Two opportunities offered by The Black List and one from theOffice

Yesterday, the Black List announced yet another opportunity open to their users, coming on the heels of their recent partnership with TNT and TBS.

Black List is pleased to announce a partnership with the Walt Disney Studios to identify writers with diverse perspectives who have not made more than $250K for their screenwriting work in the last ten years for Disney's Feature Writers Program. This is the second such partnership between the Black List and a major Hollywood studio. 

The Walt Disney Studios' Feature Writers Program is a paid one year residency housed in Disney's live-action production group that provides up-and-coming feature writers with development and mentorship opportunities. 

"There are countless stories to be told and we're always looking for new perspectives at every stage of filmmaking, especially during the creation of a script," said Walt Disney Pictures President of Production Sean Bailey. "Disney is thrilled to partner with the Black List to uncover the next generation of creative and talented writers who will create the classic stories of tomorrow." 

Beginning today, writers with screenplays hosted on the Black List website can opt into consideration. On May 5, 2014, the Black List will select a short list of between five and ten writers based on the data gathered about each script during its time hosted on the website. Each finalist will then provide a professional resume and one page personal statement, which will be reviewed along with their selected screenplay by executives in the Walt Disney Studios live-action production group. 

To be considered, simply opt in during the script upload process or on your My Scripts page. 
For additional information, click here. 
For additional submission requirements, click here. 
For the Walt Disney Studios submission agreement and release, click here. 

It should be noted that one of those requirements is that the script be hosted on The Black List site for at least one week during the submission period.  So if you had a script up there and let it expire, you're going to need to reactivate hosting to qualify.  Looking over the forms, there don't seem to be any usual terms or conditions.

Also, late last night, Deadline reported that Jon Avnet and Rodrigo Garcia’s digital company WIGS has partnered with The Black List for their own search to name a writer to develop a YouTube series. According to Deadline, the digital studio specializes in scripted female dramas.  The Black List will come up with a short list of five writers to submit.  You may apply until May 6.

This joins the Black List's previous partnerships with TBS and TNT, the Sundance Institute Workshop, the Cassian Elwes Independent Screenwriting Fellowship,  and the blind deal offered via Warner Bros, as the newest of the opportunities it's made available to users.  The site's twitter account is also teasing that more announcements are yet to come.

I also was told about a new opportunity from theOffice:

If you're looking for the perfect place in LA to leave the distractions of life behind and finish that screenplay/novel/short story/what-have-you, enter now to win a FREE 6 month Premium Membership to theOffice.

theOffice is a quiet, communal workspace on 26th (across from the Brentwood Country Mart). There are 26 ergonomic workstations in the room equipped with Aeron chairs, wifi, a reference library and all the coffee you can handle.

Charter and current members include JJ Abrams, Mark Cullen, Matthew Carnahan, Sam Harris, Susannah Grant, Gigi Levangie Grazer, Gary Glasberg and many more. It's where serious writers go to GET IT DONE.

The contest is free to enter. All of the details are on the theOfficeOnlineBlog.com.

Deadline to apply is March 15th.
Send Submissions to: theOfficeFellowship@gmail.com

Reader questions: casting and descriptions

More reader mail...

Sand Man writes:


I find it beneficial to have an actor in mind when I write or read a screenplay. Would someone like yourself find it beneficial to have the writer suggest an actor they feel fits the characters they've created..?

First off, as a writer, I think it can definitely help to have a certain type in mind when writing.  If it crystallizes the character for you, that's not a bad thing.  I don't often do this myself, however on one of my recent scripts, my wife instantly came up with a casting choice after reading the script.   The funny thing is, I wasn't thinking of this actor and probably wouldn't have come up with the name on my own, but as soon as it was pointed out to me I could really see it!  Now when I picture the eventual film, that's the actor I envision.

However I decided not to go back and insert a reference to that actor in the description.  I realize that putting it in could help a reader picture exactly what I want them to.  But what if they hate that actor?  What if that actor's latest movie has terrible buzz? Or worse, what if this exec has seen an early cut of that actor's next film and knows he or she can't act their way out of a paper bag?

