Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Scripts R Us.



 

I'm not sure, but I have about 38 screenplays "on the shelf" as they say. It's all about selling old or unwanted screenplays that I've written. Ironically I had an idea to sell some of my 37 screenplays that wait in the closet in my office. It was about 38 screenplays never made. Some were close to being made, as in Emperor of Mars, which has been optioned for at least eight production companies. Then a friend of mine suggested I put them out on the market.

My first thought was to call it "Scripts R Us."

But eventually I figured it would be too complicated and maybe nobody really wants them.

Of the screenplays I've written as specs, I think they're all marketable.  But that's not the problem.

The problem, as I've mentioned several times, is that you have to find that person who likes your screenplay. But there's more.

You also have to hope that just someone liking your screenplay and knows people who can finance it. I've had seven people who "almost" got one of my screenplays made. And as I write, I have someone else interested in one of my screenplays.

It's Ghostkeeper 2, for those who followed me from 2009, you already know the history of the sequel to Ghostkeeper. I'm determined to get the sequel made, mostly because I never really got to make the first one good.

I wrote and directed Ghostkeeper and the reviews were half and half, enough to encourage me to make #2.

And the other movie I want to make is Emperor of Mars, which not only is a screenplay, it's also a book. I wrote the book after the screenplay. But yeah, you've heard it all before.

Three of the stories are actually books; as you probably know. I've written a Y/A book meaning young readers up to 15 years old, called Emperor of Mars. It's a story about a 12-year old who believes a martian is coming to earth. Secondly is my book on screenwriting, called The Working Screenwriter. It's on Amazon if you care. And the last book is a couple of years ago.

It's a travel book called "How Not To Get Beat-Up In A Small-Town Bar".

And it's about memory and those things that bring back memories, preferably good memories. I travel a lot, at least half a million miles in the last 30-40 years, mostly west of the Mississippi and Canada. 

But I'm still considering Scripts R Us. 

In fact I might list all 37 scripts here to see what you guys think. 
 
Naw... wouldn't want you to hurt your eyes.


Monday, May 21, 2018

How good am I







I was going to write a blog about the fear that consumes writers when they face the rewrite but got distracted by something else.

I was persuaded some time ago to join Linkedin, which professes to be a networking website where you can interact with other professionals in the hopes of accomplishing your goals. Linkedin has many different forums for probably every business there is from flower shops to film, law, accounting and so on.

Having started way back in 1992 on the internet I became wary of forums for one major reason; I would end up arguing with some kid in Indiana about the movie business. I realized it was a waste of my time having to deal with someone who didn't know anything about the movie business but felt he/she was my peer.

Last week, someone on the Those in Film forum offered to read screenplays and offer his comments and advice. All for$150. The person said he worked for some major agencies and knows how to improve a screenplay to sell. All for $150.

Thus ensued a continuing discussion, sometimes heated, as to the value of these kind of "consultants".

My take is simple; if you gotta pay for someone to read your script you probably don't have a good script. And I know of what I speak; I taught screenwriting extension classes at UCLA for a little over 4 years and learned two things;

First, the university encourages the instructors to get students to take more semesters. My first class was writing the first draft screenplay; later the course was dissected into 3 courses, the first act, the second act and the third act.

Why? More money.

In this way, the student would complete a screenplay in 30 weeks. Over six months.

Now while some writers take years to write their screenplays, most first draft screenplays can be written in 4 to 6 weeks and maybe even 10 weeks (the length of the semester). By stretching it to six months you almost forget what you learned in the first semester.

I'm not considering the really talented writers;  they do what they do well and can take 1 week (Dalton Trumbo) or years (Terrence Malik) but they as F. Scott said, are not like you or I.

There are dozens of websites now offering to read your screenplay in exchange for money as well as screenplay sites like Ink-tip, who charge $60 for you to post your screenplay on their site for 6 months. Along with a few hundred of your fellow writers.

You have better chances winning the lottery.

Yet aspiring writers, many of whom feel that purchasing Screenwriter 2000 or Final Draft means that yes, they are writers, will fill these websites with their screenplays. After all, anybody can write a screenplay if they have the software. Why it practically writes itself.

Secondly the truth is this; very few of those aspiring writers are really good, in fact very few are real writers. Of the over 200 students I had, and I've mentioned this before, only 4 of my students could, if they really worked and made some important connections, were capable of writing a real screenplay.

Only 4.

