Breakfast with Sharks
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Foreword
INTRODUCTION
PART ONE - Basics— Your Decision to Go Pro
Chapter 1
OVERVIEW OF HOLLYWOOD
WHAT DOES HOLLYWOOD WANT?
“WHAT JUST HAPPENED?”
EFFORT, ACCESS, TIMING
PASSION VS. PA$$ION
Chapter 2
ADVICE ON REJECTION FROM A SEASONED, AWARD-WINNING WRITER
HOW TO HANDLE REJECTION
REVISING YOUR WORK IN THE FACE OF REJECTION
Chapter 3
WHAT ARE YOUR CRITERIA FOR COMING TO L.A.?
HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN YOU ARE READY TO MOVE TO L.A.?
THE PROS AND CONS OF LIVING IN L.A.
THE THOMAS GUIDE
WHERE TO LIVE
WHAT IS A WRITER’S “VOICE,” AND HOW DO YOU MAKE YOURS STAND OUT IN HOLLYWOOD?
LEARNING PATIENCE ONCE YOU GET TO L.A.
BUILDING YOUR SUPPORT COMMUNITY
THE MOST IMPORTANT VIRTUE: COMMITMENT
FINAL NOTE
PART TWO
Chapter 4
A SNAPSHOT OF THE ACQUISITION PROCESS
WHY EVERYONE WRITES AND YOU SHOULD, TOO
WHAT YOU SHOULD BE WRITING
WHERE DO PROJECTS COME FROM?
LOW-BUDGET FILMMAKING AS ANOTHER WAY IN
THE PITFALLS OF TRYING TO WRITE FOR THE MARKET
WHO OWNS WHAT YOU WRITE?
Chapter 5
WHAT IS A SPEC?
SPECS VS. ASSIGNMENTS
HOW TO TURN SPECS INTO ASSIGNMENTS
WHAT KINDS OF ASSIGNMENTS SHOULD YOU TAKE?
THE WEEKEND READ
POST-WEEKEND-READ NOTES
FINAL THOUGHTS
Chapter 6
WHAT IS A PITCH?
THE MEET-AND-GREET
THE ACCORDION PITCH
HOW NOT TO TAKE A BEATING AT THE MEETING
WHY YOU SHOULD HAVE YOUR OWN AGENDA AT ANY MEETING
HOW NOT TO MISTAKE THE SIZZLE FOR THE STEAK
TYPICAL RESPONSES YOU WILL RECEIVE FROM THE STUDIO
WHY SOME DEADLINES CAN BE APPARITIONS
Chapter 7
HOW TO REGISTER WITH THE WGA TO PROTECT YOUR WORK
WHAT IS THE MINIMUM BASIC AGREEMENT?
UNDERSTANDING THE SPEC-SALE CONTRACT
FINAL THOUGHTS
PART THREE - The Hollywood Game and Its Players
Chapter 8
A CRASH COURSE IN THE STUDIO DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
THE FIRST-LOOK DEAL
WHAT KINDS OF PROJECTS DO STUDIOS LIKE?
STUDIO DEVELOPMENT BUZZWORDS
STUDIO NOTES: WHAT THEY ARE AND HOW TO HANDLE THEM
Chapter 9
WHO ARE STUDIO EXECUTIVES?
WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO BE A STUDIO EXECUTIVE?
HOW TO THINK LIKE AN EXECUTIVE
Chapter 10
WHO ARE PRODUCERS?
WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF PRODUCERS?
HOW PRODUCERS STAY IN BUSINESS
PRODUCERS AND CRITICISM OF YOUR WORK
PRODUCERS AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO STUDIOS
A FINAL WORD
Chapter 11
WHO ARE DIRECTORS?
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DIRECTORS AND WRITERS
DEALING WITH DIRECTOR’S NOTES
A FINAL WORD
Chapter 12
HOW ACTORS FIND WORK
ATTACHING ACTORS TO YOUR SCRIPT
MOVIE STARS AND ACTORS
QUERYING AN ACTOR
Chapter 13
WHO ARE AGENTS?
