Since the statute of limitations on this one has probably expired by now, I can probably talk about it without getting kicked out of Hollywood... or being labeled “a dick”. Someone I’ve worked with before was looking for a screenwriter for a project and gave me a call. There was pay - this was a real guy who made real movies. The first thing he said at the meeting was that he really wanted to work with me, but this project was not financed by a foreign sales deal or home video deal - he needed the script and cast to get those deals. He had money - just not much. The deal would be back-loaded with minimum up front and the rest when the movie starts shooting. I don’t want to be a dick, so I say that’s okay. I mean, you don’t want to lose the job before you’ve even got it, right? I don’t want to be “difficult”.
For some reason, writers get labeled as “difficult” in the film business. No matter how many actors throw tantrums on set and scream at cinematographers, no mater how many directors threaten to quit the film unless they get their way; it’s *writers* who are known throughout the biz as difficult. I have no idea what we ever did to piss them off - I don’t think we deserve the reputation. Yes, some writers are snippy and fight script changes, but to get anywhere in this business you have to be “easy to work with” which is synonymous with being a typing monkey. I think the reason why writers end up being the ones who are “difficult” is that we know how to debate a story note and win - and that makes us a problem. If we have the ability to logically show the producer that his stupid idea is a stupid idea, we are people to be feared... and therefore dismissed. Dismissed as in fired, and bring in the typing monkey.
Now part of this is the fine art of diplomacy - if a writer wants to have a career they need to find the way to make the producer think that the writer’s better idea is their (producer's) idea. But there is a period early in the deal where anything you say as a writer is “being difficult” so you are best off waiting for that perfect moment to slip something in. You don’t want to start out defensive because then they either won’t buy your script or won’t hire you.
My problem is that I can never figure out when is the best time to stand up for my script and how tall I should stand.
Every time you are dealing with another person (like a producer or director or star) you will be dealing with someone who has a different idea of what the story should be. But if you start out fighting for your version, you are a pain in the butt. Mostly, because when you are starting out the differences are usually pretty small. In this case the producer was funding the first draft out of pocket and had specific needs for the screenplay. Not uncommon - most of the time when I pitch ideas it’s because the producer has Michael Dudkioff, a bunch of tank footage, and a facilities deal in Cosa Rica... how can I turn those elements into a story? So I come up with 5 stories using those elements and the producer picks one and I write up a treatment and/or screenplay. Early on, there are fewer details so fewer places where we see things differently. And big differences get hammered out before I go to script.
Often in the early stages I will go along with big changes that I may not completely agree with because I haven’t gone to script, yet, so the story is still pliable. Most of the changes in the early stages are things I can make work when we get to script... though sometimes the producer notes at this stage take a great original idea and make it less original. For whatever reason most notes seem to sand down the rough edges and make the story conform - which is usually a mistake. The reason why we like a movie is that it is different and original - but not so original that it’s hard to understand or relate to. Even though I might want to argue early on against these changes, and can probably prove that the producer’s changes will *cost* the producer ticket sales; I figure there’s a survival of the fittest thing going on here and the producer will note himself out of business eventually by making bland crappy films. I’m just an employee, here.
One of the things that I frequently don’t understand are notes that remove the high concept from the script and turn it into more of the same crap. It’s as if these producers are self destructive and *want* to fail. I always try to talk them out of those notes, even if it is early in the game and I may get labeled “difficult”.
But usually early on I am Mr. Cooperation. If the producer wants to put a donkey in the script because donkeys are always funny, I find the way to make the donkey an asset. I am the Beatles’ Paperback Writer. I save all of my “difficult” stuff for later in the game, when it is too late to fire me without paying me a bunch of money. I am afraid that this may be a problem, because later in the game when I do begin to argue against stupid notes, it seems to come out of the blue. I’m like one of those nice polite boys who suddenly are exposed as serial killers with a basement full of human elbows.
