The wrongness of "No one knows anything"

Out in the screenwriting blogosphere and Twitter-sphere, you'll find a lot of great people, but you'll also find a non-zero number of complete idiots. After nearly seven years at this, I've gotten good enough at recognizing the signs of the worst of those people and I tend to just not even engage them. One thing I've found to be rather consistent among my least-favorite members of that population is their tendency to respond to any counter-point with "No one knows anything."

You'll generally find that William Goldman quote applied in a variety of ways, most of them wrong. The most common context I'd run up against tended to be its application as complete dismissal of any notes I'd given. It's no secret that a lot of writers are confidant in their writing and themselves. That is not a problem in and of itself. Greener writers tend to overestimate their own brilliance - my pet theory is they're still ignorant enough of what it really takes to last in this business as a writer that they have no context for what TRUE brilliance constitutes.

From time to time, I'd end up reading a script for one of these types and more often than not, they'd need a lot of work. These are the sorts of scripts that would be riddled with issues like tonal inconsistencies, completely bonkers structure, implausible dialogue, and so on. And yet, when I would point these out to the writer, they'd go on the attack. Deep down, they weren't coming to me for notes, they were seeking validation. In their mind, my role in this little drama was supposed to be limited to a pat on the back and a promise to hand the script to someone who actually mattered. In this writer's mind, how dare I stand in the way of a door he was entitled to?

And so, my talk about all the reasons why the script didn't work for me fell on deaf ears, as did my efforts to impart all the reasons why this script would be a hard sell. Instead, I could usually count on an angry diatribe telling me how wrong my opinion was, invariably invoking some form of "No one knows anything."

"No one knows anything" was never intended as a "Get Out of Jail Free" card for notes, but somehow that's what it turned into. I've been meaning for some time to put that quote in its proper context and last week on the Scriptnotes podcast, John August and Craig Mazin did just that.

First, I want to quote the relevant portion of William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade:


"Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for certainty what's going to work. Every time out it’s a guess and if you’re lucky, an educated one. They don’t know when the movie is finished. B.J. Thomas's people after the first sneak of Butch were upset about their clients getting involved with the song Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head. One of them was heard to say more than once, 'B.J. really hurt himself with this one.' They don’t know when the movie is starting to shoot either. David Brown, Zanuck’s partner has said, 'We didn’t know whether Jaws would work but we didn’t have any doubts about The Island, it had to be a smash. Everything worked. The screenplay worked. Every actor we sent it too said yes. I didn’t know until a few days after we opened and I was in a bookstore and I ran into Lew Wasserman and I said, 'How are we doing?' And he said, 'David, they don’t want to see the picture.' They don’t want to see the picture may be the most chilling phrase in the industry.

"Now, if the best around don’t know at sneaks and they don’t know during shooting, you better believe that executives don’t know when they’re trying to give a thumbs up or down. They’re trying to predict public taste three years ahead and it’s just not possible. Obviously, I’m asking you to take my word on this. And there’s no reason really that you should because pictures such as Raiders of the Lost Ark probably come to mind, which I grant was an unusual film. Why did Paramount say yes? Because nobody knows anything. And why did all the other studios say no? Because nobody knows anything. And why did Universal, the mightiest studio of all, pass on Star Wars, a decision that just may cost them and all the sequels and spinoffs and toy money and book money and video game money totaled over a billion dollars because nobody, nobody, not now, not ever knows the least goddamn thing about what is or isn’t going to work at the box office."

 And now I just want to quote part of John and Craig's discussion because they nail it better than I could. You can find the whole thing here on Scriptnotes, or the transcript here.

John: Well done William Goldman. So I want to focus on what this isn’t saying. So this isn’t saying that decision makers are ignorant, that they know nothing. It’s not saying they don’t have taste. It’s not saying they don’t have experience. They truly do have the wisdom of crowds. They have sneak previews. They have all of these things. They have experience. They have, you know, their own taste. They have crowds. But they don’t have perfect knowledge of the future. And you instinctually did exactly the right thing was emphasizing the word no is that, you know, William Goldman is saying like you may have very good reasons to believe something but you can’t know with certainty what the future will hold. And anyone who does tell you they know with certainty what the future will hold is lying because you cannot predict all these things.