THE AGENT ROSTER
MEETING AN AGENT
FIVE WAYS TO IMPRESS YOUR AGENT
HOW TO BECOME A CLIENT
BEING A POCKET CLIENT AND RISING ABOVE THAT STATUS
THE ROLE OF QUERY LETTERS AND QUERY CALLS
FORM FOR ALL QUERIES
KEEPING AN AGENT
HOW TO AVOID STICKING WITH A BAD AGENT
DECIDING WHETHER TO LEAVE YOUR AGENT
MARKETING YOUR SCRIPT WITHOUT AN AGENT
THE BENEFITS OF A GOOD AGENT
Chapter 14
WHAT IS A MANAGER?
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MANAGERS AND AGENTS
HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU NEED A MANAGER?
AVOIDING BAD MANAGERS AND FINDING GOOD ONES
DOUBLE-DIPPING
Chapter 15
SCRIPT READERS
SCRIPT CONSULTANTS
ASSISTANTS
PART FOUR - Ways Into the Hollywood System As a Screenwriter
Chapter 16
THE POWER OF NETWORKING
WHERE TO GO TO SEE AND BE SEEN
WRITING GROUPS
COLLABORATING WITH WRITING PARTNERS
SCREENINGS
JOIE DE VIVRE
Chapter 17
WRITER’S BLOCK
AGEISM
“PEOPLE WHO NEED PAPER” BY SONIA LENT
THE JOURNEY OF A THOUSAND MILES BEGINS WITH BASKETS OF EGGS
9 TO 5 . . . A.M.
CALL FOR BACKUP
Chapter 18
WRITERS AND THE INDEPENDENT FILM SCENE IN HOLLYWOOD
CREATIVE CONTROL IN THE INDIE SCENE
MY OWN EXPERIENCE AS AN INDEPENDENT FILM PRODUCER
BUSINESS CONTROL IN THE INDIE SCENE
MARKETING YOUR INDEPENDENT FILM
PART FIVE - Advanced Career Planning
Chapter 19
HOW TO MEET WITH AN EXECUTIVE OR PRODUCER
SETTING UP THE MEETING AT THE BEST TIME FOR THE BEST RESULT
HOW TO PREP FOR A KNOCKOUT MEETING
THE MEETING ITSELF
USING MEETINGS TO LAND ASSIGNMENTS
Chapter 20
WHAT ARE SCREENWRITING COMPETITIONS?
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TO DO WELL IN SCREENWRITING COMPETITIONS
Chapter 21
YOUR FIVE-YEAR PLAN FOR SUCCESS AS A HOLLYWOOD SCREENWRITER
POTENTIAL JOBS TO SUSTAIN YOU DURING YEARS 1–4
OUTSIDE THE INDUSTRY (DOESN’T HAVE TO MEAN STARBUCKS, BUT IT CAN)
PART SIX - Extra Credit
Chapter 22
AGENTS
ATTACHING TALENT TO YOUR PROJECT
SHORT FILMS
ANSWERING TOUGH QUESTIONS
COLLABORATION
FILM SCHOOL
PRODUCERS
PROTECTING MATERIAL
QUESTIONS ABOUT THE CRAFT
BUSINESS QUESTIONS
THE INTERNET
FOREIGN MARKETS
LIFESTYLE ISSUES
AUXILIARY MATERIALS
Chapter 23
TOP TEN FILM FESTIVALS
TEN MAJOR SCREENWRITING COMPETITIONS
TEN ESSENTIAL BOOKS ON THE CRAFT OF SCREENWRITING
TEN KEY PERIODICALS FOR SCREENWRITERS
TEN VALUABLE ORGANIZATIONS, UNIONS, AND GROUPS
ELEVEN IMPORTANT INTERNET RESOURCES
FIVE VALUABLE INDUSTRY DIRECTORIES
AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE LIST OF THE 100 GREATEST AMERICAN MOVIES OF ALL TIME
Chapter 24
About the Author
Copyright Page
TO MY WIFE, SONIA.
YOU ARE THE BE-ALL, END-ALL,
LOVE OF MY LIFE AND LIVING PROOF THAT
BESIDE EVERY GOOD MAN IS A GREAT WOMAN.
AND TO OUR BEAUTIFUL NEW SON
WILLEM SPENCER
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Carrie Thornton, my editor.
I am truly fortunate to work with an excellent editor like Carrie. Thank you and the terrific Three Rivers Press team for all your hard work on behalf of this book.<
br />
Erik Bauer, my long-suffering editor at Creative Screenwriting magazine.
In addition to being the most even-keeled publisher I have ever met, you are a good friend.
Daniel Greenberg, my agent.
