20% Of Screenwriters Have The Talent To Write In Hollywood - Kelly Edwards
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- Опубликовано: 29 окт 2022
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As HBO and WarnerMedia’s SVP of Talent Development for seven years, Kelly Edwards oversaw all of the emerging artists programs for HBO, HBOMax, and Turner, both domestic and abroad. Edwards’s career spans both television and film, having served as a key corporate diversity executive at Comcast/NBCUniversal and a creative executive for both film director Garry Marshall and producer Laura Ziskin. After moving to television, she spent six years as a senior executive at Fox, where she developed Living Single, Clueless, and The Wild Thornberrys. As SVP of Comedy Development at UPN, she developed Girlfriends, The Parkers, and Malcolm in the Middle. Edwards also produced the movie of the week A Christmas Detour for Hallmark, and the one-hour drama series Sex, Love, and Secrets. She holds a BA in Theater from Vassar and an MFA in Screenwriting from Emerson. Edwards has served on the Annenberg Inclusion Board, the UNCF Leadership Council, the ATAS Diversity committee, as a Trustee for NALIP, and is a 2019 Sundance Episodic Lab fellow. Kelly's book The Executive Chair: A Writer’s Guide to TV Series Development is now available (via Michael Wiese Productions).
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Don't worry, the other 80% can work on stuff like Rings of Power.
🤣
Its no coincidence that some of the most talented writers and directors suffer from some kind of mental illness. Imagine how many are lost due to being pilled out of their minds, gas lit, and killed by one bad rash decision. If you’re out there, keep going. Whats crazy today is genius tomorrow. We need more not less.
I worried about this for fiction writers during the rise of self publishing. How many great artists aren't business people? How many great books that don't become bestsellers because they aren't marketed effectively?
Everybody has to deal with rejection, talent alone is not enough to flourish in this real world, thats the harsh truth , trying to cater to every talent is not practical. You must endure and have strong mental fortitude to survive,
Talent?
Has she seen the quality of writing in modern hollywood productions?
the problem may not be the writers... there are people above them who change projects around.
@@KEP1983 no its the writers using their writing to push a dead agenda into something it doesn't make sense
@@KEP1983
Seen a lot of writers complaining about criticism on twitter. They wouldn't do that if it was out of their hands.
@@aaronnilestoussaint5672 that's an interesting idea, but I don't think it's just the writers wanting to push their agenda. The people above them have an agenda they want to push, and they decide who gets to work vs not work. So if you're to the right of Marx, you're not getting a job unless you keep your mouth shut and don't let anyone know what you really believe.
This sort of discrimination should be illegal, but the other side doesn't stop it even when they get elected into office.
But I do know that the people higher up will change things around to fit their narratives. I won't give away any identifiers, but I know a writer who worked on a pretty big project. I know the higher ups change some parts of the story and added things in based upon wanting to promote different views and downplay other things. The writer knew it would hurt the story even though he agreed with the producers politically, but he didn't have a choice but to change it.
@@KEP1983 Wow, thats exactly what Kanye has been saying.
I like that the interviewer allowed her to share her experience without railroading her into talking about one specific topic.
Refuse for 5 years anyone who went to any of the major film schools into any of the fellowships and a change in the industry would happen. Diversity not just in the Hollywood sense which is race, gender and sexual orientation but diversity in backgrounds. The main problem with the industry is that everyone who gets in is of the California or New York perspective because they were raised or educated there. Let's see more filmmakers and writers from the south, Midwest, blue collar or gray collar backgrounds making films and TV that have the feeling of authenticity.
AMEN
Hunny im black and im from California and that doesn't make it better.
@@caseestarr
He's not advocating for racial privilege, he's advocating for actual diversity of the kind that matters. Thought.
Do you know how many famous filmmakers, actors and writers are from the Midwest? I think the Midwest is doing fine
@@Lilliathi the kind that matters?
She gave a very very nurturing and realistic approach to writing and what it takes. 😊
She was talking about 20% of writers in the HBO access program. Who knows what stories are actually profitable.
Thanks for saying this… it needed saying.
Diversity = Authenticity (Just because you are a different skin colour does not mean you are adding diversity).
especially if you are from LA or surrounding areas of California and even New York. We don't need another black or Hispanic or Asian or LGBTQ filmmaker from those areas telling a variation of the same story that has already been told. We need filmmakers of those race and gender groups from the south, the midwest, the rural, the upper and lower mids telling their stories. I see one more film or series about LGBTQ teens from LA and NY who are living in a bubble rebelling against their liberal progressive open and accepting parents I'm gonna vomit.
