So, I am on some other boards today where a person who is involved in development was ranting about the 28 year old actress who hung herself (or is it hanged?) - and how it *had* to be murder because women did not hang themselves, they took pills. That sounded reasonable to me, but what do I know about how people kill themselves? So I spent 10 seconds Googling and got....
"In 2004, hanging/suffocation was the most common method among females in all three age groups, accounting for 71.4% of suicides in the group aged 10--14 years, 49% in the group aged 15--19 years, and 34.2% in the group aged 20--24 years."
Now, it's a few years old, and I could have probably found last year's stats had I spent 15 seconds Googling, but I suspect the numbers aren't going to be too much different. So, women do seem to hang themselves.
Again and again I have had scripts that I did a bunch of research on accused of getting the facts wrong. And it was the development people who had done *zero* research saying this. Now - not everything is factual in a script - things get bent for drama or to make the story cleaner. But those are never the things I get called on - I get called on the stuff that is *correct*. In one case, I had facts I lifted from an FBI report and put in a character's mouth *changed* to be completely wrong info - and no matter how hard I fought it (even with the actual FBI report) I lost. Even though part of telling a story *is* bending reality so that it seems more real, this is usually not the case. Instead it's what someone believes to be correct when they have no idea what they are talking about. Like all women killing themselves with pills.
Imagine your script goes to this person and you have a woman hang herself... and that bit of "unrealistic behavior" is what earns your script a pass?
Or you fight... and lose... and have to change accurate info to become just plain obviously wrong?
That stuff pisses me off.
Can't they just take 10 seconds to Google before they give you that note?
- Bill
"In 2004, hanging/suffocation was the most common method among females in all three age groups, accounting for 71.4% of suicides in the group aged 10--14 years, 49% in the group aged 15--19 years, and 34.2% in the group aged 20--24 years."
Now, it's a few years old, and I could have probably found last year's stats had I spent 15 seconds Googling, but I suspect the numbers aren't going to be too much different. So, women do seem to hang themselves.
Again and again I have had scripts that I did a bunch of research on accused of getting the facts wrong. And it was the development people who had done *zero* research saying this. Now - not everything is factual in a script - things get bent for drama or to make the story cleaner. But those are never the things I get called on - I get called on the stuff that is *correct*. In one case, I had facts I lifted from an FBI report and put in a character's mouth *changed* to be completely wrong info - and no matter how hard I fought it (even with the actual FBI report) I lost. Even though part of telling a story *is* bending reality so that it seems more real, this is usually not the case. Instead it's what someone believes to be correct when they have no idea what they are talking about. Like all women killing themselves with pills.
Imagine your script goes to this person and you have a woman hang herself... and that bit of "unrealistic behavior" is what earns your script a pass?
Or you fight... and lose... and have to change accurate info to become just plain obviously wrong?
That stuff pisses me off.
Can't they just take 10 seconds to Google before they give you that note?
- Bill
Comment