bee.CAUSE.(c)aulity.[re|in(tro)]VERTed.unTILL.wee.MEAT.uh.....GAIN
tulsa.LOUP(e.garoup).DE.LOOper
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I don’t mean to comment on the film industry, of which I have only tangential experience, just writing in general.
My experience of screen writing is with a mix of people, including someone who does work in the industry, and was of superlative creativity.
I guess we were operating with the awareness of the kind of problems and clichés that crop up that you have noted, but perhaps the experience was so good precisely because we were writing for the material rather than with any financial conditions in mind.
Or, at least, squarely in mind. Perhaps it is impossible to completely evade the influence of the marketplace but why would you want to?
/rhetorical extremism
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No offense meant, but that means you are an artist, and not yet a professional writer. “Art” means doing what makes you happy, being a professional often, but not always, means doing what sells. I listen to the podcasts “The Business” & “The Treatment”, they often interview writers describing the arcs of their careers. It rarely is just writing a script and selling it, agents, connections, script doctoring and collaborations are frequent stops along the way.
Of course the best is the film “Barton Fink”, a sendup of how NY writers like Dorothy Parker would be lured to Hollywood. He’s a leftist intellectual who’s told to write a wrestling picture.
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Hmmmmmm
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And the BBS snark machine warms up. Many people are happy to be called artists. I suppose you have a different way to define the difference between an artist and a entertainment industry professional writer?
The definition is in the act. One is a professional when one gets paid. Trump was not a politician until he got elected to office, he was just a blowhard. Now he’s a blowhard politician.
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When somebody says “you are X, and not yet Y” (grammatically implying a transition that may occur at some point in the future) it is seldom a compliment.
Especially when somebody has identified themselves as Y.
And especially when they start out with “no offense meant, but” which implies “I can totally see how someone will take offense at what I’m about to say, but IDGAF”
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There are many transitions in life: from student to graduate, from childless to parent, from alive to dead. From amateur to professional is simply one of these. If you bring judgement that’s your issue. Every artist or athlete that has ever made money at it was once an amateur before they became a professional.
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I define “art” as a feedback process of internalizing and externalizing culture itself, typically because one is compelled to. Asserting that it is a pasttime people engage in to feel “happy” with themselves sounds to me inaccurate and glib. It is more of a calling than a choice.
If the definition is in the act, than where does that leave merely professing to be an artist?
If life is truly transactional, than people automatically get something back from whatever they do. If you create some of the culture you live in, then they will give something back to you because what you do has value. Seeking compensation is backwards, and suggests that one is unmotivated, and needs to be bribed into doing anything worthwhile.
That’s so much loaded semantic bollocks. From what you are asserting, it naturally follows that people do what they love, and so they are later paid for it. But you also say that it is the lure of eventual pay which inspires and legitimizes their efforts, which suggests that most people are instead merely prostituting themselves. Placing the legitimacy of your culture and craft in the hands of a cartel of non-creative capital hoarders sounds personally disempowering, as well as a losing strategy culturally. That’s not to say that it doesn’t happen - but you shouldn’t be surprised if others aren’t convinced by it.
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No need to keep assuming you’re causing any offence, I get the message; prepare to have your artistic ideas reframed, ad hoc, through the lens of financial viability and have any conversation about them be about that instead. 
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I’ll answer this actual question and ignore the rest of your elaborate and high-minded view of what creative people do. The answer is: who cares if someone calls themselves an artist? I certainly don’t. I used the term to refer to someone being creative who doesn’t get paid for it. There’s nothing wrong with that but neither should that person have contempt for those who choose to create what someone will buy and allow them to keep a roof over their head.
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I’m sorry, I made the error of assuming the that since you are writing a screenplay you were interested in having it produced. That’s the world I live in. Perhaps you can understand my mistake.
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Ah - so you are disregarding all of my questions and statements in favor of re-stating what you said before. Yes, we are each entitled to our own definitions, and acknowledging those would be necessary for any further discussion.
Contempt sounds like an emotional problem. But there are also practical considerations why normalizing a kind of lifestyle-extortion/exploitation can actively make things worse for creative people, and culture generally. There is not any shame in saying “I prostitute myself so that entrenched economic interests allow me to survive”, but I cannot defend going the extra step of personally fronting for such a state of affairs, declaring it a virtue, and so obvious that it should pass without comment or criticism.
If my perspective sounds “high-minded”, be aware that I myself am an unemployed artist with no formal education who lives in a squat - so I am coming at this very much from street-level. Without having a pimp, the “pay” for the efforts of writing a screenplay - is that you have the screenplay you wanted. That’s how it is with any efforts. If you negotiate with others and set the precedent of an asymmetrical power dynamic, then you get the consequences of that also.
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Feel free to discuss whatever angle on the topic takes your fancy, I sincerely appreciate your thoughts and you shouldn’t be of the impression I don’t want to hear your insights on the practicalities of real production, I do; I only ask that you stop apologising for and assuming you have somehow hurt my feelings.
I was poking fun at your side having been driven by a propensity to do to our conversation about narrative structure exactly what you were saying the industry does to creativity on the whole; re-frame it to centre on financial considerations. You do realise that’s what you’ve been doing, right?
I thought, perhaps you might be indulging in a bit of haughty, symbolic meta-conversation but on the whole, in attempting to understand your mistake I’ll have to agree, you really do have a bee in your bonnet over this time travel business!
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Anyone watched any specific films recently they’d like to talk about?
(not that art vs. professionalism isn’t worthy of a discussion in its own right, but it’s getting a bit OT here…)
ARS GRATIA ARTIS and all that…
I tried to watch Knight of Cups yesterday. I struggle a bit with Malick, particularly this later period stuff. It’s a bit too anti-narrative for me. Just meanders along, through pretty shots of LA. Lovely looking film, I just didn’t care about Bale’s character in the slightest.
I need to try that again. I’ve read the thinking behind why Joe Cornish made it, but I took such an immediate dislike to Boyega’s gang that I gave up on it early on last time.
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oh! @AcerPlatanoides, I watched Attack the Block.
I concede. It was ace.
So were the aliens.
Everything was cool like.
@daneel, the message is weird, in that it’s basically normalising the violence that the youth are perpetuating but the message, if there is any, is directed into that audience. And done well. You were right to have that reaction to the gang… it’s a weird, hazardous moral-landscape for a film to work within.
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Also, (it’s me again, miss me yet!) did I mention I saw Logan?
Holy sheeyet it’s violent!
But somehow, the violence actually suited the film to a tee. Basically all the other incarnations of Wolverine were shown up to be the boring bags of barely contained puke leaking into our laps they always were.
I actually cared about these characters and was affected by the violence.
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And there I was wondering if you were some bourgeois who didn’t understand what people need to do to eat. You understand, you just choose not to play. If interacting with society to make a living is prostituting myself, so be it. I have neither the cushy day job, the trust fund, or the stones to be so purist. Cheers.
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Saw “Get Out”.
Trailer gives away too much, but there is a lot in there about identity and subject object relations and perspective and, well, good flick.
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One infant? 
That’s the world I live in. Perhaps you can understand my mistake.
You can still move back/ So long as you understand it, that’s what matters. 
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In honor of the great Chuck Barris’ passing, I propose that Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is an underrated film.
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