And so, what I get so frustrated about is they’ll use nobody knows anything as excuse for, “Well, why don’t we just try something wild because nobody knows what’s going to work.” Well, people actually may have really good sense of what’s going to work but they can’t predict things perfectly.

Craig: That’s exactly right. It’s a little bit like that exchange where someone says, “You think blah, blah, blah…” and someone says, “I don’t think, I know.” That means something, right? It means that it’s not in the realm of opinion, it’s a fact.

John: Yes.

Craig: What Goldman is saying is that essentially all this stuff boils down to opinions so you can’t know it and therefore you have to make your peace with an uncertain world.

John: Yeah.

Craig: And so, of course, people are going to make mistakes but they’re not mistakes at the time. They’re only mistakes in retrospect. That’s the thing. You just don’t know. And he even — it’s interesting, he even italicizes the word know. There’s no — so we actually know that this is what he means. We don’t think this. We know that.

John: Absolutely.

I want to add one further point - if you come to someone specifically for their opinion, having asked them to invest time and effort in a read so they can formulate that opinion, it is the height of dickery to immediately dismiss that with, "Well, that's just your opinion." OF COURSE IT IS, ASSHOLE, BUT THAT'S WHAT YOU CAME TO ME FOR.

When someone tells you something and you brush it off with "Eh, no one knows anything," that's what you're doing.

We're SERIOUSLY still fighting about this "Screenwriting Rules" s***?!?!?!

Nicholas writes in with a request that I got a few times on Twitter and honestly had been trying to avoid.

I'd love to see a blog post with your take on the Scriptnotes podcast where John and Craig discuss screenwriting rules.

For those of you who don't know what he's talking about, it's this podcast here. (Transcript here.) John and Craig break down a "Meet the Reader" post, "12 Signs of a Promising spec script."
 
Honestly, I've taken on the rules so many times that I've gotten tired of writing the same post over and over again. It's a fight I'm tired of because it often means that some useful advice gets shat on because someone like Tarantino found a brilliant way to defy convention. Perhaps some of us giving the advice could take more care in how we present it. For instance, my 12-Step Screenwriting videos are NOT meant to be "the secret formula for writing a script" or "the only way you should write a script." It's merely a processes designed to keep you always moving forward in your writing. I would never have put it out there with the message of "this is how you have to write a script."

But I have never seen such ugly fights break out as I have with people being advised on script length, or "we see," or bolded sluglines. You tell a group of aspiring screenwriters that they should be vigilant about catching typos and at least one person in the group will pipe up with "Fuck you! Tarantino doesn't even spell his titles right! This is bullshit!" And then suddenly we're no longer having a conversation about what can help you make a good impression as a writer, we're throwing down about if this advice really matters if it cannot be rigidly applied in the absolute.

About a year ago, Scott Myers and I coordinated efforts on a series he did for his blog called So-Called Screenwriting Rules. You can also find a couple of my posts - like this one on "we see" and this one on unfilmables - that fit into the context of that discussion.

Scott and I specifically wrote this series as an answer to all the "Rules" and you'll find that as we discuss each commonly-accepted "rule," we're careful not to apply them as absolutes and explain why certain tendencies might be good or bad for your script. It was an attempt to move the discussion to a more useful level than the binary "These are The Rules/There are NO Rules" fights that every screenwriting board devolves into.

And then John August and Craig Mazin take on an article written by Ray Morton called "12 Signs of Promising Spec Script" and treat it like it's presented as holy writ with regard to all screenwriting.

*Sigh*

I've got a lot of respect for John and Craig and I don't know anything about this Ray Morton individual at all, so maybe I'm missing vital context as to why they went after his first-person article with such vehemence. If Morton's article was something like "12 Things Every Script MUST Have," I'd get it. But Morton isn't presenting his advice as if you're looking at the secret scorecard that all scripts are checked against. He's simply saying, "I've read a lot, and here are factors that tend to recur in the worst-written scripts."

