The Bionic Screenplay: Faster, Better, Stronger—More Sellable

A New York Times article recently tweaked my antennae with a curious set of facts about a growing trend in the Movie/TV biz.

The article, by Jay A. Fernandez, suggests we consider this: in the last six weeks (as of this writing on 4/23/08) studios have announced 22 films based on graphic novels or comics. At the box office (domestic and international) films based on graphic novels have grossed all the biggest numbers, over all, and have maintained the largest dollar averages per screen, per week, for exhibitors.

Now consider this: Universal recently partnered with Dark Horse Entertainment to produce and distribute movies based from its independent bevy of comics, Paramount has its partnership with Marvel, while Warner Bros. owns DC Comics, and every other studio is scrambling for comic-based material.

What conclusions can we draw: For studio creative executives responsible for making and breaking writer’s careers and spirits, having a graphic novel in hand makes script development cheaper, faster, and more fun; since essentially the graphic novel is a screenplay with detailed storyboards already included in the mix. Plus, given the average age of the typical studio creative executive (12-19 years) they are already familiar and comfortable with the comic/graphic novel form. Add to this the fact that graphic novels already have a fan base, Internet platform, and sequel appeal; it’s a no-brainer for studio greenlighters. Ironically, as Jay points out, it can also be beneficial for the writer, since he/she will likely preserve more rights than he/she would by selling an original screenplay.

Jay quotes Frank Miller (“Sin City” and “300”), “I don't think there's a single worse story form than the screenplay … They're unreadable. Just about everything makes you want to put the thing down! Whereas a graphic novel is full of pictures . . . and you get a much clearer idea of what you'd have to spend to make a film.”

So, what’s a writer to do? I can’t draw worth a stitch. I guess I could buy some storyboard software and let a computer do it and then add bubbles to the pictures and fill the bubbles with dialogue. Throw in a few text blocks (like they do in the comics for scene direction) and presto-chango; the new screenplay made better, stronger, faster. Kind of like the 6 million dollar man, only in today’s movie dollars it’s more like 100 million, plus foreign/ancillary and new media.

So my advice to you dear writer, forget the screenplay writing program, expensive story consultants, and film school. If you want to sell your screenplays, get thee to an art school and start learning how to draw. Or, give it up for an expensive graphics package and buy a new pimped-out Mac with all the graphics whistles and bells and let technology do the work. All you have to do is add the words. But, doesn’t that just kind of put us back where we started?

Hmmm, maybe writing is still important after all?

Save The Sign!

Hollywood landmarks seem to have bullseyes on them these days.

The iconic Hollywood sign may soon be going the way of The Brown Derby, Musso & Frank’s, Chasen’s, and the Ambassador Hotel. Quietly, last month, the Chicago based investment group that owns 138 sage-covered acres above and to the left of the 45-foot-high, steel-and-concrete H put the land up for sale last month for $22 million, after purchasing the parcel from Howard Hughes’ estate for $1.7 million in 2002. Not a bad profit, even in today’s bull real estate market!

Councilman Tom LaBonge wants the city, which owns the ground under the sign, to buy the property, but the city can't legally pay more than $6 million. So, Labonge is trying for a repeat of the last time the sign was in trouble, when back in the 1970’s a bunch of celebs paid $28k each to replace crumbling letters.

We can’t lose the sign, folks. Los Angeles losing its sign is like Manhattan losing the World Trade Center towers. The landscape will be changed forever. Besides, if the sign goes, how will the pilots for the major airlines know they’re on the right flight path to Bob Hope Airport? Com’on, folks, we can’t lose the sign. Certainly the moguls, studio heads, media barons, and “A-Listers” can scrape together a few million dollars and save Hollywood’s soul—or at least it’s nametag.

Ironically, the sign was originally designed as a real estate advertisement (Hollywoodland) to help sell development in the region. Now, however, it has come full circle. From ad to icon, now threatened by the very industry that gave it birth (real estate, not the movies).

However perfect this circle might seem, let’s not lose the sign folks.

I'M BACK!!!

