Hollywoodscript.com Newsletter
Craig Kellem
which is published by script consultants Craig Kellem, Judy Kellem
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"Hollywood is the only place where you can die of encouragement."
TWO MINUTE HEIST PREMIERES
A new film on which we consulted, TWO MINUTE HEIST got into the New
York Independent International Film Festival. The opening night of the
movie is March 25th (2009) at 8 at the East Village Theatre. The
producer (Justine Hughes) reports that they now want to take it to
Cannes!! Big congrats to their budding little group!
JUDY AND I RECENTLY DID AN INTERVIEW WITH A DELIGHTFUL WRITERS GROUP
IN NORTH CAROLINA. HERE’S SOME OF THE HIGHLIGHTS WHICH YOU MAY FIND OF
INTEREST.
Q: What are the most common mistakes that you see writers making?
Judy: I find that some of the most common mistakes are that writers
rush themselves, so they’re in such a hurry to complete the material
that characters end up not being fully fleshed out, story lines end up
having holes in them, plot lines end up not completely hanging well or
not making sense because there are breakdowns in the logic. But of
course a screenplay is such an unwieldy thing to manage, that when
you’re swimming around in 120 pages, the details pile up and it’s easy
for those details to fall through. Or, sometimes I see that writers
are really excited about a particular scene they have in their head,
or a particular character they want to write about, and they’re trying
to build an entire script around that scene or around that character,
but what ends up happening is that they didn’t spend enough time
really fine tuning and developing all the material that’s going to
surround that one particular scene or that one particular character
and so it ends up showing up in the work, where you can tell that they
didn’t spend time turning that character into somebody who is
surrounded by other characters who can carry an entire film--or they
didn’t take that one scene that they were really excited to write
about and find a way to actually develop it and deepen it and break it
open into a full story that has legs and can take up an entire
screenplay. And so it ends up being a lot of filler surrounding that
one thing that captured their imagination. That’s my short answer.
Craig: There are many long answers to this. First of all, I want to
say that on our site there is a link called “Useful and Important
Articles” and we have about 50 articles that we’ve written pertaining
to all these issues and I recommend that you take a look. The first
thing that came to my mind is that it’s about story. There are many
writers who have good artistic talent, who can develop a character,
who have good ideas and decent concepts and good instincts. There are
not that many writers who can tell a good story. So, in line with what
Judy was just talking about, it’s a matter of really doing the work
and doing the due diligence of developing story lines, in great detail
– story arcs, cross-checking them, arcing out each individual story
and subplot, so you can really see the bones of the story in order to
really put together a good first draft. And also, in doing that to
remember that every scene has to have its own magic. As Judy said,
sometimes writers will put in a bunch of filler or they’re so in love
with certain scenes that they think that’s enough to carry the moment
and it’s not. It’s got to be terrific, and it’s also got to be really
well developed. And a lot of the writers that I know spend more time
on developing the story than they do on actually writing the script.
Also, as you guys probably know, in Hollywood, even if you’re doing a
sitcom, you’re going to do a lot of story work and you’re going to do
multiple drafts of the story before you get a chance to write the
script. And if the story’s not good, you may not even get a chance to
write your own script.
Q: What is the best way for a new writer to break into the business,
or get noticed?
Craig: My answer is that it’s to write something that is so terrific
and compelling that it somehow manages to supercede all the resistance
that they would normally receive. That is it. We have something on our
site that says: “The best marketing tool is material that works.” And
that may seem just like advertising fodder, but it’s absolutely true.
If you have a script that really makes it, and happens, and makes
people feel something and turns them on and makes them want to talk
about it, you’ve got a ticket to ride.
Q: So once someone has a script that really works, what is the next step?
Judy: The next step is to write a really strong query letter and
bamboozle every possible address, contact, to just blitz the market
place and to send it anywhere and everywhere, to every possible person
that you can get your hands on.
Craig: And that may sound cheesy – I mean, what kind of advice is
that, to send it to everybody? But you’d be surprised how many people
are out there trying to focus in on Tom, Dick or Harry out there,
which is fine to do, and you can write to people like directors who
you think would be wonderful, or an actor in a television series ready
to break into a movie and this would be the vehicle, or you can write
to some agent that you read about, or whomever, but there’s nothing
wrong with absolutely blitzing the marketplace and just kind of
playing the numbers. And you depend on the fact, you have faith in the
fact that the material will communicate what you want it to
communicate.
