Tag Archives: screenwriting

The silent, wealthy screenwriter

Ning Caishen (宁财神), the writer behind the hit TV comedy My Own Swordsman (武林外传), posted the following update to his Sina microblog:

在这行久了,认识的人越来越多,即使不合作,也都属于抬头不见低头见那种,看到烂片还真不好意思多说什么,实在憋的难受,就私底下跟朋友发发牢骚~一直幻想,哪天有个远房亲戚忽然给我留了一大堆遗产,我立马退休,每天写影评,每个电影三万字,从头骂到脚,一个细节都不放过,把所有人得罪光了算球!

After a while in the business, you meet more and more people, and even if you’re not working with them, they’re the sort that you see around all the time. Watching a stinker, I’m embarrassed to say anything, but it’s so painful to hold it in that I have to bitch about it to my friends privately ~ and all the time I dream of the day when a distant relative will suddenly leave me a giant inheritance, and I’ll retire immediately and write a movie review every day, 30,000 characters of pure rant that doesn’t let a single detail off the hook, because who cares if I piss everyone off!

Jin He Zai (今何在), who like Ning got his start in net-lit, replied:

你现在知道我为什么不想混编剧行了?编时就要担心层层评审,能过审评的该删的也删差不多了,评过了也不定能上映,上映了一看,这还是当初写的那个本子吗?还得挂个名字一起挨骂。

Now do you see why I don’t want to get into the screenwriting biz? Writing a script means you’ve got to worry about all those levels of examination. To pass the censors, pretty much everything gets cut out, and passage doesn’t necessarily mean it will get screened. If you look at what does make it, is that the script you first wrote? And you’ve got your name up there so you get attacked along with it.