John August

QandA

To live and die in LA

Film Industry, QandA

In your opinion, does a feature scriptwriter need to live in the Los Angeles
area to be fairly active in the business and sell work?

–K. Strom

Yes. As much as I want to believe that a fledgling screenwriter in Scranton,
PA, can take the industry by storm, the majority of writers working in studio feature films live and work in Los Angeles, at least in the early stages of
their career.

Could you do it in London? Sure. New York? Probably. Could you just commute
back and forth to LA, spending most of your time somewhere else? Maybe.

The real question is should you, K. Strom, move from wherever you live to
Los Angeles? That’s the $1000 question, and one that’s been raised at least
half a dozen times in the three years I’ve been writing this column. Basically,
if your life’s dream is to become a giant Hollywood screenwriter, then you
need to live in Hollywood. If you have different goals — indie films, for
example — your options are much more open.

Movie quotes

Film Industry, QandA

It has always bothered me that screenwriters are left out
of the credit for famous quotes. For instance "Here’s looking at you kid," or "Put
your lips together and blow," are almost always credited to the actors
or even referenced as the movie directed by "so and so." Even worse,
some movie theatre chains throw quotes from famous films up on screen prior
to the previews
and NEVER credit the screenwriter.
Where is the screenwriter?! Do you have any
feelings about this? Does the
Writers Guild of America take a position on this?

–Robert

Although I am not an official spokesperson for the WGA in any way, I can safely
say they’re against it. They’re probably even outraged. But in the whole pecking
order of guild priorities, it’s certainly quite low.

Personally, I feel it’s always wrong to quote an author without giving credit.
It’s also wrong to bring a four-year old to an R-rated movie, but it happens
so much I’ve given up being angry about it. For better or worse, I’ve become
complacent about a lot of things that used to really piss me off.

If you feel like becoming an activist for this issue, you might direct your
first missive to the good folks at National Cinema Network (www.ncninc.com),
the company that actually creates and markets most of those pre-show slides
you see. While you’re getting them to properly attribute their movie quotes,
would you also get them to make their jumbles harder? It’s a little insulting
to have to decode a famous movie star when given "M O T S A N K H."

Past mistakes

Psych 101, QandA

Now that you look back on your career, what was the single biggest mistake
or wrong assumption you made early on that someone else could learn from?

–Damion

From the moment I got to Los Angeles, I felt I didn’t deserve to be here.
I was never a classic movie buff; I didn’t have a favorite director; my Honda
was rusting out, but not in a glamorous, beauty-in-poverty way.

I felt like a fraud, an imposter. Worse, I was taking up a slot that some
genuinely deserving person should have gotten. Working in Hollywood was never
my childhood dream. It was almost a flip-of-the-coin decision. For all I knew,
the next Spielberg was stuck flipping burgers in Wichita because I had taken
the last available opening.

Honestly, I felt this way for about three years. I kept waiting to get found
out and sent back to the Midwest.

Thinking this way was easily the biggest mistake I made. When you don’t think
you deserve to be in the room, no one else will, either.

But the truth, which took me an embarrassingly long time to realize, is that
all of the smart, confident people I was meeting really didn’t know any more
than I did. Okay, I had never seen Terrence Malick’s BADLANDS. But I had seen
every episode of "Bewitched," and that was just as valid.

And I could write better than most of them. That seems like an egotistical
statement, but considering I was marking myself lower in every other category,
that lone bright spot was a beacon of hope.

It’s hard to synthesize this advice without making sound like insipid pabulum, "just
believe in yourself." Perhaps it’s best expressed in the negative: "you’re
no stupider than everyone around you."

Writer’s strikes

Film Industry, QandA

I’m beginning my first script and I plan to market
it next year. But I wonder about the writer’s strike–what’s the protocol?
I think that writers
fighting for my chosen profession can only be a good thing and I don’t want
to undermine, nor be a "scab." On the other hand, the entire Hollywood
sphere is detached from a newbie like myself. Where do the unsigned, unrepped,
first timers fit in?

–Dan Bentley

Note: This letter came a few months before the great writer’s strike of
2001–which never in fact happened, although there was a de facto production
gap since
studios rushed to get movies finished.

This is the kind of question where a dedicated journalist would call up representatives at the WGA and get a detailed answer to your question, complete with properly attributed quotes.

Unfortunately, I’m just a screenwriter cranking out my column at the last moment. As it happens, I think I can give you some good advice anyway. First, some general background info. With few exceptions, every screenwriter working for the studios is a member of the Writers Guild, an organization that enforces minimum standards and fees, collects residual payments, and awards "written by" credit on films, among other duties.

Every few years, the WGA negotiates a contract with the studios, deciding exactly what fees and percentages will be paid to writers. The current contract is set to expire at the end of May (of 2002), and there are several issues where studios and writers are at odds, which will make coming up with a new contract difficult.

Several of the issues are creative (such as the "a film by" credit), while others are purely financial, such as the calculation of residuals on foreign broadcast television sales (really, I’m not making that up) and how to account for distribution over the Internet. Particularly when it comes to the numbers, the differences may seem trivial — a half of a percentage point here or there — but for many working writers, it can mean the difference between writing full-time or waiting tables.

The writer’s strike is not a foregone conclusion. Many things could happen between now and May 31 which would cancel or postpone a strike, and the possibility of an actor’s strike at the end of the summer (over many of the same issues) might expedite a settlement.

So what does this mean for you, Dan, a newbie writer working on a script? Not a whole lot.

Finish your script, and don’t worry about the larger labor issues of Hollywood. Once it’s done and perfect, stick your head out the door and see if there are writers marching down Melrose with picket signs. If so, the strike is happening, and the whole town has probably gone crazy. Without writers, literary agents won’t have a lot to do, so they may be unusually happy to read your script and possibly sign you on as a client. There’s nothing scab-like about getting an agent.

Where it gets weird is if your agent tries to sell your script during the strike. My instinct is that this is a bad thing. Even though you aren’t currently a member of the WGA, the assumption is that you would have to join immediately after the strike, and they wouldn’t look kindly on your actions. Fortunately, you have a resource beyond my random speculation. Check out the WGA website. It’s chock full of informational goodness, and as the strike comes closer, I’m certain they’ll have a FAQ with answers to your specific questions.

Of course, this is all moot if you don’t finish your script. So write.