Does bad work spoil mine?
I work for a small production company.
While trying to break into the "next" (bigger)
level as a screenwriter, I work here as a reader. Basically, I spend a lot
of time writing coverages for awful scripts that never should have been written
in the first place. I often wonder what is going through some of these people’s
minds when they send this junk out.
I don’t really know when it happened, but at some point it seems that everyone in the world decided they wanted to be screenwriters. My question is this: does all that subpar work poison the water for the rest of us truly capable folks?
–Aaron Saylor
I hear you, brother.
I worked as a reader for about a year and a half, both at Tri-Star and at a little production company based at Paramount. During that time, I read the worst scripts of my life — horrible, horrible atrocities worse than a dozen cable movies.
In writing coverage, half the time my plot summary was much clearer than the script’s true narrative, and my comments section became an exercise in finding creative ways to express the same underlying truth: this script is not a movie, and this writer doesn’t know what he’s doing.
I got a taste of my own medicine later, when I slipped one of my scripts under a pseudonym to an intern whose opinion I respected. His coverage lambasted the screenplay and the untalented hack who created it. I actually got nauseous reading his critique.
Since then, I’ve learned to temper my disgust for poorly written scripts, and try to view them as the little lessons they are. Once you start looking for the common problems, you can avoid these pitfalls in your own writing:
- Bad scripts introduce ten characters in the first four pages, without giving you any real information about them, or making clear which ones are important.
- In bad scripts, characters talk about events you just saw happen, which makes seeing them redundant.
- In bad scripts, characters are always walking through doors, as if it’s a play where they need to make entrances and exits.
- In bad scripts, characters do exactly what you expect they’re going to do.
What’s interesting is that many of these lessons can only be learned by reading bad screenplays. In a good script, you’d never know what you were missing. So rather than blaming these bum writers for doing terrible work, rejoice in their suckiness, and remember that their low standards make your great script all the more unusual.
Articles
September 11th, 2004 at 12:02 pm
Amen! As a reader for the Austin Film Festival and the Texas Film Institute, I take pride in knowing most of my education as a screenwriter comes from reading bad scripts. No classes, seminars, books. Reading bad scripts. They tell you what not to do! And because any aspiring screenwriter should already know what they NEED to do.
May 18th, 2005 at 9:44 am
Weird. I was just about to comment, when I realized I already did 8 months ago! And check out the date. Eerie, man. Just plain eerie.
May 18th, 2005 at 10:04 am
Not to be a smart ass, but…
Bad scripts introduce ten characters in the first four pages, without giving you any real information about them, or making clear which ones are important….like in the movie ALIEN.
In bad scripts, characters talk about events you just saw happen, which makes seeing them redundant….as in THE MATRIX.
In bad scripts, characters are always walking through doors, as if it’s a play where they need to make entrances and exits…..as in all episodes of STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION.
In bad scripts, characters do exactly what you expect they’re going to do….like in TITANIC (the lovers fall in love and the ship sinks).
Point being, there’s no formula – neither for good scripts, nor for bad ones. While I agree there’s a lot of crap out there, it’s not just coming from wanna-be writers, but also from highly paid pros (Mr. August being a rare exception). By the end of the day it’s all subjective. I’ve gotten my hands on coverage before that truly condemned a script o’ mine in ways that got me worried about the reader’s sanity. Same script has since been optioned. Does a highly regarded industry professional with a dozen credits for commercially successful movies know less about “what makes a good movie� than some frustrated reader who lives with his iguana in a studio in North Hollywood? You tell me.
May 18th, 2005 at 10:10 am
Haven’t I read this article before here? Maybe it’s a glitch in the Matrix…
May 18th, 2005 at 11:05 am
Johnny — I agree with you about it all being completely subjective. My last spec was slipped to a couple readers at studios before going out. One guy ripped it apart so bad I considered giving up and going to dental school, but another guy praised it as if it were the next box office golden boy. I realized that I shouldn’t care what one person’s opinion is, or even 20 people’s opinion for that matter — it’s possible that just as many will love it. However, if 20 million people say it sucks, well, then…
But after interning as a reader at a production company for a summer I completely agree with the “bad script” clue-ins. Sure, they’re generalizations and there are always exceptions, but for each of those movies you named as the exception there are forty-thousand more that make the rule. I think I read most of them, too.
another “rule” to add:
In bad scripts, there is a page of dialogue for the introduction of new characters. Hi. Hello. How are you? Great, how about you? Great. Did you know Frank is dead?
