Thanks so much for all the great comments yesterday.
Some of you may remember that before I moved house in June, I sent out ten copies of my script, Sugar Mountain, to indie producers and George Clooney. Much silence. Fast forward to the third week in August.
Cell phone rings. A woman with a British accent introduces herself. Her name is the same as Lear’s youngest daughter. As a result, I ascribe great character to her; how could a woman with that name speak anything but truth?
Indeed, she has called to say that my script has gotten great coverage and that the top people at the production company would be reading it that weekend. She would be back in touch in two weeks. I did what any sane, seasoned writer would do: I started drafting my Oscar speech.
You know what happens next: they never get in touch. I send a friendly email, like hey, have you had chance to read that script, you know the one with the great coverage?? No answer. Fortunately, I know how to go fuck myself.
Now it’s November, I finally, I start my new script. Then, I impulsively shoot off an email to Lear’s true daughter. I ask if she has any feedback for me, and if she would be interested in my new script, Loneliness 2.0, which I lie and say is weeks away from being finished. Here is her reply (yes, a reply!):
HI Betsy–
So the news on Sugar Mountain is that we think it is unusually good, and I want to encourage you with that. It is and truly engaging story with intricate and well-developed characters. The trouble is we don’t think we can take it on as the story’s themes do not resonate with enough of the team here, and we feel we would not do it justice if that is the case. We also have a very full slate which we are struggling to get into production. Anyway we are very pleased to have come across your work, and we would be prepared to read more. Re. Loneliness 2.0, please could you send a one paragraph description of the story. We’ll take it from there.
I wonder what you make of this little exchange.I feel kind of jerked around since it seems like they were never going to get back to me. How do you all handle it? I guess I should be grateful they got back at all. I never heard from the other eight, or Clooney for that matter.
Filed under: Rejection, Uncategorized |
Betsy Lerner 
Betsy, I’m so grateful for your daily stories. They really keep me sane. The most upsetting rejection I ever received was recently when an agent apparently read my whole novel, got what I was trying to say, praised it highly, and yet didn’t think she could place it. The form letters or ones that don’t get me don’t bother me so much. This one kllled me.
I don’t have any real experience with screenplays. I had a manager in Hollywood briefly, and wrote-and-didn’t-sell five scripts. So take with a grain of s. But they’d have blown you off entirely if they weren’t at least slightly interested. What that reply means is, ‘We think Sugar Mountain is well-written, and would tank at the box office, but if you write something with commercial potential, we’d love to work with you. And we think there’s a slight chance that you actually might come through. Very slight, but extant, which is more than we’d say for most.’
Remember your salt.
Betsy, here’s what all of that really means. They’re filming the fucker RIGHT NOW and they’ve tweaked and changed a few things and you’re not even credited as the screenwriter. George Clooney is. And he and twenty other people are credited as Executive Producer.
Oh, and um–you ever consider getting an agent?
I’m sitting on one of these, not over a novel, just a paper. She, the equivalent of Lear’s third daughter, emailed a week ago to say she was interested but would need to check out whether their particular magazine can publish it.
She’ll get back to me in a day or two. Ten days later, not a word. So today I send a gentle reminder. Still no word.
It’s cruel isn’t it? This same editor once rang me at home about another paper which she did eventually publish. She scolded me over the phone because i had failed to put my email address on my cover sheet. She told me then that busy people, like the editors of magazines, need instant access to their writers and if you’re not there available and readily accessible, they move onto the next story.
It’s like the message on the doctor’s surgery wall: ‘Please keep to your appointment time’. And then the doctor keeps you waiting for an hour. As if there are two sets of rules.
Ah the cruel hypocrisy of it all.
Any writer who has sent out proposals/synopses has heard this time and time again. I don’t mind the rejects, I don’t mind the kind words “although”I don’t think I can place this,” and I don’t even mind the “No thanks, not for mes.” I do mind those agent who ask for the entire manuscript, call you once to tell how enthusiastic she/he is about the book and tells you they will read it over the weekend and then you here nada for one week, three weeks, 2 months, and then, yes, you email, and silence, silence, silence, vodka, vodka, vodka. . .
Me again….from mediabistro, John Irving says: “If I were twenty-seven and trying to publish my first novel today, I might be tempted to shoot myself…I think it’s a lot tougher to be a first [time] novelist, to be an unknown novelist today than it was for me and so I worry about what’s going to happen with those good, younger writers”
Here’s my theory on rejection letters: that just wasn’t the write agent for me. I also ascribe to the theory: things happen when they happen, and not a moment sooner, no matter how badly I want it!
So, that production company just wasn’t the right one for you. You’ll find the right one, in the right time, so keep on writing!
