My Taskmaster, My Friend

Ah, I do love a good Monty Python reference.

During a rather laborious recent re-writing period, the notes from our the project’s new boss started out brilliant and grew progressively more moronic with each rewrite.

Was the script “perfect”? Of course not. But her notes stopped addressing the script’s real problems and became increasingly nit-picky, irrelevant and, plainly, stupid.

And, no, we hadn’t yet been paid to do any of it.

It’s great to be pushed hard by a coach (or task-master) who knows what they’re doing and who has a definitive goal in mind - but it’s pure hell to be pushed by someone who doesn’t know the game and is pushing simply because they see it as their job to push, whip and scream with no real goal in sight - and it’s unproductive as hell.

I find that I’m my greatest Taskmaster. At what point do I, an aspiring writer, let it out into the world? At what point do I quit Taskmastering myself?

I’m confused, are we talking about sex or writing?

There’s a great scene in the movie “Julia” when Jason Robards (as a famous Dashiell Hammett) tells Jane Fonda (as an unknown Lillian Hellman) to throw in the towel if she’s so tired of his endless notes on her drafts. He says something like, the hell with it then. Nobody’s out there waiting for your work. Anyway, it’s just the kick in the ass she needs. I think the play in question was her first hit, “The Children’s Hour.” It might be easier to swallow were the Taskmaster a world famous writer himself.

I can so relate to this. And having been in a creative partnership for ten years with the ultimate Taskmaster ( intelligent, constructive, ruthless, honest and nurturing), I know without the shadow of a doubt that my scripts wouldn’t be where they are today without her.

I also realized that the suggestions I resist the most are often the ones that ultimately will take the script to a new level. In fact, when I find myself fighting energetically against a note, I take a break to consider why I’m so defensive about this particular one. Often, not always but often, I come to understand that the note resonated somehow with a nagging yet unexpressed feeling I’ve had about the very aspect of the script it addressed; the note then is the verbalisation of that feeling. And was I was really fighting wasn’t the note, but myself.

To complete what I wrote above and about the “stupid” or irrelevant notes, which I received at times from people outside my partnership. Irrelevant or stupid notes have little of no effect on me.

When I know someone is wrong, I’m very much at peace. I don’t waste time fighting them. Instead, I work with them through the consequences of the implementation of their notes and, if they’re intelligent, more often than not, they themselves dismiss them.

Daniel wrote:

Often, not always but often, I come to understand that the note resonated somehow with a nagging yet unexpressed feeling I’ve had about the very aspect of the script it addressed; the note then is the verbalisation of that feeling. And was I was really fighting wasn’t the note, but myself.

That’s exactly it. We’re fighting ourselves more often than we realize.

As they say, “Diamonds are made under pressure.”

To me, the notes are in direct proportion to the respect of the material and the writer as a business partnership.

I’ve never received a note where I didn’t want to uncover the “why.”

Beware the person who declares him or herself a taskmaster at the outset and promises you a hard time. That person is an idiot.

Actually, the Dialectic Method was first devised by Plato in his famous “Dialogues.” Hegel did indeed break it into the unending “Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis” process.

Dialectics is also the base of Marxism and the philosopies and economic/social systems derived from it—this, of course, explains the Soviet-like mentality of most producers and studio execs.

Hegel’s dialectic is very different from Plato’s dialogues.

Hegel’s dialectic is not the base of Marxism. It is the base of Dialectic Materialism, which states that every economic system creates it’s own contradiction that will eventually overcome it and bring about the following economic system. For example, the feudal in France created the economic class ( the bourgeoisie ) and the conditions ( changes in the means of production ) that lead to the French revolution ( it’s not actually that simple, but that’s pretty much the essence of it).

Dialectic materialism remains valid whether it is applied to the study of capitalism, or imperialism, it’s ultimate stage, or any other economic system.

It can also be shown that the Soviet system was not communism as defined by Marx’s work, but…

… all that has nothing to do with Craig’s post, which uses Hegel’s dialectic (not Plato’s or anyone else’s) as a representation of the dynamics of collaboration in the film industry. Or did I get that wrong?

DL

In other words… When someone points out something worth looking at, better focus on what it is that is pointed out than on the finger. :)

DL

I’m with you, Daniel. It’s improper to call Plato’s “dialogues” dialectical, for they basically took the form:

Socratic antagonist: “A is true!”

