A special treat this week on GITS as each day I will be posting excerpts from a screenwriter?s roundtable I did with some of the best and hottest young screenwriters in Hollywood: Chris Borrelli, F. Scott Frazier, Justin Rhodes, Greg Russo, John Swetnam and the writing duo Jeremiah Friedman & Nick Palmer. How good are they? Over the last 2 years, they have combined to sell 12 spec scripts, and that doesn?t include the numerous writing assignments they have landed or original pitches they have set up.
Here are the 12 spec scripts they have sold:
Chris Borrelli: ?The Vatican Tapes? [Black List 2009], ?Wake?, ?Sad Jack?.
F. Scott Frazier: ?The Numbers Station?, ?Line of Sight? [Black List 2011], ?Autobahn?, and a fourth project as yet unannounced.
Jeremiah Friedman & Nick Palmer: ?Family Getaway? [Black List 2010].
Justin Rhodes: ?Second Sun?.
Greg Russo: ?Down?, ?Autobahn?.
John Swetnam: ?Evidence?, ?Category Six?.
Our conversation covered many topics and is a unique opportunity to learn what it?s like to go from aspiring to professional screenwriter. Beyond their insights into the craft, I?m sure you will be inspired by their passion for what they do, their love of movies, and just in general how much fun they are.
Screenwriter?s Roundtable: Part 5
SM: Greg, you sold a second spec after you landed some assignments, right?
Greg: That was a spec that I?d written a year ago and had gotten a lot of good feedback on it, and it had bounced around. It was really stressful until we finally found the right shop for it? after changing the title and also calling it Autobahn. By the way, I think everyone here should write a script called Autobahn. There?d be seven in development, it would be amazing.
[Laughter]
SM: Jeremiah and Nick, I know you are working on The Bodyguard, but do you have an interest in continuing to write specs down the road?
Nick: Yeah, we?re developing one pitch with a company and after that, we?re really excited to get going on another spec idea. Kind of because it?s so different from an assignment. It?s really exciting for us to sit down and write something that?s completely our own idea and it?s just the two of us sitting together working it out, as opposed to all the red tape you?ve got to walk through or all the people you have to deal with for assignments.
Jeremiah: All the hoops you have to go through.
Nick: Yeah, and going to the producers and pitching for six months to try and win them over for your take on something. It?s more fun just to write the script.
John: And there?s something really exciting about spec scripts. You?re rolling the dice and you?re working for free, fifteen hours a day, and the coffee and the cigarettes, and you have no idea what?s going to happen. And you could spend three or four or six months on this spec and nothing happens. But the reward of selling a spec is just so amazing. It?s worth it. Every day, it excites me. There?s so much potential and possibility. Whereas with the assignment game, once you?ve got the assignment, for me it just starts to feel like work. I got in this business so I didn?t have to work. That?s why I like the specs for myself, they?re just more exciting.
Scott: I?m actually worried that Swetnam and I may have a physical addiction to selling specs. We talk a little bit about it like it?s heroin.
SM: It?s like you guys are the Lennon and McCartney of the spec world. John Lennon would go away and write a song and then the next day, McCartney would show up with another song?
John: There?s something fun about this whole thing. Me and Frazier aren?t sleeping together, I promise, but what we both get is that this is exciting. And I want to keep it that way, I don?t want it to feel like too much of a 9-to-5 job, that I?m working for somebody else and all the deadlines. Obviously, that?s part of the game, but I feel like this is such an amazing opportunity for all of us, and it?s just too much fun to not play the game and enjoy it, and see what we can do. Because we are the ones that are going to pave the future and, hopefully ? like I said ? five years from now, we can look back at this and say that we changed the way the spec game was. And we changed the kind of movies that were written. We have the potential to do that and it?s fun to think about that.
SM: That?s my larger point, that you guys are perhaps doing that. Not to say you?re the exclusive reason why the spec market has rebounded the way it has this year? another spec sold today, so by my count we?re at 108. Essentially, if two more specs sell, it will be a 100 percent increase in spec sales from last year, which is extraordinary. What I?m hearing here is a real respect for the spec script, a passion for it, and I see it in your pages and your concepts. They?re fresh takes on interesting ideas that maybe are reinvigorating this whole development world in terms of the spec. Do you feel like there?s something going on in the spec script market right now? It?s widening out, it?s bubbling up, it?s coming to life.
