Just the facts, Ma’am…
Posted on November 28, 2006
Filed Under Uncategorized
So before we put high concept away for another day, let’s take a look at what I’ve come to know as the FACTS:
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99 out of a hundred producers are looking for high concept screenplays.
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99 out of a hundred producers make only high concept movies.
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99 out of a hundred producers only involve themselves with high concept screenplays.
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Most top actors will read high concept screenplays over non high concept screenplays.
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Studios and Producers make more high concept films than they do non high concept films.
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It’s EASIER to get financing for high concept screenplays.
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It’s EASIER to get distribution for high concept screenplays being made into high concept films.
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Everyone is looking for the next great high concept screenplay.
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Producers will take more time to listen to a high concept idea than they will a non high concept idea.
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Agents will take more time to listen to a high concept idea they they will a non high concept idea.
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It’s EASIER to get someone in the business to read a high concept screenplay than it is to get them to read a non high concept screenplay.
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NEW screenwriters trying to BREAK IN with a high concept screenplay have a higher success ratio than NEW screenwriters without a high concept screenplay.
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High concept screenplays sell for a HELL OF A LOT MORE MONEY than non high concept screenplays.
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A high concept screenplay will get YOUR FOOT IN THE DOOR a HELL OF A LOT FASTER than a non high concept screenplay especially when it comes time to MARKET your unsolicited high concept screenplay.
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There are a hell of a lot more high concept spec screenplays sold than non high concept screenplays.
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Having sold a high concept screenplay makes it easier to get EVERYONE to take a look at your other screenplays even if some or all of them are non high concept screenplays.
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Selling high concept screenplays lead to MORE OPPORTUNITIES IN HOLLYWOOD, i.e., Producing, directing, Acting, etc.
Now I could sit here and make another list about non high concept screenplays but why bother? Unless you absolutely LOVE taking the hard road to success, I think the above facts speak for themselves… No, I can’t cite any resources that lend more credence to the facts I’ve come to know are THE FACTS but then again, it shouldn’t take a genius to figure out that the above facts ARE THE FACTS.
Let me go on to say that THIS ONE FACTOR seems to be the biggest problem I see in screenplays that I read i.e., they are just NOT high concept ENOUGH i.e., they are NOT unique enough i.e., they wouldn’t appeal to a wide enough audience i.e., you can’t SEE THE MOVIE.
Of course you have to know how to write a high concept spec script for this to work but assuming your writing is already at a professional level, maybe kicking your spec up a few more notches so that it becomes a high concept spec is the brass ring you’ve been looking for.
BRASS RING?
That’s right… Take another look at THE FACTS above. Read them again. Done? Good. Okay, so now let me ask you…
WHAT ARE YOU WRITING SCREENPLAYS FOR?
If you’re like me and damn near every other screenwriter and wannabe screenwriter I know, you LOVE MOVIES. You love them so much that you want to write them. You want screenwriting to be YOUR DAY JOB instead of the day job you have right now. Maybe like me, you eventually want to move up to producing and directing… No better and EASIER way to accomplish this than by writing outstanding high concept screenplays and selling them.
So unless you WANT to take an extra 5 to 10 years to break into this business, you may want to take the facts more seriously than you have been – assuming you’ve taken them serious at all.
How long does it take you to write a spec script? A month? Six months? A year? More than a year? No matter how long it takes you to write it, I’d be willing to bet that most of you don’t spend an enormous amount of time on your concept.
SOMETHING about your concept grabbed you enough to make you write or start writing a screenplay around it… You’d be surprised at how many people tell me some idea popped into their head and they immediately started writing around that idea… This might work for the prodigies among us but for most, this is equivalent to cutting off a few fingers.
Meaning that YOUR CONCEPT deserves as much effort and work as the screenplay you’re going to write around it. Meaning that you owe it to yourself, and anyone else relying on YOU to do the best job you can possibly do. Meaning that your concept is JUST AS IMPORTANT as the screenplay itself.
