Now, didn’t I say two weeks ago that “you don’t need to get better at pitching?” Yes. I did say that. But if you’re new here (and there are quite a few of you the last few weeks, hi!) or if you skimmed — it’s okay, I skim — the real crux of that piece was that pitching favors people who’ve done it already before. If you are out there pitching on big studio writing jobs and haven’t had one yet, you are at a disadvantage. If you’re pitching an indie drama but have only ever written schlocky horror, people aren’t really going to give you the benefit of the doubt.

And that is why I am not out there pitching OWA’s. I’m pitching an original idea, firmly building off of some of the other stuff I’ve done.

What’s the format of a successful pitch? Well, give me a few weeks to see if this sells and then I can let you know exactly how I formatted it.

But here’s roughly how I build one, structurally…

• Start with a personal story — one that’s both the genesis of the idea, and hopefully speaks to what the theme of the movie is going to be.

• Introduce the main character as the person living out the story of the movie, both dramatically (plot) and thematically (emotion). I also provide some actor comps so people can orient themselves while I talk.

• Break down the story. The first act is the most detailed, second act less so, third act least of all. gets more time than the third. Introduce the co-lead and antagonist (again with comps). Hit the major setpieces, but mostly hit the emotional moments: that’s what people remember.

• Keep the story simple. You cannot pitch a twisty windy expectation subverting idea over zoom to two people who have been on their computers all day and are doing their best to pay attention.

• BREVITY IS KING! This should all be LESS THAN 20 MINUTES.

• Bring a lookbook. I’ve written before about how writers don’t need pitch decks. But this isn’t that. It’s a 28 page lookbook to show the vibes, world, characters, comps… Something to look at besides my face for 20 minutes.

• End on emotion. Story is only a vehicle for making people feel things, especially in the context of selling an idea. So I have reverse engineered the story to be one that ends (hopefully) in an emotionally satisfying way.

Then I’m done. That’s it.

Looking for more practical pitch tips? I’ve written some of those before here too.

Wish me luck. I will report back more in depth as I get through this pitch cycle over the course of the next few weeks and let you know what worked, what didn’t work, and what I’d change…

One additional pitch…

The Hollyweird Hang is back!

I went into it in detail last week, but once a month, paid subscribers to the newsletter can log onto zoom with me and talk through any and all questions they have. We cover agents, managers, queries, notes, pitches, page one problems… you name it. Just a chance to talk it through which is sometimes all you need.

The founding rate for early subscribers (and thank you to those of you who already are) is just $8/mo. But here’s the Why Now… that rate is going to increase July 15th to $10/mo. Last month’s free test run was a really great time and I keep getting sent great questions here and in my DM’s that are just too complicated (and important) to try to answer in a brief message.

So here’s our chance to actually dig in.

You can subscribe here.

Hope to see you at the next hang, August 5th.

I received a question from Phil this week at that we discussed at the Hollyweird Hang on Wednesday that I keep thinking about. I have often written here about how filmmaking exists at the intersection of art and commerce, and I think this is a great case study for exactly that intersection.

Without getting in the weeds, Phil is working on a genre spec and his reps have hit him with the classic Hollywood note… “Can’t the script just open with the good stuff?”

In this instance, that’s “couldn’t the script begin with a strong demonstration of the genre elements of the project?” They want something big and flashy right away. Our writer wants to take his time, establishing the world and character, so that when the cool stuff happens it’s more emotionally meaningful.

So the question is…

Who’s right?

The annoying thing about art is… nobody. Or both sides. Depends.

The commercial case for “just getting to it” is a strong one. Readers are always skimming, always looking for an excuse to set this one down. Try to imagine your reader is on the treadmill after work, or sitting in a car on the way back from a drinks meeting. If they don’t know what’s going on by page 5… they’re not interested.

The creative case for withholding, and using the time to establish character is also real. We hate something that feels predictable, stale, trope-y. Neither side is necessarily wrong… Which means the answer isn’t “listen to the notes” nor is it “listen to your heart.”

It’s the secret, third choice that exists at the intersection of art & commerce.

Do both.

Can you find a specific, genre-leaning image or moment? A mood setting tonally loaded way to indicate genre without being generic?

Your reps are not wrong. We need to know what kind of movie/show we’re in for, pretty darn early. But figuring out a way to do that that is still artistically satisfying to you the artist… that’s the real work of being a professional writer.

This is worth saying now — the notes that are about “selling” the thing (which are by and large going to come from reps and execs) are not the enemy. They are the necessary tension of working in this very very very expensive medium. Learning to live within that tension, is what separates the pros from the not quite pros.

Phil’s situation, like many notes situations, is solvable, by focusing on the “spirit of the note” or the “note behind the note” rather than the note itself.

Kaitlin, who also asked a question at the Hang, had a different, but related problem.

Her reps don’t have a specific note about a specific project. They’ve stopped responding to anything she sends. Every spec or idea feels like it’s noted to death, or just not vibed with… at all.

This is where the notes become a problem.

Early in my TV writing career, I sold a show! Yay! And then began development of the show. It was a torrent of never ending, conflicting notes. They were contradictory, extremely specific, extremely vague, extremely “not this but… I don’t know what else.” The kind of notes that make you want to quit. Or just hand your computer over to the studio executive and say “You know what, why don’t you take a crack at writing it?”

I complained about my experience to a much more experienced TV writer, expecting some sympathy. But he instead offered something that’s stuck with me ever since.

“Your job is not to transcribe.”

Taking notes seriously is not the same thing as taking them as sacrosanct and executing them literally. More than anything, a note is a symptom — it tells you something isn’t landing for the reader. But the note itself is almost never the diagnosis, and even more rarely the actual cure. If an exec says “I don’t like the ending,” the ending is probably not actually the problem. Something leading up to the ending is the problem, and the ending is just where they felt it. Your job is to find that and to fix it in a way that’s true to the thing you actually want to write. Sometimes the fix looks like doing exactly what’s been asked of you, but more often than not it doesn’t at all. But as long as you’re fixing what feels broken, you’re never going to hear a complaint about not taking the note literally.

This, of course, is not permission to ignore the notes. Please do not take “your job is not to transcribe” and twist it into “your job is do whatever you want, and stuff them.” Because that’s not the job. That would, in a sense, be easier. The job is actually to exist within both the art you want to make, and the reality that you’re doing so in a very expensive commercial medium. Ideally, you should be solving the problems the notes address. You should simply be doing it your way.

Which brings me back to Kaitlin’s question about her reps.

If it’s one note, on one project — that’s something solvable. But if it really is a never ending “this one didn’t quite work for us,” then that’s something else entirely. Something that warrants a serious conversation (which you are allowed to have, see last week’s newsletter). Because if it’s this way for everything, the question shouldn’t be “how do I fix this?” it should be “are we even trying to do the same kind of thing?”

One possibility is… yes, you are all still on the same page, and they’re just seeing a pattern before you the writer. This happens! My manager once told me “you never really just throw a fastball right down the middle, do you?” Which… ouch. But also, true!

But, the second possibility is… this relationship has run its course. A rep who’s tired of hearing from you, and tired of trying to sell you is going to stop trying. And there is nothing worse for a writer’s career than an unenthusiastic partner. People grow and change and so do writers and their agents. Sometimes we grow apart. And it’s not really something that writers can fix, when it does happen.

Here’s the test I use to tell the difference:

Can you find the version of their note that makes the work better — truer to what you’re trying to do, not just more palatable to them? If yes, you have a craft problem, and craft problems are solvable, usually by finding your own version of the third thing Phil needs on page one. If the note would require you to build something that isn’t yours anymore — if executing it means transcribing instead of writing, changing the entire thing it is that you do — you don’t have a craft problem. You have a relationship problem, and no amount of notes calls are going to fix that.

Both of these questions — Phil’s and Kaitlin’s — came up at the very first Hollyweird Hang this past Wednesday. Thank you to the 30+ people there who asked questions like this, about their craft, their careers, and the tricky parts of our business that exist somewhere between the two.

If you missed it, here’s the recording. (It’s standard def — I’ve got a ticket in with Zoom about that, promise the next one’s 1080p.) It’ll be up through July 15th, then it moves behind the paywall for good.

That’s what the Hang is for. Not a webinar. Not a lecture. An hour where you bring the actual thing you’re stuck on and we figure it out live.

First Wednesday of every month. Founding rate is $8/month instead of $10, locked in for as long as you stay subscribed — through July 15th only.

Claim the Founding Rate

Can’t make it live? Recording lands in your inbox either way.

That was just one project. Isn’t this career a numbers game? Aren’t you always saying that, Colby? Didn’t you say diversifying was the “one simple trick to survive in Hollywood?”

