| reading the neighbors script |
There is a downside to living in Los Angeles and this is it: the certainty that sooner or later according to the law of averages one of the vast horde of screenwriter wannabe types out there will wind up living in the apt adjacent to your own and suck you into reading one of their miserable scripts. The neighbor was Joe. Joe had a masters in theater arts from UCLA and as a grad student briefly interned for some studio hotshot and one day at the hotshots house, with the hotshot in the can taking a poop, Joe seized this opportunity to rifle the rolodex and score a few names and numbers that he later called and in this way he sold an option on a treatment for $7,000. He was on his way—or so he thought. Time passed. He wrote more scripts and treatments and made a few bucks from time to time but nothing that could be called making a living and he was forced, poor man, to take a job-—teaching English to Mexicans—-ESL. He taught for LA Unified. The rate was $40/hr. If he made $40/hr for all the time he devoted to banging out these miserable scripts he'd be in good shape. Time passed. More scripts, more script rejections. He “fired” his agent. He was 43. He had written 18 scripts in 15 years and made $43,000. We bumped into each other from time to time on the stairs where transpired these marathon film discussions. It was Los Angeles. You talked about movies. It was movies, movies, movies. If you cant make a living in the movie biz you can at least talk endlessly about it. There is no accounting for taste in movies. Joe thought Apocalypse Now was a great movie. I said no. I thought Barry Lyndon was a great movie. Joe said no. He gave me his all time top ten and I gave him my all time top ten. We each had our favorite cult-type films unheard of or seen by the other. He told me about British a film called Life is Sweet directed by Mike Leigh. I told him about a Hungarian movie called Colonel Redl directed by Istvan Szabo. There we stood between floors with one foot up and one down on the stairs and in this way we could go on for two hours. Did you know the producer of Heavens Gate had a boyfriend who was a musician and she had a budget of $100,000 to spend on the score and she gave $10,000 of this to her boyfriend to write the score and kept the other $90,000 for herself? Did you know that on the lot over at Warner Bros, in the writers building, Jack Warner regularly prowled the halls, on tippy toes, to press at each door an ear, listening for the sounds of typing from within? Did you know that Louis Mayer, the Louis Mayer, who ran MGM and had a vast stable of starlets on the payroll, couldnt get laid? Joe and I did. One day Joe asked me to read a script. Why do writers ask people to read something they have written? Writing is written to be read by an agent—-not a neighbor who would rather have his fingernails pulled out one at a time. But—-he was the neighbor. I said OK. I read the script. I read it in bed and when I finished I lay there staring at the ceiling in a paralyzed state. My head was spinning. What was the word for this thing? The word was unreadable. This wasn’t writing; it was the literary version of Lou Gehrigs disease. I forget the title. The title wasnt bad. He should have stopped right there. The story was this: a savvy dishwasher--a Gene Hackman type—decides to blackmail a gorgeous millionaire—a Fay Dunaway type. The action occurs in Los Angles. One night the Faye Dunaway type in her Mercedes greases a Mexican cleaning lady in a hit and run that is witnessed by the Gene Hackman character. The Gene Hackman character has eating him a seething resentment complex relating to rich people and he now seizes upon this incident to devise a sinister extortion scheme. But it isnt money he is after--its humiliation. It’s a social reform/redemption type situation. He decides the time has come for this rich broad to get a taste of life as it is actually lived by the masses--the un/rich—-such as the Mexican cleaning lady she greased in her Mercedes. He wants to stick her nose in it--the muck. I wont bother with the details. The details are: a phone call followed by a meeting and he reveals his scheme: for her to move in with him at his fleabag hotel in downtown LA and go to work as a waitress at the pupuseria he has nailed down this dishwashing job. Thats the idea. She says: ok. Its hilarious. First of all--you have to live in LA to fully appreciate the idea of a white guy working as a dishwasher in a Mexican restaurant in downtown Los Angeles. Its hilarious. Between shifts he keeps her locked up in the room chained to the bed. The movie continues. She falls in love with him--of course. The movie continues. At some point the Gene Hackman character is tracked down by a business assoc. of FD and busted on a kidnapping rap but the Faye Dunaway character intercedes on his behalf and he is spared 25 years in state prison and the movie ends on this tender note. It was something like that. I was in shock. It wasnt even the absurd narrative line or the two turnipheads he devised to handle the action. It was the sheer staggering dismal sappiness and lifeless tone of the writing. There was no energy --balls—-the exact thing the Gene Hackman character was perceived to possess in abundance. And now I had a thought. It was this: In what way did this vile script of Joes differ from all these other scripts that daily found their way onto the desks of agents and producers and proceeded to be made into actual movies with huge budgets featuring the hottest stars that called for a massive marketing campaign and saturation distribution and all the rest of it? That was my thought. And the answer was : in no way. These scripts were the norm. They were seriously read and considered entirely makeable. We’ve all seen these films. Now I knew who wrote them. They were written by people like Joe. I guarantee that right now, someone reading this story, a producer or agent, maybe you, is saying the same thing to his or herself: I like this script! I returned the script to Joe who stood there waiting for me to render a critique. Writers don’t want the truth. They want praise. They write because in this way they hope to receive the adulation they cravethat has eluded them as ordinary human beings, and if you cant provide it don’t bother. I said: I like the script! |
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