Especially after reading the article and reviewing the transcript, I can't shake the observation that John and Craig seem to be turning Morton's piece into a strawman.

In a really telling moment, John says, "I think he’s also noticing patterns in his own response to things. And I think those are valid personal experiences. The frustration I have is that in observing his own personal reactions to things, then trying to go to the next step and codify these out as like these are things, prohibitions of things you should never do. And I think that is incorrect."

But.. I don't really think that's what this specific article IS doing.

I'll give John a little credit. He's usually the first of the two to concede that there's some kind of point being made in the article. While Craig is savaging the advice like "know who the protagonist is by page 5" and "something interesting must happen by page 10," John pipes up with, "I would basically stand up for him here. I think the overall point is that if by page five nothing interesting has happened, I’m going to have a harder time getting to page six."

This is where I'll remind everyone that a regular feature of Scriptnotes is the Three-Page Challenge. John and Craig read three pages of a script submitted by a reader and give their reactions to it. There are a lot of weeks where what they glean from those few pages doesn't sound terribly dissimilar to the sorts of diagnosis that Morton is making based on a history of reading entire scripts. Most weeks, a lack of clarity is a recurring issue with some of the submissions and if you pick apart Morton's article, a number of his issues are coming from the same place.

I'm not surprised that there's animosity between these gentlemen and the gurus who sell consulting services. Hell, I hate most of those guys too, so I'd be right there with them. If some idiot was charging $500 for you to attend his seminar and this was the sort of advice he was giving, I'd be all for dropping the hammer on him. Looking at the actual article, it's a pretty benign bit of first-person advice from someone who's a decent representative of the people whom companies have as their first-filter. Morton's biography claims he has read for Paramount and Columbia Pictures, among other companies and producers. He's also a freelance consultant and I get why that makes people like John and Craig wary. It makes ME wary. Yet his rates don't even seem all that out of line.

I've seen a lot worse advice coming from people with a lot less practical experience and much higher rates. That's all I'm saying.

Another part of Craig and John's discussion bugged me in how it was presented - their initial aggression that NONE of these RULES are ever true. And then if you listen, they kind of walk some of those assertions back. I wish it was that they'd lead with the point I quoted from John above and broke down what the reader was really saying when he was declaring these rules. Writers often talk about having to look for "the note behind the note." I think a lot could have come from examining "the flaw that spawned the 'rule.'"

(And I don't wish to dissect this at length, but it feels deeply disingenuous to use The Godfather as the film that disproves the "rules" when the article is specifically referring to spec scripts. Not only are most aspiring writers NOT Mario Puzo, who had a strong enough command of the form to have his audience hanging on every word, but The Godfather was not a spec as we think of them today.)

John and Craig's discussion comes from a place of "Don't let anybody tell you how to write!" But that's because John and Craig are seasoned enough at this that their process is innately effective. They don't think about "rules" because they don't have to. Aspects of writing that others have to think about, they do by instinct. If John August opens his script with a five page monologue, then it probably is because there's a definite REASON for it. And John's a good enough writer that it's probably a helluva speech that justifies that length.

It's like the "don't direct on the page" rule. Craig might say, "That's a stupid rule, I've never been told that! Hell, I've done it!" If he were to say that, I guarantee you that when Craig did it, it was unobtrusive. I also guarantee you that he probably didn't do it often in the script. (And more than likely, it was a scene where such direction was necessary for the clarity of what the audience does or does not see at that moment.)

BUT....

I've seen amateur scripts that really try to micromanage the directing. I'm talking about scripts where every other scene is noting a whip-pan, or a tracking shot or a camera move, or some other bit of photographic choreography. When people say, "Don't direct on the page," it's directed at THOSE guys. Clarity and brevity are two things a screenwriter should strive for and excessive camera direction is rarely either of those.

Guys at Craig and John's level are capable of writing strong description that captures the tempo and the flow of the scene so acutely that they don't need to say if the action provokes a close-up or a camera move. Why bluntly tell the director where to put the camera when good description subliminally leads him to that result AND has him convinced it was his idea?

