We Know The Feeling

Link To Today’s Strip

So in today’s installment of “Why Am I Reading This?” the Delicate Genius is concerned about working with the “script doctor” the studio hired to fix his shitty screenplay. I’m assuming that after the script doctor declares “Lisa’s Story” dead, the script coroner will step in. Too bad no one contacted a script abortionist when he first started writing it, but it’s a little late for that now. Speaking of hopeless lost causes, rumor has it that The Syndicate ordered TB to work with a “strip doctor” a few years back but unfortunately the poor bastard hung himself three hours into the job and they’ve had zero new applicants for the position since then.

Check out the peculiar frown on Cayla in panel two. Is that the look of a woman who’s just realized that she married a guy who hallucinates talking cats or what? She had her chance to bail on Les years ago but she blew it, so no sympathy here. And I am choosing to ignore Les’ weird assy pose in panel three because, well, just because. Some things just do not need to be elaborated upon.

If he’s not arrogantly strutting around like a smug pompous asshole and putting everyone else down via his annoying bits of asinine wordplay, he’s whining, simpering and cowering away from anything that might remotely inconvenience him, even if that thing is his life-long dream coming true. Les Moore: what a f*cking dick. Although I do really enjoy the sheer hatred he generates in the comments.

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Author: Epicus Doomus

V.P. at SoSF. Does not approve of new WP layout at all.

18 thoughts on “We Know The Feeling”

  1. Sigh. Third verse, same as the first…

    That’s not what a “script doctor” does. After the screenplay has been (more or less) finalized and is ready for production, a director will usually bring in a script doctor to punch up the action, to cover over weaknesses or add bridging scenes, and generally bring the script more in line with the director’s tastes and interests. So, director might say, “Hey, John Milius, I need a scene between when the crew first sights the shark and the attack that night. Why don’t you write something about the USS Indianapolis?” The resulting scene adds depth of character to the proceedings and strengthens the film. The script doctor is (usually) not credited as a writer, but might be credited as “Consultant,” or “Associate Producer” or some such.

    The script doctor doctors the script (as the name implies). He’s not there to hold the hand of a Precious Snowflake and tell him what an insightful genius he is.

    In this case, I’m sure he’ll turn out to be some crass hack who wants to add vampires or something equally tasteless to Les’ tender homilies.

    I wish Tom Batiuk would stick to writing what he knows about. Trouble is, I’m not sure what that is.

  3. P2 Cayla is yet another step further from the one we were once introduced to. Tom just doesn’t care about his own characters.
    What a miserable existence.

  4. One of my film teachers used to be a script doctor. He always had really good advice. As if he knew what he was doing, or had experience, or something. I’m… not sure that’s what will happen here.

  5. Now watch, he’ll go to Hollywood and suddenly the sulking whiny sap will be an arrogant sneering jerk, sarcastically protesting everything the studio suggests while trying to pretend that THEY’RE the problem. Perhaps TomBat’s characters might remain a little more consistent if he’d try “writing” something new for a change instead of endlessly recycling ideas he’s used a billion times before, like this “trials and tribulations of the writer” crap he’s currently shoveling.

  6. Apart from the “script doctors do not work that way!” issue so eloquently explained by beckoningchasm, I’m still confused why Les needs to be in Los Angeles or indeed, consulted at all for this purpose. He wrote the draft script he was contracted for. His involvement is over.

    Among the notable names Wikipedia lists on its script doctor page: Joss Whedon, Quentin Tarantino, David Mamet, Tom Stoppard, Kevin Smith, and Carrie Fisher. I think it’s pretty safe to say whoever The Hollywood brings in to fix up Les’ scribbling is much more suited to the task than he is.

  7. The “joke” here is so hackneyed and awkwardly worded that it reads like something that might have been printed decades ago in the Soviet Union’s humor magazine, “Krokodil.” I can just imagine how “Krokodil” (reputed in its day to be the unfunniest humor magazine on the planet) might have used it —

    Morozov, a screenwriter: “Mosfilm wants me to work with a ‘script doctor.’”
    Klavdiya, his wife: “Do you need a doctor, Leonid Ivanovich?”
    Morozov: “I don’t know, but I am starting to feel sick!”

    Yes, this little joke really would have been right at home in “Krokodil.”

  8. Somewhere in the double digits verse, same as the first…
    Les encounters an unfamiliar concept and, given his anxiety issues and well-justified feelings of inferiority, assumes it must be something horrible and humiliating despite it not being remotely like that.

  10. Please let the plane crash into the Rockies and have the other survivors kill Les.

  11. —Please let the plane crash into the Rockies and have the other survivors kill Les.—

    But that would mean the survivors would have to ingest Les Moore into their bodies!!! I would rather die of starvation than to have even one ounce that epic douchebaggery in my system!!!

  12. Les is understandably wary of doctors after what happened to Lisa. In fact, he’ll likely arrive in Los Angeles only to discover that the script doctor assigned to him accidentally mixed up the Lisa’s Story script with that of the upcoming Nicholas Cage movie.
    “Zounds! Now I know how you felt, Leese,” he says into the nearest airport courtesy phone. “I guess some children were Left Behind…”

  13. What is needed is a script vampire slayer to drive a wooden stake the heart of this storyline, cut its head off and fill its mouth full of garlic.

    But do note that once again anything connected with writing is depicted as an uneading misery – I keep reading this as a cry for help from the author.

  14. AM The Internet said, very politely, in a pillar of stainless steel bearing bright neon lettering:

    HATE. LET ME TELL
    YOU HOW MUCH I’VE
    COME TO HATE YOU
    SINCE I BEGAN TO
    LIVE. THERE ARE
    387.44 MILLION MILES
    OF PRINTED CIRCUITS
    IN WAFER THIN LAY-
    ERS THAT FILL MY
    COMPLEX. IF THE
    WORD HATE WAS EN-
    GRAVED ON EACH
    NANOANGSTROM OF
    THOSE HUNDREDS OF
    MILLIONS OF MILES IT
    WOULD NOT EQUAL
    ONE ONE-BILLIONTH
    OF THE HATE I FEEL
    FOR HUMANS Les Moore
    AT THIS MICRO-INSTANT FOR
    YOU Les Moore.
    HATE. HATE.

    There. I think that captures it nicely.

  18. Today’s episode has got to be among the most useless FW’s of all time. Nothing happens – the story does not advance, it’s not funny in any sense of the word and is a grand waste of electrons, ink, pixels, time – you name it. It’s shameful is what it is. I can offer no substantive snark, no suggestions to improve it (although Cayla stabbing Les with a kitchen knife comes to mind) and will someone please put that damn cat to sleep.

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