A workshop series for emerging and student filmmakers with tips from professional writers, directors, and producers of documentary and narrative films.
WRITERS WORKSHOP SERIES: 3/16/21
Moderator:
- Craig Emanuel, Esq., Chair, Global Entertainment, and Media Group, Paul Hastings LLP
Participants:
- Gordon Bobb, Partner, Del, Shaw, Moonves, Tanaka, Finkelstein & Lezcano
- Luke Davies, award-winning screenwriter, novelist, and poet
- Hanna Weg, screenwriter, and producer
Play Video
Transcript:
[Music]
greetings and welcome to March On spring workshop series minding your movie
business pro tips for emerging filmmakers i’m artistic director isis arabe we are
delighted to have you with us these workshops are designed to share vital information on filmmaking
as a business and a craft this first one focuses on writers films are an
integral part of our work with the festival along with first person accounts from
icons and foot soldiers of the civil rights movement
we also have scholars presentations and the visual and performing arts and we rely on
narrative and documentary films to help us unearth the mistold and untold stories and
strategies of the movement in the words of the great afrocentric political activist and
orator marcus garvey a people without the knowledge of their past history
origin and culture is like a tree without roots the akan people of ghana
and cote d’ivoire convey a similar message from the ancestors for the preservation
of culture and philosophy in their language system of symbols called a dhingra one of the symbols is of a
bird with its feet facing forward its head facing backward
and an egg in its mouth this symbol is called sankofa commonly translated to
mean we must reach back and claim what is in the past in order to move forward that is the
essence of our mission and that of filmmakers who have an interest in social justice
workshop discussions are curated and moderated by craig emanuel one of the festival board members and a
seasoned la entertainment attorney who has been involved in the development
production and distribution of hundreds of film and television projects
negotiated countless deals and juried on an array of film festival panels
as part of this workshop series we are also featuring selected short films
on the inventive platform by past winners of March On’s emerging and student filmmaker competition
actor and filmmaker derek middleton submitted his short film shape up gay
in the black barber shop in the competition’s first year and won the grand prize for
documentary in the emerging filmmaker category the film is set in harlem and sheds
light on the vital role barbershops play in the african american community
while examining the often complicated relationship gay men have with these faces welcome
derek hello hello oh i see sarah it’s lovely to see you lovely to see you
thank you for having me what made you want to make this film
growing up as a queer kid in the barber shop i i always felt i was having a separate
experience from the other men in the space but i wasn’t able to articulate what i was
experiencing out of my own fear and lack of representation i had never heard another black man
admit out loud that they were even uncomfortable in barber shops let alone afraid so i suffered in
silence for the majority of my life and instead of focusing on how i could
possibly affect change in that face i focus on protecting my performance of
masculinity so that i might be able to fit in or at least not become a target of
homophobia but when i got older and had already come out to my family and friends
it became even more uncomfortable for me to have to keep going back into the closet every time i went
through the barbershop so i started to write a narrative script or
film a series about the alienating experience that i was having being gay in the
barbershop and i would go back to the street and add to it every time i had a
traumatic experience at the barbershop but i never talked to you with my friends about it until one day i got
kicked out of the barber shop for being gay who that experience wanted me to open up to
a friend and to my surprise my friend had stories of his own
about all the awkward experiences he had in a barber shop because of his sexuality that was the
first time that i realized there are so many other lgbtq people in the world like myself
that experience fear and anxiety in barbershop on the daily basis so i decided that i
would make a documentary first before i make the narrative project because in a documentary i’d be able to
include the voices in the experience of so many other individuals and that’s how
shape up getting the black barber shop became the first ever film made about the experience of
being an lgbtq person in the heterodominant and often
hyper masculine yeah and it was a great film you had
some powerful people there who were telling their truth on the camera so since you won the award
what has been happening with you and your film my primary goal for shapa was to spark
an open dialogue in my global community about the importance of making these sacred spaces
in the black community safe and inclusive of all people since winning the grand prize at the
inaugural March On i had the opportunity to screen shape up
at film festivals around the country and i’ve also been able to screen shape up at private screenings
and panel discussions that i’ve curated on my own at various spaces from the new york public library
to barber shops and communities of color and on those panels i have included barbers
from the community as well as lgbtq people from the community and provided a safe
space for them to indulge in and take part in an open
dialogue about ways that we can affect lasting change in these spaces and those have been some of
my most i would think significant experiences um with the film uh last year i was
featured in the new york times in an article titled when a haircut more than just a haircut black lgbt new yorkers are using
social media to find bark to find barber shops that double as safe spaces and i was
