Writing Movies For Fun And Profit! (14 page)

Yep. That’s
essactly
what happened. If this book has taught you anything yet, it’s—
that’s how Hollywood works
. You make the
Lord of the
Rings
trilogy, then you die, alone and unloved, in the parking lot of an Arby’s, trying to trade your Oscar for a pack of Salem Menthols.

Hollywood has a SHORT MEMORY. Think of Hollywood as a sexy young CHEERLEADER with a great pair of legs and Alzheimer’s disease.

(Note: there is an upside to Hollywood having a short memory: you can remake the same movies over and over! For example, you can make
The Pacifier
with Vin Diesel, then make almost the exact same movie five years later and call it
The Spy Next Door
! Fun!!! AND RECYCLING IS GOOD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT!!!!)

ANYWAY—
back to our chilling tale!

The young screenwriters had come to New Line to pitch their movie about a schlubby young mall cop who lives with his mother in a retirement community in Florida and gets caught up in a web of intrigue and
Die Hard
–style action. The studio executive (someone we would come to know and respect) listened to the pitch and did something that no studio executive had ever done before:

She fell asleep
.

Sound asleep. A gentle afternoon siesta like the ones our friends in Sicily and Madrid enjoy. She looked like an angel, head listing back toward Heaven in gentle repose.

The screenwriters did not know what to do. There was a long, awkward moment. They looked at each other, then back to the sleeping angel, and decided to do the only thing there was to do: wait it out.

(Note: if the person you’re pitching to falls asleep, DO NOT WAKE THEM. They may wake up confused and angry and as a result hire Ganz and Mandel instead of you.)

The screenwriters waited. After a few minutes, the angel’s eyes fluttered, and she refocused on the room, TRYING AS HARD AS SHE COULD TO ACT LIKE SHE’D BEEN “THINKING,” UNAWARE THAT SHE’D BEEN
ASLEEP FOR QUITE A WHILE
. This is easier to do in a college lecture hall, where you’re one of a couple hundred people in the room. When it’s you, an assistant, and TWO OTHER PEOPLE WHO ARE TALKING DIRECTLY TO YOU, it’s pretty awkward. Not quite as awkward as letting out a fart, but pretty close.

When the studio executive returned to the land of the waking, she
turned to the screenwriters and said groggily, “I’m pretty sure Adam Sandler’s already working on a mall cop thing.”

And you know what …
he was
. It was made with Kevin James. It was called
Paul Blart: Mall Cop.
And it made $183,293,131 worldwide.

The moral of this story: A movie with a schlubby guy as a mall cop is a VERY GOOD IDEA.

For starters: “Redlighting” is not an expression ever used by anyone in Hollywood. It’s an expression that we made up for this chapter, meaning the opposite of greenlit. It is not trademarked, so feel free to use it! The fact is, movies get STOPPED, SCRAPPED, HALTED, and BAILED UPON all the time.

(Note to editors: BAILED UPON seems like the right grammar? BAILED ON? ALL BAILED UP ON?)

Movies can fall apart faster than a macramé bikini made by a Thai child-labor slave. PRETTY FAST INDEED. Especially when that macramé bikini is on, say, Tyra Banks.

There are a lot of dumb things the writer can do to help get the movie stopped on a dime, or rather
stopped on the couple million dimes that have already been spent
and the possible contractual penalties of the stars, director, etc. Stopped on LOTS and LOTS of dimes.

Here are some things to watch out for:

1. Table Reads

Yikes. They want to do a table read of the script.
Um … okay, sure.
Consider yourself lucky if you even get invited to the table read of your script. They often don’t invite the writer. But if they do, it will be a fun opportunity for you to go to a fancy hotel conference room and see BIG-TIME MOVIE STARS butcher your words. It’s not their fault—they’ve just NEVER READ IT BEFORE. In fact, they’re only vaguely familiar with the fact that they’re getting paid several million dollars to star in this movie. All they know is the concept. Let’s say, for example, you’re doing the production rewrite on
Starsky & Hutch.
Well, keep in mind that Owen Wilson might not remember if he’s supposed to be playing STARSKY or HUTCH until he sees which part Ben Stiller reads first. This kind of thing happens all the time. Keep in mind that no matter what they do, THEY ARE THE MOVIE STARS—
YOU
ARE THE ONE WHO WILL LOOK LIKE A DOUCHEBAG WHEN ANY JOKE FALLS FLAT. This is a COLD READING for them; they’re doing their best.

