After the Rain

The year’s rainy week is over, and Los Angeles is back to being the sun-kissed oasis of perfection that drives the Midwest and East Coast wild with envy. Sunny, dry mid-seventies days, cool nights. It was during this lovely week past that I chose to develop a mild case of pneumonia. While it was rainy and cold I was healthy as a horse; I guess my Chicago-based biology was in shock. Now I’m back in the saddle, none the worse for wear. It took the old immune system a couple of tries, but finally it adapted.

Adaptation’s a way of life out here. The city father’s built this sprawling metropolis on the edge of a desert; there’s no water but ten million people live LA county alone. Don’t like what your life was like back in Hamtramck or Des Plaines? Come on out to the coast and build a new one. Darwin saw it a long time ago, adapt or perish – it’s how we evolve.

Screenwriting’s all about adaptation. The one thing that Hollywood runs on, other than sex and money, is fear. Fear that someone else is going to sign the next big idea, star, concept, trend. Fear that you won’t be at the right party, working for the right studio, driving the right car. Fear that somebody else will get there first. Like, Mr. Blake said “Third place is – you’re fired.” Blake was being generous.

The flip side of this fear driven race is that originality will kill you. Be first but not too first. Sure, you pick the next Juno and you’re a hero. But there are a million Gigli’s for every Juno, and the studio exec’s who picked those dogs are parking cars at Dan Tana’s.

So everyone plays the safe bet; stars they know, producers who’ve proven themselves, writers who deliver material that fits into a comfortable niche. Which is great if you’re on the inside, but they won’t hire you if they don’t know you and if they don’t know you, you won’t get hired. So how do you break that cycle? Adapt.

One proven way for a beginning screenwriter to get a foot in the door is to bring an adaptation of a published work to the table. Chicago’s Columbia College, of which I am a proud graduate, offers a whole semester that teaches acquiring previously published material and adapting it for the silver screen (Semester in LA – http://www.filmatcolumbia.com/LA.html). As a disclaimer, the course is taught by a friend of mine, Craig Gore, but I can personally attest to the fact that you can learn more in five weeks with Craig than most people learn in four years of traditional University coursework devoted to the movie business.

I know what you’re thinking, and – Yes, yes, you are, of course, the next Great American Writing Genius. But that doesn’t do you any good if you can’t get anyone to return your calls. If, however, you walk into a meeting with something that a movie executive can relate to, something that’s already been bound and published and vetted on the stage of public opinion, something that SOMEONE ELSE has already stuck their neck out for, well then, you’ve just raised your odds way above every other Barton Fink out there who’s railing against the corporate machine. Then, when you sell that first property and the guys who write the checks know that they can trust you, you can start pitching your brilliant original work. And you can go back to being unemployed.

Of course that’s cynical, but some would call it reality. The cold fact of Hollywood is that this town is about making money, and money is made by scripting what the mass of Middle America enjoys. The taste of the average American sucks. How else could anyone explain the popularity of McDonalds’, Wal-Mart, Microsoft or Jessica Simpson? Find something popular and attach the rights. People will listen to you. You can bitch about it all you want, but, in the movie business, you need a dog in the hunt to play, and one way for an aspiring film writer to get their toes over the threshold is by attaching them to someone else’s foot.

At base, Adaptation’s pretty simple. Most people who write books don’t know beans about how to convert them into screenplay format, much less how to sell one of those. So a screenwriter gives the original author a few bucks for the rights to their work for a year or so, and then he goes out and writes a screenplay based on that material. Original? No, but it ups your odds of getting a meeting exponentially. There’s a lot more to it, but those are the basics. Like a lot of business, it’s not pretty but it works. And working is what being a writer is all about. Unless you want to sit alone before the fire, crafting pretty sentences that no one will ever see.

There are a few pretty accurate thoughts about the subject here (Writing World – http://www.writing-world.com/screen/filmrights.shtml) and this is by no means an exhaustive coverage of the subject; I present this simply something to think about. Because, trying to make a living as a writer is like getting a date in high school; you should never limit yourself to one opportunity. The more lines you have in the water the better chance you have of catching a fish. Write your own material, of course, but never forget to keep an eye out for that fantastic story that someone else told – recently, last year, a hundred years ago – that has potential. You’re not whoring yourself out, or compromising, you’re becoming a professional. And if you want to write for a living you better treat it professionally, like a business. It’s all about learning to adapt.

— Ric Hess, Feb 11, 09:04 AM

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