I think French Kissing is up to 12 ish total rewrites. It's wild to see the things that have survived each demolition and rebuild, not always what I would have expected, now those images or scenes are so strong because they've been around the longest, they hold the script up. Survival of the fittest scene.
I literally last Saturday went back to a script I wrote ten years ago, that I did probably 10 drafts of and couldn’t figure out the first 10 pages. And I realized I simply needed to cut the first 10 pages and it immediately made the rest of the script better. But I needed ten years of distance to finally crack it.
Really interesting to hear your insights. I've just started this year to write scripts and reading your normalizing a long rewrite process is helpful to see.
I think French Kissing is up to 12 ish total rewrites. It's wild to see the things that have survived each demolition and rebuild, not always what I would have expected, now those images or scenes are so strong because they've been around the longest, they hold the script up. Survival of the fittest scene.
Oh I love this! It really does become a script made up only of the stuff that “stood the test of time.”
I literally last Saturday went back to a script I wrote ten years ago, that I did probably 10 drafts of and couldn’t figure out the first 10 pages. And I realized I simply needed to cut the first 10 pages and it immediately made the rest of the script better. But I needed ten years of distance to finally crack it.
isn't it always like this??? just cut SIX PAGES from a pilot after truly years of cutting and revising and tweaking
Thanks for sharing the process, Colby. I agree: We need to normalize people giving a shit and making things better...
Really interesting to hear your insights. I've just started this year to write scripts and reading your normalizing a long rewrite process is helpful to see.