Photos By Alec Boehm

by David Bruskin

Over the past fourteen years, I’ve done it over 5,000 times, eight or more times a week. I’m not one to brag, but they even pay me to do it. Yet no matter how good it is, doing anything that long can get monotonous — not to mention the added pressure of performing two or three times a day.

Yes, writing coverage day in day out can become a challenge even for a veteran story analyst.
Story analysts, also known as “readers,” read screenplays, novels, manuscripts, articles, etc., then “cover” the material by writing a synopsis of one to two pages (more for books) and about a page of comments. An analyst’s job is to find gold nuggets in the endless flow of screenplays that pour into Hollywood studios — which means we’re an infinitely patient breed. Executives can’t read everything (and apparently, a few can’t read anything), so they come to rely on analysts’ coverage.

A typical studio will have a staff of eight to fifteen analysts to handle 4,000 to 7,000 or more submissions a year. Each analyst has four or five hours in which to read, synopsize, form an opinion and evaluate material that someone has spent months if not years considering and creating. Readers analyze and summarize the material’s strengths and weaknesses by applying objective standards of dramaturgy and commercial potential. (Those standards are secret. All I am permitted to say is they were established one rainy night in 1963 by the Secret Order of Story Analysts in a Denny’s on Sunset.)

If the material works — makes us laugh, feel, or think — our comments conclude with the words “Consider” or “Maybe.” One hardly ever dares to “Recommend” something, as that implies the movie will have a guaranteed $100 million opening weekend.

But usually, the verdict is a “thumbs down,” known professionally as a “Pass.” Most likely, the material isn’t awful; rather, it somehow misses the mark. Or maybe the studio already has a project in which a woman in jeopardy switches bodies with a team of sports underdogs working for the CIA — not to mention there’s a very similar project at a studio across town. Maybe the analyst loves a script, but he knows his studio is as likely to make it as Steven Spielberg is to make 1941: 3-D.

Here are a few examples of how it works. If the analyst says “Consider” to Star Wars, the executive gets the credit. If the analyst says “Consider” to the four-hour French monologue La Peinture Sèche (The Paint Dries), the story editor calls and reminds the analyst to take his medication. If La Peinture S èche turns out to be a hit, the executive gets the credit.

Since story analysts have to meet eight, ten, or more deadlines per week — almost like being in college and having one or two papers due each day — it’s not unusual for a repetitious, redundant, monotonous sameness to creep into their professional vocabulary. The available supply of adjectives and turns of phrase gets tapped out. Falling somewhere between brain surgery and making sausages, grinding out coverage on a daily basis is ultimately more about picking a horse race than literary analysis. Yet, like the writing being evaluated, the coverage must communicate. So how, then, to repeatedly describe flaws that one repeatedly finds in screenplays without sounding — repetitious?

What follows is an incomplete, subjective, initial stab at compiling a Reader’s Thesaurus. These entries have been culled from actual pieces of coverage written over the years by several different analysts who graciously and anonymously contributed.

When it’s good it’s …

Effective, interesting, diverting, quirky (can also be bad), engaging, appealing, original, fresh, imaginative, inventive, thoughtful, emotional, titillating, captivating, riveting, compelling, inspired, resonant, irresistible, gripping, pulsating, sparkling, crackling, smoothly oiled, keeps the pages turning.

When it’s bad it’s …

Pedestrian, uninspired, predictable, flat, cardboard, two-dimensional, one-dimensional (a.k.a. really flat), one-note, routine, obvious, generic, derivative, superficial, vague, quirky (can also be good), meandering, static, stale, cookie-cutter, half-baked, undercooked, clichéd, trite, thin, anemic, tepid, lite (e.g. someone failing to emulate Tarantino would be Tarantino-lite), disposable, feeble, unconvincing, inert, lackluster, contrived, mawkish, pandering, exploitative, unappealing, unsatisfying, underwhelming, irksome, by the numbers, kitchen-sink variety, fails to suspend disbelief, in need of “deep tissue” dramatic changes, faux-slick, aggressively unfunny, incredible, abysmal, doomed, a rip-off, repellant, fatal, DOA.

When it’s bad but diplomacy is called for, it’s …

Unfortunate, earnest, well intentioned, misguided, flawed, limited, problematic, weak, deficient, dubious, questionable.

Is it commercial or … ?

Maximum overt commercial pandering; not even worth a pause while channel surfing on cable some night.

There are probably plenty of guys who would identify with this fantasy of finding an unconditionally loving, beautiful woman, but not even the most desperate of them would be likely to sit through this severely handicapped attempt.

Here’s my $10. From this first act alone, it seems this will be everything a John Waters/Divine fan could hope for.

Who’s the audience?

This kitchen-sink variety of pandering, exploitative, derivative set pieces exists solely to jerk off a young male audience.

PG-ification.

Who would go to see this movie is as much a mystery as why anyone would bother to write it.

Quality of writing:

The extremes to which the writers go with these gags — the penis jokes, the ass jokes, the bathroom jokes — reveal a penchant for puerile, tasteless, juvenile humor. Believe it or not, that’s an objective classification, not a criticism.

Storytelling:

Packed to excess with every cliché imaginable, this … is a dense pastiche that self-consciously overdoes everything. … It’s tough to get through, even at 76 pages.

Not a lot seems to happen in 143 pages, which is a very bad sign.

A good set-up:

Shows him as a hero in his field, not in a contrived action scene where he happens to be the Wesley Snipes of obstetricians.

Why make this movie?

It’s hard to imagine that this wouldn’t become Shampoo for the 1990s, which raises the question: should there even be a Shampoo for the 1990s?

One of the worst scripts ever read:

Pass pass passpass pass. Pass pass PASS passpasspass, pass passpass passpass. Passpasspass passpass pass pass, passpass pass pass pass; passpass Pass Passpass — pass pass pass!

One of the best scripts ever read:
(Proof that story analysts can like — really, really like — what they read.)

We spend so much time developing projects that fail to have these most crucial elements draft after draft, yet here is a spec that knows what a screenplay should be and is way ahead of the game. … Nothing has jumped off the page to this reader in this fashion in a very long time, and while that might be a function of personal taste, or a dearth of good scripts to calibrate the creative meter, or both, this nevertheless is truly worthy of our serious consideration.

… even if this thesaurus is not.