Manager not Passionate?

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  • Manager not Passionate?

    Hi,
    So I've been developing something with my manger for a bit and he finally thought it was ready and sent it out to ONE producer who passed. Suddenly, my manager says he thinks it's good, but he's not passionate about it and suggests that I should re-write it (again). But his only notes are that it needs "more twists and turns". Uh, ok...

    My question is the timing...why didn't he tell me this before? Or did the ONE pass, freak him out and now he's got cold feet all of a sudden. That seems weird for a manager right?

    Thoughts?

  • #2
    Re: Manager not Passionate?

    Hard to say. He may have been on the fence before, and the pass swayed him into thinking it's not ready. Plenty of managers do a soft submission to a couple of producers they know and trust just to test the waters for a piece of new material. I've certainly had it happen where that soft rollout led to taking a step back and doing a rewrite.
    https://twitter.com/DavidCoggeshall
    http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1548597/

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    • #3
      Re: Manager not Passionate?

      Thank you!! I've realized my issue is not with a re-write, but with the notes. Just got "more twists and turns". It's making me question my managers skills. But I also feel like a bit of prisoner since they are basically the only person who can send it out.

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      • #4
        Re: Manager not Passionate?

        So, remember:

        Most people can't tell you why they don't love something. They can make guesses, but their guesses could be completely wrong.

        When he tells you "it needs more twists and turns" he's probably saying that he found it predictable and obvious. Maybe not, but that'd be my guess.

        At a certain point, though, you have to be the expert. You have to be able to say, "This is the script."

        And if he doesn't go out with it, leave him.

        But it's possible he's protecting you. Maybe the producer in question said unkind things about the script in his pass. Maybe they had a discussion where the producer convinced him it's unworkable as is. Now, some writers don't want this kind of protection, but some do.

        The problem with getting development notes from your manager (or anyone else, really) is that it costs them a couple of hours, max, to read it and tell you what to do (which they don't know will make it better!) and it costs you weeks (if not longer) to apply those notes.

        Which may not actually fix the problem, because they don't know how to make it work. They're guessing.

        Assuming there actually is a problem, of course, which isn't a given.

        In the past two years, I've had two different scripts each get passed on by over a dozen well-respected managers ... and get picked up by the first or second producer to read them. You've got to imagine that the managers who passed would, if I had been their client, have had a lot of notes - or be unwilling to go out with the script at all.

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