Save the Cat! Strikes Back: More Trouble For... (22 page)

►
Overly familiar too fast
– You meet someone at a party, event, or even the supermarket. They're a “name” and your follow-up is a barrage of calls and emails or dropping by the office unannounced that makes them wish they'd never met you. You've taken a nice interaction and become a stalker. You've been gifted by chance to know someone better, and leaped ahead, bragging to all who'll listen about your new best friend. Well, don't. This is great if you're David Geffen, if you're a
wunderkind
in the making who is kicking butt and taking names, but freshmen who over-commit too fast only reveal a lack of long-term planning.

►
Pushing for the meeting, and blowing it
– The amazing fact for freshman is you
can
get a meeting with a bigwig. Surprise! In fact, as a new face in town you actually have more sizzle than many veterans. You are an unknown quantity, in a community forever craving fresh ideas, and — especially if you are young — are assumed to have knowledge of the target market execs pretend to know, but don't. So if you push for a meeting, they might meet you. But if you get the face time, use it wisely, and make it count. Because if you get in that room and you don't dazzle, it will be a while — and you'll have to do something remarkable — to be invited back.

►
Confusing “no” for “yes”
– There are a million ways for a producer to pass on a project, e.g., “I like the idea, but not the script”; “It needs a little more set-up”; “I'm going to Cannes and when I come back we'll talk about it.” These are all… “no.” The producer's job is to let you down easy — and yet sometimes we don't get it. Often freshman confuse these non-denial denials as “maybe.” We've seen frosh throw themselves at these little shafts of daylight hoping to push open the door, by rewriting based on a note that's really a “no,” and spending weeks and months to little avail. Yes is “yes.” Yes is: “Call business affairs!” Everything else is “no.” Proceed at your own risk — and on your own dime.

Another maddening thing about freshman year that BREAKING IN 101 helps to overcome is the problem of not being a member and only being allowed to become a member if you already are one.

Huh?

Hollywood is rife with Catch 22’s. “Have your agent send the script, otherwise we can't read it,” you'll hear. But you don't have an agent and when you contact one, they'll say: “I can't take you on unless you have a deal.”
Grrrr
. Another example of this kind of doubletalk is: As a freshman, you'll desperately want to join the Writers Guild of America (
www.wga.com
). There is a point system whereby so many credits earned gets you in. Yet you will often be precluded from getting jobs because you aren't in the WGA. But if you can't get jobs to earn the points…
Grrrr 2
.

And still we all survive and even go on to prosper.

How?

The way past all these roadblocks, and what BREAKING IN 101 stresses, is the development of — and momentum for — your real talent and skills. Take a breath. Take it easy. And know that there is nothing that will get you in the door faster, and keep you there, than steady improvement in your writing chops and a slowly earned reputation for quality work and great ideas.

Yes, there are frustrations:

► The reader working for an agency, company, or studio who seems to have it in for you. Often, he is just like you, a writer on the make, sandbagging others.

► A buyer who dangles $100,000 for a script, but can't commit, so you think cutting your price will help. How about $50,000? $25,000? You'll take it! But what this buyer is really saying is… “no.” Fooled ya! This game was over the minute you caved.

► The agent who charges reading fees, or has some odd scheme for representing you, or is interested in your script only because it is like his “real” client's and he wants to see if yours is competition.

All these and more will perplex you, and make you think it's about you. And make you do something crazy — like quit.

Don't.

Keep firing with scripts they can't say “no” to, keep up the attack with concepts, pitches, and treatments that wow. Keep building your sheaf of contacts — the right way — by putting yourself in their shoes and asking: If I were them, why would I want to be in business with me? And then deliver on that insight.

And remember my father, SBU professor emeritus’ advice, which should sustain us through the perils of freshman-itis:

Every “no” is one step closer to a “yes.”

A slightly advanced course offered all who attend Strike Back U. is more upbeat. There will come a time when you actually sell something. In fact, you might have your name in the trades, and an article listing your latest achievements appearing on the front page of both
Variety
and
The Hollywood Reporter
. Amazing! Like Will Ferrell
in
Anchorman
, you will find yourself saying: “I don't know how to put this… but I'm kind of a big deal.”

Congratulations. You have “heat.”

We might go so far as to call you “hot.”

And while so many screenwriting schools focus on the can'ts, that's how Strike Back U. is different.

Because we know you can.

Your rise in temperature is due to many factors. You may have sold a spec, written a troubled film into production, or hatched a pitch that's packaged with an “in” star, but the point is you have everything you've needed to move to the next level.

So what is that?

HEAT AND YOU: AN OVERVIEW teaches students how to parlay their thermal inversion and not misuse it. Oddly, becoming known puts you in a place where there is risk. Believe it or not, this is just one more test. You can take your heat and parlay it
down
the ladder as easily as you can go the other way. The classic cautionary tale is best seen in the documentary,
Overnight
(2003), in which said writer, by his own admission, did just this.

The proper use of warmth veering on heat is to go back to a basic question we should be asking at all points in our lives:

If a magic wand was waved over me right now,
and I could have anything I wanted, what would that be?

In truth, you should be prepared with a response at every stage of your career, because the answer will keep changing.

