John August

fixed

Things that get caught in the spam filter

QandA

The new version of WordPress has Akismet spam filtering, which does a remarkably good job weeding out spam comments. Occasionally, it flags something that is so tantalizing that it really should be shared with the world:

Dear sirs.
It is my pleasure to inform you that I have written a sexual screenwriting ,(It is about a widow that she desirs to have a sex with her neighbour’s son and finally she successes..).
If you deal this kind of screenwriting please contact to me or introduce sites & agencies that deal sexual screenwriting or how I can sell my screenwriting.
I am waiting for your kind anwer.

I don’t know where to begin.

Of course grammar matters

QandA, Words on the page

questionmarkThere is a question I’d like to ask. Regarding grammar on screenplays, how important is it to film companies, producers, studios, etc. I was under the impression, grammar can’t be filmed, so ? Your thoughts.

— Frederick

I’m generally of the school that there are no dumb questions, but I think your question is dumb enough to merit front-page attention. It’s also functionally ungrammatical, which gives it a nice bonus for irony.

Of course grammar matters.

It’s bizarre and saddening that aspiring screenwriters will agonize about the perfect margins and the proper number of brads (two), without ever considering whether a question mark might be appropriate at the end of a question. Or inappropriate at the end of a vaguely declarative statement.

True, grammar can’t be filmed. But scripts are read by people, not cameras. And people deserve the best writing you can muster. That means matching your subjects and verbs, watching your tenses, and practicing careful punctuation.

Bear in mind: as grammarians go, I’m pretty lenient. English is not Latin, and many of the so-called mistakes are really just the opinions of stubborn jerks.

But wrong is wrong. And yes, it matters.

Your question was originally posted in the comments section of another entry. A helpful reader pointed you to my lengthy missive on professionalism, which unfortunately did not meet your needs:

It didn’t answer the question. It made a vague reference to presentation and professionalism. Which means, studios, producers will assume it’s great. This is really an annoying question because it puts people on the spot about their education, grammar is at all time low in America and no one wants to discuss it. I hope I’m not dropping a bomb here.[…] He was aiming for inspiration. Inspiration isn’t an answer.

If I ever start a line of subtly demoralizing t-shirts, I now have my first slogan: “Inspiration isn’t an answer.”

Geek Help Wanted: The missing sidebar

Geek Alert

Being a Mac user, I’m spoiled with Safari and Firefox, and happily assume that the rest of the world has it so good.

A kind reader wrote in to let me know that the sidebar isn’t showing up on Internet Explorer 6 or 7 for Windows. This means readers stuck with IE (at work, for example), aren’t seeing the search box, or any of the sections.

I’ve been willing to accept that the brad logo looks shitty on Windows (a .png issue). But lack of navigation?

This will not do.

I’ve poked around a bit, and tried the usual “make-it-validate” tricks, but haven’t cracked it. And I wouldn’t know if I did, since I don’t have a PC to test it on.

So if you’re a web-geeky reader with access to IE and some free time, and feel like pulling the source of this page to figure out why IE isn’t handling it as expected, I’d love to know. You’ll get a big shout-out from me, and good karma to boot.

UPDATE: A big thanks to Matthew Pennell and Andy for their suggestions. If you’re reading this on IE, please let me know if the changes so far have fixed the situation.

UPDATE #2: Here’s where we stand. Apparently, the sidebar now loads properly on IE 6 and 7 beta. I’ve set it so the brad logo doesn’t even show up on IE 6 (it was part of the problem), but appears normally on IE 7 beta.

Please let me know if this is not the case. And thanks to all of you for your help.

If a trade paper has a blog, is it still a trade?

Rant

Question: Would The Hollywood Reporter sneak into Sony Pictures late at night, grab the director’s rough cut of a new movie, then publish a review of it the next morning?

No. They’d lose all credibility and respect of the filmmakers and studio folks who constitute their readership. There would be outrage.

Instead, The Hollywood Reporter (like its fellow “trade” newspaper, Variety) waits to review movies in their finished form — or at least, in a public screening, such as a film festival. The reviews aren’t always positive, but the circumstances surrounding the review are fair.

Would The Hollywood Reporter run a review of a script in production?

Highly doubtful. To my knowledge, they’ve never done so. Likely, that’s because they recognize what a disservice that is to the filmmakers. Movies change significantly over the course of production. Reviewing the screenplay while the movie’s in production would be (in my opinion) worse than reviewing a rough cut, because it’s not acknowledging the role the director, actors and other departments play.

So I was concerned to see this entry in the Hollywood Reporter’s blog:

Thanks to Stax, IGN FilmForce’s resident Bond maven, for this link to a description of the new James Bond script. If you don’t want to read the spoilers, don’t go there!

If you followed the link to IGN, you’d see it’s actually another link to Latino Review, which has the actual article. To be clear: The Hollywood Reporter blog didn’t publish a review of the script. They published a link, which in turn led to another link.

Still, this seemed pretty unusual for The Hollywood Reporter. So I called Anne Thompson, the deputy editor whose picture runs alongside the text on the blog. We had a good conversation about her decision to include the piece, and the challenging distinction between capital-J journalism and what happens on the internet. She was thoughtful and forthright, and ultimately revised the piece to remove the link — one of the real benefits of the digital age.

I consider that specific issue resolved, and thank Anne for attending to it so quickly.

Part of the reason the issue resonated for me is that I’m in the middle (okay, beginning) of writing a public lecture that I’m giving in a few weeks as Trinity University. I had to announce my lecture title months ago, so I picked: “Professional Writing and the Rise of the Amateur.” And this is certainly a good example.

It is easy to empathize with the frustrations of a professional journalist who gets “scooped” by film geeks still in high school. Writing under a pseudonym at Ain’t It Cool News, YoMamasBeeeotch can spill all the dirt on an upcoming James Cameron project, without the burdens of truth, accuracy or grammar. When criticized, these writers generally fall back on the defense of, “I’m not a professional journalist! I’m just a fan who wants great movies!”

The central question of my lecture — for which I don’t currently have a meaningful answer — is what does it mean to be a professional writer? It can’t just be getting paid, because in the age of AdSense, the blogger can out-earn the reporter. It’s not the size of the readership, because many blogs attract more eyeballs than traditional papers do.

My hunch is that the distinction between professional and amateur lies in the implied contract between writer and reader. The professional writer is promising a certain level of accuracy, consistency and forthrightness.

That’s why I chafed at seeing that link in The Hollywood Reporter, when I wouldn’t have blinked an eye if it were in CHUD. But these are murky times.