This semester, I am taking a class called "Producing Essentials" with the very witty and entertaining Sharon Badal (who, among many other things, is the programmer for Shorts at Tribeca) and the entire class is focused on creating the perfect verbal pitch. We have to come up with an idea for a production and pitch it to a hypothetical investor. If the investor picks it up, you pass the class. If not, you fail. Naturally, the first couple of weeks were spent in complete panic and a chaotic search for the perfect idea. She gave us one tip.
A desperate writer is a producer's best friend.
Upon seeing our dumbstruck faces, she continued in her typically sassy New York accent.
So. Imagine this guy. Joe Writer. Now, Joe Writer's kind of a loser. He's fat and single and lives in his mother's basement. He's just received his final rejection. Everyone's telling him his book sucks, he's lonely, he's depressed. So what does he do?
Professor Badal climbs onto the chair behind her desk in our mini aphitheater lecture hall and fashions an imaginary noose around her neck.
Suddenly (dramatic pause), the phone rings (another dramatic pause).
So Joe Writer takes off his noose, gets off the chair (and she proceeds to get off her chair) and picks up the phone.
"Hello?" he asks hesitantly. "Yes, this is Joe Writer." And he smiles for the first time in months.
You know who that phone call was, she asks us. We stare at her, clueless but rapt.
YOU! she shouts like a crazy church pastor. That phone call was you, telling Joe Writer that you read his manuscript at your internship and you want to make his book into a movie.
This story terrified me on two accounts.
First, because I've started thinking of myself as a writer, I was terrified at the prospect of becoming Jane Writer (unless Jane met Joe and they fell in love and lived happily every after with their family of little typos).
Second, because as filmmakers (another little label I'd like to stitch on my back), are we all out of ideas? Or at least good ones? Everything is adapted, from The Godfather to Dear John and it makes me wonder what a filmmaker's role is supposed to be. My notion of filmmaking has always been synonymous with storytelling, which is why I'm so flummoxed by this whole idea of adaptation. Granted you're giving credit where it's due (unless you're Vidhu Vinod Chopra and you've jipped Chetan Bhagat of his on screen credit), which is why there's a Best Adapted Screenplay category in the Oscars, but what about your own story? How do you find the passion and commitment to direct and produce something you haven't conceived of yourself? Are filmmakers merely executors? Maybe we should stop bashing James Cameron for Avatar having such a crap story. At least it's his.
A desperate writer is a producer's best friend.
Upon seeing our dumbstruck faces, she continued in her typically sassy New York accent.
So. Imagine this guy. Joe Writer. Now, Joe Writer's kind of a loser. He's fat and single and lives in his mother's basement. He's just received his final rejection. Everyone's telling him his book sucks, he's lonely, he's depressed. So what does he do?
Professor Badal climbs onto the chair behind her desk in our mini aphitheater lecture hall and fashions an imaginary noose around her neck.
Suddenly (dramatic pause), the phone rings (another dramatic pause).
So Joe Writer takes off his noose, gets off the chair (and she proceeds to get off her chair) and picks up the phone.
"Hello?" he asks hesitantly. "Yes, this is Joe Writer." And he smiles for the first time in months.
You know who that phone call was, she asks us. We stare at her, clueless but rapt.
YOU! she shouts like a crazy church pastor. That phone call was you, telling Joe Writer that you read his manuscript at your internship and you want to make his book into a movie.
This story terrified me on two accounts.
First, because I've started thinking of myself as a writer, I was terrified at the prospect of becoming Jane Writer (unless Jane met Joe and they fell in love and lived happily every after with their family of little typos).
Second, because as filmmakers (another little label I'd like to stitch on my back), are we all out of ideas? Or at least good ones? Everything is adapted, from The Godfather to Dear John and it makes me wonder what a filmmaker's role is supposed to be. My notion of filmmaking has always been synonymous with storytelling, which is why I'm so flummoxed by this whole idea of adaptation. Granted you're giving credit where it's due (unless you're Vidhu Vinod Chopra and you've jipped Chetan Bhagat of his on screen credit), which is why there's a Best Adapted Screenplay category in the Oscars, but what about your own story? How do you find the passion and commitment to direct and produce something you haven't conceived of yourself? Are filmmakers merely executors? Maybe we should stop bashing James Cameron for Avatar having such a crap story. At least it's his.
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