John August

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Pitching a take, and the WGA elections

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Scriptnotes, Transcribed, WGA

Today marks the inaugural episode of Scriptnotes, a podcast that Craig Mazin and I are trying out. It’s meant to be a weekly-or-so conversation about items of interest to screenwriters, from getting stuff written to dealing with insane producers.

Topics in episode one:

* Pitching a take. When screenwriters are asked to come in and meet with the studio (or producers) about a project, what do both sides expect? How much work do you do in advance? How different is it from pitching an original idea?

* The WGA elections. It’s time to pick new officers and new board members. We talk about issues and priorities, and what the WGA Board actually does.

You can listen to the episode here:

Down the road, we plan to have the podcast up in the usual places (like iTunes), so you can subscribe and get episodes automatically delivered. I’ll post details when they’re available.

UPDATE 9-4-11: The transcript of this episode can be found [here](http://johnaugust.com/2011/scriptnotes-ep-1-pitching-a-take-and-the-wga-elections-transcript).

Stay away from this girl

Genres, Rant

Wait, how did I not know the [Manic Pixie Dream Girl](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ManicPixieDreamGirl) existed as a trope? Nathan Rabin gets credit for first [calling her out](http://origin.avclub.com/articles/the-bataan-death-march-of-whimsy-case-file-1-eliza,15577/):

> [Elizabethtown’s Kirsten] Dunst embodies a character type I like to call The Manic Pixie Dream Girl (see Natalie Portman in Garden State for another prime example).

> The Manic Pixie Dream Girl exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is an all-or-nothing-proposition. Audiences either want to marry her instantly (despite The Manic Pixie Dream Girl being, you know, a fictional character) or they want to commit grievous bodily harm against them and their immediate family.

The OnionA.V. Club lists [sixteen examples](http://www.avclub.com/articles/wild-things-16-films-featuring-manic-pixie-dream-g,2407/) and further clarifies just what’s wrong with this archetype:

> Like the Magical Negro, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype is largely defined by secondary status and lack of an inner life. She’s on hand to lift a gloomy male protagonist out of the doldrums, not to pursue her own happiness. In the late ’60s and early ’70s, MPDGs often took the comely form of spacey hippie chicks burdened with getting grim establishment types to kick back and smell the flowers.

She’s simply awful. She’s the [navigable air duct](http://johnaugust.com/2006/air-vents-are-for-air) of female antagonists, something that exists only for cinematic convenience. Let’s stop using her.

Like villains, love interests need to have a plausible reason for why they’re there and what they want. Always ask yourself, “What would this character be doing if the hero never showed up?”

If you can’t answer — or if the answer is boring — you need to go back to the drawing board.

There’s nothing wrong with kooky females, by the way. Anna Faris has made a career of them. But in films like The House Bunny, it’s always clear what she’s after — and it’s never about getting a nice guy to loosen up.

Aline Brosh McKenna and the BlackBerry 3

Genres

NY Times has a nice piece on Aline Brosh McKenna, screenwriter of [“the BlackBerry 3”](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/magazine/if-cinderella-had-a-blackberry.html?_r=1&ref=susandominus&pagewanted=all):

> McKenna’s solution to romantic-comedy fatigue is not to ironize the genre or make fun of its characters’ (and therefore its audience’s) quests for fulfillment, but to give them what they want: a great guy and a great job, a happy family and professional success. In “I Don’t Know How She Does It,” Pierce Brosnan may seem like a straightforward object of desire; in fact, as McKenna sees it, his character is especially seductive in that he alone recognizes the heroine’s talent. “He embodies the work recognition she hasn’t gotten until then,” McKenna said.

Because movie stars and directors are more visible, we rarely look at a screenwriter’s credits as being part of an overall package. It’s nice to see an article paying attention to more than just the movie headed to theaters next month.

McKenna’s produced films are thematically unified in much the way Kevin Smith’s or Woody Allen’s are — with the same type of protagonist answering the same category of question. Regardless of the director, her movies feel like her movies.

In failure, screenwriters are pigeon-holed. In success, they’re branded.

WGA Elections, 2011 Edition

WGA

Writers Guild members should have received ballots this week for the 2011 election, along with a packet of candidate statements and endorsements thicker than a screenplay.

You’ll see my name listed on several endorsements for candidates I think are terrific, but I also want to give a more general overview of the issues and personalities involved.

The top of the ballot
—

We have two candidates for WGAw president: **Chris Keyser** and **Patric Verrone**. Both have served the guild in a variety of roles. Both have strengths.

Chris Keyser comes from the Board of Directors and the Negotiating Committee, and spent seven years on the Health and Pension Fund, where he served as a Trustee. I didn’t know him before this election, but after [reading his statement](http://keyser4wga.com/2011/07/22/my-candidate-statement/) and [watching a video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qIU5BiXGCg&feature=player_embedded) of him speaking at a house meeting, I think his priorities are correct:

> We cannot demand that companies make more movies or pay for more development, but we can be a Guild that is strong in between negotiations, strong on those days when we don’t have an army on the streets. We can be strong through enforcement, strong through leveraging our shared membership with the DGA, strong through rapid, effective assistance to members in need.

A WGA president must occasionally play the general who leads us into battle, but far more often needs to be the pragmatic CEO who insists on the best from his organization and all its partners. We can do a much better job enforcing the contract we’ve already won. That seems like Keyser’s focus.

Patric Verrone is by far the better-known of the two candidates, since he served as president during the 2008 strike. It’s impossible to talk about Verrone without some rehashing of the strike, and what it means going forward.

Here’s my short assessment: I think Verrone did a commendable job of internally organizing the Guild. He kept members informed and engaged in a way I hadn’t seen before.

But his external communication was a disaster.

For months leading up to negotiations, Verrone kept beating the “strike or cave” drum, including an ill-fated campaign of picketing for reality TV. Watching this, the AMPTP came to us with a ridiculous offer full of rollbacks, giving no choice but to make good on our threat to strike. Meanwhile, the studios did an end-run around us and made a deal with the DGA.

We were boxed in, and Verrone built the box.

The contract isn’t up until 2013, but re-electing Verrone signals to the studios they might as well prepare for a strike — again. They might as well pre-negotiate with the DGA — again. They might as well just ignore us, because we’re lunatics who elected that guy – again.

I’m voting for Chris Keyser.

The rest of the ticket
—

I’m happy to see so many strong candidates for the other offices and board of directors. I’ll be reading through the candidate statements, but want to give a few recommends based on writers I know personally.

Keyser and Verrone both endorse **Howard Rodman** for Vice President. So do I. He’s particularly devoted to getting WGA coverage for writers working on indies.

I served on the Committee on the Professional Status of Writers with **Billy Ray** and found him to be smart, focused and incredibly generous. Last year, he organized a series of workshops for screenwriters hoping to direct. That’s exactly the kind of programming the WGA needs more of. A strong guild is made of strong members.

In his statement, **Jeff Lowell** focuses on enforcement. In particular, [late payment](http://lowell4wga.blogspot.com/2011/07/candidate-statement.html):

> Honestly, the fucking blatant disregard for the contract they signed… They acknowledge they owe me money, let me know that there is some kind of mysterious internal operation of indeterminate length to “process” the payment, and then, when that’s done, it’ll take five to ten business days to get the check from them to my agent.

He’s angry, but he’s right. The WGA needs to spend the money to get checks in writers’ hands on time.

**Ian Deitchman** focuses on repairing relationships with the DGA and SAG/AFTRA. He also has experience with web series, which still haven’t materialized as the Next Big Thing we were supposed to be striking over.

Ballots are due September 16th. I urge you to vote.