Film Courage: What no BS screenwriting advice can you give to young screenwriters or even
older who've never sold something and think that they can make a living at this?
Jim Agnew, Screenwriter/Producer: Well, you've got to be realistic.
You have to look at the steps involved and what is your end game?
Do you want to get a movie made?
Is it a small movie?
What kind of movie is it are you writing?
A kind of studio type script?
Are you writing a small intimate thing that can be made for half a million dollars?
So you have to kind of set the parameters of what you want to do and kind of take it
from there because if you're a young screenwriter and you want to do this for a living.
I mean you need to write a couple samples and write some scripts.
You need to be around the film business.
TV has given a lot of opportunities to being on a writing staff.
There's so many TV shows now too.
That's a great way to becoming writers.
You can become a writer's assistant get to know the working writers and you'll actually
get paid taking notes doing things and learn how it all works and that that will help you
with jobs if you're a little bit older i mean you should really work on you know work on
your screenplays but also determine what do you want to do is it something that you want
to try to get made on your own do you want to try you know like it's a little bit different
are you writing a john wick movie or are you writing a you know small intimate thing because
if it's john wick movie that means you have to sell it through the studio system that's
very hard to break into until you like are working at a certain level it does happen
but you usually have to work your way up you don't just you know all of a sudden you're
not up for like these gigantic jobs of writing you know 100 million dollar films so that's
that's a whole kind of skill set into itself so my advice would be just just keep working
but work on your craft because people don't do that they don't you know they don't take
the time to actually keep rewriting and learning to write you know they write one thing and
they think here it is world you know and that that's why it doesn't get made and then they
get frustrated but i think anybody who's going to take if you're determined and you want
to take you know 10 years of your life working super hard to get somewhere you can get somewhere
you get some movies made you can you can do it for a living but you have to really like
buckle down and be like okay am i going to like save enough money for a year that's kind
of what i did i'm just going to save enough money so i don't have to work for your focus
on this or just really you know and being in la is a big part of it too it really is
you know unfortunately it's like it's hard to become you know a professional screenwriter
when you're in missouri or somewhere because a lot of the connections you make and people
you meet you know i ran into a friend of mine who's a big producer at the coffee bean one
day i hadn't seen her a while and she said what are you working on i go well we got this
zombie thing and she goes oh call me later and then we got paid to write it for for a
huge company so it's like but those are relationships i've developed for a long time but if i wasn't
in la i wouldn't ran into her you know it's it's these are just things that you know happen
and you know so it's that's another part of it too so you have to be in the gate you have
to be around it you can't just you know be outside of it because there's a lot to learn
a lot of people to meet it's all about relationships too what year was this that you had saved
up the money so that you could live for a year i think it was 2005.
oh okay so the economy was doing well so yeah i produced i produced a movie with david boreanas
and then i did a big music video and and got paid well on both those so it's like okay
now's the time so um yeah because i didn't want to keep producing films because producing's
producing is fun i like producing but it's different it's not that creative so i was
just like now's the time so what i did is i just planned for a whole year it's like
okay i'm just gonna focus on this and it worked but i'd worked around i'd been in the business
and worked in the business and knew people so it wasn't you know coming out from somewhere
moving to l.a and a small apartment just going okay i got a year to make it but you know
if you want to do it you can do it it's not the good thing about screenwriting it doesn't
take a ton of money to do it you don't it's i mean if you want to make a short film that
you have to hire a crew you have to shoot you know to write you know even the other
day a really big a-list director not to say it was he goes writing's free you know if
you want to just sit and write and do as many drafts you want you it's your time but it
doesn't cost you anything so day one of that like we're doing this i'm not you know i'm
not taking any new commitments on what was your did you like schedule things out did
you have it on a calendar today no i wish i was that i wish i was that organized it
was a lot of intuition just like okay now feels like the time you know so no it wasn't
i wish it was more planned out but you know sometimes you know some of this stuff just
happens but you have to be in the game for it to happen you know i put myself in the
situation where it's like okay this is all i'm gonna do and just talk to people about
it you know annoyed agents that i knew i was like hey i wrote this script i'm working on
the script and they didn't care you know even though i knew them you know they're like great
good luck but i was like okay this is the time now to be really focused on on just and
not really having a plan b and how many hours a day did you write during that year probably
like three or four but i think after four hours you get a little bit like diminished
returns now that doesn't mean the other five or six hours a day i'm not thinking about
the writing like but physically sitting there behind the keyboard usually you try to limit
to like four hours because after four hours you start getting if the work starts getting
a little like you know not there you know you're not sharp why keep writing but i'm
always thinking about things like a lot of things when i write i don't touch keyboard
until i figured out the whole for like i said the whole first act the second act turn and
i will i can sit down one day and write 20 pages but i've thought about it for two or
three weeks and maybe just wrote out and beats what's going to happen and then you know it's
not the best 20 pages in the world but i can do it one day in a couple hours but i know
where everything's going to fit and what the beats are and then i'll go back and rewrite
the dialogue and rework the scenes but i know it's going to happen so after a year did you
say okay time to start making money again or you it just naturally progressed it started
happening oh okay yeah so got lucky in that sense very nice and then that film you ended
up selling it yeah the second the second script we wrote second script oh yeah yeah that was
the one that didn't get made but yeah i got paid for that and that was a nice that was
a good feeling i would think that was the first time i ever got paid to be creative
you know i've been i've worked on films but that's a little bit different kind of creativity
you know as being a producer but being creative it was it's like the greatest feeling in the
world to like do something creative and get paid well for it you're like what this actually
you can actually do this and that's a that's a big inspiration once you get that once it
becomes kind of a rush it's like oh hey this is better than working at starbucks not that
i have work to start but you know or you know going to an office yeah much better than going
to an office yeah did you have office jobs no i mean in the film industry i did i always
i was very lucky i just but i always kind of angled myself to where i had a cool job
because i didn't want to be bored at work that was like the only mantra i had was like
i don't want to be bored.
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