Wednesday, July 13, 2005

I worked with a director a little while back developing a rewrite pitch for Telefilm. I thought we had a pretty good pitch for them. But it turns out he's going to rework his original idea into something entirely different.

I sort of thought I hadn't nailed what he was looking for, because he kept asking me to re-explain what I'd come up with, and his producer wasn't entirely on board. At the same time I think the pitch I wrote up was a good one and writeable and the sort of thing I can write the hell out of. I'm not sure I could write up what he wants in his heart of hearts -- I'm pretty sure I couldn't figure out how to make it into a movie you could actually get financed. Maybe someone else can.

It's hard, the writer/director dance. On the one hand you have to listen really carefully to what the director wants, because in movies it's his show. (In TV it's your show.) If you follow what's said but miss what's unsaid you won't satisfy.

On the other hand they're paying you -- he hired you -- to deliver a good script. So you can't just agree with everything said and unsaid, you wouldn't be doing your job...

Nothing to do with what I'm up to right now, though, where we're all on the same page, as far as I can tell, and things are going swimmingly...

2:30 PM

1 Comments:

I know how you feel. Doing the dance myself right now with this rewrite. My dance partners are: The Production Execs, the Director and the Development Exec. Some of them are doing the rumba, some the tango.

By  Cunningham, at 1:49 PM  

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