Filmmaking | Reports

The UnSullied Truth About Hollywood

1 Apr , 1999  

Written by Raúl daSilva | Posted by:

Everyone wants to break in to Hollywood, but is it possible?

Every one of us who toils in the film crafts for the commercial or business market has a Hollywood dream. Since my first experience in film happened to be with Paramount, mine was not a dream but a nightmare. I had a Hollywood nightmare, but I will spare you that for now and try to relate to you what this one, small voice believes about the Hollywood thing.

Robert Forster, who was nominated for an Oscar last year for his work in "Jackie Brown," has now worked in over 60 movies. I met Bob in 1970 and for a time we were friends and socialized together with our now ex-wives. In the mid-70s I was driving near the University district in Rochester, NY, where we then both lived, and spotted Bob appearing somewhat forlorn, walking down the street. He carried what I immediately recognized as a screenplay in his left hand.

Stopping alongside the curb, I greeted him and we decided to share a cup of coffee in the Frog Pond, a nearby university hangout. After I asked the cliched question, "Why so glum?," he said he had just been offered a lead in a TV film, "Standing Tall" (check it out on Imdb.com) and the script was real garbage but he needed the money, around $150,000. The old Rifleman, Chuck Connors was to play the bad man. At the time, I taught screenwriting at a local college at night, while working as executive producer on the Eastman Kodak account for Kodak’s Ad and PR agency for motion picture products. I had by that time won a few dozen film awards for directing and producing commercials, educational and business films. I offered to review the screenplay overnight, and meet Bob at the Frog Pond next A.M., Sunday. The next morning, I showed up with 36 single-lined, typewritten pages (I began my entire film career with Paramount as a script analyst and dialogue writer) indicating prospective changes. I was limited because the project had already been cast. Thus, I could not eliminate characters, with many badly in bad need of elimination; the script was unqualified trash. What I did was clean up the terrible dialogue and tighten up the forward motion of the corny plot (greedy cattle baron against guess whom?), a sort of liposuction job. There were over 30 cleans and a good three dozen plot cinctures and improvements in the introduction of subtext.

I dropped the use of bolas by the hero, for example, a highly improbable contrivance stuck into the story by the original writer. Bolas is weights tied to long leather thongs, thrown by the Vaqueros, specifically the gauchos of Argentina, to run down cattle. Bob was impressed, so much so that many months later, he sent me a small token check of $500, which was unsolicited by me. After that, I told him I was going to try to sell a screenplay of mine, possibly direct it. He said, flatly, without taking a moment to think, "Raul, you don’t stand a shot."

As my film festival prizes mounted and my screenplays took on the radiance of cut diamonds, I spent five years seeking and eventually locating a Writer’s Guild Signatory agent, which is now required by most companies in Hollywood. Ultimately Bob was correct. For years, we kept trying to get some studio suit to read one of my scripts. To date, I we have failed.

Why is this? The truth is that each individual who reads a screenplay in Hollywood cannot spend more than a few minutes on each and generally the read is actually nothing but a scan. Most of the scripts that get the green light are moved in through connections. They find entry through known entities in the tiny fiefdom that is Hollywood. An unknown, no matter how good, having so many film credits, even training within the industry, does not stand a shot.

So what is the answer? The answer is so simple that many do not grasp it. The brothers Weinstein best exemplify it. They created a company in New York City and named it after their parents, Miriam and Max Weinstein. Miramax is now mainstream Hollywood. It is now a division of the most powerful and wealthiest company in the biz, Disney. Nonetheless, it took some years and a lot of hard work for them to make it first outside of the Hollywood envelope, in the weird world of independent film distribution, carving out their name and being able to access some rather good films made outside of the Hollywood game.

In a later chapter, we can see how a film is actually financed outside of Hollywood and how you can possibly make it without being on the inside–how you can stand a shot.

This article is an excerpt from Mr. daSilva’s third edition of ‘Making Money in Film and Video’ which is in progress and now seeking a publisher, to follow his first and second editions, which are now still available but deemed out of print. Order a copy of an earlier edition of ‘Making Money in Film and Video’ at amazon.com.

See the NewEnglandFilm.com jobs page for current opportunities in the film and video industry.


This article is an excerpt from Mr. daSilva's third edition of 'Making Money in Film and Video' which is in progress and now seeking a publisher, to follow his first and second editions, which are now still available but deemed out of print. Order a copy of an earlier edition of 'Making Money in Film and Video' at amazon.com.See the NewEnglandFilm.com jobs page for current opportunities in the film and video industry.

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