Good advice from agents
Reader and fellow screenwriter-blogger David Anaxagoras is taking a class from the estimable Mike Werb, who recently brought in David Lubliner and Ken Friemann of the William Morris Agency to talk about agents, managers, and the business of representation.
Mr. Anaxagoras was generous enough to share his notes from class. Since “How Do I Get an Agent” is my number-one most avoided question to answer on this site, I thought I’d take this chance to comment upon some generally excellent advice:
Ken stressed that you should get as many pair of eyes to look at your script as you can, and that the eyes you want are in LA — so move out to LA. Search out managers, lawyers, assistants, creative execs, young directors — anyone who might have a connection and can pass your script along.
Two good points rolled into one. First, never be afraid of showing your work. Put it in the hands of everyone you meet, no matter what their job in the industry. Even these readers aren’t in a position to help you at the moment, one day they will be. Or they’ll know somebody who knows somebody.
Second, move to L.A. Yes, technically it’s possible to become a working screenwriter while living in Boise, but it isn’t likely. L.A. is film what Nashville is to country-western music. You just can’t avoid that.
Often, a good script will not sell. That’s the norm. New writers will get meetings off their script, and should look at it as an opportunity to open doors and build relationships.
I’d amend that to say “most good scripts will not sell.” Don’t look at screenwriting as a lottery ticket. You’re trying to build a career that will last decades. Building relationships with people who love your writing is much more important than a six-figure sale.
New screenwriters should expect to sign up with junior agents. In fact, Ken says it is imperative to sign up with a junior agent. Find someone who is passionate about you and your work and who has a vested interest in advancing your career — and thus their own. An established agent with high-powered clients has little at stake in your ultimate success or failure. Find someone you can grow with.
Yes. You want to grow up with an agent. An agent in his mid-40’s with top-tier clients isn’t going to hustle for you the same way a junior agent in her early 20’s will. More importantly, that agent won’t be having drinks with all the junior execs around town — the guys who oughta be reading your script.
Writers are often asked “what else do you have� in meetings. Ken recommends writers stick to the same genre or something similar until they are established. It’s just too much for Hollywood people to wrap their head around a romantic comedy, a period drama, and a horror pitch all in a short space of time. Remain relatable and help the agent to help you. Earn the right to write different.
Don’t worry about being pigeon-holed until you actually have a career. My first two paid jobs were adapting kids’ books, so I got sent a lot of other kids’ books. It was annoying. But I was working, which is a lot.
Ken let us know that a screenplay has a short window of opportunity once it goes out, and that if it doesn’t sell, writers need to learn to let go and move on. They can’t live off the hope of that one script forever. Instead, they need to keep producing new material. Keep writing — don’t sit around and wait for the sale or the next assignment.
Amen. This is very hard advice to take, because you’ve no doubt poured your heart and soul into those 120 unsold pages. Hopefully, you’ll get great meetings off that script. But don’t expect that one day someone will say, “Hey, we should really buy this old script that’s been sitting on the shelf.” From experience, I can tell you that it doesn’t happen.
You can David’s whole recap in part one and part two.
Tom Smith on How I Got My Agent
David Steinberg on How I Got My Agent
Articles
May 28th, 2005 at 5:56 pm
New writers, junior agents, junior executives… It all makes sense.
But what about all those dusty old manuscripts laying on shelves around town, the ones that were good enough to get a meeting but not appropriate for that particular market or year or producer? How possible is it for a once rebuked idea to be recycled again someday? Or is that the stuff of vanity projects and self-indulgence?
Great site, by the way.
May 28th, 2005 at 8:25 pm
That’s great and all, but what about the people in the wrong country who aren’t even allowed move to L.A.
Then what do you do?
Are there even any foreign screenwriters in LA? You never hear their story, if there is one.
Sometimes it seems like the film industry is just for the Americans.
May 28th, 2005 at 10:24 pm
Very good point. I would move to LA but I’m not American and not from a country where they do any real favours in terms of working Visas (Canada). I am however in Toronto and it seems that being in Toronto is workable since many people from LA are quite often here. The real pissoff is that trying to “network” or gain access to even a junior agent here is painfully tough. What advice would you give to really get an agencies attention so they don’t just roll your script over into the trash as soon as you bring it to them?
May 29th, 2005 at 5:56 am
John, thanks for illuminating and expanding on these items. Always valuable to have your perspective.
May 29th, 2005 at 10:08 am
My only question is how did you know I was living in Boise?
