February 7, 2003  

Desperately Seeking Screenwriters

"Adaptation," the movie voted best screenplay by the New York Film Critics Circle, contains a subplot concerning Robert McKee, the famed screenwriting guru, and a debate about whether Mr. McKee's rules -- or principles -- are helpful to fledgling screenwriters. Mr. McKee is the leader of the pack in preaching screenwriting precepts to the masses, but the pack is large and growing.

Last October, for instance, 1,866 screenwriting aspirants converged in Austin, Texas, in order to be encouraged and inspired for a fee.

Austin is the home of the Austin Heart of Film Festival and the associated Writer's Conference. Now in its ninth year, the conference is a perfect example of a growing cottage industry now selling services to writers who want to hone their craft and gain entry to Hollywood.

The industry fuels and is fueled by a growing interest in writing screenplays. In 2001, more than 40,000 scripts were registered with the Writers Guild of America. Meanwhile, just 4,525 Guild members reported earnings, and overall membership in the Guild is stagnant at best. (Most Guild members work in television, not feature films.)

Despite the long odds, the legions of aspiring scriptwriters keep multiplying. A record 5,489 scripts were submitted to the Nicholl Fellowship competition, an amateur screenplay contest run by the Motion Picture Academy. The Nicholl is the most prestigious of the screenwriting competitions. But more than 200 others share the stage. Dozens of consultants will take a fee to "analyze" scripts. At least 30 how-to books on screenwriting have been published in the last four years alone.

Key to Everything

Beyond Austin there are more than 100 seminars, workshops and conferences scattered around the country. The conferences assemble panels of successful writers, producers, agents and consultants, who lure the aspirants.

Austin, in particular, promises "unique access to the most tremendous talents" and "networking with the many producers, development executives and agents." Indeed, it attracts an all-star cast of screenwriters including Bill Broyles ("Cast Away"), John Lee Hancock ("A Perfect World") and Ed Solomon ("Men in Black"), among the many who attended the last conference.

Aspiring scriptwriters pay anywhere from $295 to $695 to attend. In return, they sit in on panels on such topics as "writing action that works," script coverage, development, and the role of the producer. But whatever they're called, all the panels tend to focus on two questions, Mr. Broyles says: "how to do it and how to sell it."

The second question, unfortunately, remains a puzzle -- apparently even to the most successful writers, to hear them talk. Mr. Broyles, for one, declares, "It's just a mystery to me how you ever get a movie made or a script sold."

One of the keys, everyone in Austin agreed, is to write a great script -- an obvious enough qualification. Still, nobody present claimed any capacity to teach just how to go about doing that in the course of the long weekend. Nonetheless, the would-be scriptwriters moved hopefully from ballroom to meeting room in search of rules or tips.

If anyone can crack the code it would seem to be Shane Black, whose influence derives, in part, from writing "Lethal Weapon," and, in part, from his 1996 sale of "The Long Kiss Goodnight" for an eye-popping $4 million. Perhaps more than any single individual, Mr. Black has helped fuel the upsurge in screenwriting ambitions.

Like other speakers, Mr. Black praised the festival for providing a place for learning and the exchange of information -- though as he suggested, there were limits to the information he could impart. There are no hard and fast rules, he said, except to stop looking for the (expletive deleted) rules.

The search for rules proceeded, nonetheless, abetted by Mr. Black who could not resist, throwing one out to the hungry crowd from time to time. "OK, here's the key to everything," he announced, "The best movies you'll ever see are ultimately about discovering friendship." Films, he said, like "Star Trek" and "The Odd Couple." "That, to me, is eternally moving."

There would be no keys, from him, though, about ways to market a screenplay. That was because -- the highly successful and exceedingly well-paid Mr. Black told his audience -- the relentless and self-defeating pursuit of commerce had led to "homogenized" movies that are "not about anything."

Other rules came from other authorities. Asked about the problem of theme in screenwriting, Lem Dobbs ("Kafka") said, "It seems to me all great films are about aging.... 'To Kill a Mockingbird' is about aging."

Inspired at the Bar

It was left for Mr. Black, though, to express the consensus view that, even if one couldn't teach people to write, one could -- he could -- "teach them to be inspired to write."

Most in the crowd seemed satisfied with that. Asked what they learned, many responded that they picked up "nuggets" or "subtle craft points." Others reported that they had, indeed, been inspired not just by the sessions, but by hours at the bar with Hollywood writers and producers.

The producers, meanwhile, claim to enjoy Austin for all sorts of reasons: They like getting away from Los Angeles, they like "giving back," they feel good about celebrating writers and writing, and so forth. To be sure, some admit that the writers they really want to hang out with aren't those in the audience -- the ones hoping to learn the route to screenwriting success and the big time. What's better, noted Matt Gross of Kopelson Entertainment, is the chance to cultivate the A-listers doing the talking.

About events like the Austin festival, one attending novelist noted, "they're selling something that's not for sale." Not officially, anyway. The something being sold is access -- and the buyers continue to line up.