John: I do. I think a lot of it ? and I could be completely wrong ? there are so many smaller buyers out there, there are so many people who are trying to make movies. I don?t know what the numbers of big studio sales are and if those have gone up, but there are a lot of people out there that want to make movies. So sometimes, you can write for those smaller companies. When I sold Evidence, I never thought that was going to be a studio movie. I wrote it because I was going to make it for fifty thousand dollars, but it was finding a company that said, okay, we?ll go ahead and make this movie. And I think there are a lot of those companies out there and you can target your specs to some of these smaller companies that are actually going to make your movie instead of going to a studio that?s going to sit on it in development for years. And sometimes when you sell it to a studio, like with Category 6, we were like we?re only going to do this if you guys are going to make this movie and now they?re going to make the movie. It?s all about the movies being made to me, it?s not just about selling a spec script. It?s about selling a spec script that?s going to get made into a movie.
Scott: For me, everything goes in cycles. And I feel like we?ve hit the end of the cycle of reboots and remakes and comic book movies, and not that I ever think those will fully go away. It?s the same way there was a glut of erotic thrillers in the late 90s, right? And now we get two a year. It?s not that movie types will ever go away, but I do think that for the last couple of years, there has been a premium on established IP. Characters that people all around the world can recognize. And I think we?re slowly moving away from that into more original territory. I think it?s cyclical.
SM: And this year, it?s interesting: for many, many years, comedy has been the number one genre in spec script sales, but this year, it?s been thrillers or action-thrillers. Any sense about why you think that might be the case? Partly, perhaps, because it is original content, but is there anything else driving that?
Scott: I?ve always heard that thrillers play better overseas than comedies because in comedies, a lot of the jokes don?t translate properly to every language. But Liam Neeson electrocuting a guy?s balls? That?s fantastic in France, Germany, Russia?
[Laughter]
SM: Justin, I wanted to get back to you. You sold a spec, I know you?re working on some secret project that?s still not yet announced. Do you feel like you might ever go back to writing specs?
Justin: I think I might be the outlier in the group. I?ve never really written a spec in terms of writing something by myself. Second Sun was developed with Scott Aversano, who?s the producer, almost from the beginning. So most of what I?ve been doing is that, and I sold two pitches earlier this year before that. Those haven?t been announced yet for a variety of reasons, so it was a weird thing. Even when we went out with Second Sun, we didn?t go out wide. They slipped it to Warner Brothers and Warner Brothers bought it that day and that was it. So I don?t know. I don?t actually have any experience writing a script just for me, on my own. I think it?s something that might be rewarding, but the two projects I have coming up right now are pitches with attachments, so I actually don?t have any plans to write a spec in the near term.
Greg: I?m going to jump in and agree with Justin. I love working on assignments. I love working with producers. I?m just a collaborative person, so I?d rather work on a project with a very smart producer or executive, or even a director, who I can work closely with to bring it home, rather than just break it by myself. The other thing I?ll say is? producers, execs? they?ve got the best ideas. They?ve got all the cool shit, they?ve got all the cool IPs. So it?s hard when I?ve got my list of ideas and I?m going, ?Man, that would be interesting to work on.? And then all of a sudden some producer?s like, ?Hey, you want to work on this?? And I?m like, ?What the fuck, of course. Are you crazy??
Writing assignments can be great. As Greg says, there are some fantastic story ideas out there, controlled by producers or owned by studios, just waiting for your fevered fingers to dig into. Absolutely you should go for those.
But there?s always the spec script. And spec scripts aren?t just for aspiring screenwriters. Spec scripts are an opportunity for you to write your stories.
Each day for this series, I?m going to highlight one of the writers. Today: Greg Russo.
Russo has original thriller project ?Down? at Relativity, hoping to go into production next year, and action/thriller project ?Autobahn? he wrote and optioned to Inferno Entertainment, with Mark Steven Johnson directing, and Russo exec producing. He sold a pitch for an original action/thriller to Alloy Entertainment earlier in the year and is currently working on rewriting the summer action flick ?Heatseekers? at Paramount, produced by Michael Bay?s Platinum Dunes and writer/producer Chris Morgan. Russo recently signed on to write a brand new action script called ?High-Speed? to be directed by the Bandito Brothers (Act of Valor), hoping to go into production next year as well. He?s currently developing a number of projects with various producers around town.
For Part 1 of the roundtable discussion, go here.
For Part 2, go here.
For Part 3, go here.
For Part 4, go here
Tomorrow: Part 6, the final segment of the screenwriters roundtable.
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