🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <57680031@hpscit.sc.hp.com> fish@hpscit.sc.hp.com (John Fisher) writes:

>I have a question for the screenwriters out there.  (We seem to have
>emerged from the shadows lately, huh?)  
>
>From time to time we hear loud complaints from screen writers about how
>the director (usually, although sometimes it's the producer or studio)
>has ruined their movie.  They say the final vision on the screen was not
>what they wrote at all.
>
>My question is: What do you, as a screen writer, think your final
>product is... a movie, or simply a script?  Clearly, your influence on
>the film as seen by audiences will be dependant upon your involvement in
>the production.  But I'm wondering what your mindset is as you write the
>initial script.  Do you feel you are writing a movie that you would
>expect to see on the screen pretty much as you envisioned it, or is the
>movie (the film itself) someone else's project?
>

Okay, well, what I do is I write the movie in my head, and lay that
out on the page.  Of course, I know that it's not going to end up that
way (in fact, I know it a lot more viscerally now that I just finished
a "minor rewrite" for a producer that left maybe 5% of the script the
same).

The reason that writers get upset, I think, is because regardless of
how much we've read and heard, most of us believe that
Producers/Directors can recognize what's good and leave it alone (at
least in OUR writing ;-).  So, when someone comes in and starts making
stupid requests, we're a bit stunned.

By the time things have spun totally out of control, with changes on
the changed changes, there are plot holes, motivational gaps, and just
plain dumb shit moments.

We feel mind-raped and stupid, and a little to a lot depressed about
what might have been.

Of course, there's also the off-chance that you'll get a brilliant
producer or director who will make it better, but even then you've got
your own ego to fight through to see it.

jas

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Jeffrey A. Sullivan             | Research Scientist et al.
jas@isi.edu (Internet)          | Information Sciences Institute
72511,402    (Compuserve)       | University of Southern California