[Jane Espenson](http://www.janeespenson.com/) has a good post up about [TV staffing season](http://www.janeespenson.com/archives/00000065.php), answering everything you’d want to know about the schedule for how shows hire their writing staffs. She would know; she’s been involved with some great shows, from Buffy to Gilmore Girls.
Also, she had Quizno’s for lunch. In case you were curious.
[Kevin Arbouet](http://tenspeedbrownshoe.blogspot.com/) tagged me to answer [10 questions](http://tenspeedbrownshoe.blogspot.com/2006/03/one-of-greatest-things-to-do-is-talk.html) about mistakes and bad practices.
Taken the wrong way, the whole exercise could be kind of negative and bleak. But one (hopefully) learns from one’s errors, so it’s in that spirit that I further the meme.
1) WHAT’S THE WORST THING YOU’VE EVER WRITTEN?
With hindsight being 20/20, probably _Fantasy Island_. My concept was probably interesting only to people familiar with the show. (Short version: Roark dies on page 13, and shit goes haywire.) There were too many characters, and it was all too arbitrary. Years later, “Lost” did everything I was trying to do, and so much better.
2) WHAT’S THE WORST LINE YOU’VE EVER WRITTEN?
From _Demonology_: “Somewhere between fuck me and fuck you — there’s the problem.” I held onto that dumb line for far too long, until the exec finally called me on it.
3) WHAT’S THE WORST ADVICE YOU’VE EVER GIVEN?
To my former assistant, [Rawson](http://imdb.com/name/nm1098493/): “I don’t think anyone is clamoring to see Vince Vaughn playing dodgeball.”
4) WHAT’S THE ONE TIME YOU KNOW YOU SHOULD HAVE SPOKEN UP BUT YOU DIDN’T?
I did a rewrite of a movie for a pretty big producer. In the original script, the sister of the protagonist was a flight attendant. I changed her into a pilot, just because I thought it was more interesting. The producer insisted that I change it back, because, “That’s absurd. I’ve never seen a female pilot. I just don’t believe it.”
I know a female commercial airline pilot; I had recently been on a flight with a female pilot; four seconds of Googling could give me the exact statistics that I needed to prove that female pilots are not the Yetis of aviation. But I said fuck it, it’s not worth fighting about and changed it back. I regret not making my point, though it wouldn’t have really amounted to anything meaningful.
5) WHAT’S THE WORST PITCH MEETING YOU’VE EVER HAD?
Just this year, I pitched my take on _Black Monday_ to Paramount. I had this bad feeling going in, sort of like when you think you might be catching a cold. Except this wasn’t a case of the sniffles, but rather some kind of aphasia. I couldn’t get three words together. It was awful.
David Hayter is writing it now. God bless him.
6) WHO’S THE ONE PERSON YOU’D NEVER WORK WITH AGAIN AND AREN’T AFRAID TO NAME?
Don Murphy. Runner up: Bernard Rose.
7) WHAT’S THE WORST SCRIPT IDEA YOU’VE EVER HAD?
_Highlanders_. Early in my career, I was up for writing one of the sequels. I probably spent a solid week working on my take, without ever once stopping to think, “Seriously, Highlanders?”
8) WHAT’S THE WORST THING ABOUT YOU BEING ON SET?
After a certain point, I have a hard time masking my boredom. Every other person on set has a job to keep him or her busy. My job is to watch rehearsals, then stare at the monitor during each take, silently whispering the dialogue I wrote. During the 95% of the time we’re not rehearsing or shooting, I get incredibly restless.
Come to think of it, the script supervisor has largely the same job (and lack thereof). I could probably never be a script supervisor.
9) WHAT’S YOUR WORST WORKING HABIT?
Particularly when I’m re-writing a script, I suffer from what my friend [John Gatins](http://imdb.com/name/nm0309691/) refers to as the line-painter dilemma. Here’s the short version:
A guy is hired to paint the yellow line down the middle of a country road. The first day, he paints five miles. His supervisor is impressed. The second day, he only paints two miles. His supervisor thinks, “Well, maybe he had a bad day.” But the third day, the guy only paints half a mile. The supervisor asks the guy what’s wrong — why is he getting so much less done?
