What Beginning Screenwriters Should Know About The Movie Business - Jim Agnew [FULL INTERVIEW]
![What Beginning Screenwriters Should Know About The Movie Business - Jim Agnew [FULL INTERVIEW]](/pic/what_beginning_screenwriters_should_know_about_the_movie_business_-_jim_agnew_full_interview_/ZHh5a214OVlqdms_.jpeg "What Beginning Screenwriters Should Know About The Movie Business - Jim Agnew [FULL INTERVIEW]")
Film Courage: How did you get your first script in the hands of John Carpenter? Jim Agnew, Screenwriter/Producer: Well, it was the first thing I wrote. I’d been working as a producer on indie films and music videos and commercials and like I’m going to take the leap into screenwriting. I saved enough money for one year to just work on screenwriting and had this idea to do a very pulp fiction-type horror film, kind of non-linear. I had a friend who was a screenwriter (Sean Keller) who had become my writing partner and we’d never worked together. We just decided to write it and after three months just working on the script with no expectations. We ended up getting a manager from it because it was so unusual and odd and different than what was out there. Then from there I get a call a few weeks later saying John Carpenter read it,
loves it! I grew up watching his movies and by the way he’s the greatest guy on the face of the earth. He’s the coolest dude you could ever meet. He read the script, liked it and was very interested in directing it. His process was to sit there with the script and read it aloud to us page-by-page and everything that he didn’t like or thought wasn’t good he’d go Come on, you can do better than that. Which was a learning experience in itself and it showed, it taught me a lot about what directors are looking for and what they want and he’s a great teacher. The film never got made but it was a really good experience and then from that we actually did an uncredited rewrite on his last film THE WARD, so it worked out great because we got paid to rewrite the film. So we’ve worked
with Carpenter twice and he’s a really good dude. Film Courage: And so this was the second script with you and your writing partner? Jim: That was actually the first one. Film Courage: Sorry, but how did this manager and how did all this even get in the hands of John Carpenter well I had spent time like the first 10 years of work in the film industry I worked for production companies and produced some indie films and things so I kind of knew how the business worked a little bit I had an unfair advantage to most people just stepping in but I spent 10 years working in the world and making some connections and also understanding how scripts work so I really had worked on a few things where it's like I could probably write as well as that or even saw what other people were making and some other screenplays I was like I think I could do that so that's kind of where it came out of and just we also knew that we had to write something that was really unusual out of the box we didn't write a script to be made we wrote a script to get noticed and that's where I think really it worked it was like okay this gets made that's great but people will not forget the script and it did what it was supposed to do because it got us it got us a manager and then later got us an agent from another script and just kept the ball rolling and people still ask me about that script and we've optioned it I don't know maybe six or seven times the last 15 years still hasn't been made but it's it's done well and when you sat down with John Carpenter where was this like an office building yeah he has like i'm not going to say where's office but he has yeah he has an old craftsman I think maybe he lived there like 20 30 years ago that he still owns it's been converted into office so it's cool you go in there and all his posters are up all his scripts are there he just sits in the back office and just most of time when we would talk about the script we'd also talk about basketball and music and all these other things and he gave me a lot of advice about the film business he would say people are going to rip you off they're going to do this they're going to do that don't start writing until you get paid do this and that and one of the best stories I have about him is when we were doing a rewrite on the ward for him there was a big conference call with all these producers and everybody kept telling us what to do and he stopped everyone and he just said hey let let them go do what they do and it was the coolest thing because we knew all we had to do was just talk to carpenter it's like deal with everybody else and pretty much the script the rewrite we did was the movie that that you saw so yeah and when he started going through the script and saying you can do better than that did he did he show you what better was within the script no he no he's he let you he kind of treated you as a professional it's like this can be better which means you need to go figure out how to make it better and just some lines he'd be like a hero would never say that the lead of the movie wouldn't say that so it was a good good education and understanding that like they're not gonna do the work for me and things I didn't do correctly in a script it's like and that's not necessarily their job it's like this isn't working so you need to give me option a b and c so that was a really good lesson from somebody who knows films backwards and forwards and so when you and Sean left there with your whether you put paper clips or post-it notes or whatever how are you racking your brain to go why didn't he like this what like no it was just like I can't believe we're hanging out John Carpenter more more than anything but he was so he's he's like like he's probably one of the best people I've ever met not just in the film business but just a great great person and super cool and just gives great advice and it was just he didn't do it because he was from a place of like come on it was more like you can do better and he would say you can do better just was really pushing and really dug the script and to have somebody who you watch these movies growing up say that is like you better listen so it was part it was it's part of educating yourself I still I've been doing this 15 years professionally as a screenwriter i'm trying to educate myself all the time to get better every day so good lesson and jim were you paid for the script no that one was just work to try to get it to the finish line that happens sometimes sometimes things are options sometimes they're not if you're you have a good attachment like a director like him you sometimes work on trying to get to the next level to go out to get the financing so not every job every every project you work on is you're not always getting paid sometimes you have to you have to make that decision do you want to do the work to try to get to the next level or do you want to try to get paid sometimes there's no one's going to pay you so it's like there's