What Not to do

We all know that putting your writing out in the world in the hopes that total strangers will take the time to read it, and possibly be moved, or even pay you a little for your trouble, takes a leap of faith. It inevitably results in a pile of rejection letters, form emails, and worst of all: radio silence. And yet, perversely, we persist.

After I was lucky enough to be in a group of screenplay contest winners announced in the film industry trades Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, I was thrilled to get a flurry of interest from agents, producers, and managers. This was way back in the Dark Ages when actual humans in the form of assistants would call me up on a thing called a telephone and request that I “send a copy of the script over to the office.” Apparently, in their world, everyone had a bevy of messengers and a collating copy machine just down the hall. Not me.

Each phone call, as exciting as it was, meant an expensive trip to Kinko’s Photocopy store where I’d obsess over page numbers, typos, and whether to add a card-stock cover. I rigorously kept to the three-hole-punched, brass-brad format I’d read about in my screenwriting handbook, never varied from Courier font, fussed over a cover-letter I knew no one would read, and rushed around town in my aging Subaru to hand-deliver the screenplays by “messenger.”

Of course, the whole rigamarole was thrilling, despite the expense and hassle. All those people and companies I’d been trying to find a way to get my work to were calling me! (Their assistants anyway.) As I dropped each hopeful manila envelope in the hands of one more over-caffeinated and extremely efficient receptionist, I got a glimpse of the halls of Hollywood power. I could imagine myself padding through the lushly carpeted offices, grabbing an espresso with a director pal, pitching story ideas to an eager executive, and thinking back to the days when I’d snuck into the building, disguised as that messenger, delivering my own script.

Skipping forward a few weeks, I found my list of scripts delivered peppered with polite and positive-sounding rejections: The script showed promise and was inventive, but not for them at this time. Keep in touch when you have something new. Then, there were the many scripts I’d dropped off into oblivion, never to hear a peep from anyone in months, despite my ultra-polite follow-up calls. Eventually though, I ended up with a list of perhaps fifteen appointments with companies or people I’d vaguely or never heard of.

At that point, for some insane reason, I didn’t research who exactly wanted to meet me, didn’t figure out what they’d done in the past, and therefore had no idea what they might be able to do for me in the future. I guess, partly, I subconsciously didn’t want to be intimidated if I found out they were huge Hollywood players with lots of money. I thought it would be better to go into the meetings ignorant and mostly calm. Mistake Number One.

Besides, I reasoned, they must be asking for a meeting because they’d read and loved my screenplay. They probably either wanted to buy the script or hire me. Mistake Number Two.

I’ve since learned that everyone around these Hollywood parts except the very famous (and sometimes even them) very much want the people they meet to know their past achievements. It isn’t always just ego. After all, how are you supposed to know if your stories and talents are right for a producer, manager, or agent if you don’t know what kinds of stories and artists they’ve helped nurture in the past? Sounds logical to anyone with any sense. Unfortunately, at the time, I was treating meetings like dates. I considered it crass to look up someone’s background before I met them like some kind of stalker.

I’ll give one example of the many meetings I took that, looking back, unsurprisingly went nowhere. I was to meet with an entertainment lawyer in his Beverly hills office. I had no idea why a lawyer would want to read a script, but his assistant had reached out and I’d “messengered” it over a month earlier. Had I bothered to research who the man was, I’d have discovered he’d negotiated deals for a cluster of up-and-coming writers, getting them decent paydays and writing contracts with respectable production companies. The guy knew everyone.

I just heard “lawyer,” thought “Perry Mason” and shrugged.

I arrived at his office just on-time after circling the block in a fruitless search for free Beverly Hills parking. The receptionist sent me right in, and I sank into a cozy leather chair as the fit man in an excellent suit looked at me with cool grey eyes. “So. Congratulations on the contest win. That’s a good one.”

I humbly offered my thanks, not taking the opportunity to compliment him on the amazing deals he’d just made, mostly because I had no clue he’d made them. I figured we’d soon be talking about my amazing script. And we were, in a way.

“So. Tell me about your script,” he asked.

I swallowed. “I sent it, had it delivered a few weeks back. Didn’t you have a chance to read it?”

He was unfazed and didn’t hesitate: “Yeah. You sent it. I know. But I haven’t read it. What’s the concept?”

The concept? The script was a disjointed coming-of-age story about a young man who eventually either commits suicide or has a psychedelic mushroom trip. At the time I couldn’t have even summed it up as vaguely as that. The concept?

I think I mumbled something about coming-of-age. The hotshot lawyer’s eyes dimmed and he glanced at his calendar. “What else are you writing?

Again, I was totally caught off guard. I should have had several pitches, ready and practiced, even if I wasn’t writing anything, not to mention, a pitch about the script we were meeting about.

But I was writing something! What was it? Oh yes, “I’m writing a dark comedy about a suicide bomber,” I blurted.

The lawyer looked at me like I’d lost my mind. And maybe I had. It was the Spring of 2002, and the United States was well into the Global War on terror.

No one wanted to make a funny movie about a suicide bomber

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