May 29th, 2005 at 10:43 am
Hey John,
I can understand how living in Boise might be a drawback to establishing a career in screenwriting (I’m from Iowa originally, which is often confused with Idaho and Ohio, I think because they all begin and and in a vowel) but what are your thoughts about being based in New York City as a playwright AND screenwriter? There seems to be a industry here as well, or is it not the right kind of industry? Love to hear your thoughts on this, as that I am in New York City where my plays get produced, but I’m contemplating whether or not a move to LA will help or not.
May 29th, 2005 at 10:44 am
Hey John,
I can understand how living in Boise might be a drawback to establishing a career in screenwriting (I’m from Iowa originally, which is often confused with Idaho and Ohio, I think because they all begin and and in a vowel) but what are your thoughts about being based in New York City as a playwright AND screenwriter? There seems to be a industry here as well, or is it not the right kind of industry? Love to hear your thoughts on this, as that I am in New York City where my plays get produced, but I’m contemplating whether or not a move to LA will help or not.
May 29th, 2005 at 10:46 am
an apology – I don’t know why my comment posted twice -
May 30th, 2005 at 8:03 am
“Building relationships with people who love your writing is much more important than a six-figure sale.”
John, I have to disagree. I spent years in LA going to meetings with very nice development execs after each of my specs went out. And they were good, fine, fun meetings, at the right companies, and I often left feeling that they liked me, and I can’t tell you how many times I heard that they loved my writing. But I never sold a spec — my fault, my specs had bad hooks. And so I was not on the List. The List isn’t imaginary. My agents repeatedly told me I needed a spec sale to get anywhere in the writing business, and so have other writers.
So … a six figure sale, unfortunately, is the winning lottery ticket, not because of the six figures, but because it puts you on the map.
May 30th, 2005 at 10:36 am
I agree with Alex. My career for the past 6 months has gone exactly as he described. Meeting after meeting after meeting…and I’m starving from all the praise.
May 30th, 2005 at 10:47 am
Alex and Gary:
Certainly not to contradict your experiences, which are all too common. I never sold a spec until Go, which was actually a lot less than 100K. But before that, I had gotten two paid jobs, and would have continued to work, with or without a spec sale.
In terms of getting on “The List” — much more important than a sale is getting that first job. Which means getting someone to say, okay, this guy is worth hiring. And doing that generally means not just taking a bunch of meetings, but converting those “we really liked your writing” into “maybe we could hire you to write something with money from our development fund.” In other words, closing the sale.
At any given point, I was trying to get four different jobs — some of which were no more than a producer’s vague idea that they “really wanted to do a movie about the invention of the Walkman.” My agent could set up the meetings, but it was up to me to get the job. And yes, I was starving from all the praise for a while. Talking with other writers working today, I’ve found that most of them have never had a classic spec situation. The dividing line between when they weren’t working and were working was much fuzzier, yet they’re full-time screenwriters today.
May 30th, 2005 at 12:04 pm
I suppose the moral here (a shocking insight!) is that it’s simply damn difficult jump-starting an A-list screenwriting career.
May 30th, 2005 at 12:08 pm
You know since asking that question, I’ve now become fixated with knowing if European screenwriters exist in L.A.
It seems strange that you don’t hear about them.
Does anyone know if they actually operate in Hollywood?
I’ve always wondered how foreign talent, like British, Irish, and Australian actors can move to L.A. to further their careers. Does the same work for screenwriters?
If not, why?
May 30th, 2005 at 12:19 pm
Kevin, most of the Euro transplants are hybirds. Writer/directors. Andrew Niccol, Christopher Nolan, the guys who did Saw, Luc Besson, etc.
May 30th, 2005 at 2:30 pm
I am hoping to be the transplanted Canadian working in La La Land one day (although I do have a valid green card and semi-immigration status) so besides my plaid Blue Rodeo t-shirt, asking every bartender if they stock Molson Canadian and submitting scripts accidentally with OUR spellings on color, favor etc, they’ll never know….
May 30th, 2005 at 3:08 pm
From my experience in NYC I managed to make a living from writing, however a LOT of it was under WGA minimum and for the indy market. Which was fine – I supported myself, and had the opportunity to see my work prodcued and hit festivals like the LA Film Fest, Tribeca, and Sundance. So while living in NYC (at least when you’re trying to start out) isn’t the best place to begin, it’s not impossible. A lot of companies and agencies have LA-NY offices, or at least sister companies.
May 30th, 2005 at 7:16 pm
Weird. I implied I never got hired to write anything while I was in LA. And when I wrote the comment, that’s exactly what was in my brain. Actually I probably did about a dozen commissioned scripts and rewrites. Just, none of them were WGA jobs. All were for independent producers — non scale, low five, sometimes even four figures.
