Screenwriting : In our own words by Rob Tobin

A screenwriter on a screenwriting site bemoaned the fact that he had spent literally decades trying to get produced and failed. This was my response to him.

God, you're preaching to the choir on that one, Dan. I have a few credits but... this is the nature of the business. In some ways, it's more of a lottery than a business, with nowhere near the logic or organization that a true business should have.

In fact, if you define a business as an organization that standardizes and formalizes a process by which it sells a product or service, the film industry isn't a business at all. It's a crap shoot with nearly no logic or process or system to it at all.

Look at McDonald's, Ford or Apple. There are so many business principles at play. Products and processes tested and refined, based on science and design, engineering and marketing systems and techniques -- detailed, professional, and logical. Even then it can fail, but at least there is a method to their creative madness, whereas the film industry is more... madness and a roll of the dice.

And THAT is what we buy into, what we base our dreams and even our lives on -- largely unjustified hope. Even athletics has objective goals and measures, a strong logic and process, and a result that, if not guaranteed (can you say Colin Kaepernick?), can be fairly predictable and objective.

The film industry has inexplicable successes like "Barbie" and "Poor Things" while truly brilliant scripts and even films are ignored (can you say "Air?"). In other words, a nearly total lack of logic or reliable system and no way to REPRODUCE success even for great films and great scripts and great writers.

THIS is what we buy into, especially as writers. And even when we "succeed," there is no real success involved. My first film was produced, but the producer had no experience in distribution so the film sat on Prime for years, doing nothing. Never entered into contests, no film festivals attended, no American Film Market... nothing. My second film was purchased and produced a couple of years ago, the producer then took my name off as screenwriter and gave me "story by," taking screenwriter credit for herself, then the film sat in post-production for years. Nothing. I mean, we think that if only we can find a buyer, then we think if only we can find a buyer who can produce the script, then we think if only we can find a buyer who can produce the script and get it distributed, and then we think... what? What do we think then?

There are pitfalls and Catch-22s everywhere, and this industry makes Vegas look like a sure bet. At this very moment, I'm being asked to sell one of my scripts to producers who want to make it an ultra-low-budget film (again!). They have not even one sentence of a plan on what they will do with the film if they do produce it. No distribution plans, nothing. So the film gets made on an ultra-low budget, I get my ego stroked, and something else to put on my resume, but so-the-fuck-what? The film will have wasted a few hundred thousand dollars of investor money, and then what? Nothing, that's what.

This is it, gals and guys: the film "industry" that's more of a film lottery. In baseball, you step up to the plate and hit a home run, and keep hitting home runs, if you do your job well, you get results, reactions, offers, money, and fame. There is a way to objectively measure your skill and thus a way for you to use that skill to make a living.

Then there's the film industry. "Barbie." "Poor Things." "Maestro." It's one thing to wonder how you can compete with brilliance, but the question in the film industry is how do you compete with crap? Crap that gets made and earns millions and billions of dollars for no reason that you can identify. How do you emulate crap in order to be successful? When there is no logical reason, no role model that makes sense, no clear path forward, no base to step up to, no ball to hit, no... no fucking BAT???!!!

But... this is what it is. And I have to say... it's on us. It's on us because we keep stepping up to the non-existent plate, with a non-existent bat, to hit a non-existent ball in a non-existent stadium with no fans watching at all.

Huh. What a bunch of idiots we are, huh? Now, I have to go, because I have changes to make to a script that will get produced (I have the offer) and then lay in the film graveyard without ever having had a life of its own... kinda' like most screenwriters, and I will make a few thousand dollars upfront and maybe an offer of net points (which do not exist) or maybe I'll even hold out for gross points (which exist only if the film makes money). I made three thousand dollars for my first film. Three thousand dollars. Given how long it took to write the script, pitch it, pitch it, pitch it, pitch it, then do rewrite after rewrite... McDonald's looks like the road to riches compared to screenwriting.

No. I'm not going to go off now to once more do my usual, pointless thing. I want to propose something here, even if by now I've lost my audience because they think I'm just being too negative (and WAY too long). I propose that we take back control of our work.

Look, where did storytelling begin? Around the campfire, with hunters bullshitting about the day's hunt or the day's battle or the night's sexual tryst, and women bullshitting about babies and crops and their asshole mates who climaxed way too early and then took off to brag about it at their campfire.

That's the baseline, the barest example of storytelling. No agents or managers or producers or readers or directors all profitting from our work, and telling us either "fuck no we don't want your work," or "yes, but you'll have to change it the way I want it to be changed." Just... storytelling.

So my question is this: if a singer can go out onto the Santa Monica Promenade (or any street) and just... sing, if a painter can go out to the street and display her or his painting, if a poet can go out and recite his or her poetry, why can't we, as screenwriters, go out and tell our movies the way we wrote them? In essence, then, why can't we produce our own stories?

We can. No, there probably won't be an audience, but there isn't one now anyway, is there? There won't be any fame or fortune, but... is there any of that now? For 99.9% of us? Even for most of us who are produced?

Aren't you tired of seeing "Barbie" and "Poor Things" making their producers and directors and actors and even writers rich, while far, far better scripts lay in the metaphoric dirt, being stepped on by those people hurrying to their wrap parties and award ceremonies and banks?

ENOUGH!!! Just... fucking... enough, okay? So this is what I propose, and I'll copy and post all of this on other sites too: we start speaking our own words and fuck anyone who wants to interpret them and then change them so much we're ashamed of them half the time. No more "Here, take 2 percent of this $100,000 budget and be grateful you're getting even that, and by the way, did you finish that last set of rewrites we told you to make?". No more.

How do we do this, speak our own words without relying on producers, directors, agents, managers, actors, ad infinitum? Fucked if I know, but here are some ideas off the top of my head: we go online and we tape ourselves sitting in a chair, or pacing a room, reading our scripts. "What, but how do we achieve fame and fortune, how do we get an audience, how do we -- "

Oh, shut the fuck up. We already covered the fact that there IS none of that for the vast majority of us. But think about it: we have nothing to lose. The film "Industry" has backed us so tightly into a corner that we... have... nothing... to... lose.

So of course there are better ways to do it than my harebrained idea of going on YouTube and speaking our words, so suggest them. Let's start a movement in this moment, and make both the movement and the moment great and significant and historic, the movement that replaced Hollywood's insanity with a quiet revolution, a writers' revolution, where we take back the night, the INT., the EXT., the day AND the NIGHT.

My email address is scripts90@gmail.com. If you're going to do this, let me know. In fact, here's a development of my idea: someone out there knows about the internet, how to monetize it, how to maintain it and use it. Create a damned site for writers to speak their own words and call it... "IN THEIR OWN WORDS."

I'm tired. Go do it. Or not. Did I mention I'm tired? But I dare you... double dog dare you... do it.