Giving Notes and Kicking Ass

“I really want to hear what you think. Good, bad, whatever…”

These are the words that are said before someone gives me a script to read. I have no doubt that in their minds, they actually mean it. They want to know where characters come off as clichéd or a plot point just a little too convenient. At least they think they do. Until they actually hear it.

This is why I don’t like giving notes. It’s fairly certain that giving me a script will crush someone’s spirit just a bit (assuming it’s good), and quite a lot (when it isn’t). A friend of mine gave a script a little while back and I should have put it down after ten pages because I didn’t like it at all. As a general I do this because if I don’t like the first ten, I’m not going to like whatever follows. But he was a friend and I wanted to give him something useful to go back to the drawing board with. There were so many problems throughout that I was at a loss about what to say.

This is always a difficult conversation because part of me is aware of the “Who the fuck are you to tell me my script isn’t good,” reaction that has to be on their minds.  I don’t like having black clouds over me when I sit down to give notes, but such, evidently, was to be my burden.

When we finally sat down, I began by saying this was going to be a rough discussion and if he didn’t want to hear the thoughts, I’d understand. He did. So I went into where all the problems were. He nodded politely, asking questions every now and again, explaining why certain choices were made. I could see it though. With each passing comment he hated me more and more. By the end of the conversation it had turned into an epic loathing.

I asked a fellow screenwriter what he does when someone asks for notes on a script he doesn’t like. His approach is to find the three best things in the script and talk about how they could be better. “Very few people want to hear how bad their script is. And you know what, it’s not my place to tell them.”

“But they’ve asked you to tell them,” I answer.

“They’ve asked me for thoughts. These are some of my thoughts. Not all of them. What’s the point in devastating them?”

“Maybe you’re helping by devastating them. Maybe that ass-kicking is what they need to get to a good draft.”

“Maybe,” he said, “but I just don’t want to hurt someone in that way.”

The obvious message was that I, of course, do.

On the last script I wrote, when I turned it in to the producer, I couldn’t have been more pleased. I had knocked it out of the park. Home run. Slam dunk. I had the tune “Walking on Sunshine” in my head all day.

Then I got the call. They didn’t like it. Not even a little. If I wanted to start over and rebuild it from the ground up…

What the fuck had gone wrong? Somewhere there was a massive disconnect, and clearly it was mine. I showed it to my agent and manager. My manager gently suggested moving on to something else. My agent stopped reading after thirty or so pages with the simple, “This doesn’t sell.”

This was mind-numbingly painful. The kind of pain that makes me climb into bed and hope that someone has the decency to inject me with an overdose of heroin to make all the pain go away forever.

Unfortunately, the heroin savior never arrived and eventually I had to get out of bed. Now I had a choice: I could just move on to another story, or go back to the beginning and figure out where I went wrong. I did the latter. It was a far longer journey than I ever anticipated. Months of work to really dig out the cavity and find the core of what I loved so much to begin with.

The story is world’s better now. Had I not gotten savagely beaten, I wouldn’t have understood what it really wanted to become.

Sometimes a good ol’ fashioned ass-kicking is exactly what you need.

Until later -

Burning Pictures