pitch
I’m still here, I’ve still got a voice. I’ll never give up throwing it out there whether anyone wants it or not. Sometimes I find that getting praise for something I’ve written can be a real hassle. What I mean is when people say “Yeah, give me more of that, just like that,” as if everything else I’d ever done was irrelevant to them. Well listen, I’m glad you liked one piece of mine, but I can tell you right now that the stuff to come will very likely be different. And that’s not anything against you, that’s just me doing what feels real to me. Your priority can’t be to please an audience, number one always has to be you. It’s your name going on the page, so those words better have come from you, be part of you, not the shallow answer to some audience’s wishes. I know that may not be a popular opinion, but it’s how I do business. We create art because we have so much inside of us that we can’t help but to throw it on a canvas, find it in the angles and shadows, or write it on a page. If someone else happens to connect to it, great, but that expression can be controlled by none other than the artist.
I resent writing for (most) television and film because it’s so much about what the audience wants and expects. You’ve got to reward them. Some producer who’s never written a line demands a helicopter in the opening scene, relevant or not. That’s like saying, “Yeah, more just like that!” Sure, what you liked was a part of me, but there’s a whole barrel of different voices, different sides of myself that I need to express. You don’t have to like it, it won’t stop me either way.
