A to B (And All the Way Back Again)

Once upon a time, I wrote a script. In chronological order, this is what happened to it:

1) To start with, read about Terry Illot and the Hammer Films episode here.

2) After that, Marchmont Films got their grubby little hands on it – you can read the full sorry lowdown here.

3) More or less at the same time, this happened (hello Yellow UK!) (I never got those script reports done, incidentally).

4) November 2007, and the script is selected by METLAB for development and eventual pitching to a cabal of investors. After a meeting in January 2008, I launched upon a month’s worth of rewrite and whizzed the new draft over to the truly gorgeous Lucy Vee for comment (Lucy is/was METLAB’s script editor of choice). Notes came back: super! At this stage, I was hoping to get another meeting with both Lucy and John Sweeney (METLAB head cheese) as per the original ‘calling notice’ to discuss potential ways forward. For whatever reason, the meeting never materialised. Wary of putting a lot of work in for no discernible gain, I turned my attention elsewhere (I was mid-way through a tricksy collaboration/treatment; stay tuned for more fun and games on that one at some point). Over the next few months, I waited for a meeting and a plan of action from John Sweeney, but nothing turned up. By now, I was starting to get the feeling that nothing was going to come of this (my sixth sense by now is quite well attuned to episodes of this sort). The project sat on the backburner for several months until I e-mailed John asking him what was going on (and giving him an ultimatum of sorts). I received this in reply. Game over.

5) In February 2008, I got this from an agent at United Agents:

...I absolutely loved it. It is smart and witty and unsettling.

...I’d love to read anything else you might want an agent to sell and I’d love to meet, if you’re still looking for representation.

Er, let’s think about this for a second – yes please!

Then: complete and utter silence for months. I chased up Mr Agent on a couple of occasions - he was always politeness and charm personified, but still nothing doing. Is it worth another chase? Probably not.

(Apropos of nothing at all, United Agents represent Henry Naylor: a couple of friends of mine were on the same Cambridge Footlights revue as Mister Naylor, and had a frankly uncalled for rhyme whenever his name arose in conversation: “Henry Naylor, Henry Naylor; about as funny as Vlad the Impaler.” Honestly, there’s just no need for it (*chortle*)).

6) “Notable Producer X”: I am wary of blogging too much about this at the moment, as I might say something I'll regret (as if that's ever stopped me before).

7) BBC Writersroom: a couple of months ago I got a lovely letter from Writersoom with a couple of pages of notes saying how much they liked the script and inviting me to send my next grand opus in (which I duly did, only for it to come back a month later – they’d already read it, you see. Oops).

Strangely enough, I wrote this in a post on 30th July 2007:

... if you want to know where NOT to send your speculative scripts, then stay tuned – I seem to have an almost supernatural knack for ferreting out production companies for whom procrastination is a profitable pastime...

In a bizarrely circuitous fashion, over a year later I’m back to where I started from - which really does go to show that if you want a successful screenwriting career, keep one eye permanently glued on Unfit for Print. Whatever I do, do the exact opposite: you really can’t go wrong.

Plate Spinner Extraordinaire

Whilst everyone and his/her dog has been away at the Screenwriter’s Festival, I’ve been putting my extremely ad-hoc and random marketing plan into operation, which is much like keeping a series of plates spinning whilst rubbing your head and patting your stomach at the same time – or something (you get the idea). Last week seemed the ideal opportunity as well, as the competition were all off playing croquet in Cheltenham ;-) (I went to a school with a croquet lawn and two grass tennis courts – how posh am I?)

The upside is that I got two script requests and a chat with my agent chum (just because you haven’t heard from someone in a while doesn’t mean they’re not interested – very often, a polite phone call is enough to gently prod them into action). Baby steps all, and it keeps those plates spinning I guess. And what with METLAB in a Ripley-esque state of suspended animation, I idly starting wondering what had happened to TAPS. One e-mail later, it transpires that the scripts are out with ‘industry professionals’ for a read – decisions as to the final scripts may/may not be made in the next couple of weeks. Probably best not to hold your breath.

I’m also still tarting about with that treatment, which now has a deadline of late August. And then of course, there’s the RISE Summer Challenge and the new Red Planet thing – lots to keep anyone occupied over the summer I reckon. The Red Planet competition looks great (as usual), so I’ll have to get my skates on at some point and do something about that.

As you were...

Six Types of Busy

Six types of busy at the moment, which is always surprising (and immensely gratifying). I suspect that by writing about things I’ll put some kind of weird gypsy jinx on them, but hey ho:

* METLAB script – this is where a lot of my energy is going at the moment – a month into the rewrite and I’m 60 pages in, which is quite an achievement considering the number of times I’ve had to rewrite the first 30 pages. I had some major issues with character motivation that had to be resolved before I could continue – bearing in mind my crap working method (i.e., outlining as I write, or, as I prefer to call it, ‘making it up as you go along’) this does not make for a mentally stable experience. On the home straight now (I think).

* A Pitch in Time – oh, go on then.

* Another pitch and synopsis for someone else. Like I might’ve mentioned before, I’ve thrown these out for other people previously – what tends to happen next is complete and utter silence – which is, you know, cool.