And yes, that's my opinion, but again, not everyone is a brilliant painter, or actor or insurance salesman or whatever. The plain truth is that all of us are just mostly average. I claim no talent, even after writing and/or rewriting 18 feature length produced screenplays as well as at least 70 unproduced screenplays.

What I am is downright stubborn, it took me a long time to learn how to write well. And I even slip now and then.

The impact of all these people who want to write screenplays has encouraged new cottage industries including screenwriting gurus, almost 300 books on screenwriting (go to Amazon sometimes), screenwriting classes at almost every university, week-end workshops with failed actors who shout down at their audience, 3-day filmmaking classes, probably hundreds of websites with courses, software for screenwriting, production, budgets, storyboarding.

The list goes on and on and one is tempted to ask;

So where are all the great screenplays?

With all of these screenplay gurus soliciting and recommending screenplays, there are fewer good movies now than ever before in our history of film. With so much access to experts and so-called experts and books and movies, there just doesn't seem to be a whole bunch of great, memorable movies.

But for now, I have to deal with my own demons writing a screenplay that is probably the most closest to my life that has ever been. And if you think it's easy, it's not. For one it comes from someone who knows me quite well. Also that person gave me the idea.

The problem is that I might write something too close or to far from the story. How does one write something that is your life (or at least sort of your life) and yet make it sound to a reader that it's not my life.  And that's hard to do, although if I didn't say it's my life, it would be way easier. 


One of my writer friends always says that "It's always your life no matter what you write."

(Sort of).

 

 

Friday, May 18, 2018

Who are you?






Yes, didn't come up with an idea good enough so I thought you'd see who you are. Look above on the world map.

Canada
United States
France
Germany
Russia
Taiwan
Kazakhstan
Netherlands
Portugal 

As well I get about fifty or more others who come in and out. It's mostly U.S. and Canada who rotate as well as France and Germany. Russia is interesting, they can post over 100 people and then way down to 4 or 5. Nobody emails me though, always wide open. 

It's quite interesting about this blog, most know it started 2009 and was to be a film make with a friend. But it didn't happen. However I managed to get a dozen features/MOW's. I didn't really know much about blogs, but I followed much of the online classes that I taught at UCLA, where I learned even more. I'm hoping to do more as well. 

And as for screenplays, I'm working on one, almost finished in 2 weeks hopefully and sneak out to San Clemente. My screenplay is taking place in a story about two people who were married long ago and divorced and now meet again single.



"The Old Days"






Wednesday, May 16, 2018

The Concept of Copyright


 




Whenever you write anything, be it a sentence or a screenplay or a book, it is copyrighted. You don't have to pay to have it copyrighted and you don't have to do anything. It just happens.

Well, sort of. (there's always a "sort of") 

For example, if you sell a screenplay to a U.S. studio, they will inevitably sneak in a clause that says they own the copyright. In perpetuity. Throughout the known Universe. Really.

So what happened to that copyright that you own? You give it up by selling the screenplay. Hollywood learned a long time ago to grab up everything. A clause in their contracts says "work for hire" and just like that you lose your copyright.

Most other countries, like Canada, simply don't allow transfer of copyright.

But they try. 

I had a meeting with a cable company representative in Calgary. It was about the video footage I got on Georgie Collins, an actress, now 86, who played a role in Ghostkeeper. I edited a version of it, 13 minutes long, and it can be seen on Youtube by clicking on Georgie under Materials in this blog.

I had thought about extending the Georgie video as she talks about her early years as a child and eventually going into the acting profession. She is the Grand Dame of Drama in Alberta and I thought I could extend the video to 30 minutes as a tribute to her.

I was turned down by some broadcasters but then had an opportunity to have it shown on a local cable station. A "cable station" in Canada is a specific channel that provides a full-scale broadcast studio for anyone who wants to put on a local show, gardening, local events, anything.

It's also known as a "local access channel".  It's there because the government makes them have this local access in exchange for allowing the broadcaster to sell his 150 regular channels.

The representative was very excited about this possibility (and yes, he did say he was "excited). My friend who introduced us thought this would be good too. I figured that while it's not a real broadcaster in the sense of TV shows and drama, it's more for someone who wants to do something in their neighborhood. Still an audience is an audience and right now nobody else wants Georgie's tribute.

Then, after a couple of weeks, an email arrived and they were still excited, and offered their needs and wants and --- copyright of the finished product.

