Marc Scott Zicree, Screenwriter/Author: I am here to provide a service and if I can
open a door for someone where they understand that it's not as hard as people make it sound,
you know that's the trick of it…
Film Courage: Marc, what do you think makes you different than the thousands of other
screenwriters who came to Los Angeles during your time here?
What do you think made it different for you?
Marc: Well I think I was very, very lucky in the fact that I was enthusiastic about
science fiction from when I was a small boy and science fiction (unlike a lot of other
genres) the fans became the writers and so they had a sense of wanting to pay it forward.
When I noticed that the same writers were writing for Star Trek and Outer Limits and
Twilight Zone as we're writing the short stories and books that I was reading and the novels
Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellis and Theodore Sturgeon, Richard Matheson, etc.
I could then go to science fiction conventions when I was a teenager and I sought these wonderful
people out and they became mentors and friends that that helped enormously and and also I
just had such a passion for writing I had such a I had a sense of calling from a very
early age and I understood that because of rod sterling because of so many of these writers
that I admired that you could aim high you didn't have to blend in you just had to be
clear what you were sharing with the world and Ray Bradbury was a mentor of mine for
over 10 years i'd go over to his house once a month for over 10 years toward the end of
his life and ray always used to say look inward don't look out for your mature look inward
and that doesn't mean that you can't write about things that are different from your
life it just means that you find your passions and the your true self inward and then you
put that out to the world and and so I had extremely good teachers in that way because
I think some writers out of fear feel that they have to imitate others or write down
to their audience I've never felt that I'm the same as my audience and if I come across
an idea or a story or characters or whatever that excites me usually my audience will be
excited too by what I'm doing and I trust my audience I don't I they're they're I feel
I'm with my family when when I'm talking to all the weirdos weirdos are good things yeah
I like weirdos yeah yeah yeah how did you know that you could actually get something
made I mean there's a lot of people who love a certain genre but they dabble in it or they're
on the sort of the outside the outer limits so to speak how did you know though that you
could get something made and eventually be successful at it well I didn't I didn't have
a in terms of knowing that I would be successful I didn't know that it was there are basically
two people who are responsible for my career more than anyone which is my wife Elaine who
I met when I was 20. we got married when I was 21 now we've been together 45 years and
married 44 and we write and produce and direct together and my friend Michael Reeves who
was writing for television and brought me into animation when I was like 22 23 years
old so I started by knowing by the time I got out of art school about my degrees in
painting sculpture and graphic arts from ucla and because I always knew I was going to be
an artist or a writer but by the time I went through college and then went to the clarion
writers workshop and sold my first short story I knew I was going to be a writer and so I
thought well how do you learn how to be a writer in television and there was really
no there was no graduate school in that at the time we're talking the late 70s and so
I thought well i'll write a book about one of the greatest television shows ever made
to learn how to make great television and so that's why what gave me the idea to to
do the Twilight Zone Companion it was two years after Rod Serling's death and had Rod
not died prematurely terribly sadly at age 50.
I wouldn't have embarked upon that book because if anyone should have written a book about
the Twilight Zone it would have been Rod but since he wasn't with us anymore I thought
well let me follow this and see where it leads now Elaine was invaluable because I started
writing the book interviewing over 100 people who had worked on the show and it started
getting rejected when I started submitting it it was rejected by 25 publishers over a
two-year period and probably if I would if i'd been left to my own devices I would have
probably quit and Elaine said no no just keep going and but we also looked at what wasn't
working which was the agent I had wasn't the right agent she wasn't she wasn't seeing opportunity
to close the deal and so we I switched agents to someone who was young and hungry and she
sold it almost immediately to one of the publishers who already rejected it but a different editor
who had grown up with the twilight zone and understood why people would want to read about
that and and the other thing I think that was responsible for my success was sometimes
people are so dogged about this is all i'll do like I mean you know Elaine and I have
mentored a lot of people and one person they said well I'm I want to act in a Steven Spielberg
movie and we said well you know there's a lot of other things being cast you could you
could try for other things no no Stephen's it's got to be Steven Spielberg and so and
we said you know well he might only do one movie every few years and and it might not
have a role that's right for you you're limiting your possibilities so I knew I wanted to be
in television and I knew that I wanted to be writing for shows like star trek but when
my friend Michael Reeves was writing animation and he said would you like to come in and
collaborate with me I saw that as that got me into television and then I could write
spec live action features and so forth and that moved me then into live-action tv shows
but that's how I ended up writing for Smurfs and He-Man and super friends and and all those
shows and but I always brought my a-game to everything I did so I wasn't writing down
at all someone once asked me when I was writing for animation they said do you write for the
child in the audience and I said no I write for the child and myself and so I would go
to that place that would be delighted by the jokes or by the stories and then just write
as truthfully as I possibly could and and that worked and so I've I'm very proud of
the work I did in animation as well as the work I've done in live action I am here to
provide a service and if I can open a door for someone where they understand that it's
not as hard as people make it sound you know that's the trick of it you know it's like
that's why I wrote green lighting yourself so people would know that they could be the
engine that drives their career they don't have to give up power they don't have to wait
for the studios and the networks or the publishing companies even to see their value because
thanks to the internet thanks the fact we all have cameras in our pockets thanks the
fact we can edit on on a mac or a pc there's no reason not to just make the thing you want
to make give it all of your heart and soul and put it out to the world that's your audience
and that's how you build a body of work you don't have to wait there's no reason to can
