Chapter 14

The Creative Entrepreneur

From Kickstarting a Web Series to Hitting the Big Time

The digital television revolution has completely up-ended business as usual. Given the role of social media and crowdfunding, and the efficiency and low cost of shooting video on our own, everything now sits in a more level playing field. We can create and distribute our own content and gain attention through less mainstream, unconventional methods. Increasingly, visionary first-time series creators are circumventing the lower rungs of the staff writer ladder and leap-frogging straight to the upper ranks of co-executive producer, and even showrunner.

So how do you break in to the TV business in today’s cluttered marketplace? Let’s start with the conventional path.

“Call My Agent”

Sam Esmail, the creator/showrunner of Mr. Robot, is represented by the powerful Creative Artists Agency (CAA) and the influential management company Anonymous Content. And yet, he offers this guidance to new and aspiring TV writers: “The biggest mistake you can make is to think that all you need to do is get a big agent and then sit back and let them do all the work.” Esmail is always generating new material and fostering his own business relationships; he doesn’t just rely on an email or a phone call from his agent. “You have to be proactive,” he says.¹

The reality is, as invaluable as agents can be with packaging and access to studio/network executives and producers, agents can also present delays because they represent a full roster of clients, and you’re not always their top priority. They’re well intentioned—your success is their success—but many of your jobs are going to come through contacts of your own. Of course you’ll want to be communicative and transparent with your reps (if you’re fortunate enough to have one). Don’t alienate them by overstepping into their territory; writers write and agents/managers sell. But the simple fact is that you’re always your own best advocate.

Over the years when I’ve landed jobs on my own steam and called my agent, the reaction has sometimes been skepticism. One time a conversation went down like this:

Agents, like all power players, want to feel like they’re 100% dialed in and in control of the ball, that they’re pursuing the leads and are the ones who are giving you the information and fielding offers. But now that there are so many platforms, it’s difficult for them to know everything. And with so many viable writer submissions being made through proper, “official” channels (to the gatekeepers via agents and managers), sometimes that coveted writing staff job comes through a side door.

Getting an Agent

The most common question asked by aspiring TV writers is: How do I get an agent? And my answer is always the same: When you write a great script, the agents will come to you.

When a piece of material is that fresh and inventive, when the voices of the characters are distinctive, when the plotting is smart and surprising, when everything just pops off the page, there’s so much excitement and heat that will be generated from that particular piece of material that everyone will start to talk about it. They’ll talk about it on tracking boards and in staff meetings, and people will read the material. It will probably be an assistant, whose job it is in development to track down the hottest scripts out there and bring them to their bosses. Trust me, everybody’s constantly on the lookout for great material. The biggest challenge is reaching that level of originality, authenticity and quality.

To get on their radar and break in, it’s not about being “persistent” and constantly hounding them to read your material. As mentioned, the material will work its way to them. It’s their job to find it, and they will find it. At UCLA, we have showcase contests; I have agents and managers and studios always asking me, “Have you read anything great lately? Who’s exceptional? Who’s hot?” And when I recommend students to some of these people, they also ask me, “Not only are they great writers, but what is the person like, are they easy to work with, are they agreeable, are they collaborative, are they perfectionists in a good way?” Although you may not be in film school, there are many other ways to get noticed and contests that you can enter (more on this later).

Agents vs. Managers

Once you do have at least one piece of good material, you might put out some feelers and try to find a manager. (Again, I wouldn’t waste your time trying to get an agent early on.) Managers tend to be more open to nurturing talent and getting you to a point where you have a body of work that is viable. At that point, a good manager who has connections with agents can lead you to getting your first agent. Some writers opt to work with a manager only. The manager can send your material out, get you meetings and introduce you to people. The only thing a manager cannot do is negotiate deals; they’re not allowed to do that by the Writers Guild of America (WGA), the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) or the Directors Guild of America (DGA). So even if you do have a manager who’s representing and guiding you, you will eventually need a licensed agent or a literary or entertainment attorney to negotiate your deals since a manager is not sanctioned to do that. That’s the way it works. Managers can still be extremely valuable in other ways, especially if you can find one who’s adept at giving notes and can help you strategize what you should write and how to specialize (more on this below).

Advice From the (Staff Writer) Trenches

Each year in my Writing for Television lecture series at UCLA, I invite a panel of former students who are all now staffed on network shows. In some cases, it’s their first staff job; in other cases, it’s their second or third staff gig. On a recent panel, there were several especially sharp insights that stood out for me:

Pay Your Dues: Don’t underestimate the value of working as an intern, personal assistant, writer’s assistant, production assistant, researcher—anything—as a means to get your foot in the door. And if you’re lucky enough to land one of these entry-level positions, make the job they hired you to do be your top priority. Everyone knows you have higher aspirations, but that’s not their problem or concern; if your primary tasks are to make coffee and go on lunch runs, be the best runner you can be. Be the first one to arrive in the production (or writers’) office and be the last one to leave. If you’re there for two weeks and expect them to read your pilot and promote you, you’re going to be disappointed.

