“I've had my own frustrations and misery, but at least when I write, I'm writing what I want to write, you know. I'm doing it how I want to do it and I'm not following anybody's blueprint for it.”
- Lewis Colick
“But the one thing to remember, there is that when you're writing a show that exists a lot of the work has been done… I always call it paint by numbers writing for TV, which I liked you know because it's like you have this box you're sort of limited to what you can do, but then it's fun like, how do you color inside those lines is sort of a fun way to look at it.”
- Michael Daley
I can't remember the first time I heard it said, but it's a commonly acknowledged fact nonetheless:
Film is a director’s medium. Television is a writer’s medium.
While I may have already known this, I don't think I truly comprehended it until my informational interviews with Lewis Colick and Michael Daley. Colick has been writing films for decades now, choosing to work in Hollywood after graduating with a playwriting degree. He expressed how he briefly worked in television, and it wasn't for him. He has little interest in collaborating, and wants the freedom to write from his own vision rather than a showrunner's blueprint.
In contrast, Daley specifically emphasized how he didn't think he could ever write alone in his career. He hears about people going on solitary retreats to write their next great screenplay and, in his words, "I would kill myself. I would never last, I wouldn't last like a week without people."
Nevertheless, while television writers are limited to the rules of the world and consistency of the story, within those limitations, they have much greater authority over their work. In Hollywood, a director rules the film and a showrunner rules the TV show. While Colick is content with his choice to write for film, he's equally frustrated by how little control he has over the final product. He even said that out of all of the scripts he has had produced, only one (October Sky) came out the way he originally envisioned.
“It's brutal being a screenwriter; it's really, really disheartening...when you care about it and people just come along and wreck it and the movie comes out and your name is on it, and the critics are saying, you know, the screenplay is terrible. And it's not how you wrote it. It's not what you know and you take the heat for it, it's really a bad feeling.”
I held these interviews almost back to back, and I think the best takeaway I have is that choosing between film and television is entirely dependent on your personality. Colick is a solitary writer, and prefers to remain so. He likes the freedom to write what he wants, even if people rewrite it against his wishes. Daley, however, appreciates the opportunity to collaborate with other writers and find interesting ways to color within the lines. For him, a blueprint isn't constricting, but even helpful.
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