I also worry about boxing their imagination in too much.  Maybe they don't think this particular actor is marketable and limiting their imagination to that specific type, I've closed them off from coming up with other possibilities they might have actually worked with.  These are things I worry about, but at the end of the day, it's all a judgment call.

I have no doubt that there are some professional and produced writers who would totally endorse naming actors in your script.  It's a perfectly acceptable shorthand, especially if you're dealing with readers who have limited imagination.  Also, it's a much easier trick to use if you're naming an actor with a lot of mega-successes under his belt.  (In other words, using "Robert Downey Jr." probably isn't going to be as much of a knock against you as "Chris O'Donnell.")

So is there really a right answer here? I'm not sure, but there's probably a right answer for you.


Ian writes:

I've read plenty of screenwriting books and plenty of scripts. I think I'm pretty competent when it comes to putting a story together, and anyone who reads my work says my dialogue is strong. But it's action and description that I still can't figure out. I'm never sure how much to describe a setting or a character's expression, and when to keep the description to the bare minimum, and I think it's affecting my work negatively since, obviously, a lot of the writing in screenplays is action and description. 

So I was wondering if you could weigh in on this? Should I keep the level of description consistent throughout, or should it change from scene to scene? Do I just keep things simple on the page, and let directors, cinematographers and actors fill in the description for me? Anything tips you could give me would be greatly appreciated.

If by consistent, you mean that every scene should have the exact same level of description, I rather disagree with that.  It's going to vary depending on the specificity of the environment.  For example, if your main character is walking into an unremarkable office or a grocery store, there's a good chance you'll do less describing than if they wander into an alien spaceship or something totally foreign.

Also if you're returning to the same environments several times over, you won't need to write nearly as much on subsequent visits as you will the first time.

In terms of how complex you get, I don't think you need to delineate every single piece of blocking in the scene.  If it's important that a character cross a room in a particular way, then certainly go crazy.  If you get carried away and try to spell out every movement in the script, you're going to over-complicate the read and that can hurt you.

The question-behind-the-question here is really about figuring out what's essential to tell the story.  I can't give you a one-size-fits-all answer.  That's one of those things you discover yourself through trial and error.

Reader questions on selling unmarketable ideas and foreign submissions

I've gotten very lazy about answering the old mailbag, so I'm going to try to make some headway this week.

Joel writes:


I've written two screenplays so far and am working on a third. I am increasingly cynical about Hollywood, as there seems to be more people making money off exploiting aspiring artists, than people who are making money off of art. It's kind of like a modern day gold rush, you're far better off selling whiskey to the prospectors than actually panning for gold. 

My screenplays are more about the telling than the actual tale, and are more or less unpitchable, in the traditional sense of the word "pitch." For example, Ripple, my first screenplay uses multiple inter-connecting storylines to track a highly contagious bad mood through a community, until all the small altercations culminate in an event that affects everyone involved. Not pitchable. 

As a film enthusiast, I prefer soft concept movies. It's seems that most production companies only want high concept screenplays, and in a few years there will be no such thing as a drama. As a reader, what is your advice? At the moment selling this screenplay, which everyone that's read it has loved, seems impossible. Should I keep plugging or should I attempt to shoot it myself with absolutely no budget? Or go to screenwriting seminars and sell cocaine to all my fellow failures? 

Okay, a lot to unpack here and also a lot that probably deserves more in-depth discussion than I can give.  So let's start with the soft concept discussion. You're right about how soft concept scripts are hard sells.  Part of that is that high concept stories are a lot more exciting to pitch and seem more marketable.

The other part of that is that this town is swimming with soft concept scripts. In my years reading professionally, I read a ton of low-key dramas.  Clearly SOME of these writers were getting repped or at least had enough connections to get their work passed around.  But there's also supply and demand.  When there's a massive surplus of those stories floating around, the bar is going to be raised for the really good ones to stand out.  So statistically, your odds of selling such a script go down and they're probably likely to sell for less.