“Well,” the guy says, “I have to keep walking back to the paint can.”
The screenwriting equivalent, of course, is that at the start of each day’s work, one’s instinct is to go back to page one and read-slash-revise up to where you left off. Which is a very counter-productive habit.
10) WHAT’S THE WORST MISTAKE YOU’VE EVER MADE?
I could have bought Muhammad Ali’s old house. My real estate agent got me in to see it, and I loved it. I went back to see it twice, once with my contractor, to figure out exactly how I’d redo it. But I chickened out at the price. Now, of course, it’s worth three times that. I drive by it twice a week when taking my dog to swimming lessons. And every time, I think, damn. That should have been my house.
Not that my current house isn’t perfectly fine. It’s great. But it’s not epic-great. It’s not a house that I’d happily die in. That’s the Muhammad Ali house, my San Simeon.
Looking back, almost all the things I regret are non-actions — chances I didn’t take. I actually got a tattoo to help me remember that.
Last night, I had the pleasure of giving a guest lecture at Trinity University in San Antonio. While I speak at various screenwriter-oriented functions fairly often, this was unusual in that the event was university-wide, and the focus wasn’t specifically on film.
Part of the deal was that I had to announce the title of my speech months in advance. I picked, “Professional Writing and the Rise of the Amateur,” figuring that in the intervening months I would think of inspiring examples of how the World of Tomorrow was going to be a wonderland of possibility for the undergraduates in the audience.
But the more I thought about it, the less I wanted to talk about the future. Instead, I wanted to focus on one of the biggest challenges of today: in our celebration of the amateur, we kind of forget what it means to be professional.
As I spoke with various classes before the big presentation, I promised I’d post the whole speech on the site for those students who had night classes. And, of course, for anyone else who might be interested.
Let me warn you: this is __long__. My speech lasted 45 minutes, and that was without a lot of riffing. So if you’d rather read the whole thing as a .pdf, you can find it [here](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/professional.pdf).
. . .
It’s a pleasure to be here talking with you tonight. Over the last two days, I’ve been visiting a lot of classes, talking about screenwriting and movies, and well, basically talking about myself. Which I’m really good at. But when I agreed to give a formal public lecture, one of the requirements was that the presentation actually have a title. By which I mean a topic, a thesis. A point.
It all feels very academic, and I love that. I miss that. None of you will believe me now, but some day you’ll look back on your college careers and be wistful. Nostalgic. Because there’s something comforting about having to write a fifteen page paper on the use of floral imagery in “Pride and Prejudice.”
I think what it is, is that even if you’re completely wrong, it just doesn’t matter that much. For the rest of your life, you’re going to get called on bullshitting. In college, you’re graded on it.
Anyway.
I decided I wanted my lecture tonight to be not strictly about screenwriting, but about writing in general. Because everyone in this room is a writer. You might write screenplays; you might write research papers. You definitely write emails. Every one of you is, and will be, a professional writer in some field.
So I wanted to talk about what that means.
[Read more…] about Professional Writing and the Rise of the Amateur
Screenblogger Devon DeLapp was generous enough to type up [his notes](http://www.devondelapp.com/weblog/?entry=223633) of my recent Q&A at the Writers Guild Foundation. He did a good job keeping up with a rambling conversation. I only have a few real corrections/clarificatons:
* Go really didn’t change that much from the first draft.
* Charlie’s Angels was a positive experience, but not “a total love fest.” [clears throat]
* My dad died several years before I read Big Fish.
* For Thief of Always, I was fired for a very specific reason: the director and novelist _hated_ my script.
* Drew Barrymore’s relative star power wasn’t the deciding factor on Barbarella; there were complicated studio politics at work.
* “I can beat myself with the best of them.” Well, I probably said that, but it sounds kind of naughty out of context.
* Although I write longhand (a scribble version, followed by a readable one), what my assistant types up is exactly the script, not notes. I’ll try to scan some of these scenes so people can see what I mean.
* “Get job as a writer on TV” — as if it’s that easy. But I really do think that every screenwriter should look at TV as just another screen, and pursue it if at all interested.
You can read the whole shebang [here](http://www.devondelapp.com/weblog/?entry=223633). Thanks again to Devon for putting it up.