Writers - Please Stop The New Age Mumbo Jumbo

I could not agree with you more. Is anything more grating than these people who insist that they’re ethereal, beautiful, artistic souls one minute and then bitch and moan about the way this BUSINESS treats them the next? If your art means so much to you, don’t sell it unless your “artistic” demands are agreed to or don’t sell it at all. But don’t cash the check and then cry about what the person who wrote the check did with what is now his property.

On that note, could I please add “entitled” to the list of Words That Should Not Be Uttered?

Mostly, I agree with you.

OTOH, haven’t you ever met one of those mega-successful writers (Stephen King comes to mind) who gets by with just enough craft to graduate from college, and just makes things up from the top of their heads, and makes millions from it?

For every hard-working, left-brain craftsman like you and Ted, I seem to run into two airy-fairy, don’t-know-where-it-comes-from writers who are getting mid-seven for a draft and set.

Sure, they could be lying, but they seem pretty wooly-headed in their non-writing life as well…

I can’t believe I forgot “ethereal.” I’ll add that one into the master list of Words That Should Not Be Uttered.

“Entitled,” on the other hand, is a word that deserves its own article. Stay tuned for that one. :)

Since we’re talking montage, I’ll fall back on a sports analogy. Let’s say you love watching professional basketball. For thirty years, you’ve been following it closely. And one day you decide, “You know what? Screw accounting. I oughta just play for the NBA.”

So you start training (BEGIN MONTAGE). You work on your free throws. You run drills. Because, after all, if you practice really hard, you should be able to get good enough to take on Shaq, right?

Of course not. It’s absurd. When you finally go back to your accounting job, no one is going to say “Oh, Phil gave up.” They’ll say, “Phil finally came to his senses.”

But substitute “screenwriting” for “basketball,” and suddenly it’s supposed to be a level playing field for everyone with a word processor. Because everyone has a great idea for a movie, and it’s frankly not that hard to fill 120 pages.

If an aspiring screenwriter faces rejection, it’s the system’s problem, not any failing of his/her own.

I consider myself fortunate to have a screenwriting career, but get a little chagrined when people say, “Oh, you’re so lucky.” No one tells Shaq he’s lucky. It would imply that Some Guy Over There could just as easily take his place, and it’s simply not true.

It’s as if you glimpsed my soul and painted it with words.

Yeesh. I can’t even satirize it without my skin crawling. Reminds me of Bender’s diatribe in The Breakfast Club: “‘Isn’t our son swell?’ ‘Isn’t life swell.’ ‘Mmmmm smooch.’ ‘Mmmmm smooch.’” BAM.

Yes. A resounding yes. Those who describe and expect writing to work that way may get lucky, but they won’t make a life out of it. Nor will many who do, because it’s damn hard. Not the writing itself, mind you. That part’s easy. The application.

Writing is magical only in the way real magicians know it: the effect of wonder from incessant practice.

The problem with Our Thing is that it’s fertile ground for delusion. Unlike basketball, where someone could say, “Okay, let’s go, one on one, right now,” Our Thing holds out the tantalising possibility that you are an incredible talent that’s just been ignored…and since many writers believe they haven’t really been evaluated, they will continue to insist that they are diamonds in the rough.

That’s why I think so many find the story of John Kennedy Toole fascinating. It reinforces a certain kind of magical figure: the case of the unappreciated genius who killed himself because the world unfairly rejected him (but then posthumously embraced him…the epitome of the adolescent fantasy of “They’ll miss me when I’m gone!”).

Of course, Toole was one-in-a-million. Most unappreciated writers are unappreciated because they suck.

This is why my favorite television show is American Idol. Somehow, AI manages to acknowledge both the existence of the undiscovered genius and the reality that most people who believe they are superior are, in fact, common or inferior.

The New Agey language of creative equivalence exists, in my mind, solely to service the kind of philosophy that leads someone to call a exceptional writer like John August “lucky”.

Riiiiight. And Babe Ruth was lucky too. Never even opened his eyes when he swung the bat.

Good Lord…

Clint wrote:

Writing is magical only in the way real magicians know it: the effect of wonder from incessant practice.

Man, that’s a perfect way of putting it. I wish I had thought to pluck that one off the Mother-Tree Of Word Energy.

For the most part I agree with you guys. Before my career began I was much inspired by and later guided by the long Paddy Chayefsky interview in “Craft of the Screenwriter,” which sounds a lot like what Craig writes. I’ve even been skeptical of great writers who talk about their characters “telling them where they want to go.”

But.

In the last year or so I’ve started to worry a bit about having become too much the artisan and too little the artist. A certain craftsmanlike approach is probably the thing that’s most needed — and maybe the only thing that’s needed — when tackling most studio assignments, and even many (most?) specs of certain types. But lately I’ve come to wonder whether such a studiously left-brained approach (to oversimplify) doesn’t in the end limit real creativity, and whether the Hollywood rewards which come with being a proven Solid Professional won’t in the end tempt a writer to squander too much of his talent. Just something I’ve been thinking about.

Actually, Craig (and Ted), as I write this, I start to wonder whether you don’t have it exactly backwards. Might it not be that anyone can learn self-criticism, structure, story analysis, and the like? Don’t we all know producers and executives who have those learned tools, but don’t have that other thing, whatever it is — maybe the ability to capture an idea (or a joke, or a wildly inspired structural solution) like a butterfly in a net? Maybe it’s exactly the thing that you guys (and I) don’t like hearing about which actually IS the difference between a real writer and a technician, or an executive.

And John August… you are lucky. And so am I, and so are Ted and Craig. Lucky primarily because the thing which we do, the thing at which we’re good enough to be consistently employed, pays so damn well and provides such a nice life. If my talent were for poetry, say, or teaching autistic children, or fighting fires, I would not be nearly so lucky as I am to have some talent for story structure and dialogue.

Real success in Hollywood is — always — a combination of talent, hard work and luck. We’re all lucky, to some extent, to have come to the attention of the right people at the right time. The guy I think of as the most talented and most interesting screenwriter I know hasn’t yet had a studio feature produced, and it took him until around age 40 to even start getting serious assignments. That could have been any of us.

Like I say, for the most part I agree with you guys. But this is a more interesting post, no?

“Embrace” is another over-used word that tends to pop up a lot in the touchy-feely oeuvre.

Embrace your inner-voice.

Pah-leeze.

Also “organic.” As in, “I write organically, and let the story grow on its own.” Is this a CSI spec or is it a Chia pet?

Howard: That sounds like me right now, actually. Although I don’t know if you’d find me that interesting.

