Opinion: For Aspiring Screenwriters, Hollywood Is The New Wild West

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AUTHOR'S COMMENT: Notice I changed the Title?

Writing is Rewriting. Rule Number One of the Screen Trade.

Onto the subject at hand.

Like writing for DJ? Want to try your hand at the movies?

Allow me to share with you some recent news, some stunning success stories, my own experiences in the screen trade, and a slew of links to great sites for writing resources, contests and information on scripting a film from soup to nuts.

First, a most recent success story, from MovieBytes.com:

Newcomers Brian McGreevy and Lee Shipman, whose spec script Of Every Wickedness scored significant industry buzz, have won an assignment to write a remake of Brian DePalma's 1978 supernatural thriller The Fury.

The project, about a young man with heightened kinetic powers who is abducted by the government, was based originally on a novel by John Farris. McGeevy and Shipman are repped by Paradigm and manager Michael Connolly.

I'm envious. The Fury was a damn good film, and one hell of a remake project for a couple of newcomers to be handed on a platter.

Hope Springs Eternal.

By the way, I fully expect a blockbuster release on that one in 2010.

You might also be interested to know that Lethal Weapon was a spec script submitted by writer Shane Black in the mid-1980s.

A little brief on that from Wikipedia:

Recent UCLA graduate Shane Black wrote the screenplay in mid-1985. His agent sent it to producer Joel Silver, who loved the story and worked with Black to further develop the script. After they took it to Warner Bros. in early 1986, studio production executives offered it to director Richard Donner, who also loved it.

Leonard Nimoy was one of the choices considered for directing, but he didn't feel comfortable doing action movies, and he was working on Three Men and a Baby at the time. With those key elements in place, the search began for the right combination of actors to play Riggs and Murtaugh.

Casting director Marion Dougherty first suggested teaming Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. She arranged for Gibson to fly in from his home in Australia, while Glover was flown in from Chicago, where he was appearing in a play, to read through the script. According to a June 2007 Vanity Fair article, Bruce Willis was considered for the Riggs role.

Hollywood has long been known as the toughest business in the world to break into regardless of the profession, be it acting, writing, directing or producing. But as the post above illustrates, it IS possible even for the newest of newcomers, if you have a great idea for a film and are willing to work hard to script it and shop it.

If you do desire to write a film script, there has rarely been a better time in history to pursue your dream. With the explosion of the entertainment market and the hundreds of channels now available through cable and satellite, the hunger for new feature film and TV show ideas and concepts in Hollywood is insatiable.

The Internet has also facilitated a revolution, particularly with regard to access hitherto unknown in Hollywood. A million doors are just waiting to be opened.

But first, the reality.

If you do decide you'd like to try your hand at scripting a film, you need to know what you're up against.

First, there are approximately 12,000 WGA members, about half of whom are out of work any given day. Second, you're also up against successful children's books like Shrek, comic book heroes, graphic novels, big news stories, historical epics, bestselling novels and works of nonfiction, and about a half-million other writers who have the same idea in mind.

If you can get past all that, also keep in mind that those with the best ideas go to the front of the line. Like Shane Black, Brian McGreevy and Lee Shipman, for example.

On to the nuts and bolts.

First, you need to know how to write a script. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has a primer on their Nicholl Fellowship site. The Nicholl Fellowship, by the way, is the most prestigious amateur screenplay contest in the world. More on that later.

Creative Screenwriting, Screenwriter's Utopia, WordPlay and even the Writers Guild of America West (WGA-West) websites have many great resources you can spend days going over.

Or, you could go straight to the source. Drew's Script-O-Rama has thousands of TV and feature film scripts you can download for free. The site is constantly updated with scripts from new releases. See how your favorite films were written.

As for contests, there are far more than I could mention here, but I'll give you the big ones.

First, AMPAS' Don and Gee Nicholl Fellowship. For an idea of how far this contest can take you, Ehren Kruger wrote the script ARLINGTON ROAD and submitted it here. No sooner was the contest over than it went into production with Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins in the lead roles. Mr. Kruger's work since then includes Reindeer Games, Skeleton Key, The Brothers Grimm, The Ring and the Ring Two.

Mr. Kruger is currently working on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and The Talisman, based on the novel by Steven King and Peter Straub. Not bad for a guy off the street, huh?