it's either the market doesn't want it right now or will want it with attachments or it's a tricky thing most people in the film business you won't make money unless multiple people want to buy the project if just one person wants to make it they're like sure we'll give you an option we'll do this we may have optioned that script I don't really remember but it wasn't it was never purchased so and a lot of times you just get an option you don't get paid for a script you read these stories of people selling a script here or there that happens but if you're more in the indie world 10 million and under you option a script maybe they'll give you five grand maybe they'll give you 10 grand maybe they'll give you a hundred dollars and when the movie gets made the first day of shootings when they actually pay for the script so if you want to be a team player and get the movie mate you have to work a lot for free and so going there you and Sean both knew we're not going to be paid but we see the opportunity exactly down the line exactly it was like having a master class it's like it's yeah where the guy's sitting there you can ask me if you want so that's great what's the story behind your first screenplay sale so first screenplay sale was the script we wrote after the John Carpenter project which is called elli gothic this was called damned and this script was got out and it was picked up by a pretty big producer and they arranged the financing for the film and they actually paid for the script and what happened was a few days before shooting it was fully cast I think they were shooting on like a monday and this was friday the cast was getting on plane flights to fly out to missouri and they get these frantic calls like don't get on the plane because the money fell out three days before principal photography and that happens sometimes in films until you're actually I even have the theory that on an indie film until you're actually finished shooting you don't that's when you don't really have to worry about the money so much you have to worry about post but I've worked on films where sometimes they don't have all the money they say they they do so it's a problem that happens but it was it was sad we got paid at least we got the rights to script back they were great to give us that back because the movie didn't get made and we optioned it several more times but it was it was very disappointing because that was the first thing I thought was going to get made and it didn't it got very close and it just fell apart but you live and you learn and then you move on to the next project keep going so that didn't deter you no not at all no it's like it was it actually made me think even more okay we got to work even harder on the next project and get something made cause it came so close and finally we're making some money as screenwriters and we were like let's do it it's not like no actually it actually emboldened me to even go harder and things and so in a case like that who calls the the actors the location is that's the producer that's yeah making all these horrible calls that's probably got to be very difficult yeah and so there was no chance of maybe in a month it was basically this is done they they talked about it but usually in these kind of projects if that happens it's it's kind of hard to regroup you spend so many months putting the whole team together doing everything getting the actors in line getting their schedules making deals and then for it all to go sideways and not know when you're going to pick it back up it's very difficult it does happen don't get me wrong but it's it becomes like okay there's a little bit of a jinx on a project at that point so you just kind of have to move on and just try to make the next one and sorry this was your first screenplay that you wrote or you second oh second okay with Sean yeah okay and with the first one did you expect anything from that that was the John Carpenter one the expectations were just to get noticed really because it was it was really kind of crazy and that's another thing I talk to people a lot about it's like what are your expectations with the script is it if you write something to sell it or to get it made or to get noticed and a lot of I think young screenwriters don't try to write something to get noticed because if you want to do this for a living it's something that you've got to like you're not just going to write one script you're going to be writing every day all the time and have tons of scripts do you think the chain of events would have happened today because things have changed so rapidly in so many ways do you think that same story could be duplicated again either one whether you get a script that you won't be paid for but into the hands of some master class person basically a master definitely happens all the time a lot of people who become big writers they they write a script that turns into a sample and even I've had that several times my career where there's like a sample of like a horror film that everybody was into and then a thriller that everybody was into and then I recently wrote a really big action film that that's getting a lot of traction right now but it's also just in the last few weeks got me up for some big writing gigs because if you're trying to get a job for a 80 million dollar action film you can't show them a one million dollar horror film you have to have that sample that gets people's attention and professional high level producers read they know by your sample if you can do the other job so you have to have samples that fit that that kind of what you the type of work you're looking for so it was a great sample so your two screenplays that you had one that was looked at and scrutinized by John Carpenter the other one that was ready for production and it fell through a few days beforehand what did both those situations teach you about writing they just taught you I mean they taught me to be just part of the process because you start working with directors and producers and actors and even though neither neither of those projects got made you realize that like you're not an individual in this process you have to you have to be a team player you have to work with all these different people that have their their input and maybe producer a has some good ideas and producer b has horrible ideas but producer b might be giving you the money for the film so it's like how do you navigate those waters so that was that was what I took out of those more than anything it's like it's not I don't get to do what I want but I've got to try to like navigate to a sense to where I can make it what I want or win some of the battles but i'm not going to win them all and you just don't have a choice when someone pays you for something they own it it's like it's like if you sold your house and then you're like well I don't want them to tear out the hardwood floors they're going to do it anyway so a lot of it is is doing that as being figuring