Your writing career is hanging on an actor’s COLD READING of your script in a room with twenty-five very powerful people and their assistants. Yikes. Double yikes. Exclamation point. Every dud that happens in the reading: PEOPLE WILL LOOK AT YOU as if they’ve just been told you have inoperable brain cancer.

Before any table read: YOU should go through the script and do a pass where you TRIM EVERYTHING down to the BARE MINIMUM. If your table read goes long—that is NOT GOOD. Let’s say your reading goes so long that a bunch of people RUSH to the bathroom the moment it’s done: NOT GOOD. So trim, trim, trim. Let the draft for the table read be light and breezy. And trim dialogue too. Is anything said TWICE in your script? Unless it’s a callback or the THEME OF THE ENTIRE FILM (e.g., “I never knew what was right under my nose until the genie made me change places with that basset hound”). Never repeat yourself. If it’s said twice, cut the second time it’s said. And descriptions of action
can be cut WAY DOWN—you just don’t need to say everything that happens, especially when it BREAKS UP A CHARACTER’S DIALOGUE. Less is more. Aim for WAY LESS.

2. Budget

We know what you’re thinking: HEY, THE BUDGET ISN’T MY FAULT!
DIDN’T THEY JUST PAY THAT MOVIE STAR $25 MILLION TO BE IN THIS GODDAMN BASSETT HOUND SWITCHEROO MOVIE?

True, not every aspect of the budget is in your control. But keep in mind, as the budget of your movie SPIRALS OUT OF CONTROL (the normal state of budgets), the studio’s position becomes more and more difficult. Keep in mind this fact that people often forget: MOVIE STUDIOS DON’T GET EVERY PENNY IN TICKET SALES BACK. They SPLIT the profits with the movie theaters. And not evenly but on a shifting scale (short version: the longer a movie stays in the theaters, the more the theater owners make). AND, if the star or director are big enough: THEY’RE GETTING FIRST-DOLLAR GROSS. So the studio is splitting the pie with LOTS of folks
who loves themselves some pie.

The studios have to justify every expense, and your script has to be a GUARANTEED HIT if the budget is high. Not only does it have to be a GUARANTEED HIT in the United States, it has to have INTERNATIONAL APPEAL TOO. (General note: any movie you’re writing for a studio these days HAS to have international appeal. Your movie has to be a hit in GERMANY TOO.
Keep that in mind as you write, dummkopf!
I.e.,
no jokes about how David Hasselhoff IS NOT THAT GREAT at singing.
That stuff may play here, but you’ll be in Vierten Platz
*
in Hamburg.)

When it comes to the budget: DON’T BE PART OF THE PROBLEM, BE PART OF THE SOLUTION. If there are creative trims you can make to the action of your script or if you can reinvent a very expensive set piece to be LESS EXPENSIVE, do it!

Look at the most expensive sequences in the film, and ask yourself:
Is it either so awesome that it’s going to be in the trailer or really necessary for the story I’m trying to tell?
If it’s absolutely necessary, if it’s very funny and good enough for the trailer—keep it. If it’s not either one of those—BE
THE FIRST ONE TO RECOMMEND TRIMS TO YOUR OWN SCRIPT. YOU WILL BE APPRECIATED FOR IT. In general, the less “precious” you are about your words, the better liked you will be.

Remember: the less your movie COSTS to make, the more it can MAKE in profit. The short way to remember this is:

$$ > $

Two dollar signs is greater than one dollar sign. BUT THIS SAD FORMULA HAPPENS A LOT IN HOLLYWOOD:

$$$$ = $$$$

This means the studio spent four dollar signs on your movie AND MADE BACK FOUR DOLLAR SIGNS. Bummer.
Shoulda considered what the German audience would think about the basset hound taking a whiz on the leg of Hasselhoff’s lederhosen. Bad move, dummkopf!

3. Act III Problems

As a movie gets closer and closer to production, Act III of the script seems to pretty much ALWAYS be a problem. Even more than Act I and Act II problems, this is the biggie.