Early on, your one and only dream is to “sell something,” to “get on the boards,” but now that you have that, what next? You certainly want to get a great movie made, stay on the project as long as possible, make the final product as good as what's in your imagination. But more often you are fired or rewritten. Sadly, the writer is thought disposable here, Hollywood being the only relay race where you hand the baton to the next guy…

And he shoots you.

So regardless of the outcome, you decide to live up to the motto of our curriculum, and our graduates, and… strike back!

Suddenly the wish you'd make if you had a magic wand (that worked) is to ingratiate yourself into your deal as either a director or a producer. Consulting with your reps, and with the next script being as hot as the first one you sold, you can.

The list is long of writers who, by original design or out of necessity to protect their work and stay in the game, made being a producer or a director a key to their next sale.

And if you don't like this avenue, you might consider partnering up with someone who has a producer or director head, but is lacking writer skills. Andrew Bergman and his producing partner Mike Lobell for many years structured their deals thusly, Bergman parlaying his writer's heat properly — demanding not a full bar, or a ride in a G-5, or front row seats at the premiere, or a date with a pretty actress (we've heard of writers using their heat for even more inconsequential stuff), but a greater role in making and controlling projects that had his personal voice. The result is a long list of successful films as both writer and director (among them:
The Freshman
,
Honeymoon in Vegas
,
It Could Happen to You
), delivered in Bergman's unique style and protected by producing partner Lobell from the nabobs who could easily have taken his baton, turned, and shot him… then run the other way.

When it comes to directing, it all sounds very fun, but here's a hint: Don't insist you want to direct…
just cuz
.

If you
must
write-and-direct that's one thing, but if you want to be the name above the title because your friend did it, or because it's cool, or because Quentin Tarantino does… don't.

Here's the way to know if directing is for you:

1. You have a burning desire to do it

2. You love incredibly hard work

Having heat also allows you access to others with heat. Out of the blue, you will find yourself in rooms with people you have admired from afar for years who are suddenly telling you:

“Let's work on something together!”

Yes, Jeffrey! You bet, George! No doubt about it, Wendy! We absolutely
should
do something together a-s-freakin’-a-p.

It's not farfetched to be hatching these plans and these scenarios early. Instead of picking up the phone and calling your agent when you're bored and moody and think you're not going anywhere, why not sketch out a few “dream plans” where it's just you and hanging out (it could happen) and “working together” comes up.

This is what HEAT AND YOU: AN OVERVIEW teaches: Think ahead, dream big dreams, and review these plans every year.

We ask that you work out with breathtaking audacity:

► A one-year plan

► A five-year plan

► A ten-year plan

And be specific.

What other writer's career most resembles the one you want?

What steps did that writer take to achieve his or her goals?

These scenarios, I can tell you, when written down (or better yet spoken aloud) have amazing power to actually occur.

Be ready.

To take this class there are pre-requisites; you have to write and sell a script, and get your name on the credits of the movie when it's widely released. That is the requirement for being in the crosshairs of America's most beloved pastime:

Bashing Hollywood!

The flipside of having heat, and just as treacherous, is to have a script with your name on it get made and be lambasted mercilessly
by critics. Yet many of our finest graduates have experienced this very problem and not only survived, but thrived.

Fricasseeing the latest movie that comes out of Hollywood is not only okay, it's good sport in America. It's so easy to pan a “commercial” film. And the ones that are merely entertaining are criticized most. Movies are as easily available as water, so we just expect more to come out of the tap. Look at what Siskel and Ebert popularized to deal with the horn ‘o plenty pouring out of the 310 area code: Thumbs up or thumbs down. That's it! Just like Roman emperors voting on the life or death of the poor gladiator, bleeding in the arena, who only wanted to put on a good show.

Did these fine critics sit with the writer in his kitchen, watching his bills mount up, wives or girlfriends crying, begging him to stop! And yet he persevered! Did A.O. Scott read
all
the drafts the script went through to see how an anonymous studio executive and his anonymous writer took a left turn on draft #20, sending the script down the road to a green light, sure, but away from a document that actually started out written…
in English
.

And now…
isn't
?

And when the bashing is doled out, it's always the script! That poor director, those poor actors! Look at the trash they had to work with! These are the people the critic will meet in Cannes. The poor writer is back home with his Fruit Loops, thinking about a new idea that maybe, just maybe, might be critic proof.

The reason this course is necessary, and one you must be aware of, is: You too will experience this scorching. Your script will be bought, and then one day you'll pick up the trades and read that it's getting made. You're the last person to know, of course. They stopped calling you to tell you about the progress of your story months ago. And then it is made and released, and the cry of “bomb” and “disaster” and “stinker” suddenly is about you, yet you're the person who had the least to do with how it turned out.

You may again want to quit, you may take it personally when you read the reviews and take the criticism to heart. But look at the list of writers whose first movies were horrible disasters. What if these talented writers said: “You're right. I suck.” and quit:

Phil Alden Robinson's first movie was
Rhinestone
…
… but he went on to write
Field of Dreams.

Bob Zemeckis’ first few films underwhelmed until…
… he and Bob Gale wrote
Back to the Future
.

Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski's
Problem Child
…
… led them to
The People vs. Larry Flynt
.