Judy: Exactly, because it’s about exposure. Enter it into as many
contests as you can afford because that guarantees that you’re being
read by somebody, and it’s a matter of the numbers. You’re trying to
get yourself as much exposure as possible because you don’t know what
kind of doors are going to open. A contest person could read your
script, and even if you don’t win that particular contest, they could
remember your script and recommend it to somebody they know and you
didn’t even know it. You don’t know where it will take you.
Craig: One of the secret things you need to know about “Hollywood,”
and it’s true that a lot of the people out there are really pains in
the neck, and difficult, and the business has become much more
difficult because there are only a few big companies out there now
because all the rules have changed and there are no regulations
anymore, so you’re really facing something that’s difficult to face.
But a lot of people out there have gotten into the business because
they love it, or they think they love it, or they want to love it.
They fall in love with movies, and they fall in love with actors and
they become fascinated with things. And there’s nothing like finding
something that turns you on and lights you up and makes you want to
run around and show it to everybody. And the most hard-hearted
creative executive out there has that vulnerability, and that’s where
you want to go. You want to have faith in the fact that you’ve got
something that really works, and that you’re going to find people who
are going to respond to it.
Q: To that point, I know that there are major questions about making
the script great, or making the story great, before taking the steps
toward marketing, so that you’re not wasting your time on marketing
before you’ve actually taken the time to make sure that your script it
good. Can you talk to us about getting it into the right format and
packaging before putting it out there? How important is it to do that?
Craig: You make sure that the script is typed correctly. But if you
get five pro scripts and you line them up on the table, you will find
that the formatting is slightly different, that it’s not all the
perfect Final Draft or whatever it is, but I think the script has to
look professional, obviously, and to me that’s formatting and that’s
presentation.
Judy: Make sure you have a cover sheet that indicates the writer’s
name and address, its WGA registration number, that it’s copyrighted.
One thing to note about the packaging is do not include photographs,
or clippings from newspapers, or any supplementary material, sheets of
music, anything like that.
Craig: Well, that’s mostly true. There are times, you know, if you’ve
discovered some story somewhere that no one knows about and is totally
shocking, and you make reference to it in a (hopefully) tightly
written cover letter that says exactly what you want to say and makes
it nice and punchy, where you don’t go on and on, the script will
speak for itself, and you want to include the fact that there are
three articles from the New York Times or the Washington Post or
Newsweek or some transcript from 60 Minutes…I mean, Judy’s right, most
of the time when people send stuff like that it seems hokey, or they
put on weird-looking covers, or they send long biographies of
themselves – none of that is good. But there will be an exceptional
case, if you have something really extraordinary, where it might be
okay to include a clipping or two.
Q: You mentioned about getting your script registered and having your
WGA number on there. How important is that, to have it registered or
copyrighted?
Craig: It’s important to us. One of the things about tonight was that
I didn’t want anyone to call up with their “greatest idea” and tell us
over the phone something that’s not registered and not copyrighted,
and it’s just a good idea to do the due diligence of protecting your
material before you start sending it around.
Q: As far as you know, have you noticed any difference in script sales
or in people or producers looking for scripts because of the economic
downturn? Is there less opportunity?
Judy: I haven’t noticed any difference in opportunities out there.
Craig: The only thing that I’ve noticed, and I read about this in an
article on CNN, is that showbusiness is having a very good year and it
seems to be that in hard times, people are flocking to something to
make them forget about what’s going on out there. So isn’t that what
entertainment is all about?
Q: Are there producers, studios, agents, etc. who are more open to
receiving scripts from unknown writers? And, on the flipside, are
there ones that you know who are completely unresponsive and a waste
of time for a new writer?
Craig: They’re all unresponsive and it’s all a wonderful waste of time
that you have to overcome by having material that is so compelling
that it’s going to be noticed, and where you go through all the
avenues of contests, and anybody you know who can make a connection,
and writing passionate and fascinating query letters and getting your
foot in the door, somehow, someway. But the bottom line is you need
the product – period.
Q: If material is initially rejected and you do the rewrites that were
perhaps suggested, is it in bad taste to send it back? How often do
you approach the same person or company?
Craig: How many times would you ask someone out on a date before they
said no or they finally acquiesced? I just think there’s no rule or
anything – I guess the rule is if you have a really great piece of
material, and you’re on fire with it and you’ve done a great revision,
I just think you have to communicate that. You’re writers, you know
how to communicate, that’s what writing is about. So you find a way to
honestly communicate it in some kind of a letter, or whatever, and you
hope that what comes from one heart reaches another. You really have
to depend on that because the whole business is impossible, it has
always been impossible. I was an agent, some young, wet behind the
ears agent, trying to find talent in comedy clubs, and make a splash,
and not be completely ignored all the time. But you keep trying and if
you have the product, people are not stupid. And one of the great
things to remember about the whole deal is that they need you as much
as you need them. This is not a one-sided thing. Those people may be
sitting up there in their fancy offices in their studios, but they’re
depending on some writer somewhere who’s sitting in Charlotte, NC, or
Buffalo, NY, who has a terrific idea and has developed it and has
really made something out of it, who really has a sense that there’s a
possibility that this thing is going to really happen because it’s
good.
