Film Courage: If a writer is being ignored by Hollywood is that a sign that possibly
their work is just not ready yet? Brooks Elms, Screenwriter: Maybe, it's a great question.
There's two things going on here. Most likely they're probably not ready. That's more likely
and because it's a subjective business it's entirely possible that work is totally ready and
just hasn't found the right person at the right time, so how do you know which one is you with
your script? That's when we come back to this idea of a high quality feedback system right? So first
your internal system with where you're developing it and then when you get it to the point where you
feel like it's as great as you can make it then if you're an amateur you go to screenplay contests
or Blacklist.com or SpecScout.com or Coverfly really great places to see where you stack up
and the metrics I generally suggest are 10 places. It could be an industry, it could be somebody that
work...it could be a friend of yours that's an intern at such-and-such production company. It
could be one of the contests, it could be one of those screenplays exchanges that I just mentioned,
any of those things. If it's somebody in the industry that could be like oh my gosh this is
the best script I ever read! I'm going to turn around and give it to so and so and they could
do something with it that to me counts as an open door if it's your friend who went to film school
with you that doesn't count because unless that person's you know spielberg's kid or something
right so um it's got to be somebody that has the agency to sort of move it move it forward
out of 10 data points whether they're in every contest everyone's like google
content is still going to be believe me every contest has an opportunity to break your career
they don't exist they're there to try to help you right you know there's one or two scams
out there but by and large they're trying to help you they want your script to be amazing
so um so they're all data points so you if you submit to 10 places in the industry contest
exchange whatever and at least three out of the ten only three out of the ten you are
getting an open door then you're actually in a good place that's the minimum right and by
that means an open door is you advance in that contest you get maybe a seven on the blacklist
or you're pretty high in the specs out but you're basically you're getting to the point where either
that organization is like oh we want to keep you listed on our site because we feel like we
might want to take credit for your success right anybody advances that's what they're doing if you
uh submit it to your friend who's working at such and such and they submit it up to the producer and
like oh this is interesting we're not going to set this up but maybe you come in for a general
meeting or the next thing you write right that's an open door anything that's sort of that counts
as like a longer term relationship escalation that counts if you don't get it if you get um
rejected by the screenplay if blacklist gives you a three if whatever if if it's a closed door
um then it's just a data point no big deal okay it's a data point so when you then you look at
those data points and if you're not getting if you're only getting one or two out of ten
you know it's probably because the material is not close and then you go back and you go okay
well i thought it was close here's what i'm doing here's what my comparable movie's doing what's
the difference how do i close that gap you close that gap by a high quality feedback loop people
that know what they're doing people that'll give you a sense and then you'll figure out
and then you go back and you resubmit right if you are getting um more let's say you're you know five
at it like half you have a great script and half the places you submit to you're advancing or maybe
you won one outright right great so now you're in a different place now you're for sure ringing the
bell and now it's a numbers game that's when you double down um and i did this myself when i was
first starting out and entering contests we had a script uh me and this one writing partner and
it made the quarterfinals of the nickel fellowship and i was like oh that's nice so um i'm going to
double down 15 more screenplay contests to that for that script right because i already knew that
it was proven and and so then i had 16 data points and what happened eight of them were open doors of
some sort and eight of them nothing and one of the things that breaks my heart is like writers
come up to me like yeah you know i submitted my script like two or three places and like you know
i only got into one or whatever but they they don't they're not taking subjectivity out of it
you need data points right so of that one script and one of those scripts we won the grand prize
we run ten thousand dollars so if our script we've submitted to three of those places by chance and
they all got projected and we just gave up it was left ten thousand dollars on the table right so
uh so you got to take subjectivity subjectivity out of it by getting enough data points
um and so uh and then once you have something that's again you're getting you know fifty percent
at least thirty percent but you want fifty 60 70 percent of open door rate they need to buy as
many lottery ticks as you can as many festivals as you can get that there's also other ways you can
you meet anybody you want in hollywood this idea that the doors are closed are ridiculous because
um all you need you just need to you need to know how to entertain your way into talking to people
i mean that's the truth and there's way you know and usually the way most people query hollywood is
ridiculous it's um what you need to do is um empathize with where the other person is and
approach them with an easy ask maybe you ask them a question maybe you look at their twitter account
you see what they're talking about but you have um you have an organic conversation with these
people at peer-to-peer um and there's lots of the doors are wide open this myth that it's closed is
ridiculous it's closed because you haven't thought about them you've been thinking about yourself
and you don't either don't have it in this on the script yet you need to you know spend more time
developing the craft or um you actually have a quality project but you're selfish in the way that
you're approaching people you're annoying them you know you're like a telemarketer or whatever it's
not gonna work you know but if you charm your way you know you can even there's a guy that hit me
up on twitter who um he technically made all the wrong decisions in terms of how to query i tell
people how to do it and when i work with them and there's very specific ways that have a very high
success rate this guy did all the wrong ways you know he was completely talking about himself me me
me my project whatever but it was so damn charming and the way he did it i was like i'll give him
a pass i started talking to him and you know we ended up you know ended up working with him so um
charm is the most important thing but like and it can even overcome bad form but like there are
just simple ways of again getting back this idea of it all being easy you know people are like ah
i knew this one writer who thousands of query letters and it was partly and got like sort of no
response and partly because he um he just had that old school approach i'm just going to shotgun all
these people and i'm going to talk about all my i got to establish credibility so i did this and
i won this festival blah blah blah and it's just noise it's just noise nobody wants to hear that
