A Hollywood Ghost Story (or: How I Wasted Six Months of My Life)
Sometimes it doesn't make a difference how good your script is...if you're writing the wrong script
Let me tell you about the time I sold a TV project and made it multiple drafts into the pilot process before discovering the real reason my employer’s notes had proven so impossible to answer.
(I use the term employer here, rather than identify the studio/network/streamer involved.)
The time period: Six years ago.
The setting: Hollywood.
The set-up: I have pitched and been hired to write an adaptation of a hot new European TV series. It has fantastical elements, but not supernatural ones. Call it a horror series driven by ancient mythology, but with lots of heart; something Guillermo del Toro would make (or so I flatter myself).
I complete a first draft much faster than anyone expects, which I attribute to the thoughtful development conversations that precipitated me sitting down to write. The producers love it. I’m a golden god, according to them.
Every screenwriter enjoys this feeling, probably because we know it’s inevitably short-lived. In my case, this is the first time I’ve handed in a pilot since the “DRACULA” debacle you may have read about in this newsletter, so it’s especially satisfying.
Then, my employer say they love my script, too…but they have notes.
No problem. After “Mr. Smiley” — see the “DRACULA” horror story — notes no longer frighten me. Nothing will ever be that bad again, so I genuinely look boisterous when I hear this news. “Of course, hit me!”
The notes — or rather note — turns out to be simple: It needs to be scarier.
The story is solid, I’m told — general high fives all around — but let’s dial up those scares.
Easy-peasy. I complete a second draft in less than a week.
But the same note is repeated by employer. Something is missing, they tell me from across the ocean of table that separates us.
None of the faces looking back at me can put their finger on what it is, though. I say I think I understand the note behind the note, and go back to work.
I complete a third draft, this time working for free because I need this project to go my way. Most U.S. pilot deals are for two steps, but it’s incredibly common for producers and employers to push you well beyond that, taking advantage of their writers despite WGA warning against doing this.
In this new draft, I clarify the rules in the script, making sure I hit the nail on the head here or there so later I can dial it back once my employer finally gets it. More scares, too. Somehow the emotionality of story is even ringing truer than I expected at this point, so I’m feeling pretty damn good about myself and the script.
My employer reads the new draft, and summons the whole team — me, the producers, the studio — to their windowless meeting room to talk.
Uh-oh.
The employer feels we —this includes the producers — haven’t understood their notes, even though the producers are confident we do and I have completely nailed answering them.
Nope, sorry.
My employer begins to throw out new thoughts about how to address the note we don’t understand yet. If you’re an established screenwriter, you know how this goes. “Let me pitch you the bad idea here.”
Pro-tip: they never think it’s a “bad idea” when they say this.
Their pitch, regarding more scares, is this:
“What if our protagonist comes home and…” (pause for dramatic effect) “…a door bangs upstairs? Let’s make the audience really jump.”
At this point, I sense something is truly amiss. Beside me, the producers look similarly confused.
Me: “Why does the door bang?”
My employer (in a tone that suggests this is why they get paid the big bucks): “The ghost.”
Me: “What ghost?”
Them: “The ghost in the house.”
Me (leaning slowly forward): “But…there is no ghost.”
As it turns out, the employer had been shown a foreign-language commercial for the TV series I was adapting. From that commercial alone, they erroneously discerned we were pitching them a haunted house series filled with…ghosts.
Lots and lots and lots of ghosts.
Long story short, my employer was giving me notes on what they thought they bought — which had no relationship to the actual source material or my pitch. There were no more drafts. But the writing sample all this produced got me several more jobs…so that’s at least something.
By the way, this isn’t even in the Top Five dumbest or terrible things I’ve experienced as a professional screenwriter. In fact, it barely scratches the Top Ten.
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