Page One Rewrite

Filed Under Fanwank

I meant to blog yesterday, but I got caught up in working on my script. Yes, I’ve finally begun writing something. Rewriting, actually. Last Friday, I dug out one of my old scripts — “Double-O Zombie” — and started rewriting it from page one. The plot remains the same, but I’m stripping away the big blocks of text — scene descriptions that just go on and on and on. The second draft will have much in the way of “white space.” There’s also a snazzier opening sequence, as the hero has to disarm a nuclear bomb that’s plummeting towards Washington DC.

Filmmakers are lazy sonsabitches. They don’t like reading scripts. They don’t like reading, period. In fact they hire people called “readers” to read scripts for them. Readers don’t like reading scripts, either, believe it or not. A script is a bitch-kitty to read. It doesn’t engage you like a novel or provide visual aids like a comic book. It’s scene descriptions and dialogue. The format is weird-looking, too. Contemporary scripts have done away with shot descriptions, but they’re still not the easier things in the world to get into.

So, how do you write a script for someone who doesn’t even like reading? Well, you make sure it’s heavy on the white space. The less a reader has to actually read, the more he’ll like your script. What’s more, why should I waste time explicating the mise-en-scene when some douchebag is going to be called in to rewrite my script anyway? It’s best to simply put down a few sentences about what happens in the scene and move on to the next one. I banged out over 15 pages last weekend — ten on Saturday alone!

I’d been revising that damn scene where the hero disarms a nuclear bomb at 30,000 feet for a couple of years. Each time, I hated how it came out. It was because I wrote pages upon pages of text, providing all this unnecessary explanation about a few simple actions. Meanwhile, I was neglecting the fact that some director will hire a storyboard artist to obsess over the intricacies of the scene. This is of course after an uncredited rewrite will have been performed on my script, doubtless changing the dramatic beats in that scene anyway.

Now I’m about 20 pages into the script. My original goal was to knock out at least three a day. That would mean I’d have a completed script in about a month. I’ve been averaging about five a day, so I might be done sooner. The script is an embarrassment of riches. Once you get past all the bloat, there are some awesome sequences. I cannot wait to get to part where the hero explodes out of a shark’s guts and tears a group of skin divers apart. That bit’s like putting “Jaws,” “Alien” and Fulci’s “Zombi 2″ into a blender and hitting the button marked “ZOMG!”

I’ll try to keep up on my blog as I work on my script. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of dumb bullshit going on in the entertainment world for me to bitch and moan about, like readers who don’t like reading. That in and of itself is worthy of its own entry.

-Brad Lohan

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