What producers and executives really think of writers

In an article in the Los Angeles Times, Patrick Goldstein writes, “Dan McDermott has actually admitted the ugly truth, the secret that screenwriters everywhere have always firmly suspected—executives are envious of writers!”

 McDermott is one of the writers of “Eagle Eye,” the current hit action film. Previously he was an executive at Fox and Dreamworks. Then he had a near-death experience and switched to being a writer (in my view, being a writer in Hollywood is a near-death experience in itself, but that’s a different story).

 He was the first writer on “Eagle Eye,” but not the only one. He says, “You can’t take it personally. The paradox of Hollywood is that if a studio gets a script they really like, the first thing they do is hire some other writer to rewrite it. It stings a little, but that’s the nature of the business. If they didn’t like the script, they wouldn’t be rewriting it; it would just be sitting on the shelf.”

 The jealousy, he explained, comes from the fact that most executives want to work in a creative capacity but the higher up the ladder they get, the less involved they are in the creative process.

(For guidance in how to write for TV and film, as well as books and articles, get "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available via Amazon and other online and retails outlets.)