Zilfworks

Friday, November 01, 2002

 

What I Finished Reading Today:

Reading for a Living by T. L. Katahn

I've been reading (movie scripts) for a living for nearly 10 years now, and although it's a very popular way for aspiring screenwriters like me to earn some extra cash while also making a few contacts in the entertainment business - and learning a heck of a lot about writing (by analyzing both good and bad work of other writers) - I've never seen any books on the subject, which always surprised me. But then someone on a screenwriters' e-mail list I subscribe to mentioned this book earlier this week, so I had to rush off and read it (particularly since I'm also writing a bit about reading for a living in the book I'm currently working on).

To my surprise, the book is far from new - in fact, it was published in 1990 - but while large chunks of it are hopelessly dated (it extolls over and over the benefits of using a word processor instead of a typewriter, and why it's so great to be able to print out your work after you've written it), the parts that deal specifically with the readers' job are as timely today as they were 12 years ago. In short, the book explains how to land a reading job, what story editors expect from readers (i.e. how to keep a reading job), and then goes into great detail on how to write script coverage, that combination of story synopsis and readers' comments which can make or break a script's future at any production company or studio. The book also explains how coverage is used by the companies that commission it, which also remains quite accurate in today's Hollywood.

In short, the book does a very good job of explaining the basics of reading scripts for a living, and would probably provide a rank beginner with enough information to produce a good piece of sample coverage, which could then be used to land a reading job. As a 10-year veteran of the script-reading trenches, I was quite familiar with almost everything the author describes, though I did run across two pieces of information that were new to me (or one that was new and one which I should have been aware of long ago). The information brand new to me was the description of how a rarified few readers actually become "union" readers, who unlike most of us are not freelance piece-workers, but have full-time, union-protected jobs at the major studios, and actually earn a living wage, complete with benefits. I've always known union readers exist, but I've never met one, and never really knew how they get to be what they are. But this book explains it, and now I know.

The second "new" piece of information, for me, was one that should have been old hat. There's a very useful chapter here that explains some of the not-immediately-obvious benefits of script reading, which include tax deductions for business expenses such as subscriptions to the Hollywood trade papers, and the purchase of movie tickets. While I've always been aware of these, and dutifully deduct them every year, the book reminded me that because readers work at home, and are required to drive to their employers' offices to pick up scripts, mileage to and from those offices is also deductible. Well, as someone who makes most of her living as a freelance writer and producer in corporate communications, I've long deducted mileage for my corporate work. But for some reason, my idiot brain never made the mileage connection for my script reading work, despite all the years that I've dutifully traipsed back and forth to various production companies, on an almost daily basis, picking up and dropping off scripts. (Yikes! I hate think of all that good mileage gone unclaimed!) Now, however, after reading this, I won't forget that nice little deduction at tax time...which means the book has probably just paid for itself, several times over.

Finally, while the book goes into great detail about coverage formats and how to write coverage, I've found employers today do ask for slightly different things than the book describes.

First, when describing the small summary sections on the front page of readers' coverage, the author uses the terms "concept" and "theme" interchangeably. In my experience, however, all companies now use the term "concept" exclusively, and what they want here is a one or two-sentence "logline" describing the main details of the script's story and central conflict (e.g. "A young Kansas farm girl is hurled through a tornado to a brilliant fantasyland, takes a perilous journey down a yellow brick road to find a the great and powerful wizard who may be able to send her home again, and meets a trio of unusual friends along the way." "Theme" on the other hand, usually refers to the subtext of the story (e.g. "there's no place like home"), and is one of the story elements the reader is responsible for identifying and commenting on later in the coverage.

Second, the coverage samples included in this book tend to have very short story synopses (one to two pages is the stated length preferred), but again in my experience, synopses have gotten a bit longer in recent years, and most companies now seem quite happy with 2-3 page synopses that give a slightly fuller sense of the story's key details. (I did work for one company that started out asking for two-page synopses, and later trimmed that back to a one-page mandate...but that's been the only such case in the dozen or so entities I've read for). Personally, I prefer the longer synopses, because they're much faster to write. Trimming a story down to a coherent one or even two page summary, which still accurately conveys the tone and timing of the original, is much harder, and takes a lot longer (at least for me).

