Peter Bart On Redrafting The System: What Joe Eszterhas & The ’80s “Writers Rebellion” Say About Today’s Screenplay Malaise

deadline.com:

Even as he collected his martini, the burly stranger who introduced himself as “Joe” exuded an aura of belligerence. We were standing on the fringe of a post-screening reception, so, hand extended, I blurted, “Did the movie work for you?” “It was blah,” he replied. “Given what they spent for the script, they should have made a powerful f*ckin’ movie.” At the time I didn‘t realize I was talking with Joe Eszterhas, who had made $4 million from sale of his script — more an auction than a sale and hardly “blah.” Joe and several estimable writing colleagues were participants in what came to be known in the mid-‘80s as the “Writers Rebellion,” a moment when top screenwriters decided to reinvent what they considered a broken system for propagating their creative product.

The rebellion was not as momentous as, say, the French Revolution, but its drama and rhetoric for a time changed how Hollywood interacted with its creative community.

Eszterhas has long since retired to quieter pastures, but given the discontent pervasive today in Hollywood’s writing community, some writers for film and TV might do well to re-examine that period for clues in resolving the present malaise.

Film and TV writers historically are notorious complainers, to be sure, but their agita these days seems especially shrill. “The studios are withdrawing from their role in developing and marketing scripts,” observes Franklin Leonard, who, as CEO of the 20-year-old Black List, is positioned as a keen commentator.