So, there was a production meeting last Thursday at 10.00am. I sent out my version of the play to the director and writer Tuesday afternoon. At 8.00pm Wednesday night, I finally hear back from the writer, but not in the way I expected. What I received from him was an ‘updated’ version of what I had given him.

I didn’t have the time to read it Wednesday night, so my plan was to print it out and read it Thursday morning before the meeting. That didn’t happen. Turns out, my printer doesn’t like me.

You see, I got to page 35 (of 75) when the printer ran out of paper. Fine. Put some in and hit the ‘OK’ button. Except it wasn’t the ‘OK” button, it was the power button. I turn the thing back on, expecting to be able to print the rest of the pages. Not gonna happen. It starts printing from the first page again, even though I specify it to start at page 36. After some fancy setting adjustments, I get it to print up to page 41. And then it only prints page 41. Over and over and over. No matter how many times I stop and delete the print que, it always goes back to page 41. Turn off the printer, quit Preview, open the document again, try to print it again and it only prints page 41.

By now I’m pissed, and running out of time so I load up the printer full of paper and print the script from the first page again. This time, no problems at all. It prints all of the pages.

I quickly skim through the script and notice that the writer added a scene that the director, producer, and I said wasn’t needed because it didn’t do anything to add to the story. That, as I found out in the meeting later, wasn’t the only thing that changed; the writer removed all of the comedic scenes I wrote. (Before the meeting, the director and I were bullshitting and he said that he really enjoyed what I had added. That he actually laughed at it; not just finding it amusing.)

Also, the writer said that he didn’t know where to add a scene that I had actually added to the script. He just didn’t ‘get it’.

When I finally had a chance to explain to the writer why I had added what I did (because he written that a character was supposed to ‘come by the office’ but never had him show up on stage or mentioned him again) he, the writer, seemed to finally ‘get it’. But, he said he was going to take that character and change him to one of the characters from the scene I mentioned earlier, the one he added back in.

He thinks that scene adds some comedy to the show when all it really does is repeat things already said so that it becomes annoyingly repetitive.

To make matters worse, when the producer told him that at some point he would have to let go of the story and let me and the director take over, he replied that he doesn’t think he’s gonna do that.

That, right there, is why I never should have taken the project on in the first place. I knew that he was going to do what he wanted and that anything that I may have written would not be good enough for it. No, not that it wasn’t good enough, that it wasn’t written by him. The story he has in his mind is the one he wants and nothing else matters.

And this is why this thing is going to flop.