Video Review: 'Screenplays That Sell'

Allison Burnett is an L.A.-based novelist and screenwriter. He has written numerous Hollywood movies, involving people such as Richard Gere, Winona Ryder, Joan Chen, Heather Graham, Josh Hartnett, Diane Lane, Samuel L. Jackson, Lara Flynn Boyle, Morgan Freeman, Radha Mitchell, Kelsey Grammer, Kate Beckinsale, and former Adelaide boy Anthony LaPaglia, among many others.

I first noticed his name when I watched the romantic drama Autumn in New York on DVD, while undergoing chemotherapy back in 2007. When I heard he had released a video detailing the secrets of his amazing success, I wanted to see it.

Here's the point: Allison Burnett has written a dozen movies, including a run of seven consecutive spec scripts, every one of which sold to Hollywood. Well over 99% of all spec scripts written never sell. The odds of being in that less-than-one-per-cent that do sell, seven consecutive times, are beyond my memories of the Probability Theorem, but they would be astronomical. There has to be something more than luck at work here.

His background is that he was a theater-geek in high school, who then spent ten years writing plays, short stories and novels in New York, while working as a high school tutor and proof-reading at a law firm. At the end of that first ten years he had earned just $100 from his writing.

He moved to L.A. in 1990 to write screenplays.

The first significant fact he tells us, in his video Screenplays That Sell, is that he didn't approach screenwriting while thinking romantically of himself as an artist; he was comparing screenwriting with proof-reading legal documents and tutoring high school kids. It was to be a business, a way of earning a living.

Soon after, he went bankrupt. Desperation brought a sharper focus. He was writing spec scripts that producers agreed were well-written, but that they refused to buy. Allison began to observe the patterns of his failures-to-sell.

In the struggle between you and the world, back the world. —Kafka

Allison Burnett and Alan Watt (LA Writers' Lab)

From there he recounts the process by which he learned the rules of How To Sell a Screenplay in Hollywood. It's a great story, well told.

Here are just a few of the pointers from the video.

• Producers will not buy your script, if they cannot sell your script.
• Even when a studio can make a movie for $5million, they still have to spend $35million around the world to market that film.
• You have to write for movie stars.
• There's no green light in the studio world without a movie star saying 'Yes.'
• You want your lead actor to have speeches, you want them to have an Oscar clip, you want them to have big emotions, you want them to have set pieces where they can really act.
• What's 'in' and what's 'out' changes over time, but the genre in which you choose to write is absolutely crucial. 
• It's becoming harder to sell romantic comedy. 
• Beware of writing anything about grownups. 
• Spec scripts need to have a youth element.
• Do not offend.
• A lot of writers try to get approval and love way too early. Get the script right first.
  
  

This is a 90 minute video in which a successful spec script writer explains the things which moved him from consistent failure to consistent success. It is solid with information. I couldn't get through the entire video in a single sitting; there's too much to think about. Allison Burnett is easy to listen to: nice voice, clear diction, well organised.

The thing is, it's going to cost you US$10, give or take, depending on exchange rates, etc., to get hold of the video. I wondered why he didn't go the traditional route and turn it into a book, but that's becoming a crowded field. And there's the other question, of whether people learn better via their eyes or their ears. I do better if I can see the material written down, which is partly why I take notes. For some people, having someone tell you the information is more effective.

I recommend this video to anyone aiming to crack the Hollywood spec script market.

If it were a book, I'd say it was a steal at $10. The information is 2012 current. I was surprised by some of the things he shared on what genres are currently selling, what to avoid, how movie stars think, the difference between a star and a character actor, his theory of pitching, and (my favorite) how a writer can plunder a studio meeting.   I especially enjoyed the sense he gives of how things really unfold when writers negotiate with producers/agents/studios.

Screenplays That Sell is worthy of your time and money. Here's a short clip so you can see for yourself.

Screenplays That Sell

First posted:29 October 2012

David S. Goyer - Tricks for Screenwriters

David S. Goyer has a deliciously twisted mind. (They don't call him "The Prince of Darkness" for nothing.) And he knows how to bring comic book characters and superheroes to kicking, screaming, vengeful life, as he did in The Crow: City of Angels, the Blade series, and Batman Begins. His intense Batman screenplay, written with director Christopher Nolan (Memento, Insomnia), resurrected the moribund Dark Knight franchise and confirmed his writing voice as a go-to source for a green light. Here, in this wry and surprising dialogue, Goyer reveals his tricks of the trade for how to intimidate a room full of studio executives, when to stand on principle, how to hook an actor's ego with killer character descriptions and dialogue, and why fear can pay the bills.