My personal response to these New Age writer types is usually “Wow, that must be absolutely terrifying. I mean, at least with the way I write, I know with practice, knowledge of the craft, structure, a good idea, and more practice, I will keep getting better. You, on the other hand, have no control over your writing. It’s some mystery. It’s like you’re not even the author… just some spiritual stenographer. If that voice ever stops talking to you, you’re fucked.”

Maybe that’s why I don’t get invited to parties now…

I love you, and I want to have your babies.

In real life though I’ve been having my husband’s and she’s over my shoulder so can’t comment now, other than to say, how freaking true is that?

Channel my Aunt Fanny.

HoGo:

I’m not denying the un-knowability of talent. I believe in talent. I believe in the intangibility that separates that-which-one-can-learn and that-which-one-cannot.

The problem is that the metaphysicality of talent is a bit like the metaphysicality of sanity: those who don’t have it are pretty damned sure they do. And the un-knowability of talent becomes a convenient way to avoid actually finding out if one has talent. A declaration suddenly suffices, whereas you and I had to work a while to actually prove it.

Once you’ve been a worker and applied yourself to the nuts and bolts, I see nothing wrong with turning inward (as you are doing, and as I occasionally do as well) to challenge ourselves. See, but even in that, in the challenging, you’re not behaving like a New Agey “the Word Speaks Through Me, I Am But A Vessel” type.

You’re behaving like a professional who wants to improve himself.

Embrace…check. Organic…check.

Fair enough.

By the way, I wouldn’t even call myself a writer until I was earning a living doing it — nine years after my first play.

Meanwhile, I had a freshman roommate who introduced himself, “Hi, I’m Kevin. I’m a poet.”

“Hi, I’m Kevin. I’m a poet.”

“…That’s nice. I’ll have the lunch special and a chardonnay, thanks.”

And Louise, you’re such a flirt. ;)

HoGo:

I’m still reeling from two encounters. The first, many many years ago. A met a guy and asked him what he did. His response: “I’m a successful screenwriter.”

Sigh.

And he wasn’t.

The second encounter was with a friend who had tried his hands at different careers. I asked him what he was up to these days. “I’m a writer now,” he responded, as if simply saying the words would make it so.

Oh…and Louise! The wife says no more babies. If your husband lays down a similar verdict, then maybe we can talk. :)

I don’t know how many wannabe screenwriters actually finish a draft or the percentage of those people who finish one draft who go on to finish a second screenplay, and what percentage of those people actually sell something…

Yeah, definitely not words plucked from the sky. I had to type the words on the page. Then the page had to be joined by other pages, which I also typed. And I’m only as good as my last draft, which really really sucked.

No delusions here. If I could only get to step two…

Cool blog, Shawna. Consider yourself linked.

John —

The one that bugs me:

“Now that you’re successful, are you going to write something non-commercial and personal?”

And I always think “How can anyone ever write something that’s not personal?”

And I then I think “Wait, Does that mean what I’m writing now is commercial and impersonal?”

And then I think “Fuck you.”

And then I say “Hey, whatever happened to Harry Dean Stanton, anyway? I haven’t seen him in anything lately.”

And that usually does the trick.

Something that Char Knightley (name drop: Keira Knightley’s mother) said once (she’s a retired actress, now produced playwright and unproduced screenwriter, under her maiden name):

All writers want their work to speak to the largest possible audience. The difference between “commercial” and “art” is this: the smaller the audience, the less its commercial, until, finally, the writer has only an audience of one: himself. And that’s when he starts talking about art.

Which is kind of backwards from how its usually stated … but also more true than its usually stated, too, I think.

The expression I use is “Everyone thinks they suck at the crack in the Cosmic Egg.”

Thinking people suck at the Cosmic Egg would be dumb.

(“Suckle at the teat of the Cow of Divine Inspiration” might be good for a few laughs, too).

Maybe I just blocked out the phrase “suck at the crack”.

I’ll change it, but I want you to know you’ve disrupted my soul with your negative energy by challenging my truth.

Please keep up the comments, all of this discussion is feeding my soul.

Let me make the argument for why I LOVE, absolutely LOVE, that there are so many dilletantes out there typing FADE OUT (usually on page 136) and then submitting their screenplays to agents and production companies and studios. (Didn’t the WGA receive some ungodly amount of registered screenplays this past year… well over 50,000?)

I love it because our screenplays shine by comparison. With so many suck-jobs out there, it is extremely refreshing to read something good. Execs, managers, producers thirst after a good script like stranded men in the desert. They have to wallow in a sea of shitty scripts just to find that one gem. (I can mix metaphors like a cuisinart!) So when we turn in a new script or our latest draft, I’m glad it gets compared to the usual crap.

So keep on writing screenplays America! And keep on submitting your crap! You’re doing us all a favor.

Derek:

Don’t get me wrong. I love the existence of dilletantes. I just hate dilletantism (if that makes any sense). Anything that celebrates the metaphysical equivalence of all writers is just muck to me.

Adding words to that list… Memory, Concentration, Knowledge, Creativity, Structured logic!

Or, as “they” say in every lock & barrel intelligent school classes worth taking: Know the skills and use structured logic to concentrate at creating from memory. :) The ritual is simple, work at it… HARD.

Awesome post. I felt it touch my core… Ugh, I can’t even fake it.

Artistes make my head hurt. Could be the hangover, but I’m pretty sure it’s the Artistes.

When people ask me what I do, I tell them I’m a professional clich?. When they ask for further details, I tell them “I’m an unemployed writer in Hollywood.” It’s around then that their eyes light up, expecting me reveal the magic, the wonder, the art. Because, there seems to be a romantic notion of the Writer.They ask me what I’m working on. I simply tell them, “becoming employed.” How’s that for romance?

I know a woman who fancies herself a wriTER (to be read as James Lipton says acTOR). She reaches deep into her soul, and lets it dictate her words. She believes that what she (or really, her soul) writes is important. She believes her work pertinent, and that she’s changing the world one word at a time. I believe her, too. Really.

One time, she and I got into a debate about writing, she ended the debate with, “well! You’re a TV Writer, you wouldn’t understand!” I’m pretty sure she floated away, angrily.

She was right. I’m not out to set the world on fire, to make people think, or change their minds. That’s not my job. I don’t feel my characters, or touch whoever’s whatnot.

Perhaps it’s selfish of me, but, I’m quite happy to leave the metaphysical, transcendental, important work to the Artistes and wriTERS. I’ll just continue to write [what I think are] really fucking cool stories that I’d enjoy watching.

P

“Sometimes I have no idea where a play came from, in terms of my unconscious, subconscious — whatever you want to call it. It just springs from my emotional insides.”

“I discover, one day, when I’m going around minding my own business… that I have been thinking about a play for quite a while and haven’t been aware that I’ve been thinking about it, the unconscious moving to the conscious.”

