Behold The Boss

I think most of us realized who The Boss was but I’m really disappointed that no one answered “Tony Danza”.

We’ve been discussing The Audience in the last couple of posts and I suspect some of you may already know how truly terrifying The Audience is. Most people who actually work in this business know that you can never truly understand why The Audience likes or dislikes anything.

Test Screenings are hilarious (if it’s a movie you have nothing to do with) and heartbreaking (if your name appears before the title). I sat through a test screening for a Suzanne Delaurentis movie and when the audience told the moderator how much they hated the movie…she cried. I’ll never forget that image.

The Boss scares the hell out of me.

But I do love The Boss.

I like the boss … as a playwright, I deal with the boss, live and in person, constantly (I have a show running now) and I find the boss always appreciates when everyone does their job right.

Bear in mind I’m inexperienced enough that my optimism hasn’t been completely kicked out yet, but—to me—there’s no point in trying to anticipate the audience’s taste. The audience is beyond understanding. Just do what you think is good and hope that your tastes converge with the audience’s at some point. The best-case scenario is that you and the audience love the same thing. But if you fail to connect, well, I’d rather be responsible for a box-office failure like I Heart Huckabees than, to use someone else’s example, From Justin to Kelly.

Kevin, I’m not sure how much money Monster’s Ball made. I know it did pretty well, but I don’t think it was ever No. 1. Looking back, if you knew that changing certain elements would have appealed more to the audience’s taste—say, her son is in a coma throughout the movie and wakes up at the end—would you have done it?

jacob wasn’t the first person to say it was the audience, though, craig. sandra said that first.

This is the same boss that sometimes camps on the sidewalk for tickets? Far as I can tell, most people who work in the film industry today started out as part of the boss. So it’s a bit rich to complain about the boss booing, walking out, falling asleep, or pashing in the back row- Who here hasn’t done those things?

CW:

Who’s complaining? I mean, your comment was sort of the point I was making.

pashing!? is cw an ocker or a kiwi? or has that word found it’s way north of the equator … ?

MICHAEL:

I think that if the son woke up at the end I would have thrown my cup holder at the screen.

But you pretty much hit the nail on the head.

If you make a movie that you think you would like, a movie that you could watch late at night and kind of forget that you wrote it—then that’s the best way to go. And if the audience doesn’t see your movie you’ll at least feel confident that you did the best you could, as was the case with The Woodsman.

The more you make movies the more you realize that Marketing is much more important to the eventual success of your movie than Quality. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if an audience doesn’t see a movie it doesn’t necessarily make it bad. It just means that the audience didn’t see it. Even with your example of I Heart Huckabees, I actually hated it a lot more than From Justin to Kelly—probably because I expected a lot more from Huckabees.

The Blair Witch Project is a great example of how important Marketing is. The movie itself, in my opinion, is not very good. But the idea that this movie might actually be real is what brought that gross up to 146 million dollars. Even my wife at the time thought the movie was real. And with the help of the Sci-Fi Channel and the movie’s brilliant website, the Marketing of The Blair Witch Project really made that film POP.

If you look at the Box Office each week, the movie with the Best Quality usually isn’t the top grosser. The movie with the Best Marketing usually wins. And why would a Distributor put more faith in Marketing than Quality?

Because Quality is S-U-B-J-E-C-T-I-V-E.

When The Woodsman was at Sundance we got a standing ovation. Two days ago, I was at the gym and this girl came up to me and told me how much The Woodsman sucked.

True story.

Taste is subjective - quality of craft, be it acting or writing or lighting, is not. It either works or it doesn’t.

Taste is what is subjective. Some folks will like a character study about a pedophile - some are never gonna like it, no matter how well it’s done.

You repeat your mantra that quality is subjective and I’m going to repeat myself in telling you this - it’s not. Not at all, not even close. Only taste is. Craft is not subjective.

Otherwise, why are you passing on all those crappy scripts that are submitted to you every week? If quality is subjective, as you say, why not just pick one blindly out of the pile and film it, what difference does it make?

Because I pick what I like. That’s all I can ever do. If I think something should be a television show or a movie then I’ll try to make it. But when I’m doing it I already know that there are going to be people who are going to hate it.

And I totally agree with you when you say that Taste is subjective. But I wonder now if this is a case of semantics. The definition of Quality usually denotes a degree of excellence. But what I find excellent you may find shoddy. If you think that Godiva Chocolate is delicious then there will be an immediate and obvious coorelation to Quality. If you give a movie 4 Stars you think that the film has a certain excellent Quality. If I give that same movie 2 Stars, I obviously think that it is of less Quality than a movie that I would give 4 Stars too.

