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Opinions = Assholes

As I slowly approach that all-important 60-day mark, at which time I will finally get paid to sit in my underwear reading crappy screenplays (formerly just a hobby, along with sitting in my underwear writing crappy screenplays), the gears are starting to grind, and I’m a little more irritable than usual. Also, I smell terrible. What a world.

I’m soon-to-be paid to give my opinion, which I’m currently handing out free of charge (its actual value). This is all I do. I read things, and I explain why I like or dislike it, what could be improved or eliminated, and whether or not the author has “what it takes.” I’m not really clear on the definition of “what it takes,” so I usually skip that part. It seems to be implied that if I actually bother to write full coverage on it (rather than writing a short paragraph explaining how much time I wasted and make suggestions about places it could be lodged, rather uncomfortably, in the human body), the author has “what it takes.” So that’s good enough for me.

Over this past summer, The Manager has cultivated a small group of Actual Clients. I like to think I had a small part in that, because I’ve read billions of submissions, and in general the few that I’ve liked have ended up sending more, and soon they’re sending rewrites, and finally The Manager announces that he’s sending one out to production companies, so let’s hope it’s “the one.” Usually the rewrite stage is where I realize they’re “clients,” but sometimes I don’t even know until he says he’s sent something out. I’m not sure if this is part of the disconnect from doing this job from 2000 miles away, or if it’s part of the disconnect of being an intern nobody cares about.

I want the scripts he sends out to be good. As good as humanly possible, if not better. I don’t actually care about these writers or their scripts; through e-mails mediated by The Manager, I’ve come to realize that — like most writers — they’re a bunch of assholes. Which is fine, because I’m one too, but I want their scripts to be exceptional because at the point when I decide I’ll become The Manager’s client, I want production companies to still accept material from him. Like everything else I do, this theoretical act of selflessness and dedication to an unpaid internship is motivated by greed, abuse, and self-interest.

The trouble started about two weeks ago, when The Manager asked me to take a look at a script that he thought he could “start sending out.” It was a period piece about a guy who can communicate with ghosts. It had some good stuff in it (or maybe I’m just a sucker for period pieces), but there was a complete logic breakdown in the third act. I don’t ask much from horror or action movies, but they least they can do is be sorta coherent from beginning to end; this didn’t deliver on even that meager request. I made a half-dozen suggestions to clarify the problems, which would have constituted a time-consuming, major rewrite. Maybe the writer is some kind of speed-demon (or perhaps speed-freak), but before the week was out I heard it had been sent out.

My infamous friend Mark explained it pretty well: “He finds great high-concept, commercial ideas in terrible scripts, but he seems to think that’ll work itself out later on down the road.” As I say, I’m no expert, but all I’ve ever heard or seen is the opposite: you sell the Earth-shatteringly great screenplay, and then as more cooks start peeking at the broth, it’s slowly ruined as they try to turn it into every other movie ever made.

But long gone are the days of Joe Eszterhas scrawling a drunken, coke-fueled idea onto a napkin and being paid $4 million for it. And those days were never there for the unestablished newbie; simply put, nobody will even buy a script that’s mediocre, much less one that’s flat-out bad. Life’s too short, and believe it or not there are too many good scripts out there to waste time trying to make a bad one good. Part of a manager’s duty to his client, and to himself and that wonderful 15% he earns, is to make sure that client is writing the best possible screenplay, especially a newbie manager who will be breaking through along with his client.

So I was willing to let it slide; maybe the writer came up with some kind of brilliant way to fix all the problems with a few simple changes. Maybe The Manager was even right that somebody will see the potential and they won’t worry about everything that’s wrong with it. I neither knew nor cared. Later in the week, The Manager sent me a screenplay by an author whose previous script I really liked (which had been “sent out,” and I could say with pride that it should have been). It was disappointing compared to the other script, but it had some good stuff. It’s basically the story of a prostitute and a mob enforcer, bookended by elaborate, mob-related goofiness. The beginning sets up way more than it has to for a payoff that basically involves all the mobsters dying.

This was my only problem with it: the relationship is the story, and yet it doesn’t start until the midpoint. The enforcer and the prostitute meeting is the act break; I thought they should meet in the first act, all the pointless mob stuff should be scaled way back, and the relationship should be expanding. In the end, even the mob enforcer dies, but as written, I had a hard time buying that these two people met and fell in love in the 48 hours before he’s killed. I’m not saying I can’t believe that would happen; there’s not enough of them connecting for me to buy it. If there were more relationship, the ending might be easier to take.

Last week, I got a rewrite of the same script. This didn’t surprise me, because unlike the script about the Prohibition-era ghost whisperer, a major revision wasn’t necessary; I saw deleting or changing a lot, then writing a few new scenes. What did surprise me was that…absolutely nothing I had suggested ended up in the script. In fact, with the exception of a few new scenes that just explain more mob bullshit, the script was exactly the same. And the new scenes actually weaken the rest of it — the rare rewrite that’s worse than the previous draft — because they exist solely to explain information that we already know. I wrote The Manager and explained that I think the changes are worse and every suggestion I made in my coverage still stands.

