Film Courage: What do you say to the screenwriter who says it’s not their job to get the movie
made.
It’s just their job to have ideas and come up with a story?
Jim Agnew, Screenwriter/Producer: They probably won’t get a movie made.
I mean it’s just a team process.
It’s like if you get to a certain level where you can get paid very well off of screenplays,
you can have that mindset.
But those are high level professionals.
Like Yeah I got paid half a million dollars to do this and that…good luck!
And they know it’s a money gig and maybe it will get made and maybe it won’t but
if you want to work more in the 10 million dollar and under indie film trenches you’ve
got to be part of the process or really you know what will happen is you will just be
cut out of it completely, they won’t ask you and then you will watch a movie and this
has happened to me something that I worked on that I wasn’t really part of the process
and it’s not even really part of your script, it’s not even your story and your name is
on it.
So it’s in your best interest to stay involved in the process and to be a team player and
no one wants to deal with a negative writer either.
If you’re like “No those ideas are bad!”
Or “That’s bad!”
You have to frame it in a way of “That’s good.
What about this?
Oh yeah…”
Because if you are going to do this for a living you have to not let criticism affect
you.
You have to be like okay if somebody doesn’t like something, no big deal.
Because other people who don’t do this all the time like some producers and some actors,
they are very precious about their ideas and can get very emotionally hurt if you just
go “No, that’s bad.”
So you have to be a little bit of a therapist and somebody who understands what the other
people are thinking why they are even asking these things.
Because one of the best things I ever learned was this one actor (I’m not going to say
who it was) had a really bad idea on this movie and kept saying it over and over and
it made no sense.
And I said to the director one day why does he keep talking about this one bad idea and
the director said look guys like us we have a hundred ideas a day, we throw away ninety-nine.
Guys like him, he gets one idea every six months.
He can’t let it go.
And that was a big lightbulb.
It was like Well that’s why he likes that bad idea, he doesn't have any other ideas.
So you have to kind of manage that and be part of the process or they will just leave
you behind.
They will just make the movie without you.
Film Courage: Do you literally have 100 ideas a day…let’s say are you in line waiting
with a mask waiting to be let into a grocery store and you are like “Wait…that lady
reminds me of this.
That would make the perfect story.”
Jim: I probably come up, I’m not kidding, I probably come up with at least 10 ideas
for films a week or more and I write them down and some have legs.
I have a system where I figure out if it’s actually a story or a script.
I come up with them all the time, literally all the time.
There used to be a joke pitch that my writing partner and I used to do to lighten the room
when we would be in a meeting.
We’d say Oh we’ve got this idea for this movie.
It’s POINT BREAK on motor bikes and the cyclones are coming in or the tornados are
coming in and they have to rob the banks before the tornadoes hit and this FBI agent has to
infiltrate the group.
It was a joke idea.
Somebody sold that exact same script for a half a million dollars a few years later.
No I don’t think they stole our idea or anything (it’s just in the ether) but what
seemed like a joke idea, somebody else sold.
So it’s like you have to have a lot of ideas and you have to know what ideas are going
to work.
I’ve worked on a few scripts that are great, fantastic scripts and nobody wants to make
them because there is just this issue or that issue or the producers think it’s too hard
or it won’t make its money back so it’s a balance between the business side and the
creative side.
Film Courage: When you do have a great idea what is your process for at least putting
it somewhere that you can come back to and how do you know when you want to take it further?
Jim: Usually I email them to myself so I have all of these emails that half the time don’t
make sense - SECOND ACT: All on a plane, giant fight.
Guy looses his wife.
Hitman finds out his ex-wife is married to somebody else.
Things like that.
So I have all of these weird random things but once I really dig in I have a process
to figure out if something can be a script and usually I figure out the entire first
act beat-by-beat-by-beat (the first 20 pages).
This happens, that happens, this happens.
The first six or seven scenes.
Then I know what happens in the second act turn, kind of what shifts the movie or the
story and then how it ends.
And if I can figure all that out then I know I can pretty much write a good script.
That’s what I usually do first.
I don’t want to know the whole story beat-by-beat-by-beat because I figure things out along the way
that I would have never thought of.
Now there are other times where I have kind of thought the whole thing out in bigger beats
and bigger sections but that’s usually what I do, I know the first act, how it ends, what
happens in the middle, and then what happens in the end and that’s it.
Film Courage: So it starts as an idea, you could be pumping gas somewhere and you go
and quickly email yourself this little log line or whatever?
And then from there maybe on a weekend or whenever you have “spare time,” you go
and try to write the first 20 pages?
Jim: Yes.
Usually the ideas that I can’t stop thinking about are the ones I know are good, they keep
popping back in my head because there are certain ideas you come up with and “Nah,”
you throw it away.
It’s pretty good but not great.
But the ones that keep reoccurring are the ones that I feel okay I’ve got to work on
this, there is something here because it’s stuck on my head.
And also too ideas are a great testing ground with people too.
This is for more commercial type films but if you pitch an idea in two or three sentences
to somebody (just your friends or whoever) they kind of do this weird thing, this is
when you have a good idea not when they say “That’s great” but when they think about
it for about three seconds and they go “Ooh, that’s good."
That’s when you know it's actually connecting with people.
So if you have an idea and you say that to ten people and they kind of all go “Ohh?”
Or they ask you about it again later, you know it’s a good idea.
Film Courage: [Referring back to an earlier discussion in the interview] So if I tell
you I have a great script about my uncle, he’s really cool and he has a pawn shop
in Hoboken (NJ) and he’s just a really funny guy and he always know when some “fence”
is coming in to like…and I look at you go…what are you going to tell me?
Jim: Hmmm…I don’t know.
If you want to take the time to write that?
But no, it might be the greatest script ever but that is one thing I’ve noticed too is
that the screenplays that get a lot of traction and a lot of people’s interest are things
that can be described in two or three sentences because a lot of times if you’re pitching
the idea or a creative executive reads it, they have to go down the hall and pitch it
to their boss.
So if it’s too complicated, it’s going to get lost in the translation.
We sold a TV show that everybody understood the pitch in two sentences.
I think that’s why it kept snowballing and snowballing because it was like Okay great!
Everybody got it without reading the pilot.
It was like Okay good.
So those kind of things seem to really work with people, at least seem to really work
with people (at least with getting through the front door).
If the script is bad, it's not going to go anywhere but you have to make things digestible
for people who are working…you have to keep in mind real producers are working 20-30 projects
in development, hearing pitches all day, talking about things, working on films.
If you give them so overly complicated idea about your uncle in a pawn shop they are going
to be like “Wait, what did you say again?”
10 minutes later.
So there is that.
Questions For The Viewers:
How many movie ideas do you have a week?