Writing Movies For Fun And Profit! (24 page)

You wrote a movie for a movie studio. You got fired. (And maybe rehired, then fired again.) Now—if your movie is being filmed and
you’re
not the one writing on it:
someone else is
. If a movie is being filmed, there’s a 99 percent chance it’s being rewritten. It’s not uncommon for DOZENS of writers to work on a project. Especially comedies.

You probably won’t know who else wrote on the film until you get, in the mail, THE RECOMMENDED CREDITS:
after a film is completed, but before it is released, the MOVIE STUDIO submits their SUGGESTED CREDITS to the WRITERS GUILD.
They submit their suggestions, and then the Writers Guild almost always makes the studio’s “suggestions” into the OFFICIAL CREDITS. (We know, that’s kinda f@#ked up, huh?)

This is important and harks back to the “don’t be a dick” section of this book—because the studio will almost always recommend that the credits go to the WRITERS THEY KNOW THEY’RE GOING TO WORK WITH AGAIN IN THE FUTURE.

Don’t be surprised if some TOTALLY UNDESERVING DOUCHEBAG is given credit for your movie. It’s because the studio has other projects with him and they don’t want to piss him off
. They’d rather be the “good guy” to both of you and let
you
duke it out in the ARBITRATION PROCESS.

So—what is the arbitration process?

First, you have to write up a STATEMENT to submit to the Writers Guild ARBITRATION COMMITTEE, saying why
you
deserve screen credit and why the other writer or writers suggested DO NOT deserve credit.

To get credit, here’s what you must prove to the Arbitration committee:

“Any writer whose work represents a contribution of more than 33% of a screenplay shall be entitled to screenplay credit, except where the screenplay is an original screenplay. In the case of an original screenplay, any subsequent writer or writing team must contribute 50% to the final screenplay [to also get credit].” (From the WGA
Screen Credits Manual.
)

BE READY TO PROVE NOT ONLY THAT YOU DO FILL THOSE REQUIREMENTS BUT
THAT NO OTHER WRITER DOES
.

Make no mistake:
This is war
, and the best thing you can do is to BE PREPARED. Other writers will be ruthless in their statements, and you have to be too. The Writers Guild will read your statement and the statements written by the other writers you’re fighting against, and then THE ARBITRATION COMMITTEE will judge and decide who gets screen credit.
Who are the judges on the committee?
The Arbitration Committee is composed of
THREE OTHER WRITERS
, all of whom have received credit on some film in the past. They were RANDOMLY SELECTED to serve on the panel for YOUR arbitration (like jury duty for Writers Guild members). They alone will decide your fate. You need two out of three of them to agree that only you fill those requirements and deserve credit.

Will their decision be fair?
Who can say? The Guild tries to ensure that the three writers on the committee aren’t FRIENDS with anyone who’s arbitrating (or enemies with them either). They do this by ASKING you, as a Guild member: “Do you know any of these writers you’re about to judge, or do you have any prebiased opinion about them or their work?”
So it’s totally up to the honesty of the three writers
. Do they ever lie? (We dunno.
We’ve
certainly lied to get out of REGULAR jury duty.)

The committee’s decision is final, and cannot be changed, ever
. Ever. If you lose, you can complain, but nothing will be changed. It’s the rules.

(AUTHORS’ NOTE: The arbitration process is completely f@#ked and is the cause of a great deal of discord within the Guild. There’s no other creative union that pits its members against one another, and with such hefty consequences.)

Now … can you win?
Yes. We have
.

Here’s What You Need to Do to Win

1. Get help. There are a few professional arbiters in Los Angeles who specialize in this field.
They can help you with your statement, and, most important: they can read all the scripts and tell you if you have a case or not
before you even start. These helpers are not widely known, but your entertainment lawyer will know of one. Get the best one available BEFORE THE OTHER GUY DOES.
They’ll be expensive but they’ll be worth it
. The good ones run about $5,000 to $10,000. If you win, you’ll make a fortune in residuals. If you lose, you won’t make a dime.

2. Be scientific. Read every draft of every script by every writer and make notes. Dissect the scripts, and find every single aspect of the plot, every character, every piece of action, and determine WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR IT (who wrote it first, in the earliest draft). And the answer better be: mostly you.

(
Note: Name changes of characters and changes to dialogue are supposed to count
less
than plot, but these changes frequently FOOL the committee and bite you in the ass. Also, if you’re doing a rewrite, it’s in your best interest to
change everything YOU can
!)

3. Write a statement that states your case
very clearly
, and convinces the committee that all other writers’ contributions are INSUBSTANTIAL. Your statement needs to be AMAZING. A good arbitration statement can take as long to work on as a script itself.
No joke
. You should write this statement as though you’re writing for your life:
because you are
. This is war, and there are douchebags lurking out there who did a few days of dialogue polish on your script who are trying to STEAL YOUR ROYALTIES. Spend A LOT of time crafting your statement. Hit all the facts, and also
reinforce your “emotional attachment” to the film. Remember: only successful screenwriters will be reading this statement, so make it the best thing you’ve ever written.

4. Cross your damn fingers, ’cause arbitration is a crap shoot. There is simply no science to it. It’s an entirely vague, veiled, and f@#ked-up process. If you lose, you will very likely
never know why
.

And if you win, give a VERY NICE GIFT to the arbiter who helped you (so they’ll take your case the next time, even if the writer you’re arbitrating against asks first).

Then invest in short-term municipal bonds. (Those are the kind of bonds that are entirely TAX FREE, so a gain of 6 percent is really a gain of 12 percent!!!) We know a good investment guy if you need one.

So your picture made some money! Mazel bro—serious mazel on that, way to go. Now, then, when is it appropriate to discuss …

… the sequel?

