The Writing Year - Year Two: Managers, Lawyers, Producers, Option Agreements, and Giving Someone the Ax

Happy new year!

If for no other reason than we have to throw out our calendars and open new ones to January once again, New Years celebrations tend to go hand in hand with evaluation (or re-evaluation) of one's life. As far as my writing life went, 2009 was a pretty interesting (and sometimes frustrating) year. Actually, you could say the same thing for my personal life, too. I really learned a lot about the business in 2009, and though I didn't find "success" in terms of a major sale, I continued to fight my way toward Hollywood's door. Hopefully what I went through will help shed some light on your situation or reassure you that you're not the only aspiring screenwriter fighting an uphill battle.


It was just over a year ago that I officially signed with my first manager. I pitched him ideas for follow-up projects to my post-Apocalyptic spec when we met in late December of '08, and I spent my holidays working on the one we settled on. By February, he was transitioning out from the company he was with when I signed with him, and he was making the move to someplace else. Agents and managers hop companies all the time, so that wasn't a red flag for me. I did, however, grow suspicious when he had me emailing his private email because he couldn't tell me where he was going or what the situation was. At the same time, a manager at his former company was embroiled in controversy regarding slander and a lawsuit. I quietly (and not so quietly to The League) hoped that this was why my manager was leaving.


At that point - two months into our manager/client relationship - I didn't have anywhere else to go. My manager had contacts I certainly didn't, and I wasn't an in demand writer. So, when he asked if I would go with him to his new company, I quickly said yes. I had to officially fire the first company, which I did via email (as per my manager's instructions). I hated the place that put me in; after sending the email, his former colleague told me that I had to inform them which projects he had repped me on, where they had been submitted, and that any sale made on them would mean 10% for the old agency. My manager's response when I worriedly asked him how to deal with that - "ignore it."


Things got more and more unsettling. March came, and still no word about where he had transitioned to. In fact, I had very little word from him at all. I enquired about the status of my script a month after he supposedly submitted it nine places, and he said he would check in a week. Finally, a mutual friend who we had submitted my script to emailed me; she'd received an eblast from my manager informing his friends and professional contacts of his new home. Right then, I did two things. I emailed my manager to see if he would finally tell me what was up, and at the same time I googled the new place. The new agency - primarily a literary one - very clearly said "we are not the right place for screenwriters" on its homepage. They repped writers for almost every other medium, but were adamant about that. When my manager did get back to me, he did so with no explanation. All he said was that I should email him at his new address from that point on.


By the beginning of April, I'd had enough. I felt like I was doing more work for myself than he was. It was also right aorund that time that a family friend - Gretchen Somerfeld - read my script. Gretchen's an LA based producer with recognizable credits to her name, and she was into my script. Smartly (though certainly not advisable in many cases), I slipped her the script wihtout going through my manager. I was growing so displeased with his actions that I didn't want to cut him in on 10% of a potential sale made from my direct contacts. Within the span of just a few weeks, I fired my manager, found out that a production company with a first look at Warner Bros had strongly considered my script but ultimately passed on it, and I agreed to work with Gretchen.



May passed by pretty quickly. I scrambled for a lawyer to take a look at the option agreement Gretchen sent me. The phone calls to entertainment lawyers were all over the place. Some of the larger companies refused to have any sort of conversation without a $15K retainer, while others gave what little advice they could before telling me that I would have to pay $200 to $600 an hour to speak further. One junior at one firm actually agreed to look everything over and take me on at the standard 5% of the sale, then got back in touch a week later and said he would have to do it at 7.5%. Finally, I managed to get some help from a very kind woman at the WGAEast. Though she prefaced that she's not a lawyer, she works closely with contracts and option agreements, and she assurred me that my agreement was one of the more favorable she'd seen.


I went on vacation at the end of May, and I signed the agreement with Gretchen upon returning in early June. By signing with Gretchen, I also acquired a manager in Kevin D. - Gretchen's manager who would rep me for the project (and then potentially longer, based on our work together for the first spec). With that, the re-writes began. The first major change was the title. For the record, I either hate titling my scripts, or I love it. A title can make or break interest in a project (and sometimes a project itself), so unless I get a great one, I'd rather hit myself in the crotch than give my baby an unworthy title. 


After weeks of waffling and tossing while trying to fall asleep, I settled on a new title that Gretchen and Kevin both really liked. Kevin started talking the script up to a few people around town, while I spent the summer re-writing. The script underwent some major changes, finally settling into its second real incarnation by the third week of September. 


