A Screenwriter's Rant

By Alex Simon

I wrote this to an acquaintance who asked me to look over a treatment some friends of hers had written, which she suspected was pretty bad. She asked for "blunt honesty," and I delivered, with an extra dollop of candor about what it feels like, from a writer's POV, when people think of us, and our profession, as not being real "work," but something one can approach casually. My intended 1-2 paragraph reply turned into a real rant. Thought I'd share it with some fellow scribes, and fellow travellers.

Dear Linda,

You asked for honesty, so here goes: this treatment is strictly amateur hour. The plot is convoluted and confusing, the characters are stereotypes, and the story is high melodrama posing as a "deep and meaningful" metaphor for the human condition and the path of self-destruction our race is on (supposedly). Plus, it is rife with grammatical and spelling errors, some unintentionally funny.

I take it the gentlemen who wrote this are acquaintances and/or friends of yours. I am also guessing that they are not professional writers and this is something they did on a lark, thinking that anyone can write a screenplay. This hits a real nerve with me, because most people cannot write screenplays, just as most people cannot perform brain surgery. For some reason, people outside Hollywood seem to think that making movies is easy, not back-breaking, brain-swelling work, which I promise you it is. Please tell them that if they're happy with their lives/careers to not even bother trying to write a screenplay. They will just face humiliation, rejection, and heartbreak, as they're amateurs trying to compete with some of the world's greatest creative minds, all of whom swallow the preceding trilogy of pain on a daily basis. It would be as if I played in a pick-up softball league and asked you to approach Alex Rodriguez to get me a tryout with the Yankees because, after all, I can really swat that beanbag on Sunday afternoons after church.



Screenwriting is not a hobby. It is a profession, a passion, and a calling. We who are professionals do it because we have no other choice. It's who we are, what we do, and we do it better than anyone, after years of training and practice. To give you an example: I wrote my first script at age 11. I have two degrees in film: a BA from USC's School of Cinematic Arts and an MFA from the American Film Institute, the Harvard and Yale, respectively, of film studies in the world. I'm now 43, with seven produced films, and have won three awards. After all of the aforementioned credentials and accolades, it looks like I might finally be getting some real heat on my latest project. To sum up, this is after three decades of writing, two degrees, and tens of thousands of hours at keyboards ranging from my dad's circa 1966 manual Remington, to the Dell desktop that is my current muse. My latest script, and my life, are not larks that I threw together with a buddy over beers one weekend--and that's what this treatment feels like to me.

If my reaction comes off as harsh, I apologize. It is not directed at you, but as I said before, when people think they can just toss off a screenplay after coming home from their 9 to 5, and then jump in the ring to compete, I am honestly a bit insulted. I realize that their act had nothing to do with me personally, but I do wish that people who are not writers would take those of us who are seriously, just as they do brain surgeons, rocket scientists, attorneys and firefighters. We're all professionals, and none of our fields are for the faint of heart, or those who don't have the skills to be in the trenches with us.

Rant concluded...

Dalton Trumbo: the real McCoy.