The Great World of Script Consulting

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.

I am Not a Consumer

"An art form is the manifestation of a huge preference for one mode of experience. Asked what kind of music he liked, Mozart said: 'No music. Artists are not consumers."

- Marshall McLuhan,
Counterblast, 1969.

Since I first got Netflix almost five years ago, I've had all the movies that I want at my disposal. I still have my subscription, but I'm starting to feel like their are other things I can be doing besides re-arranging my queue and watching movies at night to make sure I can get them back so I can get another one. I guess now I'm ready to create rather than consume, per the McLuhan quote above.

Speaking of needing "other things to do", I'm still trying to get my driving lessons set up. My representative's supervisor still hasn't approved my voucher yet, and it been nearly two weeks. I've never dealt with a state agency that is so awful in doing things in a timely fashion. I'd really like to get this set up, because I'd like to start working on the rest of my plan. I'm also hoping that my trip to New York in a couple of weeks will help me figure out those plans as well.

Earlier today, I was up at my sister's house. She's a music teacher, and she was showing me how George Russell's Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization works. I've been trying to find some new ways to approach writing for myself, and being a jazz fan, I was hoping that his improvisational approach could provide me with some clues on how to...well, I don't know.

But I had an epiphany. All this reading of books and copying of articles have been a way to figure out what methods work for me, rather than the "one size fits all" that's in most screenwriting books. Perhaps I don't need to write a book critiquing other people's methods! What I need to be doing is devising a viable method for myself! However, as I have said previously, my efforts will provide me with a background with which to explain my methods.

Finally, I watched High School Musical 2 last night. Not too bad, but I think I would've liked it more without all the commercial breaks. Seriously. It was like ten minutes of movie followed by twelve minutes of commercials and buffers featuring the cast at their director's house. Couldn't they wait until afterward to show what happened behind the scenes.