It does have a brief, albeit extra-pulpy, synopsis of the story:

7 RED- Louis Hollander doesn’t believe in luck and for twenty years he cheated the system until he got cocky and got caught. Now, as a spotter under the thumb of a casino boss, he turns in the cheaters. He is sent to track a mystery woman who has been busting roulette tables across the country on seemingly impossible single-number bets. Hollander’s mission is to intercept her, crack the secret of her game, and stop her from being a threat…stop her hard, if necessary. Producers are Mace Neufeld (HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER, INVICTUS) and Robyn Shwer of Mace Neufeld Productions and Eryl Cochran and Branon Coluccio. Currently out to cast.

Why isn’t my name in there? Well, the only writer mentioned on any of these projects is a writer/director. Directors you can advertise. Directors are sexy. The point of these releases (as well as whatever presentation they bring to Berlin and subsequent film markets) is to give the projects some sex appeal while they raise the money. My name provides absolutely none of that. They could have put it in there just to fluff me, but there’s no business upside to it and, frankly, I don’t need it.

They’ll be doing plenty for me if they make the movie.

This article doesn’t mention who wrote 7 Red, but I’ll go ahead and spoil it: it was me

The company’s EFM projects include Midnight Sun from producers Eric Morris (Say Uncle) and Ben Smith (The Bourne Legacy); 7 Red from producers Mace Neufeld (Hunt For Red October) and Robyn Shwer of Mace Neufeld Productions and Eryl Cochran and Branon Coluccio; Rider from producers Arnold Rifkin (16 Blocks) and Damon Martin (Another Happy Day); and One Square Mile by Charles-Olivier Michaud (Snow & Ashes), which will begin shooting May 7th.

Sales and Production Unit Meyers Media Group to Launch with Four Films at EFM

Any allusions I’ve made to “the Vegas project” were about this screenplay. I really, really hope I get more news to share with you in the coming months.

“But,” inquired John curiously, “who did plan all your wonderful reception rooms and halls, and approaches and bathrooms—-?”

“Well,” answered Percy, “I blush to tell you, but it was a moving-picture fella. He was the only man we found who was used to playing with an unlimited amount of money, though he did tuck his napkin in his collar and couldn’t read or write.”

–from “The Diamond as Big as the Ritz“, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Published in 1922.

I think this old Kids in the Hall sketch does a good job capturing a particular type of absurdity that’s inherent in the professional life of a writer in Hollywood. Until the moment where things become real – which, as I’ve always told you, Jimmy, is when the check clears – there are a lot of activities and developments that seem as if they should be very exciting, and yet nothing about your day feels different. At all. Your senses are telling you that, no matter what you may think is happening, in reality, nothing is happening. And more often than not, those senses are right.

I was a little spoiled by the Queen Lara experience, because it was only a week after the script went out that we were all signing deal memos and shaking hands (It was another four months before I got paid, but that’s another story). That was an extreme exception to the normal way of things.

Contrary to popular belief, most Hollywood meetings are not like this

My Vegas project has a team around it: the young, struggling producer who is my friend; the big, RichandFamous producer who is shepherding the project; the up-and-coming director, and the Big Star. Of those four people, I have met exactly two – my young producer friend and the director. The young producer has met RichandFamous a couple of times, and speaks regularly with one of his executives. RichandFamous has sat down with the Big Star on at least one occasion for the specific purpose of discussing my script; which, since they’re trying to make the movie, they probably both like a great deal. But I have absolutely no further contact or detail about that meeting. I don’t know what they said, if they intend to change anything, or what they were drinking. Presumably, when and if it’s finally necessary, I will meet both of them. In the meantime, I wait for my young producer friend to call or e-mail me with the latest information about who is having meetings about my script and where.

Last night he called to say that RichandFamous producer had a meeting with a company. My friend is not 100% certain what this company does, because they are new. We have both Googled it – and when you’re at our place on the food chain you do a lot of Googling to cover for the things that are just assumed to be known by People in the Know.

The company’s website is still in development, and our point-of-contact executive is still listed on the website of his previous employer. But the only reason to meet them is money. Either through equity raising, direct investment, international sales, or some combination of these and other financial gadgets, they have the potential to put up some or all of the budget for the movie.

