Without belabouring the current dire straits of television and the difficulty of entering the workforce as a new TV writer, I wanted to write a brief farewell to the pilot script I'm deprioritizing.
Salt the Devil's free hosting on The Black List is coming to an end, which is fine. I feel deeply validated by the 8 score, and I'm not especially disappointed by the two 7s it got on the free evaluations. Almost all of the evaluations on this script were waivers or free, so I can say I didn't sink a lot of money into this pursuit.
Some friends have been seeing big swings between high and low scores, something that's fine for feature scripts, because movies are an individual discrete experience with genre expectations that are particular to both the viewer and the writer. A pilot can't have big swings, and I'm glad mine didn't. That consistency is also validating for me, because it means there's more universality to the audience reception. A pilot represents a story that needs to endure more-or-less indefinitely. I know I got that right. That is the skillset I can point to that is rare, requires the labour of years, and an instinct for identifying the theme in oneself and one's experience.
Salt the Devil was originally Knives, which I began sometime in 2017 as a 30-minute pilot, and increased in length down the road when I wrote it out. I knew nine years ago I had something. Stevie, for me, stood in for every frustrating experience I ever had in the 13 years working as a line cook, and that includes the self-inflicted ones. There is a never-ending crucible of rage that lives in every kitchen that represents the unfairness and inefficiency of life concentrated into an occupation dedicated to our most core cultural essential: sustenance.
When the Bear came out, I had one of those silly little oh no/oh yes moments, because I felt like I was scooped while also recognizing that a new genre, a very narrow one, had opened up here. I didn't think (and still don't) that there's a procedural version of the cook show, but I do like the opening up into a less-appreciated setting. I don't think the trappings of that setting (the cinematic artistry of the Bear's plating, service, etc) are as important to my story as they are in that TV show, but they function as thematic levers that get thrown in different configurations depending on the external pressures on my protagonist.
There is also an inversion of the objective - the more successful Stevie is as a chef, the more recogition and celebration she receives, the more inextricably corrupt she and her business becomes. She starts out being strong-armed, but eventually that will stop being her main problem. She's complicit in murder. She's benefitting from it. She rationalizes her position in a criminal organization that she initially rejects, but that on some level, affirms her. The fact that readers are getting "Breaking Bad meets the Bear" from the first 58 pages of written material is deeply encouraging. And I hadn't yet seen Breaking Bad, nor had The Bear existed at the time I wrote this. I like my narrative instincts, and I see no reason to entertain "but TV is dead" as a reason why I shouldn't be proud or ambitious for this project.
The reason I'm temporarily benching Salt the Devil is that the wall between me and potential allies and stakeholders is thicker than ever. It does not mean those allies and stakeholders aren't there -- it's just a larger reality compounded by some strong external forces.
Having witnessed the repeated death of Hollywood and its various institutions and its subsequent totally unlooked-for breakout successes, I'm convinced that breakout successes are actually the only standard any writer should aspire to. All success is a breakout success. So TV can be as dead as Lenin as far as I'm concerned. I'm not about to bench my skillset just because the sky is falling. The sky is always falling.
That said, I recognize my energy has been weighted towards projects that aren't currently in demand at the level at which I might have advanced them five or ten years ago. A lot of regular life things fall under that category, which is not a coincidence. We're in a weird set of cycles that don't all align when it comes to audiences, labour and the means of production -- not least, slow-to-change regional norms. The industry I want to work in is currently locked off by a hostile national policy that, even as a holder of US citizenship, I am not safe from. It is unsafe for me to do what I absolutely need to do in order to be intellectually honest as an artist and a human being, which is to exercise my freedom of expression.
So for now, I'm stepping back to orient myself towards features. It is a very different, difficult shift for me, not because I'm not up to it, but because I am so confident in my skills at the other thing. I can play TV by ear, while I need to really get back to the sheet music with features. The number of actions a character can perform in a story is limited, and must achieve an outcome, while in TV the goal is to create conflicts where the outcome can be stretched out over seasons. It's a different pace and a different attention span. It's also a real joy to be learning something new, even if it is intimidating and frustrating.
I'm still holding on to Salt the Devil. It's the best thing I've ever written, and easily has the most value as far as market prospects are concerned. Other people have seen that. I also am confident I wrote something that's pretty timeless. That doesn't mean it doesn't have a limited shelf life, but of all the things I'm uncertain about, I think I can afford to be pretty certain about that script being exceptionally good...because I don't think TV is dead. I think it's just one finger on one limb on a comotose body of artistic culture that intersects with a self-destructive state of humanity. There are spanners in the works, sure, but TV is one of our narrative, social and emotional foods. That's never going away.
It's with that in mind that I'm setting aside this material for now. I'm writing other stuff. I'm writing stuff that represents my range and industry. I'm going to turn my energy to marketing my portfolio of scripts once it's hefty enough to satisfy me. Because that's all I can really do at this point.
I want to add that I had extraordinary help with this script from many generous professionals who treated it and me with the consideration of peers. Having working Hollywood writers donate their time to this helps me keep my head in a very challenging game. I'm really grateful for that.
As Salt the Devil's public Black List page will be up for a few more days, anyone with any professional interest in it can read it here.
