Got my final rejection for my Dominatrix script. The Virginia Film Office elected not to proceed. Interestingly, the reader had some very supportive comments:
This is a story with great potential. The bones of it – a dominatrix that is the prime suspect in a number of murders and a detective that has an unorthodox relationship with the women that he once knew from his days working in Vice – is intriguing. There’s no doubt that it will capture interest.
However, very much like the man who did coverage for the script (second third here), they felt it had too many unnecessary scenes or scenes that should be trimmed by a great deal. The reader ‘complained’ that I wasted too much time for a feature film that was burning through $100K per page. That basically makes what I wrote an $11M feature, which is way more than I was expecting to spend.
When I forwarded the above to my movie making friend John, his basic response was “I told you so.” And, somewhat repetitively, I replied with:
If I were trying to compete to write the next Hollywood blockbuster franchise, I’d probably be more inclined to listen … And, I suspect, never get anywhere, because that’s all about who you know and no one gives a damn about what you know. It’s more about you have 10 leads that, contractually, need to be on screen for X number of pages, so that ‘creativity’ is more about coming up with the least-bad story you can out of the pile of steaming contractual shit you’ve got to work with. Or, like Mission Impossible, the story that fits within the idiotic stunts they’ve already filmed.
And if I were in it simply to make money as a writer and really didn’t care about my story intent, I’d be more open minded to re-conceive the story to satisfy the generic audience. But, instead, I’m some dumbass that wants to tell a certain story (and then get paid to make it, of course), so really don’t give a damn when I get advice that goes against my intent. I can always create another story.
If I become successful (statistically a snowball’s chance in hell), then my sticktoitofness will, no doubt, be one of the reasons. But, most likely, I’ll do this for another 4 years, 7 months, never amount to anything, then content myself with holding boom for my friend John as he complains until we all go deaf and blind that if I’d only…
My idea of re-conceptualizing the trilogy of movies into a miniseries is probably just as dumb as anything else, but if I were driven by intellect instead of emotion, I’d be investing all my free time into a billion-dollar invention idea I’ve had since at least February, instead of pissing away my time on this nonsense.
