Most of you are following my Award-Winning script, THE ONLY WAY OUT's journey through Hollywood via my blog so most of you know that I've been working on this script since 2019, trying, and failing, to package (attach talent, financing and distribution) and sell it since 2020. What you don't know is that before THE ONLY WAY OUT, I tried, and failed, for years to sell many of my other feature scripts.
Those scripts include:
My low-budget thriller, DISGARDED.
My award-winning comedy, SAVING DAD.
My award-winning adventure-thriller, IN THE SHADOW OF LONG'S PEAK.
My feel-good disability drama, THE BOY WITH THE GOLDEN SMILE.
My teenage dance drama, JOSEPHINA'S TANGO.
My teenage comedy, MEATHEADS.
My comedy, A HAPPY FAMILY.
My sports drama, CASEY'S SUPERCROSS.
My award-winning comedy, FORTUNE COOKIES (renamed ARTY'S TREASURE).
And more...
During this time, and we're talking decades, I became an expert at failing. In fact, my life could be a Master Class in Failure. In fact, many of you don't know this, but I'm the one who put the f in failure (and in a certain 4-letter word that's often furiously exclaimed when one fails for the 10 millionth time).
As a self-proclaimed failure expert, I can tell you first-hand that failure is awful. It's demoralizing, scary, embarrassing, disappointing, discouraging, anxiety, vomit, and diarrhea provoking. If you're lucky, that's all it is. Failure knocks you flat on your keester and scares you out of taking the risks necessary to succeed!
You dive even deeper into the question and wonder, "Is my dream really worth fighting for anymore? Is it even possible?" Then the "can'ts" and "impossibles" start spinning through your head as you tumble down a rabbit hole full of self-hate.
And when we fail, family and friends often console us by saying things like:
"If you fall off a horse, you get back up."
"You've just gotta pull yourself up by the bootstraps and try again."
"Never give up."
If you have kids in the house, you've probably read, The Little Engine that Could at least fifty million times. If you haven't read it, the book is about a little train trying to get up a steep mountain while hauling cars full of Christmas presents from a broken train in order to save Christmas. This is a book in which, "I think I can, I think I can" predictably becomes "I thought I could. I thought I could."
And so, motivated by kind words from friends, family, books, and self-help videos and podcasts, we try and try again only to wake up one day to an overwhelming avalanche of failures crashing down upon us, crushing us, sucking the willpower and self-confidence right out of us.
It's beyond frustrating. Ruminating thoughts fill our minds.
"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME?"
"WHY CAN'T I ACHIEVE MY GOAL?"
"WHY CAN'T I SUCCEED WHEN EVERYONE AROUND ME IS SO SUCCESSFUL?"
"WHAT AM I MISSING?"
Upset and furious with yourself, you dive even deeper into the above questions during which time the quitter in your mind asks:
"Is my dream really worth fighting for anymore?"
"Is it even possible?"
"Am I stupid for thinking I could make this work?"
"Why don't I just give up."
Then the "can'ts" and "impossibles" start spinning through your head and you tumble into a black hole of self-hate. Eventually, when you get over the acute phase of your pity party, you realize that to move forward, you have to choose one of three options:
Suck it up, try again and risk failing again.
Give up, move on and do something else, something at which you can succeed.
Evaluate why you keep failing, fix the problem(s), and try again.
Option one is the most popular option, but it's awful. The saying goes, "try and try again and eventually you will succeed," but that's not true because if you keep trying the same thing, using the same tactics and strategies, you will continue to fail. Every, single time and this will lead you to...
Option two, giving up. Giving up and moving on is so much easier than persevering in the face of adversity and sometimes (in rare cases) giving up is the right thing to do, but more often than not, it's just an excuse not to take a risk, a major cop-out.
Option three. My husband once said the definition of stupid is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. If, when we fail, we fail to figure out what caused that failure, we will continue to make the same mistake(s) over and over again arriving at the same end result. If, however, we take a step back and truly look at what happened, what went right, what went wrong; if we take responsibility and ownership of what went wrong, we can then solve the problem and move one step closer to success.
Let me show you what I mean. Here are some examples of my real-life screenwriting failures and what I chose to learn from them. I hope this helps you on your journey!
FAIL 1:
FORTUNE COOKIES was my first script given to an A-list actor's agent, a man at the largest, most prestigious agency in Hollywood. He promised to read it and pass it along to the actor who was out of town at the time of submission. Had that actor been in town, he, Dustin Hoffman (before sexual abuse allegations cropped up) would have personally read the script.
Anyway, shortly after the agent received the script, he was called out for sexual assault and harassment and fired during the Me Too movement. (Don't get me wrong, I was thrilled that he was fired for his actions, thrilled that there were consequences for those actions. What I was not thrilled about was how this man's actions cost another woman (perhaps more), a possible entry point into the industry.) My manager and I tried and tried, but never gained any more traction with this script, so we were forced to move on.
I wondered for a long time if there was something wrong with the script, but after receiving feedback from top executives, Stephanie and I discovered that nobody wanted to make a movie in which the main characters were all in their 80s. Ageism ultimately killed the project. If I wanted to add younger characters as the lead actors and make the older characters' stories subplots, the script would have a much better chance.
Lesson Learned:
KNOW THE MARKET before you try to sell any writing project, especially a script!
Ageism is as real as sexism in Hollywood.
