Stephen Susco Q&A at Full Sail

Winter Park , Florida

Last week  I went to hear screenwriter Stephen Susco do a Q & A at Full Sail University. It wasn’t open to the public but I know some people who know some people, so I dropped in and found some worthwhile advice from a Hollywood veteran that I’ll pass on here in bullet points.

Back in 2009 in the post Screenwriting Post #83 (Stephen Susco) I mentioned that Susco wrote 25 screenplays before he had one produced (The Grudge). His numbers as of 2014…he’s now written 63 scripts and had a grand total of 7 produced.

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(But that’s Susco’s experience, he has a writer friend who’s written 28 scripts and had 20 of them produced.)

Sucso wore a Notre Dame hat during his Q&A which is where he did his undergraduate work before getting his master’s at USC film school. Some of his other credits are Red, High School, and Texas Chainsaw 3D. His next film to hit theaters is The Reach starring Michael Douglas. Here are ten takeaways form the Q&A with students, followed by an interview with Susco via Movie Greeks United!

* Filmmaking is a battleground of art and commerce.

* To investors, films are like widgets. Watch Shark Tank to see how investors think. When talking to investors think in terms of heart, mind, and pocket book.

* Screenwriters give up the copyright when they sell their script.

* Writing for Tv is attractive to feature screenwriters because writers are considered important in TV.

* Write what you’re passionate about (big Hollywood movie, horror, whatever) because even if it doesn’t get made, if it’s good it will open doors and people will ask, “What else do you have?” As an example Travis Beachman’s script Killing on Carnival Row got a lot of attention in Hollywood, but still hasn’t been produced. But it opened the door for writing assignments on Clash of the Titans and Pacific Rim.

* After his first script sold he couldn’t believe he was getting paid to do what he’d do for free. That first script sold for $38,000–but he had a partner so his half was $19,000. After taxes, attorney and agent fees he netted $7,500. It took them 2 years to write that script.

* He once spent four years on a script that ultimately wasn’t used for the movie that eventually got produced. He received an associate producer credit. It’s a business where a screenplay about your mother gets turned into a movie about Elvis and your name isn’t in the credits—or worse ,it is in the credits.

* You will hear the word “no” a lot and you’ll need to forget hearing it before the syllable “o” has faded from their lips.

* Pitching stories and ideas is not as common as when he first started in the mid-90s, but it’s easier than ever to make your own film. He mentioned writer/director Oren Peli and his film Paranormal Activity as an example.

* Think primal. Fear and personal loss are the foundations of many fine films.

Related Post:
The Secret to Being a Successful Screenwriter (Seriously) —John Logan’s journey
How to Become a Successful Screenwriter (Tips #41) —Michael Arndt’s journey
How Much Do Screenwriters Make?

Scott W. Smith

 

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Screenwriting Quote of the Day #83 (Stephen Susco)

“(USC Film School) made me realize that this wasn’t something I could take lightly; if I was serious about it, I’d have to get my butt in gear.”
Stephen Susco
screenwriter, The Grudge, Red

Years ago I heard it said that there were plenty of screenwriters in L.A. who had never had a movie produced but were living in homes with swimming pools and driving nice cars. Meaning that even though a screenwriter hadn’t been produced he or she could still earn a decent living. I’m sure today that is still true (though perhaps to a lesser extent).

Up until yesterday the record number that I had ever heard about of feature scripts written by a screenwriter before they were produced was 18 by Geoff Rodkey who finally broke through with Daddy Day Care. Then I heard the Creative Screenwriting’s podcast where Jeff Goldsmith mentioned that Stephen Susco wrote 25 movies before he had his first one produced (The Grudge).

The Grudge was produced by Sam Reimi and starred Sarah Michelle Gellar and had an $100 million domestic gross at the box office. An interesting side note is The Grudge is based on the Japanese film Ju-On: The Grudge written and directed by Takashi Shimizu though that version only made $3 million worldwide.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about Susco is not that he wrote 25 screenplays before being produced but that he wrote 25 screenplays in less than a decade. He wrote his first feature screenplay in ’96, graduated from USC film school in ’99 and The Grudge was released in ’04. But he had also been writing since he was a kid growing up in Pennsylvania far from the film industry. He also had made some short films including one that won an award in California which helped open the door at USC.

So Susco wrote his pages and paid his dues. Susco’s directorial debut Red premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

Everybody’s got their own crazy story about how they got started, and for me, I had written a lot by that point. Also, when I got to USC, I got a really good recommendation from someone. What the school’s going to be able to do for you is somewhat limited, so you should try to get an internship at the studios and you can learn a lot, so I ended up getting an internship at Warner Brothers at a production company over there.

My job was basically to get coffee and water for people in the morning and alphabetize the script library . . . but I read all of them, and listened to people talking on the phone and started to figure out how the business actually worked, things you couldn’t really get in school. I kept writing and second semester I switched and interned at Silver Pictures: Joel Silver’s company, which was good for me cause I grew up on those films; I loved his films. And it was also a totally different kind of shop.

The first place I worked was sort of a smaller company, Paul Weinstein’s company, and they did a lot of sort of independent films and going over to Joel Silver, it was suddenly you’re in a middle of an episode of Entourage but there was a guy who worked there who had aspirations to be a producer also, and he had found out that I had written a couple of scripts and he said you know I have this project that needs re-writes, and I have this director involved. Can’t pay you, but if you’re interested that’d be great. I ended up re-writing their script for them, and that’s the script that ended up at New Line cinema a number months later and led me to get my first gig. It was kind of a circuitousness path- I didn’t have an agent at the time.
Stephen Susco
Interview at filmmaker.com

Scott W. Smith

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