John August

QandA

How ScriptShadow hurts screenwriters

Film Industry, Projects, Rights and Copyright

[There is an update to this post here.]

Earlier this year, a blogger going by the name Carson Reeves began reviewing screenplays on a site called ScriptShadow. These aren’t scripts for existing movies, but rather screenplays to upcoming films — ones in production, ones in development, ones in limbo.

A recent Wired magazine article by Scott Brown discusses his intentions:

[Reeves] says he wanted to celebrate the writer, promote talented unknowns (aren’t most screenwriters pretty much unknowns?), and acquaint newbie scribes with the art of the craft. “I’ve had so many emails from writers all over the world thanking me for making Hollywood feel closer and less intimidating,” he says. “It’s particularly appealing to amateur screenwriters who want to know what’s selling. You have to realize that this is information they’ve wanted for years but just didn’t have access to.”

That’s not really the case. Aspiring screenwriters have always had access to this material the same way Reeves apparently got access to it: by working and interning in the industry.

In between answering phones and trying to get their bosses on flights out of Kennedy, bright underpaid aspirants have the opportunity to read almost every script in town. Impromptu networks of assistants pass around their favorite screenplays, in the process picking the next generation of hot writers.

Studios turn a blind eye to this because it helps the industry. You want the smartest people with the best opinions working for you, and you want them to have a good sense of what’s in development all over town. A boss at Disney isn’t going to lose sleep if an intern at CAA reads a draft of that Miley Cyrus comedy. It’s expected. It’s good.

So ScriptShadow should be a good thing, right? More is better.

It’s not. And the reasons become clear pretty quickly.

There’s a big difference between reading a script and reviewing it online for the world to see. Not only are you spoiling plot details, but you’re establishing a baseline judgment for a project that’s often still in its fetal phase.

Brown’s article is alarmingly upbeat on this point:

Scriptshadow is the logical next step in our increasingly impatient attitude toward the delivery of entertainment. We’ve seen the sun set on the medieval Age of Professional Reviews, the rise of the populist recap, and the boom of real-time in-theater Twitter. The precap, however, trumps them all. It’s the kind of access Tinsel-trolls like me have been jonesing for since the ’90s, when Ain’t It Cool News hooked us with preemptive trashings of preview screenings. ((More than impatience, I think it speaks to a culture of entitlement: “It’s not fair I have to wait until a movie is out to know what happens.” Or, “It’s not fair that only Hollywood people get to read these scripts.” Guess what? It is fair. Fair doesn’t mean you get whatever you want.))

And here’s the rub: just like the AICN reviews of screenings made studios much more reluctant to test their films, sites like ScriptShadow are making them clamp down much harder on the heretofore common practice of passing scripts around.

This isn’t theoretical. It’s happening now.

Ruining it for writers

Earlier this year, I worked on a rewrite of a potential tent-pole movie in development at Fox. A week into my writing, ScriptShadow posted a review (since removed) of an earlier draft of the same project. It was largely laudatory, but the studio went ballistic. I don’t know what pressure they put on ScriptShadow to get the review taken down, but I was suddenly given extraordinary restrictions on exactly who could read the script. I couldn’t send it to the director, the producers or anyone other than one executive at the studio. These were by far the most restrictive terms of any film I’ve written at any studio.

Keep in mind, this wasn’t X-Men or Avatar. It was one of two dozen movies that could maybe someday get greenlit. Fox legal was willing to go to war over a movie it might not even make.

The more often sites like ScriptShadow poke that hornet’s nest, the bigger the reaction is going to be. The revised terms — I couldn’t even send the draft to my agent — may become the norm. Assistants will get fired for sharing scripts. In the long run, it will be crippling for the industry, and screenwriters will suffer most:

  • Screenwriters get hired based on the last few things we wrote, and if those are sealed in vaults, we’re screwed. I got my second writing assignment (A Wrinkle in Time) based on the script to my first assignment, a project that was still in active development. If that script had been locked down, I might not have gotten another job.

  • If I can’t get feedback from trusted readers about the script I’m writing, it won’t be as good. Period.

  • Pretty soon, blame for one of these “leaks” is going to be aimed back at the actual writer, and how would she defend herself? If I leave my iPhone or laptop unattended for sixty seconds, it would be nothing for someone to send himself one the drafts I’ve emailed to myself as backup.

I don’t want to have to write in a Fox office, on a Fox computer. But that could very easily be the future.