WRAP YOUR HEAD AROUND THAT ONE…
YOUR CONCEPT IS JUST AS IMPORTANT AS THE SCREENPLAY ITSELF.
Hmmm. That’s almost something you might want to start chanting before you hit the rack every night (go to bed)… Turn it into a positive affirmation and BELIEVE IT.
That doesn’t mean you have to spend just as much TIME on your concept as you do your screenplay… Not at all. It just means that they are of EQUAL IMPORTANCE so why not TREAT it as such?
I think I would personally go so far as to say that coming up with a high concept is actually HARDER than writing the screenplay that goes along with it. Spend enough time with the concept to make it high enough and the writing part of the process becomes much easier BECAUSE of the HIGH CONCEPT you came up with because remember… With a high concept idea, YOU CAN SEE THE MOVIE.
Don’t make your high concept too general… If we’ve seen it before, tweak it – flip it – beat it until it’s UNIQUE… Don’t make it predictable. Don’t allow US to immediately draw closely related comparisons to other movies. We don’t want to see the same movie over and over again even though we seem to be doing that a lot these days. Don’t fall into what a lot of screenwriters call the HIGH CONCEPT FORMULA i.e., basically rewriting the same shit we keep seeing at the theater. It’s okay to write something with a similar concept but you’ve GOT TO DO THE WORK to make it UNIQUE from the comparisons we will immediately draw from.
MAKE IT DIFFERENT FROM ANYTHING WE’VE EVER SEEN BEFORE.
Unk
Tags: high concept high concept spec screenplay high concept spec high concept script spec script The Unknown Screenwriter
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24 Responses to “Just the facts, Ma’am…”
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Great summation!
One thing to remember. Although everybody is looking for “unique” and “different from anything we’ve ever seen before”, it doesn’t necessarily mean out in left field. For example:
Buddy Cop movies:
Red Heat - US and Russian cops team up
Lethal Weapon - depressed and retiring cop team up
K-9 - Loner cop man and loner cop dog team up
Stop or My Mom Will Shoot - Cop & Mom team up
Hollywood Homicide - Experienced & rookie cops team up
The Hard Way - Cop & Actor team up
All buddy cop movies, but different enough to be a new story, yet the concepts are “high” in that the conflict is easily recognizable.
How about wish fulfillment?
1) It’s a Wonderful Life
2) Mr. Destiny
3) Family Man
All surrounding the question, “What if I’d…” never existed, married another woman, or married my sweetheart?
When folks talk about high concept, all that’s intended is that the conflict is easily identifiable and, typically, it’s something that makes you say one of two things:
1) Hey, I’d like to see that
or
2) Damn, I wish I’d thought of that!
Some other easy examples:
1) A lawyer can’t lie for a day
2) A man gets to be God, including all his powers
3) A robot is sent back in time to save a woman whose son can save the world
4) Two divorce lawyers fall in love while working the same case.
5) A married couple turn out to be assassins assigned to kill each other.
6) A young man takes his first job as a lawyer and it turns out to be with the mob.
There are many non-high concept movies made, the problem is that they’re not usually new writers and not typically new material. Most is either adapted or written by somebody already established in the industry.
As Unk said, if you want to increase your odds of making a sale, try and make it high concept.
I missed you, Unk. Just sayin’. Duly emailed to all and sundry.
Dare I ask how the mother of all re-writes goes?
[...] Just the Facts … is well worth reading; whether you’re pro High Concept, like myself, or anti. [...]
Quick question, Unk, do the folks looking for high concept screenplays have the same understanding what a high concept screenplay that you do?
Because whenever I’ve talked to some (and admittedly, I run in smaller circles than you do, Obi-wan) I don’t know that the actors / development / producer types (and I do meet more than a few) have a real idea of high concept . . . they all seem to want a movie just like one that hit number one at the Box Office, just like it, but with one or two tweaks . . . you know what I’m saying?
Another great post containing lots of wisdom. All I can say is thanks and I’m directing this to the attention of some people I work with.