The Manager wrote back that he made the suggestions for the new scenes. He explained his reasons, which actually kind of made sense, but then he said something that really stuck with me: “In the end, I want [the mob enforcer] to live.” I realized that the dying was the problem all along. The convoluted mobster stuff really isn’t bad. It’s unnecessary, but it’s actually kind of interesting at first, until you realize that it’s actually about a relationship and the enforcer’s redemption. And then since that suffers because there’s so much mobster stuff, then that stuff becomes expendable. To me, anyway…

…but if the enforcer lives, that changes everything. I could easily believe everything that happens in the first draft I read, from beginning to end, if the enforcer lives, and he and the prostitute go off to live a quiet life. Even if it’s implied that things won’t work out between them, I could easily buy their entire relationship as the start of something. I just can’t believe it as the whole relationship, especially with the prostitute’s reaction when he dies, like she’s lost her one true love.

But, The Manager went on, the author is very insistent that the mob enforcer must die. Why? I don’t know. He’s a screenwriter. For some reason, screenwriters are obsessed with their main characters dying at the end. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen this before, and I even did it once myself before I realized how fucking moronic it is. Nine times out of 10, the “main character dies” ending isn’t earned, just like it’s not earned here. Some movies really justify the hero dying at the end, and the fact that I can’t think of one off the top of my head is evidence that it’s a pretty rare thing.

So, fine, the author doesn’t want to change the ending. All that means is he needs to change everything else. I was a little irritated, though, because it seemed pretty clear that the writer — apparently with The Manager’s approval — dismissed my criticisms. At times like these I wish there were more of a dialogue — preferably not going through a third party like The Manager — so I could really understand what the writer is going for, and maybe help them get there. Of course, whether or not he agrees with me, the mere fact that I say, “This is what the story is” should perk his ears up. If he disagrees, that’s a flaw with the screenplay, not the reader.

I started to think, “You know, if they’re just going to ignore me, I’d really like to start getting paid now.” If they want to pay me for my opinion and then ignore it, that’s fine; but I’d rather not waste my time handing out free advice if it’s not going to be used. Especially when said advice, if followed, will help me in the long run.

But hey, this was just one script. If The Manager really can’t convince the writer to change things, maybe he’s just inordinately argumentative. I could understand The Manager wanting to keep him around for that one really good script, even if his others are crap that he refuses to change. I figured, as long as he didn’t keep doing this over and over, I wouldn’t feel so useless and unappreciated.

And then came a doozy. I still can’t figure out if The Manager ran out of scripts, but over the weekend he sent me something of his own — again! — but it wasn’t even a screenplay; it was a 20-page treatment for the movie version of an established comic-book/TV-series. The first thing I thought was, “Does he even own the rights?” but then I realized I don’t care one way or the other. I read through the entire treatment, and while there was actually a lot of good stuff there, it reminded me a lot of the new Star Wars movies, all three of which failed creatively.

While there are too many reasons to list, a big one (in my opinion) was the focus on tedious intergalactic politics, pre-Empire. You gotta admire the Empire, at least, for keeping it simple: rule everything with an iron fist, and crush all dissenters. Watching Darth Vader strangle a guy from 20 feet away is way cooler than spending seven hours watching Galactic Senate hearings, praying for something to happen, for the love of God…and then when it finally does, it’s retarded, but that’s unrelated. The main thing that sunk this treatment for me was the attention paid to overcomplicated politics that, ultimately, don’t matter to the story a bit. It’s planned as a franchise (i.e., as many sequels as possible), so from beginning to end this is mostly set-up. Hell, the only character that I recognized from the TV show isn’t even born until the end. But here’s the thing about starting off your franchise with a movie that’s all setup for sequels: it will suck. Especially when the core of your story revolves around characters who will be dead by the second movie, dealing with politics on planets that they’ll flee at the end of the first one…

Remember in the first Superman movie, the way they handle Kal-El being sent away from Krypton? It’s 15, maybe 20 minutes at the most, to set up Jor-El, the politics on Krypton, what ultimately leads to their doom, and Kal-El being sent to Earth. This is a similar idea (including the birth of a baby and fleeing the planet), stretched out as an entire feature. I didn’t have the heart to say, “Cut this down to 20 minutes, then start your movie,” but I was honest enough to say that the politics bored me to tears. It’d be so easy to take everything but the essentials and hang the stories on the central relationship, which is pretty interesting, and then you’d have a pretty decent movie loaded with action and tension and drama, instead of people sitting around discussing peace treaties.

I had a few, more minor complaints, but the big thing was the politics. I wrote The Manager back, and he e-mailed me back almost two hours later on the nose with a revised treatment, which he believed I’d like a lot more, but he specifically pointed out that he “could” not address the political situation. Why not? It’s “too essential to the plot.” It is? The revision is almost identical to the first one; the only changes address one of my minor complaints (note that I had more than one).

It irritates me because, especially when The Manager sends me his own material, I see this as a favor to a friend/colleague. I see it as someone seeking my advice because he trusts and values my opinion. It bugs me when I’m totally ignored for reasons that are either unclear or stupid. It’d soften the blow quite a lot if I were at least being paid, but it’d still bother me a little bit. If you’re not going to listen, why bother asking? If you disagree with my opinion, why do you trust it? I don’t get it.

Posted by Stan on September 5, 2006 5:35 PM  | Permalink | “I’m a living joke!” - Horror Stories from the Workplace, The Manager Chronicles | Digg It