also invited as a guest lecturer at middle tennessee state university where shapewear was used as part of the
syllabus for a course called cross cultural connections the experience of seeing how shape up
could be used as an educational tool in a university setting actually inspired me to go back to grad school
and i’m actually in my last year right now earning my degree in human rights
wow this one film has spawned a lot and you know you can tell by my
haircut that i spend time in a barber shop on a weekly basis so i know what the conversations can be
like in there but for you to bring this to a barbershop community is powerful
so tell me now you’re a little bit down the road from the emerging filmmakers who may be listening
can you share some tips or ideas for them about how they can proceed with their career and their films
sure i’d love to um oftentimes this filmmaker is an artist
we only view our work through a creative lens and that can actually limit the
possibilities in the reach of our work when i made shape up i didn’t realize that i was actually writing a
dissertation through the medium of film oftentimes people in academia will go to
school for years to graduate and then write a dissertation or create a body of work
or they go to school to learn how to critique the artistic offerings of others
i like to think that i went to grad school after making shape up because i wanted to learn how to intellectualize
my own film work filmmaking especially documentary filmmaking
is as academic in nature as it is artistic and that’s something that hadn’t
occurred to me when i was creating shape up because i always saw myself more as an artist than an
intellectual but i would implore filmmakers to be open to viewing their own work
through a critical academic lens because it will add another layer and dimension to your work that you
might never have considered uh the second bit of advice
i would i’d like to share is dream big and figure out how to get the project
made later because if you worry about the logistics beforehand it will likely discourage you
and make you feel like it’s nearly impossible to bring your vision to fruition my say if your vision is brilliant and
it has the potential to affect change in the world just trust that someone will be daring enough to
help you get it made yeah and my third bit of advice would be to keep in touch with the organizers of
the film festivals that screen your work i like to think of March On as my home
festival because i always check in and not only to update you all on what i’m doing but also to
see if there’s any way that i can be of service and so many wonderful opportunities like
this program tonight has come because i kept in contact with this phenomenal team that makes March On happening so i’d like to thank you again i see sarah for having me
and i thank the mark from the washington film festival for continuing champion my work it’s my pleasure you’re
absolutely right you’re always top of mind when we either have someone we can think about we want to introduce
you to or have you participate in something so thank you so much derek thank you be sure to catch
derek’s film shape up gay in the black barber shop free on inventive for the rest of the
month and now it’s my pleasure to turn this over to our moderator craig emanuel who will introduce his
panelists and lead the discussion
you’re on mute
there you go there we go welcome good afternoon or good evening everyone and thank you so much for joining us for
what is the first of a series of three panels focusing on issues relevant to writers directors and producers
i’ve been fortunate enough to work in this industry as an attorney for more than 37 years
and i’m excited this afternoon with the help of some wonderful panelists to share some valuable information to
you as you think about your career paths as writers over that period of time i’ve been lucky
enough to work with some truly wonderful clients including the two writers who are on our panel this evening
and have been fortunate enough to work with some wonderful attorneys over the years sometimes as colleagues and sometimes as
opposing counsel on the other side of a deal and today we are fortunate enough to have a highly
respected attorney in our industry that any one of you would be lucky to be represented by
before we start talking to our panelists i’d like to take a few minutes to briefly introduce each of them to you
hannah weg is both a green writer and a producer and someone i have known and represented
for more than 25 years hannah is known as an actor’s writer with a reputation that is based on
characters and dialogue that are richly laid and authentic and which have attracted the attention
and interest of hollywood’s finest talent including kate blanchette kate winslet salma hayek and adrian
brody in the wonderful films septembers of shiraz and such acclaimed directors as
kenneth branagh in television hannah’s work includes an adaptation for amazon and itv
the novel chang and eng about the lives of the original siamese twins as well as recently working on a project
entitled the witch of wall street about the life of hedi green for producer ed pressman
hannah has two projects heading towards production including the beautiful and the damned the true story of zelda and scott
fitzgerald and the garden of last days an adaptation of the novel by andrei
dubas iii of which hannah will also be directing hannah thank you so much for joining us
this evening thank you for having me gordon bob is a partner in the santa monica law firm
dell shaw moonves tanaka finkelstein and lesgano gordon’s practice focuses
primarily on the representation of actors comedians athletes writers directors production
and distribution companies across television film and multimedia platforms gordon began
his legal career in 1996 as a securities attorney in new york and then realized the true passion was to
work for the arts and move to los angeles where he’s been working with del shaw since 2000
gordon is on the board of directors of the black house foundation a non-profit organization dedicated to expanding opportunities for
