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A
Hollyweird Education – Column Four By Thomas McKelvey Cleaver Way back
before many of you-- my readers-- were even born, there was a political crisis
in America that shook our constitutional foundations; the height of that
crisis-- the moment when the opponents of a sitting President became the
mainstream-- came on Saturday night, October 20, 1973, when President Nixon
ordered his Attorney General, Elliot Abrams, to fire the Watergate Special
Prosecutor, Archibald Cox, who was getting too close to the President’s
conspiracy to obstruct justice. Abrams refused and was either fired by Nixon or
resigned, depending on your sources. Nixon then called Deputy Attorney General
William Ruckelshaus, who also refused and resigned. Nixon finally got the
Solicitor General, Robert Bork, to do the deed, and the country was up in arms.
It was known forever after as "The Saturday Night Massacre." Why do I tell
you this non-Hollywood war story? I tell you because when he was questioned
about his action that Sunday morning, William D. Ruckelshaus answered with a
great lesson: "In politics, one must
always maintain the option of saying ‘no.’" It’s one of those
quotes that tattooed itself on my frontal lobe the first time I heard it. The truth is,
that lesson is valid for far more than politics, and nowhere more so than in the
screenwriting profession. And it’s most important when it’s the hardest to
do, as happened to Mr. Ruckelshaus. Several years
ago, during a period of "financial instability" following a project
being put into turnaround when the development executive in charge finally came
to his senses, a friend of mine steered me toward a possible writing gig. It was
with a person who shall remain nameless, an actor who was also a writer and
director of low budget, foreign-distribution-only, action films. After hanging
out with this guy for two days (on each of which I had to scrub extra-hard in
the shower on returning home to scrape off the slime), listening to his ideas
for a story, he finally turned to me and said, "Here’s the deal: you get
$1,200 for writing a shootable script and I will have the writing credit."
Looking back, I am surprised that I was actually surprised for as long as I was
(about thirty seconds) at his audacity. He took my delay as an indication I was
uncertain, and laid on his best argument in favor of the idea: "Hey, you
get to write a produced movie." (As if a produced credit minus one’s name
is something to look forward to.) The delay was
actually because I was hearing Ruckelshaus’ voice in my head. "You must
always maintain the option of saying ‘no.’" What was
truly surprising was his response to my using words that would later be
immortalized by our current Vice-President-- "go f - - k yourself"--
as my answer. He actually ran after me as I walked out of the room, yelling at
me about what a great opportunity he was offering me. Yeah, I
actually needed the money to cover some important expenses, but I didn’t need
the money badly enough to harm my talent. That’s what happens when a writer
takes jobs they shouldn’t, offered by people who have no shame-- your work
will suffer, and the more you do it, the more your work will suffer. Trust me, I
know whereof I speak. I was
reminded of all this a few weeks ago on a Sunday morning when She Who Must Be
Obeyed was idly looking through the want ads of the local litter box liner, and
spotted an actual, for-real want ad for screenwriters. It had a website one
could go to for more information. Since want ads for screenwriters in the L.A.
Times are even more rare than hen’s teeth, curiosity drove me to go check
it out. It’s a
"deal" (I use that term advisedly) to adapt a novel. One is supposed
to pay $8 through PayPal to download the novel, then turn in the first 12 pages
of a spec screenplay, which will be posted on the site and then voted on by
people who visit, with three semi-finalists asked to write their entire script,
for the "producers" to choose the "winner," who will be paid
the princely sum of $500. Folks, it is
@#$%&%$#@!! like this that is why real writers went and fought the studios
for years in the Thirties to create what is now known as the Writer’s Guild of
America, an organization that admittedly has far less power than it once did,
with its enemies now being multi-billion dollar, multi-national corporations,
rather than the traditional foe, studios run by people who actually liked making
movies. The one good
outcome I see to the above outrage was an ad at craigslist this past week, from
the same organization, now touting that the download of the novel was free. That
makes no difference. It was still b.s., and the little scumballs running it are
lucky I can’t track them down in the real world, to plant my size
nine-and-a-half so far up their derriere that the heel of my cowboy boot comes
out their mouth. Speaking of
craigslist, here’s another place where every day you can see a minimum of five
"offers" made in the Writing Gigs section that should set your alarm
bells ringing. And it’s not just the "producers" and
"directors" looking for "great scripts" that you have to
watch out for. There’s a beast called The Hollywood Wannabe Vampire flapping
around and stopping by craigslist with alarming regularity. You can detect its
droppings, which look like this: "Hi, I’m a good screenwriter with great
ideas and I need to hook up with you if you’re great with dialogue, have an
agent so our stuff can be seen, and have good contacts..." This isn’t
just a problem for those trying to get their foot in the door, and those trying
to keep from being booted back out the door because they’re still so near it.
