Screenwriting : The writer and his script. by Stevan Šerban

Yes. My Brother (Rob McHugh - we share a mum) was so badly behaved that the TV studio would send a taxi for the script and he was banded from attending (pre internet days).

As a newbie to this industry I’m taught how important it is to impress, charm, intrigue, etc. people with my script using my personality (of course a solid script is paramount). However, I think the script “should” be evaluated separately since the audience is interested in the product of a script, not the writer. I expect with the right representation a writer can avoid the whole personality issue, depending on what kind of writing project you’re involved with. But at the end of the day, no one wants to deal with a jerk.

No. Part of a screenwriter’s job is to make changes as the needs of production change. If the idea of altering your script causes you to throw a tantrum, this prevents you from being a reliable colleague and causes your personality to overshadow what you’ve written.

No. I agree with Stephen Floyd If you can't work well with others, there are too many other good scripts out there by professional writers that know how to collaborate.

Don’t worry. When Rob was sacked (he went to the studio and made an ass of himself) they got his final cheque to his house faster than he got there.

It is good for your career to be nice. But work is assessed separately. They will just sack you as soon as someone else comes along.

If they are interested in one of your screenplays or maybe hiring you to write one they will ask you some questions to try and figure out if you'd be difficult to work with.

It's not about writers but there is a recent example that comes to mind. The actor who plays Quentin Coldwater in the Magicians was apparently notoriously hard to work with but delivered a solid performance, and the show was on a roll for several seasons. At the end of last season they found a contrived reason to kill him off, involving some preachy bullshit about his white male perspective and attempting to retcon him as never really being the lead character. The shift in tone was unusual for a series that never really had to draw attention to their diversity and the show has suffered in its latest season having no lead to ground it, and a death that is supposed to be impactful is undercut and even insulted by the new "woke" message and a transparent attempt to just fire the actor. (they even literally have the line "you can't be a hero, you're a WOMAN!", cringe..) They even brought his character back for an episode, casting a young boy we've never seen before instead of bringing back Jason Ralph as a guest star because they apparently couldn't stand working with him for even one more episode.

As a fan and an artist, my opinion is, that i don't give a damn if he is hard to work with, you all made good television together. Suck it up and put the art first. This isn't about you. Additionally i think people who work together on a production don't have to like each other, they just have to get the job done. It is the same with any other job. As long as your personal issues don't affect the end result--and i would say, that refusing to work with someone talented just because you don't like them, is definitely affecting the end result.

Ben Hinman There's a higher tolerance for actors and directors that are making big hits and seasoned people with special niches. For new people, and especially writers, being difficult to work with will get you replaced very quickly. You don't have to be "liked," just professional.

There’s a misconception that brilliant creators are aloof misanthropes, therefore being petty and argumentative is a sign of genius. But these are really just signs of immaturity. If you want to be regarded as brilliant, impress people with your solutions to the changes they ask you to make in your screenplay.

Christopher Phillips yeah but why do we tolerate this from our actors but not our writers, surely if its an issue of quality the writing is more important. just because the industry does something, doesn't mean its the right thing to do. if you ask me treating people like a replaceable cog is more egregious than excusing someone who's just a bit of a dick as being "eccentric". If they're truly bringing a unique and irreplaceable voice to this project then they shouldn't be that replaceable and if they're not then why did you hire them in the first place? I'm not excusing it, like i said if it gets in the way of the art its definitely a problem but i really think that its about compromise.

Like take David Lynch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9LvqESsRlM

The guy has his moments like this where he's argumentative and even rude. He's got a vision and if people question it, he argues with them. No one is going to fire him because he's "earned it", right? But imagine if he hadn't and his attitude was an obstacle to his own employment. Twin peaks never would have been twin peaks without him. Hell, fucking television as a whole wouldn't have been the same without him.

owning a screenplay is like owning a house - you paint it, make it your own, put up a garden shed but then one day someone wants to buy it and you are very excited about it until they tell how they are going to change the colour, take out the shed, knock out a wall etc. and then you turn into a princess.

If you want to write something and have high ownership of it and keep your "artistic values/vision/morale high ground" then you first need to get some runs on the board and some success and then maybe go and seek out producers/directors you know who will respect your artistic stance.

In the meantime, write stuff that you are happy to change or alter for someone who believes in your work enough to want to option/buy. Put your ego and personality on hold.

