Originally published on Facebook 7 May 2013. Edited for this publication. 

Josh Olson, a screenwriter, wrote an essay called “I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script.” Its thesis was that if you had a nephew or a cousin or next door neighbor of friend of a plumber who wanted Josh to read his screenplay and give him all sorts of advice, Josh will say no, likely more politely than his title.

Many readers, ignoring everything he says therein, stampede to the interpretation that he contends that nobody in the writing business should ever help any up-and-comers, at any point, at any time, even though somebody must have once helped him.

Dig this, shmucks: he’s not saying that. He’s not saying that at all.

I have the same policy. I will not read your unpublished novel. I will not. You cannot get me to.

UNLESS you’re a professional I respect with a specific question.

OR an actual friend for whom I feel the obligation to provide my professional eye.

OR a student in a workshop I’m affiliated with.

OR somebody whose early work has impressed me and who I have volunteered to teach independently.

Note that this constitutes an awful lot of exceptions.

But will not and cannot offer this service for the boyfriends of cousins or the sister of the exterminator or people who come up to me at parties and think it’s something I should do just for the asking.

It’s a favor, and a time-consuming favor, and if I did just that for everybody who asked, I would have no time to live let alone write.

He is not saying that he will not pay forward.

All of us pay forward.

I am currently helping to run a workshop with six other writers, of which only two others are published, and none are published at my level. The two others have managed to get a couple of short stories apiece into professional-level markets; one has published semi-pro novels at minimal rates; it’s something, but they have a distance to go.

Between all of them that is a monthly delivery of about two hundred pages, some of which is a slog to get through, and all of which has to be gone through line by line with a sometimes VERY intrusive red pen.

I am also soon traveling a significant distance to give a lecture to student writers; and if you factor in the time it takes to write the lecture and the time it takes to travel and the time it takes to give it and return, not to mention the haul, that is an awful lot of effort for someone who “won’t pay forward.”

I will happily give you all the career advice you could possibly want, which seems laughable to me, as I am still not setting the world on fire, a quarter of a century in. I’m not George R.R. Martin. If you’re just starting out I have things to say. I can save you some heartbreak and I have no problem taking my time to do so. Neither does Josh. But you cannot ask me to “just” read your unpublished novel and “fix” it for you. That’s too much to ask. I don’t have the time and you’re an asshole for asking.

And then there’s this, something which his celebrated essay doesn’t even mention except in passing:

Some of those strangers approaching us for this time-consuming service?

Are.

Dangerously crazy.

I’m talking Annie Wilkes crazy. I’m talking Sandra-Bernhard in KING OF COMEDY crazy.

Let me tell you one from my personal experience.

I had made a deal with a small production company to write a science fiction movie for them. (The movie never materialized, but don’t read anything into that. Here’s the saddest part of the business: it almost never does. Josh is an incredibly busy screenwriter who is often paid very well for projects that then pass on to other hands; and this is profoundly irritating to him and to others like me who see his talent and would like more of it to get through the filter; but it is not unusual. William Goldman wrote THE PRINCESS BRIDE and BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID and MARATHON MAN and a bunch of other screenplays you have heard about and a bunch, a big bunch, of others that he labored on and agonized over and that never got made; he once contemplated suicide because his dream project, THE RIGHT STUFF, fell into the hands of a director who simply didn’t agree with his take and dumped it, for what eventually got made. And no, that doesn’t mean that his take sucked. It happens to the absolute best.)

So: back to me. I have made this deal and I am in a public place working alongside the producers to present concept art and to drum up interest. There is some. Everything looks good.

Along comes a fellow who is, I have got to tell you, physically repulsive.

I need to parse this carefully.

I mean what I say when I say, “physically repulsive.”

I am no Adonis myself. I’m a fat and rumpled guy. I endeavor to be a clean one. He is physically repulsive. He is covered with a thin layer of grease. You know the shiny way your hands look when you have been eating hot buttered corn on the cob and it’s drenched them all the way to the wrists? BEFORE you get to a napkin or a sink? That’s the way this guy looks, all over. He is that shiny. I mean, he’s lubed. It’s a wonder he doesn’t slide off the planet. His hair is unkempt and loose strands are plastered to his forehead with sweat. I don’t recall that he smelled bad, but I don’t know, maybe I just wasn’t inhaling through my nose that day.

He is physically repulsive in the extreme but I make no assumptions regarding his character.

He tells me that he is a big fan of mine, and provides various titles to prove it. I have since come to the conclusion that he never read word one, but googled me on the way in.

I thank him.

He introduces himself. He says that he is also a professional writer. He tells me that he wrote several episodes of one incarnation of STAR TREK, and a few other TV shows.

This is more than I have ever accomplished. I am a print guy. I congratulate him.

He asks if it’s okay with me if he talks to my producers about a project he has in mind. If he can tell them I said it was okay.

They are standing ten feet away. He does not need my permission to cross the room. They are approachable people. They are there to talk to the public. It seems odd that he would need permission from me. I suppose he is excessively concerned about stepping on my toes. I shrug and tell him go ahead. He can say I said it was okay.

He goes. Last time I ever speak to him.

