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Interview with
Neal Stevens Neal recently sold his script, DEADER, to Dimension Films. He has sold and optioned several others, including THE SLOW MAN to 20th Century Fox. He has also been hired to write a BLAIR WITCH sequel for Artisan Entertainment. How did you get started with screenwriting? I've been writing screenplays since I was thirteen. My first official sale took place when I was attending film school at NYU Grad Film. It was a treatment for a kid's movie called, "Herbie The Super Dog" which, so far as I can tell, was never actually produced. I was paid 250 dollars for it. During the next four or five years, I had two scripts optioned, neither of which were produced. During that time, I'd sent a script of mine to Tom Allen, the story editor at Laurel Entertainment in New York, and he'd invited me in to talk about it. He liked the script, although they didn't end up buying it. But around that time, they were starting a follow-up series to "Tales From the Darkside" called "Monsters" and, on the strength of that script, they invited me in to pitch. They bought one of the ideas I'd pitched -- a thing called, "The Feverman" which I wrote for them and which got me into the Writer's Guild. Shortly after that, when they were still in production on the first season, Tom Allen passed away, and Richard Rubinstein and Mitch Galin at Laurel brought me on part time to help with some consulting work on "Monsters" and then hired me full time to work on "Monsters" as a Creative Consultant and on other thing that Laurel was doing. Describe the experience of seeing your first script produced. That would be "Feverman" -- and I was invited to the set (in the studio out in Queens). It was pretty impressive, seeing this whole huge (at least it seemed huge to me) two-level interior set that had been build to stage this story of mine. I went back stage and met David McCallum, a very intelligent and soft-spoken gentlemen, and also visited the make-up room where none other than Dick Smith himself was applying the make-up to the woman who was playing the living "Fever" that David, playing, the "Feverman" was going to fight. When the show first aired we invited a bunch of friends over to watch and had a party -- but I have to admit, we haven't done that since. Do you write with budgets in mind? Certainly on shows like "Monsters" you had to write that way. They were very strictly limited -- two interior sets, no exteriors, two or three main characters, no more than three or four supporting characters -- and a monster every episode. On the features I've written, though, I haven't really focused a lot on budget. Some of them are naturally more expensive than others -- but that's just a matter of where you're going to try to sell them -- and in some ways it doesn't necessarily make a script more saleable if it's cheaper. You recently sold your script, DEADER, to Dimension Films. Tell us about it! Well, after Laurel was dissolved, due to the Viacom/Paramount merger, I found that, being unemployed, I had a lot of time on my hands and so was doing a lot of writing. But I had no agent at the time -- and none of the agents I had had over the years had ever sold anything that I ever wrote -- and since I hated doing it myself, the scripts were just sort of accumulating. And yet, because of the years I'd spent at Laurel as their story editor after "Monsters" was finished, I'd looked at literally thousands of feature screenplays, and I knew that what I was writing was on the level of what was being bought. And I also knew that, even though I was just about the worst salesman in the world, essentially everything I'd ever sold, I'd sold as a result of my own efforts -- while the various people who'd represented me at intervals, who were presumably good salesmen, had never managed to sell anything of mine. What I really needed was somebody who was a better salesman than either them, or me. Finally, I was able to convince my wife, Judy, to take on the job of being my manager. Although she had no experience in the business, she'd worked in sales and in publishing before she opted to stay home with the kids -- and I knew that she had a great phone manner. She could call up a complete stranger and, in five minutes, they'd be chatting as if they were old friends. Once both of our kids were in school, I started my campaign to get her to be my manager. Finally, I was able to convince her, and we got a copy of the Hollywood Creative Directory, I told her to call up companies that seemed like they'd be interested in a given script, ask for the Director of Development, and start talking. So she started making cold calls, trying to sell various scripts that I had lying around the apartment. Eventually, she managed to get a script of mine, "The Slow Man" optioned by Twentieth Century Fox for Harold Ramis' company, Ocean Pictures. Shortly after that, I'd written "Deader" but she hadn't done much with it, because, frankly, she doesn't like horror all that much. But after that, I finished another script, an historical adventure, which she did like, and she was busy trying to get that around town. She sent "that" screenplay, to Stan Winston's company and spoke to an exec there, David Greathouse, who liked the script a lot, but said that they were really looking for things that had more "creature" effects in them -- and so she sent him "Deader." He loved it and asked us if he could show it to a few friends of his to see if he could get it set up. So we said sure, so long as we knew where the script was going so that it wouldn't end up going to the same place twice. So he started sending it around on a Wednesday. By the time the end of the week was coming along, there