Oh yeah….and my script didn’t sell. So what the f#%k do I know.
Next.
May 18th, 2005 at 11:09 am
Obviously what one person likes and another trashes is subjective. I think the point John’s making (or I guess made) is that bad script tell, don’t show, have no sense of proper pacing since scenes go too long to become repetative, and are predictable in their execution, not necessarily in their outcome. Everyone knows the two leads will get together in the romcom, the thing that kills or saves it is what happens along the way and how they deal with it. It’s all in the how, not the what.
May 18th, 2005 at 11:19 am
Or as I’ve read Ebert write multiple times: “A movie isn’t what its about, its how its about.”
May 18th, 2005 at 11:38 am
Johnny: Good point about Alien and the many characters introduced at the start. I’ve never read the screenplay, but I’d guess that the character descriptions are pretty minimal. What’s different about this good script and its multiple characters is that they’re all involved in interesting action from the start.
May 18th, 2005 at 11:57 am
The comment about doors is interesting. I may have to think about it. Is it a matter of describing too much action? After all, there are all those screwball comedies with people popping in and out of doors. Also, there is Corman’s famous quote that there is nothing more terrifying than a subjective view moving down a hallway toward a closed door. But then, that is more a directoral decision than a script decision.
Now my own addition:
In bad scripts, the first five pages are spent in a flashback that does nothing to establish character or dramatic tension.
May 18th, 2005 at 11:58 am
I concur.
May 18th, 2005 at 12:00 pm
…I concured w/#8.
May 18th, 2005 at 12:44 pm
“Read, read, read. Read everything – trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out the window.” – William Faulkner
May 21st, 2005 at 1:42 am
I agree about how being a reader is akin to having someone hold your feet to a large open flame. I was a reader for 2 different companies a few years back when I was in L.A. I’ll never forget this one assignment that was so bad, I literally set the screenplay down and looked around for hidden cameras to be sure I wasn’t on “Punk’ed.”
I think whoever said that people think screenwriting is easy business so why not get involved was right. But daaaamn…spare everyone else. It just goes to show that if you know the right people, you can get your stuff read by professionals….or interns at large companies.
May 21st, 2005 at 8:55 am
I was just thinking that “The Royal Tenenbaum’s” breaks those rules. But thinking about it more, the flashback for the first 5 minutes or so, along with maybe 10 or 12 character introductions is quite damn informative.
-JoBlo
May 21st, 2005 at 7:19 pm
After my first novel was published, sold reasonably well and won an award, I was offered a lot of moneymaking gigs, such as teaching a writing workshop or being one of the judges of a fiction-writing contest — all of which involved reading large numbers of bad manuscripts. They weren’t all “subliterary,” but many were.
I found the experience to be depressing and came to feel like it was degrading my standards because I was constantly having to choose the best of the worst. It made me selfconscious about my own writing, just on the level of forming sentences, as I couldn’t help compare my own fluency with those who were truly bad.
It wasn’t good for my work (or my psyche, for that matter).
I think it’s better to read stuff that’s great or at least competent and then aspire to be in the same ballpark. Even if I’m not, I can try.
May 21st, 2005 at 8:45 pm
I’m one on those New York Times readers who turned up here out of curiosity and regret to say that it may show (despite that newspaper’s grossly inflated reputation for both writing and intelligence–only read the late John Hess). In any event, the master in residence writes:
Need I point out that “nauseous” is an object or attribute which induces nausea, and not a state of being? I think Mr. August means “nauseated”.
May 21st, 2005 at 8:48 pm
Sorry, my brackets obliterated the offending quote, which reads:
“I actually got nauseous reading his critique.”
May 21st, 2005 at 9:19 pm
I think that I may have seen the film with all the characters talking about the events that happened in the last scene.
May 22nd, 2005 at 6:12 am
I’m another New York Times reader with unkind words.
It seems to me that a crucial distinction is missing here: the difference between a “bad” script and an “inept” one. Virtually all Hollywood scripts (or at least the movies made from them) are “bad” — cliched, trite, predictable, adding nothing to the sum of human knowledge or delight. This could mean “Million Dollar Baby”, “The Aviator”, “Birth” or the latest Bruce Willis vehicle.
