Breakfast with Sharks Page 19
CREATIVE CONTROL IN THE INDIE SCENE
Because screenwriting is only one piece of a complex filmmaking puzzle, many scriptors long for total control over their work. The major creative appeal of independent filmmaking is analogous to the old Saturday Night Live commercial for the Bass-O-Matic 5000: You catch the bass; you kill it; you puree it; you eat the whole bass. In other words, it seems an incredible opportunity for personal accolade and vision. Writing, directing, and producing your own short or feature can be a good way to get out into the market and make some noise for yourself, especially if you have no previous credits or track record. Much of the excitement and many of the advances propelling modern cinema come from independent film. Unfortunately, the flip side is a very public opportunity to fall on your own sword. If you’ve ever been pummeled and jeered by angry friends and loved ones turned investors during the unveiling of the “director’s cut,” you know what I mean. Grandma Sadie may not have her own teeth, but she can still leave a mark. However, in either scenario, making your own flick puts you smack-dab in the middle of the game. Just remember: It’s your bass on the line.
MY OWN EXPERIENCE AS AN INDEPENDENT FILM PRODUCER
Screenwriters are supposed to chain themselves to their keyboards, crank out a magical, flawless script to give to their agents or producers, then wait patiently for the phone to ring with news of a spec sale or an opportunity to pitch on an assignment. Sometimes a bit more initiative is in order. In the riptide that is a Hollywood career, there is merit to barrel-riding a tsunami any way you can. Producing a movie is an incredible odyssey, a real test of will and dedication. Let me rewind to 2000, when I volunteered my time, giving notes on a play turned first draft of a screenplay that had just won a competition called the New Visions Fellowship. Note that many “earning” writers avoid reading others’ work unless there’s a direct monetary benefit for them. That calls in bad karma, in my opinion. In any case, Hard Scrambled, written by Chicago playwright David Scott Hay, was a produced stage play with a gritty, character-driven, Mametesque feel. Think House of Games set in a dead-end diner. Principal work, during the two years following the New Visions Fellowship award and option, entailed adapting the emotional power and subtext of the stage work into the visual language of cinema. I was lucky enough to come on board as co-producer on this project. During this development period, fellow producers James Mercurio and Erik Bauer did double duty, guiding David through multiple rewrites while simultaneously going out to find investors and then potential cast members.
I can tell you that the key to connecting with investors is a solid script. The same goes for attracting a good casting agent. David delivered a dynamite draft in early 2003, on the strength of which veteran actor Kurtwood Smith (That 70’s Show, Dead Poet’s Society, Robocop) committed within twenty-four hours of receiving the script. The only catch was that principal photography on the feature had to be completed during Kurtwood’s summer hiatus from That 70’s Show, so we producers had just a few months to cast the additional roles, raise the additional money needed for production, and shoot a movie.
BUT YOU’RE A SCREENWRITER . . .
“But you’re a screenwriter, and producing a movie is really hard work. I don’t see what’s in it for you.” That’s what a director friend said to me when I was first approached by Jim and Erik to come on board, just before preproduction. I had just optioned a screenplay and was obligated to deliver a rewrite on that project. Meanwhile, I had never produced anything beyond my own student films back in grad school days. But counterweighted against my fear of the great unknown was the memory of a chance meeting with a veteran writer a few years previously. The writer had had a financially lucrative twenty-plus-year career, but had never received credit on a single produced project. Many times I have thought about him and have vowed, like Lex Luthor, that he wasn’t going to be me. I decided to put my option on hold and roll the dice. As anyone who has seen Lost in La Mancha knows, preproduction in no way guarantees a successful result—or even that a movie will actually be shot. But the opportunity is great and the odds are manageable.
