Save the Cat! Strikes Back: More Trouble For... (21 page)

All of it is about the forwarding of your career and the generation of material that makes everyone
keep
being interested in you. This speaks to “getting you out of your box,” which usually comes when you're mid-career, have had numerous sales, rewrites, and co-ventures with others in your genre, but suddenly the phone stops ringing. You're in your box all right, and now the question becomes: Do you want to be buried in it?

We'll discuss more about this in the next chapter, with the “re-booting” process. Know for now that a good agent or manager will be cognizant of this too, and, like Tracey's Bollywood interest, be ready to expand your options.

Yet it all comes back to you.

It's simple! Your relationship with your agent is about the developing of your creative impulses and letting someone know about these in order to exploit them. There are all kinds of
do's
— three I have noted above. Here are some
don'ts
:

►
Don't
call up to chat! – If a rep wants a pal to “say hi” or “check in,” they will call one. This relationship isn't social; it's business. If you must call, have a point and make it brief. Most of all: Let them call you.

►
Don't
badmouth your agent – They're family — for now — and talking badly about one's agent only reflects badly on you. Besides, there's no better way to help than to talk your agent up!

►
Don't
plot against your agent – You may think your little scheme for making a deal will impress your reps; it will
only complicate matters. You do your job; let the agent make the sale.

But the number one “don't” I've found to be most helpful in my career and will italicize and even center here in hopes it makes an impact:

Don't… bitch
.

Writers are whiners. It goes with the territory. In truth you have only one job: Plant your butt in the chair and write something. It's painful, I know. Occasionally your mind drifts. And what your mind drifts
to
, much of the time is: Why isn't my agent calling? Which leads to the next thought: My agent sucks.

And you are wrong.

Next time you have this thought, do what writer Stephen J. Cannell suggested to a group of writers at the 2008 Final Draft Screenwriting Contest, for which I was a judge. Cannell, who is the world's most successful TV show creator (
The Rockford Files
,
The A-Team
, and a host of others), is now also a prolific novelist, and I note, a family man, married to his high school sweetheart for 40 years. He also labored in the wilderness, one hand clapping, the other one typing, for six long years, getting rejection slips from everyone while he got better at his j-o-b (please stone me if I ever use the word “craft”). Even when he got an agent, and moved his family to Hollywood, he still had a hard time. Though we all know what a powerhouse writer he is now, no one knew it back then.

When Cannell did not get the job, or did not sell the script, he did something remarkable:

He'd take his agent to lunch and thank her.

Thank you for taking me on as your client! I know you are doing everything you can do for me — and I know I'm tough to sell. It's a tough marketplace. But you are the closest person to me in my professional life and I will do everything I can to help you do your job. You are my link to the film community. And I just want you to know I appreciate everything you're doing.

Can you imagine what an agent would do for a client after
that
conversation? Why she'd go out and kill for a guy like that!

So much better than calling up and mincing around, asking why it isn't going better? And why didn't you read that one-act play I sent you, and what about TV? And
bitch
,
bitch
,
bitch
.

If this describes you, no wonder your agent doesn't return your calls! Your reps do not care about your mortgage, or your daughter's braces, or the fact your wife will leave you if you don't find work. They have a job to do and they can only do it when you are helping them — so why aren't you?

Mumbling, murmuring, and complaining are, after all, what keeps us in the desert, waiting to be brought in for a happy landing. Part of the test of being in the wilderness is feeling stuck, but not giving in to
being
stuck. It can all change on a dime with the right attitude — and your attitude is one thing you can control!

So do it.

And when things are going well, say thanks! One of the most delightful things I ever did for my agent, Hilary Wayne, was to buy her a Rolex in honor of our first sale. She loved that thing! She showed everyone whenever we were out together, and it's one of my happiest memories of our relationship. I got to say: Thank you.

So when you feel you must call and complain, when you can't take it anymore, be productive instead: Write something.

For those of you who don't live in Los Angeles, don't despair. These days, your career can be handled by using the Internet, mail, plane, and phone. In fact, you might actually do more work, and be less tempted to call, if you aren't down the street from your reps but across the country, or in another one, writing.

I have met many writers in my travels, working pros who've sold specs, done rewrites, and been very successful without ever leaving their hometown. One woman I met in Chicago began writing specs, and selling them, from the confines of her condominium. She did it all by email.

Another great success story is my Screenplayers.org buddy, Jamie Nash, who, from his hometown of Baltimore, has built a career as a writer of quirky sci-fi films like
Altered
(Rogue Pictures) and other assignments, as well as writing and directing his own short films. Jamie is another remarkable go-getter.

It still begs the question: How?

Well, it's the same. Write lots of specs. Get good at your job. Select a few contests — I recommend only a few — and get some feedback. Query groups like Triggerstreet and ScriptShark for better advice. Take a class online. Join a writer's group.

