The Business of Screenwriting: What to do on the day your movie premieres

On average, a human being will experience about 30,000 days in their life. I don’t know how many of those days are truly special, but here’s one that is: The day your movie premieres.

While the life of a Hollywood screenwriter would seem to be pretty exciting, the simple fact is most of the time is comprised of said writer sitting in a room, staring at a computer monitor, trying to concoct a coherent, entertaining story. Some days are better than others. Yesterday, you wrote four pages. Today you cranked out five. Tomorrow, you’ll be lucky to eke out two.

On and on it goes until you finish the script. Turn it in. Wait for notes. Rewrite the script. Turn it in. Wait for notes…

Here are some apt descriptors for that experience: Plodding. Drudgery. Tedious. Struggle. Travail.

Special? Not so much.

But the day your movie opens, that is totally special. If your movie is in wide release, it could be playing in three or four thousand theaters. There will be TV, radio, web and print ads. Reviews in newspapers, magazines, and online sites. Box office projections. A veritable buzz in the air.

It’s as if for a moment in time, your story has managed to stake out a corner of the entertainment universe.

This is something you should celebrate. But how?

Here are a few tips:

• If you live in LA or NY, drive around town to find billboards featuring your movie’s poster, and take pictures of them, preferably with you in the foreground.
• Bonus points if you get shots of posters on buses and benches.
• Blitz your friends with an email featuring one of those photos with this message: “Get your ass to a theater to support [my movie] this weekend!”
• Travel to theaters in different parts of the city where your movie is screening. Check out the crowds to see what type of people are buying tickets.
• Even if you’ve screened your movie one or more times, pick out the most kick-ass theater where it’s scheduled to play and watch it with a real audience.
• If you’re in LA, drive up onto Mulholland Drive and stare down at the city, realizing there are thousands of people watching your movie at that very instant.
• Call your agents and managers, and scream into the phone, “My movie is opening!”
• Call your father and say, “I told you I could make it in Hollywood.”
• Call your mother and say, “Thanks for believing in me.”
• Throw a party and invite your friends. Pick out the best and worst reviews of your movie, and have everyone read them aloud to much cheering and booing.
• Drink Veuve Clicquot. A lot of it.
• Smoke a cigar.

But whatever you do, be sure to cover these two bases:

• First, when you visit a movie theater that day, stand by the ticket window for like ten minutes, and just listen to people as they say, “Two for [my movie].” Let the realization sink in that these individuals are actually parting with at least some of their hard-earned cash to see something that you had a hand in creating.
• Second, late that night after everyone has cleared out, and you’ve got one last swallow of champagne left in your glass, go outside by yourself. And in that deep stillness, remember how it all started with you. Your ideas. Your words. Your story. All those days writing… four pages yesterday… five pages today… two pages tomorrow…

Somehow they all led to the miracle which is this day… the day your movie premieres.

Then drink that last bit of Veuve. Stagger off to bed. And when you wake up the next day…

Sit your ass down on your chair and knock out five pages of your newest script, fueled by dreams of your next movie premiere.

The Business of Screenwriting is a weekly series of GITS 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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