8

The Biz

You may wonder why so many chapters in this book exhort you to work harder, commit yourself to comedy screenwriting, and, well, enjoy life less.

If you’re in the one tenth of one percent of all aspiring screenwriters who just happen to be closely related to someone who’s a big player in the entertainment industry, then—for Pete’s sake—put this book down and go schmooze that person now. Does he need a backrub? Give him a backrub. Does she like truffles? Buy yourself one of those truffle-sniffing pigs they use in Italy to find truffles and start searching.

Oh, and remember—you love his work. You always love his work. I’m talking about your close relative, the big player, not the pig.

But if you’re one of the ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent who don’t have that advantage, keep reading this book. And when you’re done, start again. You still won’t be on an even footing, career-wise, with the person who’s related to the big player, but at least your comedy screenwriting will improve. Plus you don’t have to buy the pig.

The industry is that competitive.

Successful screenwriters balance two worlds—the inner world of the writer, and the external world of Hollywood. Art and money. Yin and yang. Some like to pretend they don’t care about money at all. They will tell you that, when they are writing, they have no other concerns. Maybe. But sooner or later they’ll have to put on their business hat, make calls, lunch with the right people, and sell themselves.

But the real winners, the ones who kick ass, make lots of money, and succeed over and over again—they meld the two worlds. For them, there is only one world—that of the Hollywood screenwriter. And, in that world, art and money are not opposites; they are mutually complementary. Those writers don’t hold their noses while dining with agents and pitching to studio executives. They breathe it all in. They love the combination of the two environments.

They don’t see writing and power as contradictory—they see writing as power.

Those writers—assuming they’re also very talented and hard-working—rise to the top. They become show runners in TV and have multiple movie projects in development at the same time. Hollywood is their oyster. They never complain about how it’s too sunny in California or how nobody on the West Coast has read the right books … because they never liked New York to begin with. They live for this. There is no duality. Yin is yang.

I’ve known more than a handful of those screenwriters, and I admire them. Since I am also a playwright, there is still a part of my soul that cannot totally enjoy Hollywood. And that holds me back.

But I advise you, the aspiring comedy screenwriter, to make peace with all that is Hollywood and travel farther into this industry than I have ever gone. I will wave to you as your ship leaves and pray that your star never fades. And I will call you up the next time I’m in Beverly Hills, and we’ll do lunch.

Until that time, however, your career demands that you learn more about …

The Comedy-Industrial Complex

As I write this, the movie industry is drying up, feature screenwriters are scrambling to break into TV, and Hollywood is perusing the internet—not a pile of spec scripts—for the next great comedy writers. Or so it is said.

But there’s one thing to remember—this has happened before. In the fifties, when TV swept the world, plenty of folks thought movies were dead. And it looked that way until Hollywood came up with something TV couldn’t provide—lavish musicals. When VCRs came out in the eighties and cable broke the broadcast TV monopoly in the nineties, again, the film industry seemed inches from death.

But comedy screenwriters like us have strong reasons to be hopeful. The first is that comedy tends to be cheaper to make than most genres. So studios keep making them.

And then there’s the animation revolution. In the beginning, it was all Lion King and Finding Nemo, which didn’t threaten live action’s hold on comedy. But more and more animated movies are now straight-up comedies—not just animal movies with the occasional laugh line—but comedies. Ice Age, Toy Story, Shrek, Madagascar, Monsters, Inc., Despicable Me, Chicken Run: all comedies.

More good news: the basic rules of comedy screenwriting that you find in this book doubly apply to animated movies, which are usually created with painstaking care. And for writers, here’s an added benefit; in animated movies, we don’t have to worry about actors screwing up our lines or—worse—improvising. The nature of animation means that what’s on the page is what’s on the screen. They can’t re-animate a whole scene because an actor had a funny idea, so actors and directors take what’s in the script seriously.

Of course, few animated movies are made from original spec scripts. Instead, writers who have earned “fans” with their original spec scripts are often invited to come in and pitch their “take” on an existing property. That’s how you get to be the writer of one of those animated comedies.

So what types of comedy spec scripts are getting bought? As of this writing, it seems high-concept stories helmed by a single actor are fading out. What’s fading in are two-handers, female-centered stories, and cop stories.

Oh, and romantic comedy never dies. It’s never a foolish decision to write a rom-com.

Now for the bad news—there are a handful of producers (Judd Apatow being the king) who dominate live-action comedy. Getting into their orbit is painfully difficult, and getting a green light for a script without being in their orbit is nearly as difficult. But if you love the craft of comedy screenwriting, you won’t let that stop you. After all, you could be the next king.

