When I fell into the movie
industry, no one taught me anything about how to write a screenplay. I was an
almost-PhD in English, accustomed to reading Shakespeare and abstruse modern
novels. On my first day at Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, I was handed a
script – it was Charles Willeford’s screen adaptation of his own down-and-dirty
Cockfighter – and told to note my thoughts on how well it worked.
Somehow I managed to make a good impression. My career as a motion picture
story editor had begun.
Roger, in those years, was a
master at avoiding the hiring of union screenwriters, who of course were paid
more than Corman peons. My good friend Frances Doel, from whom I learned the
tricks of the screenwriting trade, was quite resigned to being send home on a
Friday afternoon and told to come back Monday with the first draft of some
screenplay for which Roger had supplied the premise. She’d slap a pseudonym on
the title page, and when a credentialed screenwriter was brought in to improve
on her very rough original, the identity of the first writer was our little
secret. (We had to come clean just once, when the very gentlemanly William W.
Norton expressed a strong interest in meeting with that original writer in
order to check out some story points.)
Later, when I worked at
Roger’s Concorde-New Horizons, we dispensed with WGA writers altogether. Or, at
least, we weren’t WGA signatories. Plenty of writers with guild-worthy
credentials but no work on hand were happy to invent new names for themselves
so that they could be part of our cut-rate productions. Henry Dominic, anyone?
Although I have six Roger
Corman screenwriting credits, I’ve never been a WGA member. Still, the guild
sends me the occasional check (compensation for overseas screenings of films
I’ve written), and I have the greatest respect for the pros who deserve every
penny they’ve earned by crafting my favorite movies and TV shows. And I’m happy
to endorse a recent publication of the Writers Guild Foundation, edited by
screenwriter Daryl G. Nickens. It’s called Doing It for the Money: The Agony
and the Ecstasy of Writing and Surviving in Hollywood.
How-to books about
screenwriting are a dime a dozen, and I wouldn’t recommend this one as a
primer. Though several brief sections offer the reader “Secrets of the
Hollywood Pros,” the book’s strength does not lie in providing specific advice
on such things as formatting and loglines. Instead, the core of Doing It for
the Money is a series of short
essays by award-winning writers on how they’ve handled their own yen to tell
stories on the screen. They’re writers, after all, so they express themselves
with heart and wit. They’re funny, and often inspirational.
My very favorite section
is by Glenn Gordon Caron. He was once a
newbie on a TV sitcom writing staff, led by a man named Steve. Everyone loved
Steve’s work, but one week it was Caron’s turn to churn out the first draft.
Instantly, the cast turned hostile, refusing to have anything to do with this
interloper’s script, and insisting that Steve step in and fix it. Steve, who
knew a good script when he saw one, told Caron to re-submit the same draft but
add the word “revised version” to the title page. Suddenly everyone was
onboard, and Steve announced that Caron had made many of the great fixes
himself. With his reputation and his morale saved, Caron went on to a long
career, including the wonderful Moonlighting. Like most Hollywood
writers, he wasn’t doing it just for the money. .
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