The No-Go Go-Ahead

After close to 8 weeks since we signed our deal and submitted our beat outline to the people at Fox, they decide to get back to us.

The Fox Exec starts off the phone conversation with "where's my script?!" Only in jest, but something that obviously sets the tone and gives us a little insight to his personality and what kind of oddball timetables the studio has for projects.

Their notes are interesting, nothing that looks to compromise the integrity of the story we came up FOR THEM. The studio exec and the production company exec bounced ideas to us that on the surface seemed to increase the interpersonal conflict between the characters, as well increase the major characters internal conflict.

We feel their notes will make the script a lot stronger, as they address the "wants" and "needs" of the major characters, and how to make their struggles more organic.

We listen carefully to their concerns, take copious note and promise to get them a write up that outlines how we will address their notes in the upcoming first draft. To which the Exec jests about getting us paid as quickly as possible, so we can start the draft as quickly as possible.

We hang upthe phone and rejoice. - money and the first hollywood job begins.

Of course they call us back

Ball's in their Court

We spent the last couple of days ccoming up with minor, but critical beats in response to the devlepment Exec's notes. I think some of the changes are very cool, they give the characters more problems to deal with throughout the script (or at least in the outline). We worked listening to this Brazilian music by Gilles Peterson and the new Zap Mama album - "Ancestory "

Once we get final approval, I'll post the first pass at the outline and the final pass so you can see the process.

And now that we've done our part, we're submitting the second pass at the outline this morning. I expect the Exec at the Production company to sign off on this version, as we incorporated her notes fairly well (and they were good notes, a rarity in this business as we learned several years ago with another script).

Our contract closed this morning - they didn't give us the additional two weeks that we asked for to write the first draft. We wanted those two additional weeks not for writing, but for workshoping the script before turning it in. Our plan is have several friends of our read it (and give us feedback) and to bring in several of our actor friends to have a staged reading of the script. That way will see how the words flow on the page for people who read scripts for a living, and we'll hear how the dialogue sounds and what other dramatugical elements the actors will bring to the piece. Hearing actors breath life into your work is inspiriing, but it leaves you vulnerable too because you KNOW immediately if your intentions and instincts as a writer are dead-on or not.

We're going to buy an Apple PowerBook to do the actual writing, as I want to be able to go all over the city to cool, inspiriational places to hack out the script. I found that working in the same environment for too long saps the creativity, plus I get distracted by all the captiviating items, books and magazine floating around our place. I need to work on minimalizing everything in the apartment though, just so we can focus better on the job at hand.

The Legal Side Of It

The contracts came in the mail today, they're fairly straight forward and since we created a LLC to act as a loan-company the paperwork had to take that into consideration.

Our lawyer negotiated as much as she could with the people at Fox Legal, but they weren't trying to budge on a lot of the points. Mainly the time we get to write the first draft of the script - 8 weeks! Yeah, 8 fucking weeks! Can you believe that??! Which means some strenuous days and nights of hacking away at the keyboard. Also, equally irriating is that Fox plans to have 8 weeks for the "Reading Period," which is the time the bureaucratics masquerading as creative executives have to read the script. This is even more perposterous -- does it really take 8 weeks to read a script and deliver notes on the draft? Sure about 4 execs have to read and weigh in (the studio and the production company), but damn! And I say DAMN, because we don't get our next installment of money until the studio bureaucrats have finished redlining the bad-boy and meeting with us to discuss their notes.

Then the periond between the First Draft and first set of revisions is again 8 weeks, but the reading period is shorter. And then the next set of revisions/polishes is even shorter like 4 weeks, and they have 2 weeks to respond.

The tricky part is that our money is rationed out for each time we're supposed to be writing - so we're on the hook financially until they finish their leisurely reading.

Oh, we also just got a call back from the Exec at the Production company about our beat sheet/outline; she didn't have too many notes, and what she did have was quite good at upping the dramatic tension in the outline (who knows what's going to happen in the script!). Once we address these notes, we send the revised outline back and if it's cool it goes over the Studio's Exec for his approval/notes. At that point, we'll start officially writing -- and the paycheck can come in the mail.

As you can see there's quite a bit of writing that we're doing essentially for "free" just to get in position to cash a paycheck for News Corp.

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.

Getting The Deal

In April of 2004, we heard from our friend at Wendy Finerman productions that they were planning on doing a sequel to the hugely successful film DRUMLINE. We lobbied for the job, submitted a sample script, were asked to pitch our take on the sequel (in late June), then heard that we were in the finals (in late August), then went in to pitch to Wendy and the brass at Fox (in September) and then finally heard about landing the gig in mid October.

As you can see the process took quite a long time.

I'm going to be chronicling the process of putting that script on paper and the finally on to the screen.

This is our first writing gig, and it puts us in the Writer's Guild of America, so we're finally professional, paid writers.

Oh, something I neglected to mention is that our friend at Wendy Finerman's he had taken a script out about a year before the Drumline gig first came up, so he was already familiary with our work and confident that we could come up with something strong.

Ironically, another good writer friend of mine KNOWS the exec in charge of Drumline 2 and had invited me to go hiking with them numerous times in the past and I neglected to go -- that could have saved me a bunch of time, perhaps got us the deal a lot quicker, easier. But that's an example of the missed opportunities I've had in Hollywood.