The way I'd suggest thinking about it is if some reader tells you something that sounds like a rule, internalize it as "Oh man, some dumb bastard did that excessively!" Think moderation. If the "rule" is "Be between 90 and 120 pages," it doesn't mean that a script that's 89 or 121 pages is as egregiously offensive as the 160 page script. (If I glean from the first ten pages that this is a gross-out comedy and your page count is at 135, I admit, THAT is probably going to concern me. Conversely, if it seems like you're writing a WWII epic that clocks in at 75 pages, I'm also going to look askance at it.)

Look at how much space has been wasted on a debate over if the Rules are real and if John and Craig are right and wrong. It's clouding the real issue and all it accomplishes is the next time someone says, "Hey, maybe don't have your first page be made up of 3 sixteen-line paragraphs," instead of considering why they shouldn't do that, they'll say "Fuck you, man! Craig Mazin says there ARE no rules!"

That doesn't help you. This debate doesn't help you. It's a waste of your time and it's a waste of my time. So fuck the debate. Instead look past the rule and try to understand the writing pitfall it's trying to steer you away from.

Tuesday Talkback: John August's blog comment holiday - bad idea?

I see that over on his site, John August has turned off comments on new posts and has hidden comments on all old posts.  He says he wants to experiment and see if it makes a difference in how the site feels to readers and him.  Already, I feel a difference.  I think one of the great things about the net is the interactions we can have and the discussions that can take place when reasonable people share their insight, knowledge and advice.

Note that I said "reasonable people."  I consider myself pretty lucky that the people who comment here are, by and large, a fairly civil group of people who know how to express themselves maturely.  I've run this blog for nearly three years and only once have I deleted someone's comment.  (And in that case, it was not because of trolling so much as it contained information of a privileged nature that I didn't feel was necessary to post.)  I've not had to censor anyone and on the rare instances that a dickhead or two shows up, they're usually swatted down swiftly.

I understand some other bloggers aren't as fortunate.  I've seen plenty of comments elsewhere that are petty, mean, trolling and go out of their way to be belligerent.  It's nice we don't deal with that here much, and to be honest, it seems rare that August's site gets plagued by those morons either.  I like the conversations that result over on John's site.  To me, it's an asset that there isn't just one point of view and we can see why some people agree or disagree with John.

It's fun for me to watch you guys comment on my posts and either agree with me or challenge the views.  It's even more fun to watch you talk amongst yourselves, spurred on by something I said.  Even when I don't contribute in the comments, it's really satisfying to see some of you discussing and forming your own opinions in reaction to something I've posted.  This is particularly true when I put something up with the intent of getting a reaction and also getting you to look below the surface and perhaps understanding your own reactions to a particular stimulus.

Basically, blogging is a two-way street.  Or at least that's the way I see it.  Does a blogger even exist if there's no tangible audience reacting to them?  Do they continue to thrive, or do they die like an applause-deprived Tinkerbell?  For now, I think it's our loss that we can't contribute to John's blog and interact with other readers there - but not as much as it's John's loss

Can I build my career without moving to LA?

Warren asks:

Just curious to know if you think a screenwriter can only break in from LA (or the US at least)? I'm on the other side of the world even though I have been polishing my skills for years.

I get this question a lot, and usually I refer people to the archives, but I recognize that it's been a while since I covered this, so it makes sense to promote this FAQ again.

I think it gets significantly harder to break in the further you get from L.A. Is it impossible? No... but you're at a disadvantage if you're not in the same town as the industry you want to work in. Writers who argue that writing is a job that can be done anywhere and that meetings can be done over the phone are missing that there's an entire social aspect to the industry - as with any industry.

I'd never say "I want to work on Wall Street... but it should be no big deal to telecommute from Burbank. I can chat with my boss via Skype and handle my work over the internet, right?" And frankly, that presupposes that I've already got the job.

If you're in L.A., you'll meet other people in the business pretty quickly. These friends can be of help in guiding you. Maybe your neighbor is a writer on a TV show and offers to look at your samples. Heck, maybe you're lucky enough to impress him and he passes you on to his manager. Perhaps that girl you meet in the dog park is a Creative Exec for a production company that makes precisely the kinds of movies that you write.

