Lit managment: not a good career for Julie July 24, 2007 ~ 10:05 am
Posted by Julie in : Drama Queen , trackbackI slouched into work today with seven scripts on my back. After work, I will drag my script-laden ass into the city, trade those seven in for another seven, and slump home beneath my burden. I figure I will have to do this again over the weekend, and by that point I will have read roughly 40 scripts since I started this at the beginning of July. There are 50 scripts in the pool of nominees we have to cull from, so I figure that if I read 40 of them, and someone else read 40 of them, and the third person on the nominating committee read all 50 of them because he’s the literary manager at the theater and that’s his job, we should be in good shape. Our goal is to provide the committee that actually selects the winner with nine scripts to decide from. Surely from the 40 scripts I’ve read, I should be able to find 3-5 scripts that I like, right?
I am reminded of why I was never interested in the literary management side of dramaturgy, though. New scripts are fine. (Well, some of them. Some of them are really godawful.) But if you’re the lit manager, you’ve got to read all the scripts that come in, and that is a lot more than 50. That’s hundreds of scripts, and a fair amount of them are going to blow. The 50 that I’m reading from are supposed to be the cream of what’s come in this past year. Some of them are excellent. Some of them…I wonder how they got into this pile. The past three weeks of my life have been mostly devoted to script reading. Sure, I got one weekend of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and I had been re-reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix while reading the scripts, but the script reading has put as serious halt on my leisure time. It’s like having homework all over again: if I’m not reading scripts, I feel like I should be reading scripts, and the guilt, it hangs over me while I watch America’s Next Top Model reruns.
On August 2, we have our nomination meeting and after I get out of that I will be like a kid in a candy store. I’ll get my knitting time back! I’ll be able to sit down and read all the Harry Potter books back-to-back, notebook in hand, so that I will be able to remember exactly when in Harry’s Hogwarts career what happened. I will be able to sit down and watch everything that’s been backing up on my TiVo, including many episodes of ANTM, Rescue Me, Doctor Who, and yes, even a few episodes of Hey, Paula (I likes me a tranwreck in the making, okay?). I may even finally set up Savvy Brooklyn so that Jordana and I can sell all the damned jewelry we’ve made. And that would be awesome, because hey! More money for beads!!
So basically, August 3 is when school’s out for me. I now remember why I was so happy when I finished grad school.
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I watched Goblet of Fire the other day with the kids and got a good look at David Tennet in it. Damn it was weird seeing Dr. Who in a Harry Potter movie. But apart from the being insane thing, he acted a lot like Dr. Who in the movie. It was cool!
So, if you’re only reading 40 scripts, what if the best script EVER is one of the 10 you didn’t read? I’d call you a slacker but 1)I’m afraid you’ll reach through my monitor and kick my ass, 2) you’re still reading 40 scripts, which is WAY more than I can handle.
So when’s the big “graduation” party after you’re done?
Vince~Did you guys see the movie for Order of the Phoenix yet? There’s a preview for “The Dark is Rising,” which features Chris Eccleston. Rick said “It’s Doctor Who” and I said “It’s Chris!” at exactly the same moment. I then reminded him that Barty Crouch, Jr. had been played by David in GoF…Doctor Who is everywhere! And if the best script is in one of the 40 I haven’t read, well, someone else will have read it and he can recommend it. (And yes, I would kick your ass.)