Gordy Hoffman: The Invasion Of Quality

In a fiendishly clever move to promote his imminent Blue Cat screenwriting workshops in London, Hollywood script guru Gordy Hoffman has been contributing guest-posts to the UK's finest screenwriting blogs. Luckily, he's also decided to write one for mine.

As with his other posts, Gordy invited me to ask him a question to kick-start his article. Here it is:

Even in this age of super-fast global communication, it's true to say that UK screenwriters often feel quite isolated from the Hollywood system. What, in your view, are the best ways for them to go about invading Hollywood with their spec masterpieces?

And here are Gordy's thoughts...

This is a question I get often, and it comes from writers all over the world. I guess everyone feels like they are isolated from the Hollywood system, simply because they don’t live in Los Angeles. Trust me, many writers right here in Hollywood feel quite isolated, thank you very much. So if the writer in London is isolated, and the writer in New York feels the same way, along with the one in Phoenix, what about the one in Studio City? Where does this feeling of isolation come from? Isn’t this a perception? There are writers being discovered who do not live in Los Angeles all the time. It can’t be a problem with geography. It must be something else.

We have a choice in our professional attitudes. We can characterize ourselves as being isolated because we live thousands of miles away from the Hollywood sign. Or we can believe we can get our material in front of any person in the world. It’s correct you’re not going to bump into many industry people at your local coffee shop if you don’t live in LA. That’s a fact. But what does that do for the people here? They have access, by sheer proximity. Does that ensure success? Of course not. That’s ridiculous.

The answer to your question is in your question. You need a masterpiece. Um, well, maybe not a masterpiece. But you need something that everyone who lives on your street thinks is wonderful. Right? Why would you think it would be any other way? Why do writers focus on how to break into the Hollywood system, how to land an agent or manager, etc., while they continue to get notes and comments from their fellow writers encouraging them to rewrite their work?

The wall of isolation is in the quality of your work. It’s not a very sexy answer. But it’s true. The barrier is the story’s problems. This is the path of invasion. Opening your ears to the issues of your screenplay and continuing to work, wherever you sleep.

If you do have something that everyone loves in your home town, send emails out to the agencies and managers of writers you’d admire, and see if anyone, even the intern, will read it. If you can get the person who runs the copier to read your script, and they become a fan, this is a great thing. As they will be promoted. And promoted. Any connections you do make have value. Don’t worry if it’s not the principal of the company reading your work.

But more importantly, keep the focus on improving your screenplay and making it better. If you do finally write a gem, trust me, it will find it’s way out of the woods, be it Cardiff or Encino.

Thanks Gordy - and please forgive me for illustrating this post with a Chuck Norris poster. Any excuse, and I'll grab it with both hands.

It's hopefully not too late to bag a seat at one of the man's forthcoming Blue Cat workshops. The one-day Ten Page Workshop sessions run on August 12, 13 and 14, while the Art Of Screenwriting two-dayer shakes the capital on August 16 and 17.

THE BLUECAT SCREENWRITING WORKSHOPS
LONDON - August 12-17, 2008
Birkbeck, University of London
Malet Street, Bloomsbury
London WC1E 7HX

SEE ALL DETAILS HERE.

Living Spirit's Hollywood Class

Hello you! May I say, you're looking horrendously attractive today?

Yesterday, I attended my first Living Spirit class, about making it in Hollywood from a UK perspective. The low attendance - roughly eleven people - was fine by me in terms of opportunities to ask questions and get a li'l one-on-one time, although Living Spirit had understandably expected much more from a one-off class hosted by film-makers Genevieve Jolliffe (UK) and Andrew Zinnes (US).

I'll post some specific notes in the fullness of time, if folks are interested. In the meantime, I'll say that it was definitely a worthwhile day. Genevieve and Andrew are an instantly likeable and engaging couple, willing to share pretty much every morsel of information - right down to Gen's personal circumstances and tactics when she made the big move to Los Angeles. They also detailed the loooooong development process of their screenplay Absolute Angels, which spent at least two years hopping from studio and studio and remains unproduced.

I would certainly attend another Living Spirit class: mainman Chris Jones' unstoppable forward-drive and extremely loud voice are infectious. For me, the information dished out was partly a kind of refresher course, which I needed in order to kickstart my Hollywood strategy, although I definitely learnt plenty of new things.

One thing I'm starting to really feel, though, from classes and events I'm attending lately: it's time for me to step it all up a gear, in terms of how much I'm writing. It's all too easy to settle back and (a) listen to other people talking about the process and (b) blog about the process yourself. Any successful writer will tell you how their fingers bled, their friends gave up on them and weekends just whizzed past, like they were any other day. That's the kind of joyous misery I need to start inflicting on myself...

Inktip Tips and Invasion: Hollywood

Finally got around to registering with InkTip, the US-based website which posts loglines, synopses and (optional) screenplays for a closed community of producers, agents and other assorted Hollywood industry folks to peruse. As I have a US-centric screenplay which remains unsold/optioned, this seemed like a good way to go about things. Anyone else on it? All I have to do now is find my Writers Guild of America certificate for the screenplay, so I can post the WGA registration number... Damn that house-move...

Thanks to Lara's blog, I signed up for Living Spirit's June 10 class on making it in Hollywood. While I don't have plans to move to Hollywood - and see plenty of sense in Danny Stack's assertion that you need to live there to make serious in-roads - I'm drawn to this event for a UK-centric view of how to invade the place with your screenplay. I've been to Hollywood on a business mission, with moderately successful results. In October 2006, I had face-to-face meetings with my entertainment lawyer and the production company who wanted to (and ultimately did) option my Panik screenplay. I attended a screenplay conference and a pitch-fest. But overall, it wasn't the most targeted offensive. I'd like to find out what more I could do. How much further I can push it while still living in London.

Ultimately, though, I don't want to live in Hollywood. I do want to live in London. So the main thrust of my ambition now lies here, in the UK...