It can't be 20%. I've seen what Hollywood has been putting out lately.
That's a problem with the gates to Hollywood, not the available content. So much hype.
@@sullyFL and the diversity basically only choose their friends to help. People can talk about diversity but really it becomes just another version of gatekeeping. Coogler and Duvarney will help Californian or New York-born black filmmakers especially if they know them somehow. Would they help a black filmmaker from the Carolines nope they'll leave that to someone else?
@@NA86737 Definitely agree. Jaden Smith or Cazzie David would be touted as adding diversity to a room when they've had an insane amount of privilege. Outside of NYC or LA + public school + minimal connections + working class = tough path to breaking through. Location and financial background should be diversity considerations, too.
I had the pleasure of listening to Kelly speak at a few panels at the Austin Film Festival just one week ago. She tells it straight, and is so knowledgeable. If she is your guide, you will avoid wasting time and hitting road blocks. Very genuine. And spot on honest.
Access for everyone won't change the percentage, the good will still stay around 20% and the best around 10% proportioned to the mass.
Writing film use to be entertaining, informative and persuasive now it's torturous; Unfortunately.
Please sent those writers to disney plus, because their writers stink.
As it’s been said many times, at the end of the day, you write for yourself.
This is a great video. I think she’s giving amazing advice. 😊🙏
Wow. I’ve been the diversity person. It’s not an easy role. This was comforting to hear. Thank you.
Glad this one found you Blaine!
@@punchforpound2808 Yeah, obviously not comparing, LMAO.
Kelly has quickly grown to become my third favorite interviewee only Shane Staley and the legendary Chris Gore.
She's arguing directly against Chris Gore though.
she's fantastic. very thoughtful and comes across confident and compassionate. i would trust her as a leader
Just amazing. She understands the plight of the aspiring writer so well.
Shoot, 20%? That's WAY more generous than I thought, lol. Basically everyone writes!
If it's 20%, I'm a shoo-in! Lol
So that's it to be in the top 20%?
1. Be able to write
2. Be able to collaborate
3. Have a thick skin
4. Diversity
5. Diversity
6. Diversity
7. Persevere
#1-8: be talented
No, no, you misunderstand! She never said _top_ 20%.
Writing is the toughest job in the industry, but writing does not require previous experience or a particular train-able skill set. This makes it attractive, unlike sound recording, art direction or cinematography. These other crafts have entry levels where you start as an assistant. There are no writers' assistants.
Writing is the only job where you need to dig a new well every time you need to fetch water, because the writer starts from scratch every time.
The writer is the star player of every winning team. Everyone else can hide or coast a little bit, not the writer. Writers are the only people whose work is not guaranteed to end up on the screen. When everyone else starts work the movie is actually being made.
When the writing is not great the audience will reach for their phones or say the movie sucks. They might not say it, but it's the writer's fault. When have you ever heard viewers say the cinematography sucks or the directing?
Why is the project compromised because of office politics?
It is easy to be a one-hit wonder with writing.
I wouldn't mind.
And that includes the screenwriters in Hollywood.
I'm sure there are a lot of them who know how to write well - but it doesn't seem like many have anything interesting to say.
Okay, well clearly Hollywood isn't hiring anyone in that 20%
Its crazy because they throw bricks at you and expect you to not bitch and moan.
Wow.
It’s Halloween 🎃 today & I have been thinking about if there is an afterlife? Do our souls live on after we die? Do you think anyone has sold their soul for a successful screenwriting career?
I have wondered how some famous Hollywood filmmakers achieved a successful career, cuz their projects are awful. 🤔 hmm?
What do you like about this video?
It's a pro that she's exposing what's actually taking place on the inside for outsiders to gain a better understanding. Her last interview was great, but for some reason this interview's tail end reminds me of a saying or quote, "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind." -- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, India (1869- 1948) The quote refers to a passage from Leviticus in the Bible (from the part known as the “Old Testament” by Christians).
Honestly, it makes me want to give up on my dreams of screenwriting. I just want to tell an entertaining story. But if the industry is this shallow, maybe I should just go be a welder instead. At least then I wouldn't be subjected to self-righteous woke-workplace tribal-activism.
@@edwardwonghaupepelutivrusk5189
But then it never changes. Lets make our own Hollywood, with blackjack and hookers.
@@Lilliathi You son of a bit... I'm in.