Well, here’s our simple rule:

NEVER DISCUSS THE SEQUEL BEFORE THE MOVIE COMES OUT! EVER!!! DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT. THIS IS LIKE THE WORST JINX EVER. SERIOUSLY, KNOCK ON WOOD IF YOU EVER TALK ABOUT A SEQUEL BEFORE THE FIRST MOVIE IS A HUGE SUCCESS. The box-office elves that live out in the trees will hear your boastful comments, and they will smite the crap out of you.

For example: we remember standing in the lobby of the El Capitan Theatre, talking with the brilliant Nina Jacobsen of Disney moments before the premiere of
Herbie: Fully Loaded
. “Maybe in
Part 2
she’s in Japan!” is the kind of thing we’re all saying. “How great would that be. Good ol’ Maggie Peyton,
*
trading paint with Day-Glo neon Japanese Tuner cars! Woo-hoo! Let’s do it … oh, wait. Crap. What’s that horrible sound? OH, NO—everyone hates
Herbie: Fully Loaded
! And us! Run! Run
for your lives!!! Oh God, no—they got Lindsay! Lindsay Lohan is dead!!
*
SAVE YOURSELVES!!!!”

Did you read the part about how
Taxi 2
was one of the biggest deals we ever made!?!?!?!?!!? No amount of crazy punctuation in the world can properly express how befuddling that fact is. In fact, at some point somebody probably joked about
Speedracer II
. Speedracer and the mysterious Racer X did not meet again.

Sequels are like the mythological MEDUSA. DON’T PISS OFF THE MEDUSA, or she’ll turn you to stone or something. Be sensible and cautious. Discuss sequels only when your film has OPENED, won its first weekend, and either HELD ON REALLY WELL or won ITS SECOND WEEKEND. Let’s face it, if you win TWO WEEKENDS, your sequel chances go way up. IF YOU WIN THREE WEEKENDS, a sequel is almost a guarantee. FOUR? FUGGEDABOUTIT. Same if your box office goes UP from your first weekend to your second weekend, à la
Night at the Museum
or
The Blind Side
. $200 million domestic is a pretty good guideline, but not a guarantee. But for chrissake: DON’T JINX IT. SHUT UP ABOUT THE SEQUEL, ALREADY. We shouldn’t even be talking about it here in this chapter called “Sequels.” The box-office elves are waiting in the shadows, ready to SWITCH our movie with an evil, ugly changeling movie!

Of course, if your movie is a huge hit, it’s likely people will talk sequel. Or even better:
threequel
. If you got “Written by” or “Screen Story by” credit, you literally do not have to lift a finger on the sequel, and you will still get paid. Of course, you’ll make
more
with some finger lifting—so go for it. If you wrote the first one, the studio
has
to offer you the job of writing the sequel. So crank those sequels out until you have to DIG YOUR WAY OUT OF ALL THE MONEY WITH YOUR BARE HANDS. Like some kind of wonderful Scrooge McDuck scenario, where ol’ Scrooge McDuck is literally BURIED IN AN AVALANCHE OF HIS OWN MONEY. Ah, Scrooge McDuck. That guy is great. (General note: When you start to sympathize with the ULTRARICH characters in your favorite cartoons, like Scrooge McDuck or Montgomery Burns instead of, say Donald Duck or Comic Book Guy, you know you’re on the right path.) In short, sequels are all good news. The studio has to
pay you. They have to pay you more. And even if you pass, you still get paid!

So when they pull the trigger on the sequel,
Basset Hound Switcheroo 2: The Basset Case
, the only question is: WHERE SHOULD I CELEBRATE? Well, why not take your trophy partner to the Jade Mountain resort at Anse Chastanet in Saint Lucia? (www.jademountain.com.)

Think you’ve ever stayed in a nice hotel room? Well, you haven’t. Not until you’ve stayed at the Jade Mountain resort. Seriously, these rooms will knock your socks off. They don’t even call ’em rooms. They call them “sanctuaries.” And they have only three walls because it’s always nice there and so you can see the Pitons mountains—and they kind of look like boobs. The rates are probably really high, but so what? Let
Basset Hound Switch 2
worry about it.

So you read some book, and you think it’d make a great movie. Or a comic book or an epic poem or a magazine article or a short story … any work of fiction or true story. How do you acquire the screen rights?

Step 1: Tell your manager to do it.

Your manager will make a bunch of calls and tell you if the screen rights have been sold. If they haven’t been sold, he’ll negotiate a price for you.

Can you buy the rights yourself, without a manager? Of course—but this is one of the reasons you have a manager. You should be busy WRITING. Let them take care of this kind of stuff for you. Your manager will have one of their lackeys look into it for you.

If you don’t have a manager, you’re gonna have to do some Googling. Find the publisher who published the story, then contact the subsidiary rights department. Or, if it’s a TRUE story, find a phone number for the people in the story. Or, if they’re deceased, find their family. (But be careful. If it’s a story with many people involved or if the deceased has a large family, finding out who actually OWNS the rights might be very, very tricky.)

When you’ve found who owns the rights, call ’em up, use your best
phone voice, and say who you are and what you want. (“I’m a big-time Hollywood screenwriter, and I think your story would make a great movie! Can I option the rights to it?”) Pretty soon, they’re gonna ask you HOW MUCH YOU’RE GOING TO PAY THEM FOR THE RIGHTS.

So you need to have done some research. Usually when you option the rights to something, there’s an up-front fee. Could be $50,000; could be a lot more, depending on how popular the property is. If it’s an OLD book or story or one that’s obscure, it might not cost much at all. Sometimes you can buy rights with NO up-front money—just an agreement that the author will get paid if the script gets made into a movie (then the studio would pay them).