Freelancing: The Fine Art of Staying Free
What a day. I talked for a half hour with the producer about some minor problems with the script I sent last week. I had literally just returned from the Post Office mailing the script from this week. The level of excitement is back in the guy’s voice and his stock is up down there. We’ve been working on this for over 6 years. He rarely sounds this good.
Frankly, I’m temporarily burned out on it. Hollywood is a strange beast and if I ever scored a movie deal, I would avoid going there as much as possible. I mean I want it in writing that I never have to go anywhere or do anything. The producer laughs that off but he puts it in the contracts and that’s all that matters. Freedom is a feeling.
By the way, I had that in my Tribune contract too, and I wish I had stuck to it. For me, visiting the office can be a career-ender.
One funny thing I did with these script contracts is stick in some language in case the movie is a hit. That’s not normally done but I don’t care. The last thing I need is to watch other people get rich off of something I wrote. Here’s the exact language: “Additional Bonus: In the event that U.S. domestic gross revenue of the Picture from U.S. domestic theatrical box-office ( including Canadian theatrical box-office) exceeds One Hundred and Twenty Million Dollars ($120,000,000), Owner shall receive an additional bonus of One Million Dollars,($1,000,000).”
It goes on like that for 6 pages. I’ve got to fight to keep that in when we get serious with the new contracts in the next few days.
Freelancers of the world, take note.
posted by Bill McDonald @ 2:06 PM
8 comments
8 Comments:
As usual, you are a fount of useful insight. I don't sell often enough to make a living at it, but enough to keep it interesting. When it comes to contracts, you can never have too many examples.
Thanks Max, The key with Hollywood is to use the ticket sales as reported in Variety as a base. If they lie about those to pretend their movie is a bigger hit, it's a criminal act. If you wait for the net, you'll run into accounting games.
Huge movies end up as losses on paper, as Art Buchwald found out.
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."
Now for the trivia question of the week: Who wrote that song and what town in Arabia did he used to live in part time when his parents worked for Aramco? One hint: My parents used to get Christmas cards from his parents. They did, it's true. I read one and it described what the other kids were doing and then it said Kris had just made a movie called "A Star Is Born" with B. Streisand. Daoud, are you out there? Back me up on this with the Rita Coolidge story.
As for freedom being nothing left to lose? Nah, freedom is when you have lot's to lose but you don't spend all your time just keeping it. Freedom is nothing without time.
Kris Kristospherson!!! Yes???
I always knew that because his name was spelled like mine.
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Bill McDonald said...
My sister informs me that Kris was an Air Force brat, and his Dad was at the Dhahran airbase and not an actual Aramco employee. Whoops. Daoud, back me up with the Rita story please.
So there I was at a Kris Kristoferson and Rita Coolidge concert in New Jersey circa 1974 (when they were still an item). During the intermission I sent a note back stage saying that I lived in Dhahran and would like to talk about his visits there. So after the show they let me go back into this small dressing room where Kris was guzzling the same thing he had been guzzling before the concert... maybe bourbon and Rita was sitting there. For those of you who remember circa 1974, Rita Coolidge was the Foxiest Goddess of the Universe. So here I was shaking hands with Rita Delta Lady Coolidge and all I could think was what a shame she was wearing so much make-up. Kris asked me about Dhahran, but I don't remember what we said... I was too busy looking at Rita. Billy help me here. You write movie scripts. Make up a nice dialogue between me and Bobby McGee, I mean Kris Kristoferson. Whatever my brother writes is true... and if it isn't, it should be.
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