Writing Screenplays

It seems easy enough a concept, really. Especially when writing is just about the only thing you can do and you studied in film to boot. It combines regular writing with regular storytelling, but it's never just so a reader can take it and imagine it their way in their heads and more about having a specific type of reader get a better idea on how to make it look better than it already does so it can sound like a regular situation and less like something you read.

So, really, it's all about being vague enough in your details so that others can set it better than you, but with enough natural flash to elicit that same person, who reads half a dozen screenplays a day, to keep reading yours until the end.

And that's where it gets tricky, because the stupidest or most mundane story with barely a couple of good dialogue lines can look really cool on screen (see Shoot Em Up or Get Shorty), while very well written films can fall into near obscurity because a big-name director (Charlie Bartlett) or big-name producer didn't take care of it (The Chumscrubber), or a bigwig executive didn't have the balls to release it properly (The Dangerous Lives Of Altar Boys).

So, in my opinion, there is a fine line that must absolutely be crossed depending on where you want your idea to be headed: smart and little chance of commercial success but likely international recognition, or typical formulaic fare that could make you rich if you know the right people to sell it to. But most people aren't plugged in with the Hollywood bigwigs, so I'm left to wonder why there aren't too many potentially amazing ideas running around in recent film releases, and I'm stupefied at the rate of remakes, sequels and adaptations hitting the big screens and video store shelves in recent years. It's downright scary.

Which leads me to what I'm writing now. Two screenplays dealing with customer service - an issue that hits home in more ways than one in my case. It's not like it's a new subject,a nd it's not like my take on it is revolutionary. So I have absolutely no idea how it would fit with the categories I've described in the previous paragraph.

Maybe I'm just fucked.