Rewriting the rewriter
How often do original screenwriters, who’ve been rewritten by other fellows, get hired back onto their original scripts? Does it matter if the script is revving up to go into production? I’ve heard of a few other guys like Josh Friedman (Chain Reaction) and Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine) hopping back on, but are they the exception or the rule?
– Lewis
It’s not uncommon. I was on and off both Charlie’s Angels movies several times, and I can think of at least half a dozen other cases where the original writers came back in before (or during) production.
In order to understand why the original writers are sometimes rehired, you have to understand why they leave projects. Sometimes, it’s simple availability: at a crucial moment during development of the first Charlie’s Angels, I was shooting a series in Toronto, so someone else got the gig (a long string of someone elses, as it turned out). In other cases, a new element (director, producer, star) wants to take the script in a new direction, which generally means a new writer — often someone they’ve worked with before.
You’re not always fired, and it’s not always acrimonious. That’s important to understand. The screenwriter wants the movie made, and wants to maintain relationships with the filmmakers and the studio. So it behooves everyone to make sure the original writer is at least peripherally involved, even if he’s no longer the active writer on the project.
The original writer might get asked back for several reasons. The simplest is cost: she may be willing to do a lot of piece work essentially for free because it’s her movie. But more often there is something about the original writer’s voice or vision that remains important despite subsequent revisions, and the producers (or director, or stars) recognize this. So she comes back in to make the new stuff feel like her stuff, and let it read like one movie rather than a patchwork.
Filed under: Charlie's Angels, Directors, Film Industry, Projects, Psych 101, QandA
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December 10th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
John, I have a question. What if after a first spec script sale, countless other writers are brought it for the script. Now it’s to an extent that almost none of the original writer’s story remains. Does the original writer still get screenplay credit or does he get booted off? Can this be protect by a clause in the contract asking for a credit?
December 10th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Sounds quite civilized here. I wonder if you read Nancy Nigrosh’s piece in Variety, where she asks the simple question: “Why is it so ingrained in Hollywood that one person alone cannot write a producible screenplay?”
Her conclusion is that if writers weren’t so eager to abet producers (and others) in booting the original scribe, more movies would be released with a single credit. She notes: “Novelists, playwrights and poets are not rewritten by other writers.”
Of course, as you point out, the situations are often more complicated, but I think Ms. Nigrosh makes a fair point and I’d love to hear your thoughts from inside the trenches.
December 11th, 2008 at 4:03 am
Faisal (#1): (sorry to jump in before John, but I think I’m right)
The scenario you mention is actually quite common: a writer’s first spec sale will almost always be taken over by a writer the studio feels more comfortable with. If, as you say, the script is rewritten by a succession of new writers to the point where “almost none of the original writer’s story remains” – generally – unless the writer is fortunate enough that the studio/producer/other writers waive their credit – the original writer will end up with a “Story by” credit. Possibly even forced to share the “Story by” credit with one of the re-writers. But I think that’s the bare minimum. The original writer HAS to receive “Story by” at the very least since his/her material is (as can be proven) where the finished film originated from.
December 11th, 2008 at 6:44 am
I like Dave in DC’s question.
Is it the cost of producing a film that makes everyone nervous and suddenly need five writers for a film that was fine to begin with? I am a published author (one measly book…) and while my editor made suggestions — which is maybe the equivelent of ONE set of notes from a studio exec — I can’t imagine that rewrites by other authors would’ve made my book better, and more than likely it would’ve made it worse.
Maybe I’m naive, but when I sit in a theater and see huge plot holes and glaring inconsistencies in characters, I don’t think the studio bought that script — but that it was turned into that by rewrites that never should’ve happened. When movies get rewritten to appeal to the broadest of possible audiences (four quadrant, is that the term?) there’s no “there” in them anymore. I often forget an entire movie I’ve just seen on the way to my car in the parking lot.
December 11th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Unlike being a novelist, poet etc making movies is a team effort. The argument of whether the original work was better then the end product will always be there but producers, directors, studio execs etc aren’t making changes to the script that they don’t think will improve it.
I would imagine in some cases it would be easier for a director to bring in someone they’ve worked with before and who they generally share a similar vision with then trying to collaborate with someone new to the scene.
I also believe that movies are generally shot more in the vision of the director then that of the writer and the truest way to get “your” story across would be to both write it and direct it.
