Industry

Insight


Article

by Danny

Kravitz

What’s it really like to be a working Screenwriter?

Scenario #22


Danny Kravitz, is a Chicago-based screenwriter, author, and professor of screenwriting at Columbia College Chicago.


Danny Kravitz got the call from his LA-based screenwriting manager while coming off the golf course. “Danny,” he said in a bit of a panic, “how are you coming with that re-write? I need to know…now!”  Danny told him he was making progress but had a book deadline for a Young Adult historical fiction novel that was taking up a lot of his time. Danny had been working to removing the cartel villain from his thriller screenplay about a racist, grieving border guard who reluctantly saves an illegal immigrant boy from the cartel, and replacing him with a corrupt INS (Immigration) officer who does assassinations for the cartel instead.


During the last six months Danny’s manager had heard over and over from the studios that cartel villains were really “tired” and the mere sight of one on the page had a less-than-desirable effect on the readers enthusiasm...enthusiasm that was crucial to getting someone to keep turning the page, let alone invest tens of millions of dollars. Danny’s writing partner pretty much loathed the cartel villain, effective as he was, and everyone knew that casting Matthew McConaughey instead of an unknown Latino actor as a villain would give the movie a better chance at getting made and succeeding at the box office. So Danny created this corrupt Immigration officer to chase the border guard and the cute little boy across the southwest as they travelled to the boy’s family in Chicago. The new character was more interesting, much less cliche´ and also made sense in another important way. A movie that explores the human side of the immigration issue with a racist protagonist who decides to save the life of an illegal immigrant doesn’t work as well if the bad guy set on ending the life of an illegal immigrant is a brown person from Mexico. It was a smart adjustment. But the truth was, making large changes like that to a script requires a lot of work to not only extract the old character and insert the new character but deal with of all of the cascading imbalances and problems that such a change sets off. The script wasn’t even close to being finished.


Danny’s manager explained the urgency. He had just finished dinner with a very, very, very famous male actor who after hearing the pitch for the movie, expressed a great, great, great amount of interest in playing the lead role and possibly directing. The actor’s manager had even cornered Danny’s manager after the meal to reinforce the enthusiasm and ask for the script immediately.


It was one of those great moments that often happens in the screenwriting business...THE call with some update that could lead to your script being made into a movie… and the money that comes with that. Danny has had THE phone call many, many times. This producer wants to option your script, that actress wants to play the lead in your script, this producer wants you to write for his TV show. Even earlier on, when he first started writing… this contest just named you the winner, this agency wants to sign you. This manager wants you to be his client. It’s fun. And these little victories are worth celebrating. Danny tells his students at Columbia College Chicago that too. It’s something that many people in creative fields advise. Celebrate every little milestone. Even sitting down for the first time to try writing. You’re going for it. Doing something for you. It’s something to be proud of.


Danny promised his manager a draft in 3 weeks - which was a joke because there were months of work needed and Danny was still trying to meet a deadline for his book. The bar had been raised with the suggestion of this actor and everyone was scrutinizing everything about the script, rightly so, to make sure it was at the level of an oscar-winning story that could win the actor an oscar.  That’s why an actor of such stature would choose to play the character in this script, a dramatic, gut-wrenchingly emotional story with soul-crushing pain and real catharsis. To win an oscar. Earlier versions of the script had some of this, but it leaned a bit more on its thriller aspects and targeted an audience less interested in the deep human story.  Which is a valid version of a movie. But it probably wouldn’t attract an A-list, Oscar-winning actor to play the lead.


After 12 weeks, 8 drafts, countess nights of 5-hour phone calls with his writing partner, rounds of notes from 6 different VPs at Danny’s manager’s production company, and many, many, many improvements later, the script finally got finished to everyone’s liking. And, though this process is often a feared one by beginning writers, Danny says it doesn’t need to be. You’re just making the script better. And solving problems always leads to becoming a better writer. Of course if the script isn’t as good as it was before or hasn’t reinforced the things that you thought were important to the story, you may be collaborating with the wrong people for you. But Danny and his partner loved the work they had done. The movie in their head was getting better and better.