After a long absence--I have returned. Very sorry for the disappearing act. Life has a funny (or not so funny--ok, sometimes sicko) way of interfering with things. I won't bore you with details, I'm not a details kind-of-guy, but I will offer this: exercise, eat right, get plenty of sleep, and don't bother with the 8 glasses of daily water--it's a diet myth that is now busted, and if you're a writer-- write like your life depended on it, because it does. As my novelist friend Caroline Leavitt says, "Put blood on the page."

I'll let you figure out how literal you have to get with that one.

Bad Penny for Your Thoughts

The former writer's strike is threatening to become the proverbial bad penny. I alluded to this possibility in my last post (It's Over—Kind of—Maybe—Fingers Crossed!, February 2008), when I mentioned the divisions within the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists (AFTRA). Well, there are now rumblings moving across the land suggesting the bad penny is slouching towards Hollywood.

I’ve been listening closely to the “noise” on the various entertainment blogs and reading much of the member commentary on the WGA’s website, which continues to offer a bully pulpit to supporters and naysayers alike, and based on what I’m “hearing,” one might say the pimple on the backside of the WGA strike may finally be coming to a head.

Witness the most recent salvo by WGA member Harlan Ellison. For anyone who loves words and the music of language, Harlan Ellison is a God (he is to me, anyway). Ellison’s work in TV, film, and literature is hailed far and wide and his genius and talent are legendary. As is the “verbal flamethrower” that is his mouth.

Love him or hate him, and both camps are filled with devotes, Ellison left a colorful and pithy post on the WGA site as to his views of the current deal and his accompanying disappointment thereof:

“THEY BEAT US LIKE A YELLOW DOG. IT IS A SHIT DEAL. We finally got a timorous generation that has never had to strike, to get their asses out there, and we had to put up with the usual cowardly spineless babbling horse's asses who kept mumbling "lessgo bac'ta work" over and over, as if it would make them one iota a better writer. But after months on the line, and them finally bouncing that pus-sucking dipthong Nick Counter, we rushed headlong into a shabby, scabrous, underfed shovelfulla shit clutched to the affections of toss-in-the-towel summer soldiers trembling before the Awe of the Alliance.”

Followed by:

“You [WGA leadership] are their bitches. They outslugged you, outthought you, outmaneuvered you; and in the end you ripped off your pants, painted yer asses blue, and said yes sir, may I have another. Please excuse my temerity. I'm just a sad old man who has fallen among Quislings, Turncoats, Hacks and Cowards. I must go now to whoops. My gorge has become buoyant. Respectfully, Yr. Pal, Harlan Ellison”

(FYI: "My gorge has become buoyant" means he's about to throw up.)

There was more, but these two snippets capture the essence of his ire, point, rant, and talent. What struck me about this post was not the unvarnished, in-your-faceness of it, but rather the numbers of reply posts supporting the sentiment that “it is a shit deal.” There were several Harlan bashers and angry replies supporting the deal, but for the most part members who replied agreed with Ellison.

And this is my point! WGA members full-throatily voted to stop the strike. They may not be so full-throated when it comes to ratifying the deal. As I said in my earlier post, there are lots of sticking points in the current deal that writers are not happy about (promo windows in new media, reality TV and animation writers representation, etc.), and SAG/AFTRA’s negotiations in June with the AMPTP will be dealing with the same issues. So, the question is begged: What happens if the WGA members don’t ratify the deal?

I hear the chorus already, “You’re nuts—not in a million years.” I’m not as crazy as the idea I’m suggesting, trust me. I realize if the WGA starts pushing back on the AMPTP deal the producer’s guild could just say “f*&k you—we will bury you.” And things get very ugly very fast. Not ratifying the deal would be a clear statement that the WGA was adopting a strategy of wait-for-SAG, meaning let SAG negotiate a better deal for its members and then let the favored nations clauses kick in and the WGA wins by proxy. Or, SAG goes on strike and then the WGA joins them and the united front of writers and actors dismantle Hollywood completely. This is a strike, by the way, that would last about one week!

