Amazing Article on the Economics of "Time Risk" for Screenwriters (and everyone else)

[scottfs]

This just isn't true - demonstrably. Look at how many hopeless, worthless films get made, utter trash you never even hear about because it's straight to video (at best) - films made by professional production companies big and small. Clearly, clearly there is a desperate demand for scripts - almost any script - to shoot. They'll even settle for the trash that I mentioned - a whole river, a whole ocean of trash. Now you're telling me that the ground beneath your feet (and those of your close friends/colleagues!) is littered with excellent scripts ready to shoot? Something doesn't add up. And having worked at a talent agency for several years, and headed the story department where I did nothing but read and covered scripts and supervised other readers, I can tell you what is wrong with that situation. Your statement is divorced from reality. Of those three parts, only one is true: littered. Yep, lots of scripts - and all litter (sorry for the pun). Not "excellent". Not "ready to shoot". Yes "litter". Tons, and tons and tons of litter. Here is the terrifying truth - the vast majority of all those "excellent" scripts you speak of, are even worse than the trash that gets made. Because that trash that gets made is mostly the sorry cream of the sorry crop.

If you have a half-way decent script, it'll get made. The problem is in getting a half-way decent script. Because during the time I worked at the agency, and read all those scripts, I mostly dealt with - 90% - scripts written by working screenwriters, often with credits. So I was really dealing with the cream of the cream. And guess what - about 99.999% of them were just plain bad or unmakeable. Now you're telling me that the piles and piles of unrepped submissions are actually buckets of treasure? That's true - but in an alternate universe, called Opposite World.

The reality is that the vast, vast, overwhelming majority of scripts can barely be even called screenplays. It's not writing. It's typing - and even that poorly.

How many good films can you think of from last year? One? Ten? Fifty Five? A Thousand? Almost any number you pick, I can tell you there are multiples - multiples - of others that were made all over the world, mediocre films, bad films, atrocious films, unwatchable films. That's true by definition - good films - and very good films - are always going to be a tiny minority. So where do you think all those other films come from, what scripts? Why not pick one of those "excellent" scripts that are "ready to shoot" instead, and have the universe invert itself and in Opposite World, you'd have majority excellent films and tiny minority of atrocious films. Alas, we live in this imperfect world. Where the devastating truth is that those unmade scripts are even worse than the atrocious films that do get made. That's what's littering peoples floors and that gets trampled underfoot - though these days, thankfully, many don't get printed out, and only haunt people's email inboxes, where they sit like an evil weight, draining the energy of the unfortunate readers tasked with wading through that trash.

On the other hand, good news: take an excellent script (even the one underfoot), and you'll get to make an excellent film! Easy peasy!

How funny! There are about 1.5 million scripts floating around the world at any given time. Many are good, even very good. They never get sold.

Part of it is only certain films get made; the safe ones. Sequels. Comic book. Action.

A film with virtually no dialog, with a good guy trying to rescue a damsel in distress, in an action-laden shootout, has a much better chance of being made than a dialog-heavy art film. Unless you are Woody Allen.

Action sells, not introspective, intelligent films. You can never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the film-going community.