TOUGH LOVE SCREENWRITING -- PART TWO

"DEVELOPMENT HELL"

By John Jarrell

Back in the Nineties, I wrote a Horror spec called The Willies.  It was essentially Carrie with Evil Twins.  People are constantly abusing and shitting on these orphans, until at last, after making a pact with the devil, they take their bloody revenge.

My agent went out with it and immediately got a shamelessly low-ball preemptive bid from a smaller studio in town.  By that point in my life, my dream of becoming a legitimate screenwriter was nearing extinction.  I'd been struggling in L.A. for four years, was stone-cold broke, about to lose my apartment, and my girlfriend and I were subsisting solely on the 49-cent value menu at Taco Bell.  Facing even more of that ugliness, I did what struggling young writers have to do sometimes -- I sucked it up and took the dogshit money, simply glad to survive and hopeful I would live to fight another day.

First day working, I go into a story meeting with the company's "Creative" VP and Head of Development.  We dug in and spent several hours doing notes starting Page One -- discussing what they thought worked, what didn't, and what I'd need to address in my rewrite.

At one point, the VP looks up at me and says, "Wow, John.  This description on page 52 is really good writing.  Would you mind reading it out loud?" Flattery will get you everywhere with a screenwriter, and I'm sure I flushed slightly with pride as I found the page and paused to clear my throat.

The set up was simple -- a grieving daughter (our protagonist) looking through her deceased mother's belongings, which have all been boxed up and stored in the attic.  The beat offered a brief respite from all the genre action, gave us a further glimpse into her character, and prompted her discovery of an important clue at the end.  

This was the description I wrote, verbatim --

"She rifles several of the boxes, finding little more than old letters and checkbook stubs, key chains and their forgotten keys.  The meaningless remnants of our too brief lives."

There was a long pause after I finished.  The VP and Head of Development were nodding their heads in synchronized approval.  Then the VP says -- 

"Yeah, it's really great.  Great stuff." 

(HARD BEAT) 

"Lose the poetry, John, cut it all out.  It's slowing down the script."

I'd never been quite so close to publicly crapping my pants.  Did he just say LOSE... THE... POETRY?  a.k.a. LOSE THE GOOD WRITING?  Wantonly kill off two short sentences -- two sentences he actually likes -- which perfectly sell the moment?  And replace them with what, Mr. Hemingway?  "She opens her dead mom's shit and finds a mysterious clue!"

Like every indignant scribe during the century before me, I sat masked in a queasy half-smile, cerebral cortex locking up.  Surely "development" couldn't be like this everywhere?  Surely this exec must be a nutter, a lone gunman of sorts, some soulless script assassin who didn't value lightweight artistry over the groan-inducing stock lines which had stupefied readers for decades?

Nope.  He wasn't the slightest bit insane.  In fact, Mr. Company VP was the Gold Standard -- an Industry veteran and Number Two guy at the whole company.  And if I didn't "lose the poetry" voluntarily, believe me, he would have no qualms hiring another low-ball writer to lose it for me. 

Way back at NYU, an older studio vet had once shared a bit of sage wisdom with me -- "It's better for you to fuck up your script the way they want, then have 'em hire somebody else to fuck it up for you."

As baffling and counter-intuitive as this advice had seemed, now I went ahead and took it.   I labored at "losing the poetry", beat after tight beat, good scene after good scene.  For nine agonizing months, they "developed" the script this way.  Any nugget of goodness was ruthlessly ferreted out, any clever turn of phrase or interesting character tic was quickly sandblasted into beige.  My reward, such as it was, was being kept onboard as sole writer.  

In the Industry, this process is commonly referred to as "Development Hell".

Finally, they were ready to go out with it.  And they did.  And in a matter of three short weeks, the company blew a sure-thing co-financing deal, flatlined similar offers via ego and absurd distribution demands, and then shelved the project out of self-loathing and shame, never to see daylight again.  It also left

The Big Question still looming -- Had sacrificing all my poetry to the Commercial Film Gods made my script better... or worse?  Now, tragically, there was no way I'd ever know for sure.

Instead of my project -- and I'm totally NOT kidding here -- the company produced the urban side-splitter Don't Be A Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood in its place.  That film survived three embarrassing weekends before being euthanized and laid to rest in the VHS checkstand displays at Rite-Aid and Ralph's.

During what I thought a poignant last ditch appeal, before all the lights had been turned out, I'd made the case to the company that horror was an American genre mainstay, essentially a license to print money when well executed, and this is what the same VP told me -- 

"Horror's dead, John.  Nobody wants horror anymore.  It's all about the urban audience."

