Accepting your faults is one of those monumental decisions no one ever gives other people credit for. The only thing more fucked up than that, is the lack of acclaim you get from getting steps in place to compensate for your weakness.
If your terrible at picking up phone calls, you get a receptionist. If your terrible at cooking, you move next to a delicious jewish deli. If your a sex addict, you go to the bars and exaggerate what you do in your career to ditzy blondes (TIGER ROAR!). Sadly, I'm not Jewish, so I will not start a deli to help you appease your food cravings. I will not answer your phones, I swear too much, even in small talk. I will not help you with chicks at the bar. I'm a slightly overweight Indian guy. Those rank last on the list ditzy blonde chicks want to meet. If M. Night can't get fucked in this town, neither can I.
My weakness is writing. I'm creative, hyperactive, hard working, and articulate. Those are four reasons why people like to talk to me about movies, not about button down tops at Banana Republic. What I can't do is spell worth a damn, or write clear consice sentences when stirring up in a tizzy, a frantic action sequence. It's the chicken or the egg argument - How can he be a writer when he can't properly form compound adjectives complacent with present noun usage.
Note: I don't give a shit about proper noun usage. You don't give a shit about proper noun usage. Michael Bay and Brad Fuller and JJ Abrams and James Cameron do not give a shit about proper verb usage. Michael Bay and Brad Fuller and JJ Abrams and James Cameron's readers and assistants went to ivy league schools give a shit about proper usage. Remember this later when you try to over take hollywood - or become A list like one of those guys. I GUARANTEE you will not give a shit about proper noun usage.
Back to point at hand. I haven't sold a script yet, so it's hard to argue again the chicken when you haven't friend it's egg. But there are actions you can take. me, for example, hire an editor. It's nice to get proper notes and feedback from your script, then you read it and realize they cleaned up all your errors. It's expensive, five percent of your final sale - which can ADD up. But Ill pay that willingly.
But I hate when people complain about hiring an editor. I hate when the editor complains about the very reason you hired them. I don't care about your opinions that its stupid that I not know rudimentary English. I don't care that I make your job harder. If I knew how to do it, I
A-wouldn't give away 5 percent. I love my editor. I do not like giving away five percent of what I'm earning.
B- I don't care that you feel better pointing out I can't form correct sentences on EVERY LINE OF A HUNDRED AND TWENTY PAGE SCRIPT. You will better pointing that out, but that's not going to fix my script when the protagonist switches motivation half way through the script. That's the reason it's an issue.
C- Did you know the average education of a typical American is 7th grade. Interpret this thought and what it means, via the transitive property.
We interrupt this rant to bring you a real life story....
I got this email back from (notable actresses name) producing partner. I sent them a script I had to write in two weeks, Earth Bound. It was not great. It was not good. It had a solid opening ten pages. A solid last fifteen pages. And a great twist in the middle of act two. Everything else was piss poor. Even I was appalled by the number of mistakes, both grammatically and artistically I made. I was embarrassed.
The email stated:
Hey just completed
I respect the attempt and work put in by the writer at the last minute. I will remember him and will read what he writes in the near future. I believe that his talent is developing strongly. bUt compared to the scripts I received so far - they are fully developed and have been through many re-writes. I have sent it to my partner on this deal and will forward his comments and thoughts. i like your writer.
I didnt get a pass because my script was littered with errors. I got a pass because my motherfucking idea wasn't developed since I spent two weeks rushing to get it to them. Sometimes you get a genius script from that. Sometimes you get an incomplete draft. I will say this producer was far kinder than he needed to be. I appreciated it, he let me down easy. But he appreciated that I wrote a feature script in TWO FUCKING WEEKS.
But they'll read whatever I write. Because they liked the story. They didnt pass on me because my script had grammatical errors. This is important to remember when people bash you over things you do - If you're good, people will work with you. Kevin Smith's original scripts have the craziest formatting I've ever seen - yet Harvey Weinstein keeps going back to that well and making money. Harvey knows more than you and me.
That doesn't mean my editor SHOULDN'T keep pushing me to get better. It doesn't matter that my readers don't harp on me. Those are their jobs. But it's also the job to know when to drop it, and when to look at the big picture. In the end, all we got is the big picture right? And no one's telling JJ about how his secondary story in episode 103 on Fringe had the character speak an incomplete sentence. Or how his action sequence had EXPLOSIONS written when only one explosion happened.
They were admiring the beauty of Star Trek. And JJ knows his one flaw he needs to fix, so does Judd Apatow, and Paul Thomas Anderson, and the Coen Brothers. That's why they hire people to help them.
I make a lot of mistakes when I write. Some of my mistakes come from pushing force really advanced writing that most others can't reach. Some are so easy my niece tells me I need to spell better. Both eat at me equally. One I notice easily, the other I don't. If you constantly remind me of my weaknesses constantly, I will do neither. And you get this blog not getting updated for two months...
Because everyone has that one thing they hate to hear, but that doesn't mean you can't get the job done, right?
...Right?
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