HOW TO CLEAN A HOUSE, WRITE A SCREENPLAY, PRODUCE IT AND
MAKE A MILLION DOLLARS?The answer is. Start. Sweat Bullets, Expect obstacles, Expect No's ...but KEEP UP. Then finish. That's the abbreviated method.
If I were to add an in-between, it's while you're doing the Herculean labor of cleaning a house or writing a script, be in touch with your muses.
A script is fast to write. The reason is, that it's almost like secretarial work. (110 page Script takes 4 days flat to get on paper, but only after you have written the outline of the plot, which needs to come in dribs and drabs organically --with your muses in attendance. That can take several days.
I have a file on how to channel the screenplay --http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6448/sands.html
That one deals with writing a screenplay. This article you're reading now is just "how to hustle a screenplay")The writing requires Muses and so does a rewrite. Muses work best while you're cleaning a house, organizing offices, papers, boxes, gardening, on your knees with a wet rag or trowel, the truly MINDLESS work --- so that means you must be digesting the work of art, the script, or whatever you're writing, or rewriting, while you're truly, deeply mindless. For me that means I read the thing, or a chunk of it, and then just work at empty work. Cleaning.
You can clean the office sufficiently to reach the shelves at outer perimeter of room, reach the old screenplays there collecting dust and read a few pages, so you can have your unconscious working on those 'choices' while you clean.
You are looking to re-write and update the novel, cookbook, screenplay or magazine article. You want to sharpen it. MUSES are great at giving you the original premise, the inspiration but in rewrites, they're just as keen at little additions or twists.
Muses strike best at odd moments, while you pick thru piles of notes you've made for the last two decades, much of it related to that script, those characters in the novel. Muses even strike while you pick thru orange peels sorting trash for the compost pile. But the important thing is, you have loaded your R.A.M (random access memory) the top part of the drive, with a recent 'meal' of the script. That means having read a few dozen pages to get you digesting that work.
The central trick is to stay empty enough of self to notice the fine things -- the subtle things that 'come up.' Muses work with hazy clouds of molecules. Five fingered ideas don't drop into your lap. As muses make the job interesting, palatable, and if it's art, brilliant, stay light in the saddle. Don't play the radio. Work in silence.
Right this moment, every room of my house is like littered, Arizona highway crossed with city dump. I have sixty years of my novels, articles and screenplays on shelves but I can't get near one to xerox it and send it out as unplowed fields of grocery boxes filled with papers, old clothes, old shoes, lay in the way. Occasonally I find a single copy and send it to some lawyer, actress or potential producer to show around town, full knowing my printer doesn't work and I'll have a hard time coming up with copies. That's how actress Sally Kirkland got hold of PERCIVAL to give to Jim Carrey (who she was working with on BRUCE ALIMIGHTY) Her script was my last copy. The twit still has that script somewhere in the mire of her Hollywood penthouse. I HOPE. I offered her half the producer's fee to show it to him. No one else could play the addled Knight of the Grail except Carrey. She still hasn't and we're nigh on 3 months. Reason she states is that she hopes he will love her, and doesn't want him to feel USED! Get a grip Sally. REALITY check. He dates 20 years old, you and I were born in 1941!
So I work out of a nowhere starting point. If I can do it anyone can. My friends are useless. I live in utter poverty and chaos. I have very little space to PUT the boxes of novels, scripts in --- as my paunch bellied 18 months pregnant SON sprawls rent-free in this house for three years, and took the garage too! So I have absolutely no storage. I beg him to build a few shelves inside the entry closet. No way he has time. He's a pro carpenter. There must be a connection here. He who has no storage has LITTER. He who has carpenter for a son has no shelves. He who has son that looks like mare-pregnant-with-horse has no hope!
The non-paying rat fink kid has borrowed money to the tune of my monthly earnings and never once paid a cent of rent. At least I can see where my money went. His belly.
It's ok. I have a hugely comedic script on the fat bum. That's what it's called THE FAT BUM. I'll make my money back sooner or later. Because I KNOW HOW TO PRODUCE A MOVIE and write one.
But the person who undertakes to do either must have great bookshelves, scripts in perfect dust free condition, envelopes, stamps, a superb printer, agency stationery and stickers for the big envelopes. I have all of that right now. I am ready to launch STARPOWER LITERARY AGENCY. But one element is remiss.