Now, I do not know this at the time, but on the basis of his two minutes of conversation with me he introduces himself to my producers as a long-term friend of mine, and my permission to cross the room and talk to them as my fervent recommendation of, and deep admiration of, his script. He tells them that I have personally vouched for him and for his work.

They find this odd, too, especially since they’re scrambling to launch the project we’re working on together, but out of respect for me they naively agree to take his screenplay, which he (of course) happens to have on him. They report later that it has the same greasy texture as the rest of him. It is like he’s been keeping it in an oil-changing bay. It, of course, looks like it has already been handled by many different hands. It is far too short for a full-length movie: maybe seventeen pages. They take it thinking it might be a proposal.

Within twenty four hours he calls them demanding to know whether they have read it yet.

This is a no-no. He should give them weeks. Sometimes the gatekeepers get to your work within a day and sometimes they have so much else to read that it takes months. He asks within a day. Asshole amateur arrogance. But he demands to know. They have been busy with life, with families, with paying work, and haven’t looked at it yet.

He calls again a day later. More insistently. With irritation.

They realize they better get this guy’s major malfunction out of the way, and read his script. It only takes a few minutes. One reads it, then the other.

They compare notes, just to confirm that neither one of them is hallucinating.

The script is not just covered with grease.

It is not just sub-par.

It is not just bad.

It is not just one of the worst things they have ever read.

It is psychotic and it is disturbing.

Seventeen pages of illiterate, violent misogyny, written in first person despite being in screenplay form, no story at all, just the man’s greasy wet-dream id-fantasy, transcribed in all its ugliness. Things his protagonist does to a helpless woman. The average torture porn producer would puke.

He calls again while they are still debating how to respond to him. (Especially since, remember, they still believe him to be such a good friend of mine, and they are worried about my feelings as well.)

They tell him that they have read it and that it is not a project they choose to get involved with.

That is ALL they say.

He starts screaming at them that this is breach of a handshake contract, that they have agreed to make a movie out of his screenplay, that he has been telling people he sold a screenplay and that he has been humiliated, that he knows that they will steal his brilliant idea, and that if they EVER make a movie of any kind he will sue them into the ground. He demands an amount of money they do not have. Now. Or, again, he will sue.

They are shaken when they hang up the phone.

Now, remember: he has contrived to hitch his name to my name, using the weight of my reputation to bolster his.

There are producers in Hollywood now who, based on this experience, would not just fire me from the project but let it be widely known that *I* am too crazy and unstable to deal with. What this guy has already done, to these small players, is insane enough to have ruined my career, if I was working with big players.

But these guys are friends of mine. They take a step that it is possible Katzenberg or Spielberg, with all they have to deal with, would not take. They call me to get a reality check.

In hesitant voices, they ask me if this greaseball is really a long-term friend of mine.

I erupt with rage. I tell them, hell no. I met him two minutes before you did. He just asked me if it was okay with me if he told them I said it was okay to approach you.

They look up his professional credits.

There are none.

He has never sold a STAR TREK episode.

As near as we can figure it out, he got a polite rejection slip from Paramount once.

They consult their attorney — more mess they have to deal with — and then they call him back. They tell the greasy fellow that his screenplay is shit and that the only plagiarism suit he can win is one filed after he investigates what they leave in the toilet after a fast-food burrito. Only if their bowel movement is greasy enough can he make a case that they copied his work.

They tell him he will not get a dime, not a dime. They tell him that if he sues they will counter-sue him for harassment and they will win. They tell him that the biggest piece of evidence on their side is the screenplay, read into evidence at any trial, for the horror of any judge and jury. They will make a point of doing this, to humiliate him. They tell him that if he ever bothers them, or me, again, they will ruin him.

And he goes away.

They only heard from him one more time: when one of them was at a science fiction convention and spotted him at the registration desk, telling the folks behind the desk that he was a big-name author and that it was criminal of them to not let him in for free. I was at that same convention and saw him approaching other professionals, names you would know, to look at his screenplay. We made it our business to go to every professional there and warn them off. The guy had one scam, and one scam only, and he was determined to ride it to the grave.

I repeat what I said before telling my story.

Some of those strangers approaching us for this time-consuming service.

Are.

Dangerously crazy.

I’m talking Annie Wilkes crazy. I’m talking Sandra-Bernhard in KING OF COMEDY crazy.

Had this guy had more on the ball, and had my producers been less invested in me as a friend, this guy could have ruined me. He at the very least could have extorted them. He was *dangerous*, just not good at being dangerous.

And you think it’s arrogant for Josh, for David Gerrold, for Harlan Ellison, for anybody, to politely say no to ANY total stranger or distant acquaintance to just wants us to take a week or more out of our lives, on demand, to shepherd their work to professional level?

You STILL think so?

Fine. Here’s what you do.

Sell a million-dollar screenplay first. Or a bestselling novel.

Then prove your moral superiority by taking all comers.

Tags: Assholes, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, david gerrold, Harlan Ellison, Josh Olson, King of Comedy, Life Wisdom, Marathon Man, Star Trek, The Princess Bride, William Goldman, writing | Category Books, Life Wisdom, True Stories, TV, Writing