Andrew Barnett's Lounge Discussions

Andrew Barnett I was just lamenting about this!!

I'm currently physically disabled and can't get around so I can't go to events and stuff like my agent keeps wanting me to and I also live in an area where there are practically no events to go to. I don't do the whole socializing scene anymore since I've become disabled because I do not want to tell my story, I'd just rather sell the script and get it over with.

In these days it seems like a lot of the schmoozing could be done online since we have enough technology to be able to do so. It seems like a waste to have to go out and actually rub elbows with people when you can do almost everything you could do IRL online. I want to know what the actual difference is? We have video chat now if you're that concerned about the people not being who they say they are, geeze.

And while I'd love to work on a production team, I seriously don't think that one member being on a conference call on skype is going to make that big of a difference in the film as long as they're not the actors starring in it.

-G.R.B.

Hi G.R.B., when people meet me in RL, at first, they'll assume that I'm simple-minded. That's because I have the manner of a quiet tradesperson who's worked outdoors for the last thirty years. Actually, in some genres, I'm in the top ten percentile of students in the highest ranked university in the UK. I'll probably stay for a PhD, there's so many things that I want to think about and explore.

If I'm not saying anything, I'm thinking, and I have a quick, incisive mind. I don't have anything to lose and I'm not desperate for work, so I can afford to be up-front. I don't want anyone to have undue financial or employment-related leverage over me. Once they've got you in this position, what's to stop them turning the screw? I've heard RL stories where professional writers have sold a TV series and they've worked with team only to have their story wrestled off them mid-series by the company and other writers. If you watch children at play, they are all trying to grab the best toys in the room and keep them for themselves. Human nature doesn't change, it becomes more sophisticated and honed in adults.

Like you, I don't want spend my time explaining to anyone why I am this way. Many professional people react with incredulity, assume that I'm joking, when I tell them, straight, that I couldn't work with them because I'd be scratching the paint off their office walls if I had to sit in room with other people day-in, day-out.

Thinking about this networking, chasing around and pitching your screenplay, to me, doesn't seem worth the reward-- we all want different things out of life. It's a lot of energy to expend, and it puts put me in mind of professional poker players, who take the risks but only a tiny percentile will make a living from it. There's got be a mile-high carnage heap of broken dreams and families around anything with this kind of risk-reward ratio. In Call of the Wild, Jack London noted,the ones making fistfuls of guaranteed money were selling shovels and supplies, not (all but a few of) the prospectors. I've already been offered decent money to edit a novel, also to tutor 1-1, hours to suit. I didn't have to ask or pitch, they came to me. I imagined there might be similar peripheral jobs, (that don't involve travel and too much interaction) around the screenwriting industry, but I'm not working on spec, hot air, or for nothing. I don't need to.

I don't mind the pitching and stuff so long as it can be done in virtual reality. I mean, I get that you have to sit down and talk story with people sometime, it's just I don't get why it all has to be face to face.

I'm an author too so I'd like to know where my fistfuls of guaranteed money ran off to... lol. ;)

-G.R.B.

Dan, I'm asking these questions because I have to write a screenplay for a university assignment. It's has to be to a high standard. Sometimes, it helps to write the creative part of an assignment with the intention of publishing, like my short stories and poems and explain about the successful submission and editing processes. I can't see this happening for me with screenwriting because it's a totally different industry . The moment those agents said, "you have to work with us and a team of other screenwriters, travel, and act like an employee", I flipped out of any connection with idea. Simple as that. Who knows if I could write and sell a screenplay? If those are attached conditions , I'm not interested. So the assignment is going to be a technical exercise. I enjoy screenwriting but I wouldn't enjoy the rest of it.

GRB, "fistfuls of money"; don't ask me. I was paid $20.00 for a short story that took weeks of spare-time editing and much worrying. I decided I wanted write because I love writing and it seemed a reasonably asocial occupation. Screenwriting means you have work with groups of other people in face-to-face conditions, which one reason I took up writing-- to avoid. I enjoy working 1-1 and online but not in RL groups.