10 years of Bitter posts - When Good Scripts Go Bad

When I started the blog, one feature I thought I'd get more milage out of was "When Good Scripts Go Bad." It seemed like an interesting way to pick movies that turned out less than good, but that read so much better when I saw them in script form. It sounded like a good idea in concept, but in practice, writing those posts was less fun.

I don't shy away from writing dissections of TV and film that I felt fell short. Studying those mistakes can be instructive, and there is plenty you can learn from failures. I think what I discovered was that in framing the reviews in the way I did, it made the post too much about ME and less about the work. Also, every post was determined to have the same punchline - "I read it, it was great, but I was wrong and the movie sucked."

That doesn't mean it wasn't instructive in helping demonstrate the difference between a great script and a great movie. That disparity absolutely exists. The problem was that in most of these cases I experienced, the reason for my bosses passes almost ALWAYS came down to business reasons. After I've told you once or twice that, "this script came with Tony Scott attached and there's no way in hell these guys wanted to work with him" or "they didn't get it, but it was more that they saw no commercial potential because later that year they developed two scripts that clearly they didn't get either."

That's why this was an experiment I did only twice and when I was halfway through a third post following the same pattern, I could already sense I was repeating myself. I found I enjoyed dissecting failed films much more just as a straight review rather than forensically looking back at the original script and using conjuncture to presume how it ended up going from A to B.

One of my earliest mistakes in getting a script wrong was DOMINO, a Richard Kelley script directed by Tony Scott.

I had the then-rare distinction of reading a really clever and engaging script for my bosses at the time. It had a complex plot, a clever non-linear structure, some funny showbiz cameos, and some really well-executed twists. In short, it was one of the most original scripts I’d seen and also one that I would have been willing to stake my reputation on. The script in question? Richard Kelly’s Domino, the story of a former model-turned-bounty-hunter, based on a true story (sort of.)

Unfortunately there was not shortage of reasons why my boss felt that the script was an inappropriate fit for us at the time, and there were factors I wasn’t expected to know about, so the company quietly passed. I spent the next year lamenting the fact that my bosses had let such a sure-fire hit movie get away. During that time, whenever someone asked me if I’d read anything good lately, I was quick to reply that Domino was one of the best scripts I’d ever seen and that it was sure to be a hit when it came out. Maybe I’m exaggerating, but in hindsight it certainly feels like I was staking all my script-reading credibility on this movie, at least as far as my rep among my friends was concerned.

Long story short - the movie that was released was not the movie in my brain. But it took YEARS for me to see the final film, which was plenty of time for Richard Kelley to become cemented in my brain as a writer who was vividly creative and clever. It meant he started ahead of the game the next time a script of his crossed my desk...

Here's what I had to say about my enthusiastic coverage for SOUTHLAND TALES.

There was some incredibly clever writing in that script, as well as a truly unique premise. But it wasn't realized exceptionally well. Isolated pockets of it worked so well that as a reader you really wanted the whole thing to come together and be more than the sum of its parts. I got this just before a weekend and it was such a priority that I was going to be reading it alongside the VP of Development, the SVP of Development, the assistant to the President of Development and the President of Development himself.

After my first read, I could never have explained half of what went on in that script. It was just all over the place and full of complex, scientific concepts and technobabble about the nature of time and reality. There were enough ideas in there for three completely different films. But the one-third of it that I really understood, I really liked.

I read it a second time, and understood it only marginally better.

I read the script FOUR times over the weekend, taking notes each time until I felt I had puzzled out most of the narrative. Then read it a FIFTH time as I wrote up the synopsis and tried to bring some order to a very chaotic script. I gave it a consider, citing its imagination, even as I knew it only worked about 50% and that was with immense effort on the part of the audience. To bulletproof myself, I mentioned the commercial viability of all of the talent attached.

I probably should have known better when it was taking that much effort to decode the script, but in my defense, the parts of the script I immediately liked were so good that they MADE me want to put in that time.

Of course, if you read that post, you'll see that I also was envisioning those scenes in an ENTIRELY different tone than they ended up being done in the movie. I supposes that exposes the limitations of coverage - sometimes your own imagination can steer you wrong, unless it's the fault of unclear writing.

I was early in realizing this, but sometimes the posts focused on the day-to-day work of being a reader were rarely fascinating to those who weren't readers themselves. It made me realize I'd need a different approach in discussing the script problems of completed works.

