Our friend John August, the screenwriter with a Web presence who can be relied on to get things horribly wrong at a technical level, has topped himself, you might say. He’s launched a jeremiad against ScriptShadow, a site that reviews screenplays, including unproduced ones. ScriptShadow is merely bringing to a mass audience what was hidden behind closed doors. As August admits:

Aspiring screenwriters have always had access to this material the same way [ScriptShadow] apparently got access to it: By working and interning in the industry. In between answering phones… bright underpaid aspirants have the opportunity to read almost every script in town. Impromptu networks of assistants pass around their favorite screenplays, in the process picking the next generation of hot writers.

The elite screenwriter and producer castes, and their servants, have access to every script in Hollywood. They can say whatever they want about those scripts (short of defamation, I assume), but they can talk only to each other. These critics act like a royal family ensconced in a castle. ScriptShadow has breached the moat and knocked down the front gate.

The elite screenwriter and producer castes and the (not atypically gay) manservants who answer the latter’s phones do not have exclusive access anymore. It’s over, John; the world of limited disclosure among a prescreened clique has crashed into the sun. It’s now a question of learning to adapt to a world of full disclosure to all and sundry, even people who haven’t passed the laughably minimal test of securing an entry-level job on a studio lot. (These people are genuinely more qualified to review screenplays how?)

I don’t see how August can reasonably claim that it’s in a screenwriter’s best interest to read everything, and make sure everybody reads their own work, when “everybody” doesn’t actually mean everybody. And if he’s worried that studios will lock the writing process down, meaning that writers won’t get work for future scripts because nobody will have access to existing scripts, now might be the time to consider the wisdom of labouring in an industry where you never own your own work. It seems that the motion-picture industry is a much worse bargain for writers than the music industry ever was for musicians, since in their case rights eventually reverted to the artists much of the time.

I suppose it makes sense that a man who gets so much wrong about the Web would act surprised and alarmed when that same Web does something it has done all along.

“Tone… greatest virtues… frank, at times angry but typically one register below anger… typically fedupness… You have plenty of snark… funny and salable… Ubiquitous use of the word ‘you’… baggage… I’ve really sort of come around on the tone… Reflects very honestly on who would buy this book and how it would be promoted….

“You’re constricted on what you can do with a project like this, which you approach with humour and good grace… Slipping a little more gradually into such a frankness… I worry it will be more offputting than winning… Accusatory – j’accuse, right?… You understand the importance of the lede… Candour – as though one were sitting together and confronting us about what you’re feeling without fear… I worry that it might be a little overdone… key moments should be chosen…

“Interesting stuff is where you’ve done all your writing – like, ‘What is journalism?’

“Confrontation – deprogramming – lifestyle adjustment: I think that really works.”

A few excerpts from the book Libel by Peter Downard. (Cf. similar coverage of The Law of Libel and Slander in Canada.)

• First of all, defamation is a provincial and territorial matter. In Ontario, the relevant law is the Libel and Slander Act.

• You actually can defame someone using their own words (p. 17):

  Where a person’s own words are presented in a manner which distorts them, the effect may be considered to be especially damaging. In that case, the plaintiff is put in the more difficult position of having to explain an objection to words that came out of his or her own mouth and were believed to be true when spoken. In cases involving print media, the juxtaposition of words and images may also result in a person being held up to ridicule and contempt, even though innocent words are used.

• You can defame someone using a series of articles even if you don’t actually impute anything defamatory in an article mentioning a person.

  In the case of a series of articles in a newspaper, prior articles may be considered for the purpose of determining whether a subsequent article was defamatory to the plaintiff even though the plaintiff may not have been referred to in the earlier articles. This may be so, for example, where the series has an overall theme of reporting on people of bad reputation, or improper conduct of a particular type.

• Intent means nothing.

  Since the test for the “natural and ordinary meaning” is an objective one, the intention of the person communicating the words is irrelevant in determining the natural and ordinary meaning. The question is what the words meant to the ordinary reasonable reader, not what the defendant intended them to mean…. A defendant’s assertion that he was only jesting is irrelevant to the issue whether the words bore a defamatory meaning.