As you get better, pick a project you feel strongest about, get out your
Hollywood Creative Directory
, send out 100 emails, and see what you get back. (If you don't know what an email query is, reread
Chapter One
. See! Your skills have been improving just by buying this book.) Attend pitchfests — but don't go expecting to sell something, go to make contacts, get practice at pitching, and keep building up both your skills and your list of professional associates.

And keep doing the following:

► Commit to adding to your list of contacts every year.

► Keep coming up with high-concept ideas, vet them, write them, rewrite them, put them “on their feet” with a reading.

► And continue the process. Write. Sell. Repeat.

At some point, however, you will need to come out here to get the lay of the land. Anyone can plan a two or three-day trip to L.A., and you should. Try to set up meetings with those who have responded to your scripts or pitches, gang up as many as you can, and do them all. Everybody needs practice tear-assing across Laurel Canyon to get from a meeting in Beverly Hills to a busy producer in Burbank.

Why should you be the only one who hasn't?

And when you go back home, make notes of your meetings. No, you don't have to advertise the fact that you live out of town,
as long as you are available, and can afford the plane trips between drafts of a script — plus the several emergency trips required to meet, just in case. You can get rewrite jobs, too.

Point is: If you are in the wilderness and want to get out, you have to take the steps. Don't wander in the desert, grumbling about your sad state. Do something. You have to do the work and be prepared to show up for your career with a positive attitude and a love of this adventure. And have no doubt: It is one.

Even when things are going badly.

Even when trouble comes at you in all new ways.

Blake's Blog /
June 19, 2008

“Failure is not an option for us. We are here to succeed. We are here to get closer to our goals by becoming better in the face of a ‘no.’ And that alone is a ‘yes’ I can proudly claim every hour of every day!”

Throughout our adventure, from the first
Cat!
book til now, I hope you've been encouraged by one truism that really is true:

There's always a solution.

I learned this as a youth by working with
my
aged screenwriting mentor, Mike Cheda, who calmly, and wisely, held to this notion. I was always in a hurry, impatient, forever forcing the binary: It worked or it didn't, now or never, black or white…

While Mike always clung to “maybe,” not enough information yet, and the certainty I hope this book resonates with: Given enough patience to find it, every story problem has an answer.

But is this also true of life?

We've bumped our noses against story trouble, the notes of others — some that we hate — and the challenge of finding and keeping sales reps that not only get our ideas, but get us, too.

We've seen, I hope, that hitting the wall is just the beginning; it's really where the fun starts and the true skill of writing kicks into gear. And I think I've proven the case that if you look at all writing dilemmas this way… you can't fail.

Now I'd like to go further out on a limb and say that these very same rules apply to navigating your way past the Scylla and Charybdi of Hollywood — the Greek myth equivalent of “da shit.” One of the nice things about my experience in Movie World is I can share about hitting the wall at absolutely every stage of the profession. From breaking in, to the many ways to screw up along the way, the “dark night of the career” can be beaten, too.

It's how I earned my Masters degree from Strike Back U.

Strike Back University is the school of hard cheese here in Hollywood from which you don't get points for the quality of your work, or selling that big spec, but by rising up from the deck after you've been smacked down hard, and still manage to stand up smiling, ready to go at ‘em again. My very first instructor in this discipline was my Dad. His motto, whispered in my ear to the point of annoyance, was: “A Snyder never gives up!” And as an Emmy ® award-winning TV producer, he knew whereof he spoke.

He ingrained in me the will to get off the mat and come back swinging. A pioneer in children's television, my father walked an even scarier high-wire act than I ever have. Often it was only after the fact, when the show had been bought, or the first check was finally received, that he'd let the wife and kids know he'd had to mortgage the house as a stake against his latest venture.

His incredible career, filled with million-dollar paychecks and Peabody Awards, was a testament to the
real
family motto:

Whew!

We screenwriters have a much lower overhead. It's just the cost of paper, brads, and the patience of our loved ones. But the lessons we can derive from sampling the courses taught at Strike Back U. are still required.

So what do we offer here at Ol’ Cat?

Whenever my former writing partner, Sheldon Bull, was asked how he broke into the business, Sheldon's response was: “Late at
night.” And there is still some truth to that. Strike Back U. welcomes freshmen. To be admitted to this most basic of first-term survey courses, we encourage you to write a lot of spec screenplays, learn about the business by studying trade journals such as
Variety
and
The Hollywood Reporter
, and sampling a summer reading list that includes
What Makes Sammy Run?
;
Hello, He Lied
;
Breakfast With Sharks
; and
Adventures in the Screen Trade
. Once admitted, you'll face tests that seem to have little to do with writing, but everything to do with career.

Nothing is more indicative of your freshman status, and a trait we strive to correct, than being over-eager. You've got the stuff, we know that, and yet there are right and wrong ways to introduce yourself… and transcend the mistakes we all make: