TV ON YOUTUBE

The WalkingDude has posted a list of tv shows on Youtube. Digg it.

ONE AGENT, TWO AGENTS, THREE AGENTS, FOUR

Q. How many agents can one writer have at a time? Do you send them the same material to pitch? Do you negotiate separate agreements based on the type of work you've written i.e. one agent for features and another for television or is it based on region and reach?

You can negotiate any sort of arrangement if people want you badly enough. The simplest way to split jurisdiction is by material. You might have one agent for showbiz and another for books. That's common; the world of publishing operates on different principles and at a completely different pace than showbiz.

Generally you'll have one agent rep you for showbiz everywhere. That's simpler for everyone. You might have one agent who handles you for TV and another for movies, but at the same agency; if you live in New York you might have an agent in New York who belongs to a bicoastal agency, such as Gersh. This works because the commissions all come home to the same agency (though I'm sure the individual agents fight about it).

My situation is idiosyncratic because I live in Montreal, which is a small but functional market for material, and I need to raise my profile in the rest of Canada. I've found that Toronto agents really can't grok Montreal -- what with the French language, and the French culture, and French producers' attitude towards contracts (they're a good basis for further negotiation). And likewise it is hard for Montreal agents to cover Toronto effectively. They won't bump into producers at the Spoke Club, or Starbucks, or the film festival, or the WGC awards. And calling isn't the same as meeting.

Agents don't like split jurisdiction; they're worried they'll do a lot of work to sell a piece of material and the other agent will sell it out from under them. I talked to a couple of agents who wouldn't let me carve off Montreal. So I didn't sign with them.

Another way to get more attention is to sign with a good manager, if you can find one that wants you. Then both the manager and the agent are looking for work for you. You're paying much more commission (managers take 15% on top of the agent's 10%) but 75% of something is better than 100% of nothing. Just make sure that if you've got both, they're both actively repping you and not just booking the commission.

WATCH BEFORE THEY TAKE IT DOWN

The unaired Buffy pilot is up at YouTube, all 25 minutes of it. Interesting to see what they kept and what they changed for the actual pilot. For example, Willow is overweight and decidedly not Alyson Hannigan. Thus breaking a rule of Hollywood: the Ordinary Looking Chick is actually a Gorgeous Chick playing ordinary looking.

I haven't watched the whole thing -- was this supposed to be a half hour show?

DARREN LEVY INTERVIEW IS UP

I've uploaded the full recording of Darren Levy interviewing me on WNYU; if you haven't caught it yet, you can listen to it here. Or download it, for that matter.

IGNORE THIS ADVICE TOO, IF NECESSARY

I found your FAQ at craftyscreenwriting.com and was intrigued to find that you had indeed answered a question on what a high schooler should do if they are interested in filmmaking. To my dismay, I noticed you recommended against starting screenplays at a young age. After having immersed myself in thoughts of my story and images and pre-maturely made directorial decisions, I found myself losing interest and passion in continuing with this story as I have lately found it difficult to write short stories without them snowballing into screenplays. I am afraid that by the time I am of age to write full length scripts I will have long forgotten this tiny spark of an idea and I'll never get the chance to see it realized. Do you have any suggestions for a young person like me on how to break free of this current disheartened state which I'm sure comes to every aspiring filmmaker after bad news?

You're asking two questions. One is, what do I do when I'm disheartened? And the answer to that is, of course: perservere, and find a way to turn your experience into art. The more important question is: what do I do when I get advice that doesn't make sense to me. And the answer to that is: ignore it. If it makes sense, use it. If it doesn't make sense, don't use it. I could be wrong about not writing screenplays. Actually, I probably am wrong. At the time it seemed like good advice. Since then I've read one young writer's screenplay that is probably at least as good as my first one was when I went to film school. If you think in screenplay, write in screenplay.

The reason I said don't write screenplays was that it seemed to me that it's harder to get intelligent feedback on a screenplay than it is on a story. But that may no longer be true. Maybe your friends are just as clear on how to read a screenplay as they are on how to read a short story; or clearer. My stepson doesn't read much; he plays video games a lot. Maybe he'll be more visual than verbal.

So ignore that bit of advice if it seems wrong to you.

On the other hand do the other stuff: read, learn about style, watch lots of great movies and dissect them.

Also, don't worry about your tiny little spark of an idea. If it's that meaningful to you, you won't forget it. I'm pitching a TV drama series right now based on a play I had a reading of maybe 8 years ago, which was based in turn on a feature script, which was in turn based on a character in my thesis film back in 1990. And the first version of something is rarely the best.

Ultimately, there are a million different paths to becoming the person, and the craftsman, and the artist, that you ought to be. The straightest route is not always the best; the best paved route is not always the best; but the one that seems to you the best probably is the best, if you have the courage to pursue it. I could not have told you 20 years ago, when I was applying to film school, how this was ultimately going to work out. And I didn't stress about it much either. I just figured it was the thing to do. And it was.

[NOTE: I'm updating the section in my FAQ accordingly.]

THE BAROQUE CYCLE

I'm reading, and loving, King of the Vagabonds, which is dubbed "The Baroque Cycle #2." For those of you who haven't read any of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, it is an entertaining picaresque set all over Europe in 1683 or so, a time when Amsterdam is the wonder of the world, quicksilver is the key to mining silver, and the Thirty Years War is raging (or has raged) all over Europe torching villages. Stephenson is a science fiction writer, so he makes science fiction of it -- that is, he is as interested in the science as he is in the fiction. For some reason I find throway lines about "the cheap fabric just now coming out of Calico, in India" thrilling, as I do the knowledge that Amsterdam is where they dammed the Amstel River.

I am a font of useless knowledge.

The plot, for what it's worth, is an oddly diffident love story about a rogue who calls himself Half Cocked Jack for unfortunate clinical reasons having to do with a failed attempt to cure the pox, and a British girl he's rescued from the Turks, who has an eye for high finance, the smelting of silver, and obscure Hindoo sexual techniques.

For those of you who have read it: this book seems to be a repackaging of the middle part of the first hardcover book. Since I never got through Quicksilver, which lacked the love story and the Hindoo sexual techniques, I never got to King of the Vagabonds. Could someone kindly explain which of the paperbacks belong to which of the hardcovers, so I don't have to buy all of them or worse, go to a bookstore?

CRAZY. RIGHT?

It would be crazy to buy a brand new Intel Core Duo-sporting 2GHz+ MacBook entirely so I can waste time playing Civilization 4. Wouldn't it? Spend money to be able to waste huge amounts of time playing an addictive game? That's like buying a brand new car so you can drive to the pusher. Isn't it?

HMMMMM

[GEEKFEST] Hmmm. Now that Apple is making dual-boot-ready notebooks with the Intel Duo processor... in other words there's a version of Mac OS X that runs on the Intel Core Duo processor ... then maybe some clever person will configure a Dell or Toshiba running the Intel Core Duo processor to dual boot with Mac OS X?