In any event, if your goal is to write comedy for the big screen, there are still screens for which you can write.

However, as a practical matter, you should also write for every other kind of medium under the sun: TV scripts, sketch comedy, web series, etc.

Haven’t ever written something funny on a cocktail napkin? Start. But keep your basic voice and style the same. If you write buddy comedy feature screenplays, try a buddy comedy spec pilot. Stick with your strong suit, genre-wise. Remember that the basic rules and strategies of comedy writing apply to all of its forms.

The career path of a screenwriter twenty years ago—in which young aspirants went to film school before settling into years of spec-writing in Los Angeles coffee shops until hopefully selling a screenplay—is now only one of the possible paths to success. There are people making movies on their phones, distributing them via websites and social media, and basically operating as one-person mini-studios.

But most of them—I’m talking ninety-nine percent—aren’t making a profit from it. To do that, you still need to break into Hollywood.

Pitching

A few years ago I was invited to speak to aspiring screenwriters at the Austin Film Festival. After a night of counseling young scribes, I decided to grab a beer before hitting the pillow. I meandered around State Street, the center of Austin nightlife, finally drifting into a cozy bar. I was hoping to avoid the hubbub and movie talk that dominated the handful of city blocks around the festival’s central location. I failed.

The bar, which was packed, had a stage. Nearby, a long line of people waited … but for what? Was this karaoke night?

Sadly, it was not.

Onstage were two chairs. In one sat a man in his thirties. Across from him was a woman in her forties. As she stood up from her chair and reluctantly walked away, only to be replaced in the chair by a person waiting behind her, I remembered something I had read in the festival program and realized I was at a pitch competition.

Yup, it was a contest. Aspiring screenwriters waited in line to sit across from a Hollywood studio executive and pitch him a movie—a movie the writers would presumably be hired to write if they impressed the executive. Or perhaps some of them had already written the movie they were pitching. In any event, I wanted no part of it and left without finishing my beer.

Pitching is a rarely used skill that only a small minority of Hollywood screenwriters ever need to master. In fact, if you really need to learn how to do it, it’s probably because you’ve already had some success as a screenwriter.

Why would that be?

Because no sane producer or executive wants to buy a pitch from a writer who cannot execute what they pitch. In other words, there is no point to pitching it unless you can write it. And, generally, the people who sell pitches in Hollywood are screenwriters with long resumes.

Would you hire a contractor to build you a house if the contractor had never built one before? I doubt it. No, you’d want to see a house the contractor had built beforehand to judge her or his ability to build one for you. In fact, you might very well go to see such a house before hiring the contractor so you could assess her or his work.

That’s why pitchfests and pitching contests are such a waste of time.

By the way, I have sold more than a handful of feature film pitches to major studios. I know of what I speak. And that’s why I don’t want you to waste a second of your precious time as a soon-to-be-successful comedy screenwriter learning how to pitch—because it will be time taken away from the more important goal of learning how to screenwrite.

Here’s an analogy: Imagine you are a talented young basketball player. You are working to impress coaches and scouts and break into the NBA. You know that, if you make it, you’ll need to learn how to sell sneakers on TV because that’s how you’ll someday make a bundle of extra money. But here’s the thing—you can learn to sell sneakers when you become a star. For now, you need to spend every waking minute on your three-point shot, your ball-handling, etc.

Now that I’ve warned you away from pitching, I’ll discuss it anyway. I do this because (A) I could be wrong, (B) you, the reader, will hopefully someday become an experienced screenwriter in a position to pitch something that could actually get bought, and (C) occasionally pitching actually helps writers write.

But remember this rule as long as you screenwrite:

If you have written a script, don’t pitch it.

Pitching is, after all, a way for a veteran writer to get paid before writing. That’s the primary purpose of pitching—to avoid the risk of writing a spec that may not sell.

When aspiring writers tell me they’ve written a script and then go about pitching it to me, I beg them to stop. They usually won’t, so I hit them with a brick. I do that to wake the poor bastards up.

After all, if you have written a script, you want people to read it. The reason has to do with the purpose of writing a spec. Since almost no specs ever sell, the secondary—more commonly used—purpose of writing a spec is to show what a great writer you are.

But you can’t do that if readers don’t read you. You can’t show them what a great writer you are by sitting them down and starting a sentence with the words, “We open on a … ”

No.

