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My POV
Brian A. Wilson
BOOK REVIEW: "Sell Your Screenplay: Your Guide to the Independent Film and Television Producer" by Andrea Leigh Wolf. Robert D. Reed Publishers, San Francisco
Part 2 of 2
The narrative part of the book presents precious little hard advice. Instead, Ms. Wolf gives vague guidance along the lines of "don't make the same mistakes I did," "do whatever you can to promote your book" and "make sure your script is as good as it can be." What little clear advice there is gets repeated at various points throughout the book.
For the most part, I felt like I should be reading some other book to get the actual information I needed.
Ms. Wolf's anecdotes detail her Hollywood experiences and belabor how much her husband helped (bought her a computer, bought her a car, urged her on), but fail to extract the broad lessons to be learned. One is left to figure them out on one's own. That's well and good, but one can do that without spending $15 on the book!
To her credit, Ms. Wolf (apparently) practices what she preaches. Her approach is a shotgun style, firing her script off to anybody with $50 for a box ad in Variety. I suppose if you're totally fearless, devoid of contacts and/or desperate, this is the way to go.
For myself, I look at my script as something that may be worth anywhere from $50,000 to, say, a million bucks. If your script were a diamond, or a da Vinci sketch you'd unearthed in a garage sale, would you send it off to a blind box ad and ask, "So, what do you think it's worth? Oh, and please write to me if you feel like it."
No thanks.
I'd prefer to go the slow and steady route, get to know folks and build my contacts that way.
But that's just me. Perhaps the scattergun approach is the one for you.
Maybe you have confidence that your script will become a "go" picture if you mail it off to places listed in this book, movie-making hotspots like Edina, Minnesota; Sparks, Nevada; or Overland Park, Kansas.
I do not.
If you're going to pursue the indy producer, why not pursue one in Hollywood or New York? The Hollywood Creative Directory lists contact info, personnel and credits for hundreds of indy producers who are at the heart of the movie-making business. Maximize your chance for success. Target people in the game!
Yes, you may get your script read by Ms. Wolf's suggested producer in Fall's Church, Virginia, but then what? That producer will pick up the same HCD that you could buy or get online, and start doing the legwork himself, only probably not as well or as doggedly as you would.
Andrea Leigh Wolf's book means well, but ultimately doesn't provide much reliable information or a decent system to help with selling your script.
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