One of my former students worked at Shondaland (Shonda Rhimes’ production company) for years before he was given the chance to prove himself as a writer, but his first writing gig was not on a Rhimes show. So did that writers’ assistant job on Scandal have any value to him? Absolutely. That job provided him with a behind-the-scenes education of how a TV series runs on a daily basis; he learned how to be a better writer by observing—via osmosis—how to be a professional. When he did earn his first staff writer job on a half-hour comedy series, he wasn’t just being thrown into the deep end of the pool without floaties; he’d already learned how to swim. He’d also been humbled and had learned gratitude. He learned how to function as part of a team and how to make himself more valuable in a writers’ room. The grunt work galvanized him to work harder and perfect his writing samples. He made contacts and acquired essential political and socialization skills. He also learned one of the most valuable lessons of all for any TV writer or any human being: How not to be an asshole.

Marta Kauffman, the co-creator and showrunner of NBC’s long-running, Emmy Award-winning series Friends, and currently of Grace and Frankie on Netflix, will be the first to admit that she’s never been a joke writer. She’s the person who gets to the heart of the story and the emotion, and she likes to dig in and explore the characters. So she brought in Howard Morris on Grace and Frankie, and he put in the jokes. She’s smart because good showrunners know how to delegate. They know what they can do and what they should bring people in to help them do.

Specialization is important, but all in good time. Another mistake people who are breaking in make, in addition to prematurely sending the material out, is that they define their specialization and limit it too soon, before they’ve had a chance to explore everything they’re capable of. So give yourself a chance to explore different genres and tones before you pronounce, “This is who I am and what I’m specializing in.” My writing partner and I used to think we were sitcom joke writers. I’ll be honest—that’s never been my bailiwick. What I thought I was good at and what was going to be my bread and butter was not at all how I’ve succeeded in my career. It’s actually come through scripts that I didn’t even know I was capable of writing. Early on in my career, I wrote a hard-edged procedural crime story. I wrote a legal drama. I wrote things that I didn’t know anything about, but I researched and immersed myself in the field and stretched myself as a writer. And people’s response was, “Hey, you’re awesome at this. Why haven’t you written this before?” And I replied, “I don’t know, I’d never tried. I didn’t think I could.” So don’t limit yourself too soon, and don’t pick a color and stick to it immediately. Give yourself room to grow and explore and experiment. You may discover that you’re actually better at some things than you realize. It might not come as naturally at first, but the more you do it, the more you may say, “Hey, this is actually more my thing than the thing I thought was my thing.”

Be a Perfectionist: Revise, refine, rewrite. Rinse, repeat. Set the bar high and reach for it. Each of the panelists’ success stories had a common denominator as they transitioned from student to professional: It wasn’t just about pleasing their instructor anymore. At this point, it was about pleasing themselves and creating a body of work of which they could be proud. They didn’t care how many drafts it was going to take. They didn’t say, “Can’t I just be finished? I’m tired! Leave me alone.” They said to themselves, “No, no, I want to go further, I want to make it better, and I’ll work as long and as hard as it takes.” Bear in mind that your spec material doesn’t have an odometer, meaning that nobody cares how long you worked on it. If you wrote it in a weekend or if you wrote it over five years, when a professional reads it, they’re just reading the script. I wouldn’t necessarily tell them that it took you five years, but the point is they’re judging it purely on the quality of the script, not how long it took you to write it. So ideally you will not send out any material until it’s been through a significant vetting by trusted advisers who have told you that they don’t have any more notes. And even at that point, hopefully you’ve set the script aside for a week or two, gone back to it with fresh eyes, and even you don’t have any more notes. As mentioned previously, you don’t get that second chance to make a first impression. So again, don’t send stuff out too early. Be a perfectionist and be willing to put in the time and the hours to get it where it needs to be down to those final drafts. Every detail matters. And the hard work pays off.

Be a Self-Starter but Seek Advice: So there’s a paradox in the writers’ room—and you know how much I love paradox when it comes to characters. You need to absorb information and find your own way through observing how other people behave in the room, reading draft after draft to see how they evolve and come up from that early writer’s draft through network notes through the process of refinement. If you get an opportunity to go on a location scout or to sit in on a music spotting, color correction or editing session, take advantage of it. Just sit there and absorb.

