Forget about the Great American Novel. In the '90s, everybody wants to write movies. If Matt & Ben could do, why can't you? DAN TOBIN learns the hard way.

So you wanna write a screenplay. . .

 

by Dan Tobin

 

A FRIEND OF A FRIEND of mine named Jeff actually sold a movie script. Rather, the script was optioned, which means a pseudo-famous actress paid my pseudo-friend $50,000 for rights to his script for one year, with the possibly of more cash if it became something real. A few months later, Jeff did some rewrites after John Hughes and Joel Schumaker off-handedly expressed interest in the project. A few months later, nothing happened. And nothing continued to happen until the year lapsed and the money ran out. Then Jeff started over again. He was two years out of college.

            The power of that story wasn't lost on me. I've heard tales of kids selling scripts for a megabucks and making a splash on the indie film scene right of school. And we all saw Matt & Ben waving their Oscars onstage and thanking this fair city for squiring them. But this was different. This was a real person with whom I'd eaten lunch and talked about girls. This was totally real.

            It really drove home the fact that John Hughes wouldn't express interest in my script. Not because I can't capture teen angst, or because I don't get along with Judd Nelson, but because I don't have a script. Jeff had one. It got optioned. He's my hero.

            Well, I want my piece of the pie. Boston's a movie hotspot right now, with films like L.A. Confidential, There's Something About Mary, and Next Stop, Wonderland all stemming from the word processors of area natives. Then there's the ubiquitous Good Will Hunting, acting as a sort of challenge to aspiring Boston-based artistes who don't have the cheekbones of Matt & Ben, but think they have a better vocabulary. All these guys with scripts. All these movies. All this success. And dammit, I want in. How hard can it be? I can write a script. I can be a big star. I can date Gwyneth Paltrow. I can make the cover of every national magazine in the country.

            Forget the Great American Novel. I'm writing a screenplay.

 

I'VE ALWAYS BEEN TOLD to write what I know, so my main character will be a semi-cool dork a year out of college. He's staggeringly handsome with a scintillating personality, and he has all sorts of wacky adventures at the alternative weekly newspaper he works for. I can tell this is going to be first-rate stuff, a critical and box office darling. I can almost smell the little statues, and I'm tempted to call information for Gwyneth's phone number.

            But I'm a little hazy on how to actually. . . start. I mean, for all the endless talent I obviously possess, I've never actually read a screenplay. I mean, I've seen movies — in the theater, even. But I don't know what a sript even looks like, which may put me at a slight disadvantage. So I head to the bookstore and find no less tha ten gazillion books on screenwriting, all guaranteed to teach you how to write a saleable script, all seemingly endorsed by Richard Donner of the Lethal Weapon series. I go on faith and opt for The Screenwriter's Bible, by David Trottier. It's the third edition, or as I like to think of it, the newest testament. I'm sure any number of books are good, especially those by Syd Field. But I felt divinely inspired to buy this one. And let us say, Amen.

            I take the book home, cue up Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger," and begin to read. The Screenwriter's Bible explains how to format the script in terms of dialogue and stage directions. It outlines the three-act structure of the conventional script. It illustrates how to write dialogue, how to develop scenes, and how to make the story believable. There are even excercises and check-lists to help create round, likable, interesting characters. It's a jam-packed 300 pages, and it gives me lots to think about.

            Of course, now it's starting to sound, like, hard and stuff.

            I decide to call David Kleiler, director of the Local Sightings independent film series, and basically the elder statesman of indie film in Boston. I know that I'm so talented that I don't need all this formatting crap, and since Kleiler's also a professional script consultant, he should be able to tell me how to circumvent that process. After all, I know this semi-cool dork thing is a guaranteed hit.

            "I know you want to be true to your subject, which is you," Kleiler explains to me, "but nobody's really going to want to spend an hour and 45 minutes in a darkened movie theater with you." I explain that he's overlooking the wacky adventures my character has on his way to check the fax machine each day, but Kleiler will not be deterred from raining on my parade. "You're a fundamentally uninteresting person," he declares. And that's that.

            To be honest, that was his hypothetical advice to the aspiring screenwriter, not a brutal attempt to shatter my self-confidence. But it's a valid point nonetheless. "Understand how your script is going to stand out," he tells me, which is also valid. In this vein, I decide to add martial arts abilities to my character's repertoire, I change the newspaper to a weapons factory, and I add a band of evil gnomes bent on destroying our hero. Now, we're talking. Today, Word '95. Tomorrow, Sundance. Next week, Gwyenth Paltrow's underwear drawer.

            Of course, Kleiler shuts me up pretty quickly after that. "People who are writing screenplays are largely clueless about who they're writing them for," he says. "They really haven't identified the audience, they don't know the marketplace, and they have no idea where their idea fits into the big picture." In other words, evil gnomes battling a semi-cool dork ninja maybe isn't what Robert Redford is looking for. Fine, whatever. This Kleiler guy is starting to get me down, so I cut to the chase ask him what my chances are of selling this script.

            "I have a friend who's written 45 screenplays, and he just sold his first one at age 49. Then again, my son's best friend — his first script sold to Scott Rudin for half a million dollars. It's just that random. But lightning does strike."

            Oh that's just great. That's just wonderful. Thanks a lot.

