This is a series of articles I've written about writing, specifically about the problems faced by (a) the new writer who isn't selling enough work yet to make a living or (b) the older writer who isn't selling as much as they used to. To read other installments, click here.
Around 49.5 years ago, I launched my career as a professional writer. At the time, I didn't imagine that nearly half a century later, I would still be doing it. I didn't imagine that I wouldn't not be doing it, either. I had a fairly good imagination but I've never imagined too far ahead of myself.
Writing was the only thing I wanted to do and I clearly had more aptitude for it than anything else except maybe Hostage or Human Sacrifice. So it was kind of like, "Well, I'll try this and if (or more likely, when) it doesn't work out, I'll figure out a Plan B for my life." So far, it hasn't been necessary but I sometimes think, "Well, maybe next week…"
As I've mentioned here: When I started out, I did a lot of writing for magazines. For one, I had to write a profile of a famous singer, which I did largely by paraphrasing and rearranging hunks of various press releases that the singer's publicist had supplied to my publisher. After the piece was printed, the publicist hired me to write press releases and also to write articles about his clients. He gave the articles for free to the magazines which ran them, each time with no indication that the author worked not for them but for the subject's publicist. Two of those magazines later offered me assignments. It was a more benevolent version of how Washington, D.C. operates.
So it was generally a matter of one job leading to another. The publicist also had me writing jokes and fake anecdotes for his clients to tell when they went on talk shows. Then when his second-in-command went off and started his own publicity firm, that guy hired me to work for him, too.
Amidst all of this, I met other writers and we'd tell each other about jobs we knew that were open or buyers of writing who were in need. I even began to get calls where someone I'd never met before would say something like, "I'm putting together a new magazine and I need a 5000-word article about such-and-such by Monday. Phil says you're the guy who can get it done for me."
Maybe ten years ago, I addressed a group of wanna-be writers and I told them what I'm telling you. There was one gent in the first row who had a great deal of trouble grasping certain aspects of this lecture. He kept saying, "You're telling us everyone thought you were a brilliant writer" and I definitely was not telling them that. If you think I'm telling you that, read more carefully. I am not making any sort of claim or evaluation of the work except one. I am telling you that they found it useful.
To be honest, I never knew if they found it excellent or mediocre or what. There are those who hire writers who will say "Great job" about just about everything they accept because, I suppose, they think praise will keep you willing to do more work for them without asking for more money. There are also those who think the opposite: That if they tell you it's great, you'll demand more money. A lot of people deliver compliments the way we applaud performers even if we didn't like what they did — as a kind of polite obligation.
As nice as some of it may be, never take that kind of thing seriously. A great old pulp magazine writer named Frank Gruber once told me, "There are really only two compliments you can ever get from your editor that are meaningful and certainly honest. One is 'Can you do another job for me next week?' and the other is 'I'm giving you a raise.'"
But let's get back to the key word for today's lesson: Useful. The buyers found my work useful. The reason they shelled out money for my writing was that they found it useful.
It was there on time and with little or no additional work on their part, it would fill X pages in their magazine or they could send it out as a press release or it would simply do what they needed it to do and they could check an item off their "to do" list. I was also easy to work with and I think I usually managed to hit that sweet spot between being Too Cooperative and Not Cooperative Enough. Writers often lose work by being one or the other.
At some point, the guy in the front row at that lecture switched to asking me, "Are you saying it doesn't matter if our writing is good?" and I kept telling him no, I was not telling them any such thing. Obviously, it matters and it matters a lot. Great writing is always better than adequate writing and adequate writing is way better than bad writing.
Should you have a long and varied writing career, some people may hire you or buy your work because they think it is of high quality. But all of those who pay you money pay you money because they think you are useful to them in producing their magazine, their movie, their TV show, their comic book, their line of novels, whatever. And here's where I segue to a story…
Around 1977, a friend of mine I'll call Riley sold an original screenplay that bounced around Hollywood for years, trapped in a kind of Twilight Zone that is not uncommon in this town. It was optioned and re-optioned and it went into turnaround and then it turned around another way and was optioned again and so on. Everywhere it went, there were folks who wanted to make it but not the right folks or maybe not enough of them at any given moment. At some point, it found its way to Mr. Burt Reynolds, who was then still not only a Superstar but a very Bankable Superstar.