Josh,
Good question. The answer is YES and NO. Don’t you just LOVE that?
But to extend that answer a little more… It doesn’t matter. If you write a high concept screenplay that enables those in the industry to SEE the high concept, you’ve done your job i.e., you’ve given them a screenplay with a concept that they can easily market and you’ve (hopefully) written a screenplay that is unlike the usual high concept shit we see every week i.e., what a lot of people call the high concept formula and what I call SHIT.
That’s the big difference here. You definitely want to give the industry a screenplay with a concept they can easily market but what you do not want to do is beat out another high concept piece of shit.
Hence, the reason why a lot of screenwriters SHY AWAY FROM HIGH CONCEPT. They THINK it means they have to turn out the usual high concept product when in REALITY, it simply means that the studios are picking the best garbage out of the high concept garbage they have.
There, I said it.
Most of the shit is already garbage and too many of US just keep on writing this predictable fucking garbage. What I want to recommend and promote to anyone trying to break into this world is that you can still create a high concept screenplay but not follow the usual formula we all too often see in the theater.
I am deadly serious when I tell you that there are not a lot of good scripts out there. DEADLY SERIOUS!!!!! I’ve read A-LIST screenplays within the last year that fucking suck. They were high concept in concept ONLY and NOT in the writing. They were derivative, predictable, etc., etc., etc.
IT IS POSSIBLE TO DO BOTH yet so many of us DO NOT DO BOTH.
What the fuck?
Hope that answers your question… If not, SHOUT OUT!
Caroline,
Rewrite is coming along. I dare say that I am almost finished… That is until something else comes along and hits me so hard that I have to go ahead and include it. That’s actually my biggest problem. With every sit down and read through I do, I keep coming up with new twists on the story. I then sit on those ideas for a few days and consider them…
If, after a few days, those new ideas still knock me over like a freight train, I go ahead and figure out how to flesh them in…
Of course the problem there is what I call the mirror domino effect… Meaning that as I flesh some new idea in I of course have to flesh in both sides of the domino… i.e., everything leading up to IT and of course everything following IT after.
Every time you flesh in something new, it throws the story off course ever so slightly until you work it all the way in…
Lots of work…
Unk
It does, Obi-Wan, it does . . . yes, that’s your new handle, Unk . . . when you and I tangled on this topic before, it was simply a matter of semantics . . . what I call HIGH STORY, you call HIGH CONCEPT . . . but we, as you noted, essentially agree on what it is, methinks (though I have planned on questioning the one sentence thing, but I simply am not prepared to explain myself and I damn will know you would be, so another day, maybe, and what would be the point? I agree with what you say, I’m simply not as articulate about it;)
. . . and the problem isn’t not just that many aspiring writers don’t understand HIGH CONCEPT / HIGH STORY (not just screenwriters but writers in general) but also many of the folk that produce / publish / exploit our product don’t understand it, either . . . you know? Which leads to even greater confusion on what it is, not to mention the idea of HIGH CONCEPT was given a stain in the swinging eighties by those who packaged films without regard to story and execution, you know?
A couple years back, I was invited to a meeting with a bunch of D-folks, organized by a guy at a mid-level prodco with a good rep - he invited a few writers whose work he admired, and some development people from a few other companies, to sit down and talk, in the hopes that we could communicate with each other and come up with some ideas.
My view, and essentially the view of all the other writers, was that I can write whatever you wish - just tell me what you want and think you could sell and I’ll do my best . . .
None of the D-folk could articulate what they were looking for (not like you have) and when we pitched ideas, nor could they respond why what worked or what didn’t work clearly . . . primairly because, like writers I have met, they didn’t KNOW what they wanted . . . all the writers there had good product (most of us had indie-stuff happening) and most of all, we all WANTED to write more commercially.
but the d-folks there were unwilling to put their stamp on an idea / concept / story without passing it by on a superior / committee, etc . . . in other words, they weren’t any more committed to finding high-concept material than some writers are about writing it - you get what I’m saying? So it simply muddied the waters for us scribes that were there . . . of course, this is nyc, it may be different out west where you are . . . so the meets were discontinued after one, which is too bad, because in theory, I thought they were a good idea. Get the creatives together with the suits and see what we can do together.