You don’t want them to listen to a two-minute version of your story. And you certainly don’t want them to listen to a twenty-minute version of it, which is what an attempt at a two-minute version usually becomes.

If you want to break into comedy screenwriting, I strongly propose you do one thing over and over until you get there—write. Don’t talk. Write. If your writing is excellent and industry people enjoy what they read, then you can pitch.

Now, for those who need to know, there are two types of pitches. You can pitch an original story, and you can pitch to write what are sometimes called “assignment” scripts.

An assignment script is one based on some existing property that you do not own. When a studio or producer controls a property—say, a comic book or a video game—and needs a screenwriter to write the movie version, the studio executive or producer calls all his or her favorite screenwriters to come in and pitch how they would write that script. A call may be put in to the major talent agencies: Send your best writers to come take a crack at this book/play/article/video game, etc.

And if you are one of those writers you will go and pitch your version of what a script based on that property would be like.

They might hear pitches from three writers, and they might hear twenty. They will most likely ask the finalists to return many times, each time bringing changes made in response to their notes on the previous versions. They will not, however, pay any of these writers a dime for any of that work. Only one writer (or writing team) will win the pitch-off, and only that writer will get paid for the work.

And sometimes no screenwriter wins. Sometimes the producers or executives are simply listening to pitches to determine if they want to make the movie at all. If they don’t hear something they like, they may just drop the whole project altogether. Wash their hands of it. Like it never happened.

Sound like fun? My wife did the same thing to three or four contractors when we decided to renovate our kitchen. Each contractor came up with his own design and pitched it to us. Nobody got paid for that work. Naturally, we went with the guy who best responded to our list of gotta-haves. We had to have a certain type of cabinetry, a certain brand of fixture, a particular stain on the wood floor, etc.

And the contractor’s job was to make it all work together. Somehow. That’s what screenwriters do when they write scripts based on existing properties—they season to taste. And the producer paying the tab is the taster. Fail to hand the producers a script they love and you will quickly be replaced by someone who will.

There are two advantages to assignment jobs, as opposed to selling a spec script. One is that you don’t have to create your premise and characters out of whole cloth; those elements are usually given to you. The other is that you get paid to write, as opposed to being paid for having written.

But know this—the process of meeting with producers and studio executives, then pitching and re-pitching their ideas and properties back to them, can easily drag on for months or years. Plenty of screenwriters toss entire eras of their lives away on these fruitless campaigns without ever seeing a dime of compensation. You are hereby warned.

The same is sometimes done for re-writes as well. Experienced screenwriters may be invited to come pitch how they would re-write a script the studio owns but isn’t ready to shoot. Perhaps the writers are asked how they would “punch up” that script. Or perhaps they want a “page-one re-write.”

Either way, some screenwriters are meeting with some people in power and telling them what they would do if they were to be paid to do it—and not before.

These are a few of the many reasons why pitching is for experienced professionals and not those fighting to break into the business. So, unless you are in that first category, I advise you to avoid it at all costs.

After all, your time is valuable; you are an up-and-coming comedy screenwriter.

Agents

Here again we have a subject matter that is far less important than most aspiring comedy screenwriters believe it to be. If you’ve written a hot spec that’s leaving readers begging for more, you should be thinking about an agent. If you’re still working toward that hot spec, keep writing and ignore the temptation to show work that is not ready.

Don’t get me wrong—a great agent can make or break your comedy screenwriting career. Meet as many as you possibly can. Get to know them. Pretend to laugh at their jokes. Date them if you can stand it. But do not, under any circumstances, show them that script you’re toiling away on, the one you know damn well isn’t close to being finished.

And stop being scared. Agents aren’t gods, and they’re not miracle workers. They sell stuff; that’s all. They’re middle-men (or middle-women; OK, that sounds odd). They charge ten percent of their clients’ gross income from writing because they bring something very valuable to the relationship—friends.

Literary agents cultivate readers—those who can buy scripts and the people who work for them. Since they stand in that huge empty space between the writer and the buyer, it is their job to know both ends of that spectrum.

It’s easy to get to know you. They can take you out to lunch and learn everything about you before the check comes. After all, if you’ve attracted the attention of a literary agent, it’s probably because you spend all your time alone in your apartment, writing your butt off, keeping your A in the C. By the time some agent finally calls you to lunch, you are more than excited to take that first shower in days, throw on your only collared shirt, and meet him or her at a restaurant.