(Your specific pitch actually sounds more high-concept than low-concept.  I could see the concept cutting both ways.  On one hand, it could lend itself to one of those "Valentine's Day" ensemble-type films with a dozen famous faces.  On the other hand, the "how do we market this?" question looms large if you don't pack it full of famous faces.)

I think it's good that you recognize how the market perceives your work.  That sort of insight helps you direct your energies to the strategies most likely to pay off for you.  Personally, I like the idea of trying to shoot it yourself.  If it can be done on a low budget, it seems like the sort of idea that could brand you as a director (if that's what you're after).  There's certainly a history of directors with original ideas finding a way to shoot their films themselves and get noticed that way.

If you're running into a situation where a lot of people love it, but can't do anything with it, you're choices are: (1) keep trying to find the right buyer or (2) shoot it yourself.  It's possible that "right buyer" exists somewhere out there and the great thing is that if the script really is good, that buyer won't be able to keep their hands off it.

But if your ideal buyer is an extremely rare breed, then I say shoot it yourself. We're in an era where it's gotten drastically cheaper to make a film.  The challenge then is to make a GOOD film and to find a way to market it so it can become your calling card.

If nothing else, see if it's at all feasible to produce it yourself.  If it's way out of your reach, then maybe change your strategy of who you're going after.  Or write something that IS producible.


Borja writes:


In a few months I'm finishing my studies, and a question started buzzing in my mind: Could an Spanish writer send scripts to Hollywood? I know maybe I'm aiming too high, but Spanish Film Industry is dead (or at least deadly wounded). That's why I'd like to know if you have ever red any script sent from Spain.

Just speaking for myself here, I didn't read too many submissions from foreign countries that didn't come through agents. So if you're looking to get your script to someone like me, you need to chase after agents first.

The foreign submissions I did read frequently had issues with language/translation.  Occasionally, you'd stumble onto some awkwardly written descriptions, but the place where this was most noticeable was in the dialogue.  Unless the writer was totally fluent in English, when they translated the dialogue from their native language to English, it would often take on a stilted, formal quality.

So before you start submitting to American companies, find Americans to read the script and be brutal with you about the quality of your English.  It will pay off in the long run, I promise.

A tribute to Harold Ramis and Dr. Egon Spengler, the coolest Ghostbuster.

 As kid, when my friends and I would throw on our toy proton packs to play Ghostbusters, I was always Egon.  Maybe he was my favorite.  Maybe he was just the one I resembled the most.  After all these years, I don't totally remember why.  I just remember thinking that Venkman was too much of a smart ass and Ray was kind of a man child.

But Egon - Egon was cool.

With the passing of his portrayer Harold Ramis on Monday, I've seen many, many reflections on Egon and on Ramis's other work in general.  A number of people have remarked on how "Egon was a nerd who acted like how nerds really are."  I don't know if I'd have put it that way, but at least he's not Sheldon Cooper or Steve Urkel, and for that we are grateful.

The particular types of nerds those two characters represent are usually socially awkward and frequently the butt of the joke.  Urkel is also excessively clumsy while Sheldon is an insufferable whiner defined largely by a superiority complex the size of a Dyson Sphere and an inability to adapt to any circumstance with an axis that doesn't revolve around his desires.

And then there's Egon.  A lesser movie would have made him the nerdy geek who Venkman picks on.  Instead, Ramis makes him a guy capable of holding his own against the scientist with the personality of a game show host.  There's a quiet confidence that Ramis brings to the character, avoiding both the awkwardness and arrogance present in most film nerds.  When his secretary starts flirting with him, his reaction isn't to trip all over himself, but instead he remains aloofly oblivious.  Or maybe he knows and he's playing his own game of hard to get.

I'm sure at some point in everyone's life, they're friends with someone whom others don't "get."  You know, the friend who makes a scene at a party, or who always causes trouble when you go into a restaurant.  I'm sure we've all had the feeling of, "Ugh, I have to put up with this guy. I'm friends with him, but would it kill him to be more mature?"