But I’ve digressed. Let me get back to your topic.
In HIGH CONCEPT, as a writer, you need to essentially give a person a reason to watch the movie, right? That’s the challenge, and it needs to be simple, clear and immediate. Why should I dedicate two hours of my life to this movie? Answer that, and you got the daily double. Correct? Am I in the right neighborhood here?
Joshua,
I think it’s the walk like a duck, talk like a duck scenario. A lot of people hate using the “high concept” label but they know a good story when they hear it and will run with it. Call it whatever you want.
Unk,
Welcome to the I Am My Own Worst Enemy club. You will be advised of the meeting schedule in due course, when it has been throughly reflected upon and vetted.
Oh, shoot . . . I forgot to ask you before . . . I also liked 8MM, but since it was a pretty fair copy of HARDCORE (actually, in the original 8MM script, Cage’s character is older, closer to Scott) does that mean that the story is not unique and therefore not high concept?
That’s the tough thing about this . . . what is unique, what isn’t, you know? I mean, most love stories are not unique in that two people fall in love - and there isn’t nessesarily bad to follow a familair story . . . part of writing a story is playiing with the expectations . . . if it’s a spooky story, we want scares, if it’s a kung fu epic, I want some ass-kicking . . . now here’s where you tell me that the uniqueness comes within the execution . . . but in the three step check list you’ve given me, how can I communciate the uniqueness of my crime-thriller in one sentence?
Damn it, I’m talking too much, my apologies . . . I’ll save the rest for after your rewrite and pick your brain then . . . .
Obi? Obi-Wan? Obi who?
Josh,
First of all, let me throw out the following disclaimer:
I’m just telling you what I know. I do not claim to be a screenwriting guru. I do not claim to have the pulse of the industry. Everything is just my opinion. I was recently interviewed by a screenwriting magazine believe it or not… LOL.
They asked me to reveal myself… I said, “Fuck off.” I have NO IDEA how that interview is going to look on paper NOR do I know if they will end up even printing it.
And you know what? I don’t give a shit.
I’m not here to make money. I’m not here to sell anything. I’m just here to SHARE. It seems that a lot of what I share is being discussed in many circles and some seem to think it’s a good thing and others seem to be pissed off about it. Why? I have no idea. SHARING is a good thing and if I can simply let somebody out there trying to break in KNOW SOMETHING they didn’t know before that makes it that much easier or at the very least, alerts them that the road they insist on taking is the HARD ROAD — so be it.
I only mention this because what I’m sharing on this blog thing is nothing new, yet much of it doesn’t seem to be discussed and hence, a lot of us UNKNOWN SCREENWRITERS are sitting down writing stuff “that we know” or stuff that “is close to our heart” WITHOUT finding the high concept.
I sat in on a JIM MERCURIO workshop about a year and a half ago and to be honest, I wasn’t impressed. It was obvious to me that the guy knows a lot about screenwriting. What didn’t impress me was how he then went on to say that probably EVERYONE in the workshop there that day will NEVER EVER sell a script and should be writing screenplays simply as a hobby.
Gotta tell ya… That PISSED ME OFF and I told him so. Luckily, I was invited by the people who put the workshop on so I didn’t have to waste $135 to have someone tell me what I’m doing is nothing more than a hobby. In fact, if I remember correctly, he talked more about his current (then current) foray into the world of Texas Hold’em.
Now here’s why I was pissed… All the other people there that paid their $135 wrote down everything this guy said as if it was the GOSPEL. He even brought in a Power Point presentation of 3 Act Structure and everyone in the room GASPED as if they had never seen this before. They quickly copied it all down and trust me — it was VERY BASIC STUFF. Not worth copying down at all.
