Screenwriting: In the Trenches
Writing is a tough business. Many with talent give it up, because they can't take the repeated rejection. Especially in the screen writing genre.
Recently, I wrote a piece about Harlan Ellison that pissed off some of his friends and fans. If you look at my blog since I began writing it on Christmas Eve 2009 and note the number of comments for each piece, you'll see that this one posting brought dozens and dozens of comments and cross-comments. Then things settled down for several days. Then I got a couple more comments. And I realized that nearly all--95%--of the commenters are folks writing screenplays. Including some respected screenwriters like Josh Olson and Charles Pogue.
Many of the comments were crude and angry, belittling me and other writers leaving comments. Some commenters referred me to other blogs that supported my view of Mr. Ellison and Mr. Olson, but they were just as rude and angry. Sitting at my computer reading these comments, I began to feel like I was witnessing a war. In Hollywood. Writers in the trenches. And I thought; Why are they willing to write in a war zone?
Around 1979, I co-wrote a screenplay called Moondogs. Todd Berger, the co-writer who was also a wildlife biologist, had a connection with Disney through his father. We got the script to Disney and waited and waited...for six months. Then they told us they weren't interested, because they had just bought the rights to Farley Mowat's autobiography, Never Cry Wolf. Their movie came out in 1983. It was boring. Ours would have been exciting and fun, about a boy who finds wolf pups and gains the confidence of the Alpha male and female. He becomes one of the pack and lives with them. It was a good story with lots of action. But Disney chose to make a boring wolf movie.
So we took it to Sun Classic Pictures, who made family movies like the 1977 film Life and Times of Grizzly Adams with Dan Haggerty. They had the script for a short time and rejected it, because they didn't have the budget to film on location in Alaska. I thought that was a bogus excuse, but it was easier to accept than our script sucked.
Then in the mid-1980s, I was introduced to a man who had a great story about robbing drug dealers in San Francisco, escaping from prison and escapades that would make a great film. He had written a narrative of his life and wanted to turn it into a screenplay. And he was dating a script consultant working for Michael Douglas. So I spent several hours interviewing him, read his badly written narrative of his life story and wrote a script called The Man Who Got Away. We agreed to share any money we made if the script was sold or produced.
A short few days before the script was finished, he and his girlfriend split up. But she agreed to read it and, if it was good, give it to Michael Douglas for consideration. We waited only a few weeks. And the longer she had the script, the more hopeful we became. And then we got the word from his ex-girlfriend: "This is a novel, not a movie." She said she liked the script, but she thought it would be best for him to write it as a novel. So he did. And years later he got it published. And I made absolutely nothing.
In 2001, I was approached by a friend of mine who was trying to become a movie producer. And she had a personal story about her husband suffering from Alzheimer's when he was only 50 and how it devastated the family and their finances in a short few years, but how her love for him never wavered. Since he had been in the entertainment business and worked with the likes of Willie Nelson and Tennessee Ernie Ford, we thought his story would resonate with Hollywood producers. So I wrote a script based on her story called Webs and Tangles. My producer friend was able to get some back-end, product-placement money from a pharmaceutical company that made a popular drug for Alzheimer's patients. "Back-end" meant that the money came when the movie was made--not before. And 9 years later, she's still trying to find someone to put up the money to make the film.
This same friend around 2001 had an idea for a comedy based on an incident where her aging father lost his driver's license and wanted to stay mobile. She wrote a 40-page version of the script and I created more story and characters and re-wrote the script, which was titled Black Currie, about an old man on a quest to travel several miles on a three-wheel "Currie"-brand scooter (top speed is 15 mph), while being chased by two stupid crooks. It was a funny script. She actually got it to one of the top producer/directors in Hollywood, Sidney Pollack, who liked the script but wasn't interested in producing it. Then actor Hume Cronyn, who was married to actress Jessica Tandy, read the script and, through his agent, agreed to play the lead for $400,000. With him on board, we thought we were on our way to getting somewhere with the script. But then Hume died.
My friend called me and asked, "So who else could play the part Hume was going to play?" I said, "Well, what about Jack Lemmon?" So she contacted Jack's agent, who read the script and loved it. And he agreed to give it to Jack when he got out of the hospital, where he had just been admitted for an undisclosed medical condition. We waited for Jack to get better. He died.
