The Business of Screenwriting: They don’t think like you

Hollywood executives can have a different way of seeing the world.

I am sitting in the office of a studio executive. At this point, K-9 has been produced, we’ve sold a pitch to Warner Bros., and have an overall studio deal. All good news, right? Somehow we have managed to do something (I forget what) to irk this particular exec, so she calls us in for a chat.

She is shifting back and forth in her chair behind her desk, hands working overtime as she explains why she feels aggrieved. Working herself into a lather, she says the following:

“Look, I like you guys, I really do. I mean, you are the first people I think of to call when one of my lunches cancels.”

Read that comment again… and think about it for a moment.

To this exec, what she said was intended as a compliment. Not only a compliment, but the most direct and meaningful way she could think of to tell us how much she liked us.

That we were her first second choice.

And that in a nutshell conveys one of the most important truths a Hollywood outsider needs to know:

They don’t think like you.

You can be smart like them. As well educated as them. Drive the same car. Have the same politics. But unless you actually work in the entertainment business or grew up inside the bubble that is demarcated by the 405–10–110–101 freeways, there’s every chance in the world that the way you think and the way they think will be utterly different.

I lived and worked in L.A. for many years and I still don’t understand fully how their minds operate. But I do have some clues as to why they think the way they think.

• They are insanely busy. If I say “Southern California,” the first words that may pop into your mind are “laid back.” Nothing could not be further from the truth re people who are employed in the entertainment business because they work all the time. From 6AM when they hit the gym to work out until they finally finish reading the coverage on their latest project after midnight, their days are completely filled. Where you or I may go out for a leisurely meal, they have breakfast meetings, lunch meetings, dinner meetings. They don’t just get on the phone to talk, they roll calls, 100 or more business conversations on the phone per day. If they go to a concert or a movie or watch TV, it’s not a form of relaxation, it’s work. Day after day, week after week, year after year of that definitely contributes to the unique melange of their brain chemistry meets world view.
• They are extremely competitive. Stands to reason because movies, TV, web, music, they are all highly competitive businesses. They are all chasing after The Next Big Thing and that’s pretty much a zero sum game: x-amount of potential projects funnel into the system of which a small percentage are worthy of acquisition. As a result, the challenge to source the right stuff — whether it’s a manuscript, band, writer, story — is a stiff one because everyone else is doing precisely the same thing. On the whole, this requires a competitive impulse that is hard-wired in a person’s DNA. Here’s an example: I went to a Dodger game once with my agents where they basically bet on everything that happened: would the first pitch be a strike or a ball, which team would get the first hit, the first home run, even betting who would be closest to guessing the game’s attendance. As a producer once said to me, “The movie business is one big dick-measuring contest.”
• They all know each other. I was shocked to learn how small ‘Hollywood’ is (I’m referring to the entertainment community, not Hollywood proper which by the way is home to only one major movie studio — Paramount). If something happens over in Culver City, word gets to people working in Burbank instantly. These folks see each other at screenings and concerts, their kids’ soccer games and school functions, The Ivy and Gelson’s. You and I call it ‘networking.’ They know it simply as life. With such a tight-knit community of people, they have their own history, values, and business ethics. It’s a shared, self-reflective life-experience where they pretty much act under the assumption that this is how the world is.

These are just a few of the contributing factors to why they think the way they do. Bottom line: What an outsider is dealing with when interacting with an industry insider is someone who is always under the pressure of time, forever scanning the world around them for a hot new project, and doing their job virtually shoulder-to-shoulder with their competitors.

No wonder they develop their own world view and their own language system. So when you sell your spec script and make the rounds, don’t be surprised to hear things like this [actual comments from our script meetings]:

“I like this scene, but could you make it 30% funnier.”

“I know I told you to make that change, but I didn’t mean it.”

“Can you make the Protagonist more sympathetic, you know… give him a dead wife or something?”

They’re smart, talented, busy, competitive, and in each others’ business all the time. Perhaps the best way for an outsider to look at it is like they’re part of a cult. What they do and how they think makes perfect sense to them, but can be mystifying to us.

Which is why you need to face facts: They don’t think like you.

The Business of Screenwriting is a weekly series of Go Into The Story posts 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.

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