Interview With S. S.
Wilson
Interviewed by Keith Justice
S.S. Wilson and his writing partner, Brent Maddock, have numerous screenwriting
credits, including Short Circuit, Short Circuit II, Heart And Souls, Ghost Dad,
Tremors, Tremors II, *batteries not included, Wild Wild West, and the upcoming
Frankenstein And The Wolf Man. He is also co-founder of Stampede
Entertainment, producers of Tremors and Tremors II.
How did you get your start in Hollywood?
I started making movies with an 8mm camera as a kid. My dad encouraged me to keep studying film when I
went to college. Eventually I went to USC film school. I learned a lot there but it was no help at all breaking into
Hollywood. However, it was there I met Brent Maddock, who I write with, and Ron
Underwood, who hired Brent and me to work on educational films he started producing and directing. We made these
short films (which were sold to schools and libraries) for a number of years. I worked in animation and
low-budget special effects. Later I started writing the shorts, too.
Our first mini-break was selling some material to Chuck Jones (creator of the Road Runner). We had written a
Daffy Duck cartoon just for the fun of it, and mailed it to him. He read it and, while the cartoon never was
made, hired us to write gags for the cartoons he was making for TV at the time.
During this same time, Brent and I wrote spec screenplays (about seven altogether, I think). None of
them got any interest. We couldn't get an agent. But finally we did one called Short Circuit, which happened
to be read by the friend of the son of a producer. (Brent met the friend in a screenwriting
workshop he was taking). The friend showed it to the son. The son showed it to
the father. The father liked it -- and we were finally through the door. Then we were able to get
our agent (now our manager and partner) Nancy Roberts, who closed the deal and has been very instrumental in everything else we've done.
Can you tell us a little about your background?
I think I sort of covered that above. I've had a life-long interest in movies and animation. I made a living as a
stop motion animator for quite a while, working on the Curious George pictures that were done at Churchill Films.
Grew up in Oklahoma. Lived a lot of other places (my Dad moved around a lot).
Liked off-road vehicles before they were cool.
From your screenplays that have been produced, which have turned out as
good or better than you envisioned, and on the other hand, which have any not lived
up to what you might have hoped?
Tremors I, Tremors II, and Heart and Souls came out the best, but that's because
we had a lot of control over the productions. Our friend Ron Underwood directed
Tremors and Heart and Souls. Nancy Roberts was the producer on Heart and Souls. I directed Tremors II with Nancy and Chris DeFaria producing.
Of the movies on which we had little or no input after the script was done, the best, in our opinion, were Batteries Not Included and Land Before Time (we did
a lot of work on it, but are credited only in the crawl titles at the end). The
worst was Ghostdad, which passed through several hands before getting produced in
much-changed form. Wild Wild West was, unfortunately, a disappointment. We loved
the TV show and worked very hard to capture the comedy and wacky adventure the show had. We were not involved
in the production and don't know why Barry Sonnenfeld went so far away from our version (it was
our version that got him and Will Smith interested in the project in the first place).
What advice can you give to an aspiring screenwriter?
Write. Write more than one script. You learn by doing. As soon as you finish one, start another.
Consider taking courses in screenwriting -- they are good for meeting other people who are not only
working on the same kinds of writing problems, but also trying to break in to the business. It's a way of networking.
Have your scripts read by people you trust to be brutally honest. If you get the
same note from three different people, take it seriously. It's probably true.
It's very hard, but try to get an agent (get the Writers Guild of American list of agencies that will read
unsolicited material from new writers; send query letters to those agencies). Get the scripts to any body you
know in the film business. I don't have any experience with the new Internet services that
supposedly review scripts for the "industry." I would be very cautious about them, especially if they charge money for reviewing your script.
Always register each script with the Writers Guild. Until you have an agent, registration offers you at least some
protection in the unlikely situation where someone reads your script and steals your ideas.
From a writing perspective, have you noticed any changes in the industry
from when you first started to the present?
For me the most significant change is that the people I deal with at studios are,
on average, less knowledgeable about film making. I'm not saying this to be nasty;
it's just a fact. Film companies are now small parts of much larger corporations. Sometimes
executives are transferred from the soft drink division to the movie division and you end up having a meeting
with someone who knows very little about the film business, film history, etc. It can be frustrating.
Looking ahead to the next question, the agency business has changed a lot too. Unfortunately, it seems there are fewer agents willing to try to sell new,
unknown writers. It takes time, and the agents are under pressure to make deals,
not nurture new people. It makes it that much harder for new writers to break in, even though every one in Hollywood complains that
they don't see enough good scripts.
How important is it for an aspiring writer to have an agent?
For someone like me, it was important. It depends on how much of a hustler you are, how good you are at
selling yourself. Most writers aren't very good at it. Their writing speaks for them. The agent (at least, a
good agent) is the person who gets people to read the writing. Even after Brent and I sold our first
script, our agent was crucial to helping us build a reputation, make our deals better and so on. She kept track of which
studios were buying which kind of idea. She kept track of what other writers were being paid and knew when
and how to negotiate better prices for us. She had regular meetings with us to talk
about new ideas and to develop game plans for selling them. She was, by the way,
unusual in how hard she worked for her clients.
All of this is stuff you can do yourself if you're a good business person, but, as I said, most writers aren't. So
yes, try to get an agent. But try to get your scripts read directly by people in the business, any way you can.
Do you see the internet as the wave of the future for writers, agents,
and producers?
As I indicated above, I'm suspicious of internet "review" services. One such service started by a well-intentioned
producer was very quickly shut down when agents and writers complained that it was interfering with the
deal-making process. So mainstream Hollywood is still struggling to see if and how to use
the Net.
However, the net continues to evolve and it's impossible to predict what the "norm" will be even in six
months. Maybe someone will come up with the right format for showcasing new writers without ripping them
off. A place that's viewed as "hot." Maybe studios will assign development staff to scan sites for
new ideas and writers -- maybe it's happening already. I don't know.
What's in the future for yourself and for Stampede Entertainment?
We've been in a long period of creating new material. We've gone back to
writing spec scripts in an effort to do more projects over which we have control
throughout production. If these projects sell, you'll be seeing a lot from us in
2000. Meanwhile, our next studio picture may be Supernatural Law, based on Batton
Lash's great Wolff and Byrd comics. The studio likes the script (and is having it revised) but the movie doesn't have a green light just yet.
