I haven’t been blogging for the last week because I’ve been at the Austin Film Festival. I wrote a screenplay last year (my first, despite being ostensibly a film major), and the script made it into the semifinals for the AFF screenplay competition. This means for the first time I got to see the conference side of the festival.
Over the weekend, as I went to panels and parties, and drank my weight in Dos Equis, I compared the conference with my experience at sci-fi cons. The differences were pretty obvious. The crowd was more mainstream culturally and socially, the celebrities were a lot richer and more famous, and the money referred to in any conversation dwarfed the costs associated with any literary endeavor.
When I wasn’t shaking hands with celebrities I mostly talked to my fellow screenwriters. They were usually pretty easy to spot. They were the ones who looked hungry, wide-eyed and waiting for the chance to make a pitch that could lead to a sale. I felt that they took very little joy in the medium of film. I can see now why the American movie industry is the way it is. The screenwriters aren’t trying to make a movie, they’re making a logline and a pitch with a ninety-page addendum.
Nevertheless there were a lot of aspects to the panels that were virtually identical to what I’ve seen at sci-fi cons. It’s probably just a result of the power dynamic between those who are on the inside and those who can’t find the way in, but while listening to a panel discussion with the authors of Indiana Jones and Lethal Weapon, I amused myself by trying to define–
The Archetypical Questions an Unsuccessful Writer Asks a Successful Writer
Process Qustions:
-How often and when do you write?
-Do you outline or do you prefer to be suprised?
-Where do you get your ideas?
Sales
-How do things sell?
-How do I get people to buy my stuff?
-Do I force myself on important people to get them to buy my stuff?
-How do I get important people to listen to my ideas?
-Should I send in query letters, or should I buttonhole important people?
And the answers, in no particular order:
-Talent sells
-Talent alone doesn’t sell
-Perseverence sells
-Luck sells
-Virtually nothing sells anyway
-Hardly anyone has talent
-Everything happens because of personal relationships
-Nobody really knows how anything happens
-If you want it to happen, you should just do it yourself
-My process is perfectly rational
-My process is perfectly bonkers
-Nobody really knows where ideas come from
-Don’t be creepy
Nevertheless, there were some revelations. For instance, I realized that everyone has an invisible producer with a pitchfork and horns inside their heads saying "that won’t sell." Or as the guy who wrote Shrek put it in a slightly paraphrased quote: "I don’t think of screenplays as a means of expressing myself. I think of them as a tool for getting a movie made."
The other revelatory moment came when a big-name producer said, "I hate to say it, but you probably should turn your screenplay into a graphic novel first."
I’ve got one more screening and one more party tonight, and then I can go back to sleeping late and going to bed early. Next entry I’ll give a summary of the movies and screenings I attended.
