Best recent TV show. Seriously -- I can see why it got canceled -- but if you've got any interest in Saturday Night Live, sketch comedy in general, producing film or television, and/or like The West Wing and rat-tat-tat dialogue, then Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip is for you. And, on a sidenote, Danny Tripp is God. I'm starting a cult and calling us the Trippers. Who's in? Let's Tripp together.
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I'm developing a script at the moment (if you know what it's about, ssshhhhhh). It's an adaptation of a recently released bestseller, it's the first option I ever got in my life, and I'm fairly excited about it. And the reason I'm bringing it up is something that has to do with producing: how hard it is to find writers.
If you're just starting out in the film business, and you're a director or producer who can't especially write, then your first challenge is going to be finding someone who can. To be honest, decent actors are relatively easy to find -- not great ones, but decent ones; and so are ideas. Writers, who can make that idea into a piece that has something worth filming on every page, though, are a very, very rare thing. If you've ever been to a film festival, you'll agree with me that one thing short films and low-budget independent films have in common is great lighting, great camerawork, decent acting, good editing, and HORRENDOUS writing. The dialogue will be all right, albeit showy, the structure will be shoddy and essentially rely on a last-minute twist, and any theme or subtlety is usually missing in action. I used to think this is because most people don't work on their scripts enough, and I now think I used to be mistaken. It's because scriptwriting is a bloody hard, unnatural thing to do.
I like to think of myself as a competent semi-pro screenwriter. In the sense that if I have a solid, plot-able idea, I can write that out into a script that's fairly clever, fairly entertaining, and fairly commonplace. It'll take me lots of hard work, but it'll have a theme, two- or three-dimensional characters (also whether they're interesting or not I couldn't vouch for), and a somewhat compelling, forward-moving three-act(ish) structure; dialogue that doesn't rape your ear; and maybe even one or two good scenes. The problem is, it'll also be about as exciting, inspired and risky as your average chair. And I think people can learn to get to that level of writing -- get a good idea, hack it out to where it clunks along in a decent fashion -- and then use those skills to shoot a decent short film, go to a festival, network, find better writers, and move up the Ladder To Nowhere together.
But inspired writing -- and this is what I need for this, inspired, tone-perfect, brings-tears-to-your-eyes-as-you-smile writing -- is rarer than diamond. It's not a very new thing to do, and probably not something you give a pole-dancing crap about, but I've been wrestling with this adaptation for a couple of weeks now, and that's what on my mind on the moment, so I thought I'd share.
And as you might be wondering: Yes, I do support the Writers' Strike. It's a shame there is a strike, but if there's a right side and a wrong side, the writers are definitely in the right.
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It's funny (and by funny, I mean unbearably sad) how America used to mean apple pie, Brett Favre, Bruce Springsteen, Clint Eastwood, Walter Cronkite, fulfilling your potential, entrepreneurship, hard work, family values, hot dogs, the 4th of July, and men on the moon; and now it means Burger King, Michael Vick, Paris Hilton, Adam Sandler, Fox News, fear, Enron, legalized torture, distrust, and the impunity of the powerful.
Don't me wrong -- I never thought America used to be Heaven and is now Hell (I mean, Jefferson of the many lovers were as hypocritical as they came; the Founding Fathers knew smear campaigns as well as anyone before or since; and the 50s had their share of crappy blonde "singers"). But their used to be respect for the idea of America. It was cultivated. People who believed in it were welcomed, and people who made it happen were celebrated. I can't help but be worried by the fact that America won the Civil War by being the side that fought for their rights rather than their privileges; then won the Cold War by being the side that said "we'll fight if you pick a fight"; and now is losing the war on terror by being the side that attacks third-party countries and says, "torture? sure. slap a different name on it, lie about it, and we can do it". I can't help but worry that they're fighting a moral struggle by taking the same moral low road as their enemies do.
If you had asked people in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, what the word America meant to them... I'd never dare predict what their answers would have been, but I imagine they would've been very different from what people would think of first now. Not in a good way, either.
I suppose it's a cyclical thing, that the superpower that rose as a beacon of progress falls as a litter of fat cats, and that if it happened to Athens, Rome and the L.A. Lakers, it's only logical that it could happen to America. To someone like me, though, who grew up on the idea and values of Americanism (despite not being even remotely American), it's like waking up one morning and realizing that Kermit the Frog is actually a wife-beating child molester. Or is that piggy-beating child molester?
In any case, it's not a warm feeling.
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Things have, otherwise, been going relatively well. I've been meeting writers (some of them potentially very good, shame on my earlier self for being so negative), optioned the project, and even though I can't announce exactly who just yet (but will soon), I have just signed a fairly well-known artist to help us finish that long-overdue short film I'm hoping to get out there in the somewhat near future. In my first year out of film school, I worked with Robert DeNiro, Indiana Jones, Elizabeth, a Stephen King story, and Natalie Portman; and hustled a (very good) short film into film festivals.
Looking back, it's been good. The one problem so far has been getting paid to an extent where I can do all these things comfortably, without counting pennies in the evenings to make sure I'm not going to eat canned soup all weekend, and if any of you hear me talking about needing a win, that's what I'm referring to. One of those Paying Jobs. I'm onto a few leads, but the legend is true: they're a hard thing to come by. Not any paying jobs, not something to pay the rent and food, but something that's IN the film business, advances your career and learning, and can pay for optioning stuff, buying your writing books, maintaining your software, traveling to a couple film festivals, registering copyrights, and all the while have enough time to keep working on your stuff.
You might say I'm not finding one of those jobs because they can't be had. But, hey -- I'm not gonna get anywhere by having what can be had, am I? That would be too easy.
Cheers,
TenCents
PS: Check out I'm Not There and Gone Baby Gone if you can. Great films -- and both, to me, epitomize, in very different ways, what independent is all about. Risky, unique, artfully made, entertaining, challenging and emotionally and morally complex. If I get to help make one of those, two of those, in my lifetime, I'll die a happy producer.
PPS: And to finish, and in case you'd like me to explain the title of the post, a David Mamet quote about producers...
"The artist is, in effect, a sort of gangster. He hitches up his trousers and goes into the guarded bank of the unconscious in an attempt to steal the gold of inspiration. The producer is like the getaway driver who sells the getaway car and waits outside the bank grinning about what a great deal he's made." - David Mamet, Bambi vs. Godzilla
You gotta love film people.
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