Film Courage: Anytime we interview someone they [our viewers] naturally go right away to their
IMDB for better or worse and they want to vet the person. So you have I believe six
screenwriting credits? Okay, can you talk about how many you've written and how screenwriting
actually works and how selling them actually works. So you have six there, but probably you
have many more that just aren't on your IMDB? Jim Agnew, Screenwriter: Yeah that's a good question.
I mean I've probably written i don't know maybe 80 screenplays. Probably optioned or been hired
to write at least 20 or 25? I don't even know anymore but the thing is that there's different
things too. It's like sometimes you can be hired to write a script. We wrote a script for Antoine
Fuqua who hired us to write this movie about the force, so sometimes you're hired, those don't
get made and then you don't they don't show up on you know your IMDB credits or you get hired
to write a pilot. I've written several pilots for tv shows that haven't been made too. Then
sometimes things are optioned or people buy things they don't get made, so it's always different so
I don't know there's been a lot. The thing is I have this rule of thumb to make a living in the
film business i have to have almost 20 projects in development or i'm working on at any given time
so whether i'm writing something right now or have something out there or producing something
or trying to put something together or something over here because the formula i think is if i have
22 of them might get put together so that's what i'm get paid off of so you know because this is
how i pay the bills i have to think like that and have to have a lot of things going on but yeah you
know that there's a lot of things a lot of work you do that doesn't show up on imdb because it's
things that you wrote it didn't get made or optioned or you know you got hired to write
and once you get hired to write something if it doesn't get made you don't own the script they
own it so i don't know what they're doing with you know several projects you know we wrote a really
big teenage zombie thing for qed and they're not even around anymore so i don't know who even owns
the rights that but we got paid so someone owns it you know so there's there's things that happen
like that so imdb is not a full it doesn't i'm nothing against imdb but it doesn't indic it's
not a full barometer or it's not your resume no no exactly like i put my resume on linkedin like like
i've been hired to write or you know work on like i don't know at least 20 things like you know we
just had a tv project that didn't work with a really big a-list you know director but we got
paid to write a pilot off of that you know they had a tv show we sold the abc that almost got made
so you know there's a lot of things that you know you get paid you work on but you build
those relationships too with those people so do you think most writers want to take shortcuts
no i don't think so i think i don't think it's shortcuts but i think they just don't dig in and
do the work you know writing a script you know a first draft and just going here you go world you
know it's like you may have to rewrite it over and over especially when you haven't done it
often you know you have to learn how things work and you have to get good at it's like any other
kind of like craft or anything else you know it's like you don't become great in two months
you know you don't you can't ride a bike amazing in two months or skateboard or
do karate in two months why do you think you can just write a screenplay and the world's gonna come
looking for it you have to get really good at it and you have to learn every day and really
watch a lot of people you have to love films too you have to really be into films and what's the
structure of films and what are they trying to say in scenes and and you know just really be
passionate about it so that's that's my thing is i don't think they take shortcuts but they
just don't do the work so maybe that's a gigantic shortcut but you've got to get good at your crap
you've got to keep doing keep rewriting right if you want to be a professional right you should
have a ton of scripts you know especially if you're young keep writing a bunch of things
you'll get everyone's gonna get better you know most professional writers are like on
their seventh or eighth script by the time they sell something you know so they've gotten better
each step of the way and they've taken five or six years to get good at it you were in a band
correct yeah and what did you play i played guitar oh okay okay great and how long did it take you to
pick up different chords and feel like you could be in front of an audience oh the cool thing with
the hair yeah that was so long ago i mean yeah i don't i don't know i started playing guitar i was
13 or 14 so it was but i played a band called hate department back then which still are kind of
around and we're pretty successful and great guy and they're still friends of mine which is even
more amazing all those years later we're still all good friends so yeah it was fun it was you know
i thought i was gonna be a rock star but instead i ended up being a screenwriter but you know so
it's not not the worst thing in the world is there are there similarities so you you needed maybe you
didn't have to go to school for you didn't go to gti or you didn't go to whatever juilliard but you
you learned different chords you probably listened and mimicked different songs yeah a lot
of similarities it's funny you say that because it's about i think about the rhythm of like things
like you understand rhythm in in story and just you know same thing with with music it's like
you go here you do that you go here you do that because you know we talked about i talked with
a lot of people about like films you know kind of more popular type films not the avant-garde
kind films or like pop songs you know they're not that complicated it's three-act structure it's all
you know they're you hit certain beats there's this point where there's heartbreak all hope
is lost it's like a pop song it's very structured you know it's not like a prog rock thing you know
there's movies like that but those are few and far between and not the ones that everybody sees but
for the most part films are very structured and they they have a rhythm and you know you know
something bad is going to happen here when you're watching you kind of know you know you know the
pacing of a movie they're they're all you know you know at the end if something happens weird at the
end you're like that can't be the end because you know you've seen it so many times in films
and just as music producers know this is going to be a hit it fits these different things the same
with film yeah i mean not so much a hit but you know if it's going to work or not you know get to
some but you know there's things like like i said there's been a few screenplays we've had out there
well i'm like wow people really like this they've really responded to it more than i even thought
so you never know how do you know they leave comments or yeah they respond you mean to the
screenplays or yeah yeah right because you just get yeah no because you just get uh up for jobs
you know they bring you in for other stuff or they make an offer to buy it you know or so so you know
that's yeah if it gets you other work it's doing something and gets you a lot of meetings you write
a great screenplay you have an agent send it out you can end up with like meetings all day long
with everybody is that its own sort of busy work though where
you you're taking so many meetings but then you're not actually getting the work done
or it's not a bad thing uh it's building relationships which paid off in the end
you