<h2 style="text-align: right;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">PANELISTS</span></h2>
<h3 style="text-align: right;">Richard Arlook, The Arlook Group</h3>
<h3 style="text-align: right;">Zach Cox, Circle of Confusion</h3>
<h3 style="text-align: right;">Mark Hertogsohn, Gersh Agency</h3>
<h3 style="text-align: right;">Keya Khayatian, UTA</h3>
<h3 style="text-align: right;">Adam Perry, APA</h3>
<h3 style="text-align: right;">Mitch Solomon, Magnet Management</h3>
<h3 style="text-align: right;">Jake Wagner, Benderspink</h3>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"> <strong><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">By Jim Cirile</span></strong></p>
<blockquote><p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>I still believe that if you’re in Peoria right now or wherever you are and you write that brilliant script… the cream always rises.”&#8211; Richard Arlook</i></span></p></blockquote>
<p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><a title="The Paradigm Shift—Part 1" href="http://creativescreenwriting.com/the-paradigm-shift-part-1/">Last time</a> on Agent’s Hot Sheet, we reported that there’s been a sea change called: </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Hollywood is making less fricking movies than ever.</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> This creates a ripple effect affecting pretty much everything &#8212; less scripts being sold means less opportuinities to break in, which even means less interest on the part of agents, managers and development executives for reading spec material, and on and on. Ugh. Taking up the slack has been TV, which has been boomtown lately. As a result, some reps like Jake Wagner from Benderspink, long-known for setting up big feature specs, have shifted focus towards TV (hence the whole”paradigm shift” thing. With me? Good.) Can a writer still break in with “just” a killer feature spec?</span></p>
<p>“<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">We target clients that can do more than one thing,” says APA feature lit agent Adam Perry.” Obviously, I hear legends of the days 10 or 15 years ago where you’d go out with a (feature), and almost every other spec sold for a high price. Now it’s more that we people we target, A, we think they can play in the studio feature game, and B, they can be attractive to the TV market as well.” Jake Wagner says he still encourages his clients to write spec features. “Hopefully, we’ll sell it, but if we don’t, hopefully it serves as a sample to break them into TV. I’m finding a lot of new people I’m signing are off of original spec pilots. For original ideas, (the place to go is) TV.” Arlook Group’s Richard Arlook puts it like this: “If you’re a typical motion picture lit agent, who used to rely on selling specs, you have no choice but to seek alternative revenue streams. If you’re still in this business 5 or 10 years later, the only way you’re surviving is because you’ve become entrepreneurial within that agency. You’ve learned to pursue reality stuff, television, packaging, all of those things any smart representative would be doing.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Says Perry, “I’m on the feature side, so obviously (a writer has) to have a good feature or I’m not really interested. But we really beat home in the meetings, and when we’re putting a team together to go sign someone, that we hope you have TV aspirations.” And if you don’t, he says, well, buccaneers, you’d best start. “There are lots of networks now, and all these new places popping up – Crackle, Hulu, Yahoo!, all these new channels – are looking for studio writers or just big feature writers in general. They (often) have big show ideas that we can develop and sell to a network or to one of the cool cable channels. At least at our agency, it’s very important that the feature agents are always talking to the TV agents and vice-versa. So without saying it’s essential, it’s definitely more than 50/50 – I’d say 80/20 – that we want people who can do both.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">So this means you should probably have a good feature sample AND a good TV pilot sample before you go rep hunting. Aw, come on, it’s not so bad. 1-hour TV pilot scripts are half the length of features. Piece of cake. Well, except for plotting out the full multi-season arc and all the character bios and show bible and so forth… hrm. Damn.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">Well, if you’re just not feeling the TV side, fear not. There are other paths yet. Says Perry,“The one good thing about the studios making less movies is that there are more non-studio financiers popping up. There are new opportunities every day for writers to set up some projects. Some of these places will make the projects that the studios won’t make any more.” Indeed, earlier this year, Perry set up Alexis Jolly&#8217;s</span><em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood</span></em><em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">, the Mr. Rogers biopic, at Treehouse Pictures. “</span></em><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">That movie has no place in the studio system,” says Perry. “But for $10 million with the right actor and right director, they can get hopefully good domestic results out of the Fred Rogers story.” Adds Arlook, “There’s always a new kid in town. Somebody comes in with a development fund and 5,000 agents descend upon them. Maybe you get lucky, maybe you don’t. They’re not necessarily gonna pay you a big quote anyways. But maybe it can keep things going or open a door.”</span></p>
