody seemed to be aware of the utility of having locked pages or how to manage script revisions using pink pages, so I took the initiative to detail the pink page process I learned years ago. (Some parts of this process aren't exactly standard Hollywood because I work as a Script Supervisor and use Final Draft, the industry standard for writing screenplays, but my guidelines do seem to make things easier to follow, so take whatever's helpful and leave the rest.)

WHAT ARE PINK PAGES?
Anytime revisions are made to a script, it's often hard to keep track of them. Visual markers are needed to quickly show everyone what was changed. To solve this, asterisks were added in the right margin on each line that was changed, but that wasn't enough—each page with a revision was also printed on a colored page. New sets of revisions, or "pink pages", are circulated until more than a quarter of the entire script has been revised, after which a pristine white draft is reissued and the process begins again.

THE PINK PAGE PROCESS
First of all, each draft's page numbers are locked—they will not change. This means breakdown sheets can be done without scene and page numbers changing on the fly and everyone can literally stay on the same page. You can always tell which draft you have because the draft number and date is printed at the top right of each script page, just to the left of the page number. If you are looking at a revised page, the top right will instead have the revision set number and the date of that revision set.

REVISIONS: Chain of Command
1) You see a typo, a continuity problem, or anything which doesn't make sense and probably needs to be fixed in the script.
2) You bring your comment to the Script Super first, not the Director.
3) The Script Super adds all revisions to the latest list of revisions, but doesn't change the script yet...
4) The Script Super shows all the changes to the Writer, Director, UPM, the Line Producer, DP, and the 1st A.D. Once all those department heads approve the changes, or adjust them as needed, the Script Super adds the revisions to the script and prints out a new revision set, assigning it a revision set number and a date on the top right side of each page, to the left of the page number.
5) Revised pages are copied on a color-coded page corresponding to that set of revisions (see below).
6) Everyone gets a copy of the newly revised pages, although when the next set of revisions is distributed depends on how urgent the corrections are. (Obviously, actors get dialogue changes pronto, while the Line Producer needs changes that affect the budget, etc.)

REVISIONS: Methodology
Whenever revisions are made to the script (scenes added, omitted, or altered), redistribute new pages for everyone. With each set of revisions, the pages should be copied on different colored paper and have the date of the revision in the top right hand corner: "Rev. 8/31/06"

These color-coded revision pages are commonly referred to as "Pink Pages", even though they are not necessarily pink.

This is the color key for each set of "Pink Pages":
1st Revision—Blue
2nd Revision—Pink
3rd Revision—Yellow
4th Revision—Green
5th Revision—Gold
6th Revision—Back to white

"Someone handed me a set of revised pages (or 'Pink Pages')... what do I do?"
Use the page numbers as a guide to replace the pages in your script with the revised pages... and throw away your old pages. For example, if pages are added between page 16 and page 17, you will be handed revised pages with numbers 16A, 16B, 16C, etc.—put these in between pages 16 & 17; if pages are deleted between page 16 and page 24, you will receive a new page 16 with a page number of "16-23"; any omitted scenes will simply say 10 OMIT 10 (for scene 10).

The following people must receive copies of the Pink Pages:
Script Supervisor
Director
1st A.D.
Line Producer
UPM
Propmaster
Wardrobe
Makeup
Writer
All lead actors

If at any time during the shoot, you are missing a set of "pink pages", ask the Script Super.

Monkey Points

When Frank Capra was asked what made his films so appealing, he described his famous "Capra Touch", highlighting his choice of lighting, his great actors, and all manner of things... everything, in short, except the script. The next day, Capra received a script in the mail from a writer he'd recently worked with. Capra eagerly opened the script to find all 120 pages were totally blank. On the front page, the writer had scrawled: "Put the Capra Touch on this!"—Richard Walter, Screenwriting: The Art, Craft, and Business of Writing for Film and Television

Today I learned a new filmmaking term: "monkey points". This is odd because, having worked in low budget filmmaking for so long, you'd think I'd have heard about it sooner. I read it in the opening speech by John Bowman at the WGA's salary negotiations:

What other business but ours has the accounting term, "monkey points?"

What the hell?, I asked myself.

