Last night, I watched The Great World of Sound. The premise of the movie is about Martin (Pat Healy), who gets hired at a fly-by-night record company, The Great World of Sound. GWS offers would-be musicians: you give us $3K, and we'll make you a star.
The interesting thing about this movie is, not even the employees seem to be in on the scam. Most of them are so eager to work, that they never really question the legitimacy of their employer. In one scene, they're acting out a potential customer-rep interaction. Martin addresses that $3,000 seems a little steep, in which his boss suggests that his employees use "metaphors" to coerce potential customers into paying for their services. Eventually, one of the deals that Martin and his partner Clarence (Kene Holliday) make goes awry, and it's downhill from there.
I recommend this movie.
Anyway, I bring this up because for the last several months, I've been considering going into business as a script consultant. Why? Because the items I plan on purchasing/renting in the next several months are pretty expensive, and this stuff won't pay for itself (And this is part of what "Indigenity" will be about). Also, I guess the appeal in it for me is that if I can't make a living as a writer myself, maybe I can help someone else become one. I read Derek Rydall's I Could've Written A Better Movie Than That, and one of the things he stresses is creating a "unique selling perspective" or "USP".
I've read the book and flipped over it several times. The book has interviews with people like Linda Seger, Christopher Vogler, Jeff Kitchen, Judith Searle, Kathie Fong Yoneda, Rachel Ballon, and Pamela Jaye Smith. Not too long ago, it dawned on me. What difference does it make? You can use the chakra method, Joseph Campbell's overrated "Hero's Journey", or "The Ennegram" to evaluate scripts, but the only reason why consultants exist in the first place is to help the writer make the script saleable. If it weren't for the script market, these people would be selling real estate and tupperware instead.
I guess what I'm saying is that, like Martin, if I go into this business, I'm going to cheat someone. Who am I to tell people how to fix their script, where, as of this moment, I have never had any script of mine produced--not even something I've directed. Unless you count the narration for Are You From Bingo?, of course.
As William Goldman famously said, "Nobody knows anything." Meanwhile, I'm going to have to come up with another way to pay off the incurring debt...
BTW, I tried to watch Cocaine Angel tonight, but unfortunately, the disc was defective.
Labels: bullshit, Craig Zobel, Netflix, script consultants, The Great World of Sound
