He attacks my questioning his plan to sell a farmed-out screenplay to the movie industry with a hypothetical about commissioning a schlock painting to hang on his living room wall for his own private delectation.
OP: if your question had been, can I pay some hack screenwriter to turn my “idea” into a screenplay that I can read and re-read as (expensive, commissioned) fanfic – . . . . sure, it’s your money. But that wasn’t the question you asked, and our responses to the question you did ask are hardly “BS.”
Sorry if it came out that way, I didn’t mean to imply that everyone who replied in this thread is wrong. There was lots of useful info and posts that made good points and gave much-needed warnings about this whole process.
Well, there are two stages to what I want. The first stage is to simply see my idea on paper. This in itself is worth something to me, but not that much that I would pay tens of thousands of dollars on it. If I find someone to get me to the first stage with an amount of money that I find is worth it for that stage, then, if the script, now on paper and more “evaluable” than a simple idea in my head, doesn’t look totally ridiculous, then I may spend more effort and/or money to see whether this has any chance to go to the next stage.
Thanks for the info.
What happens in case of books (like biographies) “written” by famous people, but actually ghostwritten by professional writers? Do the ghostwriters own the copyright, or does the famous person that paid the ghostwriter?
In the context of ghostwritten books, wouldn’t the above imply that the ghostwriter can sell the book and the famous person that commissioned it have no say in the matter? Or are you saying that a ghostwriter for a famous person has a contract that gives up his/her copyright to the work, in exchange for a huge fee and/or royalties from sales, and that no writer would agree to such a contract with an unknown outsider?
If I can find some hack screenwriter to do the above, then, if I did want to try to go to the next stage and see if it has any potential to be sold, why is the script that this hack screenwriter comes up with worse than a script that I would put together after taking writing classes and spending a long time writing as a total beginner?
Is it basically that the script from the hack screenwriter would totally suck in quality (much more than what I could produce myself), or is it because of copyright issues (i.e. the hack screenwriter would write the commissioned fanfic for me to read at home, but would not release the copyright to me to enable me to potentially sell it later [or could release the copyright to me but for much more money than for just writing fanfic for me to read at home])
IRL, no one will generally pay someone solely for writing without having a written contract. It’s just much tidier. Once you have a contract, which will/should contain an assignment and disclaimer of rights from the ghost, the statute/common law on work-for-hire don’t even come into play; contract trumps.
If you ever go through with this, pls. make sure to get the arrangement in writing before hand.
I doubt I know any more about ghostwriting than you do. It’s my limited understanding that the celebrity “authors” often do write at least some of the material themselves, and I know I have seen books where the ghostwriter is credited on the cover: “My Life, by Famous Person, with Ghostwriter.” This suggests to me that in these cases the celebrity and the ghostwriter are legally co-authors of the work, but I really don’t know.
I don’t know how much the screenwriter would balk at releasing all rights. Maybe, maybe not. If he’s hard-up enough to put his own projects to the side, he’s probably hard-up enough not to demand too much extra for a right that is statistically unlikely to ever come into the money (see my post of a moment ago – you should certainly demand all rights). So I guess I’m saying the story-by-committee would, yeah, probably not be very good. You certainly wouldn’t want to tell any studio exec. that you somehow cajoled into reading it how it had been cobbled together, I’d think.
There you go Polerius, start with Eris001 and go from there. If you get your screenplay to the stage where it does pique at least a modicum of interest from someone relevant in the industry and it would benefit from the services of a talented script doctor, I guarantee I can give a mediocre script (not to imply Eris001 only does mediocre work) a treatment to make it great, particularly, but not exclusively, if it’s a comedy. I’ll do it cheap on the front end because I’m not in the industry and have no track record, for some consideration on the back end. We’d both be taking some risk, but I know I’m up to the task, love to write, find comedic angles everywhere. and am a perfectionist. I’ll undercut any offer from Rand Rover, too—just because I can.
In Hollywood, people who hire writers are called producers. They play a specific role in the movie making process, by rounding up all the people, organizations, and money needed to make a movie.
There’s a specific path which leads to the job which usually involves being an assistant to a producer or an agent, and working your way up the ladder one tortuous rung at a time. Along the way, you make the connections and develop the skill set you need.
