What’s a reasonable amount of time to give your manager to read a draft of your script? It sometimes takes mine up to a month.
It seems long to me and I have been losing faith in his desire to get me work or sell my scripts. I’ve been with him for two years now and got a lot of meetings with the first script we went out with, but in the last year and a half nothing. At first he was very hands on and now it seems he has pushed me to the very bottom of his to do list.
I’ve stayed in touch with some of the producers I’ve taken meeting with and was wondering if it’s crossing a line to ask them to help me get a new manager or an agent?
— Mike
Hollywood
Don’t worry about firing your manager. He’s already fired you, but doesn’t have the guts to tell you.
Substitute “manager” for “agent” and follow my advice on How to leave an agent. You could have the Big Talk with him, but in the end I strongly suspect you’ll need to move on.
If you’ve kept up relationships with those producers you’ve met, it’s absolutely fair to ask their input on a new manager and/or agent. But it’s going to be really awkward if your only contact was the meet-and-greet months ago. They need to be colleagues, not contacts.
Ask yourself whether you’ve done everything you could to make your screenwriting career happen. As I put it before:
The biggest change shouldn’t be who is representing you, but how you’re representing yourself. As you take meetings, make them understand that you will work your ass off to land assignments, then work five times harder to deliver. Say it and mean it.
I wouldn’t bother firing your manager until you have something new and shiny with which to attract attention.
UPDATE:
Reader James points out I never really answered the question of how long is too long to wait.
If you hand your manager a script on a Monday or Tuesday, you should expect to hear back by Friday — or get a call/email saying that he’ll read it over the weekend. A script delivered on Wednesday or later will probably be weekend reading as well.
He should get back to you by the Monday afternoon with word that he’s read it, or an explanation if he hasn’t. If you haven’t heard back, take the initiative and call/email.