I once asked a director friend of mine, “What can I write?” I was concerned with what was possible to put on the screen. He gave me a sort of puzzled look and then said, “What do you want to write? Anything you want is possible.” What he was telling me was that the technology of film has progressed so far these days that if I could envision something, it is possible to put it on the screen. It was a heady feeling. I was overjoyed. I realized at that moment that I was a god. Not “God” with a capital “G” but rather the master of any universe I chose to create.
Of course, I had never read any screenplays and was therefore woefully ignorant of what I was getting myself into. But also I knew I was a very quick study. I mean, how hard could it be? I first started writing when I was about seven years old. I had been writing professionally (albeit legal writing) for many of the intervening years. I had also been writing fiction on and off for many of those years; and some said the legal writing was fiction in and of itself.
So I read a few scripts to get a “feel” for the format and sat down and wrote an average romantic comedy script. Besides my penchant for creative spelling and the fact I tried to write it in a “Word” format eschewing the formal “Hollywood” format, there were two major problems with it. First, I had studied “director’s scripts” rather than “reader’s scripts.” “Director’s scripts” include things like shot angles (something of which I still know very little), and music choice for background use. “Reader’s scripts” on the other hand include just the minimum needed to describe the particular scene and the dialog. I had inadvertently strayed deeply into enemy territory in a conflict between writers and directors as implacable as a World War One battlefield. Apparently directors get a little more than cranky with writers who want to direct “their” films. Who knew?
The other major problem with my first script (and there were many other minor problems too numerous to go into here) was that it was, in fact, “average.” There are a huge number of scripts being written every year. Many, if not most, are pretty bad; the ones in the middle are just average. A few are really good. This doesn’t mean that bad scripts are not filmed. Nor does it mean that all really good scripts are filmed. Indeed, it doesn’t even mean that good scripts are not sometimes destroyed by ham-handed directing or bad acting. But what it does mean is that it usually takes a very good script to get noticed amongst all the dross. Once I bit the bullet, bought a good screenwriting program and formatted it properly, fixed my spelling errors and corrected my grammar where needed, my script wasn’t horrible. By the same token, it wasn’t wonderful. It was time to try again.
I had been kicking around an idea for a stage play for about 30 years about a man on the eve of his execution in early Tudor England. The problem was that I couldn’t figure out how to put it on a stage; the scope of the story was just too big for such a small space. When I discovered screenwriting I thought I had finally found a perfect home for my story. I wrote what I, and a considerable number of other people in the know, apparently believe is a very compelling story. There are swordfights, and intrigue, and arc for the characters. I carefully researched the language to make sure it was historically correct. I checked on all the minutia of the period to make sure that it was “real” as I could make it. It was not based any real historical incident, but it clearly could have happened in the right circumstances. People loved it; I had gone from average to wonderful. Then reality came crashing down.
I showed it to a producer friend of mine and he said, “This is a wonderful script. How are you ever going to get it made?” I replied, “Well, my director friend said I could write anything I wanted and it could be filmed. What’s the problem?” Apparently the problem was that it was a “period piece.” If it had been a novel, it wouldn’t have been any more money to print whether it was set in my living room or in late 15th, early 16th century London. Unfortunately, film is different. Costumes cost money. Tudor mansions cost money. Horses cost money, as do swords, armor, castles, etc. etc. etc. To film my “wonderful” script would cost somewhere between $25 million and a $100 million dollars to put in the theatres; maybe more. Since I had about $62 in my checking account, the chances of an unknown writer from Anchorage, Alaska getting this film made anytime soon was about as likely as the government balancing the budget before noon today. I sighed, sat down at my computer, and wrote another script.
More next week…
I'm enjoying your story, so please keep going! 🙂