But let's get back to talking about getting work - these days, it still seems that people like to actually meet the people they're hiring. Let's not forget it's easier to build a relationship with someone in person. If you meet someone and actually break bread with them, you're bound to be more "real" to them than someone on the other side of an email or a phone call. Face-to-face meetings are still very much the norm, particularly for the sorts of meet-and-greets that managers send their clients on in the hopes of getting work. If you're in the room, you're "real."

Case in point: during the instances where I have met someone through this blog, it's always been a bit surreal to have a conversation with that person and realize, "This is someone who's read my words." Even when it's someone who I've exchanged emails with, they're not particularly "real" to me until we've met face-to-face.

Related to this, check out these must-read posts from John August on the subject:
Like banging a chainsaw against a tree
The Duluth Dilemma

In the latter, John offers a variation of what he calls "The Nashville Argument."

The country music industry is based in Nashville, Tennessee. If you’re a country music singer/songwriter, you could stubbornly refuse to move there. You could record your demos in Denver and put them on your MySpace page and play all the local clubs.

But while you’re doing that, a hundred other singer-songwriters are in Nashville, surrounded by an industry that is looking for the next great song, or the next great star. If you lived in Nashville, every third person you met would have a connection to the industry. You could learn from the best performers and technicians in the world.

Moving to Nashville is a smart, proactive move. But you could stay in Denver and just hope for the best. And if your career never takes off, at least you’ll have some heartbreak to write a song about.

If you want to write for Hollywood, it really helps to be in Hollywood. But for contrast, you might also want to check out this post: Starting a career from Puerto Rico.

UPDATE: I almost never do this, but Joshua Caldwell left a great comment that deserves to be seen and I know there are plenty of readers who might not click on comments, so consider this my first-ever comments spotlight.

Is it possible? Yes. Is it harder? Yes. Ultimately, talent wins out. A great script is a great script, no matter where you live. But the bigger struggle is getting people to read it. Hollywood is a town built on relationships and the only way to start building those relationships is to be here, meeting people face to face.

The problem is that people in this town are always looking for a reason to say no and it is far easier to toss a query letter into the garbage than it is to tell a friend of yours that you threw away his buddy's script.

Whether it's writing, directing or even just getting a job as an assistant, referrals and personal recommendations are the name of the game. It is very, very difficult to find a job if you don't know anyone and I should know, because I spent three years sending out blind resumes and I was the recipient of an MTV Movie Award.

The way I finally broke in was a swallowed my pride and got an internship. I decided that if I was going to be spending 8 hours a day doing something for money, I wanted to to be something in the business. It was through my first internship that I met a guy who would eventually get one of my scripts to a big producer who signed on and took it out wide (didn't sell, but...). Because he read it, loved it, recommended it to a friend who a friend who worked at the producer's prod co, who read it and loved it, who then recommended it to the producer. Sure, it was a great script and a bad script wouldn't have gotten as far, but really, it was about me being here, meeting people, talking to them and saying, "Hey, take a look at this."

And it was this internship, that eventually led to me working for Anthony E. Zuiker, creator of the CSI franchise, as his Director of Digital Media. It was this job that provided me with the money and resources to direct my current short film "Dig." And it was shooting "Dig" that allowed me to meet a guy who gave me a great idea for a feature, one I am now developing with Participant.

When you don't live in LA you have to be THAT much better of a writer, THAT much better of a filmmaker, because you're asking for execs to adjust their way of doing things to accommodate you. Whether it's a block of meetings the week that you're here (meetings are cancelled and rescheduled ALL the time) or being only available on certain dates, it's just not worth their time unless it's just a blow your mind amazing script. And few scripts are.

Can you build a career without moving to LA? Sure. But know that there are a ton of people who ARE here, waiting in line, willing to take your place for the chance to succeed.

A Rant on the ScriptShadow issue

We had some good comments yesterday on the John August v. Scriptshadow post, and though I responded to some of them there, there was one in particular that left me with so much to respond to, I decided to make it the basis of today's post.

