John August

Film Industry

Clive Cussler really, really dislikes Sahara

Adaptation, Big Fish, Charlie, Film Industry, Los Angeles, Projects

Today’s LA Times has a lengthy article about Clive Cussler’s lawsuit over SAHARA. It’s a fun, gossipy read, partially because I’ve had beers with many of the people involved:

For those who don’t have time to read the article, I’ll summarize the moral: be very careful when adapting the work of living authors. Particularly when they go on about how much they hate Hollywood.

Cussler had unprecedented and frankly unconscionable control over the adaptation. He bitched and bullied and couldn’t be placated. And if the resulting movie was less-than-stellar, well Mr. Cussler, three fingers are pointing back at you.

But on another level, I get it. Screenwriters are used to seeing their material altered, mangled and reinterpreted. Screenwriting is part of a process, and the craft can only support medium-sized egos.

The novelist, on the other hand, is God. And God doesn’t like to be told he’s a crotchety old jerk who’s been coasting on a mediocre franchise for years. I sympathize with Cussler’s dilemma: he wanted a big movie to bring new readers to his books, without any risk of the cinematic version replacing his literary one. Dirk Pitt has black hair, damnit! It says so here on page two! He wanted Hollywood on his terms.

Have fun with that lawsuit, Mr. Cussler.

My own experiences with adaptations have been more positive. (How couldn’t they be?)

For A WRINKLE IN TIME, Madeleine L’Engel functioned through a trusted producer, and while I had some significant disagreements over what plot points really needed to stay or go, at least I wasn’t arguing with the author. BIG FISH was a love fest from the start, with author Daniel Wallace so intrigued by the screenplay form that he became a screenwriter himself. And CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY was made with the blessing of — and little interference from — the Roald Dahl estate.

What lessons should an aspiring screenwriter take from the SAHARA debacle? For starters, remember that the unhappy stories get press simply because of the train-wreck factor. Most times, the author and screenwriter have a decent relationship — if they have one at all. A smart novelist remembers that the existence of a movie doesn’t change anything about the book sold at Barnes and Noble. And the smart screenwriter remembers to praise the author at the press junket.

When should I panic?

Film Industry, Psych 101, QandA

questionmarkA two parter: First, after several years of false starts, I’ve finally finished a script I think is pretty good. I have a friend who is a pretty established movie writer, and he has a manager at an established company. Friend gave Manager the Script. After two months, Manager finally read the Script and called me up and said he really liked it a lot and was excited about it. But Script is an unusual sci-fi comedy and perhaps a tough sell (a director and or star would need to be attached) and so Manager needs to “find consensus” with others at his company, so I need to wait for others at the company to read it. Time passes.

After a couple of weeks, I have another conversation with Manager, who tells me nothing has happened but people are out of town — be patient, let’s connect a week from today. A week passes and no call. Another week-and-a-half passes, and I email. Another three days, and I call. Manager is “in a meeting.” Will call back.

Friend, who knows Manager well, has said, “Manager will not give you the silent treatment. If he doesn’t like the script, he will say ‘I don’t like it. Sorry. Bye.'”

After several days, I’ve gotten no response from Manager on the call or email.

Second, meanwhile:

I have another friend (Friend 2) whose very good buddy is a partner (in TV) at a large Agency. (Script is a feature.) Solely as a favor to Friend 2, Agent agrees to read script. I drop off Script in the Agency’s mail room. Time passes.

Nine weeks later, Friend 2 asks Agent about the Script. Agent’s assistant tells Friend 2 to tell me to resend the latest version of Script to Assistant, because Agent is going to take it home over the weekend. Done.

Two weeks later, Friend 2 and Agent have lunch. Agent says, “Sorry, I haven’t read Script yet. I or one of my associates will read it.”

A week or two later, I leave my first voicemail with Agent’s Assistant, asking if I can have any info on whether the script has been read or gotten any coverage.

A week later, I have heard nothing back.

Am I fucked?

— bagadonuts

Your story is my story is almost every story of an aspiring screenwriter in Hollywood. In my case, the agency was CAA, the friend was an instructor at USC, and the waiting game went on for about two months before we finally got a pass. But during those two months, I came home from work every day staring at the answering machine (it was still the answering machine era), hoping for word about the script.

Bagadonuts, you are not fucked. You are just stuck in the waiting cycle which hits everyone. And so you know, the waiting doesn’t magically go away as you progress further into your career. Just the people change. Instead of waiting to hear what an agent or manager thought of your script, you’re waiting to hear back about what the studio chief is thinking. But he’s busy dealing with a crisis on This Other Movie. So he’ll get to it when he can.

Best advice: Always have multiple things out there. Follow up on a reasonable schedule, but never speculate that silence means doom.

When do you walk away?

Charlie's Angels, Film Industry, QandA, Tarzan, The Nines

questionmarkSo I’m doing it again. Writing on a project that I feel in my gut is doomed. It’s paying me money and I know many writers are looking for that first paying gig. This is my umpteenth paying gig, and somehow I’m not really that much further along in my career than I was four years ago when I started. But I am a bit wiser. Wise enough to know when producers and development execs are really out to lunch. But apparently not wise enough to jump off this sinking ship. Baby needs a new pair of shoes, right?

And so I must ask someone wiser and infinitely more successful than I am: at what point do you pull the plug. You know, you’re getting notes that make no sense. You’re executing a project that is someone else’s “idea”…though you know full well this someone doesn’t realize that his idea is nothing yet…not until you deliver a script that will undoubtedly be everything he did not imagine (because he really hasn’t imagined anything at all).

