What the Deal Memo Locks In
Know your three before the phone rings.
The long form takes four months. The deal memo takes an afternoon. Everybody treats the memo like a placeholder, and then the memo is what the lawyers argue from for the next year.
A deal memo is two or three pages that say who's buying, what they're buying, for how much, and on what schedule. It's short because it's meant to be. Most of them bind you on the points they name, which is why the points they leave out are the expensive part.
Watch what people fight over later. Credit, because the memo said “written by” and didn't say what happens when a second writer comes on. Rewrite steps, because it said one rewrite and a polish and nobody defined polish. Bonus triggers, because it promised a production bonus and never said whether a greenlight or the first day of photography sets it off. Reversion, because it said nothing at all.
Little Miss Sunshine sold to Fox Searchlight at Sundance in 2006 for around ten and a half million. Deals that fast get agreed in a hallway and the contracts finished later. That's normal and it isn't the problem. The problem is being the one in the hallway without having decided which three points you won't move on.
Know your three before the phone rings. It's hard to think about while it's happening.
A package is what lets somebody else write a check. The cast list is the piece that moves the number.
Anita Loos was the first woman staff screenwriter in Hollywood. The more interesting fact is the sixty eight years of work that came after.
An intercut is not a transition. Three questions that tell you whether you have one, with The Godfather and The Silence of the Lambs as proof.
Text scenes fail when you write the transcript. Write the gap instead: the typing indicator, the delete, the message nobody answers.
Your opening scene is the oldest thing in the file. Four questions to ask it, with The Godfather and Sunset Boulevard as the working examples.
Part two on film sales: when a sales agent commissions the license fee, when a distributor's margin is already priced in, and where the fees stack.
Frances Marion was the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood and the first woman to win an Oscar for writing. A woman gave her the first job.
A sales agent works for you. A distributor is the buyer. Calling the wrong one first costs first-time filmmakers real money.
California’s film credit now pays up to 35% on a $750 million pool. Writers are non-qualified spend, and here is why that still matters.
Almost nobody will sign a writer’s NDA. What a submission release actually says, and where to protect the work instead.
Nora Ephron told Wellesley graduates to be the heroine, not the victim. For screenwriters, that line is a business instruction, not a sentiment.
A ticking clock is a deadline the audience can count. Not a mood, a number that gets smaller while they watch. A deadline with no consequence is a calendar.
A button is the last beat of a scene, the line that makes the cut feel decided. The best one is already in the scene, one beat before you stopped.
A phone call takes away everything you usually use. It's only half a scene, and you write the other half: what each person does, and what each one can't see.
Chain of title is the paper trail that proves who owns the story. If a lawyer can't draw a clean line from the idea to you, the script can't be bought.
Clare Boothe Luce knew what it took to get into those rooms. Having your own money isn't about being rich. It's about being able to say no and to walk out.
Voiceover isn't cheating, but captioning the frame is. Goodfellas and Sunset Boulevard show the difference, and one test tells you which one you wrote.
The good sex scenes are negotiations. Write the decision, not the choreography, and remember the agent and the line producer read the pages too.
Lenders don't buy scripts. Fifteen minutes of research tells you whether the name on your desk is equity or debt, and whether your pitch has any chance.
Difficult is what they call you when you ask who is paying and want the credit in writing. It describes the inconvenience, not your temperament.
Withheld information is not a twist, it is a trick. A real twist uses what the audience already had and shows them they read it wrong.
On-the-nose dialogue kills a scene because it leaves the audience nothing to do. The fix is not vagueness. It is giving the character something else to want.
The buyer asks who else is looking. That answer, not your draft, is what moves the number. What agents are really managing is scarcity.
Georgia pays up to 30 percent back on qualified spend. That credit decides where your movie shoots, often before anyone reads your pages.
Too emotional is the note you get when the scene is working and the room is uncomfortable. Keep the line. Cut the three around it that explain it.
A flashback that only explains is a footnote. The one that works takes something the audience already watched and makes it mean the opposite.
A character whose job is to agree cannot generate a scene. Give her a want that costs your protagonist something, or cut her lines entirely.
Net profit is a defined term written by the people who have to pay it. Negotiate fixed compensation, production bonuses and gross-defined escalators instead.
Turnaround is not a death sentence. It is a number the next buyer has to clear before a single new page exists. Columbia put E.T. in turnaround.
At B Story Media, I go to film festivals to meet writers, producers and industry insiders. Catalina Film Festival is my favorite, and here's why.
Networking is hard for an introvert, but it's part of a writer's life. Here's how I prepare for writers' events, break the ice and follow up afterward.
Lighting, framing, editing and color grading shape a scene's mood and subtext. Here's why I think screenwriters should write with the camera in mind.
My rewrite of #WHATNEXT won Best Writer at Austin Film Festival Under the Stars, and the short also took the People's award. What a night!
#WHATNEXT, starring Marietta Melrose, was invited to screen at Austin Film Festival Under the Stars. I rewrote the script for this comedy short.
I'm so happy for Marietta Melrose: #WHATNEXT was invited to screen at the LA Femme International Film Festival at Regal Cinemas in downtown LA.