It is customary to sell a program to television by license, in that you license them to have a certain amount of broadcasts (also referred to as plays) under specific rules.

I had suspected that they would ask for it for free, as they rarely pay for anything but I wasn't expecting a copyright issue.

Suddenly the game changed. I could not, nor would not give away any aspect of copyright for many reasons. My copyright on Ghostkeeper means that I own it. By giving away the copyright as is often done in the U.S. , I lose that right.

Meaning that the local access channel could say they own several minutes of Ghostkeeper. And that would make it very difficult to sell Ghostkeeper or any parts of it. In fact, impossible.

I emailed a few friends, all of whom agreed that giving copyright to the cable company was not going to happen. Rather a licence could be agreed on, giving very minimal and specific rights for a certain period of time. After all they're getting the Georgie video and specific scenes from Ghostkeeper itself, for nothing except a licence.

Say, they can show it 20 times over a period of 1 year. Local access/cable channels often repeat shows so that's a realistic start. Oh, and no copyright.

What this is about for me is Georgie. She is a wonderful lady and a great actress and at 86, more than worthy of a tribute and it's not right for her to be caught in a copyright catfight, in fact nobody knows this except me, 3 references, my friend and the very nice access representative. And you.

I sent the email but the rep was out of town so I'll hear from him sometime.. And just in case, I'm making a few other calls, there might be someone out there in Alberta who wants to honor their homegrown star.

BTW the cable company that I'm dealing with made $1.2 billion in 2011 and paid $24 million to it's former CEO Jim Shaw.




Monday, May 14, 2018

Star Wars among other things.







 

Watched George Lucas being interviewed by Charlie Rose some time ago (as per Charlie Rose's problem with women) and being almost Lucas's age I remembered very much the origin of Star Wars and who it's for.

Like most kids in the late 1950's, I went to see western movies which were the equivalent of today's action movies like Fast and Furious and super heros. But there was also something called serials.

Serials were sort of like a TV show, except they were shown in movie theaters before the movie


They were usually around 10 minutes and always featured the hero ending up having to jump off a cliff or trapped in a mine with dynamite blowing up. 

The idea was - will he survive, or will he save the girl. We loved this little features which would often have twelve to fifteen "episodes". Most of them were from the late 40's and the special effects were very basic.

I remember Flash Gordon, a space serial and Batman also. The cost of these shorts were minimal, space ships looked like toys, probably because they were toys.

But we couldn't wait for the next one.

That's why, when I first saw Star Wars, there was something on the screen that was quite familiar. And that was the title words of what was going on, you know, they were moving away from us on an angle.

That was exactly what all the serials we watched had. 



And when the movie began to play I also realized that what Lucas was doing was exactly the same as those badly made serials. What was different, however, is that the technology was definitely far superior. 

Everything in Star Wars was a grand version of those serials.

And Lucas didn't forgot the western movies, Han Solo has his gun in a holster. A "homage" of the classic western gunfighter. 

And I liked it. But I also realized it was really made for kids. Just like the serials.

That's what Lucas wanted. He agrees that adults go to see Star Wars, I'm going this afternoon after the rush, but that this new movie was still meant for kids.

Lucas also was giving up kid movies and is now going to make adult movies, of which he can finance himself, given that Disney paid billions of dollars for the Star Wars franchise. So get ready for Star Wars 8 and more.

And Disney is already building a Star Wars ride on their Disneylands.

Everything old is new, as they say. They might look bad to you, but we loved them for what they were... stories out of this world.



Managed to catch the new version of Lost in Space. It's not too bad at all, and follows the original in the 60's. I didn't mind this new version but there's one issue that I supposed had to be done.

There has to be inside stories, meaning our characters have problems. The old version had it but it was delicate, someone called someone else a name. 

But of course, today, we have the two parents are planning a separation or divorce. We didn't do divorce in the 60's. But now there has to be more than just people walking around in black and white.

And then there was not as much violence as today. But this was the beginning and George brought out both sides with the charm of star wars long ago. 







Friday, May 11, 2018

Working on a project







Sorry to be behind, I'm working on a project as well as doing some comments on a friend's screenplay. I'm also meeting some people this weekend. See you Monday.




 

Wednesday, May 9, 2018

What does it take...









Someone asked me what it takes to write a screenplay. Is it the idea, is it a concept, is it something magical?

