Why Screenwriters Get No Respect, and How They Can Get It

Listening to this interview with Akiva Goldsman on The Business rekindled my interest in the status of screenwriters. We all know that screenwriters are treated like shit in Hollywood. They're typically not well known and not well paid. I've always thought of the screenwriters as the primary authors of films. Yes, I know that directors and cinematographers shape the look of the film, that producers' tastes are the only reason the screenplay gets made into a film, and that movie stars bring certain cultural cache that affects the interpretations of the audience and helps films get made. I've come to value all the input of every creative person who works in the industry. I firmly believe that every one of them has some impact on how a film is received, and that if even one of those elements is out of place, a film that could've been great would turn out to be awful. But still, the appeal of Hollywood films is less about lighting, acting, and even subject matter. Its about a well-told story. Its still my contention that everything else can only either augment or detract from the core emotions and ideas that are in the screenplay. As they say: the story's the thing.

Then why aren't writers more well known and paid more $? It has something to do with how many there are of them and how quickly they can be shifted from picture to picture. Goldsman points out that everyone piece of the cinematic division of labor pretty much stays put during production. It would be unthinkable to go through 10 wardrobe people during a film, but completely normal to go through 10 writers.

A less extreme version of the infinite monkey theorum applies here, and while I'm not quite calling screenwriters 'monkeys,' I am saying that they're partially responsible for their low status in Hollywood. Part of the reason that everyone has a screenplay (and not everybody is a budding cinematographer) is b/c the tools of the trade - paper and pen - are pretty damn cheap. As digital production and distribution costs fall, maybe they'll be the kind of glut of talent in other realms of filmmaking, but still, it seems like writing will always have this edge.

How are screenwriters responsible for their lowly status? I think that they have a certain view of writing and are unwilling to depart from it.

My theory is that screenwriters are:

A) too married to their work. So when a producer asks them to change something in the script b/c it doesn't test well or b/c the producer has done many films like this and "knows the audience," the screenwriter refuses, and is summarily replaced. They don't think about the finished screenplay as something that can be radically altered after it has been completed, by them or by anyone else. The economics or production and distribution necessitates that work be seen this way. Producers can't know exactly how a film is going to play from looking at a treatment. Screenplays are like theories, and the process of bringing one to the screen involves various little experiments, each of which either confirm or deny the effectiveness of the film. If its denied, you don't just give up. You retain some elements and introduce new ones. You revise. Sure, the producer is a false proxy for the audience, but still, he's more detached and experienced than most screenwriters.

B) too into the idea that storytelling is an art and not a craft, and that the spirit that moves one to write and the place where the ideas come from cannot be pinned down. Either you got it or you don't. It comes from the soul, and the worst thing you could possibly do is to compare writing to a science (like I just did).

The theory I offer here is a self-serving one (but that doesn't make it wrong). I want to teach visual storytelling, therefore I'd love it if writers looked at screenwriting as more of a teachable craft and less of a "you got it or you don't" kind of art.

Maybe that's true, and maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree. But there seems to be some evidence to the contrary. If you look at the most successful screenwriters, a good number of them have read screenplay manuals (which are imperfect for reasons I'll explain), have gone to film school, or generally see writing as (at least partially) a teachable craft. If good writing really "came from the soul" and not the textbook, then wouldn't all successful writers not have read any screenplay manuals or taken one screenwriting class? I'll readily concede that plenty of great writers aren't taught but born, but the amalgam of taught/born writers suggests that there's something about writing you can teach. And I think part of the reason more great writers haven't been taught is b/c they're not teaching in the right way. Manuals provide a hard-and-fast formula, when really its an ever-mutating process that is (like pretty much every phenomena in the world) better known through a combination of ongoing experiments and classic books . So, if Hollywood continues to run this way (at least partially), how long can screenwriters keep preaching the gospel of the gut and scratching their heads at why they can't get any respect?

Also note that writing screenplays in the revisable, experimental mode isn't antithetical to creativity. Someone has to come up with the ideas to try, and the best screenwriters will still be the ones with the deepest wells of creativity, the "biggest guts."

If they did change the way they thought about screenwriting, then maybe the hierarchy would change a bit. Maybe a flexible writer would stay put on a film longer, or collaborate with a producer or studio longer. Its in the best interests of producers to collaborate with known entities. The business isn't out to screw writers. They just want them to be a bit more flexible.

Subscriptions, eh?

After reading this article in the New York Times magazine on Rick Rubin’s move to Columbia, I’m giving more consideration to the subscription-based model for the distribution of media. For the record, I can think of at least 3 ways how we might consume abundant media (I’m assuming that all media texts will be abundant in the coming era):

1. Ad-driven – this assumes that spot advertisements (or any kind of ads outside of search-based ads) actually work. After reading this book my Michael Schudson and speaking with my friend who works for a new media marketing firm in San Francisco, I feel increasingly confident in claiming that the kind of push advertising that consumers don’t seek out but is foisted upon them (as opposed to ads based on a google search for a consumer good) never worked very well. I have to admit that I’m thoroughly disappointed to see YouTube going down this road.
   
2. Micro-payments – This is how Itunes works. I had an idea about a new "nickelodeon" where you would pay 5 cents to see a short film that was made on a low budget. So as we’ve seen music adjust from album-oriented sales (which dictate what gets made), we’ll see a change from 2-hour movies and half-hour or hour episodes to shorter, more serialized online videos. If they are serials, then in a sense, it will be like a subscription, though it will be one with rather unfair terms that will ultimately hurt the show’s lasting value – viewers will be strung along as long as the network can string them along for. With an ideal subscription network, viewers are loyal to the aesthetic of the network, and therefore aren’t liable to jump ship when one particular narrative ends. In that case, the narrative doesn’t have to get dragged on and become watered down.
3. Subscription – I used to be against the idea of more media going this way, just for personal reasons. I hate bills, I hate being locked into something. There’s something about he subscription-based way of consuming media that makes it more habitual and less critical or reflective, and therefore you’re more liable to end up with shittier, shallower media. But after reading Rubin’s prediction, I thought a bit more about subscription media. Suddenly, I realized that the two brand name ways of disseminating and producing media that I praise the most are subscription-based: HBO and Netflix. I still think that the way people consume music and the way they consume narrative media is and always has been radically different, so I’m not sure that any restriction on when a person can listen to a certain piece of music would work.
   

Whether micro-payments or subscriptions are the way to go, for music or video, depends on how the media is consumed. If its a serial narrative (or a series of serial narratives) then a subscription would make sense because consumption is so habitual. But with something like music, you want to listen to it many times over, but you might put it away for a few years and then rediscover it. I feel like this happens more with music than it does with video.

Already, I think we're seeing a tiered system develop in music: there's music that people are OK paying for (maybe music that's in greater demand, had a higher budget to produce, or is, by critical accounts, damn good) and then there's music that people don't expect to pay for (poppy, temporary hits). There hasn't been much of a price hierarchy in music before: the pop album cost roughly the same amount as the rap, classical, indie rock albums. But it would be interesting to see that change in the future. Maybe there will be a bottom-feeder genre of music that is free but that contain product placement in their lyrics, or are ad jingles.