What My First Hollywood Script Sale Taught Me
How I learned to trust myself in a business where nobody knows anything, but everybody insists they know everything
Let me tell you the story about how I sold my first screenwriting project in Hollywood and, in doing so, share with you a valuable lesson I learned about trusting yourself in a business where nobody knows anything but everybody insists they know everything.
The time period: 2009.
I have multiple agents and managers at this point, but I’m still unemployed as a screenwriter, paying my bills as a freelance arts journalist for Village Voice Media amongst others. This is shit-work, mind you. I’m getting paid .10 to .25 per word, churning out thousands of them a day.
At this point in my career, I am what you would call an “emerging writer” in Hollywood. My spec script QUATERMAIN, a reinterpretation of the H. Rider Haggard’s KING SOLOMON’S MINES 1885 novel and Allan Quatermain character, earned me a lot of attention the year before. Unfortunately, QUATERMAIN didn’t sell because one of my filmmaking idols had a competing project (in a very loose sense) and killed mine.
The good news is, QUATERMAIN made me a lot more fans across Hollywood’s production company landscape. Creative executives keep asking me to reimagine other classic books for them (as this is a magical time in Hollywood where people pitched new ideas and sold them all the time, not like today — which is a hellscape of despair). I’m a fiend for these characters and stories, so it comes naturally. After Guy Ritchie’s SHERLOCK HOLMES (2009) blew up the box office, everyone wants their own period action franchise, and I’m going to give it to them…I hope.
One idea in particular, one inspired by my love of the 1924 and 1940 THE THIEF OF BAGDAD films, has me very excited. It’s based on some virtually untapped source material that hasn’t produced significant films in more than half a century. That source material is the ONE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS — or, as it was rendered in its first English translation, ARABIAN NIGHTS — mythology.
Yes, I know ALADDIN is a film that was made, but, at the time, it was an animated film and only one corner of a vast universe of stories. There were 1,001 nights, remember.
One of my new fans — a young exec who has gone on to rise through the ranks in Hollywood (so proud of them!) — asks me what I’m thinking. I tell them, a 30-second pitch that I wish I could share here with you. The exec immediately drags me into their boss’s office to pitch the boss, too. They both love it.
Excited, I take this idea to my reps to ask their advice on next steps. This is when my anxiety begins to skyrocket.
My pitch elicits divided opinions from these reps. One half of my team says it’s a great idea, and encourages me to pitch it. The other repeatedly argues it’s definitely not. The concern is that PRINCE OF PERSIA will soon be released. Nobody wants another “desert movie”, or so I’m told. Ignoring how offended I am by the use of such a description, I point out this isn’t a “desert movie”, that ARABIAN NIGHTS also takes place in lush, colorful environs across Africa, Asia, and islands of the Indian Ocean and South Pacific. Great, they say…except a Tarzan movie is in development. Nobody wants another “jungle movie”.
But I’m young and overconfident, despite no real experience. So, I agree to work with the producers anyway. That’s when the miracle every young writer hopes for happens.
We pitch this idea to Warner Bros., and I sell it in the room. Really, it’s that easy. I’m suddenly a professional screenwriter. I call my parents, who think I’m wasting my time in Hollywood. They cry, I cry.
But when the deal is complete, I must now reckon with the fact that two of my reps advised me not to pursue the project that I just sold. I mean, process that. I paid off 100% of my credit card debt and 20% of my university loans* because I just trusted my own gut.
*(To be clear, I made WGA minimum. At the time, this was basically a $90K USD sale. Less 25% to agents, managers, and lawyers. I did not strike it rich, is the point, but it was a lot of money at that time in my life).
There’s only one choice about what to do next, I decide. I call my naysaying reps, thank them for their eight months of service, and part ways with them. It isn’t just that they got this project wrong. Other ideas — some of which I will go on to sell — were also discouraged.
Which is how we come to the lesson of this screenwriting essay:
All you have are your creative instincts.
That’s literally what you’re banking on in Hollywood, that your instincts are strong enough for others to hurl money at you to live your dream.
If you chase trends or listen to anybody about what people want, you might sell a project or two, but anything special about you won’t show up on the page and very quickly you will discover how soulless and exhausting being a creative whore is.
This doesn’t mean you’ll always be right. Many of us are not. Many of us are also not meant to make it in this business, despite our dreams. But the only way you will succeed in the long run, as far as I’m concerned, is to self-nurture your own voice and narrative instincts.
Nobody knows what kind of a writer you want to be better than you do. It’s not always easy to find reps who “get” you, who care about what you want to do, but it’s much worse to be stuck with reps who constantly tell you the writer you want to be is the wrong kind of writer.
Incidentally, I made one of my most enduring friendships in Hollywood because of this project. Marc Guggenheim (creator: “ARROW”, “LEGENDS OF TOMORROW”) was hired to rewrite my script. He took me out to dinner, and became one of my most consistent voices of wisdom in the business, always there when I need it, which means something good came of the project other than launching my career and income.
This is another lesson I learned: most of the real long-term gains in this business are human ones. Never forget the people you meet will be around a lot longer than the cash you make.
I also want to point out, this isn’t the only time reps discouraged me from pursuing a project, though the next time was much more of an isolated incident. It led to my first TV sale and that pilot script was greenlit to series. A story you can read about here…
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Link to your Dracula article on Medium is broken.
Great to go back and read this one that had gone out pre my subscription. I finally know how you know Marc!