Question: Is [writing] ignorance bliss?

Open forum question from The Bitter Script Reader:

Is ignorance really bliss?

That is to say, if you knew when you were starting out just how tough a business this was, and all the struggles a single project goes through, would you have still had the faith and will to write your first script and pursue screenwriting as a career?

Just so there’s no misunderstanding — I’m not asking if you have any regrets. Just curious about how you’d juxtapose your perception of the business then with the benefit of your experience now.

That’s a great question, TBSR. I knew so little about the movie business when I wrote K-9 (back in 1986) and I think it was a plus. I still have a copy of a letter I wrote to accompany the last draft of K-9 to my then writing partner Steve Siegel in which I stated point blank, “If somebody doesn’t buy this script, then they’re crazy.” Ha! Talk about crazy! I was the lunatic — and didn’t even know it! I just had no idea how competitive the business was. To illustrate that point, let me describe this actual historical scenario:

The spec script K-9 went into 20th Century Fox for the weekend read on Friday, January 9th. That Sunday night, I went out for a drink with my wife (this was when we were living in Berkeley), and I told Rebecca, “I don’t know why, but I just have this feeling that the script is going to sell.” And I did, literally a sensation in my gut.

The next day, January 12th, I drove down toward southern California, set to launch six solid weeks of comedy gigs in clubs in Ventura and Thousand Oaks. I set off about 10AM, which is when Steve told me Fox would have their weekly Monday development meeting at which they would be discussing scripts from the weekend read, including K-9. So as I was driving, the fate of my script was being decided. But as I drove, I continued to have a strong sense that the script would sell. 

About 90 minutes later, when I reached King City, I pulled off at a Shell station and plunked some change into a pay phone (no cell phones in general use back then). I called Steve — got his answering machine. Then I called Rebecca to see if Steve might have called her. She answered the phone and the first words out of her mouth were, “Fox wants it. They want to buy your script.”

Five hours later, I drove my clunker Ford onto the 20th Century Fox lot to meet with Steve — and that’s how my journey as a screenwriter started.

As it turns out, my gut was right: We did sell the script (not to Fox, but a preemptive offer a week later from Universal — that whole thing is a long story).

But here’s the deal: I had no logical right to think the script would sell. 

In fact, if I had known virtually anything about the movie business, I doubt if I ever would have tried my hand at screenwriting — What’s the point, the odds against success are astronomical!

So on the one hand, your point is spot-on: In my case, ignorance was bliss. My cluelessness afforded me the freedom to write the story that Steve and I imagined. Certainly we were aiming to create what we thought was a commercial script, but apart from my own personal history of having watched thousands of movies from my childhood on and Steve’s background as a grad student at USC, we — and certainly more so I — had a grossly limited understanding of Hwood.

Of course, that lack of understanding came back to bite me in the ass many times as I made, what I now know, were several bad choices. One example: Because the lawyer who drafted the K-9 contracts didn’t include these four words — “or any other format” — I lost out on several hundred thousand dollars in compensation because Universal produced two sequels to K-9 that were direct-to-DVD, which they claimed did not qualify as sequels because the original contract only specified theatrical movie sequels or a MOW (movie-of-the-week). In essence, sequels which were not legally considered to be sequels.

Which brings me to two other points:

* First, one of the reasons I do this blog is to provide information to readers so that if/when they/you break in as a screenwriter, you won’t make the same mistakes I did. 

* Second, I do not recommend writing spec scripts from a position of ignorance like I did with K-9, precisely because you need to know enough about the business of being a screenwriter to protect yourself, especially with some key choices you’ll make on the front-end of your career.

So what in effect you have to do is learn as much about the movie business as possible, even the knowledge that it is an insanely difficult business to break into, and then somehow set that awareness to the side when you are actually writing your stories. This may not be possible with OWA’s (Open Writing Assignments) as there are typically lots of potential casting, budget, and production issues that accompany each of those writing gigs, aspects you have to be aware of when you write the script. But when you write something on spec and you want it to be really original, it behooves you to be able to compartmentalize the business stuff over here and your creativity over there.

And that last point is pretty much what I would advise for GITS readers who are writing on spec. Learn what you can about the movie business and use that information to help you choose wisely a strong story concept to write, but once you start writing, set that business ‘stuff’ aside: Your goal is simply to go into the story, find its heart, soul, and characters, and write the hell out of it.

Finally, write with the belief you are going to sell the script. Yes, be prepared for “no.” But there’s no reason you shouldn’t be positive-minded as you develop and write you spec script. While the odds are enormously against you, at least one spec script sells on average per week in Hwood. Might as well be yours.

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