The next time you watch GHOSTBUSTERS, pretend that is Egon's inner monologue in every scene with Venkman.  Any time Egon offers an odd-on-its-face reply to Venkman's wise-assery, pretend that he's messing with Venkman.  Case in point:

Venkman: Egon, this reminds me of the time you tried to drill a hole in your head, remember that?
Egon: That would have worked if you hadn't stopped me.

There are a couple ways to read this dialogue.  First, there's the possibility that it's meant to be taken at face value.  Egon really tried to drill a hole in his head.  But that seems so crazy for a guy that smart that I suggest a second possibility - that Egon was doing some other kind of experiment in para-psychology and the chronically-terrible-student Venkman only half-remembers what it was about.  In this version, Egon's probably a bit bemused that Venkman reduces a complex procedure to something so mundane.  (This IS the guy who says, "pretend for a minute I don't know anything about I don't know anything about metallurgy, engineering, or physics" later in the film.)

And then there's the third possibility - that Venkman is just riffing and Egon volleys it back to him with perfect dry delivery.  The beauty of Ramis's performance is that it's layered enough that all three of those interpretations could be true.

Watch the film with the mindset that Egon is the smartest guy in the room and that his quiet confidence comes from the fact he doesn't need to prove it.  Venkman is a ball of "me, me, me" insecurity in constant need of attention, but Egon is completely at peace with his role in the group. I like to think that every time Venkman goes off on one of his jokey tangents, Egon's there silently certain he could match and top every silly quip of Venkman's.

Think I'm reading too much into things?  Notice how he projects authority when Louis Tully is dropped off at the station.  And later when Venkman makes the silly quip about getting the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper together, it's Egon who lets Peter know this is no laughing matter without insulting Peter for his ignorant suggestion.  Ray may be the heart of the Ghostbusters and Peter may be the ID, but Egon is the brains.  He's the true leader.

There's something odd about spending so much of a tribute to a writer-director on his acting work.  Part of this is that I don't know where to begin with his writing and directing credits.  I do recall it blew my mind as a kid when I found out the guy who played Egon was also the man who directed National Lampoon's Vacation and who co-wrote Back to School and Animal House, among many others.  Take a look at the films he contributed to as a writer and/or director:


Animal House
Meatballs
Caddyshack
Stripes
Ghostbusters 
Back to School
Armed and Dangerous
Ghostbusters II 
Groundhog Day 
Multiplicity 
Analyze This 
Bedazzled 
Analyze That 
The Ice Harvest
Year One

A lot of classics and solid hits among those.  I wouldn't even know where to begin to talk about Groundhog Day without saying something that hasn't been said before.  In fact, as I look at those movies, my most prominent thoughts are how much his work made me laugh and how surreal it feels to realize he's gone.

It's weird to mourn the passing of someone you never met.  But then it's also unusual to note the loss of someone who seemed to still have so much living left to do.  When I was younger, the famous people who died all seemed so old.  They were ancient relics of a different time, commemorated in massively deteriorated video clips and aged celluloid moments.  Sometimes it was shocking to realize that they hadn't already been dead for years.  But still, death was something that came for people my parents grew up watching - the Little Rascals, the Three Stooges, and so on.

It's too soon for my generation to start losing the Ghostbusters.  I'm not ready to watch those movies and regret that a reunion of my childhood's Fab Four is impossible. Over the last couple of days, we've been mourning Harold Ramis on blogs and on Twitter, but it's not just him we're grieving for.  His passing marks the death of a little bit of our childhoods. 69 is far too young an age to leave this world.

By all accounts, Mr. Ramis was a genuinely nice guy and always pleasant to be around.  My condolences to his family and those who knew him.  We can only hope that the door swings both ways.

Also check out Scott Myers' excellent tribute post over on Go Into The Story.

The Lone Ranger's real problem is that it's embarrassed by its hero

I'm some eight months late to the party on this, but I finally watched THE LONE RANGER last weekend and came away with some thoughts.  This was one I skipped last summer because - to put it bluntly - the trailers failed to sell me on the movie and there were plenty of other films I was more interested in seeing in my free time.  The fact that a lot of critics went after this one didn't help, nor did the fact that the only insanely positive reviews I saw seemed to be coming from a place of wanting to be contrarian.