On this project, because it was the producer’s money, I was Mr. Cooperation and probably a little Mr. Kiss Your Butt. I didn’t want to argue over any of the small story stuff, because it was his money. Not some studio’s money and not some development fund money. He was paying for this script himself. You have to respect that.
By the way, much like Underdog, I also try to be humble and loveable. I figure with IMDB and every other resource a producer has, they should know who I am when I walk in the door. I know who they are. But I’ve had many cases where the producer never did a basic IMDB search on me, and thinks I just drove into town from the dustbowl with all of my belongings on the back of my truck because I heard there was good work out here in California as a screenwriter. On one project, maybe three meetings in, I brought a copy of CRASH DIVE and asked if I could pop it in the office VHS player (that dates the story) - and when the producer saw my name in the credits during a submarine diving into the Atlantic, his jaw dropped open like a cartoon character’s and he said, “You wrote this movie?” “Yes. It was an HBO World Premiere and it aired on March 28, 1997. It was an original script.” The producer had no idea I’d ever had a script made, let alone one that was about a million times bigger in scope than his cruddy little project. Guess what? I was “let go” from that project, probably because I had made the producer look like an idiot. Producers tend not to like that. Undermines their authority. So I no longer talk about my past credits - I just hope the producer has looked me up before the meeting.
That was not the case with this project.
I had worked with this producer before, early in my career... and for some reason he thought I had been frozen in carbonite since then. He had no idea I continued to sell scripts that were made into movies and that those movies may not have gotten any better but at least they have become more expensive. As it was, I was writing this script for this guy at a rate that I had not been paid in over a decade... actually probably 10 years. I liked the guy, it was his personal money, I was doing him a favor.
Now, here is the problem with doing people favors - if *they* don’t know it, it’s not a favor. My mom would tell me that is just plain wrong - you don’t announce to people that you are doing them a favor, you just do it. It’s about being a good person, not scoring points. But my mom doesn’t live in Hollywood, where it is all about what Seinfeld called “hand”. As in, who has the upper hand. So the producer has no idea that I have written other things over the past 10 years and has no idea what I was paid for them. No idea what my current “quote” (pay rate) is. He may even think that he’s doing me a favor by giving me a job. At the time, I could have easily turned down this job - I’d just banked a check on another job where I was paid my quote.
There were some notes on the first draft, including one that was a major problem. I calmly and reasonably discussed the notes with the producer, explained why I thought the one note was an issue - and he disagreed and wanted me to do it anyway. So I made that change and the other minor changes and turned in the second draft and we were supposed to go right into preproduction and cast the film and then crew up and make the sucker...
But something went wrong.
The producer gave the script to an actor - not a star, but a friend of the producer's who would be playing a minor role in the film... and this actor tore the script apart. You see, his role was all wrong, and the story was all wrong. The story should be more about *his* character, and his character should be more the kind of role this actor wanted to play, and...
Well, you might think that the producer would tell this actor to go to hell, but that’s not usually what happens. Instead, the producer regurgitated the actor’s notes at our next meeting and wanted the script completely changed to fit what this actor wanted. Oh, and I should mention that a couple of the actor’s notes were “script killers”. You know how the Death Star in STAR WARS is designed to kill a planet? Well, there are some notes that do the same thing with a screenplay. Seems like just a small thing, but it will cause a story implosion that will destroy Alderon. Why can’t the hero and villain put aside their differences at the end of Act 1 and be friends? Why can’t all of the characters act the same? Why does the hero have to have any emotional problem... or even any emotions? Why can’t the girl *instantly* be in love with the hero instead of having her not like him and grow to love him? I’ve heard those, variations on those, and a few dozen others over the years - each one will kill a script. They rob the script of drama and conflict and character... and turn it into mush. I have actually had a producer ask me why there needs to be a *conflict*? WTF? So when a couple of the notes were script killers, I debated them with the producer and became “difficult”.
