Initial Stages

Our attorney recevied our LLC paperwork today to submit to Fox business affairs, so when we get paid it goes through our Production Company not directly to us. Why do this? It's very simple -- TAXES! screenwriters do get paid well, but not that well - especially for the first thing you ever do.

However, it's enough for Uncle Sam to bitch-slap you; and here's how: another good friend of ours landed his first writing deal earlier this year to (to adapt the novel "BLING" for Miramax), after his agent and manager each took 10% each, plus lawyer's fees it was time for the IRS to take a bite. And boy did they take a bite! Our friend was getting $80K to write, eventhough he was only actually getting $64Gs, and Uncle Sam taxed him like he was making $80,000 a month; as if he was making $960,000 a year -- putting him in the 45% tax bracket, thus reducing his $64,000 by 36,000. So all he got was 28 thousand and he still had to pay his attorney.

For our deal, we have neither agent nor manager, and are luckily paying our lawyer 5%. Now, we can also claim the attorney money as a business expense when it's tax time (because our corporation is hiring out for outside services).

Our attorney also said, "be very eager to do the work, and don't balk at re-writes." We weren't going to do that in any event, but she just wanted to make sure we knew that bitching as writer gets around Hollywood, a notoriously small community.

The way our deal is supposed to work is that we'll get half our fee to commence writing (which begins once the production company signs off on our outline and we sign the commencement docs), then the next quarter to do 2 revisions and then the final quarter to do two sets of polishes. This is key because this is how we get into the WGA (meaning I can see a dentist and sawbones whenever I need to, not when I'm past the point of knowing somethings wrong).

In the meantime, we knocked out the first crack at the outline, which basically consisted of expanding the document we used to pitch our take. We used a technique that a friend of ours named Joel Viertel inadvertantly taught us, to flesh out the characters and the various acts to give it a visual feel as well as beefing up the interpersonal drama and giving a flavor of what some of the scenes are going to look like.

After completing the outline, we emailed it to Production Company's executive in charge of the production for her notes. That's what were waiting on now.