A former agent acquaintance e-mailed me today. She originally renewed our quasi friendship via a phone call a few weeks ago because she'd moved to a new area of the country (thus she is no longer agenting), and while teaching at the university there and critiquing scripts on the side, she had come across a horror script that was set here. After reading it, she thought it was commercial and remembered the Louisiana money I had told her about, so she called to get information from me to see if I could help her hook up with the money people. In spite of that not strictly being in my best interest (because hey, limited funds, 'if they spend money on hers, will they still want to do mine?' sort of thing), I gave her the information she needed and told her who the best person was for her to contact. Turned out, she knew that person's financial partner -- the guy who was actually bankrolling all of the films here (knew him personally), so she had a more direct line than I did, and she went to him.
Now, the twist isn't that they're making her script. Nope, the twist is that they turned her down. But in the original conversation, she had mentioned that the script wasn't that terribly well-written. It just had a good commercial hook and enough of a surprise ending, she thought it would get made. She was in a hurry to try to set it up because if she could, she would get a producer credit; she was worried that the script would sell elsewhere. Which it apparently did, yesterday. She e-mailed me today to let me know it had sold to MGM.
I'm not really sure how to respond to that. (I mean, technically, I know how to respond to her... but I'm not sure how I feel about her e-mail.) I'm sorry she isn't getting to make it because she is a nice person and I like her; however, I don't think she's broken-hearted or anything. In fact, she's got so much access, she'll be finding new scripts soon and making them. I don't mind that this other writer whom I don't know at all has sold. Plenty of people do. There's not a limited amount of purchases available in the universe and then poof, it all dries up with nothing ever to be published or sold again. I can't be jealous, then, since there are always opportunities out there. No, what I think bugs the living crap out of me is that someone whose writing isn't highly regarded (or regarded much at all) can have that many people going after his script, when really good writing doesn't sell. I get the whole "it's a commercial hook" thing -- hell, I've made that lecture a hundred thousand times to new writers. I know how the film business works, and this is the dark part of it -- that it really isn't about the writing. It just sucks a little bit of my soul away to see it in action.
Posted by toni at September 25, 2004 04:10 PM