Selling a Screenplay Quotes

“What if you read a book you like, and want to write a screenplay based on that book? To find out if the rights to that book are available, call the publisher of the hard-bound edition. Ask for the motion picture and theatrical rights division. They will tell you if the rights are available; if they are, they will refer you to the author’s agent.”
― Syd Field, Selling a Screenplay: The Screenwriter's Guide to Hollywood

“The thing the writer usually forgets if he gets the rights himself is to ask the person to get releases from the other important people in the story. This is a potential source of legal liability.”
― Syd Field, Selling a Screenplay: The Screenwriter's Guide to Hollywood

“and the ones they like are the ones where they can say, yes, that’s a movie. They can see it. Even if parts of it need work; maybe some of the jokes don’t work, maybe some of the characters are a little cliché, maybe some of the stuff is a little repetitive. But if you can see the movie, there’s a chance it might get made, even if they have”
― Syd Field, Selling a Screenplay: The Screenwriter's Guide to Hollywood

“People call it high-concept but it’s really having an idea which you can tell in a couple of sentences, so the head of the studio can call the marketing guy and pitch it, and the marketing guy can say, Yeah, I can sell that.”
― Syd Field, Selling a Screenplay: The Screenwriter's Guide to Hollywood

“they should write their brains out. If they get a deal, they should write the assignment, then take time off to write something on spec, then write an assignment, then write on spec. You have a lot more control over a spec script that becomes a hot script. It can put you on the A list faster than waiting four years to get something developed.”
― Syd Field, Selling a Screenplay: The Screenwriter's Guide to Hollywood

“Many writers—and I read more than five hundred scripts a year—do not realize that a screenplay is a selling document. When they’re writing a screenplay, they’re not writing a movie. They’re writing a script, material that’s going to be read, not seen. And it’s the reading experience that will determine whether the movie gets made or not.”
― Syd Field, Selling a Screenplay: The Screenwriter's Guide to Hollywood

“Your script has to get past all those initial readers to the head of the studio who reads it and sees nothing but dollar signs. Their job is to pass, so you can’t give them a reason to say no. And the bottom line is money. They’ve got to read it and know if they buy this script (a) they can cast it, and (b) even if they can’t get a big name for it, the picture itself, the idea, the action, or whatever else is in it, is going to sell it. “On the other hand they’ve got to feel free to go to the marketing people and say ‘What do you guys think? Can we sell it in Europe? Will it play Japan?’ The marketing guys are the number-two guys at the studio now, and they’re very important.”
― Syd Field, Selling a Screenplay: The Screenwriter's Guide to Hollywood

“read the trades, call the agents, call the production companies, call the agents of the actors she thinks are right for the parts, call the people she knows in the industry; in other words, she’s got to determine if there’s a market for her script.”
― Syd Field, Selling a Screenplay: The Screenwriter's Guide to Hollywood

“Then I remembered something I’d read in a Kurt Vonnegut novel: when you’re trying to find the answer to a question, the answer is in the question.”
― Syd Field, Selling a Screenplay: The Screenwriter's Guide to Hollywood

“Hollywood is the only place where you can die from encouragement.” Dorothy Parker”
― Syd Field, Selling a Screenplay: The Screenwriter's Guide to Hollywood