Read 'Man Overboard wins the Los Angeles Film and Script Festival' at http://www.SellingYourScreenplay.com.

I’m happy to announce that a film I wrote with Nathan Ives, Man Overboard, has won top honors at the Los Angeles Film and Script Festival. It has been awarded the “Best narrative feature.” It will be screening in Santa Monica, CA on November 5th 2011. If you’re available please come out to see the film.

Here is a link to the festival’s website: http://lafilmandscriptfest.com/

Here is a link to the 2011 winners: http://www.lafilmtickets.info/Fall_2011_Winners.html

You can purchase tickets to the event by going here: http://www.lafilmtickets.info/Tickets_2011.html

Read 'What happened to Dish Dogs?' at http://www.SellingYourScreenplay.com.

You can find a little background on Dish Dogs here:  How I optioned and sold my first screenplay Dish Dogs

Shortly after Nathan Ives and I optioned Dish Dogs we took a couple of passes at the script making changes that the producers requested.  We met with Sean Astin who was interested in directing the script.  He seemed to like the script but had a lot of problems with it, too, and many of his friends and family seemed to be trying to steer him away from the project.  After meeting with him he seemed to want lots and lots of changes which I didn’t think were needed – and in fact the producers were telling us that they didn’t think it needed any further changes either.  I never heard exactly what happened but soon afterwards we got word that Sean was no longer the director on the project, which suited us just fine since he seemed to want too many changes.

In hindsight this was the biggest mistake we made in dealing with the producers.  Nathan and I should have really fought for Sean as a director.  Sean seemed hard working and eager to make a good movie.  Our script had problems and Sean recognized that even though Nathan and I didn’t.  If he had directed the film I think he would have made the effort to work with Nathan and I on the script and together we would have made a good film.

A few months later I called the producers and asked them how things were going.   I could hear the producer I was talking to cover the phone and say, “hey, it’s one of the original writers on Dish Dogs.”  I knew that wasn’t a good sign.  Basically the funding was moving forward very slowly and the producers and director were just waiting around for filming to begin.  With literally nothing to do they just started to re-write the script almost out of boredom.  One of the producers had given the script to his hairdresser and gotten notes from him!  I’m not kidding.  Nathan and I read the new version of the script in sheer horror.  It went from our script that the producers said needed “no changes” to something completely different – and in our opinion worse.

We had a few meetings with them and were willing to work with them to make changes but at that point the script wasn’t ours anymore and they didn’t really want to hear what we had to say.

Nearly six months into the option they got their funding and paid us for the script.

Nathan and I were on the set several times and they were always very gracious to us.  In fact they were some of the coolest dudes you’d ever want to hang out with on a movie set.  Unfortunately we had very different artistic sensibilities.  It’s hard to say whether our original script was really better than what was produced, maybe, maybe not.  Our script did have problems but I don’t think the producers were able to solve the problems and in trying they ripped the heart and soul out of the story (at least in my opinion).

I’ve posted the script online and you can still buy or rent the movie so you can weigh in on which version you think is better by leaving a comment below.

It’s available from Netflix on demand as of this writing or you can buy it from Amazon here: Buy Dish Dogs at Amazon.com.

If you want to read the original screenplay you can do so by going here: download the original screenplay for Dish Dogs.

The screenplay is formatted incorrectly so please do not use it as any sort of style guide for screenwriting.  The original screenplay was written in Word Perfect 5.0 before I had any sort of screenwriting software so I used custom macros to format it.  The macros didn’t work (of course) when I opened it years later in Wordpad so the formatting was lost when I created this online text version.

Read 'Rushlights' at http://www.SellingYourScreenplay.com.

I recently sold a spec script called Rushlights (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1536437/).  Rushlights is being produced and directed by Antoni Stutz.  It stars Josh Henderson, Haley Webb, Aidan Quinn, and Beau Bridges.

Rushlights is a film noir story about a down on his luck guy who tries to steal an inheritance by getting his girlfriend to pose as the dead guy’s long lost granddaughter.  The protagonist gets knocked around the whole story always getting dangerously close to being exposed but he plugs away, and keeps plugging, and doesn’t stop until there’s nothing left.

I optioned Rushlights to Antoni years ago and he plugged away, too, trying to get the film financed.  I can’t help but notice the parallel between the film’s protagonist and Antoni.  Getting an independent film financed is incredibly hard – mainly because it’s such a risky venture – but Antoni never gave up and I congratulate him for persevering, getting funding and being able to realize his vision.

In hindsight I think I was smart to write a story about a guy who wouldn’t give up even in the face of overwhelming odds because that’s the sort of person a movie needs to get made and it’s the sort of person that was attracted to this story.  I optioned the script several times before I met Antoni and all the people who liked it were dogged as hell.  If you write a story about a bunch of goof-ball stoners it might be hilarious but if that’s the sort of person who comes on board to produce it you’ve got big problems.