Weird. On the other hand, for the legit development people, none of those gigs did count, in the sense that no amount of indie rewrites put me in the running to rewrite the next studio zombie horror video game adaptation, but my spec did get me the meeting on it.
But there is the distinct possibility that my writing was just not good enough, and had my writing been more impressive, I would have got the gig.
May 31st, 2005 at 12:24 am
“An established agent with high-powered clients has little at stake in your ultimate success or failure.”
True. And funny, because I learned it from David Lubliner himself — the hard way. I wrote a short script that got me the attention of agents at ICM, WMA, and CAA. Lubliner’s was a name I’d heard, so I went with him. He sent me on a couple of meetings, and then I turned in a spec. He thought it was weird and he buried it. The meetings stopped, my phone calls went unreturned. I was confused. Wasn’t he my bigshot agent? Wasn’t my career just starting? It was right around this time that I learned what “hip-pocketing” was, and then I knew: I’d been hip-pocketed; he took a momentary flyer on me, and when he didn’t see dollars in my spec, dumped me. I had no idea.
I “fired” him (he had the nerve to get mad — they’re like that, agents) and got a new agent, this one at a boutique agency. My tiny new agent told me he loved me and proceeded to send me on upwards of 75 meetings over the next year. Eventually, I got an assignment, a rewrite. This was four years ago. I’ve worked ever since. I’m still with my tiny agent. I don’t think he really loves me, but that’s ok — love is not what I need from him.
Post script: I was at Independent Spirit Awards a couple years back, as a nominee. (Best Screenplay. Lost.) I saw Lubliner and wanted to say “hi”. I had no hard feelings, and he was doing as well as ever –- let’s make nice, I thought. So I go up and stick out my hand, and he shuns me! Turns his back right on me! At first I was shocked. But then I got all sorts of proud. Because I knew he knew he blew it. And he knew that I knew.
May 31st, 2005 at 10:02 am
John,
great blog…super advice…and all for free.
For all the unrepresented “gente”/talent..keep your head up…and March forward:
I fell upon your work (& site) by chance..a mutual friend Kelly Reasner…
Question: What’s your take on starting with Short Films to shop around?
May 31st, 2005 at 11:35 am
Great Lubliner story – anonymous :-)
June 2nd, 2005 at 11:07 am
Regarding Europeans in LA:
I’m an American screenwriter living in London. When I first moved here, I found it much easier to get my phonecalls returned than it had been in LA. From this, I concluded that the British film industry was more open…
…until I spoke to a British friend of mine who had just gotten back from a trip to LA, where he found it much easier to get his phone calls returned than it had been in London.
The US/UK divide seems to work to the advantage of writers traveling across the Atlantic in either direction. The British think we Yanks know some secret of screenwriting they don’t know, which is why I get more meetings in London. We Yanks, by contrast, associate British accents with sophistication, which is why my English buddy got all those meetings in LA.
I’m not sure if the same principle applies for all of Europe; I’m guessing that there’s not the same mutal admiration going on between us and, say, the French.
June 2nd, 2005 at 1:45 pm
Thanks Jacob, how ’bout the Irish? I bet we got the limeys beat, if that’s how you could spell limeys that is. Limies doesn’t look right. Either way, the Irish rock!
;)
June 3rd, 2005 at 7:19 am
If there’s one thing Americans love more than English accents, it’s Irish and Scottish accents. (We love Welsh accents, too, but most Americans tend to lump them in with English. Sorry, Wales.)
June 3rd, 2005 at 8:49 am
So should american writers living in LA start working on their British accents? I actually have pretened to be from Irlenad at bars a few different times. Works until they call you the next day and the accent isn’t on the voice mail message. Whoops.
Tip: Just watch any Colin Ferrel behind the scenes interviews.
June 3rd, 2005 at 2:06 pm
I love this column, it is by far the best, most simple, most direct advice I have ever read.
I think that in the end it all comes down to how you view yourself in this business. What are your needs? How do you measure your success?
Maybe it’s because I still see myself as a young screenwriter, but I don’t see myself in need of an agent, even though I have one currently sending me out. (I am not desperately trying to land a job. I am in this phase of learning. I think learning more about myself and the things that I want.) Do I lack a plan? absolutely not! Two years ago I planned my entire artistic career. Amazingly enough, I am shooting through that “to do list” at a faster rate that I ever expected. But I also know that I’m in a business where my chances of success are slim to none. I take it for the joy of it, for the adventure; knowing that my chances of selling are small is actually rather liberating.
Yes, my scripts have opened many doors, have gotten me a few re-writes, have gotten me more tv work than I ever expected. I still haven’t made that sale. So what? I loved the writing of the script.
