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Nine Signs Your Client Can’t Write by Sky Tallone
Sky Tallone endeavors to accentuate any setting, although her specialty is writing and directing. photo: courtesy S. Tallone
BEFORE I GET TO MY 'CLIENT FROM
Hell Story", I want to reaffirm: I’ve been pretty lucky so far to work with, and be employed by, honest and reasonable professionals who are creative and deliver on their promises. As a female in the film industry, I haven’t really experienced any sexism or gender-related judgment from the people I’ve worked with.
Although I’ve been commissioned to write scripts by plenty of non-writers I didn’t see eye-to-eye with, we were always able to come to an understanding. But this time it was different.
The client commissioned me to write a dramatic feature-length screenplay inspired by true events and it was an absolute nightmare from the very beginning.
First of all, he had no understanding of the screenwriting process or even normal story elements, though he seemed to think he did. He would throw away every original idea I had and replace it with an overdone cliché, often quite comical. If only we were writing a comedy.
When I would point out that characters generally need quirks or traits to make them less generic, he would respond, “Films aren’t supposed to be entertaining.” To make his point, he referred to the supposed cinema crimes committed by "Gravity", a film of which I wasn’t a huge fan but certainly wasn’t void of entertaining elements.
Secondly, he would project his sexist views on the characters, insisting male characters cannot be stay-at-home dads and must be emotionally distant workaholics. Women, for their part, cannot have careers or adventures which might injure them, all the while remaining overly emotional but also beautiful.
Of course, if these views pertain to what makes sense for the characters within a story, I totally understand, but that wasn’t the case here. It was simply his sexist worldview talking.
Thirdly, if you are trying to model a character after yourself, as he clearly was, at least allow them to have one or two flaws. No way! He wanted his character to be manly and strong, a perfect family man who becomes the hero with virtually no narrative arc—that's how much his ego was invested in this character.
Tallone also takes a damn good Polaroid. photo: courtesy S. Tallone
Fourthly, PAY THE HELP! He would agree to pay a certain amount for an outline, then when that was complete, decide he now needs ten script pages before the first check is inked.
After I put many hours into his project, he decided to lower the agreed-upon-amount by $1,000! On top of that, he now won’t pay me the last few hundred dollars of even that reduced rate!
Ordinarily, I would not make such a big deal but it isn’t really about the money. I feel like I’ve been taken advantage of—indeed, my whole writer cohort has been disrespected. He would talk down to me and act like I was crazy for mistrusting him, even as he continued to swindle me. He treated our male producer with a lot more respect.
Unfortunately, I was never able to get a contract signed because every time it was ready, he would change something and it would have to be retyped and wait for the next meeting.
I know, I know, I should have known better!! Although I don’t have a contract, I do have several e-mails and text messages in which he acknowledges what he owes me.
Would that be enough in small claims court? Should I bother to move from artistic to legal action, and the immense time suck that involves? Or should I just go ahead and finish the script as I see fit and try to sell it, since he didn’t technically pay me in full? Without his final cut meddlings, it might actually be a good film.
Along the way, however, I least I learned the:
Nine Signs Your Client Can’t Write
1. They get obsessed with getting the story out while remaining blind to the characters and the details.
2. They want to create ridiculously easy solutions to get their characters out of problems.
3. They always want to insert something they just saw on "Breaking Bad" or whatever else they’re into.
4. They love exposition. If they could have the characters explain the whole story, rather than showing it, they would.
5. When it comes to dialogue, they don’t understand how real people talk, despite the fact that they themselves are a real person and they talk like one.
6. They admit outright that they are not a writer, but still have set-in-stone ideas about how they want the story told and are essentially just using you to input and format it for them.
7. They keep trying to make it a story about them or their life, or model a character after themselves, resulting in them not wanting the character to have significant flaws—ie, severely boring writing.
8. They seem to think everyone in the audience is brain-dead; hence, they need to repeatedly beat them over the head with every plot point in the most obvious way for fear that “They might not get it.”
9. They refuse to comply with basic screenplay structure. They feel their story is somehow special or different in some esoteric way so that it doesn’t need to follow a basic story arc. Indeed, their story is so incredible, there is nothing wrong with writing a 200-page spec script on the subject.
Sky Tallone is a writer, director, filmmaker and blogger, and can be reached .Posted on Mar 14, 2014 - 03:51 PM