When it comes down to it all

ender_finch said:

What is more valuable? Being a creative, talented, and experienced screenwriter. Or having a very high up connection (Agent, assistant, manager that belongs to an established and legit company.)

Are the lucky more likely to find success even if they have half the 'stuff' an unlucky writer has?

These are the thoughts that roll around in my brain when I try to sleep. When I'm not playing my movie in my head, of course. What are your thoughts or experiences with this?

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First of all, simply having an agent or a manager, however "high up" isn't the golden ticket that a lot of people seem to think that it is.

What you have to realize is that the higher up an agent is, the higher up in the business his clients are, and for agents like that, his first priority is always going to be to service those high-priority clients. They already have credits. People already know them. They are already in demand. And they already have "quotes" - that is, an amount they were paid for their last project which becomes the basis for negotiating how much they're going to be paid for their next project.

Then there's you, who has none of those things and that nobody knows about. So even if, by some chance, he's taken you on - you're still nobody around town unless there's something else - and that's a really hot script that he can send around and suddenly everybody wants it, and by extension you.

Now, there are different kinds of connections that can certainly give people a leg up and that definitely do.

If you happen to a screenwriter named, say Jenny *Lumet" and you can walk down the hall and drop the script for Rachel Getting Married to your dad -- Sidney Lumet, who reads it, loves it and proceeds to call up a friend of his -- Academy-Award winning director Jonathan Demme and suggests that he read this incredible script -- and he does and he loves it and he gives a call to this actress he knows, who happens to be, say -- Anne Hathaway, who also loves it -- well, if you have a small indie-sized movie with Demme directing and Anne Hathaway starring and both willing to work for almost no money -- then your little indie-script is going to get made and get a big release and everybody will say how wonderful it is.

On the other hand if, instead of being Jenny Lumet, you're Jenny Plotsky from Arkansas having written the same script -- Sidney Lumet doesn't read it. Jonathan Demme doesn't read it. Anne Hathaway doesn't read it.

You'd be lucky if anybody would read it and the chances of that script being made, to be honest would have been essentially nil.

It got made because of her family connections and to pretend otherwise would be naive.

But we can't choose our parents. If you happen to have a Dad who's the former President of the United States and you really have no qualifications to be President -- hey, you might end with that job too.

On the other hand, you might have no connections either in the movie business or in the President business and still end up selling your script or becoming President.

Both of those things can happen too.

NMS

ender_finch said:

What is more valuable? Being a creative, talented, and experienced screenwriter. Or having a very high up connection (Agent, assistant, manager that belongs to an established and legit company.)

Are the lucky more likely to find success even if they have half the 'stuff' an unlucky writer has?

These are the thoughts that roll around in my brain when I try to sleep. When I'm not playing my movie in my head, of course. What are your thoughts or experiences with this?

Click to expand...

Personally, where it definitely helps to have a "high up" connection I think that the truly talented ones will always get noticed...somehow.

That isn't to discount the amount of luck needed to get anywhere quickly though. I have this strange idea that in this business there are people who are "Lucky" and there are those who are "Good". Rarely are they the same person. Not saying it's impossible, just rare.

The ones who are lucky have a tendency to do things randomly and have them work out in their favor. Look at American Idol.

The ones who are good can do the same things as the lucky ones but for one reason or another it just doesn't end in their favor.

They could have the exact same amount of skill or talent (if not more) and still lose to someone who is just plain lucky.

So is it something to lose sleep over...I'd say no. You can't control how lucky you are, but you can control how good you are. Aim to be good. Hope to be lucky.

I agree with the above....with one exception.

While relationships might get you placed a little further up the ladder and being good will get noticed one way or the other..... there's one more element that needs to be looked at.

As McQuaig said, you can control how good you are...but, you can also control how lucky you get...to a point.

You can have a great script and you can get lucky enough to get a read. But if you're timing is off....you're script isn't going to get very far.

If you're pushing a comedy and the agent/prodco or who ever is still riding the vampire/syfy/thriller wave....you're comedy becomes very low on the priority list.

On the other hand, after you do some checking on who is looking for what....you find an agent/prodco that's looking for an off the wall comedy, your luck greatly increases to getting read and maybe a deal.

If you look at the ones that have been "lucky"...you'll find that they did a lot of homework and a lot of planning.

As the lovable lush Foster Brooks and others have said....It took me thirty years to become an overnight success.

dageezer said:

I agree with the above....with one exception.

While relationships might get you placed a little further up the ladder and being good will get noticed one way or the other..... there's one more element that needs to be looked at.

As McQuaig said, you can control how good you are...but, you can also control how lucky you get...to a point.

You can have a great script and you can get lucky enough to get a read. But if you're timing is off....you're script isn't going to get very far.

If you're pushing a comedy and the agent/prodco or who ever is still riding the vampire/syfy/thriller wave....you're comedy becomes very low on the priority list.

On the other hand, after you do some checking on who is looking for what....you find an agent/prodco that's looking for an off the wall comedy, your luck greatly increases to getting read and maybe a deal.

If you look at the ones that have been "lucky"...you'll find that they did a lot of homework and a lot of planning.

As the lovable lush Foster Brooks and others have said....It took me thirty years to become an overnight success.

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While the above makes sense on some level, what beginners have to understand is that there's a good two-year to eighteen month lag time between script and screen -- and so likewise with what's "hot" in terms of what people are looking to buy.

It's like a tsunami -- you see the wave of vampire-related projects hitting the screen now -- the tectonic movement that started all those projects moving actually began a couple years before. By the time the wave hits, the earthquake that sent it on its path is a distant memory.

So what you simply can't do is look at what's "hot" in the sense of what people are watching or what's in the theatre and write that -- because that wave has passed. People were writing and selling *that* a year and a half to two years ago. That vein is sold out.

What you need to know is what's hot *now* -- what is that people are writing and selling and looking to buy *now* and which will then be hitting the screens a year and a half to two years from now.

And without an agent or a manager, or someone else who actually has on-going relationships within that community, that's extremely difficult to know.

NMS