Still, I was curious enough to see the movie on DVD, if only to see if it really was as bad as people claimed.  And here I agree that the rhetoric surrounding the film probably got a little bit out of hand.  There were definitely worse movies last year.  You could argue this is a major disappointment coming from the team behind Pirates of the Caribbean, but it's nowhere near the disaster that Dead Man's Chest was.  It's got a lot of well-staged action and a cut of this film that just the set-pieces would probably be damn entertaining.  When he's asked to do broad, over-the-top and well-choreographed cheeky action, director Gore Verbinski delivers.

But unfortunately that only accounts for about half of the film - and the other stuff that's left... is not good.  If the rest of the film was merely neutral, I probably could have let the action carry me away and assess that in a big picture sense, the movie was great fun.

The problem is that the stuff that doesn't work is often offensive in how bad it is.  Too often it's the kind of misfire that's hard to ignore.  It's made worse by the fact the final moments of the film shoves those flaws in our faces anew, leaving us unable to wrap up the viewing experience without being reminded "Oh yeah! That was awful!"

As I watched the film I kept seeing the sequences I recalled being targeted in some negative reviews last year.  I'll deal with a few of those below, but one moment in particular completely surprised me and it's the moment where I decided the filmmakers were embarrassed by their own hero.  But I'll get to that momentarily.

John Reid, the man who becomes The Lone Ranger, isn't introduced as the sort of macho-heroic figure you might expect.  His first scene is actually kind of charming in how it uses that. While riding on a train, he picks up a child's stuffed animal and attempts to toss it back to them. In a well-executed bit of comic timing, the toy is sucked out an open window, prompting the child to cry as Reid is chagrined.  The mother invites Reid to pray with them, and he says, "No thank you ma'am. This is my Bible," and indicates his law book.

Yes, this incarnation of the Lone Ranger begins as a bookish sort who would look completely out of place in a gunfight.  Moments later, it's played for a laugh when he takes on a bad guy and says "I must warn you - I boxed in law school."  It's not quite as extreme as watching Niles Crane awkwardly resort to fisticuffs, but that's definitely the sort of laugh that the movie is going for.

On it's own, this isn't a problem.  I kind of liked how this gave Reid a lot of room to grow.  If we accept the Lone Ranger as a superhero of sorts, then it's fair game to play up the nerdy alter ego.  THe problem is that the script can't resist undercutting the Ranger at every turn throughout the film.  Scenes seemingly designed to show off how formidable the Ranger has become are instantly undone by a cheap joke.  Some of these come in the form of physical comedy and others arrive as sarcastic quips from Tonto.

As I kid, I know I rented The Legend of the Lone Ranger more than once.  I now recall very little about it, beyond the fact that it got a number of the touchstones right.  Those who remember The Lone Ranger at all probably recall bits like the use of the William Tell Overture, the line "Who was that masked man?," the fact he uses silver bullets and that he's prone to rearing up on his horse and saying "Hi-yo Silver away!"  In fact, that last one is probably the iconic hero shot the character is remembered for.

We get that moment in the film.  After a really good third act and a massive set piece involving a train, things mostly seem to be on track.  The William Tell Overture kicks in at the start of the sequence and for the rest of the sequence everything seems to play almost perfectly.  The action is audacious and fun, the heroes are making all the right moves, and for the most part, the humor seems to enhance the scenes rather than take the piss out of them.

The adventure over, the Lone Ranger rears up on Silver and gives his familiar battle cry as he prepares to ride off into the sunset.  And if the film ended there, it at least would go out on a high point and a rush of endorphines.

But it doesn't end. Instead we cut to Tonto, whose practically rolling his eyes.  He says, "Don't ever do that again."  Get it? Because the Lone Ranger's are so cheesy and embarasssingly square that you HAVE to have someone call them out.  Seriously, Verbinski and his team are so embarrassed by their square-jawed hero that they can't even let that ONE moment play out without any irony.  And it's emblematic of how the film treats the character throughout.

