Every year I enter the 2016 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting Competition, and every year I never win.
Now I'm not saying that I'm a brilliant screenwriter like Robert Towne. In fact, it may be that I have no business writing screenplays what so ever. That very well maybe true.
But one thing that I have seen with this competition, and the Final Draft Big Break winners, is the more often than not (like 90% of the time) the winners are predominantly from California—specifically Los Angeles/Hollywood.
Here's the 2015 Nicholl list of winners:
Amy Tofte "Addis Abeka" Los Angeles, CA
Andrew Friedhof "Great Falls" Ultimo, Australia
Anthony Grieco "Best Sellers" Los Angeles, CA
Elizabeth Chomko "What They Had" Woodland Hills, CA
Sam Regnier "Free Agent" Los Angeles, CA
Notice a pattern here?
Now before any of my fellow writers here start yelling at me because some of them are from LA and says, "...what does that have to do with the fairness of the contest..." take a look at this:
The 2014 Nicholl Finalists:
Sam Baron, Cambridge, United Kingdom, “The Science of Love and Laughter”
Alisha Brophy, Los Angeles, CA, and Scott Miles, Austin, TX, “United States of Fuckin’ Awesome”
Robert D. Cain, Los Angeles, CA, “Gagarin”
Josh Golden, Los Angeles, CA, “Road to Oz”
Melissa Iqbal, London, United Kingdom, “The Death Engine”
Ben Jacoby, New York, NY, “Earthwalkers”
Duncan Samarasinghe, Dandenong, Australia, “The Caretaker”
Ryan Trevino, Seal Beach, CA, and Robert Wolfe Dunn, Los Angeles, CA, “Arcadia”
Mike Van Waes, West Hollywood, CA, “Grave Hearts”
Sallie West, Charleston, SC, “Moonflower”
Granted the 2014 winners were mostly non-Californian but the finalist were.
And here's the 2013 Nicholl list of winners:
Frank DeJohn & David Alton Hedges, Santa Ynez, CA, “Legion”
Patty Jones, Vancouver, BC, Canada, “Joe Banks”
Alan Roth, Suffern, NY, “Jersey City Story”
Stephanie Shannon, Los Angeles, CA, “Queen of Hearts”
Barbara Stepansky, Burbank, CA, “Sugar in My Veins”
3 out of 5 are from California.
So what? California has better screenwriters than the rest of the country/world?
Here's what I think:
I do not believe that the Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting Competition is a scam or rigged.
But I do believe however that it is unfair—especially to fledgling screenwriters.
Hear me out.
The demographics of the finalists and winners don't lie. The majority of them are from California, and the majority of those are from Los Angeles. Go back and check the winners from years past and the data holds up.
So here's a question for you:
Where are most of the professional working screenwriters located?
Los Angeles/Hollywood.
And/or in the vicinity.
Now I'm not talking independent or international film production companies and writers (like in Vancouver, Canada). I'm talking good old fashioned million dollar bidding war screenwriters, and those WGAW screenwriters who sell their scripts and then get rewritten half a dozen times or more so that not one word of what they wrote appears on the screen!
And of course all of those TV teleplay writers who get let go during the summer hiatus, and who lose their jobs when the shows get cancelled. Unless you're Shonda Rhimes of course!
So it stands to reason that either professional screenwriters are entering this contest and/or the LA/CA-based screenwriters are in league with professional screenwriters and/or the professional script readers who either offer inside advice or judge the contest.
Not saying again that the contest is rigged. The anonymous script submission process mitigates some first-hand knowledge of whose script their reading. But I don't think it's hard to tell which ones are from local professional-level screenwriters.
Here's the thing about Hollywood, and I'm sure lots of you are going to disagree with me and that's fine.
If you don't live in LA, you are NOT a screenwriter! Period.
I didn't say this.
Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant who wrote Writing Movies for Fun and Profit, said it.
Quite loudly over and over again in capital letters!
And so did Script Magazine's reporter Chad Gervich. In fact he said in a 2010 article, "If you don't live in LA you're not a screenwriter, you're a hobbyist."