Webshow: "I wrote it, now what do I do with it? Part 3 - Coverage services."

It's not uncommon for me to get a question along the lines of, "I wrote it, now what do I do with it?" It's a good question, and one with no easy answers. So don't think of this continuing series AS those easy answers. There are merely points to ponder. This week, I talk about what sorts of things you should look for in a reputable coverage service.

The difference between coverage and a review

After my post on Monday wherein I expressed that aspiring script readers might find it useful to peruse internet reviews, I got a tweet from someone called "BrainyReviewer":

"So if aspiring script readers should read reviews, that entails reviewers (good ones) can succeed as script readers?"

That's one of those apples = oranges/transitive property tricks that I'm often wary to agree with because it's not a perfect analogy.  Limited to 140 characters in response, I tweeted back "It's possible, assuming they can adapt to the needs of coverage."

To that, BrainyReviewer asked, "Can you please elaborate?"

Certainly.  At the core of this is a simple truth.  A review is not coverage.  What Roger Ebert writes is not coverage.  What AICN publishes is not coverage.  And most any review you read on the internet is not coverage.

Coverage and reviews are similar in that both (presumably) entail looking at a work of art analytically.  A review of a TV show or a movie might examine the deeper themes of the film, note the complexity of the plot or character arcs, or evaluate the merits of the concept.  The difference is that the format of a movie review or a random internet review is almost certainly less rigid than coverage.  When writing coverage, brevity is often important.  You're writing a review for people who are too busy to read the actual script, so the coverage needs to break down the nuts and bolt succinctly in a professional fashion.

In my experience, agencies are the most rigid when it comes to coverage format.  Basic coverage is four paragraps, broken down as follows:

- Introduction
- Characters
- Plot/Structure/Concept
- Conclusion

Most of the time, that's all expected to fit on less than a page.  Depending on the agency, there might be a little give on those numbers, but I'm not aware of any agency that encourages coverage to be two pages or more.  Most of the places I've worked for prefer the coverage notes not go over a page.

Also, as rigid as agency coverage guidelines are (and like everything else associated with agency work, they are indeed needlessly complicated and weighed down with a multitude of arbitrary rules) production companies tend to be a bit looser about coverage structure.  Out of habit, I maintain the four-paragraph format unless specifically directed otherwise - but I have read for companies that have accepted briefer, more superficial coverage.

But I'm drifting.  My point is that reviewers used to just putting their thoughts down on paper might find it a bit of a tricky adjustment fitting into the constraints of coverage. In addition to that structure, coverage is supposed to somewhat objective and analytical in a way that a review often isn't.  If I'm reading a genre that I personally hate, I still need to be able to weigh the script on it's merits.  My own tasted can't be the last word on the script.  It can be a guide, certainly, but I've got to have more to back up my opinion than just "It sucks."

Don't get me wrong - most of what I read sucks.  I just need to be able to "show my work" and do the math to PROVE that it sucks.

I'm sure many reviewers are capable of adapting to this format, but I did feel that it was important to make this distinction.

The last word on "How Can I Become a Script Reader?"

In the nearly three years I've run this blog, one question has been submitted more frequently than any others: "How can I become a script reader?"  I've run several blog posts covering this question from many angles and yet I rarely go long without getting an email that asks this question.  From now on, unless I have a compelling reason to give more of an answer, I'm just going to reply to that question with a link to this page.  

So how can I become a script reader?

I'll direct you to this post where I talk about my history and how I got the job.  As several years have passed, things have doubtlessly changed, but the important detail to understand is that it's rare to get hired right out of college as a script reader.  At the risk of sounding someone pretentious, Script Reader isn't a job you "get," it's a job you "earn."  Get a job that puts you in contact with people who need scripts read, then offer to do coverage on the side for them.  If you want to be a Script Reader, don't be above taking a "lowly" PA job, particularly an Office PA job.

What education should I get in order to be a better reader?

Watch movies, read scripts.  That's essential.  Don't just watch/read good movies, but do the same for bad ones and attempt to understand why they're bad.  I also highly recommend reading reviews.  When I was in college, I visited Roger Ebert's website several times a week and I learned a lot about the art of criticism just from reading his takes on films.  I didn't always agree with him - but it was almost always informative to read why he thought what he thought.