Q: Have your writers gotten deals?
CRAIG-We’ve had our share of movies made and have a zillion writers
who have gotten development deals, or managers, or agents, or have won
other contests, or whatever. I’m really happy when somebody writes a
great script, and I’m also really happy when we deal with
nonprofessional writers who somehow, at some point make that
transition in writing an actually professionally written script, and
that gives me a tremendous amount of satisfaction. So we always tell
writers, “you’d better look for any light.” If anybody gives you a
compliment, or they really like something and you can really tell that
they do, or you win a contest or you’re a runner-up in a contest –
that really counts for something. I had a guy call me one night and he
was complaining about some actor, it was actually Roy Scheider, and he
said that Scheider had gotten wind of his project or something, but
that it turned out to be a bunch of bologna. And he felt that he had
been BS’d. And I said to the writer, “Take a bow for getting BS’d by
Roy Scheider, and realize that there’s significance in getting BS’d by
anybody because there are people out there who never get BS’d.” So my
point is that you have to kind of grab the goodies as they come and
recognize what the positive manifestations are, even if they seem
modest.
Q: What has grabbed you about the scripts that have won the contest on
Hollywoodscript.com?
Craig: We’re just like anybody else who reads material. We put on the
other hat now, we become the readers, the temporary judges of the
material, and any script that becomes a winning script is a script
that we like, you know. We’re turned on to it. How do you describe
that except to say that you find the idea compelling, the characters
are punchy and relevant and you feel them and you’re tuned into them
and you care about them, the story is intriguing and you keep turning
the pages because you’re fascinated and you care about what happens to
them and you’re curious about what’s going to happen next in the story
– so there’s something invisible about making that judgment. It’s what
gets you in the heart, and that’s what we go with. So it’s hard to
describe. But you can take a look at some of the coverage of the
winners’ scripts on the website.
Judy: Basically, over the years the people who have won the contest
have been in all different kinds of genres, styles – it’s run the
gamut. What they share in common is that they’re all very polished and
tight scripts, they have been really fine-tuned, and all of them have
great stories to tell, great characters who are very alive, very
cinematic, and most importantly have gotten under our skin and crawled
into our guts, made us feel like, “Oh my God, what a wonderful piece
of work, we want to share it with the world!”
Craig: And we tell people when we send them winning letters, “This is
not the end-all be-all thing.” It’s another feather in your cap. It’s
some acknowledgement, we do send the material out to a lot of people,
we have a deal with Scriptblaster and they send it out, we have a deal
with Inktip, they feature it. And I think that it gives you a little
bit of a leg up that you won a contest somewhere. You can always use
that in your letters and résumés or whatever, the coverage stays up
for a very long time so somebody can go to a link and refer to it.
It’s a war that you’re in in trying to make these things happen, and
the process is that you just keep doing the next right thing, whether
it’s a contest, or a great query, or whatever it takes to communicate,
predicated on material that really works.
Q: If you could give two bits of advice to a writer, what would be
your best advice for the creative writing process, and what would be
your main advice for the sales/marketing process?
Craig: The advice I would give, the prototype persona of the writer I
would advise you to be, would be someone who loves what they do, who
has a real work schedule, even if they have other jobs, etc., where
they keep processing material, growing ideas, keeping files, being
alert and aware of stuff, who is not in a hurry, who’s willing to do
the dog-work and the due diligence and all of the drafts that need to
be done, who’s not obsessed with the marketing process and getting
over the goal line, but obsessed with making the script magnificent,
and then while they continue to be creative they spend a good 10-15%
of their time marketing. But the marketing is not the end of the world
marketing, the big one, it’s got to happen next Tuesday, it’s got to
happen next year, you move to a motel room in LA because somebody
breathes right on the phone and you’re so hungry to get this to happen
that you’re going to jeopardize your entire life because you want it
so bad. It’s a lot steadier and a lot more productive just to keep
knocking out the material, to get better and better, to keep doing the
next right thing, to do the marketing thing from a very objective and
impersonal point of view, where you just keep doing it and doing it
and doing it, and you understand that you’re fighting a war and it’s
okay because you are, hopefully, enjoying the process, and you have
faith that you will make a connection, that something good will happen
if it’s in the cards for you. And if you’ve worked where I’ve worked,
and you sit around on a movie lot and you look at thousands of people
over months and years, you realize that every single one of them came
schlepping in from Kansas City, or Canada, or God knows where, and all
of them were fighting huge odds, and somehow they got through because
they did the work, they had the talent, and hopefully they got the
break, obviously they got the break.