Tonto's main purpose in the film is to provide a vehicle for Verbinski and his team to keep reminding us that they're above the material.  He's their mouthpiece for puncturing the straight-arrow nature of the Ranger.  There's nothing wrong with a good-natured quip now and then, but the more they do it, the more it feels like we're encouraged to see the Lone Ranger as a fop. In The Lone Ranger, Tonto's quips are all about undercutting any competence and presence on the part of our hero.  He's Tonto's punching bag.  It's sort of like watching a Sherlock Holmes movie where Watson is played by Jonah Hill and he's constantly calling the famed detective "a nerd who can't get laid."

Picture this: in the next James Bond film, Daniel Craig orders a dry martini, shaken not stirred.  He nods down the bar to the impossibly beautiful woman whom we know would be putty in the hands of Sean Connery.  The woman smiles, eyes aglow, and says...

"Come see me when you're ready for a MAN's drink, Sally!"

ISN'T THAT FUNNY?

Or what if The Dark Knight Rises had a sequence where Batman confronts Catwoman and she goes, "What's with that stupid growly voice?  Is that supposed to scare me?"

SEE? IT'S FUNNY BECAUSE THE GRUFF VOICE IS SILLY!

Just by way of comparison, I think most people are of the opinion that 1997's Batman & Robin is a silly, campy film, right?  Most Batman fans are embarrassed at how cartoony the tone and the dialogue are and it was so poorly received that it necessitated a total reboot of the franchise in a completely different tone.

As bad as Batman & Robin is, there's really no point where director Joel Schumacher tries to convince you he's above the material.  We're talking about a movie where Batman pulls out a Bat-Credit Card and NO ONE blinks at how silly it is.  If Verbinski had directed that moment, Robin would have had some quips along the lines of "Who the hell issues a Bat-credit card?  What's your credit limit? Do they do debit as well?  Or is it de-BAT?"

Schumacher's Batman might be a square-jawed boy scout along the lines of the Adam West interpretation, but Schumacher still directs the film like Batman is our hero. As much as he's overshadowed by the villains, at no point are we directed to believe the guy in the batsuit is a silly klutz.

Batman & Robin commits to its reality more firmly than The Lone Ranger. Digest that one for a few.


THE LONE RANGER has a host of other tonal issues too, including a really misguided framing device that has a young boy encountering Tonto at a fair in 1933.  The elderly Tonto is there as part of a display called  "The Noble Savage" and the whole story is then told as sort of a tall-tale from Tonto.  It's a misfire in terms of tone and also in how it sets up the world.  If you were to show me this two-hour-and-thirty-minute cut of the film and give me free reign to edit it, all of this material would be the first to go.

The one thing it does accomplish is that it opens the whole story up to the possibility that we're seeing it through the eyes of an unreliable narrator.  Given how bananas Tonto is in places, that would at least give the film's strange tonal shifts some context.  I don't really think this was intended, though.  And if it was deliberate, the film doesn't commit hard enough to being a tale told by an Indian with a few marbles missing.

Of course, the other problem with this framing device is that it means that after the aforementioned "Don't ever do that again" scene, we have to again return to this 1933 travesty to tie up everything, which means Tonto gets the last word AND the ending credits are spent on watching him take a solumn walk off into the desert alone.

THE LONE RANGER concludes not with a heroic gallop into the sunset, but a downer ending that makes you pity Tonto's sad fate and loneliness. The film's biggest failings are what Verbinski uses as punctuation.  You almost feel like a fool for enjoying the final act as much as you did.

Someone give this film the Phantom Edit treatment.  It won't fix everything, but it WILL mitigate the damage.

To return to my main point, the most important lesson one can get from it is to remember that the audience usually needs to believe in your hero in order for the film to work.  If you don't think your guy is capable of saving the day, why should we?

How to vet a potential agent or manager

I often get asked for advice about pursuing agents and managers.  A lot of the questions I get revolve around how to get an agent to read your work.  It's not often I get asked questions that deal with the scenario of "I've caught him, now what do I do with him?"