I quickly discovered that what I lacked in feature film production experience I made up for in writerly instinct. Don’t let anybody kid you: We scribes have a secret weapons stockpile going for us that no one else in Hollywood has. For starters, we’re research-, detail-, and deadline-oriented. We’re used to pitching our most private or protected work to people we’ve just met five minutes ago. We filter information as we receive it, and are naturally inclined to organize and prioritize tasks. We bring less ego to the table, and are more inclined to be empathetic toward others. Because we tend to be low-key and good listeners, when the fit hits the shan on set and others are freaking out, we writers are still taking it all in, looking for ways to work outside of the box. “You say we shoot in one week and Tom Cruise’s company just forked over five times our rate to buy our location out from under us? Hey, no problemo. There’s a better locale up the road, anyway.” Finally, screenwriters-turned-producers are sworn on the crucible to respect and make the script everything it can be.
INTO THE BREACH
At this point, I know what you’re wondering: “So where’d the money come from?” It came from investors, barter dollars (trading ad space and professional services like script analysis for goods and services), courtesy of Creative Screenwriting magazine, innovative dealmaking, including guarantees that investors could visit the set and would be recompensated before anyone else received Dollar One. In short, we did whatever we had to do to claw our way into production. But first a bulletproof script was quietly crafted over two years. That’s something that 90 percent of would-be producers fail to do—I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard stories about movies in production where everyone is aware that the script is weak. Even though we had a good script and director, an indie film dream cast, a gifted cinematographer in Matthew Heckerling, and money in the bank, it still wasn’t easy. You know that old commercial about the army being the toughest job you’ll ever love? That goes double for producing a movie. Catching ninja throwing-stars in your teeth is easier than overseeing staff and crew and equipment for several months. Shooting locations fall through during production, and Porta Potties on the set seem always about to blow. You’re there on the set at 6:00 a.m., thirty minutes before the first crew members show up. And you’re still there at 1:00 a.m., thirty minutes after the last crew person goes home. On the way home you’re on the phone with the other producers, setting up for the next day, putting out all the little fires. Through it all, you’re running on cold coffee and survival instincts.
I can tell you that producing is an epic endurance test and you’d better be in shape physically to withstand the rigors of days that last as long as eighteen hours. Preproduction meant lots of twelve-hour days—six weeks’ worth, in my case. It seemed like I had 1,001 little tiny jobs, but my strength was in tracking down information, being an empathetic ear for below-line problems like wardrobe, hair and makeup, catering, locations logistics, etc., procuring corporate sponsorship by pitching “the story” of our movie, and turning “no” into “yes.” Marketing the movie for items we needed in production became a pitch—the story of a ragtag band of misfits willing to risk all for the sake of a dream. Truth to tell, I made mistakes (one whopper was to comment about an actor’s performance within earshot of another actor), owing mainly to nerves or inexperience. But I always corrected them and took ownership. For me, amending a mistake on set during production was no different from doing a rewrite.
Taking matters into your own hands isn’t easy. Many times I wondered what the hell I had gotten myself into. But one day I was prepping for the move to our next big location in the San Fernando Valley, where it was routinely 107 degrees under the simmering July sun. In walked a location scout for director Michael Mann, who would be shooting at the very same site two months after us. We exchanged pleasantries and sniffed each other’s projects. And I thought her eyes gleamed just a bi
t as I explained what we were trying to accomplish and the challenges we were up against. “Wow! You’re doing it,” she finally said. “How’s that?” I asked. “Making this movie, your movie. You’re living the dream,” she said, shaking my hand and giving me her card. It all came about because a group of people, including me, were willing to take a chance and make something happen. Right now, six-person crews are putting movies together on free weekends, and producers are scouring the Web for shorts and feature scripts to shoot. My advice: Don’t be afraid to get dirty in the trenches, because there’s no greater teacher than experience. Word, especially good buzz about a project, travels fast. Within weeks of completing production on Hard Scrambled, I was engaged in talks to produce on three different feature film projects, all with budgets two and three times greater than the budget of Hard Scrambled. I’ve decided that, ideally, I’d like to divide my year by spending six months writing and six months producing a film, from my script or someone else’s.