<div id="attachment_6986" style="width: 610px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-6986" class="size-full wp-image-6986" alt="Fred Rogers" src="http://creativescreenwriting.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/rogers-blog-jpg_175840.jpg" width="600" height="337" srcset="https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/rogers-blog-jpg_175840.jpg 600w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/rogers-blog-jpg_175840-150x84.jpg 150w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/rogers-blog-jpg_175840-300x168.jpg 300w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/rogers-blog-jpg_175840-500x280.jpg 500w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" /><p id="caption-attachment-6986" class="wp-caption-text">Fred Rogers</p></div>
<p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">And on the feature side, don’t underestimate the power of the Black List. Even if a script doesn’t sell, getting on there can launch or revive a career. Says Arlook, “I represent (a writer) who’s been around forever, 30 years or so. He’s had some success, some not-so-success, but he’s always kind of like made a living.” Eight years ago that writer’s studio movie opened but underperformed. Soon he was forced to take jobs well below his quote just to keep the lights on. “Finally he got an opportunity based on his (studio) script two years ago to do a discretionary fund project,” says Arlook, “and literally got paid (half his quote) to write the script. He took it because he liked it and thought he could do a good job. Well, he wrote a great, great script. It ended up on the Black List. (An A-list actor) loved it and committed to it, and now it’s getting made and he’s getting big assignment work at the studios again and making well beyond what his quote was at the time. What I’m saying is you can turn around. I still believe that if you’re in Peoria right now or wherever you are and you write that brilliant script… the cream always rises.”</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">The key, says Perry, is “write something that is unique. Then (when you) give it to someone, the topic’s going to be so cool and so interesting that they’re going to want to pass it to their friends. And amongst those Hollywood execs, it goes viral. That’s how you land on the Black List. That’s how you sneak a sale in there early. So write about something one, that you’re passionate about, and two, that you think has the possibility to raise a lot of eyebrows. Whether it be someone’s biopic that people are fascinated with like </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Rodham,</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> from last year &#8212; for a young writer to tell a true story and tell it in a unique way, I think it opens a lot of eyes.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">And by the way, the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Rodham</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> script (by Young Il Kim) was discovered by our own Richard Arlook. “That was off a query letter,” Arlook marvels. “That was a one in a million, but it was a query letter. There was something in that query that struck my fancy. I forwarded it to (Jason Hong) and I said, “This sounds interesting. Read it. And he read it and he said this is really good. So I read it and I said, ‘Shit, it </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>is</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> really good.’ Look where that guy is.” </span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>Rodham</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"> is currently fast-tracked with James Ponsoldt (</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>The Spectacular Now</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">) attached to direct.</span></p>
<div id="attachment_6985" style="width: 610px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-6985" class="size-full wp-image-6985" alt="James Ponsoldt" src="http://creativescreenwriting.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/james-ponsoldt-rodham-director.jpg" width="600" height="338" srcset="https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/james-ponsoldt-rodham-director.jpg 600w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/james-ponsoldt-rodham-director-150x84.jpg 150w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/james-ponsoldt-rodham-director-300x169.jpg 300w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/james-ponsoldt-rodham-director-500x281.jpg 500w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" /><p id="caption-attachment-6985" class="wp-caption-text">James Ponsoldt, currently directing <em>Rodham,</em> by Young Il Kim</p></div>
<p><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;">So whether you’re working on a TV pilot or a feature spec, rememeber to bring the uniqueness, bring the voice. It has to be different enough to stand out from the pack. Competency is no longer good enough. Safeties off, boys and girls! Go get ‘em.</span></p>