Okay, I admit, I used to be a writer who thought I could just write anything I wanted and sell it, but that's not the case. Hollywood WILL NOT buy anything that that executives don't believe will make a profit. They WILL NOT buy anything they don't believe will command a huge audience and make money for them and the film's investors. Period.
FAIL 2:
Moving on, I wrote CASEY'S SUPERCROSS as an action-packed drama about a young woman coming-of-age as while being the only woman competing in Professional Supercross with men. I researched the heck out of this script. I had spent years racing dirt bikes with men, so I'd had a taste of this world, the amazing, the good, the bad and the just plain ugly. I interviewed the incredible Professional Motocross racer Stefy Bau, who made history racing professionally with men. At the time, she was the only woman racing professionally in Men's Supercross.
I interviewed Motorcycle Hall of Famer, Debbie Evans, a pioneer in Observed Trials Competitions and stunt rider. Debbie was Stefy's mentor and coach. I thought here's this wonderful, inspirational action-packed script. It was DRIVEN, but with a female lead on a dirt bike. It was...
UNSALEABLE!
Despite the script being well-written, I was told that sports movies are one of the hardest movies to sell. Almost as hard as period dramas. I was also told the film was too expensive to film based on the tiny target market (women and girls who would be interested in a movie about a woman/girl on a dirt bike), so that was that.
At the time, nobody, and I mean NOBODY, thought a story about a female racing Supercross with the men would appeal to anyone. But then... A couple years later, Disney released SUPERCROSSED, which ironically did incredibly well (probably because it was about a boy and girl switching places). God forbid the girl be the solo star of the show. Go figure! ARGH!
Lessons Learned:
KNOW THE DAMNED MARKET!!! EVERY TIME!!!
Sports movies are super hard, if not impossible to sell, unless we're talking boxing movies. Those do seem to sell.
If you have a woman in a sports movie, there'd better be a man around to "balance" the equation.
Unless you're an established writer working for a studio or you're telling the true story of a very popular sports figure or you're basing your script off of IP, you probably don't have a chance in hell of selling a sports movie script. (I'd love for you to prove me wrong!)
Sexism in Hollywood is REAL.
FAIL 3:
Moving on to IN THE SHADOW OF LONG'S PEAK... Marketing ISLP was the best time of my life. I really thought I'd made this time around. I wrote an award-winning adventure-thriller with an amazing story. My manager got the script to Charlize Theron and Reese Witherspoon, both of whom LOVED it. Theron's partner told my manager that her company would read anything I wrote from then on out. That's how impressed they were. I was floating in the clouds happy. But... Unfortunately, both Charlize and Reese turned down the script.
Reese had just done WILD and didn't want to do another film outdoors and I can't remember what reason Charlize's partner gave for her turning it down, other than I think I remember it having to do with shooting a physically demanding film in the mountains in winter in the snow.
I quickly discovered that most A-List actresses won't even consider a role like that because it's hard. In fact, it's a lot of work out in the cold. There aren't a lot of women who like that idea and even fewer A-Listers who have earned the right to turn down roles that are either physically or emotionally uncomfortable.
At the time, I remember being frustrated with these actresses because the headlines were all about Leonardo DiCaprio and the horrendous conditions he and the crew endured during the filming of THE REVERENT and I kept thinking, come on, ladies! This is the role of a lifetime. If Leo can do it, so can you. I was so frustrated; I wanted to scream!
But as time went on, I came to understand that ISLP was dead because it was an expensive film to produce, one that placed the success and failure upon the shoulders of the lead actress and the lead actress alone and no one wanted to take that risk, especially since the script wasn't based on existing IP (intellectual property like a Best-Selling novel or wildly popular short story).
Lessons Learned:
KNOW THE FREAKING MARKET!!! EVERY TIME!!!
Sexism is real and a mid to large budget adventure-thriller, driven solely by one female lead, WILL NOT SELL (unless it's based on IP, and even then, good luck).
A-List Actresses don't have to subject themselves to roles that will make them uncomfortable because they no longer have anything to prove to the industry.
Expensive films that require A-List actresses to be attached in order to gain financing and distribution are a BEAR to sell.
At some point, I've gone back through all of my scripts and did some troubleshooting to determine why they didn't sell and if they might be saleable in the future. Certain commonalities began to emerge amongst the lessons learned. It appeared I had learned a couple of lessons but wasn't implementing them into my writing.
The biggest lesson learned during the course of over a dozen scripts was:
KNOW THE FREAKING MARKET!!! EVERY FREAKING TIME!!! BEFORE YOU START A SCRIPT!
It was with this in mind that I wrote, THE ONLY WAY OUT which has gone on to score two producers, Marty Katz and Steve Schklair, and a fabulous director, Eric Schwab. It's been read by Charlize Theron (she liked it, but didn't think she'd be right for the role), Emily Blunt and John Krasinski. It has been read and enjoyed by countless Hollywood executives and producers. This is the farthest I've ever gotten with a script, and it was all because I figured out how to turn my previous failures into a success by making one, simple change.
Over time, frustrating as failure is, I've come to accept the fact that failure isn't bad. No, failure is good because it gives us knowledge that, when we finally decide to use it, leads to achieving success at screenwriting and in all other aspects of our lives.
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Way to go continuing to stand up and follow your dream. My fingers are crossed for you and your script!!
Your perseverance is amazing. You are absolutely right to use failure to your advantage. There is no easy way into this industry, but with all you have learned and continue to learn, you will get there! Keep going!