was some serious interest being generated by it. On Sunday night, around ten o'clock, Judy got a call from Bob Weinstein -- of Dimension. He'd only read around sixty pages but wanted to call before it got too late. He really loved what he'd read so far -- and he wanted us to come in on Monday to meet with him. So we did. So Judy and I went in and met with Bob and some other folks from Dimension and we chatted a bit about the script -- and then they took Judy bodily off to the business affairs office and left me in the conference room to have a diet Coke -- and, after Judy made a few trips back and forth, we finally agreed to the deal -- which was a mid-six figure purchase price. In the aftermath of the sale, of course, we were flooded by calls from agents, some of whom actually flew in from the coast and "courted" us. And ultimately, we went with Valarie Phillips and Matt Bedrosian at Paradigm. What happens to a writer from the time a script is sold until it goes into production? Well, any number of things can happen. Generally, they'll pay you to do rewrites, and give you notes, which you may either like or not like. Then you take a crack at executing them, which they may either like or not like. And, depending on which, they may bring in other writers to take a crack at the material, until they get something that they like, or else give up. That's all part and parcel of the system, and it doesn't really change whether you're writing a script for a million or for guild minimum. Obviously, a writer always wants to continue to be part of a project that he engenders, but part of what you have to accept, when you take the money is -- it's not up to you. Any tips for pitching? Pitching is actually something that I just started doing, so I don't have any great words of wisdom -- other than be prepared to pitch at whatever level of detail the producer wants (which you may find out ahead of time or have to gauge as you go) and sound enthusiastic. I actually practice telling the story to my kids, figuring that if it keeps a seven and eleven year old interested, it might do the same to a roomful of producers. Of course, with some scripts of mine, you can't really try them out on young children. You were also hired to write the BLAIR WITCH sequel. How did you get that position, and what's happening with that now? In the aftermath of the "Deader" deal, I met with a number of people, and Cybelle Greenman from Artisan was one of them -- and she raised the possibility of my working on the "Blair Witch" sequel. Some time later, they asked me to pitch, which I did, briefly, over the phone, and on the strength of that, they made me an offer through my agents and I started writing. After a few days, they decided that, even though they'd already closed the deal, that they wanted me to come out and pitch it in a more detailed form to all of the Artisan execs -- so they flew me out and had me pitch. They made a few comments -- then I flew back and finished writing the draft. Since then, I've done a rewrite, based on input from the "Haxan" people. As to what's happening to it... Well, the deal is, Artisan elected (as apparently, they've done in the past) instead of hiring a single writer on a project and seeing what he'll come up with, they hired me, and an additional three writers, all of whom they paid to write independent versions of the "Blair Witch" sequel -- presumably in the hopes that of the four scripts, one of them will be something that they want to shoot. I have no idea at this point whether they're planning to use mine, or pieces of mine, or, in fact, one of the others, or maybe even go with something completely different. I'm not sure that they've come to a decision yet either. Do you plan to continue writing specs, or primarily work on assignment now? What are the benefits/downfalls to each? Well, of course the benefits of working on assignment is that you get paid before you start writing. On some level, though, I think this is probably a greater benefit to other writers than it is to me. That's because, even on assignments, you have to "pitch" your take, and for me to be able to pitch coherently, I have to work out all the story beats and write everything down anyway, just for me to keep track of it. And that, for me, is most of the work. So even though, officially, I haven't started writing, in point of fact, I've already done a lot of the creative work -- just in order to do the pitch. The thing about spec scripts, given where I am now, is that there's a potential to turn any would-be spec script into an "assignment" by pitching it first. Then, ideally, you'd get somebody to pay you for it before you write it. Of course, the one disadvantage of doing it this way is that, because, inevitably, there's a lot of money involved, there's a lot of "hurry up and wait" about the process. In some cases, I really believe that I've spent more time pitching and waiting for reactions and pitching again than it would take me to actually sit down and write the script. Any further tips for new screenwriters? My biggest tip for new screenwriters, other than writing in complete sentences, including a story in your screenplay (you'd be amazed how many beginning writers tend to leave this out), and writing a great script -- is that, early in your career, like it or not, you have to take responsibility for marketing your own material. It's almost impossible to get an agent, and even when you do, the amount of time an agent is going to invest in a new, unsold writer is minimal. You have to be prepared to take responsibility for making contacts and getting your script seen (or else be married to somebody who's willing to do it). |
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