Being a writer is great! You pour your heart into a project, sometimes spending months or years on it, and when you release it into the world, it’s always met with undiluted praise and success. Ha ha! Just kidding, being a writer often sucks ass.
See, for example, Jeff Loveness, who wrote the script for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Quantumania was hyped up to be the film that would kick the Multiverse Saga into high gear. Instead, it tanked, earning a 48% critical score on Rotten Tomatoes and experiencing a startling 69% drop in box office sales after opening weekend. In short, Loveness experienced every writer’s worse nightmare: the spectacular failure of a project he was really proud of.
In a recent interview with The Daily Beast, Loveness opened up about the pain Quantumania’s reception caused him. “To be honest, those reviews took me by surprise,” Loveness said, explaining that he was in a “low spot” after the reviews came in.
Loveness went on to explain his reaction to the news, saying, “I’m really proud of what I wrote for Jonathan [Majors] and Michelle Pfeiffer … I thought that was good stuff, you know? And so I was just despondent, and I was really sad about it.”
Oof. I feel you, Jeff. One of the first things every writer learns is that they have to have thick skin, since rejection is part of the job. That doesn’t make it any easier, though, especially when the work that gets rejected is something you’re particularly proud of.
However, Loveness shared a little spark of positivity in the interview—which also pointed to the gulf between the movie’s critical and audience responses (for example, the Rotten Tomatoes audience score is currently 83%). Loveness says that he attended a screening, and his mood lifted when he heard the audience laughing at the jokes he’d written. “I’m like, ‘Goddamn! No, [the reviews] are wrong! I’m right! MODOK is great! …. I’m pretty happy with [the movie] overall, and I think I learned how to take a punch this week. And now that I learned that it’s not too bad, I can just get on with making things.”
Every artist, regardless of whether they liked Quantumania, should take Loveness’s words to heart. Just get on with making things. That’s where the true reward lies.
(via The Daily Beast, featured image: Marvel Entertainment)