BUSINESS CONTROL IN THE INDIE SCENE
Funding for independent films comes from four main sources: art houses, exploitation, cable television, and the emerging realm of the Internet. The following section illustrates a few of the strengths and pitfalls of each.
ART HOUSE
The current independent film movement emerged from the primal ooze of what was once referred to as “art house films.” Subject matter for this group is often edgy and/or eclectic—perfect fare for niche audiences flocking to herbal-tea-and-velvet-curtain emporiums with names like Bijou Cinema and the Angelika Film Center. Companies that specialize in this milieu include MTV Films, Gramercy, October Films, Strand Releasing, and Artisan Entertainment. Many of these groups specialize in acquiring distribution rights to completed films that have already been financed (e.g., The Blair Witch Project). Occasionally, however, such companies finance projects themselves, as in the case of MTV and the film Election. The key here is attached elements, such as rights to a sought-after novel, a particularly hot director or an up-and-coming actor, or obtaining a critical cameo from an established actor, like Robert Duvall in Sling Blade. The upside to approaching art-house companies is greater access. Often the execs in these companies will take pitches right over the phone. Another important upside is that although these financiers buy a lot less product than does traditional Hollywood, the passion is much more real. If an art-house company buys your script, the chances are much greater that the company will go the distance to make the movie. The downside is that you can’t expect the big bucks.
Somewhere between the studios and the art-house group are companies like Miramax Films and Fine Line Features. These are independent arms of major studios that operate with higher budgets and greater freedom than do their art-house brethren; however, writers working with such studios are faced with many of the same encumbrances confronted by big-bucks features—namely, Dantean levels of bureaucracy.
CABLE AND TV
If you’ve ever sat through an hour of a grown man interviewing a hand puppet on local access television at four-thirty in the morning, or seven broadcasts of Free Willy in three days, you know there is a plethora of channels dying for content, especially on cable. When it comes to films, you should be aware that the big cable companies and channels like HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, and Lifetime often buy the rights to existing stories, then hire experienced Guild scriptors to write a screenplay.
Writing for cable usually means pitching independent production companies that have access to executives at the aforementioned cable companies. Usually these companies have made movies for the cablers in the past and have a sense of what kinds of stories sell. The budgets are usually small, in the $1.5 to $50 million range. Compensation usually runs from $10,000 to $35,000. The main advantage for writers is that these production companies are more open to pitches from less established writers, and if they like an idea, you can find yourself in production within months of the initial pitch—unlike studio development, which routinely takes years. The downside of writing such projects is both the limited budgets and the ever-present contingency that you will still have to jump through the cable company’s hoop. And if the production company fails at setting up your project at one place, your prospects are fairly limited elsewhere.
A few years ago a partner I had brought on board for a single, specific project and I were hired by an East Coast producer to write a legal thriller set in the world of rock and roll. Afterwards the producer was unable to set up the project. However, we had a connection with a production company that made many movies for a cable company that specialized in this exact genre. Our producer offered us a deal: Set up the movie with our contact and the cable company, and we could come on board as full partners and producers. That’s a heck of a deal, considering we had already received $30,000 in compensation for what had been an assignment. The production company loved the synopsis sent via our agent, loved the script we submitted, and didn’t have any problem with the three of us already attached as producers. In turn, their lead producer pitched, then sent over, the script to a development exec at the cabler, whose response was also enthusiastic. So we were brought in for a meeting to discuss story changes that would bring the script in line with the cable company’s creative sensibilities as well as its budget. As a result, chase scenes were minimalized and localized, and the courtroom drama was downplayed in favor of more glimpses into the rock world. Turnaround for revisions was about four weeks, and we did the work uncompensated, since the production company still had to physically sell the project to the cable company. The development executive at the cable company felt the script was ready to submit to her senior vice-president, who gave final approval on all acquisitions. Our agent called to inform us that everyone was optimistic that we had a “done deal” that would be finalized after the weekend. On Monday my partner and I awoke to discover that the entire creative team at the cable company, including the senior vice-president, had been fired. The company announced that it was “going in a new direction.” Our project was first in limbo and then later passed on by the new team. Meanwhile, the initial production company still believed in the project and had an in with a cable company specializing in legal dramas. Once again we did a free rewrite, this time playing up the legal aspects of the story over the music-world material. A few weeks later this cable company passed without giving a reason. With few other relationships and markets to turn to, the project remains in limbo. The above story illustrates the typical highs and lows of the cable world. As writers, my partner and I were really put through our paces, rewriting in weeks instead of months. Had the first cable company acquired our project, the chances it would get made, and quickly, were excellent. It’s exhilarating to know that your work may be made into a film very soon after you complete it. My partner had completed two $4-million films just this way.
