Confessions of a Script Doctor

Most first-time screenplay writers can't bear to hear the bad news: Their scripts were not only dead on arrival at a production company, they were dead long before arrival.

Screenplays look deceptively simple on paper. For example:

JOHN bites into a jelly donut and fires his .38 at a roach running across the ceiling. The bullet JUST MISSES the creepy, skittering critter.

John looks at his gun quizzically and then looks at MARSHA.

JOHN
I love you, Marsha. You know I do.

Marsha smiles demurely and takes the jelly donut from his hand. She throws it--HARD--at the roach, now running down a wall, and SPLATs it.

Roach and donut THUD to the floor.

MARSHA
Yes, I do. But show me again, John. Prove you love me.

And so forth, for 90 to 125 Academy Award-worthy pages.

In much of my practice as a script doctor, my "patients" arrive at my office already dead. They are just a bunch of zombie vowels, consonants and punctuations crammed into PDFs or printed out on three-hole paper.

Producers--but, more specifically, the all-powerful freelance script readers hired by producers to render judgment on "spec" (speculative) screenplays--would start seeing the dreaded "PASS!" word in their minds within the first two or three pages of these scripts.

So it is my job to try to bring the zombie typing back to life--or at least try to make it a little less dead--so my clients' screenplays have a better chance of being read and considered for purchase and production.

A couple of things I have observed about many first-time screenwriters:

1. They paid no attention in English class.

2. They paid less than no attention in English class.

When I must try to resurrect a dead screenplay, most of my work initially involves fixing grammar, spelling and punctuation problems, usually a dozen or more errors per page.

Many of Hollywood's script readers were conscientious English students, so a screenplay must be almost completely error-free. Otherwise, the readers will start noticing and mentally counting the blunders, rather than focusing on the story the writer is trying to convey.

After I clean up the grammar, spelling and punctuation problems, then and only then can I get to the real work of trying to help the characters, descriptions and plot become a story--a movie--that somebody might actually want to see.

Then and only then can I also start trying to (1) eliminate a billion dollars' worth of special effects that nobody can afford to produce and (2) find the heart and soul of the story--if it has a heart and soul beneath its myriad explosions, car chases and outbursts of gunfire.

Often, it's a tale about a discredited, burned-out FBI agent or CIA agent trying to save the world by driving fast, shooting assorted guns, blowing stuff up--and falling in love. New screenwriters, especially the young male ones, all seem to be infected with this same, lame story line.

Doctoring a "spec" script--one created merely out of hope by a writer without a paid assignment--often is an ugly process, but somebody has to do it. And that's why I'm paid the small bucks by a few producers and screenwriters willing to admit they need some help.

I know where to put the commas--and the smoldering love and the blazing gunfire--in the verbal sausage otherwise known as a screenplay.

-- Si Dunn

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One Man's 'Pork' Is Another Man's Movie Project That Creates Jobs

By Si Dunn

The leaders of the Ridiculous Republicans have just published a list of what they consider "wasteful" spending in the Senate's version of an economic stimulus bill.

Near the top of their list is a "$246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture film," according to CNN.

Wait a minute. Aren't the Ridiculous Republicans all about reducing taxes? Are they now labeling a tax cut as "pork"?

Clearly they don't understand anything about the movie business.

Number one, it's expensive to make a movie, especially with film. And, despite all of the great digitial advances in recent years, film remains a very beautiful and viable medium for making movies. Movies made with film still look better than movies made digitally. And using film forces better planning and efficiency on the set. You don't just turn on a camera and let it run for two hours while people horse around and do 32 takes of one scene.

A tax break on the cost of film means a producer can put more money elsewhere into his or her production. That means more crew members can be hired. And at least some of the film specialists at post-production labs get to keep their jobs.

Producers who buy film also help keep employees of film manufacturing companies and film processing labs both productive and earning money for their companies.

Things definitely have not been great at Kodak lately. Some of the survivors of recent Kodak layoffs no doubt are now looking to Congress for help with keeping their jobs. Selling more movie film would keep at least some of them employed.

With a tax break on film sales, film editors get more work. Camera operators and focus pullers with experience on film cameras get more work. Lighting crews with experience on film projects get more work. Other members of production crews also get more work.

Jobs are created, and jobs are saved.

This is exactly the sort of economic stimulus that is needed now. And the Ridiculous Republicans are--to put it gently--scurrilous scoundrels and running dogs for opposing it.

You can't incessantly run around screaming "Tax cuts! Tax cuts! Tax cuts!" to the heavens and the moon and then oppose a tax break that both saves and creates jobs in a time of frighteningly high unemployment.

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