*Agents – Agent X is now in receipt of Script #2. It’s a long and time consuming process as the recent discussion over at Lucy Vee’s pointed out – the skinny seems to be that agents probably aren’t worth pursuing if you’re expecting them to do wonders for your fledging career, but Agent X seems interested enough to read more so I’ll try and keep that plate spinning for a little while longer.

* I have somehow wangled a meeting with a producer/director for next week. Check back here for exclusive updates on how I manage to fluff it all up by saying something stoopid and falling over in a comical fashion.

*A short script for the BSSC and SuperShorts – never tried one before so hey, why not?

And there you have it. As you were.

More Agent Bothering

Every six months or so, I do a more-or-less random trawl through the labyrinthe of UK literary agents in an attempt to cajole them into reading one of my scripts. My ‘hit rate’ was a fairly respectable one in four – until Monday that is. Out of six e-mails, two agents came back on the same day requesting material – which was nice. What usually happens now is that they read the script and go strangely silent for several months, as did Marjacq Scripts. That said, one interesting e-mail I received was from a large agency who stated that they were not looking at any unsolicited scripts – ten minutes later, I got emails from not one but two agents at the same agency (one requesting a script). So, we’ll see what happens. When the dust has settled, I may even name names (but don't hold your breath - I tried this once waiting for Dench Arnold to respond and it all got very painful).

In other non-agent news (well, it might be related, depending on your take on the PFD/United Agents dust up), Gladiators is back! True trash television at its best.

This Week’s Round of Rejection is Brought to you by the Letter ‘M’.

It’s always good for the soul to get rejections, so I thought I’d run through a few of my most recent failures for your delectation and delight:

Marjacq Scripts: Luke Speed asked for a script a few months back. Well, actually that’s not quite true – one of his assistants did. And from then on, complete silence. I chased Luke recently, and guess what? A deafening silence.

Shall I take that as a ‘no’ then? ;-)

Many Hands Productions: none other than Danny Stack tipped this lot. One beautifully crafted e-mail that adhered to MH's very particular requirements (their 'wants' list read a bit like a kidnap demand), and guess what? More thundering silence.

OK, I’m getting the idea now.

Marchmont Films (aka Bloomsbury Weddings): TonyB kindly supplied this link in which Marchmont want you, yes YOU, to wade through their EU wedding video mountain with a view to editing it down into a 45 minute package that someone’s paid a couple of thousand quid for. However, before you all pile in, bear in mind that you need your own editing equipment and the available funds to pay your own salary (I made that last bit up).

Even so, I’m sorely tempted. Just imagine the fun you could have Fight Club style, editing in screenshots from Marchmont’s website that no-one’s bothered to update since July 2006.

(What is it with companies beginning with the letter ‘M’? I would make a crack here about M standing for monosyllabic, but as these companies can’t muster a three word e-mail between them, I won’t bother).

London Pictures: the only company with the decency to send an e-mail saying, ‘No thanks, not what we’re looking for at the moment.’ And is it any co-incidence that the letter 'L' comes before 'M' in the alphabet? Conspiracy a-hoy (dons tin foil hat) me hearties!

As I’ve written before in previous posts, I seem to have developed some strange script-related abilities:

1. In general, my query letters always seem to get some sort of positive attention (mostly because, I suspect, I don’t write in crayon).
2. After I send prodcos and agents a script, they fall silent for months – this makes me worry, as I start to think that they may have been abducted.

Or maybe there’s another explanation: I read The Information by Martin Amis a little while back, where one of the characters – an avant garde novelist – writes books that give readers instant headaches and/or nosebleeds. In turn, perhaps my work sends agents and prodcos into weird deep space Ripley-esque comas.

Pip pip!

Rejection Times Two

Two more rejections from agents today – the first from David Higham, the second from Eric Glass. But what makes the rejection this time round a little more bearable is that I simply can’t remember having written to either of them!

Perhaps this is the best way to handle rejection (which is, let’s face it, going to happen more often than not in this game) – get those scripts and letters in the post and forget all about them. I do the same with competitions (I put two scripts in this year for Blue Cat but completely forgot about the second – Gordy Hoffman was not amused at my response).

I have stuff out with a couple of agents at the moment who are due a chase, so stay tuned...

Agent Bothering and Other Hobbies

I’ve been bothering UK literary agents for years with a spectacular run of what I like to describe as ‘ur-success’ (which is a lot like failure but stretched over a period of many years). Bear in mind the agents below are only the ones I’ve had significant exchanges with over the last few years.

So, in no particular order:

Brie Burkeman. I recently received a lovely e-mail from Brie saying that although 'technically' she is looking for new clients, she is simply too busy to dedicate any time to them at the moment. That said, her kind words are probably a euphemism for ‘feck off’. I think Brie used to be at:

Jonathan Clowes. These guys are the original big hitters. Clients include Len Deighton, Doris Lessing, David Nobbs and the Sir Kingsley Amis Estate. No email and no website, so you will have to approach by letter (unlike a lot of agents out there, JC always respond to initial queries, even if it is a ‘no thanks’).

