Just a question:

Would you choose to stick with your principles, and retain your integrity, even if it diminished your chances of carving a career in writing; or would you happily flog them in order to guarantee success?

Andrew

At first, I think, you have to play the game, unless you're your own producer. Then, gaining gratefulness, you can take back your integrity and almost do what you want. Don't forget that you always play with other people's money.

That's my point of view.

Michel

Depends what principles you're being ask to bend/break. Care to clarify?

I will say I've learned not to be married to my scripts and I've definitely changed things in my scripts when asked by (potential) producers, even if I felt a little hesitant at first. Then again, there's been nothing that's left me with a bad feeling. Generally, I'd like to stick my principles and wouldn't wanna do anything I think would cause the work to suffer and reflect badly on me as a writer. All I really need is to pay rent and still have enough for a couple beers at the end of the day. I don't write for a paycheck, even if it'd be nice to see one for my work every once and a while.

Unfortunately, I'm afraid Michel's right (to an extent). You can always choose to "sell out" or not "sell out" but either way, in the case of first time screenwriters, producers generally have you by the bollocks. You just gotta hope a nice one comes along.

The company that's making my first feature asked me to make a rather large change (extracting a central character completely), and while I was hesitant at first, I really feel like the changes I made actually made the script stronger.

I'm basically saying, even if you're not keen on the changes, there's no reason you can't find some way to make them work for you.

I guess that advice goes out the window if every time you give them something you're proud of they say "No", but I feel like you should be able to make it work.

Selling out is all relative to every individual.  Selling out to one is surviving in the marketplace to another.

I went to school at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and we we ALL very set on the idea that we would make in the field without 'selling out to the man'!  We were going to do it our way and still make it big!

That's great talk back at the dorm at night, but when you're doing your assignment for a client, it's always a different story.

Everyone who's active in Hollywood sells out and continues to do so. Joe Eszterhas "Devil's Guide To Hollywood - read it, people. It's a brilliant look into the business from the biggest pen in the biz" has so much insight in this area and he has an incredible outlook on it.  Read the book if you haven't done so already... You'll learn alot. You'll also learn to not even care about getting read and start living your life.  Selling a script for a million is like winning the lottery - You might do it once in your time here on earth, but odds are you won't do it again.

Interesting responses.

There was no attempt to sway people with the question, I just wanted to see how it would be interpreted more than anything. I guess, more than anything, I was curious whether or not people would tell stories that make money at the expense of telling stories that they want to tell, y'know.

Personally, I don't think 'selling out' really means anything. That probably comes from the fact that I have a background in Marketing, and without the biz, there is no show.

So to speak.

Andrew

Interesting interview with Jim Jarmush that vaguely talks about this question at the end.

http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/btm/?last_story=/ent/movies/btm/feature/2009/04/30/jarmusch/

I'm in the persuasion of it depending on what you're asking me to do. Asking me to make a revision isn't selling out. It's rewriting. It's selling to begin with.

For me, writing something against my principles is not easy to do mainly because I can't relate to what that would be or I would just be uncomfortable doing it. If it came down to it, I probably would because at that point, I'm rewriting for someone else and it isn't my script anymore.

The real question is "If someone offered you a quarter million dollars for that rewrite, could you do it?" I think I would find the will to do so.

When you sell a script, you won’t own it anymore. And you won’t have any say in what they do with it unless they ask you for it.

Screenwriters need to understand that although you may write a script alone, you will not be producing a movie alone. There are lots of other people who will be working on it and many of them have legitimate interests in what happens. If you can’t bear to have anything in your script changed at all, then there’s little point in trying to sell it. It’s highly doubtful anyone will purchase your script without wanting to make some changes.

If they want your input, you will be working for them, not the other way around. If you don’t like a change, you’ll have to convince them your ideas are what they want. Otherwise you’re out of luck because in the end, they will get what they want. If you refuse to make changes they insist on, they can just fire you and hire someone else to rewrite your script.

As far as how much you’re willing to change, every writer has to decide that but you will change things sometimes or else you won’t work professionally. That’s just all there is to it. What will you do if an actor doesn’t say a line the way you think it should be said? Insist to the director that it be done your way? You make some compromises. You have to. Because writers don’t make movies alone.


Breanne

From my point of view I would define selling out as doing something for money that you either don't agree with, or you think has no artistic merit.

You have to ask yourself the reason why you are doing it in the first place.

