Indie Screenwriters & New Year's Resolutions
Unless it's a close friend, Iusually won't take on a creeenplay unless I know in advance that the writer is willing to do at least one rewrite. If one is a client, there are usually several drafts. I don/t charge much, and there are usually several drafts, but unless writer is willing to take and act upon input, there is no point. Filmmaking is, after all, a collaborative process, and there are many changes between script and screen. Control freaks beware!
I try not to impose my own vision of what the film should be, but to help the writer realize their own vision, even if its something like LOBSTERS IN LOVE, wherein a blonde bimbo mistakenly takes a obster enhancing potion which makes her, when she gets horny, turn partially into a lobster. One memorable scene is when she is making out with her hunk of an Italian-American boyfirend and her hand tirm into a lobster claw when she attacks his crotch. Let's hear it for taste
And although I would never pretend to write a script (lthose who can do, those who can't teach), I have no patience with paid script consultants (remaining nameless, since I went to the party thrown by one of them yesterday afternoon), who, when they do write a script and are daring enough to do a staged reading, reveal an unweildy, narcissistic piece on unlistenable trash that would drive any unwitting would-be writer away.
Which brings me to this writer who lives in Wyoming. With a vivid sense of character and a florid sense of drams, but no sense of structure, she wasts to do no rewrite, wants to cast the film herself (she pursues Kevin Kostner, John Goodman, Patty Duke, etc. It's thoroughly delusinal. And she has no money nor access to money. And yet, encouraging type that I am, I did nothing to dispel her delusions. That is, until New Year's night Which makes me think that doing so is a kin of New Year Resolution - to only talke on projects that have a real possibility. After all, at my age, I'm not building a career; I only want to use what I know to help others build theirs.
I try not to impose my own vision of what the film should be, but to help the writer realize their own vision, even if its something like LOBSTERS IN LOVE, wherein a blonde bimbo mistakenly takes a obster enhancing potion which makes her, when she gets horny, turn partially into a lobster. One memorable scene is when she is making out with her hunk of an Italian-American boyfirend and her hand tirm into a lobster claw when she attacks his crotch. Let's hear it for taste
And although I would never pretend to write a script (lthose who can do, those who can't teach), I have no patience with paid script consultants (remaining nameless, since I went to the party thrown by one of them yesterday afternoon), who, when they do write a script and are daring enough to do a staged reading, reveal an unweildy, narcissistic piece on unlistenable trash that would drive any unwitting would-be writer away.
Which brings me to this writer who lives in Wyoming. With a vivid sense of character and a florid sense of drams, but no sense of structure, she wasts to do no rewrite, wants to cast the film herself (she pursues Kevin Kostner, John Goodman, Patty Duke, etc. It's thoroughly delusinal. And she has no money nor access to money. And yet, encouraging type that I am, I did nothing to dispel her delusions. That is, until New Year's night Which makes me think that doing so is a kin of New Year Resolution - to only talke on projects that have a real possibility. After all, at my age, I'm not building a career; I only want to use what I know to help others build theirs.
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