Holy shit, have you seen this thing at Wired where they lay out the process behind writing a 2-3 page article on Charlie Kaufman for the magazine? It is like a case study for why the rest of the print world is plummeting in flames into a mountainside of its own creation. Every teensy little step along the way is drawn out and questioned and workshopped and and brainstormed and troubleshot and put into meetings and bounced off no less than three different editors. So far they’re just at the rough draft and already they’ve racked up 98 days worth of effort and people’s salaries. The whole thing is a grueling, three-month-long ordeal, and all for 3,000 words and a couple pictures that some schmuck will read one time in his bathroom and mumble “Hmmm.” That’s 30 words a day, the same number as that last sentence, which took me approximately 11 seconds and one ball scratch to tap out. Anyways, take a few minutes to read the rest of it and we’ll wait here for you to crank your jaw back into its rightful place.

The thing starts with the writer’s pitch at a meeting in May, which he has decided it would be a good idea to frame in the self-reflexive style of his subject’s writing.

“OK, here we go. Writing the pitch. Pitch pitch pitch. A pitch about Charlie Kaufman. Charlie Kaufman, Oscar-award winning screenwriter of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation, and Being John Malkovich. Just finished his directorial debut, Synechodoche, New York, which was the only American film to premiere at Cannes this year. Just finished his directorial debut, Synechodoche, New York… It would be great to capture this show-and-prove moment.  So don’t blow it, Jason.”

Sidestepping the issue of this being extraordinarily lame, dude has written and somehow “presented” (still not sure how this worked, did he read all the cutesy parentheticals and Ed notes in a different voice and make finger-brackets around them?) a 600-word screed for which an email saying “Hi gang, I’d like to do a profile on Charlie Kaufman, the guy who wrote all those movies. Interested?” would have just as easily worked. He is 1/5 an article in the hole coming out the gate.

The thread picks up two months down the road, when someone from Wired finally sends an email to Charlie Kaufman’s people seeing if he’s up for it. In all fairness, the idea could have just taken a back burner to whatever else folks were working on, but given the reams of hemming and hawing and back & forth that follows, I sort of doubt that’s the case.

Kaufman’s rep writes back asking for a synopsis of the piece, the writer, Jason, churns out some overblown crap, and four. days. later. the editor emails it to the rep. Are these people hard of clicking or something? This also marks the beginning of some particularly excruciating “print jargon” in the guy’s emails with his editor, the worst offender being the use of “scenes” to describe the different places he’s planning on hanging out with Kaufman.

So, the article is still up in the air at this point, Kaufman hasn’t said yes, they haven’t even seen the movie they’re supposed to be basing it around. Out of the blue, Jason jizzes off another 400 words to his editor about the “shape” of the piece he is still, insanely, three weeks away from actually starting. The heading claims he sent this email at 4:55 PM, but if you sub out the words “Kaufman” and “Adaptation” for the name and lead singer of your favorite band, it reads like every conversation you’ve ever had at 4:55 AM. Mind-bogglingly, and in glaring defiance of the note’s closing “no need to resopnd,” his editor resopnds.

By the time the editor has given him his wholly unnecessary “letter of assignment” and Jason’s finally interviewed Kaufman, sorted out the picture, and sat down to start writing the piece he is basically inventing ways to make the task longer and harder than it needs to be. Note the hourlong email chain about what directors’ last names are used as adjectives. Note the fact that in his rough draft he types out the phrase “Amy Pascal, Sony’s TITLE TK” instead of typing the first two words into Google, where her title is contained in the first sentence of the first result (and confirmed in the second).

This last little detail perfectly encapsulates the problem with mainstream print media, just as much as the meetings and the multiple editors and getting everyone in the company’s official stamp of approval at every stage of the process. Everything has to be done according to the rules of “real journalism” without any question of their actual worth. Instead of simply Googling a famous executive’s title (because Googling is lazy journalism) Jason leaves a note to himself or his editor to figure it out some other way before he submits his article to the magazine fact-checker. Doesn’t matter that the fact-checker is then going to confirm this title, presumably the same way Jason eventually figures it out, you’ve still got to go through the motions to keep up the appearance of professionalism. 

It’s the same thing as the crap they drill into students’ head in journalism school about “conflicts of interest,” like how you’re never supposed to accept gifts or a meal from anybody you’re writing about, even after the fact. It’s not because anyone is ever going to be able bribe you into changing your story or lying to cover up for his company by sending you a fruit basket, but so critics can’t call you and your paper out for not following the rules. That’s not a conflict of interest, it’s a tautology.

Anyways, I guess the whole thing with the storyboard blog is meant to give you an appreciation for all the effort that goes into a simple (and so far, kind of shitty) article, but when most of the effort involves getting over hurdles you’ve set in your own way to prove that you’re a “real media outlet”, it just makes me appreciate the people who know how to get shit done and move on.

TERRY HAND