So let's say a potential rep likes your work and calls you in for a meeting.  What now?  The most important thing to remember is that it might not always be best to go with the first agent or manager to show interest.  Not all agents and managers are created equal, and if you're selecting someone with that much power over your career, it's pretty damn important to determine if they're right for you.

The best rep isn't necessarily the guy at the fancy agency with three letters.  There are pros and cons to everyone.  It certainly sends a message about your place in the food chain when your rep is that bigshot WME agent with half of the hottest writers in town on his client list.  On the other hand - with that many whales demanding this guy's attention how much of a priority do you think you'll be?

In that light, the advantage of going with a smaller rep could be that you're more of a focus for them.  Also, they might have a little more hustle and the virtues of that can't be over-estimated.  But then again, smaller reps might not have as many doors open to them.

So how can you break the tie?  After polling a number of professional, working writers I know, I've distilled their advice into several questions you can ask in that initial meeting to figure out if this rep is the right rep for you:

What are your overall plans for me? 

What are your goals for first year? 

What is your strategy for [the spec that got you this meeting]? 

(If dealing with a manager) What agents do you want to pair me with? 

What are your expectations for development of new material? 

(If dealing with a boutique agency or management company,) how involved is the senior or named agent or manager?

How many notes do you give before sending out? 

How important are attachments? 

Do you send out "naked" specs?  (specs that don't have actors, directors, or producers attached.)

How much do you work with other agents/managers at the company? 

It's very important for you to go in there with a strong sense of who you want to be, and to communicate that vision to them at the meeting.  Regarding your next two or three projects, have an idea about what your brand is. This is the time for you sell them on who you are and show that you're doing the things you need to do to get where you want to go.

As an example, if you want to direct, how are you going to make a case for it? What's the next short you're gonna make? If you want to write studio films, what's the spec that's going to get you on that list? Whatever your long-term goals are, bring them up in the meeting.  This should be about getting as much information as possible as well as getting a sense of how this person would be to deal with.

Yes, the agent or manager is there to interview you to see if you mesh with them, but they also have to mesh with you.  Don't go home with the first guy you dance with just because he asks.  A bad rep can be worse than no rep.

Please feel free to leave any other advice in the comments.  I'd like to make this post an easy resource for those seeking representation.

Support Marisa Stotter's documentary on the history of women in comics

My friend Marisa Stotter is running a Kickstarter campaign for "She Makes Comics," a documentary she's doing about the contribution of women to the comic book industry.  Already, she and her team have interviewed a number of comic legends including writer Chris Claremont, Vertigo Comics founding editor Karen Berger, and comic artist Joyce Farmer.

It sounds like the documentary will focus on the largely unknown roles women have played in comics in the industry's seven-decade history. The project's page explains:

"From the early days of the medium to the present, women have had an important and sometimes overlooked hand in the creation of comics. Alternative and underground comics, graphic novels, and webcomics have been particularly fruitful areas for female creators. And more women than ever are involved in iconic mainstream comics franchises. 

"While women have made significant strides in the medium over the past several decades, it's still not easy to be a woman in comics. Female readers fight to be recognized as legitimate fans in an insular and sometimes sexist community. In mainstream comics, there remains an unequal balance of women in creative and business roles, and some publishers have been criticized for misogynistic portrayals of women in their titles. The pessimistic question is often asked: is there a place for women in comics? 

"In spite of these issues, our project intends to emphasize the valuable contributions women have made since the Golden Age of comics. They may not be as recognizable as Will Eisner or Stan Lee, but we hope to make some of comics' most prolific women into household names by showcasing their talents and contributions."


If some of this sounds familiar, perhaps you saw the write-up on the project last week in The Hollywood Reporter.  With less than two weeks left, they've raised just over $30,000 of the $41,500 that they're asking for.



I don't often promote Kickstarters on this page because I fear it will provoke a floodgate of "Please promote my project!" emails.  I've pretty much decided on a policy of only promoting a crowdfunding effort if I've been moved enough to contribute to it myself.  Suffice to say, I have donated and I wish Marisa and her crew the best of luck.