black filmmakers and encouraging their inclusion at world’s premier film festivals by
fostering an environment for continuing support community and
education and he is also an active member of the black entertainment and sports lawyers association
gordon’s clients include the extremely talented director and writer stella mcgee who is working on the biopic i want to
dance with somebody about the life of the late whitney houston as well as representing the very
talented lena weights who has worked on such projects as dear white people bad hair and a new project entitled such
a fun age gordon thank you so much for joining us today thank you for having me
luke davies is a screenwriter a novelist and a poet one of luke’s early novels
candy a story about love and addiction was produced as a movie in 2006 starring the late heath ledger
jeffrey rush and abby cornish in 2017 luke was nominated for an academy award
as the writer of the film lion directed by garth davis and starring dev patel rooney mara and nicole kidman
other films produced based on luke’s work include the recently released tom hanks film news of the world together with a moving
film beautiful boy starring steve carell and timothy chalamet like hannah luke has started working
more in television having written and been an executive producer on the series catch-22
starring george clooney and is currently in development as a writer an executive producer on a series entitled
the most dangerous man in america starring woody harrelson to play the role of timothy leary thank you luke for
joining us thanks for having me um after i finished the questions with the panelists i’m hopeful
that we’re going to have a little bit of time for some q a so you can ask some questions which i believe you can direct to the producer
through chat who will then forward the questions to me at the end of this discussion so let’s let’s get started i’d like to
start by itching asking each of the panelists what it is about their current careers that drove
them and motivated them to want to pursue their career in the arts and how did they get their start in
such careers so hannah maybe we’ll start with you and then gordon and then you look
hannah um i think the thing that motivated me the most was
probably my exposure to so many different cultures as a kid actually um i
wasn’t unusual in the united states to travel as much as i did and i went to
places as far-flung as the soviet union as the people’s republic of china
uh all in very early years 1972 1978 um i was in kenya
in tanzania um and so i i was really um i i was
forced very early on to um and and lucky enough actually very early
on um to have to want to understand
all of these other places um and i think the fundamentals
of storytelling are that you know we tell stories in order to
engage empathy in others um and we also the the act of storytelling is an act of
empathy because you are by definition putting yourself into somebody else’s shoes um and those are the stories i
like to tell i like to tell stories about about places and people um
that we know less about um and that we might not necessarily be
empathetic with if we didn’t know them better um so i think
uh is that does that answer the question yeah and then and then how did you take that interest
and then start your career i i did decide that i wanted to go to
film school um and so uh i applied i my parents were not going to pay for
that um so i i ended up with a with a fellowship
um i applied to her grants and and got them um and i think it was a really important
training ground for me um in part because the school uh i ran into the kind of
narrow-mindedness sometimes and rejection and especially as a woman um
that i was going to meet in the business except that i actually
found the business to be more accepting um and you know the
i eventually left film school and i got a job reading scripts that’s part of
how i learned what to do with the script um and i read as a as a reader for
icm for various agencies um and eventually uh wrote my first script
while i was still in graduate school uh and was lucky enough to be hired
actually before finishing graduate school um and i never looked back i was i was
quite lucky but i but i gave myself the the um the access to people who would read by
taking these jobs where i was reading for them and so when i was done i was able to
walk into somebody’s office and say hey i just finished my first script and because they’re development
executives it’s their job to say can i read it so that was sort of
how i how i began terrific gordon how about you sure um i i guess
the my earliest uh memory of being um you know uh risked away or
taken by the arts uh was in summer of 1989 i was watching i grew up
in new york in brooklyn new york and i went to see the film do the right thing by spike lee
and it was the first film that i watched that um really reflected my personal
surroundings and it was a story that i can relate to the characters the situations
um the the storyline um and it was it was it was so rich and beautifully
shot and vibrant colors and it really brought um you know storytelling and hollywood
to to me personally um and that was uh kind of my first taste
of it and then i i went off to um study actually political science
um because i thought i wanted to go into government um but um quickly realized i didn’t want
to do that um and so my focus then shifted back to kind of that um you know the pursuit
of the arts and i knew that i wanted to be you know apply to law school so i i
ended up going to columbia law school in new york and one of the reasons i chose columbia was that they have a very
uh well-regarded school of law uh law of the arts uh called the kernicking school of media
i believe it’s called now um and so i just absorbed everything i
could um every class that i can take up every internship uh externship teaching assistant
um and um you know that was kind of my way of kind of really immersing myself
uh one of the things that we did at law school uh was um volunteer for
volunteer lawyers of the arts was which is a non-profit organization um that helps artists mostly struggling
