Screenwriting : Studio feedback letter by Michael Schulman

And the Oscar went too.... lol. Thanks for sharing.

Cowboy man bad. Handsie studio heads good. LOL.

Just think how much better it could have done if the studio hadn't made him change the title!

Wow... I'd like to see how much worse it can get than this LOL

Great and original creations like this film are never understood by those who can only comprehend conformity and "thinking inside the box". This letter was written by someone who illustrates the Peter Principle.

When I saw the film, I felt that the genre now had been gifted with one of its most powerful statements about the human condition.

I would love to hang a rejection letter on my wall lol

Only commenting on the rejection and my impression of the film.

Another example of why I don't let anyone who isn't at least as good as me think they are qualified to judge my work. "I skimmed most of it" tells you the mentality and (lack of) professional skill set many (most) in-house readers have.

Dang. Goes to show you, beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder. Some gatekeepers suck. Onward and upward.

Or...maybe there is another lesson here: the screenplay got noticed and made, despite the gatekeeper who apparently did not care for swear words and cut-face whores and so forth,

Actually, the system worked exactly the way it is supposed to b/c somehow good material manages to find someone to read it. In my experience, I have never once seen a noteworthy screenplay go completely unnoticed, or I would have noticed (by definition).

Did Clint receive this before or after Clint's company was given an office on the WB lot?

I wonder if Sonia was at the Academy Awards when the "inferior work" won Best Picture.

I have a hard time believing that he received this from a professional, considering it has 5 spelling errors and a grammatical error in the body of this page. Like seriously, if you're going to tear someone else's work apart you need to get your own ABC's in order. Lol

The world was a different place in 1984 than it is today.

I have never seen this before. But every cell in my body is crying bullshit.

I can’t believe that even a semi-professional person in any industry talks about themselves so much in a memo. They did address the story, genre or anything else.

“Unforgiven” came out in 1992, same year as Reservoir Dogs.

This memo is dated 1984, the same time as Spike Lee was circulating “Do the right thing”. “Repo Man” was a film 1984.

To back up Doug’s point. In “Stranger Things” we have children swearing, not cowboys.

People get wrong all the time...on the other hand, there will always be someone believing in the work he does....all comes to circumstances I'd say...This script may be trash in some other's hands, turned gold in Clint's...and it was circling the industry some good 20-30 years I've read...

While the obvious reaction is outrage over the reader's ignorant and dismissive attitude, maybe that's the wrong take-away. The movie, after all, did get made--the system worked in the end. Good material cannot remain unnoticed--it finds its own audience. Get the script right, and everything else will (eventually) fall into place.

Wow. Harsh words! “Trash?” Is this really how folks in the industry talk to each other? Brutal!

Yikes. Brutal. What a great artifact. Thanks for sharing it!

Doesn't surprise me a bit. The number of lousy movies getting the big OKAY-Recommended is the result of questionable readers and their own story preferences.

Brutal/trash? Yes this was the way those in the corporate offices spoke. We understood business, then we would go to lunch together (maybe cut a deal). Those were the days before the invasion of the woke snowflakes.

Michael Schulman, thanks for posting this. You talk about a wake-up call!

Michael Schulman Well, maybe... but then Clint did produce this and make his decision himself, in the face of Warner Bros. revulsion. So, is that part of "the system" that any regular film maker is a part of? Because clearly Eastwood disagreed with them and forced his will on them, right? I doubt many of us have that pull. The script apparently had been around since 1976... I was unable to find details of any of the machinations involved in Eastwood pushing to get the movie done and ultimately distributed through Warner Bros. I did come across this "12 Surprising Facts" article among my research though:

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/67958/12-dusty-facts-about-unforgiven

Dan MaxXx That's right, and that's my point. There's such an industry built up around writers figuring out how to pitch... and the people they are hoping to emulate don't go that route.

Trying to bring a bit of balance to this; when people are really offended by the content, they'll also hate the craft. It's clear this struck a nerve and it's the coverage provider's job not to hold back on their opinion as millions of dollars and people's reputations are at stake.

This is also why reading the history books is also so important and why I bang on about it so much. Pretty much every movie you love had a tough route to screen that was filled with doubt, resistance, and hate.

Eastwood was told by everyone around him that Every Which Way But Loose would kill his career too. The mavericks don't tend to go trying to please the committees. More screenwriters need to see that and stop being so servile.

I also love it when people boast that "the system works" based purely on the few huge success stories that get made despite Hollywood and not because of it. Plenty of examples out there of legendary artists having the door slammed in their face before one person helped them go against the system.

Can't help but think that perhaps this lady and Clint knew each other well and this is how she spoke about everything around him.

That is exactly right Wal, and you are the only one to have picked up on that nuance. These two had a close friendly working relationship. There was no contentiousness. Clint always liked the script and chose to shelve the script for 10 years, until he finally felt like getting around to it. At which point, he made only minimal changes to David People's draft. Sometimes the real story is a bit different than what appears at first blush.

Yes, they had an every day professional working relationship and even much of the industry today is still balanced on such relationships. Woke snowflakes need not apply.

Clint said in an interview he kept doing rewrites to the script, but it kept falling apart the more he'd try to improve it, so he went back to the original draft by David. Not sure where that is on the timeline of this letter. But not rewriting scripts appeared to become a staple for him after this film.

Bwahahaha

Wow!

CJ: Right on da money!

William Munny: "It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. You take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have." - One of the all time great lines. Was fortunate to have the opportunity talk to David Webb Peoples, very informative. Great writer. The script of Unforgiven is no more vile than the violence it denounces.