“Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.” -Erma Bombeck

It’s Thanksgiving week, and as with many holiday scenarios, my own Thanksgiving will be spent with family and friends.

In my case, actually, ex-family. I spend the holidays with my brother’s ex-wife’s family.

Huh?

Being as I live in Chicago, it’s been convenient through the years to head up to Wisconsin for Thanksgiving. Quick 90-minute car ride, nice scenery. Those folks always liked me more than my brother, even when he was still married to their daughter.

We’re Packer fans, you see…

Read the rest of this entry »

For those of you unable to make the lecture today at Chicago Screenwriters Network. I’ll post the full content shortly, but for now, let me ask you this:

Do you need an agent to start your career as a writer?

Short answer is… No.

Do you need to submit and place well in screenwriting contests to start your career as a filmmaker?

No and no.

Do you need to go to L.A to start a career in the business?

No, no, and NO!

I stand before you a true convert to the new religion: DIY  Film-making. This is not a new church, you might say. Low budget movies have been around since William K.L. Dickson filmed Fred Ott’s Sneeze  in 1894. John Cassavetes made films for low money. So did Orson Wells, who made bad wine commercials to finance his low-budget Shakespeare adaptations… Robert Rodriguez literally wrote the book, and major directors like Spike Lee and Aronofsky getting their starts on the cheap. Credit-card filmmaking has been around forever,  the watchword being FILM making. The early efforts of ALL these were made ON FILM– which brings us to what is new: TECHNOLOGY.

What is new is being able to pick up a Canon 7D, or an Alexa, or a Red, or any of the Sony HD cams, and shoot a movie saying EXACTLY what you want to say, maintaining full control of both content and distribution. Because what is also new are digital platforms to sell your product that didn’t exist even ten years ago. Platforms that have leveled the playing field and democratized the entire process of the art.

We take these rapid advances for granted these days. It’s the speed of the change that is often truly breathtaking, and the wondering on where it all will lead. So what’s that got to do with you, Good Reader?

Here is Hollywood. Here is the true 1%. Behind this is the gated community. The kidney-shaped pools and impeccable hedge rows. Million Dollar mansions and Lamborghini excess. The Country Club of which you are most definitely NOT a member. You cannot apply to this club. The gatekeepers know you are not of their cloth. They can SMELL you, Good Reader. Can smell your WANTING, your desperation to join them on the inside. They have set up impenetrable motes and ramparts to stop you. How will you scale these walls?

For your part, you have always played by the rules. You wrote query letters to find an agent, followed the message boards, paid through the nose to take advice from the gurus and bought their fucking books even though it didn’t much seem to help. You sent into as many screenwriting contests as you could, put your scripts up on Inktip or other websites that claimed the inside ear of “Industry Professionals”–meaning the 1%.

You did all these things with a belief in your work as a writer. You just wanted a chance, a chance to… what?  To bag an agent, take meetings, pitch and get sent out on assignment work, work your way into the Writer’s Guild, pump out one-two-five movies, establish a reputation and make your rate, TO HAVE A CAREER!

To get yourself on the INSIDE. Beyond the Hollywood  gate…Old School-style.

People, Old School is dead.

Some thoughts on the new religion, coming your way….next week!

*EDITOR’S NOTE: If you’re in Chicago next weekend, I’ll be speaking at the Chicago Screenwriter’s Network at Porkchop Restaurant, Sunday, November 4th. Check Chicago Screenwriters Network for time and location!

There will also be some up-to-date information about CHAT, the micro-budget movie that will be shooting this March & April. For information, visit our Kickstarter page. Stay tuned!

Ah, to be the poet! On writing only those things that strike his fancy! Writing what resonates with him, period. If they get it they get it, if not, fuck ‘em!

Screenwriters don’t get that luxury. As Mamet told us long ago, “screenwriting is a collaborative business. Bend over.”

Seems to me a sign of maturity for a screenwriter is when he becomes aware, not just of what it is he wants to say, but of his audience and the marketplace.

William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote novels that will be around 500 years from now. Yet they struggled in the Hollywood Studio system. Producing literary works under those conditions, under the thumbs of studio bosses who wrote those huge checks, whole different game.