artists with free legal advice so that was one of the things i did in law school also at the time my best friend from
college was also at nyu film school and i was helping him make his student films
and you know get him you know sneak him onto campus and shoot while he shoots scenes that uh he didn’t have to
pay for um but uh so that was kind of my my first um foray into the business so you know
as you mentioned in my introduction i did get sidetracked for a couple of years uh and uh
practiced corporate law but then i quickly kind of realized that my passion didn’t
was for the arts and i and i moved to los angeles and um
and it was fortunate enough to um to join uh the firm where i’ve now been
for the past 20 years and have uh just been able to uh
create a career uh working with such talented writers and directors and producers um
and who’s tell these these these wonderful stories and narratives that really
impact social change because for me it was really about using the power of law to to
um impact social change and move culture forward so that was really my focus that that’s
that’s what kind of struck me about that film that i mentioned earlier and that’s kind of been my mission
throughout my career thank you luke well mine was a very singular kind of
blinding flash light bulb experience moment when i was 13 years old
i was just wondering the bookshelves of the school library and i pulled out this book cannery row by john steinbeck and up
until then i’d been reading i was a little reader kid but you know they were those books for kids with their
neatly packaged moral messages and so on so i read this steinbeck novel and i enter this world
of uh a much more complex uh moral and emotional universe and um and it was just it was
like i it was like i stepped inside a palace with an infinite number of rooms at that moment
and i’ve been wandering around in those rooms ever since you know that’s the palace of literature and then three years later at
16 years old i had this uh another blinding flash experience which was wandering into a theater
in sydney where i was growing up and um and seeing this one verna herzog movie called aguero the
wrath of god and i i was into films from like 12 years old or whatever but i had no idea that
you could tell stories this way and so that was like entering another palace with an infinite number
of rooms to wander about in cinema and so the experience in both of those moments
was like oh now i know what i want to do in my life i i want to affect people the way this
book just affected me and changed my life a cannery row or the way this film affected me and changed my life so
that’s it began two-step process but the big one that’s 13 and even when i tell that story now
the memory is so concrete and precise because the emotional experience
was so fantastically overwhelming in the best sense
um thank you hannah um i’d like to turn to the question of representation
um and perhaps you can tell us how did you get representation you know as a with an agent or a manager
and do you think it’s become more difficult in the last you know 20 years um and perhaps you can
touch on you know whether or not an agent or manager has opened doors for you and how
those people helped your careers
you’re on mute just being polite sorry um
uh it goes back to having been a reader um for
production companies where i was reading scripts and covering them um i you know as it happened you know
this is this is a long time ago and it’s a time when you know it’s 25 years ago um when
writing really when only the writing mattered
um and only the quality of the writing mattered and so when i finished my first script
and i was reading scripts for a production company i walked in and i said oh i i finished my first script they read it
it happened to be a woman who was dating a young man named john lescher
and and that is how i got my first agent um she she basically said to me can i
give this to my boyfriend um and i said sure um
and uh in truth i had really no idea about what
agents did or or what they could do for me and i had to learn as i as i went along
with him um and over the years i have in fact um learned quite quite a lot about
how to have that relationship um and how you handle that relationship
is um is is in direct proportion to how
uh productive that relationship can be i think um and i’ve had a variety
i’ve had i think five agents in my lifetime um some i broke up with some broke up
with me um and uh and that’s to be expected um sometimes you outgrow a relationship
sometimes uh they are not doing for you what what you
expect them to do um sometimes they don’t understand you sometimes they want you to be something
that you’re not and i think it’s really important that um in approaching an agent that you don’t
that you don’t expect the agency to be working for you you expect the one person with whom you have the relationship to be working
for you um because they’re the one who is going to get on the phone and very early on i had
uh sharks as as as agents and representatives and
attorneys and i found early on that i didn’t want to be represented by sharks
because i’m not a shark i wanted to be represented by gentle men and women
um by by by people who reflected who i am and my values
and so over time i made those shifts so that i found myself among people who
much more reflect who i am as a as a person um
later in the business the business shifted i mean for many many years writers did not uh need to have managers
um and at some point about 10 years ago that began to shift because the agencies
became so bloated and so huge that their individual relationships with
individual clients they ended up with so many different clients on their list they and their the pressure on them
to produce a bottom line became almost untenable um and so agents went
from being people who who shaped careers to people who made deals
and now the manager has stepped in as a person who really can be
more of a shaper of a career and i’ve been very very fortunate to have
an extraordinary manager um who found me uh and i i had one manager before that