A better tomorrow

Several screenwriter friends have emailed Reeves, asking him to take down reviews of their scripts. Every time, he has. So I believe Reeves when he says he wants to help writers. Here are two ways he can do it:

  1. Review scripts of movies once they’ve come out. Most of the scripts aiming for awards this season have freely-available .pdfs, and Reeves’ own contacts should enable him to get ahold of the ones that aren’t. Shining a spotlight on the scripts and their screenwriters would genuinely help readers see how the words on the page were translated to the screen.

  • Ask writers before posting a review. No doubt some screenwriters benefit from getting their spec scripts mentioned, just as the Black List has helped draw attention to worthy writers. As long as Reeves checks in with the writer first — making sure that a review wouldn’t derail a deal in the works — everyone benefits.

    • Other sites publish script reviews. The reason I’m singling out ScriptShadow is that its owner genuinely seems to have some sense of responsibility to its readers and the screenwriting community. Hell, it uses Scrippets, so it can’t be all evil.

    I’m hoping that by setting the bar higher, ScriptShadow can stop hurting the screenwriters it claims to celebrate.

    Startups and slippery facts

    Film Industry, International, Screenwriting Software

    I cut startups a lot of slack. Innovation and entrepreneurship rely on some suspension of disbelief: we’ll be able to make this product, on this schedule, at this price. Google was once a pipe dream, as were Twitter and Facebook. Dream big, I say.

    But since I was name-checked twice in this interview from Wharton School of Business, I feel some responsibility to point out a few fallacies and follies.

    When the Writers Guild of America went on strike in 2007, it looked as if Hollywood’s balance of power favoring big, money-hungry studios would never be the same again. To some extent, that’s the case, but not necessarily in the way the striking screenwriters expected. The growing popularity of free, web-based writing software — available to anyone, anywhere — is breaking down the barriers to entry of the screenwriting profession as never before, says Sunil Rajaraman, co-founder, president and CEO of Scripped.com. As he tells it, the urgent mission for his California-based screenwriting software startup couldn’t be clearer, yet more daunting: Change Hollywood.

    I met with Sunil and his partner Zak Freer (a Starkie) in 2007 when they were coming up with their concept for Scripped. I gave them a few suggestions and wished them luck.

    In particular, I hoped they could fulfill the international aspect to their mission:

    We combine cloud computing and web-based software to provide free access to Scripped.com to aspiring writers worldwide, to find the next John August. He or she might be in Thailand, China or India — not necessarily in Los Angeles, which is the way the film industry has traditionally thought about sourcing this kind of talent.

    Their site is up and running. I haven’t really checked in with it for the past two years. But it annoys me to see Rajaraman recycle this Hollywood urban legend as proof his software is needed.

    Two problems are solved with web-based screenwriting software. The first is collaboration. Many of the scripts of the films we see in movie theaters have undergone dozens of rewrites before they make it to the screen. For example, for the original of Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck put the screenplay together with more anecdotal stories about South Boston and friends they grew up with. Characters were eliminated from the screenplay and it underwent a very detailed rewriting process. Who knows how many writers had their hands on that screenplay before it was made — and it eventually won an Oscar.

    So, wait: does the untrue story about rewriters on Good Will Hunting mean your collaboration software is good thing, or a bad thing? Rajaraman is taking one of the few actual advantages of of web-based screenwriting software — real-time multiple users on an open document — and making it sound unsavory.

    The second problem online software solves is access to writers. If you give the software away for free — it is very cheap to provide the software — you can attract all sorts of talent that would have otherwise not been interested in screenwriting.

    There are many free or low-cost options for screenwriting software, including the basic word processors everyone already has on their computers. I wrote Go in Microsoft Word. Screenwriting software is useful, but hardly necessary.

    For that matter, both of the flagship applications cost less than $200. When the price of an iPod will buy you all the software you need, that’s a very low barrier to entry.

    The Writers Guild West consists of about 15,000 writers, a very small group. The average price in Hollywood for a feature-length script from an accomplished writer is US$250,000. These writers have to protect the system, and the system exists to provide for them. Because Scripped aggregates talent worldwide and brings new content to producers, it is a threat to the way business is currently done.

    WGAw membership is closer to 8,000. I don’t know where Rajaraman is pulling the $250,000 figure, but he’s committing the classic mistake of confusing a script sale with a career. In 2007, median earnings for a WGA writer were $104,857.

    Hollywood pays roughly US$1.2 billion a year for feature-length scripts. So point one, producers are not necessarily getting the most talented writers to write those scripts. And, two, they are overpaying for those scripts. We aim to democratize the process, cut the cost and increase the talent pool of writers who have access to the Hollywood studio system and elsewhere.

    I emailed Rajaraman to ask about the $1.2 billion, but I think he’s off by at least a zero. ((Update: Rajaraman says he’s basing that on $30 billion in worldwide film production costs, with 3% to 5% going to the writer. He will try to get the article updated. It still doesn’t help make his point.)) Regardless, I can’t fathom how that proves producers are overpaying for less-talented writers.