I give one piece of advice that I rarely see on any board. ENJOY the writing, LOVE the writing, LIVE for the writing. Do it because there is nothing else you want to do, because you get up in the morning with writing the very first thing in your mind.
Do what you love and success will follow. But have your own measure of success. No amount of money will make you a success if you don’t enjoy the road there.
June 3rd, 2005 at 2:24 pm
Well said. I wish I had the insight & enthusiasm of a nineteen year old.
Don’t worry buddy, spend enough time in LA and you’ll end more jaded than the edge of Whitney Houstons last credit card.
June 6th, 2005 at 4:59 am
Re an American in England, years ago I moved there because–as a novelist, which I also am–I couldn’t get an editor or agent to read my works stateside. I went armed not only with the manuscript of a novel, but also with a fifty-minute BBC teleplay. I’d researched the TV writing scene there (which was very rich), and with the script signed with an agent in two weeks. She was associated with a book agent, and five years later (yes, I stayed on, though I’m now back in the US) my first novel came out in the UK, afterwards here.
Because so many people in TV there had seen my scripts, three of them who were now working as a film company, commissioned me to adapt my novel as a feature. It wasn’t made, and it makes no difference here in my trying to get repped (I had a manager, but we’ve since gone our separate ways), but it looks good on the resumé!
June 6th, 2005 at 10:27 am
The above is excellent advice. However, how does one find a junior agent?
June 6th, 2005 at 6:05 pm
Are these Expo exhibitions any good? Is there any point in pitching ideas at things like Expo if you haven’t got an agent or attorney in L.A.?
If you had a really good script, but you hadn’t been produced, should you keep that big idea to yourself until you’re in a position to get it made?
June 9th, 2005 at 12:27 am
Nobody has mentioned managers! While perhaps not quite so “pretigious” as agents, I find my manager (Jeff Ross)very savvy. He steers me away from low/no dvelopment runaround eternal rewrite quasi-producer types (now, THERE’S a REAL Hollywood hyphenate!)and sends me actual leads that might just get me a script sale.
And managers are quite easy to approach as well.
Now, different subject: Strangers in a Strange Land. I have been working with a Serbian screenwriting novice on a “translation” of his spy flick, written in what we have come to know and love as “Eurglish”. Since he lives in Bosnia, and isn’t exactly a native English speaker, I am hard pressed to convince him that he should be writing in his own language, for his own (albeit limited) market. He’s bound and determined that he’s going to have to move to LA. Bosnia is NOT Boise! I live in Canada myself, and that’s hard enough. As long as I change my “colours” nobody has a clue that I’m not a Yank. But my poor friend…no way. It’s rather sad, really- he has all of his hopes and dreams pinned on selling to Hollyweird, but due to his “accented” writing, so little chance of actually making it. When your last name is Bin Laden, can you really BE a rock star?
October 5th, 2005 at 4:04 pm
how you doing—i’m james baumgardner—–i wrote a story which will be a blockbuster of a movie—-it’s being made into a movie script now—-i’m looking for an agent—–i’m not crazy about this online line stuff, so could you please send me an email of someone i could call to talk more about my story————-thank you ————jim
January 9th, 2006 at 4:59 pm
I’m an indie director in NYC and am interested in meeting talented up and coming writers to collaberate on spec scripts with. I sold a 35mm short I wrote and directed to IFC and just completed another that has been accepted into the South By Southwest Film Festival. In addition I was with ICM for 2 years but wasn’t really feeling a lot of love there and recently left. I just finished my fifth feature script collaberation and plan to shoot it on a low budget this summer. If anyone visiting this site writes good comedy/drama material and is interested in a possible collaberation please let me know.
May 9th, 2006 at 1:40 pm
may 9, 2006
i enjoy your site! my partner and i have written several scripts in the past 18 months……one of them, “flipside”,is an extremely worthy contender to successfully follow the footsteps the like of: “4 weddings and a funeral”, “notting hill”, “love actually”,”wedding date”, and either of the bridget’s…..we’re talking 200-300 million dollar grossers…..i’ve noticed that the industry people that i’ve contacted about this script act very lacadasical as if they could care less about a vehicle that could make them some serious millions.. the script after this one, “the shiloh incident”, received a very praisworthy letter from chris wyatt, also known as the producer of “napoleon dynamite”……..he said that he so very much enjoyed reading it, that he’d like to direct it should our mutual schedules coincide.
i’m thinking of traveling to london to shop “flipside” in the very near future……are their some names and addresses that you would kindly bring me aware of…..the story has excellent michael caine and bob hoskins parts as well as many other funny and interesting characters..
thanks a lot for an opportunity to air my feelings!
sincerely,
rich pulin(los angeles, california)