The Best Time

So I landed back in Toronto. I got another cheap movie for Lionel and looked for something bigger and real. I had written a few scripts, some people looked at it but nothing big. Always felt that Toronto was there to kill me. 

I met Phil again, at the Toronto Film Festival. He had two movies already and we talked about some of the scripts I wrote and that he would pass them around. He also liked one in particular. I didn't mention it before, but Phil shot his film about the same time as mine. However his was a classic western and was a big movie. It was good to see him again and we spent the evening talking scripts. He had someone who wanted a hockey movie, based on a true story about hockey in 1911. I would write it.

Then, I met someone else who changed my life that same night. I had a friend in Vancouver who was also Phil's writer's friend. Phil mentioned that I was a good writer. So I met a few more people at the festival and one of them introduced himself, saying that we both had mutual friends. His name was Paul Lynch, an English director who was raised in Canada. 

Paul had just finished a horror film also, Prom Night, which was a hit. I lamented about my not finding any work as usual in Toronto and that even agents here didn't want me. Paul said that wouldn't be a problem. He had an agent already. In L.A. He would send me to L.A. to meet him. All I had to do is get there.

This time I drove across Canada again and stayed with some friends in Vancouver before the big leap. Finally I drove down I-95 hoping for the agent.

I arrived in L.A. and stayed with my Ghostkeeper distributor and his wife, who was the lead in Ghostkeeper. But Ghostkeeper wasn't big enough. Still, a start. I called the agent, Barry, and ask to meet. He said "my friend is your friend", or something Hollywood-ish.

I met Barry and figured that I will be rolling in money. But as the days went back and the months I began to realize that Paul's agent wasn't that good. I would meet two gangster producers who lived in a house with only one sofa and a few chairs.  I was realizing that Paul's agent wouldn't help me much.

By now I learned that I was "working up" as they say in that I dropped Barry to another agency and started to meet real producers. That lasted for about a year with no meetings. 
Then I got a good agent, or at least he thought he was. He did get meetings for me, but he thought he was the best agent ever. But, like I said, he did intro me to people who liked me and who would get recalls.  Then I got a young agent who liked me and was going to land in a mid-size agency. He called me and said he would want to take me with him.

It began again, and I was getting closer to big agencies. But not yet. I began to get jobs in both U.S. and Canada and also fixing screenplays for movies to shoot. They were mostly TV but also a few features. I was making money. I flew to Luxembourg to rewrite three screenplays and one in Mexico and even wrote two Paramount movies and rewrote two movies in Canada. This was mid-90's.

I still got rewrites from producers which was a lot of fun and I liked doing rewrites. When 2000 came I had continued with TV movies and a few features. Then my agent left his mid-size agency and brought me along. I was now with Paradigm, one of the biggest. But 2000 was going to drown me and to anyone who was in the same case as me. 

It was a little TV show called Survivor. A dozen young people trying to survive with cameras all around them. It took off like a rocket and everyone was watching it. Everyone.

And this was the beginning of what we called "the end of TV movies". I had a few theatricals but mostly TV. As belonging to WGA, we had a party at the Roosevelt Hotel across from the Chinese Theatre to watch our industry change. 

Around 2002 I also taught screenwriting at UCLA online and really enjoyed it. I taught four years and am considering teaching again. I also wrote a book on screenwriting, you can see it on Amazon.
  
Who would have killed TV movies by a bunch of young people on an island trying to beat the other young people. 

There were DVDs but you had to go to them in your car or bike or whatever.

It was pretty slack after that. But it always comes back.

Netflix.

It began with a guy who figured out that if he could slip a DVD into an envelope, well, maybe a lot of people might. And that started it all over again. And now, new fresh movies are being shown by so many companies I can't keep who's who?

So TV movies are still there, new and fresh every week. 

And for me, I have two features hanging on and a new one.

Just gotta clean them up and they just might get sold.  

I've finished my latest screenplay, inspired by my ex who suggested the idea as a road trip for us. We both agreed that a roadtrip we took in 1971 was probably the best time we ever had. So of course I sat down last November and wrote it. 


I also wrote two other books; Emperor of Mars and How To Not Get Beat Up In A Small Town Bar. All three are on Amazon. 

Emperor of Mars features a 12-year old boy in a small town who believes that a Martian is coming to Earth and he has to save the world and his new hot teacher and close his friends. It's based, of course, from my life in a small town. The book has been optioned 8 times and still hasn't been made. The last option had me directing. Still waiting. 

The other book is basically what I love secondly. The highways. It's a collection of real stories that I came upon including road trips to every part of the American west and most of Canada. The title came from a small town in western North Dakota where I got into trouble in a local bar where the town and barely made it out. There's stories about Roswell, small towns, animals, palaces, and movie stories.  

But, basically we can still write stories from a crayon or pen or scratched on a building, they were always done with someone who had an idea. Go out there.