    I don’t know that there’s a viable business model for Scripped. I still wish them luck; I’m not rooting against them by any means. But they do themselves a disservice by misrepresenting the facts behind the motion picture industry and the career of screenwriting.

    Through my work with the Sundance Screenwriting Labs, I’ve experienced that the best way to extend the craft of screenwriting to other countries is through example and outreach. The Labs does it with in-country sister programs. I do it with this site, trying to make sure my articles acknowledge the wider world beyond the 30-mile zone.

    But I’m also very leery of trying to promote screenwriting as a career separate from the greater film industry. The reason most screenwriters live in Los Angeles is because this is where Hollywood movies are developed, financed and produced. Software doesn’t change that.

    Zombie-class situations

    Genres

    Zombies are more than the walking dead. They’re a useful paradigm for a range of common scenarios in many genres.

    Whenever your hero is facing off against a system or mob rather than an individual, that’s potentially a zombie-class situation. Any given opponent isn’t necessarily that formidable; it’s the sheer numbers that make it so difficult for the hero.

    War movies are frequently zombie-class, as are comedies about plucky outsiders. Science-fiction and horror revel in zombie-class situations, from the Borg to the Visitors to those troublesome tribbles.

    If you find yourself writing a zombie-class situation, here are some helpful class features to keep in mind:

    • You can’t fight the ocean. In a zombie-class situation, heroes ultimately won’t get far trying to defeat their opponents, who have the advantage of both numbers and replaceability. Rather, your hero must set an achievable goal such as escape, survival, or retrieval of a key asset.

    • Ants vs. Elephants. It’s great to be big, but it’s better to be numerous. Just as heroes will often rally a crowd, opponents can do the same — popular opinion is a hard thing to fight. And look for ways to use your hero’s size (or reputation) against him.

    • Zombie processes. In programming, zombies are bits of code that unintentionally keep running in the background, sucking cycles and threatening a crash. That’s a useful framework for many stories: noble intentions run amok. Just as every villain is a hero, every zombie was somebody’s baby.

    • One of us. In the Romero tradition, zombies eat brains. But this can be generalized to assimilation: your hero has something the opponents need. Can your hero figure out what they’re after — what makes the hero special — before it’s too late?

    A zombie-class situation is a key difference between Alien and Aliens.

    In the former, Ripley and company mostly battle a single creature. Survival means killing it, so that’s pretty much the only goal.

    In the sequel, the aliens are so numerous that there is no hope of defeating them. Rather, Ripley’s goal is simply escape. Once Newt is captured, Ripley must face off against the Queen, but defeating her in no way impacts the hordes of aliens left behind.

    That’s how zombie-class situations often end: the hero’s victory leaves the world just as dangerous as before.

    Burn it down

    Psych 101, Story and Plot

    You wouldn’t splash gasoline on the walls of your home, then toss a few matches while strolling out the door. In real life, this kind of willful destruction is criminal.

    In fiction, it’s crucial.

    As the writer, you need to burn down houses. You need to push characters out of their safe places into the big scary world — and make sure they can never get back. Sure, their stated quest might be to get home, but your job is to make sure that wherever they end up is a new and different place.

    Writers tend towards benevolence. We love our characters, and want to see them thrive. So it can be hard to accept that what our hero actually needs is to have everything taken away, be it by fire, flood, divorce or zombie uprising. No matter the story, no matter the genre, we need to find ways to strip characters of their insulating bubbles of normalcy.

    The Fire (or other catastrophe) often occurs as an inciting incident, setting the wheels of plot in motion. In The House Bunny, Anna Faris’s character is kicked out of the Playboy Mansion by page 10. In Gladiator, Russell Crowe’s family is killed.

    Just as often, The Fire signals the end of the first act. In Star Wars, Luke returns home to find his aunt and uncle dead. In 9 to 5, the trio of secretaries has inadvertently kidnapped their boss. There’s no going back to the way things were.

    But The Fire can work just as well later in the story, effectively burning bridges characters have just crossed. Three of my upcoming projects feature second-act or third-act Fires that not only keep the momentum going, but also remind the audience of the scale and stakes. ((There’s something uniquely cinematic about destroying a giant set. A TV show, no matter its ambitions, generally has to protect its standing sets until at least the end of a season.)) Late fires ward off complacency in everything from The Dark Knight to Revenge of the Nerds.

    It’s easy to think of dozens of great movies that never really burn the house down. But the better exercise is to look at your own scripts and ask, (a) what could burn, and (b) why haven’t I lit it on fire?