What’s the budget? I don’t know. They are coming back with a proposal detailing what they can raise. I don’t know if this figure will represent 100% of the budget in their mind, or some smaller portion which will have us searching somewhere else for another component. I have the vague sense that it is a good thing that, since they are preparing this proposal, it means that the dynamic of the relationship is that they are selling us their money-producing capabilities rather than us trying to sell them the package. The package, it seems, is satisfactory in all respects.

When the proposal is presented, I give it a 20% chance, tops, that I will see it. The most important numbers will probably find their way to me, though.

So do you understand how this is kind-of-sort-of great news, an exciting phone call to receive, yet so vague and distant and potentially-vaporous that it’s difficult to peg an emotional reaction to it? I’m always glad to know someone likes one of my scripts, and it’s especially nice to think that the odds of making a movie and making some money have made a minor adjustment in my favor. But until I actually see these people in a room with a contract, or at least read a budget topsheet or a letter of intent, my adrenaline stays put, and I have a day job to attend to that I’m obviously not quitting today.

Can’t you see how much progress I’m making?

And while I do the ritual railing about how so many executives in Hollywood don’t know how to read, here is a development along those lines that I actually consider to be a positive. Here is a teaser trailer, not for a movie, but for a screenplay. It was sent out this week with a spec script called Grim Night, and the script was then purchased by Universal late last evening after a robust auction. Spec auctions are a more rare bird these days, so it’s worth looking at what got buyers so excited.

Now, I don’t think you’d say this is a release-quality piece of work, but that wasn’t their goal and I don’t imagine the buyers were expecting that. The point is to examine the goals of the producers who invested in this on behalf of their project, and I would say they are: to communicate the premise and tone of the story, and demonstrate that it could translate from the page to the screen. “Proof of concept” is the appropriate term. It’s basically the classic 60-second “elevator pitch”, only delivered via YouTube instead of by a nervous writer in an actual elevator (been there, played both roles).

And on that level, I think this is an excellent piece of work – you know the backdrop of the story but not the whole saga; your appetite is, as with those free samples at the food court, whetted.

There are other industry stories like this, like the 9-minute short (since-dubbed Saw 0.5) that filmmakers used in 2003 to raise the funds for the first Saw picture. As with many developments in film, the horror and thriller-makers are out on the forefront.

Back in my development days I often helped put together presentations that would help sell the idea of the movie, whether we had script for it or not. I once re-wrote the “Director’s Statement” for a documentary without telling him, and helped get him the funds to finish his movie. But we never invested the resources to do something like this. I would make a Powerpoint or a 5-6 page summary with pictures and a colorful cover page. From one point of view, this is just a natural evolution of that same idea, and one that gives the guy with a camera a distinct advantage over me and my cruddy Powerpoint slides.

If you look at it from the buyer’s perspective, it makes sense. Since the majority of projects now either come pre-packaged or as adaptations of pre-sold titles (now in development, Candy-Land: The Movie!*), when the time comes to weigh their decision of WHAT to buy, they are used to looking at more than a stack of script pages. A screenplay, remember, is in part a technical document whose format evolved to cater to the needs of the people who will film it. But when it comes to communicating whether or not the movie which will spring from it is a worthy investment, it is, if we can muster the courage to admit it, a flawed tool.

Are these teasers the right tool? I would say they’re a very valid part of the approach. A lot of writers might resist it, and I think part of the problem is that writing is goddamned hard enough without also having to teach yourself how to be an effective DIY filmmaker. There aren’t many of those. And this approach removes one of the subtly-compelling advantages of blank paper: it is the ultimate democratic medium. On the blank page, it doesn’t matter if you’re rich, poor, or have the right friends. It’s why we would like to believe that the page should be enough. If we’re going to go entirely over to who can make the best trailer – as with thesis projects at the best film schools, as with the freedom to live in LA while working an unpaid internship for six months – people with money to throw around are going to get an obscene head-start; and really, don’t they get enough of those everywhere else in life?

But this is where that gyrating price point comes back into play. I can tell you that I would be very shocked if that Grim Night teaser cost more than a few grand and a little ingenuity and sweat equity to make. So, okay, we don’t all have a few grand to spare for this; but back up for a minute and think about it as an hourly investment. How long does it take you to write a feature screenplay – I mean really do it, soup to nuts? Four months? Six months? How much money could you have made in the hours you spent on it? The answer is probably – several grand.

