Writing Movies For Fun And Profit!

Touchstone

A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright © 2011 by Third Baptist Holding Corp, and Lennon Entertainment, Inc.

“RENO: S.O.S!” © Twentieth Century Fox. All Rights Reserved.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions

thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Touchstone Subsidiary

Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Touchstone hardcover edition July 2011

TOUCHSTONE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases,

please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at

1-866-506-1949 or [email protected].

The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event.

For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers

Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at
http://www.simonspeakers.com
.

Manufactured in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Garant, Robert Ben.

Writing movies for fun and profit! : how we made a billion dollars at the box office

and you can, too! / by Robert Ben Garant & Thomas Lennon.

p. cm.

1. Motion picture authorship. I. Lennon, Thomas. II. Title.

PN1996.G34 2011

808.2’3—dc22 2011011985

ISBN 978-1-4391-8675-6

ISBN 978-1-4391-8677-0 (ebook)

This book is dedicated to entertainment lawyers everywhere— especially Karl Austen

A portion of the authors’ proceeds from this book are being contributed to the USO of Metropolitan Washington, a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to serving active duty military members and their families in the greater Washington, D.C., region.

Introduction by the sellout authors:

If you’re gonna sell out, make sure you make big money. That’s the best part of selling out—the money! This book will tell you how we made over a billion dollars for the studios and bushels of dollars for ourselves,
and earned the love and respect of film critics everywhere.
*

Foreword by John Hamburg

Introduction

PART ONE: SELLING YOUR MOVIE

1. Getting Started in Hollywood

2. Why Isn’t Anyone Buying My Brilliant Script?

3. How to Pitch Your Movie

4. Joining the Writers Guild of America, West

5. I SOLD IT! Now What Happens?

6. Idiot Check

7. Coverage! or How a Kid Getting College Credit Can Make or Break Your Movie!

8. Have I Made It Yet?

9. They Love My Script! … and I Got Fired?

10. Why Does Almost Every Studio Movie
SUCK
Donkey Balls?

11. The Art of Nodding or How to Take Notes

12. Directors

13. Producers

14.
Herbie: Fully Loaded

15. Redlighting or How to Get Your Movie Un-Greenlit!

16. Turnaround

17. How to Pimp Your Movie

18. Naysayers

19. The Silver Lining

20. Our Lunch with Jackie Chan

21. Credit$

22. Living in Los Angeles

PART TWO: WRITING A SCREENPLAY

23. If Your Screenplay Doesn’t Have This Structure, It Won’t Sell, or Robert McKee Can Suck It

24. In a Few Pages, We’ll Teach You How to Formulate Characters in a Script

25. How to Write a Screenplay

26. Writing Action and Description

27. Advice for Writing with a Partner

28. Rewrites: You Want It When? And I’m Getting Paid What?!?!?!!?

29. Martin Lawrence Has a Few Thoughts or How to Take Notes from a Movie Star

30. Arbitration or Who Wrote This Crap?

31. Sequels!

32. Getting the Book Rights

33. I’m Drinking Too Much. Is That a Problem?

34. Final Thoughts

Appendix: Sample Outlines

Glossary

Acknowledgments

Index

All that—plus FREE SAMPLES!

Writer of
Little Fockers, I Love You, Man
,

Meet the Fockers, Zoolander
, and
Meet the Parents

I’ve known Tom Lennon and Ben Garant since the time they were young, hungry sketch comedians fresh out of New York University, trying to make a go of it in the big city. And from those humble beginnings, it’s been an honor and pleasure to watch two of the funniest, most talented comedic minds I have ever come across completely sell out and get rich by churning out an endless supply of mindless Hollywood screenplays.

Now, having just purchased this tome, you’re probably asking yourself, “Why the hell did I just shell out twenty bucks for a how-to book by the writers of
Herbie: Fully Loaded
?” That’s a great question which I do not have the answer to. You clearly made an impulsive decision, and now you have to live with it. What I do know is that, when it comes to writing big, commercial, hit movies, Tom and Ben truly know what they are talking about. They treat the job like professionals—more like terminators really—and their talent, insane work ethic, and practical approach to movie-making has made them two of the most successful scribes in the industry.

Whereas most of us try our hardest to dress down for our meetings with studio executives, when Tom and Ben go to pitch, as legend goes, they wear matching suits—expensive black suits—so that the execs who may potentially shell out millions of dollars for these guys to write their next potential franchise know that they mean business (having directed Tom as a gay man with whom Paul Rudd goes on a “man date” in
I Love You, Man
I also know that black is incredibly slimming on him).