Irish Olympic Sailing commentator

The Olympics are dead boring. Except when you have the right commentators on the job. And in that spirit, I have to say, 'Thank you' to Ireland.

Boston's poems in the rain

Boston's sidewalks are covered in secret poems you can only see when it rains.

Ask the Screenwriters

BAFTA ask a bunch of screenwriters some questions relevant to the art of screenwriting. And they come up with some great answers.

My First Job In Los Angeles - Justin Trevor Winters

Justin Trevor Winters talks about the start of his career as a screenwriter.

Shane Black interview

You should know, but in case you don't, Shane Black is an L.A.-based screenwriter and director. He wrote Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, amongst others.

His influences as a screenwriter were Walter Hill, William Goldman and Raymond Chandler.

Here are a few Shane Black quotes: 

• Dialogue can be fun but most people don't study it.

• The feeling of finishing the script, the first draft, was the high. Everything that followed—though of interest, and sometimes slightly exhilarating— could never match the idea of having just taken your story and racked your brain, finally having it on paper in a version you're willing to tolerate and ready to try to sell. I remember Joe Eszterhas calling me and saying, "Woo hoo! I just sold another one!" You know, there were fun times, but I didn't get into that whole money thing with Joe or the competition. It just seemed a little phony to me. Because ultimately, I like making money, but it's not exclusively what I'm trying to do. It won't make my life fulfilled. Directing comes closer than anything I've found yet to providing me with a good reason to get up in the morning that goes beyond just getting some money. Because all the money does is buy the bed. Getting out of it is the problem.

• Books were my hiding place. The library was more comforting many times than going home after school. I would just go to the library instead. It's amazing to me that to this day, how many screenwriters or aspiring screenwriters you talk to and you say, "What do you like to read?" and they say, "Well I don't really read that much." I say, "You don't read, but you want to be a writer!?" They say, "I like movies, I just want to write movies." They don't read books. I think that's virtually an impossibility. Mostly it was being trapped in a library for any number of years finding tremendous comfort in books.

• Unforgiven (1992) is seminal in so many ways. Whenever I write something, I'm always saying, "Oh, that's from Unforgiven. Or The Exorcist (1973). The other one that I find myself referencing—hopefully not copying, but certainly referencing—is All That Jazz (1979), which isn't even an action movie but it has such a power to it, such a melancholy. It's such a wild combination, a musical comedy about death.

• I loved detective stories, and I devoured them. I've literally read hundreds of them. I wasn't allowed to read them when I was a kid because they were racy, so I would sneak them. I'd save my lunch money—I wouldn't eat for three days so I could buy the new Mike Shayne book, or the new Shell Scott, or Chester Drum. The racy scenes were great but I loved the mystery. There was a real kind of masculine, rough-hewn rhythm to those caper novels, and I acquired an even deeper sense of them that was emotional and powerful. If I hadn't read those stories, I wouldn't be writing movies.

• The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) sold for just a sinful amount of money. People were angry that I took the money. People offer you $4 million for a script - what are you going to say? "No, I'd rather sell it for $100,000? But it engendered so much anger, I lost friends over it. And no one talked about the creative content of anything I did any more. They all just assumed I was this guy with a formula, a hack formula. So the spotlight was on me. I pretended it wasn't, but it was, and for every wrong reason. It was all about money, it was all about my supposed competition with Joe Eszterhas over who'd be the highest paid screenwriter. I didn't care. I just wanted to to write stories, try to become a better writer, improve my style, change genres, even try new things. I didn't like action so much any more. But I wanted out of the spotlight, so I subtracted myself for a few years. I tried to do a couple producing projects. Of course, the problem is, in getting out of the spotlight to feel safe and invisible again, I overcompensated and went too far into the darkness. And now I come back and go, "Wait, I didn't mean to go that invisible. Hey, come on, I'm here, I want my voice to be heard.

In the video which follows, Shane Black talks about the relationship between private-eye movies and westerns, catharsis, torturing yourself, making choices, and some of his personal philosophy.




First posted: 21 October 2012