Other great contests are as follows: Disney, Fox, Nickelodeon, Sundance, The Austin Film Festival, American Zoetrope (Francis Ford Coppola's company), Indieproducer, CS Weekly's AAA Competition, InkTip, Script PIMP, A Feeding Frenzy, ScreamFest and the prestigious Hollywood Film Festival.

As I've said, a million doors waiting to be opened. IF you're script is good enough.

There are many other great competitions available to enter you can find at sites like MovieBytes and DoneDealPro. MovieBytes even has a reader and site report card system grading competitions, and writers who have participated can comment on their experiences, good or bad.

The average screenplay contest entry fee is $50.00, some less, some more. Some contests like Page International even provide the option of judges' feedback or coverage reports on your script for an extra $30.00 or so. This is a real bargain, given the fact that coverage can run anywhere from $75-$6000.

Coverage, by the way, is simply an industry insider's report on your script based on plot, dialogue, concept, structure and market viability. Many studios today won't even read spec scripts anymore, relying solely on coverage to make their judgments one way or the other.

Makes sense. Why read an amateur's 120-page screenplay when you can read a 6-8 page industry professional's assessment instead?

Anyway, lots of good stuff. As for myself, I have entered many of the top contests and have done fairly respectably, making two trips to red carpet awards galas at the WGA Theater in Beverly Hills and have had one screenplay optioned to date. I am currently working on my fourth. I've been at this ten years now and I feel like I'm just starting to figure things out.

Will I ever make it? Sure. If I write something good enough. I have plenty of inside contacts now, but contacts only help if you have something outstanding to give them. Like Jerry Seinfeld pitching Bee Movie to Steven Spielberg over lunch, for example.

Anyway, I hope this OpEd has been enlightening, entertaining and informative. If you don't hear from me too much here at DJ for awhile, you know what I'm doing.

A few last tips:

Register your completed script with the WGA. First and foremost. Protect your work.

NO TYOPS! Readers HATE typos! Scour it a hundred times, and on paper. There's errors on a computer screen you may never pick up on except on paper. Turst me, I know.

If you submit a script to a contest, producer or studio, don't bug. They'll get back to you. Eventually. They HATE being bugged! Wouldn't you?

Writing the script is the easy part. Shopping it around is what's tough. Even after many significant contest successes it took me a year to find a producer to option my first script. It's called pitching, and if you plan on screenwriting you'll have to do a lot of it. Goes with the territory.

As much as you may disagree with any coverage reports (and they can be BRUTAL! Believe me, I know), remember that you're paying industry insiders who know the game to provide you with the best possible feedback to move your script up the ladder. They know what they're doing.

Polite. Always be polite.

And remember that even if your script should be optioned or sold to a studio, that is the beginning, not the end. The final product may look nothing like what you wrote. This is how it works. It's called the development process.

During a shoot, so many pages are so often changed in a script they're even color-coded to identify which number rewrite it's from. Actors change dialogue. Directors change scenes. Sometimes films in production, or even in the can, are scrapped and started fresh.

From script to final release, everything is subject to change. The development process is why Clint Eastwood played Dirty Harry instead of Frank Sinatra. It's why Harrison Ford played Indiana Jones instead of Tim Matheson and Tom Selleck, both of whom auditioned for the part.

Point being: if you ever get that far, know what's coming and don't take it personal.

As a classic example of what I mean, allow me to share with you an example of a writer extremely disgruntled by what Hollywood did with his work.

Once upon a time in the late 1930s, Warner Brothers bought the rights to a play they liked very much. As the project progressed, the playwriter became increasingly distraught at how the studio was botching his brilliant story. He even sued the studio and one of the writers.

After the film's release, said writer bitched to everyone who would listen how Hollywood supremely screwed up what was once a brilliant story, and that he would never do business with them again.

The writer? Howard Koch.

The play? Everyone Comes to Rick's.

The film? Casablanca.

'nuff said.

Lastly, a disclamer.

I do not claim to be an expert on Hollywood. Nobody is, really. Even George Lucas had Howard the Duck. As screenwriter Extraordinaire William Goldman so famously said, "nobody in Hollywood knows anything." Mr. Goldman included himself in that company.

Just don't tell them they don't know anything, okay? Don't make it any harder on yourself than it has to be. Keep that one under your hat. It'll be our dirty little secret ;)

And oh yeah.

Break a Leg!