It’s the big day. Well, maybe not The Big Day, or The Big Day but it’s a day. Judgment day. For you and your script. It might be a round-table readthrough organised by a producer to hear your script aloud, to help with the next draft. Or it might be a rehearsed readthrough in front of a Controller or Commissioner to decide if you get to make a proper pilot, or even a series.
Either way, it’s crunch time. Squeaky bum time. You get the idea.
All the cast are sitting around a big table, along with the producer, director and half a dozen others who do stuff you haven’t quite figured out yet, but they seem to know who you are. Or at least they’ve guessed because you’re the least good-looking person in the room, who doesn’t seem at ease.
You are ‘the writer’. But are you a good writer?
Is this script any good? Are you funny? Did you make the right choices? Is that stuff you insisted on leaving in the script going to work? Is it going to get a laugh in the room? Is it going to play? Does the script make sense? Will the whole thing judder to a dreadful embarrassing halt as the last ten minutes make no sense, but they won’t stop reading it out? Will the actors understand all the subtleties and nuances of your amazing dialogue? Will they trash a key line? Will anyone actually read or notice some vital stage directions that make sense of the whole thing? Do you feel sick? Is it hot in here? Can someone open a window? Is this what you really want to do with your life? Didn’t your mum say you should have gone into teaching? Or the law? Maybe it’s not too late to retrain. Are you naked and everyone's laughing and you're going to wake up...
STOP. BREATHE.
It’s completely understandable, but if you approach a readthrough like this, it will be every bit as suffocatingly awful as you think it is, even if it goes quite well.
But a readthrough of a script is not an exercise in pride or vindication. It feels like it is, but it shouldn’t be. A readthrough is just part of the process. A painful part, for sure, but once you’ve accepted that, you’ll have a much nicer time.
Your Script Isn’t Perfect
What you need to realise before the readthrough starts is that your script isn’t perfect. It’s probably not awful, since you’ve been writing and rewriting it for a few weeks. Maybe even a few months. It might well work. There or thereabouts. But there’ll be parts of it that don’t work. They might be key moments that need fixing. The question is working out which bits they are.
If you’re rehearsing a readthrough for a commissioner, then hopefully this is not the first time the script has been read aloud. And perhaps you’ve got time to fix the faults and make some cuts. But let’s say it’s not a ‘pitching’ readthrough. After all, most
readthroughs are part of the process, intended to highlight script weaknesses. Plus, if it’s for a show that’s going to be broadcast, it gives all the departments a chance to hear the show and get a sense of what’s required from set design, props, costumes and all that.
This readthrough is just part of the process. It’s a good thing, like a trip to the dentist will show you which teeth need attention. Granted, people tend not to sit around and watch while you have your teeth checked, and draw conclusions about you and your talent from the state of your teeth, but you signed up to be a writer, so you know that people are going to look at your craft at some point. Get used to it.
Thinking Ahead
If you’re putting this in context, and playing the long game, you want your finished, edited broadcast show to be brilliant. The only way that can happen is if you shoot the right show. And the only way that can happen is if you have the right script – because if the script is wrong on the day, it’s very hard to fix. You want to find those script flaws now in a badly lit, windowless, basement meeting room – rather than in front of millions of people on TV or radio, or in front of a studio audience, or even in front of three dozen tired production crew while you’re shooting stuff on location and it’s obvious that it isn’t working and it’s too expensive to take time to fix it. So the readthrough is a good thing, even though it feels like a cold shower. Of bleach.
The actors may well be sight-reading the lines, and they might make mistakes on some key lines, but you’ll know from that readthrough what works, and what doesn’t; what scenes feel strangely long, pointless or unfunny (like those scenes at the Theme Park. Turns out that exec was right all along); what jokes you’ve clung onto from the start are not funny, especially as you’ve changed the context of those jokes in the previous rewrites. And there are the jokes that no one understands – and it turns out you’re the only person who heard of Fleming’s Left Hand Rule For Motors and understands it well enough for the joke to work. So that producer was right that people haven’t really heard it. You might even find the original moment, or motivator for the episode feels oddly out of place now and should probably be cut. Great. You can now cut it.
What’s The Worst That Can Happen?
The episode may fall apart completely in a read-through. I had that once on an episode of My Hero. It just wasn't funny. At all. We were recording the episode in front of an audience in five days, and had already pre-recorded some scenes. It was the worst day of my professional career. But we fixed it – because we all wanted to make a funny show. And it became my favourite episode. So, it doesn’t matter how wrong it goes. You can make it right.
Once the script has been read, and when the notes start flying, listen, think, consider, review and generally keep an open mind. The notes you’ll get will be a mixture of baffling, truthful, infuriating and infuriatingly truthful. And you’ve got time to fix the script so that it’s funny. Really funny. And that’s what you all want.
Keep bearing in mind that if your script is at this stage and the pressure is on you, at least you’re being paid. This is both what you wanted, and a lot less arduous than most jobs in human history like working in a factory, a mine or a cornfield. So get over yourself. In the grand scheme of human existence, your life is easy.
The Big Scary Readthrough