Know your ending!
So yesterday the Daily Variety announces this:
Hong Kong action hero Chow Yun-fat is set to follow up his role as the ancient philosopher Confucius with a part in Chinese helmer Jiang Wen’s $18 million period Western laffer “Let the Bullets Fly.”
Hong Kong’s Emperor Motion Pictures said Chow will co-star alongside Jiang, best known for arthouse pics such as “Devils on the Doorstep,” and the popular Mainland Chinese comedian Ge You.
So this is worthy of a GITS post because of the first-time joint appearance in a movie by two legendary Asian acting dudes? No, it gets a GITS post because of this:
The script had undergone nine rewrites with 10 different endings before it was finalized on Monday.
Look, you may be one of those free spirits who chooses not to work out your story in advance before you type FADE IN and that’s fine. In general, I think it’s much smarter to bust your story during the prep-writing phase, but if you really need to find your story in the first draft, I acknowledge your right to do so. After all, there is no right way to write.
However before you start writing, do yourself one big damn favor: Know the ending of your story. Because if you don’t know the ending of your story when you start writing, you’re likely to find yourself in a situation just like the poor saps chained to their laptops on the above-noted project — pounding out rewrite after rewrite after rewrite after rewrite after rewrite after rewrite after rewrite after rewrite after rewrite (9 rewrites) in order to try to find the story’s ending.
Or as one old scribe told me years ago, “If you don’t know the ending of your story, you don’t got squat!”
This has been a public service announcement on behalf of the “SSSS: Society to Save Suicidal Screenwriters.” No screenwriters were harmed in the filming of this advertisement.