John August

Follow Up

Amazon Studios, round three

Follow Up

Amazon Studio’s new venture isn’t getting much love from the screenbloggers. Craig Mazin thinks the [deal is grotesque](http://artfulwriter.com/?p=1103):

> Here’s where Amazon kind of disgusts me. They put this whole “Hollywood is old and lame, and we’re the new hotness” vibe out there. In their intro video, their hip spokesman with the spiky haircut is an inclusive, welcoming voice. Hollywood is represented by a fat old Jew at a desk.

> Funny thing, though. The actual terms of Amazon’s “studio” are so much worse than those offered by Hollywood studios, it’s grotesque.

As I’d hoped, Craig digs in on the terrible financial upside of the deal, including the lack of credit protection or residuals. Even if your movie gets produced, another writer could easily get the screenwriting credit:

> Or…and here’s the kicker…WB could hire a WGA writer under a WGA contract to rewrite the script (if they hire any writer directly at all, it must be under a WGA deal). At that point, the Amazon work becomes source material, and the original writers are not eligible for ANY WGA credit at all. Just a “based on a screenplay by” credit. The WGA writers–even if they only wrote five words–would be the only writers eligible for WGA credit and residuals.

Michael Ferris is impressed by the marketing, but [sours on the details](http://www.scriptmag.com/2010/11/17/amazon-com-studios-the-new-way-to-break-into-the-industry/):

> Amazon touts this whole “revisions” thing as a type of love nest/commune of artist’s collaboration, when in reality we screenwriters view it as a pack of dirty kindergartners sticking their grubby little ravenous fingers into the beautiful pie we just baked.

I honestly looked for some positive reviews, but haven’t found them.

As I write this, the [Amazon Studios site](http://studios.amazon.com/projects?sort=current) shows 994 projects. But is there one worth making? Could their system spot it? One of the goals of the system seems to be finding a needle in a haystack. I wonder if they’re just getting more hay.

The Amazon film thing, ctd

Follow Up

Drew McWeeny wades in with another look at why [Amazon Studios seems nuts](http://www.hitfix.com/blogs/motion-captured/posts/the-morning-read-why-amazon-studios-is-a-very-bad-idea-for-writers):

> Line after line of the legalese on these pages just confounds me. “You agree to be automatically entered into any future contests for which your work is eligible. The specific contest rules for future contests will be posted on this page when they are announced.” And considering one of the rules of this contest grants Amazon Studios a free 18-month option on your work the moment you upload it, the idea that they can enter you in a contest later and tell you the rules after they do so seems positively batty.

The myth of Hollywood is that there are giant walls to keep you out. Here, the walls keep you in, whether you like it or not.

A reminder on comments

Follow Up, Meta

Let me offer a quick refresher on policy and procedure here on the blog.

For most posts, I turn comments on. I enjoy discussion. You’re welcome to express your opinion and disagree. But it’s my house. If you’re being uncivil to me or the other people here, I may warn you, or simply kick you out.

When new users post a comment, the system holds it in moderation until Matt, Ryan or I have a chance to review it. This helps cut down on spammers and scammers.

Far too often, I’ll find something like this in the moderation queue:

> The fact that you deleted my post but kept Synthian’s just shows how you don’t care about rude or downright insulting comments as long as they support your agenda. Anyway, good luck with that, John. Hard times ahead for hacks and studio pets like you.

This charming person’s prior comment wasn’t deleted — it was in the moderation queue right above it. The fact she couldn’t wait *one hour* before going apeshit helps explain why comments are moderated in the first place.

(I don’t leave anything lingering in moderation, by the way. A comment is either approved or trashed.)

There is also an automated spam detection system (Akismet), which will occasionally flag a valid comment as spam — particularly if there are more than two links embedded in it. If your comment hasn’t shown up for 24 hours, send us an email and we’ll check for it.

When necessary, I delete comments. Here’s a guide for making sure your comment doesn’t get deleted:

* Stay pretty much on topic.
* Don’t link to your own sites, except in the URL spot.
* Be polite. Don’t say anything you wouldn’t say in my living room.

When a comment violates any of these three points, I’ll happily delete it. It’s one click for me. So keep that in mind before you spend 10 minutes writing something that won’t show up.

These are all fairly standard [Living Room Rules](http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2006/10/living_room_com.html), but some people seem unfamiliar with them, so I thought it would be better to state them explicitly.

A few other helpful tips:

**Use your real name.** We will take what you’re saying much more seriously if there is an actual name attached. Plus, I want to say, “Hey, I know that person!” when you set up a project at Fox.

**Use an actual email address.** I understand the temptation to use an imaginary email address when filling out a form, but there are at least two reasons not to. First, while the public doesn’t see that address, I do. If it’s clearly fake, I’m less likely to take you seriously. Second, I sometimes need to follow up with readers, and I can’t if I don’t have a valid email address.

**Get a gravatar.** These helpful little icons follow you around from post to post, blog to blog, and help us remember who you are. They are incredibly [easy to set up](http://gravatar.com).

Lastly, if you’re posting a tag-along comment (“Me too!”) on a post that’s months (or years) old, I’m likely to trash it. We keep comments open on old posts because readers sometimes bring new information. Simple agreement isn’t enough to resurrect a dead thread.

On Dogfooding, and scratching your own itch

Directors, Follow Up, Psych 101

Several readers have written in to ask whether we have plans for Chrome or Firefox versions of [Less IMDb](http://quoteunquoteapps.com/less-imdb). We don’t — not because we have anything against those browsers. We just don’t use them nearly as much as Safari. We built the extension to address our own needs, and shared it with others because they might like it.

When you make something that you yourself use, that’s called [dogfooding](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=dogfooding+(to+dogfood)), a contraction of “eating your own dogfood.” That’s developer-speak, but it’s a mindset screenwriters would do well to appropriate.

Aspiring screenwriters will often throw a few loglines at me and ask which one they should write. My answer is always, “The one you would pay money to see.”

That’s dogfooding’s close cousin, scratching your own itch. You’re writing movies you wish existed.

Looking at successful filmmakers — in particular, writer-directors — it’s pretty clear who is doing this. Tarantino makes movies to fill a special shelf at his fantasy video store. Wes Anderson makes movies his own characters would dissect over canapes.

If you have more mainstream taste, great. Embrace that. Scratch your own itch. But forget about “commercial” or “high concept.” If you’re writing a movie you yourself wouldn’t buy a ticket to see, you’re wasting everyone’s time.