Feature: Screenwriter Alan Loeb
An interesting and informative read in New York magazine on the life of a screenwriter from the perspective of Alan Loeb. A few excerpts:
There are few writers (if any) in Hollywood who’ve written for both Oliver Stone and Adam Sandler, and there is certainly only one who’s spent time over the last year scripting movies as different as a Miley Cyrus vehicle (So Undercover), an action remake (Escape From New York), and a hair-rock musical (Rock of Ages). “You could not get more diverse,” acknowledges Allan Loeb.
In an industry where most writers toil for years without having one of their scripts produced — and Loeb spent years as that sort of writer — he’s had four credited productions hit screens in the last six months (including the new Adam Sandler comedy Just Go With It), and his name comes up for seemingly every movie in town, no matter the genre. “At any given time, I’ll have five to ten projects in my orbit that are actively moving forward,” says Loeb. “But also at any given time, I’ll be focused on two or three scripts that I’m actually writing on, if that makes sense … It’s my job — and it’s a very high-pressure job — to get a script to the point where the Oliver Stones or the Robert Luketics or the Ron Howards of the world say yes.”
How did Loeb get so hot? It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
The 40-year-old grew up in Illinois with no intention of getting into film and originally pursued a career at the Chicago Board and Trade — “It’s kind of one of the things you do in Chicago” — until a screenwriter friend in Los Angeles began asking him for notes on his scripts. Impressed by Loeb’s story sense, he encouraged Loeb to come west and give it a try himself, and though Loeb occasionally found work, none of his films were ever produced. Eventually, those frustrations (coupled with a lifelong gambling addiction) took a toll, and Loeb began to mull leaving the industry to become a stockbroker.
“[I was] the baby writer at the lowest rung within the system, who has just enough rope to hang himself,” he says. “That’s what I lived and breathed for seven, eight years. The money’s not much, the respect is bad, and it’s tough to play in the minor leagues. I really was trying to find a way out.”
In 2004, after his agent called to drop him, Loeb finished his last-chance screenplay: The Only Living Boy in New York, a coming-of-age tale about a young man who falls for his father’s mistress. The well-received script sold to Sony and landed him a fourth-place spot in 2005 on the first edition of the Black List, a now-annual industry survey of the town’s best unproduced scripts. Still, there was even better news: His script for Things We Lost in the Fire took the №1 spot on the list, over Diablo Cody’s Oscar-winning Juno screenplay.
The rest of the story is even better. You can read it here.
I had a message board conversation years ago with a veteran TV and movie writer who said this [paraphrase]: “There is only one certainty in the entertainment business. You will be up. You will be down. It’s always a cycle of where you are in terms of your writing and your career. If you want to be a writer in this town, you better damn well enjoy riding in an elevator — because that’s what your life is like.”