I have thirty scripts written and they're in boxes somewhere. I have no storage. THE GARAGE belongs to the 36 year old son, his tools, his space to work, his tables. HE and his cretin co-worker the Salvadoran cracked my gorgeous, antique carved furniture that I had stored in the garage into pieces and dumped them
into the trash in street -- an English Victorian walnut armoire and a huge storage cabinet of fruitwood, carved doors, cracked into pieces so that they could dispose of them easily. They needed room for their tools. I was aghast. Shoulda known! Boys will be boys. Amend that. Demons will be demons.Read all the tough-love books out at library but I still live with scoundrel who did this to me --who only said 'it looked like junk to me.' He has this dumb twit wife, and they eat out three meals a day but can't pay a cent of rent to Mom. They honey moon in bed all day then take luxurious, very long hot showers at my expense. I have a bedroom for which I'm grateful. My two remaining bedrooms are wall to wall boxes, stacked to the ceiling, novels scripts sealed away, as I haven't been able to unpack in all the three years I rent here, and I still I have no place to put the contents of those boxes so I can work on them.
My guru Jules comes over; he says throw them out. THE BOXES. AND the KID. You should see my guru's garage. To the ceiling with antiques and gorgeous, sumptuous useable things, HIGHLY USEABLE. He tortures me by saying that he's going to throw them out. I'd kill for stuff like that. Don't know where I'd put those goodies. My house is full of stuff now. Let's add a few details here. I have thirty cats (Someone gave me a pregnant female in 1973.) These pusses roam the house; no way I'd put them outside in the Southern California, slightly cool, nights unless they wanted to go outside. They can use the always-open back door to look at the stars, see if there is wild life in the yard as a respite from three meals a day of home cooked turkey. So the cat spray, urine catbox smell, the hair, fleas, the filth AND the thirty always-moving bodies are also underfoot.
Another hazard is here, but it's not moving. THE TELEPHONE. My admiring friends call me for two hour long phone calls entailing my advising them, many times a day. I wouldn't care if they were paying clients, I'd clock them and bill them, but no, these are my friends. They want card readings, dice tossing for free. That is hours and hours on the phone. And my guru THE MASTER HIMSELF calls to dictate chapters to me, I type while he dictates. There's another few hours of wide awake time down the drain. Organize THAT!
When three a.m. rolls around and I'm unable to move from all the above, then my day starts. I must clean the house, type and make the rent. I who write movies like Billy Wilder does am forced to write, "Your JUPITER IS IN AQUARIUS," :>) glib, upbeat and charming. And email it off. And get 15$ back.
The despair in my heart is intense. I'm a brilliant screenplay writer and article writer but haven't printed out EVEN ONE finished script or sent ONE article to a magazine in two decades as that takes time, a printer, ink, ribbons, paper, stamp money, stationery and being able to find your scripts without tearing apart the garage and it takes printers and my printers don't work. (NOTE! THIS JUST IN. GOT LEXMARK TO WORK! Have a 31$ ink cartridge so I'm good to go for a bit!) For several years, have had no way to print one word. I could only email. Which means the 300$ worth of stationery marked STARPOWER LITERARY AGENCY was useless. NOW it's NOT! NOW we can produce films again. I'm back in BIZ. I have a 75$ book called "HOLLYWOOD FILM PRODUCTION COMMUNITY" with every phone number and every address, and what films they made, every studio exec... his fone and fax both, so guess what, now we can hustle scripts. You as a writer, now have an agent. You as a potential producer now have a fantastic writer in me, with pounds of scripts! You as an agent now have a producer to rep. Meaning we pool scripts, we set up meetings. LEAST they can pay a producer who walks in a script they want is about 300 thousand dollars.
My great guru pal heard that I couldn't print out his hallowed chapters and gave me a 40$ brand new Lexmark printer two yrs ago. I didn't know how to work it. I can't afford tekkies to show me. Or 30$ a bottle ink. So the printer took up space but did nothing. Like the son, the cats and like me and my boxes. Kind of a pattern don't you think? But now RANDALL (my tekkie pal came in from IDAHO and made printer work I'm back in biz! ) Fed him for two days and tolerated his ciggies and he fixed my life. PRETTY CHEAP, hmmmm? Do you know a house only smells of tobacco for about two days after a smoker leaves? Why do all those L.A. people get their knickers in such a twist?
Now I don't know about HOUSE AND GARDEN MAGAZINE, but FENG SHUI masters say that anything on floor, table, any drop of clutter in a room is bad feng shui and attracts no business, no money due to fact it gives you mental confusion. Chinese aren't a 6,000 year old culture for nothing. HERE is where I AM REMISS. Clients come see ma maison, they go eek. There was once this big star yoga teacher with lotsa movie star students who had a student come and consult me. That person got their reading, but went back and said "EEK" to the big teacher ergo she sends no more clients to ANITA for readings.And was heard expressing horror over how I live. Cat boxes, 20 cats, etc.
