Eric Boellner
Well-known member
Read an interesting piece on the Guardian site today about Kelly Marcel (writer: Saving Mr Banks, 50 Shades of Grey). Most interesting thing about the article was the line:
That pretty much sums up the life of screenwriters (and actors and everyone else in Hollywood, honestly). The ones you hear about always seem to break onto the scene and suddenly their names are on everything that's in development at the time. But the reality is that in almost every case, they've been busting their asses for years unrecognized, and often uncredited (I didn't know Marcel had done uncredited rewrite work on Bronson - a film I really loved).
I remember in one of his Wordplay columns, Terry Rossio talked about how when he and Ted Elliot decided to become a writing team, they set out to write ten scripts over five years before they would even try to sell one. That was their gameplan: spend years developing their craft before attempting to "break in." The idea always encouraged me when I would get frustrated at not being the wunderkind screenwriter I thought I'd be when I first got into the craft.
Sometimes it's important to remind myself that every year I get older is another year I get better. And there's no such thing as overnight success.
The other interesting thing, to me, was to learn that Marcel, who wrote and sold what would become Terra Nova, was offered $300,000 per episode to write the first 13 episodes of the series. That's almost $4mil. She turned it down. From the article:
While I've little actual knowledge of Marcel's skills as a writer (I don't know what or how much she contributed to Bronson, and haven't seen any of her other work - honestly, the 50 Shades thing throws some doubt into the mix, but whatever), I thought it was refreshing to see a screenwriter turn down what would have been a career-making job because she didn't trust that the project would turn out well. So she cut her losses, took the check and walked away. Three years later, her career is finally taking off. I know it seems easy in hindsight for someone to have walked away from Terra Nova, but think about it: four million dollars to write a show, based on your own idea, with Steven Spielberg producing. That's a f--king WET DREAM for any writer, especially a writer without a single credit to their name.
I'm not really trying to talk about Marcel here, I'm talking about the ideas underbellying the article: overnight success takes years of hard work, and sometimes it's better to walk away.
I don't know. Food for thought, I guess.
That pretty much sums up the life of screenwriters (and actors and everyone else in Hollywood, honestly). The ones you hear about always seem to break onto the scene and suddenly their names are on everything that's in development at the time. But the reality is that in almost every case, they've been busting their asses for years unrecognized, and often uncredited (I didn't know Marcel had done uncredited rewrite work on Bronson - a film I really loved).
I remember in one of his Wordplay columns, Terry Rossio talked about how when he and Ted Elliot decided to become a writing team, they set out to write ten scripts over five years before they would even try to sell one. That was their gameplan: spend years developing their craft before attempting to "break in." The idea always encouraged me when I would get frustrated at not being the wunderkind screenwriter I thought I'd be when I first got into the craft.
Sometimes it's important to remind myself that every year I get older is another year I get better. And there's no such thing as overnight success.
The other interesting thing, to me, was to learn that Marcel, who wrote and sold what would become Terra Nova, was offered $300,000 per episode to write the first 13 episodes of the series. That's almost $4mil. She turned it down. From the article:
While I've little actual knowledge of Marcel's skills as a writer (I don't know what or how much she contributed to Bronson, and haven't seen any of her other work - honestly, the 50 Shades thing throws some doubt into the mix, but whatever), I thought it was refreshing to see a screenwriter turn down what would have been a career-making job because she didn't trust that the project would turn out well. So she cut her losses, took the check and walked away. Three years later, her career is finally taking off. I know it seems easy in hindsight for someone to have walked away from Terra Nova, but think about it: four million dollars to write a show, based on your own idea, with Steven Spielberg producing. That's a f--king WET DREAM for any writer, especially a writer without a single credit to their name.
I'm not really trying to talk about Marcel here, I'm talking about the ideas underbellying the article: overnight success takes years of hard work, and sometimes it's better to walk away.
I don't know. Food for thought, I guess.
.