Today it’s more about emerging technologies, emerging distribution markets, the democratization of cinema where everyone and their Uncle Al gets to make a movie. Warhol’s 15 Minutes Of Fame was never so close.

This post is about defining the movie you’re writing so you can have a shot of success when it comes time to sell the damn thing.

It’s undoubtedly too simplistic, but I’m boiling this down to three paths to glory…

• THE STUDIO MOVIE

Remakes, sequels, comic book and graphic novel adaptations, Board Game and toy movies, branded entertainment. Tentpole stories, mega-million dollar budgeted. Mythology and monster hooks. Cross-platform marketing possibilities that thrill more than the movie itself. If any of these describe your movie, then it’s probably a Studio flick and will have to be sold on that level.

And good luck with that!

Why do Studios fuck with great first movies like LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, or MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE? Because there’s $$$$$ in it, dummy! The most recent GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO wasn’t awful, but Howard Stern bringing back PORKY’S? Wow, can’t wait.

Here’s an awesome list of 75 Hollywood remakes and reboots in some stage of development for 2012. Included on the list: CONAN, CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, DUNE, THE CROW, GHOSTBUSTERS, GILLIGAN’S ISLAND, ROBOCOP, TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES.

Studios, of course, also dedicate a piece of their operations to low-budget film-making in hopes of striking gold in the age of PARANORMAL ACTIVITY. You could back 50 stinkers at 1 mil per with only 1 PARANORMAL bringing you back, what, a billion for three movies? Studio bean-counters are brilliant in a I-am-my Beamer mindset. Do they care about the content of SLINKY, THE MOVIE? Probably not, if it costs $30 mil to get in the can but brings back 200 mil. If people are buying tickets for this dreck, IS it dreck?

So now you know: If you’re writing SLINKY, THE MOVIE, you’re a Studio guy. If not, you’re probably writing…

• INDY

This is NOT meant to be any sort of DEFINITIVE RULE, but I’d say, generally, low-end Indy could be considered $500,000 to 2 or 3 million. $5 to $10 million seems high-end Indy. These movies have more leeway creatively. 95 out of 100 will require bankable names to finance. The other five have put together angel financing of some sort through friends, family, or the Pope himself– because getting a million dollar movie WITHOUT a name will take something akin to a miracle. The search for a star can last YEARS. My brother was been on this exact quest for over seven years. It appears he’s very close (Google BLACK WINGS PAQUIN) but as my producer friend once said, the money is only real “when I’m eating the steak from the banked check that cleared.” Healthy distrust is a good thing.

So, if you’re writing a movie with a budget in this range, understand that it’s likely won’t happen without star involvement. If you have no agent, then the CATCH-22 dance begins. What would that sound like? Call up the Reese Witherspoon’s agent. The assistant’s assistant answers. “Got a phenomenal project for Reese. Riveting period-piece drama about  a lady hot dog salesmen at a Brooklyn Dodgers game who uncovers a galactic conspiracy–” The assistant interrupts you, with three words… “Are you funded?” “Well…not yet, but once Reese is on board–” Click. The call might not even get that far, as only an amateur would call under such circumstances. You need a star to get the money but a star won’t read your script without the money in the bank. Unraveling the mysteries of the Sphinx is child’s play by comparison.

• MICRO

Look, it’s not a panacea for word hunger. It’s a world filled with no-name actors, microscopic production budget limitations,  drama upon drama that comes from NEVER having enough money when you make the movie.

But…

You’re making the movie!

The beauty of micro is the CONTROL it affords you. What exactly is the budget for micro? Like with Indy, there’s no one-size-fits-all definition, but I’m comfortable thinking of micro as any budget you can raise yourself. If it’s within your power to raise 200K, I’m calling that micro. If you can only raise 10K but it gets the movie made, it’s micro.

Liberating in the extreme, knowing that you can pull it off for 20- 30-50K. Wells and Cassavetes would have loved the digital age. No more bad wine commercials. Imagine Orson with an Alexa camera or 7D? A beautiful thing for you the writer, to take back control of the process.

Like I said, no fantasies here. There are TONS of bad micro movies made, perhaps more bad movies made than ever before in history. But a few of them will make a noise, and the film-makers wouldn’t have had that opportunity without the technological or marketplace innovations of just the last few years.