out how to like navigate those waters of like to keep the integrity of your script and still get the movie made because that's a very delicate balance between the two you had been in the film industry before you said were you working as a script reader or around script readers no I actually had worked at streamline pictures which was the company that brought all the anime over to America in the 90s I worked for Carl Masik and how I got that job was I got out of college I played in a band and the drummer had gotten a job there marketing and I was like I need a job so he goes I'll get you one so he got me a job there and it was a really interesting environment because streamline was like did so many things they produced films they they imported films they created content they they were like really ahead of the game in a lot of ways and carl masik was like probably the first mentor I ever had he passed away a few years ago but he was a great guy and just kind of let us do our own thing he'd be like call universal and see if we can set up this film well how just figure it out so you'd just be left your own devices so from that I working at that company I learned a lot about films and the industry and the business part which I think is still an advantage I have over a lot of other people in the film industry that I understand how the the money works and where it flows back and forth and what's the bottom line of making a film so from there I worked on some indie films I produced some indie films after that and some commercials some music videos and just learned about production as much as I could and didn't even on the indie films I worked on I didn't just sit in a chair I sat there with a line producer and learned how to line by line how to budget a film how to do all that stuff because it was just like if i'm going to do this for a living I need to know as much as I can about everything every department so that's pretty much what I took away from that is that something that you think is to your advantage I mean have you always been that way where you cut you you don't you you just need to be told where point b is or a is and you'll find a way how to get yeah I i'm a little bit both right brain and left brain so I can i'm one of those few people that can like do a budget but I can also write a script there's not a lot of people like that so I don't know why I can do that but it's it's you you when you understand the business points of like why people are investing two three million dollars in a film and what they want out of it it becomes a little bit easier to shape the creative side too how'd that help it did what would you say to people that say well I only do this though I mean I mean some people think that what it was jack of all trades master of none and they don't they don't want to get in that situation but then there's a real power in knowing how many different things work yeah and and here's the thing this is what I always try to the more about the film business the better it's going to help you you don't have to be an expert but you have to kind of understand how things work because this is the one thing I always I always try to explain to people that are want to get into screenwriting they'll be like hey I wrote the script it's my first script I want to get it out to producers I want to send it to people I want to get it made and they want someone who they don't know who's who they've never made money for to give them two million dollars now if you just take that aside and you think that you want to start a restaurant but you've never worked one day in a restaurant you've never even been in the kitchen of a restaurant and you write a business plan for a restaurant and you go to somebody who invests in restaurants and say can I have two million dollars for this restaurant they're gonna think you're crazy but for some reason screenwriters think oh I wrote the script someone should give me two million dollars it's yet it's their first script it's their first business plan they haven't spent any time in the industry and think somebody's gonna write a check for two million dollars because it's that good I mean maybe there are a couple scripts they're that good that people just can throw millions of dollars at you but there's like that's like a handful on the planet so people don't understand it's like that's one of the things that like I try to instill in people is like if you want to be a screen screenwriter and do it professionally you maybe your sixth or seventh will be good enough to show to a producer your first script about your uncle isn't going anywhere and there's millions of those and that's the problem is like it's not hard to become a professional screenwriter but you have to do the work and you have to understand the business that's what people don't do a lot of times and is there a hazing with all the knocks that you're going to get and all the stuff that's going to be the plug's going to be pulled and then yeah you have to have very very thick skin and something that took me a long time to understand too is you have to interpret notes because sometimes producers don't like something but they can't tell you what they don't like so they say no a and it kind of doesn't make sense you have to figure it out you have no guideline because there's I've worked with both kinds of producers really fantastic a-list producers and other ones that are good at like putting a film together but can't articulate the creative side so you have to figure out what they don't like and that's your job and that sometimes it's just alchemy you're like you've got to get inside their head and understand why they don't like the first act and when we hear about these wunderkind or whatever that's like their first thing and then it's picked up and it's probably more so maybe in the past I don't know how much does that spoil us as writers or creatives because we think oh i'm going to be the next one yeah it does I mean it does because those stories get told over and over but they're so few and far between I know a lot of filmmakers I know a lot of directors I know a lot of writers and there's very few films that completely change your life it's more like a stepping stone from this to this like maybe you'll do this movie and then you'll get that one you'll direct a bigger move you went from directing a million dollar movie to 5 million to 30. but there are those things where people get hit by lightning but I always try to say that 50 of of getting a project put together is super hard work being talented staying focused and the other 50 is timing and luck because the market can change within minutes because we had a script that was this thriller that people liked we put it on the market and we had some people really interested in it and then taking came out like two weeks later and then suddenly my agent got like 20 calls like the next morning hey that and it wasn't really even like taken but it just was like a revenge thriller