This goes back to my classes at ULCA, which I did for almost four years. Most of the students took classes to see what this screenwriting thing is about, since film schools suddenly popped up everywhere, inquiring minds wanted to know.

The truth is that most of them never came back mostly because it was a lot harder than they thought. And no, it's not my fault, I can show you my evaluations. And the ones that are left will most likely give it a try, I'd say out of 15 students, probably two or three would give it a try. Some keep trying and trying.

One of the problems I noticed was this; most of the students were writing and writing and ended up with nothing in the way of a story. They were more into technique rather than story.

In short, most students didn't have a story.

There's a difference between technique and story. Technique is about how you write it, story is what you write. And most of the students had no real story in their hearts. Just technique, making sure you separate the first act from the second or use the right button  for the scene.

So who does have stories?

You all must know one person who's always telling you about where they went, what they saw and maybe even give you some anecdotal insights.

Those are usually the story-tellers.

Take my example; I had finished a new book in which I tell stories I remembered on all my road trips, about half a million miles worth. I also have a very good memory of all of them, including the motels and hotels and truckstops and more. Actually I have a perfect memory of them.

And I always told stories as long as I remember. 

Some are good, some aren't, but I always notice something worthwhile. Like sitting in an empty cafe in a Montana town with a waitress and I noticed a sign beside the cash register (the register was 1050's vintage). As the waitress was telling me about how she changed her life by coming to Forsyth (the town) I noticed a hand-written sign on the wall. 

It read; "When Mary B. comes in for breakfast make sure she pays before she eats".

It caught my attention immediately.  Who was Mary B. and why does she have to pay first?

I asked the waitress and she said that Mary B was a local who drank a lot overnight and would appear at the cafe for breakfast and then forgets to pay before she leaves. 

A simple story. But my mind began to create stories about Mary B. I even wanted to wait and see if she showed up. But she didn't.

Most of my friends are always surprised at the things I notice, but that's why I'm a writer.

And that's why most screenwriter students, or even just people who buy the software and hope it creates magic for them, most of them never make it. 

Because they're not looking around.

There are exceptions, those people you see in coffee houses, but I think most of it is what a lot of us refer to as "performance art". Pretending to be a writer.

I can't work in public, there's too much to see all around me and there's a story with anything.

So what do you look for?

Look for a Mary B. Or the girl next to you at Starbucks talking on the phone to someone and who's mad. Why are they mad?

It all sounds kind of child-like, but that's where the best stories come from. 

It took my a few years to figure this out; I was writing screenplays but they were just imitations of movies I saw. They weren't real, just bland copies.

It wasn't until I started using real people in my screenplays that my work got better.  Because I wasn't making it up. It was real.

So what do I mean by that?

I use pieces of real people.  One screenplay that got me a lot of attention and was optioned and was about a drug recovering female studio executive.

"She" was made up of a combination of an alcoholic female exec I knew, but there were other pieces of people I used, one was me and my father, another was a woman I know who lived in the Pacific Northwest, all of which combined into different character.


If you've read my book below you might get a hint or idea. They all come to those who notice things. There's a few pages to read. Not trying to sell it. There's a few pages absolutely  FREE.!

Also got good comments at Jody Foster's company. 


As for Mary B.

All of these formed one person. 


Try it sometime and you'll have a good story. 




Monday, May 7, 2018

Maybe a sale... or not?


 


I had a message left on my phone Friday,  posted around 1pm but never noticed it until around 4pm. Message was simple enough, someone wanted to "talk" to me about my script. He gave a name and a company.

Those are the kind of calls a writer likes to hear. 

Someone wants to talk about my script. At first it sounds great. "Talk" is akin to buy? For a moment, I went back to my Christmas movie in 2010 wherein a woman left a message for me and actually saying; "we'd like to make a deal, who do we talk to".

That was plain and clear and within a few days the contract was signed. And the movie was made 4 months later. I actually have kept that message on my answering machine and now and then press it again "we'd like to make a deal..."

So why shouldn't I be happy about this new one? Because they "want to talk with me" about the script. Not buy -- talk. 

Now my friends say that no company is going to call me to say they don't want the script. So why am I expecting the worst.

Well, for one, I don't know which script they mean; I have a half-dozen circulating around town. But that'll be easy to know once I call back today.

And for another reason to be uncertain can be told in 3 words. Emperor of Mars. The screenplay I wrote in 1989 and was "almost made" 4 or 5 times. And each time it started with "we'd like to talk to you about your script".