Thank you for making this project happen.
Mary Lent and Walt Heinbach, my grandparents.
Both had an extraordinary work ethic and truly believed in the power of knowledge.
Inez Bauer, my copy editor at Creative Screenwriting magazine. Thank you for your help proofing and correcting this manuscript.
Masako Oshiro Beckwith, my mother-in-law.
You have taught me the true meaning of perseverance and determination against all odds.
Domo arigato.
Janet and Joseph Hirschoff.
Thank you for being the sister and brother who encouraged me day in and day out.
Paul Lazarus III.
Thank you for sharing your experiences, which inspired me.
Norma Brokaw
Thank you for your words of encouragement when I needed them most
Playwright David Rambo
Theodore Heyck, Esq.
Dr. Valarie Clemente-Crain
Lee Hamilton Knight
Dr. Nitin Patel
Thank you for your friendship, wisdom, and encouragement throughout my journey in Hollywood.
FOREWORD
Navigating the depths of the Hollywood shoal is as difficult as venturing into a Minoan cave without a ball of string, especially if you weren’t born into a place of wealth or position. My own start in this industry was in some way the norm. I started at the bottom, like most people who gain entry into the business of moviemaking by delivering mail or as readers at a studio. However, to succeed here, you will need—among other things—help and guidance. Breakfast with Sharks will provide that help and guidance, but nothing beats jumping in headfirst and starting your career yourself.
This business, more than any other industry, is constantly changing; tastes change and people in power change positions frequently. Many who come to Hollywood and make a go of it are driven out by the undertow and the vicissitudes of time. The sine qua non is the passion for their craft, lots of patience, and the ability to stay at the table long enough to get people to notice you. You have to know that a career in Hollywood is a marathon and not the hundred-yard dash.
Millions of people are trying to open doors in the movie business, but only a few will make a living at it. Luck and, most of all, talent are the most important ingredients. Experience comes after that. The thing to remember most is to find a friendly ally quickly. Also, think about what is important to you. In my opinion this isn’t money. That will come if you love what you do. You have to keep your priorities in order. In my view, family and a few friends come first. These values and what you do for others will determine your character and will put you in good stead. Be honest, first to yourself, then to others. If you take the easy way in, you will suffer the easy way out.
That said, read Breakfast with Sharks, learn, and then go ahead with it and enjoy the journey.
—Mike Medavoy, Chairman of Phoenix Pictures
INTRODUCTION
Hollywood is one place in the world where you can die of encouragement.
—DOROTHY PARKER
Graduate film school was the best two and a half years of my life. The next three years that followed were definitely not. Since way back, I had focused on this singleminded dream of writing movies for a living. All was going according to my master plan until just after my relocation to Hollywood in the autumn of 1993. Upon arrival, I hit the ground running with three completed specs and three student films made for under $1,000 each. Luckier and maybe more persistent than most, I quickly landed my first production company writing assignment, along with a high-profile agent at one of the Big Five literary agencies (those being CAA, ICM, WMA, UTA, and Endeavor) in Los Angeles. A studio executive at Disney was also championing my spec script. Life was sweet. Indeed, my Barcalounger was oiled and ready for a victory lap down Sunset Boulevard. But wait . . . within my first forty-five days, the assignment project was dead, the executive was fired, and my agent let me go with a blunt 7:30 a.m. phone call saying, “I shopped your spec, but couldn’t find a buyer. I read your new spec. It’s okay, but frankly I was unimpressed. You had one friend in this town [the aforementioned exec] and now you don’t. I don’t think there’s any more I can do for you.” My first thoughts were Who conducts business at that ungodly hour? and Now what the hell do I do? While the questions came quickly, the answers took years. In the difficult days and weeks that followed, it would hit me like a brick hurled from hell that although I had watched both Eraserhead and The Seventh Seal frame by frame seventeen times, and understood as much about binary character theory and restorative three-act structure as anyone else, I was still desperately unprepared for this brave new world of trial and many, many errors. Unfortunately, writing a script, or making a short film, or taking a dozen film theory courses in no way prepares you for what Hollywood is really like.
