Contour At The Movies

So I’m here in LA ahead of the “MY STORY CAN BEAT UP YOUR STORY!” seminar I’m doing at The Writer’s Store on the 30th.  Taking advantage of being in LA, I’ve had a bunch of meetings this week with producers, agents, managers, and executives.

Knowing that a big topic of interest at the seminar is going to be about the business of writing, I figured that I’d ask the executives I’m meeting with for their read of the pulse of the business: do aspiring writers need agents?  What should they be writing?  How should people go about marketing themselves and launch their careers?  What’s the market for pitching like?  How about spec screenplays?  How important is it to live in LA?

The answers I’ve been getting have been really, really interesting and more than a little surprising.  For those of you coming to the seminar, you’re going to get the most current, best information available on the business of the business.   For those who can’t make it…hang tight.  I’ll turn the information into something readable as soon as I can.

To learn more about the seminar or to sign up, please CLICK HERE or go to The Writers Store website (www.thewritersstore.com) and search for “My Story Can Beat Up Your Story.”

– Jeffrey Alan Schechter

Overall Impression – Actually and totally two distinct stories: 2 heroes, 2 plots, 2 arcs, with a connection between the stories that is ‘wahfer theen.’

THE FOUR QUESTIONS

Who are the main characters? – Julie Powell & Julia Child.

What are they trying to accomplish? – (JULIE) Professional: Cook her way through Julia Child’s cookbook.  Personal: Become a writer.  Private: Feel like she’s got value and worth.

(JULIA) Professional: Write and publish a French cookbook for English speakers. Personal: Become a writer. Private: Feel like she’s got value and worth.

Who are trying to stop them? – (JULIE) No one, really.  She is caught in a numbing job as a civil servant, she has a doubting mother, but the real villain is her own insecurity.

(JULIA) No one, really.  She is an ambassador’s wife who meets small resistances on her way to, first becoming a Cordon Bleu chef, and then a published writer.

What happens if they fail? – Not much in either case.  (JULIE) Julie claims to have never finished anything, so cooking her way through Julia Child’s cookbook in one year would represent a huge personal victory for her, however she has a wonderful husband and great friends who will still be there for her if she fails.

(JULIA) Julia also has a wonderful husband and great friends.  If she fails to get her book published, she will be unsatisfied but her life would continue.

THE FOUR ARCHETYPES

Orphan – (JULIE) Julie has an emotionally terrible job handling insurance claims in the wake of 9/11.  She’s just moved to a small apartment over a pizza shop and is struggling to find something she can do that feels valuable to her.

(JULIA) Julia has just relocated to Paris (awwww, poor girl!) and even though she loves Paris she is trying to find something to do to fill her life and give it more meaning.

Wanderer – (JULIE) Julie gets the idea to do what she knows…cook…and share her journey through the new medium of blogging.  She starts working her way through all 536 recipes in Julia Child’s cookbook, setting a deadline of one year to cook them all, wondering if anyone is even reading her blog.

(JULIA) Julia loves cooking and decides to become a Cordon Bleu chef.  She finishes the course and begins to teach with two friends who pull her into their plan to write a cookbook.

Warrior – (JULIE) As Julie’s readership increases, so does her commitment and drive to finish what she set out to accomplish, taking a toll on her marriage.

(JULIA) Julia begins writing her opus cookbook, navigating the waters of partnership with her two co-writers as well the various rejections she gets from publishers.  Additionally, as her husband gets reposted to different cities she goes with him, never giving up her goal of finishing the book no matter how long it may take.

Martyr – (JULIE) With her marriage a bit shakier because of her journey of self-discovery (at least, that’s what we’re wanted to feel), Julie has to back off of her drive to reassess what’s important in her life.  Her husband comes back to her and with his encouragement, she accomplishes her goal.

(JULIA) For the life of me, I cannot think of anything that Julia Child gives up to reach her goal.

AND, IN THE END…

JULIE & JULIA is a good movie, but not a great movie.  Ultimately the stakes are too slight and both stories runs out of dramatic steam in and around act three, as evident by the weak martyr sections.  The connection between the stories is intellectual and thematic, and ultimately not as satisfying as it may have been had both Julie and Julia been in each other’s world, and with a connection between the stories stronger than the revelation that the elderly Julia Child was unimpressed with Julie’s efforts in the blogosphere.

What is fabulous about JULIE & JULIA is Meryl Streep.  Just the night before I watched THE RIVER WILD, another Meryl Streep movie, on cable with my wife.  After seeing JULIE AND JULIA my wife commented in admiration “If I didn’t know Meryl Streep, I wouldn’t believe both parts were played by the same person.”