I regret to say I haven’t seen a John August movie, but it’s unlikely he’s getting all those re-write jobs, or has sold a dozen spec scripts, for writing movies of high intelligence, wit or insight. This isn’t spite or slander: the economics of production and marketing argue against the development of interesting projects with less than world-wide mass-market appeal. It’s also not clear that the MBAs running the business know the difference between good and bad, or could pass a cinema 101 final exam.
John August’s scripts are no doubt “competently” written — they follow accepted conventions, satisfy the expectations of studio executives and are free of the absurdities to be found in much amateur screenwriting.
But, in the end, does it really matter, when the product is still worthless?
May 22nd, 2005 at 10:08 am
Walter:
Like split infinitives and other shibboleths, you’ve hit on a matter of usage:
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-nau1.htm
May 22nd, 2005 at 2:31 pm
Well, John, in that case, there is no such thing as incorrect usage, numbers alone will prevail.
The tide of language change may be impossible to hold back, but it’s disheartening to see a writer — a highly acclaimed one, apparently — oblivious of his tool of trade.
May 22nd, 2005 at 2:59 pm
Walter:
Sigh. We won’t get anywhere productive with this discussion. I don’t believe there is such a thing as “incorrect usage,” as long as the writer is effectively communicating with the reader. You disagree. That’s fine.
May 22nd, 2005 at 4:17 pm
I work as a reader, formerly for a big five major agency, and currenly for another big five agency.
At one major agency, each script that gets submitted for coverage is assigned a seven digit number for their coverage database system. In the fall of 2004, I learned that this seven digit number is actually THE NUMBER OF PIECES OF MATERIAL that have been submitted to this agency’s story department for coverage. Now granted, some of them are different drafts of the same script, others are books, but at the time of my discovery, the seven digit number had just passed 1,050,000.
Yes, a million, fifty thousand.
And that’s just at this single agency, going back less than a decade. This is to say nothing of the other four major agencies, plus all the minor agencies, the management companies, plus the studios, and all the myriad production companies here in LA and all over the world.
My question is this:
With so many millions of scripts floating around, and I empahasize millions–it’s not tens or hundreds of thousands, it’s millions–can the sifting mechanisms in Hollywood have any hope of actually identifying worthy material that comes from someone other than the elite writers in town?
If you ask me, with the current system, there’s no way.
Even with thousands of people reading scripts, the volume of material is too great. With so many scripts, and so many creative and financial strata to overcome in order to even have a hope of getting set up, much less produced, there’s just no way to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Good movies come out every year, but I often find myself shuddering at the thought of all the brilliant scripts floating around out there that will never see the light of day.
So my other question, John, is this:
Would the business be served by setting up a clearing house for spec screenplays by unrepped writers. A central hub, maybe sponsored or even operated by the WGA, where every aspiring writer can go, pay some money, and get their script evaulated by an experienced, trusted, veteran reader, and get their shot. If the script is worthy, all the town’s agencies and management companies are alerted, and it’s up to them to read the script and pursue the writer.
Ben Los Angeles
May 22nd, 2005 at 9:03 pm
Ben, I think you’re right that the volume of material is overwhelming, but even if some sort of clearing house could be established that wasn’t similarly overwhelmed, what makes you think Hollywood is looking for brilliant material?
The usual suspects and the major agencies are more than capable of supplying the industry with everything it wants. The last thing any producer in this business wants is a brilliant script, because brilliant scripts are nothing but trouble.
What this business wants is product in the crudest sense. For that, it can trust entirely to the vagaries of the marketplace and its suppliers, which already provides more than it can handle.
May 23rd, 2005 at 12:11 pm
man, i don’t know how readers plow through this stuff all day monday thru friday (plus some on the weekends). i can only stomach a few pages. i mean, this stuff is so bad. like, there aren’t words.
if i were a buyer i’d only read a few bad pages before chucking the script
May 23rd, 2005 at 12:15 pm
Under this same topic, how does one find opportunities to become a script reader? Do you have to live in NY or LA? What credentials do you have to have? Thanks!
May 23rd, 2005 at 12:21 pm
I’m curious if anyone knows what kind of success that ‘Trigger Street’ experiment had? It’s a website where aspiring screenwriters rate each other’s scripts.
Have any been made, sold well?