In 2021 I also pitched on a studio reboot of a kid’s franchise (which has conspicuously not been rebooted since this pitch), an adaptation of a horror novella with shiny director (and producer) attached, a big four quadrant thing, a big sci-fi studio job… the list goes on. You can read everything I did in 2021 here.

At the end of the year (when I wrote that review) I looked back and realized just how much time (months and months) of the year was spent chasing jobs to no avail.

Now… could I have gotten a little bit better at pitching some of these? Sure. Could I have chosen better, spent time on more commercially viable material? Maybe.

But I think there’s a larger force at play, and it’s one that we don’t really talk about enough in Hollywood.

As things get ever more conservative, maybe pitching is simply… not for everyone.

At the end of the day, a pitch is asking for trust. You’re speaking with someone — a producer, a star, a financier — asking them to invest time (and/or money, ideally money) in a promise. A promise that you will deliver something valuable. And the single most important factor in the calculus those people are doing, when millions of dollars are potentially on the line? It’s not your pitch. It’s not your “Why Now” or your “Why Me.” It’s your track record.

Have you done this kind of thing before?

Which means that the pitch, as a way of doing business, favors not only towards the people who are the best at sales, but also the people who are most well established.

Not only is the more established writer probably better at pitching (sorry they just probably are) but they also are coming in pre-vetted, with a track record that’s a little bit easier to bring to your boss and then your boss’ boss.

Hollywood has unfortunately become a business of risk mitigation. Just listen in on any quarterly shareholders call with these “movie” companies. It’s all about optimizing, lowering costs, and returning value to the shareholder. Not really cool ideas from really cool artists.

And the transition into McKinsey Optimization has meant there are simply fewer opportunities. It’s not just that LA production is down… there are fewer major movie releases. Fewer big movies, way fewer mid-size movies.

And as a result, there is a lot less assignment work.

The life blood of the Hollywood screenwriter for decades has been the OWA, or Open Writing Assignment, a job that a studio or production company with money would offer up to the best writer with the best pitch.

The pool of available Open Writing Assignments has substantially shrunk compared to even when I was starting out, which was substantially smaller than the 80’s, 90’s, and early 2000’s. As that pool shrinks, the resumes of the people you’re competing against get better and better. Because they have mortgages to pay (and yes, they came up in a time when a solid Hollywood career could still buy you a house). And the more you’re in direct competition with people who have already done this many times over, the less your really really good pitch is going to matter to a company’s bottom line. Why not choose the safer bet?

So to go pitch an idea, whether an assignment or an original, is harder than ever. And the time! The time is the real killer, because in the time that I developed probably 8-10 films for other people who didn’t ultimately hire me, I could have written 2 very good spec screenplays. Or gone off and directed a cool short film as a directing sample. Or heck, probably all three of those things. Plus some time to… I don’t know… have a life?

And this isn’t to say that all pitching is pointless. There are contexts where it makes sense. Especially in the circumstance where you have a preexisting relationship with someone, or they’ve specifically reached out to you because of your specific background or life experience, or if it’s a project you yourself have originated. If someone’s already sold on you, then yes, pitch away.

But this is not the situation most early career writers (myself in 2021 included) find themselves in. And when that’s the case, and when the entire system is deliberately tilted against you personally… I don’t know if “I need to try to pitch ideas, I need to make a pitch deck” is really where you should be focusing your time or energy. [Especially not the pitch decks]

Instead of doing that, instead of asking someone to gamble on you, with not enough evidence that it’s a good bet, you could sit down and make something.

Whether that’s a completed spec screenplay, or heck, an actual film, the actual proven item, the thing people can’t really deny… it isn’t a pitch.

The question I wish someone had asked me earlier: what would you do with this time if pitching weren’t an option? For most writers, the honest answer is… write!

Something you own. Something you care passionately about. Something you’d write whether someone was paying you or not. And those are almost always the most interesting. And… in the business of Hollywood, we must always be thinking about the business… something you own is always the most valuable.

Write that instead.

Before you go, just a reminder

Next Wednesday July 1st at 12PM PT is Hollyweird Office Hours, live on zoom. It’ll be a big group conversation in which I answer your questions to the best of my ability. They can be craft, they can be career, they can be the more philosophical kind of “how the heck do I just keep doing this?”

Whatever you’ve got, I’d love to try to get to it. If you’d like to attend, you can RSVP here to get the link emailed to you, and if you have a question, you can pop it in the form.

See you soon!

I’m writing to you specifically (mid week!) because you’re a paid subscriber, and I want to give you a heads up about some changes happening behind the scenes at Hollyweird before they hit your inbox from Substack.

The short version: I’m moving Hollyweird onto its own business entity, which requires me to change some backend settings that unf…

Read more

I’ve stopped noodling.

The Hollyweird Hang is returning on Wednesday, July 1st at 12pm PT / 3pm ET — and the first one is free and open to the entire Hollyweird community.

Here’s what it’s going to be

A live, online Q&A. Basically these will be the Hollyweird Office Hours.

You bring whatever you’ve been stewing over — a script problem, a career question, a “what should I focus on next?” brainstorm, something about the industry that doesn’t make sense to you — and I answer it as honestly as I can. No prepared content, no slides, no performance. Just a working writer in a room with people who actually want to talk about this stuff.

I can’t promise I’ll have the answer to everything. But I can promise I’ll tell you what I know, what I don’t know, and what I’d do if I were you. Which — as I wrote last week — is sometimes all you need.

The details

• Wednesday July 1st, 12pm PT / 3pm ET

• Live on Zoom — link sent to everyone who RSVPs

• 60-75 minutes

• Recorded and available afterward if you can’t make it live

• RSVP link

Want to submit a question in advance?

You don’t have to wait until July 1st to ask. Submit your question ahead of time and it goes to the top of the queue. The question form closes 48 hours before the session.

• Same link as the RSVP!
  

One important note

This is a one-time free session. Going forward, Hollyweird Office Hours will be a monthly event for paid subscribers — the first Wednesday of every month, same format. I'm finalizing the membership details now and will have everything ready to share after the session. If you come on July 1st and find it useful, you'll know exactly what you're signing up for.

For now: just come.

So. What have you been trudging around the house muttering about?

Bring it July 1st.

RSVP & ask your question now.

I will stew. Not the good kind of stew.

Whether it’s a career problem, a script problem, a people problem, I can often be found trudging around the house muttering to myself, trying (but failing) to solve it in my mind. This can go on for days before someone, usually my wife, has to say… “Can’t you just call [someone] and ask about this?”

And the answer is, yes, of course I can. And… why hadn’t I even thought to do that???

Being hyper independent can be a helpful tool. Especially for writers, artists, proponents of DIY filmmaking. And it makes sense. I spend a lot of time, as a career, noodling on script and story problems until somehow, someway, something in the back of my mind manages to solve them. So it only makes sense that as a writer you could train yourself to think that all problems can be solved this way — slowly, internally, by simply grinding the gears in your mind long enough.

I regret to inform you (and me) that, after many years of trying to do this I have discovered… Not all problems can be solved like this.

If you are a well adapted individual — my wife, my manager, my therapist (it takes a village) — you’ve probably been patiently (or not so patiently) waiting for this part of the story. The silently solving on your own thing… doesn’t always work.

Sometimes you really do just need to pick up the phone and call a friend.

You can tell yourself… “well probably nobody can really solve this one for me. I probably need to solve it myself.” But here’s the thing… it’s not REALLY about the other person actually solving the problem, whether it’s a writing problem or a career problem. I mean, sometimes you’ll Phone a Friend and they will literally have just dealt with the same thing. But hearing any version of an answer, or even a non-answer, just the THINKING IT THROUGH OUT LOUD WITH SOMEONE ELSE… it just hits different.

This may be common sense for some of you!

But I have a feeling that there’s a disproportionate amount of this screenwriting/filmmaking audience who are Hyper Independent Gear Grinders.

Hearing how someone else would approach the problem, would think about the problem, even just how someone else commiserates with you about the problem you are facing… often is enough to get you unstuck.

It gives you something to agree with, disagree with, or simply bounce off of entirely, and… that kind of thing is actually super helpful for figuring things out.

Even if only to have someone who is / has been very much “in the shit” with you.

And then sometimes people literally just need to be called and asked explicitly to do something for you, or to stop doing something that they have been doing. Which can also be hard to do. But we’ll save that for another day.

The people most valuable to ask? People who are just slightly ahead of you. There’s a lot of talk in entertainment / arts careers of “mentorship” and “networking” and it is easy to confuse that for trying to meet people who can do something for you. When, in fact, in my experience, the best “mentors” I’ve found are the people who are essentially my peers. With all due respect to the Old Guard of Hollywood, if you broke in before 2016… you were living in another universe. Hell, having broken in pre-pandemic I feel like I entered a totally different Hollywood than exists today for newcomers.

