Most screenwriters will experience this at least once, and if the writing gods hate you it may happen frequently. It's when you find out that your prized script, your high concept masterpiece, your closely guarded return to originality, is in fact set be released as someone else's movie within a couple years. It's a pretty sucky feeling on a few different levels. For one, you're not as smart as you thought you were. When you were first telling those in your closest circle about your killer idea like a bunch of thieves going over the perfect heist, somebody else was banging out draft two of the same idea and stealing your gem. Secondly, the stock in your idea has just taken a big hit. You've just spent a year or more on your idea, confident that it will be a hot product when complete. Now it's tough to gauge just how valuable your high value project is. Thirdly, for whatever reason, someone else out there can get it done and you can not. They're either more connected, more talented, luckier, or sleeping with the person you can't sleep with. Maybe it's all of the above. Whatever the reason, things are falling in place in one of the toughest industries for them, not you.
Maybe I'm being too bitter. Maybe I still feel the sting from the other night when I discovered that a movie is being released in the near future that makes my "unique" idea less unique. I still think my concept is better, as I feel most writers do when they see their idea turn up elsewhere. I'm not too worried, I suppose. I'm young, and hopefully the other bastard writer is old and dying of cancer. Sorry, that was mean. But I am starting to feel better. This blogging stuff isn't so bad, kind of like a virtual punching bag. Too bad I'm only getting fatter as I sit here.
I haven't returned to my idea yet since finding out about the other movie. A part of me is ashamed of the confrontation, like a father approaching his teenage daughter after she got knocked up. But what are you gonna do? It happened, so I guess I just need to bang through my script, hopefully with the same enthusiasm that I had before. Maybe the rival idea will fail as a movie and my script will be poised to step in as the product the other movie should have been. Although, there is something about that situation that feels like sloppy seconds. Whatever, it's Hollywood and I'm an aspiring screenwriter. Sloppy seconds, tainted thirds, and funky fourths are all welcomed at this early stage.
I'm curious as to how other writers react when their idea shows up elsewhere. I'm not talking about a blatant rip off. I don't believe it's so much that as it is there just not really being many truly unique ideas left. I'm going to move forward telling myself that every script I write is already an embryo in several writers' heads. Some will mature at different rates, but that will largely depend on the writer. If my babies are never really my own, then complacency is never an option. It's time to whip these scripts into shape and start shattering the hearts of other writers who thought they had the big idea.
4 comments:
Maybe I'm just being pessimistic, but sometimes I feel like there's no such thing as an original idea. There are so many people out there dreaming up their own stories and ideas - it's hard for me to imagine that anything I've ever thought of hasn't already been thought of by ten other people already.
Truth is, anyone can have a good idea. I can't go to a single family gathering without an uncle dishing out a great idea he had for a movie. Anyone who's even seen a movie can have a great idea for a movie. Great ideas are common; however, *well-executed ideas* are few and far between.
That's what successful separates writers from the rest of the schlubs - they can have the great ideas, but they can carry them out. The good writers are the ones who can carry them out better than the bad writers.
Think there'll ever be an original love song again? A breakup song? I can't, really, but every year a talented newcomer will put out something that proves me wrong. Johnny Cash wrote about a billion songs about being in prison - each is different from the last. And each is awesome.
Someone else wrote your script already? Just make sure your script is better. That's all you can do. The best material will find a way to float to the top.
I've run into this several times. I think zombie is in essence correct with the "well-executed idea" notion, although some ideas are high concept enough that it would require substantial rethinking.
I mean, I wrote a white trash "Macbeth". I'm unsure how to rewrite it in a manner that wouldn't look like a retread of Scotland, PA, regardless of how good I may feel my own execution is.
That said, I also had a zombie script that had some set pieces that were used by various of the recent rash of zombie movies. I may get around to that one and see how I can rethink those so they don't appear the same, but still fit the vision I have overall.
I'm not sure I agree that Johnny Cash wrote that many prison songs, though. I can't even come up with five, and not much more than a dozen that he performed. It's just that the ones he did write (or perform) were just that indelible in ones brain. Speaking of good execution.
Thanks for chiming in Neil. I agree with you guys on the notes about ideas being well executed, but I also hear what you're saying about the possibility of having to rethink high concept ideas.
More and more as I develop my craft I feel an urge to leave some sort of emotional separation between myself and my work because I feel that if I am absolutely attached to every paragraph on every page, and in love with every character, it's going to be tough as hell to alter my script in the event that it HAS to be altered in order to see the light of day. And I'm not saying the script has to be altered because it isn't good enough, but rather that circumstances in the industry (another writer getting paid to write the same idea) doesn't leave room for the script in the business.
I know there are a lot of writers who are willing to stick to their guns and stand by their work, confident that their solid script will get found in its pure form, but it's a tough industry. I don't really know what I would do just yet.
My pleasure!
Having not been so lucky as having to deal with someone wanting to alter my script, aside from friends and associates advising me on what they think would be best, I still think I'm old enough to be able to cope with changes in principle.
Somehow I think there's a balance in understanding what really is important about your script. As some point being a script with a 6-foot man or with a really funny scene in a bathroom is just being pedantic and missing the point of your own work. At some other point, in principle at least, changes would be more basic and come into what I bring to the page as a writer and I may not even be qualified to make some kinds of alteration, without even being unwilling to see my baby changed.
Ultimately, if you're going to shoot your script in your backyard for $12, absolutely stick to your guns, but remember each dollar past that is something you may need to compromise over, up to if you're writing John McClane vs. Godzilla, you'd better figure you'll be answering a lot of notes for a long time... The upside is that I can promise if your script gets shot, I'll be spending my $10 to see it, no matter how the trailer looks.
But I think the key there is compromise. We're supposed to writers. Creative people. If we can't solve what we really want and not marry ourselves to the fact of a 6-foot guy or funny bathroom scene and not come up with a way to get what other people are saying you need and what you want at the same time, then your creativity is failing.
I'll give an example. I'd had a sex scene in the feature script that I was cutting down into a short. Without the surrounding material, it didn't work. However I could assess the thematic reasons I wanted it as well as realizing that I'm a dirty, dirty perv and just wanted it there, and I shifted events around, created an entirely new scene that actually strengthen the spine of the shorter story and making other people like the script more there, but also allowed me my thematic and pervalicious desire to include a sex scene.
Obviously not all potential changes are the same, but the principle that we're creative people and that coming up with creative solutions is part of what we do that we expect people to pay us for, so it's a failure on our parts if we're unwilling to live up to that end. It's not integrity, it's laziness.
Mind you, there is a place for integrity. In an overly extreme sense, my short script remained a horror story. If someone had said "It would be better if you took out any violence or threat of violence", I'd have "stuck to my guns".
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