Le Manif Hier

Here's a nice little article in LA PRESSE on our march yesterday. Attention, c'est en français. The writer put me a bit on the spot as the writer of Bon Cop:

Le principe est le suivant: quand il y a un grand succès, il faut que les créatifs en aient une partie, croit Alex Epstein, l'un des scénaristes de Bon Cop, Bad Cop. Je ne me plains pas, mais le succès de Bon Cop, Bad Cop arrive aussi après les autres boulots que je fais.

When you've had a success, it's awkward to complain that you haven't been adequately rewarded. And I have no complaints -- Bon Cop has been good to me.

But not directly. I don't share in the DVD sales of the film. My payoff is that more people want to hire me to write stuff, for higher pay. I got paid on BON COP based on its budget.

Moral issues aside, this is inefficient. The next thing I write almost certainly won't do as well as BON COP, but I'll get paid more for writing it. There are lots of screenwriters whose quote depends on one hit; am I necessarily better than another guy who didn't luck into a writing gig on a movie with a great concept, great star package, brilliant director, hardy producer, etc.?

Who's heard of the BLAIR WITCH creators since? They haven't done anything outstanding; people keep hiring them hoping lightning will strike.

It just makes more economic sense to pay people for their successes rather than for the things they do after their successes.

(The Blair Witch guys did clean up economically, but that's because they also produced their movie.)

Which is where residuals come in. If your show runs endlessly on TV or the Internet, if it sells more DVDs than tickets, you should get a real piece of that success. Then you'll write not only for the theatrical release; you'll write for the DVD. You'll make your stories richer because it'll put money in your pocket to do it. Or you'll take more risks because Internet is all about niche marketing.

If your show drops out of sight after opening weekend, you should get a cup of that oblivion. Just like the studio and the producer.

N'est-ce pas?

More From Today's Outing

Quebec members of the Writer's Guild of Canada joined today with members of SARTEC, the Société des Auteurs de Télévision et Cinéma, our sister organization, in solidarity with the Writer's Guild strike.

Chants we had aplenty, because who knows how to hold a manifestation like the Québecois, unless it's their ancestors the French. "Pas d'auteurs, pas d'histoires! Pas d'auteurs, pas d'ciné! Pas d'auteurs, pas d'télé!" And "So-so-so-solidarité!" We had come prepared with some English cheers too, but in keeping with Law 101, they had to be half as loud, and half as clever.

Mon amie Martine has some video on her blog.

I had a great time, there were lots of reporters there from print, radio and TV, one of whom interviewed me in French -- I hope I wasn't too incoherent...

And then we went to dim sum. All in all, a lovely morning in the crisp, cold Montreal air.

And the best part of it? We got to go back to our paid gigs in the afternoon.

Out on the Line

Off to a Manif

I'm off to a demonstration in a bit -- if you're in Montreal or Toronto, or London or Dublin or Paris or Brisbane or Sydney or Perth, hope you'll join in!

Know Any Good Chants?

For those of you who've been out on the line -- we up here in Canada are demonstrating tomorrow in solidarity. Anybody heard any particularly brilliant chants?

I Have a Great Idea, Book Version

I've got a great idea for a book about movies/moviemaking. I assume this all starts with a query letter. Do you have any general advice? Also, I'm young with no moviemaking credits, how much harder does that make it for me to sell a book about movies?

The book biz is an entirely different racket than the movies. Books cost little to produce, authors make very little, and it takes an astonishingly long time for publishers to produce a finished book from your electronic manuscript. (Though it takes iUniverse about two weeks...) The book biz is also bizarre because booksellers get to return any unsold book to the publisher for a total refund, which is a huge waste of shipping and paper that no one seems able to stop.

But the critical difference you need to know about is between the book biz as it used to be, and the book business now. By and large, publishers are not looking for a good book. They are looking for a book with a "platform."

What's a platform? It's what makes the book promote itself. Any book by a celebrity (Diane Keaton's books of photography, an autobiography of Joan Jett, etc.) has a platform. A book by a writer who makes a business out of selling his books has a platform. They want a cookbook by a chef who has his own cooking show, or chain of restaurants, or both. They want a book on screenwriting by an author who does weekly seminars all across the continent. They want a book on art buying by the head of Sotheby's, or the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Any book by a celebrity will get press. Thomas Hoving is pals with lots of reviewers; his books get press too. And, of course, any author who goes around personally promoting their book at seminars and other events doesn't really need press.

I was recently talking to my editor trying to sell her a second, revised, expanded edition of CRAFTY SCREENWRITING. Her main question wasn't "how will it be better than the first edition?" Her main question was what my platform is. I have a popular blog, appear randomly on radio, occasionally jury things, appear on panels and so forth. So I'm not without a platform. But I don't cross the country teaching seminars and selling my books. (I don't have time.) I may have said I would do, back when I wrote my first book, but by now it is obvious that I don't.

So it may not be easy to sell your movie book, if you don't have a platform. A great idea may not be enough.

The process for getting a book contract, as far as I've seen, is:

a. Tell your idea to a book agent;
b. If she bites, write her a proposal. This is a document of forty or so pages with a sales pitch, a marketing plan, an explanation of your platform, an outline, and a sample chapter.
c. She helps you polish your proposal then
d. sends it to publishers, who hopefully get in a bidding war.

One other thing you should know about book writing: by and large, you don't do it for the money. On most books you'll be lucky to get a $5,000 to $20,000 advance for 3-6 months work, and you'll be successful indeed if you clear your advance.

You write to help crystallize your own thinking. It may be an excuse to do some research you wanted to do anyway. It is a great opportunity to interview people who might not talk to you if you weren't writing a book. It is fun to give back knowledge.

And it sure impresses your parents!

I'm Really Not There

Did I'M NOT THERE open and close in the same week? Didn't it just open on the 21st? I can't find it anywhere?

Is this some kind of sick joke?

The White Board

We're breaking story today on a rewrite. It's a horror feature, so I'm restructuring it as 7 acts, complete with act outs. Time for the white board.

So in that spirit, here's a household tip. How do you get old dry-erase marks off your white board?

For a few marks, you can always write over it with fresh dry-erase marker, and then erase that. The solvent in the marker is exactly the solvent for the dry markings.

But what about an entire board?

Toothpaste.

A little bit of toothpaste on a rag will nicely remove old dry-erase from a whiteboard, it turns out. Toothpaste contains a very mild abrasive that leaves your whiteboard minty fresh!

Now where's my fifth act out...