Reading for a Living

Taking What They're Giving... and Writing Coverage

Welcome to February, everyone. And welcome to another post in Dursin’s Dungeon. If you are reading this, thanks so much. I appreciate you. If you’re wondeirng what I have been doing since my last post, I don’t think you’ll be too impressed, but just in case, you shouid watch the latest season of Fargo, and then watch Echo, and then read Where the Body Was by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. They were all amazing. Ok, I’m kind of lying because I haven’t read Where the Body Was yet, but I’m sure it’s amazing. And if you are reading this but not subscribed, then please do so. It makes me happy. And consider donating or subscribing to a paid tier, because that makes me even happier.

Ugh, I hate being a shill.

Anyway, on with the post…

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If you read these, then you know that I like to write about my experiences; dating experiences, job experiences, ebay experiences, what have you. One experience I don’t think I have ever written about was my time as a script reader for a production studio in Hollywood known as Fried Films. It’s pronounced “Freed,” but named for founder Rob Fried, producer of such classics as So I Married an Ax Murderer, Rudy and the Matthew Broderick Godzilla. Why he didn’t call it something else, so people would stop mispronouncing it, I'll never know, but he is apparently still married to Nancy Travis, so good on ‘im. Interestingly enough. I had not seen Godzilla when I worked there, but it was finished and the promo art was amazing, so that was the main reason I chose that studio for my internship. Always been a fan of the Big G. 

I came to be in his employ because all Emerson College students who partake in the Los Angeles study “abroad” program are required to get an internship while there, and most of the available internships are at production offices. There’s literally hundreds of them, and the way they worked (at least, back in 1998) was that screenplays would “hit the town” on a given day, and someone would have to read them and decide if they were worthy of being made into an actual movie. For this task, there were interns from various colleges, or people who actually made their living as script readers, and these people would decide the fate of hundreds of movies. Obviously, this is a simplified version of the economics of Hollywood, but for the purpose of this story, this is how it went. I would show up for work, and my supervisor would hand me a screenplay and say, “This is hitting the town today. Read the first 20 pages and tell me what you think.” Literally 99% of the time, I would read those pages, walk back out to her desk and say, “Pass.” I was then told to finish reading it and submit my coverage (For the uninitiated, “coverage” is basically a synopsis of the script and your analysis.) Then I would be handed more screenplays that were less pressing to read and write coverage for. I don’t mean to brag, but I was told that I was their best reader because I read fast and wrote concise coverage. Mostly because the screenplays I was being given were usually awful, so I wanted to get through them as soon as possible. 

Being the best was good because I wanted to one day be a screenwriter, so it was cool to see how the business-side of it worked, but being their best reader also had drawbacks. Mostly, it meant that I had to read more scripts than any of the other interns, including on my days off, and even once when I had to call in sick. This was 1998, remember, so they had a bike courier deliver scripts to my apartment so I could read them and fax my coverage to the studio while I was home sick. Also, I should point out that this was not a paid internship. It was college credit only, and here’s a fun side note: Emerson only required students to work two days a week to get full credit, but Fried Films made me work an extra half day, and I did because, well,,, Godzilla. 

I don’t mean to say that they treated me like a servant, although one of my other duties was to go grocery shopping for the office, so it definitely seemed that way at times. But they also did some cool things for me. One day, I was sent to be on the set of a movie they were making at the time, the direct-to-HBO movie Winchell. At the time, a straight to HBO movie wasn’t as big a deal as it would be now, but the movie did have some star power. I did say hello to Paul Giamatti in the elevator. The scene was being shot on the deck of the Queen Mary II, so I was sent there to get some “real, on-set experience.”  However, my role for the day was to babysit the extras, who were basically sequestered in a small lounge on the lower decks. I was given a walkie-talkie and when it was time for the extras to go to set for a scene, I was told over the air, “Matt, send up the extras.” After I relayed the message, my job was to stay there and watch their stuff to prevent thievery. I suppose they were afraid the ghosts that supposedly haunt the Quey II were going to steal their magazines. The point is, I did not get any “on-set experience.” However, the extras were given a healthy supply of snacks and donuts, so I did get some of that. If I knew then what I know now (Go read my post about being an extra if you want to hear about that):

Extra Credit

I would have just gone to set anyway, or just gone home. And taken the walkie-talkie with me!