So you still want to submit to the Nicholl?
I went out to LA a bunch of times trying to pitch my scripts. I spent thousands of dollars going to the Great American PitchFest, queried hundreds and hundreds of agents, joined multiple local film groups, got involved in local indie film productions, became a virtually unpaid journalist for an arts and entertainment magazine so I could use my press credentials to visit film shoots and have access to celebrities trying to make serious connections out here in the Boston area, and even worked for almost no money for a local cable access TV station to learn the broadcast business and break my back producing my own low-budget non-paying shows (that nobody seems to watch), and I got nothing to show for it after years of trying to break in except for a few rinky-dink faux agents who took my money and made me empty promises like the contract was in the mail (literally!), which never came. Some of whom are on the Predators and Editors list; yet, they're allowed to be at these pitchfests.
Oh boy were there some ruthless agents in LA that handed me my butt six ways from Sunday!
You think being a book author is tough, try being a screenwriter!
But I'm used to dealing with ruthless agents and such. Been to NYC pitch events and the literary/publishing ones can be even worse!
In the book Tales From The Script, the authors basically say that the moment you get off the plane in LA you start getting screwed over by the Hollywood system if you're trying to be a screenwriter.
I know from my own experiences that at least some of that must be true.
But there are three things, and I know they are arguable, that I learned over the years:
I'll tell you a little story about a young woman, and I mean young (14!), whom I met at the 2009 Great American PitchFest. She had ALREADY sold a screenplay by the time she got to the conference and was in the process of optioning/selling another. Why? Because she was young, she lived in LA, and her mother was connected into the business. All things that I certainly don't have, and I'm betting most of you don't either.
I'll tell you another story of a friend of mine who went out to LA right after college. Here's a guy who was not great looking, had medical problems his whole life that bereft him of the ability charm people (in that Hollywood/The Player kind of way), and he spent 22 years in Hollywood trying desperately to break into a business that nobody wanted him. He finally gave up and moved back to the east coast to write for a local coastal community newspaper.
He's a very talented writer and a very nice guy, and he even managed to becomes friends with two well-known Hollywood directors. But my friend was not able to exploit those connections like a good and "slick" aggressive Hollywood writer should. Hence, he never got anything looked at, not even by his director friends—let alone sold a script and got repped by a real agent.
Why? Because he wasn't beautiful and "slick". He was young when he went out there; he's not young anymore though. And he's no longer any aspiring screenwriter: Hollywood broke him.
And one of my other friends who went out to LA in his early 40s, made a short film that went viral, got repped, got only one job for a short viral movie that was a tie-in to a tent pole film. Shortly after that he got dumped by that agency! Now's he's pushing 50, out there and struggling to get any kind of directing work to feed his family. And he's the most talented writer/director/kindest man I know!
But no... let's give immature directors like Josh Trank a tentpole film so he can mess it up, where as my more mature and talented friend would have made it a blockbuster!
I know that a lot of you are going to say that these are isolated cases but I have a feeling that I'm not too off the mark here.
Look, I've accepted that I will never be a working professional Hollywood screenwriter. I'm neither young, beautiful, represented, nor do I live in LA. So that's that.
But chances are I'm still going to enter the Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting Contest!
Why?
Because the very definition of insanity is: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results!
Such is the life of a writer...
Now I'm not saying that I'm a brilliant screenwriter like Robert Towne. In fact, it may be that I have no business writing screenplays what so ever. That very well maybe true.
But one thing that I have seen with this competition, and the Final Draft Big Break winners, is the more often than not (like 90% of the time) the winners are predominantly from California—specifically Los Angeles/Hollywood.
Here's the 2015 Nicholl list of winners:
Amy Tofte "Addis Abeka" Los Angeles, CA
Andrew Friedhof "Great Falls" Ultimo, Australia
Anthony Grieco "Best Sellers" Los Angeles, CA
Elizabeth Chomko "What They Had" Woodland Hills, CA
Sam Regnier "Free Agent" Los Angeles, CA
Notice a pattern here?