(What's the difference between a Superstar and a Bankable Superstar? Well, "Bankable" generally means that if the performer says, "Hey, I'd like to star in this," a skillful producer can use that interest to set the project up somewhere and get it made. At this moment for instance, if Tom Hanks said he loved your script, there's a really good chance it would turn into a major motion picture.)
Obviously, such actors have scripts by the tonweight offered to them. Obviously, they don't read most of them and pass on most of those they do read. Burt reportedly read Riley's script and passed…but someone told someone else who told someone else that Burt had said something like, "This role isn't for me but this writer writes great dialogue."
Did he really say that? I don't know, you don't know, Riley didn't even know. And if Burt did say it, did he really mean it or was it one of those "polite applause" kind of remarks? We don't know that either. But someone said he said it and that was good enough for a lady producer we'll call Maxine Bialystock.
Maxine had a screenplay she'd purchased and she'd been shopping it around town for months, trying to gin up some interest. It had been offered to top stars and top directors and no one on top or even very far from the bottom wanted to attach themselves to it. It had been offered seven different ways to Mr. Reynolds but it had never even gotten into his "to be read" pile.
It was about an old, burned-out failure of a man and about his redemption due to the love of a good, young woman. Burt was not Maxine's only choice for the role of the old, burned-out failure but after Clint and Sylvester and Harrison and a few others all said no — some of them actually after reading the script — she decided her best shot was ol' Burt.
And when she heard about Burt's alleged remark about Riley's script, she quickly hired Riley to do a major rewrite on her script. Paid him a ton of cash with, in fact, a nice bonus if he got it done in a hurry. She was afraid that if it took too long, Burt might not be bankable by the time it got to him. Some levels of stardom, after all, have an expiration date on them like "Five years or three flops, whichever comes first."
Riley delivered promptly. Ms. Bialystock sent the new version to Burt's people, imploring them that "Burt is known to love Riley's work so he'll want to move this to the top of the pile." We'll never know for sure if that's the reason Burt read the script but read it, he did. His reaction was "This role isn't for me but this writer writes great dialogue."
I think this little tale illustrates the way in which the word "useful" applies to writers and also to folks like actors and directors and to anyone whose participation can drive a project forward. Maxine bought the script in the first place because she thought it would be useful in setting up a movie that she would produce. She submitted it to directors and to Bankable Superstars and several times to Burt Reynolds because she thought those people would be useful to advancing the project to the next stage.
When that failed, she hired my friend Riley to rewrite it because she thought a rewrite by him would be useful to get it to Burt Reynolds. And then if he liked it, Burt would be useful to get…oh, maybe Debra Winger or Sissy Spacek (both then quite Bankable and therefore useful) to agree to play the good, young woman…and then maybe Martin Scorsese (Bankable!) would be interested in directing. He'd certainly be useful…
Would these people be the best possible choices creatively for the script? Maybe, maybe not…but that wasn't what Maxine was looking for. She was looking for who'd be useful in getting a movie made.
The script remains unproduced to this day and is likely to remain that way. My friend Riley told me this story and I asked him if what he wrote was any good. He said, "Yeah. It could have been a good movie. It could have made a good movie before I rewrote it, too. I wasn't hired to improve a poor script. I was hired to produce something Burt Reynolds would read. The minute he did, I think I earned my money. He just didn't want to play that kind of old loser character at that stage of his career."
I asked him what Maxine thought of the script. He said, "I have no idea. It's possible she didn't even read it. Why should she? It didn't matter if she liked it. It only mattered that Burt read it." Then he added, "If he'd hated it but agreed to do it if they'd hire someone else to rewrite it his way, like he did with some of his films, I'd still have earned my money."
Burt apparently changed his mind later on. His people, Riley told me, inquired about the availability of the script years after and someone may even have shopped it around with him attached. Alas…by that point, Burt was no longer Bankable. Worse than that, he was no longer useful.