Don’t make the big mistake I made. I remember one of the times I was invited into the editing room on Melrose Place. I was arrogant and young and stupid enough to think that since I’d written the episode and I was invited, that I was on an equal playing field with everybody else. It was a huge mistake. I even contradicted one of our executive producers about something. It was bad form; I just didn’t know. If only someone had said, “By the way, you need to have a seat and observe and listen and learn,” I would have kept my mouth shut. It was entirely my fault, and I should have paid better attention to the successful writers around me instead of being cocky. But, as we all know, although hindsight is a wonderful thing, foresight is better (William Blake).

So not only do you need to learn to do things without people teaching them to you, you also have to be smart, politically savvy and diplomatic enough to know when to keep your mouth shut and when to open it. You need to learn, not only how to write for a given show, but also how to read a room. Painful lesson learned. What I should have done (which I can recommend to you) is say, “I take it that I’m here to observe and learn. If you’d like me to participate, please let me know. Tell me what’s appropriate.” That’s a good question to ask on staff, because if you just assume things, you can alienate people and commit career suicide without even being aware that you’ve done anything wrong. Ideally, mentorship should naturally emerge in a writers’ room from a hierarchy. It behooves them and the show for the more seasoned people to take the new writers under their wings and mentor and explain things to them. On some shows, in some writers’ rooms, that does happen. But more often than not, people have their own scripts to write, their own problems, personal lives and multiple projects. You’re not necessarily a responsibility they want. They want you to come in, be low maintenance, fend for yourself, not get in the way and be a professional. That means being a humble listener and a humble learner, and that’s how you learn without anybody actually teaching you anything.

Diversify: Several former students on my panels have participated in TV network/studio/fellowship programs, i.e., NBCUniversal’s Writers on the Verge, CBS’ Diversity Program, ABC/Disney’s Fellowship, Fox and HBO Diversity Initiatives, etc. Such fellowships and mentorship programs are extremely competitive but worth pursuing. In some cases, you needn’t be a woman or from an ethnic minority to apply; they’re seeking diverse voices on the page, not necessarily race or gender based. The initial screening process is often blind.

Bonus Content

A list of the top screenwriting and/or writing for TV contests and fellowships is available at www.routledge.com/cw/landau. Always remember to do your own due diligence on each competition’s legitimacy before applying.

My main point is not solely to rely on the hope of securing an agent or manager. These programs, festivals and contests can also generate heat and buzz to attract a representative. The greatest advantage is that diversity programs and writing fellowships are designed as a means to nurture and discover new talent—and the reward is getting staffed on one of their series. Showrunners are incentivized to hire fellowship writers because these writers’ initial salaries are paid not out of the show’s budget but by the studio/networks’ diversity and mentorship budgets. So the show gets another fresh voice and perspective in the writers’ room, and the writer gets his/her first gig. It’s a win-win for everyone lucky enough to be selected.

If you’re not picked, apply again and again. According to Grace Moss, who currently helms NBCUniversal’s diversity programs, “You actually increase your odds by reapplying with new original and spec material each year.”² You have everything to gain and nothing to lose, so be prolific and tenacious. Be aware of their evolving eligibility requirements and deadlines. Mark them on your calendars. This needs to be part of your breaking-in strategy. Be your own agent/manager until you have one.

Naturally, this presumes that you’re uniquely talented and have the writing chops to back up your networking prowess. Great writing samples (original pilots and/or screenplays) are essential but so is your personality and how you “present” in a room: Are you a good listener? Do you have a worldview? Are you confident, but also a humble team player? Your words on the page count for A LOT, but no one is going to hire you if they don’t like you. They’re going to be spending more time with you than with their own families. Don’t be a kiss-ass but be genuine, enthusiastic and gracious. If they hire you, your #1 job is to make their jobs easier—and that means writing solid first drafts, being able to generate fresh story ideas in the writers’ room and being able to implement notes with alacrity and verve.

To break into television you’re going to need an exceptional, wholly original pilot. You may also need a spec episode of an existing show because, while showing that you can create a pilot and characters is the key skill, to work on staff you also need to demonstrate that you can capture the voices and the style of another show. More likely than not, you’re going to get hired off of an original pilot and then go to work on a writing staff of someone else’s show. So if you don’t yet have the skill of writing in someone else’s voice, you’re going to find that, to please the showrunner, you’re going to need to learn those skills while in the early stages of pre-production. Once production starts, the machine starts moving so quickly that there is little time to learn on the job and still meet the deadlines. So ideally you will write at least one spec episode of an existing show, just to develop that muscle, which is vital.

