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Come on, writers, script
your futures By
Patrick Goldstein, Los Angeles Times [The Big Picture column] There's
even a legion of actor-filmmakers like Clint Eastwood and George
Clooney. But as
the writers strike enters its third week, I think the future belongs to
a tantalizing new hyphenate: the writer-entrepreneur. The
choices were pretty obvious: Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, John
Lasseter, George Lucas. . . . As the names spilled out, I realized they
all have something in common. They're
filmmaker-entrepreneurs, artists-turned-businessmen who helped start
their own companies to further their work, became financially
independent and created a world that operates under a radically
different set of rules from the vacuous studio assembly lines. It's
telling that the current strike is about new media yet both sides seem
to be following old-school models. Writer
Guild members, listen up. There is a lesson here.
Gilroy
had a script that was dead in the water until a total outsider -- a
Boston real estate developer named Steve Samuels -- said if Gilroy
could get a star and stick to a budget, he'd bankroll the film. "I'd
say the experience was more about my wising up than becoming a
visionary," he explained the other day. "But
the moment I started chasing private-equity money, it didn't take me
long before I'd realized that I'd short-circuited the formula for
getting a greenlight. I didn't need studio approval. All I needed was
one guy who believed in the movie." "This
is all everybody is talking about on the line. They're not talking
about healthcare. They're going, 'Wow, is there a different way to get
our movies and TV shows made?' " Scott
Frank, who wrote hits like "Minority Report" before directing "The
Lookout" this year, has been speaking with Samuels about financing a
new film. David
Twohy, writer-director of "The Chronicles of Riddick," has lined up
financing for a new thriller, "A Perfect Getaway," from Relativity
chief Ryan Cavanaugh, who also bankrolled "3:10 to Yuma." Mandate
has a similar partnership with writer-director Sam Raimi of
"Spider-Man" fame. Mandate also has a writers program in which, in
return for initially cutting their fee, writers can get 25% of the
gross after a film goes into profit and have approval rights on hiring
the movie's cast and director. "But
that value doesn't get unlocked in the studio system. If writers are
willing to share our risk, then we're willing to give them a lot of
control and share in the profits too." But
those days are gone. The stars became free agents long ago. In the last
few years, with billions of private-equity dollars flooding the
business, the studios have lost their lock on financing too. But as
more entertainment migrates to the Internet, where distribution is
basically free to anyone with a computer, the studios will lose that
monopoly as well. If the
last couple of weeks are any indication, with clips from out-of-work
comedy writers popping up every day, the Web could be littered with new
must-see video sites by Christmas. Remember:
After barely a year in existence, YouTube was bought by Google for
$1.65 billion. On the Internet, good ideas travel fast. "Once
the independent financiers start going directly to writers, things
could change really fast. I ask myself every week -- why aren't we all
working with them? Look at the movies they've made. They are the new
Medicis." None
of the films had a big budget, but fiscal discipline and artistic
autonomy often fuels creativity. "Ten
million dollars to $30 million is where ambiguity stays alive, where
you can have complexity in storytelling," Gilroy says. "When you get up
to a certain budget number with studio films, the bad guys have to all
wear black hats." Real
change in today's world comes from the energy and ideas of
entrepreneurs, not from labor negotiations. To take control of their
work, writers have to cut out the middleman. Marshall
Herskovitz and Ed Zwick, who just struck a deal with NBC to air their
"Quarterlife" Web-only dramatic series, will reap most of the rewards,
since they own the show. Not
every writer has the clout of that duo to attract outside investors.
But as the Internet has proved time and again, game-changing ideas are
more likely to come from an unknown 26-year-old newcomer than a
fiftysomething veteran. Radiohead
and Prince have both bypassed the soul-killing tangle of retailers and
promotion people by releasing their latest records themselves (with
Radiohead using the Internet as its distributor, even letting its fans
set the price of the record themselves). If you
want a sweet upfront paycheck, you may not have the stomach for it. But
after seeing studios bowdlerize their scripts, many writers will swap a
big payday for more control. Twohy says that after Relativity read his
script, "They told me, 'Script approved as-is.' I've never heard a
studio ever say that." Software
entrepreneur Marc Andreessen, who helped found Netscape, makes an
eloquent argument on his blog (blog.pmarca.com) that a prolonged strike
could undermine the studios' control of production and distribution,
ushering in a new showbiz model built in the image of Silicon Valley. NBC's
Jeff Zucker can sneer at the paltry dollars to be made from selling TV
shows on iTunes all he wants. But if
old media keep pulling their product away, surely the day isn't far
away when Steve Jobs will bankroll his own programming to keep our
iPods full of compelling entertainment. So
writers should keep their eyes on the prize. Getting a few more pennies
of digital loot is just a beginning, not an end. The ultimate goal
should be finding ways to own a piece of your own work.
~ ~ ~  Related
Talent Development Resources pages:Writing.: quotes etc writing resources : interviews articles sites blog writing : teen/young adult... Writing books Writing articles The Inner Writer site The Inner Entrepreneur site ~ ~ ~ |
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Just ask Tony Gilroy, the writer-director of "Michael
Clayton," a nervy thriller that's won critical raves this fall. 
