Tales from the Script

Saw Tales from the Script, a homey little documentary where a bunch of screenwriters talk about their lives working as screenwriters. They're mostly delightful little bookish people who speak with the assured tones of a parent talking about their job. This seems like a great film to show someone who wants to be a screenwriter because they talk in about the grim realities of their jobs. They don't glamorize themselves as starving geniuses, indeed they claim their worst mistakes were made as idealistic youths who approached writing as an art, rather than as a craft. They also don't present themselves as smug insiders who have made it. They talk about how as soon as you make a big movie, all the doors shut all over again and no one wants to see you. And they pepper these lessons with funny anecdotes and wry observations.

They also talk about how big studios have changed. Probably in reaction to the double-whammy of decreased theater attendance and an abundance of new talent struggling at the gates, almost no one can get a script accepted anymore and the scripts that do get accepted have to be based on something (and therefore prepackaged with a fan base) and allow for sequels and franchises. Grim times ahead. This is all about risk minimization and profit maximization and why shouldn't it be? Art is all very well and good, but this is a business. Still sometimes, by accident perhaps, good things are allowed to be made.

I don't really have much to say about this film because, funny anecdotes aside, this seems like a documentary that was genuinely trying to be informative. There's talk of emotional states when starting out, when pitching ideas, how to deal with movies that bomb and how to get your script read and how to deal with actors. Most of this isn't mechanical but philosophical. One distinguished gray-hair keeps repeating that no one intends to ruin your films, they just do, and that when some idiot in a suit tells you a scene isn't exciting, it's because you've failed to make it exciting. There's also advice on when to move on to greener pastures which, for me, for this review, is now.