Toph Eggers responds

On March 9, Salon ran a piece [“Hollywood’s Worst Screenwriter Strikes Again”] by Toph Eggers which you can read here. As Eggers, himself having written three movie projects, took some shots at a fellow screenwriter, many in the online screenwriting community voiced their displeasure with the article.

I responded with this GITS post.

Subsequently Toph contacted Franklin and myself with this letter which I am publishing here in full.

A little more than a week ago I wrote a piece for Salon.com criticizing a certain screenwriter for his recent body of work. Actually, let’s be clearer about exactly what it is that I wrote: it was a cruel, blindsided hatchet job of an unsuspecting and undeserving fellow screenwriter. Many, many mistakes were made in the process: I rushed the article out there to coincide with his most recent credited film, I didn’t show the article to anyone ahead of time but the editor, I repeated used the screenwriter’s name in a pretty slanderous way and basically just wrote a juvenile, dickheaded snarky piece.

But good came of it. Amazingly tons of people came to this man’s defense. For once, the usually spiteful god that is the Internet, home to some of the world’s most condensed forms of societal cruelty actually sacked up, defended someone being unfairly attacked and ripped me apart. Now the question of whether you believe the solution to bullying to be bullying the bully aside, as much as I hated being obliterated online, I’m glad it happened. Not only did I learn a few life lessons but I also had my faith in artistic-minded people as a group restored watching them back up a fellow artist with logical reasoning and measured arguments.

But perhaps the strangest thing I came away from this with was my reluctant admittance of what I had actually done. I had written a snarky piece. This might not seem strange to anyone on the surface, except when I tell you that there’s just about nothing I hate more in the world that snarky online pieces. I absolutely hate snark. I think it’s the vilest of all byproducts of the Internet and it’s truly starting to warp people’s minds for the worse. This is the reason I avoid a lot of Gawker-like websites and especially most sites that comment on the entertainment industry. I think snark is wimpy, small-minded and doesn’t help anything (like the “journalistic” equivalent of kicking down creative people’s sand castles). So what a shock came my way when — after a few days of fierce, fierce denial — I finally admitted to myself that I had in fact written a snarky piece of my own and an incredibly obnoxious and mean-spirited one at that. It was like watching yourself become your worst enemy right before your eyes and having absolutely no power to stop it. Or, like waking up with a hangover and your car t-boned around a neighbor’s tree. In both cases you’ve got to somehow come to grips with the fact that that was actually you behind that act of idiocy, make amends and hope it’s one-time occurrence.

Granted Salon also added an immensely enflaming title calling him the world’s “worst screenwriter”, something I’d never say or even believe about anyone. But the fact remains I wrote the rest of the article and it was wrong. If there’s only one way thing I’m proud about in this debacle, it’s that I signed my name to it so I called be correctly called out by name on my B.S.

Screenwriting is perhaps the most moronic way you could ever hope to make a living. Every LA coffee shop is filled with no less than 75 people with Final Draft open cranking script after script out, each production company and studio is flooded with scripts by those established and novice screenwriters alike and no one has time to read any of it. And, even if your script is miraculously bought, you’ll be lucky if only thirty people want fundamental changes made to it before it gets shot. Getting a script made and into theaters is the artistic equivalent of sprinting through a five-mile live minefield wearing only Tevas and a loincloth and somehow surviving. Can you imagine how happy you’d be to have lived through such a thing? Well then imagine if at the end of that minefield was some prick — from the very same platoon as you — waiting just to punch you in the balls. Yeah, I’d hate me too.

I owe this man a huge apology. I’d like to thank some sane people, like John August who writes the wonderful and immensely helpful screenwriting blog at johnaugust.com for pointing this out as well as a truly well articulated article about critiquing the material and not the man by Scott Myers. What I meant only as a minor and playful dig on a successful screenwriter COMPLETELY got away from me and morphed into a nasty, acerbic rip job of massive quantities. I’m way too old to have made such a mistake and just hope that being from comedy he can see it as a terrible joke that fell dead and contained no humor to begin with (the online article equivalent of the bitter drunken bitter wedding speech) and forgive me.

Bitching just for bitching sake is, well, bitchy. Bitching should be really a last reserve option and if you chose it you damn well better include a solution with it. Otherwise you might as well just be a whiney seven-year-old stomping his feet in the toy aisle, cause you’re a brat.

Obviously I have some karma points to win back. A friend suggesting writing a positive piece celebrating some films I like to which another friend responded, “who would want to run that?” Which brings up another interesting point about the Internet. Is there actually any real interest in an online piece that is simply a celebration? It’s obviously easier to make a strong opinion and there’s no argument stronger to make than an attack (hence the reward system for snark and the proliferation of mean-spiritedness that hangs over most of the Internet). But this is a topic for another day and a more seasoned and savvy article writer than I currently can claim to be. So let me just say, in as heartfelt terms as the Internet will allow that I am sorry to Steve Koren, his family, work associates and friends.

And, besides that apology I want to do him one better. I am young, healthy (relatively) and have some (note: a LOT) of free time. Therefore, I want to humbly volunteer myself for any project this man needs help with. Be it a webisode, a short film, sketch or indie feature or whatever. I will do anything from PA to stunt double to craft service for this passion project, free of charge, this offer starting now and extending til the very distant future. In this way maybe I can undo my act of tearing down one piece of work by helping creating a new one. So I hope he’ll take this offer and use it. Or… just ask for a free punch to my stomach. Both are valid. His choice. Call me up.

Screenwriters are a clan even if an especially marginalized one. Putting out any sort of work takes a lot of fortitude and bravery for any artist. But that is exponentially so for screenwriters who unlike painters, novelists or playwrights will see their work almost always ruthlessly changed, picked apart and fundamentally changed before the public ever sees it. For me to know this fact fully well and still take down someone else trapped in this often frustrating occupation is both sophomoric and cruel. Especially over a genre as subjective as comedy. We need support groups and hugs for what we have to endure. Not further abuse. I’ll now drink (hopefully) my last glass of Haterade and see who on Kickstarter needs helped being propped up rather than taken down. Thanks for listening.

I’m glad Toph wrote this letter of apology. I have some additional thoughts, but I will withhold comment until people have had an opportunity to weigh in with their reactions.

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