I sold this script using exactly the tactics I talk about in my How to Sell Your Screenplay (in a nutshell). There was nothing more than sending the script out (a lot) and finally optioning it to someone and then waiting a long time.  Antoni placed an ad in one of the trade magazines, either the Hollywood Reporter or Daily Variety.  I don’t remember which one.  I responded to his ad, he responded to my query letter, I sent him the script and we met at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood.  He basically liked the script although he did do some re-writing to it over the years.

Inheritance (which was my original title for the script) was the sixth script I wrote and probably the second script that was coherent enough to actually be turned into a half-way decent film.  So while I’ve had other scripts produced, this one is my earliest script to actually make it to production and it probably always will be because I doubt any of my earlier work will ever see the light of day (thank God!).

Look for Rushlights to be released sometime next year.  I hope it turns out well.

Read 'Man Overboard available on Netflix' at http://www.SellingYourScreenplay.com.

A script that I co-wrote was released on DVD in August. It’s slowly making it’s way through the various DVD channels and is now available to ad to your queue in Netflix. It’s not actually available yet, but it’s in their system as “soon to be released.” So if you’d like to see it and you have a Netflix account you can add it to your queue by going here: http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Man_Overboard/70126912?trkid=222336&strkid=1863872280_0_0&strackid=36fb669aab6ed3f7_0_srl

And of course after you’ve seen it please write a nice review of it!

There are several other ways to buy the movie including through Amazon.com and through the official Man Overboard website.

Click here to buy Man Overboard from Amazon.com.

Click here to buy Man Overboard from the film’s official website.

Click here to add Man Overboard to your Netflix que.

Read 'Man Overboard Facebook page' at http://www.SellingYourScreenplay.com.

A Facebook page for a movie I co-wrote, Man Overboard (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1186829/) was recently set up.  If you use Facebook check it out and join the group.

The Facebook page can be found here:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Man-Overboard/90567549197

The trailer and official site for Man Overboard can be found here:

http://www.manoverboardmovie.com

Read 'How I optioned and sold my first screenplay Dish Dogs' at http://www.SellingYourScreenplay.com.

I’m sure many people reading this blog have looked at my IMDB link, but if you haven’t have a look at it. You’ll notice my first writing credit is a film called Dish Dogs starring Shannon Elizabeth, Sean Astin, Mathew Lillard, and Brian Dennehy.

Dish Dogs started out as an idea I had in college – a sort of modern day Easy Rider about two guys who would drive around the country washing dishes at local restaurants, never staying at one place for more than a few days. I washed dishes at a Chart House Restaurant in high school and I saw firsthand how easy it was to get a job as a dishwasher and thought this was a romantic and somewhat plausible premise for a script.

I had told my college buddy, Nathan Ives, about the idea and he liked it. After sitting on the idea for several years he asked if he could take a stab at writing it. After we talked about it for a while we decided to try and write it together – it became the first script we wrote together and has been an enduring writing partnership.

So Nathan and I wrote a draft of the script and we started to pass it around to our contacts. Nathan worked at Digital Domain (a special effects company) so he gave it to a few people down there. While no one wanted to buy the script, people seemed generally pretty positive about it.

At the time I was working on a master’s degree at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) in communications with a screenwriting emphasis. One of the other students, Stan Williamson, had recently optioned his script Just Write. I asked him how he had optioned it and he told me he submitted it to an ad in The Hollywood Reporter. I had occasionally seen these ads placed by producers looking for scripts and even submitted a few times, but I had never gotten a reply so I had never done it with any consistency. He told me that he had been submitting to them for 10 years and had optioned quite a few scripts that way. So I too began to submit with extreme consistency.

After 9 month of consistently submitting (probably hundreds of submissions or more) to every post in The Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety where someone was looking for a script I started to get a few replies from people. One guy was thinking about hiring me to re-write a project he was working on. One company was looking to hire writers to write their ideas. And finally a production company liked Dish Dogs and wanted to option it. They paid us $500 for a 6 month option and told us they were going to make the movie for around $2 million. Nathan and I were ecstatic.

It turned out to be quite lucky that I was able to sell the first script that I optioned and it ended up getting produced. Usually options don’t turn in to actual sales. Since then I’ve probably had 25 options that never went anywhere.

I’ll leave the actual process and the re-writes of the script for another post – it didn’t exactly go as planned. Hopefully there are some lessons in my experience for you. I still occasionally look in the trades for posts but it doesn’t seem like producers post there any more, most of the equivalent postings have gone online to places like Craig’s List. Check out my post about submitting to Craig’s List.