Monday, February 12, 2007

Writing for feature films

It is easily the most frustrating thing I do. It takes forever and at the end of it all nobody wants to read it. Not even friends or relatives. I have to sometimes rely on blackmail to get a read out of people.

Once I am ready with the first draft the really hard part of being a writer begins; trying to sell your script to a prospective producer/actor/director. The film business is a very strange business. Everyone complains that there are no good scripts or writers. Yet, nobody wants to read a script or meet a writer. I guess the business works on a “friendly” basis. They’d rather hear a friend tell them, in 5 minutes or less, a great concept over a few drinks (and maybe a couple of hits) in a really noisy bar. I suspect that a lot of the producers and actors in our industry are illiterate so reading is not really an option. The Joey character from the series Friends is not that way off the mark. There is one good part to it though; there is very little chance that anyone will steal a script that they haven’t read.

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