More Opportunities Than Ever—Yet It’s Never Been More Competitive

Back in the days when movies were the be-all, end-all, one great pilot script or spec TV episode could open every door for you. That can still be the case. However, buyers are more cautious and tighter with the money. And it’s much harder to get through the door. The streaming, premium and high-end cable networks are not necessarily going to get that excited by one script. At Hulu, Netflix and Amazon, a great pilot script will get our attention, but a pilot script, a series bible, a look-book and maybe another episode will usually also be required to make the sale (see Chapter 12). Now that shows on streaming and premium/high-end basic cable networks have shorter orders and are highly serialized, the buyers will want to see how the show is going to sustain over the course of a season—or even over multiple seasons. They may to want to see at least one future episode to understand how that’s going to play out. Depending on the show and the auspices of the creator and/or showrunner, these could be written documents or via a more informal conversation.

Just because you’ve written one pilot, don’t expect every door to open, no matter how good it is. Yes, the agencies will find you if you write one great script, but they might not necessarily sign you. The first question any reputable agent or manager is going to ask is, “What else have you got?”

Show Them Your Proof of Concept

Proof of concept is the caution under which the network gatekeepers operate. As we are already aware, few people in Hollywood are empowered to say “yes.” Proof of concept is all about making your show so irresistible that they’re not going to be able to reject it. It means showing them the “evidence” that your show is exciting, sustainable and viable. Show them your proof of concept, and they’ll show you the money.

Think Locally, Act Globally

When I travel and lecture in other countries, people always ask, “How do we break into Hollywood?” My advice is usually to break into the industry in your home country first. Get a show on the air in your native language; cast actors well known in your country. Tell universal stories that can be adapted for different cultures but emphasize the universal themes with local specificity. A hit show overseas can “incubate,” build local buzz, and that becomes your proof of concept to export to Hollywood. So don’t think you can only break into the TV business by living in Hollywood and writing in English. There are many ways that both I.P. and formats from foreign countries can come into the US and other countries and find great success. (See Chapter 11.)

What I Really Want To Do Is Direct (a Web Series)

For decades, the above cliché used to be the joke about every disgruntled screenwriter in Hollywood. Having languished in studio development hell for years and/or seeing their screenplays ruined by others, many screenwriters segued behind the camera to take control. But with astronomical production costs and the high risks of filmmaking, this is an untenable approach for most. On the other hand, a web series can be short (5- to 15-minute episodes) and relatively cheap to produce. Web series are fun to make but difficult to monetize; they’re a satisfying creative endeavor but rarely, if ever, profitable. Of course, there are exceptions.

The sketch comedy show Key & Peele, created by and starring Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, also had its roots as a web series—bolstered by Key and Peele’s popularity on the late night, SNL-inspired MADtv on Fox. The series spanned a total of 53 episodes over for 5 seasons, from 2012 through 2015. They took their good fortune (notice, I didn’t say “luck”) and parlayed it into featured roles on shows such as Fargo. Jordan Peele went on to write and direct the wildly successful Get Out (2017).

Sure, Broad City and Key & Peele are outlier success stories. But Glazer and Jacobson and Key and Peele blazed the trail for other talented content creators in the future. Here are a few select case studies:

Creative entrepreneurship is more than just creating superior content; it’s about creating superior content and then connecting to an audience. Popular bloggers are called “influencers” because they wield influence. But their currency is authenticity, so there’s no use trying to influence them other than creating authentic, awesome, original work. Create that itch and they’ll scratch it.

Work Begets Work

A writer is a person who makes an appointment with him/herself to write—and keeps it. As a creative entrepreneur, that needs to be your modus operandi. You have to always be looking forward and thinking about what you’re going to do next, because that’s going to create the momentum that’s going to propel your career. Your “big break” is more likely going to be a series of smaller breaks. Work with people who challenge and inspire you. Gain experience and learn how to work well with others. Don’t make money your primary goal. Instead, focus on the process of assembling a body of work of which you can be proud. Take chances and be bold. Make a game plan. What are your career writing goals in one, three, five and ten years from now? This is a collaborative business built on relationships, networking, synergy, synchronicity, kismet, strategy and timing—never solely just dumb luck. First and foremost, this is a business of talent, and content is always king. You may believe that you’ve already got what it takes, that you’re a wunderkind or a misunderstood genius and that it’s all about the gatekeepers shutting you out. But the truth is, new doors open every day. It’s up to you to be ready and use your power of storytelling to connect people, to bring them closer together.

Now is not the time for any of us, whether just starting out or even seasoned pros, to rest on our laurels. Both our writing and the industry have a long way to go. At the 2017 Emmys, which were historic for ethnic minorities and women, Bruce Miller, showrunner of The Handmaid’s Tale put it best: Everyone needs to go home and “get to work—we have a lot of things to fight for.”⁵