Everyone Knows Nothing: The Fear of Writing a Good Screenplay, with Martha Polo
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Up-and-coming screenwriter and renowned haikuist Martha Polo shares her experience of why she writes bad screenplays.
Alexis: Thanks for agreeing to another email interview. You’ve been quoted as saying that “writing good screenplays is too hard, don’t do it”. What do you mean by this?
Martha: I mean what I say: “writing good screenplays is too hard, don’t do it”.
Alexis: Please could you clarify the underlying meaning?
Martha: Can I be absolutely clear Alexis? You don’t understand the meaning of the sentence: “writing good screenplays is too hard, don’t do it”?
Alexis: I understand what it means on the surface. But clearly it doesn’t mean what it means on the surface. Or else nobody would write good screenplays!
Martha: To be more precise: nobody following my advice would write good screenplays.
Alexis: I apologise Martha if I’m being obtuse, perhaps you could give the reasoning behind the sentence?
Martha: But of course. If you attempt to write a screenplay whose quality could be described as “good”, then the process of writing it will have hardness which can be described as “too much”.
Alexis: By who?
Martha: I believe you mean “By Whom”. Well by any sensible human being.
[Confused, I didn’t reply to this for a few hours — AK]
Martha: I assume by your lack of email reply that I have obfuscated the issue. Allow me to help you. I recently began a re-write of my screenplay TECHNO TECHNO TECHNO: “A 90s pop-rave duo battle against an alien invasion that occurs as a result of earworms in their music, only to discover that their love for each other is the only unbeatable defense.”
The opening scene is the female lead of the pop-rave duo dancing barefoot in a science laboratory. In an attempt to freshen up the first few pages — to catch the attention of the brain-dead gatekeepers of our morally bankrupt industry-I used all of my poetic skills (ingrained during my years as a renowned haiku writer) to send the message: Excuse me Ms. “I’m sorry, but I can’t sell a screenplay like THIS to Netflix” Manager / Producer — I’m not one of the hundreds of thousands of wannabes who aren’t capable of stringing a simile and metaphor with an imagist twist. I am a bonafide WRITER. I can make you smell, taste, touch and see with my words.
But as I got to the end of the first third of the first page re-write, I realised I had 89 and 2/3 of pages left to go if I wanted to make my script truly good: packed with poetic and well-thought-out descriptions. Well that ain’t gonna happen. It would drain me of all life and energy. Kill me dead.
Alexis: Screenwriting is a job, right? And aren’t all jobs worth doing, hard work?
Martha: NO.
Martha has not responded to my emails since this exchange. According to VARIETY ONLINE, her screenplay TECHNO TECHNO TECHNO has been picked up in a bidding war by A24, with SANDRA BULLOCK and ADAM SANDLER attached.