Polerius, you seem to be setting yourself up as an amateur producer. Not a good plan.
If your story is as good as you think it is, tell it in a novel, or a web comic. If it develops a following, chances are pretty good Hollywood will come to you.
Lamia is flat-out wrong, in this and in subsequent posts. Please be careful to ignore any “facts” provided, although the advice about contracts is sound.
The famous person normally owns the copywrite. It’s easy enough to check. Just open any book by a famous person and check the copyright page. (Remember, no book by a famous person is written by a famous person unless proven otherwise.) However, see below.
Crap. Just write the appropriate clauses into the contract.
That’s why it’s crap. Ghostwriters go into the deal with known expectations. They are written into the contract.
It is certainly possible for a ghostwriter to share credit, copyright, and money. I know because I’ve done it. I wrote a nonfiction book for someone for money. The situation wasn’t quite the same as this. I was approached by an agent who knew my work. The sale was more or less guaranteed. I negotiated my name onto the cover, because all the writing would be mine. I wouldn’t have any of these expectations is I were writing a celebrity autobiography, though. And I would never, ever go through such a horrible experience again. Unless you paid me really, really well.
Every aspect of the situation is subject to the contract that is signed. Get a lawyer who specializes in intellectual property law. (NOT an ordinary lawyer. They know no more about the subject than people posting here evidently do.) It’s your money. Set it up anyway you want. If somebody wants your money - and somebody will - they will sign. That’s the way the business works.
If you’re going to be buying scripts, you need to be an expert on scripts. Otherwise, you stand to get ripped off, and you won’t have the knowledge or vocabulary to make useful critiques.
So, read these books. Read every script and watch every movie covered in these books, and do a structural analysis on each script.
Keep in mind that even super low budget movie costs as much as a nice house. When someone buys a script, they’re buying the blueprint for a house. They want expertise, and preferably experience and personal recommendations from past buyers.
Your script would be in competition with those written by the thousands of writers in Hollywood who are expert in film and dramatic storytelling.
How many times are you planning on replying to the same post? I really don’t understand why you’re being so unpleasant about this. The “facts” I provided in the passage above were that there is such a thing as work for hire, that this is limited to certain types of creative works, and that there must be a contract signed up-front for any work to be considered a work for hire. This is consistent with your own later posted cite (post #59), so if I was “flat-out wrong” on those points then so were you. For everything else I was careful to make it clear that I was offering nothing more than my best guess based on a limited understanding of the issues involved. I did not pretend to be offering any sort of expert opinion, and if Polerius wants legal advice then he shouldn’t be asking here.
*You have stripped the quoted passage from its context. I was referring the Polerius hiring a writer in the same way he’d hire an art student to paint something for his bedroom. Many young artists are happy to do this sort of thing on an informal basis with no contract, and this was apparently what Polerius had in mind. If there’s a contract involved in the proposed screenwriting project then that’s not “on similar terms” as a casual arrangement with an art student to paint something to display in one’s home.
A quick “something” search would have settled this thread back in 2010 but for some reason, nobody did… Anyway, it looks to me like you can hire a ghostwriter for between $4,500 and $10,000. Most of them have relevant writing samples available and, while not members of the screen writer’s guild, I’m sure many are experienced veterans of the industry. They also require signed contracts that clearly stipulate who owns what and for how much.
It’s called “work for hire” and it’s common in every industry I’ve ever worked in.
I’ve actually written a screenplay. I even won an award. What I learned from the experience is that neither the idea or the screenwriting is really all that difficult. What’s difficult is selling the screenplay. If Polerius has the money to pay for a script, perhaps he already has the money to produce the film or has a buyer already lined up.
Too late. The OP turned out to actually be Roman Coppola, who won the 2012 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay along with his co-writer Wes Anderson, for Moonrise Kingdom.
j/k. But that would have been interesting, wouldn’t it?
I remember this thread, and I recently got a sortofa foot-in-the-door into the industry*. I just started using a crazy-silly pitch idea to practice creating characters and a story. Sort of developing a screenplay like I enjoyed so much in college. I was hoping the OP could inspire.
*: Nothing really likely, just contract work at a motion capture startup that hasn’t actually started up quite yet.
