And screenwriting is a lot golf, where you’re competing against yourself. Each time to play the course (or do a re-write) you improve shots, avoids bunkers, stay out of hazards, hit more greens, make more putts, and most importantly–come up with clever ways to score!

You learn to see the course in new ways each time you play it. Same goes each time you read and re-write your script. Dialogue gets crisper, scenes get shorter or go away, subtle layers of complexity grow that give all your characters life, etc. Plus in a script you have the advantage of playing the holes in a different order!

In other words, lose the ego and don’t golf with a better player until you’ve smacked the ball around the course a few times–or a few courses. By then you’ll hopefully know enough to keep your mouth shut and absorb the free advice. Nod, take notes, and say thank you–and maybe they’ll read your next one.

Just like in golf, in screenwriting you can never achieve perfection, but you can always improve your game!

Finally, everyone’s 1st script sucks–and mine even won some awards. I think the “average” sell is for one’s 8th script with having the 10th financed by a studio and not a stack of credit cards.

And there in lies the problem.

The problem with grant funded film making is instead of getting your script taken or rejected by a witless Hollywood businessman, whose only objective is how big a return they can make on your script… instead you get censorship by committee.

In the region where I used to apply for funding, I knew that any script or treatment I submitted was being judged for funding by a person whose only experience in the business was being deputy manager of a cinema. Which would be OK, if he understood his limitations… but the problem is once you give someone the power to make decisions like that, they generally assume they have the ability.

The effect on the British Film industry of grant funding for film development, is we’ve developed a generation of producers and writers who understand how to write a project that will attach funding… and to write a script that will appeal to the funders… but who absolutely do not have the script development or business skills to take a project to the market and get a return on the money invested.

Plus, if I option a script in the UK, even with a large reputable production company I’m unlikely to see more than £5K-£10K for the option, with another £20K on first day of principle photography. And, what’s more likely is the producer will want to take the script on a deferred payment, because they won’t want to hand over any money until they’ve secured funding (which will then be earmarked for “production”… and they’ll trot out the usual, “well I could pay you, but not without effecting the production values, which means you’ll lose out in the long run”)

At least in the US, when you actually option your script to a legitimate producer, you get paid an amount that is commensurate with the time you put in.

But, my main problem with script writing in the UK, is even when you speak to people who claim to be experts… and who train other script writers, they are about twenty years behind the times in terms of technique.

I recently had a run in with an organisation who claimed to be the Renaissance of British script writing… they’d managed to get a pilot project running where new script writers were trained in “technique” but also worked alongside producers… so the writers spent a year writing the kind of script these producers wanted.

The only problem was, their version of technique was applying Syd Field’s structural approaches dogmatically, even in circumstances when it made absolutely no sense.

However, with that said the French, German and Italian film industries have produced some fine work… mainly because they protected distribution in the 1950’s, when Hollywood bought up all the European cinema chains.

I don’t Hollywood is ideal by any means… but at least there is some experience of creating a product you can take to market.

The auteur theory has also made directors go nuts. I’d say you’re more likely to have your script raped in Europe than in Hollywood. Only recently did the German TV industry start doing script development in the same style as in USA where it’s a bunch of writers and a head writer who oversees everything. Before this and still today in most of Europe it’s a bunch of writers and the director who obviously doesn’t know much about writing and has a habit of rewriting most of the script. (The UK is a bit of an exception.)

I remember reading somewhere that until a few years back, there wasn’t even a single film school in all of Europe that would teach screenwriting. Screenwriting isn’t seen as something that needs to be learned.

So, yes, if you want:

* Less pay.
* Less respect.
* More script raping by studios/directors.
* Less people seeing the films you write.
* Almost zero residuals.
* No union protection.
* Smaller budgets.

Then come and write films in Europe.

Also, because of the government-dependent funding model and the usual corruption in the public sector, it’s much harder to break in. There’s no open door policy. It’s much harder to find studios who would be interested in receiving spec scripts.

There is a theme to the “writers’” strike… an elusive internal plot that has yet to surface. Hollywood (the producers, the money, the distributors) are telling the writers to fook off. They have the helm, it’s their ship, it’s their course. So swab the decks swabbies all — or think about a position, say, polishing the interior of Davy Jones locker!!

