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.

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.

But reading this news, that two of the largest theatre chains in the country are joining forces to acquire and distribute films through their own theatres really excites me. Here’s a few reasons why:

1) Theatre owners are fighting to protect the movie theatre experience.

I’ve said it before – if you want an audience these days, you’ve got to convince them to leave the house. In general, people blame things like high-definition TVs and DVDs for the decline in theatre attendance. It’s why exhibitors rushed to embrace 3-D – the margins are better and, at least for a couple more years, the average American cannot get it at home.

But one of the other problems is the gradual collapse of the release “window”. It used to be that the theatre was the ONLY place you could see a movie for a long while. Waiting for video could take 6 months, cable as much as a year. Not only did the exclusivity benefit theatres, they were incentivized to keep movies on their screens for longer periods. The “split” in box office revenue tilts drastically in favor of the distributor for the first two weeks – when the big crowds come in – and then adjust in favor of the exhibitor if the movie keeps its audience for long periods. The industry term is “legs” – exhibitors love a movie with legs.

But studios have been inexorably crushing that release window, to the point where major productions are often on DVD shelves within 3, 2 months, or even less, after their release date. They do this because they make more money from DVD these days, and in order to save on advertising. Instead of drawing attention to the movie once, going quiet, then trying to raise the volume again for the home version, they can just make one, sustained run at your attention.

Prices have changed, too. It used to be that the ticket to see the movie on the big screen was $6, and buying the VHS was $20. So there was less risk in giving the movie a try at theatres, and you reserved home video purchases for the ones you really loved. But now the ticket costs you $12, and the DVD might cost $15-20, but could drop to $5 within months at a big-box retailer on a holiday.

This is a catastrophic formula for theatre owners in the long-run, because audiences feel less urgency to get to the theatre when DVD is going to be available so soon and so cheap. Frequently now, lower-budget films are launching under a new model where they debut in theatres, on DVD, and on on-demand cable, all on the same day. It’s hard for a theatre-owner to argue that you should leave your house and give him $10 to show you a movie once, when you could order it from your couch for $6; or flat-out own it for $12.

So 3-D has been a Band-Aid, and more chains are presenting live events like rock concerts and operas and the like, which is a step in the right direction. But this is the kind of bold experiment that theatre-owners need to protect their investment in all those giant screens and bone-rattling sound systems.

2) It changes the formula for what goes on their screens, and for how long

Juggling the demands of the studios – who want to blanket the multiplexes with big-budget movies – can often force theatre-owners to not even consider smaller or more off-beat fare; the real estate at the newest theatres is limited, and smaller movies can take time to find an audience.

But when it’s their movie to put out, who’s going to tell them they have to pull it to make room for something else, or jam it onto DVD in 6 weeks? By owning the movie, they own the exclusivity, which gives them instant drawing power. And there’s nothing like having skin in the game to get them to put more support and faith into a smaller product.

3) Ultimate targeted marketing

When you make a movie, who do you want to sell it to? Moviegoers! What’s the one place in America where effectively 100-percent of the people who are there are moviegoers? A movie theatre! If Regal and AMC have any imagination whatsoever, they’ll know that they have the chance to really flip the whole promotional model with this idea. Prominently-placed posters and exclusive trailers playing only on your screens should really just be the beginning.

For a movie they own, they could do the kind of promotion in the theatres that doesn’t feel like a parade is breaking down your front door. For pennies on the dollar, people will have the chance to discover a film, and decide on their own that they’re interested. These are your word-of-mouth champions who help give a movie those mythical “legs”, and they are trusted so much more than a commercial on TV.

4) Once you build a pipe, it doesn’t like to be empty

I can tell you firsthand that there are piles and piles of small-budget films out there at marketplaces and festivals, already made and waiting for a home. Many of them are garbage, but some of them are very good films, or simply unique films that people out there would love if they only knew of their existence. In implementing a model like this, these chains will be creating “slots” for probably 1-2 dozen of these little movies a year, and offering the potential of greater support like I described above.

This is going to stimulate the market for movies of this size – which is fabulous, because you can do a lot that’s interesting in this price range. Independent investors who hate getting screwed by studio accounting but need the security of distribution may get a little looser with their money, knowing this option exists. And filmmakers who lust for the prestige of the big-screen release will be eager to offer up product.

Most importantly of all – it means the same damn group of people won’t be making all the decisions of what movies get to play in your neighborhood. This board needed to be shaken up. It’s all in the implementation, of course, and I’d love to see one of the other chains get in the game and provide some competition for this new model, but I see game-changing possibilities here, and it excites me.

The thing is, they were never going to pack up and move Middle Earth to Canada or Romania. Sure, they could have – a Hollywood studio with a willingness to settle on quality can do just about anything. But the point of this whole public kabuki is hidden in the details – as New Line Cinema used this spat as an excuse to chisel the country of New Zealand for a few million more in “incentives” that will move some of the cost of the movie off their balance sheets.

Moving the production – two feature films with a combined half-billion in budget and years’ worth of pre-production work already complete, would have cost tens of millions of dollars, and set production back by months, if not years; not to mention the drastic change in what you would see on-screen. Not to mention, more coldly, the increase in odds of certain leading performers who are already in their 70′s, well, dying. When Peter Jackson made the Lord of the Rings trilogy, he didn’t just make movies, he made an entire world-class filmmaking infrastructure that is still thriving, and has been preparing for this project. Whereas Romania, I hear, has some guys with shovels who work cheap.

It’s a universal truth that there is nothing the powerful enjoy more than the illusion of being victims. My friend the former Hollywood dominatrix could tell you a few things about this. It is why, during the writers’ strike, I heard producers, executives, even lit agents (who you’d think would at least PRETEND to see their writer clients’ point-of-view) sincerely gripped by the fear that a writer asking for 1.5 cents of Internet revenue on projects that have already aired and earned their money elsewhere was going to bring about the End of Hollywood. They were the ones under assault.

But it is just Downtrodden Fantasy Camp; it isn’t real. What it does do, is allow them to bully, and increase their advantage, but to act very sorrowful and reluctant about it. Gee – we don’t WANT to lay some of our expenses off on New Zealand taxpayers. Shucks, no! And our stockholders would never even contemplate it – perish the thought! But if these actors’ unions keep making trouble, it would just be too STRESSFUL to stay in this country! Maybe you could, uh, think of something your country could do to make us more comfortable…

Please note – I am not taking sides on the actors union’s central argument over the union status of Peter Jackson’s film shoots, or whether the performers are fairly compensated. I know nothing relevant to take a side – I know that doesn’t stop most people, but it stops me. What I am interested in is the fact that a newspaper like the Times would so willingly play Chorus to a drama it ought to recognize by now, yet still act as if the ending is a surprise.