Commercial Conundrum
[Note: I intended to post this last week but got busy and, per usual, forgot about the existence of this blog. There will be a new script review — of Clive Barker’s Dread — this week.]
This week’s attempt at a script review put me in an awkward position. You see, I haven’t read any of the scripts that are opening. A few weeks ago, I read some bad intelligence telling me Gavin O’Connor’s Warrior will be out this Friday. Turns out, that’s not the case. I guess it’s coming out way the fuck in September, and I really don’t want to be reviewing scripts more than a week or two in advance of their release. So, instead, I’m writing one of the many promised non-review articles that I’ve been too lazy and/or busy to get done.
Something’s been bugging me for the past few months. I got used to writing development notes, which outline a script’s strengths and weaknesses while offering suggestions for ways to improve the script. (That way, Your Boss — who, if you’re lucky, will read maybe one out of every ten scripts he or she forces you to read — will have something reasonably intelligent to say in his next meeting. It’s an elaborate charade, and everyone knows that his or her notes are coming from some borderline-retarded, caffeine-addled reader, yet nobody ever says a word.) On some level, you deal with marketability, but everywhere I’ve worked, they’re surprisingly concerned about making the script as good as possible. In other words, they’ve already convinced themselves that they can sell the product — so now, the challenge is making the product great.
So why do bad movies happen, if everyone’s so concerned about making great product? I’m no expert, but here’s a pretty sound theory: you take 15-20 different people, all with different agendas and different beliefs about what constitutes greatness (some dare to think “artistic merit”; some think “profitability”; others think “myself,” meaning their primary concern is the project making themselves look good; still others think “Well, I have to say something” — they might honestly think this is the greatest script ever written, but in order to justify their jobs, they feel compelled to say something ridiculous like, “Why not set this movie in 18th-century Paris instead of modern North Carolina?”), give them the same script, and you’ll get 50-100 different ideas on how to make the script fit various people’s ideas of greatness. After deluging the writer(s) with these ideas, the writer(s) have the unenviable task of trying to make everyone happy. If they’re great at what they do, this can still result in a good script; more often, it results in a big, sloppy mess.
My realization after reading a few of last year’s Black List scripts made me question this theory, however. Some of the scripts were good, some were flat-out great — but a lot just kinda sucked, which makes me wonder about agendas. I understand that the Black List is all political, so maybe these aren’t really the most favored scripts. Now, since I know work for a distributor/production company, I only read scripts of movies that are nearing completion, so I’m about a year behind the development cycle. But when I look at the Black List from 2008 and even 2007, only one of my favorite scripts (The Book of Eli) made it, and with a relatively low score (though I must qualify, yet again, by saying I did enjoy The Way Back and Whip It, though neither qualifies as a “favorite”). My tastes run pretty mainstream, so it’s not like I’m bitter that the list lacks moody, symbol-heavy French scripts about rape — so does that make me a freakish anomaly, or does that make everyone else an idiot? You know where I stand!
The problem I have isn’t so much with my the holes in my theory about why the development process fails a good script more often than it helps a bad one. It’s more about the differences between reading for a distributor and reading for development. Distributors have their own goals for coverage, chief among them: will this make money? Working for production companies and shady literary managers, I’ve never been asked to consider that question — it’s their job to convince others that the script will make money. So now, I have to adjust my radar. It’s not about better or worse. If the script is locked, the big names are attached, and the budget is set, how much money will it make?
Initially, I tailored my arguments to whether or not I liked the script. It could be the world’s least commercial script, and I would rally around it and insist it could make money with no budget and a no-name cast and make $1 billion in its opening weekend. Conversely, if I hated something, I’d build the synopsis and notes in such a way that it argued against its profit potential, no matter who the stars are or who’s directing. It’s pretty basic, right?
Things have gotten more complex, though. In the past couple of months, I’ve received a number of scripts that I actually like, yet I can’t argue in favor of their commercial possibilities. There’s one broad question I find myself unable to answer: other than me, who’s the audience? Three examples: (1) a romantic comedy, set in England, about an American business student who pays her tuition by starting a business of her own — as a beard for gay men, (2) a story that’s essentially a vignette-driven biopic about an Australian dog that’s apparently famous, and (3) a horror-comedy about a pair of hillbillies who are mistaken for psychotic serial killers by a group of dumbass college students on spring break.
The main problem with all three: they’re not great scripts. I can recognize this fact. They happen to hit certain sweet spots in my sensibilities, but they all have their share of problems. Although it’s actually funny, Script #1 follows its rom-com formula much too rigidly, which means two things: its fair share of Idiot Plot moments, and characters who are more like funny stereotypical constructs than real people. Script #2 is catastrophically unfocused, weakening its structure. Script #3 is a one-joke premise stretched to feature length — granted, it’s a funny joke, but it’d work better as a sketch than a 90-minute movie.
Because these aren’t exceptional scripts, I can’t argue that they’re so fucking good, audiences will embrace them no matter what. But all three share bigger problems: what audience do they want? Does a romantic comedy about a woman pretending to date gay men want to appeal to a straight male? Does a biopic about a legendary Australian dog have any interest in cultivating an American audience? How will a horror-comedy appeal to horror and/or comedy fans when (a) it’s not scary but (b) it’s too gory for comedy fans with zero interest in gore-based comedy (especially when there’s little variety to the humor)?
This leads to obvious thought: I’ve managed to become a sellout hack without even selling a script.
But have I? There’s a weird netherworld in which certain movies exist. Road House is not a good movie, but I love it anyway. It’s entertaining and watchable, but I have no illusions about its quality. Action Jackson, Mr. Mom, Billy Madison, the Doris Day-James Garner comedy where she was stranded on a desert island for years whose title I never remember even though I watch it every time it pops up on Fox Movie Channel (and have consequently seen it about 85 times)… All examples of movies resting in this weird, limbo-like plane of movie existence: they’re likable crap.
How do you argue that to a distributor, though? “It won’t make any money, but man, if it gets on cable, it’ll develop a huge cult following. That cult audience may buy it on DVD or BluRay, but probably not because they play it on Encore 75 times a month.” That’s not what they want to hear. They want to hear about asses in seats and/or DVDs sold, because they don’t make any money through cable deals. So that means I have to torpedo the likable crap in order to make my bosses happy and keep my job.
Is that a good or bad thing? Maybe I’m justifying bullshit, but I feel like it’s the right thing to do, ethically. If something’s not of obvious high quality (like, say, The Book of Eli, which may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but anyone who reads it will say, “Okay, at least I can see why he liked it”), but I like it anyway, it doesn’t feel right to recommend it. That’d be like recommending a friend for a job when you know he’s kind of a slacker: it’s nice to help out a friend, but that makes you look bad. Some might argue it’d be wrong to not help the slacker friend, but getting him a job he’ll take for granted isn’t help. Explaining to him why you’re not helping him get the job is, at least, food for thought, and real friends get that. Hell, real friends wouldn’t even put you into that awkward situation. Only douchenozzles like Henry Fool would do that.
Justified or not, I still feel bad about it. There’s a place in the world for lovable crap, so movies like that shouldn’t be punished because they’ll never make Avatar money.
Posted by Stan on January 26, 2010 2:45 PM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | How Not to Write a Screenplay, Random Musings | Digg It
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