Screenwriting : Spec Screenwriting and Writer's Block by Lee Matthias

Someone, a non-writer, or maybe a writer wannabe, asked me about spec scripts and writer's block. I answered:

Speculative screenwriting. No buyers, just a script looking for production. Could be a pro writer’s script. Could be a newbie’s. Welcome to the spec writing life.

No movie deal. No reader. No interest.

Just an audience would be nice. It's like a performer who can only rehearse. Not even, in fact. A performer who only rehearsed long ago, and looks at recordings of it every few years. And, instead, goes around asking theaters for gigs. Or busking in the subway. Long after midnight. And only the janitors and an occasional transit cop walk by.

Kinda pathetic.

But… wait ’til morning. Rush hour’s worse. Industrial strength ignoring. Definitely ain't bliss.

Yup. Pathetic.

But… that's the way it can start. So toughen up. It ain't easy. If it was, everybody'd be doing it.

Now, writer's block...

I'm someone who doesn't go by the so-called rule that you have to write every day. I write when I have something to say, or something to add to the script I may be working on. I am perfectly happy to set it aside. Even for years. I have written both ways. Once, I started a script on a Friday night and finished it on page 105 on the following Sunday night. Another time I sat on an idea for at least ten years unable to figure out how it could work. I just had a few notes. So I guess I don't worry too much about writer's block. Maybe ease up on yourself.

And so it was in this case: It was such a cool idea. I had come across a news article about a guy who was the mastermind behind a kind of car theft ring. The arresting FBI field agent said it was the cleverest scam he'd seen in his 25 year career.

So this was back in the '80s or something. Cars were a little different back then. They used to have standard keys, and their V.I.N. (Vehicle Identification Numbers) in the corner on the dash where the windshield meets the body on the driver's side. The guy would rent a car, copy the key (he had his own key machine), pry off the VIN plate, and then go to a junk yard until he found a matched wreck with the title, buy it, and tow it away. Then he'd swap the VINs, put the rental up for sale at a very attractive price, and sell it for cash in a face-to-face at a random parking lot somewhere. He'd secretly follow the buyer home or elsewhere, watch for them to park it on the street, and then steal it back, swap the VINs back again, and return the rental, paying the bill, now thousands of dollars richer. He'd celebrate by torching the wreck in a lonely, out-of-sight area. Before he was caught, he had teams working it in several states. They were pulling in seven figures.

So I wanted to make this the basis of a screenplay. But how? Car theft? After wrestling with it for years without success, I suddenly had one of those "aha" moments. I realized it didn't have to be about cars.

As a lonely spec script writer pounding out stories in my garret above my rich man employer's five car garage (yeah, right!), I thought, "What if it was about screenwriters and scripts?" What if it was about Hollywood during the spec script boom back in the late '80s/early '90s? In another life I had actually been a WGA Signatory literary agent and sold some stuff to studios and book publishers. I had some memorable experiences, to say the least. So, suddenly the whole story assembled itself before me. I know, I know. Hollywood doesn't like making movies about itself. It does it sometimes (THE PLAYER, BARTON FINK, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD), but usually only with A-List writers and directors.

Well, here's where you have to stop second-guessing yourself. If you're passionate about something, get out of your own way and WRITE IT! The passion will come through, and, if nothing else, it will serve as a great writing sample. Or lead to something else that CAN sell.

The real irony here is that I have written books about screenwriting (THE LAST REVEAL - Movies, Screenwriting, and the Decline of Western Cinemazation), and one specifically about using techniques of lateral thinking for screenplays (LATERAL SCREENWRITING - Using the Power of Lateral Thinking to Write Great Movies). Yet, here, despite years of struggle, I had not "thought outside my own box"!

Anyway, that revelation became my screenplay, DARKNESS CALLS ME, a black comedy about a gamer who doesn't care about money except as it elevates the game, with the logline posted here alongside my other ones. The car scam idea was only the vehicle (pun intended) to drive the plot. I needed a character that would embody it, and once my light bulb came on, I had it. Oh, it broke the "no Hollywood scripts" rule and several others. It came in at 138 pages, so, it's too long, too! Yup! Like Bill Murray said about meeting the "Dolly" Lama in CADDYSHACK, I got that goin' for me.