When do you save yourself the embarrassment and heartache and suddenly become “unavailable due to a scheduling conflict.” Yes, sometimes the most unlikely projects fraught with problems go on to become successes. Apparently Casablanca didn’t have a script and was being written anew the night before each shooting day. But my experience also tells me that is the exception and that doing it “right” has a higher likelihood of turning out a creatively successful product. What’s John August’s tipping point? When does he leap? What are the danger signs that make John August say, “My employers are completely whacked and I’m catching the next bus out of here”?

— Skip
Vancouver

Often, the only power a screenwriter has is to walk away, and the decision whether to do it is almost never straightforward. But there are a few key points to consider:

1. **Write movies, not scripts.** Always recognize that the words scrolling up and down on your monitor are the means to an end, not the end itself. An unproduced screenplay is like blueprints for an unbuilt skyscraper — brilliance is irrelevant if it never gets made. So ask yourself: “Am I giving up because of a fundamental concern about the movie, or a concern about the script?” The former is valid, the latter isn’t.

2. **Don’t do free repairs on sinking ships.** The Writers Guild (or the Canadian equivalent) would like to remind you that you’re never supposed to do free rewrites, but the reality is that for a project you believe in, you’re willing to do whatever it takes to get it right. But if you’re questioning the producers’ commitment to the project, ask to get paid for that next batch of tiny tweaks. If they balk, it’s that much easier to walk.

3. **Set some objectives and deadlines.** Agree to do that next pass, but only if they’ll commit to taking it out to directors. Insist on having the follow up meeting this week, not a month from now. Don’t let it drag out.

4. **Write your own notes.** Before the next revision, give them a set of written notes about what you want to do. Let that be the template. If they’re not on board, it’s clearly time to move on.

If it’s any consolation, the decision of when to cut one’s losses never gets easier. I had to walk away from both Charlie’s Angels movies when they completely went off the rails, only to come back later. More recently, I had to let Tarzan go, after more than a year of work.

In both cases, I felt profound frustration and disappointment, both in myself and the people who’d hired me. It wasn’t just the amount of wasted work, but the sense that I was abandoning my creations. The characters were real to me, and now wouldn’t get a chance to live. (This dilemma ultimately became one of the storylines in The Movie.)

The only upside I can offer is that once you leave a project, you remember how many other movies you want to write. Shutting one door opens others.

Is the Slamdance script competition a bad idea?

Film Industry, Genres, QandA, The Nines

questionmarkI am a writer who has multiple scripts entered in the Slamdance Horror Script Competition.

Recently, Slamdance announced the new Grand Prize: $10,000 and acquisition of all rights and title by an independent production company. In said acquisition, the production company plans to produce a feature motion picture from the grand-prize winning script.

The winner will be paid five percent of the film’s minimum budget, which is $200,000.

So here’s my first question: Shouldn’t the writer be paid 10% of the film’s budget according to WGA standards?

As a writer who has primarily entered the competition with the hope of placing in the competition so I can attract queries from agents, I am a bit puzzled by this new Grand Prize. If a script is good enough to rise to the top of a competition like this, and if the writer is lucky enough to land a good agent, wouldn’t it be within the writer’s interest to look for a better deal?

Not to mention that upon accepting the Grand Prize and putting pen to paper, the writer is signing all rights of the script to the powers that be.

Would it be foolish for someone to decline the Grand Prize and take his or her chances with attracting an agent who might be able to find a better deal?

— Terrell
Newnan, Georgia

Yes, it would be foolish. If you win, you should take the prize money and the additional $10,000. (I’m assuming that the 10% of the budget comes on top of the prize money, but either way, take the deal.)

Why am I suggesting you blindly take whatever’s offered, when just two days ago I advised another reader to [quickly get another lawyer](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2006/help-im-getting-screwed-on-my-own-series)? Because you live in Georgia. You’re treating the Slamdance competition as a sort of become-a-screenwriter lottery. The first, unspoken rule of lotteries is “always take the money.”

Could winning the competition help get you started as an honest-to-goodness screenwriter? Sure. But getting a movie made would be a much, much bigger help. Lots of writers win competitions but never get beyond that point. However, if you get a movie made — if you get a movie set up — you suddenly become an actual, working screenwriter. And the process of finding agents, managers and future work becomes much easier.

Now that your main question is resolved, let’s correct one fundamental misunderstanding:

Shouldn’t the writer be paid 10% of the film’s budget according
to WGA standards?

Yes, in Fantasyland. There’s no WGA rule or standard. All there is is WGA scale, which indicates the minimum a writer can be paid for movies of a certain budget. These are flat figures, not percentages. (You can download a .pdf of the rates [here](http://wga.org/uploadedFiles/writers_resources/contracts/min2004.pdf).)

I’ve never been paid anything close to 10% of a film’s budget. My first feature, Go, cost roughly $6 million. I was paid $70,000. That’s half a million dollars less than I “should” have gotten.

For The Movie, I was paid low-budget scale — $35,782, plus a $5,000 script publication fee. (If we’d qualified for the [WGA Indie](http://wga.org/subpage_writersresources.aspx?id=924) rates, we could have brought that down to zero.)

And as a writer who’s written several very expensive movies, let me tell you, I’d love to be cashing $20 million checks. But it doesn’t happen.

Don’t get me wrong, a screenwriter can make plenty of money. But dollar signs shouldn’t be a driving force in choosing it as a career, no matter what level you’re talking about.