We've put the script away, because we don't want anymore of our favorite, senior actors leaving us.
Then, in 2003, my friend raised $100,000 from an organization in Palm Springs that wanted to memorialize their founder with a film about agoraphobia. I agreed to write the script as a feature film, as long as it wasn't an illness-of-the-week-type of story. They agreed. Having directed theater for several years, my producer-friend hired me to direct it. I was paid $10,000.00 to write and direct my one and only film, Open Spaces. It was a low-budget blast.
On April 17, 2004, Open Spaces premiered at the Camelot Theater in Palm Springs, with a red carpet, CBS and 500 guests. It was the only public-theater showing of the film. And it was never released commercially. But the Institute for Phobic Awareness has sent thousands of copies of the film worldwide to their many chapters. There's some satisfaction in that, but not the same as if it had been commercially distributed in theaters or DVD.
I lost interest in writing screenplays. I went back to novels. I send my manuscripts to an agent or a publisher and they send back a rejection letter. There's no muss and no fuss. And I don't have personal opinions about the novelists who are getting published at the houses where I've been rejected. And I don't have to write a blog that attacks them for being jerks, because they're too busy sitting alone somewhere writing their novel, not trying to make a ruckus and get noticed by a producer.
Screenwriters are willing to write in a war zone, I suppose, because they are writing for huge numbers of people for piles of money and hoping for worldwide fame. Although hoping their books will become bestsellers, I believe we book writers have a more humble approach to our craft. I'm not saying that screenwriters can't be humble. It's like screenwriters are diving into a world war, having to make a big bang to protect territory, while book writers are battling on a smaller scale, just trying to blast a small opening in the wall through which they can crawl and appear on some publisher's list of books.
MAKE WORDS NOT WAR!
Can't we all just get along? Peace, love, dove, Hari-Krishna, far out, groovy, solid, and tie-dyed.
Recently, I wrote a piece about Harlan Ellison that pissed off some of his friends and fans. If you look at my blog since I began writing it on Christmas Eve 2009 and note the number of comments for each piece, you'll see that this one posting brought dozens and dozens of comments and cross-comments. Then things settled down for several days. Then I got a couple more comments. And I realized that nearly all--95%--of the commenters are folks writing screenplays. Including some respected screenwriters like Josh Olson and Charles Pogue.
Many of the comments were crude and angry, belittling me and other writers leaving comments. Some commenters referred me to other blogs that supported my view of Mr. Ellison and Mr. Olson, but they were just as rude and angry. Sitting at my computer reading these comments, I began to feel like I was witnessing a war. In Hollywood. Writers in the trenches. And I thought; Why are they willing to write in a war zone?
Around 1979, I co-wrote a screenplay called Moondogs. Todd Berger, the co-writer who was also a wildlife biologist, had a connection with Disney through his father. We got the script to Disney and waited and waited...for six months. Then they told us they weren't interested, because they had just bought the rights to Farley Mowat's autobiography, Never Cry Wolf. Their movie came out in 1983. It was boring. Ours would have been exciting and fun, about a boy who finds wolf pups and gains the confidence of the Alpha male and female. He becomes one of the pack and lives with them. It was a good story with lots of action. But Disney chose to make a boring wolf movie.
So we took it to Sun Classic Pictures, who made family movies like the 1977 film Life and Times of Grizzly Adams with Dan Haggerty. They had the script for a short time and rejected it, because they didn't have the budget to film on location in Alaska. I thought that was a bogus excuse, but it was easier to accept than our script sucked.
Then in the mid-1980s, I was introduced to a man who had a great story about robbing drug dealers in San Francisco, escaping from prison and escapades that would make a great film. He had written a narrative of his life and wanted to turn it into a screenplay. And he was dating a script consultant working for Michael Douglas. So I spent several hours interviewing him, read his badly written narrative of his life story and wrote a script called The Man Who Got Away. We agreed to share any money we made if the script was sold or produced.