There were also two other reviewers whose work I devoured in those days.  Tim Lynch was a major internet reviewer in the Star Trek world during the late 90s.  Though he'd been mostly retired by the time I stumbled onto his review archive, I found his reviews of Deep Space Nine so insightful about the show and TV writing in general that I made it a point to read the corresponding review before revisiting any of those episodes in syndication or DVD.  It was like a master class in both criticism and TV writing.

Another Trek reviewer who always left me with a lot to think about is Jamahl Epsicokhan aka "Jammer."  He covered most of the modern Trek series and Battlestar Galactica.  If none of those shows floats your boat, that's cool.  The net is full of quality reviewers out there, so find something you're passionate about and see if there's a reviewer who inspires you to think deeper about what you watch.

Are there many jobs out there?  How can I get hired? How much does script reading pay?

If you're looking to be a full-time script reader, completely supporting yourself just on that job, I'm going to tell you it's very difficult. It used to be that some production companies I've worked for had a script reader on salary.  They'd pay a weekly rate and that reader would get a relatively consistent workload.  Those guys had the security of knowing they'd be able to pay their bills each week.

Far more common is an arrangement where the reader is paid per script.  This rate varies.  Most reputable companies should be paying at least $50 a script, but it's not entirely unheard of to get more, like $70 a script for basic coverage.  So if you read ten scripts a week (hardly an impossible task), you could pocket between $500-$700.

That's not too bad.  So what's the problem?

The problem is that for the last three years, companies have been cutting back.  As you can see, a reader who covers 2-3 scripts a day is costing the company about the same amount as a full-time assistant.  When the pennies get pinched, that becomes an unnecessary expense.  Thus, a lot of companies have started farming out work to freelance readers only when absolutely necessary and have forced the assistants to do a lot more of the reading. The reason for this should be obvious - the assistants are already on salary and they aren't paid extra for these additional coverages. Make an assistant take those extra two scripts a day and the company has just saved the cost of an entire person's salary.

Most readers I know have to read for more than one company.  When I got started, I was more than secure just with one company.  I picked up a second gig just for security and that was a perfect arrangement because when one office was light, I knew I had the safety net of another.  As work dwindled, I did my best to pick up other gigs.  At one point I was juggling work from four different companies.  Some weeks they all had enough to keep me busy, but there were times where I found all of those employers to be light on work.

Reader jobs as they were when I got started no longer exist.  If you want to really make it climbing the ladder this way, set your sites on an assistant job and try to climb the ranks in development as a development assistant or a story editor.  Long-term, that's a far wiser strategy.


So how can I be a script-reader without living in NYC or LA?

Are you daft?

Look, I get that the fantasy is that in the age of the internet, everyone can sit on the toilet with their iPads in their laps and do their jobs from anywhere.  There might even be some readers who've managed to move out of LA and continue their jobs - but they almost certainly built relationships in the business first and made a reputation for themselves by actually being in LA.

If you want to work for an agency and a production company, you're almost certainly going to have to physically be here.  The only way I ever see getting past that is if you've got an impressive resume that backs up your coverage skills.  Usually the person asking the question above is someone fresh out of college or someone slightly older who's settled into a "real" job and life and wants to work for Hollywood without uprooting.

I don't see it happening.  I'm sorry to be that blunt, but that's what my experience tells me.

But I saw an ad for Film Festivals and Screenwriting Contests who are looking for readers who can submit coverage over the internet!  You're a liar!

I consider most of those jobs beneath my notice.  Contests really don't pay much at all, and they're seasonal so it's nothing even close to a permanent solution.  At best, you'll get coverage experience you might be able to parlay into another gig.  Most of those places underpay so hideously that I think it undervalues the entire coverage process.  I know of a place that paid $30 for two-pages of synopsis and 2-3 pages of notes.  For that level of work anything less than $50 is taking advantage

There are some competitions where all you have to do is fill out a score sheet and you'll get paid maybe $10-20 a script.  That's not taking advantage quite as much, but still... what are you getting out of that?  Most contest submissions are crap and a real pain to read.  You can always learn something from bad writing, but after a few contest scripts, you'll often cease to see anything of value.

If you had to start all over again, would you pursue being a reader?

As I indicated, I'd make more of an effort to stay on the development track and rise within a company.  It's a really bad time to try to break into reading. The jobs aren't out there, the workload is shrinking and you're competing with guys like me who have a lot more experience. Reader jobs tend to go to people who have already made contacts in the business and guys like me are always looking for additional freelance assignments. If you don't have any contacts in the business yet, it's going to be hard to break into this end of it.