and it's like so suddenly the script that everybody's kind of into becomes everybody's into because something was a hit so you can't control that you can't control the market you have to just do the best work and hope that it goes somewhere sure it found footage yeah yeah yeah things change so something you wrote even now like I've had people like talk to me about like older scripts like hey what about that and i'm like I don't even want to send it to you because I feel like a i'm a better writer and b things have changed it's just that was written 12 years ago it's not the same kind of way movies are made because things do evolve I think I've heard you say it's not about selling a screenplay it's about getting the movie made yes yes how how are those two things different well I mean you you could sell screenplay if you want to make some money and that's great but the in my mindset it's like if I love this script and I want to get made I not only want to get paid but I want to get it made because in the long term sure you make some money but the reason a lot of us are doing this is to create things so if it's a document that's just sitting there in a drawer not many people are going to see it but if it's on Netflix or something you can get out of the world so yeah I try to like be very focused on like how do I get a movie made but I also have a personality where once I start getting into some I won't let it go until and just push and push and push the movie Rage which we did with Nick Cage that movie took five years to get made and it was like a five-year like hall of constantly working and pushing it up the hill at one time antoine fuqua actually often optioned the script he was going to direct it and that would have been fantastic and then we had this other director and other people were involved one time ethan hawk was going to be the movie it just kept falling apart getting put together but we had to have that tenacity of like all these setbacks the script's too good not to get made and a lot of people said it's a great script it's too bad it didn't get made so i'm like okay well it's gonna get made and it took us five years to get it made and it finally got made but it's it's just a different kind of mindset of like if you want to be in the film business obviously the end game is to get movies made the flip side of that which is kind of like strange is that sometimes you can get hired to write a tv pilot that never gets made and you make a lot more money than a film that does get made so you have to kind of temper that like don't get me wrong i'm i'm a capitalist and I love getting paid but I also want to get a movie made and completed and finished so were you always like this where you wanted to see something through to the end yeah i'm very good so i'm also i'm working on not being miserable until it's finished I have a bad habit of like not enjoying the process which I've got much better at the last few years but it's kind of a mindset like you have to just be focused on like the the finish line and not let go until it's done because movie a million things can go wrong even even after you shoot it everything can go wrong in post you could run out of money things could go sideways the the editor does a bad job we had a director on a film we had a fire in post and I had to do the sound mix and the other producer had to do the color timing so and we had to reshoot the beginning so it's a it's a process but we got the movie finished so let's take that screenwriter though that is that first screenplay that's he's writing about his uncle his uncle has a pawn shop and he just he's the coolest guy and everybody needs to see this film at what point do you tell that person and they have this tenacity I don't think it's gonna work yeah that's a good question but they have to also kind of like have some self-reflection of like what is this script doing for producers like at the end of the day every movie is made for one reason it's not a creative endeavor it's to make money I mean secondarily it's creative endeavor but you have to make money unless you find some rich uncle who's a billionaire just wants to throw tax shelters at you that's a whole different story but if it's not working that script what's wrong with that script is there not a market for it does it do producers not you know have do they not get sparked to it what is the thing that's going to get you to the to the next level if that script's not working write another script write something maybe more commercial write something more personal what what is not connecting with people on that script because the thing is what I hear from agents and managers all the time is like 99 of scripts I get are horrible people pitching them things are horrible ideas and it's like if you write some if you write well and you have a great script it will get noticed it might not get made you might not get money but you'll get some kind of notice on it but what is the level of that good script is it did you spend three months on it did you spend two years and keep rewriting the same script over and over sometimes things don't work I mean I don't know on my computer the other day I found probably 40 scripts that were half written or the first act and i'm like okay it's not working it didn't come out the way I thought it was and I don't see how it's gonna be great to sell I actually have two full scripts right now I've written that like I thought were gonna be great i'm like I don't know they're not what I want to put out right now so I just put them away maybe I'll come back them later maybe I'll never even look at them again but if you want to work as a professional writer and work all the time that's what you've got to do is just keep grow one script isn't going to make a career so follow-through is great tenacity but at some point having some type of an awareness that when you're getting notes or you're just getting just complete rejection that there's a sign there yes yes okay and sometimes it's good like if you're working on something that's not working people are not you know having any kind of reaction to it try something else put it away write another kind of script see what people feel I mean the problem is too a lot of people give scripts to their friends and ask their opinion they just go that's great or or even people who don't know a script from don't work in the film business you which that's kind of like a problem too it's like I know a lot of people subscribe to these like they pay for coverage or they pay for script notes and who's giving you those script notes somebody who's never worked on a movie maybe they know a little bit more about you so you have to be very careful those things can be very educational and can help but you I don't I don't ever like when people spend a ton of money on those things because I feel like they're getting ripped off at some point because if you want to learn how to make a movie the templates there there's hundreds of