The Business of Screenwriting: Your first big check

It is March, 1987. I am here, the Hamburger Hamlet on Sunset Blvd. It’s 1PM. I am meeting one of my agents for lunch. For dessert: My first big check for the sale of the spec script K-9.

Up through mid-February, I continued to do my nightly comedy act. Once my spec script sold, I scrapped the last two weeks of my so-called stand-up ‘career.’ So I have been living pretty much hand to mouth, driving around in my 1978 Ford Fairmont with 145,000 miles on it and crashing at my friend Dennis’ house in Thousand Oaks.

Here comes my agent. He slips me an envelope and smiles.

“Happy payday.”

As we eat lunch and chat, my mind keeps imagining what the check looks like. I know from my contract how much money it is. But I’ve never seen a check for six figures before. Hell, I remember my hand shaking the time I penned a $2500 check for a bill to Yale.

And yet I do not open the envelope. Why? One would think I’d be so excited, I’d rip open the damn thing, kiss the check, and start doing the bump with the waitstaff.

But no, I eat, I talk, I listen.

And I keep one hand on that envelope at all times.

Perhaps I do not believe this is really happening, that if I open the envelope, there will be nothing inside, and the entire world will start laughing at me.

“Fooled ya’!!!”

As fate would have it, I’ve got two meetings that afternoon. So here I am after lunch, wheeling my classic ride (did I mention my Fairmont is rusted out, one window won’t roll up, the clutch is just about gone, and it has a dent the size of Oxnard on the left quarter panel) over to Paramount and then Disney.

Oh, the looks I get as I drive up to security check-in. Sweating (did I mention the car has no air conditioning) in my one good outfit, behind the wheel of Herbie the Deathmobile. The guards check and recheck my info as they wave one $75K sports car after another past me and onto the lot.

And all the while, my hand rests on that envelope.

This is one big fact joke, okay?!!!

What to do with it during my meetings? Why, I take it with me, of course. I stash it in my sports coat pocket and check to make sure it’s still there… oh, about every 10 seconds.

If my life were a comedy, of course I would misplace the check. But I think God has figured that driving that Ford Fairmont (did I mention when I apply the brakes, they screech like the Manson family cats in heat) onto movie studio lots dozens of times in the last few weeks is hysterical enough. Then again, maybe I’m wrong.

This is God speaking. You know, maybe I’m in on the joke, too!!!

As I hit the 405 that night and head toward the 101, I’ve got one hand on the steering wheel, and one hand on the envelope.

I make it to Thousand Oaks. Stop my car at a Wells Fargo bank. And finally I open the envelope. There illuminated by the light of the moon is my check. There’s my name. There’s MCA Universal’s logo. And there’s the amount: Over $100,000.

The next thing I know I’m standing by the ATM, punching in those figures on the keypad. Checking and rechecking I got the total right. I push a button “OK,” then that hectoring beep to let me know to insert the deposit envelope. And zip — there goes the check.

I take the deposit slip. And just stand there staring at it. At the time I make the deposit, I have precisely $221.82 in my checking account. Now it says I have more than one hundred grand to my name.

It’s surreal. Finding myself in a Wells Fargo bank parking lot in Thousand Oaks, California. Literally in a moment of time going from flat-ass broke to having more money than I’ve ever had in my life.

And all because about six months ago, I typed the words FADE IN on a spec script.

I guess this is not a joke!

As a screenwriter, you get used to deals in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. For some high flying types, even in the millions. But I doubt there is any check as significant as that first big one.

It means you can get rid of your Ford Fairmont.
It means you can buy more than one set of clothes for meetings.
But perhaps most important, it means validation for you as a writer.

My sincerest hope is you get to have that experience someday.

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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