The Amazon Studios deal

The other day while I was eating waffles with friends the topic naturally turned to the Amazon deal. By now, you're no doubt heard about it: You upload your screenplay to the site, people tinker with it all they want, you can't send it to anyone else for 18 months, and in the end you might maybe get paid if you can get past all the legalese and someone decides to make whatever the crowd produces.

Know who has time to edit someone else's screenplay for free online? People who don't have good projects of their own they'd rather be revising. This isn't like Triggerstreet or Zoetrope where people are giving notes - this is a situation where people who have no idea what they're doing can fuck with your script in a relatively public forum. I was going to login and see what kind of scripts have already been uploaded, but there's no way in hell I'm signing onto that contract even as a casual reader. There are entirely too many loopholes.

It's a new method of doing business, so who knows, maybe it will payoff in the long run. I am not going to be the guinea pig.

Personally, I think it's a despicable attempt - one that has already seen a lot of success, sadly - at seducing desperate writers with promises of a back way into the business. But don't take my word for it.

Craig Mazin thinks it's a bad idea.

John August thinks it's a bad idea. What's funny is how Amazon actually links to his blog.

Drew McWeeny thinks it's a bad idea.

Michelle Lipton thinks it's a bad idea.

Hal Croasmun thinks it's a flawed idea.

Then there's this parody video, which is just awesome.

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