thousands of movies on Netflix you can watch that have been made you just have to find movies like what you want to do if you want to write a personal story or a story about you and your friends and some girl dumped you watch swingers the template's there it doesn't have to be the same story but you can follow the beats and you can see how it flows and where you the second act turn happens and where the resolution comes in and what's the arc it's it's all been done for you making it sound really easy aren't I well some people are self-aware and some people aren't so yeah have you ever paid for script coverage have you ever no you've never no I've never read a book about how to write screenplay or anything but I found that I work a lot of intuition but I also but what I do though sometimes and even now that I've been doing this i'm in the writers guild I've done it for a long time make a living at this even recently I pulled up a script for a film because I wanted to do I was thinking about a spy idea that was very similar I found the script online I put the movie on on amazon prime and followed the script with the movie I don't need to do that but I did it anyway just to follow the beats and see what got shot what then that's a great exercise for people because sometimes the script you can see what's in it and what's not but i'm like this has already been done for me it's a different story I have a completely different idea of a different story but this spy movie was awesome so i'm just gonna watch where all the beats happen and the formula is there because making a film is like a pop song it's there in the box it's two hours long or 90 minutes to two hours you're not reinventing the wheel we were talking off camera about the exorcist and friedkin and bill blatty and I think you just mentioned something about rhythm and I remember that billboard talked about good writing has a rhythm we talk about that in terms of screenwriting yeah you have to really understand the rhythm of a of a film like think of it like you you've we've all seen lots of films you have to think of it like here's the opening where do we go now then what do you see next then when do you go back to that character then when do you see the bad guys show up for the first time you innately you should understand those rhythms because they've been done time and time again maybe that script wasn't originally written like that but when they shot it they edited it like that but there's a rhythm to films which is an any good film in any successful film which you have to kind of pay attention to like you don't stay with one character I mean if it's a character study that's a little different but if it's an action film you don't stay with character a through the whole movie you have to go see the bad guy you have to go set up what's going on here you have to go do this and you have to have this like understanding of rhythm because the rhythm on the page is what's going to get you to the next level the directors is going to make the movie and he's going to edit it but if you don't have that those beats in time and you spend six pages with one guy talking about something people reading it are just going to tune out so you have to have this like really phonetic rhythm of like that happens and when to end on a scene be like that's a great beat to end on cut away to somebody's doing something else cleaning up a dead body what it was whoa catching the next scene and keeping the rhythm going where somebody's reading they're like okay okay okay okay so really good filmmakers do that in the films but you can apply it to your script as well can you name three films that has have an excellent example of rhythm that a new geez there's like I just said there's a million I mean one one guy who's really good at rhythm is matthew vaughn like if you watch his movies like everything from layer cake to like the kingsman movies those things have just a rhythm it's like we go here we do that we introduce this we do introduce that we introduce this but there's always two scripts I always tell people to to watch I mean sorry two films if you want to learn about screenplay writing and they sound corny but they're two of the best like films to understand how scripts work one of them is karate kid because the first 10 minutes of that movie so much about the characters and it's so organic I mean even when daniel larusso shows up at his new house with his suitcases he has to kick the gate in and he goes yeah and then the kid behind the gate gets knocked over goes do karate I know karate you know it's so simple and so easy to understand all the characters you you see what happens to them or what they're doing and you understand the characters and within 15 minutes everybody in the movie what they're about how did they introduce mr miyagi mr miyagi oh the sink's broke can you go find the handyman so it's very natural and organic and quick that movie just goes so those are all in place and then the other film I always tell people watch is urban cowboy because that has such a great rhythm of like almost using no exposition it just kind of goes okay he's leaving at this house to go live here he's going to do this he's going to do that he meets this girl they get in a fight and the next thing you see is it's their wedding and they're taking photos it's just got this this pacing that explains so much without bogging you down in exposition so that's kind of what rhythm you have to really pay attention so those are two more movies that are really good with the rhythm do you think a lot of new screenwriters they get too hung up on one character you were saying before like you have to keep it moving yeah not not only that but they get hung up on like id things they want to see in a movie that's a big turning point when you're writing professionally you have to realize that like what that cool scene you want to write and you put in the script it's not going to work and you have to take it out because there'll be things where like you it gets stuck in your head you have to kill I mean kill your darlings you've heard it time and time again but it's true you have to do whatever's right to service the script and sometimes it's like you might have written this like amazing intro that you love but does nothing for the story so it's got to go or you have to do another one but you have to like do that and I mean look there's directors I've worked I've worked with some great directors I work with some directors that like want to do something so they're wedging stuff into the script and it always goes sideways it's like they saw somebody who did like long runners and just in a movie recently and they're like well let's take these five scenes and make it a one-shot scene and then it screws the story up but they don't care because it's like they want to see it so you can't get caught up in like things you want to do and see that don't work for the story what do you say to the screenwriter who says it's