Reader question - What's my process for coverage? Is there a checklist?

MalcDelNorte said:

I'm similarly intrigued as to what is your streamlined process for script triage. Do you have some kind of check list so you can justify your decision on the script in an objective way. Or do you just read until your gut feeling tells you the script hasn't made the cut? Cheers! Malc.

When I'm reading something that has been submitted to one of my bosses from an agent, manager, actor, director, etc, I HAVE to read the whole thing. Ditto for agency coverage. An official submission of that nature needs to be written up and documented. Ergo, a synopsis of the entire script and an evaluation of the project both need to be completed. There have been rare instances where I've been able to go back to the development exec who gave me the script and say something like, "He opens with the brutal torture murder of a baby and then tries to turn it into a rom-com. Oh, and half the dialogue is in Romanian."

If you run across an obvious turkey like that, you might be able to cut corners and stop early. This works best when the exec has a full load of stuff he wants you to read for him and recognizes he'd be wasting both your time on this trash. More likely, he'll just give you the go ahead to do the "skim treatment." Different places have different was of breaking this down, but I know it as the "10, 25, 50, 75, 90 rule." Essentially, you read the first ten pages, the last ten pages and a few pages where each major act break is supposed to go.

Some writers might consider it a benefit that in most cases, the reader has to take in the entire submission. They'll call bullshit on me and other readers when we say that you're playing a dangerous game by taking 30 pages just to get your story started. Their retort is "Hey, you've gotta read the whole thing anyway, so who are you to tell me what to write?"

I'm the guy you've gotta get past, jackass. And once you get past me, you then have to impress my boss. Trust me, unless I write up the most positive review you can imagine, an exec or agent will be even less charitable about a flabby script than I will. Write as if the reader can toss the script away at any point.

But to get to the heart of your question, let's talk triage and checklists. I think there are a lot of disgruntled writers who try to interpret coverage as if it's some sort of mathematical proof. You can spot these guys because they ignore most of what's written in the comments and try to argue the merits of what the coverage grid shows.

(Sidebar: writers often manage to get copies of their script's coverage illicitly. All it takes is for them to be connected to the right assistant or intern and a review that's supposed to be internal can leak out. This is why many, many companies set it up so that the reviewers name does not appear on the coverage. I've heard horror stories of agency readers being tracked down and chewed out over the phone by angry writers.)

Here's probably the simplest way to explain the review process - the reaction determines the review, not vice versa. What I mean by that is that before I've written up my actual notes and done the little grid, I KNOW whether the script is going to get a PASS or CONSIDER. For the better scripts, I know it's a CONSIDER well before I'm done reading the script. I'm pretty sure most readers operate the same way. When they finish a script, they know whether they like it or not - just as any of you know whether you liked or hated a movie as soon as you finish watching it.

What I don't do is finish the script, write up a paragraph or two each on the Characters and the Plot/Structure and Concept and say, "Hmm... based on what I just wrote, this is probably a Consider." Nor do I go through the grid and say: Premise: Good, Plot: Fair, Characters: Fair. Structure: Good. Marketability: Fair, and then go "Well, based on the point values of each of those elements, this grades as a Consider."

2 "Goods" and 3 "Fairs" could be a CONSIDER, but there are circumstances where it could be a PASS. Maybe there's a circumstance where 5 Fairs could squeak by as Consider, where 1 Good and 4 Fairs could be a PASS. So if you happen to get a copy of your coverage and the grid scores for yours are lower than some other coverage you saw that got a Consider, don't try to argue you deserve a consider on those merits. Despite all the formulas aspiring writers are fed for writing their script, this isn't how coverage works.

So that's the long way around saying I don't have a "checklist." Obviously there are things I will look for - such as engaging characters, strong voice, interesting premise, good pacing - but I don't sit there and go "Character's flaw established by p. 7: that's 3 points."

In a case where there's a lot on my plate and I know I might have to give the weaker ones the skim treatment in order to spend time with the ones more worthy of my attention, here's what usually comes into play:

Is the protagonist clear? I've read scripts where 15 pages in I'm still not sure who the main character is. Can you watch any movie where you don't know within ten minutes who the lead character is? There are some writers who you could give the plot for Back to the Future, and you'd get to p. 20 not knowing if the star is Marty, old George McFly, Doc, Jennifer or Biff because they have no idea how to focus their story. That's a big problem.

