Transcript: Indiana...Smith? Or Jones?

Rob Long on how to deal with exec notes

This is Rob Long with Martini Shot for The Ankler.

Every writer has a Sinatra moment — you know what I mean, a moment when you got a note or a request from the studio or the network — change this character, make the mom younger, add a dog, don't mention cancer — you know, just the general stuff that every writer in Hollywood eventually has to deal with when the "art form" they've chosen — and yes, in case you didn't hear it, I made little quote marks in the air when I said "art form" — but when the "art form" that you've chosen requires $17 million worth of expensive equipment and 300 people to bring to life, rather than a six-dollar set of oil paints and a piece of canvas, you end up having to listen to a lot of people.

And sometimes those people have, you know, thoughts. Suggestions. Ideas. And you're supposed to listen to them.

Which you do. Mostly.

But every writer has a moment in their personal career history where they just said, “No. We're doing it My Way.” A Sinatra moment. I will not make the mom younger, and I will not give her a dog, and I will give the little boy cancer. And it'll be funny. I swear it will be funny.

The problem with those moments is, later, when you're watching a final runthrough or worse, watching the final cut, it's possible to hear a little voice inside your head saying, “I wish the mom was younger, and had a dog. And the little boy story is just depressing.”

But by then it's too late.

And that keeps us up late, because you never know, really, how anything is going to turn out — so when you're gearing up for your Sinatra moment, you know — you KNOW — that there's a karmic likelihood in play here, and that if you're not careful, you're going to be in the editing suite or soundstage thinking, that idiot kid from the network who's, like, 12, was right. People do love dogs. People do hate cancer. Everybody likes a young mom.

So if every writer has had a Sinatra moment, they've also had a Peter Lawford moment — you know, the go-along, get-along affable Peter Lawford, the guy who was Sinatra's pal.  

The guy, in other words, who caved. The guy who sang “I Did it Their Way”.