Sunday, February 03, 2008

The Eternal Dichotomy

Or catch 22. More than any other artistic medium, film and TV relies on MONEY at the embryonic stage.
A poet or author can self publish and hope for a buzz. A playwright can get something on in a room over a pub and hope the right people are watching which results in a lucrative commission.

Screenwriting is about CASH. Not the writer's cash. And there's the rub.

Despite the fact that screenwriting is about cash remember that it's really not. It's about entertainment. You just might have to butt a few heads to get that on screen and knowing when to butt heads depends on a lot of factors. Mostly how wanky the exec your are dealing with is.

But non wanky exec plus committed writer has a good chance of entertainment. Also known as NWE+CW=MC2

MC = mass circulation

A committed exec is hard to come by. A committed writer isn't. The trick is to find where the two meet. Different agendas, same goal.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

you're back. thank god.

freebooter said...

Dave, you've obviously found a tree house to live in where you can create works of sublime richness that no-one will ever make, or understand, or care about... No that's me. Is echo beach the most appalling shit since that thing in the south of Spain? Is Ben Miller the worst piece of casting since Christopher Timothy? These and other questions demand answers, and those answers demand questions, and those questions.... fades... shuffles back to screenplay, remembers have to put on pants tomorrow....

freebooter said...

Dave, you've obviously found a tree house to live in where you can create works of sublime richness that no-one will ever make, or understand, or care about... No that's me. Is echo beach the most appalling shit since that thing in the south of Spain? Is Ben Miller the worst piece of casting since Christopher Timothy? These and other questions demand answers, and those answers demand questions, and those questions.... fades... shuffles back to screenplay, remembers have to put on pants tomorrow....

freebooter said...

oops double posting - how inaept of me

freebooter said...

and I can't bloody spell - where did it all go wrong?