The screenplay then “went out” as they say in Hollywood. To the huge actor and 2 others who were even huger. To directors. To agencies. To managers. This was an “attaching talent” round and it’s what producers do to package and sell a project or raise the financing to shoot it. Much easier to sell a project that has Robert DeNiro attached to play the lead than it is to sell a project that is simply words on a page. The built-in audience for that actor guarantees a certain return, or at least makes financiers feel more confident, since there are no guarantees of anything in the movie business. None at all. It is a business with perhaps the most bizarre lack of guarantees, or sure things, or even logical or predictable, or reasonable paths to success than any other in the history of mankind.


How Danny even got to this stage is a story illustrative of a common process in Hollywood. Danny’s manager used to be a successful independent producer before he agreed to helm production at his management/production company. Years after first optioning Danny’s script and, as often happens, not getting the project off the ground, Danny’s manager called Danny up to ask if it had been sold yet, since he’s just had dinner with the partner of a younger huge male star whose new production company wanted to make Danny’s script into a film. Danny and his writing partner immediately signed with the new management company and his manager began negotiating the deal while Danny and his partner had some productive meetings about suggestions for improving the script. 


It was actually a great deal that they were being offered. And a rare one these days. A high five-figure short-term option to do one draft of a re-write, then they would cast and finance the movie, at which time Danny and his partner would get a nice six-figure purchase price. Danny remembers the last conference call meeting where all parties had their little love fest and agreed to move forward.  The buying producer said “so guys, should we do the deal now or wait ‘til our new financier comes in and have this be the big new movie on their slate”? As often happens, this was such a sure thing that it really didn’t matter. Though the salesman in Danny thought to himself... “Do the deal now!!!”


And then, as often happens, the deal died, pens in hand. While waiting for the new financier, something shifted and suddenly phone calls weren’t getting returned. It’s all part of the film business, though this was, admittedly, a bit more kooky than normal, but only a bit.


“Do the deal now,” Danny repeated. “Don’t wait for the landscape to change.” A movie deal is as fragile as a dandelion. One little wind and trying to put these little white floaties back together again is as likely as you winning the lottery a second time. They fly away, like your dreams, never to be found again, though you search and struggle and try to pick them up with your fingers until you ultimately go home and avoid answering your mother’s phone call because she only wants happiness and success for her child and doesn’t understand how a sure thing blows away so easily. But the movie business requires financiers, actors, directors, agents, managers, producers and distributors, all with independent trajectories, to come together in a point in time and do a dance that keeps them all circling each other before they fly off again. There is nothing certain about that.


Which brings Danny to this moment. The script, which is now better than it was when it was almost bought the last time, has been out for a few weeks now and the responses from actors and directors and all of their handlers will start to come in to Danny’s manager. And then, the phone will ring one day with another THE call, and the patience required to wait through all of this will no longer be needed. The next deal will be made. That much closer to the movie being made, as long as the wind doesn’t blow. For people like Danny, you don’t need that much patience actually, because you’ve been here many times before and you trust the process. Besides, you are already onto the next script, or book project, or perhaps you need to attend to that older project that was on the back burner that is heating up again, just like this thriller screenplay about the grieving, racist border guard. According to Danny there’s no reason to worry or wait around for the phone to ring. If you work hard and are decent at what you do, you can trust that the phone will ring. And worrying and waiting accomplishes nothing anyway. You just keep moving forward and try to enjoy it all…life that is. Since life isn’t all about work success. “Not even close,” says Danny.


Danny mentions Alan Alda who said, “a life well lived is a life well lived.” “Writing and even having some success, it’s just a part of that. “ What’s a life well lived? It’s the rich, rewarding, and interesting story of YOUR life...your movie.” That’s what he tells his students. That’s what he tells me...as he finishes working on a treatment of his newest script, then heads off to teach a class, with plans to try and make it out onto the golf course...where he doesn’t even look at his cell phone.