December 11th, 2008 at 10:24 am
Hmm, that makes it sound so warm and fuzzy. (Which is not necessarily a bad thing, given La La Land’s reputation.)
December 11th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Dear John, Thanks for all your comments and advice. Regarding what you say (“she may be willing to do a lot of piece work essentially for free because it’s her movie”), I’d like to know, grosso modo, if you usually agree on a number of revisions when you first sign your contract or if each revision means some more money or you have to do it for free. I’m collaborating with the screenwriter’s guild in my country and we’re trying to develop “good ways of work”, and knowing what you guys do there would be very very useful. Thank you very much.
December 11th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Forgot to include a link to the Variety article, which makes the case better than I.
http://weblogs.variety.com/thompsononhollywood/2008/10/screenwriting-i.html
December 11th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Shonda Rimes wrote GA’s pilot by herself, but in many of the subsequent scripts she was only consultant or something to that extent. Studios tend to have faith in a greater variety of people – putting one script to one writer is probably like giving an entire multimillion dollar movie to one star to monologue through.
All the same, as a screenwriter, I would appreciate fellow writers jumping in, giving me advice, rewriting errors or inconsistencies, but I would like a cap at 5, and surely, they cannot create any new problems and issues.
Good link, Dave in DC, that article is very insightful and full of nuggets of truth on the WGA practice.
December 11th, 2008 at 11:07 pm
@karl, Grey’s Anatomy is a different situation, since it is a TV show. Also, Shonda Rimes is the show runner, so she has input on every episode as well as who is hired on the writing staff.
December 14th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Karl,
Rewriters ain’t advisors. If you’re lucky they’ll call you, tell you they’re going to cuddle your baby, and then, behind your back, gut it ass first. And they would have every right to because it ain’t, legally, your baby. It’s, contractually, the studios. The studio, in the eyes of the legal world, is the author. In hollywood, even the original voice is an advisor to the studio’s non-human (non-existent) author.
December 15th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Certainly it’s easy for studio execs and their apologists to explain why it makes sense to employ several writers to work on the same movie. Budgets change, logistics change, the original writer might not be available to do all the work, someone else might be faster or more capable of doing the required changes, etc., etc.
Of course, this doesn’t exactly explain why. You could easily apply the same principles to every other creative position and argue that, if you’re making Titanic, James Cameron should only be allowed to shoot the big action scenes and then step aside to let Robert Redford direct all the romance. (Is there anyone who thinks the film wouldn’t have been better under those circumstances?)
So why doesn’t that happen? There’s no way to answer this without invoking circular reasoning. The stock response, of course is something along the lines of, “Because the director is the ultimate creative authority on the movie and steers the film at all stages, from pre through post.” But there’s no good reason that the writer isn’t that person, like s/he is in TV, on stage, or in print. Imagine if a novel were required to have only a single editor but could utilize dozens of writers.
So I think the real answer lies somewhere in the early studio era, where the Harry Cohns and Jack Warners beat their writers into a bloody pulp at every turn, then kept them down long enough for Alfred Hitchcock to step in and proclaim that the director was king for good and all. And nothing’s changed since.
December 15th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Sometimes the studio will buy a script, and hire the spec writer to do the rewrite (as required by the WGA) knowing full well that the original writer does not have the ability to “bring it home.” Yet there is something in the project that is worthwhile and the executive sees a real movie there… if only… one of the characters was funnier. Or there was a way the second storyline could be made stronger. Or the last act made more sense. Or many other things that the original writer is just too close to the project to see beyond or is perhaps just not talented enough or has enough experience.
It doesn’t reflect poorly on the spec writer; movie making is complicated and there are many creative people involved.
By the way, it’s a myth that novel writers work alone. Many of the best books you’ve ever read were a collaboration between a writer and an editor. The same goes for many poems (e.g. T.S. Eliot/Ezra Pound), and plays (e.g. Tennessee Williams/Elia Kazan).
December 16th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Hey, BrianMarx — not to be combative, but the comment on novel writers simply isn’t true. Present day novel writing is not a collaboration. After he buys your book, an editor will give you some big-picture concerns for you to try and smooth over, and you will have a copyeditor to catch typos or awkward sentences, but their own back-breaking scheduals means they barely have time to answer emails, much less hold your hand and look over your shoulder, and help “create”.