That day was an anomaly, however. Most days at Fried Films consisted of reading and writing coverage. And as I said, many of them were terrible. I know it might sound like a mean thing to say (and, ok, maybe a little bitter), because these writers were actually doing the thing I wanted to do, but I have to be honest. They were just awful. I remember reading a script called Three to Tango, where a straight guy asks his presumed gay colleague to keep an eye on his mistress, only to later discover that the guy is not gay and has fallen for her. I quickly passed, and remember telling my supervisor that it felt like a bad episode of Three’s Company, although I’m not sure she knew what that was. About a week later, I happened to be reading an interview with Matthew Perry in T.V. Guide and he said that his next role would be in a movie called, you guessed it, “Three to Tango.”

I asked my supervisor if that was the same script that I had passed on a week earlier, and she said, “Yep. Somebody took it.” It was a good learning experience, and certainly a better Hollywood moment than babysitting the extras’ stuff on the set of Winchell. And I stand by my decision, and the movie-going audience seemed to agree with me, as the movie only grossed $10 million at the box office, and that was probably only because it starred Matthew Perry and Neve Campbell, who were big stars at the time. It should be noted, however, that one of the screenwriters went on to write The Devil Wears Prada, 27 Dresses and created the series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, so good on her. Glad I didn't actively ruin her career.

Which brings me to basically my biggest takeaway from my time as a reader (No, not buying bean dip for the office.) Here I was, trying to make it as a screenwriter, working as a guy who reads screenplays, and the biggest lesson I learned was that, even if I make to a level where an agent will send my script out to major studios, it will end up being read, and probably passed on, by some dumb, God-fearing intern. Maybe I’m just that much of a cynic, but it was pretty disheartening. Out of hundreds of scripts I read while there, I only recommended/enjoyed two of them. One of them was called Magnificent Bastards, which was a Coen brothers-style crime story that followed different characters, and just when you thought one person was the main character, they would be killed off and then the story would basically follow the person that killed them. I thought it was Shakespeare, but had to tell my boss that it would never make money. So I wrote my coverage and it ended up in the slush pile. I did, however, make a copy for myself, which I still have, and plan on putting my name on it someday and trying to sell it to a streaming service.

Long-ish Side Story about Magnificent Bastards and Why I still have a Copy 26 Years Later. Feel Free to Skip to the Next Section if you Want.

Yes, I dug this out just to take a picture of it, and weirdly, enough, I also made a PDF of my coverage, which, as always, was attached to the back of the script by brads (those little clips that hold the script together. If you know, you know. Note: I haven’t printed a screenplay in about 20 years, but I still have hundreds of brads that I bought back then.)

I don’t know if Hollywood still works this way, but back then, a screenplay had to be submitted just so, meaning a title page with the script title, writer’s name, their agency, and contact information. If you really want to be cool, you could put all that on a card stock cover. The fact that Jeff McCarthy got this script to a studio with a cover like that must mean he was pretty ballsy or knew somebody. I did notice a detail that I forgot, however, and that this was listed as a “sample” of his work, so maybe the studio was not too concerned with the proper formatting. Still, the fact that he had even made a cover like that is pretty crazy.

Maybe it was the cover that made this script stand out at the time. Whatever the reason, this one hit different, and so I did something that I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to do and I made a copy for myself and took it home - literally all the way back to Massachusetts, in fact - and have since moved with it about 8 times. Why did I do this? Reading my synopsis in 2024, it seems like it could be a typical season of Fargo, or maybe a really great season of any of the myriad crime shows streaming right now. However, I read this in March of 1998, so there were no shows like this. Even The Sopranos didn;t start until 1999. There were obviously movies like this, as Fargo the movie had come out in 1996, and a lot of screenwriters, myself included, were trying to write something like that. Was that the inspiration for Magnificent Bastards? It sure seems like it, but I will probably never know. There were a bunch of listings for Jeff McCarthy on IMDB, but none of them say “Writer.” It doesn’t mean one of them isn’t the writer of this script. All it really means is that I didn’t have the energy to look into it any further. From what I can tell, this particular script never got made, and that’s a shame, because they would have gotten my money, and it would have been the only script that I read that Spring that did. Jeff, if you’re reading this, bravo, my friend.    

