An Oldie But A Goodie

Gazing out at the landscape of script sales this fall things do appear bleak. Unless you have a thriller with a unique hook or a horror script you might be looking at a marketplace that has no interest in you.

What to do? Do you write away from what interests you with an eye on a sale only? If you can pull off such a move without appearing inauthentic, by all means go for it. But what if horror/thriller is not in your wheelhouse? What do you do then?

After spending a year working on a period piece that has limited prospects in the current marketplace, Joe and I were determined to not go back in time--to make a pun out of it. Since horror/thriller is not generally what we do, we took a look at some of our other scripts and dusted off a true crime screenplay we had written a few years back titled "Perspective."

"Perspective" (we know we need to change the title) is an account of the infamous theft of paintings from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner museum. Unsolved to date, the crime was the biggest score of art, in terms of dollars, in US History, and our take on this story is about as close as we can get to thriller.

Art theft stories are also traditionally hard sells, but we sent it to a reputable Hollywood production company who liked the concept very much. The catch...? They think it needs work, but don't have the capacity to take it on formally. However, they told us, they would surely look at a rewrite.

It's the old conundrum of do you do rewrite work for one source in the hopes something will come of it. Given that it's hard to sell anything these days and this is a script we have great fondness for --and we do believe it needs work-- we might be willing to take that risk.

As the old saying goes, follow your bliss. Well, we have passion for this oldie and we are determined to make it even more of a goodie than it already was.

We'll provide updates on our progress and look forward to hearing your thoughts on this as well as your fall projects.

-Randy