So what if you made this deal with yourself – that on top of the hours you set aside for yourself to write, you would use some of those same hours to generate money; money that would ONLY be used to create proof-of-concept materials that you could deliver with your script. It wouldn’t even need to be this elaborate. Hire an artist friend to draw some really great storyboards. Put together a mix tape soundtrack like Zach Braff did for Garden State. Embrace that you are going to deliver MORE than a script, and that this MORE is worth the investment of your time. Could you do that? Could you take a part-time job just to raise seed money? If not, then what are you doing here?

This could be good for you. It could let YOU be the first person to test whether your idea can really work as a movie. You’ll learn a few things, won’t you? Might even make your script better (yeah, I said it, your script’s not perfect right now.)

Does that mean more investment and risk from you up-front? I’m afraid it does. But back in the day, Hollywood would pay out $4 million if Shane Black sneezed on a napkin and called it a screenplay. The pendulum swung. This is where it is now. It can be good for you if you’ll just see how.

*Not a joke.

They’re collecting funding pledges here at kickstarter.com. No money changes hands unless they reach their goal.

A lot of what I wrote about during and about the Writers’ Strike was about building a system where we could bypass the media conglomerates completely and control and create our own work. Matt and Chrissie have been on the front lines of this effort for years – this is their third series (that I know of), and having crewed with them before, I know they can put together a quality product. If you’re not moved to make a pledge, at least send them some good vibes and consider spreading the word!

Netflix springs their new business model on customers

Big companies screw up all the time. Some of you Internet people might be too young to remember, but Jack in the Box made burgers that killed children. The difference is in how you own your mistakes, and Jack in the Box set the standard for how you do it:

Step 1) Own it. The company paid out massive settlements, and their CEO appeared in commercials acknowledging the horrendous mistake, and swore to earn back the trust of consumers.
Step 2) Back it up. Jack in the Box became an industry leader in safety and quality standards in their food preparation.
Step 3) Give us something else to think about. This step is more than a little devious, but as consumers we participate in it because it helps us move on. Soon after, the restaurant chain launched their long-running “Jack” ad series, featuring the ping-pong ball-headed “CEO” with the wry voice and the love of delivering good food at a good price. It was a new story, a new “face” for the tainted company, and it was entertaining. We officially had permission to give them another chance.

By comparison, Netflix not only created their own disaster, they made it worse in their efforts to address it. First, they raised prices. Unpleasant, but probably necessary because of their real success. Studios are indeed withholding streaming rights renewals out of panic, and charging higher prices for those rights. And the streaming-only service could be a viable independent business in the long run. For both those reasons, Netflix needed cashflow, and from the upper layers of the atmosphere, this move had to be made. But Netflix did nothing to lay the groundwork for the change, offered nothing to loyal customers to make the medicine go down, and then had the idiot chutzpah to try and position it as some kind of savings – which not even New Math could put over.

And you know something? Even at this point I was defending Netflix. It was a shock, but I could see down the road, and given the volume of viewing I do, it was still a hell of a bargain given the breadth of their DVD catalog. I could ding them for clumsiness but I didn’t actually feel abused.

But then came the apology. By which I mean, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings writing a long, middle-of-the-night e-mail to customers apologizing to us for the fact that we are too stupid to see what an awesome thing he did. No – really, his only fault was in failing to communicate it well enough to all us nimrods. And in the middle of this non-apology, he decided to spring yet another surprise on us – that DVDs would soon be shunted off the Netflix website entirely, forcing customers to create new profiles and queues at a separate website called Qwikster.

This rather nakedly revealed that he was setting up the new company to sell off when the time was ripe, and the name was worthy of mockery; and believe me the Internet got to work mocking. But it was the fact that you couldn’t even pretend this was anything but a giant, insulting inconvenience that was the masterstroke. John Cleese, who made an entire television program called How to Irritate People, could not have composed it better. It was like sending a Hallmark Card reading: “Sorry I crashed your car. It’s your fault for letting me drive. P.S. – I crapped in the glove box for no good reason.”

At least though, he earnestly assured, there would be no further price hikes.

And so the hole they were digging struck a cave, the stock price tumbled into it, and the scorned-nerd mob took up their slings and arrows.

