Steve my review of “Mank,” w/Gary Oldman as the screenwriter and Amanda Seyfried as Marion Davies: RN was also the scriptwriter (old joke in Hollywood: “She was so stupid, she slept with the writer”). You heard the old joke about the dumb actress in Hollywood - she slept with the writer!Īs the old joke about a Hollywood starlet so dumb she slept with the writer attests, screenwriters are widely perceived as the least powerful collaborators on movies. New York, NY: Owl Books (Henry Holt and Company, LLC) They call it ‘‘the voice,’’ ‘‘the melody’’ and every successful show has one. (The starlet joke goes: “She was so dumb, she slept with the writer.”) The exception is situation comedy. Writers, as everyone knows, are the lackeys of the film industry. 7:Īnd, indeed, if anyone has a real cause for revenge in Hollywood it is the creatively fleeced, and often uncredited, scenarists who for years have been labouring under that cheap, humiliating barb about the movie starlet who was so dumb she slept with a screenwriter.īy Linda Blandford: Linda Blandford writes from Los Angeles for The Guardian of London Ĩ June 1988, Glasgow (Scotland) Herald, “Hollywood strifes” by Anne Simpson, pg. That joke not only defines Hollywood’s social pecking order, it says more than I’d like to admit of the writer’s.

One of the oldest inside jokes out there is of the starlet so dumb she slept with the screenwriter in hopes of advancing her career. Hamondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books New York, NY, U.S.A.: Viking Penguin As one feminist screenwriter succinctly phrased it, ‘“In the world of studio politics, screenwriters as well as starlets are f-.” Sexual politics are one thing, but studio politics are something else-and something worse. Her big move? “She slept with the screenwriter.”Įven among feminist screenwriters, this joke meets with rueful guffaws.

Screenwriters themselves tell a joke about the ambitious but dumb starlet who came to Hollywood determined to make it big in the movie business. (She slept with a screenwriter.)ġ7 August 1986, Chicago (IL) Tribune, “Screenwriters get little credit, but the pendulum starts swinging in their direction” by Julia Cameron, sec. I have already observed that there are few jokes about directors, and have rarely heard any about actors, unless you include the one about the actress (your choice of ethnic group0 origin who wanted to get ahead in Hollywood. While Hollywood jokes may tell us a lot about the current state of the business and the attitudes of its participants, they are equally revealing in what they don’t talk about.

There is an old Hollywood joke, setup and punch line at once: “Did you hear about the actress who slept with the screenwriter to get a part?” Such is the paradox of writing for Hollywood, where everyone agrees that only good screenplays make good movies, yet screenwriters themselves are the least powerful men in a business that knows only power.Ħ February 1986, LA Weekly (Los Angeles, CA), “Have you heard the one about the honest agent?” by Christopher Monger, pg. ICM agent Sam Cohn, one of the giants in the business, quips, “Did you hear the one about the lamebrained actress who wanted to get ahead? She slept with the writer.”ģ March 1985, Washington (DC) Post, “Hollywood’s Script Doctor: Tom Mankiewicz, Tonic for Ailing Screenplays” by Paul Attansio, pg. The powers that be may all publicly proclaim that success is in the written word, but, even if this is true, the hierarchy of the motion-picture business doesn’t reflect it. She (Loraine Despres-ed.) also, however, has a healthy skepticism about the realities here, noting the old line about “the starlet who was so dumb she slept with a writer.”įebruary 1982, Cosmopolitan (New York, NY), “Screen-Writers: The Stars Behind the Stars” by Lawrence Eisenberg, pg. Although the screenwriter joke was very popular in the 1980s, it is probably much older.ġ5 April 1981, Nanaimo (BC) Daily Free Press, “ShowBiz: The Woman Who Really Shot J.R.” by Rick Du Brow, Wednesday Niter sec., pg. “One of the oldest inside jokes out there is of the starlet so dumb she slept with the screenwriter in hopes of advancing her career” was cited in the book None But a Blockhead: On Being a Writer (1986) by Larry L King.

“She’s so dumb/stupid, she slept with the writer” is a jocular saying illustrating the lowly place of a writer in a production, especially on a Hollywood set. To be cast in a Hollywood or a Broadway production, the old saying is that a starlet sleeps with the director to get the part.

Joke about screenwriter and starlet