I
don’t want you to make this mistake.
It’s a biggie.
This
mistake isn’t something forgivable like taking too long to get to your inciting
incident. It’s not the unsavory practice
of using “ing” words in your description.
It’s not even -- gasp -- submitting a spec with more than 120 pages!
Those
–- if they really are mistakes -- are baby blunders, the kinds writers make
when they first start out.
I made
this misstep -- the biggie -- after getting some huge breaks, after I had
dozens of meetings set up and plenty of interest in my writing.
My
mistake was based on a false belief. The
false belief was this:
I
thought meetings with producers were job interviews.
They
aren’t.
When
I was finally lucky enough to have UTA sending my work out to reputable producers
all over town, I was able to schedule meeting after meeting.
At
this point, I assumed I was days away from a mammoth payout.
The
truth is: These meetings aren’t about
money, because almost no producer has the means to offer you any money at all.
A
few with independent financing connections will occasionally shell out $5000
for an option or writing assignment, but it’s very rare.
In
at least one way, producers are very similar to writers. They want money from the same place you
do. The studios.
The
studios have all the cash. And only the
top-top studio execs have any power to spend money.
When
you really think about it, there are probably only a few dozen individuals in
the whole industry who -- if they wanted to -- can just decide to hand over any
real currency.
So
if all these producer meetings aren’t about getting you paid, then what are
they about?
In
part, they’re about opportunities to write for these producers for free. (The pros and cons of such offers are a subject
for another article.)
In
part, they’re about producers needing to meet anyone other producers are
meeting, so they don’t feel left behind.
But
what they’re really about is this:
You’re
making a connection. You’re meeting
producers with whom you might form a long-term relationship.
And
one of those long-term writer/producer relationships might some day, after
months or even years, lead to a time when the two of you find yourselves in a
room with a studio exec -- and the possibility of real money.
When
I first started taking these meetings, I was so confused. Nobody was offering me any paying jobs. After much frustration, I finally mentioned
this confusion to my manager.
He
told me, “You’re not there to get a job.
This is a business of relationships.
People give jobs to their friends.”
So,
to sum up, my mistake was this:
When
I finally found myself in these producer meetings, I was looking for a job when
I should have been looking for a friend.
