From it’s cautionary tales to its lessons on life and professionalism, this documentary should be required viewing for all aspiring screenwriters. I just watched this documentary again, and found it at once humorous and depressing. It’s a sobering account of the business for those of us aspiring to make it as screenwriters, and it makes the point that while being a professional screenwriter is rewarding both financially and creatively, it is also a frustrating and difficult career.
Rather than going into a detailed critique on the quality of the documentary, I’m going to focus on some thoughts I had when watching it.
I found it engaging both intellectually and emotionally. The film spends a lot of time pointing out the challenges that come with trying to break in as a screenwriter, and then goes on to show challenges that even experienced screenwriters have to deal with.
I did feel like it spent a lot of time showing what’s wrong not only with screenwriting, but with the film industry as a whole. One point that it makes that I found particularly interesting almost serves as an explanation. That point is the fact that no one in the film industry knows what they’re doing. If they did, every movie would be wonderful, entertaining and a joy to watch. The problem is that very few films actually are very good, and it’s a miracle whenever any movie actually gets made.
However, there were some uplifting moments in the film as well.
One moment particularly caught my attention at the end when Bruce Rubin is discussing the film My Life, which starred Michael Keaton as a man with terminal cancer who is putting together a series of videos for his unborn son. Rubin wrote the screenplay for that film, and it didn’t do well with the critics or in the box office, but he told a story about something that happened to him a few years later. He was approached by a woman at a party who told him that her husband died of cancer and her son had never been able to talk about it. Then they saw his film and it opened a dialogue between them for the first time. She had also recently found out that she had terminal cancer and the experience of seeing his film was easing the pain that her son was dealing with and was making it easier for them to go through this terrible experience. That’s when Rubin realized that he wasn’t writing for money or fame or critics or even an audience. He was writing for himself.
That’s the lesson that I learned from the second viewing of this film. Writers are rarely famous and have little power once they’ve handed over their script to the studio. But if you’re a writer, you’re a creative person and writing is how that creativity is manifested. You might never sell a screenplay or publish a novel, but your work has the potential to have a positive impact on a person’s life.