The Paradigm Shift – Part 2

<h2 style="text-align: right;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">PANELISTS</span></h2>
<h3 style="text-align: right;">Richard Arlook, The Arlook Group</h3>
<h3 style="text-align: right;">Zach Cox, Circle of Confusion</h3>
<h3 style="text-align: right;">Mark Hertogsohn, Gersh Agency</h3>
<h3 style="text-align: right;">Keya Khayatian, UTA</h3>
<h3 style="text-align: right;">Adam Perry, APA</h3>
<h3 style="text-align: right;">Mitch Solomon, Magnet Management</h3>
<h3 style="text-align: right;">Jake Wagner, Benderspink</h3>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<blockquote><p><i>“The writer’s strike (and) general economic downturn gave the studios a very good reason to streamline their business—make less movies and be choosier and take bigger risks for bigger profits.”—Zach Cox, Circle of Confusion</i></p></blockquote>
<p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: comic sans ms; font-size: large;"><br />
by Jim Cirile</span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: comic sans ms; font-size: xx-large;">W</span>elcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends! It’s great to return to Agent’s Hot Sheet after a 2-year hiatus, and we’re psyched to be part of the <i>Creative Screenwriting</i> relaunch. For a decade, AHS brought you the inside skinny direct from the industry’s top literary agents and managers. Now we’re back, and as always, we promise no-punches-pulled critical intel for writers and creative professionals. So let’s get to it.</p>
<p>There’s been a sea change of late in the form of: <i>Hollywood isn’t making any freaking movies anymore</i>. Yes, I’m exaggerating for dramatic effect, but not as much as you might think. Disney released 12 movies in 2012, down from 22 ten years earlier. Sony released 18 compared to 31 in 2002. The studios rarely even pay to make movies anymore—about 50% of movie financing is handled by an assemblage of hedge funds. Despite that, the studios seem increasingly reluctant to greenlight any movies not based on well-known source material. This is not good. Clearly, fewer movies means fewer opportunities for writers—fewer rewrites, assignments and spec sales—as well as reduced commissions for agents and managers. So we put it to the panel: how has Hollywood’s shrinkage affected your business?</p>
<div id="attachment_5012" style="width: 610px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://192.254.190.185/~erikpsc/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/paranormal-activity-4-1600.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5012" class="size-full wp-image-5012" alt="Paranormal Activity 4" src="http://192.254.190.185/~erikpsc/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/paranormal-activity-4-1600.jpg" width="600" height="225" srcset="https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/paranormal-activity-4-1600.jpg 600w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/paranormal-activity-4-1600-150x56.jpg 150w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/paranormal-activity-4-1600-300x112.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-5012" class="wp-caption-text"><i>Paranormal Activity 4</i></p></div>
<p>“The simple answer is TV,” says manager Jake Wagner from Benderspink. “It’s true, they’re making less movies. So the hot feature writers are pitching TV. New writers are writing original spec pilots.” Wait a minute, is he saying that there’s no real point in writing spec feature screenplays anymore? Uh, yeah, he kinda is. “The only movies the studios want are (like) <i>Paranormal Activity,</i> the Jason Blum model (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0089658/">http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0089658/</a>)—low risk, high upside with just $1-5 million dollar budgets, or big, big, big giant swings, tent pole movies.” Wagner feels that original ideas or original specs are losing traction. “In 5 years it’s all going to be sequels, remakes and Marvel, <i>Star Wars, Transformers.</i> That’s where it is.”</p>
<p>Well, I said we’d bring you the skinny. I didn’t say it would be especially <i>good</i> news. “There is no spec market, certainly not as we once knew it,” says producer/manager Richard Arlook, who co-headed the Gersh Agency lit department for many years. “It slowed down after 9/11 and came to a screeching halt in ’08 after the last writer’s strike. In the glory days, the mid- to late-’90s, you would read specs, and if there was a good concept there was a market. But that’s been gone for a long time. Now, as opposed to just looking to sell things, you’re looking to make things, you’re looking to package things.” Arlook says there is still an open writing assignment market for a certain echelon of writer, and adds that most of his clients are working on assignments now.</p>
<p>But the paradigm shift has, in part, necessitated a change in the way Arlook does business. “I was an agent, but now my company is a personal management production and consulting business. One of the reasons I became a manager is that I could produce and consult; I could work in TV. I’m able to be a lot more entrepreneurial in terms of creating as many revenue streams as I can think of. Whereas if you’re working in a traditional agency (as) a motion picture lit agent, you better have a bunch of writers working on assignment, you better have the ability to package movies that get made or have the ability to sign talent, or do TV, or you’re going to be having a hard time.”</p>
