Reversals

A nice profile of screenwriter Tony Gilroy in The New Yorker. Gilroy's credits include The Devil's Advocate, the Bourne movies, Michael Clayton, and the new thriller Duplicity. The article describes a writer who enjoys complex, character-driven stories with lots of twists and turns, and yet someone with the ability to step back and not overcomplicate the premise.

Here's a snippet:

Gilroy bounces between two ideas of what it is to be a screenwriter: technician and artist. On one level, he is a regular guy, a union man with a job to do, just like the cops and firemen whose kids he grew up with in Washingtonville. “I hate that Paddy Chayefsky idea of a script—that it is cut in granite,” he says. “Someone who directs a movie word for word—they’re an idiot.” And: “The most makeable screenplay idea is to write a hero part for a guy between thirty and fifty”—a pause for effect—“with a gun.” He has long worked as a script doctor, and he speaks of such projects bluntly. He says, “If I come in and, say, you’re going to give me the weekly”—he gets as much as two hundred and fifty thousand dollars—“I’m basically promising you that I’m going to be able to get it done. I have made a temple out of that.”

Now that he's a director, I'd say Gilroy is leaning much more to the side of a technician. His style suggests that the screenplay is just the means to an end.

The Pros and the Wannabes

Here's a charming post from Seriocity, a television and screenwriting blog:

As everyone knows, one of the truly awful things about the internet is that anyone can throw up a website and act like they know what they're talking about. This used to happen in the old AOL days all the time, when some know-nothing would wander in and bleat about screenwriting like their opinion was just as valid as a professional's. If one of the pros told them that their opinion was uninformed, the shit would inevitably hit the fan. It was almost a weekly event. Because they could type, the fact that they'd written a novel/screenplay/pilot meant they were writers.

Yeah, way to ingratiate yourself with your readership. It's one thing if you want to disagree with someone's blog. Fine. Argue it out. Prove them wrong. But to invent this whole caste system of those whose opinions matter and those who don't just stinks of fear and insecurity. Maybe if my "professional" credits were Millenium and Dead Zone, I'd feel a bit insecure, too.

It's also interesting that a lot of these "professional" writers are too broke and too working-middle class to actually be able to afford to support the strike. They fear the short term pain. So, apparently it's no better than working in IT. Of course in IT, you're not unionized, so you're just working from contract to contract or severance package to severance package. Either way, at least you're not writing spec scripts for Stargate Atlantis.

Where the Writers Rule

Salon has a pretty blah article today about the history of screenwriters in Hollywood and their abuse at the hands of management, producers, and directors. The article itself doesn't tell you much that you wouldn't already have gathered through osmosis, but I thought this was a pretty excellent comment from Calliope30 in the letters section:

Aside from Charlie Kaufman, no one can name a famous feature writer. But throw out David E. Kelly, Aaron Sorkin or Joss Whedon's names at a dinner party and you'll get smiles and nods of appreciation. Those men are writers who've said to hell with features and turned to television.

And it's not hard to understand why. In TV land, the writers are producers and showrunners and the directors come and go and do what we say. Many people would agree that some of the best screenwriting today is turning up on TV. Look at The West Wing, Deadwood and The Sopranos - people love these shows because the writing is brilliant.

I will never understand why my friends and collegues continue to bash their heads against the wall, working in film.

TV is well paid, increasingly well respected, and the only place to be if you want to have any power at all.

With HBO and serialized TV shows stealing movieland's thunder, and with the new conventional wisdom being that we are witnessing the revival of the grand Dickensian or Tolstoyian novel in televised form, I think Calliope30's point is essential: TV is run by writers, Movies by directors, and that's why you recommend The Wire to your friends and not We Own The Night.

The audience wants good writing, story and character, and not blockbuster imagery, wacky camera angles, shakey cam, or scattershot cutting. If they can't get something they care about at the cinema, the TV is just a remote control away.

I hope when the Writer's Guild does strike, they bring the whole junky system to its knees.

Go For Character

From the "Running With My Eyes Closed" blog:

A pilot script can be rich in scenes that are only present to develop character and don't drive the story forward in any other way. Written well, they don't stop the action. Instead, they up the viewer's commitment to the series.

The pilot script for a TV series is like the opening scene of a screenplay or the first chapter of a novel. If you give the audience someone they're interested in, they will become more invested in the plot and the story you are trying to tell.

Hit the Ground Running

Actual real advice from actual real writers. From the Write Here, Write Now blog:

You've heard the phrase, "hit the ground running"? In my experience, those scripts that are read in full are those that do this. We join an obvious protagonist, with an obvious journey, from page one. That protagonist's motivations and backstory is hinted at from the start (no expositional dialogue please: "I need to change my life because of the death of my wife..." Yuk!) and his or her need to gain something - and indeed whom the antagonist is and why they are standing in the protagonist's way - needs to be introduced. All within ten pages: therein lies the challenge.

Lots more good stuff there.