What's that you say?

Don't let the bastards grind you down?

Hmph.

I've been working at this idea that I "ripped from the headlines." Great story concerning some War in Iraq shenanigans. I've been researching and reading and looking on-line and formulating and all that, all the while knowing time was of the element and the story was too good to go unnoticed by other on-the-ball writers or producers, etc. Last week I find out via Google that the main guy involved, the guy I'm using as my inspiration, is going to have a book come out in the spring, part memoir, part account of said shenanigans. I get my manager to get off his ass and call the publishing house that just announced their purchase of the as-of-yet-unwritten book to find out about getting the rights. Rights secure my investment in the project and allow me to use it as source material. Well, come to find out the publisher already has the rights sold off to an "A-list" writer and an "A-list" studio. And so I'm screwed. And now, fucking well depressed.

All I keep hearing about is high concept, high concept, sellable scripts, commercial ideas...

It's just not what I do. I try and I fail. I have a colleague who just cranks out stuff like that all the time. "He's a guy who suddenly realizes he can stop time with his cell phone..." Stuff like that. And that has its place, and I don't begrudge the guy what he does since, shit, we're all just trying to make a fucking living... But i just don't do that sort of thing. I can't get it up for spending long hours of my day dreaming up "hooks." Maybe for that reason I'm in the wrong game. Maybe I should write novels. Or fucking billboard copy. I saw the other day that a guy who I met out here on what was our first job just sold his script for, literally, a million dollars. It's about a guy trying to pick the best man for their wedding except all his buddies are deadbeats or something. Sounds sorta funny and exactly like the kind of idea I'd never crap out on a napkin over drinks to then sell for a million dollars.

And so here we are. The one time I have an idea that I think I can make high concept, commercial, sellable AND get behind creatively... I can't get the rights to. I mean, I understand that studios comb through publisher's lists of upcoming releases just so they can obtain properties to develop... but this isn't even written yet. This guy was in newspapers, hasn't written a word. And I'm not saying I thought I couild beat the machine but I mean, fucking forget about getting the rights to material unless you are just completely knee deep in the studio world.

So it's down to this quandry: continue working on the thing, which will have to be rejiggered to not be quite as factually close to the real guy's story, thus making it up pretty much from scratch, in the hopes of having them either buy me out when they go to make it in the hopes that there can be two competing projects at the same time, a la Armageddon/Deep Impact.

The other option is to just scrub it and move on to the next thing. The next uncommercial thing.

Christ, this fucking game.