The good news is that I was doing 30 pushups
daily before the accident and am now up to 20 again, which is quite an
accomplishment considering that a couple months ago, I could not even do
one. Besides getting my strength back,
my sore arm has thrown my whole system off so I’m been feeling less than
chipper for some time now. My guess is
that will only remedy itself as I continue to strengthen my arm. This is turning out to be every bit as
challenging as when I shattered my leg in Boston in 1975. The doctor in Boston told me it could be the
rest of my life recovering the full use of my leg. By jogging five miles a day, I managed to do
it in about nine months.
I’ve
got to find a way to turn the page on my career and on my life. Even though after my accident I was advised
by Oakland University to pursue my CFP training in an online program elsewhere
instead of the brick-and-mortar program they have at OU, I have nevertheless
already made a huge investment in time and energy at OU last year, all for the
sake of qualifying for their intern program, for which I did qualify. Alas, the guy who was mentoring me and was in
charge of placing me as an intern very suddenly retired in April, moved to
Florida, and is no longer on the map. So
one thing I must do is get back with the people who are currently running the
intern program just to find out if I’m still in the program. Of course, I can’t do that until I’m ready to
actually participate and, though I believe it’s a virtual certainty that I am
no longer in the program, recovery is still the top priority before making the
inquiry. I think I am close.
************************************************
Meanwhile,
as a number of my closest friends have suggested to me, this accident may be a
blessing in disguise for, since January, I’ve been getting an awful lot of
encouraging news about my screenplay, Ash Wednesday. As I mentioned in my March post, my script
was ranked as the 7th best screenplay out of a thousand in the
WeScreenplay Competition in Los Angeles.
Even though only the top two scripts won awards and were referred to
agents, it was still very stimulating for me that my first full-length script
in many years had been received as well as it had.
My
success with WeScreenplay emboldened me to enter more prestigious
contests. Among these were the Austin Film
Festival, the Nashville Film Festival, and the Big Break in New York. I’m still waiting on Austin, did not make
even the first cut at Nashville and, worse, the feedback from Nashville was so
superficial and cookie-cutter that it was worthless, and am also still waiting
on Big Break, though the final deadline was just a couple weeks ago so it’ll be
a while yet. Big Break is the only
contest that will not be offering judges feedback so I won’t be hearing from
them at all unless I’m one of the few winners.
So I won’t be hearing from them at all until they send out the public
announcement of who the winners are.
But why
I’m writing now is to announce the results of the Page International Screenplay
contest in Los Angeles. I did find out a
week or so ago that I did not make the quarter-finals, which would have been
the top ten percent of all scripts. They
had estimated that 10,000 scripts had been entered. With the quarter-finalists announced, they
were now ready to send the judges reports and I could only hope that they were
not going to be as thin and useless as Nashville had been.
**********************************************
They
weren’t. In fact, I received not one but
two reports, totaling 14 pages between them, quite impressive and also quite
useful comments. At last I’m getting
criticism that I actually understand.
These two judges were top notch. That’s
the first part of the good news. The
quarter finals were not the first cut.
They actually had three levels of judging going into the quarters and I
had made into the first two. To get
through just the first cut meant you were in the top 25 percent. I was quite curious to find out how close I
had come to being chosen as a quarter-finalist.
How close had I come to that top ten percent?
The
first judge graded me a 65 out of 100.
That didn’t sound that great until I read that anything over 60 was in
the top 25 percent. The second gave me a
similar score but it was pointed out that you needed a minimum score of 70 to
be in the top ten. So according to their
rules I was just 5 percentage points shy which means I made the top 15
percent. That was out of 9,000
scripts. Not bad for my first screenplay
in many, many years.
