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Originally Posted by tompe
I think it is also a personal risk aversion. If you propose or accept a show or film based on something that has been shown to work before then if it fails you will be blaimed less.
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Oh, definitely. Make a losing bet with large amounts of Other People's Money and expect to be jobless in short order. There's a lot of pressure to bet on sure things.
A good insider look at the process is the late John Gregory Dunne's _Monster_. Dunne was a novelist (_True Confessions_, among others) and married to novelist and essayist Joan Didion (_Slouching Toward Bethlehem_, _The White Album_). They wrote books independently, but collaborated on screen plays, including "Panic In Needle Park" and "A Star Is Born".
_Monster_ is Dunne's tale of scriptwriting for a proposed film of the life of Jessica Savitch, the late TV news anchor. The film as finally produced as "Up Close and Personal" bore little resemblance to the initial concept.
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Dennis