My guru comes to leave new tapes for transcribing, says EEK a dead VW in
your driveway. The garden is overgrown, plants lie in the paths, get some workers in to clip back the plants, BAD FENG SHUI. He added "now type my chapters for free."My heart doctor says "You won't live to thirty without open- heart surgery to repair those valves that don't close." I told him I was sixty and to stuff it.
I had my first stroke a few days before Xmas. I had been in a ten hour typing session. Suddenly it felt like a small animal suddenly moved inside my skull and instantly my eyesight blew. There was a bright flying saucer flashing back and forth beneath my left eye, flying in the air. And the Computer screen, (I'd just put in a ten hour day typing stars on it,) was a blur unless I turned my head and looked sideways at it. Now, I always knew strokes ran in my family. Therefore I ate lots of bioflavenoid rich oranges that had hung three years on the tree to be super ripe, in order to prevent it! I have no time for strokes and impaired eyesight! I have to sell a screenplay or at least an article but the problem is, I have to clean up my house to do that.
So I just started. I spent an hour on the front end of what really should be a week long "spring housecleaning". I started in the kitchen. Chased out a litter of kittens. How much harm can they do to a living room? PUHLENTY! I washed the floors with soap and bleach so I could stand to be there. Did dishes by hand. Dishwashers waste water and electricity besides which I don't have one. I emptied drawers near the sink that had mysteriously filled with black water. Too close to sink I guess.
I need to do several loads of clothing but can't with COMPUTERS turned on as clothing washer blow PC hard drives with the brownouts and surges they cause to current. So I turn off PC's. But believeing as I do that house cleaning is the best way for writers to reflect and connect with their muses, as I juggled cutlery, drawers, the subtle thought that came to me: Here's how to do this huge job of organizing my house and writing the screenplay and sending it out, when I have 30 cats, thousand of boxes, kids a stroke and a dinky heart valves?
It came to me! Just START AND FINISH. And in between, listen for inner cues. The Muses. So as I clean toilets, bathroom floors, I wait for thoughts to come. Inspirations. Views, PHILOSOPHY maybe. Even clues to how to rewrite DEAD GIVEAWAY so there's a suspenseful last reel.
The first thought came. It was this. Martha Stewart would tackle any chore, even a week long housecleaning, with the MARTHA HEAD TRIP that it was absolutely possible to do it in one night! Martha Stewart would probably go at it like a beagle after a rabbit and probably knock it down to a single night too! SO I decided to see if I could pull a MARTHA! THREE YEARS OF UNDONE WORK, MESS, ROOMS STACKED TO THE CEILING WITH BOXES so you couldn't enter the door, find a blouse and yet no storage to put the mess IN.
Knock this mess down as my guru had told me to do, as the famous yoga teacher had implied had to be done after having spent an entire day talking to people who wanted to talk only about themselves until I was lying on the floor answering them. I had friends that would call me at three a.m. So then it came to me. UNPLUG THE PHONES! I did it, amazed that I could.
I cleaned until dawn. Then fell into bed. Not a UNISOM sleeping pill left but I didn't need one. NEXT DAY: Today is the big day. THE OFFICE. How can I keep from distracting myself? The phones are still disconnected, so that's a help. I tip toe through the maze of boxes, turn on PC, review my internet mail already. 90% spam. "Lengthen your penis, lower your mortgage, make money at home stuffing envelopes." ERASE it all.
Now, undistracted, this vast plain, this infinite possibility of a DAY stretches in front of me. The day I tackle the OFFICE. The one that I couldn't wade through to get a silk party blouse last Friday night. (I had to wear a burlappy cotton daytime dress to read palms at a Bev Hills party!) So now I tackle the office that is wall to wall boxes stacked three high. Turn radio on. NO! Today is office cleaning day. Don't distract yourself! I have empty boxes for putting stuff in. I have my eyeglasses as I will be going through 40,000 documents to see what is getting
tossed. BOXES and boxes of documents. OK. I"m rolling up my sleeves. I've just had my morning coffee and bible bread. Quelle Excitement! I know Martha would approach a house cleaning assignment like this (seeing as it's by a real, FILM ARTIST type lady, about to get back into the biz) with excitement! Here goes nothing. Meanwhile, as I CLEAN my BAD FENG SHUI, you read this and tell me what you think about producing. To tempt a producer to do your flick. What can you do?1.) Raise part financing, has to be in the multi millions. This is very hard. You need to have a STAR attached first, which stars won't do anymore. And then they will fund the making of film.
