Script Readers, Getting Past Hollywood’s Gatekeepers

by George Wing | Published March 1, 1997

It's 7:30 on a Monday night, and the Alibi Room, a Seattle film hangout, is packed. Suddenly about half the crowd gets up and walks downstairs with an air of cheerful anticipation--except for one guy who looks like he's heading to his execution. A woman at the bar grabs his arm as he passes.

"Excuse me, where is everyone going?" she asks.

"To a staged screenplay reading."

"Oh," she says, wrinkling her brow and nodding. She's never heard of a such a thing.

The guy with the air of doom about him joins the 50 others assembled in the downstairs screening room. Twelve actors file in, scripts in hand, and sit on the stage in a row facing the audience. Kathleen McInnis, the event's organizer and narrator, warms up the crowd, introduces the writer, then launches into page one of his romantic comedy. Half a minute later the first big laugh comes, and the writer remembers to breathe.

Two hours later, he's ecstatic: people laughed throughout the reading, and the public critique session at the end was both helpful and laudatory. Better yet, a director in the audience approached him, expressed interest, and later brought the script to a production company which offered him an option contract and a rewrite deal.

People have been making feature films for 90 years, but until very recently the staged reading ofscreenplays did not exist as a form of public entertainment. The first regular reading series outside of Los Angeles began at New York's Nuyorican Poets' Cafe in January, 1994. Since then, similar series have been launched in Seattle, Chicago, Austin, Portland, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Philadelphia, London and Paris, and others are in the works. Some, like London's "Script Factory," were directly inspired by the instant success of the Nuyorican's "Fifth Night" series. Others seem to have arisen spontaneously, as though sprung from the film community's collective unconscious. Their success and popularity have also been immediate.

"There are 25,000 actors in New York" says Roland Legiardi-Laura, director of the Fifth Night series, "and on any given night, 24,500 of them have nothing to do." This may help to explain why dozens of well-known actors, including Claire Danes, Eric Stoltz, Frances McDormand, Lili Taylor, Stanley Tucci, Matthew Modine, Wallace Shawn, Martha Plimpton and Mary Stuart Masterson have participated. The Seattle series has recently hosted the likes of Tom Skerrit, D.B. Sweeney and Ned Beatty.

As McInnis points out, staged readings are good for everyone involved. The most obvious beneficiary, of course, is the writer. Many writers look at their scripts with fresh eyes just before a reading ("This thing is actually going to be read aloud?") and do some of their best work in one final, frenzied rewrite. He or she trades the vacuum of solitary composition for flesh-and-blood actors, a live audience and the excitement of performance--all this without first having to convince someone to spend millions on a production. The script's strength and weaknesses are made clear by the crowd's moment-by-moment reactions and the discussions that follow.

Invariably, writers are astonished by what happens to their work when it's presented at a reading. "My dialogue sounded so much different in my head compared to what the actors did with it," says Steven Crozier, whose Out of Town Zombies in the Big Apple was presented at the Alibi Room. "They showed me which lines didn't work, which lines were foolproof, and they discovered comic moments that I didn't know were there. Also, I had not anticipated the passion that actors bring to even small parts. That will affect my writing in the future."

Readings provide invaluable exposure, and it's not essential that the right agent, director or producer be in the audience. The series' organizers receive constant queries from the industry, and they forward good material to selected contacts. Thus the readings provide the unrepresented writer with a direct channel to Hollywood and the opportunity for their script to be magically transformed from the dreaded unsolicited submission into the coveted exclusive sneak peek.

In some ways a successful reading can be more satisfying to a writer than a successful movie premiere. The story is presented just as the writer envisioned it, without the inevitable changes and compromises of a finished film. There is no director present to be handed most of the credit, no much-hyped actors to get all the attention. The writer is the star of the evening.

Producers and directors go to readings to discover new screenplays as well as new actors. They can also use the forum to test material without spending a penny. A reading may reveal that a script needs substantial changes or should even be abandoned altogether. They may also find that they like their script just the way it is. Seattle director John Lampassi commented after a reading of his next project, On a Naked Horse, "We're not going to change a thing. There was controversy, but that's exactly the response we hope the film will provoke."

Actors, too, get exposure, experience and a chance to practice their craft in a fun, informal way. They can try on a variety of roles and expand their range. Many have landed the very part they initially read. "It's also a great chance to practice reading cold," says Seattle actor Eric Liddell, "and to watch other actors read cold and see how they handle it." Perhaps actors are more inclined than anyone to recognize the benefits of the staged reading. Once a work is performed before an audience, it has come to life and is less likely to lie dormant or go unnoticed. It's worth noting that a number of recent films that were developed in this way were written by actors. Steve Buscemi's Trees Lounge, Adrienne Shelly's Sudden Manhattan and Eric Schaeffer's If Lucy Fell are prime examples.

Audiences at a reading are treated to a unique form of live entertainment, and find it gratifying to be asked to critique a script afterward. "I get tired of watching these scripts where guys think about the meaning of life and women don't," was one woman's comment at a recent Seattle reading. A female cast member instantly came to the writer's defense: "This is a story about guys. It's not Little Women." A lively debate ensued, and the director and producer, who were in attendance, paid close attention. Once a picture is shot, changes can be prohibitively expensive. They were getting invaluable feedback for free.

