Parting Ways

Image by johnstocker on Freepix

Happy to share some good news: I have a movie coming out in a couple months! It’s my first movie in, uh, fourteen years. Yes, that’s quite a gap. A big reason I started this newsletter was to shine a window on the reality of a “middle-class” screenwriting career and share how I wrote my way out of a mid-career slump. Since we’re getting to the good stuff (a new movie you can watch!) I figure it was time to wind back to the slump and discuss how I got from there to here.

Here’s the thing: it’s not a straightforward story, not “I did x plus y and got a movie made.” Instead it was a bunch of “I dunno what to do next, maybe I’ll try this” and luckily that brought me to where I am now. So this is much less “how to get a movie made” and much more “this is how it shook out for me, please proceed with caution.” It’s also too long for one post so I’ll split it up into a couple.

First step, a few years ago: I had to part ways with my reps.

And by reps, I mean my manager and my agent. And holy hell, was this scary.

An aside here: “parted ways” is a nice way to say “fired.” When I talk about times when a rep and I stop working together, I try not to get into the details of who fired who. I’ve both been fired and done the firing. “Parted ways” is a way to make it sound nice and amiable. Which in this case, it generally was.

So here’s the story: after Killers came out, I wrote my first spec TV pilot. This was around 2011 or so, and this led almost immediately to my first manager and I parting ways. Then I got a job on White Collar and once that season ended, I signed with a new manager. Manager #2 was not only successful with working clients, but he was also a really nice, grounded guy. Exactly what I was looking for. I signed with him and we went to work.

I took meetings, pitched TV shows, wrote pilots and feature scripts. And after six years together…we hadn’t made a buck These were tough years, the kind where a lot of writers could have quietly left town and gone on to modest teaching careers in more affordable cities. The reason I was able to stick it out was I’d made some good money on Killers and the White Collar gig. Plus, I knew I wasn’t done with LA. There was still much I wanted to accomplish.

But it was obvious that manager #2 and I weren’t a good fit. We really got along, but when I look back at the projects we developed together, I don’t like what I see. They weren’t bad, they just don’t feel like me. This was a tough time. And in hindsight, what made it especially difficult was that both my manager and I were too nice to “part ways” with the other. So how did I break the cycle? Like most moments of change the come in a writer’s life:

I wrote a new script.

Now up to this point, I was writing mid-budgeted action films, but studios were shying away from those kinds of movies. So in trying to think about what to write next, I looked at a batch of ideas I’d been considering for a while. One was for a low-budget action/thriller, contained, small. Too small, in my mind. I wanted a home run. Did writing a solid base hit serve my career? I had thought the answer was no. But my wife and best friend kept bugging me about this idea of mine they loved.

I decided to take a shot and write what I’ll refer to now as CONTAINED ACTION-THRILLER. And crucially, I decided not to develop this one with my manager. I would write it on my own, get feedback from friends, and present it to him as a last-ditch effort, as if to say “this is the best I got, can you do anything with it?”

So I wrote that script. And I brought it into my writers group to get feedback. It was universally positive. Yes, there was some work to be done, but everyone felt I was on the right track. So I asked a scary question: “If my reps don’t see this as a script they can get behind, is it good enough to plant my flag in the sand and part ways with them?”

The answer came fast: “Yes.”

So I revised the script and sent it to manager #2, really hoping he’d like it. He didn’t. And then we parted ways. Kindly. Amicably.

And that was that. I was now without a manager, BUT I still had an agent. One of my agents who’d sold Killers had formed a smaller agency with his colleagues, what’s called a “boutique agency.” They’d been growing, logging wins, and I could feel that they were outgrowing me. So I sent my agent my new script, crossing my fingers he’d like it. He didn't. But he didn’t hate it either. It was just sorta…

Meh.

So now I had no manager and an agent who wasn’t crazy about my new script, and I was wondering what to do about it when the Writers Guild of America (my union) got into quite a tussle with the agencies. It’s a long story and you can look it up, but it had much to do with packaging fees in TV - something that didn’t really affect me. But the feud was serious, and eventually the WGA asked its membership to part ways with their agents until the agencies agreed to change how they did business with writers. And most everyone did.

My situation was tricky. I was informed by the WGA that because I hadn’t worked in a while, I was considered a “post current” guild member which meant I didn’t have to leave my agent. But once he sold a script or got me a job, then I’d be an active member again and at that point would have to fire him. So there was a loophole, a tiny window where I could ask my agent to help me sell my new script. And that’s what I suggested to him.

His response was he was too busy and couldn’t help me. In my mind, I was thinking “Too busy doing what? Most of your clients just left your agency.” But I took this as a sign that our time together was over and after thanking him for changing my life for the better, we parted ways. Again, amicably. And for the first time since the beginning of my career…I had no manager and no agent.

Three weeks later, it was announced in the trades that my previous agency had just signed a deal with the WGA, instantly making them the hottest agency in town. Ah, so this is why my agent was too busy. He was probably negotiating a new deal with the WGA. That explained a lot. But what it really drove home was this simple, terrible fact:

I had just left the hottest agency in town.

And I had no manager.

It was just me and my new script. And a yawning chasm of “what the fuck do I do now?” This was (professionally) my all is lost moment. The moment when it seemed like my career was over.

But it wasn’t.

More next time.