But before you actually head off to your first meeting with an agent, let me tell you what not to do. Do not concern yourself with the issue of whether or not the agent understands you. It doesn’t matter if the agent gets you. The agent only needs to be able to sell you. It’s more important that she or he gets the buyers.

Do not concern yourself with the agent’s age and whether the agent strikes you as hip or cool. What’s cool is selling a script.

So when you first sit down with a prospective agent, ask the agent what scripts she has sold. Go ahead. Ask. Then ask what potential buyers the agent has access to. Once the agent starts selling herself, focus on one thing—the agent’s ability to make you money. Just remember that no matter what the agent tells you, she is concerned only with that very same thing.

Agents are constantly trying to determine what their readers want and doing their damnedest to give it to them. Hopefully, you have that on the page.

Until you have it, agents are worthless to you.

Trust me. If you have a great script, agents will come. Many of them. Like sharks to blood. You’ll be cleaning them off your windshield with a squeegee. All you need is that script.

When my former screenwriting partner Hank Nelken and I were looking for representation, we managed to get a script to an agent in Beverly Hills. A few days after he received it, he called us. Instead of revealing the agent’s name, I’ll give him a fake name—Jon Klane. That phone conversation is reproduced, more or less, in the scene below.

It was that simple. Klane loved the script and wanted to represent us. We loved it too and wanted to be represented by him. Instant marriage.

That story represents an ideal situation for a screenwriter (or, in this case, screenwriting team). Now I’m going to tell you about a more common situation, one that many screenwriters find themselves in and that should be better understood.

It’s called hip-pocketing. Hip-pocketing is when an agent maintains a connection with a writer but does little to advance the writer’s career. You can tell when a writer is being hip-pocketed because the writer will say something like, “My agent told me that, as soon as some producer gets interested in me, I should tell that producer I’m represented by her and she’ll totally take the producer’s call.”

Here’s the thing: an agent will always take a call from money. If a producer wants to buy your script, you can get any agent to take that call and negotiate on your behalf because that’s ten percent easily “earned.”

To make things worse, many writers who are being hip-pocketed will come to believe that they must somehow remain loyal to that agent. They may stay up nights worrying that, by having coffee with another agent, they are somehow showing disloyalty to the agent who’s hip-pocketing them. But that’s silly—like being loyal to a hooker. Here’s the thing …

Agents don’t earn their money by negotiating deals. Well, they do negotiate deals, but that’s easy stuff. Icing on the cake. Agents earn their money by promoting their clients. If you have an agent who isn’t melting the phones telling everyone in town what a fantastic writer you are, you don’t have an agent. And if you don’t have an agent, you don’t need to worry about being loyal to that person. You can do what you please. You can flirt with as many agents as you like.

To be clear, you can always meet with as many agents as you like. After all, even if you have an agent, you still need to maintain social connections with other agents. Why?

Because screenwriters can change agents as fast as they can change their pants. And very often, they should. After all, agents sell their contact lists. That’s what they offer—their lists of friends. Friends they can call. Once they have called them all and done their best to convince them you are a fantastic writer, capable of moving mountains with your laptop, their usefulness to you is largely exhausted.

And that usually happens in the first couple months of any writer-agent relationship.

After that, if there is no success, you are effectively hip-pocketed. After all, they called all their friends and sent them your latest script. But, if they didn’t dig it, the last thing the agents want to do is bring you up again. They’ve learned their lesson.

The only question remaining is this: Did you learn yours? Or will you stick with the agent as nothing happens in your career for months or years?

Your only alternative is a new agent, one with different friends who haven’t met you yet. And getting a new agent usually requires providing him or her with a fresh, new script. And that requires you, the comedy screenwriter, to make another pot of coffee, sit your A back down in the C, and get writing. Again.

Welcome to the life and career of a Hollywood screenwriter. I recommend a Mr. Coffee or a Melita micro-brew with a reusable wire filter.

The thing to remember about agents is that, for the most part, they are just as desperate and manic as screenwriters. Often, more so. If it’s hard to make a living as a screenwriter, it’s ten times as hard for an agent, who must have ten clients working to make the kind of money her clients make. After all:

• 10% × 10 Clients’ Incomes = 100% of the Average Salary of the Average Client

You may find it satisfying to know that agents get fired all the time—by their agencies and by their clients. Don’t envy or fear them. Just use them.

Write a great script, make them want you, and use them.

Managers

In California, which is pretty much the only state that matters to a comedy screenwriter, the law prohibits agents from producing their clients’ work. Apparently it has something to do with conflict of interest, but invoking ethics when discussing talent agents is like invoking ethics when discussing talent agents.