“[I keep] endless notebooks in which I’m fundamentally talking to myself about trying to lift this or that out of the darkness where it’s hiding.”

Here’s the thing, guys: in the end, the only thing that matters a damn bit is the work. Not how we talk about it, not even how we go about doing it. If your scripts are good, you’re a good writer. If they ain’t, then it doesn’t matter whether you like to talk about your characters mystically taking on lives of their own, or whether you talk about Joseph Campbell, craftsmanship and index cards; you’re still not a good writer. And all that’s left to debate is which kind of person who overrates himself is more annoying to listen to.

The quotes above — and I didn’t have to search hard for them, they were in something I read recently — were Terrence McNally, Edward Albee and Arthur Miller. And far as I’m concerned, they can say whatever the fuck they want.

Howard:

It’s not the writers I’m concerned about, really. It’s the executives and producers who also claim to have pulled their genius idea out from the darkness of their emotional insides.

Can we blame them, when we’ve lent credence to this notion that our best work is somehow not ours, but rather simply found? As it so happens, the latter two authors you cite state it perfectly. “I have been thinking” is active and not magical. “Trying to lift” sounds like work to me. Nothing New Agey there. Very vocational.

But McNally…oy. “It just springs from my emotional insides.” McNally may not understand how he created what he created, but that doesn’t justify him denying that he created it. “It springs up” instead of “I made it spring up, even though I don’t know how.”

“It” can “spring” out of anyone’s insides, ya know? Anyone like, say, a rookie development exec who’s giving you notes. And how can I challenge the validity of the product of his emotional springing when others give it so much credibility?

“I thought about your suggestion, and I’m having trouble making it work because of story reasons, craft, logic, etc.”

“No, no, you don’t understand. This isn’t even my suggestion. It just sprang forth out of my emotional core. Just like what happens to McNally. I’m not in control here—I’m just channeling the Muse. So go make it work.”

Blechhh.

C.

Ted, this may blow my chances with Keira forever, but I think the elder Ms. Knightly is way wrong.

It’s absolutely not so that all writers want their work to speak to the largest possible audience. If that were the case, nobody at this point in human history would be writing plays, poems or short stories. But they still do. Serious writers attempt every day to master those forms. And yes, of course, they want their work published or produced… but toward the end of finding the RIGHT audience, not simply the largest.

Maybe some here might think I don’t have a place at this table, without a major hit movie to my credit… but I did work on a number one TV show some years ago, back when that meant 35 million people would watch your show the first night it was on, week after week. So I’ll pull up a chair and take my chances.

Yes, all work is personal to some degree. But I’ve worked both ends of the field, and I sure know the difference while I’m doing it. There’s work you do because you want to mine some event or condition or personal interaction close to your own experience, to work deeply the very small field which you truly know best, to find some worthy and unique way to give voice to your own idiosyncratic vision of the way things are, or were, or might be.

Then there’s work you do because Katzenberg pitched it to you and it made you laugh.

I’m not saying that the latter isn’t worthy. I’m not even saying that an entire career made up exclusively of the latter isn’t worthy. And — speaking as a fan — you might very well feel that the extremely successful work you’ve done is in fact highly personal, and that when you guys are through you’ll have left behind an oeuvre which was not only highly commercial but which adds up to a clear and unique vision of the world — like, say, Hitchcock.

But to say that it’s all about commerce, and that “art” (a word, I should add, which always sticks in my own throat) is merely what’s left for the writer whose work interests no one, is, ultimately, to dismiss every poet, playwright and short story writer, not to mention the guy who just took six months off from studio gigs to write a “small, personal movie” he’s planning to make for a couple million bucks.

But it’s worse than dismissive, actually; it’s dangerous — because if every writer begins to think that artistic aspiration is merely the self-important residue of failed commercial aspiration… then we’re really lost.

Craig, we must somehow know entirely different sets of executives.

Mine pretty much never talk about their notes springing up magically from their emotional insides.

Mine talk about likeability, raising the stakes, and all sorts of things they “learned” from Robert McKee or their old bosses.

Howard —

I think you missed the point of Char’s comment, but I also think I know why.

If you’ll both forgive a huge heapin’ portion of presumptuousness on my part and bear with me for a moment:

I have noticed that the one recurrent complaint that virtually everyone in this industry has — and I mean everyone, above-the-line, below-the-line, everyone — is this:

“They wouldn’t let me do the best job I could do.”

Reading through the lines in your posts on WA about Mr. 3000 (this is the part that’s presumptuoescent), I get the feeling that your experience on that was very similar to my experience on The Road to El Dorado and another project: you knew what that movie could be when you started work, you knew what needed to be done in order to realize it, you knew you had the expertise and craft to accomplish it …

… and although you did your best work at every turn, you were unable to to do the best work you knew you were capable of doing and are capable of doing.

They wouldn’t let you do the best job you could do.

That sucks, man. That sucks in any circumstances; but it sucks like the vacuum of space particularly if you are working on something personally important to you (like, oh, I don’t know, something about baseball? About redemption through growth, or vice-verse? About the difference between loving being good at the game and loving the game itself?).

Not much satisfaction to be found there, no matter how much expertise and craft you have.

So you’re feeling (more presumptuosity here), eh, getting the job, getting paid, using expertise and craft, getting a movie made — not satisfying. So there must be something missing there, and what is missing, you’ve decided, is art.

Which suggests an interesting definition of “art,” I think, and maybe a pretty accurate one when we’re talking about doing the work, rather than appraising work that has been done,

“Art” is: the sense of satisfaction in applying your expertise and craft to do the best work you know you are capable of doing, and absent any other considerations whatsoever.

The difference between loving being good at the game and loving the game itself.

Or not. I could be just talking through my hat here, projecting waaaay too much. If so, sorry, and back on topic:

I think you missed the point of Char’s comment.

Ted —

First off, I guess I’d better go back and read what I wrote on WA about “Mr. 3000”! In fact, that was the best experience I’ve had in features. What I was called on to do was limited and well-defined: within very specific parameters (the just-hired director’s thorough take on the movie), thoroughly rewrite almost every page of the script in less than a month, the best way I knew how. Then another two weeks of work, mostly head-to-head with the director polishing scenes, and some months later a few free days helping conceive a couple new scenes for reshoots. And that was it. Within those parameters clearly defined up front, I probably got into the script about 95% of what I’d have wanted, which is pretty good; and in the end, I liked the movie, was proud to have my name on it.

I wonder what I said that made you think I was down on the experience; maybe things I’ve said about the other dozen and a half feature jobs I’ve had in the last few years. Because what you describe — not being allowed to do my best work — has definitely been the case at times. Equally often, though, I’ve done my best work, and after a couple of drafts the studio reached the point of saying, You know, we’re just not really that interested in making this kind of movie.