@9:17
If you're there to tell someone they're racist, that's why they don't like you, and it's completely on you. People tend not to care for the person who comes into a situation specifically to change people. A writers room is for writing, not activism. I don't go to work and point out what I don't like about people. I have a role on the team, and I play that role. I don't agree with everything that people say, but I don't have to. Everything doesn't go my way, but it doesn't have to. Why? Because I'm secure in myself enough to work with other people effectively. At the end of the day, I don't have to leave the place, saying, "I won." If you're trying to win something every time you go to work, then you're turning co-workers into opponents, and really, what person of any talent wants to work in that type of environment? And that's really why the quality of writing in Hollywood has gone down the toilet.
If it looks like a duck and quaks like a duck, it's a duck. Nothing wrong with calling out a racist if they are being racist
@@sheldonhollis5258 unless they are jewish, then you get blacklisted.
I think it's awesome to ponder the gates to Hollywood and what projects we are missing out on because the path to entry is often via privilege. I'm surprised that on one has adapted publishing query model to Hollywood. It's much more equitable.
what is the publishing query model?
Who cares about equitable? It needs to be meritocratic.
@@Lilliathi Did you miss the video? Many potential writers out there have the talent but never get the chance to develop into working TV screenwriters. In a straight meritocratic system, they would be competing with people who have been handed everything necessary to enter the business.
@@free22
How is it a straight meritocratic system if some people are being handed things?
If you want to try and stop nepotism, be my guest (good luck). If you somehow manage, only the best would be hired, likely making things less equitable... and that's a good thing.
@@Lilliathi A meritocracy is based on accomplishments and results alone. That means that a meritocracy does not care if Tom’s parents handed him a full ride to USC and Tim can’t even afford screenwriting software. They would both be judged equally in a meritocracy. HBO’s program and others like it try to be more equitable by providing opportunities to people who might not otherwise get them.
I don’t have an access.
If there's so many good writers in Hollywood, why are so many modern movies and TV shows so terrible? We're now seeing films that a few years ago would have gone straight to video (yes, I'm old), TV series for adults that appear to have been written for 'special needs' levels of intelligence and Comedy series which are completely devoid of any humour above the occasional 'Grin'.
A truth is never harsh .
Stop race swapping existing characters and start writing new diverse characters, that's all I'm asking. I have no problem with characters of color, like literally NO problem, unless they are a race swap from pre-existing stories. Just take those talanted writers and create something new, something that we have not seen before, instead of taking what people before you have come up with and changing attributes like race, gender, sexuality etc. That's the lazy approach and it has to go. Let the true creativity thrive.
Lots of good writers from Fanfiction ….and they just do it as a hobby.
I like the channel and the interview was great, but it's funny how the thumbnail and title make it seem like it's about how "only 20% are good enough" when she's actually saying the opposite: she was seeing a lot of writers from very different backgrounds who might not have access to becoming professional writers DESPITE a full 20% of them, with likely no professional experience, actually being good enough to do it.
So, what you have is a SYSTEM built to oppress good writers rather than promote good scripts... GENIUS, no wonder the crap on Netflix (or wherever!) is so damn watchable!!! - only the best turds can float to the top.
Can someone just be freelance screenwriter?. Like sell our spec scripts kinda thing Or will we not get jobs without being there to write with them and for them ?..
Why can't they hire the right person
It's not about what you can do; it's about who you know. Also, studio execs want writers who will do what they say, no matter if those studio execs know anything about good writing. The most obvious example is Kathleen Kennedy, president of LucasFilm. She hires writers based on who can check off woke boxes, and she's fired directors who are actually good because they didn't do what she wanted them to do (called "creative differences"). So, studio execs aren't thinking about hiring talented writers and directors; they're looking for compliant writers and directors, and if they happen to hire someone with any talent, it's completely be accident.
@@G360LIVE Crazy but this is the honest truth.
20%? Maybe 5%... Having watch 2 years of Netflix trash I was astounded by how unoriginal and pathetic writers ate today..
I got a top 12% score for a pilot on Coverfly the other day, so I'm within those 20% :3
When I look at the writers who make these lists very few of them are black men.
Ok so explain the appalling writing for the rings of power and She hulk etc…
Where the biggest failure is the writing.
A writers room has always sounded like a nightmare for people who are creative, and completely corporate, with lots of people just protecting their own jobs and NOT hiring talent that makes them look bad, or, conflicts with their own (limited) subjective perspectives on how a 'writers room' should look and operate.
The closest I would ever wish to be near a place like that, is on another planet, hundreds of miles underground, with 100 metres of solid iron surrounding me, I will be the last human to exist in the universe, because the atomic decay of iron is a process which takes longer than it does for a writers room to arrive at a conclusion about who to hire.
In the words of Brian:
"...You see us as you want to see us… In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions..."
