Hey, wasn't that the plot of "Big Trouble," with Tim Allen?

Oh, wait-- you said *comedy.*

Well, if it's half as funny as Baby Geniuses 2: Superbabies!, I'm looking forward to it.

Best of luck,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

Oh, BTW-- I'm back.

Not that you missed me or anything.

Hope you had a great Christmas, or whatever pagan ritual you celebrate up there in your wretched hive of scum and villainy.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

"... even though it's comedy and of course the plot is foiled."

Gah! Spoiler warning!

Have you contacted Roger L. Simon about this?

Course I missed you, Dave.

Eric,

Sorry. I hope it doesn't blow it for you to learn the hero lives, the villain dies, and the chick gets nailed.

Moonbat,

I've been considering that. I guess I'll do it. It's an imposition, of course, but I guess I'm going to have to impose on people if I want to get this stupid thing read (and bought).

Ace:

Sorry I can't help, but did want to say that you hit the nail right on the head when you wrote that Hollywood would rather associate with someone who frequents porn sites than someone who writes a conservative politics blog. Blue State Values at their best!

For another example of the drivel that we get from Hollywood/Rock Music, I invite you to visit thoughtsonline

Good luck.

Steve

I won a big screenwriting competition at about the same time. Rather than market it aggressively, I dropped everything to write a War on Terror thriller. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, I made the foolish assumption that even Hollywood was on America's side.

I could hardly get anyone to read it. When someone did, I couldn't tell whether their rejection was based on professional or political considerations. Ultimately, I gave up rather than poison the well, and I have been writing something new.

I sympathize with your paranoia. Good luck, Ace. Somebody is going to first to scale that wall, and I hope it's you.

ACE, some advice. I have jousted locally with a gibbering Green Party moron, who nevertheless has managed to make a living off technical writing and getting 16 fictional books published - 2 of which actually made him some money.

Although he writes crap, he is very savvy on the marketing end...what will make a publisher or an agent some money if they go with it. What the competition is. His solution is to write up his stuff as literary offerings, as a business proposal. Having had short stories published, I recognized this aproach as something I should have done myself (odds are this bedwetting liberal learned it from a coven of fellow quasi-pinkos at one of the Blue schools he attended).

A link to his format for offering a book he is writing.
http://users.adelphia.net/~gcheney/thanksgiving.htm

Note he does it as a webpage from his personal writing biz Site, which also includes his bona fides and samplings.

As for agents, I (one book pending) and a friend that has 3 novels in the bin went with paying an agent. You should be able to find one by asking around at a college that does advanced writing courses, or getting in contact with local published authors......but be prepared to pay a retainer, and pick carefully...and also be ready to tell a college or author that you just want a name or two, not that you will mention them as a reference. You might also try to capitalize on having a recognized web site with other bloggers who have had stuff published.

There are also now quite a few "Internet publishers" operating Sites where they promise to help struggling new writers rich and published...I don't know if any are really worth a shot, but they're there.

But it is probably a good idea to sit back and think "competition". Like how many scripts are out there since 9/11 with the central theme "evildoers with a nuke bomb seek to blow a city up, disaster averted at the last(cliche'd) suspenseful minute".....20,000?? How many money-losing movies have been made on that theme?

On the other hand, the guy that sold the script for the movie "K-10 the Widowmaker" found agents singularly uninterested in his sub script until he pointed out that no submarine movie based on his Hollywood market research HAD EVER LOST MONEY...going back to the 1940's...and his script was on a unique sub event no one else was covering that would capture several market niches.......then the agents got very interested!!!

So unless your script distinguishes itself from the 20,000 other products or shows money-making uniqueness...in one paragraph or less....chances are it will be passed on. Perhaps you can entertain the idea of fiddling with the script....

Here's a scenario: (Script written in a timeline)...6 months prior to Apr 3rd, no one knows WHAT Apr 3rd is - to the movie viewer it signifies the climax of the flich...but it could be good or bad.
A poultry farmer in China goes out to feed the chickens, but as he gets closer, silence makes him rush...to find 10,000 dead and dying birds and he stands in the middle wailing as the camera pans up to show a whole acre of death.
5 months later, in a major American city, dogs begin dying of a horrible disease that doesn't affect humans, so other than the pathos and a few determined families and Vets determined to find the cause...no one cares much...not the police, not the Feds. But a plucky young girl (who does have to have a splendid rack to be in the script) thinks the dogs are just a prequel to a biological attack on humans...And she is reluctantly joined by a kindly old vet who harbors a secret - in his MD grad youth, paying back the Government his job was infecting and killing thousands of dogs and other animals in American biowar experiments in the 50's, thought those dark days were behind him, but he had seen results like what now faces the city, but is reluctant to reveal his past. Sure enough, they find that all the infected dogs had been given a rawhide bone bought at Walmart from a Chinese Import company in town, which is run by some sinister people that a timely-arriving Everyman Hero Cop says were Chinese biowar military renegades who left China when they started becoming more free (so you have a chance for a movie producer that hates Wal-Mart and fascists - to be pleased with the script that mirrors his feelings - and has a greater chance of biting on the script).
But then the true horror emerges. The dogs were in fact just a test!! The real goal is flipping a gene that makes the disease spread to other dogs, then to humans.....and the plot involves convincing Wal-Mart to move shiploads of infected bones to all American cities to ensure the fascists take over in China. (All this is learned in an exciting torture scene where the Everyman Hero Cop pounds it out of a suspect who reveals that he was both a doctor and a Colonel in Quo Harbin Regiment #23, which had learned their skills from captured WWII Japanese germ doctors.) The courageous girl then foils it by mezmerizing a security guard at the China Importer warehouse with her splendid rack...then karate blowing 3-4 Chinese fascists twice her size into submission (Girl Power theme), starting a fire to destroy the doggie bones....is captured by Chinese who leer at her big breasts...but as the warehouse burns and rawhide dog bones mysteriously explode in vast fireballs, the kindly old Vet and the Hero Cop arrive to rescue her......with the calvary....with the usual Hollywood helicopters and machine guns blazing that don't spatter an enemy but allow him to collapse in a graceful heap.