So, now you understand? 

Talking and buying are two different things.

I know, I know, some of you out there would be happy to have someone call who wants to talk to you, or take you to lunch or have you wash their car.

That's the problem with experience. You get dropped too many times and after a while you begin to be more suspicious than ever. Being dropped 2 or 3 times is hurtful but how about a hundred times, or two hundred times.

So what else would they want, if not an outright sale? How about these possibilities?
- What else do you have?
- Can you do a free rewrite?
- We don't have a lot of money, can we have it for free?
- Can you change it to Romania?
- We have someone else in mind to rewrite it.
- Can we put another name on it as well as yours?

That's the insecurity of being around as long as I have.

After all, after around 50 or so screenplays I've written and dozens of others that I never finished, I begin to think I really don't deserve it.

Actors are the only others in this business who go through the insecurity thing;  writers and actors are always judged on what they bring to the table, actors bring their face, writers bring their 100 pages of story.

So here I am, Monday, wondering exactly what time I should call back. I checked the producer and he is valid but I'm not sure what his company was as it was a little blurred in the message.

So there I am... I figure 10am is a good time. Or does that suggest I'm too anxious? Maybe 10:30.



Friday, May 4, 2018

Where was I?





I'm going off the track today as far as the movie business. 50 years ago today in 1963, President John Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas. As with most of the world, I remember where I was. I recently watched a very good documentary from Netflix on the other Kennedy. Bobby Kennedy.

For me, I was in high school, Grade 9 I think, and we were just finishing a boy's gym class when someone came in and told our gym teacher something was wrong. He then proceeded to tell us that the President was dead.

I have to point out that I lived in Canada, but across the River lay Detroit, you know, the Motor City. And being so close to America, we felt it just as strong. I also had relatives who lived in Michigan. But later I would discover that the whole world felt it, all the way from a Texas city called Dallas.

I entered the 1960's with hope and excitement, having moved in 1959 to Windsor, Ontario, which sat ironically south of Detroit. It was piece of Canada that was actually south of the United States.

My gym teacher also said that JFK was shot because he was Catholic. Remember this was 1963 and JFK was the first Catholic president ever and there was a lot of flack from the Christians who were afraid of having a president who would have to listen to the Pope. Naturally this was ridiculous but in those days... it wasn't. And since I was Catholic and attended Catholic schools, it was particularly close.

I remember being in a fog for the next few days and when he was buried, my local grocery store put black paper over it's windows. Canada was just as affected, being that it was and still is, the closest country to the U.S.A, both in location and in our hearts.

It took a long time to figure out what happened that day, it was a shooting, but it was so much more. JFK promised a bright future for America and the world, he started the Peace Corp and didn't go to war with Russia.

What happened was a loss of innocence. The 1950's were, at least to me as a kid, the best time. We were the baby boomers, born between 1946 to 1964. Our generation had it easier than any other proceeding us.  We grew up on TV and movies and went to school (unlike a lot of our parents), we had homes, schools, families and everything else and nothing seemed to worry us. 

But after JFK the world changed. Vietnam came and 50,000 Americans died. Four students at Kent State University in Ohio were shot dead by National Guardsmen and others wounded while protesting the war. There were marches on Washington to stop the war, with the largest being around 2 million people from all walks of life. 2,000,000 people.

Then I got involved in politics when I joined Students For a Democratic Society, or SDS as it was often called and was quite involved with stopping the war.   In 1968 I went to Indianapolis to work for Bobby Kennedy in his quest to become President. I ended up in a bad area near downtown where I went from house to house getting African Americans to register to vote. It was quite interesting.

I was amazed at the reception I got, me with a sportcoat and tie and very Canadian... they treated me incredibly well and they truly had a love for RFK. And I saw the American political machine at work, which impressed me big time. And yes, I shook his hand, even with Colonel Sander's chicken on it..

Then Martin Luther King was shot and killed and in some odd coincidence, a rock concert at Altamont near San Francisco with the Rolling Stones ended when a concert-goer was killed by Hell's Angels. I say coincidence because Altamont finished the 60's with a bang. Bobby was shot in L.A. a month or so after I worked with so many others only to see another death
Bobby was in Indiana and made a speech about both MLK and JFK and there was no riot that night.
 
After that I joined the Trudeau campaign in Canada, for Pierre Trudeau, a colorful and masterful politician who had the youth vote and was, to my mind, the best leader of our country that we ever had.