We sent it out to a few places, including giving an exclusive to the production company with the Warner Bros deal that passed in the Spring. Since I'm an unknown writer, my "team" and I agreed to try and attach an agent first, and then go wide. Unfortunately, after a long day at work, I found out that the production company passed a second time, and the agents we were hoping to hear from either hadn't read or also passed. 


Finally, in October, a bite! Another production company, this one with a first look at Universal, was interested. The head producer (Oscar nominated) hadn't yet been made aware of the script, but one of his right hand people had read and liked it. She had some notes, which would ultimately send the script into its third major revision, but was offering us an exclusive deal. In a money-less handshake agreement, we agreed that I would do re-writes per her notes. If she liked the new draft (which she has not gotten yet), then it was off to the producer and, fingers crossed, to Universal with an A-list producer attached. I've been working on the new version since, and just about finished the first stab at the revised Act Two today.


So, 2009 has been quite the rollercoaster ride. I don't mean to belabor my first failed management experience, but I do think that it's important for all new writers to know that they don't have to take someone's crap just because they're unproduced. Don't get me wrong - the key to my relationship with Gretchen and Kevin so far has been my willingness to work with them and take their feedback, and I'm sure they'd tell you the same. On the other hand, though, if a working relationship isn't, well, working, then you're not obligated to stay in it. This is your career, so you have to do what's best for that. And for you. 


All in all, though I didn't make a sale and am not yet an in-demand writer, I would say that 2009 was a very good year for me. I got closer than I have ever been to launching my screenwriting career, and I did manager to land on a few people's radar, if only for a few minutes even. I've been working on this post-Apocalyptic spec for two years now, and I know there's still a lot of work to go. 

So please, if you take nothing else away from this post, take these two things: work well with others, but make sure that they're working well for you, and be patient. Some people might have the great fortune of being a legitimate overnight sensation, but if you read between the lines in most articles on "overnight" screenwriters, you'll see that they worked in the industry (as a producer, reader, grip, caterer, etc.) for years and had been writing for more years than that. 


May 2010 be yours and my best Writing Year yet!

Decade in Review - Onyx's Top 10

A couple months ago Backer had the idea of posting our top 10 movies of the decade. He followed through and posted his list, as has Cake Man, and Zombie has his full list coming. Inspired by their efforts to sift through ten years of cinema for ten movies, I went ahead and put together my top 10 for the decade. This list does not represent the top 10 greatest films of the decade. These movies (in no particular order) are my personal favorites over that time span, and I've learned from it. I've learned that I am clearly a dude...and I understand more clearly why my girlfriend and I can never agree on anything to watch.

No Country For Old Men (2007)

There's a lot to love about this Cohen brothers film, but it makes my list because of Javier Bardem's portrayal of Anton Chigurh, one of the most intimidating and relentless villains I have ever seen. His determination and sheer lethality took me back to The Terminator where we saw a seemingly unstoppable force barreling towards our protagonist. The fact that the terminator couldn't be killed by any bullet only added to its fear factor. Chigurh is a flesh and blood human and can be done in by any well placed bullet, but you almost begin to doubt that in the way he takes life. Even when Chigurh is wounded it's only a brief delay in his pursuit of Llewelyn Moss. As we saw in The Terminator, the antagonist takes a scene to mend his wounds himself. It's the only time Chigurh and the terminator aren't in direct pursuit of the protagonist and it doesn't last that long. What more could you want from a bad guy?

Gladiator (2000)

It always surprises me that I can't remember if I saw one of my favorite movies in theatres. I'm sure Cake Man remembers the exact date, time, and place he first saw the forest battle in Germania or Maximus' first battle at the coliseum. Everyone has a few movies that you can just sit down and watch again regardless of how many times you've seen it. Of the movies made in the 80s, I came back to Predator more times than any other. Of the films made in the 90s, The Princess Bride took the replay value crown. For this past decade, Gladiator was that movie. Each time I watch it I still hope Maximus can return to his estate in time to prevent the slaughter of his family. That's when I know I really love a movie, when I keep hoping despite having seen the outcome dozens of times.

Taegukgi (2004)

My college roommate recommended this Korean movie to me back in school when he realized I was somewhat of a military junkie. I should have been studying at the time, but instead I was glued to my computer screen as the dvd played, fighting off tears at times.

Taegukgi follows two brothers who are forced into the Korean War. Jin-tae is the street-smart older brother who always looks after his book-smart kid brother, Jin-seok. When Jin-tae learns that recipients of a prestigious medal of valor are granted special requests, he volunteers himself for any mission no matter how dangerous in the hopes of winning the medal and sending his brother home. But as the brothers fight for their lives and the fate of their country, Jin-seok seeks to step from within his brother's shadow and stand on his own as a soldier and a man.