Scott brought up a few points that I've seen elsewhere, and so I'm going to take the opportunity to respond not only to him, but a lot of other ScriptShadow defenders across the net:

"I am not saying at all that people should have access to these scripts. In fact, the only people who should are the ones who need it to do their jobs. But what we know from practice is that scripts in production or development are widely disseminated. August even says thats how he got one of his first assignments because his script was passed around."

Okay, there are more than a few things I should probably discuss here. August didn't get one of his first assignments because a few interns passed a script around and it landed on the desk of an assistant who kicked it upstairs. John actually said: "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."

In a circumstance like that, what happens is the producers (in this case, the producers of A Wrinkle in Time) are looking either for a rewriter or for someone to flesh out their concept into a full script. Either way, they want to know that the writer they hire can work well in the genre and style they're after, and the best way to do that is to look at their prior work. Let's assume that at this early stage in John's career the only produced film he had to his name was Go - which isn't comparable at all to Wrinkle. Thus, John's name might not be at the top of the list.

But lo and behold, John happened to have gotten hired on an assignment that probably was closer to what the producers were looking for with Wrinkle. Clearly that film never got made and the script was owned by A Major Studio. Now, had A Major Studio locked down the script, John's agent would not have been able to send the script to Wrinkle's team, which effectively is denying John a job interview. Thus, John doesn't get the job and perhaps experiences a major roadblock in his career.

I'm sure there are a few posters who will say that it's not ScriptShadow's fault that A Major Studio wouldn't release the script. But in a world where scripts are not only being leaked, but passed to people who review them on the internet, how could they be sure that some intern working for the Wrinkle producers wouldn't take a copy of the script and slip it to Carson or a site of similar purpose?

Yes, the threat of such piracy has always existed, but until sites like ScriptShadow made it much more efficient for bad buzz to be attached to a script in such an open forum, the impact of that piracy had been minimal. And since the studios own the rights to the scripts, they have every reason to hunt down any pirates of those scripts. Just because they haven't gone after the PA who printed off a copy of TRANSFORMERS 3 and kept it in his room doesn't mean they've voided the right to pursue a guy who boldly posts a copy of the script on the internet.

Script swapping does happen within the industry, but it RARELY harms anyone. Take this example - a few years back I was a development assistant at a company that was readying the latest film in their big franchise. When the first draft of the script came in, the assistant to the head of Development sent out an email to everyone saying that the script was not to be copied or taken out of the office without her (that is, the assistant's) express permission. Yes, this meant that even I, who was working in Development, had been barred from reading it.

This was on a Friday afternoon. Monday morning, one of the Development VPs delivered the script to me personally, just to see what I thought of it. It was a moot point though because I had already read the script Friday night. How did I get it? Someone close to the director slipped it to me. Now, this individual had known me for a while and knew I could be trusted not to put it online, write a review of it, or pass it on to anyone who would do any of those things.

This is generally how the inter-industry script trading works. People pass to people they know with the understanding of "Don't screw me." It's not something we do to exclude the outsiders. It's not an elitist conspiracy to keep people outside LA in the dark.

And honestly, it's rarely even that unseemly when scripts get passed around within companies. Let me explain a little bit about coverage. What Carson does is NOT coverage. He writes a review and he often makes good points, but coverage is generally more in-depth than that. It's an analysis of the writer as much as the script. That's why more companies have two slots for the PASS, CONSIDER, RECOMMEND rating. One for the script and one for the writer. Good coverage tells the person reading it not only if the script is good/bad, but if the person writing the script knows what they're doing. Maybe the script happens to be a very well-written bad idea, or a good concept written weakly.

So that's why if you're reading for Joel Silver's company, you might find yourself with the latest Bruckheimer screenplay to cover. This could easily happen if the Bruckheimer film was a spec sale from a first-time writer and Silver Pictures needs someone to rewrite their next project.

This is how and why scripts get passed around Hollywood. This is why people end up reading scripts for projects they're not actively working on, and yes, along the way it's likely that a few interns, PAs, and other employees snaked a copy for themselves - but let's be honest, these people value their jobs. When you take a job working for a producer or a studio you sign a ton of confidentiality agreements that essentially mean that if a leaked script is traced back to you, the best you can hope for is that you'll be fired.