Judy: That’s a wonderful answer so I’ll be brief. My one bit of
advice, just in terms of the writing process, is that it’s really true
that you should write stuff that you’re emotionally connected to,
because I find that a lot of times people will have it in their heads,
“Write things that you’re emotionally connected to,” but then they
abandon that because they get caught up in the whole marketing thing
that they start writing stuff they think other people will want to
see. They start writing characters that they think are the popular
characters to write, and plot lines that are the popular plot lines to
write, and before they know it they’re writing recycled material, and
it shows up in the pages, it totally transmits. As a reader, even if,
on paper, technically, that character should be somebody who is
familiar to us, and we’ve seen that character in a dozen popular
movies, they’re not flying off the page – they’re flat. And it’s the
same with the plot lines or story lines that are manufactured or
contrived. So when you’re sitting down to write, even if the marketing
voice in your head is saying, “Oh, but nobody wants to know about that
kind of character, the popular ones are these guys!” try and shut down
that voice as much as you can and just get down and deep with
yourself, and start combing the experiences of your own life, and the
things that have made you feel the most in your life – the people
you’ve encountered, moments you’ve encountered, experiences – and use
that as your material to write from because it will fly off the page.
The emotional gold will transmit and it’s a magical thing, but it
happens. I really believe that movies that are really great, when you
sit and break them down, and you look at the incredible
characterization or you think, “Oh my God, how did they come up with
that?” – I would bet that that writer, it was coming right out of
their history, and they were so close to it that it just shot right
into you. So that would be my advice.
Craig: Another Hollywood secret is that as much as they will try to
corrupt you into doing what they want, or the most marketable thing,
or the next thing in vogue or whatever, they depend upon the writer to
hold up their part in terms of coming up with material that comes out
of passion. That’s a big deal. And you will be tested to go away from
that, to be convinced to try other avenues, and more commercial
methods, to do what they want you to do – but they will always respect
you when you come in with stuff that just knocks their socks off.
That’s what they want from writers.
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THANX RAJIV
Hi Craig,
Thank you for the email and those great notes of yours -- a very
thoughtful surprise. I have been thoroughly impressed with the extra
work and effort you have constantly put in and I feel a profound
gratitude for you and the incredibly high quality of your work. It is
so obvious that you care. I consider myself incredibly lucky to have
met up with you.
Thanks so much man.
My Best Regards,
Rajiv
_______________________________________
BIG CONGRATS TO EVAN HOWARD
Hi, Judy--
I thought of you today as I received a contract from a U.S. publisher
(Guideposts Books) for The Lost Epistle of Jesus. It is a nice deal
and follows on the heels of the book being sold at auction to one of
the largest publishers in Brazil.
Robert Gottlieb, my agent at Trident Media Group, has been fabulous to
work with so far, as has his amazing team at the agency.
The more I learn about the writing and publishing industry, the more
amazed I become. There's lots of hard work involved, but getting to
this point is totally fun and exciting!
I will always be grateful for the time, deep thought, and support you
offered me at the WIP stage. You have a wonderful gift for bringing
out the best in writers!
I will be revising the book (and hopefully continuing to improve it)
to meet a May 1, 2009 due date.
I hope that you are finding much success and fulfillment in your work.
Again, many thanks for sharing the early stages of this amazing journey with me!
Evan
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Dear Craig!!!
We're Finalists (Top 20 out of 1300) for "Mother Lode" in the
Filmmakers International Screenwriting Awards!!!!!!
Obviously you played a major part in this. Count how many times you
are referenced in the attached information requested by the contest.
Love,
Mark & Linda
DO YOU NEED NAMES IN HOLLYWOOD FOR PURPOSES OF SUBMISSION? IF SO, THEN TRY THIS.
The Hollywood Creative Directory is now completely revised and updated!
http://www.writersstore.com/product.php?products_id=1103&cPath=129_134_145&affiliate=ZAFFIL680
________________________________
Craig,
SERPENTINE and ROCKWELL, which you did consults on,
are both in the Semi-Finals of the Movie Script Contest.
Stephen Leach.
(Note-SERPENTINE in now a finalist in the Movie Script Contest!)
___________________________________________________
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