not their job to get the movie made it's just their job to have ideas and come up with a story they probably won't get any movies made I mean it's it's a team process it's like if you get to a certain level where you can get paid very well for screenplays you can have that mindset but those are high level professionals that are like yeah I got paid a half million dollars to do this and that and good luck and they know it's a money gig and maybe it might get made maybe it won't but if you want to like work more in the 10 million under like indie film trenches you've got to like really be part of the process or what happened you'll just be cut out of it completely they'll they won't ask you and then you'll watch a movie and this has happened to me it's something that I worked on that like I wasn't really part of the pro and you don't it's not even your script it's not your story and your name's on it so it's it's in your best interest to stay involved in the process and to be a team player and nobody wants to deal with a negative writer either if you're like no those ideas are bad or that's bad you have to kind of frame it in a way that like that's good what about this oh yeah you because you have to become very if you're going to do this for a living you have to not let criticism affect you you have to just be like okay if somebody doesn't like something no big deal because other people that don't do this all the time like some producers and some actors and stuff they're very precious about their ideas and can get very emotionally hurt if you just go no that's bad so you have to like be a little bit of a a therapist and and somebody who understands what the other people are thinking why they're even asking these things because I one of the best things I ever learned was this one actor i'm not gonna say it was had a really bad idea on this movie and kept saying it over and over and it made no sense and I said the director one day I was like why does he keep talking about this bad idea and the director said look he goes guys like us we have a hundred ideas a day we throw away 99. guys like him has one idea every
six months he can't let it go and that was a big light bulb it's like well that's why he likes that bad idea because he doesn't have any other ideas so you have to kind of manage that and be part of the process or they'll just leave you behind they'll just go make the movie without you do you literally have like a hundred ideas I mean are you let's say in line waiting with a mask to let you let into the grocery store and you're like oh wait what that lady reminds me of this that would make the perfect sense I probably come up i'm not kidding i'd probably come up with at least 10 ideas for films a week if not more and write them down and some are just some have legs you have to kind of like I have a system where I try to figure out if it's actually a story or script but yeah I come up with them all the time like I mean literally all the time there used to be a joke pitch that my writing partner I used to do sometimes to lighten the room when we'd be just in a meeting we'd say oh we got this idea for this movie it's like it's point break on motorbikes and the cyclones are coming in and yeah or the tornadoes are coming in they have to rob the banks before tornadoes hit and this fbi agent has to infiltrate the group it was a joke idea somebody sold that exact same script for like a half a million dollars a few years later like no I don't think they stole our id or anything it's just in the ether but it's what seemed like a joke idea is somebody else so it's like you have to have a lot of ideas and you have to know like what ideas are gonna work because they're I've worked on a few scripts that are great fantastic scripts and nobody wants to make them because there's just this issue or that issue the producers think it's too hard it won't make its money back so it's a it's a balance between the business side and the creative side so when you do have a great idea what is your process for at least putting it somewhere that you can come back to and how do whether you want to take it further I usually I email them to myself so I have all these random emails that that half the time don't make sense like you know second act on on a plane giant fight guy loses his wife hitman finds out his ex-wife is married to somebody else yeah things like that so I have all these weird random things but then once I really dig in I have a process to figure out if something can be a script and usually it's I figure out the entire first act beat by beat by beat like the first 20 pages this happens that happens this happens like the first six or seven scenes then I know what happens in the second hack turn kind of what shifts the movie or the story and then how it ends and if I can figure all that out then I know I pretty much can write a pretty good script so that's usually what I do first I don't want to know the whole story beat by beat by beat because I figured some things out along the way that I would have never thought of now there's other times I've kind of thought the whole thing out almost in more bigger beats and bigger sections but that's usually what I do is I know the first act how it ends what happens in the middle and then what happens at the end and that's it so it starts as an idea you could be pumping gas somewhere and you go quickly and email yourself this little like log line or whatever and then from there on a weekend maybe when you have quote spare time you go and try to do the first 20 pages yeah usually the ideas that that I can't stop thinking about are the ones I know are good they keep popping back in my head because there's some ideas you just come up with nah throw it away it's pretty good but it's not great but the ones that keep reoccurring are the ones that I feel like okay I gotta work on this there's something here because it's stuck in my head and also too ideas are great testing ground with people too I mean this is for more like commercial type films but if you can pitch an idea in two three sentences to somebody just your friends or whoever and they kind of do this weird thing I've noticed this is when you have a good idea not when people go that's great when they think about it for about three seconds and they go oh that's good that's when it's actually connecting with people so if you have an idea and you say that to 10 people and they kind of all go or they ask you about it again later it's a good idea so if I tell you I have this great script about my uncle and he's really cool he has a pawn shop in hoboken and he's just a really funny guy and he always knows when some fence is coming in to like and yeah and I look at you and you go what are you going to tell me if you want to take the time to write that but no I mean it might be the greatest script ever but I've noticed that's one thing I've noticed too is that the screenplays that get a lot of traction and get a lot of people's interest