Are we talking about the same thing?

Nope.

Then I don’t know what to tell you.

But if you think that an audience can see Quality as an absolute as it pertains to film or television, you’re in for some real heartbreak.

And if you think quality is strictly and absolutely subjective, so are you.

Josh, I know nothing about Theatre. Nothing. Nada. Zippo.

I truly don’t know the exact process from start to finish. I don’t know what it’s like to get that immediate gratification from an audience 20 feet away from the stage.

You will school me on that every matinee of the week and 3 repeat performances on Sunday.

But when it comes to Film and Television, I’ve been at it for over 10 years now. I don’t know why you refuse to grasp certain concepts and I suspect that if I was as equally stubborn in the world of theatre, you’d be just as concerned for my future in that world.

One of the first things a working Screenwriter, or Director, or Producer will learn is that Quality is subjective. There is very little coorelation between Box Office grosses and Audience Attendance when it comes to Quality. Of the top ten movies of all time, I truly only think that 5 of the 10 was made with a certain quality. And if you ask the person to your right, he’ll probably disagree with me.

If Quality was an absolute then you should be able to mention 10 movies of Quality and then everybody has to agree. With no deviation. I don’t think you’re gonna find that.

In the world of Professional Screenwriting, you can only write what you, the author, think is good and interesting. That’s it. But if you think that it’s of a certain absolute Quality, you’re in for a real downhill battle.

Kevin and Josh:

You know, you might both be very interested in Zen & The Art Of Motorcyle Maintenance, if you haven’t read it yet. Ultimately, the book delves very seriously into this very question, which the author calls The Metaphysics of Quality.

I’ve read it, Craig, it’s a very good book. I used to own a motorcycle too, though when I lived in Iowa. Not too prudent to do in nyc.

And Kevin, if you think that there is no objective difference between good screenwriting and bad screenwriting, why are you on this website?

Because when you say things like Quality is subjective, that’s what you are saying, that there is no “good” or “bad” and in that sense, I disagree. There is good writing and there is bad writing. Good directing or bad. Good acting or bad.

It’s a construct, what we do, and there is a technique to it and definitely craftmanship. When you hint that there isn’t, it tends to frost me.

I think it’s a copout to say, “nobody knows what’s good.” There are loads of people producing films and television right now who are making decisions based on that very idea, that they know what is good.

When a writer goes into a meeting for a job, what the writer is saying is: I know what’s good.

What’s your take, Craig? If you go into pitch, are you telling them what you believe is good, quality work or are you saying, this is my taste but nobody really knows what quality is?

In terms of stories, well, taste is subjective, as I’ve said. Some folks love the comedy of Adam Sandler. I don’t, but I can certainly recognize that it’s a taste issue more than a construction issue. But I actually thought the idea of Bob Barker kicking the crap out of Sandler was a good idea, funny, and it’s no wonder it worked, even on me, someone who doesn’t get Sandler. I forget the film that happened in, but it worked. A well crafted joke.

We know that there is good and bad. We do. And that, in a sense, is what we strive for. Quality work.

If quality was strictly subjective, why work so hard? What difference does it make if I do one draft or fifteen drafts? Who cares if it’s formatted right?

Quality matters and that is not a subjective thing.

And as a side note, I don’t think it’s difficult to find ten movies that most everyone can agree are masterpieces of construction.

Usually the Godfather tops the list, Citizen Kane is on there somewhere and I bet Star Wars is mentioned.

Again, taste will always rear it’s subjective head in lists such as this, some folks won’t have anything to do with a violent movie (Goodfellas) no matter how well it was made and some have little patience with musicals (Wizard of Oz), like I do, or black and white films (Casablanca) that seem cliched’ these days.

But seeing that you’ve mentioned professional folks, people in the industry, I find it shocking that you think most movie people couldn’t find ten films that they could agree are good quality movies. Shoot, we do lists every year and hand out awards every year. What are the Oscars but a chance for the film workers to award the quality films of that year?

What about it, folks in the gallery? Are there not ten movies in our long history that we could agree are works of quality?

Hey, if the audience is the Boss, then does that make the studios the snarky Dave Spade-like receptionist?

I think it’s a good point made that worrying too much about what the audience will think can be a waste and an unnecessary anxiety producing experience.

That certainly doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t include some educated guesses about how they might respond when making the creative work or that we shouldn’t be willing to make some compromises to find something that is more than less likely to appeal to their taste.

