So my most recent screenplay is now churning through the wheels of the Hollywood machine. For those who don't know it's a long process that starts with one's manager and/or agent. They take a look it. If they don't like it, they ignore it. If they do, they give you their notes and suggestions, and you make the changes. Then it goes out to producers, who either like it or not. If they do, they have suggestions and changes. You make them and then you're off to the buyers, the studio execs, with the producers. If they're interested they go to their bosses, the ones who can write checks, and if they say yea, then you've got a deal. But that's only the beginning.
After that comes the slippery slope of stars and directors, of schedules and budgets, of the risk you're script will have extra pens added by more recognizable writers or because your work wasn't satisfactory to this person or the other. Sometimes your story gets changed entirely.
But the thing is that if you can run the gauntlet repeatedly with at least a consistent level of success you've got a career, a career that less than ten thousand people in this country happen to have. The last time I got in the door was almost eight years ago.
I've come close. I've gotten little bit of praise, tiny scraps of love that encouraged me to move on. Now, as I'm an award-winning journalist and all, and as the book business resides in a kind of fearful limbo that is keeping my own career there at somewhat of a standstill, I have to go for it. This is the dragon I've been chasing for my whole life. And I'm praying that this effort, my most commercial one to date (and definitely the most well-crafted), will pick the locks on doors that have been closed for sometime now and make way for the more gritty stuff I tend to love. (Tall Oaks recently said that she could actually picture me as a gun-toting criminal. For some reason I took that as a compliment).
The fact that I'm scared is a good thing, as I believe it has been my best works (Salamanca and Childress Street) that I have been the most fearful about going in. The same went for my Salamanca script, which got a little love when it went out to a few people. Then the strike came. I'm taking another pass at it for the next few days, just in case I happen to need a follow-up. Then I'll do some pitches and treatments. I'm preparing myself for good things and free meals, getting ready for the next level.
I imagine that this is the best time to jump back into the pool, with the strike just over and everyone hungry for new material and writers to get to work on things that have stalled. The more ideas I have the better, and as according to Glass, I am an "idea guy," (as opposed to a guy who sits around waiting to get picked for assignments) the world is always what I choose to make it.
Shoutout to my girl Bassey, who wrote one of the most poignant pieces of writing I've checked about her last few days in the Chi. (That was some of the best stuff of yours I've read in a while, girl). Shoutout to Ifaniyi for being as much friend as advisor. Shoutout to all of you who told me to keep at it (and who will continue to do so if this fails). Shout to Negarra and Seda and Suzy, Kaypri and Laala for being my rocks through the hardest times.
Today, while at the library I stopped and looked at the worn copies of Seeking Salamanca Mitchell and Dakota Grand in the stacks, work I sometimes felt were forgotten. But by the looks of them that's definitely not the case. Shoutout to the Haitian Iyawo to be and the four-eyed Yemoja just made. I ran into some bumps on my road. But I know I'll still get there soon. Out.
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