Then things were quiet for a bit. I read announcements here and there that they were striking new streaming deals with the likes of Dreamworks Animation, and that wasn’t enough to dislodge the giant, smelly problem they had made but it was the kind of thing they needed to start doing in order to create a “Back to Business” vibe. The addition of video games to the mail service was a piece of good news that got buried but will get more notice. And then today, the announcement that the vaporous horror named Qwikster has been pre-emptively slain. Since a lot of groundwork had been laid for the split, this means kissing off that investment and probably putting any spin-off plans under wraps for awhile; which is fine – given the way we treat infrastructure in this country it’s going to be a few more years before the quality and penetration of a streaming-only Netflix delivered via high-speed Internet could actually be viable. But is the first Big announcement lately that hasn’t involved making things worse for the customers. And that matters.

Now, announcements about new streaming rights will work supportively in the background while “Netflix is trying to stop being so dumb” is in the foreground. “Reed” (still trying to be on a first-name basis with us like the hip web-business CEO he is), barely touched the plate of crow he was served, but at least their action (or rather, their decision not to take a previously-announced dumb action) spoke a little louder than words. And what’s funny is, our anger at the Qwikster move – which never actually happened – successfully siphoned a great deal of attention off the price hike. There’s some silver lining in that.

And Netflix is still in-production on their first original series; the debut of which should be splashy and interesting and lead to some articles about the company that aren’t exclusively about how much of their investors’ money they lit on fire this year.

This is not “A” or even “B” level crisis management, but one thing you have to say is that in the process of being so spectacularly clumsy, they pushed the bar so low it’s practically in the dirt. By the standard of their recent behavior, Netflix did something right today, and they will survive to do more if they’re willing to hand over the shovel.

But I am noticing something as I watch trailers for upcoming films. Here is the featured cast for Steven Soderbergh’s September thriller Contagion: Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Marion Cotillard, Laurence Fishburne – not to mention supporting turns from star-emeritus Elliot Gould, and Winter’s Bone’s John Hawkes. Those eight actors have all either won or been nominated for Academy Awards. The ever-busy Soderbergh also has an action thriller set for release in January – Haywire. And while the star is Gina Carano, a mixed-martial arts fighter making her feature film debut, the cast around her features Michael Douglas, Ewan McGregor, Antonio Banderas, Bill Paxton, X-Men: First Class star Michael Fassbender, and G.I. Joe star Channing Tatum. Film casts are getting conspicuously more star-studded these days, as posters swell with five, six, or more of the bold-faced names of a caliber which studios would formerly need only one or two to launch a blockbuster.

Back in the mid-90’s, it was the check cut for Jim Carrey to star in The Cable Guy that launched the so-called $20 Million Club for movie stars, and soon every agent worth their cocaine was striving to make sure their guy was either in that club or perceived as being worthy of that club. Salary quotes got set high, fixed fast and reported loud, so that if a star ever worked below-quote, it was a major artistic event. For several years, the name was the star, and so movies were getting made that had only one or two “star”-quality roles, because you just couldn’t afford any more than that. Ensembles that were rich in talent, dazzle, or both were so rare that Soderbergh’s 2001 Ocean’s Eleven was greeted as an astonishing anomaly.

The pendulum was swinging. Studios and audiences worked together in unconscious conspiracy to undermine the caste system and make the brand the superior star to the actor. In the wake of Spider-Man and The Lord of the Rings, getting John Travolta was suddenly penny-ante compared with having an action-fantasy property that had name recognition and “four-quadrant” demographic potential. People don’t talk as much about star salaries these days – and you would think that if they were going up, the agencies would be boasting. They’re not.

But I think, as I have pointed out before, that we have passed the break-point where larger and larger budgets are being applied to less and less valuable “brands”, and so the pendulum is swinging back. Not all the way to the other side again, but a little ways back towards taking advantage of the buyer’s market for acting talent and realizing creative and financial benefits from it.

Here are a few examples just from the mainstream fare of 2011: Behind new star Chris Hemsworth, Thor pulled together Natalie Portman, Anthony Hopkins, Rene Russo, and Stellan Skarsgard, not to mention trustworthy players like Kat Dennings, Idris Elba, and Colm Feore. The solidly-successful comedy Horrible Bosses combined Jason Bateman, Jamie Foxx, Kevin Spacey, Colin Farrell, Jennifer Aniston, and comedy stars with built-in niche fan bases like Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day. Even Ron Howard’s underperforming comedy The Dilemma had Vince Vaughn, Kevin James, Winona Ryder, Jennifer Connelly, Channing Tatum, and Queen Latifah. That’s a mid-budget movie with six separate stars who have all, at one point or another, been THE name launching a movie.

