Christie — Thank you! I am sorry we do not have a newsletter. If you click on the RSS button at the top, you may choose a service (I use Google) and it will send each new post to your email.

You may have asked a particular question, but thousands of people who read this blog secretly want to know the answers too. You just had the guts to ask.

I pulled age 22 out of my hat because that is about the age I thought I was all ready to go after film school, expecting to make my millions, but was still completely ignorant to the whole process and to the minor problem that my writing was unripe.

I was not that 1 in a million screenwriters to hit it big right out of college. The screenwriters I know who were that lucky person are severely depressed, so I don’t envy them. I’d rather have little and be happy than to have everything and be miserable. There is something to be said for struggling and earning something over time, as opposed to being handed everything on a golden plate.

I am grateful for my hardships. It is the darkness that makes me appreciate the light. It is from my own ignorance and having to learn that I can teach.

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– SizzlyP — Thanks! You have a happy holiday season as well.
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–t.sterling — I am glad that my information touched your basements and that you learned a lot. That is my aim: to help people get on their way quicker than for the rest of us who had to learn by trial and error. Only by being honest about all this can I be of any help. If I make it flowery and pretty, you all will be misled.

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– Shane — More like the reverse, a little bit of talent and a lot of luck!

Yes, I think that a person’s odds for success go up dramatically the more effort a screenwriter puts into his work. If you are primarily a screenwriter, but you direct and produce, then you become a produced screenwriter, instead of a begging screenwriter, hoping and waiting for someone else to produce you, and you therefore put yourself WAY ahead of the game because your written words are turned into visuals. As director/producer, you are able to take your vision all the way to screen.

The only way for a screenwriter to ensure that his written word is respected, like the words of his contemporary playwrights and novelists, is to direct and produce his own scripts.

Inversely, collaborated works amongst talented filmmakers can create interesting masterpieces. Ideally, if you sell a script, one hopes that the hired director is a better director than you would be (and usually is) and therefore creates a better film than the one you would create. That, again, is luck of the draw, as to which director you get.

Say Disney buys your script, you may have zero say in who directs and acts for your story or if it ever sees the light. This is where luck plays big because if your movie bombs or doesn’t get made, it is not so great for your career, whereas if your movie is a hit, of course your opportunities and price quotes raise. This aspect of screenwriting and your success can be totally out of your control. Luck! Luck! Luck!

One screenwriter I know thought his movie was going to be terrible, didn’t like the director’s vision and all the additional script rewrites by other writers, so he took his name off the credits. The movie turned out to be a hit and the screenwritier lost out on tons of money royalties and future work.

From the directors I have met, the insecure A-hole tyrants tend to be big box office losers and the directors who are humble and respectful tend to come out big winners. That’s one reason Gus Van Sant has a great chance of winning this year — he is one of the coolest kindest directors in Hollywood.

Positive energy and good communication translate well on screen.

Thank you for all of this information. Hollywood is a lot more cut-throat than I had ever imagined.

When you get down to it, a million people go out there set upon succeeding as a screenwriter and only 1 of that million will make it.

Do you think people have a better chance of sucess if they do it themselves; filming their own script? Or is it just about the same? Talent and a little bit of luck.