Finally, one of the most fascinating details of this book, for me, was its note on how much readers make for reading scripts. It says freelance readers make $30-55 per script. Now, since this was 12 years ago, you'd expect that figure to have risen a bit. Well, it has. Rates are now $50-60 per script. Yes, that's a whopping $5 raise, at the high end, in the last 12 years. Really, however, I'd say that rates haven't actually risen at all. You can still find plenty of people looking for people to read scripts for free (and plenty of aspiring readers ready to jump on those jobs), and I find just as many clients paying $50 per script as they did when I started almost 10 years ago. (In fact, my first big client paid $55 per script, so the $50 I'm still getting now from a couple of fairly big-name companies actually represents a drop in income, especially when you factor in inflation.)

So you'll never get rich reading scripts. But if you do think you might enjoy the work, and if you're curious about the nitty gritty basics of the reader's job, then this book would probably be very helpful (though it would be even more helpful if the author would update it by dropping the many sections on word processors, and by finding some slightly more current coverage samples).

posted by Elizabeth 9:53 AM

Thursday, October 31, 2002

 

What I Finished Reading Today:

Chasing Cezanne by Peter Mayle

This frothy, fun little mystery isn't in anywhere near the same literary league as yesterday's epic tome (see below), but if you're looking for a quick, delightful diversion, it's just the thing. The story centers on a globe-trotting art photographer, who accidentally happens to see a famous Cezanne painting being removed from its owner's home when it probably shouldn't be. The photographer makes a few inquiries among his art-world contacts, and after he and a genial dealer realize something fishy's going on, they start chasing after the painting to find out just what kind of nefarious plot is in the works. The chase takes them through New York high society, a couple of preliminary locations in Europe and the Caribbean and, finally and most descriptively, to Paris and environs, stopping at a great number of lavish homes, hotels and restaurants along the way.

All in all, the plot is pretty slight, just barely enough to hang a book on, but what makes it so much fun is that the point here isn't so much the details of the mystery, but the places it takes its entertaining characters and the meals they get to eat along the way. Most particularly, Mayle, who also wrote the descriptively lush non-fiction book A Year in Provence, uses the fictional concept as the basis for another lovely tour of France and its fine cuisine. And his obvious love for the country, for travel in general, and for all good things gustatory are evident at every turn. (Even a notorious art forger won't discuss business without meeting at the finest local restaurant and spending ample time and page space discussing the prospective meal...which is always delivered, consumed and praised in great detail as well.)

One should definitely not read this book if you haven't eaten or traveled well recently...because it's likely to make you want to pick up and head for France (preferrably for dinner...tonight). Of course, if you do want to be spurred into just such action, then by all means, indulge. Just keep a few tasty morsels on hand to munch while you read until you get there.

posted by Elizabeth 12:17 PM

Wednesday, October 30, 2002

 

What I Finished Reading Today:

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

About once a year, I find a novel that completely blows me away, in every respect. This is that book for 2002.

It's a truly epic tale of four very ordinary people in a large Indian city, circa 1975. A young widow from a wealthy family, who refuses to live with her overbearing brother, takes in a college-age lodger to help pay the rent, and hires two lower caste tailors (who were born untouchables) so she can take in commercial sewing jobs to earn a living. This forced-by-circumstances foursome - who would in normal situations never have met and certainly would never get to know each other beyond perfunctory comments and instructions - becomes forced by chance to become a family. And it's the "chance" part that drives the epic and, ultimately, the epically tragic, dimensions of the story.

The narrative plays out against a backdrop of the social and political "Emergency" called by the corrupt government of Indira Ghandi (never referred to by name but always as the faceless "Prime Minister"), which takes on absolutely Dickensian dimensions for the story's characters. Actually, the characters are also quite Dickensian, and include a vivid cast of completely original oddballs - a legless beggar, a street performer who balances first monkeys and then children, a man who collects hair for a living, and a Beggarmaster who polices his army of (sometimes deliberately) deformed alms-collectors with a stern but oddly compassionate rule. For these folks, who it's clear are not even the worst off amid the city's crushing poverty and overcrowding, life on the best of days includes such horrors as water taps that only function at certain hours of the day, plagues of worms that invade the sidewalks, bathroom plumbing and even human intestines, and a city in which people are happy to find - after days or even weeks of searching - a well-guarded doorway to rent for a place to sleep. And the worst of days include frequent government roundups in which thousands of innocent people are swept up into trucks without warning and transported to days-long political rallies, forced labor on various "beautification" or civic improvement projects, and even involuntary sterilization operations.

One of the reviews quoted in my copy of the book likens it to both Dickens and the Russian masters, such as Tolstoy, which is probably a pretty accurate comparison. The book begins with lengthy histories of each of the main characters, detailing their childhoods, families and the circumstances that finally bring them to the big city, and to the point where their paths eventually cross those of the other central figures. Each of these stories is involving in its own right (and could be nearly a book in itself), but it's not until the four characters meet and begin working and living together that the overall narrative really takes off. Because despite all the external color and drama of the story, what really drives it, and really draws the reader in, is the way Mistry's characters develop and grow as they get to know each other, coming first to a grudging mutal respect, then friendship, and eventually even love amid their nearly impossible circumstances.

