Screenwriting 101: Gerald DiPego

“Before this interview, I thought I would do a little homework. I made a column of original screenplays called ‘Sold and Produced,’ and I have three of those. ‘Sold but Not Produced’: I have six of those. ‘Not Sold or Produced’: I have nine. I was a little surprised. I thought, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of pages that stayed on the shelf.’ You know, nine scripts, 120 pages each — that’s a lot of pages that never saw the light of day.

There are some disappointments there. I remember I should have had a signal about this one script called ‘Rapture.’ They bought an option on it at this production company. I walked in, and it’s always a great feeling — they loved your script and they put some money on the table. The first thing the executive said to me was, ‘We really like your script for what it can be.’

I did notice that the three scripts that were sold and produced are all speculative fiction. Not quite sci-fi, necessarily, but what I call the big ‘What if?’ kind of scripts. Maybe the ‘What if?’ ideas were more fresh, and there was nothing like them in front of the industry at the time. Maybe there’s a little bit of a lesson there.”

— Gerald DiPego (Phenomenon, Instinct), excerpt from “Tales from the Script”

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