And
here’s another decidedly optimistic take on all this: according to the WGA, there are about 50,000
screenplays registered with the guild each year. Now go ahead and discount the 20,000 professional
guild members who are likely writing at least one script per year. Also discount the fact that only about 2,000
of these professionals are actually making a living as screenwriters (albeit
rewriting other scripts assigned by a producer rather than selling their own)
and the fact that only 2% of the guild is working at any given time. But of the 50,000 registered scripts, nearly
half are by professionals who have already gained entry to the industry. If that leaves 30,000 scripts by amateurs and
aspiring professionals, this means that the 10,000 scripts that are entered
into these major contests represent fully ONE-THIRD of ALL the scripts written
by the hopefuls in the entire country every year.
Keep in mind also that there are
also a great, GREAT many rank amateurs who don’t have any idea how to write
(writers I became very familiar with during my tenure as President of Ann Arbor
Playwrights) so the other two-thirds are likely made up of these hacks not qualified
to be in the industry at all. There are
also a great many more who are so out to lunch that they don’t know enough to
even bother to register with the WGA or enter contests and you can easily
deduce that the 10,000 entrants to contests like Page are the cream of the crop
of all the serious writers trying to break in.
We’re talking one-third of the entire crop – and the one-third that’s
the best. I made it into the top 15% of
that club. Pretty cool.
The
first judge was a lady with 15 years experience reading and analyzing scripts
for such major talent agencies and studios as UTA (United Talent Agents, one of
the biggest), Amazon Studios and United Artists. She was also a graduate of the screenwriting
program at NYU, one of the top four film schools in the country. The second judge was a British gentleman
equally credentialed. He has worked for
the top talent agency ICM as well as the U.K. Film Council, having received a
Master’s Degree in Screenwriting from the Royal College in London as well as an
MFA from the super prestigious American Film Institute.
In other words, both of these judges are exactly
the same people who would be reading the script if I submitted directly to the
studios and major agencies. That makes
the Page contest an excellent option for gauging one’s readiness for the big
time, for getting a good grade here means you’ll likely get taken seriously
when you submit to the majors. I’m
guessing that if a 70 gets you to the top ten percent (the quarter finals), it
probably takes an 80 to get to the top five percent (semi-finals), and a 90 to
get to the finals, the top 1 percent. If
WeScreenplay is any indication, the winners are chosen from the top ½ of 1
percent, which probably requires a grade of 95 or higher.
With 65, both judges gave me a
“Pass.” As a reminder, the grades from a
judge are always Pass, Consider, and Recommend.
My guess is that a 70 will probably get you a Consider, and anyone who
makes the Finals a Recommend. I’m also
guessing that a Consider from one of these judges is probably good enough to
get you a “read” at any major agency.
I’m going to be optimistic here and speculate that I’m only 5 points
away from having a script good enough to send to an agency.
So far Ash Wednesday has garnered
from other contests 3 “pass,” 2 “consider,” and 1 “recommend.” With this contest I now have 5 “pass” but,
considering that I placed so highly in such a competitive field, I feel quite
good about these two “pass.” Though I
got basically the same grade from both, the lady judge liked the script quite a
lot more than the male judge. This has
been the consistent trend from all the judges.
I find this highly ironic that a script about two women written by a man
would be so highly praised by the female judges but faulted by the males who
have almost unanimously found more problems with it. I’m really quite pleased that a script I have
written about women would be so lauded by every woman who has read it, the men
not so much.
**********************************************
The main criticism that has come
back to me time and again is that it is simply too long. The version I sent to Page was 128
pages. Both judges said that this
particular script should be no more than 120, 110 would be better, 105 better
still. The most recent version runs
118. But I have a plan to cut at least
another ten pages. Though it’s supposed
to be a thriller with a big surprise ending, the one comment every judge has
made is that they saw the ending coming.
This didn’t bother them because they enjoyed the ride so much. And it wasn’t because of bad writing that
they figured it out, it was simply because the rules of a thriller dictate that
the hero must defeat the antagonist so they knew that’s what would happen.