So now I most often come on to movies which are already going, or close to going, or at least conceivably close to going — things the studio is pretty serious about, and where what they need from me seems pretty clear, and more often than not I do the best I’m capable of, and they’re very happy with what I give them for a few weeks’ pay.

Here’s the thing, though: that is EXACTLY “the sense of satisfaction in applying my expertise and craft to do the best work I know I am capable of doing” — in other words, almost the definition of art you suggest — except for the last part, “…absent any other considerations whatsoever.” Because there IS another consideration, the one at the heart of your earlier post… and that is that this work is not, by my standards, truly personal.

Which, to me, makes it feel like craft, rather than art.

Now, I love those jobs. I really do. But having come into this as a playwright, having been inspired by the kinds of movies studios used to make but rarely do any more, having never expected to have this kind of craftsman’s career, and beginning to realize my age and that the number of scripts I’ll be able to write is indeed finite, I’ve definitely been feeling the call to mix in some work which is more, well, personal.

Anyway, back to the topic: help me with Char’s comment — what did I miss?

Howard:

I must admit, I don’t hear this much from execs, so perhaps I’ve overstated the case a tad. It’s actually directors I tend to hear it from, but thankfully the director with whom I currently collaborate is not at all like that.

He’s a Republican, in fact. :)

Just as point of professionalism, you should probably use some form of spell-check before you post. Dilettantism has one L.

Hello. A comment or two on the New Age of writing.

I have had folks ask me if my writing comes from some place special within.

To which I reply: Yep. That’s why I do so much writing in the bathroom.

Craig —

Oh, DIRECTORS. Well, then… yeah.

Lorene:

Alas, Movable Type doesn’t have a spell checker. The good news is that this means I get full credit for all the words I do spell correctly.

Thanks for spotting the error. S’fixed.

Howard —

I thought you had mentioned that you wanted the movie to be more sophisticated, with greater complexity in characters and relationships, than it turned out; if that wasn’t you, my apologies. 95% is pretty good.

On the other hand, we seem to agree on what the term “art” means, in context of the discussion, so that’s something.

So, back to Char’s comment:

I would offer that all writers do, in fact, want their work to reach the largest possible audience. What her comment addresses is the notion that limiting the largest possible audience to one person — the writer himself — somehow gives the work greater aesthetic value than limiting the possible audience differently would, or not limiting it at all.

You mention wanting to write movies like those Hollywood used to make, but doesn’t seem to anymore. Believe it or not, I feel exactly the same way — we’re just talking different eras.

But what the movies you’re talking about and the ones I’m talking about have in common is this:

The work spoke and continues to speak to the largest possible audience.

Annie Hall and The Adventures of Robin Hood were both “commercial” movies — the largest possible audience to which they spoke happened to be pretty sizable, and willing to pay to see them.

There is an odd belief that at the other end of a the scale from “commercial” is “art.” This belief is demonstrably wrong; at the other end of the scale from “commercial” is “non-commercial.”

It’s a classic example of anomalistic belief: because many movies that are considered “art” were non-commercial — the actual audience they spoke to was relatively small — intentionally writing a non-commercial movie — writing for the smallest possible audience (one: me) — makes it “art.”

And that’s the point that Char’s comment was making: whether or not a work is “art” is unrelated to whether or not it is “commercial” or “non-commercial,” and regardless of the audience for which the work is written.

Whether or not a completed work is “art” is an entirely subjective judgment. Another screenwriter may not judge Pirates of the Caribbean as art — and it is absolutely coolio whether they do or not; I’m interested in understanding their subjective standards (because of their expertise in the form), not in refuting that judgment, those standards or their expertise — but I can say without reservation that doing the work was art, as defined above: the best work I was capable of doing, absent any other considerations.

But it should be noted that I consider the I work I do not to be writing, but filmmaking. The screenplay is a means toward an ends, a component of the film — but it’s not the film itself.

The screenplay is not the screenwriter’s art (either definition); the screenwriter’s art is the movie.

And in order for there to be any chance whatsoever for either the doing of the work and the work itself to be art, it is incumbent upon the screenwriter to be able to communicate effectively with the other people whose expertise is required to make the movie as someone whose own expertise is required to make the movie.

If writing is the product of mystical forces beyond ourselves and craft, then there is no difference between the quality of our ideas and opinions and those of non-writers; the only difference is we have the craft to execute them, and they don’t. “I could be a writer if I had the time to write” becomes a true statement — and every time a writer publicly goes all spiritual and quasi-jedi, that “truth” is perpetuated.

Whereas if we make it clear that writing is not a matter of having inspired ideas, but of having the expertise to evaluate ideas and select the best from the worst, the right from the wrong, the art from the crap and the commercial from the non-commercial — the ones that people will pay to experience because they speak to them instead of the ones that people will not pay to experience — then we increase our influence not just over the screenplay (every writer has absolute authority over the screenplay for as long as he’s the one writing it) but over the movie.

To do the best work we are capable of doing, absent any consideration other than doing the best work we are capable of doing.

That’s the theory, anyhow.

Literature is art.

And, that is text.

Screenwriting is no more different than the most primitive form(s) of poetry and “expression” than the (final, consequential) resulting film produced from that work. It might get “technical” enough to reach a common level of understanding with those who collaborate towards interpreting what’s written but it’s still the least denominator of art. Otherwise, even novelists can’t reason that the published documents aren’t creative products.

A paint by numbers format could be as minimal in quality or effectiveness, it remains a work of expression. Without the essential, you don’t even have the basic elements that constitutes what i consider to be artform and medium, filmed or read. Blank canvas DO receive mixtures of colors.

There’s harmony in music but it uses notes, a specific wave length to simply express the characteristics of sound.

Ted —

First off, it’s entirely possible that I’ve watched “The Adventures of Robin Hood” even more times than I’ve watched “Annie Hall.” (I’ve described that movie to my son as being to me approximately what “Star Wars” is to him.)

And that definitely wasn’t me on “Mr. 3000,” which was about as complex and sophisticated as that movie should have been (and a lot more sophisticated than the marketing suggested). I might have liked a little more risibility, that’s about it.

Back to the subject. Thanks, first off, for clarifying her point; I get it now.

I have less than zero interest in evaluating whether anybody else’s work is “art.” When I watched “Pirates,” all I cared about was that I had a damn good time, and that these filmmakers really knew what they were doing, and that thanks to them I enjoyed a rare night when I didn’t mind at all the cost of tickets, popcorn, dinner and the babysitter. Wouldst that I felt the same about “The Curse of the Jade Scorpion.”

I don’t suppose we’ll ever come to a full meeting of the minds on the definition of “art,” but since neither of us seem fully comfortable with the word anyhow, I don’t suppose it matters a lot.

