Nice post Scott.

So if one takes a crap assignment, what do you think of the attempt by the writer to bring the very best to the situation they can. IE: you can try and work a structure that is as good as it can be, maybe create a secondary character that has interesting and dramatic contradictions, maybe write one set piece that works beautifully in and of itself?

In other words, even when you are selling your soul, is there not still space to hone your craft and do the best you can do, even it's just making a particularly sequence work?

James, that's a big part of the point I mentioned at the very end re a future post: I'll get into it more later, but if you have just broken into the business and are starting out at the bottom ring of the screenwriting latter, it's most likely that the OWA's (open writing assignments) you'll be considered to write are a studio's nearly dead projects. In other words, they're willing to give one last try to a moribund project - at a newcomer writer's low fee - to see if they can do anything with the material.

Now most of these projects are nearly dead because they're problematic. And those problems can create real headaches for you. They may also not be the most inspired of ideas, again making it a tough writing assignment.

But as you note, you can use the experience to hone your writing skills, elevate the material as best you can, etc. Because if you can breathe some life into it, then you start to work you way up the ladder -- "Hey, he turned that piece of shit project into something now in active development. Maybe he's good."

The problem is that yes, you can justify working on that project in order to "hone your craft," but if you start using that excuse for every piece of crap project to come your way, you can get stuck in the soulless rut I mentioned in my post.

More on the subject later.

I would so totally write Mister Ed in 3D.

But not necessarily as a musical.

Granted, it might end badly, because in 2005 Fox (or someone) was trying to reboot the show...until the showrunner committed suicide. Who know the exact reason...

But I'm a huge fan of Mister Ed. Found the show on TV Land when I was a freshman in high school, and watched it every single day from there on out, until they stopped airing it. (I'd done the same with Get Smart and Gilligan's Island.) It was one of those few things I could count on as consistently making me feel good throughout my teenage years. Nostalgia now, I guess.

Great article Scott.

It reminded me of this old axiom, "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

@Nicholas: So there's the yin to my yang post - since you love Mr. Ed, you would be the perfect writer to get that gig. How much better for the project for you to write it than Mr. Hates Horses Dude?

Though I believe that you should be ready to say no, I think the reasons need to be good ones. As a writer, I don't feel like you can have a problem with any story.
My first option (a short in Pre I'm extending to a feature) is a topic I'm not a "fan of" but I felt that I had to be able to distance myself from the content and write the story.
It worked.

Wish I'd read this two weeks ago - just signed up to a project I really don't want to work on and am regretting it already!

Aside from the drinking and drugs, that describes my life now. I'd take Mr. Ed: The Musical (in 3D) over another day in my corporate shill job.