Archive for November, 2011

American Screenwriters Reality TV Series

American Screenwriters Reality TV Series

Reality TV producers are in love with branding shows with the tag American. There is American Pickers, American Hoggers, American Restoration and other shows. Viewers follow a day in the life of different people doing what they do to pay their bills.

Reminds of a book I enjoyed reading from author Studs Terkel called Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. People that are not screenwriters might find a reality TV show about the gig boring. But if you think about how boring most reality TV shows would be without MTV style editing and drama driving music laid underneath it’s not too far-fetched a concept.

A friend and I decided to write a treatment for a spec reality TV series along with three completed episodes titled American Screenwriters. We filed it with the U.S. Copyright Office and are using LegalZoom.Com to trademark the name. We officially have nothing to do with the book titled American Screenwriters or The American Screenwriters Association (ASA).

Sure, it’s really just for shits and giggles, but you never know. If I was a head of a network I would have passed on American Pickers. What was the pitch? Two boring guys drive around digging through barns for stuff to sell to people online telling corny jokes they only laugh at. You watch one episode and you’ve seen them all.

That’s why I guess I’m not the head of network programming for History Channel. It’s still airing and people are still watching it. For me as a TV viewer at least with a reality TV show like Jersey Shore you’re going to see colorful characters, drunken wildness, random fights and casual hook-ups. It’s completely scripted and mostly staged, but entertaining random stuff does happen.

There’s an idea floating around out there that screenwriters are boring people and stay locked behind closed doors alone working on scripts. American Screenwriters will put an end to that way of thinking. Screenwriters are some of the most interesting, wildest and hardest partying people I know. Most screenwriters I personally know have some inner-demons they battle or they could never write some of the screenplays they do.

Every screenwriter has their own ways of working and dealing with having a screenplay rejected. Rejection is a nasty hang and when a person chooses the screenwriting life they’re going to get a steady stream of it in their writing career.

When a screenwriter works alone for long hours with only their creative minds to keep them company things happen when they go out to unwind and blow off some steam after another rejected script, a movie producer wants another rewrite or they’ve just seen the screenplay they wrote butchered during filming. It’s a tough gig, so going out to raise some hell is only natural for more screenwriters.

American Screenwriters will show the day-to-day grind of what it takes to go from movie idea to finished screenplay. But it will show viewers how different screenwriters work and play. I have not met a screenwriter that didn’t have at least one or two vices they feed on a regular basis.

Slice of Americana Films is either thinking of doing American Screenwriters as a reality TV series or documentary if we can’t attract a History Channel production money. This is indie filmmaker Sid Kali typing SMASH CUT