And here's what Wikipedia said:

In the motion picture industry, the term monkey points refers to the practice of many low budget production companies offering talent, such as actor or writer, a percentage of a film's profits, as opposed to a percentage of the film's gross, or a fixed salary. In this case, 'monkey' is intended to be derogatory. This term was coined by Eddie Murphy, who also stated that only a fool would accept net points in their contracts; always insist on gross points. Since such projects usually never make any money—at least on paper—the talent who accepts a percentage of the project's profits usually never makes any money. This is due to the infamous Hollywood accounting, where a studio manages to list every conceivable expense associated with running a studio as an expense of the film in question—eating up any gross profits. Writers and other lesser persons often get stuck with monkey points. Being a gross player, someone with enough clout to be given gross points, is not common in Hollywood.

I've been offered, and have taken, net points on films, and they rarely pay (although that's mainly because the films didn't make money, not because of the Hollywood accounting system). Usually, net points are used to convince you that the car you're driving is actually a beautiful painting, even though all evidence points to the contrary.

The fact that this term even exists is a sign for how creative financing can often be to get films made... and how foolish people are to accept this kind of lottery ticket salary. Writers are often stiffed in this process, especially when it concerns residuals. For example, of all secondary markets like broadcasting movies on TV, pay-per-view, and home video, the residual formulas dictate that writers are supposed to collect 1.2% of what the companies make, which the companies didn't want to pay, so in 1985, the companies decided to apply that 1.2% formula to only 20% of what they made. After two strikes by the WGA, the policy currently rests at the much-hated 1.5%–1.8% of 20% of what companies make on VHS and DVD.

So let's ask ourselves: if a screenplay is well written and the movie does well, doesn't the writer deserve a fair amount of that movie's residuals? Sure, producers and investors and actors all deserve a slice of the residuals pie as well, but without good writing, what is there to produce? What is there to invest in? What is there to act?

Nowhere was this salary divide clearer than when the new Battlestar Galactica produced webisodes to bridge the story from season 2 to season 3 and build buzz for its season 3 premiere:

The Webisodes themselves have caused a conflict between NBC and those involved in their development, relating to the royalties that the developers should receive. NBC Universal, the major studio behind the reimagined series, refused to pay or credit the webisode writers on the grounds that the webisodes were promotional materials. In response, Ronald D. Moore said he would no longer release any webisodes. NBC Universal then took control of the webisodes and filed an unfair labor practices suit against the Writers Guild of America. The Guild told Moore and other NBC Universal television show producers to halt production of any further webisodes until a deal over residuals had been reached.

Every three years, the Writer's Guild of America (WGA), and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), meet to hammer out how much professional writers get paid, and for what kind of work (treatments, rewrites, polishes, etc.). The finished document is called a Schedule of Minimums, as in minimum payments writers are to receive. With the rising popularity of streaming media, the issue of residuals is again a key negotiating point because nobody knows how the revenue stream for online digital entertainment will play out.

This opening speech by John Bowman on behalf of the WGA's Negotiating Committee perfectly articulates the issues writers face in modern-day Hollywood (my highlights are in boldface):

There is a real disconnect between what the [production] companies are reporting to Wall Street and what they’re saying to the talent community. Investors are hearing about the changing landscape in entertainment and exciting new markets to exploit. In contrast, the AMPTP communicates nothing but problems to the Writers Guild. Problems like—and this was mentioned by AMPTP at a recent press conference—ad skipping, even though NBC Universal had just announced a one billion dollar DVR deal. And while WGA member revenues have not kept pace with industry growth—we are a line item that is definitely under control—the companies balk at giving us a fair and reasonable share of the industry’s success.

I don’t think anyone in this room is arguing about the right of writers, actors, and directors to residuals. As collective authors of a work, we are entitled to a portion of the revenue generated by that work. But you have publicly stated that you no longer want to pay us residuals on shows that are not in profit. Here’s why that is untenable: Writers are a cost of doing business. They have no say in production, marketing, on advertising and publicity, directors, casting, the decision to spend tens of millions of dollars advertising, etc. They can’t be expected to be paid from profits when they have no say in the costs which affect those profits. Profits are under the control of CEOs and their executive staffs.

Intellectual property has rights, just as physical property does. Management has no problem paying the person who made the DVD box before a film turns a profit; they shouldn’t have any problem paying the artists who created the intellectual experience that came in that box either. To claim that intellectual property has lesser rights than physical property is a dangerous argument for anyone in our business to make. You are making the same argument to us that digital pirates make to you.