• A

If I’m not mistaken (and Craig will correct me if I’m wrong), this website has more to do with the Business of Screenwriting and less than the Craft of Screenwriting. And that’s why I post on this website. There are a million websites that try to talk or even teach the craft of screenwriting and I’m not entirely sure that screenwriting can be taught via the internet.

There are certain things that we’ll all disagree on but I believe that most working screenwriters will all agree on the business of screenwriting; something I think is much more valuable than complaining about The Man.

When I say that Quality is subjective, I’m talking about many things. In this case I’m talking about how the audience views a film. Of course, the audience views the Quality of a film as subjective. How could they not? I don’t know anyone who thinks a movie absolutely sucked but sure admired the heck out of the Quality.

In the Business of Screenwriting, there are no absolutes; especially when it comes to quality.

I suspect that no one has posted 10 movies that we all can agree has superior quality for 2 reasons.

1. Nobody wants to play our little game.

2. An audience will not be able to agree on what movies are made with superior quality.

Hell, sometimes quality can even be dated. Remember those groundbreaking special effects from Terminator 2? Well one day those CGI effects will be dated and look pretty silly.

Kind of like the special effects in the first Terminator that everyone raved about.

Quality in screenwriting is a bit different. If you do the very best you can, then you can achieve a personal standard of Quality. And that’s all you can ever hope for. But here’s the real kicker:

When another pair of eyes look at your screenplay, they will find all sorts of holes and problems all over the place.

And that personal standard of Quality? It goes right out the window. Because another person doesn’t think your screenplay is as hot as you do. And if you’re a proper screenwriter you’ll be able to review your work and think, “Hmmm. Maybe this wasn’t as good as I thought.”

Which tends to happen in film. When I first saw Natural Born Killers, I hated the film. Hated. I hated the acting, I hated the cinematography, I hated the writing, and I hated the editing.

But then I watched it again on cable. And I loved it. Simply loved it.

And I can’t explain why.

If there were an absolute with audiences, a certain standard of Quality that everyone can agree on, it would revolutionize the entire entertainment business.

Executives would never be fired. Movies would never flop. Attendance would be through the roof. And bad movies would cease to exist.

But that would never happen.

Because a movie isn’t bad until an audience says it’s bad.

And if Craig, Ted, or Derek, or anyone else who makes a living as a screenwriter totally disagrees with my bold—I’ll shut up…

You’re confusing popularity and taste, which are certainly subjective, with craftmanship and quality, which are not.

A movie isn’t bad until an audience says it’s bad? Which audience? Who? It depends, right? Someone who loves musicals will not like Natural Born Killers and vice a versa, right?

Eli Roth told a story about a test screening for Hostel in which the audience was asked if they would recommend his movie to their friends. The answer was a resounding no. He stood up and asked if they would recommend the movie to their friends WHO THEY KNOW ARE HORROR FANS. The answer was a resounding YES.

As I mentioned, I don’t care for Adam Sandler movies. But certainly some of them have well constructed parts and will work no matter what (I cited the Bob Barker segment in Happy Gilmore) because they’re well constructed. They may not be to my taste, but that doesn’t mean they’re not of a certain quality for his audience.

What we do, in making this thing, it know if we constructed something well or not. Even if a story is not to my taste, I can tell if it was well put together because that’s what I’ve spent a large part of my life learning how to do and continue to do so. That’s what we’re all doing, isn’t it? Learning to tell stories well, and in this site, it’s learning to write movies WELL. That’s quality. It’s not absolute, to be sure, because we’re all working together with a bunch of other people and to be sure, Charlie Kaufmann constructs his scripts with more time and care than Adam Sandler, so they have differing levels of quality, but to say that quality is subjective and strictly in the eye of the beholder is misleading, to say the least.

As I mentioned, if it’s strictly subjective, why do more than one draft, why work it again and again, why even use spellcheck and the right format?

Because it’s the right way to do it well. And that’s the business of screenwriting, is it not?

You often mention how you like one movie and someone else didn’t like it as a measurement of its quality and I understand, that’s what an audience does. They make judgements from their POV based on taste, which is extremely subjective. But I’m positing that good writing and good storytelling is not subjective, it’s something we can all strive for as a common goal.

And it’s good business, too, we don’t always get to choose our projects to our taste.

We don’t always have that luxury, sometimes we have to pay the bills so we take the job writing the horror movie (as both Frank Darabount and Brian Hegeland have done in the Nightmare on Elm Street series) and write that movie - now, even though it may not be to our taste, can we not still constuct a script of quality that delivers to its intended audience?

