Script Mutiny Threatens SPAAmart.

7 October, 2011

Trouble is brewing over this year’s SPAA conference, with the scripts selected for the feature film shop window staging a sit-in at SPAA head office.Â

Wake Up Dead, a particularly fat script, blocked the door of the SPAA lunchroom just before lunch yesterday while other scripts phoned media outlets with a list of demands.

Sci-fi thriller The Room was clearly angry, “I mean, we all wrote ourselves, didn’t we? You saw the SPAA press release last week. We’ve got producers. We’ve got directors. But we don’t get a look in. Look at us; we’re all great ideas. Fresh, original, compelling – of course we wrote ourselves! And now it’s time for a bit of recognition.”Â

SPAA spokesman Bunty Swine admitted the scripts had indeed put a lot of work into themselves, “But screen storytelling is a collaborative business, the scripts couldn’t have invented themselves without a lot of help from the producers and the directors. That rom-com over there on the phone to Michael Idato – it got completely blocked writing its own first act. The producer had to stand at the computer and yell ‘first they hate each other!’ over and over until it got through the worst of it.”

Bunty Swine heaved a troubled sigh, “We thought we’d solved this malarkey by getting rid of the writers. Writers are just annoying. They worry about their career. You get one of their scripts up and they want to do another! As if. And sometimes they expect to be paid. With real money. I mean, hello? Having the scripts write themselves was supposed to be SO much easier.”Â

In the lunch room Red Car and a pdf version of Boys Club had abandoned the phones and broken into the SPAA wine fridge. Several third acts were in danger of becoming incoherent.

Bunty Swine was philosophical, “That’s so typical of Australian features. We’ll have to get someone in to fix it.” Did he mean to employ a writer? Swine grins. “As long as they don’t expect a credit. Or a mention in a press release.”Â

The Growler or GRRWR (Guardian of Rightful Recognition for the Writer) lives in the basement of the Australian Writers Guild. Injustice and failure to give a writer their due give him dyspepsia and cause him to rant and demand credits or rectification.