2.) Find a star and get letter from him saying he'll do the role if the film finds financing because he loves the script. FIND a STAR? GET LETTER? HOW? Put a loaded gun to his head, contract and pen to his right hand. That usually might tempt a star to SAY he'll do your flick. But the important thing is getting a letter from him, on his stationery saying "I WILL STAR IN THIS FILM IT GETS MADE." Unfortunately, stars don't like to write that since Kim Basinger got sued for 32 million and lost her ass because she promised she'd do Boxing Helena. And then when they raised money, she wouldn't and didn't, she was busy doing L.A. Confidential. The Producers who sued her made way more money off her than the flick ever earned them. So now stars do not give letters saying they are attached to a project.
3) A better way is this: Let STAR produce it and take producers fees, you get some back end points. For PERCIVAL a loony tunes guy is req'd. Jim Carrey is it, but ya know, I can't even get my pal and longtime client Sally Kirkland who's working with him day and nite on Bruce Almighty to show him my script and I promised her half the producers' fees! She sez "I'm in love with him. I don't want him to think I'm using him!' So she backed off. She also wouldn't pay for 2 yrs of free phone readings so Sally? All bets are off. I'm telling all on you! I'm not your friend anymore.
4.) Another way is to Give the big STAR that you ran into at healthfood store, an option on your script for six months to a YEAR for free. You 'deputize' that star to produce it, as he has contacts. As Star didn't buy the option for the usual ten thousand bucks, you write your own producers' profits into the contract as backend points, i.e. you get 50 % of his producers fees/ profits.
5.) If you don't run into stars at stores in L.A., call his manager, his person, his lawyer, the people who think for him. They will always read a script submissions. They are looking for a produceable for him. NOT his agent. Agents only want big fat cash on the barrelhead offers. No, get the friends who think for him to read the script, 'cover it,' interest him and let them be in on it. "Be in on it" means a percentage. It might mean a percentage of YOUR percentage. If he's really a friend to the star, he knows he'll be given producing rights/ fees automatically as his star friend has class and he found the script. 'Found' also belongs in quotes as it refers to the serendipity of someone crossing paths with a super script that's right for the pal star.
6) Now, why we don't go to big AGENTS. Big stars' agents want only two things:
a.) you put his l0 million dollar salary in ESCROW before they'll even read the script and tell him when you start shooting as big star needs to have an opening in sched.b.) their own writers, the big 2 million a script writers they already have. They don't want to package a star with NOBODY writers cuz they don't have l0% of the nobody and it would be a pittance. They have writers under representation contracts. SO THEY CAN "PACKAGE."
7). FROM THIS YOU WILL DEDUCE a. that you should never approach a big packaging agent just because you wrote your script for one of their stable of stars unless you can get the AGENCY to sign you FIRST. The agency can sign you several ways: as a producer or as the writer. Packagers love to own the writer lock stock. SOME agencies do want new sharp writers. Usually age twelve. You're too old? Then send in a 20 yr old pretending to be you. THAT WORKS BIGTIME!
It sure helps to have a big packaging agent. And I hear from the street that young, new writers ARE getting signed by these really big guys cuz they want fresh scripts. Hollywood wants the Young person's 'take'. So a big agcy would sign a Hollywood based fresh, young writer if he could show them a stack of student awards, scripts, all spec scripts that never have been seen, never shopped around.This last is important. ANY 'no's circulating out there (for your scripts, where studios read them, 'COVERAGE' it's called) it looks bad for you. So no coverage is better than bad coverage. You can bury bad coverage by renaming a script and renaming yourself so the computer at studio can't locate data on you.
NOW, it's still possible to get a lucky hit and find a star. This happened to Michael Black when he met Kevin Costner with DANCES WITH WOLVES in hand. He had a second or half minute of access to him (I believe he met Costner's massage therapist or something,) and a yr later Kevin read it. So, the thing is, carry script full time. That massage therapist may have access!
How to get a celeb to sign on? FIRST: Live in Hollywood. Second, Go where THE celebs are or where their massage therapists and publicists ARE: If you need a young dude for your action flick, Go to The Viper Room to dance, go to boutiques to try on overpriced designer duds healthfood stores, gyms, yoga instructors, chiropractors and high colonic irrigation givers. I saw Greta Sacchi at Gooches. She's not bankable but she's a start. I saw the German actor from Das Boot there, too. Joergen Prochnow, ditto Sidney Poitier. Problem is, the three of 'em together are unbankable.' YOU NEED stars that studios hanker after! That is why I developed the SANDS METHOD of getting a project bought which does not require going to stars. I'll tell you that one in a sec, but let me finish up on this part as Serendipity may put you in front of Madonna. That happened to me. I told her about the script, MY FACE FOR THE WORLD TO SEE which my pal wrote, she was very kind, said 'no problem, send it to Ovitz, my agent". Dummie here should have had a copy of the script on me, then I'd have said Madonna, you read it, you give it to your agent. I was at a WGA screening. WHY the hell didn't I have a script on me?Or ten or twenty!
