Welcome

Based on my wildly imprecise estimates, there are approximately 72,000 books available on how to write a screenplay. There are another 637,000 on how to sell one. There are exactly zero that touch on what happens after that. Why? Because so few people actually ever make the mythical "Spec Sale" there would be no market for it.

Well I sold a screenplay. I sold a few of them in fact. I sold pitches and had material optioned and did rewrites and adaptations at the studio level for several years. I made a lot of money and had a glove box full of drive-ons and got to tell people I was a screenwriter - no, a REAL screenwriter, who gets paid and everything. I took a lot of meetings and expensive lunches and thought - for a while - that I had the whole system figured out.

I had HEAT.

And then, all of a sudden, I didn't.

See, while I'd been doing all that writing and taking all those meetings and thinking I was terribly clever for having walked away from a steady "real job" for this Hollywood lark, the one thing I wasn't doing was getting movies made. Year after year I would hand in a hundred and ten pages of courier 12 point and they would hand me a check and we'd never speak of it again. My patented line was "I have scripts collecting dust on some of the finest shelves in town!"

I should probably mention at this point that I'm a comedy writer.

But if you don't get movies made you're not making anyone any money and it becomes increasingly difficult for the powers that be to meet your ever increasing quote. Pretty soon instead of hiring you they're hiring the New You for a price The Real You would gladly accept if it meant another at-bat.

But it doesn't work that way.

Why wasn't I getting movies made? Bunch of reasons. Most scripts the studios develop don't get made, so frequently it was the law of averages just not shaking out in my favor. Some of the projects I worked on were doomed before I got to them. Some fell out of favor for market reasons. Some I simply didn't do a very good job on. And some were ridiculously bad ideas to begin with. In the balance I think that enough of my scripts are genuinely good to support my belief that I am not terrible at this.

Over the course of this blog I'm going to go through each the projects I sold and or worked on. I probably won't talk about them chronologicially. There's no reason I shouldn't, I just don't have that sort of executive function. I hope to tell stories about each of these projects that are funny and frustrating because that's what this industry is.

I'll also do stories just about screenwritery stuff. I don't know what that entails just yet. Also I hope to get some of my friends to contribute. Finally, I'll write about me. Because this is a blog and what are blogs for if not industrial strength navel gazing. I am a deeply flawed human being with a history of deep self loathing and depression. That oughta make for some hilarious entries, huh?

I don't plan on "naming names." I'm just not that kind of guy. This isn't about me shinning a light on individuals, just the process.  I don't want to piss anyone off who doesn't deserve it. Most show-folk are decent people. And frankly the few assholes who I'd like to call out by name are such nasty fucks that if this blog were to come up the next time they're (inevitably) Googling themselves I'd really rather not even think about what that might look like for me.

But the one thing I don't do is whine. Let me make that perfectly clear up front. I know I am incredibly fortunate to have had ANY career as a screenwriter. It's a job that untold thousands of people are trying out for every single day and many would gladly swap places with me for a chance to play in the majors even for a year. Just getting paid as a writer in any medium is quite a feat. So please understand, I ain't complainin', just retelling my story for some laughs and to shed some light on the (relatively) unglamourous side of being an unproduced-but-working screenwriter that they never talk about in books and finally, to refresh my memory about a wonderful decade or so of weirdness before it's lost to a haze of IPA and casual marijuana usage.

Of course I haven't given up on screenwriting. I still have projects in development and keep my fingers perpetually crossed that the stars will align in my favor for a change. I keep writing and hoping I catch the "lightning in a bottle" (that's an expression, right? I'm not even gonna check) required to get a bunch of people interested in spending a ton of money and time to turn a pile of paper (or these days, a PDF) into a movie. It can happen. I mean, of course I'm still looking for work outside of Hollywood to pay the bills, but it could happen.

So read on if you want to. I am not trying to talk anyone out of writing screenplays and hoping for the "big sale." Just know that for every one David Koepp, there's a hundred schmucks like me who you've never heard of.