So, writers are viewed as someone that will toe the line or, will challenge the authority of the people running the room.
That is not creativity, that is hell on earth. Glad I am not working in one of those rooms, with probably some kind of democracy (one ruler).
No thanks.
Not for all the tea in China.
Not for one hundred trillion dollars.
Not for eternal life.
I would NEVER sell my soul to the devil.
I will pray for your eternal soul.
She's sugar coating it. Nepotism and connections matter more than actual talent nowadays in Hollywood. And that is why we're getting more things like She-Hulk, Rings of Power or The Witcher and not more masterpieces like House of The Dragon or Netflix's Daredevil. Meritocracy is DYING or it never even existed and it was a fantasy.
.
I think she just doesn't want to say barely 1% have the talent and then just came up with this "emotional" bullshit
There is 0 talent in current Hollywood. Name one classic, universally beloved movie made after 2005. And I don't mean one that is watchable, or one that made billions. I mean movies that people even 40 years from now will be interested in watching. I've personally seen kids today watch Tim Burton's Batman films and love them: meanwhile the same kids watch Nolan's Batman and were bored within 10 minutes and stopped watching altogether less than an hour in. People still watch and love Bonnie and Clyde, Cool Hand Luke, The Blackboard Jungle, The Godfather, Jaws, Back to the Future, Platoon, Groundhog Day, Harry Potter, etc etc. Where are all their equivalents today? It has nothing to do with people's attention being peeled away by video games or social media. People want to like movies. Why do you think billions of dollars worth of movie goers go and see stuff like Marvel films or Star Wars films hoping to be dazzled?
It all lies with the talent. Corporations who don't know what they're doing took over Hollywood and filled it full of rich kids and the "right sorts" who shut the gates and ensured only they and their friends could and would get in. The plummeting quality of movies can be demonstrably measured, not only by the films themselves but the lack of new up and coming super directors or A listers. There are no more Pacinos or Spielbergs, there's not more unique voice in films. Just bland soulless corporate garbage shovelled out to trick movie goers into filling seats, all created by the kids of rich/famous parents and their chic friends.
If you have writing talent its far better to just give up on Hollywood and go into self publishing. If you have filmmaking talent, again, it's better to just give up and make your own original works and try to build an audience on sites like RUclips, because you'll never ever get into Hollywood as an outsider, and even if you did, you'd be relegated to nonsense projects you have no control over, like many popular RUclips filmmakers who got hired only to direct dreck like Insidious.
Tbh nearly everything I have watched, that make it to the cinema in recent time have been poor.
9:17 - "Nobody wanted to see the 'diversity girl' coming because I was always there to tell them they're racist".
I almost fell off my couch, rolling my eyes so hard at this toxicly woke personality.
This lady and her way of thinking is why Hollywood is dying. Fighting racism with racism is disgusting.
Yep…that’s where she super lost me. She’s so a part of the problem she can’t even diagnose the problem.
Churning out garbage
It's highly competitive indrusty, people are ready to say or do whatever to make you off your game so they can get one up. So a lot of stuff needs to be able to go past, some people will say whatever they know will throws you off your game.
A lot what she says is very true but then if you call yourself a divercity was it ceo, also that she Only writes black women leads and then hates if she would be called a divercity hire when it sounds all she wants to do is excatly divercity hiring 🤔 I get that she looks for talent but it feels like people always say it's not about color of the skin but then she basically says she doesn't look just talent but only black women talent. Not a big deal she says she has a cause but sounds still somewhat backwards.
Whatever happened to stories being about people 'living out of their essence' (nature) -- rather that their external persona (aka culture). This whole diversity program and agenda literally defies the story structure everyone is supposed to be teaching these writers. 'It's not whats on the outside (skin) its whats on the inside that matters'.
Take the movie Ratatouille for example -- Its because they all love food that united everyone in that story. All of the cultural differences pale into insignificance when you realise that fact. All the characters were the same in their essence -- 'food lovers' since the earliest days of their childhood.
This is the essence and message of the story -- let go of focussing on cultural differences and focus on that instead. Thats where we find common ground.
No! Black born in America IS privileged.
I pray I meet you some day, Kelly.
African. Seriously
This was a good interview for the most part but I felt very bad for this woman being interviewed when she threw in the name Joy Reid! If she thinks Joy Reid is some kind of a role model that is very sad. Joy Reid advances NOTHING BUT LIES AND HATRED and SHE IS A DESTROYER in all ways! I hope this woman rethinks saying there's a part of Joy Reid in her and sometimes in her writing!
So glad you spoke directly & honestly about the difficulties black writers deal with in the business.