Film Courage: Why do screenwriters feel like executives ruin their screenplays or ideas?
Kelly Edwards, Staff Writer, Author, Producer: That's a good question however
I am doing listening to that new book that just came out about HBO and it's an interesting thing
because a lot of the testimonies from the writers are very positive about how they're
being supported so I do think that anytime you get a a note it's hard you have to internalize
you have to assimilate that into your psyche in some way and and notes are not everybody wants
their thing to be great right out of the box and it almost never is it always takes work so I think
no matter if you're getting it from your writer's group or you're getting it from an executive you
you're gonna you're gonna push back on it because you obviously turned in the thing that you thought
was ready and then to get the no no it's not ready there's something that needs to be done
that's like it's a little it's a little hard to to stomach but I do think there's a a whole
line of rhetoric out there about bad executives and and a lot of the bad executives are demanding
they demand your notes to be taken their notes be taken I think the better executives
try to again help you find your path your own path that's why I think if you're if you're
even even if you're not an executive and you're giving notes giving a note in a form of a question
will really help ease the pain and also you should also be cognizant of the fact that maybe somebody
doesn't want to take the note if they've taken the spirit of the note as opposed to the exact note
and you get the point across then it should be all good but I do think that there's there's been
a history of people who who give notes that seem to unravel things as opposed to helping them and
and if they don't have a fix for it that's even worse even if you say hey this is the bad version
then at least it's a little something so there's a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel
but I don't think anybody willingly goes out of their way to give terrible notes there are there
may be people who are just not equipped they don't know enough they haven't heard enough
pitches or they haven't been on the pitching side know how hard it is so there are those
people who probably shouldn't be giving notes but hopefully if you're in a network and you're
and your you're you're skilled enough to be sitting in that room
you should be giving fairly good notes what's the spirit of the note mean sorry give me the
note of the under the note yeah what is spirit you said the spirit of the note oh the spirit of
the note sure so let's just say you you have read my script and you give me a very very particular
note about a particular line well it might not be the line might not be the problem
but what you're tapping into is there's something not working about that scene or that moment maybe
I haven't earned that moment yet and your note may not be the right identifier of
that problem but if I take a step back and go well wait maybe what is she trying to tell me
maybe I can fix it a different way maybe it needs to be a different scene maybe everything's out
of place remember how I said in the beginning I took a script I completely unraveled it and then
I put it back together again and it worked so much better well the note was just go deeper he didn't
give me a do it this way or this particular way but he could have and if he'd done that and really
the note was just go deeper than I would have had to have looked under that I would have had to look
under well this why is this not working for him and take the spirit of the note which was deeper
earn those moments give me more character follow the emotion and so sometimes people don't know how
to say that and they give a very specific here's a line problem or I don't love this scene or
it's I'm getting bored or whatever but they don't understand that they're not getting bored because
the story is boring they're getting bored because they're not emotionally driven by the story you
have to understand what's well let me let me figure out what they're really trying to say why
this really isn't working for them so the spirit is just telling you there's just something off or
go they're not giving you look over here yeah I see okay that makes sense how many emails does an
executive get every day I I averaged about 200 of emails a day when I was at at HBO I'm going to say
easily 200. and some of that is incoming stuff agents managers some of that is catching up
with other executives that I know some of that was internal hey we've got a meeting
or hear notes on a script or whatever so it's a tonnage of things that come at you constantly that
you have to prioritize and get to the things that are that matter you might have a meeting coming
up you need to address you might have just done something you need to do an action item
so you just never know and every day is different every day is just slightly different
where there's a new fire to be put out why do screenwriters think executives are the enemy
well I think just it goes back to your notes question which is
this the the executive is the person who delivers the the notes number one they deliver the passes
number two they're the people who say no and I think a lot of executives have gotten the wrap
for being risk averse and not Taking Chances and sometimes that's true and sometimes it's
it's a factor that's way out of our control so but we're always the ones who deliver that news
so it's it's a lot of different things and I think the the whole process of of Hollywood is so random
and arbitrary and I was just thinking about how we just saw CODA win best picture and in the speech
the director talked about how hard it was to get the film made and you just go in the normal world
you can't do that movie as a big studio movie they don't do those anymore you have to go to
the Indie route so imagine all the things she had to do in order to make that thing go or she and
the producers and the writer and all of those things where people were constantly saying no
and all the people who said no right now are kicking themselves because it was a yes movie and
it desperately needed to be made and it touched so many people and it changed so many things
and yet all those people said no it only took one person to say yes thankfully it's out there
in the world but again think about how many other places and other movies that that don't
get made because someone doesn't think that it's right for them or the right time or they
don't have the budget whatever it is whatever the reasons that they're not going to push the button
and how many things have to really be squeaked by there's a whole thing about the Godfather have
you seen there's like a whole thing about the Godfather out now about how the Godfather was
made there's like a lot of threads on Twitter but then there's this movie that's coming out about
it and you think about all of the ways that that could have gone south and it probably couldn't
have it wouldn't have made it and yet it's like the most celebrated movie of of all time
and you go if it's just by the it's just by some sort of magic that it it became something
and I think they even said it at one point that the book hadn't even been finished at
the time that they they were starting this movie thing so it's just it's kind of crazy
you think about if you go on that thing there's like a Netflix show about
I don't know the history of how things got made and I think they do they do Dirty Dancing they do
die hard and they all have the same story which is there is no way in the world this movie should
have gotten made it should have it should have crashed and burned a million different times and
those are the things that make it so somebody had to champion it somebody had to say yes
but a lot of people said no so I think executives in general
like it's just a miracle of modern science that anything actually gets gets made and turns out
good because there's just a thousand ways that it could end up Heaven's Gate I guess right.