"You hate to see yourself do one draft of a script and then have somebody else come back in and change what you've done"
About this Quote
There is a particular sting in watching your own work get “improved” by committee, and Thomas Lennon names it with the plainspoken irritation of someone who’s spent years inside the machine. The line isn’t about preciousness so much as authorship under industrial conditions: in film and TV, a script can be less a document than a relay baton, passed from writer to writer, producer to producer, each hand leaving fingerprints. Lennon’s “you hate to see” is doing cultural work here. It’s casual, almost shruggy, but it smuggles in a shared grievance and invites solidarity from anyone who’s ever had a deadline met with notes.
The subtext is a quiet negotiation of status. Lennon is an actor, but he’s also a writer; the quote asserts that identity without bragging. In Hollywood, rewriting is power, and power often looks like someone else getting the last pass. The pain isn’t merely aesthetic; it’s existential. One draft is a claim: I shaped the story, I built the jokes, I made the choices. A rewrite can feel like being edited out of your own voice, even when the final product succeeds.
Context matters: Lennon comes from comedy, where rhythm and intention are microscopic. Change a line and you don’t just alter meaning; you break timing, tone, character. His complaint lands because it’s less romantic “artist vs. philistines” and more workplace realism: collaboration is the job, but erasure is the fear.
The subtext is a quiet negotiation of status. Lennon is an actor, but he’s also a writer; the quote asserts that identity without bragging. In Hollywood, rewriting is power, and power often looks like someone else getting the last pass. The pain isn’t merely aesthetic; it’s existential. One draft is a claim: I shaped the story, I built the jokes, I made the choices. A rewrite can feel like being edited out of your own voice, even when the final product succeeds.
Context matters: Lennon comes from comedy, where rhythm and intention are microscopic. Change a line and you don’t just alter meaning; you break timing, tone, character. His complaint lands because it’s less romantic “artist vs. philistines” and more workplace realism: collaboration is the job, but erasure is the fear.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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