Taegukgi has intense military action sequences that can stand with anything Hollywood can put out, but the movie also has character and lots of heart. If you enjoyed Saving Private Ryan and can stomach subtitles Tai Guk Gi is well worth a watch.

Collateral (2004)

It didn't take much more than mention of Michael Mann and a hitman to get me to watch Collateral in theatres. I'll admit, Tom Cruise had something to do with it too. I feel as though I'm one of the few people who openly like the guy. He had me at Top Gun, and I wholeheartedly enjoyed seeing him transformed into Vincent, the ruthless silver-haired hitman. Jaime Foxx was excellent in his role as a cab driver who gets the unfortunate task of driving Vincent around the streets of Los Angeles for one night while he eliminates his targets. It never hurts to have Michael Mann direct in my opinion. I can't quite pinpoint all that I like about his directing, but I find myself drawn to his movies and I certainly appreciate that when guns go off in his films you instinctively feel like ducking.

Go (2001)

When I first saw Go in my Japanese Cinema class it was my first exposure to the racial tensions that exist in Japan between Koreans and Japanese. I wasn't surprised that such tensions existed, but this was my first exposure to them, and although a movie isn't the real thing, it can be a very intimate portal into those experiences we otherwise wouldn't know. The human emotion that propels us through these experiences are the same on both sides of the world, but it's always refreshing to see it through another perspective.

Go is a teen drama that follows Sugihara, a Korean national who lives in Japan with his parents. He attends a communist Korean school, but he speaks Japanese and hangs out with Japanese kids. When he falls in love with a Japanese girl, Sakurai, he hides his heritage from her in fear of rejection. There's a great deal of anger within Sugihara as he is a young man who doesn't quite know how to blend into Japanese culture while being at peace with his heritage.

Go is an exciting, stylish film, but it has great emotion at its core in a story propelled by youthful love. It manages to go beyond teenage angst. It's not just about the pressure of Sugihara's love for Sakurai. The film touches on real societal pressures and familial pressures that add to Sugihara's strife. I don't really remember caring about a character recently in the way I cared about Sugihara.

Black Hawk Down (2001)

There were a lot of movies I was thinking about including over Black Hawk Down, but I'd just be lying to myself if I didn't put it on my list. I'm a sucker for great military drama and action, right next to the guy kissing the girl at the end of the movie. I'll admit there are other places to look for better military drama, but Black Hawk Down is a spectacle for military action. This movie was almost exhausting in its relentless action as it portrayed what was described as the most intense gun battle involving US military forces since the Vietnam War. I remember it fondly as one of the loudest and most entertaining movie going experiences I've had, and Mark Bowden's book was just as good. I wish there was something I could say on a character or story level but there really isn't. As much as I love great characters and great stories, sometimes I just want to see something blow up.

Kill Bills (2003 and 2004)

Never has a quest for vengeance been so much fun. If we're not being wowed by stylish slice and dice fight choreography amid an ultar cool soundtrack, we're sitting through drawn out scenes of dialogue that we absolutely don't mind sitting through. I consider Tarantino to be a master of dialogue, and he so often manages to create a full cast of great characters. In some movies you might lose track of the supporting cast, but how often have we seen small 1-3 three scene roles in Tarantino movies go down in the better part of cinema history? Congratulations to Tarantino for creating Beatrix Kiddo, the best movie heroine of the past decade in my opinion.

JCVD (2008)

Our love of movies has to start somewhere, and I'm not ashamed to say that Jean Claude Van Damme was one of my favorites as a kid. When I got older and began exposing myself to films that contained more than spin kicks and shootouts, it was easy to see the shortcomings in a lot of Van Damme's work, but you have to keep in mind that movies like Bloodsport and Double Impact aren't being put out as oscar bait. Van Damme is an aging action star, and I'll always respect his legacy in entertainment.

When JCVD was released it was interesting to be able to hear people collectively talk about a Van Damme film in a positive way. JCVD is an intimate film, semi-autobiographical and semi-fictitious as Van Damme plays himself and touches on his difficulties as an aging action star, marital woes, and the pressures of public criticism. The story follows Van Damme retreating back to his home country of Belgium in an attempt to escape the madness, but the national icon can't seem to catch a break as he becomes one of several hostages in a botched post office robbery. The film is a gift for any Van Damme fan, but as critics' praise revealed, JCVD is a solid film that any movie goer should be able to find merit in.

The Last Samurai (2003)

Every once in a while a movie comes along that you feel was made just for you. Cake Man has The Dark Knight, and I have The Last Samurai. I'm not sure if I'm ready to call it my favorite movie over the past decade, but it stands out as my most rewarding movie going experience over that time. Some might say that I should have seen more movies, but let me try to explain the way the stars aligned for me on this one.

