Would you pay 50,000 dollars to make the mistakes that would ruin a normal career?

I once heard an explanation for why english has become the language of business throughout the world.  It had something to do with the amount of adjectives.  Adjectives....supposedly those of us that speak english have more ways to describe everything that any one who speaks a different language.  And yet, english fails most of us more than we’d like to admit.  

I was having dinner with my producer (who is Japanese) and my director (who is British) .  I am pretty sure that I intimidate my director, but he is such an egotistical bastard that he doesn’t back down. 

It is very hard to try to write something creative.  To then give it to a number of people and have it judged.  And then to have the judgements be so opposite that really the best solution is to ignore the comments.  But, sometimes the words fail me and the ideas I am trying to convey don’t materialize in the intended way.  But, if you happen to be giving anything to a british person it’s hard to not take it like some bizarre form of  chastisement. 

“It needs to feel more (hands waving indicating something bigger)....yeah.  You know what I mean?”

“That parts good... That’s good... (circling with a pen) What about this line?  It that real?”

“It’s a good first draft.  I can’t wait to the next one.”  Or more recently “It’s a good fourth draft, but it’s not the movie I want to direct, yet.”   

“You just need to work at it.”  

What the fuck do you think I have been doing?  

In any case... we were having dinner tonight. And I finally had enough.  I told the both of them that it’s done. This is the draft you are shooting.  My director last friday told me that he’s not going to do any preparation at all.  No story boards, no shot lists, nothing.  This is a guy who will obsesses about a single word in a paper and won’t turn it in until he gets it just right.  Meanwhile the paper gets no credit because it was late.  He starts to obsess about things that don’t matter.  

I think I scared them for about ten seconds. 

The whole group likes the fourth draft, including the director.  They just aren’t sure if it is film-able in the time alloted.  I asked the director to do some prep so that we know what needs to be cut for the shooting days.  And here is where communication is key.  He thought that I was stepping on his toes.  Of course I told him that I felt that he was “winging it.”  And being the obsessive person that he is, he didn’t like that very much.  

No film is ever perfected, the film-makers just ran out of time or money.   

But just in the blackest moment, I decided to talk to them about the outlines.  In reality at  this point, our Japanese producer couldn’t keep up with the rapid-fire english so I was really just talking to the director.  

I talked about how we hand three outlines that really did nothing for the story. I had 2 pages of writing that didn’t help me at all in the formation of the script.  And he wanted a third draft of the outline. It got to the point that the mentor had to say you can’t move forward with out a first draft of the script. The director wouldn’t have been happy with the 25th draft of the outline.  

This is where we were with the script.  The whole point of a film script is to have it filmed.  I write a blue print, or building blocks for something visual.  It’s time for the director to move forward in making the fucking movie.  And he finally agreed.

My mistake was to start to take it personally.  It I had made the allusion to the outlines in the first place I could have saved myself a huge headache.  And I probably wouldn’t have pissed anybody off.  To me this was one of those AH Ha moments that most of you have already learned.  Don’t take for granted that the director knows the usefulness of storyboards and shot-lists to a screenwriter with a contract through shooting. 

We are all trying to make the best movie that we can.  Isn’t it wise to test out a script in preproduction, with the screenwriter, before the actors have any ideas?  This is a medium that has evolved from the production line method to become more collaborative.  There is a gray line that a screenwriter can cross if you want to use him like an ally.