Proximity to the same kind of problem is really what you’re looking for in these calls. People who’ve seen it, been through it, and know what they’re/you’re talking about.

This is also why peer relationships in this industry matter more than most people give them credit for. Not networking in the gross “work the room” sense. Just… knowing people who are currently working at your level, who are facing the same decisions, who you can call and say “here’s the situation, what would you do.” I’ve been the person receiving the call many times, and I always want to help. People like to help! It’s nice to help!

Which is partly why I’ve been noodling over (by myself, sorry, bad habit) bringing back a feature of this newsletter that’s laid dormant for a bit, the Hollyweird Hang, in July. This will be a live, online Q&A on Wednesday July 2nd (12PM PT / 3PM ET) where you can bring exactly the kinds of questions I’m talking about here. Whatever you’ve been stewing over alone. I can’t promise I’ll have the answers, but I can be honest about what I know, what I don’t know, and what I’d do if I were you. Sometimes that’s all you need.

More details and a link to RSVP will be in next week’s issue of the newsletter, but I just wanted to plant the little seed for this now.

In the meantime, whatever you’re currently walking around the house muttering about… is there someone you could just call and ask?

There probably is.

New parents always get the same advice — “sleep when the baby sleeps” (easier said than done) and to just try to take things “one day at a time.” It’s good advice! And also a little bit of a cliché, which is what usually makes something good advice

So as I struggle to get my writing (and my newsletter about writing) back up to speed I find myself thinking about this very good advice (for new parents but also for life) to take things one day at a time.

It’s actually really good writing advice too.

One page at a time.

When we’re really struggling it can be all too easy to panic and start to project outward. “Is it going to be like this forever?” Reasonable question to ask, especially in a fog at 3AM. But it’s not the most helpful thing in the world to, while sleep deprived, project outwards… “This must be how everything will be from now on.”

You’re asking about the unknown, and there’s nothing like the unknown to trigger existential dread in a person. Particularly a sleep deprived person.

And if there’s one thing I know a lot of writers have in common, it’s a little too much existential dread.

Writers are constantly self-interrogating (part of the job) and it often comes with exactly this kind of fortune-telling / “existential crisis in advance” that’s not particularly helpful —

“Will I ever figure this out? Will anyone ever read this? Will this ever be any good?”

All things I’ve wondered. And all things that… surprise surprise… didn’t particularly help me solve anything at all. Especially not creative problems. Solving creative problems requires… being present!

Back when I lived in New York there was an acting program / multi level marketing scam / light cult (I don’t know exactly where it landed, I never took the class, but all acting programs kind of exist in this nexus) that some of my acting friends got very, very into that had one basic teaching, that good acting comes from mindfulness, and in order to remain mindful, anytime you thought you were drifting out of the moment, you’d tell yourself…

“I’m back.”

As much as I feel like it’s maybe an insane acting technique… I kind of like “I’m back.” Worrying about how people reading the movie isn’t being here with the script you’re writing, so come back. Worrying about whether you’re ever going to figure out how to get something you wrote actually produced isn’t going to help you do the task you’re currently trying to get accomplished, so come back.

All that we really have to work with, as writers, as artists, as human beings is the present. So like it or not, we have to take it one page at a time.

Because when you’re writing, this page is all that really matters. This page is the present moment. And all you can do is write some words down on it. You can’t solve the ending while you’re in the middle. You can’t solve Hollywood’s decreasing production pipeline while you’re writing. You can’t even solve the your own existential crisis about your career while you’re writing. All you’re doing is writing.

So when you find yourself, like me, looking (too far) ahead to be useful, come back to the present moment.

What is happening right now?

Who is in this scene?
Does the character want something?
What stands in their way?
How are they going to overcome that?

Your job as a writer isn’t to solve it all. It’s to solve this one unit of measurement — TODAY’S PAGE.

Inside you there are two writers. PRESENT WRITER and FUTURE WRITER. I’ve written about Future Writer before. Future Writer exists to solve problems. Present Writer exists to make them.

Present Writer’s job is just to get some stuff down. Future Writer’s job is to come in and clean it all up.

[I’m doing this right now by the way, Present Writer’s draft of this is rambling and all over the place, it’s Future Writer (hello it’s me) who has come in and made it legible and coherent and hopefully a heck of a lot tighter than what’s currently in front of me]

Get a page done. That’s the only thing you need to do in the present.

When you are dealing with something very immense and very challenging — writing and then making a feature film, parenting a newborn child (these are equivalent in difficulty, I’m sure) — you need to break it down into manageable, survivable units. This hour right now. This scene.

All there is to worry about when you sit down to write is RIGHT NOW. We can worry about the next scene and the next day and the next diaper change later.

Page by page, day by day, is how things get done. Even when it feels like there are a million more remaining.

I promise being a new parent hasn’t made me any more woo woo (I was already woo woo) and I promise this isn’t a parenting newsletter.

I’m just here telling you all, and myself, “I’m back.”

Hollyweird will also be on hiatus because… that’s me! I’m Hollyweird! For April and May there will be no new issues, no roundups or back catalogs or guest writers, no previously scheduled posts. Just a couple months off to deal with something, frankly, a little bit more important than a newsletter about working in Hollywood.

I’ll be back in June. Of course with more writing about juggling a career and a life (and someone else’s life) in the entertainment industry. Also a new worksheet for people who, like me, don’t like outlining, and of course more updates on my directorial debut.

If you are new here and found the newsletter recently — Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere. Thanks in advance for hanging out. Feel free to dig through the archives.

If you’ve been here for a while — Thank you, even more than the new people. This little weekly dispatch has been such a delight. I’m lucky that I get to connect with some of the strangest, funniest, hardest-working people in the biz. People who care about making genuinely good art within the machinery of a very weird business. Thanks for welcoming me to your inbox.

If we work together — Expect an email with more context about how this leave will actually work.

I’ll see you all very soon.

Colby

When I was still very fresh faced to Hollywood, I got paired up with a Very Important Writer, who had a cool idea for a TV show. The VIW had just been nominated for a Very Important Award and so it really felt like “This Person Can Do No Wrong.” Together, we sold the show. The Very Important Writer’s idea, with me writing it. VIW too busy (and too expensive). Classic.

However, it immediately became clear that the people we had sold this idea to were not in fact that interested in it. Whether they’d never considered what it would actually look like, or had no idea what it would actually look like, or just didn’t like that kind of show (familiar) it very quickly became a vortex in which no version of it that I proposed in an outline / series document was appealing to them. This went on for months, before, ultimately, my dear agents and mangers called me to say “They’re pulling the plug on this. They’re going to try a different direction.” Different direction? We never even picked the first direction! We stalled out before I was even allowed to write a draft of a pilot.

It was all one long, attenuated, unnecessarily confusing “No.” It was particularly brutal.

But I am here to tell you, with more experience under my belt:

It never really gets easier to hear “No.”

And I’m not entirely sure that it should, either.

There’s an underlying tension to this job, which I just keep saying, over and over, but is true — Hollywood is where commerce meets art.

[Feels like I should make a bumper sticker of my “catchphrase” that depicts two cars crashing into one another or something.]

And in order to truly make a good piece of art, you really do have to care. A tremendous amount. It takes hundreds of hours to make something interesting, and it takes an incredible amount of conviction. This is all operating in the “art” portion of the car crash.

Then there’s the “commerce.” Over in the commerce car, it’s best to practice a kind of business-brained zen style of non-attachment. “Whatever happens, who cares? I hear yes, I take more chances. I hear no, I take more chances.”

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So while I do believe that THE MOST IMPORTANT SKILL to make it in Hollywood is the ability to put yourself out there, to say “hello, here I am, please give me a shot!” I think the second most important skill — because you will inevitably need it five seconds after asking for said opportunity — is the ability to handle that rejection.

Over and over and over again.

If you’re going to set yourself up for a lifelong career of rejection, we need to find some coping mechanisms.

Here’s one that has helped me tremendously.

Remember, there isn’t just one type of “No.”

Not all Nos are the same, even though it might feel easy to jump to the same conclusion upon hearing it — “they hate it, they hate me, it sucks, I suck, I should give all of this up and become an Alaskan Crab Fisherman.”

That’s probably not entirely true. And it’s probably not the best career pivot.

There are many reasons to be rejected, and, honestly, most of them having nothing to do with you and whether or not you suck.

Here are some of the most common to keep in mind:

1. The “timing” no. This is the most common and the most invisible. The project passed because the slate was full, the budget changed, someone across town just set up something similar, the executive who championed you got fired, the market shifted. The work had nothing to do with it. You will almost never know this is the reason, which makes it particularly maddening, because you're left trying to diagnose a problem that isn't actually a problem with your work. It’s also the most vast category — one that entails basically all logistical reasons NOT to do a movie, and there are A LOT of reasons not to do any given thing on any given day.