• What is malice? Again, it has a specific meaning (p. 103):

  Malice is a dominant and improper motive on the part of the defendant comprising a desire to injure the claimant, intentional dishonesty, reckless disregard for the truth, or any ulterior motive that conflicts with the interest or duty created by the occasion. […]

  Intrinsic evidence is evidence provided by the defamatory publication itself. The wording may be “so violent, outrageous or disproportionate to the facts” that it furnishes strong evidence of malice. Tone of voice may be considered. […]

  Extrinsic evidence is evidence of surrounding circumstances…. Malice will have existed if the defendant’s dominant motive in making the statement was to injure the plaintiff…. Malice also exists if it is concluded that the defendant was reckless in the sense of being indifferent to the truth or falsity of the words [at] issue, so that it may be said that the defendant had no honest belief in the truth of the words….

  Evidence that, prior to publication, there were in fact no grounds whatsoever for the truth of the statement will be strong evidence of malice. A failure to provide the plaintiff with an opportunity to respond to an allegation before defaming the plaintiff is evidence of malice. A failure to make proper inquiries or a failure to investigate may be evidence of malice…. If correct information on a subject is readily available through a public source, a failure to check that source may be evidence of malice.

To correct the many misapprehensions that users of the second-worst blog platform seem to manifest:

• Meghano, kiddo, what I have are well written, beautifully-typeset, and illustrated proposals, which are always well received by people who have read them. The books just have not fit the publishers’ specific lists. While disappointing, it isn’t unexpected news and, when dispassionately delivered, is no problem for me.

  As I have been published for 20 years, I am not just airlifting entire manuscripts into agents’ offices; I pre-query. Hence in fact there were no unsolicited submissions at all. You have this quite incorrect, and could have clarified it had you bothered to ask.

  Additionally, none of the books I’m working on is a novel, let alone one I’ve been “working on for 15 years.” (Hence, Ambrosia/Lamebot, I am not attempting to “get a literary-fiction book deal.” Fek, take note.)

  So not a lot of accuracy there, Meghano. In fact, none.

• Who exactly is Josh Olson?

• Actually, Turbine, I am quite a competent writer. Check my reviews. Your opinion is noted, though. Also, there were no “perceived slights”; I am merely reporting what happened. There is no book on a slush pile, as I have already explained. Unsolicited submission of an entire manuscript is unwise. I’ve never done it and don’t intend to start.

• Fek will by now be aware that I have made no unsolicited submissions. And actually, Fek could have verified that before “reblogging.” To again explain what is obvious to all professional writers, one queries an editor or agent to determine if a book is in their general subject area, then, if the answer is yes, asks if they’d like to read a proposal. Then one submits a proposal. One does not submit a manuscript and one does not do anything without solicitation.

  So we can add Fek to the list of people who have gotten this quite wrong – through inexperience and because they didn’t bother fact-checking with me beforehand.

  And finally, while I am quite capable of being cantankerous, I’m not being that way here. Not even now, when there’s ample reason.

• And again, Lindsay Robertson Liz Spiers, no, nothing “unsolicited” is being sent, including “pitches.” You could have verified this but didn’t.

  When an experienced writer pre-pitches an editor on a project, the editor has an obligation to respond and respond nicely.

  If they asked Joe to pitch them, yes.

  They did. Well spotted, Lindsay Liz; your writing experience has stood you well there. Your comparisons with publicists are inapplicable, though.

• Bibliothèque, would you like to read one of my proposals? (Confidentially, of course?) You can read both of my previous books online, or buy a print version of the first one for next to nothing. Hence you could put your thesis to the test.

• Katie Bakes seems to like the idea, though. Doesn’t that help? I think it does. And Skybarn was quite amusing.

There seems to be an assumption that I am a beginner at this industry while people who run Tumblrs are the experts. Somebody has that backwards.

Because I publish essentially everything I work on and have already been documenting the atrocities of literary agents I’ve had the misfortune to tangle with, today I begin to publish basic details of all or nearly all my dealings with publishers. (Including names.)

This form of disclosure has other aims, including bringing life to the term “accountability.” When an experienced writer pre-pitches an editor on a project, the editor has an obligation to respond and respond nicely. These postings will have, I hope, the salutary effect of exposing which agents either aren’t at their posts anymore (hence cannot answer mail sent to those posts) or just ignore potential authors. As publishing is a futures business, editors like the latter hasten the demise of book publishing.