My own suggestion is to try to sell a script for very little money to a European TV station. The BBC and lots of production companies in Britain make TV films out of scripts by unknown writers, a couple of whom I know. The crush of applications is far less than Hollywood because there is so much less money in it. BBC radio still make radio plays from scripts by unknown writers.
I haven’t tried, but it sounds to me a far better way to break in.
.
May 23rd, 2005 at 5:14 pm
KChapman,
Ben from LA replying to your post.
To get work as a reader, you should write coverage on a few scripts, three or four, so that you have samples to show prospective employers. The samples should be of material you like and hate.
If you’re totally new to it, be sure to read a stack of coverages to get the form down. The form is, essentially, make sure your synopsis is quantitative–just the beats of the story, no commentary, and your comments should be all qualitative–don’t re-tell the story.
Then approach the companies that hire freelance readers. CAA, WMA and ICM are the only major agencies I know of who employ freelancers–they have the most volume of work, but as such, they are the most difficult places to get in. You need great samples, good experience, and even better timing as there isn’t much turnover.
The other places to approach are mini-major studios (New Line, Mandalay, Phoenix, Regency, etc.), and well-moneyed production companies–Imagine, Bruckheimer, Red Wagon.
Not sure if there are any management companies who use freelancers, but start with the biggest ones–Brillstein-Grey, 3 Arts, Mosaic Media maybe.
You may also investigate getting into the reader’s union, but there are only a few dozen people in it, and it generally takes years to get in. Plus who wants to be a reader your whole life?
Good luck.
Ben LA
May 23rd, 2005 at 5:21 pm
To answer your other questions, yes, you need to live in LA or NY. Although there won’t be much work in NY.
As far as credentials, (I only know from LA, you’ll have to ask someone else about NY) you really only need to be able to show that you can write coverage. You’ll have to show your samples and write an audition piece or two wherever you apply. For free.
People will want to see that you went to college, but any four year school will do. You certainly don’t need an Ivy League background, just a passion for movies, and for screenplays.
Ben LA
May 24th, 2005 at 7:38 am
Thanks for your suggestions on work as a reader. I’m an aspiring screenwriter and I think this would be a valuable experience. Are there any places on the Web where I can read solid coverage reports as examples? (I only have one coverage report on one of my scripts.) Thanks.
May 24th, 2005 at 10:34 am
KChapman,
Replying to your post (by the way, does John want people talking back and forth individually on the site?), if you’re in LA, just ask a friend who works in the business to show you a few samples–they’re not hard to come by.
If you’re not in LA and you’re serious about screenwriting, then you need to move here as soon as you can.
If you’re new to town and you don’t know anyone in the business, sign up with the Film Industry Network (filmindustrynetwork.com)–they organize a variety of interfaces between people in the business and people looking to get in. They’ll hook you up.
Or maybe John A. could post some coverage samples on the on the site.
Cheers,
Ben LA
May 24th, 2005 at 11:17 am
Hey, John,
I am an aspiring screenwriter who found your blog by reading the New York Times. I found this comment thread amusing. I am a huge admirer of Carl Theodor Dreyer. Dreyer started out in the film business as a script reader in Copenhagen in 1912, and he was quoted in his biography as saying something to the effect that “back then, every cab driver on the street thought he could write a screenplay, so the work was rather tedious.” So it’s clear, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
I also wanted to pass on this link. It was written by George Bernard Shaw in 1911. It’s a very funny piece on how to conform to public expectations when writing a play:
http://www.imagi-nation.com/moonstruck/clsc18w1.html
Cheers,
Susan
May 30th, 2005 at 5:33 am
Susan, reading your post, per Carl Dreyer, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry — you sounded like me, 10-15 years ago, when I first approach this medium with hopefulness, faith and terminal delusions.
So, solicited or not, and in the hope of saving you 10 years, I’m going to give you some advice: you’re in the wrong place and the wrong business. Even the most accessible of Europeans “art” films — say, “The Seventh Seal” or “Stolen Kisses” — could never get made today in the U.S., not in Hollywood and not in the New York independent scene and certainly not by the pseudo-indie production companies like Fox Searchlight or IFC (at least, not without big celebrities and even then they’d want you to shoot it with a camcorder for $250K).
Consider that Charlie Kaufmann is the most venturesome produced screenwriter today, in either comercial or “independent” U.S. cinema. Now look at the Carl Th. Dreyer of “Ordet” or “Gertrude”. See what I mean? What you need to do, if you’re really determined, is make your own films. This assumes you’re either independently wealthy or have some talent for making features for the price of videotape. But that’s the choice.