2. The “it's not for me” no. Taste mismatch. Completely valid on both sides. This one stings because it can feel like a verdict, but it's really just a compatibility issue. You sent the right thing to the wrong person. The goal is to find your people, and your people are not everyone. There are some things we simply do not vibe with. This one is a bit insidious because it can be easy to hear that someone doesn’t vibe and have that “harsh your vibe.” Maybe this uptight business person wasn’t feeling particularly whacky when you sent them your gonzo anti-establishment satirical comedy. Doesn’t mean we don’t need gonzo comedies, you just need to find people who are going to get it.

3. The “the work isn't ready” no. The hardest one to receive, and the most valuable one if you can actually hear it. When someone takes the time to tell you why — specifically why — they passed, that's a gift, even if it doesn't feel like one at the time. The notes inside a rejection from someone with no stake in flattering you are sometimes the most honest feedback you'll ever get. And often managers / agents / producers will insulate clients from this feedback. I don’t think that’s wise! Share the feedback. It might help unlock something, or it might start to sink in — “This one just isn’t working.”

Now, I’m not saying you need to sit down and try to suss out with each and every rejection what kind of no you’ve received. More than anything it’s simply about remembering with each and every “No thanks” that they aren’t all in category 3, aka “this kinda sucks right now” — in fact, they mostly aren’t!

Most things are simply… not about you at all.

That series they chose to go in a different direction on? Never happened. Maybe it was bad timing. Maybe it was not for me. Maybe it sucked. We’ll never know.

You know how I ultimately got over that job? I wrote something else that I could send out and hear yes / no about. Much more No than Yes, always.

So I would never say “toughen up.” I would never say “get over it” or “rub some dirt on it” or any other toxic takeaway of Brené Brown’s grit speech. Instead I’d say, be pissed off. Be annoyed. Be hurt. But set a timer on it, start the next thing, and get back out there. There are plenty more No’s waiting for you. I have a million in a google document somewhere, you can have some of mine.

[I actually have written more about tolerating disappointment before, and I do of course in that article say “rub some dirt on it.” Toxic Brené Brown Stan Mode Activated.]

What about you? How do you handle the no? What actually helps, and what do people tell you should help that doesn't? I'd love to hear it in the comments.

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Previously on Hollyweird…

So naturally, I woke up this morning ruminating. Thoughts of “But what does this guy even want???” in a never ending loop as I made my coffee and walked the dog.

“What does this guy even want?”

This is after I’ve pitched the movie, outlined the movie, re-written the outline for the movie, and written the movie, mind you. And after I wrote this piece trying to boost my own spirits heading into the rewrite!

At the same time, I’ve been helping with the edit on the documentary Father Figures I’m producing. As we edit the film, we’re having this same conversations. “How do we show what our protagonist wants? And how do we make that clear to the audience? And how does every moment in the film follow logically from that goal?” It’s different in documentary, you’re writing and rewriting the film in the edit rather than in Final Draft, but… same stuff! Same problems!

What does this guy want?

It’s a SIMPLE QUESTION. And one that you’re supposed to answer from the very beginning of the process. And yet! It seems to be one that I have asked over and over and over again throughout just about every draft of every project I’ve ever worked on.

As you may be able to tell, I am in currently in “The Rewrite Suck.”

What do I mean by “rewrite suck?” It’s the part of the process where you look at the thing you’ve been working on for weeks, months, years, and say… “I can’t figure this out. This sucks. I suck.” And I would just like to say, as a PAID, PROFESSIONAL screenwriter, this has happened on every project I’ve ever worked on.

And I’m pretty confident it has happened for just about everyone else I know too.

[Minus, of course, the psychopaths, they are doing just fine, thank you very much]

So how do we set ourselves up for success knowing that we will, almost inevitably, find ourselves swimming straight into The Rewrite Suck? I have some thoughts.

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Remember, you aren’t going to “break” it.

The first thing that stymies a rewrite, and it’s something I see most often with earlier career writers is a fear of breaking the thing. I get it. You have toiled countless hours to get here, and it’s working… pretty well. Not perfectly, but… you got it this far. The machine runs. It’s clunky at times, but it runs. And so, as writers head into rewrites, it’s common to worry about doing too much and pulling the thing apart.

But remember, if you wanted to run diagnostics on a car’s engine, you would have to pull the engine out of the car to look at all the little pumps and pistons and what have you (I don’t know, I’m not a car guy). Is this technically breaking the car? Momentarily, sure. But, it’s what you have to do to get the thing to peak performance. Every single piece of the thing has to be reexamined and re-tooled.

You will not break it.

You still have the old draft. [Save a new copy of the file every day!] You will soon have a new draft. But you do have to pull the thing apart to get into the guts of the matter. Don’t nibble around the edges. Don’t polish scenes up before you’ve overhauled the structure.

The old draft is the floor, not the ceiling. Trust me. As someone who’s currently re-breaking all of Act Two, trust me.

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Know what draft you’re on

Remember how ONE SECOND ago I said “don’t nibble around the edges?” Don’t get confused about where you are in the process. The first draft is for getting something down. The second draft is for doing a massive, structural overhaul that hopefully makes everything that was interesting about the first draft actually cohere to a sound story structure. It’s about honing in on theme, it’s about removing anything non-essential, and it’s about being a little bit aggressive and mercenary in order to get there.

Do not be afraid to throw things away. The first rewrite isn’t the time to be “polishing” anything. There’s a reason that these two types of work are technically considered different things by the WGA. A rewrite is about tearing down the walls in the house. It’s a reno. The polish is about re-decorating.

Get notes (but not too many)

In my experience, getting notes is invaluable, and also, overwhelming! I’ve written about best practices before (how to give notes, and how to take notes). But something that I think is extremely important to keep in mind when you’re about to tackle rewriting something is trying not to cloud your own judgement with too much feedback.

A film is not crowd-sourced from every smart person you know. A film should ultimately be one coherent vision. And so, rather than ask ten people for feedback, I’d recommend 2-3 people. Any time I’ve gotten feedback from more than three people, I start to lose the plot. It’s just too much to hold onto. You don’t want to be considering eight different points of view on what the character’s want is. You just want to get to the bottom of what YOU think it is.

Let the problems solve themselves

If you can give yourself some space and time from the draft, and then from the notes, you should. The human brain solves problems subconsciously (many believe that’s part of why we dream!) and so allowing your brain to kind of do its thing without forcing it, may in fact solve a lot of the things that today you are banging your head against the wall over.

When you hit the rewrite suck — walk away, if even just for a day.

Start big picture, like very big picture

It’s really good to write out for yourself what this movie is about. Both why you want to make it, and what you think it’s trying to say. If you have that, you have a North Star you can always refer back to in order to gut check feedback. Does this align with what the movie is trying to do? If not, toss it out. From there, it’s also important to try to hone in on more specifics — is the protagonist’s want/need clear? Is the story’s structure supporting that journey? Are the act breaks where they need to be, and are they changing the character appropriately? BIG PICTURE STUFF. Now is the time to do it, before you get to draft seven! Trust me!

Trust that you will have new, better ideas

Ideas are not finite. You will come up with new things that will solve old things that never worked. You will come up with new things that are just better than what’s in there currently. It will happen. Trust the process. Trust that you’re just as smart (and probably smarter) today than you were when you were first writing.

Don’t be afraid to cut cut cut

There’s a lot of interesting stuff that you can find while writing. But the rewrite process is all about CLARITY OF VISION. If something doesn’t support the film as you imagine it, it can go. Don’t worry. Nobody will miss it. Not even you!

Remember: The Rewrite Suck is normal.

Rewriting is hard. I think it’s important that it be hard. That means you’re probably doing it right. An easy rewrite is usually a polish in disguise. You’re nibbling around the edges, fixing up dialogue and making slug lines more interesting, when you should be getting under the hood and pulling the entire machine apart. There should be some emotional friction as you do this. And some frustration. And some rumination.

You can and will hit The Rewrite Suck.

Wondering whether you’re ever going to figure it out, whether it was a good idea in the first place, whether you even know how to tell a story, is all normal stuff.

And you do know. I believe in you.

And now, I have to go figure out how the heck to tell this story. Again.

What about you out there, dear readers and writers? How do you handle Rewrite Suck? Any practical tips for the rest of us? Self-care tips? Share em below!

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Previously on Hollyweird…

So, if you ever have writing questions — whether about the creative part of the process, the business part of the process, or, focused on exactly the spot where those two processes overlap (as this question is) — send them my way! I’d love to answer them. And if it prompts a particularly longwinded response from me, you’ll know that you’ve asked something I myself have been grappled with.