Why be a manager?

Because you are an agent who wants to produce. Otherwise, a manager does pretty much the same job an agent does for a screenwriter.

There is a belief among many screenwriters that a manager should take a more hands-on approach to representing writing talent than an agent does. Thus, a manager would be sitting down regularly with writer clients, giving them detailed notes on their work and helping them improve their craft. And while that should happen, it rarely does.

When my manager made the deal to sell Bride Wars to Miramax, he called to tell me what he had done. I was certainly thrilled. That one gig would pay for me to live for three or four years, assuming I didn’t eat out much and stayed away from Vegas. (I didn’t, but that’s another story.) Near the end of the call, he mentioned that he would be attached to executive produce the movie as well. To which I said, “Oh, OK. Cool.”

What else was I going to say? I needed the sale. Moreover, why should I have stood in his way? He wanted to produce, and his credit cost me nothing.

Again, the main reason to manage writers is so the manager can produce the client’s work. There is little value in that to the writer. But there is a value to being simultaneously represented by both an agent and a manager. In that case, you pay double the commission, but you may also get double the potential readers for your next script, which is priceless. You may even be able to get your manager and agent to compete for your affection. After all, this is Hollywood, and you’re a writer. You’ll take any little bit of power you can get.

As with agents, I recommend you give managers no special loyalty. When they have exhausted their list of potential fans of your work, they will drop you into their hip pocket without warning, and you will need to find new representation.

Now you know.

Producers

If you’ve been to film school, you know a producer’s job can be a lot of work. The producer may be corralling actors for the shoot or renting equipment with which to shoot them. The producer may be obtaining necessary permits or staying up nights fiddling with the film’s budget.

In Hollywood, a producer does none of those things.

Producer is a title. And that title can mean just about anything. It could mean that the person holding that title was the first person to read and advocate for the script—a very important person indeed. It could also mean that the studio has a deal in which every movie distributed of a certain type or budget automatically lists a certain name in the credits as a producer. I spent three months on the set off a movie I co-wrote, and yet there are two people listed as producers of the film whom I never met. Go figure.

When a producer acts as an advocate for a writer and helps sell that writer’s script to a studio, the producer is attached to produce. That means, at the very least, that the producer’s name will appear on the movie poster. And that, for a producer, is like getting on base. In a minor-league game. Getting a name on the poster for a hit movie is like hitting a homer in the World Series.

So producers have a lot at stake. They also have a lot of influence over the scripts for which they advocate. Which means they usually give notes to the writers.

Are those going to be good notes? Will they help the script?

Who knows.

But be realistic; if you want to work with the producer, you’ll take the notes and use them. After all, the producer—like your agent or manager—is essentially an intermediary. The producer stands between you and the buyer, in most cases a studio.

When I was pitching Bride Wars, I was working with a full house of producers; however, Alan Riche was the wise man among them who pushed me to make smart changes. That’s what great producers bring to the writing—notes that get the movie made. What they bring to the deal is relationships—with executives, other producers, and talent.

Remember: if you want to write what moves your soul, write a poem. There’s no money in poetry, but you don’t have to take anybody’s notes.

Everybody Else

OK, there isn’t anybody else. I mean it. There isn’t.

If your goal is to break into comedy screenwriting, there’s only you and the industry you must embrace—with all its faults, excruciating humiliations, and exceedingly rare and precious victories.

That means you pretty much have to do whatever it takes to be an insider. After all, you can move to Los Angeles and still be very much on the outside. Most aspirants are. Los Angeles is a big city spread over a massive space. You can live in Hollywood and feel a hundred miles away from what’s happening on the inside because you don’t know anybody who has broken in. Hell, you can live down the street from Fox or Paramount and, if nobody will return your phone calls, you might as well be in Poughkeepsie.

So how to pursue your dream of comedy screenwriting and continue to live as a regular person—the kind who has regular friends, works a regular job, and lives a regular life?

You can’t.

Regular people don’t break into this business. That has never happened. Manic people break in. Desperate people break in. Insane people …

The point is that if you want to become a working, professional comedy screenwriter, you need to budget more than a handful of years to the task and dive into every element of the business—the writing, the schmoozing, the abandoning of all pretense that you’re headed for a normal life. That’s all gone now. Drop your civilian boyfriends or girlfriends because they can’t help you. And don’t think they’ll keep you sane; you don’t want to be sane. You’re not headed for sane. You’re headed for Hollywood. Collagen and colonics.

