Entitlement

I love him to death, but he is driving me insane! It's amazing how I have a few friends in my life who have a sense of entitlement towards me and/or my time. I admit to a certain extent friendship is a give and take thing, but can you consider my time too? I have already spent countless hours discussing this project with him. I am just completely brain dead when it comes to that subject.

So a good friend of mine wrote a script years ago. It is a short only about 30 pages or so and it is ok. The first time I read it, I told him my honest opinion - that it read like a PSA. He got really defensive, so I had to spend hours defending my opinion. Granted he solicited my opinion, and I gave it to him - hesitantly because I didn't want to have to justify every single nuance of my opinion.

So he called one of his other friends and she said the same thing and he got us both on the line and we discussed it for hours and hours. He was very defensive and argumentative.

So now he has revised the script and he kept a lot of what we said in mind, and it better, but in my opnion it is just ok. My main issue with the script is that I don't really relate to the characters, nor do I care what happens to them.

But he wants to belabor this script with me night after night. Well, what if I do this, or how about that? Long discussion. That's cool, but I don't know how much longer I can stand it. I don't want to write it....

The thing is my friend is a great director and filmmaker, but a writer...eh...he is just ok. It is kinda like Spike Lee in a way. I think Spike is a great director, but his writing is a little suspect. His films (that he wrote) I felt were preachy, one dimensional and generally just ok (with the exception of Mo Betta Blues and X) He just got better as he honed in on his strengths and left the acting to the actors and the writing ot the writers.

My friend is extremely analytical and often reads way too much into the details, but sometimes misses the big picture. He is very gifted with setting up a scene with words. When reading his work, you can literally see how the scene is supposed to look - which I think is phenomenal. But dialogue and sometimes character development....not so much.

I am no film critic - that's for sure. My idea of Must See TV is America's Next Top Model, so clearly I am not that deep :) Which is why I shouldn't be spending long countless hours analyzing a script - (I really should be writing my own). Don't get me wrong, I love reading scripts, but don't hate if I don't tell you what you don't want to hear.