So yeah, if someone got caught slipping Carson a script, their ass would be grass. The fact is, it's pretty hard to catch those people but since Carson is the one who brazenly posts the scripts we CAN catch him. He might not have signed confidentiality agreements but he is trading something he doesn't own and he's doing it out in the open. Thus, since his actions have had some unfortunately consequences, it's not a surprise that writers are calling for changes.

Also, I've seen the argument put forth that Carson always takes down the scripts if asked to do so by the writers, so that (1) the writers shouldn't be crybabies, (2) this means that every script and review is still up their with the tacit approval of the writers, plus (3) it's just too hard to track down the writers beforehand, so if Carson waited for approval, he'd never get it. Thus, no one's been hurt and Carson is in the right.

Bullshit.

I'm sorry, that was hasty of me. Allow me to rephrase.

Bull-FUCKING-Shit!

My readers often email me asking if I'll give them notes on their script. At present I don't, but suppose YOU sent me YOUR script and I not only posted a blistering review of it, I uploaded the script itself so that any original idea you had there was free to be plundered by anyone who came across it. What if I posted it on Triggerstreet, and left it to be disseminated and torn to shreds by even less-experienced writers than you?

Even if you came to me and told me to pull the review and the script, anyone with any knowledge of web archiving could retrieve the old review even after I deleted it. Plus, on the off-chance that someone was so motivated, they easily could have downloaded the script from me and put it up on another site. So even getting me to take it down wouldn't put the genie back in the bottle.

Yeah, you'd be pretty pissed too. How does it feel to know that every time your name is Googled with the word "script" the first thing anyone found was something calling you a hack who couldn't write their way out of a paper bag? That might make it difficult for you to send that script around and get representation, wouldn't it? (Because let's be frank, readers almost always Google the scripts and writers they're reading, if only so they don't end up accidentally slamming the spec that Peter Berg's company just optioned.)

Meditate on that a bit. Then talk to me again about how Carson's burning need to review a script outweighs the writer's right to stop someone from distributing his work illegally.

Bitter, out!

John August vs. Scriptshadow

In this corner... blogger and screenwriter of such films as Go, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Big Fish.... Jooooooooooooohn August!

And in this corner... a blogger who - in the words of Wired Magazine - "says he wanted to celebrate the writer, promote talented unknowns, and acquaint newbie scribes with the art of the craft".... Carsoooooon Reeeeeeves!

The issue: Does blogger Carson Reeves actually hurt working screenwriters with his review site ScriptShadow? If you want background on John's position, check out this post and then his follow-up. Read what he says in his own words, so that there can be no complaint that I am slanting the arguments.

John claims that because ScriptShadow has made studio screenplays far more available to the non-professionals, this has resulted in studios taking stronger measures to protect their intellectual property. He describes how the studio cracked down after ScriptShadow published an early draft of an upcoming project earlier this year:

"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.

[...] "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."

As he details, the "suffering" will come in the form of writers not being able to send out scripts of their aborted projects as writing samples, with is a fairly common way for writers to get assignment work. That's pretty serious.

Carson tweeted yesterday that he doesn't intend to comment further on the matter, which is his right and his prerogative. However, he has a loyal mob of defenders who have been commenting on John's post and - with a few exceptions - I feel it's not unfair to characterize them as a group of entitled, aspiring screenwriters whose legal knowledge seems to have been derived from a marathon viewing of the worst Law & Order spinoff (SVU, if you're keeping score).

Many of these commenters are saying that Carson shouldn't get blamed for a bunch of executives acting like assholes, because it's always easier to throw stones at a few rich fat cats and say it's their fault for making us want their unproduced scripts so much.

The fact is:

1) The studio owns the scripts.

2) They have every right to fight copyright infringement.

3) Recognizing that getting something off the internet is like getting pee out of a swimming pool, they realize the only way to keep this material private is to raise the security measures surrounding it and applying further punitive measures. That's their right. And that is the situation that John August says is happening.

