About Good Timing


In screenwriting, as in many things, good timing can be everything. The timing of your movie concept, which you really can never predict, may lead to a quick sale or considerable frustration. Let me give you a personal example.

In January, 2002, my writing partner and I put a script called I'LL DO ANYTHING on the market. Logline: Michael thinks he has found his soulmate -- until she comes out as a lesbian. The only way for him to win her back is to become a woman.

Totally by accident, just as we put this on the market, scripts involving cross-dressing began to sell. As I write this (still in January), four have sold! This puts us in one of two places: just behind the curve, so we are too late by a matter of weeks on a Hollywood buying fad; or just under the curve, and a sale is forthcoming. (I'll write here later to let you know which it is.)

Hollywood now and again has a fad buying frenzy -- suddenly everyone wants a cross-dressing script! We have what we think is a good one, and this is very frustrating because we need to get this script sold now, not tomorrow, while this fad is hot. Will we? Or maybe the fad, with four sales, is already over. There's nothing to do but wait and see.

You never can predict these moments. In a sense, this very notion of a fad buying frenzy is absurd. But it's part of the surreal world that makes up the Hollywood marketplace.

What my partner and I have done in response to this frustration is start another script. We've got the script out there -- we're getting five good readings as I write -- and what happens, happens. It's out of our control. All we can do is "keep on truckin'." So we are.


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01/02