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).

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.

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.

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.

http://weblogs.variety.com/thompsononhollywood/2008/10/screenwriting-i.html

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.

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.