fixed

When I finished my first script, I sent out query letters to agents to try to get them to read it. A few requested it, but they never seemed to actually read it. This went on for months.

One day, a classmate of mine at film school read the script and really liked it. She wanted to produce it so I gave her a free option. She began to call these agents and told them that she was a producer (sort of true) and that she had optioned the script (also true), but that she wanted to get the writer an agent before she sold it to the studios (a bit of a stretch). Every agent she spoke to read it that weekend!

Of course, I never signed with any of those agents, so the trick only works so well, but the rule of thumb makes sense: Someone (anyone) else saying your script is great is infinitely better than you doing it yourself.

We eventually got an agent to represent me by first getting an attorney on board. Attorneys (or managers) are easier to get and can give you that key referral the top agencies always say they want.

---

David
H. Steinberg wrote SLACKERS, and received story credit for AMERICAN
PIE 2. He wrote and directed AFTER SCHOOL SPECIAL.

I was eating Thai noodles with a friend and we ran out of things to talk about and then he said "Are you looking for an agent?" and I’d at that point written three unproduced and perhaps unproduceable screenplays, but did not want to appear overly eager, so I said, "Yes," instead of what I wanted to say, which was, "Good god, yes!"

He hooked me up with a friend of his who had just that month become an agent. She read my work and liked my work and agreed, perhaps too quickly, to represent me. She was not particularly well-known and she did not have any ‘clout’ but she understood my work and sent it around anyplace she could get a foot in the door.

Three years later she left the agenting business, having come to understand she was not really temperamentally suited for it. But by that time I’d gotten a couple of real assignments from real producers at real studios. Finding the second agent was not so difficult.

---

Howard A. Rodman wrote the screenplay for JOE GOULD’S SECRET. He also wrote F., which is consistently ranked among the best unproduced screenplays in Hollywood. His TV credits include episodes of "Fallen Angels" and "The Hunger." He served as artistic director of the Sundance Writing Lab in 2002 and 2003. Currently, Howard chairs the film and television writing program at the University of Southern California, and is also co-chair of the Writers Guild indie caucus.

I just moved to L.A., spec scripts in hand, and knowing not a soul immediately started sending query letters to only the top agents in town. I would read that they represented Chris Carter or Lydia Woodward and think, sounds good to me.

Of course, I had no credits and thus no chance in hell. But an assistant who read me "responded to my material." When he was promoted to agent he brought me on board.

---

James LaRosa wrote EVERYBODY’S DOING IT and THE REAL WORLD: THE LOST SEASON for MTV Movies. He also wrote for the TV series "Spyder Games" and "DC."

I got my first agent through my lawyer.

I had written a play which he had read and liked and offered to give it to her. She liked it, took me on, never did a single thing and eventually I fired her. (Soon all your readers will be writing in, "How do I get my next agent?")

I had a lawyer already because, in a freak hiring, I had been given a job right out of college at Saturday Night Live and needed someone to review the contract.

It seems like the short answer inevitably has to be contacts. I don’t know anyone who got an agent by just picking a name out of a book and submitting.

Douglas McGrath wrote and directed NICHOLAS NICKLEBY, COMPANY MAN and EMMA. He also wrote BORN YESTERDAY and BULLETS OVER BROADWAY, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award.