Are the genre and tone clear? The first 10-15 pages are crucial for establishing the kind of world your character lives in. Is it slapstick or serious? In a comedy, a character might be able to take the sort of physical abuse that would leave them maimed or in a body cast in a drama. Dumb & Dumber doesn't read like Sense & Sensibility. Even before the story really gets going, I should be able to sense the tone.

Is there a clear hook or jumping off point for the story? One that establishes a firm direction? Marty McFly ends up back in time and averts his parents first meeting. Ferris Bueller plays hookey. Jerry Maguire gets fired from his high-paying job and has to start all over again. The arrogant warrior Thor is exiled to Earth. Usually by p. 15 your reader should have a pretty good idea what your script is about and by p. 30 the main plot should be very apparent. New writers often make the mistake of writing scene after scene that doesn't clearly go anywhere. Story momentum lags, making a less engaging read.

Is the dialogue natural or does it feel stiff and expository? I think this one's pretty self-explanatory.

Those are probably the biggies. And if you manage to screw up formatting and the proper way to write action paragraph (hint: don't tell me what your character "thinks."), that'll also probably also hurt you.

But to give a short answer, it's probably more of a gut thing. After all, I have to like it if I'm going to tell someone to "Consider" it.

Reader question - doing coverage for an internship

I got an interesting question via Twitter from @codyisdead. He says:

applied for intrnshps in LA. Most req coverage of scripts. Do you have a sample cov. On ur site? And, can I intern for you?

140 characters is often quite limiting so I might need clarification on one point. Are you saying that you're being asked to do sample coverage as a prerequisite for getting an internship? That seems... odd. I never heard of anything like that back when I was an intern.

Granted, when I was an intern, the hottest song on the radio was Evanesence, Katie Holmes was at the top of my celebrity list, and everyone anticipating that the second Matrix movie was going to be awesome. In other words, things change.

To just get off on a tangent, I hate "audition coverage." There are times I've seriously wondered if a company pulls this just to get free coverage of their script backlog by calling in people for a job that doesn't really exist. It's ridiculous that an applicant has to do for FREE what they are paid to do as their vocation. If it's so important to get someone with experience and they want to see how the person writes coverage, prior samples from other jobs should be sufficient. You don't ask an applicant for a Development job to bring in a script and package it for free, do you?

No one should expect an intern to be brilliant with coverage, so perhaps you mean that coverage is required if you get hired. If that's the case, don't sweat it. These people will teach you how to do coverage and you'll get to see plenty of samples of what's acceptable to them. You're there to learn and they'll help you do that.

The basics of coverage are usually 1-2 pages of synopsis and one page of comments. The format for comments is most commonly: Introduction paragraph, character notes paragraph, plot/structure/concept notes paragraph, conclusion. (The middle two paragraphs may be transposed.

I'm sure if you poke around the internet you can find some professional examples. I don't have any on my site because legally, I don't own my coverage. It's all the property of the companies I've generated it for. I would just advise you to be aware of the difference between a review and coverage. The stuff you find on Scriptshadow isn't coverage, and I single him out only because he's probably the best-known script review site. I've also seen some confusion about this fact in a few private emails to me and elsewhere on the internet.

Oh and I wish I had need of an intern - or that I had enough pull in this business that it would mean something for someone to have interned for me.

Take criticism

My wife and I have been watching American Idol as it enters this season (sidebar: Steven Tyler is damn entertaining when they can play with his footage in the editing room... but I cannot WAIT to see what happens when you put this duck on live TV with an open mic. Unfortunately anything REALLY good will probably be chopped out by the time the West Coast broadcast begins) and I always empathize with the Idol judges. When you consider the relative quality of what I read, and the relative quality of what the judges contend with, our jobs are very similar.

It also makes me very glad that my coverage is often anonymous, and that I don't have to deliver it face-to-face to the writers in question. There have been situations where I have dealt with the writers through an intermediary, and often, it reinforces my decision not to make myself available to writers.

You know those moments on Idol where someone comes into the audition room talking up their own talents? Then they proceed to butcher a classic song, perhaps rendering it unrecognizable... and yet they're shocked - SHOCKED - when the judges tell them it's not up to snuff. In fact, I've seen it start with the judges trying to let them down easy, let them go with some dignity and the clueless auditioner becomes combative, insults the judges personally and either stomps out or demands a second chance.

