Film Courage: Have you always had thick skin when it comes to writing
criticism? Travis Seppala, Author/Screenwriter: No, I'm not even convinced I have thick skin
now because I'm very good at taking a note from someone and trying to figure out
like how to fix it or if I don't understand the note like how to find the note within the note
sort of thing and see what the deeper problem is to fix it overall. But there are still some notes
that make me upset where I'm like how could you not understand this? It's right there on the page.
Yeah so it doesn't happen as frequently as it did when i was younger and was newer but I try
to keep that at bay or if something even irks me just a little bit like thank you for the note and
then I'll come back to it later and be like okay maybe there was something there? Let's take a look
at it and calm myself down. But nobody's perfect and I sure as heck I'm not either. Film Courage:
What would you tell someone who wanted to quit their day job today so that they could pursue
screenwriting full-time? Travis: Don't do that, don't do that. Again like there's I
couldn't find the chapters in the book in a quick but you're not going to get rich right away and
you're definitely not going to get rich right away without having some way to pay your rent
and there's no reason to go homeless in the pursuit of it. There are plenty of people,
what's her name? JK Rowling [Harry Potter author] she was going again how many hundreds of
rejections before her book finally got picked up? If she didn't have her job like she would've been
homeless. Even more because i've read stories where she couldn't feed her kids or whatever.
It's like that would have been even worse if she had quit her job to write that book.
You don't quit your job until you even...and even once you've had a success unless it's a TV thing
where now your new job is writing in a writer's room because like I said even if you sold your
script for a hundred thousand dollars after you pay all your stuff you got like forty thousand
dollars and how much are you making in the year right? Compare that to your job. Sure if you want
to take a year off but don't if you're quitting it to start pitching stuff that's insane. I'm sorry
you need to pay rent. You need to eat. You need to feed your kids and family, if you have that.
Your dog would appreciate having some food as well. Do not quit your job until you are making
enough of an impact where you can just survive on the screenwriting. Film Courage: What do you want
20-year-olds to know about screenwriting? Travis: 20-year-olds all right. It's been a long time for
me I'm 36 now so not everything has to be a video game or comic book in movie form.
Those are great but not every movie has to be and they're not going to buy your superhero script
unless it's from an IP [intellectual property]. I've made the mistake of writing my own superhero
and nobody cares because it's not, it doesn't already have the audience you know. That's whereas
horror you can come up with original horror movies and it's awesome. We want to see it. You can come
up with awesome action movies. It's original. We want to see it. Don't write adaptations.
Don't write adaptations of things you don't own the rights to. Don't write an original
superhero movie because nobody cares unless it's an adaptation. It's a very interesting thing. So
if you can get the rights to a superhero by all means get the rights and then write it but don't
write your own superhero and don't try to writing that adaptation of something you don't own the
rights to. I've seen a lot of people in the forums like on Facebook who are wanting to write their
own Spider-Man movie. You don't own the rights of Spider-Man. No one will ever see that in fact
they may even try to sue you if you try sending it to the people who do own the rights to it.
I made that mistake once again when I was first starting out I wrote a superhero a superman script
not knowing I couldn't do anything with it. I wrote an adaptation of the jayjay monologues
not knowing that I couldn't do that and I got in touch with people, found out the rights already
owned, so blah blah blah it didn't work. That's the thing don't adapt something you don't own
because you're just gonna be disappointed and waste your time. Film Courage: What about advice
to 20-year-olds on mindset? Such as Don't get too high or too low. I think when you're younger
and you come here and everybody's so in awe of young people in Hollywood. It's easy to really
to go on these roller coaster rides because people are telling you how amazing you are or they're
either telling you you're not and then they just told you yesterday you were. Travis: Right So
don't let rejection hurt you too bad because they're not necessarily rejecting you the
person they're rejecting your script and a lot of people seem to take a rejection of the script as a
rejection of them personally. If because I didn't like your script I hate you? I don't hate you,
I don't know you. You could be a wonderful person but I don't like your script. It's not a great
story. I'm sorry but it has nothing to do with the person. Don't let the rejections be personal for
you and on the flip side don't rejoice at every minor success or something that even looks like a
minor success because it can still fall through. I can't tell you how many times I've had this
amazing looking deal that then just gets yanked out from under me for whatever reason. I had a
producer a few years ago who was going to pay me like $20,000 to write a pirate movie for him
and then all of a sudden his investor who was giving him it was for like an $80,000,000 million
dollar budget or something like that and then he was like Oh I have the money blah blah. I'm gonna
send you the stuff I'm going to send you the $20,000 check to start writing like next week.
Didn't hear from him. Next week didn't get a check so I call him up oh yeah so my investor dropped
out or another one where I was supposed to get hired to write a sequel to a horror movie and then
the producer just stopped communicating with me all of a sudden, no reason given, just stopped.
I even had one producer who literally died during our negotiations so that didn't happen
you know. So it's like there's always always something that can make it go wrong. So don't
start celebrating until the check is cleared is the rule of thumb i've got on that. Like
it's fabulous that people are interested in my stuff but until like there's a contract signed and
money in my hand it could go wrong at any time and even after then they're still playing movies that
sell for millions of dollars the script and then the movie never comes out you know. so
Stuff dies in development hell every day you know. Nothing is a success until it's
100 successful. Film Courage: What's your favorite movie about the industry? Travis:
I really like Trumbo. That was a really fantastic movie. Film Courage: Why did you
like it? Travis: Aside from Brian Cranston's amazing in almost everything he's in. Even
that new Mountain Dew commercial. Are you kidding me? He's fantastic. Seeing how the industry was
at that time is interesting to learn there's been other movies that have shown that like
you may have not seen the Majestic with Jim Carrey where he played a screenwriter
who ended up getting blacklisted because they thought that he was a communist or whatever
and there's the same time period and so it's very interesting to see how all the world of
Hollywood is being shaped by hearsay and then to still see how Trumbo and his friends kind of like
circumnavigated the issue in a creative clever way. They took a huge cut in their paychecks
but they still did what they love you know and it was just a really interesting look at
what the the industry was like back then and then how people could get around that
and how they all changed today and then again Brian Cranston's a freaking genius.
Question For The Viewers: How do
you handle criticism to your writing?