Tag Archives: Script Rewrites

Yes, it was an interesting year. Filled with lots of work, a long stretch without work and that awful writer’s fear that they found you out and you’ll never work again. (Every writer knows this fear, get used to it.)

But overall it was a great year for rewrite assignments. Between January and July I had non-stop work. Assignments and Rewriting other people’s work is the bread and butter of most screenwriter’s lives. It pays the bills. Do I feel guilty sometimes taking another writer’s hard work and removing and replacing most of it? Yeah. I do sometimes. I know how it feels. It’s been done to me. But it’s also an everyday practice in this industry and as a screenwriter you need to understand it and live with it. Sad, but true.

Between July and December was the LONG Fall and Winter. Nothing. Nada. No paid work at all. My yard looked great though. My original feature was to have gone during this time, but circumstance and fate and… etc…etc…etc… stepped in. And voila, it was postponed. Another lesson for the anxious screenwriter out there. Nothing happens fast or on schedule, and steps backward are the norm. And... it often happens suddenly and without warning. I'm still hopeful about it though.

Lots of close calls for paid jobs this year, but I either lost them to other writers or the project stalled or dropped off the face of the earth. This is also normal. As a working writer you will read a LOT of scripts your manager sends you and you’ll take your notes on how to fix them and sometimes you’ll actually get to pitch your notes, sometimes not.  Sometimes you get hired.  OR they’ll ask your manager if you’d mind rewriting them on spec (FOR FREE) with money on the backside. (haha) And I will tell you, with total commitment, that writing for free is your choice of course, but something I do not recommend (or ever do) as it sets your price and worth to whoever is asking you. And it doesn’t pay bills. I’d rather write an original spec that I have an emotional connection with, than write for someone for free because 99% of the time it’s a colossal waste of time.

Ok. Enough of that.

2014 also brought the filming of Jeff Willis’ and my script, The Right Girl. An original non-romantic comedy we wrote that the production company turned into a romantic comedy after having us do 6 (six) paid rewrites.

I had some other films premiere on cable this year with my name on them as a writer, most that actually had words I wrote in them, one not so much. Screenwriters! Attention!! When you watch a film you worked your ass off on and NOTHING you wrote is in it at all but your name is still on it, just take the money, put it on your resume, and don’t tell anyone when it plays.

This year, I also sold a pitch ten months after I pitched it, forgetting completely what I said in the meeting and scrambling to figure out what I had specifically said, learning the BIG lesson that as a writer you need to take notes about anything you say in one of those meetings. Learn this, too. Don’t get that feeling in the pit of your stomach like I did when they were offering to BUY a script from an idea I couldn’t remember. It's turned out ok, because the script I ended up writing for them  has been completely thrown out and they’re paying me to write a new one because I have a new development exec.

On a personal note, I lost my writing partner Bonnie the dog, a Golden who spent the better part of her 13 years on earth in my office with me while I wrote. There for love when I needed it and a dog smile whenever I looked. She was as close to the perfect dog as there ever was. I will miss her forever. This month also saw the arrival, six months after losing Bonnie, of Enzo the wonder dog. He’s small, fast, funny, and a bundle of love who, happily enough, lays at my feet while I write, just like the amazing Bonnie. He knows. Been here a week and he knows. He’s there now. You have no idea how comforting it is.

This year also saw my friends Gary Graham, Mike Maples, Eliza Lee, and Mike Le move forward on their passion projects. I couldn’t be happier for them. Getting a film made is as an impossible thing as there is, especially an original spec, but you see, some people are doing it giving all writers hope. Teaches you not to give up. It can happen.

And this year has given me so many new friends in the business I can’t count them all. Friends who I’ve had the pleasure to drink and eat with and get to know. Writers and actors who share the same goals and dreams. People who I wish nothing but success for. You know who you are.

Now on to 2015. Wow... 15 years since Y2K. So much has happened and not happened. Only God knows what’s in store in 2015. My feature, long delayed, is maybe going to go. I have at least two cable films scheduled to go, including the pitch I forgot. I’m up for at least a half a dozen paid jobs I haven’t heard from yet. I’ve been offered the opportunity to write the pilot of a limited cable series based on a film with development starting in January.  And I still have a couple of optioned scripts out there that might become something, but maybe not. It's the film business. Many more die than live.

And I’ll continue to blog as long as I keep getting the great feedback and the great numbers of readers. Many thanks to everyone for the blog support. I’ve already got a topic for the first one of 2015 about one of my pet peeves (one of many) I see in spec scripts. May not be a rant, but it will be close.

So I bid adieu to 2014 with my best wishes to all. Keep writing. Don’t despair. If you write a great script, it will find a way. And I wish everyone a happy, healthy, lovely 2015 filled with all you hope for.