            I call Scott Anderson, director of the Harvard Square Scriptwriters, the respected screenwriting workshop and support group. I ask what the biggest problem aspiring screenwriters run into, expecting him to rail on nay-sayers like the big meanie David Kleiler. "I think the funniest one is that people expect to become rich and fmaous overnight writing a screenplay," he says. I counter with stories I've heard about million-dollar scripts, but he talks a more sly game than I do. "Studios buy scripts and put a certain amount of money into a project, and that's listed as the price that the script sold for," he says. "That would be like hiring Drew Bledsoe to play football, and including all of the other players' costs plus that cost of the stadium in listing his salary."

            These guys don't know what they're talking about. Why can't they see that my script is going to change modern cinema as we now know it?

 

THE STANDARD SCRIPT is about 120 pages long, with the general rule being a page per minute. I'm up to about 30 pages, and my hero has just uncovered the devious gnome plot to annihilate the weapons plant. This is what The Screenwriter's Bible calls the "first plot point," the part of the action that serves as a departure for the second act and the bulk of the movie. I've outlined some amazing fight scenes involving interesting props like nunchucks and really stale French bread. Plus, I've added a love interest for the hero who later turns out to be three gnomes sittng on each other's shoulders. I know I'm working with a gem here, but I'm getting concerned about how I'm going to sell it.

            "You don't need to do it from New York or LA, but you can't do it in isolation," says Kleiler. "It's a very long process, and it takes a hell of a lot of patience." Right right, patience, whatever. I check in with Anderson to see if he knows any good producers I can send my script to. After all, the industry standard these days is the "30-10" reading, where producers just read the first 30 and last 10 pages of a script. Anderson tells me about his first sale instead.

            "I'd written a script about a greif-therapy group. It was basically five people locked in a room screaming and crying. The producer read it and said, ‘I love it, this is really brilliant.' I'm thinking, ‘Alright!' He turned around and said, ‘I want you to write a script for me.' So what did he hire me to do? A teen horror comedy."

            Ah, so what you're saying is that I should make them them young blood-sucking gnomes, and maybe add a few cream-pie fights among the karate sequences. Then I can sell it to that same guy, right?

            "It's just maddening," he says. "It's like nobody knows what's good, but if somebody else wants a script, then they want it too. It's like dealing with thee year-olds."

            Okay, we're just not connecting here. He's not recognizing me as the up-and-coming young talent my mom keeps saying I am. It's time to call Tim Grafft, deputy director of the Mass. Film Office, a state-run agency that tries to bring film projects to the Bay State. "You really have to stay upbeat and positive," he advises. "You could find out the guy who you buy your morning paper from has a great-grandmother who's the head of CAA [a major Hollywood talent agency] and they could end up optioning your script." Well now we're getting somewhere. I have to start buying the morning paper.

 

I ALMOST CALLED CAA to ask them point-blank if they'd hire me as a screenwriter, just to get a funny response for this article. Unfortunately, tons of aspiring screenwriters actually do boneheaded things like that without any sense of irony. And besides, they probably have Caller ID and then I'd never get to see Gwyneth Paltrow's blouse form the inside. Anderson tells me that if you send an unsolicited script to an agency, they'll tear it up to avoid potential lawsuits. You need to sign a release, and you need to convince them to read your script in the first place. Getting an agent is hard work, and I don't like hard work. I want instant gratification. I'm going to call Matt & Ben and get them to help me.

 

IT'S TIME TO TALK with some pros, people who make a living selling scripts. I call up Needham native Scott Rosenberg, who wrote Con Air, Beautiful Girls, and Disturbing Behavior. After a full day of phone tag — rather, me continuously telling his agent's assistant that he's "it" — I find out the writer in question is on vacation. But they promise to pass along the message.

            So I call Matt Damon. His publicist informs me he's filming in Italy until Christmas. But maybe I can talk to him then.

            So I call Ben Affleck. He's still supposed to call me back. He even has my phone number.

            Finally I get in touch with Tom Perrotta, a Cambridge-based writer whose three novels are in various stages of film development. One script was even optioned by Matt & Ben, but that was before Good Will Hunting and before they were too famous to talk to somebody as lowly and pathetic as me. If they happen to be reading this, I've got one thing to say. Hey, Ben: I'm going to steal you girlfriend. . .

            "You've got to breathe cinematic life into a literary work," Perrotta explains. "For people who are adapting a novel, they need to have a deep sense of respect for the work and a healthy sense of autonomy and independence for the work."

            It's a different angle, since Perrotta hasn't actually penned the scripts themselves. But he's got Matthew Broderick starring in the movie version of latest novel, The Wishbones. That blows my pop-culture-sensitive mind. Perrotta visited the set during filming once, and sensed what it was he'd created. "I felt like all these people there converged in one place to make some imagined dream of mine real. It was kind of spooky."

            This is what I'm looking for. I want to visit the worlds I've created. I want to walk onto a soundstage and see packs of evil gnomes ready for battle. I'm working and plugging away and feeling pretty good about my script. This could even get made. I ask Scott Anderson for some final advice to the aspiring screenwriter. "Hire somebody to do it," he says. "Give us money and we'll write it for you. Don't even worry about it."

            That's not the answer I was looking for. Maybe Tim Grafft can help.

            "Just write as much as you can," he says. "Get in a situation where you're meeting a lot of people and you're selling yourself and your script, and where you're getting concrete, specific comments back on your writing."

            Sounds like a plan. Maybe I'll join the Harvard Square Scriptwriters. Maybe I'll move to L.A. Or maybe I'll keep trying that number I have for Ben Affleck. I just know he'd be interested in battling gnomes for me.