Always carry your SCRIPT, DEAL MEMO saying 'feel free to read it, I absolutely will not SUE you, even if you do a similar film" i.e. a RELINQUISH RIGHTS contract, so they'll read it, carry right WITH YOU, not out in the CAR!!!! I have a copy of that contract an agency gave me, somewhere in a harddrive. Will dig it out.
If you print up a Script it has to be typo free. If you have typos, they think you're stupid and won't trust your writing. Any stationery included in the pcgk has to look so super beautiful and neat, and you may include letters from a Rabbi who liked script. Felt it had 'humanity.' And include a SYNOPSIS. First, Do the log line in one sentence. "It's about a hired gun at CIA who turns on the Agency. " that's what you tell the star when you meet him in the carrot juice section of Whole Foods. "Hey I loved you in TERMINATOR. I just got this script from the xerox ten minutes ago and I run into you. It's GOD talking! Your company can produce this, I give you a free option for six months to shop it around." Actors are like trout always lunging after flies. Roles. They believe in miracles like SERENDIPITY! When you tell them GOD made them run into you, they think you're that writer who sold Costner the best thing in his life. They realize that they can produce, control the whole thing, you relinquish all rights to sue him and do this very clearly. If you ever make a film about CIA guys turning on agency I will not be a bother. That's guaranteed. Say that you trust them because the role is so right for them, that with THEM attached, this film will get made by any big studio and remind the star that he can have the producers' fees...NO OPTION MONEY required.....You say all that in one breath, and mean it. And have your word be your FIAT. You will get them to take it and read it. To get anything in life, you have to tell them with absolute truth, YOU WILL GET A, B AND C from me. I just need X from you. Simple formula that gets you what you want.
Maybe with my script PERCIVAL I shouldnt try for some big celeb like Jim Carrey. HE DOESN'T NEED THAT. Some up and coming comedian from Britain is better, or maybe an over the HILL like Robin Williams would be better. Or a star who needs image repair. Someone who OD'd in his hotel room, bopped teens or someone sent to the drunk tank. Charlie Sheen or someone. Someone who has SINNED. Where does the owner of the VIPER ROOM, JOHNNY DEP hang out? (Someone died in his VIPER ROOM night club and he went to live in France.)
So if you're good at saying ten things in one sentence with a Christian face and good at hitting the star boutiques, bars, joints, always carry a script and pre-signed release!
THIS IS A REAL PICTURE of how it is. So, HOW do we USE the current state of the system to break in? That brings me to the Sands method. We don't circulate as writers. We circulate as producers who own the script already. That is because the main thing nobody wants to deal with is the writer because all the big lawsuits were about writers trying to nail producers who made films vaguely like their script.
Writer ART BUCHWALD WON. Took paramount to the cleaners on Eddy Murphy COMING TO AMERICA FILM. The lady who sued Spielberg for E.T. won more in lawsuit than she'd have made if he'd optioned it when he first got script over the transom. (no agent.)
So don't be the writer. Deputize a friend to produce it. Appoint a friend. Pick the one who's at lawschool or the one with the good suit, nice shoes as she/ he will go into studio and pitch it. I am a great agent so I as the agent figure make the phone appts. I pitch idea, show them one page synopsis by fax, then fone back and close the appt. I do that with ease. "Hello, I'm Anita at the Starpower Literary Agency. We run the L.A. Free Screenwriters' Co-op, (true). We have dozens of scripts from our kids but one is so brilliant, I thought I'd let you see it." It was optioned by another student, a lawyer, Or a rich kid, who can come over, pitch it to you."
THEY want people to pitch scripts. Want it like crazy. Dawn Wells, head Paramount Studios exec, wrote a book where she said WE LOVE to see every script in town. We want to see every new writer. We want to be the first person to see the piece. We count ourselves lucky by how many new writers come to see us daily."
So that's the rainbow you ride in on. As beginners, OUR scripts have the same ability to be bought, admired, shopped around, and filmed as the JOE ESTERHATZ scripts that earned him 2 mil each.
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