Thought on scripts being stolen and used?

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  • #16
    Re: Thought on scripts being stolen and used?

    Originally posted by dpaterso View Post
    Super tale. But how annoying is that?! Everyone else in the room didn't shout, "HEY THAT WAS JS90'S PITCH!" -- or at least look at you and raise their eyebrows to say WTF?

    Ha, I was initially livid. One of the toughest things about being a writer's assistant is that everyone knows you write and want to be a working writer. And of course, you're spending all day in a small room with other writers talking about writing. But because you weren't hired to write not everyone views you as a true writer which can sting. So opportunities where we can positively prove ourselves to the writer's room are really really valuable (especially since all writer's assistants are gunning for a script assignment!). And that's why that moment was particularly frustrating.

    To answer your question, I later pulled aside a couple of low level writers I was close with and asked if I was going crazy or if the EP just took my pitch. They agreed that it was totally my pitch but that even if it'd happened to them (story editor and staff writer) there's a power dynamic at play that would have prohibited them from fighting it. And if I'm being honest, my pitch was fun and clever but it wasn't some game changing ground breaking new element of the show. Like I said before, was more just that in my position I had fewer shots to prove myself to these people so getting credit for good ideas where I could was important. In the end it didn't matter. We weren't renewed for another season which kind of killed my chances of getting a script assignment

    And to be fair to the rest of the room, there were plenty of other moments where I'd present an idea without the showrunner or his #2 around, and then later one of the writers would say something like "Hey showrunner, JS90 actually had a really good pitch on that earlier. You should hear-.

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    • #17
      Re: Thought on scripts being stolen and used?

      Originally posted by finalact4 View Post
      Read it all but truncated it.

      I will say this. With all the scripts that managers, agents, producers, studio execs, network execs, and, yes, even writers have read, it is entirely possible and even more than that likely, that more than once, someone working on a project has had an idea that they believe is their own, but unintentionally pulled from something they read in the past.

      It's impossible to read all that material and be able to separate out a story beat of a pitch you read three years ago. If it was a cool idea, chances are they don't even know where it came from. They just think it's there own idea. I've experienced this specifically myself.

      I think that's fair to admit.

      Yep. It's happened to me as well with a writer I collaborated on projects with. I may have done it myself, subconsciously.

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