I am a screenwriter without an agent. I want to present a screenplay I wrote to a certain director/producer who has an agent at William Morris Endeavor. How do I go about doing this without an agent? May I send the director/producer's agent a query/pitch letter and ask him to pass my idea along to his client? Can I send a query/pitch to the director/producer's production company? Or am I better off finding an agent and letting them do all the dirty work? My immediate goal is to just make the director/producer aware of my idea. Could I gain the interest of the director/producer first, and if there is interest, THEN could I get an agent, possible the same agent the director/producer has?
Sorry if this is confusing...Thank you.
First of all, I want to say that what I'm about to tell you is simply my experience and I can't guarantee you the results I received, so take it for what you will.
I've been writing for pretty much my entire life and I've only recently started to find any sort of success for ANY of my endeavors into the film industry.
I have found myself in the situation your in many times. Getting a project to an established producer/director is difficult. Granted, it's a whole heck of a lot easier it you've sold something already but I'm inferring from your post that you have not. I mean no disrespect, I'm simply pointing out that you have a long, hard road ahead of you.
Don't let this discourage you though. You are on the right track by going straight to producer's but getting them to take you seriously is the hard part. What you need to do is show them you know what you're talking about. Not just about screenwriting,
about the industry. A few years back I received this same advice from an established screenwriter. he said "Don't bother going to an agent. Go to producer's because their the one who is likely to end up buying your work anyway." He also said "Call them. It takes less time to say no over the phone then it does by mail. In addition, you'll get your answer immediately."
With this in mind, myself and my business partner wanted to do something that would stand out without being overbearing. The first few places we called all asked the same thing. The first question was "May I ask who's calling?". The second question was "Do you have an agent?". This was typically followed with a quick hanging up of the phone.
So we regrouped and decided to try the query letter route. Many writers will send out hundreds if not thousands of letters with no reply. Instead of doing the standard letter though, we themed our query letters around our concept. Our concept was along the lines of a war story, so what we did was made our query letters look like they had been through hell and back just to get to them. We didn't even put a return address on them because simply put we DIDN'T want them back.
In addition to this, instead of doing the standard letter inside we did business cards. On one side was a web address, on the other was a handwritten unique login ID. That's how we kept track of who to get in touch with. When said producer went to the website and put in the ID number, it then took them through a short series of pages. The first was about the idea of the project, the second was why them, and the last page was simply asking if they wanted to be contacted about said project.
Like I said, many writers will send out hundreds of these letters with no reply. We sent out 10 before we got our first reply. And he said yes, he wanted to be contacted.
What this did was open up a line of communication without him even knowing who was gonna be getting in touch with him. In addition, it gave us a talking point when we finally did in touch with him. This is where phase two of the pitch began. Like I mentioned before, when calling people, getting past the receptionist can be difficult. Unless you anticipate the questions.
We figured out that if when they ask "May I ask who's calling?" you simply answer with your name. It leads to that second question. That's not what you want from the receptionist. What you want to hear is "Hold on, let me see if their available." Now simply saying "They should be expecting my call" isn't always gonna be enough. We found though that if you can answer this question with "I'm so and so from such and such company". They most likely won't even ask you the second question.
I called the producer who said we could get in touch with him, once a week on the same day every week just to make sure I wasn't being overbearing. By the third week, the receptionist knew my name and who I was trying to get in touch with. In fact, he was surprised he hadn't called me back yet. The funny part of this whole story is that we never actually got in touch with him.
He got in touch with us. In fact he actually called me back at the most inopportune moment possible, I was in the drive thru at Wendy's when he finally called back.
We had a short conversation, (not rude, just short) in which I told him we were the ones who sent him the letter that directed him to the website. He remembered that so he asked what the project was about. I gave him the "cross" and told him it was a TV concept and he stopped me right there. He informed me they didn't do TV. Our research was wrong. He wished me luck with the project and I thanked him for his time. We never spoke again.
You said your immediate goal was to make said producer aware of your idea. What your immediate goal should be is making him aware of your
existence. Producer's are a busy lot. They constantly have something they have to do. Be mindful of that.
As far as getting an agent goes, to this day neither me nor my business partner have an agent. This isn't to say that agents aren't helpful though. If you have a connection to an established writer who has an agent, try seeing if this connect will pass your script along to their agent. This is called "being grandfathered in". It's by no means a guarantee but it's at least something.
If it's one thing I have learned up to this point is that if your respectful of a producer's time, they will be respectful of yours. Unless the producer your dealing with is a complete A-hole, but those kind of producer's aren't around for long.
Also, to a certain extent, breaking into this industry is a numbers game. The hardest part is making sure the numbers aren't against you. Meaning that if there are already a thousand other scripts going around Hollywood that are in the same genre as yours, the chances of selling this script right now are slim. Not impossible, just slim.
I wish you the best of luck, because frankly, you're gonna need it.