who made me very suspicious of managers um and so i had to be convinced um the
second time around um and uh the second time around has
been career changing actually um and i and he has opened a landscape of
to me of uh producers who i had not come to know uh earlier in
my career um and then of course there’s my attorney who um who has has been you know the the
maserati of my team all all these 25 years um
and i’ve been but but similarly before i met you uh and i think you can attest to this i
was sort of like a battered bird because i’d come from a shark tank
and i just didn’t know you know it took time for me to learn to to trust and
sustain the relationship i think um but all of those relationships that i have now are incredibly
valuable and i do find that uh they are opening constantly opening uh
doors and opportunities for me now i think it’s easier for them to do that now however i think
it was harder for them to do that even as recently as five years ago
because then i’ll i’ll tell a small anecdote and i’ll and then let it go but i remember craig you said to me once probably 15 maybe 17
years ago oh i should be able to get you x amount of money for this deal because i just
got it for a young man who’s never written anything before and i recall saying to you i think the
operative term in that sentence is man
and you weren’t able to get me the same price that you could get for him and that wasn’t your fault it
it was systemic and that’s also changing so that’s actually a very exciting part
of my career right now is to be on the other side of that wave so
um thank you hannah um gordon when do you think a writer should
contact an attorney and what are some of the things that you consider when you’re thinking about
representing um you know a writer i mean sometimes writers ask the questions well
why do i need a lawyer if i’ve got an agent who i’m paying 10 and a manager 10 and i might have a
business manager that’s another five percent so what do you think is the time when a writer really should reach out to an
attorney well uh first i i want to say hannah i mean i was
i told everything you said in terms of um you know being represented by someone
who understands you because i tell potential clients that all the time um that at the end of the day you know what
craig does and what i do you know there are a lot of qualified people who can do that
um you know in our business but i think what um really makes a difference in
in representing in representing talent is that you actually understand and represent them you know
because you are the voice um for that talent and so you have to kind of understand
who that person is to represent them effectively in my opinion so um so thank you so much for sharing
that because i i i say that all the time and i thought i was the only one
but um but to your question craig um you know it’s it’s interesting um you
know some it depends you know when riders if they have a piece of
intellectual property that they are actually you know selling um or uh shopping
um i think um you know to get an attorney involved um at the
outset is pretty pretty uh crucial um because um you may enter into a a
an agreement or deal for the exploitation of that property that um you know let me back up think of
think of it as a bundle of rights you know when you have and you own um underlying intellectual
property whether it be a book screenplay or whatever that is what you actually own
are a bundle of rights and when you are entering into a deal
what you’re trying to do is bargain for the exchange of
consideration for those rights but making sure that you each one of those rights or the or the
collection of those rights are are properly valued so um
so in my opinion i think if that’s if that’s where you are in the process
you should get an attorney um at that point now if you’re not there
yet if you’re just starting out as a writer you’re you know getting your first deal whether you’re a literary writer or
um you know screenwriter uh a graphic novel writer whatever you are
um you know it may not necessarily be the the appropriate time to get an
attorney you may want to get an agent who can actually get you a a deal you know with a with a
publisher or or studio um but you know once that you know
job or deal or is secured then i think that’s the appropriate time to get an attorney
um thank you um luke one of the things that hannah referenced is the important
importance of having people in your life who really have the same vision and share the same common agenda
as as you do when you’re making a decision to work with a
producer that obviously can have a profound impact on how your project’s going to be
produced whether it’s going to be produced what are some of the things that you look at when you’re thinking about
forming a relationship with a producer one if you’ve got a spec project and you’re trying to identify a producer
what is it that you look for in when you when you’re making that decision
well i think it’s uh as both gordon and hannah have said in different ways it’s about finding like-minded
[Music] people to work with and how do you find those people it’s about having your ears and eyes
open and a certain kind of sympathetic empathy and a trust in your trusted advisors
your representatives or whoever that may be your friends about who are good people in the industry and um
yeah and some of that is really just uh word of mouth reputational stuff you
know you know it’s you don’t want to work with people who you’ve heard bad stories about people betraying you know people being
backstabbers or portraying situations and and so on but there’s also a way of just
growing gradually into the situation and and get getting uh the ability to trust your
gut about certain things i like what hannah said about you know the gentle men and women
finding those people i would count you as one of those people craig um and my anecdote about that was when i
came to la in 2007 with my little australian film candy which i’m still
very proud of and it’s a film that stands the test of time but it’s a dark little indie tiny film and so
