The Nature of Scripts Today
I can’t remember who told me this first, but I had always been under the impression that in order to get your script read by a producer, it needed to be perfect, at least in terms of structure and formatting. I was told, specifically, that if my script was in the wrong format, had more than 120 pages, or had fewer than 90 pages, that no one would read it. They would simply throw my hard work in the trash faster than you could say “burger flipper for life.” So I made sure to learn all the little intricacies of script formatting and structure so that I would never run into that problem.
Imagine my surprise when I make it to Hollywood and start writing coverage for major companies, only to find that the scripts I see on a regular basis have mistakes out the ass. I’m not just talking about a typo here or there. I’m talking about insanely stupid formatting errors and script structures that make no sense whatsoever. Honestly, anonymous screenwriter, what were you thinking when you decided to include scene numbers and NO PAGE NUMBERS? I’ve also seen continuity errors that would make a script supervisor want to bash their head in with a tack hammer.
Partial summary from a script I recently read:
Page 23: Guy goes into a bar and says, “hey, that chick looks hot.”
Page 24: Guy is getting married to a lamp post.
Page 25: WTF?
My problem is not that these scripts are being written, though. It’s that they’re actually being READ by major companies and considered for projects. These writers are putting down garbled streams of consciousness on a page and they’re getting paid for it! I saw one script a while back in which the words did not even construct logical sentences. It was literally unreadable. And yet, I had to sit down at my computer and write 5 pages of coverage on this piece of shit/poor translation of the writer’s acid trip/Hollywood gold.
Where have the standards gone? Really, these lazy writers just need to get over themselves. No, you are not William Faulkner. You are not allowed to reconstruct the formatting however you see fit. Screenwriting is not an abstract art, it’s a structured one. Learn the structure.
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