So the 1960's started with a boom but ended with a darkness that still haunts this country. The 70's brought us disco, which seemed more like an apology to Americans but turned out to be a fad.

So today, I'll take a moment to remember that day in my high school gym and try to balance all the hours that will contain tons of words about that day and about what it meant. 

For me, it was my first acknowledgement of adult life and what it could take from me and how it still weighs in my heart and what could have been. I was at Henry Ford College that year and remembered it forever.




Try to get the documentary on Bobby Kennedy and what he was and what he could have been.


Wednesday, May 2, 2018

Pitching on internet








I've always been asked how to pitch a script and I've always said that the best way is to pitch a script to someone you know, another writer or anyone who will read your story. No matter what. Basically, it's a lesson right there, they like it, they don't like it. Simple.

The best way is, of course, to show your script to anyone. If you're a first-timer, and you don't know anyone in LA, make friends. Actors, directors, film crew people and more. Naturally it's best to have a friend who knows a real movie person who would read it or even a person who knows someone who wants to read it.

If you're not in L.A., it's almost impossible.

There always are the internet people who might take your script for a fee, anywhere from $15 up to even higher rates. You send them a script and they will read it and give you some comments but usually you're in a race with other people looking for someone to read your script.

Most of them aren't that big of a help and mostly all you will get is nothing.

But now, there's a whole new way to show your script. It's called VirtuePitchFest. 

Here's what they do.

For $15 you can "pitch" them and they will send you to one of the 200 or so real companies and "some not so real" companies. But you can remedy that because you can see the company right there online. The Virtue people are actually okay with offering you to look at their list and you choose.

Sort of.

I tried it last year and put one of my scripts that might get into a company. I have 8 screenplays that I use. You ask why I don't get picked. Nobody liked the screenplays.
But with my first shot, I got a fish.

So when this happens, they ask you for your script. I sent it.

I thought that was great.

But I never heard from them again.

I went on and off for a year and got bites but nothing else. This is a writer who has 18 produced screenplays. That's where the weakness lies. The way it works then is this;
You spend $15 and if, and I mean a big "if" wants you they will ask for it.

I got 20 bites wherein they read my scripts. No return again.

Remember PitchFest isn't doing anything except taking your $15 which is now gone. What's missing?

What's missing is this. Going back to my comments you realize that you never really saw a human being in this program. You paid them and you probably won't get a response from a company you selected.

I go back to LA again. What's different is when you have an agent you then have someone to pitch to a live person in a live agency, bigger if possible but even small agencies can help. Or go back to show your scripts to anyone who would read it. The thing is, that if even I can't get a screenplay looked, it's cold.

As you know, I have 3 films with producers now. They were all taken from friends and people I know.

But again, if you don't have an agent or a manager it's hard as hell. But then, look up these agencies, like I said above, keep trying to get there.

When I came to LA in 1990 I already had an agent "who never spoke to me again" for 2 years and didn't get me a job. But having an agent, any agent, gives you a one up. In other words, it's better to get a new agent when you decide to drop the other one.

This is touchy, but remember this; any agent will drop you in a minute if they decide. So don't feel bad about it if you change agents. My first agent wasn't very good at all but like I said, it's better to have dropped one for another.

Screenplay festivals can be an okay thing, I feel it's just basically getting money from people who don't have much to maybe get some attention on your script and some money after you've driven to Colorado or wherever to attend the festival with money you added to.

The real way goes like this:

An example. I wrote a screenplay called Emperor of Mars in 1990 and as you might know it's been passed around since then. My third agent wasn't the best but he was  a talker and so he passed the screenplay to a major company that made Forrest Gump. A reader read it and they called me and I went to their studio. I met the boss and we talked about Emperor of Mars. He liked it but not enough. 

But he asked if I had anything else.

That hit me right there. I had a script but not good. We talked more and it ended for the time. A few years later he had a deal with Paramount TV and guess who got a job.
Me.

That's how it really works. No $15 fees or contests. 

So can you do it. If you think my way is okay. The point is the same as I said at the beginning. You have to send your script to anyone who wants to read it.

And don't worry that someone will steal it. I always think that when I get a great script in my mind I also think that another writer has the idea, another is considering the same idea, another is writing the same idea and one is already shooting. 

Just remember; there's no originals. Unless you count those cavemen or women way back with mud