<div id="attachment_5013" style="width: 610px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://192.254.190.185/~erikpsc/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/breaking-bad-15829-1366x768.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5013" class="size-full wp-image-5013" alt="Vince Gilligan's Breaking Bad" src="http://192.254.190.185/~erikpsc/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/breaking-bad-15829-1366x768.jpg" width="600" height="337" srcset="https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/breaking-bad-15829-1366x768.jpg 600w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/breaking-bad-15829-1366x768-150x84.jpg 150w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/breaking-bad-15829-1366x768-300x168.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-5013" class="wp-caption-text">Vince Gilligan&#8217;s <i>Breaking Bad</i></p></div>
<p>All of our panelists say they’re concentrating more on  television than ever before. “Do you like <i>money</i>?” quips Mitch Solomon from Magnet Management, when queried as to whether or not he recommends his feature scribes write TV pilots. Wagner continues, “To me, TV is the future, TV is the now. There’s many more channels of original programming. There’s Xbox, Hulu, Netflix, Amazon and more coming. TV is in a golden age right now with <i>Game of Thrones,</i> <i>Breaking Bad,</i> <i>Walking Dead</i>—there are movie-type ideas on TV, specifically cable. Lots of great stuff we’re finding these days are spec pilots. I’m making moves with those. I think the business will go more towards packaging original spec pilots like it was with original spec features for a long time.” He adds that each television network will buy around 100 pitches this year. “It’s almost impossible to sell a movie pitch these days. TV is where I’m focused, and where I am focusing my clients as well.”</p>
<p>Manager Zach Cox from Circle of Confusion elaborates, “The writer’s strike (and) general economic downturn gave the studios a very good reason to streamline their business—make less movies, and be choosier and take bigger risks for bigger profits. Far and away, TV is the most exciting thing right now. Particularly for writers it should be, because it’s a writer’s medium and the writers are in control, and there’s no director telling them what to do.” Cox says that even though he was brought up on the feature side, he’s greatly expanding his TV exposure. He has to. “I’ve spent a lot of time and picked my colleagues’ brains to really figure out how to navigate TV and digital. I make it a point to meet with all the digital companies that I can. Anybody who is going to tell you they know what this industry is gonna look like in 5 to 10 years is full of shit. I don’t know what it’s going to look like, but it’s going to be a weird amalgamation of TV, film and digital.”</p>
<div id="attachment_5014" style="width: 610px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://192.254.190.185/~erikpsc/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/fruitvale-station-traile-660-640x3601.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5014" class="size-full wp-image-5014" alt="Ryan Coogler's award-winning Sundance movie Fruitvale Station" src="http://192.254.190.185/~erikpsc/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/fruitvale-station-traile-660-640x3601.jpg" width="600" height="338" srcset="https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/fruitvale-station-traile-660-640x3601.jpg 600w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/fruitvale-station-traile-660-640x3601-150x84.jpg 150w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/fruitvale-station-traile-660-640x3601-300x169.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" /></a><p id="caption-attachment-5014" class="wp-caption-text">Ryan Coogler&#8217;s award-winning Sundance movie <i>Fruitvale Station</i></p></div>
<p>Stow away that noose, feature writers—there is some good news. There are feature opportunities still if you’re smart about what you write. “There are a lot of interesting new independent financiers,” says Cox. “(Don’t) spend too much time specing a $200 million epic. There are a lot of the $20 million and under financiers out there.” Cox mentions his recent deal with a fledgling company that plans to make three Sundance-type movies a year. “If that’s their initial foray, of course they have bigger dreams. But that’s a good place to start. (They’ll) build their profile as a company and parlay that into something bigger. There’s a lot of interesting stuff like that out there—people who fund stuff with VOD and so forth. That’s why you keep those budgets modest, and the more modifiable those budgets can be, the better.”</p>
<p>Be back in two weeks for The Paradigm Shift Part 2, in which we’ll talk about exactly how a feature writer can refocus into TV and expand into new media opportunities. Ciao for now!</p>


The Paradigm Shift – Part 2

The Paradigm Shift—Part 1

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