Screenwriting: Hard
There was a time when I assumed that Hollywood produced dreadful film after dreadful film because they were consciously suppressing the good screenplays. I imagined something like a weekly bonfire where producers would meet up and toss the great scripts into the inferno while gleefully greenlighting American Pie XVII.
In Roger Simon's analysis of the Writer's strike and the future of Hollywood is this excerpt:
I am not saying television and movie writing is easy. It clearly is not. Very few people can do it. The Writers Guild has only 12,000 members not because it is a difficult union to get into – it isn’t – but because few people are good enough to get hired by a signatory company, the minimum requirement for membership. I can attest to this. Years ago, when I wrote for Richard Pryor, I would occasionally dip into one of the literally thousands of unsolicited scripts pouring into his office. Not a single one was worth reading past page five. Years later, I taught graduate screenwriting at the American Film Institute, said to be one of our better film schools and certainly one of the most competitive in admissions, and hardly any of my students were able to succeed as professional writers.
Having taken a stab or two at screenwriting I can say with enthusiasm that Mr. Simon is absolutely correct. It is difficult work that very few can do well. There may be the rare brilliant screenplay that can't get read but that has got to be about as often as Haley's Comet. I have grudginly shifted to the belief that Hollywood makes the best films they can.
Now, think what that implies.