Because — as you so well express, UNK — us dumb-downed deck-hands think we have no choice. No options but to grumble under our breath as we yowsa-boss whatever order barked. We forget the marvels of Mutiny on the Bounty, the Caine Mutiny, or even the modern Crimson Tide. The Hollywood dons tell us we are powerless, and we can’t wait to take any assignment, follow any order, simply to keep us from some dreaded outcome.

Meanwhile, in Europe, there is an island — you could say the antithesis of the Hollywood ship (to keep the metaphor going) that awaits any stalwart writer. It’s the reverse of the USA system. There are millions of Euros available for pre-production. Millions to develop ideas. Millions to develop your script. Here, we have to pay someone to tell us what we already know is wrong with our scripts. There, the governments regard script writing, cinema development as “art”, and PAY the writers to get good at scriptwriting.

Hollywood is taking-on water, ready to sink. The dons think that their wealth-building/masters of the universe jive is all that’s needed to bail the sucker out. It won’t. If scriptwriting is about story-telling, about attracting the Muse into your fantasies, then what does this magical process have to do with debentures, bottom-lines and wealth concentration?

I don’t like saying this but I think our problem is that — as protagonists — we suck. We are weak, go-along-to-get-along, and, yes, boring. We’re not heroic or principled. We’re more than happy to eat cake. We’re McFly. If we actually had the juice that we want our protags to exhibit, there would be REAL strikes — not against ourselves but against the system.

What’s wrong with everyone who has ever registered a script with WGA to go on strike? Why isn’t there a movement to BOYCOTT Hollywood movies? Why don’t we do something that we would have our protags do? Why don’t we all move to the South of France? Hmmm.

… we are leaving … you don’t need us …

A truly passionate individual with a generous soul and knowledge of screenwriting, which he is capable of bestowing to anyone who wants to hear it, in a way that makes perfect sense to even the most novice or writers.

It is something we very rarely see in this world, someone who is willing to pass on the years of knowledge and opinions and expertise they have learned over their years… being someone who has managed to push through the struggle to break into the business with a damn good script, and willing to pass on what he knows works.

For Unk to pass on these words of wisdom that resonate so well with so many of us, and to not expect anything in return — except “a fucking great script” that rises to the top 2% of the 2% of scripts that are actually good. So many times I come across so-called script editors/coaches/teachers/experts that charge an arm and a leg for lesser information with the single goal of making money off of other people who are just too green or desperate to see the good information from the bad.

But Unk just tells it like it is, shoots from the hip, and isn’t up on this blog charging membership fees. He just pours out the amazingly rich information from his experienced mind and lets us take it for what he is. Some may think it’s crap, some may think it’s genius, but for the writers that take it and put it to task to create something better and more worthwhile, then that is a man I tip my hat to.

Ans so Unk, I tip my hat to you, to say thank you. Thank you for being the person you are, thank you for putting the good information into the scribosphere and letting us run with it, and thank you for doing all you can to help us all become better writers. You didn’t have to, but you did.

Personally, after reading your blogs and putting what I have picked up on to the test, I have to say that my writing has improved at least a few hundred percent.

So I don’t care what your name is, you’ll always be Unk to me, and that is something I respect and hold high.

Regards,

Scottie screenwriter

Unk’s dropped enough hints here that if any of us really wanted to find out who the bloke is, it would take, at most, a day’s worth of googling and phone calls. But, seriously, does it matter? He prefers to be anonymous, so let him be that way.

Looks like I’m blogging again. Gee, wonder why? Life is just too interesting in my neck of the wasteland these days.

And UNK? That freaking song playing over the movie montage near killed me last weekend after I listened to it like 100 times dealing with some personal shit.

Fuck man, what are you, tuned in to all of us through some magical crystal ball or what? Or maybe you are this merciful angel I keep imagining you to be…

Ok, ok. I’m vulnerable here. I’m vulnerable here… You talking to me? I don’t see nobody else… Think it’s time for a little visit to my Dr. Melfi.