The recent news about SAFE HOUSE, the David Guggenheim script that gained a lot of attention and a big sale recently and may turn out to be Denzel Washington's next film, reminded me of the recent article about Guggenheim in (I believe) CREATIVE SCREENWRITING. In the article one learns that far from the first-time screenwriter Guggenheim was described as in initial reports back in February--which said he had never written a script and just decided to wing it and wrote it in 3 months flat, start to finish--he actually had a lot of screenwriting experience, just no sales. And he had been nurturing the idea of a safe house script for a long time.
This reminded me of the way that Brad Inglesby was described in initial reports about him and his LOW DWELLER sale. As in, wow, he's a newbie from small-town Pennsylvania and he wrote this script and DiCaprio bought it and now he's hit the big-time! Crazy dreams do come true! Then it turns out he was a very serious screenwriter, had studied it in school, etc. Oh.
What both these stories have in common is that they perpetuate the (almost completely untrue) myth that screenwriting isn't necessarily that hard, that it doesn't take a lot of learning and practice to master. That myth is probably one of the big reasons that a lot of people think "Hey, I could do that too. I won't have to put in years of practice and diligence and hard work either." 99.99% of the time the reality is something else entirely.
It would be nice if the L.A. TIMES, VARIETY, et al. didn't get so caught up in playing up these sensational newbie/neophyte rags-to-riches stories when the much less exciting truth is that these writers usually have a lot of practice and work and effort under their belts already. Without that unglamorous work over the years there would have been no sales, simple as that.
I'm sure these news outlets will do the proper thing from now on and do their due diligence to capture the reality of these writers' stories rather than continue to milk the same old exaggerated/mythical screenwriter storylines.
Or maybe not.
This reminded me of the way that Brad Inglesby was described in initial reports about him and his LOW DWELLER sale. As in, wow, he's a newbie from small-town Pennsylvania and he wrote this script and DiCaprio bought it and now he's hit the big-time! Crazy dreams do come true! Then it turns out he was a very serious screenwriter, had studied it in school, etc. Oh.
What both these stories have in common is that they perpetuate the (almost completely untrue) myth that screenwriting isn't necessarily that hard, that it doesn't take a lot of learning and practice to master. That myth is probably one of the big reasons that a lot of people think "Hey, I could do that too. I won't have to put in years of practice and diligence and hard work either." 99.99% of the time the reality is something else entirely.
It would be nice if the L.A. TIMES, VARIETY, et al. didn't get so caught up in playing up these sensational newbie/neophyte rags-to-riches stories when the much less exciting truth is that these writers usually have a lot of practice and work and effort under their belts already. Without that unglamorous work over the years there would have been no sales, simple as that.
I'm sure these news outlets will do the proper thing from now on and do their due diligence to capture the reality of these writers' stories rather than continue to milk the same old exaggerated/mythical screenwriter storylines.
Or maybe not.
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