Here's one, Don:
Lenore Wright: Terry, You’ve had many hit movies; you have a whopper out right now. Is that the real reward of screenwriting?
Terry Rossio: There is a deep sense of fulfillment that comes from achieving a heartfelt dream. It's rare that you find yourself in exactly the place where you most want to be, doing exactly what you most want to do. Once you have that feeling, the memory of it serves as a kind of mental and emotional safety net -- no matter how bad things get, how many setbacks you have, how frustrated or despairing you might feel -- you can never feel *really* bad because you had a taste of the best of what life has to give. Even if it's an illusion or self-deception, it doesn't matter ... it still works great. You get this occasional, random, shit-eating grin.
LW: What do you find most challenging day to day?
TR: The big misconception about Hollywood is that it's full of professional people with experience, knowledge, and high standards when it comes to writing. It's a bit astonishing; but what you find is that people aren't very good at reading, reading accurately, understanding what they read, understanding why something is good, and understanding how to keep something good, or make it better and not worse.
Yet everyone has an opinion, usually a strong one. And they have more power and political savvy than the average writer, and dearly want to influence the final product. So it's not just a matter of slaying the dragon of creating the story ... after you do that, there are a hundred other dragons waiting to burn your story to a crisp before you can get it made into a film.
LW: Terry, you and Ted must be one of the most successful movie partnerships working today. How is it writing with a partner?
TR: The best description I ever heard of a partnership came -- of course -- from my writing partner, Ted Elliott. He said "It doesn't make the work any easier, but it does make it better." It's natural to think that a partnership means you each do half the work. He was able to spot the truth: you both do all the work, and get half the credit and payment. Plus, it's more time consuming to come to final decisions; it's an arguably inefficient system, you probably increase the amount of work by having a partner. But -- the final product is better.
LW: There are more than 11,000 members in the Writers Guild right now. Yet the Guild reported less than 2,000 screenwriting jobs last year. Think about those odds. Should unsold writers continue to write screenplays?
TR: I think your numbers are off. If you include features, animation, plays, novel writing, television writing, video games, computer games, television animation, producing, directing, acting, etc -- a lot more of those members are working, even if they're working in related fields.
In any case, it makes no sense to talk about 'odds' as if all projects gain you an equal place at the roulette wheel, with an equal chance of selling or getting produced. That's not how it works. The vast majority of projects have a zero percent chance of selling. Other projects -- very few -- have certain qualities that give them a near 100% chance of selling.
Where the numbers game starts to really become problematic is when it comes to production. My estimate is that there are maybe only really 30 completely 'open' production slots in Hollywood in any one year. That's where a film will get made, with a decent budget, advertising campaign and distribution plan -- and it's not a remake, adaptation, sequel; and not a project originated any of the established people working, like Woody Allen or Steven Spielberg.
This means to land one of those few truly open slots -- against intense competition -- you have to have a project that attracts a director or star. Even great screenplays become no more than 'director bait' and if the right director doesn't bite, the studio will not proceed. Many writers don't realize that screenplays *never* get a green light. It takes four elements to get a green light: script, star, director, and financing. Of the four, any of the other three can create a green light individually -- but not the screenplay.
LW: If you were out now as an aspiring screenwriter, how would you break in?
TR: Hollywood is a game is designed for directors, not writers. The worst thing you can be in town is a screenwriter waving a script around trying to get someone else to read it, like it, and try to make it. Usually they won't read it, won't like it, and even if they read it and like it they won't make it. If they do read it, like it, and make it -- they'll use it as a tool to make their own thing their own way. That's just too much to expect a writer to put up with ... it's not a fair deal from the start.
So if I were starting over, right now: I'd either try to become a director, or make friends with a director -- only work on projects that had a director attached somehow from the beginning. I would create my own creative team: writer, director, special effects guy, and producer. I would try to spend the bulk of my time making movies, not babysitting drafts in development hell.
I would resist the temptation to sell a screenplay. Selling a screenplay is, in the vast majority of cases, a huge mistake. The day you sell your screenplay is the day your project dies.
This is the ultimate irony, of course. Writers look forward to that big sale; it's validation and vindication. And it seems to make sense -- all films that get made come from screenplays that sold ... so you should want to sell your screenplay to get a film made, right?
Here's what really happens. The minute you sell your screenplay, it goes to a particular company -- which doesn't want to make it. They want to put it in their development pile, mess with it, and maybe someday show it to directors or stars. You've taken it off the market of all the other places that might want to make it, and restricted yourself to one place that might not be in the business of making any new movies that year, and if they are, they have a hundred projects in line ahead of yours.
Meanwhile, in order to keep the illusion that it's a worthwhile project, they'll want to improve the draft, and you'll start to get 'notes.' You'll waste years struggling to keep the screenplay from getting nibbled to death, all the uniqueness taken out. If you're lucky, you can try to do these notes yourself. Often, other writers are hired. So even if it does get made, it won't get made the way you wanted -- 'your' project dies, because it's not yours anymore.
The final indignity -- nothing is settled until the director weighs in with his opinion. You could do ten drafts making the producers happy, making the studio chiefs happy ... and the second the director gets hired, chances are decent he'll throw everything out and start over -- working with a different writer. And that's one of the 'better case' scenarios.
One solution to this is to not sell your screenplay, even if there is a lot of interest in it -- especially when there is a lot of interest. Not until there is a director and a proceed to production clause, and even then you should only grant a short option, with all rights reverting to you at the end of the option period.
Truthfully, this is very hard to do, so the better choice is the one mentioned above: only work on a project as the director, or collaborate with a director from the start.
LW: Thanks so much, Terry.
**************
After you’ve treated yourself to Shrek at your local theatre or video store, I suggest you check out Terry’s elegant website for writers:
http://www.wordplayer.com/. He offers an amazing database of articles by accomplished film professionals that provide insider information and solace to screenwriting veterans as well as aspiring writers.