I tend to enjoy Tom Cruise and his off screen antics don't really have an impact on whether or not I see his movies. In addition, I have long had a fascination with samurai and that fascination continues to this day with my study of Kendo (the way of the sword). In the film Hiroyuki Senada played the role of Ujio, one of the most fierce and enjoyable characters in the movie. I've long had an appreciation for him considering that he voiced the protagonist in Dagger of Kamui, a 1985 anime that certainly played a major role in my love of movies. Let us not forget that the music in the film was composed by Hans Zimmer, my personal favorite. Oh yeah, it also has ninjas.

There was no way I wasn't going to see The Last Samurai and there was no way I wasn't going to like it. The film was well acted all around, especially by Ken Watanabe. Its epic action is right up there with Gladiator and Braveheart, the ninja ambush being one of my all time favorites. It was beautifully shot and the score perfectly complemented the drama and the emotion. I bought it on dvd the first day it was out.

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)

Master and Commander was released a few months after the first Pirates of the Caribbean film. I was a freshman at NYU at the time and I remember that I was doing my best to capitalize on my interest in piracy by developing a true to life screenplay on pirates. As much as I enjoyed Captain Jack Sparrow and company, I always felt that the romanticized take on piracy overshadowed a very dramatic and movie worthy reality that took place on the high seas. Master and Commander wasn't directly about the golden age of piracy, but in it I found a serious representation of men of action on the high seas. I always see in it the potential for what a serious pirate movie might be.

What I love about Master and Commander is that it's a chess game in the form of a pursuit across entire oceans. One day the HMS Surprise and Acheron are exchanging broadsides at twenty yards, then the next the two vessels are separated by hundreds of miles of ocean. Another day one vessel is in hot pursuit, a few miles off the bow of the other. By morning the vessels have swapped places, and a few days later they're separated by hundreds of miles of ocean again. With no vessel captured by the next it's all due to the cunning of two captains, Jack Aubrey being portrayed by Russel Crowe. With Master and Commander it's like keeping a car chase exciting across an entire country rather than a city block. With Peter Weir at the helm I believe they did a masterful job.

There's the list. No turning back now, but here are a few other titles that could have just as easily been included. Lost in Translation, Pan's Labyrinth, Spirited Away, Amelie, Inglourious Basterds, Princess Mononoke, and History of Violence.

Shame on District 9, Body of Lies, Miracle at St. Ana, and The Hurt Locker for not being what I had hoped for.

Novel Ideas: Lessons learned so far

A quick apology for my lengthy absence. In all honesty, I've spent a while mulling what my place is here at The League -- not in reality, as I find our meetings informative and helpful -- but on the blog. Time, as with anything, is an issue. But what can I bring to the blog that readers can't get elsewhere? Links and comments are always nice, but I do my link aggregating elsewhere and in the end, you're just passing along info from somewhere else. But I digress.

One of the things I enjoyed writing most for the blog were my occasional "What I'm Reading/Viewing"-style posts, so I imagine I'll get back to those at some point in the new year. Additionally, one thing that sets me apart (because, let's face it, it's all about me, right?) from my fellow Leaguers is that I have no screenwriting aspirations. I mean, I'd write one if the stars aligned properly, but my interest lies mainly in prose. That's neither better or worse, just my preference.

I think it'd be helpful to chronicle, in a fashion similar in concept if not frequency to Cake Man's Writing Week columns, my experiences writing SILENT CITY. For those of you who don't recall, SILENT CITY is my long-gestating crime novel, set in modern day Miami. I've been working on it for over a year. After a few stops and starts and one massive outline rewrite, I finally feel like some forward progress is being made. I'm about 60 pages in and generally happy with where it's going.

So, in no particular order, here are a few things I've learned so far. I'll pop back in with more notes on the process as I continue to learn/unlearn/deal with them.

1. Always outline

One of the toughest lessons I learned was one of the first. My first pass at SILENT CITY was written in the first person, very much in the style of one of my favorite detective novels, George Pelecanos' A FIRING OFFENSE (author above). That wasn't really the main problem, though. I was working without an outline -- I mean, I had a general sense of where I wanted to go with the book and who the villains were. But, for all intents and purposes I was flying blind. Not a great idea when writing in a genre that is all about calculated surprises and tight plotting. By the time I realized (with some help from The League, of course) that I was wandering around the forest without a compass, I was about 40 pages in. Not a lot, if you're thinking in terms of novels, but it was a lot of writing for me. The longest work of fiction I'd ever produced was a 25-page short story, so the idea of having to rewrite my precious 40 pages was anathema to me. Cue long writing lull.