And I always wonder "What the FUCK did you think was going to happen?" First, let's leave aside the delusion of being the next Freddy Mercury, because that's a whole 'nother ball of neurosis. On what planet does insulting the people deciding to advance your career sound like a good idea?

More to the point, if someone gives you a bad review, does telling them to go fuck themselves really help you in the long run? In the case of a writer with a script, suppose I send you coverage that says, "Look, this needs some work... the concept is a bit derivative, I didn't feel like your character's motivation was very clear, and it was perhaps a little too slow."

Is your response:

1) Thanks for your time. I'll take your notes under advisement.

2) Well, I'm disappointed, but if it's not your thing, I can't really change that.

3) Fuck you! You clearly didn't read it! The character is scared of water - that's his motivation! Didn't you notice he turned down water in every scene, declined the invitation to go to the pool and was shown to prefer sponge baths! Do you know anything? I'm an AWESOME writer! You're just stuck in the Hollywood mold and you're just trying to keep writers like me out because you know we'll take all your jobs! Well if you knew anything about writing, you wouldn't be reading scripts for a living, asshole! Who are you to tell me what's good writing when you haven't sold anything either? Anyway, I've already deleted your coverage from my computer and shredded the hard copy (after I used it to wipe my ass) so you can suck my dick, you no-talent asshole!

Now, there's a subtle difference among those three, but two of those replies might keep the door open for future submissions, while one of them only ensures that I will never, ever read anything from you again.

Here's the thing, manners aside, you can't argue people out of an opinion. This isn't like debating science or history, where there's an objective truth. If I say, "I didn't like it," you'll never convince me "Yes you did!" You're certainly welcome to ask questions, perhaps find out why my opinion doesn't match up with your perception. But if someone's taken the time to read your work, and you don't get the review you wanted, don't waste your breath fighting them. And if you ever degenerate into personal insults, don't expect them to ever call you back.

(Seriously, do you think that Brenda Hampton or the people at 90210 would ever hire me after the way I've slammed them... and compared to reactions I've seen first-time writers have to a bad review, I've been downright polite.)

So the first thing you should learn as a writer (yes, even before formatting) is how to be respectful when someone says, "I don't think it works."

A Rant on the ScriptShadow issue

We had some good comments yesterday on the John August v. Scriptshadow post, and though I responded to some of them there, there was one in particular that left me with so much to respond to, I decided to make it the basis of today's post.

Scott brought up a few points that I've seen elsewhere, and so I'm going to take the opportunity to respond not only to him, but a lot of other ScriptShadow defenders across the net:

"I am not saying at all that people should have access to these scripts. In fact, the only people who should are the ones who need it to do their jobs. But what we know from practice is that scripts in production or development are widely disseminated. August even says thats how he got one of his first assignments because his script was passed around."

Okay, there are more than a few things I should probably discuss here. August didn't get one of his first assignments because a few interns passed a script around and it landed on the desk of an assistant who kicked it upstairs. John actually said: "I got my second writing assignment (A Wrinkle in Time) based on the script to my first assignment, a project that was still in active development. If that script had been locked down, I might not have gotten another job."

In a circumstance like that, what happens is the producers (in this case, the producers of A Wrinkle in Time) are looking either for a rewriter or for someone to flesh out their concept into a full script. Either way, they want to know that the writer they hire can work well in the genre and style they're after, and the best way to do that is to look at their prior work. Let's assume that at this early stage in John's career the only produced film he had to his name was Go - which isn't comparable at all to Wrinkle. Thus, John's name might not be at the top of the list.

But lo and behold, John happened to have gotten hired on an assignment that probably was closer to what the producers were looking for with Wrinkle. Clearly that film never got made and the script was owned by A Major Studio. Now, had A Major Studio locked down the script, John's agent would not have been able to send the script to Wrinkle's team, which effectively is denying John a job interview. Thus, John doesn't get the job and perhaps experiences a major roadblock in his career.

I'm sure there are a few posters who will say that it's not ScriptShadow's fault that A Major Studio wouldn't release the script. But in a world where scripts are not only being leaked, but passed to people who review them on the internet, how could they be sure that some intern working for the Wrinkle producers wouldn't take a copy of the script and slip it to Carson or a site of similar purpose?

