The other day, I tried to google lyrics that had hardest words to say or similar but got distracted. (I spotted Chicago among the results and, having a sudden and intense urge to play their best-of CD – thanks, Stevo! – did so, sang along with Peter Cetera to 25 or 6 to 4, came back humming Happy Man, and on returning to my desk, couldn’t remember for the life of me why I’d googled hardest words to say.)
So I’ll just come out with it: there are three words that worry my manager – I don’t know.
Y’know, I don’t know as in —
WRITER bursts into MANAGER’s office:
WRITER
I got a writing gig!
Writer starts victory moonwalking back and forth before Manager’s desk.
MANAGER
Excellent work! What are they paying you?
Writer’s moonwalking stops as he looks at his Manager --
WRITER
(whisper)
... I don’t know.
Or like when your reader, having softened you up with nice noises about your latest draft, says they’ve got a few teeny questions, and you can answer the first few easy-peasy, but then the questions get more and more specific until your very limited dissembling skills quickly run out and you’re forced to confess —
WRITER
... I don’t know.
READER
You don’t know why your villain doesn’t kill the hero even though they have the absolute drop on him.
Writer screws up his face:
WRITER
To allow me a couple of extra pages so that the page count is ninety rather than eighty-eight?
(off Reader)
No. I don’t know.
The writer’s job is to answer as many of their readers’ (and audiences’) (and manager’s) questions up front.
It’s not enough to write something like —
His eyes narrow for a beat.
— on page 13 just for some variety between the explosions and manly roars of exertion.
There has to be a reason for the eyes narrowing. Does the Eye Narrower know something the audience will discover to their horror – yes, their HORROR – on page 78? Is it merely dust in their eyes at that moment? Were they channeling Clint Eastwood for kicks?
If your Eye Narrower knows things, and you reveal them in an organic and well-paced fashion through pages 15-92, then your reader will reach your final FADE OUT and smile to themselves. They know now that the Eye Narrower needed some good strong reading glasses which, if they’d just swallowed their pride and bought them on page 2, the mistaken identity on page 13 would have been completely averted, and the script would have continued its Jane Austen meets “Sex in the City” course rather than the Nouvelle Vague Simpson & Bruckheimer reboot they have in their hands.
It’s not enough to know the script by heart. You have to know the story through and through.
The less questions your reader – and your eventual audience – ask of the script, the better the writer you are. Because YOU. KNOW. EVERYTHING.
You’re right. I do know everything.
Ah – a fellow God.
Well met, stranger.
That song was probably, “Hard To Say I’m Sorry” (1982), one of my favourite ballads from Chicago. It is on the Chicago 16 album. The song featured 3 members from Toto: Steve Lukather, David Paich and Steve Porcaro. Of course, true fans know the complete track has to include the segue way, “Get Away”. Your Greatest Hits CD does not have this full version, although another cheaper Greatest Hits on single CD has “Hard To Say I’m Sorry/Get Away” on it. If you can still get that version for $10, buy it. Finally, an edited version, that did include Get Away featured at the end of the film, “Summer Lovers”. It was actually quite a good match to the film story line, and makes it clearer that “Get Away” should be paired with “Hard To Say I’m Sorry”, otherwise the DJ/radio station are morons…nuff said.
Re. Glee, nice show, shame about the music. The covers are fairly standard (e.g. “Jump”), and some of the mash ups are lame. The one involving a song from “Hair” was very lame. Indeed “Hair” already has a combo song in it, “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In”.
ttfn
you’re right, it was Hard To Say I’m Sorry. but i’m so easily distracted.
as for Glee, i agree that the mash-ups weren’t all that enjoyable – i’ll leave the application of ‘successful’ or not to the musically-minded – but it gave me the same frisson i felt when i first watched Moulin Rouge.