Closing the Door on Opportunity

As I alluded to in an earlier post, I was recently contacted by an impressive sounding so-n'-so for help with a Telefilm application. I met with the fella a little over a week ago and he pitched me the following deal:

His company publishes over 100 different independent graphic novels. I can pick from any of the novels, and write a treatment for one or two of them. If Telefilm funds the treatment, I would get paid retroactively for the work. Then, I would move onto the first draft, which we would submit to Telefilm for further financing, and basically go down the same road as we did for DE - write, submit for the next phase of funding, write s'more, submit for the phase after that, etc. They have already had 6 feature films made based on their comics, so they do have some credibility.

The risk is that if Telefilm doesn't pick up the treatment, I wouldn't get paid for the work. (Then again, the guy was a highly energetic, fast talker, so I might be wrong about that assumption. But that is what I took from the conversation - I write a treatment, if we get funding, I get paid.) Since the treatment is based on existing material, it'd really only be a couple hours of my time wasted if it didn't get picked up. No biggie. However, if the treatment did get picked up, those couple hours worth of work could earn me between five to ten thousand dollars. Not too shabby! (Especially for a gal who might be slinging drinks in another month or two.)

I decided it was worth the risk, and so I perused their online catalog. I selected two graphic novels that sounded very interesting, and then two back-ups just in case they didn't want to produce the first two. One of the back-ups I selected was a comic he pointed out to me during the meeting. It's a smart-ass story about a dragon. Upon looking through the rest of their repertoire, I thought it might have some potential compared to a lot of the others, even though it really wasn't my first pick.

Anyway, the dude got back to me yesterday with online access codes to only the dragon comic - not my first two picks as I had hoped.

I read the comic.

It's terrible.

Then again, I'm not a 14 year old boy.

Every character is the same note. The plot is paper thin. The jokes are soooo effing lame. The humour strives to be no-holds-barred, but the social commentary misses the mark. Then again, I'm willing to admit that maybe it's just me. I'm a 32 year old woman, not a cynical teenager. I get bored when every frame that isn't blood n' guts is making a sad attempt to poke fun at race, gender, celebrities, music, Americans, the French, homosexuals, religion, the government, serial killers, and even starving children in Africa. Seriously...

I mean, I can totally handle edgy humour if it makes a point. I love All In The Family. That show had some brilliant social commentary. But these jokes... ugh. They're just cheap shots. Then again, young boys aren't exactly known for their sophisticated humour, so who am I to judge? Whatever floats yer boat. I'm not the target audience, which tells me that perhaps I shouldn't be the writer.

Not to mention, in the end, I really don't see this thing getting funded. Nor do I want to invest my time writing it, even if it does.

Am I crazy?

I mean, at some point in our lives, we have all had shit to do at our day jobs that we weren't happy about. But ya gotta pay the bills, and so you suck it up and do it. If I want to work in the film industry, maybe I have to accept some things as "just a job".... or not. This is my life and my career, and while I can accept that not everything I ever write will be gold, what matters most is that I LIKE what I'm writing. And I don't like this.

So! Now I gotta email this dude back and somehow find the words to tell him that I'm just not connecting with the material, and ask if I can do something else. (Maybe I should send him the link to this post? Ha!) The fact that he ignored my first two preferences tells me that there's a chance I might be closing the door on this opportunity. And whose to say that I'll even like those other two comics after reading them either?

I do believe that there are much better opportunities ahead for me. Like getting my own material produced, or being offered a writing gig on something I really enjoy. After all, we haven't even hit the festival circuit yet, and our film won't be released to theaters until at least February. We're going to be in the spotlight for quite a while, so why run off the stage before the curtain even rises?