EXPLOITATION
Much like U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s 1964 definition of pornography, when it comes to the exploitation genre, the best definition for these guilty pleasures is the old “you know ’em when you see ’em.” Often a film’s name, like Nazi Cheerleaders Do Compton, is a strong clue. Such movies tend to be B-list genre films, action, horror, soft-core erotica (Free Willy has a whole different meaning to this crowd). They are targeting the straight-to-video or foreign sales market, or both. The trades (Variety and The HollywoodReporter) and the Hollywood Creative Directory are useful for ferreting out these production companies. Meanwhile, the American Film Markets (AFM) convention held each fall in Santa Monica offers a chance to dress up in your favorite crime-fighter costume in order to pitch your project/product directly to producers and distributors. It’s vaudeville and theater of the absurd wrapped into one, and not to be missed.
The straight-to-video market isn’t as robust as it once was, perhaps as a result of piracy and downloading, which have made knock-offs of A-list films plentiful and cheap all over the world. There are still opportunities, however, for newer writers to build credits by writing g
enre movies in the $500,000–$1.5 million range, which is also a proving ground for new directors and producers. With script turnaround times of about a month and shooting schedules of twenty days or fewer (the average studio film is ten weeks), these projects are a trial by fire for all involved. As I mentioned earlier, a few years back I worked with a director specializing in these films. His approach to story development was simple: An explosion, gun battle, or sex scene every ten pages. Early on in my sojourn through Hollywood, one such producer stiffed me for completion-of-draft monies. The amount was a couple of thousand dollars, which gives an idea of the scope of these productions.
Three Keys to Creating a Successful Exploitation Script
1. Remember that the intended audience for these movies is fourteen-year-old boys. If the overseas market is the target, dialogue should be limited. That’s why action and martial arts movies do well with both audiences.
2. Limit locations and CGI effects. The haunted-house approach works well if you can freshen it up with an interesting twist on the location.
3. Cheesy movies should be fun. That’s why the tongue-in-cheek approach works so well with threadbare plots and sets, and marginal acting. Remember that you’ll be hard pressed to create War and Peace on a budget of $500,000, so avoid being overly earnest in your writing.
MARKETING YOUR INDEPENDENT FILM
Yes, you should spend a lot of time devising a marketing strategy before you make a movie. Will you target low-budget film distributors via a special screening in Los Angeles, or maybe go the film festival route, trying to build word of mouth and catch a more upscale buyer there? If you decide to approach distributors directly, check out the Hollywood Distributors Directory (323) 308-3400 or (800) 815-0503 (outside of California), www.hcdonline.com. Everything you’ll need to find distribution for your film is here, including contact info for more than 800 companies with 5,000 names and titles listed. Talk to these people, pitch your intended project, get a read on their level of enthusiasm. If you feel you may want to take your message directly to the people, at this writing, there are more than 600 film festivals worldwide. The Ultimate Film Festival Guide, by Chris Gore, is the bible for anyone interested in independent film. Many of the pitfalls of the process are covered there.