Socrates: “Something clever bringing A into doubt”

Socratic antagonist: “Well, gosh. Um. Guess that’s right. There’s no resisting the power of your logic, O great Socrates. I submit!”

Basically, the were a foil for some point Plato wanted to drone on about. Honestly, they were the most silly things imaginable. Or to view it another way: a classic case of shitty dialogue. Hardly dyanmic in the sense Craig was referring to.

Lee

Fine line between taskmastering and petty ‘forever mood changing’ micromanagement. Sometimes the ‘script’ is actually better before, but all sorts of concepts that come into play, audience testing results, commercialization, differing visions of the story made to merge. A good script itself isn’t the end all. Sometimes a ‘not as good as can be’ is actually the best. No such thing as a perfect world. Always a ‘first draft’ until it’s shot. Taskmaster as mentor works. Taskmaster as inept bureaucrat, well…

I think the audience should provide the antithesis. That way we have to say one step ahead of them with the plot.

I think the audience should provide the antithesis.

Isn’t that what they call test screenings?

DL

Okay, fuck it…

Daniel, your synthesis of Hegel connects to a lot that has been registered in this Blog. Namely:

It is the base of Dialectic Materialism, which states that every economic system creates it’s own contradiction that will eventually overcome it and bring about the following economic system.

Or, in more general terms:

It is the base of the Dialectic, which states that every *system* creates it’s own contradiction that will eventually overcome it and *bring about the downfall of that very system.*

Now, this is provoking from two perspectives I can think of:

1) To what extent does Craig’s “Taskmaster” subvert, rather than promote his goal? Or, what is the goal?

2) To what extent does a previously mentioned philospher’s statement, “That the highest values devaluate themselves,” offer an interpretative lens to this dynamic?

lt

Once again, let me point out…

…I have the best commenters in the blogosphere. :)

I think Daniel and Lee are correct. Platonic discourse is more tutorial in nature. Socrates knows the truth, and by quizzing the less-enlightened, he leads them to greater understanding.

Truths are not subverted and overcome.

In the give and take of collaborative creativity, yesterday’s words that were chiseled in stone are today’s rubble.

I have the best commenters in the blogosphere.

Commenters are only as good as their blogger. Or, to use this topic’s terminology, only as good as their taskmaster. :)

In the give and take of collaborative creativity, yesterday’s words that were chiseled in stone are today’s rubble.

I’m putting that one on my desktop screen near Terry’s “Never Wait.”

I have the best commenters in the blogosphere.

Commenters are only as good as their blogger. Or, to use this topic’s terminology, only as good as their taskmaster. :)

In the give and take of collaborative creativity, yesterday’s words that were chiseled in stone are today’s rubble.

I’m putting that one on my desktop screen near Terry’s “Never Wait.”

This may have been addressed:

What if you have more than one taskmaster - and they don’t agree?

I like taskmasters, they go to great lengths to make sure the material’s better, which only makes me look better. How can you argue with that?

But when you have several taskmasters, and you are tossed into the lion’s den of their conflicting notes, what is the protocol?

Thanks.

My experience, Bill, is that the biggest gorilla gets his way. My problem with this whole Taskmaster thing is that simply being a taskmaster doesn’t guarantee the talent to make improvements.

The taskmaster-producer with whom I’ve had the longest relationship has caused me to beat my head against the wall many a time, but he can drive a script to its basic form in three drafts or less. Everything after that is tightening and pointing-up, but it’s like he can see the shape within the stone when even the writer hasn’t found it yet.

On the other hand I’ve had people who keep sending you back to the keyboard again and again, and along the way you have that helpless feeling of watching your destination slide by. A large number of drafts isn’t a measure of a producer’s heroic striving, as some of them would like to believe. It’s a reflection of the quality of the notes.

Bill:

One of the things I have always insisted on, since my rookie days, is that I receive one unified set of notes. I don’t mind several taskmasters, but I refuse to write one word until they all agree.

Anything less is unprofessional on their part, and they generally recognize this once confronted with it.

who was it that said ‘art is never finished, it’s just abandoned’? agree. it can always (always) be improved