So, here’s a reader question from Jake:

I find myself writing films that aren’t really designed to be pitched or optioned. In other words, the tone or style is so specific that they might not market well on their own and I would probably just need to direct them myself (I need to work on separating my writer brain from my director brain).

Do you ever write personal projects like this? Is it still worth doing? Or is it simply smarter in this industry to always write something that can be understood by the masses and be marketable on its own?

This is a doozy! And I think gets at the heart of what is uniquely challenging both about being a writer, and about working in film as a medium.

There’s a lot going on here, and it’s a bit of a cheat because it’s a few different but interconnected questions stacked together.

Let’s talk the place where art meets commerce

First — the bad news. Film will always sit at the intersection of art and commerce. Even the smallest of films — $200,000, need large audiences in order to support them. A $200,000 movie needs a much smaller audience than a $2 million movie or a $200 million movie, but it’s still a much more costly undertaking than most other artists’ mediums. And with cost comes a need for many customers. You need a very large swath of people across the country and the world to want to go see a movie in order to make the movie make sense as a business endeavor. Which it is! Even the artsiest of artsy films end up needing Quickbooks and accounting and financial reports. There’s no getting around it.

I say this and then must of course dial it back because there are no such things as absolutes. One could make a very avant garde, very experimental, solo project that is technically a film. And in doing that not worry at all about whether anyone would ever want to see it.

But I don’t really suspect that’s the goal of people reading a newsletter called “Hollyweird.” We do, in some capacity, want our work to be seen, and in some capacity bought and sold.

So, yes, to answer the most mercenary portion of the question first, I do think before writing something about whether or not it feels “marketable.” I did not always think this way. And I don’t think anyone should begin this way, honestly. Start from a pure artistic place! Pursue what you want to see in the world!

However… it’s good to also know that in pursuing what you alone want to see, you may end up with a 50/50 ratio of things that you do that remain things that only you want to see. And while 50/50 is a pretty good hit ratio, sitting down to write a script, and then make a movie is a years-long endeavor.

As I have gotten older, as I have gotten busier, as the demands on my time have increased, as the calculus of how much money could I earn during the time I work on a passion project becomes more of a concern, I have tried to make a concerted effort to pursue projects that are not only interesting to me but also feel “saleable.”

“Is this something that I could convince a large audience that they would like to see?” Is an important question, and one that I ask early on when thinking about ideas, because it does determine both the amount of difficulty you’re going to have making something, and the likelihood of success within the marketplace.

There are basically three ways you can convince a large audience to see something.

1. Famous people they already like are involved. This is why everyone in Hollywood is obsessed with trying to get Tom Hanks, Timothee Chalamet, and/or Zendaya in their films. If there is someone that we know and love and want to see on screen, the idea for the movie can be simple. Because what you’re selling isn’t the idea, it’s the people involved.

2. It has a big clear idea. There is a reason B-horror films remain something that people are willing to invest in. It’s because they “sell themselves.” What does that mean though? What it means to investors is — the value isn’t contingent on the value of the talent involved (which is usually very expensive) but instead on the idea of the film itself. Horror films tend to have a big, clear ideas, and those tend to be marketable. I’ve written about it before. If your movie has a “Big Idea,” that’s as valuable as having a familiar piece of talent / underlying source material. When you tell an audience “this is a movie about a shark attacking people at the beach,” they know what they’re going to see.

3. Make something undeniably exceptional. This is the toughest spot to be in with a movie idea. This is what executives and agents and managers like to call “execution dependent.” Execution dependent basically just means… “this is an idea that could be really incredible, if everything works out. Otherwise, it won’t work at all.” Now, couldn’t one argue all movies are execution dependent? Yes… mostly. But that’s why trying for numbers one and two above are considered valuable in the film marketplace, they are an attempt at some kind of insurance policy to keep the project interesting to a wide group of people.

So what if you just want to make interesting stuff and not worry about making something for everyone?

I’m right there with you.

The movies I most like are “execution dependent.” Both as a moviegoer and as a filmmaker. And as much as I may wish I were someone who could simply pitch a super clean, clear, simple idea for a big movie star — I actually tend to prefer things that are a bit more complex.

[I’ve written about the “simple to complex” spectrum before, and how I think it’s one of the key ways to determine your own voice.]

However, the business of Hollywood is one of risk mitigation. And complexity breeds risk. So when the business minds of Hollywood ding you with working on something “execution dependent,” they usually mean “we see too many ways that this could fall apart.”

Almost everything I have written has been something I personally really believe in, something that is thorny and layered and complex, and something that feels like it would take a miracle to make. I haven’t stopped wanting to make those kinds of films, and I absolutely don’t think making those kinds of films is a waste of time.

Execution dependent movies can and should be made.

You just need to make them at a scale that’s realistic. Especially if you’re advocating for something that you intend to write & direct (and I think if you’re dreaming of doing it, you should just go do it), you need to be diligent about crafting something that allows you to be the director. That doesn’t mean changing your voice or tone or temperament to hopefully conform to others’ goals. It simply means making something at a scope and scale (ie a budget) where you can take more risks. The smaller the movie the riskier you can be.

For myself, right now at least, I have bifurcated the types of work I’m pursuing. In one column are the personal, niche, “execution-dependent” projects that I intend to write and direct. In the other column are projects that I think are broader and simpler to translate, meaning I could hopefully convince a big company that it’s a good business decision.

This doesn’t mean I am thinking about how to write the broadest hackiest most people-pleasing thing imaginable, but I am consciously splitting my desires into “I will write this with the intent to try to give it to someone else” and “I will write this with the intent for me to keep it and make it myself.”

I have purposefully created a system in which those two things do not overlap anymore because the overlap is where it starts to get very, very frustrating.

Without knowing the kind of work you want to make, I can’t say whether it’s marketable or for a mass audience. But I do think making films that many people will want to see is an essential ingredient to the art form.

That’s not to say that small, intimate, personal stories cannot break through. Plenty do. Films like “Sorry Baby,” “It Was Only an Accident,” “Sentimental Value” are all films that on paper a studio executive might read and say, “These are too small / execution dependent.”

But if you make a movie like that responsibly, at a low enough price point, with the right collaborators, and with people who understand and can champion the vision of making something that is execution dependent, and understand that making something that is execution dependent is more exciting and more meaningful, ultimately, than making something for a broad audience… It can be done.

And it should be done, because this is an art form.

It exists in a very weird space within the continuum of art and business, but it is an art form. And I think making art within this medium is very, very, very important, and something that our tech and finance “geniuses” running the industry seem to have forgotten is the point of the business.

Yes, we all want to make money, but we also all got into this business because we think movies are powerful pieces of art.

Pursue the personal projects you want to pursue, but know that yes, they are more challenging. And you are setting yourself up to over and over have the conversation of “this is really interesting, but it’s execution dependent.”

And when you hear that, just know, it means you’re going to have to go execute it.

And that big news of course is the fact that In the Blink of an Eye, directed by Andrew Stanton and written by yours truly is out now on Hulu and Disney+.

Here’s the trailer.

Here’s an interview I did with Rahul Menon at Script Magazine.

Here’s a link to watch the movie.

I wrote the script 10 years ago, right as I first moved to LA. It became my “calling card” script that got me in the door a lot of places. It was on The Black List that year. I had approximately 250 meetings about it. It got me my first real paid studio job. It got me the job that became my first produced film, Spaceman on Netflix.

I really knew nothing about working in Hollywood when I started writing this script, and have learned so so much during the process. Enough that I started a dang newsletter about it.

If I had been “smarter” about the business of Hollywood, I don’t know that I would’ve written a screenplay that spans the entire history of the universe. I might have decided that was impractical.

Fortunately, I didn’t know anything, and so I tried anyway.

All of this is to say, I hope all of you readers continue to make your crazy, crazy things.

I do believe the world needs them.

Here’s the first page of the screenplay for those of you interested.

I’m getting clearer with what my goals are. Which means I’ve gotten much better at being able to identify early on whether something will serve those goals or ultimately, be a distraction. And when films are so very challenging to write, and even more challenging to ultimately make, you need to balance two competing things

1. have a lot of projects

2. have laser focus on getting things done

It’s a little bit of a bind because you need grit and determination and to never give up, but also to spread that out over a bunch of different things because… well, it’s hard to make thing happen.

So how do we know when something is worth pursuing, and how do we know when it’s ultimately going to be a distraction from the stuff that really matters? Pray for guidance?

Here are some of the questions I ask (usually of myself, but sometimes of others) as I try to suss out whether an idea is worth pursuing.

Here are some creative questions to ask:

Why? Why are we telling the story? What is the point?

Am I excited about it? And do I think I’ll be excited about it 3, 6, 9, 18 months from now?

Who is this for? As in, who is the audience for this project? Is it for everyone? Is it for a small audience? Is it a targeted, more niche audience? Where will this ultimately live in a best case scenario, and then, in a more realistic scenario?

