Could Cyberspace Kill the Hollywood Reader

A New System to Put Spec Writers in Control of the Spec Market

To the countless unproduced spec script writers, they are a scourge. To studio execs, independent producers, agents and managers, they are an indispensable necessity.

The Hollywood script reader. The first -- and sometimes most formidable -- obstacle between your masterpiece and that highly-desired greenlight.

Ranging from unpaid interns to tremendously-skilled professionals, the script coverage they collectively dispense spans from the wonderfully insightful to the competent (yet maddeningly subjective) to the "what fucking planet did this asshole come from?"

Now, granted, a lot of times Hollywood readers have the same hostile reaction to writers. I've heard claimed that as much as 95% of all spec scripts are a shameful waste of brain cells and forests. Which is why the script readers are needed. Producers and agents simply can't wade through the mountains of crap to get to the few gems floating about the spec market. They aren't grizzled old 49ers, after all. They're well-manicured, for one thing. And they're forever swamped with more important tasks than reading bad screenplays, for another.

So they need script coverage.

But the problem for writers is what I mentioned before. The best case scenario for a great script submitted for consideration is that the reader, whether a professional or an intern, insightfully grasps what the writer intended and is also stirred by it. This is a rare alignment of fortunes, indeed, and, in fact, many a great screenplay have gone unrecommended based on that maddening subjectivity thing. Not to mention those space alien readers whose often infuriating notes are just too painful to harp on. May they suffer paper cuts to their eyeballs.

Also, because so many jobs rely upon the success of a script that is (often reluctantly) turned into a movie, the readers are set up as gatekeepers with the instructions to never let anything through that could damage anybody's career. The result is a lot of second-guessing and a hesitancy to recommend any script at all. Ever.

"There are barbarians at the gate. Keep them and their shitty dialogue out of our fortress."