“I can’t keep handling this…rejection”

This one is for the quitters out there…or at least the ones thinking about quitting their screenwriting journey. The following quote is from a writer who last year had a script of his land on the 2011 Black List (The Imitation Game) before it sold for a reported 7-figure deal, and then he was attached to write the script for Devil in the White City set to star Leonardo DiCaprio.

[Writing partner Ben Epstein and I] were living in New York and had just written a spec script that didn’t sell…our fifth or sixth. I felt so dejected and thought that there is no way I’m going to be a professional writer. I said, you know what, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. I called my manager and told him I was going to do something else with my life. I can’t keep handling this. I can’t keep going through this rejection.”
Graham Moore (@MrGrahamMoore)
Spec Sale Spotlight article by Zack Gutin
Script magazine

A few things to add to the mix. Moore graduated from Columbia University (religious history) and working with friend (and NYU film student) Ben Epstein he began writing screenplays. They wrote five or six and one was good enough to land them a manager (Tom Drumm at The Safran Company) and almost resulted in a sale.

Moore moved to LA where Drumm lined up some re-writing assignments and he started writing scripts on his own. In 2010 his novel The Sherlockian became a NY Times best seller, and his mom also just happened to spend over two years in the White House as Chief of Staff to First Lady Michelle Obama, which provided Moore the opportunity to meet Hollywood insiders on trips to the White House.

Moore is originally from Chicago which is where Devil in the White City is set. A story surrounding a doctor who is believed to have killed as many as 200 people during the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago.

“My high school was 50 yards away from where the Chicago World’s Fair was held, and I played soccer on a field near where Holmes murdered about 200 people. It was a truly horrible crime, but it’s a very Chicago story. Though I moved to LA, I think of myself as fundamentally Mid-Western, and in a weird way, this is a dark and twisted tribute to my hometown.”
Graham Moore
Collider article by Dave Trumbore 

Yet, another screenwriter from Chicago. (William Goldman, David Mamet, Diablo Cody, John Logan, etc. etc.)

So don’t forget to read “the rest of the story” when you hear about a first time writer making a 7-figure first script sale. But more importantly the lesson here is — if you want to be a writer, keep writing through the rejection.

February 2015 update: Graham Moore won an Oscar for his The Imitation Game screenplay.

Related Post: Screenwriting da Chicago Way

Scott W. Smith