CABBAGES AND KINGS
The writer is king here at Capitol Pictures. You don’t believe me, take a look at your paycheck at the end of every week – that’s what we think of the writer.
– Barton Fink
A long overdue mention goes to my fellow bloggers, the ones linked to Filmflam. I’m guilty as charged for not returning the favour yet, eejit that I am for not working out how to create the links, but I’ll get there, I promise.
Meanwhile, here’s the blogs worth checking if you want sound advice and cautionary tales -
dannystack.blogspot.com/
scriptuality.blogspot.com/
pavementandstars.blogspot.com/
journals.aol.co.uk/bang2write/thewriteway/
bleedingforehead.blogspot.com/
They’re all great, but I particularly like Paul Campbell’s blog on scriptuality about his four year slog from script to screen writing an episode of the BBC soap Doctors. An eye-opener for anybody who thinks writing TV scripts is an easy gig. I was shocked at the hoop jumping he went through but also humbled by his good nature – though I suspect in private he bites chunks out of the furniture. Writers are human too, you know.
Can it get any worse? I ask myself. Being none too familiar with the black art of telly writing, I wouldn’t know where to start but I suspect the BBC provides the perfect breeding ground for sadistic script editors and imbecilic producers who in a past life thought they were destined for a creative and lucrative job in the entertainment business. That is, until they ended up at the home of the £750 draft, which is roughly what Paul earned for his efforts. And that’s not counting the prep and the right to torture the Beeb got for free.
Somebody once told me most of us are only ever two paychecks away from the gutter. To be fair to all those script editors out there, it can’t be fun rounding up writers and licking their ideas into shape. They’re insecure too, hanging by their fingernails to short term contracts and judging from Paul’s story, being shunted from one crappy show to another. You could argue that by this method, the Beeb weeds out the weaklings. I suspect it’s got less to do with writing fresh and original material than taunting hopeful new writers. Scratch a bully and you’ll find a history of abuse lurking deep inside.
Writing a good script is like cooking cabbage, a perfectly good vegetable. When you boil it to death it turns into taste-free mush, so sending endless pages of script notes doesn’t strike me as having anything to do with improving scripts. It’s about control, exploitation and keeping the talent in a state of perpetual dementedness, which is why our screens are filled with shows with all the calibre and polish of, say, a Holby City or Hotel Babylon.
And you wonder why reality rules?
posted by Leanne Smith at 11:52 AM
6 Comments:
Cheers Lianne - though I'm not sure if my shitty blog comes under 'cautionary tale' or 'sound advice'...
anyway - as for script notes. i know you're talking about telly and i know jack about that but in my experience script notes are a good thing - i couldn't have got my short up to the standard it's at now without someone asking the right questions. and as a script editor myself i'd expect someone to deck me if i tried to impose on their creativity. script editing should be about enabling the writer, not controlling them.
Thanks for that. I love your blog - and congratulations on your short!
I really don't mean to be mean about script editors. I guess they're like writers - some good, some not so good. If editing makes for better scripts, then great. It's just that I was stunned by Paul's story. It all felt a wee bit heavy-handed and went on for soooo long for so little reward.
But if that's what you need to go through to become a writer...
Lx
ta!
yeah Paul's story was pretty stunning.
you know the more i think about it the more i think script editing in telly is a different species to film. i've heard of tv script editors rewriting scenes. made me shudder. must be for financial reasons? cheaper to get the script editor to do it than pay the writer to do another pass?
x
Thanks Potdoll!
I admit I haven't met too many script editors in Scotland. Outside of TV they're unheard of here. I get the impression those who work in TV are aspiring writers anyway.
I don't think it's about money. Then again, TV companies who get their in-house script editors to do rewrites are definitely saving on fees.
Does the Writer's Guild have anything to say about this practice, I wonder?
Lx
You guys were "stunned" by Paul's story! Really? It sounded relatively easy going to me. It only took three years to go from complete newcomer to having written one episode, and most of that time was spent finding one idea that people liked enough.
You've got to remember that there are who knows how many writers and ideas under each script editor, those ideas have to keep going back and forwards to Producers (who spend 150% of their time juggling all the episodes that are in production or post at any one time) and advisors. Four months to go from accepted idea through to final(ish) draft with only three drafts in between sounds pretty easy going. It did take a while to get an idea accepted, but if every one of the say 30 or 40 writers of varying skill and experience on the books or trying to get on the books has a dozen ideas then that's a lot of ideas to work through, even if there are several Script Editors.
Despite the criticsm these Script Editors get, most of the criticism comes from writers whose work doesn't get laminated at the first draft stage. Most Script Editors know their stuff, and they are the ones who guide the writers flabby, ill-structured work from mess to passable (or even good). Everyone (except maybe writers) must know that most stuff a writer writes is only deserving of being rewritten.
As I say, once his idea got accepted, Paul's process seemed pretty agreeable. It took a long time to get to that point, and it's not exactly possible to make a living that way, but he was a newbie.
Neil
p.s. I do a bit of writing too, so I do have a bit of experience from that point of view, and I think only the best or the lucky can produce work that needs very few external rewrites.
Thanks Neil,
I appreciate your comment.
I guess it's only idiots who fancy themselves as writers who think their work shouldn't be rewritten.
But then again, when I watch some of the guff that goes out on telly, I wonder what difference all that editing, all those rewrites made. Judging by some of the clunkers, you wonder what it was like to start with.
I also wonder at what point Paul stops being a newbie. A year in? Two years? Maybe three? When his whole 28 minutes goes out in February 2007?
You sum it up in your last line about not being able to make a living. Oh boy. Better hang onto that day job...
Lx
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