‘Somebody,’ Wise Up

Regarding screenwriter John Scott Shepherd’s experience in the development process with “Joe Somebody” and “Life or Something Like It”: I sure hope that if my first couple of scripts become huge critical flops in consecutive years that I have a good friend like Patrick Goldstein, with a front-page column in the Calendar section, to act as my apologist (“Dumbed Down by Committee,” May 7).

In this film-savvy town, most folks already know that writers often go through hell in development, watching helplessly as their scripts are changed by any number of executives (and other writers) until they’re literally unrecognizable. What Goldstein and Shepherd seem to forget is that film-savvy people also know that when this happens, a writer, if he has the courage of his own convictions, has the option of taking his name off the film.

Guess whose name appears on both “Joe Somebody,” a movie Shepherd professes to hate, and “Life or Something Like It,” yet another movie he claims was ruined by others? John Scott Shepherd’s.

Suck it up, guys. That’s how the business works, so quit whining.

RUS STEDMAN

Encino