Transcript: Fragile Egos Don't Take Fountain

Rob Long on the Hollywood art of protecting someone's feelings while simultaneously insulting them

This is Rob Long with Martini Shot for The Ankler.

I have a friend who wanted to do something romantic and thoughtful for his wife. Apparently, there are still husbands like this.

“She had endured a tough week,” he told me. One of the kids was sick, there was a big crisis at work, the kitchen remodeling job was suddenly delayed — it was a constellation of stress-inducing events, and he wanted to do something sweet to acknowledge how rough it had been on her.

"It was rough on you, too," I said. "I mean, you had a tough week at work, and the sick kid is yours too, and you cook in that kitchen as often as she does. Shouldn't she be doing something nice for you?"

I’m not married, obviously.

His plan was carefully thought-out. Before she came home from work, the children were fed and planted in front of a movie. Then, he lit some expensive scented candles in the bathroom, drew a bath, put some rose petals in it, and turned on some softly romantic music. The minute she walked in the door, he ushered her to the bathroom — now decked out like a fancy hotel spa — and told her she had the evening to herself, to soak and relax and unwind.

It was all seemed to be going very well, until half an hour later he knocked on the bathroom door and asked, "How is it, honey?" 

There was a pause. "I'm cold," she said.

And that was that. Some people, it seems, are impossible to satisfy.

My friend is a writer, so he's used to that kind of reaction to a lot of hard work and preparation. That's often what writers get when they turn in a script after months and weeks of toil.  

It's a heady, stress-filled moment when you finally get to the end of a script, after countless rewrites and revisions, and type "Fade Out" at the end. Even the most confident and cocksure writer feels the twitch of insecurity when he composes the email to the studio executive, with a false cheeriness —"Hi! Here's the latest draft! I really think this is one of my best pieces of work! Hope you agree!"— and attaches the draft.  

Usually, moments after you send a script into the studio or network, you get a call from the executive's assistant about scheduling a conference call for script notes. They haven't even read the script yet, but they know they're going to be vaguely dissatisfied with the results and want a bunch of changes, so why not get a meeting on the books as soon as possible?

I knew a studio executive who began every one of his first-draft notes to the writer calls by saying, in as robotic a voice as possible, "Welikeditalotthere'salotofgreatstuffhere."