Now, do what you want, but recognize your script is just a product..not perfection in a folder.

In my area an insurance salesman looked for an agent back in the 70s and talked to people in a lot of bookstores and in the military on details in a book he was writing. Unlike me, he spurned the idea that he was obligated to have big breasts factored into his book..opting for realistic details. He changed his book several times in revision and added what he learned, changing scenes and being mindful his ultimate audience would be the critics of the military community..though he hoped for modest mainstream success. His best advice on marketing the book came from a local bookstore owner who noted a need to create a foil for the sub captain.

He decided to honor the bookstore owner by having his 1st booksigning there after getting a big publisher.

The book did well. It sold out. Sold out again, until the publisher blanketed America with millions of copies and the public reacted to the rave military reviews.

The author has gone back to the same bookstore as his other novels and screenplays have been sold.

His name is Tom Clancy.

"... until he pointed out that no submarine movie based on his Hollywood market research HAD EVER LOST MONEY..."

Of course, as Stereolabrat pointed out a while back, no submarine movie is really all that much different from any other submarine movie ....

http://www.livejournal.com/users/stereolabrat/172230.html

"I've kept anonymous because I think this site would be a definite turn-off to 90% of Hollywood or literary agents in New York."

Nooooo. Really?

So unless your script distinguishes itself from the 20,000 other products or shows money-making uniqueness...in one paragraph or less....chances are it will be passed on. Perhaps you can entertain the idea of fiddling with the script....

Cedarford, I know you're trying to be helpful, but do you really imagine I haven't read twenty scriptwriting books making that same point?

As for the blow-up-the-city plot: The plot is immaterial. It's a comedy/parody. The plot matters as little as the one in Airplane! did.

And it hasn't been done before. Definitely.

Tell us more about this chick that get's nailed.

Mike

Will it bring Kim Richards out of retirement?

I wish you good luck with your script.
Your site got me laughing quite often, so I suppose you could really be quite successfull if you get someone important to read your stuff.

Am I the only one that thinks Kim Richards isn't all that??? Now Phoebe Cates...whoa momma!

Again trying to be helpful, ACE, I don't think people are ready for a blowing up a US city comedy so soon after 9/11.

It took 20 years after the Holocaust for some Jewish comedy writers to work up the balls to dare to " mine it" for yucks with "The Producers" and "Hogan's Heroes".

Perhaps evildoers planning to blow up a Ladies Tennis or Beach Volleyball Tournament might work as long as there are casting openings for some "girl-girl work", a drunk peeing on the fuse for the 1st bomb attempt as it lays buried in the sand, and of course, plenty of big yabboos being athletically thrust about by sinuous thighs in action.

Just my opinion.....

And you might want to look at that writer Cheney's site. If a bed-wetting liberal, no talent moron like him can market his work, surely the witty and debonaire ACE can..

Cedarford, I understand you were trying to be helpful. But I think there have been other destroy-the-world movies released since then-- including the Austin Powers films.

Ace:

I've taken my own pass at screenwriting (heck, I even have a MFA from the Univ. of So. Cal. School of Cinema Television).

The only advice I can offer is to stay true to yourself in terms of your vision and overall style. People may tell you that no one is ready for a "comedy" about terrorism, but my understanding is that "Team America" did alright. In other words, there's always an exception to the conventional wisdom. And in Hollywood, if the exception does well, it becomes the rule.

While I have nada in Hollywood, if you ever need publishing assists or advice, I actually have some 'friend-of-friend' contacts in the editorial department at Baen, as well as loose connections to their top author (David Weber). So, books I can at least provide some help for.

On the other side, if the screenplay is even 1/100th as good as this site has been over the past year, it will kick mucho ass. Keep with it!

Oh yeah, Baen is military-centered (but not exclusively so) SF/F publisher. Forgot to mention that.

Actually, that might sort of work. I'll email you.

Bit of advice:

Whatever the screenplay's about, make another one involving ZOMBIES.

ummmm...

Let's say...

Let's not say.

No zombie movie has ever lost money, either.

Hmm . . . zombies on submarines . . .

Get Jeffrey Katzenberg on line one, Mindy!

No zombie movie has lost money, no submarine movie has lost money, and none of the Jay and Silent Bob movies lost money.

Jay and Silent Bob fighting zombies on a submarine. BAM! Screw "The Passion Of The Clerks".

Ace,

Just wondering if you have registered the script with the WGA East, or some other material protection agency... y'know, before you go slinging it all over town.

https://www.wgaeast.org/

Thanks, TinFoil. Yes, I registered it some time ago.