This is a movie that will succeed on a variety of merits, its story being the least of them.  Meryl Streep will get yet another Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Julia Child, Amy Adams was well cast, the film was pretty to watch and very entertaining.  Was that the sound of adults laughing I heard in the theater last night?  Yes!

In spite of an act three that fell like a partially collapsed soufflé, JULIE & JULIA will definitely appeal to an audience hungry for a story without robots and explosions…unless you consider an overcooked Boeuf Bourguignon a special effect.

– Jeffrey Alan Schechter

–Jeffrey Alan Schechter

I’m often asked by writers how much passion they should have about what they are writing.  Are they selling out by writing something they think will sell, rather than something they they feel more strongly about but is possibly less commercial?

The bottom line is that one always needs a certain amount of passion when sitting down to write.  Sometimes the passion is to launch a career.  Sometimes it’s to sustain a career.  Sometimes it’s just for the joy of writing something different and out of one’s comfort zone.

However, if one is an aspiring writer and creating a career where one doesn’t currently exist is the goal, then here’s my feeling about what to be passionate about: the business of writing.

There!  I said it!  Writing is a business. If you have any desire to make writing your sole source of income, then I suggest in the strongest terms possible that you treat your writing with the same forethought and intelligence with which you would treat any business venture.

Let’s say you had the passionate desire to open a retail store. Pick one…hardware? Pizza? Bike shop? Whatever you’re passionate about.  Would you pour your time and money into opening a store before you checked out the location? Would you open your little hardware store right next to the brand new Home Depot? Would you open your pizza shop on the same block that already had three others? How about a bike shop in the middle of a retirement community? Would you have kind words for the business sense of the people who did any of these?

If I told you that I had a business venture that I wanted you to invest a thousand dollars in, would you fork over the money just because I was passionate about it? I hope not. You would check out my business idea first. What other businesses are out there like it? Why do I think my business will succeed when others like it have failed? What’s the market like for my business? You’d ask to see some hard data from me before investing.    Isn’t that time that it takes you to write a spec screenplay worth at least the same thousand dollars you wouldn’t give me for my business idea until you checked it out first? Time is the most valuable commodity that we own. Once we squander it, it’s gone forever.

What are you going to tell your wife/husband/children/significant other about the 3/4/6/12 months you spent away from them as you wrote a screenplay that had a reduced chance of selling from the first FADE IN: because you didn’t think to check if there were other films JUST LIKE IT in development?  Or that you rushed to market without first being satisfied that it wasn’t just as good as you could make it, but as good as it needed to be to be taken seriously by agents and producers?  Would you expect your loved one to have any kind of sympathy for you after you deliberately turned a blind eye to the demands of the marketplace and then came to them upset because your new horror-musical-western screenplay got rejected again?

So, what’s the solution? How do you develop your writer’s business plan?

The fact that you’re reading this means that you’ve discovered one of the most powerful secret weapons on the planet…the Net. No joke, there are communities of aspiring writers in the THOUSANDS (www.scriptsales.com, www. screenwritinggoldmine.com) that represents a huge brain trust. Post a message. “Anyone know of any horror-musical-westerns in development?” You’ll get an answer very quickly.

How about tapping into the working professionals on the boards? Drop them a short email asking if they know of any horror-musical-westerns in development. I’d bet that (without naming names) they’d be happy to let you know.

Check out the script sales posts at least once a week over at Done Deal pro. Make it your BUSINESS (there’s that word again) to be familiar with what’s sold and to whom.

Subscribe to at least one trade paper…Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Variety Weekly, Playback (up here in Canada) even the Variety online edition…and read it cover to cover every day. This is what your professional peers and hopefully future-colleagues are reading. Shouldn’t you have the same information as they do?  Remember…you’re trying to launch a business.

What I’ve presented here is a very limited discussion of a very serious topic. It doesn’t take into account building a library of material of various genres, or writing something you feel strongly about that doesn’t sell right away but may sell in the future as the market comes back around. The business of writing is a marathon, not a sprint.

Obviously, even if you take all I’ve written to heart you still might not sell your work. Happens to me all the time. It’s impossible to totally read the market…any market. But in a game where so much is stacked against you from the outset, it behoves you to take control of whatever elements you can and master them.

Yes, by all means be passionate about all aspects of writing…particularly the business aspects of it.

Blake Snyder passed away this morning from cardiac arrest at the age of 51.  Without ever having met Blake, his trajectory and mine crisscrossed and paralleled each for the last 20 years or so.  Having just signed a deal with Blake’s publisher for my upcoming book, I was looking forward to the chance of meeting and comparing notes with him.  Alas, it was not meant to be.

Blake had a loyal fan base of students and fans, and I know that he is already missed.

– Jeffrey Alan Schechter