My mind kept coming back to SILENT CITY, though. So, after kicking myself a bit for delaying the inevitable, I sat down and hashed out a new outline, trying to save as much of my first draft as I could. While a noble endeavor, that in and of itself leads us to my second lesson.

2. Nothing is sacred

In my efforts to retroactively organize SILENT CITY, I crafted a competent, but fairly uninteresting -- and cluttered -- outline. Characters became redundant, scenes dragged on too long and the climax was, to be kind, nonexistent. Changes needed to be made if the project was to be salvaged. And saving the project would most probably involve starting over, from a blank page one. This thought was utterly frightening, especially considering I'd spent months "working" on the novel to varying degrees. Still, it was that or add SILENT CITY to the pile of unfinished projects I'd built up over the last few years. This was more unappealing than the former. It even drove me to write about it on the blog.

So, with a heavy heart, I saved my initial draft as "SILENTCITYold" and "SILENTCITYoutlineold" and started two new documents. One, a new outline with an ever-changing list of changes and tweaks at the top. The changes that had been enacted were bolded, other needed changes and suggestions (based on my own editing/notes and comments from my fellow Leaguers) were continually added to the top of the list. The second document, as expected, was an entirely new draft. One of the things I felt didn't really work with the original incarnation of the novel was that it was first person. Despite my love of the Pelecanos Nick Stefanos books, I wasn't George Pelecanos, and I felt more comfortable writing in third person. So, I pasted in what I found useful from the first draft and the new outline (which, in turn, took whatever was deemed worth saving from the original outline) into the blank document as I went along, purposely avoiding plopping too much into the blank document for fear it would overwhelm me and minimize my flexibility in terms of plotting and characterization, while still giving me some structure to comfortably work off.

This plan worked out pretty well. I was writing at a comfortable clip and the new changes were working. My new outline was received positively by the League and some others who got to read it. What could go wrong?

3. Find balance

In a few weeks, I'd gone from decrying the need for an outline (foolish) to becoming an apostle of my shiny, new outline (also foolish). After a good meeting where my outline was, for lack of a better word, approved by The League, I set off and started writing. 30 pages later, I had a few chapters that I was generally happy with. The only problem? They fell kind of flat. Motivations were murky, pacing was slightly off and -- lo, and behold -- some structural changes might be needed. But why? My outline was approved! Too bad, I learned. While a few weeks ago my outline read fine and made sense, it was just that -- an outline. The execution of said outline will either support the initial success of the outline or showcase a few problems. Why is your main character doing what he's doing? Who is the villain? What's with all the musical references? At the end of the day, you can have the best outline in the world, with every scene properly paced and each character fleshed out -- but it's still just an outline. An outline that, if your book is published, no one will ever read. With that realization, I learned that you have to try your best to adhere to the plans you've laid out, but also be flexible enough to allow these characters you've created -- and created to simulate real people as much as you can -- to live and breathe, and move around and do stuff. It happened with my protagonist a few days ago. Instead of wandering into the next scene I'd plotted for him, he decided to jump ahead to another point. Bad? No. I actually think it reads better. More work? In the short-term, yes. But it's worth it if it works. This also leads me to the final bit of advice for today.

4. It's a draft. You will rewrite.

It's natural, especially I think for a first-time novelist like me, to try and nail it on the first pass. You want to set the scene perfectly, nail the dialogue so everyone sounds unique and interesting, etc. Not gonna happen. If you want to get to the end -- and by end, I mean, the end of your first pass -- you'll need to let some things go. But this realization can only come after another, more important one: This is not the last time you will write this scene, or bit of dialogue, or description. I'm not familiar with any novels that were just written in one pass and sent for publication. I'm sure I'm wrong, but it's safe to say this is not the norm. With that in mind, you have to gauge things: How much time should you spend tinkering with something vs. whether or not you should press onward, knowing that tweaks (dialogue changes, expanding descriptions) that don't totally alter the structure and flow of the novel can be revisited at a later date. "Why put off now what you can do later?" you ask? Well, that's fair. But at what cost? The goal is to finish a draft. Once that's done, you begin the process of editing and rewriting, which is an aspect of writing unto itself. One I hope we can discuss here. Once I get there, of course.

My Decade in Movies [Zombie's Top Ten, Part I]

When 'Backer posed the challenge to the League of listing and explaining our top movies of the decade, I immediately spent the next several weeks listing every movie I'd absolutely loved in the last ten years. I was left with a list of a few dozen movies that I found very memorable - and absolutely no way to narrowing that list down. What criteria am I supposed to apply? Do I go for the movies I had the most fun watching, or the ones I felt had the best screenplays? Which ones I've re-watched the most times? None of these choices seemed to fit, so I decided to try something a bit different.

