For those of you unable to make the lecture today at Chicago Screenwriters Network. I’ll post the full content shortly, but for now, let me ask you this:
Do you need an agent to start your career as a writer?
Short answer is… No.
Do you need to submit and place well in screenwriting contests to start your career as a filmmaker?
No and no.
Do you need to go to L.A to start a career in the business?
No, no, and NO!
I stand before you a true convert to the new religion: DIY Film-making. This is not a new church, you might say. Low budget movies have been around since William K.L. Dickson filmed Fred Ott’s Sneeze in 1894. John Cassavetes made films for low money. So did Orson Wells, who made bad wine commercials to finance his low-budget Shakespeare adaptations… Robert Rodriguez literally wrote the book, and major directors like Spike Lee and Aronofsky getting their starts on the cheap. Credit-card filmmaking has been around forever, the watchword being FILM making. The early efforts of ALL these were made ON FILM– which brings us to what is new: TECHNOLOGY.
What is new is being able to pick up a Canon 7D, or an Alexa, or a Red, or any of the Sony HD cams, and shoot a movie saying EXACTLY what you want to say, maintaining full control of both content and distribution. Because what is also new are digital platforms to sell your product that didn’t exist even ten years ago. Platforms that have leveled the playing field and democratized the entire process of the art.
We take these rapid advances for granted these days. It’s the speed of the change that is often truly breathtaking, and the wondering on where it all will lead. So what’s that got to do with you, Good Reader?
Here is Hollywood. Here is the true 1%. Behind this is the gated community. The kidney-shaped pools and impeccable hedge rows. Million Dollar mansions and Lamborghini excess. The Country Club of which you are most definitely NOT a member. You cannot apply to this club. The gatekeepers know you are not of their cloth. They can SMELL you, Good Reader. Can smell your WANTING, your desperation to join them on the inside. They have set up impenetrable motes and ramparts to stop you. How will you scale these walls?
For your part, you have always played by the rules. You wrote query letters to find an agent, followed the message boards, paid through the nose to take advice from the gurus and bought their fucking books even though it didn’t much seem to help. You sent into as many screenwriting contests as you could, put your scripts up on Inktip or other websites that claimed the inside ear of “Industry Professionals”–meaning the 1%.
You did all these things with a belief in your work as a writer. You just wanted a chance, a chance to… what? To bag an agent, take meetings, pitch and get sent out on assignment work, work your way into the Writer’s Guild, pump out one-two-five movies, establish a reputation and make your rate, TO HAVE A CAREER!
To get yourself on the INSIDE. Beyond the Hollywood gate…Old School-style.
People, Old School is dead.
Some thoughts on the new religion, coming your way….next week!