Are you writing in order to make millions? Or do you have something else that you want to achieve, for instance telling the world about about a particular topic?

People need to be honest with themselves and follow the road that leads to what they actually desire. If it's money you absolutely will have to write a certain kind of script and move to L.A.

If you have an yearning to tell a particular story or particular kinds (non mainstream) of films then selling out will in all honesty prevent that ever happening.

I really don't believe this idea that you get to make whatever you want once you've "sold out" and had one success. You will be offered more work along the exact same lines.

Rawston Thurber directed Dodgeball, it was a huge success. He hardly got paid for it because the studio said they'd give him $20M to make his film, but wouldn't pay him. he made more money doing a Renault advert for three days.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1098493/

The film even beat Spielberg at the Box Office (The terminal). You'd think he'd get to make a film of his choice next wouldn't you? Didn't work out like that. He had a dark thriller that he'd been working on for ages, but he couldn't get it off the ground. they would only offer him the option of films that fit the template that he was successful with, comedies.

He directed one more comedy which flopped and now he seems to be back making shorts, presumably to show he can do other things that the type of films he got pigeon-holed with. He seems to be back to square one.

The thing is you lose all credibility as an artist if you sell out. Once that has happened it's very difficult to turn around and develop something powerful because people don't believe in your voice. You are just an entertainer and have no gravitas.

You can write something hard and hitting (that is successful) and then sell out. That is a choice that you may be forced to make.

John Singelton (Boyz n the hood) said something about this at a symposium I attended. He got paid about $6M for Fast and Furious. He turned it down at 1, 2, 3 and 4 million because he thought it was poor and had no relevance. In his words though "They know something you don't, everyone has a price".

When it got to $6M he started to think that this is a decision that is no longer about him, but about his family and his whole extended family. Here is a figure that means your parents can retire, that can provide education and new homes for your nephews and nieces. How can you turn that down, it's just a film isn't it?

Personally I don't think you can. You take the money.

But that's the end of your career as a serious filmmaker. You've lost your edge straight away.

Imagine if Spike Lee did American Pie 4? No-one would listen to anything he ever said again and take it seriously.

There are only a handful of people who have managed to play both sides, Soderbergh to a degree and John Sayles spring to mind. Sayles writes genre films to finance his own films that wouldn't be backed by studioes.

Sayles seems to separate his writing career from his directing career though, maintaining his directorial credibility whilst being a gun for hire as regards scripts.

I think there's a different between changing your script TO be sold and changing your script after it's already BEEN sold. Ethics come into play either way but there's still a difference. I agree with some above comments like you should change your script to work for you and you should convince the producers that what you want is what they want and if you want to succeed in this business, you absolutely cannot be married to your work.

But if I've sold a script and the producers want me to change something extremely significant that would completely compromise the work, I would rather be fired and have someone else destroy it. Still have my integrity and my flat fee. Once integrity's gone, it's gone. That's the way I see it, anyway.

This is something I have been debating with my own writing. Do I write with my own writer's voice that is a bit "weird" or should I sell out and write "mainstream" stuff.

I was getting bummed with how everyone elses shorts were getting snapped up by filmamkers- everyone but me. So I decided to not write for myself but write stuff just like everyone else. Filmmaker bait as i like to call it.

So everytime I sat in front of blank paper I based my idea on what is mainstream, what do the majority of filmmakers want that come to SS looking for scripts.

The problem was that after a while I found it very hard to write. It quickly became a chore and a bore to the point that I got writers block. It just wasn't happening.

So I thought fuck this and so I searched and sent enquiry emails for filmmakers who move to the beat of the same drum as me. I'm still looking- theres not many out there -but I have found one or two filmmakers who love my style of scripts and I am writing stuff for them now or in the middle of writing.

Bottom line is I write from the heart and would suck at writing a formula Hollywood script but for a cheap little indie movie that dances to its own tune and probably no one would watch except for a handful at a festival then I'm your man.

and I'm cool with that.  

If working on something that I wasn't necessarily passionate about opened up doors and gave me the financial backing to be able to pursue my own projects then yeah I'd definitely make some sacrifices.

But I wouldn't change who I was for fame and fortune. I wouldn't want to be a celebrity anyway.

I'd take the money and run.
Oh yeah, take the money and run.

I'd adjust the script any way they want. They're buying /bought my concept or their idea of it.

This is about lightning seldom striking twice in the script business.

Gary