So there I was, this morning, lying on the dentist's chair. Talking to my very nice dentist about what I'd been doing since I saw him. Screenwriting, mainly. "Screenwriting, eh?" he said unto me. "How does that work, then? Do you write the action stuff, like 'He walks through the door'?"
At this point, I wrestled him to the ground, grabbed a drill and intoned, "Is it safe? Is it safe? Is it? Is it?", entirely ignoring his terrified shrieks.
7 comments:
It never ceases to amaze me how clueless people can be about what a scriptwriter actually does. It's hardly a technical term like Gaffer or Best Boy or Grip ... SCRIPT. WRITER.
The clue's in the title.
I can understand questions like:
"Do you write your own ideas or do you write what people tell you to?"
That's a sensible question with a very complicated answer; but:
"Do you write ALL the words?"
Strikes me as needlessly moronic. No, I just write every sixth word. Unless it's a Friday.
Oh wait, have I missed the point and gone off on a pointless rant?
There's no such thing as a pointless Barron rant. Every one a gem!
They didn’t let me, they didn’t let me because they was afraid. I didn’t want to eat their parakeet, but it wouldn’t BLOODY SHUT UP. An elephant? In Peckham? More like TAPIOCA.
I take it all back. And Phill, I'll see that rant and raise you five egg-whisks and a fuck-HANDLE.
Normally people think that screenwriters just come up with the dialogue*, so your dentist is a step ahead of that at least, eh...?
How's yer gob?
* Possibly an idea enforced by certain actors thanking the writers for "all the wonderful words...".
Your last day at work and you had a 'dentist's appointment' in the morning? Heh heh.
Incidentally, someone I know who writes for a soap always gets asked which character he writes for.
Does he tell people he doesn't write a specific character, just a specific emotion?
At the moment he writes all the ambivalent lines, but he's hoping to move up to indignant anger because that's where the money is.
Post a Comment