Elspeth Cochrane. Now this is more like it. I can’t remember the name of the guy I dealt with here (a few years back, admittedly), but he was a rough diamond and make no mistake, guv’nor.

This agent (let’s call him Bob) expressed an interest in one of the first scripts I ever wrote – however, rather than taking me on as a bonafide client, he suggested that I reside on his ‘temporary list’ (something I suspected he had just made up on the spot). The concept behind this ‘list’ was that I should continue to market my script all by my lonesome with no assistance from the agency whatsoever – until I made a sale that is. Bob would then magically pop out of his box and slap a commission on whatever I had managed to negotiate for myself. Cracking deal, eh? I continued to market the script myself but without recourse to this obviously spaced out lunatic (me and about seven hundred other writers on his temporary list I suspect).

Six months later, I called Bob for an idle chat only to be told by Elspeth Cochrane herself (sounding delightfully cranky, like a dotty old maiden aunt in an Ealing film) that he had gone AWOL, and that she had no idea where he was (selling London Bridge to Japanese tourists perhaps?). By the way, she said, do you want your script back, or shall I shred it? What about your prestigious ‘temporary list’ I almost asked, but bit my tongue (that said, they’re the only agents to have done this to me. Everyone else has been thoroughly professional and eminently polite, even if they think my work is a load of plop).

Notable clients: Royce Ryton, Alex Jones and Robert Tanitch. Elspeth Cochrane appear to have had the same clients for about a million years, so god knows what they were doing toying with me (and on their high-status ‘temporary list’ to boot). I seem to recall they also counted Ernie Wise amongst their clients, but that’s not important right now.

They don’t have a website (I can’t find one anyway). How very post-modern!

Curtis Brown. I worried Ben Hall for a while when he was at AP Watt, and this tradition has continued since he moved to Curtis Brown. Ben writes very polite and encouraging ‘no thanks’ letters, which I receive with alarming frequency.

Notable clients: the prodigious Colin Bateman (just thinking about his output makes me want to go and lie down in dark room for a couple of weeks), Rob Grant, Harriet Warner.

Dench Arnold. The first port of call for screenwriters fresh out of the blocks these days, so it appears. They managed to kick me into touch after eight months and two scripts – always in a considerate and professional way, mind you. However, their email answering skills would occasionally fall into Marchmont type levels of inactivity. I’m not quite sure why it takes four months to respond to an initial script query, but there you go – ours is not to reason why.

Send Fiona Grant (Elizabeth Dench’s assistant) an email – she’d love to hear from you.

Notable clients: Peter Chelsom, Adrian Dunbar, Caroline Sax (the script supervisor for Underworld – like, wow, there was a script for that? You learn something new every day).

Futerman, Rose & Associates. Guy Rose was a thoroughly likeable sort, so I bothered him for a while to no avail. Barney Fisher-Turner as well – who also isn’t interested. Meh. Their loss.

Notable Clients: Toyah Wilcox, Brian Harvey (huh?) and Iain Duncan-Smith. There’s a nice picture of Toyah post-facelift on their website, which has got to be worth a visit.

Marjacq Scripts. What a beautiful front door!

We are always seeking to expand our talented client base and welcome new submissions.

Well, you don’t see that every day. Their website features potted biographies of the writers they represent, which should give you an idea of who they are looking for. Worth a punt, I reckon. Luke Speed is the man you need.

Peters, Fraser Dunlop: a tutor of mine at Cambridge is represented by Rosemary Canter (children’s illustration) – she put me in touch with Charles Walker a few years back. Charles was always polite and accommodating, so I continued to bother him for a while until I got the message. Jago Irwin was the next in line, another thoroughly decent chap with a sideline in carefully crafted automatic rejection emails. There are so many agents at PFD by the time you got round to being rejected by them all, you could probably start at the beginning again without Agent #1 recognising your name – a bit like painting the Forth Bridge I guess.

Notable Clients: take your pick really. Everyone who’s anyone. There are absolutely millions of writers, directors, illustrators and French polishers all available at handsome rates.

There is an excellent list of UK literary agents at the Bloomsbury website here.

Agents are, of course, looking for talented, prodigious writers with finely honed commercial sensibilities, which obviously means that I’m making a series of (rash?) assumptions about my ability that may or may not be true.

That said, give me a deadline and I’ll go at it like a fat kid after a doughnut – however, I’m sure that my ‘commercial sensibility’ could do with a bit of a buff. For god’s sake, my favourite book is Bouvard and Pecuchet by Flaubert. Perhaps I should catch up on all those Doctor Who episodes that I’ve been (deliberately) missing.

With all the above in mind, I don’t think that having an agent provides anyone with a gift wrapped solution. Friends of mine seem to get on perfectly well without representation – the percentage that the agent would have taken sits very nicely inside their pockets, thank you very much. At the very least, having an agent should widen the base of companies that are prepared to read your work.

As for marketing (when I can be bothered), my current hit rate comes in at about the 1 in 4 mark, i.e., for every agent that requests to see something, another three either don’t reply or simply send a brief ‘no thank you’ note - which I don’t think is too bad (that’s discounting all those offers I have to sit on prestigious ‘temporary lists’, of course).