Do you know how long it takes to make a film? It’s, like, a really long process. It takes a long time. That is, if you’re doing it right from development to release.
What does that mean? It means you might have an idea and not see it come to fruition for literal years.
You’ll probably write several drafts, send it around for feedback, then maybe even put it on a shelf for a while. When the right moment arises, maybe you’ll pick it up again… and do more rewrites.
Maybe you’ll get some interest. Maybe you’ll get some money. Only then will you start to think about preproduction, which if you’re an indie filmmaker is quite an involved process. As a writer, you might be asked to add new characters or change locations or cut things for budget. It’s a whole other ballgame. And that can take even more time.
Screenwriter and novelist Matt Harry has published six novels, sold a TV pilot, and had a couple of low-budget screenplays produced. His fantasy young adult novel Sorcery for Beginners got optioned for TV by Boatrocker Media, the producer behind Apple’s Palm Royale. His new dystopian detective novel Ash Land dropped in May from IFWG Publishing.
In a recent Film Courage interview, Harry talked about what he’s learned after 20-plus years of getting paid to write, including one lesson he wishes someone had drilled into him on his very first job. This is the question he now asks himself before starting any new idea, and the two-year cautionary tale that taught him why.
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This Question Might Save You Years
We’ve already talked about how slowly things move when you’re a writer. But what does that mean for a career, and what should you ask going into a project?
“I think an emotional connection to your story is the most important thing because any other reason—when I hear people say, ‘I want to tell this story because this is what the market likes right now, or ‘This is what my agent wants me to do,’ or ‘This actor is interested in this idea.’ I always feel a little bit like … that’s going to be rough. Because you have to be willing to hang in there with an idea sometimes for decades.”
It’s very rare for a project to move fast, and it usually only does if it’s IP backed by a studio that wants to make money ASAP. In the indie space, it’s much slower.
So now, Harry asks himself, “Why do I like this?” What are the reasons to stick with a project? Do you resound with the theme? Is it something personal? Something you haven’t seen before?
“Those emotional reasons are the things that are going to keep me going years in the future. When you’re looking at the 50th version of a cut of something, when you have your 10th audience screening, and people aren’t understanding something, that original emotional connection that you had for that idea is what’s going to get you through it.”
The connection to the material will help your own authenticity come through the writing.
What Happens If You Skip This Question?
Harry has an example from his own career, and it’s tied to his first paid screenwriting job. He’d won the Writer’s Arc Fellowship, signed with a manager who came out of that program, and got hooked up with a director who had a gritty crime script idea in the Scorsese/Tarantino vein. Harry said he loved Heat and Reservoir Dogs, so he took the meeting.
“It’s $5,000,” he said. “And this is my first job. I was like, sounds fantastic. Someone’s going to pay me to write a script. I ended up working on that script for two years. I only ever made $5,000. I wrote four drafts of the script, like the entire script, and I never cracked it.”
On the writing side, this is a common trap. You don’t often get paid for multiple drafts, so you can spend months on a project without earning a dime.
That was one thing, but Harry learned something else from the experience.
“What I realized later was that was the wrong idea for me. I might love gritty crime movies. I am not a gritty crime writer. … I didn’t know at the time that my voice tends to just [lean] towards fun, adventure, you know, more like PG-13, not hard R, darkness.”
The movie, he said, still hasn’t been made. He also came away from the experience understanding that he’d been taken advantage of.
“This is all non-union. I should have stopped, too, but because it was my first—and probably my manager should have stopped him, too, after the second one and said, ‘Listen, he’s been working on this for over a year. I’m thinking you need to pay another $5,000.’ But again, it’s my first job. You try and do the best that you can.”
I had a similar experience with a director, unfortunately, but I was able to get out of it after about a year of trying really hard to find common ground. And did that person take it personally? Also, unfortunately, yes, but I still know it was the right move for a project that was never going to go in a direction that made sense for me.
Follow the Light
Harry has found the genre and tone that work best for him. At one point in the interview, he discusses where he thinks the “soul” in writing comes from. It’s that honesty.
“True coolness is being passionate and specific about something.”
He gets there via his 10-year-old son, who’s loved monkeys since he was 5. Harry watches him approach the age where showing that passion becomes uncool, and worries about it. His point is that creative work needs the opposite of teenage flattening.
You can’t worry about being “cringe.” Just be into the stuff you’re into, and your audience and collaborators will find you. You have to love what you’re writing and be willing to stick with it through the long process of developing an idea.
“Carrying love for something is like, I’m walking into a dark cave, and I’ve got this brazier filled with flames. It draws people to you. What doesn’t draw people to you is when you walk in and you douse cold water on someone else’s flames.”