Pete Whiting if you buy a ship from Theseus, you replace the sails, you replace the mast, you replace the planks and the frame and the outer shell, at what point is it still the same ship? Or perhaps a better question, why the fuck did you buy that ship if you were just going to build your own to begin with?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rQC7XC79w4

Ben, You buy a ship and then you find out that the shipowners were transporting cocaine with that ship!

How would you value a movie script if you found out that its author had some dark secrets in his life, or worse, that he had a serious criminal record?

In everything you do, your PERSONALITY counts. It doesn't matter how GENIUS you are.

Like if they had connections with communists? Hollywood answered that question thoroughly back in the day. Wrong answer though it may have been, lots of filmmakers lost out because of their personal lives. And before someone says, “But what about Dalton Trumbo?” he got nixed same as the others. He fought his way out of the shadows by working hard and well, further proving that who you are matters and how you work with others matters.

I think we are reassessing the question to suit our beliefs, which is human. Stevan Šerban your house analogy, knowing what happened in the house does change the quality of the fixtures or the neighbours. I watch a movie with my wife last night. In it there was a torture chamber in a house. I would buy the house, she would change suburbs to be away from it.

What about Kevin Spacey, is “The Usual Suspects” a good film?

You may not be able to work with them long term. But the work is separate.

Stephen Floyd as an aside, we have a sculpture of Dalton Trumbo in his bathtub on the street in Grand Junction, Colorado where he worked for a little while. I think on a newspaper. I heard he hated it there and for good reason, but his kids talked about it like it was home.

Many great writers have so many dark secrets that you would never want to meet them even on the street at a decent distance.

Does this diminish the value of their works, which have often been awarded Pulitzer and Nobel Prizes?

Craig, can you clarify your question a little about "The Usual Suspects" movie, please.

"Who the f....k is Keyser Söze? Fantastic script, even better movie! The plot, the actors, everything ... top!

"The greatest deception the Devil has ever made is that he has convinced the world that he does not exist."

I'm glad you said "dark secrets". Even if it's darker, no one knows them. When it's found, I'm sure he will lose much credibility, and pay huge price like HARVEY WEINSTEIN... ( Sorry for mentioning names).

Some great writers thought that what they wrote was more important than that they authored what was written, so they signed with a pseudonym. What do you think about their decision?

My dear Felix, many Nobel Prizes, Pulitzer Prizes, Oscars and other awards should have been taken away from the artists who received them, and it has been revealed that they either admitted to having the dark sides of their personalities, ashamed or not. Yet these rewards remain their property. The question is, when these dark secrets are revealed, does their work have the same weight and value before and after the disclosure of those dark secrets?

It depends on the genre, plot, and script subject matter.

Dalton Trumbo is a perfect example because under the pseudonym he won TWO Oscars, in 1953, "Roman Holiday" and 1956, "The Brave One" !!!!

Do you know the real names of writers Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll, Jack London, Tennessee Williams….

But you certainly know very well what they wrote!

I get your point, Steven Serban. But I believe it will still have an effect on your works.

Felix, Every novel, or screenplay, whether the writer wants it or not is part of his personality. It is my opinion!

Stevan Šerban if i found that out i'd be thrilled because controversy sells.

Alice in wonderland is still a masterpiece even though Carroll was a pedophile. Dickens was an opium addict. Hemingway loved fights and blew his own brains out. (actually you could fill several biographies with just the crazy shit Hemingway did.)

At the end of the day they're still respected as writers in their own right because the rest is not relevant to their actual skill, because why would it be. We don't have to think of them as good people to know they were good writers. But our standard for how we receive these types of people has changed because we're inundated with cancel culture where flocks of sensitivity mobs are in a bluster to fire anyone who even remotely steps out of line, and that creates a culture of fear, because you don't need to be a pedophile or a drug addict or fistfighting mentally ill drunk to cross that line, you just need to be moderately hard to work with from time to time. And i think the real shame of that attitude, even worse than how it frivolously destroys careers, is that it presumes the notion that the only people who deserve to have their voices heard are the clean cut, non-threatening, presentable ones with nothing to say. I think we should absolutely be hiring ex-convicts, people with a history of drug abuse, and people with controversial perspectives on sex and violence. I wanna make films with Gaspar Noe, not the freaking teletubbies. Those are the people that make life interesting. And they might be rough around the edges and harder to work with but god damn do they make better art.

Again i'm not excusing everyone who is hard to work with, some people are just assholes. I just think personability has no bearing on talent... and if anything, an inverse correlation.

So, Ben, regardless of the artist's personality, is his work more important than his personality?

Günter Grass?

Dalton Trumbo?

Come on people, is it a shame to talk about a taboo topic?