As for being jerked around . . . well, I mean, well (shards, I’m beginning to sound like Samantha on Bewitched), isn’t that an unfortunate part of the industry in some cases?
I think the mere fact that they showed interest is great. I think they could have communicated better, but that’s probably just me. I’m one of those people that sends out a quick ‘thanks’ email when I receive a requested piece of information I need at work. One, single word – thanks. It lets the person on the other end know I received the info. So, yes, they should have notified you without you having to follow up . . . but they also want to see your other stuff, so I think you’re on the road to success.
S
I’ve just about decided to write for myself and let my darn grandkids worry about publishing in about forty or so years.
Cruel, you say?
Heck, I don’t even know them yet. I probably won’t even like them.
uh… it means no. Surely you’ve sent similar letters?
They “would be prepared to read more”?? And that after you give them a paragraph, they will “take it from there”??
Are you sure the accent was British and not Romanov? Because it sounds like you’re dealing with an inbred half wit who has leveraged a lucky accident of birth or marriage into a delusion of omnipotence. I hope all her children are hemophiliacs. (Which is what I also wish for certain editors of certain Hearst and Conde Nast magazines.)
As far as rejections go, I don’t mind being jerked around by The New York Times (in 1990, when the Arts editor enthusiastically interviewed me over the phone and sent a photographer to my studio apartment to take pictures of me and my Bayeux-stitched maps and then told me the article would come out in a month, then two months, then stopped leaving me messages, and I waited and waited and I’m still waiting) but when the assistant librarian of my own local library tells me that she’ll have to get back to me later because she’s too busy to “deal with a local author” , THAT bothers me. Because once you’ve been jerked around by The New York Times, you only accept mortification from the best.
Nourishingfreinds is right: vodka helps.
Is there a role for John Cusak in that screenplay?
I agree with Mary. It means no. It means they don’t want to say a firm no in case you turn out to be the next most bankable screenwriter ever. But it means that you’ll have to work hard to persuade them to like your work for what it is now. And we all know that once we’ve found the agent, or producer, who already thinks we’re amazing, then they work harder to sell our work. So skip the ones who aren’t interested in you immediately and hold out for the agent/producer/editor who makes an offer within 2 weeks. In my experience, those with a lukewarm reception never really heat up, while those who are willing to buy your work for a good price make an offer within a few weeks.
After she left you hanging on the first one, I’d never let her consider the second; I’d move on. The non-response seems very inconsiderate and I wouldn’t want to work with that again.
Good luck placing Sugar Mountain anyhow; such feedback sounds promising for a future bite elsewhere.
It is annoying to get semi-literate rejection messages. It is maddening to get them after first receiving encouraging comments and a promise to contact you again very soon.
If the script was not to their liking, fine: a forthright rejection would have done nicely. You’d have been disappointed, but at least you would have appreciated their honestly. Thing is, they don’t care what you think.
The only difference between Indie and Original Recipe is the cost of their cars.
Money, Talent and Crew still attach to every project in the same way. The risk is shifted to outsiders in “shoe clerk deals”, and the insiders get paid above-the-line. Even so, too many flops and the Money dries up. This is especially true for Indies, since they are often undercapitalized to begin with.
The intense financial pressure makes them think they can be inconsiderate jackasses to those who submit scripts. This kind of behavior is addressed in the old saying, “Don’t kick asses on your way up, because you may be bent over on your way down.”
I hope that company is bent over soon.
While the above opinions are all very lovely and supportive etc… Send the paragraph!
Screenwriting is not like novel writing. More times than not a spec’ screenplay is used as a sample of your work to see if you are up to the task of being hired to write something that THEY want to produce. It’s not like sending a novel to an agent or publisher where you expect the novel to be published if they like it. You’ve shown you can write one screenplay that was up to scratch, you’ve shown you have persistence (which you need) and now they want to know that you can produce more.
Sure, specs are optioned all the time, as are novels, but the majority of produced movies have been written for production by working screenwriters who rarely do any real world-building of their own. Of course the Oscar winners, like Crash etc…, were often labors of love (read: spec) but they were written by people like Paul Haggis who have literally decades of experience in the trenches writing what execs tell them to write and the associated contacts and reputation.
If you want to be a working screenwriter and get your foot in the door of screenwriting contracts then send that second paragraph – they want to know what you can turn out and how quickly. They also want to know how persistent you are or whether you are a one story wonder.
If on the other hand, you want to spend your writing career working on the stories that call to you (and only them) then write novels and get a first refusal to write the screenplay on any novels you option. (This is the choice I made after some minor screenwriting success got me to Hollywood to talk to working writers and managers and I was hit with offers to write horror films – and was supposed to be over the moon about it lol! Still, the screenwriting and story editing education I got myself applies equally to novels so it wasn’t all a waste!
Good luck whichever way you go!