Origins

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There’s a rite of passage that almost all screenwriters experience early on in their careers, and it’s referred to as:

The Water Bottle Tour

It goes like this. Most writers begin their career with a particular script that makes its way around the town, being read by a lot of people. This is usually because it sells or (more likely) almost sells. But even if it doesn’t sell, people want to meet the “new kid in town” and so your reps set you up on tons of general meetings. They’re called generals because you’re not meeting on a specific project, this is just to get acquainted with various execs at studios and production companies. They call it the Water Bottle Tour because while you’re waiting on a nice couch for the meeting to begin, an assistant will ask if you want anything to drink. Almost everyone asks for water and you usually get a bottle of water and voila, you’re on the Water Bottle Tour!

Now, my last round of general meetings was entirely over Zoom so I don’t know if the Water Bottle Tour is still a thing or not. But I’ve been doing this long enough to know there can be multiple rounds of generals over the course of a career. Sometimes it’s when you have a beloved new script making the rounds. Or you get a movie made. Or your career craters and you have a new script go out and all the execs are new and want to meet this fresh young writer who weirdly seems older than they are (I say this from experience).

But one thing that every general meeting has in common is:

The Origin Story

My first Water Bottle Tour was because I’d written an across-time/zombie-killing script called Hatchet Club that went out to a bunch of studios and almost sold, but didn't. People loved the script though, and I ended up going on between thirty and forty general meetings. Most of them started like this:

Exec: Hey, nice to meet you. I really enjoyed your script! So where are you from?

It took me a few meetings of mumbling out an answer to realize that what they were really asking was “Where are you from and how did you end up writing the script that got you in my office?” Once I realized that, I honed my story into a tight, five-minute tale that I repeated in every single meeting. And it went something like this:

My Origin Story (first Water Bottle Tour)

NOTE: stuff in parentheses is me commenting now.

I grew up in Orlando, Florida (pause for them to make fun of Florida. Literally every single time). I went to UF where I studied Advertising because they didn’t have a film program. But I made lots of short films, and then moved back home after graduation when Orlando was trying to become “Hollywood East” (for real, that’s what they were calling it). That didn’t happen, but it ended up being an incredible artistic scene. I had a successful improv troupe, wrote and directed short films and theater, worked as an assistant programmer at the Florida Film Festival, acted in commercials, was an assistant casting director, and in between all that managed to write some feature scripts. The Orlando Weekly once voted me “Best Renaissance Man” for their Best of the Year issue and then I thought, well, time to move to LA.

When I moved out here, I decided to leave behind my “jack of all trades” vibe and and focus on my screenwriting…and maybe do some improv on the side. A producer I worked with in Orlando had moved out here and became my first manager. He sent out one of my scripts, a romantic dramedy called Gifted, and a lot of people liked it but it was pretty small and they were looking for studio movies. So my manager encouraged me to take my skill writing good characters and dialogue and marry that to my childhood love of comic books, sci-fi, and horror (this was before the MCU or much of the elevated genre we have today). I wrote up a few loglines and he pointed at one and said, write that one! And that script was Hatchet Club! <END OF ORIGIN STORY>

Me again. So as my career progressed, I had various moments where I took mini-water bottle tours. Looking back, I’d say there was at least three other times where I took at least ten meetings off of a new script. After my first film The Air I Breathe was shot but before it was released, my script Five Killers was picked up by Lionsgate. A lot of people read it and wanted to meet me. So I had to adjust my Origin Story, shortening that first section and adding some new stuff:

My Origin Story (second Water Bottle Tour)

I met filmmaker Jieho Lee when I was working at the Florida Film Festival. His short film had won an award and it was my job to call him and bug him into coming to our festival to accept it. We ended up getting along and kept in touch. Once I moved to LA, I invited him to an evening of my one-act plays and he actually came to see the show (if you live in LA, you know what a huge deal this is). He liked my dialogue and asked me to co-write his debut feature with him. We spent two years writing the script, another two years getting it cast and financed. We shot The Air I Breathe over six weeks in Mexico City with an all-star cast including Brendan Fraser, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Kevin Bacon, Forrest Whittaker, and Andy Garcia. It was a writer’s dream, being on set every day, watching a movie I helped write come to life