or things that can be described in two three sentences because a lot of times if you're pitching the idea or a creative exec reads it they have to go down the hall and pitch it to their boss so it's too complicated it's going to get lost in translation so if it's something that we saw the tv show that like everybody understood the pitch in two sentences I think that's why it kept just snowballing and snowballing because it was like okay great everybody got it without reading the pilot without it was like okay good so those kind of things seem to really work with people at least getting you through the front door if the scripts bad it's not gonna go anywhere but you have to make things digestible for people too that are working you have to keep in mind producers real producers are working like 20 30 projects in development hearing pitches all day talking about things working on films if you give them some overly complicated idea about your uncle in a pawn shop they're going to be like wait what'd you say again like 10 minutes later so there's that how long after selling your first screenplay did you sell your second it happened pretty quick because the next screenplay I don't know if it was the next thing we wrote but i'd come up one day I was at the tower records the old one that used to have a video you could rent videos and dvds sunset yes they had two the one across the street the one that had the dvd store in it and I was looking at dvds I was like I had this idea it was like Dario Argento I saw his he had a section I was like his movies are cool and I watched a lot of his movies from the 70s it's like we should do a retro kind of Dario Argento film and that was when horror was really hitting its peak in like 2007 2008 so it's like let's just write like a 70s jello type thing that has all those tropes and just have fun with it and we did and literally like I don't know how this happens is like two months later this friend of mine who's from Italy goes oh you have something like Dario's movies I'll send it to Dario or like like okay I didn't really know this guy that well so and then I get a call like a week later and Dario Argento on the phone from Italy he's like I love your script I want to do it so that movie got made I don't the universe just wanted that movie to get made we had a lot of problems with the production but it was just strange it was like one day it's like and sometimes the universe just kind of leads you in right in certain directions because I just was like I like his movies let's do something like his a retro 70s throwback film and then he literally directed it and Adrien Brody was in it so it's how does this happen from from the concept of being in that video store like a year later I was in Italy on set so sometimes things just have a weird synergy projects have a weird synergy too that's the other thing people have to realize it's happened to me on so many where i'm banging my head trying to get this movie made and it's just not working and then sometimes you write something and every step of the way it just snows balls it it connects at the right time and right place I don't know why but it just does and that did and it's about a missing model yeah because that's what all the 70s movies were about like missing pretty girls so it it leaned into all those tropes of it it was like this this girl who was a model went missing her sister's looking for her in a and doesn't speak the language and finds this America n who actually does and helps her out so yeah the movies cut some problems but it was it was fun to make and it was a great adventure and dario's an amazing person and a great director another again I've been I feel like I've had the million dollar film school because I've got to work with so many great people so yeah so that was that was that taught me a lot about how things can go wrong on a movie which i'm not going to go into too much detail but a lot of stuff went wrong mostly with the money and the budgets and we didn't have as much money to finish the film so halfway through you find that out it's like it's it was a real a lot of problems not creatively but on the business end of the film was it filmed in Italy yeah oh I see okay yeah great wow it looks like a good I gotta go to Italy for three months yeah that's nice that was fun to sell a screenplay do you have to really believe you can sell it yeah yeah I think you need to believe in the in the screenplay you have to believe in yeah because it's a hustle especially if it's your first one so you need to really believe in it it needs to be something that you believe in something that you think you can sell and you just need to be kind of relentless but if it doesn't work out you need to move on to the next script because the question is you need to ask yourself as an up-and-coming screenplay writer if you want to do this for a living do you want to write things for yourself to direct do you want to be a working screenwriter because if you're if you get to the level where you're taking jobs which has happened to me on several projects i'm getting hired to write something there's like an adaptation of a book or a comic book so I don't have any say in the creative thing but you can get paid very well to like do that work so are you doing it for yourself are you doing it because you want to constantly write now if you want to do it as a living in that sense where you're writing all the time you don't get to choose all the time what you want to write you may have to do a rewrite you may have to do this so it becomes more about work than like just believing just in the project you have to believe in yourself and it becomes more about like just doing the work and doing the work correctly and efficiently and on time so when things haven't panned out have you had like a heart to heart with yourself like well I didn't really believe in it yeah no I think because most those those projects I'll get rid of them before they get to that point like I won't finish them or even if I do I'll be honest about like I don't think everybody's gonna want to buy this I think it's great but no one's going to want to make it because the other thing too is like you have to really realize that in regards to indie films or smaller 10 million under film the only way they're really going to get financed unless you have a rich uncle is that you have to have actors in them you have to name actors that finance the film you can't just ask somebody for five million dollars and say the guy from vampire diaries who's the fifth lead is gonna be the lead in it it's not gonna work they're gonna wanna name actor they're going to be like okay we want Frank Grillo and we want John Travolta we want to make sure that we can make our money back so you have to also think too is that project appealing to actors that will get your movie made because that's a big important component to the whole process so you've been in situations where you think you like it but you don't