What's the difference between a whore and a screenwriter?

Not everyone thinks they can be a whore.

I've cashed the check for the treatment, which qualifies me for both positions. The producers are meeting with the money guy tonight, asking for more money. This is the guy who also wrote the novel for this steaming heap of ordure, extending the concept of vanity press to new heights of hubris and self-regard.

And what's worse, the money man sees himself in the character of the good guy, a character who lives a life of golden ease, no worries, no obstacles to his life's goal which is to play golf and exchange dewey glances with his chaste girlfriend.

The problem is, this sun-dappled plotline wouldn't even make a decent porn flick (there are obstacles in porn, right? Like who's going to pay for the pizza?) But if you take the bad guy's story, and make this a dark comedy with a rogue at its center, then you've got a damn good plotline. But that's not going to fly, not when the money guy sees himself as our golf star.

Wrestling with this has been tough. I've pushed a friend's script back a few weeks (sorry Ken - I'll get to it this weekend, I promise), I've completely abandoned my novel and I've encroached on the sanctity of my day job with long calls from the producer/director, a guy who calls me so often that my daughter refers to him as my boyfriend.

This morning, on my way to the day job, I think I it figured out. I'll rework the treatment at lunch, just in time for the meeting. I know, it's taken me five or six weeks to figure this out. Unlike real whores, writers can't satisfy clients with a few minutes of squeeze and tickle, can we?

But we can dream.