Yes, the threat of such piracy has always existed, but until sites like ScriptShadow made it much more efficient for bad buzz to be attached to a script in such an open forum, the impact of that piracy had been minimal. And since the studios own the rights to the scripts, they have every reason to hunt down any pirates of those scripts. Just because they haven't gone after the PA who printed off a copy of TRANSFORMERS 3 and kept it in his room doesn't mean they've voided the right to pursue a guy who boldly posts a copy of the script on the internet.

Script swapping does happen within the industry, but it RARELY harms anyone. Take this example - a few years back I was a development assistant at a company that was readying the latest film in their big franchise. When the first draft of the script came in, the assistant to the head of Development sent out an email to everyone saying that the script was not to be copied or taken out of the office without her (that is, the assistant's) express permission. Yes, this meant that even I, who was working in Development, had been barred from reading it.

This was on a Friday afternoon. Monday morning, one of the Development VPs delivered the script to me personally, just to see what I thought of it. It was a moot point though because I had already read the script Friday night. How did I get it? Someone close to the director slipped it to me. Now, this individual had known me for a while and knew I could be trusted not to put it online, write a review of it, or pass it on to anyone who would do any of those things.

This is generally how the inter-industry script trading works. People pass to people they know with the understanding of "Don't screw me." It's not something we do to exclude the outsiders. It's not an elitist conspiracy to keep people outside LA in the dark.

And honestly, it's rarely even that unseemly when scripts get passed around within companies. Let me explain a little bit about coverage. What Carson does is NOT coverage. He writes a review and he often makes good points, but coverage is generally more in-depth than that. It's an analysis of the writer as much as the script. That's why more companies have two slots for the PASS, CONSIDER, RECOMMEND rating. One for the script and one for the writer. Good coverage tells the person reading it not only if the script is good/bad, but if the person writing the script knows what they're doing. Maybe the script happens to be a very well-written bad idea, or a good concept written weakly.

So that's why if you're reading for Joel Silver's company, you might find yourself with the latest Bruckheimer screenplay to cover. This could easily happen if the Bruckheimer film was a spec sale from a first-time writer and Silver Pictures needs someone to rewrite their next project.

This is how and why scripts get passed around Hollywood. This is why people end up reading scripts for projects they're not actively working on, and yes, along the way it's likely that a few interns, PAs, and other employees snaked a copy for themselves - but let's be honest, these people value their jobs. When you take a job working for a producer or a studio you sign a ton of confidentiality agreements that essentially mean that if a leaked script is traced back to you, the best you can hope for is that you'll be fired.

So yeah, if someone got caught slipping Carson a script, their ass would be grass. The fact is, it's pretty hard to catch those people but since Carson is the one who brazenly posts the scripts we CAN catch him. He might not have signed confidentiality agreements but he is trading something he doesn't own and he's doing it out in the open. Thus, since his actions have had some unfortunately consequences, it's not a surprise that writers are calling for changes.

Also, I've seen the argument put forth that Carson always takes down the scripts if asked to do so by the writers, so that (1) the writers shouldn't be crybabies, (2) this means that every script and review is still up their with the tacit approval of the writers, plus (3) it's just too hard to track down the writers beforehand, so if Carson waited for approval, he'd never get it. Thus, no one's been hurt and Carson is in the right.

Bullshit.

I'm sorry, that was hasty of me. Allow me to rephrase.

Bull-FUCKING-Shit!

My readers often email me asking if I'll give them notes on their script. At present I don't, but suppose YOU sent me YOUR script and I not only posted a blistering review of it, I uploaded the script itself so that any original idea you had there was free to be plundered by anyone who came across it. What if I posted it on Triggerstreet, and left it to be disseminated and torn to shreds by even less-experienced writers than you?

Even if you came to me and told me to pull the review and the script, anyone with any knowledge of web archiving could retrieve the old review even after I deleted it. Plus, on the off-chance that someone was so motivated, they easily could have downloaded the script from me and put it up on another site. So even getting me to take it down wouldn't put the genie back in the bottle.

Yeah, you'd be pretty pissed too. How does it feel to know that every time your name is Googled with the word "script" the first thing anyone found was something calling you a hack who couldn't write their way out of a paper bag? That might make it difficult for you to send that script around and get representation, wouldn't it? (Because let's be frank, readers almost always Google the scripts and writers they're reading, if only so they don't end up accidentally slamming the spec that Peter Berg's company just optioned.)

Meditate on that a bit. Then talk to me again about how Carson's burning need to review a script outweighs the writer's right to stop someone from distributing his work illegally.

Bitter, out!