I still, though, have a substantial disagreement with you on this:

“…if we make it clear that writing is not a matter of having inspired ideas, but of having the expertise to EVALUATE ideas… then we increase our influence…”

A hell of a lot more people can evaluate ideas than can have them. And there are plenty of producers and executives who regard their powers of evaluation as equal to any writer’s… because such expertise can be acquired by anyone. It’s a lot easier to pick the funniest of five jokes than to write the five jokes.

None of this is to diminish the importance of craft, experience, expertise, whatever you want to call it. And when I sit down at my desk in the morning, I’m sitting down to work, not to pull mystical butterflies out of the air.

I’m just not sure what it buys us — collectively or individually — to sniff at the relatively rare ability to HAVE inspired ideas, and to focus only on the much more commonly attainable ability to learn what to do with them.

Can there really be a great writer who doesn’t possess both?

Responding to Howard’s earlier point about “lucky”:

Absolutely. I (and the other writers in this thread) are extremely lucky that there is such a career as screenwriting, and that it pays well. I count my blessings on good days and bad days. Especially after I get ridiculous notes.

But maybe one reason I prefer the term “fortunate” to “lucky” is that the latter word conjures the idea of a lottery, which is far too often what aspiring screenwriters have in their head as they scribble their 120-page scratch-and-wins.

Howard —

An inspired idea is one of such surpassing brilliance or excellence it seems to be the product of divine or supernatural or mystical intervention.

There is a value judgment inherent in the term “inspired idea,” and one that must be made before the term is applied: Is the idea of surpassing brilliance or excellence?

In regards to the story and dramatization of a movie, who makes that value judgment?

Who considers an idea that may feel divinely, supernaturally, mystically inspired to the person who had it, and evaluates whether or not it actually is an inspired idea?

What if the person who had it is the producer? Or the director? Or the star? Or the head of the studio?

And what if he, she or they all believe that creating the story and dramatization for a movie — because the people who actually do create stories and dramatizations for movies have repeatedly said, over and over — what if they believe that all it requires is the following: sitting at a keyboard, a copy of Final Draft and divine, supernatural, or mystical inspiration?

It is impossible to prove someone did not just speak to the gods by saying “Well, I just spoke to the gods, and they said they’ve never heard of you.”

-

wow, it’s just like the old art school cafeteria in here. i find myself reminiscing about the glorious battle between the souless graphic designers and the pathetic fine artists. knuckleheads on both sides that engaged in a battle so idiosyncratic and useless all a media major could do was finish his sandwich quietly, distracting himself with “what if” scenarios involving practicing more athletics in his youth.

work ethic craftsman vs. cosmic happy accident artiste WHO WILL WIN?

Ted (fellow knucklehead) —

You’re right, that wouldn’t work. But it wouldn’t work either if they thought all it took was a keyboard, a copy of Final Draft, and three days of Robert McKee.

This debate reminds me of the athlete who attributes his ability and good fortune to God or some higher power. They generally come across as morons because if they believe that God has bestowed upon them some extraordinary gift it sounds arrogant and if they say “hey, I’m just like everybody else - I just worked hard and got lucky,” then it sounds falsely modest. Unless the athlete’s on ‘roids and then, well…

Good writing clearly requires both inspiration and perspiration.

I grew up in the 60s, where all the references to higher powers and cosmic forces always annoyed me. But, can I really watch a Brando performance and attribute it to just hard work and craft? Can I watch an early Orson Welles film and think “how did this guy spend so much time studying film and still find the time to f**k half the starlets in Hollywood?”

Of course, today most of us are a bit more enlightened. We don’t thank God, we don’t attribute our abilities to mystical powers. We KNOW it’s the interaction between the left and right brains - all very scientific stuff.

I’m not smart enough to know where “it’ comes from, but I suspect the truth is somewhere in the middle. All I know is that if ever I become a truly accomplished writer, I don’t want to come across like the athletes I referenced above.

I wonder whether the true underlying issue in this thread is that many professional writers feel slighted. I don’t think they should feel that way. Every boy in America picks up a bat and dreams of being a big league ballplayer; though very few can, millions grow up enjoying the attempt. Lots of people write - very few will get to make a living at it, but everyone can enjoy and learn from the experience.

Dave

Some probably presumptous thoughts from a lawyer cum wannabe writer. I think Ted Elliott or H.M. Gould may have made some or all of these points already so perhaps this post is redundant but here goes anyway ;-)

1. On the word “art.”

Even elephants make “art” these days. “Art” is whatever the artist thinks it should be, which can be anything as long as it is not (dreaded word) commercial. Any fault with a modern work lies with the observer who is unable to appreciate the work, not with the creation or the creator.

This of course is crap. It’s crap because commercial art is art and its crap because non-commercial art is commercial art—just for a smaller audience. Andy Artist and Dora Director in SoHo creating “Piss Menorah” and “The Lesbian Pudding Movie” (obligatory South Park reference)are hoping their shock sells, just as much as Sam Screenwriter hopes his work “Romantic Triangle, Complications Ensue” sells.

The big difference is that it’s a lot harder to sell a work for millions than for thousands or hand-in free to your Screenwriting Professor.

1. The Craft

I don’t think I have much to add to this debate since in the year and a half I’ve been working on a script, I’ve only recently managed to finish something that might be termed a first draft. But since I’ll probably be banned from this board as a tyro after this post—two quick notes.

(1) I think sociopaths would make poor commercial screenwriters. I don’t know if you guys would call it making the screenplay personal—but when I write an emotional beat in the story, I recognize that I’m using my emotions as a proxy for the prospective audience. What inspires/frightens/saddens me, I hope inspires/frightens/saddens the prospective audience. Maybe this is obvious or maybe this flows into point two.

(2) I’ve seen a lot of movies that I consider good—or great—but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie that met that proposed standard of “inspired idea.” You have an idea, and you reach into your toolbox and pull out whatever you need to execute the idea: after-images of other movies, dreams, Shakespeare, conversations you’ve overheard, conversations you’ve been a part of—or read on the Internet—or imagined in your head, vacations you’ve taken to far-off places, pictures in National Geographic, trips to the grocery store, your children, old relationships with ex-girlfriends, former jobs, Joseph Cambell, favorite books, whatever. You take all these often ordinary and fairly common building blocks and (here comes the poor metaphor) using the “idea” as the thread (or backbone or arc) string them together in some new way that brings your idea to life. Which brings us back to the point above—your tie them together based, in part, on your emotional life of the idea (whatever it is), what works, what doesn’t work. Perhaps we’re talking about two different types of evaluation.