It’s been more than a couple of weeks since I’ve last blogged. Not that there weren’t things to write about, but it’s been deadline-mania around here lately. The last one went in Monday and I find myself truly unemployed for the first time since January. During that time it’s been a cornucopia of rewrite work for Production Companies, Producers, Development Execs, and Directors. Work on five different films, four of which are my original spec scripts (one written with the wonderful Jeff Willis). Two of them for cable networks and two that are theatrical.

The other was a hired page one rewrite job on someone else’s script for a production company which I may or may not get screen credit for. (However, the checks cleared). And it looks like maybe three of them are heading for production this year, one starting July 30, for sure. The other two of the five put off until 2015. Or not made at all. That’s what’s so hard about this business.

And as I look forward to a little time off, I also worry about where the next job will come from and when it will come. That’s the lot of anyone who works as an independent contractor, like most film writers do. I may not work again this year. I hope so, but there’s nothing on the horizon right now. So I’ll be writing more specs, reworking my pilot, and rewriting older specs in the meantime. Use it or lose it.

As I have said before, all of my produced/credited films have been for Cable Networks, mostly for the Hallmark Channel, which has been interesting because my natural proclivity is toward darker material. All of my optioned feature specs… hell… my entire two foot tall stack of specs are all kind of dark and/or twisted, including the comedies. So having to NOT write like that for Production Companies and Networks with a narrow brand has been good for me, expanding my abilities to keep my own voice yet walk those lines drawn that you cannot color over.

Where is this going? To talk about what happens to YOUR original when you option it to a Production Company or Network who wants it to fit their brand. Which is all of them.

Jeff Willis, who is a VP at a very well known and large Production Entity, is also my sometimes writing partner. We met on an Internet Board years ago and a real life friendship came out of it. And out of that, and I can’t remember which of us said it, came, “Hey. Let’s write a script together.”

We proceeded to write three over a couple of years. A dark funny anti-romantic comedy, “The Right Girl” where the two people don’t get together at the end. A Monster Movie, “The Ogre”, with a great original premise, that’s sly, violent, very funny, and gruesome. And a big grand Action/Adventure Spy Movie, “Family Bonds”, with a killer premise. Two of them are still available, by the way. The anti-romantic comedy is going into production July 30. Only… it’s no longer an anti-romantic comedy. The two people do get together and love wins. How did that happen? Not by accident.

A production company optioned The Right Girl about a year and a half ago. In that time Jeff and I have done six (6) paid full rewrites of the script for them, taking it from the snarky anti-romantic comedy it was to the still kind of snarky in places fun true romantic comedy it has become. More than a few different people from the company and the network have given us notes over the last 18 months at different times. Our main Protagonist, a woman who travels from narcissist to empowered woman (with or without a man) has basically stayed put. (She was the reason they bought it to begin with and I’m glad they kept her journey reasonably the same). She’s a lot less profane and all of the overly sharp edges have been ground down, but her personal journey to redemption still isn’t powered by her growing love for a man. The real love happens between them because she’s changed on her own.

But beyond that… if you read our original optioned draft and the production draft I sent in yesterday, you’d barely recognize it as the same script. Our major original premise point is gone, replaced by a different one they wanted instead. Our antagonist doesn’t even exist anymore. Characters and their arcs we loved are gone. Gone. Replaced by other new and different characters that fit the new paradigm. Characters retained have different agendas and needs. Some have changed sex. Some have changed age.

Don’t get me wrong. Jeff and I were given fairly free reign to make these new characters and their story arcs our own, as long as we stayed inside the lines. We skirted the edge and got away a lot of it, but we always stuck to the spirit of their notes, which is what you do when you want to keep doing this.

And we did a good enough job that they didn’t bring in any other writers to rewrite us. We wrote every version from the original to the production script. The Production Exec told us that’s never happened with them before. They always bring on other writers. So we’re feeling pretty damn good about that.

But if we had been so married to our original that we couldn’t or wouldn’t have made the huge wholesale changes that have been made to it to get it where they’re actually spending millions to makes it, we would have been replaced faster than you can imagine. And the new writer or writers may have gotten writing credit for the film with us.

Your original script, no matter how much you love it, cherish it, and do not want to see it changed, is only a suggested starting point if you want to see it get made. Unless YOU put the money up yourself, it is going to get changed and probably changed as much as ours was. As a screenwriter you have to learn to live with that or have a very very short career.

Do we like the new version? The one THAT’S GOING TO GET MADE and play on Cable for years and years to come? Yes. We do. It’s not the film we originally wrote, but it’s a damn good script. The notes we got work for what the Network and Production Company need. Did we get notes we thought were wonky at times? You bet. But we fought for what we wanted, still understanding our limitations, and most of the time prevailed. It’s going to be a cute funny film and better than a whole lot in the same category, I think. The Production Company thinks so, too. They’ve told us as much.

They are building the sets on soundstages right now. Offers are out to stars. Casting is in full swing. A director I like a lot and have worked with before has been hired. And we’re been invited to set anytime we want to go. We’ll be taking them up on it.