the meetings that i could get to try and get representation i had that experience of discovering that the
world of the agency world is a basically a heat-seeking um enterprise and so the meetings that i
was having were like hey you a you’re a nice guy b love your little film and see when you
get some heat on you we really look forward to talking to you again that was my experience for years
i couldn’t get an agent i couldn’t get in the door of any situation or any place despite my cool little indie film
that i wrote didn’t direct um and um and i remember going to lunch with you craig i somehow hustled a meeting with
you and um and it was a lovely lunch and you know i learned very quickly that you operate at
a certain level and that i had nothing going on like no heat not that you were that kind of person but i i just remember
saying to you i really look forward to just to one day coming to you and saying
i’ve got some stuff happening and will you be my attorney and you were like i look forward to that day too
and about five years later i remember when that day happened when i was like craig can you be my attorney there’s some
there’s some action happening there’s some heat thanks thanks luke um gordon um
when a writer often starts out and they’ve got a spec script and they’re forming a relationship with the producer
their faith sometimes with the producing wanting to option the material or enter into a shopping agreement for the
material could you briefly just describe what the difference is between the two
and also you know sometimes a writer enters into an option agreement and you know how long is it reasonable
to ask that a producer should be able to option material so if the project is languishing in
in no man’s land i mean what recourse does the writer have to try and do something about that
right well the simple distinction between a shopping agreement and an optional agreement is the shopping
agreement you don’t get you get no money in the option agreement at least you get a little bit of money up front um but uh it’s it’s two kind of size of
the same coin basically in an option purchase agreement um the producer or whoever the
entity is is actually optioning in in other words buying the right to purchase the script
at a later date um and basically taking that material off of the market for a period
of time either to shop it to other buyers to develop it further before going out and selling it
so in an option purchase scenario you will actually get you negotiate out the entire deal so
it’ll be an option payment which would be applicable against a purchase price in the future
once the producer you know turn um decides to buy the project if the producer decides
to buy the project um in a shopping agreement um it effectively is is the same um
it’s the same result in that the producer is taking the
project off of the market but it’s basically an exclusive arrangement or
exclusive agreement that you as the writer and owner of the
property will not allow anyone else to shop the project during a certain finite period of time
while the producer tries to set up the project with a buyer and that in that case there is no deal
typically negotiated up front only that once it is set up or if it is set up
with a buyer then you as a writer will have the opportunity to negotiate your deal directly with the buyer so that’s that’s
that’s the difference in um in those two arrangements in terms of the timing um option
agreements typically um the kind of the the studio kind of
standard for an optional room is 18 months um and then with an 18-month extension
if it’s if it’s a feature film a script uh that’s they typically like at least that amount
of time to develop and produce or have the opportunity to develop and produce
uh obviously you know as talent representatives we like to see that time frame shortened um considerably
especially if it’s in a shopping exclusive shopping agreement because again there’s no consideration changing
hands so um you know we’d like to see that shorten but you know somewhere between six months to a year
um gordon as a follow-up um um question how does a how does a young
writer today when they’re going and pitching an idea for a story to a producer or a studio how do they protect
themselves that they go in they’ve got this great idea the studio says look thanks but no
thanks and then all of a sudden two years later you pick up the paper and you see that a film that your story
seems to have been based upon um has somehow managed to get into production and you’re not
involved in it what can writers do to protect themselves um if anything against that happening
yeah i guess that’s the writer’s like worst nightmare right um uh fortunately it happens
um infrequently um but i i will say you know in order to
protect yourselves obviously if and this is i guess going back to what copyright law actually is
you cannot protect an idea um an idea is not protectable under
copyright law only the physical expression of that idea is protectable
so you may have the greatest idea for a book or film whatever that is
in your head and you express that verbally to someone else that’s not protectable that person has
the right to take whatever you said and go off and do what they want with it
um so what is protectable is the written expression so when you have those ideas write them
down um and and document those ideas um and then the second thing you should
do is register those um documents both with the your writer’s guild organization if
you’re on the east coast has to write a good writer’s guild east it’s the west coast manager’s guild west
you can go to their websites uh it’s very easy to register a screenplay or work of literary material
um you don’t have to be a member you can always register it there um and what that does is basically a
date step so that is proof positive that you actually created this work on a specific date
uh the second thing you should do is go to copyright.gov which is the united states
copyright office website and register that work with the u.s copyright office again it’s
