They put it on the page because it sounded good or it looked good or they read it in a book somewhere that this is how you structure a script or something, and they just don't get it. It's surprising.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
With some writers, the script looks beautiful on the page, but nobody actually speaks like that.
For me, if the words are good on the page, the rest of it comes from spending some time with the script, and not like you're learning lines but absorbing what the script has to offer.
Because these show are live, script pages are being switched during the program and new commercial teases might be yelled in your ear with just enough time to scribble them on scrap paper before reading them.
Some people say that they read the first 20 pages, and then decide if they want to do the film or not. But, I have to read the entire thing 'cause anything can change in a script.
Some people, especially literary people, they think, 'I'll write this original script, and it will be full of ideas. I'll submit it, and they'll hire me for television.' That's not the case.
They've got this house style which is writer driven. I heard of one person who sent his script in, and Karen Berger said there weren't enough words in it. Put some more in.
It's really interesting with scripts, because you never really know. It's paper and it could be great or awful. Even scripts that are good could end up not working.
I like it when you read a script and there's the part that you show to the other characters and then there's the part that only the audience knows.
Often when you get a really good script, and you receive the new pages, you see that the entire thing has been dumbed down. Films in the '30s and '40s, that were huge blockbusters, were very sophisticated in their language, and the ideas they brought. There were no questions about whether the audience would get it or not.
It was pretty much the way that it was when I first read it, although one exception would be that some ideas that I had were also incorporated into the script.