Bad blacklist scripts

This is the first year the annual blacklist has meant much to me as an aspiring screenwriter. There was a list of scripts that had been passed over by producers and still garnered enough respect to collect votes for the blacklist. Some of these scripts will make it to film and many will not. But why won't they?

Many of this year's blacklist scripts are available on the internet with a bit of scrounging around, and screenwriters salivate at the chance to get a read of what so many producers liked. It's a big chance to learn about what these producers and bigshots in Hollywood are looking for. But is it really? Is that really what a screenwriter should learn?

One of the things that I learned from the 2009 blacklist was that almost all of the screenplays had been passed over by producers for one or more very specific reasons. For three of the scripts that I read, the reasons became painfully obvious. You could almost hear the reason a producer would give, "Yeah, I like it BUT..." Many believe that the screenplays are passed over for minor reasons such as casting or just not working in the genre. Wrong, there are often much larger and more specific reasons. If you got all the producers that voted on the blacklist in one room, they could quickly come up with a consensus on the flaw or flaws for each screenplay.

My read of some of the blacklist scripts was quite an education into how screenwriters ignore or don't recognize those flaws. The comments that I read from other aspiring screenwriters seemed to be more about how much they liked or didn't like the screenplays. What I didn't see and read was an analysis of what a producer would say after "I like it BUT..." Why had these guys and gals passed on what was otherwise a praiseworthy screenplay?

This is exactly the question you should ask yourself when you create a screenplay. Are you writing something that can be very well written and still get that BUT when it makes its way to producers. Aspiring screenwriters should be reading the screenplays from the annual blacklist and trying their best to identify flaws that put the script on the list. Those screenplays all had flaws, and some of them had huge flaws. A few had huge flaws that would almost certainly prevent the success of the screenplay.

As an aspiring screenwriter laying in a bed with a laptop in Kalamazoo, you're probably thinking that I'm just some cynical douchebag. You might be thinking that I don't have the credentials to be criticizing screenplays on the blacklist. I am smart enough not to get into internet battles over the flaws of screenplays from the blacklist or to give a biting example of a specific flaw. You never know when you'll meet an enemy that you made in the past, even up close and personal.

I'm serious about this critical analysis of the blacklist thing. Don't read the blacklist with glowing admiration that may not be deserved. Learn what you can about why each screenplay was passed on numerous times by the same people. The blacklist isn't necessarily a place you want your screenplay to be. There you are again calling me a stupid wannabe hack from Kalamazoo. Maybe you're right, BUT...