you succeed in Hollywood if you're not a workaholic yes you can succeed in Hollywood if you're
not a workaholic but you do have to have a work ethic and it's interesting in green lighting
yourself in the new book I talk about having a life and I deliberately put it after the
chapter on building from success and recovering from failure and I pointed I pointed out in
the book that whether you're succeeding or whether you're failing it's important to have
a life separate from that because the separate having people who love you family friends
travel doing things separate from the work it gives you a breadth of experience but it
also gives you a life it gives you something that grounds you because you're not just someone
running after the brass ring and so actually I know writers who have a very balanced life
between family and the work and I think that's a good idea I don't think one should work
all the time because you run out of things to draw upon creatively but you also run out
of I mean you just go crazy the isolation Hollywood can drive people crazy simply because
they get so materialistic they get so success-oriented driven that they forget why they got involved
in the first place you know I've known people who've wanted to become who want to become
writers because they want to get rich and I've never seen it work maybe someone has
succeeded that but the people that I've seen succeed are the ones who just love the work
and they love what they're creating and they are just so grateful for the opportunity and
you know it's just there's something like for instance I just came from a studio that
I have that's filled with spaceship sets and and you know we we're building an alien spaceship
we're building this hospital in a state a space station and to be just and we're building
eight-foot-tall creatures and just to be in that world and be able to share that world
with with everyone is is great but Elaine [Zicree] and I try and stop working in the
early evening we work at least five days a week and sometimes we'll work weekends but
we try not to but we we'll work and then the evening for an hour or two we'll just relax
and watch a movie or a tv show or something or go for a walk or you know we and we have
own dogs and dogs force you to like get off the sofa stop typing you know go take them
for a walk and and that helps let the air in a bit you can't I don't think you can be
successful if you don't have a work ethic and also I think you have to stand by your
word the more you stand by your your word the more you have a work ethic the more you
have at least craft if not I don't use the word talent much because I've seen a lot of
people who had talent who got nowhere whereas if you have passion and craft and a work ethic
and and you I mean you know the reason people support me in so many ways is because if I
say I'm going to do something I do it and it doesn't matter if it's easier if it's hard
if it's hard then it's hard it's I'm not going to stop I'm not going to turn back I have
I have work to do you know I get on with it and my mantra to myself when things are difficult
is you know I'm made of iron and nothing will stop me and there are times for instance when
I did the star trek episode with George Takei it was a very grueling shoot and and I said
I'm made of iron and nothing will stop me and I had to use that but we got to the finish
line and that got nominated for the Hugo and the Nebula and I’m very very proud of that
episode still and that was for Christina Moses's first tv role we cast her out of the blue
and she's now starring on a million little things on abc so we saw what her amazing talent
was right from the beginning well you talked about talent and talent is very long in this
in this town but but what if someone's sort of the pendulum swings more toward a hedonistic
personality type well I try not to hang out with meanies they're gonna be a really nice
hedonist yeah they know but I mean I think
you have to treat your body like a car that you might own and you want to take care of
it you want to make sure that you aren't burning the candle at both ends you know so many people
burn out and you know drugs alcohol you know self-destructive behaviors gambling all that
I it's just not sustainable in the long run because it's just too hard on on your mind
and your body you know it's you know I gravitate toward people who have a family life most
of the people I work with are married they have many of them have kids I want someone
who's stable I don't want someone where I don't know if they're going to show up and
so I can make the choice of who I work with and I've been very lucky in terms of the actors
I've worked with even when I was at the studios and the networks I never had a crazy person
I always had people who were there to do the job and they appreciated the fact that I was
really putting putting everything I could on the page and they would get these scripts
they would love what I was writing because it gave them something to act some emotional
through line and and you know so quality work gets you quality actors get you quality composers
and get there's a ripple effect if you're if you're doing your your best work but you
can't be thinking about oh I've got this party to go to I've got this no it's I mean that
doesn't mean you can't have fun you can't go on vacation you can't go water skiing or
whatever you know and but but at the end of the day you have to be reliable and that means
you have to like look ahead you cannot be such an impulse monster that you know it's
Monday and you don't know where you're supposed to be you know so can't wander the streets
but you know so so that's yeah but of course in you know in the new book I talk about if
you if you have thrown together with someone like that here's how you can deal with it
because I had a friend who was an actress and she was cast on tv show huge hit show
and the the the star of the show was drinking all day and being very very abusive to people
and very insulting and she just but she recognized to not engage to do her work she was there
to do her work and she did it and ironically at the end of the day the actor came up and
said you were great and so she had succeeded I think often what we have to do is have our
eye on the ball in terms of what we are there to accomplish it's not about winning every
single battle it's not about going toe-to-toe with everyone it's not an alpha dog contest
it's about what am I trying to accomplish and so if you say okay well I'm here to write
a great script and turn it into a great tv show or I'm here to give a great performance
whatever it is you have to be clear on it but obviously the more that you take power
the less you're going to be frustrated by other people who are not there for the same
purpose so that's why I have my own studio now that's why I raise money the way I do
because you know it's fun to be in charge because then then there's no one around to
I mean if anyone's gonna wreck it it'll be me but then that's my fault you know it's
like a failing of whatever but but it's so it's so cool to work with great people and
create work that that has meaning you know I just couldn't be happier.
Question For The Viewers:
Can you succeed in Hollywood if you’re not a workaholic?