People in the industry will be interested or not interested in your script before they ever read it.
I’ve had a hard time wrapping my head around this one, but here’s the situation: With few exceptions, studios today don’t make movies that aren’t based on some already popular intellectual material—a novel, a video game, a comic book, a previous movie, etc. The ones they make from spec scripts have a high concept hook and have a role for one of a handful of (mostly male) actors who are considered bankable stars. Any script that doesn’t fit the above description is an indie. But… indie budgets tend to be limited at best. It’s pretty easy to write a script that doesn’t qualify for studio or independent consideration. Nice, right?
Smart, experienced professionals tried to explain all this to me before I finished my first three scripts, but either I didn’t get it or I didn’t care. I think it was a little of both. In my head, I kept saying, yeah, but this is a great movie. Honestly, I don’t regret my decisions one bit, but you may wish to take a different path.
Reputable contests and services can get your script in the hands of Hollywood people who will actually read it.
The good news is that I won a contest with one script (the Drama category of The Page Award) and then got that script—and one other—rated highly on The Black List web site. My first script—a low concept drama—has been optioned. It is right now in the hands of an Academy Award-winning actor who could almost instantly turn the whole project green. Pretty good for an idea that had no chance. My other script that has an indie plot and a studio budget just earned me a nomination from The Black List for The Sundance Screenwriters Lab.
You can get a script optioned without an agent.
I actually had an ICM agent who loved my first script. She repped me for a Hollywood minute and sent the script to several companies. Only one of these companies even read it. That company said no thanks but asked to meet with me. Then they canceled the meeting, and I never heard from them again.
But… I posted that script on The Black List web site, it got a great rating, and a month or so later I got a call from a company that wanted to option it. An entertainment attorney negotiated the deal and that was it. Done.
People you know in the business will probably not help you.
I’m still thinking about this one. I live in New York. I have little experience with “the way Hollywood works,” but I think I’m a pretty good reader of people. A New York friend who is not in the business but who has some connections has been extremely generous in trying to help me. He was instrumental in getting the above-mentioned ICM agent to read my work. Another acquaintance who has become a friend has offered me lots of excellent advice and has made some genuine efforts to get my scripts in the hands of some important people.
Other than that, people I know in the business have essentially smiled and looked the other way. They’ve occasionally gotten a little prickly.
To be clear, I’ve never badgered someone to help me. In almost every case, I didn’t even ask these people to read a script until they offered. I occasionally made calls or wrote emails asking them for advice. Once, I asked a friend if he would connect me to another person he knew well.
Put it this way: I don’t contact these people about my career any more. I got the message—mostly via silence, occasionally through semi-polite refusals to help—that I ought to stop.
And I don’t think these people are jerks.
I believe there are a few factors at work:
1) People are busy. They have their own careers to grow. No matter what the appearance may be, people in Hollywood almost never feel that they’ve “made it.” They are always scrapping for the next job, always trying to pull off the almost impossible trick of making art that will meet the approval of businessmen—yes, it’s mostly men—who don’t necessarily care about art. It’s a nerve-racking, paranoia-filled game. People may not want to tell you that they feel this way, especially if they’re successful, but they probably feel this way.
2) Even prominent Hollywood people often aren’t very powerful. Movies usually cost millions of dollars to make. This simple fact means that the majority of people in Hollywood, no matter how talented, are dependent upon others to get movies made. These talented people might want to help you, but in many cases, they just can’t. And they must sometimes think, why should I use the capital I have to get my friend’s script read when I have my own fragile projects to keep alive?
3) The vast majority of writers who ask for help from established people haven’t written anything good. And by the way, this fact makes the established, potential helpers very cynical. I’m convinced that they see some new material as bad simply because they’ve decided ahead of time that it must be bad. Their unconscious brains are playing the odds, and the odds being what they are, the unconscious brains are usually right. As a side note, I think there are two kinds of writers. Those who can talk analytically and flexibly about what makes writing effective and those who can write well but haven’t a conscious clue how they do it. The second kind of writer is extremely likely to deem lots of people’s writing “bad.” While the talented analyzer can see a tiny flaw in a scene that is making it “bad” and thus see the scene as essentially good, the second writer who relies on pure instinct only sees the flawed iteration of the scene.
A positive response to your writing means more than a negative one.
This is not a Pollyannaish claim. It’s logical.
Forget about the complexities of good writing for a moment. Think about what it takes just to find your damn missing keys. When you can’t find them, it’s almost always because you didn’t look in the place where you “know they can’t possibly be.” Or, even more frustratingly, because you looked there carelessly, “knowing” that they’re not there.
Now, think about what it takes to create a beautiful screenplay. Its emotional impact depends upon a thousand subtleties that, because you’re a good writer, you make clear but not obvious. You leave little gaps between what is said or done and what is meant. These are invitations for a good reader to take a little—or even large—leap, and you make your screenplay a series of invitations because you know that what’s on the page is never satisfying to a reader. It’s the leap that matters.
Ultimately, in a good piece of narrative writing, you can only invite a reader to the meaning-and-emotion party. We’ve all seen the movies that spurn invitations, choosing instead to shove us in the door and pour us a drink we didn’t want. We get whatever it is we were supposed to get, but we’re left checking for our wallets.
So back to my claim about a positive reader-response meaning more than a negative one. Can bad writing prevent the necessary leaps? You bet.
But guess what? So can the reader’s bad mood. So can the dog barking in the next room, or the child demanding the reader’s attention at the exact moment that a script makes the same demand. I think readers don’t often realize this: You have to give a script more attention than you give a movie on the screen. Remember that a movie has already been filtered through the interpretive consciousnesses of the actors and the director. A script is inert without a reader.
Red wheelbarrows and script readers—yes, so much depends on them.
And don’t forget, no one can find something that they already “know” is not there. No matter how much they “look.”
So the person who loves your script—genuinely loves it—has proven something that the reader who thinks it’s bad has not. Yes, proven. This reader has proven that the gaps are leapable and that the flights are satisfying. And where there is one such reader there are more. Sometimes it takes a while to find them and sometimes you can’t find enough of them to make a multi-million dollar movie, but I’d guess that the vast majority of movies ever made have survived readers (probably a majority of readers) who thought the scripts were bad.
Oh yeah, and some of them were bad. But that’s another article.