This column has been and will always be about screenwriting. But as with the first column more than two years ago, one has to reassess the market. We write for love, we write for passion but our main goal is to be paid for our efforts. If that includes a Porsche or Lamborghini, thank the heavens. For this article I perused the Internet and local libraries. The internet is more accurate if you follow www.edwardjayepstein.com. His information while not verified projects a positive picture for the film industry at least in the short term. As a screenwriter we seek the short term, write it sell it and get ready for the next project. Mr. Epstein utilizes the MPA numbers. The MPA or Motion Picture Association to the uninformed is like the labor relations board. They ensure that the major studios don't chase the same dollar according to Mr. Epstein.
As a screenwriter one has to contemplate dollars and cents, the world of film finance. As an accountant cousin once said, time is money. Epstein says the box office for the first quarter of 2005 is $870.2 million. Amazing isn't it. Certainly is if one devotes two hours per day to writing speculative scripts that number makes one salivate. Time accumulates if you write for 350 days per year for ten years. A lot of that time could be productively used as an assistant on a film. Yet we write on. In his book " Spike, Mike, Slackers and Dykes," John Pierson sets forth several budgets for independent film. On page 111 he states that even the production assistant earned $500. But your goals are a bit loftier. As a writer you want a $5,000 option with a six-month tail end.
If your hourly rate was $50 to 150 dollars per hour you could earn enough to produce your own movie and drive the Porsche on weekends only. But Hollywood is similar to Scrooge Mc Duck and the money is often given to the actors and not the writers unless you push them in your direction. So, as a screenwriter, lets consider film finance to ensure what we write is producible for ourselves and Hollywood if need be.
•Their our two theories to film, the no money approach and the lets spend three hundred million. The late 1970's and its epic films of "Jaws, Star Wars and Superman" created a balls to the wall approach that has expanded into the "Constantine's" of 2005.