but everybody wants to have good conversations so you want to talk to anybody in hollywood look them
up online see what they're talking about getting organically get into a conversation with them
by talking about what they're already tweeting about on twitter or whatever their charity is or
whatever they already love and let it be organic don't be attached to it let it be easy and i
guarantee you if they are true kindred spirits you will find something to talk about and then at the
right time they'll go wow you're fascinating what are you working on oh glad you asked
and then you pitch but can charm really be taught because there's some really bright people around
here and maybe they're just so used to being very matter-of-fact they're not used to i hate to say
bsing but sometimes charm can be equated to bs and there's a there's a there's a time for that
and and and people can do it very subtly and it works
but some people don't they're not they don't do charm yeah what happens to those people um
so um it's a good question and um it's it's not buyer me but it's not binary there's not you have
it or you don't it's there's a charmometer right how far along you know and there's some people
that are off the charts that are super charming and a lot of people in hollywood are very charming
in general it's a business that attracts charisma and sort of thing um but for sure there are ways
we can allow that charming charismatic side of ourselves to be more present or less present
it's a choice it's a practice you can't just some people can turn it on
but some people need more practice but um it's everybody's got it whether you're sort of geeky or
bro or artsy or whatever your thing is um emo yeah it could be anything it could be anything
but like um there's a side of you that's authentic and a little vulnerable and human and humble
and um when you show up in that energy um in service to somebody else again
i was the point that i was making before is this guy was so charming that even using the wrong form
he got my interest what i'm saying is you can actually just even have average level charm and
if you use my my approach you're going to get doors opening easily if you've got the goods
what happens is most people most people are asking me how do i try out for the yankees
i'm like oh you want to try for the yankees huh what minor league baseball team are oh miners i
have to do that first no no yeah dude you can't you're not going to make the yankees you can
first go try out for a minor league team crush it in the minors now you have a shot at the yankees
but that's exactly what i get when people are hitting me up they're going how do i i got i just
wrote a script how do i sell it like well you might be able to sell it it might be great why
don't you submit to a couple contests and see how you stack up and maybe it is maybe it's the best
thing i've ever read but chances are if it's the first thing you wrote the second thing you wrote
you know you're not ready for the majors yet probably and it's the same way it's like if
you don't play baseball you don't be like you know i was really good in high school
i'm gonna go play in the majors i mean maybe some phenomenal players can play at 18 but like
you know amateur writers don't realize levels and they don't they don't quite realize that they're
they're competing against professionals you know professionals that are at the game you know in
in fact in the major leagues you know you've only got this short window of time when you
can play in the majors right but like the professional writing game you know you could
be 20 years old you're competing against me you're competing about 70 year olds you're bringing
the lead you're competing against everybody that's alive and can breathe and sort of think
so it's a wide pool and you have to bring your game um by understanding those levels
and understanding where you really are um and then moving forward and it's not a bad thing
it's not a big deal to be like okay yeah i'm here and i'm on this part of the road
who cares because you know what at some point if you stay with it you will become professional and
okay that's fine and then um it's all the process anyway so it really doesn't matter that much
that uh it doesn't matter that much um where you are along the road but for damn sure it matters
that if you're at the early part of your journey you're not thinking that you're someplace else
you know and on the flip side after you've won an oscar after you've had a box office success after
you've had whatever you can't then get so arrogant that think that you know it all and you're not
still learning that's where that sophomore slump comes in that's where all that problem comes in
it's the same problem that the beginner has they're not in the flow they're not
feeling their superpower and leading from their superpower they're doing it enough to get in and
then they get some sort of success and they stop doing it and they fall off the cliff explain to me
data point in terms of screenwriting so when i say data point i just mean the numbers so if you talk
about going to 10 places in the industry that has the potential to advance your career um it's you
know it's a way calling it a data point is a way of sort of draining out the emotion of it because
you know i was uh helping with this one screenplay contest once and it was amazing because somebody
did this screen the screenwriter um he didn't his script didn't make it to the corner finals and his
response was go f yourself oh okay which is such a such a ridiculous it's so ridiculous on so many
levels um into the point that i'm trying to make here is it's ridiculous because um it's just one
it's one data point it doesn't matter when any screenplay you know contest doesn't reject that
you should the sooner you forget about it that it they didn't advance your screenplay the better off
you are you're only looking for at least three out of ten which means seven out of ten are going to
close a door and as soon as you find out they close your door just forget about it it doesn't
matter and certainly when you get a door closed on your face and your feelings are hurt don't
tell the people about it like you were a child and you were petulant um because this is a small
town everybody knows everybody and um i mean you know nobody's really gonna care and i don't even
know what that guy's name was and i don't care but like on the scale of like emotional maturity
um you know emailing a festival that you didn't get into or whatever and telling them to f
off that's pretty much the best the worst response you could you could have to um
show that you have the emotional maturity to to do well in this business do you think rejection
is like a muscle and that it's just you learn that eventually like it's
it just doesn't it doesn't it hurt as much if somebody punches somebody's arm it's almost like
just the weaker arm's gonna it's gonna oh but then after a while you build it up yes and i would even
say the word rejection is loaded with something bad the better way to think about it is um
it's just part of the process you're either winning this way or you're winning that way
oh i thought my script was really good but i submitted it to the blacklist and i only got a two
oh that's interesting what was it that those professional readers saw differently than what i
thought because i thought it was amazing and then you go in and you figure out how to close the gap
so where's the loss there's no loss there's no rejection it's all part of the process.
Question For The Viewers: Looking at it now,
do you feel you receive enough data points on your scripts?