Scream opened that same December and made $173,046,663.00 worldwide.  In its wake, an uninterrupted avalanche of extremely profitable low-budget horror flicks dominated the coming decade.

And me?  Exactly one year after the sale, my girlfriend and I found ourselves back at Taco Bell.

* * * * *

Those first professional cuts for any young writer are excruciating.  Everything about your script -- every flat character, every lousy throwaway line, every unneeded parenthetical -- feels personal and inviolate, gifted from the heavens and written in stone, somewhat on the order of Moses' holy tablets.

"Change something?  Why?  It was plenty good enough for you to buy it in the first place, wasn't it?"  

Some version of this is what the working writer yearns to bark in his developers (read: torturers) faces.  If you loved it enough to put real money behind it, why in the fuck do you want to change every last thing about it now?  Where's the logic in dating a tall, skinny brunette if you really wanted a short, squat redhead? 

This mentality is, of course, totally understandable.  The script is quite literally your baby, your winning Powerball ticket, the lone vehicle by which you hope and pray to escape the nagging self-doubt and just-getting-by poverty of a middle class kid with a mountain of student loans.   This is your shot -- perhaps the one and only shot you're gonna get -- and if it's mishandled somehow, if somebody shits the bed and drops the ball, you and you alone are the one who'll pay the ultimate price for that.

On the other hand... there's a couple big problems that come with sticking by your guns every time.  One, without question, you'll be replaced as soon as your steps are up, and most likely won't work for that company or any of those people again.  Producers largely dislike and distrust writers as it is.  Certainly nobody wants to work with a "difficult" one, thumbs jammed in his/her ears, not listening and refusing to consider needed changes.

Two, and this can be a tough one for us writers to swallow, what if all these developmental numbskulls are actually right???  What if a few of those "shitty notes" you keep bad-mouthing to friends turn out to be gems, pure gold, BIG

IDEAS that help take your script to that hallowed "next level"?   Some writers are so busy saying "no" that they're throwing away the very ideas which can dramatically increase their odds of success... and survival.  

So John, you ask, how in the hell do I know when to do what?   How do I discern between the gold and the gravel, the shit and the pony?  How can I ensure I do the right thing creatively while traversing such treacherous industry tundra?

And that, my friends, is the eternal question every writer faces, every time they book a gig.  Because there aren't any right answers 100% of the time.  The whole endeavor is entirely subjective, a complete crapshoot, with the looming possibility of some ravenous tiger waiting to bite your head off behind every door.  

Your creative action -- or inaction -- affects not only this project, but the possibility of the many unseen projects yet to come.  Of prominent producers and execs putting in a good word, greasing the skids for a full-freight first draft at 100% of your quote... or not.  Of you being able to pay off those loans, take care of your hard-working parents, buy yourself something nice and live the creative lifestyle you've always dreamt of and suffered so damned much trying to actualize. 

Being a writer is about making choices.  Peel everything else away, that's where it nets out, and that's what's expected by the people who employ you.  Often it requires the skill of a surgeon to juggle your honest creative instincts, the daunting politics of the situation and the challenging personalities involved.

Best advice I've heard?  "You've got to choose your hills to die on."  Don't burn whatever script cred you may have whinging like an amateur over the silly shit -- stupid throwaway lines, meaningless location changes, near-invisible "subtleties" or "finesse points" that nobody outside you will ever discern as missing from the final product.  Focus instead on the critical stuff that may legitimately lessen the impact of your story.

Ultimately, the pro's goal is to do what they want, your way.  Honestly listen to what your producer has to say, then go with your gut and trust your instincts in coming up with the best possible version of that.

But hey, no pressure, right?  Best of luck out there, my friends.

-- John Jarrell

This excerpt from Tough Love Screenwriting Copyright © 2014 used by permission.     Please check out the website and join us on Facebook --  http://www.toughlovescreenwriting.com  https://www.facebook.com/groups/toughlovescreenwriting/   For more info check out -- http://www.tweakclass.com

John Jarrell is a produced screenwriter (Romeo Must Die, The Man With The Iron Fists II) with twenty-plus years in the Industry.  He's written films for most the major studios and worked with many of Hollywood's best producers and directors, including Jeffrey Katzenberg, Joel Silver, John Woo & Terence Chang, Neil Moritz, Mike Medavoy, Carl Beverly and Warren Littlefield. 

John is a member of the WGA Screen Credits Committee.