Taken together I don’t think the process I’m describing can be termed as “hearing your muse” or “coming from the ether.” It’s pretty clear in my head who I’m stealing from or what memory is inspiring a particular point or what emotion I’m feeling or should be feeling. If there is any magic involved, it is that when you re-read a scene you wrote a while ago and it still works—and you’ve half-forgotten what a pain-in-the-ass it was to write the scene—you get that nice all-over warm feeling. Of course when you re-read the scene and it doesn’t work you just want to give up and start drinking. Heavily.

Cheers T

Trevor:

Tyros are not only welcome, but encouraged. We’re trying to spread the gospel here. Welcome!

Dave:

I think you’re right to point out esteem issues as a likely source of the “scriptomancy” talk. For some, it’s as if the infusion of divinity or cosmic power is the only thing about their work that deserves respect, when in actuality, if you think about it, it shouldn’t garner any respect.

I mean, if I’m just a conduit for the Almighty, what does it matter what I do or think? That’s why I liked the second of the two quotes Howard cited, but wasn’t so taken with the first.

Boy, writers and esteem. You know, I’m gonna have to write an article about that. :)

Ted, however, pinpointed an actual danger in this kind of neo-hippie discussion: it implies that anyone can write.

Um…anyone can write.

Most able-bodied, sound-minded humans are capable of writing at a professional level, IMHO. Capable of learning, certainly, because who among us sprang from the womb spouting character arcs and three-act structure?

Betty Edwards has proven that thoroughly un-artistic people can be taught to see and draw like artists in a very short time, and with a high degree of proficiency. Can you imagine that it is somehow more challenging to write a scene than to sketch a portrait?

What’s the difference between attributing your art to Divine Intervention rather than your own Special Abilities and Hard Won Skills? Both are ways to say “I am special and worthy, and these others are not.”

I suspect the airy-fairy types annoy you because they aren’t very good, and they think they are. Regardless of their spiritual persuasion, those kind of people annoy folks who work hard and take themselves seriously.

But I imagine the ones who really wind you up are the ones who credit their inner child and are very successful. Those are the writers that make a craftsman feel insecure. The ones who manage to outperform you without using your methods. It implies that either your approach is suboptimal, or that they have some gift or attribute that you lack.

Did you read the Mamet piece in this month’s Written By? He says roughly I don’t know what they could teach in screenwriting class. Read Poetics and write a lot. That’s all there is to it. Most craftsmen have a lot more tricks up their sleeves than just Poetics yet they have not won the Pulitzer, or gotten the jobs Mamet has.

Troubling. And a good reason to beat up a hippie who isn’t a very good writer. Easier to feel superior.

“Write,” in this context, should be understood to mean “write a screenplay,” which should be understood to mean:

“To create a story and its dramatization for use in a motion picture and render it in literary form that: communicates the story and dramatization of the proposed motion picture to others; convinces others to invest time and resources necessary to make the motion picture: and provides to others the majority of information required to make the motion pictures.”

Sorry of the lack of clarity. I forgot this discussion was taking place on the Internet.

At any rate, I have no interest in arguing about how people write, or even trying to dissuade one writer or another from his or her belief in what writing entails. The point here is that the industry-at-large perceives writing as something anyone can do, then they will continue to believe that anyone can write a specific screenplay as well or better than the person who actualy did create a story and its dramatization for use in a motion picture and render it in literary form that: communicates the story and dramatization of the proposed motion picture to others; convinces others to invest time and resources necessary to make the motion picture: and provides to others the majority of information required to make the motion pictures.

Hollywood does not direrectly disrespect writers; that is simply a by-product of the direct disrespect shown to the writing.

Why does Hollywood disrespect writing, and so also disrespect the experts who do that writing?

See the first sentence of Spec’s post, above:

“Anyone can write.”

-

Ted —

You’re implying that I disrespect writers and/or screenwriting. I don’t. As you pointed out, definitions are sometimes necessary for clear internet discourse.

In the case of “Anyone can write,” the word “can” is used in the sense of capacity rather than skill. Nearly everyone has the capacity to learn to write a screenplay at a professional level. Most don’t, but screenwriting isn’t basketball or theoretical mathematics; there’s no height requirement or minimum IQ necessary to be a good screenwriter.

Do you believe that only experts can be successful screenwriters?

Nearly everyone has the capacity to learn to write a screenplay at a professional level. Most don?t …

So what you’re saying is: screenwriting requires an expertise that most people do not possess.

Which goes to the point that both Craig and I are making: anytime a screenwriter attributes his work to the unexplainable, unknowable mystic instead of his or her own expertise, it devalues the expertise and work of all screenwriters, including their own.

As for your final question, you’ve answered that yourself: since screenwriting requires an expertise most people lack, only experts are professional screenwriters, which means that only experts can be (ie, have the capacity to be) successful screenwriters.

-

Seeing I both Act and Write, I see this from both actors and writers and it makes me wanna puke…

I went to business school, and always think it terms of business and hard work… And it’s no wonder so many producers and directors have so little respect for writers and actors, generally speaking we bring it on ourselves.

TED=?anytime a screenwriter attributes his work to the unexplainable, unknowable mystic instead of his or her own expertise, it devalues the expertise and work of all screenwriters, including their own.?

This is why I hate the whole CHARIOTS OF THE GODS syndrome; Man is not capable enough to create buildings as wondrous as the pyramids or develop the “miracle” of flight, it had to come from “the other”, the alien. Literally. This is such self-loathing, such self-deprecating horseshit.

But, to give the airy-fairy it’s due, Artists do exist. And there are some of them who seem to not really know where their genius flows from. Mozart likened his output to the uncontrollable urinating of a cow: he just did it. (Nike would have loved to logo-ize his German ass.) He never talked about the hard work, etc, only about how easy it was for him. That, of course, could have been bragging on the God-like level. Then again, Mozart’s music is God-like. And he liked fart jokes. Go figure…

All I can talk about is what writing is like for me. And it’s fucking hard work. Every screenplay only seems to get harder. Yes, I’m harder on myself every day but it’s like every lesson I’ve learned over almost 20 years as a professional screenwriter never comes up again. The next script somehow conspires to throw a brand new curve my way. It’s like after you’ve been screwed by one studio you’re sure it’ll never happen again because you now know the lay of the land — but it does, only in a wholly different way which you never saw coming. And trust me — I have been through the Kama Sutra of studio-fucking.

Robert Towne once said that one of the main ingredients needed to be a good screenwriter was a very active fantasy life. I couldn?t agree more. If you can’t entertain or frighten yourself with the thoughts that spring unsolicited from your mind I doubt you’ll ever have the powers to entertain or frighten or move anyone else. Luckily I have that ability. And I’ve made a nice living off it for a long time now. That and developing a feel for how to tell a story. No rules, just a feel. Okay, some rules. But maybe those who use the “mystic”, as Ted nicely called it, are simply mislabeling the element of “feel”. I sure as Hell am no “Artist” but I’ve met and talked to enough in my life to know that most true Artists are almost incoherent when talking about their own work. Utter imbeciles. Not every but most.