You are entering a contest in which there are very few winners and many leave broken-hearted. And oh—a contest in which youth is a fleeting advantage. So don’t waste it.

Here’s a story:

In college, I was friends—not good friends, mind you, but friends—with a guy who went on to become an A-list comedian and movie star. I won’t name him because it might make me look a tad old. And, as a comedy screenwriter, I cannot afford to look old. But suffice it to say, he’s big.

When I knew him, he was a young comedian with a bright future. He was surrounded by a cabal of friends—many of whom went on to become his producing partners, co-writers, directors of his movies, etc. In other words, being a part of his entourage in college paid off big for those who took the time to join up when he was small-time.

But I didn’t join up. I didn’t make the extra effort to follow him to comedy clubs or hang with him into the late hours. I suppose I could have, but at that time I had no idea I would go on to become a comedy screenwriter.

However, looking back—I should have. It could have saved me years.

By the time I decided I wanted to go to Hollywood, my friend was long gone from my friendship circle, and I was forced to break in without his help.

Now, to be clear—I don’t mean to imply that the people who benefited from being part of his entourage in college were untalented or undeserving. Quite the opposite—that crew went on to make movies that I’ve enjoyed. More power to them.

But you see where I’m headed. Every opportunity to make friends with someone on the way up should be grabbed while it can be. You can do all the great writing you want, but, without friends on the inside, you’re just, well … on the outside.

So don’t struggle as I did. Don’t make it harder on yourself than it needs to be. Take every advantage you can get. Hollywood is not a meritocracy, and the only reliable rules are those that can be inferred from experience. So learn from mine. If you’re headed for comedy screenwriting glory, skip making friends with anybody who cannot help you. The day you give up and leave Hollywood for good is the day you can afford to hang with folks who cannot help you.

Do I sound a bit cruel? If so, I’m sorry. I’ve just spent a great deal of my life fighting for recognition and a living in a cruel industry. And I’ve had my successes. Which have made me proud.

But I want you—the comedy screenwriter holding this book—to have it easier that I did.

Now take the quiz below, read the next chapter, and remember to keep this book very close to where you sit and write every day. I want you to pick it up whenever you need advice. I want to be the voice in your head that keeps you writing. I also want to be thanked very publicly at the Oscars, so don’t forget me, OK?

Pop Quiz!

1. 1. To break into the film industry as a comedy screenwriter, you must:
   1. A) Sell your soul.
   2. B) Sleep with the devil.
   3. C) Take a bath in blood.
   4. D) Do all of the above, over and over, until you get an agent. From then on, have the agent do it.
2. 2. Pitching is best done by:
   1. A) Noon. People get sleepy after lunch.
   2. B) Aspiring writers who are too lazy to write.
   3. C) Herb, who lives in a cardboard box on Ninth Street in Santa Monica. I’m telling you: give your script to Herb and let him pitch it to studio executives. The guy’s a screenwriting savant. That’s why he lives in a box. Trust me: you don’t want people to actually read your script. You want Herb to pitch it.
   4. D) Screenwriters who are so successful that, frankly, they probably don’t need this book. But, to be clear, they should still buy it so that aspiring writers who visit their Hollywood mansions will see it on their bookshelves and feel inspired … to buy it.
3. 3. Hip-pocketing is when agents:
   1. A) Wear their pants too high.
   2. B) Give their clients ninety percent of everything they earn. (Sorry, that’s from the agents’ perspective.)
   3. C) Do everything possible to promote their clients. (OK, actually that’s called agenting.)
   4. D) Take advantage of naive screenwriters who think they’re being represented.
4. 4. To break into comedy screenwriting, you must do one thing:
   1. A) Become Jewish. Or a Scientologist. Or both.
   2. B) Sleep with a star, making sure to quote excerpts from your latest spec script during the heights of passion. Stars love that.
   3. C) Understand the biz.
   4. D) Write, you fool. You must write and write well. And C helps, too. But most importantly—write.
5. 5. In Hollywood, producers:
   1. A) Do all the grunt work of a production: they keep the budget, manage equipment, make sure everybody shows up on time, etc. In short, they do everything that, in theory, a producer should do.
   2. B) Are, for our purposes, primarily intermediaries between writers and buyers. Oh, and they get their name on the poster.
   3. C) OK, the answer is B. There’s no need for a fourth option. It’s B, and I want you to remember that. OK? Now enough of this. Let’s move on to …