John August

QandA

Suing to get an agent, cont’d

Film Industry, Follow Up

Justin Samuels, the guy who [filed a lawsuit](http://johnaugust.com/2011/suing-to-get-an-agent) against CAA and WME for not representing him, just [wrote in](http://johnaugust.com/2011/suing-to-get-an-agent#comment-190743):

> Mr. August, you’ve no idea what other things I have or haven’t done to break into the industry. You’ve no proof that I haven’t previously lived in Los Angeles. You don’t know if I’ve had internships or not, or if I’ve done other industry jobs or not. You’re making assumptions without having evidence to back them up.

That’s not an excerpt. That’s the whole thing.

True: I have no proof that he hasn’t done those things. I also can’t prove Amelia Earhart never French-kissed a squirrel. But I trust my hunches.

If Justin is writing in to set the record straight, couldn’t he, you know, *set the record straight?* For instance, he could say when he lived in Los Angeles. Or had an industry job. Or won screenwriting competitions. Or applied for studio-backed diversity programs.

He’s given me no reason to assume he’s done anything other than write scripts, query letters and lawsuits. Maybe he’ll read this and fill in the details.

Justin followed up his first comment with another one specifically about internships:

> I should say something about internships. Internships are often unpaid, meaning the intern is working for free. Exploitation at its finest. Its okay if the intern has parents who are willing to subsidize or is on a government program, otherwise the intern may end up sleeping in a cardboard box (the intern maybe unpaid, but rent, food, gas, and other necessities are never free).

> So basically, one need not apply for an internship if one doesn’t have either parents or the government to cover one’s expenses.

Here Samuels has a point. Unpaid internships favor those with enough money that they don’t need to get paid. It’s a concern I’ve seen raised in many industries, particularly ones like art and publishing that are centered in high-cost cities like New York.

But I’d argue that unpaid internships are actually a very small part of the Hollywood ecosystem. All the interns in Los Angeles could get Raptured tomorrow and the town would function just fine. A much more fundamental part of the film and television workplace is the front line of PAs and assistants who toil long hours for a wage that, while meager, is livable.

Justin, if you’re sticking around, the 80+ commenters on the original thread probably have questions for you.

H.P. Lovecraft’s Commonplace Book

Genres, Writing Process

Bruce Sterling publishes a list of Lovecraft’s [undeveloped story ideas](http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2011/07/h-p-lovecrafts-commonplace-book/):

> **96** Unknown fires seen across the hills at night.

> **97** Blind fear of a certain woodland hollow where streams writhe among crooked roots, and where on a buried altar terrible sacrifices have occur’d — Phosphorescence of dead trees. Ground bubbles.

> **98** Hideous old house on steep city hillside—Bowen St.—beckons in the night—black windows—horror unnam’d—cold touch and voice—the welcome of the dead.

Sterling doesn’t discuss the origin of the list, but all 221 entries seem distinctly Lovecraftian. Most of them don’t suggest plots per se, but rather focus on strange words or images. That makes sense for Lovecraft, who was never known for his characters, but rather his mood-making.

There’s not a single line of dialogue to be found. If future historians dug through my notebooks, that’s mostly what they’d find: bits of speech with very little context. Some of those lines are particular to what I’m writing at the moment, but many float untethered to any specific project.

I find myself scribbling down random ideas less now than I used to. Some of that is because of Evernote, which I use as my all-purpose in-box. My [Twitter feed](http://twitter.com/johnaugust) also soaks up a lot of these thoughts, at least the ones that can be rewritten to fit in 140 characters.

Get better flashlights

Genres

The Lazy Self-Indulgent Book Reviewer has a few words for [futuristic television characters](http://lazybookreviews.tumblr.com/post/6993696856/get-better-flashlights-futuristic-television):

> Why are, like, graduates of Starfleet Academy lugging around physical cylinders that emit light from one end? Why don’t they all have chip implants in their palms that glow when activated?

> I mean, my iPhone has a better flashlight app than I’ve seen used by an actual Time Lord, and the iPhone’s flashlight app sucks.

Glowing palms are an ergonomic disaster. Try it.

But her point is well-taken. Characters generally want to light an area, not simply a narrow cone. The wizards in the Potterverse seem to have a good solution: use your wand like a torch, or fling the sphere of light where you want to see. (But they’re magic, yo. So they could also probably cast a spell to make it less dark, or give themselves ultravision.)

For sci-fi, a good choice would be hovering drones that light the area. As a bonus, keeping the light physically separated from the characters makes them less of a target.

And the best iPhone flashlight app is my friend Troy’s [InfinitLight](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/infinitlight/id399277601?mt=8).

Harry Potter and the Well of Red Ink

Film Industry

Cory Doctorow revisits a 2009 Harry Potter participation statement, marveling at how the hugely successful fifth installment manages to [lose $167 million on paper](http://www.boingboing.net/2011/06/27/hollywoodonomics-how.html):

> I think this is also a great example of why all financial numbers released by the entertainment industry should be treated as fiction until proven otherwise.

I get balance sheets like this every quarter on the movies I’ve written. I think it’s naive to call them fiction. Every industry — from oil to tech to toys — has ways of obfuscating exactly how much money it’s making.

The difference with movies is that the average filmgoer has a pretty good idea which movies are hits and which are bombs, so when a movie like HP5 shows a deficit, our bullshit detectors start beeping.

Some important things to keep in mind:

* The studio charges each movie a distribution fee. For HP5, that totaled 34.7% of the gross — a $211 million cut of $609 million. Warner Bros. is keeping that money. So the studio has made a profit, even if the movie itself hasn’t.
* Prints — the film running through the projector — are still a huge cost. For HP5, they spent $29 million. Digital projectors can bring that number down.
* Residuals matter. Even though the movie isn’t profitable on paper, the film has paid out $10 million in residuals (almost entirely to the actors, writers and director) in the two years between when the film was released and this statement.
* They claim the movie cost $315 million. In the case of Harry Potter, I suspect JK Rowling is getting paid here, since no gross participants are listed.

Very, very few movies will ever show a profit on a participation statement like this.

When you read stories about writers or producers auditing a feature, it’s not because they disagree with the math on the page. Rather, they think the numbers themselves are wrong. Ten million here, ten million there, and suddenly you’re talking real money.

And it’s not always clear-cut how the money should be tallied.

An example: Sony sold broadcast rights to the first Charlie’s Angels to ABC as part of a bundle of films. I forget the exact figure — maybe $40 million? The studio accountants wanted to divide the money among the films in the package. So if there were 10 films in the package, each would get $4 million.

One of the producers balked, arguing that Charlie’s Angels was by far the biggest movie in the package and deserved the lion’s share of the ABC money. I don’t know that disagreement got settled, but the same kind of haggling happens every day.