all digital now you don’t have to physically send it in you can just digitally upload it and that actually um
avails you of the united states federal copyright laws and
and you’re able to then pursue a copyright claim if you have to down the road for if someone does
steal your work now you should know that you know i think what’s what’s the uh
the saying in hollywood there’s no original ideas right so um that you know you may think that
you’ve got the most original story but there could be five 10 15
20 stories like it floating around you know studios in hollywood so
that’s the only way you can really protect what you did is to actually register it
um thank you luke um often when you’re working
on a film with a producer on television with a group of writers um
i imagine you know obviously the aim is for it to be a collaborative process but sometimes i have to imagine
that you you may have a strong perspective about a particular aspect of the story
and the producer or perhaps other writers in the room have a different perspective and it’s
that challenging moment when on the one hand you know you want to be thankful and and
grateful for the opportunity to be waiting on the project and it’s another thing to want to make sure that your
voice you know is heard and i’ll just be curious if you have some advice for for the writers how do you how do you
address and deal with that issue well i’m i mean one thing is i’m looking forward
to the trauma of having that situation happen in a writer’s room because i haven’t actually formally been in a functioning uh
staffed writer’s room on an ongoing project the the television things that i’ve done
have developed a bit more haphazardly and informally um so but yeah it’s it’s
part of it is like stand up for your rights uh choose your battles uh be an open
collaborator play well with others listen to notes because they’re often going to be
good notes especially if the same notes keep coming to you and part of it is stand up for what you
believe in about the things that are important to you um and i’ve had the experience of
disappointment of things being changed that i worked on and wondering
why was that decision made or why was that decision made i’ve also had the experience a couple of times of things
not really being changed which when it’s happening feels really good but red flag it can be a sign in fact
that as the thing is going into production that the director’s not really paying much attention
to what’s going on or structural problems or issues and so on um but um
[Music] i think it’s a delicate dance between
pushing forward with the things that matter respectfully with your colleagues and uh letting
things go and saying okay what would happen if i let go of that
way of thinking that i had and what would happen if i opened my mind up to that possibility and explored it
um hannah i’d like to move back to you for a moment um how the recent events of the last few
years um including the metoo movement and the focus on issues of gender equality
changed the opportunity for you as a writer i mean do you feel that historically you
were treated less favorably than your male counterparts and i think we heard that answer probably before but do you think this is now a
more level playing field and do you think you’re being treated with greater respect than you had been previously there’s
there is there’s no question actually um you know when someone like ted hope walks into a
into a meeting as the only man in the room at amazon and says i know i have a target on my back
um you know that the that the balance of power has shifted because he’s the only man in the room um
and for 20 years i was the only woman in the room and i was also the only
woman and i was the i was the i was so young
i mean most of the guys that i was dealing with were a full generation older than others
um and that’s what to say that these men didn’t help me in my career they absolutely did uh in
fact the women of my generation did not help other women because they had had to fight so hard to
get uh into the rooms that they were in that they felt that the real estate for women
was limited so they needed to be the only woman in the room um and one of the great joys of
uh what’s happening right now in my career uh it’s twofold it’s that i’m getting to
mentor young women um and that the young women
want those relationships they want the relationships with with with older more experienced women
um and i’m learning more from them for the most part then they’re probably learning from me
at this point um and there and because you know i’ve been writing
strong female characters for 25 years uh a good example of that is
at warner brothers i wrote a story about a woman who had a one night a married woman who ended up having a
nightstand with a man uh that she who had been the father of
of her child and who had ditched her very early on they bump into
each other they have a one-night stand it turns out the man is now has a disease and he’s dying and she brings him into the family and her
husband actually accepts him and what happened warner brothers decided not to make the
movie because they said if she’d been a man it would have been
fine but no one was going to watch a woman in a happy marriage
have an affair with somebody outside the marriage
and that was in 2000 i mean that was i thought what century
are you people living in and so this was something i also
experienced time and again male actors not wanting to attach themselves
to scripts where the women in the scripts were as well written as the men because
they would be they would have they would have to play on equal footing so again
time and again uh getting the the male star who would drive
the script financially was a a game of sort of
constant russian roulette we were just spinning the wheel and shooting and not not finding that that
that person to play the role um so over the years what happened is my movies were stymied
and i frankly speaking couldn’t really figure out why because i never felt
rarely felt let’s put it that way that i was being discriminated against um i did sometimes
