| How would you deal with this person?

How would you deal with this person?

Lisa M asked:


This is a long and complex question, so bare with me please. Here we go: I am a screenwriter and I am dealing with a producer (let’s call her Jill) who is so, so controlling and manipulative. I am grateful for this opportunity and I am continuing with the work such as re-writes, etc. but this woman is driving me nuts! Jill hired a team to help produce a demo dvd of my screenplay; a writer (let’s call him Billybob) for the treatment (getting paid $200 plus first right of refusal of the script if produced), a composer (Chad) to compose music from the treatment (getting paid $1500 USD for the dvd only and first right of refusal for the film), and Jill, herself, who I am paying $2500 USD plus air-fair, hotel accommodations, and expenses at the Cannes Film Festival and first right of refusal for the film if it reaches production. The entire ‘team’ had a chat a couple weeks ago, but only 3 people could get into the chat at a time, so the composer, Chad, chatted with Jill and Billybob first, then Chad left the chat to let me in….finally. When I got into the chat, I brought up an error that Billybob made on the title of a character. I have maintained that the character is a foreign minister as opposed to the Prime Minister which Billybob mistakenly named him as in the treatment. In all my versions of the script (which Jill has) I referred to the character as either ‘minister’ or ‘foreign minister’ and I tried to point that out but Billyboob retorted, ‘Oh, a little research can fix that’. I replied, ‘Well I have worked on this for 4 years and I have done the research and he is not the prime minister but a minister.’. This writer has a fairly large ego, to say the least, in almost every correspondence with us he feels the need to add in how many people were at his auditions and who he’s writing for at the moment, etc. Perhaps I’m a bit jealous, but if Billybob was so great why would he need to brag so much? Why would he settle for only $200 to write the treatment? But I digress, Jill then said that perhaps I ‘missed a word’ implying that I wrote just minister and mistakenly left out the word ‘prime’ in prime minister and am now just trying to cover my tracks. And that even after 4 years of research I don’t know the difference between the prime minister and the minister in the story (It’s based on true events). Anyway, I later told her that Billybob messed up the treatment so badly that Chad couldn’t tell what was going on. Jill blamed Chad’s confusion on my script and not the inaccurate and careless treatment written by Billyboob! Meanwhile Chad admitted that it was Billybob’s treatment that threw him off. Jill is getting everyone, including Chad, the music composer (go figure), to offer suggestions for the script. I am grateful for this, but 80% of the suggestions of ideas given are already touched on in the script. What can I do? I am paying these people big money and I feel left behind in the dust.

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Comments

3 Responses to “How would you deal with this person?”

  1. kerangoumar on June 13th, 2009 4:18 am

    you are wasting your money. cut them all off now and be done with it. as long as you keep footing the bill these people will play you.

  2. Warrior Guardian on June 13th, 2009 7:39 pm

    Well…this is a real tough one. It is your Screenplay after all, you have the option of firing them if you want. The bottom line is your wrote the Screenplay and it is yours. So, what you can do is hire a whole new Producer & Production Team to work with. Its just looks like there is way too much drama on the set going on and it has nothing to do with your DVD yet.

    Get more answers on this matter from other people before you make a final descion on it…

  3. Nonchalant Savant on June 16th, 2009 1:54 am

    I have found that the best way to work with difficult, ego driven people is to enlist their help. That is, play on their egos. Tell them you’re having difficulty making the script clear and ask them how they would make it better.

    If you allow them to offer some suggestions (and take some of their advice on the unimportant details), they’ll think of the relationship more as a collaboration and will be more inclined to allow you to get your way on the important stuff. People don’t lke to be told what to do, but they LOVE to be able to help, particularly if it makes them look good. Understand that and you’ll be pleased with how cooperative everyone can be.