If you think this is a bad idea, you must not be an author trying to sell a book. I’m just the one with the guts to do it. [continue with: Publisher accountability (1) →]

Our friends at the TTC are fresh off a month of Soviet-style namecalling (the system’s best customers are “hoarders”) and flatly lying about how much money those hoarders are “costing” the system.

Well, guess what: There is no foreseeable day on which you will be able to buy a Metropass electronically. And that next-vehicle-arrival system the online elite insists is necessary because the entire city needs to be reconfigured so it works on their iPhones? That’s not coming either.

The reason is simple: Those projects, and many more, were deferred from next year’s budget. Such deferral took place at the TTC meeting of 2009.10.29. The full list is on p. 19 of the TTC Capital Budget PDF and includes these gems:

• Debit-/credit-card capability at collectors’ booths ($1.7 million): You’d better have $121 cash on you when you line up interminably for your Metropass
• University Subway Stations Renaissance ($0.1M) and Station Modernization Program ($74.9M): Existing stations will not be ransacked to suit the tax-shelter needs of private foundation donors or the whims of noted art experts Sandra Bussin and Adam Giambrone
• Easier Access Phase III ($60.2M): It’s gonna take longer to make subway stations accessible, though this is a tad awkward as the TTC is staring down a legal deadline of the year 2020
• Subway station public washroom improvements ($4.5M): They will remain unsafe pigsties (and will not be upgraded to the sole hand-dryer technology that works, the Dyson Airblade)
• Downtown Relief Line study ($3.0M): Despite the mayor’s name-dropping this long-dreamed-of subway line last week, it’s going nowhere
• Transit signal priorities ($22.0M): Asshole motorists, not atypically in low-end German sedans, will continue to make left turns directly in front of jam-packed ALRVs
• Next-vehicle arrival (zero)
• And finally: E-commerce ($0.8M)

So to recap: The largest transit system in Canada will remain functionally indistinguishable in 2010 from the day it opened in 1954. You will line up to give a little man in a booth cash money for perforated paper tickets or metal tokens, or, in a daringly modern twist, a magnetized passcard.

I see that the juvenile cyberelite continues to delude itself that its deep immersion in the Internet makes it immune from the real world – which, outside the milieu of the wifi-enabled coffee shop, is where the peasants live.

Surely we don’t need Andrew Keen to remind us that a technological elite from a tiny killzone in northern California has invented the tools that run “our” lives. These tools are like the Googleplex in that they favour an infantilized mob of arrested teenage boys – in last night’s delicious case, almost literally so.

Teehan & Lax is a leading “UX shop” in Toronto. It’s run by a tall, strapping fella with fascinating looks and an accent he hasn’t quite explained properly, and by a runt who believes some people deserve everything they get in blog comment fields. (You see where this is going already.) It was the ostensible Swede who walked smartly over and unplugged me that time I was at their office attempting to telnet into my box to read mail. So I’m predisposed to dislike them already. I declare my bias.

It turns out not to be a surprise that the kind of company that believes it’s A-OK to malign third parties (also to spam subway passengers on TTC OneStop “information” displays, whose ads they design) is the same kind of company that hires boy designers with a fondness for toy guns. But surely toy guns aren’t real; it’s impossible for anyone to get hurt. Plus when you make a toy gun out of Lego, don’t you kill two birds with one round?

A grown man who builds a Lego handgun couldn’t work anywhere but the “UX” industry. Nobody else would hire somebody that immature and sheltered. Only the online industry has this degree of tolerance for maladaptive manifestations of the autistic spectrum. Real men play with toys only when nearby children are also playing with them. Anybody else doing that isn’t a man but a teenager.

These are the kind of people who aren’t just hired but cultivated. These immature and maladaptive behaviours aren’t just tolerated but nurtured.

I’ll point to a legislative loophole that prevented this case from achieving a happy ending. Replica handguns aren’t actually illegal at the federal level. If only they were, Jeremy Bell would be learning a hard-knock lesson he and other members of the decadent online elite desperately need to learn.

In a properly functioning society, people like him wouldn’t be able to laugh off the way their actions prompted a complaint from a nosy neighbour, shut down a neighbourhood, and resulted in momentary confinement in handcuffs. Instead they’d be hiring defence lawyers and countering Crown accusations that their own immaturity and obliviousness warrant jail time.

Undersocialized, uncultured nerds let loose in playgrounds overrun by their own kind are a risk to society. This time the gun was a toy.