In a word, don’t waste your life in the movies.
May 30th, 2005 at 8:15 am
We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.
May 31st, 2005 at 6:37 am
Walter,
You write your post on the assumption that I am clueless. I am not. Far from it. Just because I am a great admirer of Dreyer’s doesn’t mean I strive to get produced stories just like his. I know that this is pointless. (Paul Schrader is also a great admirer of Dreyer’s, and he wrote “Taxi Driver.” James Schamus is an admirer, too, and he made “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “The Incredible Hulk.” None of these films could ever be confused with “Vredens Dag.”) I’m well aware of the fact that those stories are anathema in today’s film industry, but I will not, as you suggest, just walk away and stop trying just because my idol is not appreciated by as many people as he should be. I will just write scripts in other genres, and continue to appreciate the purity of his vision whether other people do or not. I just thought people here, complaining about the tedium of script reading, might enjoy the insight about script reading that is almost 100 years old but sounds just like they sound today. If you don’t appreciate it, fine. Others still might.
May 31st, 2005 at 8:22 am
I appreciate it.
May 31st, 2005 at 10:11 am
Susan,
You won’t want to hear this, and it may well be irrelevant to your own experience, but when I started in this business I had read Schrader’s book on transcendental cinema, and James Schamus was telling everyone in town how much he loved Raul Ruiz and Carl Th. Dreyer. I suppose they both meant it, in some way or other, but it’s hard to see what those loves could have really meant for them.
Maybe you’re one those rare people who can divorce her own loves from the work she does. For many years, I thought I was one such person, and was hardly unique in that respect. Indeed, there are multitudes of us, with virtually nothing to show for the years we’ve put into this medium. For what it’s worth, I speak as a filmmaker, not just a writer. You probably wouldn’t know the name anyway, but “Walter Neff” is not it.
In any case, best of luck, one never knows, and you obviously have to follow your own road. I just hope it’s more rewarding than the one I took.
Beyond that, I enjoyed the Shaw link, so lack of appreciation was never at issue.
May 31st, 2005 at 1:40 pm
Walter,
I know your name isn’t Walter Neff. I love “Double Indemnity,” too. I love hearing Fred MacMurry call Barbara Stanwyck “baby.” It’s so not “My Three Sons.”
Shaw is a hoot. But if he came to Hollywood today, they’d probably tell him to go back to England and open a shoe store. His stuff is too meaningful be summarized on a one-sheet.
If I succeed, I succeed. If I fail, I fail. I have faith in the stuff I do. It’s hard to have faith that I will ever find anyone in the American film industry who will care, but I can still have hope. (That’s one thing Dreyer taught me, that all writers should know: People with pure intentions always get treated maliciously by people in dubious positions of authority.)
But I’m not putting my life on hold, because I like my life and I’ve heard too many sad stories.
May 31st, 2005 at 3:02 pm
Susan: Good for you. Don’t let someone else’s bitterness in not realizing fully their dreams taint yours.
And Walter: I thought this site was about writers helping writers — not cutting each other off at the knees. Please leave that for the rest of Hollywood and allow this site remain a safe haven.
May 31st, 2005 at 3:05 pm
*fully realizing their dreams
(Don’t write angry.)
June 1st, 2005 at 9:09 am
Here’s another link you can all laugh at. It’s from The Onion:
http://www.theonion.com/opinion/index.php?issue=4122&o=2
June 1st, 2005 at 10:59 am
Doug,
I’m not sure (in all truthfulness) what the purpose of this site is, or what a “safe haven” might mean, but it seems to me that some measure of discouragement can only be healthy, whether or not I’m not the appropriate carrier of doom.
I don’t know how closely you’re involved in the business, but if you’re familiar with it, you’ll know that there are legions of 55 year-old “actors” who have never done any real work on stage or screen, armies of unproduced writers who are as gray as their Dells, and “directors” whose life-time output is a third-place short at the Hoboken Film Festival, 20 years ago. This very thread cites an agency submission tally not in the thousands or ten thousands, but millions, and I believe the WGA now registers hundreds of thousands of scripts a year.