Do I know and can I describe the genre and tone easily? If I can’t I start to get nervous that it won’t be something for traditional funders/buyers, which means it won’t ever get to an audience, which means it will ultimately not have been the best use of my limited time.

Will I be doing something new? Will this be work that allows me to expand into new kinds of work or show a different side of what I’m interested in?

Does this align with my values? There are a lot of projects that I get sent where I can say to myself “yes I see what kind of movie this is and think I could do it, but I wouldn’t want to tell a story that is saying what I think this is saying.” I personally don’t want to tell any stories that don’t have something to say. I love light entertainment, but I don’t see myself making it. If a project doesn’t align with my values, I don’t sell out.

Is this selling out? We desperately need to bring back into the four front the concept of artists selling out. I am personally tired of excusing people for “getting that bag”. Selling out sucks and you shouldn’t do it.

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Here are some practical questions to ask:

Is it paid? if it isn’t paid now how soon until it is paid?

Do I need the money now? If yes, and it’s paid, say yes.

Do I have time to do this? And this isn’t could I make the time it’s do I actually have the time currently? Or will I need to carve that out somehow?

Do I like and trust these people? And if you only sort of like an only sort of trust them in my experience, that’s probably not enough!

Will I learn? If I won’t be learning, will I be gaining something else that’s valuable? See above about money.

Will I be annoyed to have to talk about this at 6AM / 9PM? This is a great question to ask yourself because… if you’d be annoyed now to have to do that, you’ll almost certainly get even more annoyed as time goes on!

Would I like doing more of this kind of thing? Let’s assume it all goes really well. The moment you’ve done something in Hollywood people are gonna respond to that and ask you to do more of that same thing. So ideally nothing in your career is a one off, it all contributes to a grander project of you as an artist. Would you be comfortable doing another one of these? If not, why set the precedent now?

What do you ask yourself when you’re considering whether to take something on? And do you all have the same problem I do, where you have approximately one million ideas and rather than worrying about coming up with them have to actively work to get better at putting ideas on ice? Would love to hear your thoughts!

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Previously on Hollyweird…

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We’ll be live from 11AM PT - 12PM PT and I’ll be answering any and all of your craft/career/writing/misc. questions.

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For the last few months, for those of you paying attention, I’ve been writing a feature film, then writing an episode of a television series, and now we have come to the moment when I’m finished writing both and have been tasked with starting to rewrite both of them at the same time. Of course it would work out this way. It never doesn’t work out this way. So I am looking this week at a lot of notes.

I’ve written before about notes, both how to give them, and how to best to take them (in my experience), but even more important than the practical “How to,” there is some personal emotional preparation that I think all writers can work on to best be prepared for the moment when you basically have to start over.

In my now decade plus long career as a professional screenwriter (and as I was reminded the other day nearly twenty years of actively “being a writer” yikes) I have gotten all kinds of notes: good notes, bad notes, comprehensive notes, paper thin notes that don’t really stand up to any scrutiny whatsoever, notes that indicate the people giving the notes never actually read what they’re noting, and “just a tiny tweak” notes that actually blow up the entire thing and demand starting over.

There is both an artful science to parsing which notes are good, which notes are bad, and which notes are neutral, which I really do believe is the key to handling all notes on projects. But let’s assume you already have processed all of the notes, and now you find yourself at the point where the most truthful notes all indicate that you’re going to do the thing all writers dread. Start over.

This can feel demoralizing. “Why all this wasted effort? Everything I’ve done so far has been for naught!” Makes sense. Writing is a lot of work and the dreaded “Page One Rewrite” means doing all that work, again. We as human beings hate the idea that work has been pointless. (This is one of the ever-expanding reasons the “AI Bubble” is a social nightmare. When we make work truly meaningless, it will deny a lot of people their main source of meaning. And make them retroactively feel that their entire lives have been meaningless. Not great for society, IMO!)

As a writer, when the feedback means you’re going to need to start over basically from scratch, it is easy to conflate that with “my work so far has been meaningless.” But I really do contend that with writing in particular, this is not the case. No creative work is meaningless.

In fact, I would argue that one of the best things that can happen from a draft of a script, whether it’s for film or television, is that people read it and determine “oh we don’t actually want that, we want this other thing.” Clarity! At last!

The process of writing something new is one of exploring, a dark, seemingly boundless territory, and slowly beginning to map it out. A wall here, a rock formation there, an exciting third act set piece involving jet skis.

In a first draft, we are Lewis and Clark, exploring the vast unknown (to us) geography of North America. [Of course that vast unknown geography was very much known to the people who already lived there, but we simply do not have the time or space in this weekly newsletter about writing to contemplate what “exploration” has meant in human history.]

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Heading across the continent once is not really sufficient for successfully and completely mapping the geography. All we’re seeing is what presents itself to us in our limited field of view as we move from idea to outline to draft. There is a vast, uncharted world of story possibility just over the horizon, and we may need to cross the continent many more times in order to properly scout it all.

So I would reframe the page one rewrite. It is not an indication that “none of that work meant anything,” but instead “we need further exploration.”

You aren’t actually checking the map in the bin, but instead trying to find a more elegant pathway through the mostly still unknown. And with each wild re-calibration, we are hopefully getting closer and closer to the best path available, rather than simply first one we decided to try.

Now, is exploring a vast continent over and over fun? Not always! Is it easy? No. Is it what we intended to do when we set out to go from A to B as quickly and efficiently as possible? Certainly not. But exploration is exactly what we are doing when we set out to create.

Is this ultimately just a kind of mental gymnastics? Absolutely, yes. Does it make it a little bit easier when faced with a note that fundamentally tears the back half of your film apart? Also yes.

This kind of flexibility is on my mind lately, clearly, as I recently made a video about the fact that I think this is one of the most valuable assets collaborators can have.

Film and television, which require tens of thousands of decisions, and allow for thousands of opportunities for things to go wrong and require a pivot, are not mediums that allow for rigidity. In a very high stress environment, rigidity will mean collapse. Flexibility is strength.

So, as I head into rewriting a feature film in a way that is going to require a lot of use of the delete key I thought it might be nice to remind myself to stay flexible, avoid rigidity, and be open to finding an entirely new path to the destination.

Which all is a great segue, to the fact that I am going to need to move our monthly zoom hang Q&A. Yes I know it was supposed to happen today.

I cannot make this happen today, unfortunately, so let’s push it to Sunday.

The Hollyweird Hang will be Sunday at 11 AM PT / 2 PM ET.

These zooms are for paid subscribers of the newsletter to ask any and all writing/craft/career/business questions and for me to do my very best trying to answer. I’ll send the link out to paid subscribers on the day, so if you want to join, you still have time.

I apologize for the late notice but there is A LOT going on over here, and if do happen to log on this Sunday I can tell you all about it.

More soon from the unmapped territory of Writing World.

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Previously on Hollyweird…

Over the weekend I was working to try to turn my episode in on time for the series I’m currently staffed on. So I wrote six pages Saturday, six pages Sunday. Monday I was in the room half a day, and wrote another six pages (it was also Emma and my anniversary, thank you 1hrmarriage.com! Your work has really paid dividends!). Tuesday the trailer for In the Blink of an Eye dropped, I wrote another six pages and started to revise the draft.

Wednesday I went through the entire episode and revised it, before turning it in. Thursday started the day with an 8:30AM meeting, back to normal full days in the writers room since my episode is out the door, notes call on the animated feature I turned in a little while ago in order to get me started on the second draft.

Today I fly to Nashville, TN for one more (hopefully the final?) shoot for Emma’s doc, Father Figures. Saturday and Sunday we’ll be shooting and then Sunday night I fly back to go back to work on the series.

Throughout all of this Emma and our editor Kat are hard at work trying to get us through our next pass of the edit, which means I’ve been getting on the phone over my lunch breaks to check in on how they’re doing. I’m also gearing up for the official premiere of Blink (Feb 27 on Hulu), meaning there are press obligations and promotional work to do, and I’m still making my daily little videos about Hollyweird and writing this newsletter.

Oh and I’m working on my directorial debut.

Since Sundance I’ve been on the verge of losing my voice — literally. It’s been hard to speak much louder than a gentle hushed tone. I’m drinking tea with honey and trying to get a lot of steam, but it’s proving insufficient in combating what I’m guessing is simply a sign of running on fumes.

I was talking recently about this feeling that I’m constantly sprinting from one thing to the next. I’ve somehow created a work/life balance in which it is all work. And I love my work, don’t get me wrong. But running around all day to keep all these spinning plates from falling and then waking up to do it all again tomorrow simply isn’t sustainable.

There’s an expression meditation people use that goes “if you feel like you don’t have time to meditate for five minutes, meditate for ten.” Which is… annoying. Meditation people are annoying. But I also do get it. When you feel like you can’t catch your breath is when you most need to do it.

