You know that that totally relatable feeling when the lovely people who run the Screenwriter’s Network give you a column on their blog and you want to seem like you’re competent and have a ton of ideas, but you aren’t and you don’t (or you’re too lazy to put the work into the good ideas you do have), so you go into the Discord and mine questions from the users so you don’t have to think of your own ideas?
…
…
Anyway, let’s get to some questions!
“What were some of the things that surprised you the most when you first started working as a reader in Hollywood?”
– courtesy of TyrionDraper
There are tons of answers to this question. I might come back to it someday. But I’ll stick with three for now.
1. The job can be a surprising confidence booster.
I want to try to keep things positive and encouraging around here. That said, I read a lot of shit. Like, a lot of shit. Some of it was even worse than the reality show pitches I would occasionally have to evaluate, so when I say shit, I mean shit. (Remind me to write you all a thing about those reality pitches by the way, because those were definitely the funniest things I had to read.)
At the risk of sounding egotistical, the stuff I write is not shit. Or at least I hope with all my heart that it’s not shit. Or at the very least, it’s not shit in the way that a lot of the most loathsome scripts I had to read were shit. The most easily identifiable kind of bad script you learn to detect as a reader are the craven scripts that were written just to be sold that the writer clearly doesn’t care about, and I can safely say that I’ve never done that.
Now, readers are a low rung on the ladder. On top of this, I’ve never read at a massive studio or agency or any company you’ve heard of (well, maybe one of them if you’re in the know), nor have I read for a massive competition or anything like that. In other words, I’ve never read at a position that screams “ideal reading gig,” assuming you have a more romantic view of jobs in Hollywood. So as I’m reading these terrible scripts in these smaller shops, you may be thinking that I felt down on my position in the industry.
I didn’t.
Even at my level, and here’s where the risk of me sounding like an egomaniac really comes into play, I often felt like I had a level of talent above what I was reading at a professional level. On those days, I went home thinking, “Okay, if these scripts can make it this far, and they can get read at these companies, I know I can do this. At least I don’t write my scripts in Microsoft Word.” (I’ve read a few of those, by the way.)
Confidence in our careers doesn’t come easily or often to us writers, but when it does come, it’s a hell of a feeling.
2. There are executives above you who really don’t care about quality.
Shocking, I know.
I’ve always understood that there are cynical career obsessed executives who are only capable of seeing the bottom line. However, it’s one thing to understand this concept, and it’s another to witness it firsthand.
One time I encountered a script that I deeply hated. For the sake of confidentiality, I shouldn’t say what it was about, but suffice to say that it was, among many things, really fucking stupid and sexist, and I said as much in my coverage. In fact, to be honest, I may have gone a little overboard in stating my case. (I know that may frustrate some of you who think readers should be as unbiased as possible. But that’s not the job. Trust me, with this script, it was worth it.)
Now, I did not have dictatorial control over which scripts advanced and which ones didn’t, nor did I expect my word to be the final judgment on anything I evaluated. But I was disheartened to find out that despite my exceedingly negative coverage, the executive who assigned it to me was pushing it forward anyway because they knew the writer. This person knew and acknowledged that the script was bad, too. They just didn’t care.
This would not be the last time something like this happened. I wish I could say that I’ve made some sort of peace with executives like this, but I can’t. There are people who only see the money or an opportunity, and as a fan and a lover of this medium, it’s a mental hurdle that I still can’t get over, and I may never will. There will always be a battle between commerce and creativity, but at the end of the day, I’m still a sensitive artist, and I’m still surprised that this kind of stuff bothers me.
There are also times where it doesn’t bother me so much as it’s just weird. The second company I worked for has a very specific business model. As such, it has put out some of the schlockiest schlock in the history of schlock. (I’m talking legendary bad movie night material.) However, they also have a deep catalogue of quality LGBTQ films, documentaries, and international films. It’s… very odd.
All that said, there is some good news! A lot of the more cynical executives I met are gone, or they have one project, and nothing else to show for it. Moreover, I’ve met plenty of executives who’ve found a balance between money and art. You may not know their names, but you know their work, as do many many other film and television fans around the world.
Of course, this is the entertainment industry. You may be able to shame terrible people into not defiling flower pots, but terrible people will never fully be expunged. However, talented people do rise. Take heart, writer friends. Take heart.
3. It’s a surprisingly pliable job.
At my first reader gig, the person I reported to didn’t care about the comments section of my coverage.
It’s not that this person didn’t value my opinion or anything like that. Quite the contrary, actually, as we would chat about each script, exchanging thoughts and commiserations and so on and so forth. However, because he was an insane person, he insisted on reading everything that came in on top of also having coverage done because he was arguably too thorough, and he wanted to form his own opinion.
So I checked the boxes I needed to check, wrote the bare minimum, and I moved on to the next script.
At the second gig, I was there primarily to give my opinion. There were many reasons why this was the case, but a large one was because this was a much smaller shop, and the higher-ups really did not have time to read every script.
As such, my summaries were incredibly thorough and my comments were long and detailed. And by “long and detailed,” I mean I’ve used sample coverage from that gig to apply to other reader jobs, and I get nervous whenever I do because it seems like I don’t know how to be concise.
This may seem like a minor point, but I make it for a simple reason: Every company or studio or anything in between is different. Whether it’s the size or the product or the culture or whatever, what you’re expected to do as a reader, and what you read in general, will change depending on where you’re reading or what you’re reading for.
Of course, this is true of any profession in any field. However, this is an industry where the product and the expectations for said product can vary wildly, and I can’t help but feel that all these companies, be they production or development or whatever, reflect that reality. Though Disney is arguably the only studio with an easily identifiable brand, and though the others put out similar products (I hate referring to movies and TV as “products” as much as you do, by the way), I can guarantee you that each one operates completely differently inside. It doesn’t matter if you’re a reader or an executive. Even though they’re similar businesses, no two companies are entirely alike.
It’s a helpful thing to understand if you want to work in Hollywood.