Now before any of my fellow writers here start yelling at me because some of them are from LA and says, "...what does that have to do with the fairness of the contest..." take a look at this:
The 2014 Nicholl Finalists:
Sam Baron, Cambridge, United Kingdom, “The Science of Love and Laughter”
Alisha Brophy, Los Angeles, CA, and Scott Miles, Austin, TX, “United States of Fuckin’ Awesome”
Robert D. Cain, Los Angeles, CA, “Gagarin”
Josh Golden, Los Angeles, CA, “Road to Oz”
Melissa Iqbal, London, United Kingdom, “The Death Engine”
Ben Jacoby, New York, NY, “Earthwalkers”
Duncan Samarasinghe, Dandenong, Australia, “The Caretaker”
Ryan Trevino, Seal Beach, CA, and Robert Wolfe Dunn, Los Angeles, CA, “Arcadia”
Mike Van Waes, West Hollywood, CA, “Grave Hearts”
Sallie West, Charleston, SC, “Moonflower”
Granted the 2014 winners were mostly non-Californian but the finalist were.
And here's the 2013 Nicholl list of winners:
Frank DeJohn & David Alton Hedges, Santa Ynez, CA, “Legion”
Patty Jones, Vancouver, BC, Canada, “Joe Banks”
Alan Roth, Suffern, NY, “Jersey City Story”
Stephanie Shannon, Los Angeles, CA, “Queen of Hearts”
Barbara Stepansky, Burbank, CA, “Sugar in My Veins”
3 out of 5 are from California.
So what? California has better screenwriters than the rest of the country/world?
Here's what I think:
I do not believe that the Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting Competition is a scam or rigged.
But I do believe however that it is unfair—especially to fledgling screenwriters.
Hear me out.
The demographics of the finalists and winners don't lie. The majority of them are from California, and the majority of those are from Los Angeles. Go back and check the winners from years past and the data holds up.
So here's a question for you:
Where are most of the professional working screenwriters located?
Los Angeles/Hollywood.
And/or in the vicinity.
Now I'm not talking independent or international film production companies and writers (like in Vancouver, Canada). I'm talking good old fashioned million dollar bidding war screenwriters, and those WGAW screenwriters who sell their scripts and then get rewritten half a dozen times or more so that not one word of what they wrote appears on the screen!
And of course all of those TV teleplay writers who get let go during the summer hiatus, and who lose their jobs when the shows get cancelled. Unless you're Shonda Rhimes of course!
So it stands to reason that either professional screenwriters are entering this contest and/or the LA/CA-based screenwriters are in league with professional screenwriters and/or the professional script readers who either offer inside advice or judge the contest.
Not saying again that the contest is rigged. The anonymous script submission process mitigates some first-hand knowledge of whose script their reading. But I don't think it's hard to tell which ones are from local professional-level screenwriters.
Here's the thing about Hollywood, and I'm sure lots of you are going to disagree with me and that's fine.
If you don't live in LA, you are NOT a screenwriter! Period.
I didn't say this.
Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant who wrote Writing Movies for Fun and Profit, said it.
Quite loudly over and over again in capital letters!
And so did Script Magazine's reporter Chad Gervich. In fact he said in a 2010 article, "If you don't live in LA you're not a screenwriter, you're a hobbyist."
So you still want to submit to the Nicholl?
I went out to LA a bunch of times trying to pitch my scripts. I spent thousands of dollars going to the Great American PitchFest, queried hundreds and hundreds of agents, joined multiple local film groups, got involved in local indie film productions, became a virtually unpaid journalist for an arts and entertainment magazine so I could use my press credentials to visit film shoots and have access to celebrities trying to make serious connections out here in the Boston area, and even worked for almost no money for a local cable access TV station to learn the broadcast business and break my back producing my own low-budget non-paying shows (that nobody seems to watch), and I got nothing to show for it after years of trying to break in except for a few rinky-dink faux agents who took my money and made me empty promises like the contract was in the mail (literally!), which never came. Some of whom are on the Predators and Editors list; yet, they're allowed to be at these pitchfests.