At 600 pages in paperback (with fairly small print), this is not a short book. But it is a surprisingly fast read, because the personalities and stories in it are so involving on every level. Finally, it's interesting to note that while many modern Indian authors are known for the magic realism that winds through their tales, Mistry goes about as far as possible in the opposite direction, creating a world so fully grounded in such vivid reality that it takes on a sort of magic of its own.

In short, I'm still in the thrall of this story - and likely will be for a very long time (it left me sobbing at the end) - and the best I can say about it is do not miss this book!

posted by Elizabeth 9:02 AM

Tuesday, October 29, 2002

 

What I Finished Reading Today:

The Scarlet Professor by Barry Werth

The subtitle of this book is "Newton Arvin: A Literary Life Shattered by Scandal," and it's a fascinating look at an ordinary man who should have been extraordinary only for his literary abilities and reputation, but who became notorious after a humiliating and career-destroying arrest for possessing homosexual pornographic materials in the late 1950s.

Although not a well-known name today, Arvin, a professor of American literature at Smith College for about 40 years (from the 1920s to the 1960s), was an extremely talented literary biographer and critic, and was one of the founders of the academic discipline now known as American Studies. Although he never became a very famous writer outside literary circles, he was an integral part of the American literary intelligencia during his career, and his circle of friends included people like Truman Capote (also a one-time lover of Arvin's), Carson McCullers, Saul Bellow and many other pillars of modern American literature.

Arvin was also a very quiet personality, and although he could apparently be emotionally demanding with his immediate circle of friends, he lived a very low-key life divided mostly between the Smith campus in Northampton, Massachusetts, and the high-echelon writers' retreat, Yaddo. Arvin's problem, however, was that he was a homosexual in an age when people didn't talk about such things, and men who had homosexual urges were forced to keep them hidden from mainstream society. For Arvin, like millions of others, his homosexuality was also a great source of personal shame, though he did eventually develop a small circle of academic acquaintences who shared his orientation, and with whom he was able to talk and act openly...which provided a measure of comfort in his late middle age.

During this period, in the 1950s, a new breed of men's muscle or "fitness" magazines also appeared on the scene, which weren't particularly explicit, but did feature nearly naked, well-developed men striking hyper-masculine poses that specifically appealed to other men. Arvin became a collector of these magazines, and similar photos, and enjoyed sharing them with his gay friends, both one-on-one and in small group gatherings. At the same time, however, there was a rising tide of anti-homosexual fear in the U.S., which followed close on the heels of the Communist witch hunts earlier in the decade. And when a local postmaster and sheriff went on a morality crusade, they raided Arvin's apartment and found his "pornography" collection, as well as private diaries describing his homosexuality and homosexual activities. Arvin was arrested, convicted, forced into retirment by Smith, and lost many of his closest friends and literary connections in the resulting scandal.

Author Werth does a terrific job of recounting Arvin's story, and bringing him to life as a very sympathetic character, who just happened to be living in the wrong place and wrong time (within two years of Arvin's arrest, separate Supreme Court decisions decriminalized the materials he was convicted of possessing, and made illegal the kind of seizures that got him arrested in the first place...and within 10 years of his troubles, the sexual revolution made homosexuality a much more acceptable trait, especially in the literary circles he inhabited). The book reads very much like a novel, and the various literary luminaries that pass in and out of the narrative come alive as well (it never feels like Werth is dropping names just because he can). Finally, Werth also does a great job of bringing Arvin's biographical work to life, and paralleling various facets of Arvin's life and personality with those of the authors - Hawthorne, Longfellow, Melville and Whitman - he wrote about.

"The Scarlet Professor" was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and it's easy to see why. It's a compelling and complete biography, which also does a great job of bringing its subject's subject, literary criticism, to life. Arvin's story is both unique (for the rarified world he inhabited and his honored place in it) and tragically common (his lonliness, shame and secret double life were all too usual for gay men of his era), and the combination of these two things makes for very absorbing reading, whether you're interested in American literature, the lives of modern American writers, 20th century social history, or enlightening footnote-to-history biographies.

posted by Elizabeth 11:06 AM

All material © 2002-2004 by Elizabeth Fuller. Please do not reproduce anything you find here without the author's permission.

Archives      Site Feed