A friend who works in legal clearance for the entertainment industry was looking over part of a script for a TV series and pointed out to me the annoying presence of f-bombs in the script’s description chunks. To clarify: I am not talking about the dialogue, which could certainly be rife with profanity depending on the series or movie in question. I’m talking about directions/descriptions written like this:
They approach the small house. It is very plain but to them it may as well be a fucking palace.
She whirls around to face him. WTF?
Fuck! They’ve gone the wrong way.
We consulted a friend of hers who writes scripts and he said, “Oh, that’s what all the hip young writers do now.”
Since when? Who is teaching this? I’m not offended by the words, but I do think that in these cases it is lazy and gratuitous.
“He’s edgy, he’s ‘in your face.’ You’ve heard the expression, ‘let’s get busy’? Well, this is a dog who gets ‘biz-zay!’ Consistently and thoroughly.”
Yes, I agree it is absolutely lazy, gratuitous, uneducated, and unprofessional. But then, so was punk rock, so who am I to say. Whatever sells the script at the pitch meeting is, demonstrably, the right way to do it.
I’m trying to recall the name of the screenwriter who posed as (I think) an incest survivor and/or ex-stripper who was currently still a teenager–but who was found to be (again, I think) over 30. (I did some searching but apparently have the wrong terms. Wikipedia’s pages on con artists and imposters don’t contain this example.)
Anyway, Youth sells. And anything that helps a showbiz aspirant pose as being legitimately Youthful (including using f-bombs) is going to get results.
Riley Weston, who wrote for the TV show Felicity, claimed to be a teenager/recent high school grad, but turned out to be in her thirties. I don’t recall anything about her claiming to be an incest survivor or stripper, though.
As to the OP, I don’t see any more problem with swearing in a screenplay than in swearing in a novel, or any other creative work. If the writer thinks throwing in a fuck here or there helps him establish the mood of the work better, well… Who gives a fuck?
Using WTF is a pretty good way of decribing a reaction. That might be the intent of other profanity, but I think a writer would get more notice from better writing skills. It’s Hollywood though, these things may get edited out before anyone important actually sees it, if anyone cares at all.
And the ‘you sells’ thing is right on target. There are a lot of old movies and TV shows where old writers thought they were hip with the kids and produced laughable garbage. If I were writing a script I’d be copying the things that 20 somethings are actually saying.
The audience for the description text is the other people working on the production. They’re not judging it on how elegantly its written. They’re judging it on how well it will translate into something visually interesting. Short, punchy descriptions are better for this purpose, and profanity can often get a blunt point across more efficiently.
Breaking Bad was I think very unique in that standard practice was TONS of description. I recently was looking at the script for a season 3 episode and literally the first page is nothing but scene description. I seem to recall some “swears” in there.
I think overall, scripts are taking a more conversational tone throughout instead of the more traditional static description.
If you’re a writer who is actually working on a show you’re writing for people who you know so there’s no reason to be “stuffy” about it.
If you’re trying to GET a job, you’re trying to do everything you can to engage that competition judge, agent, sub-junior executive reader assistant so you can make it to the next level.
That’s it; thanks. I owe Ms. Weston an apology on the ‘incest/stripper’ thing (I wonder if I was remembering some fictional “ripped from the headlines” version of the story on some procedural show or other…)
I seem to recall that in an early script for “The Trouble With Tribbles” there was a description of the Klingon reaction to Tribbles, as being like their reaction would be to a ‘handful of excrement’ - and the network insisted on the description being changed.
Sounds a bit like how Shane Black (Iron Fucking Man 3, Lethal Fucking Weapon, Kiss Kiss Fucking Fucking Bang Bang). Not so much the swearing, but the tangential narrative.
I’d just never seen it before in anything I studied pertaining to screenwriting, nor did I see it in any of the scripts I have at home for reference/models.
I don’t think I implied that, but I just tend to roll my eyes at what I perceive as pointless.
I suppose I need to get with the times, though, and re-do my three screenplays accordingly.
I have no intention of doing what feels incredibly dumb to me.