A few preliminary thoughts on reading Hollywood versus The Author. I took it up after seeing it in Kris Rusch's December Reading Rec's.

This isn't a review; just ideas as I read through a group of writers kibbitzing, trying to figure out the ways and mores of Tinseltown, and how to navigate them with a bit of grace and skill. Overall, the picture isn't a clean one.

I've a few, well, theories I guess, but I'm far too new a writer, and the time if/when Hollywood would come knocking for anything I put up is far in the future. I'd say there're the obvious things that "everyone knows", that the town's a pit, a trap for the unwary, consuming all that come looking for glory.

Or, and here's the key: a quick buck. All the scams boil down to greed. And, at least from this outsider's point of view, the competent pros in the movie and tv business being surrounded by an awful lot of people who aren't in it for anything but the scam. Or the "fame" or the loose change or all of the other things that come along.

Stealing ideas, development hell. Endless re-writes. These are signs that, to me, sound like wanna-be's, not pros.

Look, well-run tv shows put out 20 to 40 hours or more of video every year, like clockwork. Spending year after year in "development hell" doesn't sound much like competence, not when there are people who do it every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

Looks to me like the only defence a writer with a novel to sell options/rights on has is time. Use the option, put a deal, and then a movie, together in a limited time, or lose it. Period.

I suspect that's at least part of what was behind how competently the Harry Potter movie series was handled by Warner Bros. (if you're of a certain age in the HP fandom, you'll know jodel-from-aol, a.k.a. RedHen. Her description is that the first two movies were little more than boilerplate; I'm not saying they're the world's greatest ART, just that the movies were, for Hollywood, handled with a level of fidelity and competence that are far more the exception than the rule) I think Jo Rowling had not just the "leverage" of a hot property. I suspect she had a time limit on when the first movies, and the ones after, would be done, or they'd lose rights.

Such deadlines likely force: one script with minimal re-writes, from a scriptwriter who's a pro and is just translating, not "writing to their vision", i.e. writing their own script and passing it off under the flag of convenience. No re-writing for girlfriends/boyfriends/whoever's the hot young thing under contract. No games with casting, no prima donna's behind the camera or in front of it.

Only pros, people who can put together a movie in a timely manner with no muss, no fuss, and none of the drama queen business. People who just do the work.

I'm sure this isn't the whole of it, but right now I suspect it's also the only realistic grip that an unknown writer has on their story.