We talk a lot on this blog about how you should approach someone with a script, or how you should get your material out there. Does anyone have any horror stories about any major missteps they made in trying to break in? Maybe you bugged Jeff Goldblum at Kate Mantilini's when you tried to lay a script on him. Perhaps you went to William Morris and asked to see an agent. You might have stupidly sued two agencies for $8 million dollars or horror of horrors, maybe you even put your scripts up on Amazon Studios.
Who's brave enough to share their mistakes?
I once innocently enquired about the wellbeing of a producer's family member. Who'd been murdered.
ReplyDeleteAll of my mistakes have been contained to my first script I'm now writing, submitted nowhere until approved by the reader brave enough to guide me.
ReplyDeleteAnd boy, am I making mistakes. But if mistakes are the only way to learn in writing a script, perhaps that's the only way to learn in an industry career as well.
I've had some prodcos write corrections on my queries over the years. Not grammatical stuff, but still stuff I should have known like "query only one project at a time." Also, on one query I had something like "sorry to bother you" and they wrote DON'T APOLOGIZE in your letter. I had addressed one Dear Ms. Kelly something and they wrote KELLY IS A MAN.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite mistake is when imdb pro doesn't list what type of agent they are, so I'll end up receiving the "I'm a commercial agent," which is embarrassing, but superficial as I doubt they walk into the lit department and say "add this name to the blacklist because he queried me and I'm clearly a commercial agent," but still a silly little mistake; probably unavoidable.
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