In fact, one of the guys that put the workshop on was sitting right next to me and I had my trusty 15 year old Day Runner open so I could write notes throughout the day (yes, this was a one-day workshop) and he asked me WHY I wasn’t writing down the basics of 3 Act Structure.
I just laughed and replied, “You’re kidding, right?”
He wasn’t.
I was told that this was going to be an advanced workshop for screenwriters who wanted to take their work to the next level.
Yeow!
All I can say is that if you do not already know 3 Act Structure BACKWARDS and FORWARDS, you have no fucking reason to go pay $135 for a one day advanced workshop.
But in this case, it worked since apparently none of the advanced screenwriters there knew about 3 Act Structure.
What I’m trying to say here is that I’m fucking sick and tired of hearing the same old shit again and again and again — which is why I threw up a blog of my own.
I hate to dispell the rumor or theory that 3 Act Structure is in fact the SECRET to breaking into the business.
But it ain’t.
Okay — sorry for that rant — and now to answer your question…
8MM wasn’t a spec. From what I understand, it was a pitch and YES, from what I understand, it was in fact pitched as an updated version of HARDCORE.
Go figure.
But at the time (and probably still today), Andrew Kevin Walker could do no wrong so they jumped on the idea.
He made it just unique enough so that guys (and girls?) like us might go see it and though we immediately compare it to HARDCORE, it was different enough to pull in a younger crowd who never even heard of HARDCORE.
This is a COMMON HOLLYWOOD FORMULA for making movies today and once you break in to the business, you can pitch stuff like this ALL DAY LONG.
As for WHAT IS UNIQUE? I think that’s a problem for a lot of screenwriters I know who FAIL to keep up with the market i.e., the movies that keep coming out.
Very often when I go ahead and read a spec from someone trying to break in, I end up reading a screenplay that reeks of something I’ve seen within the last 3 to 5 years and when I tell that to the screenwriter, they seem confused. Confused because they never fucking heard of that movie.
So ONE WAY to keep things UNIQUE is to keep up with all the shit that comes out whether you like it or not. I’m a busy guy and I DO IT and if I can do it, just about anyone can. You just have to FIND A WAY.
The second way to know if what you have is unique is to have at least two to three other people that you trust to LISTEN to your concepts and read your screenplays. If your concept passes their tests (assuming they know what they’re doing and are honest with you), then I always recommend taking the concept out in the public.
Tell your concept to everyone you know (that ISN’T a screenwriter LOL) and watch their reactions. If you tell enough people, you can usually and subconsciously keep tweaking the concept until the people you tell it to are blown away and you can see it on their faces.
I happen to know quite a few people in all different age ranges that go to movies OFTEN and when I meet someone like that in my travels, I HOLD ON TO THEM! Hell, they might be a plumber by day but an avid movie goer on the weekends. I LOVE THAT! I make sure that I pull this person into my circle of high concept listeners… LOL. I send them thank you cards, birthday cards, Christmas cards, etc. That way, when I eventually give them a call and ask them to listen to my high concept, they are willing participants.
These people are like gold to me and as such, I try to let them know how much I appreciate their willingness to participate and in reality, they all seem to enjoy the process.
I do it a lot and they all know that I CRAVE their honesty and sometimes, they really let me have it.
Of course, these aren’t the same people that I would have read a screenplay… LOL. I just pitch them the concept and see/hear the reaction. That’s just MY process… It might not work for everyone but it definitely works for me.
As for the uniqueness of your crime-thriller… That’s a hard one without reading the script or knowing MORE about the story. Suffice to say that if your story is in fact UNIQUE, then you should be able to find the high concept logline that really SELLS that aspect of the story.
And no… You’re not talking to much… LOL. You’re WRITING TOO MUCH!
Just kidding. I wrote more than you. LOL.
Unk
Unk,
What you just shared in that last comment helped me more than you could know - thanks for that - I’d share more but I’ve written too much as it is. Thank you.
You got serious beer credits on my account, if ever we get to meet, and provided you even drink beer.
I DRINK BEER.
Unk
That’s it, then. Whatever’s on tap is on me, wahoo!
Like we thought you were an apple martini drinker ;-)
If you ever make it up here, we’ll get you good and happy with the stronger Canadian stuff.
Words of wisdom. I think I shall take each of my script and distill the concept into its simplest terms. If I can’t find that unique element that transcends the high-low concept gap, perhaps I have work to do.
Great post.
UNK:
“I sat in on a JIM MERCURIO workshop about a year and a half ago and to be honest, I wasn’t impressed….
…They quickly copied it all down and trust me — it was VERY BASIC STUFF. Not worth copying down at all…
All I can say is that if you do not already know 3 Act Structure BACKWARDS and FORWARDS, you have no fucking reason to go pay $135 for a one day advanced workshop.
What I’m trying to say here is that I’m fucking sick and tired of hearing the same old shit again and again and again — which is why I threw up a blog of my own.
I hate to dispell the rumor or theory that 3 Act Structure is in fact the SECRET to breaking into the business.
But it ain’t.”
————-
Oh my fucking god… the 3 act structure … this is becoming a pet peeve of mine.
Yes. It’s absolutely basic stuff & the 1st thing you learn when you pick up a SWing book. Any SWing book you can pick up FREE at the library.
And YES, the 3 act structure thing is very TIRED!
1st time i read Field’s book (in the early 90s) i knew right off it had some serious gaps & limitations. I’m not saying it’s wrong or i disagree with it. I agree the 3 act paradigm (or whatever you want to call it) is valid & somewhat helpful. But the thng is, it’s usefuness is very limited.
After you say a screenplay has a biginning, a middle, & an end… and something big should happen on page 30 and page 75… then what???
It’s all after-the-fact analysis that doesn’t really help you with the nuts & bolts of designing a story.
It’s like a person who wants to learn how to build a house asking a “teacher” how to do it, & that teacher saying: “A house has walls, a roof, some doors & some windows.”
The person is just gonna look at the teacher, like, huh?? What the fuck??
It may be quite true that, “A house has walls, a roof, some doors & some windows”, but that’s of limited use when you actually go to build one. You need more information.
My writing didn’t really take off until i grasped what conflict really was & started using SEQUENCES.
And what’s crazy is that sequences have only been mentioned in SWing books in the last couple of yrs. No wonder–even after all these tons of books by so-called gurus– that most screenplays still suck ginormous donkey dicks. LOL! :-)
I just wanted to give you a giant pat on the back for sharing, Unk. Fortunately for me, romance writers have been disseminating and sharing writing/publishing info for years, as well as forming private critique groups. That this HASN’T been going on elsewhere has been a revelation, because it seems so much the norm in my world.
The best part of sharing, in my opinion, is that when you begin helping someone else, you often end up helping yourself. I can’t tell you how many of my own writing issues have been solved this way.
What you’re doing here is pushing the status quo and there’ll be resistance. People hate change! But I think you’ve got a good core of listeners here. I predict great things for this group!
Like the YouTube video “Charlie The Unicorn” says: Shun the disbelievers! LOL.
Funny that you should mention three act structure and workshops.
I was at a three day Wendall Thomas workshop a few months back and had exactly the same experience. Two of those days were on three act structure and all around me maybe fifty screenwriters were frantically scribbling notes.
Now, actually Wendall is a good speaker and the day she did on subtext was superb. In fact she even had one or two interesting thing to say on the first act turning point. (I actually wrote a note!)
But what freaked me out was that I seemed to be the only writer in the room for whom three act structure wasn’t a revelation!
These guys were getting more excited that I could have possibly believed.
All the time I’m sitting there thinking, hasn’t anyone noticed that no one talking about three act structure wants to talk about the second act!
I mean they’ll quite happily talk about the first act, about set ups, the inciting incident, the decision to enter the new world, all that good stuff — but the moment they get into the second act, silence! The second act is a sixty page desert to these guys.
The only thing they seem to have to say about it is that half way through, the stakes should be increased!
I mean, WOW!