Even though I had thought I had
gone to great pains to leave the reader thinking to the very end that it could
go either way, none of these judges ever doubted the outcome. That’s the problem with these professionals;
they’re too darned analytical for their own good. I wanted them to just sit back and experience
the drama and enjoy the read. The lay
readers were not hindered by this intellectual approach to the subject and, by
letting themselves go and just experiencing the drama, they all reported to me
that they were completely surprised by the ending.
But it has gotten me seriously
considering changing the ending. I have
come up with a new climax that is so completely different from what I have now
that I’m hoping it will shock even the professionals. This will also require me to change part of
the middle. This is okay too since
another consistent criticism is that the mother turns against the boyfriend too
easily and too soon. So I have to
rewrite that part and make her transition from loving the guy to hating him
more gradual.
One fairly firm rule in writing is
that you should never send out a manuscript until you feel it is as good as you
can make it. I ignored that rule with
Ash Wednesday. This script went from a
443 page 2nd draft to a 158 page 3rd draft. It was at that point that I decided I would
most benefit from some professional feedback before proceeding with any further
cuts. Had I abided by the rule, where I
thought the polish was needed was in the section where Wednesday investigates
Jack’s background. I have never been
very satisfied with this middle portion of the script.
The irony is that not a single
judge has raised this objection, instead praising the suspense I built and the
elaborate twists and turns the plot took, instead finding fault with other
factors that I had never even considered being deficient. So I’m glad I did not polish it my way
because it would have been a waste of time.
After I started getting professional feedback I was able to continue
cutting, first getting it down to 148, then 128, and finally where it is now at
118. I hope my next draft will be down
to no more than 105. Blue Cat has
informed me that I’m eligible to submit a revised script by August 15th. It won’t count but at least it will provide
me with a low cost opportunity to find out if my new ending works better or
not. If I get a positive report, I will
resubmit to Page next year.
**************************************************
And of course there’s my new
script, “Furious,” which will be about the nation’s gun issue in general and
road rage in specific. I’m hoping it
will be quite provocative and, if so, should garner even more attention than
Ash Wednesday. But as I stated at the
beginning, most of my closest friends have suggested to me that perhaps this
accident is a blessing in disguise. That
is to say maybe with all the positive developments that have suddenly come into
my life with my writing, just maybe the gods are trying to tell me that I
should be focused on my writing.
Of course, I shall remain focused
on my writing but, as I have done all my life, I will also be juggling my passions
for finance. There are also those who
have remarked that my talent is wasted on screenplays, that I should be writing
novels instead. The judges have consistently
remarked that the screenplay reads like literature. Of course, I would love to try my hand at
writing a novel. I think this would be
very satisfying. But I still believe the
reality is that writing is a long shot and finance is a short shot. I guess it’s really a good thing that I love
them both.
Let’s face it, even if I won one of
these contests and was invited to go to L.A., they’re going to take one look at
me, see that I’m over 50, and say forget it.
If age discrimination is bad in other industries, it’s atrocious in
film. I am certain that most of the
other 9,000 scripts in the Page competition were by writers under the age of
30. I’m also already getting a very
strong sense that age discrimination is atrocious in the financial services
industry too.
One of my backup plans is to get a
license to be a tax preparer, something I could accomplish in a couple months
of study and would be very doable. It’s
the kind of work I’d be very comfortable with and where I could make a very
decent income for as long as I wanted. And
maybe I’ll find it’s a field where they don’t discriminate. I’m also pretty sure that the average
publisher probably doesn’t really give a crap how old their authors are. Tax Man by day, Caped Crusader novelist by
night, maybe even an occasional nonfiction opus once I’m established. That would not be a bad life.
This blog posting has been for the
purpose of discussing my writing career in general and the promising feedback
from the Page contest in specific. But I
have many options to consider and juggle.
When I have done more research and know many more specifics about how to
proceed with the finance path, I will be posting an update to my overall future
plans.
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