Even Transformers: Dark of the Moon found some cracks behind the pretty people and giant robots to wedge in the likes of John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, John Turturro, and treats for the character-actor connoisseur like Alan Tudyk and Ken Jeong. Have you looked at the cast list for next year’s The Dark Knight Rises yet? Because you should. And I don’t know if you noticed, but Tim freaking Robbins had a supporting role in The Green Lantern. When a movie like Super 8 comes along that doesn’t have many famous faces in it (just Friday Night Lights lead Kyle Chandler), it has to qualify as a conscious creative choice by the filmmaker, since the names are clearly available for the asking.

Part of it is a function of how massive and expensive an “A” picture can be these days – it takes a lot of artists to carry it. Part, too, is that fewer movies are being made for major theatrical release. Fewer and smaller paydays means that actors and their representatives are going to get more competitive when it comes to booking roles, and that competition appears to be manifesting itself in these bounteous ensembles.

I think that’s a good thing for Hollywood product. Special effects are impressive but you need the artistry of performers to bring humanity to any film, and so even when a movie fails as a piece of storytelling (and it can fail so easily no matter who you cast) there’s at least a lot of personality along the way. It has effectively closed the $20 Million Club for business with only rare exceptions – Daniel Radcliffe was pulling around that figure for the final Harry Potter movies because, well, do you want to be the one to try replacing him to save a buck? But that’s not payment for a name – that’s for a name and its value when wedded to a brand. Radcliffe is starting to book his post-Potter career, and you can bet his salary is not going to be the same – what’s more, it seems understood now. Just a normal part of business.

Maybe my perception is amplified by the fact that, as an obsessive movie-viewer who also works in the business, I just recognize more names. But whether audiences realize it or not, there is at least one aspect of Hollywood product in which they are genuinely getting more for their money these days. And it isn’t the 3D markup.

Contagion trailer:

Haywire trailer:

“What about Hulu?” we would ask, since the were busy crowing to Wall Street about their new ad-supported joint streaming venture with which they were poised to reap huge dollars.

“Hu…lu?” they would respond. “What’s that? Silly writers with your random syllables“. Hulu went live to the public less than a month after the strike ended.

My projection was that they had gambled wrong, and that you couldn’t just shove the network TV viewing experience into an InterTube and start cashing checks. I thought direct rental or purchase might step up, but it turns out that I was off-the-mark as well.

The model wasn’t iTunes. The model was XM.

Netflix has just about finished disemboweling Hulu, which will not survive in its present form. Hell, even the cable delivery systems are currently freaking the eff out about Netflix, which will now be streaming first-run syndication for Mad Men, and is gearing up to produce its first original series. It is becoming a one-off “channel” that exists completely outside of the cable box – one with thousands of hours of entertainment that you can watch on your own time, and which costs less than HBO.

Cable thought it had worked itself into a nice cozy corner where it could charge us $100+ a month for 500 channels – 480 of which we would never watch. Over and over it resisted calls for more consumer choice. Now people are looking at the $8/month Netflix streaming plan and saying “hey, I get a LOT of entertainment for this!” And then they turn in their cable box.

A low-subscription fee, ad-free model is triumphing, and it’s looking now like the only obstacle is studios getting grumpy and withholding their content from it while they try and whang together their own content pipe that people might actually like. It’s an exciting thing to watch, since, as my viewing of Alien vs. Ninja underlined for me – any jerkoff in the woods with a digital camera can get their crappy-ass movie on Netflix, and never even involve the studios.

That is their nightmare – filmmakers who don’t need them.

“F*^ing loved it”.

He want on to compliment the characters, the jokes, the emotion, and closed with:

“My only real complaint is that you make it look easy. Bastard!”

It’s nice to hear that it LOOKS easy. You and I both know different, don’t we, Jimmy?

This was a real boost. I believe this story has big, mainstream potential, and that I have managed to write it in a way that doesn’t insult real movie fans. When it comes to the stuff in my arsenal that has a chance at triggering a payday, I think that after a little tweaking this will immediately rank first. It was great to hear that I’m on the right track. It was great to be reminded that I can run with the pros – hell, I AM a pro.

Soon, it will be time to remind the rest of town.