Without a doubt, this was one of the most iconic experiences I had working in film development. Originally, I wrote this article for Stage 32 a few years back - so any links will take you back there. Rest in pie, David! How does a person succeed in Hollywood? Many of us, if not most of us, are on this site because we’re looking for some generally agreed upon, at least somewhat proven strategy for navigating our bewildering, often dehumanizing career path. Doing theater back in high school and college, breaking in was a pretty reliable, pretty straightforward process with a single, very frustrating twist thrown in: Trying to get involved in the productions upper-classmen are working on seems like an obvious path to success, but you very quickly discover that those kids already have people they like working with. Step two, then, is to find some people you like working with and to start producing shows of your own. Because you’re not using all that much of the school’s time and money, and because everyone in charge more or less expects you to fail, nobody’s all that worried about what you’re actually producing. Taking those limited resources, you start pushing your creative boundaries. When you finally put up a production that everyone thinks is cool, that’s when people start asking you why you didn’t just call them in the first place. Being a part of your community is what makes people want to work with you. Finding success in high school and college was really just a matter of making yourself necessary and relevant to the people you admire. BREAKING INTO HOLLYWOOD IS BIG BUSINESS My first few years in Los Angeles were a crash course in cold sales, and in the excesses of the film development process. My own work revolved around cold-calling people with presumably well-developed investment portfolios, explaining the process of making a film successful and explaining the risks involved, and then asking them to invest in our movies. When I wasn’t coaching inherently suspicious people through their first film deal, I was either writing, trying to sell my screenplays, or hanging out with my film finance colleagues and playing stupid, misogynistic, often abusive sales games.

Because I originally wrote this blog for Stage 32, any links will take you back to their site! Enjoy! What is Auteur Theory? Technically, it’s just the idea that a director’s vision is more important to the creative identity of a film than the script. When it comes to the culture of cinema, however, auteurism has evolved into the philosophy that directors with a creative vision powerful and clear enough to define every other element of production will likely make better movies, and are generally more worthy of success and acclaim. Branding is everything in the business of breaking into Hollywood, and a contemporary auteur’s work is defined by well-branded stylistic cues that make their work very easily identified by audience members. If auteurism has made a positive impact on our industry, it’s through the ease with which a single, financially empowered individual can introduce new ideas into the zeitgeist. Like with the production design of Tim Burton, the compositional approach of Quentin Tarantino, or the digitally informed cinematography of the Wachowskis, getting a clever idea up on the screen is a lot easier when the person expressing that idea has a higher degree of creative authority. Should those ideas take hold in the public’s imagination, they can change how we make movies. So, that’s a good thing. Is it the best thing that cinema has to offer? Is it genius, in the same sense that Mozart was a genius? Let’s have ourselves a talk about the consequences of idol worship, of overvaluing clever ideas, and of undervaluing our craft and our collaborators in the relentless pursuit of becoming Hollywood’s next great auteur filmmaker. OWNING MY CONTROL ISSUES Personally, I don’t like directing material I didn’t write myself. Is this because my ideas are so precious that they can’t be entrusted to anyone but me? Every day for several years, I posted a “free movie idea” on my Twitter account - specifically to develop my brainstorming skills, and to prove the worthlessness of ideas in the entertainment industry. No, I’m not precious about intellectual property. My ideas aren’t strictly worthless, but I very deliberately placed their market value on a curve that’s infinitely approaching zero. Run a search for #FreeMovieIdea on Twitter, and you’ll find a few thousand of them.