A short few days before the script was finished, he and his girlfriend split up. But she agreed to read it and, if it was good, give it to Michael Douglas for consideration. We waited only a few weeks. And the longer she had the script, the more hopeful we became. And then we got the word from his ex-girlfriend: "This is a novel, not a movie." She said she liked the script, but she thought it would be best for him to write it as a novel. So he did. And years later he got it published. And I made absolutely nothing.In 2001, I was approached by a friend of mine who was trying to become a movie producer. And she had a personal story about her husband suffering from Alzheimer's when he was only 50 and how it devastated the family and their finances in a short few years, but how her love for him never wavered. Since he had been in the entertainment business and worked with the likes of Willie Nelson and Tennessee Ernie Ford, we thought his story would resonate with Hollywood producers. So I wrote a script based on her story called Webs and Tangles. My producer friend was able to get some back-end, product-placement money from a pharmaceutical company that made a popular drug for Alzheimer's patients. "Back-end" meant that the money came when the movie was made--not before. And 9 years later, she's still trying to find someone to put up the money to make the film.
This same friend around 2001 had an idea for a comedy based on an incident where her aging father lost his driver's license and wanted to stay mobile. She wrote a 40-page version of the script and I created more story and characters and re-wrote the script, which was titled Black Currie, about an old man on a quest to travel several miles on a three-wheel "Currie"-brand scooter (top speed is 15 mph), while being chased by two stupid crooks. It was a funny script. She actually got it to one of the top producer/directors in Hollywood, Sidney Pollack, who liked the script but wasn't interested in producing it. Then actor Hume Cronyn, who was married to actress Jessica Tandy, read the script and, through his agent, agreed to play the lead for $400,000. With him on board, we thought we were on our way to getting somewhere with the script. But then Hume died.
My friend called me and asked, "So who else could play the part Hume was going to play?" I said, "Well, what about Jack Lemmon?" So she contacted Jack's agent, who read the script and loved it. And he agreed to give it to Jack when he got out of the hospital, where he had just been admitted for an undisclosed medical condition. We waited for Jack to get better. He died.
We've put the script away, because we don't want anymore of our favorite, senior actors leaving us.
Then, in 2003, my friend raised $100,000 from an organization in Palm Springs that wanted to memorialize their founder with a film about agoraphobia. I agreed to write the script as a feature film, as long as it wasn't an illness-of-the-week-type of story. They agreed. Having directed theater for several years, my producer-friend hired me to direct it. I was paid $10,000.00 to write and direct my one and only film, Open Spaces. It was a low-budget blast.
On April 17, 2004, Open Spaces premiered at the Camelot Theater in Palm Springs, with a red carpet, CBS and 500 guests. It was the only public-theater showing of the film. And it was never released commercially. But the Institute for Phobic Awareness has sent thousands of copies of the film worldwide to their many chapters. There's some satisfaction in that, but not the same as if it had been commercially distributed in theaters or DVD.
I lost interest in writing screenplays. I went back to novels. I send my manuscripts to an agent or a publisher and they send back a rejection letter. There's no muss and no fuss. And I don't have personal opinions about the novelists who are getting published at the houses where I've been rejected. And I don't have to write a blog that attacks them for being jerks, because they're too busy sitting alone somewhere writing their novel, not trying to make a ruckus and get noticed by a producer.
Screenwriters are willing to write in a war zone, I suppose, because they are writing for huge numbers of people for piles of money and hoping for worldwide fame. Although hoping their books will become bestsellers, I believe we book writers have a more humble approach to our craft. I'm not saying that screenwriters can't be humble. It's like screenwriters are diving into a world war, having to make a big bang to protect territory, while book writers are battling on a smaller scale, just trying to blast a small opening in the wall through which they can crawl and appear on some publisher's list of books.
MAKE WORDS NOT WAR!
Can't we all just get along? Peace, love, dove, Hari-Krishna, far out, groovy, solid, and tie-dyed.
Write on Brother!! Fist in air!
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I had no idea that your Harlan Ellison post garnered so much attention and by folks with Wikipedia pages. Wow. This is a propitious start to your blog. Keep up the good work.
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Thanks. I always love being "propitious." It does sound like a professional whiner, though.
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