Even more discouraging than these numbers is the nature of the business itself: is there any produced screenwriter working today who could reasonably be described as a “great” and indispensable writer, even by the diminished standards of the movies? Someone like Jacques Prevert in France, or Powell/Pressburger in England, or the days when novelists and playwrites worked in Hollywood and sometimes managed to sneak some quality and intelligence in?
No less than Stanley Kubrick observed that he never commissioned professional screenwriters for a script, because highly talented writers rarely go into the medium in the first place.
I suppose what I’m trying to say is, this work is not a sacred mission. As a statistical venture it’s worse than hopeless, and actual success is nothing to crow about either, given the nature of the stuff which gets produced today.
You probably won’t believe me, but I feel terrible about Susan, even if she doesn’t want my advice or sympathy. The thought of someone with her interests trying to succeed in this business makes my heart bleed – not because I claim to be smarter or more worldly, but because I’ve been through it, and it’s grief, choler and uselessness, and everything you do is subject to the judgment and indulgence of knaves and fools, people who don’t know the difference between Dickens and Sophocles, or between Carl Dreyer and Ridley Scott. Most of these dolts don’t even have a record of financial success they can point to. They’re professionals by virtue of the positions they hold. Period. And they’re your judge and jury.
If that picture of reality isn’t sufficiently upbeat, time for me to bow out. The NY Times got me here, and the participates got me out. Fair enough, I should be working anyway, useless as the work may be.
June 1st, 2005 at 12:14 pm
Regardless of what happens to me fifty years down the road, I’ll be satisfied that I discovered something I LOVE to do. Yes, I work in a dead-end job for minimum wage, but I get to go home to writing. It’s a release. It’s a pleasure. If I die without making any money as a writer, oh well. I tried and that’s all that matters. And I was happy doing it. But if we don’t have dreams, what do we have?
Thanks for stopping by, “Walter.”
June 1st, 2005 at 12:37 pm
Walter,
Here I go trying to be friendly to you and then you go off on me again. I find your pity for me extremely condescending, and it reminds me why I usually avoid screenwriters’ chat rooms: because some people just can’t resist spreading around their oppressive bitterness.
My outlook on work, life and writing is so different than yours that nothing you or anybody else says will deter me, whether I succeed in the end or whether I fail. I am what I am, and I don’t require your approval or good wishes.
I agree with RDane. If you truly love writing and are truly inspired, it is its own reward. If I can make somebody else care, great. If I can’t, does that make all the writing meaningless? Of course not. Nothing that makes a person happy is meaningless.
By the way, this is John August’s chat room, not yours. If you want to spew despair, get your own freakin’ blog.
June 1st, 2005 at 3:04 pm
“Walter”,
I think what’s upsetting both sides here is that you’re mistaking “amatuer” for “naive”. While there’s a few beginners, I think most people around here have a pretty good graps as to the realities of the business. You’re not wrong in your experiences, but I think we prefer to keep our own hopes and dreams alive and for better or worse keep the faith.
June 25th, 2005 at 11:17 am
Gosh. All sort of reminds me why personality has almost as much to do with success in Hollywood as talent. Because it’s a collaborative medium, like it or not. And Walter just wouldn’t be very much fun to work with. He’s a “true artist” right down to his bleeding fingernails.
But artists come in all shapes and sizes. Some have never heard of Dreyer. Doesn’t mean they have less to say as a writer. And an artist can choose a multitude of avenues to “express” his intents. I’ve written for some pretty cheesy projects (produced, mind you), and I can say that it was fun, creative, and I got some of my “art” into there too. I said something about the world and how I see it. And some sixteen year old in Idaho actually watched and maybe was affected just a little bit, consciously or not. If you want to make your “high art” for almost no one to see, that’s cool too. Some filmmakers only show their work in museums. Although, I wouldn’t pay to sit through a two-hour video installation, myself, and would much rather watch the new Dawn of the Dead, which thoroughly rocks. (Land of the Dead sucks. George is a hack.)
Some very smart, talented people work in Hollywood. They’re well-read, informed, artistic souls who have chosen to speak to the masses in the most powerful medium the world has yet devised: film and television. Heck, even Shakespeare was ultimately just trying to entertain the common folk, too.
July 21st, 2005 at 6:10 pm
Walter ‘participANTS’ got you out Joan
September 27th, 2005 at 10:38 am
I’m a huge admirer of Andrei Tarkovsky and I make my living writing thrillers for TV.
What the hell is the problem here?