Tip o’ the hat to all! Great stuff and lots of it too.

A superb site.

Others-
Unk is giving us insights into the realities of the industry. It ain’t always pretty; life ain’t fair; read and learn.

I think one of the major problems may be the bitterness of readers, I mean to an extent. In all honesty is a reader going to get more money if he/she finds that one script that just blows them away? No. So what is keeping them from just shit canning all the scripts and making up gibberish coverage? Or even out of jealousy. It may not be the case all the time but between this, Will Akers jib-jab, and the probability of writers handing over their scripts to the wrong type of development company, why not just make your own goddamn movie and deal with the distribution and financing?
I mean 99% of all the good scripts I’ve read are written in collaboration between a director and a writer, almost none of them follow the ‘formulas & structure’ I read about to the T.
Almost all directors (good directors anyhow) know the 1 minute per page is bullshit, a 160 page script can be 90-98 minutes long, and a 50 page script can be 2 hours. Perfect example of this is The Good, The Bad & The Ugly, the Mexican standoff action is 3 lines long, that’s a 15minutes fucking sequence.

INT. DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT READING ROOM – DAY
A reader, JOHN, small, frail, white skin, blue eyes and unshaven holds his coffee cup with his dirty fingernails with his left hand, in the right hand is a script.

John’s intern, GARY, enters the room with the coffee kettle.

GARY
How’s your coffee John?

A man kicks down the door wearing nothing but a jockstrap on his head welding a shotgun — he shoots them both in the fucking head.

THE END.

There, a ‘who done it’, little coverage, 6 8ths of a page, all the action on the first page, keeps your attention, we’ll get Michael Bay to direct it, he’ll change the intern to some sort of CGI alien that speaks like Morgan Freeman — $500mil.

BAM! HOLLYWOOD.

You’re right in most of the scripts I’ve read. There has been the occasion to read indie scripts where the director was also the writer, so he was lucky to be afforded such pleasures.

Unk,

Understood. I’ll keep my angles and shots out for now.

To both, thanks! Much appreciated.

As Susan said… The majority of the time when a reader reads these things in the script, they rarely finish reading unless it’s one hell of a story.

Stew,

That’s actually why I read everything that comes across our desks… I’m not a reader but having come from a spec background and still writing specs, I too am aware of the READER… LOL.

Highly aware.

You pose a good question but the reality is that there are simply TOO MANY SCRIPTS coming across everyone’s desk and in my humble opinion, not ENOUGH readers see their job as FINDING a great spec for their boss. In reality, many readers are given an agenda… To pass or recommend a spec. I’ve heard of many specs that were NOT well written but the readers were told to give it a recommend. Happens all the time.

But the reality REALLY is that most of these scripts simply do not pass muster. They’re crap. Please make note that I’m talking specs from unknown screenwriters.

The biggest problem from just what I have seen with my own eyes is derivation and cliché. In other words, we’ve already seen it and it wasn’t that great the first time we saw it so why would we want to see it again?

I am certain that a few great specs get passed over or not even read which is why the spec screenwriter needs to keep submitting assuming his or her spec is written at the professional level.

If not… Whew. You might actually be shooting your own foot because if your script is fairly bad, your name can often get passed around and if it does, then more than likely, the pass you receive simply means it wasn’t even read by anyone because they already know about you.

On top of that… The reason the studios keep making remakes and sequels is because of the built-in fan base. As appalling as it might be, their little model of movie making works.

But my feeling on that is that it works more because of the current ticket-buying demographic who, let’s face facts… Are tantamount to Pavlov’s dogs.

Unk

Sometimes we newcomers can tend to confuse spec expectation with shooting scripts which is why I guess readers, such as Unk’s guest, try and underscore these basic issues so often. :)