Let's say I rent an apartment in a complex that is in a nice enough area that no one even has locks on their doors. It's a crime-free paradise. There is no crime and thus, no one misses their locks. Then one night, some people down the block realize that they can enter the complex and any apartment at will, plundering each unit of its goodies. The owner, realizing the situation has changed, now has to pay to install locks and pay for security, which results in a rent hike. This naturally pissess off the tenants, who feel they're being inconvenienced.

Now imagine if when those tenants tried to seek redress against the thieves for both the theft and the resulting expenses, the intruders blamed the owner for overreacting and trying to keep these trespassers off his property. That they bore no responsibility for the consequences of their theft and that their real beef is with the asshole owner.

THAT is essentially the position of the mob defending ScriptShadow against John's charges.

One commenter, Synthian (comment 37), offered a better and even more succinct defense of John's position:

"Nabisco does not owe you the recipe to the next cookie they’re building in development. (Even if you ARE an aspiring bake chef. And it would be terribly educational for you.)"

If it was meant to be released, it would have been. Do attorneys publish their inter-office memos and first drafts of their closing arguments before a case gets to court? Does John Grisham post his first draft of his latest novel online “just so readers can see the process?” Do painters release the early sketches of their work before applying pigment to the canvas?

Let's not forget that these sorts of leaks have killed major films before. Back in 2002, AICN's Moriarty got a copy of J.J. Abrams first draft of SUPERMAN and write a long, spoiler-filled review decrying every bad choice made in the script. This stirred up a lot of controversy on the net and Abrams later said that the blacklash was a major factor in the project being killed at Warners.

Full disclosure: At the time, I cheered the death of Abrams' SUPERMAN because the draft was terrible (read it for yourself - it's only a Google search away) and at the time I was exceptionally grateful to Moriarty for getting an incredibly stupid comic book movie killed. Am I a hypocrite now, or do I just have greater perspective? You decide.

As I said in comments yesterday, I'm an avid reader of Carson’s site, and I'd never actually looked at it from John's perspective. I think Carson has only the best of intentions – to educate and to help aspiring screenwriters develop their craft. He’s also run several contests aimed at helping non-repped writers get representation. So in that sense, I separate him from some of the guys at AICN who write articles with insider “scoops” just so they can bring themselves more publicity.

Just making it clear, I am NOT trying to pick a fight with Carson.

I never thought about the unintended consequences that John August says are happening, and if it’s actively making things difficult for working writers, then perhaps some restraint is necessary
I was really disappointed to see so many people dismiss John simply because they're sticking up for their buddy. I think the “Fuck you, rich boy!” and “We have a right to everything on the internet” attitudes are deplorable. Why should John’s right to privacy on his private intellectual property expire simply because he’s famous and successful? Or to take the tone of another argument, because the commenter in question feels that John's movies were sub-par? (Do bad writers get fewer rights than good ones? How come no one told me?)

Beyond that John himself proposed a few ways that Carson could carry out his stated mission without contributing to the problems listed above, and as he noted in his update post, "So far, few of them have addressed my two proposed changes:

"1.Review screenplays of movies once they’ve come out.
"2.Ask the writers before posting reviews of unproduced scripts."

This is something of a timely controversy for me. It's always been my policy not to spoil scripts which come into possession via my work. For this reason, I have long avoided doing script reviews of upcoming projects because I don't want to have to deal with repercussions from my bosses. However, through means outside of work, I recently came into possession of a first draft of GREEN LANTERN, and in fact, was in the middle of writing a review for Thursday, using it to point out some lessons that could benefit screenwriters. The draft is almost two years out of date, so I assumed it wouldn’t contain too many spoilers. In light of John's post, I have decided to hold off on this and other reviews until after the film is in theatres.

Carson seems like a good guy and I genuinely believe he has the best of intentions. He's educating many newbies about the art of screenwriting and of script criticism, and I truly hope that his site doesn't go away. Having said that (Curb Your Enthusiasm ref), I don't see why he couldn't continue to do the same work under the terms that John proposes.

Surely Carson never envisioned he'd be the catalyst for these problems, but now that he is aware, why shouldn't he work with professionals to hammer out a compromise that leaves everyone happy?

I'd be interested in hearing what everyone else thinks of this, if they're not already burned out on the subject.