You’ll find that once the movie is greenlit, LOTS of people will come out of the woodwork and they will think you have ACT III PROBLEMS. And they’ll hover their finger over the REDLIGHT button until they’re resolved (or until they fire you). Sometimes they know what they want. Most times they just want the end of the movie to be … better. Whatever that means. So get ready to REWRITE and to try out a lot of different versions of your third act. In fact, be ready to REWRITE everything and anything in the script, and don’t be a douche about it, be wonderful and accommodating. Remember, this is the act where you get the guy DOWN FROM THE TREE and he’s changed for the better. It ain’t brain surgery. (See
Chapter 23
, “If Your Screenplay Doesn’t Have This Structure …”)

4. Getting a Contemplative Star Attached!

Wait—isn’t getting a star attached a good thing?
Sometimes, yes: if it’s the right star and one who likes to work all the time, yes.

But: BEWARE THE CONTEMPLATIVE STAR. This is the kind of movie star who likes to THINK for long periods of time about the kinds of movies he or she likes to do and makes only one movie a year. Sometimes, in fact, stars will attach themselves to your script because they like it
just enough to think about it, on a back burner. For years.
Or even worse, because they fear someone else will scoop it up if they don’t.

Keep in mind what is required of a movie star who attaches himself to your script: ZEro

Yep! Nothing is required. Seriously. All that has to happen is that the star says, “I’M INTERESTED IN THAT, LET’S DEVELOP IT FOR ME.” And that’s it. They’ve taken it off the market for anybody else. They don’t have to sign anything, they don’t need to commit any further, they don’t have to give you dates they’re free. Nothing. In fact, if you push them to commit, they’ll probably just give you a bunch of notes. So if you’ve got a star attached to your script and they’re not shooting one movie right now, with another in preproduction and another animated movie that they’re also doing a voice for: BE CAREFUL. You might have a “contemplative star.” Years may pass while your star thinks about the script in an abstract way while gazing longingly out the window of his mansion in Beverly Park
*
while you sit applying Icy Hot to your carpal tunnel wrists in the Frolic Room.
^†

5. Marketability

Before your movie gets greenlit, or sometimes even bought, it will be run by the MARKETING DEPARTMENT of the studio. The folks there
will have two simple questions: Who is this movie for? And is that person SOMEONE WHO PAYS TO SEE MOVIES IN A THEATER ON A REGULAR BASIS? You should have already answered both of these questions before anyone else with the script, which simply has to have an inherent appeal to the largest audience possible. If all else fails: ADD THE WORDS “IN 3-D” UNDERNEATH YOUR TITLE ON THE TITLE PAGE. Yes, oddly sixtyish years after its invention, somehow 3-D is the thing that’s getting people’s butts into the theater seats! Let’s hope SMELL-O-RAMA is next.

6. The Executive Who’s Shepherding the Project Gets Fired

What the hell?!? Good ol’ Gary got FIRED!?! BUT HE’S THE GUY WHO THOUGHT
BASSET-SWITCH
WAS A HOME RUN?!?

This happens all the time. Don’t be surprised if you’ve been inching closer to a green light for months, only to wake up and read on deadline hollywood.com that your beloved exec is FIRED. (Although the studio will never really say “fired.” They will say “departing” or “ankling,” for some reason. Or that the person has just been given a “producing deal on the lot.” All those are code words for “fired.”) Well, WAY TO GO, DUMMY. IT WAS
YOUR
JOB, AS THE WRITER, TO HELP THE STUDIO EXECUTIVE KEEP HIS JOB. WE ALREADY TOLD YOU THAT! He hasn’t failed you—you have failed him (or else he got busted doing something fishy in the copy room).

If the executive who’s been spearheading your movie got fired— chances are your movie is DEAD. No new executive will pick up Gary’s mantle. Why not? If the movie bombs, they will get fired. And if the movie succeeds, everyone will give good ol’ Gary the credit.

There’s lots of ways the movie can fall apart. But you need to be a rock that everybody can count on. This is not the Sistine Chapel ceiling you’re painting here. You’re a contractor, making the best public bathroom you can make! But still, you can make it a wonderful bathroom. One fit for “the King” to die in.