Mad Atoms

Being a writer in Hollywood means you get to take a lot of meeting with development executives about a script you have written. Some are fun, some are brutal and most of them end up with nothing accomplished (that is why you ALWAYS take a bottled water when they ask if you’d like one– it maybe the only thing you get out of them). But no matter the gender, race, creed or religion of these development execs, one thing always holds true:

They all talk like morons.

They may be smart (and that’s a big fucking maybe). They may be educated. But once they start talking in this Hollywood jargon all development people sound stupid.

I’ll give you an example. I was in a meeting once with some development guy and he was giving me some notes on one of my characters (they love giving notes on character). I disagreed with him and we went back and forth a bit and then out of nowhere he said, “Let’s put a pin it”. I had no idea what the fuck he was talking about so I let it go.

When we disagreed on another note he said again, “Let’s put a pin in it.” This kept happening so much through the meeting that at one point I wanted to take that pin and jam it right in his eyeball.

Why couldn’t the development guy just have said, “Let’s get back to that later”? Because he wanted to sound smart, that’s why. They all want to sound smart. And, ironically, because they all speak the same way none of them do.

Here’s a partial list of phrases that you will always here in a development meeting. Ultimately, these phrases all boil down to, “you need to rewrite the entire script”:

“Your supporting characters aren’t tracking. Make sure they track.”

“That’s not in your wheelhouse.”

“You need to be hitting a zeitgeist.”

“Your lead really has to have a relatability factor.” (FYI, my computer refuses to acknowledge “relatability” as a word, so this should give you some insight to the type of donkeys development people are)

“We’re looking for a script that’s middle to high concept, not low to middle concept. If it could be high to very high concept, that would be great.”

And my favorite because it sounds like dialogue from a bad soft porn movie:

“We really need a four quadrant tent pole from you, so make sure you’re firing on all cylinders.”

Why the need to talk like this? Why not just talk like a normal human being? I’ll tell you why. Because it makes them feel special. It makes them feel like they are in a special secret club that only a few are privileged to be a part of. It’s kind of like bunch of nerds sitting around playing Dungeons and Dragons and speaking in Old English, only with nicer clothes and better food.

But, hey, at least those nerds were smart.