Hollywood encourages this thinking. Every day Variety runs a story about the “high six-figure sale” of a spec screenplay by a “first-rate writer.” The truth is, the writer has been at it for several years and will realize that high six-figure sum only if the purchased script becomes a movie, a hypothetical event facing ten-to-one odds. Unreported are the stories that would go something like, “Forty thousand screenwriters passed another day writing in obscurity while their five earlier screenplays went unread and unbought.”

Questions you do not ask a screenwriter: How are old are you? Were you paid anything for your option? Does your agent return your phone calls? How are you surviving? These are impolite and break the spell.

Screenwriting is a business that requires the writer’s utmost single-minded faith even though she works in a totally inefficient, often arbitrary, market. Although there’s no real “track” to success, perhaps the most typical path is to write one or two outstanding screenplays “on spec.” The writer uses them to attract an agent, an endeavor that can take a year and is sometimes more difficult than selling the script. Even an agented writer does at least half the marketing herself. Typically she calls a producer’s office and describes the story of her screenplay in one crisp, thrilling sentence. If the producer is interested, the agent submits the script, and then anything can happen.

The script might get read in two weeks, two months, or never. If it is read, the reader might be a young intern or even a temp, who may have sublime taste or abso- lutely none. The reader might love the script and becomes its advocate, then leave the company before he can get his boss to read it. The writer’s phone calls are rarely returned; on the other hand, if a producer likes a script, he will call immediately, and the writer could be in negotiations that day.

Because it takes six to 10 years for screenwriters to establish a viable career, many seek some kind of competitive edge. Career consultants charge $75 to $150 an hour; script “doctors” average $100 an hour; seminars with script gurus peddling magic formulas cost $300 to $600 for a weekend; image consultants can cost $450 for one morning’s wardrobe makeover. Then, if the writer sells anything, her agent earns 10%; her entertainment attorney earns another 5%; and her manager (optional) usually gets 15%.

Our experiences have ranged from amazingly good to distressing to farcical. One screenplay, a controversial racial drama entitled Imminent Peril, went out six years ago to several major producers and resulted in our meeting with three heads of companies, an almost unheard-of occurrence. After an Academy Award-winning director signed on, followed by Joanne Woodward, it was optioned by Harpo, Oprah’s film company, to become an “Oprah Presents” movie on ABC. We became members of the Writers Guild, attended a Harpo premiere, and got to meet Oprah. Then ABC brought in a new executive; we were replaced and, for the next two years, two other writers wrote and rewrote Imminent Peril, changing it utterly. The option expired and we regained control, then re-optioned it to another producer.

Most exciting was the action surrounding our seventh screenplay, a courtroom drama, Blood Relations. Our agent felt it could be auctioned, so he had it delivered to 15 major producers and told them they were in competition. If two or more wanted it and could sell it to studios, there would be a bidding war. By the weekend, two had called back, interested, and soon two more called. Our bank account was getting excited. Then, over the next weeks, one by one, the studios said no. Why? Courtroom dramas had been deemed dead.

After eight years doing this, the last four living in L.A., are we still delusional? Of course not. We’ve seen way too much, had our hopes raised and crushed too many times.

Then again, we do have four different screenplays out with producers right now. . . . Hey, is that the phone I hear ringing?

Millsaps Magazine  |  Millsaps | Last Edited August 12, 1999