Marketing Your Script (Part 3)

“Although 90% of the writers we see are through referral and we are inundated with query letters, it never hurts to try. A clever note or a clever package gets our attention.”
Agent Debbee Klein
Paradigm

“You help someone accomplish something they want to do, regardless of where they are in their career. It’s wildly satisfying to start somebody’s career because you have that feeling of giving them their first check, and telling them it’s really real, and it’s a great, great feeling.”
Jeremy Zimmer
Partner/Agent United Talent Agency (UTA)
WGA Words into Pictures Forum

Let’s start out with a recap of Marketing Your Script (Parts 1 & 2) with a little help from screenwriter Max Adams (Excess Baggage), author of the book The Screenwriter’s Survival Guide, and founder and teacher at the Academy of Film Writing.

In Marketing Your Script (Part 1) we talked about writing a logline. Max in her book has a formula she likes to use:

(Title) is a (genre) about (protagonist) who must (objective) or else (dire thing will happen if protagonist fails).

Example:

Raiders of the Lost Ark is an action/adventure about Indiana Jones, a procurer of lost artifacts who must travel to Egypt and find the Ark of the Covenant before the Nazis unearth it and use it to take over the world.

Max graduated from film school in Utah and her entire book is very insightful. As the books cover proclaims it’s the; “DO’S AND DON’TS TO GET YOUR FEATURE SCREENPLAY READ, SOLD AND PRODUCED.” And she has first hand experience in what she writes about.  She was awarded both the Nicholl Fellowship and Austin Heart of Film Festival award —in the same week—her script Excess Baggage got produced and made its way to theaters starring Alicia Sliverstone, Benicio Del Toro, and Christopher Walken. Numerous studio assignments followed.

Since Marketing Your Script (Part 2) was in part about writing a query letter you’ll send to agents and producers, I traded emails with Max last night and she agreed to let me print the query letter that she used for Excess Baggage:

August 25, 1994

Joe Producer
Big Film Productions
c/o Big Dog Studios
5000 Big Dog Way
Hollywood, CA  900

Dear Joe Producer:

I’d like to submit EXCESS BAGGAGE, a feature length screenplay, for Big Film Productions’ consideration. I have professional writing credits in fiction, non-fiction, humor, and theater, recently graduated with a film degree from University of Utah, placed in the top five of the America’s Best ’93 national screenwriting competition, and am current semifinalist in the Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting competition ’94.

EXCESS BAGGAGE is a dark romantic comedy about an heiress who stages her own kidnapping and the car thief who derails her plans. The story is set in Portland and Seattle.

If you’d consider taking a look, please, contact my agent, (Agent’s Name) at (Agent’s Phone Number), or call me direct at (My Phone Number).

Best,

Max Adams

So now we come to the big moment of truth where do you send the query letters? There are a few options but I’m going to streamline it to three steps.

1) Writers Guild of America, West website has a Guild Signatory Agents and Agency list.This is a good start for you to get familiar with the key agencies in Los Angeles. (And it’s free.)

2) Hollywood Creative Directory. At $79.95 it’s one of the best investments you’ll make in your screenwriting career and the one that will begin to demystify the process. It lists over 11,000 agents, managers, and productions companies. Some with email address and website addresses. It’s printed three times a year to make sure the contact info is up to date. It’s good to have at least one hard copy around to refer to and you can buy used ones on eBay.

But here’s how you can harness the power a little cheaper. For $19.95 per month you can sign up online and all their info is there for you. You can sign up for one month and cancel. It’ll take you a several nights to copy and past the info onto an excel sheet or your digital address book but you’re pretty dialed in at that point.

3) IMDBpro—another free service if you sign up for the 14-day trial service. Now you can start doing a lot of cross-referencing. If there is an producer, actor, director, or writer you like you can find out who their agent is (as well as often times their publicist, manager, and entertainment lawyer).

Then start sending your letters out—or if you have a little chuzpah and phone skills you can always call. But either way, always be kind and courteous and ready to pitch your story.

If all this sounds like a like of work, it is. Just as you were creative in writing your script now you have to be creative in marketing it. Once you start piecing together all the players you understand a little more how the game is played.

There are other books and services out there, but that’s kind of your foundation to the industry. The key is to start gathering info on people so you can understand their tastes. Keep track of how writers talk about selling a script or getting an agent or manager. If you read a quote from an agent or go hear them speak somewhere write that down in your contact info. And for a little added encouragement here are some helpful quotes from writers and agents:

“The fact is that every single one of us or our agencies take on new people. We have to. It’s the lifeblood of the business. I mean, things turn over. Clients leave, clients leave the business altogether — we do have overhead; we do need to pay attention to those clients who make a lot of money. But there’s always got to be room for the new people.”
Lucy Stille
Paradigm

“So often the best people to get in touch with at an agency are the new, hungry people who are reading like crazy and know that their careers are going to be made because of their relationship with some new person that none of us even know exists.”
Lucy Stille

“The only thing is, for people who choose to reside outside of Los Angeles, you must make the commitment to be here as often as is required.”
Bob Hohman

If you want to write specs, you can write a spec from Minnesota or Florida, it doesn’t matter. If you want to have a writing assignment career you have to come here for enough time to meet people so that they want to give you jobs.
Lucy Stille

“You don’t have to target Tom Hanks or Oliver Stone. There’re plenty of anonymous, mid-industry level people who’ll give you a chance. Journeyman screenwriters are always good to approach, I believe — they’re easily flattered, and sympathetic to the cause.”
Screenwriter Terry Rossio (co-writer of Shrek, Pirates of the Carribbean) 
You, The Expert

“If you’re out there writing scripts, you can make it happen. It happens all the time.”
Jeremy Zimmer
United Talent Artists—UTA

It doesn’t happen much, but it does happen. And in Max’s case, true to form, her first screenplay to sell I believe was the seventh or eighth script she had written.

Tomorrow we’ll look at some alternative ways of marketing your script.

Related post:

Scott Myers answers: How Should I query Hollywood agents if I live outside the U.S.?

Update Decemeber 2011: I have been informed that after 20-years the Hollywood Creative Director no longer exisist. http://www.thewrap.com/media/column-post/promehteus-global-media-lays-hollywood-creative-directory-31441
I imagine other online servies like it will be popping up online and will provide links as soon as I learn of them.

Scott W. Smith