by Rachel Miller on March 8, 2010
As I tell all my clients, success in Hollywood is a team effort. Everyone has to work together to get anything done.
Now I am working on throwing a party in New York for a client. There is no budget and we are trying to get everything sponsored.
As we work through our connections, I suddenly get an email from the client saying, “Hey, do you want me to call my cousin who owns a TON of hotels, bars and restaurants all over the country?”
I felt like slapping my head — or the client’s head.
Think of it this way. It’s like me calling a first-time director for a screenplay by my client, and then afterwards my client telling me his cousin is Steven Spielberg.
As a young writer, your job is to help me help you! If you have a great connection, tell me about it!
Part of your job as a young writer is to network and make connections. But if you don’t tell me what these connections are, then I can’t use them to your benefit.
The moral of the story is go out and make connections. But always tell your representative or producer about these connections!
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by Rachel Miller on March 5, 2010
Jason Scoggins is a partner at Protocol, a literary management and production company; founder of www.itsonthegrid.com, a database of feature film development information; and author of The Scoggins Report, a terribly unscientific analysis of the feature film development business. Past editions of The Scoggins Report can be found on his personal website: http://www.lifeonthebubble.com.
My wife is a fan of competition cooking TV shows like BBC America’s “Last Restaurant Standing,” and as I watched the final episode of the most recent season with her recently I noticed it was illustrating something about the restaurant business that is just as applicable to being a professional screenwriter: Talent is simply not enough.
Consider the combination of skills and knowledge it takes to run a successful restaurant: The ability to attract and retain a great team; excellent salesmanship, in the dining room as well as in front of your financial partners; outstanding customer service; knowing a great location when you see one; knowing exactly what your customers expect when they walk in the door and delivering it to them consistently; plus the capacity to handle all of the mundane but crucial day-to-day business decisions. It’s all as important (perhaps more important, in the aggregate) as what happens in the kitchen. You can’t make it without being (or partnering with) a talented chef, but if that’s all you’ve got going for you you’re destined for failure, if you can even get off the ground in the first place. And there are plenty of well-run, successful restaurants that have mediocre food.
Forgive me for beating the analogy to death, but the same is true of professional screenwriting. A MacBook Pro filled with fantastic material is great, but if you haven’t networked your way into getting it in the hands of someone who can do something with it, it literally doesn’t matter how good you are. If you can’t convince producers and execs that you know exactly how to fix their broken scripts, or if you can’t pitch your own idea in a way that gets people excited, opportunities to be paid to write will quickly disappear. As they will if you don’t develop the self-discipline to deliver material on time, or an attitude that makes people want to keep working with you for years.
And then there’s my own preoccupation: Overall and in-depth knowledge of the film development business in general. If you don’t know who’s where and what their tastes are, you’re going to waste a lot of people’s time, including your own, and lose opportunities down the road. If you don’t know what’s in development where, and by whom, you’re at a total disadvantage to everyone who does. Which is to say, the thousands of other professional writers vying for the same jobs you are. In Hollywood, the person with the best information along with the best relationships almost always comes out on top.
The bottom line is this: Being a working screenwriter means being as much a student of the business as of the craft. If you don’t take the business side of things seriously, you’re not a pro (or future pro), you’re a talented hobbyist. And talent is simply not enough.
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by Rachel Miller on February 19, 2010
In a fun twist of irony, I have been trying to learn how to snowboard right as the Olympics has started.
Now I truly love the Olympics (everything except curling … I still don’t understand how that is a sport). And I especially love all the Olympic stories of adversity.
(The 19-year-old Brazilian ice skater who was abandoned in Brazil and then adopted by a French couple and discovered in a public ice skating rink at the age of 4. Or the gold-winning ski jumper whose brother has cerebral palsy. Or the Chinese couple who came out of retirement to win the gold in ice skating.)
But back to me snowboarding, or as I call it, snow “falling” (because, honestly, the majority of the time I am falling, not even remotely close to staying on the board). And as I have now been to the ski patrol hospital twice in three weeks I can say with certainty that this sport is really hard.
Which led me to realize – being the best at something takes a lot of really, really hard work. And, yes, there is a certain amount of natural ability that you have to have/
But to be the absolute best — it takes years of dedication, practice, sacrifice, and a strong support group of people around you who are encouraging you even when you are at your lowest (just ask Lindsey Vonn).
It takes believing in yourself no matter what — when everyone tells you that you can’t or you are not good enough or you should give up. To win gold, you have to passion, talent, drive, and the stamina to work really really really hard for something.
Use the Olympics as inspiration and never give up!
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by Rachel Miller on February 10, 2010
Everyone knows the old saying that there are no new stories under the sun. And trust me, as someone who reads over 15 scripts a week, that saying is certainly true.
In fact, I personally have read over 10 pilots about the first drug task forces in the U.S. And most of these pilots are written well. But none of those scripts excited me enough to make me want to sign the writer.
What does this mean?
There was nothing new in the style, story or characters that I haven’t seen before.
For example, there had always been cowboy movies since the dawn of Hollywood, but in UNFORGIVEN Clint Eastwood told the story of a bad cowboy trying to set things right in such an interesting and exciting way that the movie ended up winning four Oscars.
If you, the writer, know you are writing about a subject that is very popular, and even if you know that your material is well-written, you have to find a way to tell your story in a way that is engaging, exciting, and unique! I can’t stress this enough.
You should assume that I have read every idea under the sun. Therefore, you should do everything you can to make what you have written the best and most interesting script ever!
Because for me to get excited about taking on a new client, the material has to be something really really special — something I haven’t seen ever before!
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by Rachel Miller on February 2, 2010
A friend recommended a writer to me and, since I love the friend, I agreed to read the writer’s work.
I read it and, unfortunately, it wasn’t that good. When I emailed the writer to tell her this, she said, “Oh, I wish I had sent you my script on the Blacklist.” (The Blacklist is yearly list of the best scripts in Hollywood, voted on by production executives.)
The question is: Why didn’t she?
Because by the time she offered this second script to me to read, I didn’t want to because I had read another script of hers that wasn’t great.
If you have a script that is fantastic and is on the Blacklist as opposed to one that you know might not be as good, then ALWAYS, ALWAYS send the great one! I can’t stress this enough!
Because if something is fantastic, I am much more likely to read the second one than if I read something that is bad and am asked to read a second sample.
Producers, execs, agents, managers and everyone else are going to judge you on the first thing they read. Not many will give you a second chance. Make sure you always put your best foot forward!
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