The Hollywood Hustle

THE PLAYWRITING SEMINARS > FILM > PLAYS vs. FILM > REALITIES > TIPS > HUSTLE >

'You have much less control [in film] because when you write a movie you're an employee. . . . If you're hired to write a movie, they can hire and fire you 37 times. If I had sold THE HEIDI CHRONICLES to a movie studio, as opposed to independent producers, and they decided they didn't like my script, they would have the right to fire me and take me off the project and say, Why is this woman an art historian? Why doesn't she become a pilot? Days of Thunder did really well; why doesn't she become a race-car driver?'

-- Wendy Wasserstein

More practical moves . . .

• Register your script with the . . .

  Writers Guild of America

  . . . as soon as its done. And definitely before you show it to anybody except your lover. And get Copyright protection.

• Move to Los Angeles
  It helps to be there.

• Enter the Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship Competition
  The Nicholl is sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the folks who bring you the annual Academy Awards. These fellowships carry a $25,000 award and even placing in the semi-finals [top 30] is a great way to get a Hollywood agent. Write for the application and guidelines between January and April and well before the May submission deadline. Include an SASE:

  Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting
  Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
  8949 Wilshire Blvd.
  Beverly Hills, CA 90211-1972

  Here's everything you need to know about the Nicholl competition from the Academy's Web site . . .
  Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting

  The competition is tough -- all the more reason to enter -- with about 4,000 entries each year, but it's limited to writers who haven't sold a screenplay yet.

• Ignore Hollywood and try the Independent route
  If you've got some second-thoughts now about boxing up your computer and heading for Lotus Land [as the envious call Los Angeles], forget about winning an Oscar with that first screenplay you've just written -- at least for the moment -- and look for an eager [and compulsively driven and young] would-be film director.

  The best time to find these folks is just before they graduate from a university film program, preferably a university in your state, or even better, your hometown. Most film director hopefuls would rather write their own screenplays, but they'll respond to your talent with words -- especially if it's free, as it will have to be.

  Steven Soderbergh's SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE followed this route -- and you probably know what happened next -- and it's a great lesson in how to write for the independents.

  Tips on Writing Indie Screenplays

  If all goes well, you'll end up shooting a 30- to 90-minute film, funded on credit cards and donations. The whole thing may come in for less than $200,000. Then you and the director will hustle this at film festivals, hoping for the big one: Robert Redford's Sundance Film Festival. With luck -- lots of it -- and talent, you'll both end up with agents and Hollywood offers. It happens every year -- 1999's vintage crop of indies included THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, done for $60,000. And the odds are better than winning your local state lottery.

• Send your script via the Internet to American Zoetrope
  Francis Ford Coppola runs one of the classiest studios in the USA and he's now done the unthinkable [by Hollywood standards] . . . His staff will accept unsolicited screenplays at Zoetrope Screenplays. They'll make you work for the opportunity. But you don't have to leave home to do it.

• Syd Field's Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting

  He's a paint-by-numbers sort of guy, but he's good. You may outgrow him after you've sold a few scripts, but he's got his fist planted on what makes hearts pound inside Hollywood's film studios.

  ORDER Screenplay

And start reading . . .

And see what some of the pros say about the work . . .

• Joel Engel's Screenwriters on Screenwriting,

  A good mix of US playwrights who work in film and very successful Hollywood types.

  ORDER Screenwriters on Screenwriting