Now, if you know me, you know I am a calm and reserved person. I don’t raise my voice and I don’t even argue unless someone is being incredibly stupid. Even then I am reasonable. Unfortunately, that often backfires. When you are the calm and reasonable one, the other guy often goes batshit crazy and loses their temper. So my calm discussion of why these notes would not work did not end well. I hate when people scream at me.
So this project was shelved those many years ago - one more script I wrote that I do not own or control. The producer is out his front money, I am out my back end money; and the film will never get made.
And I wonder if I had been a dick earlier - if I had put my foot down and stood up to full height and growled like a bear when the first silly notes were given to me (instead of working hard to make them work), would the producer have treated me differently later on? I’m sure one of the issues was that a character actor he knew had given him these notes - and compared that character actor’s knowledge of how a script works to the frozen in carbonite version of Bill he thought he was dealing with... hey, the over the hill character actor is the expert! I am just some writer he worked with on a low budget project 10 years ago. If I’d been a dick sooner, maybe he would have seen the character actor’s notes as what they were - a grab for more screen time at the expense of the film. Maybe he wouldn’t have treated me like some hack and realized that since we had last worked together I had written many movies with much bigger budgets (that still ended up crap, but that’s not my fault).
One of the interesting things about working in low budget and direct to video stuff is that the producers have no idea that this spec script you are offering them just got you a dozen studio meetings. I had a conversation with a fellow writer once about this - the low budget guys think everyone they talk to is at their level. They never even consider that some of the writers they are dealing with are slumming for cash or actual scripts on the screen. They read a script that got you meetings all over town and think it’s the same as some script the office boy wrote on his coffee breaks. It’s all just 110 pages of typing - the office boy’s script and your script are exactly the same.
Several times I’ve had scripts that got me meetings all over town, and maybe were even once optioned by some studio based producer, end up landing at some low budget place that was paying real money and would be actually making the script by the end of the year. A bird in the hand - I’d make the deal.... and then the low budget producer would come up with notes that removed everything from the script the studio guys liked. Character. Originality. Drama. Good dialogue. (I have a friend who once got a note to change all of the dialogue into cliches, because people understand cliches...) It was as if they were cutting the script down to their level. Instead of making a low budget film that was so good it might change the producer’s career, they’d turn it into the same old crap they’d been making in the past. Hey, I got paid, the film got made... and I’m bitching about it. I always hope the next time will be different...
But that script that opened studio doors is just a bunch of typing to these guys. Would it be better if I pulled some kind of snooty attitude right up front? If I really let them know that this script wasn’t interchangeable with the office boy's script? That, you know, the words that were typed were better words? Words put in a better order than that thing the office boy did on his coffee breaks? Or would that just make me “difficult”?
So the end result - a script that is forever shelved because I didn't know when to be a dick.
I’m never going to figure this business out. When is the best time to be a dick? Up front when they can easily fire you? Or later on, when both you and they are dug in too deep? Or should I just *always* be a dick?
Classes On CD - Recession Sale!
- Bill
TODAY'S SCRIPT TIP: Single Protagonist Theory and Tarantino's INGLORIOUS BASTERDS.
Yesterday’s Dinner: Bar menu at Daily Grill - the little meatloaf burgers were great.
Movies: I've seen UP (excellent) and plan to see DRAG ME TO HELL tonight... reviews to come.
DVDs: Saw TIME CRIMES - absolutely great film! Spanish. Guy keeps going back in time to fix his life, and just keeps makin things worse.
Sorry! Another attack on the UK via Sky's Movies 4 Men Network...
M4M2: 6/1 - 8:20 - Crash Dive - The crew of a nuclear submarine rescues supposed victims of a boat disaster, but the victims turn out to be terrorists intent on capturing nuclear weapons aboard the sub.
M4M: 6/3 - 17:30 - Black Thunder - When the world's most powerful stealth jet fighter falls into enemy hands, only one man can get it back. Starring Michael Dudikoff.
My apologies to everyone in the UK.
- Bill
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