Perhaps therein lies the rub…

Craig & Ted ? you knew I?d show up sooner or later?Great site!

Cliff, welcome!

You know, I’m not challenging the existence of art or artistry (and certainly not artful-ness).

Nor am I challenging the fact that Mozart peed genius. Sometimes even I am astounded by the relative ease with which my best material comes, as opposed to the relative bone-breaking that gives rise to my mediocre output).

It’s really a question of how we frame it for the rest of the world. We can insist that our own creativity is divine, alien, metaphysical or merely coincidental to us.

But it ain’t true. It just appears that way because we do not understand some/many/all of the underlying mental processes humming away below our consciousness. That doesn’t mean, however, that all subconscious creativity is created equal.

Mamet is perfectly within his right to say that the predominant factor in determing success is precisely that which is inexplicable and unteachable. Nonetheless, that indeterminate something is not external to the writer. It is internal. It is evaluatable by others. It’s judgeable.

And Mamet’s indeterminate something is a truckload better than most people who claim to be a spigot for something Higher and Greater than they. :)

Mozart may have urinited genius, but the simple fact is that he trained his entire life to do so. Playing the piano at three, and composing at six. I’m pretty sure that the music he composed at the age of six was not as good as the music he composed at the age of thirty.

Was that because his bladder became more attuned to the Cosmic Egg as he got older? Or was it because he had been practicing his art and craft for decades?

I found that great Chayefsky interview on the subject:

“Artists don’t talk about art. Artists talk about work. If I have anything to say to young writers, it’s stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work. If you’re an artist, whatever you do is going to be art. If you’re not an artist, at least you can do a good day’s work.”

That seems a pretty good place to stand.

Craig -

” It just appears that way because we do not understand some/many/all of the underlying mental processes humming away below our consciousness.

There, right there! The big tapping of thoughts and clarification brains seek after. The reasoning and the activity required to intelligently create a work of art. Consciously. By using every available means. Work a neurone, it drills TO the logic.

I have a list of lower level executives who’ve lost their job and say, “I’m writing now.” It’s a euphemism for ‘unemployed’ for most of them. (The upper level execs parachute into rich producing deals.)

Writing is like becoming a parent. It apparently requires no experience or craft and anyone can do it. The rotten scripts don’t get to go into therapy to get over their bad parenting though… they can’t afford it.

JT:

I think Harlan Ellison was the one who said that anyone can become a writer, but the hard part is staying a writer.

“I write because God is a writer. And he’s better than you.”
How’s that, too ethereal?

And, Mr. Mazin, you feel like puking after one hour on the elliptical trainer? Do you have it on the Jupiter Gravity setting?

Exaggeration for comic effect. I do, however, tend to lose sensation in the soles of my feet, which is annoying.

As an agnostic pessimistic - I’m a treat at dinner parties - nothing twists my tits more than the dullards who bleat about the Writer’s Soul, how they’re simply the vessel for downloading art.

But.

To dismiss writing as purely a mechanical exercise, 100% perspiration and 0% inspiration…well, that ain’t right, either.

How many times has a character surprised you by his words or actions? None? You have got to be joking. If they’re not surprising you, how can they surprise an audience?

Ellison writes: “There is a collective unconscious working in me that is absolutely true; I trust it absolutely; I give myself up to it; I will go anywhere it takes me.”

King Writes (re: the climax of his life’s work, “The Dark Tower”): “You may not like what Roland found at the top, but that’s a different matter entirely. I wasn’t exactly crazy about the ending, either, if you want to know the truth, but it’s the right ending. You have to remember that I don’t make these things up, not exactly; I only write down what I see.”

And also: “They think I’m in charge, every one of them from the smartest of the critics to the most mentally challenged reader. And that’s a real hoot. Because I’m not.”

Now, from the mouths of those who can’t turn a phrase on a grocery list, all of that “mumbo jumbo” would fall trite. But we’re talking about at least two scenarists who have proven their worth on a page.

I absolutely, positively believe in a writer’s subconscious that is all too happy to grab the steering wheel for a spell and move you in unexpected directions. When King writes that he’s very, sorry, he knows you’ll be upset, but that Roland was going to do what he chose to do, I completely get it. It has nothing to do with New Ageisms or Deepak Chopra or Dr. Phil.

If the characters are vibrant enough, if you’ve fed them sufficiently, they will often grab your hand and lead you. Just as in dreams, when people do unexpected things. (And how can they? It’s YOUR mind, right? Yet, they do.)

No amount of effort will turn you into an imaginative writer. If you are technically sound but creatively bankrupt, you’ll be writing instructional manuals for blenders.

The successful people are those who can let their minds wander and then intelligently communicate what they’ve seen. Writing is reporting.

Yeah, but Harlan got fired from Disney, so who’s going to listen to him, Craig?

RoughDraft:

I agree with everything you say. I don’t think writing is devoid of the mystical. I think we should just shut up about it.

Yes, the great writers can say whatever they want, as long as they don’t mind that they’re giving aid and comfort to the lazy and undisciplined.

I wish we could keep the discussions of mysticisms between ourselves, like a trade secret, and project an air of difficulty and hard work to the wannabees. It sure would reduce the amount of people whose only standard of evaluation for their writing is, “Was this from my soul?”

So, you believe in the new age mumbo jumbo, Craig? You just think we shouldn’t speak of it for fear of letting the wannabes in on a “trade secret?”

I don’t agree with that at all.

I happened upon this quote by Arthur C. Clarke, who sums up my thoughts on the matter quite well: “Any smoothly functioning technology will have the appearance of magic.”

The more scripts I complete, the better oiled the machine. It’s not magical nor mystical, it’s smoke and mirrors. I’ve worked hard to make it appear this easy.

I am not a vessel through which my characters speak to tell their stories. I’ve worked hard to learn how to write decent dialogue and stories for the characters I create.

I have read most of this enormous discussion and wish to weigh in. I learned guitar as an adult. Took lessons for five years. I am white. I learned some pretty cool things from listening to my instructor talk about the origin of African music, and then how that got transformed through evolution into Jazz, and Blues. We fuse the cultures and come up with new. Eric Clapton not playing like a Black guy, but trying to. Or the Beach Boys trying to play lead riffs like Chuck Berry. Quincy Jones said there are three elements to music: Harmony, Melody, and Rythym. Europeans have Harmony and Melody. Africans have a lock on Rythyms and Harmony. When we blend the two something of beauty results.

I also learned that Africans and Arabs have four division to each note on the scale and for them to emulate those sour in-between notes on european strings they had to bend the strings, to hit the correct scale note.