Aside from my fellow film-school plebes who were scrambling and being cut from the sled dog races just like me, my now ex-agent was right, I was out here alone in the harsh wilderness of botox injections and Chuckie VII. I soon discovered that broken deals and fickle fortune were part of the initiation process for a place where ex-lawyers sort mail at talent agencies while hoping soon to land as agent trainees. In the ensuing months I realized that my formative academic background meant very little in Tinseltown. I was qualified for a place at the starting gate, but not guaranteed a career. The day you finish law school and pass the bar exam, someone will hire you to practice law, but that is not the case with film school. In fact, I had little practical experience or even a reference point to cope with the business and day-to-day aspects of life here. Meanwhile, a tsunami of student loan debt—$60,000 to be exact—threatened to wash away my flimsy thatched hut of patience and self-confidence.
I remember once talking to an aspiring director who had been out here for three years. She said, “I’m struggling so much here I can’t bring myself to tell people I have a master’s.” After listening to her plight, I promised myself that no matter what, I wasn’t going to be back on the bus, another casualty on Hollywood’s Walk of Shame. What actions I took next would determine whether or not I was to have a career in film. So I scoured the bookstores for material pertaining to my situation. I was a writer who could write but who didn’t have a clue how to navigate the hierarchy of Hollywood—on the bookshelves I found little that pertained to my situation. Unfortunately, to this day, few sources exist for those looking to go beyond how to shoot a movie, how to write a script, how to find an agent. Actually learning how to be a full-time screenwriter, how to make the leap from competence in the art to the business side of the craft, would have to come the hard-knocks way. There was no guidebook to be found. That process for me took more than four years with cumulative writer earnings of $6,500. By then, all but a few from my graduate and undergraduate film-school classes were long gone, back on that bus.
Each year, upwards of 20,000 films are independently shot and 50,000 screenplays are written on spec by in-the-trenches screenwriters, usually in the wee hours after the tykes are put to bed, or at dawn before classes, or following a ten-hour work shift. And every year, tens of thousands of intrepid souls with so much to offer the world descend upon Hollywood. These hopeful, huddled masses yearn for fame, fortune, artistic expression, and a respectable table at L.A. hot spots. Most of these arrows shot at the sun will hit dirt. The independent films they made that never found distributors to show them will find a place in the family video archive, and the script will serve nicely as a drink coaster. And the dreamers seeking to nibble their chunk of the $6-billion-a-year entertainment industry cheese will instead go hungry and leave town just in time to make room for the next wave of eager beavers. Ninety-nine out of a hundred would-be Spielbergs, Goldmans, Ovitzes, and Bruckheimers fall sh
ort of their aspirations, in part because the stakes are so very high and the knowledge that comes from mistakes, failures, and lost opportunities quickly takes its toll on the psyche and on the wallet.
Because film is the most dominant art form in contemporary culture, and the need for information, for “a way in,” is so great, more than 2,500 film schools and professional programs with more than 30,000 students currently exist, according to the American Film Institute (AFI). While film school is invaluable for teaching theory and history, most of what is taught is by definition academic. Film is a young art form, and the film industry is constantly in flux. So a cottage industry of seminar-meisters and their books have leaped into the breach, charging as much as $500 a day for promises of secret handshakes granting passage onto the inside track to Hollywood. Many pay it because actual Hollywood experience is relatively hard to come by.
Every minute of every day, people arrive in Hollywood and want to know where to live, how to get a job, how to get a life and a foothold in the business. There are definitely ways into the Hollywood system. For six of the last ten years that I have been a working Hollywood screenwriter, I have provided such information teaching at Santa Barbara City College and for UCLA, as well as sharing personal experience in my “Belly of the Beast” column in Creative Screenwriting magazine, as well as through two other industry publications, Screenstyle and Tournages. During that time I have optioned, sold, or have received studio assignments on ten projects, as well as co-producing the feature film Hard Scrambled. I have pitched on dozens of scripts, perhaps even a hundred or more. I’ve also been a judge in four writing competitions. If any of the above terminology is baffling to you, don’t worry, it will all make perfect sense by the time we’re through.
With Breakfast With Sharks, I set out to write a book that would be loosely organized like academic courses, but would provide a real-world education and an intimate glimpse into the movie industry. It would be filled with “take this and use it right now” information, as well as innovative tactics for the business side of Hollywood. Readers will learn such information as
how to pitch a project to a producer over the phone within thirty seconds
how to shop a script without an agent
how to cut through agent-and-producer-speak
how to turn a spec into an assignment
how to structure your deal
where can you meet other creative people to build your community and enhance your chances of success