An old friend of mine, a guy whose credits you would recognize, was once working
for a Very Major Movie Star/Producer/Director-With-A-Great-Reputation on a
project that was hopefully the first adaptation of a series of really good
mystery novels. The employer was known to be demanding, and more than lived up
to his reputation. By Draft Four, written to the specifications of the second
would-be-director-who-had-no-clue, my friend was starting to think the only
thing keeping him aboard was the size of the paychecks, though he rationalized
himself into believing it was his commitment to a potentially-great project with
a lot of promise that kept him hanging around. The day of
reckoning came when he had a meeting with the Very Major Star Etc., to go over
VMS’s script notes to Draft Four. All of a sudden, VMS was referring to lines
on pages that did not fit the draft my friend had in his hands. At first, he
thought it was that waking nightmare every competent person fears-- the one
where they are caught naked in public with the wrong answer-- but it went on,
and he realized he really was wide awake and really was where he was supposed to
be. At the fifth of these citations, my friend recognized the point being made--
as having been made with regard to Draft Three!! The Very Major Movie Star was
giving notes from the wrong draft! It wasn’t too hard to immediately figure
out there was no good end to this moment. It was "the option of saying
‘no’" moment, and he decided to go out standing up. He reached across
the desk, plucked the script from the hands of the Very Major Movie Star, handed
him his copy of Draft Four, and said, "Could you at least give me notes
from the current draft?" As he related
to me later, the silence in the room was so silent that any pin dropped would
have sounded like the Battleship Missouri firing a full broadside.
Very Major
Movie Star picked up the current draft and started reading it. Everyone in the
room sat silently as he read the entire draft-- page 1to120-- proving in so
doing that rumors he was a speed-reader were wrong. Finished, he put it down and
fixed my friend with that stare he is famous for on-screen, and said,
"It’s still wrong." My
friend thanked him for the opportunity and said good-bye.
The movie was
later actually made, but was so bad that it was universally panned and went
straight to video, where it mercifully sank like a stone. It did such damage to
the possibility of bringing the series of novels to the screen that it would be
a further 12 years until the first of two appeared on PBS’ Mystery series, proving that Mr. Very Major Movie Star had learned
something about getting the right scripts to the right directors.
My friend
walked out with his integrity intact and went on to get hired to write a couple
of very good movies. And me? Three
days after I told Mr. Wonderful to show the world what a sexual contortionist he
was, I got a phone call that led to being hired for a rewrite that went on to
become a movie good enough that I wish I could give you its name, but the WGA
says a writer cannot lay claim to a movie unless they received on-screen credit.
That’s okay-- the producers knew who did what, and gave me the kind of credit
that bank managers recognize, ending my "financial instability" for a
year. This scum
gets away with the scams on writers because so many writers have such low
self-respect that they seem to think they deserve to get kicked again and again.
Folks, just like there’s never been a battered wife who "brought it on
herself," there is no real writer who ever lived who deserved to be treated
this way (which is not to say that my old friend Harlan Ellison was wrong when
he once said, "Those who can be discouraged should be."). It doesn’t
matter if it’s true as Mr. Wonderful said when he ended his tirade as the door
closed behind me with, "There’s a hundred other guys would love this
deal! You know that!!" Yes, there probably are. But if you
value this gift/curse you’ve been given of being able to write, you don’t
have to be one of the morons. Your assignment, should you choose to accept it,
is to be able to look yourself in the mirror in the morning. (And if you’re
having a bad hair day, "the secretary will deny all knowledge.") -- Thomas McKelvey Cleaver has been (and still is) a freelance journalist; he
was a staff writer and editor at several publications prior to accidentally
becoming a screenwriter 20 years ago. In addition to writing 15 produced
movies, he has been a development executive in independent film, and a story
editor and supervising producer for three cable TV series. His credits
include the cult horror hit "The Terror Within" (though his only
connection with "TW II" is a credit "based on characters created
by..." which he was forced to take). He is currently in development
on a World War II script optioned by Greenwich Films, and has recently completed
an adaptation of James Fenimore Cooper's "The Deerslayer." Reach
Thomas at tom@absolutewrite.com. Click here for more columns by Thomas McKelvey Cleaver
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