I say we can.

I think the best dramaturgical advice I’ve ever read comes from Goethe and it can be applied to very nearly anything.

Goethe asked three questions: 1) What was the author’s intent? 2) How well was it done? 3) Was it worth doing?

By trying to understand what the author was trying to do you have a much better chance of having a reasoned discussion of the piece than starting off by asking “how did this make me feel?” because, as others have pointed out, the author has no idea or control over how anyone feels but themselves.

Looking at it another way, what’s the intent of an Adam Sandler movie? To make people laugh through frat-boy jokes. How well did they do that? In the case of the Wedding Singer, extremely well. Was it worth doing?

The last question is the doozy. Seeing as that the Wedding Singer was extremely popular and profitable, the answer is yes.

But Sandler aims for a wide audience base. As does Eli Roth. Where the last question gets tricky is the movies with a smaller intended audience base. In the case of Brokeback Mountain, the answer seems to be yes.

With other, less successful movies, it sometimes remains to be seen. As I’ve mentioned before, some movies (like Shawshank Redemption) fizzled out the gate only to be hugely popular later as a rental and cable staple. It took time to find their audience, but once it did, it worked and it certainly didn’t hurt Darabount’s career to do that movie. So it was worth doing. It was quality work.

Here’s the thing. I know a lot of people who thought that film was good even before it found it’s audience. They were surprised when it didn’t do well in its original run but not surprised when it was nominated for a boatload of awards and later became a huge rental and cable staple. They weren’t surprised because they knew it was quality work. Because quality is identifiable.

Again I say, quality is not subjective. Once you study enough of a subject, be it literature or music or painting or the martial arts, you should be able to recognize quality in that particular field when you see it. If not, why bother studying at all?

That’s why we’re here studying, in a sense, are we not? Isn’t this the reason we lay here on the artfulwriter and wordplayer and others, to learn from those who’ve done what we hope to do and then some?

“Charlie Kaufmann constructs his scripts with more time and care than Adam Sandler, so they have differing levels of quality…”

Now what exactly would make this a fact? By your standards, Charlie Kaufmann constructs his scripts with more time and care than Craig Mazin, simply because Craig wrote Scary Movie 3?

It doesn’t hold.

Especially when you talk about Martial Arts. I’ve been a Martial Artist since I was 9 and for the most part, America feels that Tae Kwon Do is the martial art with the most quality. As someone who does Shaolin Kung Fu and Muay Thai, we all feel Tae Kwon Do is the martial art with the least quality. The most ineffective.

I still say this is a game of semantics.

And I also believe this is one of the huge problems with awards. You believe that an Adam Sandler movie has less quality than a Charlie Kaufman movie. You believe that simply because you believe that. And what you believe isn’t a fact. It’s an opinion. It’s the notion that a popular film has less quality than an art house film.

And that’s nonsense.

But it is your opinion, which you certainly entitled to.

But it’s not a fact.

It’s the notion that a popular film has less quality than an art house film.

Nowhere in my post do I say this, nowhere - it is not my opinion and by stating it is, you’re representing my position falsely.

I’m talking about quality and craftmanship and it is semantics for you, it seems. No one else would argue that Adam Sandler movies are better constructed, story-wise, than Charlie Kaufmann films.

I don’t say that they are more entertaining, I don’t say that they are more profitable or even a better movie. I say that they are better constucted, story-wise.

And I base the Adam Sandler / Charlie Kaufmann comment on the fact that Kaufmann was awarded an Oscar for his efforts BY HIS PEERS and and nominated for two others, while not a single Sandler movie has been nominated for one. I base it partly on that. And also my own judgement on what works well and what doesn’t it terms of writing.

And I also state that Sandler’s films achieve a certain quality for their audience, which is why they are popular. But certainly he hasn’t always delivered for his audience, which is why Bulletproof tanked.

Nowhere to I compare Craig to Charlie (who also wrote for a sitcom called Ned & Stacy) and for the record, I find Scary Movie 3 the funniest of the bunch - I think that the Michael Jackson sequence in Scary Movie to be well constructed enough to make ANYONE laugh (except for maybe MJ) - even people who don’t care for silly movies - it works because it’s a quality sequence.

I’ve been involved in the martial arts over twenty-five years myself, and no one who’s done them for that long would argue that the quality of a punch is subjective. A punch either is well put or its not. It has it or it doesn’t. It has quality or it doesn’t. Those who study the arts know and those who don’t just go “whoa” - you should know that, a martial artist wouldn’t waste time saying the quality of a punch is subjective.