feel condescended to i am fortunate in being one of those women who was not you know raped molested uh
harassed in that particular way but it wasn’t until the uh
statistics came out stacy smith published the statistics um that showed
that women were you know i i was constantly asking myself what am i not doing what have i not written who am i not
talking to i i’ve written thrillers action movies the only thing i haven’t written is
comedy let’s put it that way and i and my movies still weren’t getting made and i kept thinking to myself
what am i not doing and then the statistics came out and i realized oh
only seven percent of movies are written by women and only four percent of them are directed by women
there’s there’s nothing that i’m not doing it’s not me it’s it’s a it was a cultural
systemic problem and now that women that you know i think
with the arrival of this renaissance of television the female audience has uh lent itself
to a monetary uh benefit right so suddenly female stories are
monetizable in a way that they’ve never been and my my career
in my in you know frankly speaking my mid 50s is busier than it’s ever been um
and again i’m sort of experiencing the good fortune of having known what it was like to not
have those opportunities and suddenly feeling like a a watershed has
has opened and um and it’s fantastic i mean it’s it’s it’s
wonderful and um but it doesn’t mean the business has gotten any easier
right it’s still always an uphill battle for everyone thank you um
i know we’re getting close to running out of time so i’d like to ask one last question to each of
um gordon and you luke um gordon um someone who’s worked at a firm that
has had a strong representation of black clients do you think that the events of the last 6 or
12 months have created more opportunity for your clients in the same way that perhaps
some of the things that hannah’s talked about in terms of female and gender equality have opened up the doors it certainly
does seem like the studios and networks are now focused on you know creating more
material relevant to the civil rights and other things black themed projects so i was just curious though in in from
your perspective are you seeing any kind of a meaningful sea change
um i i do see a change is you know um i’m still a little
skeptical to be honest um and maybe i’m jaded because you know i’ve lived
through a couple of new cycles in my career um where it feels like when you know a
film like a black panther you know makes you know a bazillion dollars or worldwide and everyone’s like oh
great wow i didn’t know that that can actually make so much money let’s make more of those things and as soon as one doesn’t uh perform
then we’re back to oh well that doesn’t work so we’re not doing that anymore so um you know i do think that they’re
that this it does feel different and i think we could and my colleagues in in in the industry
you know over the last six months to per year feel like this is this is a little different because it’s more it’s not
it’s not specific to our industry you know it’s more cultural and worldwide um so i do feel
that it’s a different moment i do see a shift however um yeah like hannah said you know it’s
still an uphill battle and you know there are still barriers to
to overcome both in the development phase um you know to get that final green
light um and then also i think we will have really made a a significant change when
you know films that you know that had our rights and and films of my clients right are allowed to fail and still get
another chance um thank you luke um as the final
speaker you know for this afternoon or this evening um you’ve obviously been in this
industry for a long amount of time if you had any final words of advice um for someone who wants
to pursue a career as a writer um what would you like to share with them
well i guess it would be just to say that having delusional self belief in your forward path
um in the face of all contrary uh evidence is a
is a perfectly okay way to go about your life because it because it may turn
out in the end that it wasn’t delusional after all
um thank you um i really would like to thank um my three
panelists for not only taking out time out of their their busy days but also for being very honest in
sharing information which i’m sure was um valuable um i think
you know anyone who’s pursuing a path and career in this industry um i think if you’re doing it for the
right reasons it can be an incredibly fulfilling opportunity um i think today we’re lucky
that there are more platforms than what we’re being before for a writer and storytellers to tell their own stories
and to find a home and i think that um if you get rejected the first time don’t
think of it as failure failure is only when you kind of don’t get it through or happen the first time and you
kind of put down the pen and give up but but keep going because each one of
the three panelists today have had their own challenges and their own journeys and they’ve got where they are today
because they’re pursuing something that’s important and passionate to us i do know
that some of you had questions and i’m really sorry that we haven’t had time to
address those perhaps there’s a way if you want to email those questions we we can try and get them um back to
you but um on that note i’d like to also thank the audience even though we can’t share we can’t see
you we know you’re out there in great number and my father once told me when you’ve got
something to say it’s nice if somebody’s listening so thank you for uh thank you for being
there so on that note i’m going to turn it back over to isissara to close out the the session
i can’t hear isis sarah
that’s because she was muted thank you for saying something
so thanks again craig and the panelists and our interpreter and our technical crew be sure to watch derek middleton’s film
shape up on inventive and join us next month when there are two short films by other competition
winners and on april 20th our workshop will spotlight directors until then
march on
[Music]
now
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you
