The Rough Draft

So I’ve just finished reading a script sent to me by my agent and like the song goes, “Ain’t that a kick in the head?”

Now it wasn’t a perfect script by any shape or means but it was fucking good read and as of late that isn’t how I’ve felt about my own writing. With one exception, “Snapped.” Which as it was on my computer was called, “Still Life.” But a working title by any other sounds just as good as the next to paraphrase Bill the bard.

Why was that cheesy little horror flick so much fun to write? I think the answer is easier than you’d think because the simple fact was, I didn’t have time to think about what I was putting on the page. At least not in a big plot sense. Of course I tlought about the plot, I had to, it’s what I was brought on to the project do.

Where you have to get out of your own way is in the characters and their subplots. That comes down to you doing your homework ahead of time, having the answers to questions nobody has asked yet.

So the writing was on the wall for me, they needed the rewrite and I wanted something I’d written to go all the way to camera and onward. You light a fire under my ass and I move.

We we’re going so hard and so fast that I was sending them scenes and they we’re casting them as we went. My polish which you usually get a month for, took place on a Saturday with just myself and one of the directors sittting in a office going over the whole smash, page by page.

But that’s not why it was satisfying, it was satifying because it happened fast and I wrote a bloody good script with real characters in an unreal situation. In other words, I got the hell out of my own way and just got it done. It was a similar experience when I wrote, “Killers,” for Wishbone.

That script was written in eight days and was about the same length. It too, focused heavily on plot but I still managed to cram in some really good character stuff.

So why is it when we’re faced with a deeper script do we decide to muddle things up with too much description. Description is necessary but let’s face it when an exec reads a script, he looks at the dialogue and the pitch not so much the setting. It’s the rapid patter that gets them, not so much the way the street looks in the moonlight. If I you want your script to sell, you torque up the dialogue. Dependent of course on what the script entails. But in the end, you’ve still got to go with your gut, at least until the test audience starts sending you notes.

It seems like an obvious choice but all too many times writers choose the latter over the former.

You read it in the trades, you hear it from the mouths of Actors and Directors, “It starts with a great script. What attracted me to the project was the script. I just love the script.”

Heady stuff for the writer to hear. Just remember you’re not the only one responsible for this project coming to fruition. The real power in this game are the Producers and the Executive Producer or as we like to call them, “The money.” You may think you’re the second coming of Hemingway but if you piss off these guys and get on their shit list, you might as well go out the same way he did as far as your writing career goes. Don’t piss of your fellow writers either because chances are they may have worked for or have a relationship with the people you’re trying to siphon cash out of right now. We don’t posses a lot of power in this industry but were not above flexing what little muscle we have when it comes to other writers who have done us wrong. Hell, who am I kidding, we’re as petty as hell and have longer memories than elephants when it comes to getting even.

Yeah we like to gripe about certain individuals in the industry and their personal peccadillo’s in regards to our work but there’s griping you do with your buddies in a sound proof room, daily swept for electronic bugs (harmless) and full on bitching about what a f**king idiot a certain individual is because he didn’t get your brilliant Proust inspired subplot to your latest car crash comedy (harmful). The walls have ears and people love to dish. Especially when the damage done is to somebody other than them.

In fact innuendo, rumor and deceit though they may seem fun and entertaining are most likely to come back and bite you in the ass when you least need it. Smile big, nod lots and if somebody really pisses you of, smile bigger, it pisses them of far more than any petty vindictive bullshit you can bring to bear. Remember there is no, “I,” in, “Team,” but there is one in, “Fired.” There isn’t one in, “Unemployed,” but there is a, “U.” If you get my drift. The sandbox is small, play nice and share your toys.

Nothing is worse than being dissed by some tool at an industry party because they think you’re lower on the food chain that they are. Nobody has any idea where anybody will be on the food chain from one day to the next. Steve Jobs is the number one power guy on the list in Hollywood right now. The guy who helped create Apple computers (what’s the bet Pixar is all rendered on Macs) is the guy. Talk about not being on the radar. A friend of mine once said, “Be nice to the people you meet on the way up, because you’ll be seeing them again on the way down.” Which is total crap. The people you meet on the way down will all be different as well. This industry chews people up like Tums at a studio fourth quarter meeting. The remainder of us still slogging away at it only do so because we’re too emotionally damaged to understand that this level of mental cruelty subjected to any individual is forbidden in all but the most primitive of cultures.

So remember when the question is asked, go for the humble pie. You get enough of the crap sandwich every other hour of the day.

I’m Steve Abbott

And I’m waiting to sell out.