An Evening In Which William Monahan Tried Doing Script Coverage

Writer-director William Monahan tried doing script coverage? Apparently. Doesn't sound like the gig lasted long though. From his own account, maybe an evening. Doing script coverage ranks high up there among the most agonizing summer jobs he has had, in my opinion, second to his time as editor of Hamptons magazine.¹ While his position as editor of Hamptons magazine lasted several issues, his time doing script coverage, as he tells it in his New York Press essay "Driving the Miasma," seems to have lasted no more than one evening:²

I was out of school. A woman I knew started working for a film company and got me a gig where I was supposed to review and rewrite scripts. I thought I might make some money or ordinary reputation—the sensation was like being on the verge of suicide—and got a cottage off by myself in Massachusetts for that summer.

My landlady liked the Miasma. The cottage was a small, raftered place—mismatched cups and spoons, a kitchen table with yellow oilcloth on it—and I settled in to be by myself and get serious. About the third day the FedEx guy came, mentioned that he liked the Miasma. He left off a parcel of screenplays with yellow stick-ums plastered all over them and memos paperclipped to the logoed title cards. I sat on the couch, flipped open script one. The first lines went like this:

FADE UP ON:

A PAIR OF EYES. They are blue eyes, with crow's feet at the corners. Something tells you that these eyes have seen a lot. The man who owns these eyes is a man to be reckoned with.

PULL BACK TO REVEAL:

"SKIP" BURTON.

I'm dead serious. I read the script dutifully. It was about someone going to the Midwest to get revenge on a pack of townies. No one spoke English. It was based on other films and television shows. I opened another one, and it was worse. By the end of the evening there was a pile of smashed screenplays against the wall. One of them had contained the line, "The car he drives says a lot about him."

Each one of those screenplays was worth $600 to me if I merely wrote a two-page analysis. If I rewrote any of them, I'd get scale, which isn't bad. I burned the fucking things in the stove, and went out for a walk.

This evening spent smashing screenplays against the wall probably took place sometime in the early 1990s or late 1980s. I've heard of how exasperated script readers in Hollywood can get, but this is ridiculous. I wonder who these aspiring screenwriters were? To whom does the "SKIP" BURTON character belong? That's not my take-away question for this blog entry, though.

Take-away question: Which film company was it that William Monahan was supposed to review and rewrite scripts for?

Sources:

1) William Monahan. "The Burning Deck: My Brilliant Career at 'Hamptons'", New York Press, vol. 9, no. 29 (July 17–23, 1996), pp. 1, 28–29.
2) William Monahan. "Driving the Miasma: A Generational Automotive Report", New York Press, vol. 8, no. 5 (February 1–7, 1995), pp. 1, 16–17.