So, know the movie you’re writing. Know the audience and the market. Once the “fun” of writing the thing is over, then the selling of the toothpaste begins.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, or not.

Centipedes freak me out. They belong in the deep woods or a David Lynch Eraserhead fantasy sequence. Can’t tell the difference between the head and the tail, all those freakin’ squiggly legs… They are a nightmare, and that was before I even watched The Human Centipede.

Writing is storytelling. This goes for a three-line haiku or a 1,000 page novel. Somewhere in between is the 100 page screenplay. Structure is critical to screenplays because you’re dealing, by necessity, with a finite number of pages. A novel can be 350 pages, or it can be 700 pages. A screenplay doesn’t have that flexibility. Dealing with the rough measure of one page = one minute, it doesn’t take a math whiz to see that you have somewhere between 90 and 120 pages to finish your script. Why?

Before you bring up the 450 minute Satantango, I know there are exceptions, but… Seen many four hour movies lately? How about three hour epics? Sure, you could name quite a few that go past the second hour, but generally movies are between 90 and 120 minutes. At a page a minute, that means scripts need to be between 90 and 120 pages. Genre enters into this: A comedy is often shorter, ideally 90-100 pages. Dramas can go the 120 pages, but would be more appealing at the 100-110 range. This necessity dictates the growth industry of screenplay structural systems.

Now, there are systems…

And there are systems…

And still more systems…

Because, surprise! There’s money in this. Barely 4,000 writers in the WGA, yet how many folks are writing a screenplay? A lot. And these folks, you folks, buy books. Not to say that every screenwriting beat sheet or system is garbage… Read the rest of this entry »

Networking. We’ve talked about its importance before. If Hollywood is about relationships, what the hell are you doing in Iowa? Or Texas? Or Rhode Island? How are you going to meet the people you have to meet, take meetings, etc? Is it necessary to live in L.A?

While that question can be debated, what cannot is the necessity of networking, wherever you live. Here’s a quick story to illustrate:

HOW I ENDED UP IN THE BACK ROOM OF CHICAGO FILMMAKERS

I quit my job dealing craps on the casino boat to make my movie Jane Doe. I didn’t mind…at all.

To know why is to know Aurora, Illinois. Movie home of Wayne and Garth, the city looks like a Hollywood conception of a Smalltown U.S.A.

There is no street crime in Wayne’s World. Nor are there twenty five-below zero windchills on November nights. Nor 2 a.m. mornings where the casino boat gangplank comes down and the Zombieland-like, pajama-wearing dregs of the earth stagger aboard, clutching handfuls of quarters for the quarter slots.

Little known fact: Degenerate gamblers in Illinois have the world’s worst fashion-sense, outdoing even the notorious “blue-haired” grannies of Atlantic City. My exit from the craps pit in Aurora, Illinois was downright cause for celebration.

Jane Doe was shot in 18 days. Returning home without a gig, I ended up working on a Christmas tree lot. I liked this manly job– cutting down trees, tying them to cars, knowing the difference between Scots Pine and Douglas Fir. Manly!

Working the register on the lot was the emanately cute Melanie. Rumor had it Melanie taught screenwriting at Chicago Filmmakers. One day I approached her:

“You know, Melanie, I just made a movie with Calista Flockhart. Perhaps you’d like to discuss it over an aperitif at the Bob Inn?”

“I don’t think my boyfriend would appreciate that,” she countered, “but how about coming up to Filmmakers to talk to my students?”

So, I did. Interestingly, it was Melanie’s last night teaching. She was moving to LA to become a reader. I gave a one hour talk. Later, I asked her: “Who’s taking over this class?” “Don’t know,” she said. When I asked Brenda Webb, the woman who runs the not-for-profit Chicago Filmmakers organization, she said they hadn’t decided on a replacement.

“Well, being as it’s late December, my career on the Christmas tree lot is coming to a close. Maybe I could give it a go.”

She said yes, which led to liberation from Aurora, Illinois, and  10+ years now as teacher and consultant.

And all this connects to your screenwriting career…how?

Moral of the story: You never know where and how the break will come. You’ve got to be relentless, both in your writing, AND in the meeting of people that might help your career.

Never be afraid to reinvent yourself.