As a screenwriter with a strong history of getting good performances, this is probably the craft question I get asked most frequently. While I wrote this article for Stage 32 a few years back, the principles are still the same. Please be advised: any links in the text below will take you back to Stage 32! Until my brain injury in 2013, I lived my life as a cis-gendered white male. Apart from my experience with disability, which I admit was eye-opening, I’m about as diversity-challenged as a human being can get. I went to boarding school, for crying out loud. Nevertheless, my approach to writing characters has earned me a reputation as someone who provides fantastic performance opportunities to underrepresented people. Mastering these techniques has taken me more than a decade of practice, but it’s the kind of practice that puts focus on the specificity and the structural integrity of my screenwriting in general. Teaching the core principles that make a screenwriter successful when it comes to representing diversity won’t take us very long at all. To a large degree, that’s because these ideas are not even a little bit complicated. Please, don’t be intimidated by them. ACTION AND MOTIVATION In film, characters are defined by the mission that drives them and the details of how they go about achieving their goal in the face of adversity. Because this article is not about the fundamentals of screenwriting, I’m going to refer anyone who needs that information to a blog post I’ve written called “WHY I PASSED ON THAT SCREENPLAY.” If you’re new to screenwriting, if you struggle with what “active writing” means in film, or if you’re challenged by the boundaries between screenwriting and other writing fields like journalism or literature, this article is going to help you out. In fact, I’d recommend this article to anyone who can’t give me a fast, working definition of the words “action” and “motivation” as they pertain to acting.

In the second part of my "How To Find Money for Movies" series, based on twenty years of putting money together for all knds of endeavors inside and outside of showbusiness, I cover the fundamentals of how film investments work and how we finance them. Because this was originally a blog post for Stage 32, any links will take you to that site: Welcome back, rear reader! What you are reading is the second half of a two-part series on how to find money for movies. Even if you don’t have any interest in crowdfunding, I recommend reading the first half of “How to Find Money for Movies: Fundraising” before you proceed. Not only did we clear up some widely misunderstood terms when it comes to money, but we also talked about...DISCLAIMER: Under no circumstances should you take my advice when it comes to money. Why are you listening to people on the internet? Are we all on the same page now? Ok. When we say the words “film finance,” we are referring to any situation in which a filmmaker enters into a business agreement that empowers another person to make money from the success of their film in exchange for paying any portion of the film’s production cost. Within that definition, there’s a handful of options for filmmakers, and each one comes with its own ethical and legal limitations. Consulting a lawyer and doing plenty of research are both important steps when it comes to deciding how you want to proceed with your motion picture financing. There are two options, as I understand it: investment capital and structured financing. 1. INVESTMENT CAPITAL Finding investment capital isn’t just about walking into the magic investor room with a bunch of clever answers to any questions that might come up. Anybody can offer investors the possibility of making money, and there is a sea of people already out there on the internet trying to do precisely this very thing. Ethically and legally, more is required of us.

My experience in Los Angeles involves more than ten years working with investment capital to finance feature films, as well as more than ten years finding donations for non-profits! This is one of two articles, originally for Stage 32, covering the basics of handling money. Ok, Stage 32! What you are about to read is a two-part article that’s been more than fifteen years in the making. For a little context, my arrival in Los Angeles landed me behind a telephone at the Exodus Film Group... where I pitched would-be investors on family entertainment for two long years. Probably the best part of working at Exodus, apart from the mentorship I received, was spending time with Basil Poledouris - who wrote the film score for RoboCop and many other personally beloved movies besides. Leaving Exodus behind, I helped a small group of producers found a company called Unified Pictures. At Unified, I made more than half a decade’s worth of cold calls and worked side-by-side with personal heroes from David Lynch to Gary Oldman. Finally, I managed to cultivate my screenwriting, directing, and producing efforts into a properly glaring conflict of interest and scheduling… and the resulting meeting was the end of my film finance career, such as it exists outside of my own productions. Following the demise of my life as a film finance executive, I paid more than half a decade’s worth of bills making fundraising phone calls for non-profit institutions ranging from the Democratic National Committee to the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and the NRDC. My reputation as a fundraiser was built on repairing campaign lists that were “broken” by overcalling and unprofessionalism, as well as by securing a healthy number of monthly commitments from donors. What I’m telling you is that while I do know how to ask for money with confidence and authority, I can also beg for it with dignity and grace. FUNDRAISING AND FINANCING Most filmmakers use the words “fundraising” and “financing” interchangeably... and that’s bad. More than anything, I want people to understand that financing and fundraising are completely different skill sets. Financing is the act of securing money through some promise of return. Fundraising is what you do when you’re asking people to give you money for personal reasons.