Got My Second Read!

Wow that's terriffic! How'd you manage that?!!

Please tell me you copyrighted the script. NOT a WGA registration, but a copyright from the US copyright office.

And also please tell me that you documented the very existence of your communications with this Dreamworks guy.

Woot! Good job Hobble. I'll cross my fingers for you that you'll at least get some good feedback.

Hobbledehoy said:

I mean, you're really pushing the limits of my medication. It's taken most of the neurosis away, but not all. Did I screw up Plot Device? How else am I going to sell my script if I don't let people read it? That's the logic I've been running on. The way I found the guy is unconventional and I don't even know his name. Just his email.

Click to expand...

The e-mail is most likely a sound enough paper trail to prove the dates of when he read your work.

It's just a little unorthodox for a storyboard guy to go and do a read since he is NOT (not usually) in a position to officially represent Dreamworks --not the way an actual executive is. But if he's a networking contact, and if there's a growing palsy-walsy kind of professional friendship thing going on there, then I'd say you done real good landing a contact like him.





True story--I was looking for a new apartment in the Philpdelphia area about nine years ago, and I called up one very elderly lady who was advertising a room for rent. The price she quoted over the phone was way over my head ($750 a month ... for just a room!) and I distinctly recall that as I spoke to her with my notebook and pen in my hands, I was busy scribbling a great big huge "X" on top of that particular housing option in my list of about nine other housing advertisements I was working on. And I was quietly telling myself that I needed to very diplomatically go about the polite ritual of EVENTUALLY letting her know I was not interested and to set my priorities upon winding down the phone call to exactly that sort of an ending. And because she was such an old lady, I knew it was going to be a VERY formal wind down to the conversation with lots of "yes ma'am" and "that's so nice of you" and other obligatory things like that. So I patiently continued to talk to her, and in a mindless sort of way I kept doodling and doodling, re-tracing the giant "X" I had just scrawled over her housing advertisment, and I was patiently allowing her to meandering through the conversation into needless discussions about her daughter who currently lived in California. And as she went on and on about her daughter, I just kept tossing out all those obligatory responses of "Oh, my!" and "That's interesting," and my pen just kept re-tracing the giant "X." And then she mentioned that her daughter worked at Dreamworks. And my pen froze at that revelation. And I then calmly asked: "Oh? And what does she do there?" And the old lady said: "She's a personal assistant to Stephen Spielberg." And then I looked back at my notebook and started to avidly re-circle the advertisement while adding lots of stars and exclaimation points next to it.

So ... the moral of the story is that a contact is a contact. This might be one of the most valuable contacts you could ever hope to make. But just keep that trail intact whenever you send out a script to anyone for a read.




Oh and ... I never took that room for rent afterall.




.

Reminds me of an episode of the Honeymooners just aired here the other day -- Ralph lands a promotion and Norton walks in to visit him and says, "You're not just a friend anymore, you're a contact!"

Nice story, PD!

Best of luck!