I keep saying to myself “I just need to make it though to April.” Once it’s April I will be through the show, through the next draft of the feature, through the release, through the edit, and then simply... taking some time with family and... oh right. Prepping to go direct a movie.

It’s interesting that the directing a movie part actually feels like it might be the relaxing respite. Having been on plenty of sets, it’s definitely not that. But after nearly a year of juggling many many things at once, the idea of being focused on one project exclusively... sounds pretty darn meditative.

It’s also, if I’m being honest, where I’ve wanted to be this whole time. When I first met my manager in 2016 I told him the goal was to follow the career paths of some of my favorite writers turned directors, to write some movies (check), maybe work in TV (check), establish myself within the industry (check?), learn on the job from other great directors (check), and then transition into writer/director myself (working on it).

This first conversation of ours was almost exactly ten years ago to the day as I write this.

It’s taken me longer than I would have liked, and yet, it’s been a really remarkable decade. I’ve gotten a lot done in a business where everything takes on average 5-7 years, and I’m aware that I’ve got a career I would have killed for 15-20 years ago, one that only a few thousand people in the world end up getting to have at all. But it’s also just the beginning of the career I said I wanted. And this whole time I’ve been hustling and hustling and hustling to get where I want to be next. It is both everything I’d hoped for and not quite enough. The plight of being ambitious.

Maybe this is annoying to hear. In the same way those meditation people are annoying. “I’ve had a lot of successes and it’s also not enough.” But it’s not! If there’s anything the meditation people are right about, it’s that desire is the root of all suffering. And what are we artists if not creatures of desire? We exist to desire.

I hope this newsletter can be a source of… comfort? To know that this striving for more is simply how we all feel. That all our careers feel like a marathon. And I also hope it’s a source of some practical wisdom. To know how many pages I try to write in a day (5 usually, 6 for the episode because I’ve been sprinting, see above). To know how I outline. To know basically everything I do all year as a professional writer, since 2021. To know what I’m up to next, and how I think about setting goals for myself.

Our media ecosystem is looking quite bleak, and social media seems to be particularly vulnerable to the whims of maniac billionaires. And so it has been nice, to me, to put some time and energy into building this deeper, more genuine connection with all of you out there reading. It’s nice hearing from you, and it’s nice getting to answer your writing and craft questions here in the newsletter every week.

I keep turning down people asking me if I’d be open to mentoring them or consulting for them or reading their scripts because I don’t have time, and it’s not what I want to be doing with my limited bandwidth. I have to save the rest of my energy for the next leg of the marathon — the feature debut.

But if you are interested in mentorship / more, I want to remind you all of something: Paid subscribers to the newsletter are a) very much appreciated and b) invited to the monthly Hollyweird Hang on zoom.

Previously this has been a chance to do just that, hang, but I’m craving a little more structure for these.

Based on the number of DMs I get asking me questions, I’m going to transition these into monthly Q&A’s.

Log on, ask questions and get answers! These can be about craft, the writing process, reading recommendations, the business… Whatever you’re interested in learning about and want to know, if I know it, I’ll answer it.

So... if this is appealing to you and you aren’t a paid Hollyweird subscriber, I’d recommend joining now.

The next Hollyweird Hang will be this coming Friday February 13th at 1:30pm PT / 4:30PM ET. For paid subscribers only.

If you are already a paid subscriber, god bless you, I’ll send out the link the day of.

Gotta go, I’ve got a lot to do.

Previously on Hollyweird…

As I write this I’m back from a Sundance premiere and exhausted! Getting to attend the final Park City festival with a film was a dream come true. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about Sundance and the experience of premiering a film but I’m still processing (and more than anything recovering).

I received a very thoughtful question recently (my DMs everywhere are always open) that I’d love to share here, because I think it sums up just about the entire experience of being a filmmaker. It’s an age-old question, and one that I think a lot of people struggle with in some capacity, so let’s get into it.

I’m writing my first feature film right now, and I wanted to ask you something that’s been sitting in my head for a while. Here’s how I’ve been thinking about “getting into the film industry”:

1. write a script
2. send it to festivals
3. get representation
4. write another one
5. ask my rep to send it to actors who’ve worked with first-time indie writers before
6. hope one of those actor-directors takes the project forward

It sounds neat when I write it out, but I’m not sure how much of that is real and how much is just fantasy. Could you poke holes in it for me? What parts of this plan actually work, and what should I be doing differently? I don’t really see myself directing — what excites me most is writing. Building worlds, creating dilemmas, writing dialogue that feels alive.

-Prem

Long time readers should know that I love a plan. And I love that this plan to break into a career as a screenwriter is so straightforward. Because, in a sense, it is quite straightforward. Write something good enough that people notice, those people then become your advocates, you continue writing, and then hopefully something you’ve written is produced. Then do it all over again.

HOWEVER.

Plans are a funny thing. You can’t really plan for what anyone else is going to do. And so… Prem, because you asked for it, I’m going to poke just one hole in this plan. But it’s a big one.

3. “Get representation.”

Getting a manager and/or agent is of course the number one thing I’m asked about. It’s the number one question on most early career writers’ (and directors’) minds because... well... how else are you supposed to be taken seriously in Hollywood?

I’ve written before about how I got my manager, agent, and first job, and how I think you can do that too. So I’m not going to go into too much detailed backstory here, but… what I suspect might be missing, looking at this plan you’ve shared, is all of the many many repeated steps and frustrations and missed opportunities and failures between steps two and three.

I graduated from NYU in December 2009 (I graduated early, brag) and started submitting screenplays to festivals, competitions, and anything that felt like it might help me get recognized as a screenwriter. That did not work for me. I only met my manager when a mutual friend introduced us and we hit it off, in 2016.

So what was I doing in those 7(?!) years?!

I was stuck between steps two and three. I was writing and producing theater, making dumb sketch comedy with friends (fortunately, most of these efforts have vanished into the ether that is our zombie internet), writing more movies, even producing a tiny microbudget film, and trying to get representation!

The closest I came to the plan proposed above was in 2012(?) I won “first runner up” in a screenwriting competition and… nothing happened. I got sent a pdf of an award. Nice.

Now, this wasn’t one of the 3-4 most reputable, most meaningful competitions, but… I know plenty of people who’ve done well in those and… nothing really happened for them either.

It’s a slog, this career. And especially if your ambitions are to write but not direct. At least if you’re aiming to become a director you can go direct something yourself. If you’re aiming to write, you are at the whims of a lot of other people (as you’ve highlighted in step 6 — there’s a lot of hoping someone takes the project forward).

Your plan isn’t wrong, it’s maybe just glossing over the hardest, most complicated, most soul-crushing part of the process… the waiting. The waiting and waiting for someone to find you and pluck you out of writerly obscurity into something more, a produced screenwriter.

Here’s what I think you should do rather than wait.

1. Write something small, that can be produced for a reasonable budget.

2. Find some directors who’ve made incredible shorts you admire. Use IMDBPro, use the trades, use festivals, and compile a big spreadsheet of who these directors are, why you like them, and most importantly how to contact them. Do the same thing for producers you really like. Up and comers only. We aren’t looking for people with ten features under their belt, we’re looking for people with at most one.

3. Start writing to these directors and producers to introduce yourself. Be genuine. Be real. Be complimentary. And be brief. Tell them you have a feature screenplay you’d love to talk to them about, and include the logline. That’s it. Don’t send the attachment in your intro. Ask for thirty minutes of their time to connect and introduce yourself.

4. Expect to hear back from about 20% of these people (if even). Find a way to zoom or talk with them about the project, and get to meet more generally. Then, explain why you like them for the project. If they’re open to reading it, send it to them.

5. Expect to hear back from about 20% of these people (if even). Most will tell you no. But if you have a high enough number of people you’ve reached out to, a couple might tell you they’re kind of interested.

6. Try to make that small thing together. If it’s a tiny budget thing, you’re going to be wearing a lot of hats, writing/producing/first ADing. I’ve done all those jobs. And as much as you might think “I only want to be a writer” knowing how all of the various jobs from producer to locations PA work will only help you in puzzling together the next project.

7. Once you have made the thing — you now have another excuse — and a more concrete excuse — to get in touch with agents/managers. And they have a more concrete reason to get in touch with you.

Producing and releasing a microbudget film is a beast, and there’s so much more I could say about how I think you should do it, but I’ll save that for another time. I am going to skip over all of the many many many steps involved to simply say… this is a way to make something happen, for yourself, without waiting for someone to notice you.

We must think outside the box of “I will wait until someone notices me.” You do not need to be found in a contest to make a movie. You can reach out to just about anyone in the world with a little bit of concentrated googling and dedication. Find some people who you think are at a similar career stage and start reaching out to them.

