Enter the Lawyer

Raven said, "You can't get anywhere in Hollywood without a lawyer.  Forget about an agent, girl, you need a lawyer!  And I have just the one for you."

She gave me a name and number.  "Now, I'll call him and tell him I've referred you; and that he can expect your call.  He's good people.  Hey - and stay in touch with me.  I want to see what happens."

What an angel.

So I did call him.  The next day.  I heard a crusty, curmudgeon's voice on the other end of the line:  "You're WHO?  How did you get my name?"  I told him.  "Oh, yeah.  She did call me.  What is it you want from me?"

I parroted back what Raven had told me:  "I've been told that to submit even a pitch letter to a studio or a production company it needs to have an entertainment lawyer's letter of introduction.  I'd like to retain (insert a big internal GULP right here) you to represent me for my screenplay submissions."

I will call him E.L.  He said, "Well now, you just wait a minute.  I have a name and a reputation in the entertainment industry and I just don't tie my name to anything anyone wants to submit!  And I damn sure don't do it for FREE or for CHEAP, either...WHO did you say you were?  How many screenplays have you written?  Any been made into movies?"  He was firing questions off at me like a machine gun.

But I couldn't help but get tickled.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.  I fired right back:  "Well sugar, I don't expect you to work for free.  Everybody's got to earn a living somehow, now don't they?"

This seemed to take him by surprise because there was a pause in the machine gun fire.

EL:  "Do you even have a treatment for your screenplay?"

Me:  "I DO have a treatment.  Would you like to read it?"

EL:  (grumble) "Yah.  E-mail it to me and I will have a look at it.  If I like it, I MIGHT call you back."

I e-mailed it to him and went to off clean the toilet. (Hey, I multi-task!)

Ten minutes later the phone rang.  It was E.L...

The Wonderful Raven

With all of the preconceived notions of rotten, horrible Hollywood-type people ringing in my head, I called Raven with no small amount of trepidation. Gulp.

What a wonderful person she turned out to be!  Raven wanted to know (1) how I knew her friend, the technical advisor; and (2) what my screenplay was about.  I told her.

She loved my screenplay idea!  Asked me to send her a copy!  Promised to get back to me with comments!  Was she for REAL?

She rattled off where specific plot points should be in the pages of my script.  For example, all the main characters should be introduced by page 10.  (For the record, mine all came in focus on page 12.  So close...)

So, she asked, who do you have in mind to "attach" to the screenplay? 

More Hollywood-speak!  "Attach" means getting talent to sign a contract for the screenplay.  Oh - and "talent" could be actors, producers, directors - any Name that will attract Prospective Investors.

I told her.  She was impressed!  No one's thought of attaching Her (my lead character) to anything yet, she said.

Oooh - starting to feel really, rilly giddy. 

Then the other shoe dropped. 

Raven asked what steps I had taken to market my screenplay.  I told her and she laughed.

No wonder you've had no luck, she chortled.  Here's what you're going to have to do...

Friend of a Friend of a Friend, ad infinitum

The trail went cold pretty fast on finding an agent or a production company that might be interested in Stubborn.  As one might imagine.

I asked Hubby, "Do you know anyone who might know Anyone?"  Turns out, he did.  His father had a friend who worked as a consultant for military- and fantasy-themed TV shows.  Hubby called him (bless my longsuffering Hubby's heart) to ask if he Knew anyone.

Turns out, he did.  A book author, actor, and director.  Rolled into a nice, beautiful package.  I will call her Raven.  The Consultant phoned back to give me my first "Hollywood" words:  She would take my call.  Hurrah! 

Gulp.

Save the Cat!

The author's name of Save the Cat! is Blake Snyder, a screenply writer of some renown.

One path that aspiring screewriters have readily available to them is a venue called Screenplay Writing Competitions.  They are somewhat akin to beauty pageants in that one cannot swing a dead cat without hitting a competition. (No pun intended.) And anybody can stage one.

Some competitions have an entry fee, which would seem to vary with the whim of the contest organizers, and some are free.  The free ones, I've noticed, are very difficult to enter online.  Two come to mind immediately:  Amazon's monthly screenwriting contest; and Ron Howard's screenwriting competition via YouTube.  After trying numerous times to enter with Amazon, and getting "error" notices for data entry points; and trying to FIND Ron Howard's contest on YouTube, I've concluded they've been hacked by aspiring screenwriters trying to narrow the competition field. 

Blake Snyder makes an interesting point about these competitions in his book:  They are essentially a useless waste of time and entry fees.  No producer, agent, or movie company will give a shit whether you've won a competition, or even twenty of them.  Kinda like the old adage, "With that and $5 you can get a cup of coffee."

So I will leave them to the hackers.  Good luck, you saps!

Nothing Is Ever Easy

After the inspiration struck for writing a screenplay, I did quite a bit of reasearch on the subject.   There are quite a few books written on this, numerous websites, and several software programs. 

I used a program called Contour for structuring the screenplay.  This allows the writer to write an outline of the sequence of events and act breaks for the story.  It uses several popular, recent movies as examples to help in laying out the story. 

Then I used a program cleverly called Screenwriter to format the dialogue in accordance with the accepted practice for font, size, and layout. 

A weird thing is that the accepted practice for binding a hard copy printout of the screenplay is TWO (not three) BRASS tacks holding the pages together (unwieldy and awkward); and the cover sheet MUST be pale blue with NO photos, clip art or anything else except the title of the screenplay, its author(s) - CENTERED on the blue paper - with the contact information in the LOWER RIGHT CORNER.  In COURIER 10 pt.  Anything else, I've read, is grounds for instant round-filing of your submission.  Weird.

There are several books I read about screenplay submissions, but the one I would most recommend is called Save the Cat.  The author's name escapes me at the moment.  His book discusses the formatting that Countour provides.  Also several examples, and, if you're interested, homework questions at the end of each chapter.

So, screenplay carefully written and re-written, and re-re-written, I mounted a writing campaign to find (a) an agent; or (b) a production company that would even take the damn time to open my pitch letter.

Nothing is ever easy.

A Screenplay Writer in an Engineer's Body

This is the first blog for me; about the first screenplay I've ever written and my attempts to get it made into a movie.  A day of firsts.

I am by trade an engineer.  But the screenplay came to me as a gift:  "Spiritus" - Latin for inspiration.

The screenplay is about very stubborn people and a stubborn mule.  Stubborn isn't necessary a bad thing, as the movie will show.  Sometimes it's very, very good to be stubborn.

Tomorrow I will speak more of what has transpired in my screenplay efforts; and what is yet to come.  It is an interesting saga-in-the-works.