You seem to posit, again and again, that we should just all do what we want and not worry about quality because it’s subjective and it doesn’t matter, people will like what they like no matter what you do or how WELL you do it. That nobody really knows what quality is.

And you’re entitled to your opinon as well, but I believe it to be nonsense. Quality matters and it’s not subjective.

And for the record, I agree that Tae Kwon Do is one of the least effective of the fighting systems currently being marketing in America - I say this as someone who once taught it - I myself prefer Muay Thai and ju-jistu and traditional boxing, I think that there is much quality to be found in those systems and they achieve their intent more effectively.

Now Tae Kwon Do is more popular across the country and more profitable, as we know - but seeing as that both of us are more informed than the casual karate shopper, does that make us wrong because we prefer the less popular fighting system?

How does that fit into your hypothesis?

Josh:

I think we need our own television show.

Okay. I’m ready. I have at least three treatments ready to goal, complete with show bibles.

I’d watch it. :)

I agree with Kevin that a movie’s worth is entirely based on the audience’s appreciation of it. In that regard, I’m a pop culture relativist.

On the other hand, Joshua is correct to intuit that there must be some substance that drives our evaluations of quality, and whatever that substance is…call it qualitrons…even if some people see more qualitrons in something than other…qualitrons must exist.

So what the hell are qualitrons? Are they inherent in the art itself? Are they a product of the patron/art interaction?

Hmm. Difficult question. It literally drove Robert Pirsig insane. :) I’ll only say this: I believe that I’m more in tune with my audience than not. Since that’s more important to me than the metaphysical basis of quality, I punt on the philosophy and stick to making boys and girls between 10 and 20 years old laugh.

‘Quality’ is as vague a term as the word ‘thing’. Maybe it would be best to expand the vocabulary a little and use terms such as intelligence, insightfulness, originality, inventiveness, uniqueness, etc., and see how screenplays score in those areas.

I don’t think you stopped at 20 year olds, Craig. I about pissed myself laughing during the MJ sequence, and I left 20 awhile ago.

a movie’s worth is entirely based on the audience’s appreciation of it

True if by worth you mean the commercial value of a film. But definitely wrong if by the term you mean the cultural and creative value. Many great films, books and other works of creation have been totally ignored by their contemporary audiences.

That said, the opposition ideologies is not commercial versus non-commercial/artistic creations. The opposition is really between writing from within versus writing from without. Although I respect those writers who perceive and define themselves as entertainers, I, myself, don’t write to entertain. I don’t write for an audience.

My work may or may not generate a readership. If it does, great. If it doesn’t, great again.

And I don’t think we’re wrong for prefering Muay Thai.

We just like our kicks to actually mean something.

Kevin Arbouet -

It’s not precisely on topic, but you have been talking about The Woodsman.

What ever happened to Hannah Pilkes? With a movie like that to start with, I thought her career would be in orbit by now. God knows I’d cast her in something if I had the chance. It was among the most stuning performances by a young actor I’ve ever seen. And yet IMDB Pro doesn’t report her doing anything else.

What’s the news?

Jesse:

It’s so funny you asked me that. I was just talking to her mother a couple of days ago.

I actually cast her in a small role for a film I just produced, I Believe in America.

She truly is amazing and she was even nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. But her lack of work comes down to her genetics. It’s almost as if someone shot her with a growth ray…

Hannah is only 13 years old and she’s now 5’7” feet tall!!

That’s her biggest problem. She can’t really go out for things in her age range and if she goes out for older roles, she’s up against 17-25 year olds. It’ll take some time but I think it will all catch up…

She’ll be so excited that someone asked about her!

smiles

Thanks for the update.

I have a documentary I’m directing first, (we start in three months), but after that comes a feature I wrote, Guru Trap —- A Twisted Love Story. Hopefully we’ll be ready to go with GT in about three years, while Hannah is still age-appropriate for one of the four leads.

I know we only got to see her for one film, but in my view, she was as wonderful as the young Claire Danes, Natalie Portman, or Reese Witherspoon in their debuts. I’m very glad to hear she has a part in your new movie, and also, frankly, glad to hear she’s very tall, as the role I want her for calls for a very tall girl. Selfish, I know, but, so it goes.

Thanks again for the update.

Craig:

Qualitron?

It makes sense to me. :)

You duped me Craig. Pure and simple.

I feel used.

Exxxxxxxxcellent.

I’m kind of late to this discussion, but I just wanted to say that all blog entries should be required by law to start with the phrase “Jacob Sager Weinstein is such a smartie.”

That is all.