"Screenwriters Vs. Zombies" - Meta-Crud (Play Review)

The WGA's on strike. Articles have told me that this is a good time to query literary agents and managers. The logic is, the gears aren't moving, so they might have nothing better to do than to read my script. 

Last year I sent one of my features into a feedback-providing contest. The results came in recently and the readers took issue with the story's ending. Not for the expected reasons, but because they didn't understand it. One of them thought I was baiting for a sequel. 

Others had enlightened me to this issue prior and the ending had already been fixed, so their feedback wasn't extremely relevant. But despite being a deprecated draft, the script still placed Semifinalist in the contest.

Sending queries is not something I've done much of so far. I've emailed a little over ten addresses. In retrospect, the email was fairly poorly written (and the particular script I queried was not much better), but I still got one reply. A VP at a B-movie house told me they'd read it. I followed up a few times. Their last email said they were halfway through it. But that was back in March, and my April follow-up received no reply. Can't follow up too often. "Don't be boring or desperate." Still, it's something. Maybe they'll get back to me some day.

Armed with this pitiful excuse for optimism I decided to craft a new round of queries, these for the competition-placing script, sent solely to agents and managers due to the strike. 

The loop isn't difficult- find movies that are like yours, find out who the writers are, find out who represents them, and find that person's contact info. (I won't delve into the specifics of this process because I'm not a search engine). 

This is how I discovered "Screenwriters Vs. Zombies: The Los Angeles Screenwriters Social Club," a play by Texan Alan Nafzger, an "experimental" screenwriter. The play follows several "failed" screenwriters who hang out in the coffee shop across the street from a big-name talent agency. Nafzger's premise teases us with "a zombie event," but the bulk of the play is listening in on their conversations- think an ensemble My Dinner With Andre (1981).

But where Andre and Wallace, two wildly distinct personalities, discuss their wildly distinct experiences, Nafzger's ensemble only cares about one thing, and that's Hollywood. They love it and they hate it and they hate that they love it. They go into detail about their grievances and they name names. 

I had searched the name of an agent to query and an article about them being name-dropped in this controversial play popped up. (Good luck figuring out the agent, the play name-drops quite a few).

So I read it. Part of it. It's not good. 

The play opens on a lengthy monologue. This monologue sets up nothing. There is nothing to set up. The monologue is a primer. A character rants on stage for a while and then several others come in and continue the rant. It's like a talk show's warm-up act. 

According to Nafzger's character descriptions, each of the screenwriters has a unique personality. It's a good thing he says so 'cause just goin' off the dialogue alone I'd say they're clones. They're all smarmy in the same way. 

After page 56 I skipped a few until the zombie stuff started. The gang watches a zombified big-name talent agent get shot in the head by the cops. And then they go back to the overarching rant. 

I skipped to the end. The screenwriters compete to pitch a zombie movie to some nameless executives. One wins after they pitch "Screenwriters Vs. Zombies" itself. The executives love this terrible idea. They call it "character-driven." No clue what the characters are meant to be driving at.

A lot of screenwriters I've interacted with, especially online, give off the same vibe as Nafzger's ensemble. Some have their bets hedged on winning whatever screenwriting contest advertises itself as "the only one real industry people care about." Others decry nepotism and insist that the gates are closed to whatever identity group the speaker happens to belong to. I myself once considered sending a mass-email query (setting up a spambot.)

Nafzger demonstrates a keen understanding of screenwriter mentality. It's a shame he doesn't demonstrate a keen understanding of writing.

Read "Bambi Vs. Godzilla" by David Mamet for a better writer's actual insight into the biz.

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