According to Hollywood accounting, The Simpsons is not in profits. How can we trust that kind of bookkeeping? What other business but ours has the accounting term, “monkey points?”

Residuals from shows not in “profit help” support a writing middle class, and keep writers in the business until they finally create that one great thing. Do away with residuals, and you do away with late-blooming careers like Marc Cherry and David Chase - they couldn’t afford to stay in the business. Your proposal transfers money from developing, promising writers, actors, and directors who need them the most to established pros who need them the least. It’s bad for the business.

This article has been a summary of two excellent pieces from The Artful Writer:
John Bowman - First Shot Fired
The Average Writer's Non-Biased Guide To The Upcoming WGA Negotiations

Breaking The Story

When journalists are the first to publish news, it's called "breaking a story", but the meaning is different for film and TV writers: to "break the story" is to find the beginning and end of a story and all its "chapters" (i.e., in TV, the parts that lead up to the credits and all the longer bits between commercials).

I've often thought the story of Jackie Robinson would make for an amazing film, and it even looks like one is already on the way. If you don't know who Jackie Robinson is, watch this 10 minute clip to see how he left an indelible impression on America:



The question here is, with so many interesting parts of his life to tell, where does the story begin? How much of his life do you tell? Which parts are more significant than others? If you tell everything in his life, it's probably not going to be emotionally powerful. Where does the story start? And where does it end? These are the demons storytellers wrestle with all day... and often all night, too.

In 1990, a 2 hour 40 minute movie-of-the-week retold the events behind NASA's shuttle disaster in Challenger. They chose to tell the story from Christa McAuliffe's viewpoint, because she was the first teacher to be going into space. That's a good idea, but to me, this movie was an enormous letdown because they spent 160 minutes building up to the shuttle takeoff and ended it right before the explosion. In my opinion, they broke the story off prematurely: I know how the story publicly ended, but I wanted to see how NASA dealt with the disaster, how McAuliffe's family reacted, how the public received the news. It was like 3 hours of foreplay and no climax. Dude—killing me a little bit inside. I need the payoff.

When I think about Jackie Robinson's life, I start thinking about what might be the most emotional moments, the ones with the most tension. That's the climax to lead up to, the crucible we're willing pay $9 to experience. There are many variations to choose from, but which serves the story the best—his entrance into the major league? His momentous walking onto the baseball field on April 15, 1947? His funeral procession? His funeral? Do you start with the funeral, and do the whole film in flashback? Do you start with him in the dugout on April 15 and do flashbacks until that scene... and then tell the rest of the story from there? Do you start with him as a little boy? The story can be told 100 different ways and each of them isn't wrong—but some of them will have more emotional impact than others.

In TV, this process is run through heavy scrutiny because TV viewers haven't paid money for a move ticket, so they won't stay tuned unless the story is intriguing enough to run that evening's gauntlet of commercials. The opening "teaser" has to hook the viewer without mercy, and subsequent acts must end with worthwhile cliffhangers. Sometimes, as in the first season of Alias, every episode's story is broken off early to be continued in the next episode, which is what made it so imperative not to miss any episodes. Most series, though, conclude the episode with some fitting resolution, especially as their viewers become more loyal.

If Jackie Robinson's story does get told next year, we'll see how they do it. If it were up to me, I'd probably tell parallel stories. Start with his funeral procession to get an idea of just how important Robinson was, then flashback to Robinson in the dugout waiting to go out, then flashback again to Robinson as a boy to appreciate why his going out on the field was so important. All the while, inserting clips of the funeral procession and ending with the moving funeral speech, and synching that speech to Robinson's climactic walking onto the baseball field. The game itself seems emotionally redundant—his walking onto the field was the most electrifying event we herald now. You could end with Robinson sliding into home, but that might be a little cliché... and that kind of realization is the nuts and bolts behind breaking the story.

Breaking the story is as much fun as it is excruciating. Like Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry once said, "It's like having sex with someone you really don't like and after you come, you think to yourself, hey, that wasn't so bad after all."

Arousal Feedback, Draft 3 -- Last Call!

Only two more days are left for all you feedback readers to send in your critiques! You've already had over three and a half weeks, so no excuses now... (Draft 2 readers are absolved, but everyone else should form a line over here with their hands out, palms up.)

Seriously, if you want to send in your feedback for Arousal, you've got until Wednesday evening @ midnight...

(Ray gets an extension to Sunday because he's cute and cuddly.)