The Hollywood Creative Directory

A former student of mine messaged me the other day and wanted to know if I think that the Hollywood Creative Directory is a scam.

No, it's not a scam, it's pretty legit and I think I even bought the hard copy way back in the day. What it is, however, is just a list of people and places you can contact with no guarantee of ever getting a response. I have heard stories (legends?) of writers getting their script to the "right person" via the HCD but they are far and few between.

While on the subject of "back in the day", back during the indie film boom of the late 80's-early 90's, I really studied the "path to success" that many films/filmmakers had taken -- Spike Lee (won the student Academy Award with his grad. school thesis film, opened some doors, not many but he raised the $175,000 to make "She's Gotta..."), Steven Soderbergh (nominated for a Grammy for a music video, which opened the doors that led to "Sex, Lies & Videotape") and so on, many stories like that, filmmakers who seem to come out of nowhere but really do have some industry credibility behind them. Of course, things are a lot different today.

The (rocky, hard to follow) path that I have been taking has been something like "put yourself 'out there' as a screenwriter, write anything for anyone for anything, even nothing, hope that it gets made, distributed, successful and brings you some industry attention."

So, I have a couple of original screenplays sitting around and I scour the classified ads (craigslist Philly, NYC and L.A.; mandy.com) to see if anyone is looking for anything resembling something that I have. Just last week, I answered an ad and they got back to me, interested in an almost 20 year old screenplay.

I think I have given up on sending things out to companies unless I know that they are looking for something --- that what I have is what they are looking for. Also, most of my work these days is "for hire", someone asking me to write a screenplay about XYZ for them. I haven't written an original feature length screenplay based on my own idea since 2005 -- not that I haven't wanted to.

That's not to say that I do not contribute to the story on most of the screenplays that I get asked to write. Much of the time, a producer and/or director will give me a shopping list of elements that they want to see in their film ---
"it has to have a sequence in China, organized crime and a chase with a helicopter."
"it's an Indian guy and an American woman, they're both living lies, caught up in intrigue, on the run from people but the emphasis is on the relationship, not the specifics of what they are on the run from -- an action film with only a little action."
"it takes place in Austin, Texas in 1987"

--- and then, I take it from there.

I know that I'm not in Hollywood but maybe I should be in the Hollywood Creative Directory.