Thursday, Dec. 10

The DogPile Continues

Screenwriter Craig Mazin of The Artful Writer adds his view on the Scriptshadow Controversy. Craig speaks about the need for privacy when it comes to creativity:

You would think writers would understand. And yet, so many don’t get it. When we write a draft, it’s a draft. It’s an attempt. We may find it absolutely awful and horrifying, and yet necessary as a basis for the next draft, which will be good. We may be writing the draft to address notes we think are completely misguided, with the optimistic (and often rewarded) belief that once the note-givers read the draft, they’ll finally see the light. We may be writing the draft to race a deadline, and we’ll fix it after. We may be writing the draft for an actor who is hopelessly miscast, and once that actor is gone, we can do it right. And yes, of course, maybe we just stink, and this one isn’t very good. Yet.

As a professional animator, it amazes me that I never considered this before during my ventures to SS during the past month. I would never want anyone to see my first or second pass at a scene (I usually don’t want them looking at a 10th pass, but that’s another story), so why on Earth was I OK with checking out early drafts of spec scripts? I guess partly it was because of the “newness”/insider feeling I was getting on the whole script production process. Also, credit would be due to my lack of knowledge as to what these scripts really represented (drafts instead of final products) and who they were intended for:

The difference between reviewing a script of a movie that hasn’t come out yet and reviewing a movie is a matter of audience. The target for a film is as wide an audience as possible. People will watch your movie, and react. Some of those people will react by posting opinions for other people within that same target audience. That’t the breaks. However, you are not the target audience of my script just because you want to be a screenwriter or like movies. When and if it becomes a movie, then you are. Up until that point, it’s not for you. The target audience are the directors, actors, producers, etc. responsible for turning it into a movie.

That’s from an anonymous commenter (#59), but I think accurately describes the real purpose for a script.

Everyone can agree that this is not good (If real…):

I know that Scriptshadow’s review led to firings at a big deal movie in production. Only one department had the script he reviewed and everyone in the department got sacked. The studio couldn’t determine which person leaked the script so they just fired everyone. Guilt by association.