Woody, the point is no one tells him how to draw or design or do his job. They may critique his work, but with a writer they start telling you specifically how to write the scene. They change your dialogue to their own misguided notions of what sounds better, the change plot structure, they pull delicately-wrought strands that can unravel whole sections. They don't don't get that specific with scenic designers or costumers or cameramen, because they know they cannot do that work...They can't DO the writer's work either, but the difference is THEY ALL THINK THEY CAN WRITE, so with the author they impose themselves more into his job and his work.
And you cannot survive in Hollywood without a thick skin. That doesn't mean you shouldn't take it personally when it's your work they're screwing up and that you shouldn't bellow about it when it happens. The reason the writers in Hollywood are on the low end of the totem pole and continually get trounced on is because they are a bunch of cowardly wusses who whine among themselves but refuse to stand up and call bullshit bullshit when it's bullshit!
Clearly you are speaking of what happens
now in filmmaking.
Back in the days when the studios were cranking out product by the shovelfull, the heads of the studios were very definately in charge, and not only were they critiquing the work, they were rejecting it, replacing one person's work with another's, and when they felt it necessary calling in the minions who were doing the work and telling them exactly how to write, how to design, how to create. (Example: Selznick commanding Hitchcock.) This is probably why the department heads were often taking credit for their underlings when the awards were handed out...assuming the studio head hadn't already grabbed the statuette.
The studio system collapsed, replaced by corporations with people running the corporations who had no experience in the creative process. The crafts departments were dismantled, the talent dispersed. Which is where we are today.
Now, let's take a stab at
why the writers work is such an easy target. We've been sashaying around this for a while, it's been hinted at in some of the earlier posts.
If writing is such an easy target, it's because most people don't think of it as writing, they think of it as something they themselves do every day, which is stringing a bunch of words together into sentences and talking. Everyone can talk, or believes that they know how to do so. It's a basic skill, hard-wired into our brains.
And, when it comes to scripts, everyone, even the schlub that buys a ticket, thinks they can do it better. I remember one discussion, back when
Dreamgirls was being considered as a film property. A co-worker of mine was insisting that they had to cast Whitney Houston...as Effie. I objected that Effie was supposed to be a big woman, not a statuesque beauty. I pointed out that much of the plot of the show was based on that fact. It didn't matter to the co-worker; she wanted Whitney to play Effie so that she could sing "And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going." Plot be damned, she wanted that performance.
And that's how films are viewed. It's the performance that matters. No one in the audience (except for those of us who aren't obsessed with film) cares about the director, or the writer, or how things were designed or lit or shot. It's all about the performance, that which gets up on the screen and is seen by schlub-with-ticket. Or the former accountant running the corporation, same guy really. That's the bottom line.
The only people who seem to avoid this type of thinking are the independent filmmakers. And if they're successful in their filmmaking and grab that schlub's attention, they usually also grab Hollywood's attention and don't stay independent for long.