The other time I actually recommended a script was basically because I kind of felt I should. I had been talking to some of my fellow students and after telling them my tale, I found out that most of them were not quite as discerning, and they recommended scripts all the time. The thing about L.A. in 1998 was, if I, as the intern, recommend a script, then the real employees have to take it home and read it, and then if they like it, they have to send it up the flagpole and see if their boss likes it and wants to read it. And then that person decides if it should be made into a movie. Again, a simplified version, but that was the gist. Still, after months of passing, I decided that when I was given one that wasn’t too bad, I’d recommend it, just so they know that I’m not a total spaz.

This ended up being a bit of a mistake, as I was given a script that didn’t suck, and kind of reminded me of this movie, which did kind of suck but was directed by Richard Donner, so someone liked it. I think when they saw “Recommend” on my coverage, they were so shocked that I didn't pass that they figured it must be good, because I doubt every intern had the next Hollywood experience that I had. After I read the script and submitted the coverage, I was then called into the office of one of the executives (not Rob Fried. He probably said two words to me the entire time I was there) and grilled about why I thought this would make a good movie. I think I mumbled something about marketability and how it would be an intense, thriller-type thing, but the reality I felt like I was in trouble at school, and the principal was asking me why I passed a note in class. I decided to never recommend a script again after that. Which wasn't a hard decision because I never got one that was any good.

Now, I get it; whether or not to spend millions of dollars on a movie should not be decided because, “Well, I guess I should recommend at least one.” But I kind of got the impression that she just didn’t want to do more work. Not that I blame her, or anyone in that office, for that. These people work endlessly. It is not a 9-to-5 gig, so if I say, “Hey, read this script,” then this woman was going to have to take time out of her already full day to read it. So obviously she wanted to make sure I wasn’t full of shit. But I was also 22 years-old at the time. Why was I deciding the fate of multi-million dollar movies, and potentially the studios that make them? No wonder every movie that comes out is a remake or a sequel or a franchise that everyone already knows. Otherwise, unpaid interns would be killing the business.

Strangely enough, as my time was ending, I was offered a full-time job to be the assistant of that same woman who grilled me. Her assistant was leaving, and he was actually the second one that she had been through in the few months that I was there. He was also just slightly older than me, so if he couldn’t take it, I figured I wouldn’t have been able to, either. Also, I just wanted to go home. So, I turned it down and came back to the East Coast and my video store job. Still working in the pictures, right?

Sometimes, I think about what  would have happened had I taken the job? I can imagine I would have stuck it out for awhile, since I worked at my first full-time job for 20 years. And maybe it would have opened some doors. Maybe I could have met some people and gotten my screenplay into their hands, and all that phone-answering and coffee-making would have been the stepping stone I needed. Or I could have been driven insane and drowned myself in the Pacific. It’s too close to call, really. But I often think about that scene in Field of Dreams, when Ray Kinsella is asking “Moonlight” Graham about the one inning that he played in major league baseball. Graham never got to bat, or play again, and as he recounted the story, he said, “We never seem to realize the most significant moments in our lives when they’re happening. Back then I thought, ‘Well, there’ll be other days.’ That was the only day.”

Was that my only day? Was that job offer my one inning in the major leagues? And I told them that I didn’t want to play?

Nah. Because the real moral of the story of “Moonlight” Graham is that he left baseball, went to medical school and became a doctor, and he helped a lot more people as a doctor than he would have as a baseball player, and he seemed to live a good life. I’m no doctor, but I have led a good life, and I didn’t have to read tons of bad scripts to get it.

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