Trumbo is a great example. On the blacklist and jailed. Yet still wrote Oscar winning scripts. People still secretly worked with him.

You can be an ass easier in features. They’ll just rewrite you. But it is always, ALWAYS, better for any career to be easier to work with. To be a person people want to be around.

I don't think it's simple as that but i would say yes. I miss the days when all of this wasn't a public spectacle and it wasn't all trial by public opinion. We have courts for that, we have laws for that, and they work fine--they are a full measure for the crime in question. And in your personal life, if you cheat on your wife, gamble, whatever other personal failings you have, that should stay there. You can still punch in every day and do your job. What happened to Luc Besson is a fucking joke. The guy cheated on his wife, and deserves whatever trouble that causes his marriage but to have false rape allegations lobbied against you because you specifically refuse a quid pro quo... Cancel culture has gotten out of hand, man. We all make mistakes but this is holding people to an unattainable standard of integrity beyond reproach and we wonder why the entire industry falls vastly short of it. The more you feel that pressure the more you shamefully do that crap in secret. It's far less healthy than if we were just able to accept each other as flawed human beings and work along side each other without a culture of shame and disgust.

Again it might be controversial, but did anyone expect Kevin Spacey after years of playing Frank Underwood not to pick up on that headspace AT ALL? Or to find out Louis C.K. after years of making jokes about jerking off or feeling like a piece of shit for his sexual urges that he tried to jerk off in front of a couple women? We all praise it when its Heath Ledger dying of an overdose because that is just "dedication to craft" but when its unsightly we all just pretend you can dabble in the darkest parts of human nature and not... well, dabble in the darkest parts of human nature. That goes for writers, actors, directors too.

And yeah, i don't have a perfect solution for this. We shouldn't let people get away with stuff just because they're in entertainment and we also shouldn't let that stop them from making it. Best thing i can say is not to idealize people and it won't be such a problem when they disappoint you.

Have you considered the fate of Roman Polanski, or Charlie Chaplin and their contributions to film art?

Your personality will kill your career in any industry. You can force people to look for an alternatives by the way you act. But does that impact on how good the work is, no.

It may mean it never gets read.

Stevan. There are no shortages of assholes in this industry but they pretended they weren't until after they had some success.

Dan, Success is a miracle! It's good that it exists. It is good for someone to push their sh..t under the rug, for someone it is good to understand who they really are, for someone to strive to be even better, and to ruin someone completely!

So in other words, the idea we are promoting here is don't be yourself. Pretend to be someone else until you found success, and then you are welcome to be yourself.

Ben. Nobody in their right mind would want to work with someone who would be difficult to work with.

You do it for the producers because they have all the money.

Why not do it for the writers because they have all the talent?

Honestly, how many poor sycophants suffered through Harvey Weinsteins sexual harassment parties or tolerated Jon Peters level studio meddling just because they had all the money? Are we supposed to tolerate money as the only motivator that lets us put up with difficult personalities?

Money--money can come from anywhere. Specific talent and a unique voice... That is not so replaceable. This is the way we do things now, but none of you are asking the most important question, whether we SHOULD do it this way.

Am i really the only one who thinks this way???

Anyone?

This is why that isn’t the way the world works.

This glut drives down the value of the writer. In commerce scarcity is a pressure that pushes up value. Over supply drives prices down.

There are far less studios and producers. They have many writers and many many more scripts to chose from. Therefore the competition is between us to get their attention and not between us an them around price or a value proposition.

Since money is needed to fund a production it is the most valuable asset.

You can’t improv money, you can’t rewrite money, you can’t edit money. Money is money and it is the power in the situation.

A unique voice is great. But by definition there can be only one. But there are millions of us.

To make it worse. Many of us follow rules and formulas guaranteeing conformity not uniqueness.

Of course.

Movies are a "team sport" - once you sell the script, you have joined the team and need to be able to work with everyone else. If you can't work well with others, they fire you and hire another writer who will completely rewrite your script.

My question was more about whether we would value the artistic value of a film, or a novel, the same way if we later learned that it was the author of dubious moral values.

The work must stand on its own.

That's my opinion too! But some believe that some award-winning writers should be stripped of awards because of their morally dubious past. That's why I like writers who sign with a pseudonym.

Tough question - I think a story is a subconscious extension of a writer and/or filmmaker's personality, so it could be an insight into their persona, but on the other hand, they could just be having an off day.

The story, the novel, the movie ... that's important, the author is just an instrument in God's, or some other, hands!

Is there anyone to comment on?