I came back all excited, thinking I could use the Air script to get some work. But my manager told me I couldn’t use it as a sample because I had co-written it with Jieho. I was so pissed. I really needed a new sample so I poured everything I loved in studio movies into a single script. Five Killers was a high-concept for a price, character-driven action movie with humor and heart. Lionsgate got an early copy and made me a deal I couldn’t refuse and here I am! <END SECOND ORIGIN STORY>

Me again. Man, people loved Five Killers. It’s still one of the very best things I’ve ever written. It changed my life in so many ways. A lot of other writers were hired to rewrite my script, which was a bummer, but that’s the biz. The movie got made and retitled Killers. It turned out okay. It’s a nice date-movie, plenty of people enjoyed it, and I got to buy a house so there ya go.

My third water bottle tour was after I wrote my first pilot for a sci-fi cop show called Wired. A partner at my agency at the time said it was one of her favorite TV samples ever. I hold onto that because it never sold, but a lot of people read it and liked it, leading to:

My Origin Story (third Water Bottle Tour)

After Killers, I wrote a lot of scripts, both alone and with a co-writer. But nothing sold. My manager suggested I try writing a TV pilot (this was before peak TV). I realized how much I loved TV and thought why not give it a shot? So I did. <END ORIGIN STORY>

Yeah, not much new to report here. But since I was considered a brand new TV writer, my meetings were all about the cool shows that inspired me. That’s how I ended up at Fox Television Studios, talking about how much I liked their show White Collar. The exec I was meeting with said he’d get my pilot to creator/showrunner Jeff Eastin. Eight months later, I got a call that they needed a new writer on the show, and Jeff liked my script. I met him and one of his EP’s and before I knew it, I was sitting in my first writers room. This is a much longer story, but long story short I got to work with an incredible team of writers and learned a ton. I left that show fully prepared to become a super successful TV writer.

I never worked in TV again.

In fact, I didn’t work at all for six years. Well, I worked. I wrote my ass off, both features and pilots. I was pitching, taking meetings, doing all the stuff I should do. But nothing worked. No jobs, no sales.

Those were tough times. But when it came time to do my fourth Water Bottle Tour (this time completely on Zoom), I thought it was important to talk about what I’d been doing before writing my recent script Wanted Man (which has since been shot and retitled Classified). So here’s basically what I came up with:

My Origin Story (fourth Water Bottle Tour)

After White Collar, I pitched some shows, wrote some pilots, but nothing clicked. I did a lot of theater, much of it with my good friend Ben Rock. We ended up making a horror/comedy web series that played a ton of festivals and won a bunch of awards. After that we co-wrote Video Palace, the first narrative podcast for SHUDDER. Then we sold a “monster movie for the ears” to Audible. (I’d usually pause here because execs were always interested in talking about audio drams. I’d casually mention that Ben and I own the IP for our Audible show Catchers. Planting seeds for the future!) I ended up signing with a new manager, and I wanted to write a new feature script. After Killers, both my previous managers said, “No more assassin scripts!” My new manager said, “I love assassin scripts!” So I pitched him one, he liked it, I wrote it, and here I am! <END ORIGIN STORY>

Me again. Now imagine me constantly combining and editing those four chunks of story so they were never over five minutes and never written down. It was always just an off-the-cuff conversation that started with “Where are you from?” and progressed to “What are you up to lately?” Basically, it was a branding exercise, one I’ve been engaged in for the last twenty years.

Who am I? What matters to me? What stories am I passionate to tell? What wins have paved the way? And what losses have I persevered through? And the most important question, the one that would always follow:

What do I want to do next?

Well, after the success of Classified, my manager now tells me, “No more assassins scripts!” Luckily, there are other kinds of stories I want to tell. So I want to keep writing. Keep making cool shit with my friends. Hopefully make a living in this crazy industry.

And maybe someday soon, I’ll write the script that’s so good that I get to take another Water Bottle Tour. On Zoom. With my own reusable water bottle.

Wow, think of all the plastic water bottles we’ll be saving. You’re welcome, Earth.