A IS FOR ATTITUDE
May 8th, 2010 by Adrian ReynoldsAttitude counts for a lot. It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to tackle a 90 minute screenplay with only the vaguest of roadmaps to direct you from start to finish. And even more detailed plans can’t adequately prepare you for the reality of what it’s like to turn an intriguing concept into a fully developed script with its skeleton, musculature, neurology and the rest.
Not that it’ll be fully developed even at that point, but you need to make your brainchild appealing to the directors and producers you put it up for adoption with. You might have created this unique and special creature, but you want someone else to rear it, if only because it costs more money to turn a script into a film than any writer I’ve met has lying about the place.
So, attitude. Committing to the time it takes to nurture an idea from its first tentative beginnings through to an initial draft, and then rewrites based on hopefully intelligent feedback…it’s a lot to take on. And it requires patience. Tenacity. Flexibility — when someone tells you your protagonist is the wrong gender, or that the story should open with the climactic scene, it can take a lot to see what they’re getting at.
You’ll note that there’s an assumption here that you’ll be dealing with the industry. And that’s intentional — it’s all very well complaining about the crap they show at your local multiplex, but you have no business reckoning you’re better than that unless you get to grips with the industry side of things. Which again calls for attitude. The enthusiasm that gets you out there networking events hoping to meet people who not only like your ideas, but are demonstrably sane and have shown an ability to get projects off the ground. Dealing with whom calls for skills as well as attitudes: juggling emails and phone calls politely and efficiently, responding to feedback without preciousness, delivering successive drafts to deadline.
Think of the people you might come across, and how you’d deal with them. I’m incredibly lucky in that the producer I have most contact with is a stable and skilled woman who can juggle multiple projects while still making you feel valued. But some writer somewhere sometime soon will be dealing with none other than Liam Gallagher, who has decided in the wake of Oasis and his aventures in haute couture that his new project is to be a film based on the later days of The Beatles. Say what you like about Liam, but there’s no doubting he’s got attitude.
Attitude is what keeps you going when there’s been no response to the scripts you sent out three months ago and you’re finding it hard to work the mojo to get another one off the ground. Attitude allows you to put a distance between personal difficulties and the need to keep producing pages. Attitude is what helps you realise that a random comment provides critical insight into your story, and enables you to go back to that script with a fresh pair of eyes.
You can’t learn attitude on an MA course in screenwriting. You won’t get it by going on a McKee course. It’s something you’ve hopefully already got a smattering of, and can cultivate over time and through feedback into a thing of steel…when steel is what’s needed, as it is when gutting a script to make the same story work in 20 pages less. Attitude can be about fire, when you’re at a pitching meeting and willing people to hear what you’re actually saying right here right now, rather than rerunning last night’s drinks chat with a commissioner over in their heads. Attitude can be ballsy, when that first pitch doesn’t ignite interest, but leaves one of those listening asking ‘What else have you got..?’ when you’ve got nothing prepared but recognise the opportunity for what it is.
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