Some argue this is what the WGA should have done from the get-go. Rather than go on strike last November, the guild should have just waited until June of this year and then engaged in a joint strike with SAG/AFTRA. Some say not doing this was a severe strategic error on the part of the WGA leadership. Could the WGA have held out eight months in dead-end negotiations, stalling with the AMPTP? Who knows, hindsight is usually bullshit, but it’s an interesting concept.

I do not make these musings to upset or freakout people. I just think that Ellison’s clarion call (as nails-on-a-black-boardish as it might sound) is a barometer worth heeding. After all, he has a mouth, and he must scream!

We all might want to listen.

It's Over—Kind of—Maybe—Fingers Crossed!

It’s over—even though the plus-size woman (not PC to say “the fat lady”) hasn’t sung yet. Just in case you’ve been living under a rock for three months, I’m referring to the writers’ strike! Soon, writers from Bangor to Baja will once again be crunching their keyboards churning out new programming, pitching creative executives, taking lunches, and rolling their phone calls with agents and producers, all in the spirit of bringing back normalcy to the most abnormal of industries on the planet.

Money will finally start flowing again, florists will blossom; caterers will deliver; high-priced salons will pretend like nothing ever happened, as they are above the fray of petty real-world concerns like separated rights; and all will be right with the collateral marketplace that suckles off entertainment’s benevolent teat. The celebrating has already begun, if the WGA’s all-hands meeting on Saturday night was any indication, with its 3,500+ member turnout to discuss the terms of the new deal.

Historically, such meetings heralding new contracts (1981, 1985, and 1988) can get pretty raucous, if not plain ugly. Apparently, the only “incident” to come out of this general meeting was one writer (unnamed—I’m sure his mother appreciates that) who accused the negotiating committee of “blinking” on the issue of the proposed 17 or 26 day, residual-free “promotional” window for Internet ad-supported content. This fellow got downright testy and was apparently met with chuckles and hooting to the point he was driven from the room. Maybe there was a big, red, “WGA” branded into his forehead to warn other naysayers and misanthropes, I don’t know, but there were no other disruptions.

Other than this one firebrand, the standing ovations for the negotiating committee and the unanimous support of the membership for the tentative deal sent a clear message to all congloms: the WGA is strong and united and is basking in the victory wrought by labor’s mighty hammer—the right to strike. At least until June, when the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) steps up to bat and takes its turn at pummeling the AMPTP and it’s Robber Baron masters. But, the two major guilds representing performers are a house divided, with SAG and the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists (AFTRA) squabbling amongst themselves.

Although both unions have jointly negotiated pieces of contracts since 1981, the unions traditionally maintain separate authority over production, with SAG controlling filmed projects and AFTRA overseeing videotaped shows and commercials. The line for jurisdiction over digital production became blurred in 2000, when the unions’ settled into a last-minute agreement with the AMPTP.

Currently, both unions claim the jurisdiction to negotiate digital television contracts on behalf of their members. Last year, SAG claimed it was undercut by AFTRA on a handful of 20th Century Fox television pilots shot in a digital format. The two unions reached a confidential settlement on those productions after threats of a lawsuit. But the larger issue of which union, or combination of the two, has the right to represent actors in new media productions, remains.

What will they do? Rumor has it that SAG and AFTRA are trying to mend fences before June to present some kind of united front, so that when they slay the AMPTP dragon they will come out with all their fingers and toes, and hopefully a better deal than even the writers. But, if all does not go well, the WGA could find itself back on the picket lines supporting actors and it’s dejavu all over again.

I don’t think it will come to that, because the spirit of victory and a vision of a united-labor front fighting for its future are too strong. And the momentum is clearly on the side of the guilds.

I’ll miss the strike though. While not a WGA member (yet), I have enjoyed the feeling of participation in the struggle made possible by the rich media coverage and the excellent strike information put up on the WGA’s strike-site, as well as on countless blogs. The general public has never been so privy to, or so educated in, the inner-workings of the WGA and labor politics of Hollywood. Sadly, now I have to stop visiting the WGA site daily to check status and read articles. I kind of, almost, nearly felt like I was one of them. Oh well, now it’s back to pacing in my study, talking to myself and listening to the voices in my head. But, that’s another blog for another day; maybe in June when SAG goes out on strike?

God, I hope not.