Oh boy were there some ruthless agents in LA that handed me my butt six ways from Sunday!
You think being a book author is tough, try being a screenwriter!
But I'm used to dealing with ruthless agents and such. Been to NYC pitch events and the literary/publishing ones can be even worse!
In the book Tales From The Script, the authors basically say that the moment you get off the plane in LA you start getting screwed over by the Hollywood system if you're trying to be a screenwriter.
I know from my own experiences that at least some of that must be true.
But there are three things, and I know they are arguable, that I learned over the years:
- You've got live in LA if you want to be taken seriously as a working professional Hollywood film/TV screenwriter. That's the bottom line. No ifs, ands, butts, or coconuts.
- No agent, no career! I can only imagine how much harder it must be for actors who are not repped—probably infinitely harder than it is for writers. And there are SO many dubious agents out there ready to scam you six ways from Sunday—especially if you're some naive amateur writer from somewhere else with dreams of grandeur who thought they could be a successful screenwriter because they read Robert McKee, Syd Field, or Blake Snyder's books! Ain't gonna happen. Sending spec script queries, entering contests, and going to pitchfests are exercises in futility—there are a scant few who do make it that way but they are the Powerball exceptions, not the rule. But we do it anyway for that scratch ticket chance to break in. But without an agent, and this is true for us book writers for the most part, you have almost NO chance of making a serious script sale and getting into the WGAW.
- Being a working professional Hollywood screenwriter is a game for the young, slick, and beautiful! Really! Imagine what it's like for an aging actor trying to get work in Hollywood, same is true for middle-aged writers. If you're not out there in Hollywood schlepping coffee for a ruthless executive in your 20s, learning the insider business, and making serious connections, don't even think you have half a chance in your 40s or older because if Maggie Gyllenhaal at 35 was too old to play the love interest for a 55 year old man, then the ageism (and sexism) is truly alive and well in Hollywood (and the work world in general!). Every story I've read about concerning working screenwriters has the same element to it: they went out to LA/Hollywood in their 20s, sometimes earlier.
I'll tell you a little story about a young woman, and I mean young (14!), whom I met at the 2009 Great American PitchFest. She had ALREADY sold a screenplay by the time she got to the conference and was in the process of optioning/selling another. Why? Because she was young, she lived in LA, and her mother was connected into the business. All things that I certainly don't have, and I'm betting most of you don't either.
I'll tell you another story of a friend of mine who went out to LA right after college. Here's a guy who was not great looking, had medical problems his whole life that bereft him of the ability charm people (in that Hollywood/The Player kind of way), and he spent 22 years in Hollywood trying desperately to break into a business that nobody wanted him. He finally gave up and moved back to the east coast to write for a local coastal community newspaper.
He's a very talented writer and a very nice guy, and he even managed to becomes friends with two well-known Hollywood directors. But my friend was not able to exploit those connections like a good and "slick" aggressive Hollywood writer should. Hence, he never got anything looked at, not even by his director friends—let alone sold a script and got repped by a real agent.
Why? Because he wasn't beautiful and "slick". He was young when he went out there; he's not young anymore though. And he's no longer any aspiring screenwriter: Hollywood broke him.
And one of my other friends who went out to LA in his early 40s, made a short film that went viral, got repped, got only one job for a short viral movie that was a tie-in to a tent pole film. Shortly after that he got dumped by that agency! Now's he's pushing 50, out there and struggling to get any kind of directing work to feed his family. And he's the most talented writer/director/kindest man I know!
But no... let's give immature directors like Josh Trank a tentpole film so he can mess it up, where as my more mature and talented friend would have made it a blockbuster!
I know that a lot of you are going to say that these are isolated cases but I have a feeling that I'm not too off the mark here.
Look, I've accepted that I will never be a working professional Hollywood screenwriter. I'm neither young, beautiful, represented, nor do I live in LA. So that's that.
But chances are I'm still going to enter the Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting Contest!
Why?
Because the very definition of insanity is: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results!
Such is the life of a writer...