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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