Now, I can play B.B. King. But it is a white guy playing B.B. King. I can never sing about being whipped on a slave ship. So now I have learned all the blues cliches and the mechanics of the method of expression but can not express something of interest. When Eric Clapton merges his learned African roots style with an expression of his own demons (possibly about a son who died) then we have blues that can move a man to tears as in Tears In Heaven. When Carlos Santana merges his Spanish minors and Dorian scales with Latin rythyms (again African roots), well the result is simply spectacular.

You can learn to play music quite well and never be a known musician. What gives? That musician has never learned self-expression. Is there a course you can take for that? You have your degree in performance and play for the Philharmonic or whatever, but creatively nothing comes.

Personally I think that is the product of an overly self-conscious mind. Perhaps one is too educated believing that everything of beauty already exists. I read a good book on creativity once and forget all the details but I remember the central conclusion that the author made however, and that was she couldn’t tell you where creativity comes from.

I am one of those dilettentes you speak of. I am however, learning the craft. For some of it, you can master the cliches and fit them all together in a new way, creating an an okay but expressionless experience. Hollywood isnt in the business of making art. It makes films that have some art, some more than others. The art that is contained in movies is usually expressed as a new and succinct observation of the human condition.

Learning writing can be done, but expression, that’s a little trickier. It’s all little like knitting. Plan an overall design. Add a little each day. Get the colors to dazzle. A screenplay is a knitted multi-colored scarf which you suddenly unveil all at once to a viewer and flash them with your brilliance. But you had oodles of time to construct that, that’s part of the magic. Can I knit a picture of a naked woman? What will the neighbors think? Well, that is the conscious mind getting in the way of what could be an expression of the way you see beauty. Too many rules and you can’t express yourself in a new way, you can only do it using accepted and tried ways. I guess someone who is over-socialized would view the creative process as some greater power taking over their body and revealing unto them what they should draw on the screen. Anyhow, when I’ve got the secret you can find me babbling it like Gollum under mount doom. But in the meantime can’t us newbies and dabblers submit a try or two to see if we have the secret of expression since so many experts don’t?

I want to add something to my second to last paragraph:

The art that is contained in movies is usually expressed as a new and succinct observation of the human condition. [edited to add] It is quite possible that a human with pen in hand does not have any new observations about the human condition and so, has nothing to express.

Why do we intellectualize the unknowable? In a discussion of the infinite, who is further ahead in the discussion of the unknowable, someone who has a doctorate in philosphy and can cite chapter and verse the papers and speeches of last-century potentates in the field, but who still has the essence elude him, or is it the guy sitting on his car hood staring in wonder at the star filled night sky, who quietly encapsulates a million intellectual discussions with a mere, “Wow man, dat is so beautiful!” ?

Perhaps he is further ahead, having sidestepped the agonizing process of collecting, categorizing and being tested on all the thinking, current and past, on the unknowable. Perhaps such an individual knows intuitively the process leads nowhere and he already has as much an answer as he will ever get no matter how much it gets dressed up. Perhaps he was disappointed in grade 8 when he learned about Aristotle & Claudius Ptolemaeus. Disappointed in the slow progress of man, since it’s obvious to him that the unknowable remains so after two thousand years. Ask such a person in the street what his favourite movie is. The answer you are likely to get is probably Rocky or Rambo, movies that cause a visceral reaction in the common man unable to orate in intellectual circles about absolute nothingness, existentialism or a Kafkaesque ascetism.

Yes, it is true, many dilettentes submit atrocious pieces of cliched trash which, had they bothered to investigate is a bad rehash of something already done, but isn’t Hollywood sifting through that pile to find the gold in the mud? If it were as simple as going to school and learning a process then why isn’t that road taken a guarantee of success?

The education doesn’t tell someone what to write, it only tells them how. And after years of practicing the craft with admirable accreditation from institutions and guilds, after having written an Oscar worthy masterpiece, you still might stare blankly at an empty sheet, pondering the unknowable.

I read one of the WordPlay columns and it was pretty clear that the word ‘entitled’ is not one of Terry’s favourites. It is correct English and I am here to defend it. I completely understand the connotation that the article expressed very eloquently so in keeping with my new-found understanding I submit to you the following:

Dear Sirs, Please find closed a copy of my new screenplay titled ‘Terms of Dearment’.

Origninally I planned to say ‘entitled’ but have since become attuned to the prickly sensibilities of industry readers and decided to modify my language forthwith in respect thereof. I courage you to read it for its quick witticisms and double tendres. If you don’t find it tertaining I will respect the opinion to which you are titled. For your lightenment and greater joyment of the piece, I have employed a macro to remove all the offending word syllables beginning with ‘en’. Trusting that any missed ‘en’s in my text will not cause any undue mental anguish, I remain your faithful servant, the humble,

Harace T. Quadsmire

Earlier I posted this on Wordplay and it was immediately removed I guess for arguing grammar. I would quote a judge in Law & Order in my defense, “You opened the door so I am going to allow it. Objection overruled.” Also, it was only supposed to be funny, not mean spirited.

Of course (he said, speaking to the electronic equivalent of dead air), you also see the flip-side of the airy-fairy artiste. The “I’m-just-a-blue-collar-working-class-guy-at-heart” writer. You know the type. Sure, they might make a few million a year writing screenplays/mystery novels/Taiwanese snuff films but hey, they connect to the common people. They know these folks just want to be entertained after a hard week and that’s what they do what they do. Sure, those fancy-pants professors up in their ivory towers might frown down on them but blah blah blah yadda yadda yadda yadda… You know the rest.

I don’t know. It’s probably a reaction to all the la-de-dahness floating about it but hearing rich guys appropriate the language of class warfare does leave one a little cold. And I say this as a former postal worker who’s never forgotten where he’s come from (a gritty dying steel town in western Pennsylvania)….

Kevin:

Yeah, that’s fairly annoying too, although you see that far less now than you used to. At least…I see it less.

Christian Howell: **At any rate, from what I heard from insiders is that the strike may be exacerbated by the majority of writers who AREN’T working as they have nothing to lose.**

*I’ve never bought this line of reasoning. For the most part, writers who aren’t working are just as interested in working as their currently-working counterparts. If they aren’t, then it means they’ve likely opted out of the industry. There’s probably a few non-working writers who might vote for a strike out of a “I’ve got nothin’ to lose” mindset, but the idea that that mindset drives a strike is just implausible. Ted*

Thank you. No matter how many times the WGA purges its membership list for “inactive” members, this keeps popping up.

They the strike isn’t real because of non-working writers yet no one one goes around saying that a “no strike” vote doesn’t reflect the merits of the deal but is just a bunch of writers who have mortages or cocaine habits voting “yes” no matter what.