"Every filmmaker should test their script in a public reading," says New York director Kermit Cole, who often holds impromptu readings in his apartment. "They have absolutely nothing to lose, and so much to gain. After all, they are about to dig an enormous hole in the earth and throw all the money they have into it. They need honest feedback. An audience is the one thing that will never lie to you."

Not all reading series solicit the public's comments. "We don't do that," says Fifth Night's Legiardi-Laura, "because the writers don't want to." He explained that the Fifth Night audience regularly includes literary agents and scouts from companies such as Miramax, New Line and Tribeca, all there looking for material, and that writers don't want their work trashed in front of these potential buyers. "One negative comment can do a lot of damage," says Crozier. Writer Ken Liotti, whose script The Waiting Game was recently presented at Fifth Night to a very enthusiastic crowd, agrees. "I wouldn't want a public critique session. I learned enough from watching the audience and speaking with individuals after the show."

Agents obviously have much to gain from staged readings. They can assess material that has been approved by the organizers' selection process but not yet seen by their competitors. Some agents have also begun to use the readings to attract industry attention to scripts they already represent.

Even casting directors stand to gain. "They can discover talent, try out actors they're unsure of, and perhaps do a favor for an actor they like who hasn't worked in a while," says Legiardi-Laura, who relies on a different casting professional to cast each weekly reading.

A less obvious group of beneficiaries are the organizers of the series themselves. "It's a tremendous amount of work," says McInnis, "but it's a great tool for community-building and an excellent showcase for the Seattle International Film Festival, which sponsors the Alibi Room series. I have widened my sphere of influence and been able to meet people, put people together and feel that my work is vital to local filmmakers." Legiardi-Laura, a writer himself, echoes her sentiment. "I have made thousands of industry contacts, and I have made them on my own terms."

The readings reflect the different personalities of their organizers. The Austin series, so far, is open only to Texas screenwriters. The Seattle series focuses on script improvement. The Fifth Night readings are called "unstaged," a term Legiardi-Laura prefers because the actors are seated and usually not directed. Of all the series, Fifth Night seems to have the highest profile. Every Tuesday evening performance is sold out in advance and reservations go fast. Ninety-two scripts have been read so far. Eight are now finished films, and five others are in production. Dozens of writers have received assignments, options, mentions in the press and agency representation.

If you are a writer, however, be warned. Your brilliant screenplay may bomb in a live reading. Everyone seems to agree that certain scripts are more suited for the format than others. "Genres that work are comedy, romance, thriller, drama and mystery," says McInnis. "Scripts that rely heavily on description don't work as well, such as science fiction, which is so visual, and political thrillers, which tend to have too much explanation." Legiardi-Laura agrees. "Action films don't work. What can the narrator say? 'A large explosion. Another intensely large explosion. . .' The audience wants to watch actors interact, not hear a lot of description. Sight gag comedy doesn't work. And we work with the writer on every script to cut away all nonessential description."

Many writers resist this editing chore, then discover its advantages. "I found I didn't need it," says Seattle writer Kristin Kirby of the description she cut from her Western Last Chance, Wyoming. "I left most of it out after the reading." This may be a smart approach, given the well-known tendency of studio and agency readers to ignore 'across-the-page' and rely on the first few pages of dialogue to judge a script.

"Writers are finally getting the credit they deserve," says Barbara Morgan, a director of the Austin Heart of Film Screenwriters Conference, which has launched its own reading series. "Have you ever noticed that the Academy Awards go to best director, best actor and best screenplay, not best screenwriter, as if no one wrote the thing? All that is changing. In a few years, I think, many screenwriters will be household names."

Kathleen McInnis offers a historical perspective. "In the early days of filmmaking writers had little status. But they had their own community; they had in place a system of collaboration to get each other through the rough spots. As the industry grew, their stature rose, but they felt increasingly separate; not in the same sphere as producers and directors. In the '50s and '60s the auteur theory viewed the director as the author of a film, and the writer as almost incidental. The turning point, when writers finally began to come into their own, may have been the Writers Guild strike of 1986. Suddenly people were forced to recognize [the screenwriter's] crucial contribution to the medium. It is only in recent years that the art of screenwriting has attracted the respect it deserves. The Sundance Screenwriters' Lab was a visionary program in that sense.

"These staged readings work for audiences because film is the most accessible and egalitarian art form. Everyone feels they could make a film, and they love the opportunity to see the early stages of the process and to participate. Also, these readings may exist because they help feed the tremendous demand for new material. The industry must look beyond itself for new blood."

"Readings elevate the script to an art form," says Legiardi-Laura. "The traditional film development route is slow and cumbersome. People were hungry for an alternative. Plus, this format is simply great entertainment. It's a wonderful storytelling experience. You sit back, close your eyes and make a movie in your head." MM

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Comment by CHI Fei on 2/23/08 at 11:09 am

And where they find a mountain of the slain,
Send one to climb,and looking down beneath,
There they will find him at his manly length
Which his good sword had digg’d…

PS: These words were written by Dryden in his epitaph to knightly gallantry.

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