think others will or a producer well how do that that's the case just instinct just kind of knowing what and it might not be the right time to put something out too because it's like okay these movies are hot horror movies are hot right now all anybody wants to make are these so you just have to be really honest with yourself and it you can send it but you only have so many shots of like getting people to read things too if you keep sending them junk you're not gonna get anywhere even even i'm very careful never to send my agents and managers too much stuff because I'll be like oh that was okay so I only try to send them the best stuff that I do can you think of a screenplay of yours that you did not think would sell and did yes broken vows which was made with jamie alexander and wes bentley yeah it was just it was a script that my writing partner and I wrote and then we weren't really too happy with it we knew it was good but it wasn't great and we just kind of stuck it in a drawer and then I got a call like two or three years later from a producer friend of mine said hey do you got anything that can be made for two and a half million dollars and we're looking for a thriller or something in that genre so I was like yeah here we we never sent this out we never gave it to our agent even to read check it out it's good we could maybe work on a little bit more make it better and then I get called like a week later like okay cool we got the financing let's make it so that was like literally like just finding a movie in a drawer because it was just sitting in a file but I also think two part of that is that goes back to what i'm saying about some of the stuff that I think is not up to to par it's still I've written some some things that are very professional and could get made but I don't want to like take my shots with those because I just think they're not maybe they're 90 they're not 100. so I think even something that on my 90 because I've worked on so many things is still good enough to turn into a film the opportunity just arose that this was a good opportunity to take that film that was like 90 there and they were looking for something like that so it worked great did you think it was too edgy no it just seemed I don't know I don't know why it just didn't it didn't even click with the writers in some ways we knew it was good but it didn't click with us but then we worked out a little bit more once it got serious and then it became a different kind of film and became a little bit better so I don't know it was just a weird situation where it was just script was sitting in a drawer and ended up getting fully financed and made with great actors and I think the actors brought a lot to it too so it was one of those projects that and that's what you always want is your screenplay can be here but hopefully the the finished products one step better sometimes it goes the other direction where I have one movie which i'm not going to say which movie which everybody who saw in the film business was a screenplay was great which that's very disheartening when it should get a step or two better when when it's shot and edited and made into a film broken vowels was like like a romantic deception or yeah what was it sorry it's been a while yeah it was like a stalker movie but the guy was a stalker usually you saw it as as the girls the stalker now they've had quite a few of those I think we wrote it like 2008 and then it got made in 2013. so it was it was that the guy was like obsessed with the woman and I mean they've made quite a few of those since then so and it was wes bentley that yeah the obsessed oh yes yeah yeah he's great great to work with great guy so yeah and so from that time that you got that call where they said hey what do you got hanging around when was the movie actually finished what was the time for him probably about a year later and we had to do the post everybody chipped in I did the sound mix the other producer did the color timing so it took a little bit longer to get made but yeah so it was made and I think lion's gate lines get distributed so so when they said what do you have you said well I've got this thing and you kind of were almost talking them out of it before no just I didn't know what they were really looking for so it was just it was like okay you've got this certain amount of money that you want to invest in a film you're looking for this type of film but I did tell them from the get-go I was like this is the kind of film we can easily cast because it's got some good parts for actors and they're between 25 and 35 which is a really good spot to find some good actors and we did what no bs screenwriting advice can you give to young screenwriters or even older who've never sold something and think that they can make a living at this well you gotta really be realistic you have to look at the steps involved if and what is your end game do you want to get a movie made it's a small movie what kind of movie is it are you writing a kind of studio type script are you writing kind of a a small intimate thing that can be made for half a million dollars so you have to kind of set the parameters of what you want to do and kind of take it from there because if you're a young screenwriter and you want to do this for a living I mean you need to write a couple samples and write some scripts you need to be around the film business tv's given a lot of opportunities to being on writing staff there's so many tv shows now too that's a great way to becoming a writer you can become a writer's assistant get to know the the working writers and you'll actually get paid taking notes doing things and learn how it all works and that that will help you with jobs if you're a little bit older I mean you should really work on work on your screenplays but also determine what do you want to do is it something that you want to try to get made on your own do you want to try like it's a little bit different are you writing a john wick movie or are you writing a small intimate thing because if it's a john wick movie that means you have to sell it through the studio system that's very hard to break into until you like are working at a certain level it does happen but you usually have to work your way up you don't just all of a sudden you're not up for like these gigantic jobs of writing 100 billion dollar films so that's that's a whole kind of skill set into itself so my advice would be just just keep working but work on your craft because people don't do that they don't they don't take the time to actually keep rewriting and learning to write they write one thing and they think here it is world and that that's why it doesn't get made and then they get frustrated but I think anybody who's going to take if you're determined and you want to take 10 years of your life working super hard to get somewhere you can get somewhere you get some movies made you can you can do it for a livi
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