The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood (42 page)

I know that sometime in the future, the director of
Basic Instinct
, Paul Verhoeven, will be able to finance a movie with what
he’ll
get for my first-draft script of
Showgirls
. Not because of the value of my script, but because each scene of his script is scrawled over with his pencil drawings of the way he saw the scene on-screen. Paul’s script is an erotic comic book of breasts, butts, and vaginas, accompanied by my words translated into Paul’s Dutch.

I know Paul also has, but probably won’t sell, the scented pair of panties Sharon took off and handed him the morning he shot the beaver in
Basic Instinct
.

Once you finish your script, you don’t have much control
.

N
ovelist/screenwriter George Pelecanos: “There are so many things that are out of your control as a screenwriter. It’s not just the ‘evil producers.’ It’s also actors, directors, editors, cinematographers, the crew—anything that gets between you and your words, from when you’re sitting in your room to the time it’s up on the screen.”

Make lots of copies of your script
.

T
hinking about posterity, send your script to friends and relatives and as many libraries as will accept it.

Screenwriter/novelist Raymond Chandler: “There is no available body of screenplay literature because it belongs to the studios, not to the writers, and they won’t show it.”

What can you do to prevent being ripped off?

I
t’s not easy to do anything about it. You can do a few things to protect yourself, but not many. The day that you finish an outline or a script, send it to yourself in the mail. When you receive it, make sure
not
to open it and make sure you put it away in a safe place. That way, if you’re ripped off somewhere along the line, your lawyer can dramatically open the envelope in a courtroom and prove (a) that you wrote it and (b) when you wrote it.

Just as important: You can send an idea, a script, or an outline to the Writers Guild of America and register it—even if you’re not yet a member of the Guild. (You can even do it on-line. It will cost you twenty dollars if you’re not a member.) If you’re ripped off, you can then refer to the contents and the date in court.

If you are about to have a meeting with a studio executive, a development person, a producer, a director, an assistant to any of the above, or an agent to pitch a story, as soon as you get home from the meeting, write a memo describing the details of the meeting as well as the details of the story or stories that you pitched. Same drill as before: Put the memo in an envelope, send it to yourself in the mail, and don’t open it when it comes back to you.

Besides these things, there’s not much you can do if you’re ripped off except sue. But suing is probably worth it. There are law firms that will take your case on a contingency basis. Studios and production entities usually don’t want to go to court. So the chances are better than even that you’ll make some bucks with a settlement.

Don’t ever tell the press what you’re writing
.

I
was ripped off with my very first movie,
F.I.S.T
.

Shortly after stories in the trade papers reported what
F.I.S.T
. was about, an Oscar-winning screenwriter—ironically, from my hometown—made a deal with a network to do the same story on television.

Because TV movies take a much shorter time to make, his film—
Power
—came out before
F.I.S.T
. did. So when
F.I.S.T
. came out, it appeared that I’d ripped off
Power
.

I was pissed, especially because I knew that this same Academy Award–winning screenwriter had been fired from my hometown newspaper—where I, too, had worked, albeit many years later—for stealing a watch from the scene of a jewelry store robbery that he was covering.

Interestingly, I, too, was fired from that same newspaper—not for stealing a watch, but for calling my editor some bad names in an article in a national publication.

A pox on both our houses, I say: He’s a thief; I’m an ingrate.

The best way to avoid being plagiarized
.

J
ay Leno: “You have to write faster than they can steal.”

Parallel Creativity

The phrase that will be used by someone who has plagiarized you.

PART FIVE

S
ELLING THE
S
CRIPT

LESSON 10

How Do You Feel About Going to
Bed with an Agent?

You’ve written your script. You need an agent or somebody in the business to read it. What can you do?

I
f you’ve read other screenwriting books, this is where everyone fudges. “Well,” they say, “it’s hard”—or they tell you to look up some agents’ names in
Writer’s Yearly
and send your script around.

This is what you do if you are a sexy, relatively good-looking man or woman willing to do
anything
to succeed.

You buy a plane ticket to L.A. You check yourself into a cheap motel in the Valley. You rent a car. You dress yourself up
good
to show your
assets
. Then you drive down to the bar of the Four Seasons or the Peninsula or the Mondrian in Beverly Hills or Hollywood and you pick out someone who looks like an agent or a development person (not that difficult to pick out: Prada or Armani black uniform, Cristophe haircut). And then you let yourself be picked up by him or her and you go home or upstairs in the hotel and you
fuck that person’s brains out
. You fuck like you’ve never fucked before. You fuck like it’s the bang of the century in
Basic Instinct
.

And before you leave, you give the person your script.

Let’s go over that again
.

D
id you hear me right, though? Was I actually saying … was I advocating
whoring
there?

No, no, no! Forget everything you’ve just read. That’s truly diabolical advice and I’m not the devil, am I?
Am I?
I’m a former altar boy, a devout Catholic. I even carry the cross on some Sundays at the Church of the Holy Angels in Bain-bridge Township, Ohio.

The kind of diabolic advice you’ve just read is given by the most jaded and corrupt Hollywood veterans, the kind of nontalents who tell you that it’s not
what
you know but
who
you know that will make you successful.

So I was just kidding, okay? Playing a devilish joke on you. I was kidding the same way I was kidding when I told teenagers to bring their fake IDs to see
Showgirls
. I was kidding then, too, but America didn’t get the joke. So I thought I’d put it into boldface type this time:
You do not—do not, do not—have to pop an agent to make it!