This last decade was a very transformative one for me - as both a person and as a writer. I started the aughts in high school - over the next ten years, I'd go through four years of screenwriting training at NYU, meet lots of inspirational, like-minded writers, graduate and eventually start pre-production on my own film. I'm in a far, far different place going into 2010 than I was in 2000.What does that mean in terms of films, though?

For this prompt, I'll explore the ten movies over the last decade that I feel impacted me the most on a writer. When I look back on my (hopefully long, hopefully successful) screenwriting career many years from now, I feel like my writing will still show some trace of these movies that just hit me at the right place at the right time.

So, without further ado...

2001 - Mulholland Drive


Sometime just before seeing Mulholland Drive was when I decided I was going to pursue a career as a screenwriter. I'd always toyed with the idea growing up, writing plays and short movies for my friends and family, but the summer of 2001 was when the idea cemented in my brain. I am going to be a writer even if it takes me my whole damn life.

I had first seen Blue Velvet sometime a few months earlier and it quickly became one of my favorite movie (and still is, to this day). The concept of auteur filmmaking was still pretty foreign to me. (I understood that Dario Argento and Quentin Tarantino had styles they carried from film to film, but that was as deep as my knowledge went.) David Lynch was one of the first directors whose body of work I specifically hunted down and barreled through. Mulholland Drive was the first Lynch movie that was new at the time I saw it.

Mulholland Drive begins as one thing, but by the time the movie hits its three-quarter mark you're not sure what it is at all anymore. The surreal fever dream that breaks out for the last half hour of the movie was one of the most unsettling, horrific, haunting pieces of film that I'd been exposed to. (Seriously - the film goes batshit crazy.) I remember coming to the end of the movie, calling a friend while the credits were still rolling and urging him to drive over, and then watching it all again that same night.

We debated the meaning of Mulholland Drive's ending until the wee hours of the morning, coming up with several different theories but none that seemed to fit exactly. This process repeated again and again - I'd watch and rewatch the movie with different friends, family members and other acquaintances, hoping that someone would catch something that I'd missed each time and crack the Mulholland Drive code. What the hell did it mean?

After I learned that the movie started as an aborted ABC TV series and that the last half hour probably didn't have any meaning at all - I at first felt let down, but after a while I embraced it more than ever. Some films tell a story. Some tell a story with a message. And some - like this one - don't really have a story or a message; but, they create a unique experience. Despite my search for the answers to Mulholland Drive proved to be frustrating and futile, watching the movie was an experience I enjoyed, the first time I watched it through the tenth time. And that has to be a sign of asuccess, right?

2000 - Battle Royale


I came across Battle Royale in a very roundabout way - which makes sense, as growing up a teenager in rural Ohio you just don't discover foreign film on your own. (I didn't see a video store that stocked any until I moved to NYC and was spoiled by the recently-deceased Kim's Video.)

I caught the Flaming Lips touring with Beck when their tour stopped in Cleveland in '02. During the Lips' vibrant and glitter-fueled stage show a large screen hung where scenes of exploding Japanese schoolgirls were projected behind the band. Naturally, this violent, bloody imagery stuck in my brain - when I got home from the concert I immediately jumped on the internet to find out just what the hell Wayne Coyne & Co. had exposed me to. It didn't take long for someone to point me to Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale.

I bought a horribly-subtitled bootleg DVD from eBay and eagerly dug in. Wow - these crazy kids were just massacre-ing the bajeezus out of each other! I have never seen anything this insane! I wish I knew could tell what the heck was going on! It was love at first sight.

With a new awareness that filmmaking happened outside of the U.S., U.K. and Canada, I then wondered - was all foreign film like this? Are they all this messed up?

2001 - Amelie


Aaaand Amelie proved to be the polar opposite of Battle Royale. As soon as my eyes were opened to foreign film, I eagerly grabbed my Columbia House catalog, flipped to the back and immediately ordered all five non-English movies they had in-stock. Two weeks later my package arrived and I tore in.

Whoooooa, whoa, whoa. This movie didn't have any axe-wielding Asian school girls, but it certainly had a lot of other things to offer. I was instantly enamored with the director, Jeunet, and his adorable, waifish leading lady, Audrey Tautou. To this day, no movie has outright charmed my pants off like this one. It's as twee as can be, but you can't help but just love it to death.

