The Business of Screenwriting: Flavor-Of-The-Week

If you sell a spec script or make the annual Black List, you will take LOTS of meetings in Hollywood.

Let’s say the Heavens open, you beat the long odds, and someone who is a Hollywood Buyer reads your spec script, and says, “I love this!”

[The head of 20th Century Fox actually said those exact words in reference to my spec script K-9 at the creative team’s Monday morning meeting on January 12, 1987.]

If a writer does succeed in selling a script or their script is named to the annual Black List, they will almost assuredly become Hollywood’s Flavor-Of-The-Week.

People who work in Hollywood are drawn to new things. Fresh meat. New blood. In part, I suppose it’s because shiny object syndrome is prevalent in film acquisition and development circles. And in part because the sexy aspect of the business is the deal, not the laborious task of actually shepherding a script through Development Hell. Deals feel new. Development gets old.

But some portion of the pull toward new things is completely legitimate from both a creative and business standpoint: The constant hope and yearning on the part of buyers to unearth a writer with a fresh new voice and a distinctive take on storytelling.

So here’s what I’d like you to do: Imagine that you are this week’s FOTW. That’s right, your spec script sells in a bidding war and your life is transformed in a flurry of activity over a dizzying handful of days. Here’s what you may expect as the town’s Flavor-Of-The-Week.

• Your agents and managers will treat you like royalty. Things are never better in a writer’s relationship with their reps than when they are hot. Makes total sense. You’re ecstatic because you’re in demand and have contracts lined up worth lots of money. They’re happy because they get a percentage of your revenues tied to said contracts. Plus when you are hot, you make their job easy. They don’t have to work as hard to get you in front of people, rather they spend time fielding calls on your behalf. Also your heat transfers some of its energy to your reps because after all they have you — a hot writer — as a client. Finally in the glow of the moment, it’s tempting to imagine a glorious future of endless seven figure deals, inevitable dips and downturns shunted off to the side of your collective consciousness. So of course your reps are going to treat you well. Expect an initial round of celebratory dinners, gift baskets, and skin-stretching smiles whenever you enter the building.

• Everyone will want to read you. That spec script you just sold? A PDF of it will make the rounds of every office in Hollywood within minutes of it selling. Coverage here, coverage there, coverage of the coverage, your story brought up in meetings, discussions, analysis, all of which generates buzz which can generate more heat which can translate into more people wanting to meet you which can make your agents and managers treat you even more royally… you see the pattern. But it all comes down to what’s on the page. Fortunately you were really smart, learned the craft, and wrote a great script with a strong story concept.
• Everyone will want to meet you. This is why your rep’s job is so easy because members of the Hollywood movie community are like moths to candles: Drawn to the light. And your heat has put you in the spotlight. At a very basic level, it behooves producers and studio execs to meet the FOTW because it enhances their status. Since seeing and being seen is like a religious practice in L.A., having their name associated with your name has value to Hollywood players. Beyond that, they want to get a whiff of your personality and how well you do in a room. People in Hollywood like to work with the people they like to work with. Stupidly simple observation perhaps, but true. So one of the main points of meeting you is to see if they like you. But the really big reason is to determine if there’s something you can do for them. Producers and studio execs all have projects in various stages of development. And while each is a potential asset, they also represent problems that need to be solved. In a way, that is what writers are: problem-solvers. So could you possibly help with this or that project? Or maybe you can connect creatively, work up a new story, and use your heat to take that project out to the town, and set up another big deal?

• You will gain weight. That’s because part of the meet-and-greet pattern for a FOTW writer is breakfast meetings, lunch meetings, dinners, drinks. Until you perfect the art of dining in Hollywood, which is ordering, but not actually eating, you can figure your figure will plump out a good 10–15 pounds. That’s okay. Inevitably you will get sucked into the latest local health and fitness mania, and transform into a size zero in no time.
• You will get lost. I don’t mean metaphorically or metaphysically. Even in a city as abundant with temptations as L.A., that will take at least a couple of years which is why you should keep this phone number handy at all time: (888) 920–8849. When I mean lost, I mean physically confounded in your attempts to get somewhere. L.A. — and by L.A., we are talking the entire area from Culver City, Venice, Santa Monica, Brentwood, W. Los Angeles, Century City, Beverly Hills, mid-Wilshire, Hollywood, Studio City, Universal City, Burbank and so on — is a big-ass place. Fortunately once you get used to the fact there are two San Vincente Boulevards, it’s laid out pretty logically. Just remember: Ocean to the west, mountains to the north, always give yourself an hour to go anywhere by car, and when in doubt, take surface streets, and just keep turning right, no matter what Google Maps tells you.
• You will forget to validate your parking. You finish a great meeting, you waltz out of the building with all these terrific story ideas churning in your head, you get into your car, and only then realize you forgot to get validated. Now you have a choice: Pay the $10 to exit the lot or slump back up to the office to suffer the momentary humiliation of being perceived as suffering from early onset dementia or just a cheap bastard. Of course, you will pay the piper. In relation to the cosmos, forgetting to get validated is a tiny irritant. But now that you’re “A Playah,” it’s a legitimate beef about which to grouse.

• Your head will spin. No, not like Linda Blair in The Exorcist, this time I am being metaphorical. Meeting after meeting, all these new names and faces, the whirlwind of activity will become a big blur. Piece of advice: Buy a journal and at the end of each day as you make your initial rounds in town, jot down who you met, where you met, what time you met, what you discussed, and so forth. It will help you sort things out. And if your career trajectory emulates Joe Eszterhas, the content can become fodder for your memoir.
• Your head will swell. Again, metaphorical. With everyone in L.A. seemingly kissing your hot little tookus, it’s virtually impossible for you not to get caught up in the hype that is… well… you. Piece of advice: Ask at least one really close friend or family member to pay special attention to how you act and talk. If they sense you are becoming an L.A. hipster pod person, tell them to call you on your shit. One tried and true method of self-assessment: If you start referring to movies with multiple words in their titles by one word as is the parlance of Hollywood types, the subtext being to convey a sense of working inside the business. So for example, let’s say you are in a meeting and two top films from 2010 come up, The King’s Speech and True Grit. If instead of referring to them by their actual titles, you instead say “Speech” as in “You know ‘Speech’ is a very special film,” or “Grit” as per “When the Coens announced they were going to do ‘Grit,’ I just totally freaked out,” chances are pretty good you are taking your first steps toward the Dark Side.

There is so much more you can and will experience when you sell that spec and become the FOTW, a remarkable swirl of activity and energy. At some point, however, another writer will sell the next big spec script and the town will move on. You will be left to sign your contract, cash your check, and start working on the rewrite you owe the studio.

And that’s when it dawns on you… holy crap, you have 10 weeks to deliver the goods.

The Business of Screenwriting is a Go Into The Story series based upon my experiences as a complete Hollywood outsider who sold a spec script for a lot of money, parlayed that into a screenwriting career during which time I’ve made some good choices, some okay decisions, and some really stupid ones. Hopefully you’ll be the wiser for what you learn here.

Comment Archive

For more articles in The Business of Screenwriting series, go here.