CS Daily Archive > Son of a Pitch > 04/01/04

Finding Your Assets on the Road to El Dorado

by David Michael Wharton

Getting serious about screenwriting doesn't necessarily mean packing up and moving to L.A. right away. The trick is to find the assets you have available right where you are, and use them to the fullest.

We beginning screenwriters have a tendency to exaggerate the importance of getting to Los Angeles right away. It's the dream that's sent thousands of writers to Los Angeles, and it's the dream that keeps the City of Angels stocked with a steady supply of waiters, dishwashers, and Kinko's employees. LA becomes a sort of El Dorado, a mythic shining city where good fortune is available to all . . . if only you can find your way there. When and if you decide the time is right to make that move, great, but don't assume relocation will automatically jumpstart your career. I know it's easy to let the whole "I don't live in LA, so I can't really get my career going yet" excuse become a form of procrastination; if that's the case, a change of zip code isn't going to help the situation.

Screenwriter Michael Cooney (Identity, below right) saw his career develop with one such false start, moving to Los Angeles from England and then returning home when nothing developed. Only later, when one of his scripts wound up in the hands of an interested production company he'd never even met with, did he head back to LA. This karmic yo-yo ride has left him with a unique insight into the LA Quandary: "It's terrible, but my basic advice is, don't go to Los Angeles unless they ask you. It's a brutal piece of advice. It's such a strange business, that there is no one way in; everybody will have his own story. It's not like doctors or lawyers having to take a bar exam. I think it always involves a large amount of good fortune."

So let's assume that LA isn't even the issue. I don't care whether you're in Santa Monica or San Antonio -- everybody's got assets they're overlooking, and time spent bemoaning whims of geography is far better spent in figuring out just what advantages our particular place in time and space has to offer. In this age of telecommunications wonder, most of the obstacles of distance have been mollified, if not altogether bulldozed. So what are your options, wherever you live?

One time-honored possibility is film school. It's not for everybody, but it has some definite advantages. Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen, below left, with young co-writer Nikki Reed) started out as an architect and production designer before transitioning into writing and directing her own stories, but UCLA film school was an important stop along the way. She credits UCLA for giving her broad training in multiple aspects of filmmaking. "They just throw you into it all: you're the writer, you're the director, you're making the sandwiches. It's not like USC, where every person has a department. At UCLA, you're doing it all. If you can pull the money together, you can make a movie."

Still, film school ain't cheap, and not everybody has access and/or an amenable schedule for it, so let's get down to something more universal. If y'all are the intelligent and erudite readership I think you are, then you'll no doubt roll your eyes at the obviousness of this suggestion, but: read screenplays. Lots of them. As many as you can get your hands on, and getting your hands on them is easy -- they're just a Google search and a few mouse clicks away, on sites like JoBlo's Movie Emporium or All Movie Scripts. You should also check your favorite screenwriter's web site, or fan sites devoted to those scribes. That way you'll find that Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott have posted their unproduced drafts of Godzilla and Sandman at their excellent Wordplay site, or that BeingCharlieKaufman.com has a copy of Charlie's take on Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly. While you may not be able to find scripts for every single one of your favorite movies online, you should find plenty to keep you occupied, and that's not even counting bookstores or libraries. Read as much as you can, in your favorite genre or otherwise. Every screenplay has something to teach; hell, the scripts for the real stinkers can sometimes teach you even more than the Academy Award winners.

If you can afford to travel, writer's conventions such as Creative Screenwriting's own annual Screenwriting Expo (he suggests without a hint of bias) offer the chance to network with other writers and get your work critiqued. Even if you can't travel, chances are there are resources around your hometown that you've never bothered to investigate. Writers' groups, conferences, film associations -- all it takes is a little digging to find the hidden gems lurking below the topsoil. Even small local groups can sometimes manage to bring fairly major talents into town for conferences and the like, giving you the opportunity to meet and interact with professionals you'd never cross paths with otherwise. The most important thing is, if you're going to take the time to get involved with something like this, don't do it half-assedly. Catherine Hardwicke attended several such conferences when she was learning the craft, and told me, "Some people at seminars, I can't believe they pay all that money and they don't take notes, they don't even write anything down. I never sit there with glassy eyes; wherever you are, there's always something to be learned."

By getting yourself involved with like-minded folks, you open yourself up to two of the most important factors in any writer's career: networking and chance. Maybe nobody you meet will have any particularly useful advice about how to tighten up Act Two of your screenplay, but you never know when Elbert, the twitchy guy with the bad shoes that you met at that conference last Tuesday, will turn out to be good friends with an agent in Los Angeles, and offer to pass your script on if you'd like. Bada bing, bada boom -- it's that kind of out-of-nowhere connection that can make all the difference.

Part of it is just keeping your eyes open for opportunities, even if they aren't exactly what you have in mind. Be willing to pursue an odd side path for a while, knowing that it might dead end . . . because it might just empty into territory you never expected. My road to this column was a winding one: started selling a few short stories, making contacts with editors. Then an offhand letter to the editor sparked a connection with an editor at a movie website. That opened doors to other editors in the field. I started writing for Creative Screenwriting, for sites like UGO Screenwriter's Voice and Comic Book Resources, all of these contacts spider webbing out of each other, constantly expanding. A couple of years ago, I would have told you flat out that I didn't have any interest in journalism -- movie or otherwise -- but had I not been willing to play the unexpected hand that was dealt me, I'd have missed out on work that has been a boon to my career and a helluva lot of fun on both a personal and professional level. With the web as all-consuming as it is these days, it's not hard -- if you've got a modicum of talent and persistence -- to find outlets for your words, places that will let you build a voice and a resume, let you meet and interview people you otherwise never would, and hey, even make a few bucks toward the rent while you polish that screenplay of yours.

Which isn't to say that everybody who's tinkering on a screenplay ought to be working entertainment journalism on the side -- the point is, wherever you are, there are options. We writers are supposed to think outside of the box, but sometimes we forget to apply that to the world outside the page. Take even a smidgen of the creative drive you pour through your keyboard every day and apply that to exploring the hidden possibilities of your surroundings -- I bet you'll be surprised what you come up with.

Rick Cleveland (co-executive producer on Six Feet Under) told me, "It sometimes seems to me that persistence is 90% of the game. You need talent to back up that dogged persistence. If you don't have talent then you're just crazy, and you're probably crazy even if you do have the talent. Otherwise you'd go to medical school or do something constructive with your life. But I know how it feels when you're just starting out. It feels like you're beating your head against a brick wall. And you're not in the club until you're in the club. And you usually can't get in the club until you find yourself with a produced credit -- whether it's on a TV show or with a short film at a film festival. But honestly, you need a lot of dumb luck. You need a break, and then you need another break on the heels of that first break. And then you need another break -- and hopefully somewhere in those first few breaks, you get a BIG break."

By all means, keep on trucking on that screenplay. But while you're at it, take a good look around you . . . you might just stumble onto the first break of the rest of your career.

See you next week. Now go write.

Next week: We look at the challenges of starting a screenplay, and what that commitment will mean to your day-to-day life. (Hint: kiss your social life goodbye. Just kidding . . . or am I?)

David Michael Wharton is a regular contributor to Creative Screenwriting magazine. When not watching DVDs or otherwise procrastinating when he should be working on his screenplay [Ed.: or his column], he has been known to write for the likes of UGO Screenwriter's Voice and Comic Book Resources. You can email him, especially if you're deposed African royalty looking to secretly transfer millions of dollars into an American bank account.

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