I can probably blame Amelie's influence for turning the female leads of my screenplays into Manic Pixie Dream Girls - a tendency I've been working to break myself of. The next time I write a female character whose sole personality trait is "cute" - I'll look in your direction, Miss Tautou.

In any case, this movie pushed me head-over-heels for foreign cinema. Practically to a fault, actually - for a period I'd convinced myself that Hollywood was morally bankrupt and completely bereft of ideas. I might have been right - but by limiting myself to subtitled flicks for this period caused me to miss out on a lot of really great domestic cinema.

2001 - Spirited Away


Let's go back a little bit. My initial fear of subtitles for some reason didn't apply to anime. I was an an anime nerd from my early teenage years, when my older cousin introduced me to Akira, Project A-Ko and the like. I did not fear subtitles on my animated films; on the contrary, I preferred them. (Yeah, I was THAT guy on the internet forums.)

Spirited Away (and a few choice selections from the rest of Miyazaki's filmography) is the perfect example of what a filmmaker with unlimited imagination can do when they are presented with unlimited means. An entire world is created here, much more 'real' than anything the James Camerons and Peter Jacksons of the world can make with truckloads of studio money. That's the animation advantage - if you can dream something up, it can be realized visually. It's a shame that so few animation studios outside of Ghibli and Pixar seem to be aware of animation's full potential.

The child enters a surreal dreamworld in this film that is mysterious, beautiful and terrifying all at the same time - and absolutely believable. To me, this movie does everything that Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are tried to do earlier this year - only so much better.

2001 - Wet Hot American Summer


Wet Hot American Summer seemed like a rare creature in the early 2000s - a lowbrow comedy that wasn't an American Pie, Scary Movie or Austin Powers sequel - could it be?! And it DOESN'T star Rob Schneider or David Spade? God, what a black hole the late '90s, early '00s were for humor...

Wet Hot American Summer is silly. That's really the best way to describe it. If you can buy that everything that happens in this movie takes place over the course of one day, you're gold. If you've already accepted that the 30-something actors are playing teenagers, this shouldn't be a problem. By the time you get past all of the above, you won't question talking soup cans, telekinetic teens or children averting armageddon from the comfort of their summer camp. This movie is all over the place, but in a good way. Sure, there's crude humor in there, but the film isn't driven purely by dick jokes like way too many comedies are these days.

This movie showed that a script can be silly for silliness' sake and still become a viable movie in the new millenium. Most importantly, Wet Hot American Summer reminded me you don't have to f*ck a pie to get a laugh.

[Check back later for the second half of Zombie's Top Ten of the Decade]

The Writing Week (Vol. 2) part 104 - Back in the Act Two Habit

Even though I know that vacations can be the best time to write (since I have nothing else to do after I wake up at noon), it can be really hard to motivate myself to be productive then. Fortunately, I managed to motivate myself this break, and the results so far have been... interesting.

We've written a lot on and off on this site about music and the influence that writing to music can have. Sometimes, all I need is background noise, and I'm good to go. Other times, music either interferes completely, or the wrong mood will completely throw off my writing sessions. These past few days have been an odd mix of all of the above.

Typically, I'm a fairly fast writer once I have an outline written. In reworking Act Two of my post-Apocalyptic spec, I feel like I've been all over the place. Some days, I'm doing great. Others, it's like I can't choose the right tunes, and the hour that I write for drags by with barely a word typed. To be honest, these past few writing sessions I've had have also been some of the more disappointing I've had recently. Sure, I'm making some progress and the page count is slowly but steadily growing. At the same time, though, I come away knowing that scenes are really little more than a framework for what they need to be. In the past ten pages I've written, there are at least three big beats I know I have to go back and fix, since the characters' emotions are totally inconsistent and do not make sense from one scene to the next.

I wouldn't say that I'm afraid of ot even really all that uncomfortable with this approach, though it's certainly not the one I would prefer. Rather, it's just unfamiliar territory. I don't like knowing that there's a lot of work I have to do when going back to the pages I've already done. On the other hand, maybe it's a sign that I'm recognizing needs and elements that are not yet flowing naturally from the pages, and I will have to identify the things that need to be changed in order for the script to unfold more organically. Today and yesterday in particular have left a very strange taste in my mouth, and I'm just not quite sure how I feel about them, at all. I guess I'm going into new territory for myself as a writer, and I'll have to wait before i can definitively say whether that's a bad thing or not.

The Writing Week (Vol. 2) part 103 - Laying My Writing Plans

Wow, I can't believe there's only one week left in the year (more or less). More than any other that I can remember, this year has sped by. I'm an April baby, and it seems that the eight months since I turned 24 have virtually come and gone in the blink of an eye. Still, I've gotten a lot of writing (and even more re-writing) done in that short time, and I hope for a lot more to come.