The more I do this, the more I realize that people who study, people who research, people who read screenplays, people who watch films and break them down, people who rewrite, people who take notes, people who look for expert advice are in the minority.
The vast majority of screenwriters are out there without even a clue about how to do the basics.
And yet, with just ten minutes worth of googling you can find reasonable information on almost every aspect of screenwriting.
One of the reason I’m so very impressed with unk, is because I know that he really works at this — in fact it shames me to think how much more of this he does than I do (but I’m catching up fast! LOL)
It took me eight years of floundering about, until I realised I needed to sit down and take this seriously.
So when Unk says “98% of the screenplays circulated in Hollywood are unreadable” I believe him, because those screnplays are being submitted by people who have never even heard of three act structure, who have absolutely no idea what high concept is, who have never had their work read by a professional reader.
Oh dear, I intended to leave a short note and somehow it turned into a rant! LOL
Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is, screenwriting is a highly technical form of writing, it’s not like prose, it has a specific form and very particular requirement.
Unless you are always going to self produce and self distribute you are going to have to understand those forms and those requirements, even if you then decide to reject them.
I don’t mind anyone making a non-high concept, non-three act structure movie — but at least understand what it is you’re rejecting first.
On my current project I’m writing a multi-protagonist, fractal four act structure — you just couldn’t plot it in three act terms — you’d go insane trying! You’d also go mad asking for help with it from some the gurus out there
“A multi-protagonist four act what? Would you like to repeat the question in English, son” LOL
But the point is, to get to the point where you can radically change the structure of a movie you have to understand the basics first.
Heck, I must stop writing before this becomes a thesis!
Unk, did you see the article in LA Weekly? If so, love to hear your take on it - I have a link here - LA Weekly - Screenwriters in the Shit - but, as always, I know you’re deep in writing land, as am I, but mayhap after the writing-storm is at a lull . . .
Have a great weekend!
Great read!
Josh,
EVERYONE has read that article… LOL. It’s got a lot of writers running scared too.
This goes back to a previous post I made about screenwriters needing to keep churning out the specs EVEN when they get a lot of script doctoring (everybody seems to hate that phrase) to do.
Now’s a really good time to consider (when selling a spec) negotiating coming on board as a producer even if that means taking a lower fee on the front end. If you really believe in your writing, take a little less UP FRONT and negotiate a decent back end BASED on your writing and the (hopefully) eventual film that gets produced. This can hedge your bets probably a little better than selling your spec outright.
If your spec is really good, it’s definitely possible to be brought on as producer right away… No, you probably won’t be doing much except LEARNING and you probably won’t make as much on the backend as the producers ahead of you but you do set yourself up quite nicely for other opportunities later on down the road assuming your film makes money.
And a producer that can WRITE is way ahead of the curve than a producer that can’t — everything else being equal.
One of the biggest things to remember here is that you need to keep TOPPING yourself and I think you really need to think of it in exactly that way i.e., your last script was great — your next script has got to be greater. The next script after that has to be even better and on and on.
Sounds hard — sounds difficult but it’s EXACTLY these kinds of challenges you need to make to yourself to flourish.
Let’s face it… We have no one to blame but ourselves in a way…
Why?
Derivitive work. Not unusual enough. Not unique enough. Too formula.
Once you fall into that trap, you essentially start slamming RED “Xs” on your calendar.
Unk
Got it, Obi-Wan . . . I’m on the job as we speak . . .
The LA Weekly article is interesting.
But maybe to get another perspective on this issue, you should also read this article The Widening Chasm
It seems to me that rather than things getting worse for writers, they are actually getting better, providing the writers values themselves and see their role as a partner in a creative venture, rather than as an employee.
Employees always get the shitty end of the stick.
Personally I think it will be good for the industry, because it will mean that everyone will only be as good as their next script.
[...] Yesterday we finally nailed the logline for our $1000 movie, developed two other high concept $1000 ideas and then moved onto our spec scripts and rewrote and tightened the loglines for them. [...]