How Jeff Lieber landed his first writing gig in Hollywood

Jeff Lieber, whose film credits include Tuck Everlasting and TV writing and producing credits include “Miami Medical,” “Necessary Roughness,” and “Lost,” recently went on Twitter to answer a question. Jeff kindly agreed to let me reprint his series of tweets because… well, it’s just an awesome story. Here it is!

Whenever I go somewhere and talk about the biz… one of the first questions is, “Howdya get your first job.”

So, story goes like this…

The year is 1997, I’d been in LA for 2 years, and had every thing imaginable had gone WRONG.

4 points on my driver’s license. Check.

Girlfriend left me for another dude. Check.

Chicken pox… at 28. Check, check, check.

Now, SOME things had gone RIGHT.

I had 2 scripts which lots of people liked to read (but not buy or make) and I had both a manager and agent.

(Getting agent/manager is another story entirely.)

But “having an agent and manager” is not having THE FIRST JOB.

And THE FIRST JOB I needed badly.

BTW, my bills were being paid as an associate producer on an R-rated video game, which was sort of a glorified title, considering I spent my days basically editing images of dildos.

(Again… another story for another time.)

So, to get THE FIRST WRITING JOB, my manager (Robyn Meisinger at Madhouse, still my manager to this day) and I created a pitch. And it was GREAT.

I don’t mean to say that the MOVIE that would have come from the pitch was great… I doubt it made any sense… but the pitch, which was 45 minutes of me acting out damn scene was a show worthy of broadway.

I’ve been told that some people… upon hearing about the pitch… scheduled meetings just to see me jump around.

The pitch was was a romantic comedy about a guy who had to perform modern versions of the 12 tasks of Hercules in order to win the love of a woman (like I said, movie… sketchy) and I went around town doing the dog and pony show for anyone who would listen.

Now, one of the people I did this canine/equine act for was Adam Goodman, then a junior executive at Dreamworks. Adam (GREAT guy) watched the pitch with one eyebrow raised and when it was done said… OK, that was great, BUT it’s not a movie for us… BUT, BUT there may be ANOTHER movie, one already in development, that we might consider hiring you to rewrite. Was I interested?

Was I interested? Christ, YES, my life was faux-phalic-filled.

I’ll spare you the details of the other movie, but suffice to say I worked up a pitch for the rewrite, and went back in.

Rewrite pitch… went fantastic… and I was told in the room it was in the running and it was down to just 2 writers.

Me… and John Patrick Shanley.

Insert record scratch here.

That would be, got-no-credits, spends-days-staring-at-dildos ME and Academy Award Winning Screenwriter and Tony Award Winning Playwright John Patrick Shanley. Sigh.

My only hope was… I was cheap, he was not… and Shanley (apparently) had some crazy ass clause his contract that said that once he was hired… no other screenwriter could be brought on to rewrite him.

A week goes by, then another. No news and more no news.

And I’m FREAKING out.

(Insert the image of me… at my dildo desk… calling manager/agent 10 times a day.)

By the 3rd week, I decided that I had to do SOMETHING to break the log jam and so, I went out and bought a goldfish and a bowl and some food. Then I wrote a note that said:

“Little fish eat less food, take up less space and write better screenplays. Hire me.”

3 days after I sent note and fish (to Bob Cooper head of the studio at the time)… I got the job.

Now, there is a coda to this story… one I’ve made a point of remembering because I’m quite sure it was the universe sending me a message very loud and ever so clear.

The coda goes like this:

Four days later I went in to see Adam Goodman and Bob Cooper (and another very cool guy named Jason Hoffs) to start the process of writing the movie and when I got to Cooper’s office I noticed… the EMPTY fishbowl sitting on his assistants desk.

“What — Um — What happened to the fish?” I asked.

“Well,” said the sheepish assistant, “We sort of overfed it… and we killed it.”

Yes, I thought… and still remember… Hollywood does tend to do that.

You can read Jeff’s Showrunner Rules, currently 190 of them, by going here.

You can follow Jeff on Twitter: @JeffLieber.

And I’m happy to announce Jeff has agreed to an interview. So we can look forward to his insight into both screenwriting and TV writing.

Comment Archive