With the year winding down - though, I plan on doing a TON of work over the Holidays - it's getting to be time to plan my projects for the next few months. I don't necessarily stick concretely to any writing plans I come up with, but I feel that having a game plan is always helpful, especially in the face of an almost two-week vacation while my office is closed between Christmas Eve and New Years. The break will largely be focused on continuing to re-write my post-Apocalyptic spec, which I hope to have finished by 2010. After that, though, I want to keep writing without stopping.

Usually after I finish a project, I wind up taking about a month break before delving into another. That's all well and good when I'm just writing for myself, but the hope is to sell the post-Apocalyptic project early into 2010. I'm certainly not banking on that, since nothing in this business is a guarantee, but I do want to plan accordingly. One of the worst things a new writer can do when making headway into the industry with a project is to have no follow-up projects whatsoever. I have a few completed drafts and a number of ideas, but nothing yet that could instantly go right out. 

If I'm truly serious about making a career of my writing, I know that I have to get those other projects lined up. So, as soon as I'm done with this new draft, I want to jump into a new project with little or no break at all. I have an outline I'm ready to work on. There's another script that can use some rewrites. There are other brand new ideas that haven't been fleshed out all all. Whichever one (or ones) I choose, I'll want to get cracking, so now is the perfect time to start planning. Who says you have to wait until January 1st to implement your resolutions?

2009 Spec Sale Analysis

Nikki Finke just posted a fascinating look at the 2009 spec sale stats. I remember seeing similar analysis of the market last year, and it's always interesting (and reassuring) to track the stats. Last year, for point of reference, our buddy Scott over at Go Into The Story counted 88 spec sales.


Some highlights of Finke's post:

• 436 spec scripts came out in 2009, of which 72 sold (17%).

• 373 specs went out wide in 2009, of which 19 sold (5%). Of those 19, only 3 sold after April 30th, out of 178 attempts during the period (1.7%).

• As for spec sals by genre, comedies led with 32% of sales, thrillers 29%, action adventures 21%, while dramas and sci-fi/fantasies tied with 10%.

• Universal and Warner Bros bought the most specs among the major buyers (6 each). But Warner Bros bought only 1 spec script in the second half of the year. Paramount & Sony tied with 5 each not counting ony's Screen Gems which bought another 3. DreamWorks had 4. 20th Century Fox had 3, but adding all its three banners, Fox bought 6 specs. Lionsgate purchased 3. New Line didn’t buy any specs in 2009.

• Relativity and Intrepid bought the most specs among the other buyers (3 each).

• Among agencies, CAA made 14 spec script sales out of 34 attempts, or 41%) same number of spec sales as last year, followed by UTA's 10 sales out of 30 attempts, or 33%, and ICM's 10 sales out of 33 attempts, or 30%. WME didn’t form until May 2009, but when you take the numbers for all three of its component companies -- Endeavor, William Morris, and WME -- the combined agency would have been a dominant #1 in total scripts sold, with 18 sales out of 47 attempts, or 38%)

• Benderspink among management companies had the most spec sales (5 sales out of 11 attempts, or 45%). Kaplan/Perrone had 4 sales out of 12 attempts, or 33%. Principato-Young made 3 sales out of 8 attempts, or 38%, while Circle Of Confusion did 3 sales out of 15 attempts, or 20%.

It's especially interesting to note that, of the 19 sales from specs that went wide, only 3 sold after April. Three sales for 2/3 of the whole year of that group. 

As writers, I think there are two ways to react to these kind of stats. You can either take it as a sign of how difficult things are and give up (which we at the League don't advise). Or, you can read all this, digest it, and realize just how difficult it is to make a sale and why your manager or agent might not yet have come through for you as you'd have liked when you first signed up with them. 

I'll do my major Writing Year recap in a few weeks, but I can tell you this: my post-Apocalyptic spec is one of those 364 specs that came out in 2009 and didn't sell (or at least I assume it is, since it did get read a few places). While I'd have loved to be one of the lucky 17%, my manager and producer kept telling me how difficult the market is/was, and they're totally right. It's incredibly difficult to make that sale. However, with the internet, we now have incredible access to stats and information that can help reassure us and fortify our knowledge of the situation. Your script might not have been the best thing execs read this year, but that might not be the reason they didn't buy it. People are scared to buy anything that's less than "a sure thing" and a spec script by an unknown writer - unless safely within the box or so brilliant it can break all the rules - just ain't a sure thing. Rest assured that you're not the only one who feels like you're pushing the boulder up a hill - we're all doing it. Let's just hope 2010 is the year when we get it to the top.