You asked, he answered…

A few weeks ago, I asked you to write in with your Hollywood-related questions for TOY STORY 2 scribe Doug Chamberlin.  Doug is holding his popular Mastering Hollywood seminar in November in London, so we took your questions about ‘breaking in’ and put them to him.

Here is a selection of those questions, answered by the man himself:

Dear Doug,

How do you know which Hollywood agents are good (hard working, well connected, not crooks), when you don’t live in the area so can’t really network or keep your ear to the ground? Apart from the obvious huge ones, it’s hard when researching them to get a feel for how well regarded they are, and whether they might be right for you.

Lynn Robertson Hay

Lynn,

Good question. First of all, you can network and keep your ear to the ground even if you don’t live in the area. Writers living in L.A. communicate by the web, email and phone — and you’re just as privy to this as someone living a few blocks down Sunset Boulevard. But at any rate, here are some tips to weed out the real agents from the posers:

1) Are they WGA signatory? The WGA maintains a list of agencies which are signatory to the guild. Any agency worth its salt is on this list. If they aren’t guild signatory, then forget ‘em.

2) Check the agency’s address. Hollywood is very snobbish when it comes to where in Los Angeles you are located, and because of this all the legitimate agencies are physically located in a few select areas, such as Beverly Hills, Century City, The Westside, West Hollywood, Studio City, or Toluca Lake. If the agency’s address isn’t in one of these neighborhoods, forget it. If you don’t know where these neighborhoods are, you can look them up — or come to “Mastering Hollywood” where we get more detailed about that type of stuff.

3) Check their clientele. There are ways to research which agencies represent which writers (for example, by using the WGA). If the agency represents a successful writer you admire, then they’re unlikely to be flakes. Why would that writer stay with them if they were?

4) Target the large to medium sized agencies. Smaller boutique agencies can be excellent, but a safer bet is to go for the medium-to-big boys. These are the agencies with more than, say, ten agents. The agents whom you have not heard of but who work for these companies are probably the newer agents, and are actually your most likely bet. They may or may not be personally well-connected yet, but they’ll have some decent accessibility due to the clout of the agency. They are unlikely to be shysters or crooks or lazy, because if they were they wouldn’t last at that agency very long.

Dear Doug,

A company like Pixar states that it develops all stories ‘internally’ but how does a screenwriter have a chance of getting on the inside?

I’m UK based and have a UK writing agent but would love to know a possible route to developing a relationship with a company of this calibre, or at the very least least getting them to see my ideas.

The internal screenwriters there must’ve started externally at some point, so how did they get there?!

Thanks!

Mark Locke

Matt,

That fact that Pixar “develops all stories internally” doesn’t mean they never work with writers who are not Pixar employees. In fact, if you look at the list of writers credited on Pixar films, most of them are not permanent employees of Pixar, in other words, they are “outside” writers. What it does mean is that Pixar doesn’t get their stories by hearing pitches from freelance writers or reading spec scripts with an intention to buy and produce their script. They come up with their premises on their own.

Pixar does in fact work with “outside” writers. The most likely scenario would be that they might hire you write a script based on one of their own premises. The route to being hired to write for Pixar is to impress the people at Pixar that you are a good writer, one that can handle type of script which Pixar produces. The main way you might do this is to have one or more excellent spec scripts which prove that you can write Pixar-type material, and to get this to Pixar through an agent. It’s highly unlikely that you will literally sell them this script; instead they might hire you to work on one of their premises, which is how they develop most of their films.

This is basically the way I got the gig writing “Toy Story 2.” Pixar was looking for writers to work on the project, they received some of my spec material from my agency and liked it, and then they had a very long “interview” with me (which consisted of playing with toys, eating candy, riding scooters around, and various other goofy activities, in addition to discussing possible takes on the story). They did this because they wanted to see if they got along well with me. They were looking for someone who was not “Joe Hollywood” in attitude.

So while Pixar does have some “in house” writers who often polish scripts at the latter stages (such as Andrew Stanton), they frequently look to outside writers in developing a project.

Doug C

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Dear Doug,

How did you get your first break in to Hollywood?

agentlegg007

Agentlegg,

Hmm, my challenge here is to answer this without banging on for five pages.

It’s almost not fair for me to pinpoint any one moment as my “first break,” because my journey into Hollywood was more a series of baby steps, or “two steps forward, one step back.” My first screen credit, as well the reason for my physical move to Hollywood, came from winning a writing contest held by the American Film Institute. I submitted a packet of sketches after seeing an ad in Premiere Magazine, and was one of twelve winners flown to L.A. for a three week sketch writng workshop. The twelve of us met every day with seasoned writers from the sketch writing world who gave us advice and encouragement. (This group of contest winners also included Alex Herschlag, later to become exec producer of “Will And Grace,” Jan Oxenberg, future co-executive producer of “Cold Case,” as well as other writers who went on to success in the industry — what a great networking group that turned out to be!)

The workshop ended with our sketches being produced for a one-off special on NBC. It took some time to become firmly established as a Hollywood writer after that, (a period during which I made plenty of mistakes and learned an immense amount) but it certainly was a heartening start to my career. And I didn’t start off knowing a soul in “the business.”

Doug C

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Dear Doug,

I’m a London based screenwriter with an agent and a film in development, but no produced films under my belt as yet. I would love to write a children’s animated film of the Toy Story variety. Would it be a good idea to write such a script on spec? Or are these films always developed in house?

Many thanks,

Katy Segrove

Katy,

Animated feature film scripts are not always developed “in-house.” Certain studios will read spec scripts, whether animated or not, and may buy them to produce, usually keeping the original writer on board to develop it for them.

Other animation companies, Pixar included, come up with all of their ideas on their own (see my above response to Matt). However, that doesn’t mean they don’t work with outside writers and in the case of these companies the goal in writing such a spec would to use it as a “calling-card” script which they might read, hopefully find impressive, and therefore hire you to work on one of their own projects.

In either case, it’s important to write what you love, not just what you think will be the most likely to sell. If animation and children’s/family films is what you love writing, then you should write them, keep doing what you can to get your work out there, and build up a reputation for yourself as a writer who can handle this type of material. Good luck to you!

Doug C