Then, make something.

The more things you make, the more likely someone notices, and the more likely you are to get to make another thing.

A career as a screenwriter isn’t something you can plan, but it is something that you can kickstart, and will need to kickstart, yourself, over and over and over again.

So get going. I love your plan. But I’d fold the seven “easy” steps I laid out into your own plan, somewhere between 2 and 5.

Do you have a question about a career in Hollywood? About writing? About the creative process? About pitching? About anything at all film related? Let me know in the comments and I’d love to try to answer.

Previously on Hollyweird…

It’s the end of an era, certainly, and I’m not such a Sundance Pro (this is only the second time I’m at the festival) that I feel qualified to write an “it’s the end of Sundance as we know it” piece. I’m not even qualified to write a “this is what Sundance means to me” piece, because… frankly, this is the first time I’m here with a film I worked on.

All I know is there are not just one, but TWO(!) Chase Sapphire lounges, and for that, I am thankful.

Which, by the way, as though I haven’t pounded this home enough on the newsletter or social media, is exactly why I’m here. I wrote this film, In the Blink of an Eye, which was on the back in 2016, found its way to director / genius / Academy Award Winner Andrew Stanton, and is premiering here Monday evening.

Andrew did a nice little interview for the festival about the movie and what it means to him.

It’s a very strange feeling, having a movie come out, especially one that’s been with you for a long time. I’m excited for a packed crowd at the festival to get to watch it together on the big screen at high altitude, and even more excited for it to eventually be out in the world (on Hulu February 27th) so that everyone can see it.

I’ll be running around the festival starting this morning, so if you see me and are a Hollyweirdo please say hey! And if you happen to be here and happen to be a film financier I’m also taking meetings. :)

My schedule is very full but there’s always time for one more.

Oh also, Apple TV just released a teaser for the upcoming season of For All Mankind, which I was a writer on. Busy spring.

They also released a batch of promotional photos here, but for some reason Apple and Sony REFUSE to include this picture.

It was a really lovely time, and we were lucky to be showing the current cut of the film to some very smart filmmaker friends to hear their thoughts about what’s working, and what isn’t quite working yet. Despite it being nerve wracking to “bare your soul” and share work in progress, I tend to find it energizing! All these smart people engaging with a piece of work! It’s cool. Plus, it’s a little bit easier to hear feedback when you’re the producer rather than the writer/director.

We heard a lot of very good feedback, (good as in positive, but also good as in constructive and useful for us as we continue to edit) but most importantly, we also got this:

If you’re feeling like you missed out, and want to be kept in the know about all things Father Figures, head here to sign up for our mailing list. And if you want to throw us a couple bucks to continue with our edit and finishing, I’d never say no to that, which you can do here.

This week I also got notes back on an episode of TV that I’m currently working on, AND got notes on the animated feature I’ve been writing. AND AND sent something new out to my team. Hi guys!

It really feels like it’s been a sprint to try to get as much done as possible before next week, when I’ll be on the ground in Park City to attend the premiere of In the Blink of an Eye (which I wrote) at Sundance. [If you’re coming to the festival, come say hi!]

So, if you like me, are sprinting… remember to drink some water. Pause and consider whether that fourth cup of coffee is really necessary. And try to find a moment to appreciate, even if it’s absolutely crazy making to have a jam-packed calendar where you’re running from one thing to the next to the next, that a lot of the stuff on that calendar is pretty cool!

I’ll have more to report next week (and the week after) about the festival, but for now, I’m going to keep it brief and just say I’m excited to be RUNNING TOWARDS THE FINISH STARTING LINE.

If you’re craving some more in-depth writing, I have plenty to offer you, and it’s feedback related:

And I loved hearing from so many of you about the 2025 in Review, how seen you felt getting to hear that, yes, literally everyone has projects fall apart for no good reason, and just how demoralizing this career can be (but also fun, I promise).

This week, rather than look back at what went wrong (or right, there was plenty that went right), I want to look ahead. This early January period has that “back to school” kind of energy I love and crave. I mean, I put pens and a personal planner on my gift guide this year, if that tells you anything.

What am I hoping to do this year?

And how do we even set reasonable goals for ourselves as artists, in an industry where almost everything is outside of our actual control?

Well… we have to set goals we can control for ourselves!

Here are some of my 2026 goals for your reference!

Write and send out a couple ideas in short story format.

I keep seeing these packaged for big bucks and I do think there’s a smart business strategy at play here. Spending much less time crafting a short story than it would take to craft a spec screenplay while also avoiding the thing that can happen with specs where you have inadvertently given people a reason to say “no.” Less is more in sales, and if you bog people down in the details then they are much more likely to say no. So I’m going to write some tight, concise, three act stories that have high concepts and see if I can do anything with those. I think writing and sending out TWO is a reasonable amount for the year. What happens with them? I can’t say! We are not focused on outcomes when we set goals, just the part of the process that we ourselves control!

Send out a pilot.

Every few years I try to sell a TV show and I think we’re entering another “Colby tries to sell a show” year. There’s an old pilot I’ve written (I can’t tell you how old, it is too embarrassing), a comedy about an enterprise that is normally run by idealistic dreamers that finds itself taken over by a cutthroat accountant who wants to “maximize efficiency” of everything.

Sounds a lot like the industry (and world) we currently live in!

It never quite clicked when I first started sending it out — but I think it’s very fun and A LOT MORE TIMELY now than it was when I first wrote it. So I am refreshing it slightly, stamping a 2026 date on the cover page, and then hoping to send it out to folks who’ve never seen or heard of it before. This is the nice thing about writing something on spec -- it’s yours forever, and sometimes those things that didn’t quite make sense in one moment suddenly make a heck of a lot more sense.

Direct a short.

This one kind of falls in the “what are you insane?” category, because I already have a feature film I’m prepping for [see below] but I have this crazy idea that really can and should only be a short film. I think we could do it over the course of a few days, and directors don’t get to direct very often, really.

So when you have the will and maybe the way, I think pursue it? I’ll keep you posted.

Direct a feature.

This is one of those “yes sure that’s a cool goal but how much do you as the filmmaker actually control the outcome?” I think a lot, if you are willing to hustle, determined to keep the momentum up, and are able/willing to design a flexible enough production plan that the movie can happen within a wide range of funding options. I’ve written my first feature as a director to be exactly that, and after what felt like a tedious and slow on-ramp last year, we’ve had what feels like an exciting energy shift happen as we enter 2026, that I’m eager to capitalize on.

Write an episode of TV.

This is literally already happening. It’s nice to put some goals on your list that you know without a doubt you’ll be able to cross off, and soon.

Write a new feature.

This is also already happening, and I’m being paid to do it! Another “Will Check This Off Soon” goal, which are the best kind, truly!

Complete the documentary I’ve been producing and start submitting to festivals.

Father Figures has one more pickup shoot scheduled, we’re deep into our edit, we have a feedback screening with folks planned, and we’re excited to get it across the finish line. Then we’ll start worrying about the SECOND HALF of making a movie — getting people to see it.

Reconceive my work space.

This is out of necessity, as our current guest room / home office is in the process of being transformed into a much more permanent guest’s room, ie a baby’s nursery. But I do love a project, and I especially love a project that involves making a space that feels practical and personal and primed for creativity.

I gave up my old office (rip) when I started at the show, and while I love and miss it, it also had bad internet and you could hear the train going by every 10 minutes. So I may be on the hunt for an entirely new location. Not sure.

Hit 30K followers on instagram.

How much is this one in my control? Debatable. But I grew Hollyweird’s instagram account to 15K over the course of five months, so I feel like even if we slow down substantially, trying to grow another 15K isn’t such an unreasonable goal. How will I be doing this? Same thing I’ve been doing in 2025, posting a lot, and trying to get better at it.

Why do this? Well, I would love to use my micro-celebrity to SELL MONTBLANC PENS. But more importantly, I have really enjoyed getting to hear from folks that the same practical / creative advice I’ve been sharing here in the newsletter is reaching an entirely new audience via video, and it seems to be really useful to people! I also know that getting better at social media is the key to selling the movies (and shows) I have up above.

GETTING PEOPLE TO SEE THE MOVIE IS PART OF MAKING THE MOVIE, LET US NEVER FORGET!

I have A LOT of other things I’d like to do, and things I’ll probably pursue throughout the year as well, but as I get older I am trying to be better at FOCUSING and also on setting goals that I do have some modicum of control over.

Whaddaya think? Is this overambitious? Is this perfectly ambitious? We’ll check back in at the end of 2026 and tally up the points on what did/didn’t get done this year.

And what about you? What are your goals for 2026? Writing and otherwise? I’d love to hear them, and would especially love to hear the WHY behind any/all of them.

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Previously on Hollyweird…