$374,244 or 7,200 aspirant screenwriters?

May 17, 2012 11:58 AM

It's Nicholl Fellowship season again! This year, with a May 1st deadline, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences accepted a record 7,197 entries -- an estimated 647,730 to 863,640 pages that Academy Judges will have to read and evaluate by October. This is a record reflecting not only a high number of aspirant screenwriters, but over 1,000 submissions from outside the territorial United States. Previously, here and here. Does anybody here have any Nicholl Fellowship tales? Any wins? Any multi-decade efforts to get their story out there?
posted by vhsiv (33 comments total)

FULL DISCLOSURE: I have submitted in previous yers, but not this one.
posted by vhsiv at 12:02 PM on May 17, 2012

Here's my take on the Nicholl -- possibly outdated now.

Short version -- it's the key to the doors of Hollywood.

My story: late 90s, I entered one year, placed nowhere. Second year, same script with a few tweaks, got through to the semi-final round. Realized it was now or never, called the UK agent who been sitting on my stuff for nine months, told her about the Nichol and asked her to send it back. She signed me on the phone there and then. Next thing I did was get on a plane and have my entertainment attorney (you DO have an attorney, right?) set up meetings with agents in LA. I slept on my buddy's floor and swore not to leave until I had an agent. I got five offers that week, and took the one from the agency I'm still with. I got my first paying assigment almost immediately, quit my dayjob, and have been a screenwriter ever since.

Oh, and I didn't win or even get into the finals. But it didn't matter, because you sell the sizzle not the steak. You're never as hot as just before they announce the results.
posted by unSane at 12:07 PM on May 17, 2012 [9 favorites]

One thing that I think is still true -- if you're not placing in the top 5-10% of Nicholl entries you haven't got your craft down yet.
posted by unSane at 12:10 PM on May 17, 2012 [2 favorites]

I do a simliar contest that is one-twentieth the size and the merest fraction of the prize money. Based on that - if the Nicholls is open to all, then I shudder to think of some of the stuff they're reading (honestly, there are quite a lot of people out there laboring under the misconception that they know how to write).
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:24 PM on May 17, 2012

But it didn't matter, because you sell the sizzle not the steak. You're never as hot as just before they announce the results.

Thanks, I had been casting around for a reason to burn down all of civilization.
posted by DU at 12:26 PM on May 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

I was a semi-finalist once, back in 1997 or thereabouts. I think it was for an unusually depressing screenplay I had written about the Kishinev pogroms. It got into the hands of a few agents, who I never heard back from. I suspect that may have throwing themselves in the LA river upon reading the script from the sheer misery of the story, which, seeing as the river is basically four inches wide and a foot deep, wouldn't so much more than make them soggy. That's the effect my scripts have on people.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 12:36 PM on May 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

Submitted a script. I have an actor who wants to be in it but the Nicholl didn't like it. Still rewriting it.
posted by steinsaltz at 12:38 PM on May 17, 2012

One thing that I think is still true -- if you're not placing in the top 5-10% of Nicholl entries you haven't got your craft down yet.

I couldn't agree less. The Nicholl is but one barometer of screenwriting skill, and where you place is often only whimsically associated with a screenplay's qualities. The only contest that currently matters is the one called "Hollywood." (Insert your local film community if that's the kind of thing you do.)

The Nicholl is a probably the strongest entryway for writers who don't live in LA and who have yet to forge connections, but there has never been a worse time to be an aspiring screenwriter -- or a working screenwriter, for that matter.
posted by incessant at 12:46 PM on May 17, 2012 [2 favorites]

On my MeFi search for 'Nicholl Fellowship, I found that dobbs had been working on his script for over a decade. Is that common?

A connection that I spoke to recently said that sometimes producers aren't necessarily looking for fully-polished screenplays but 'core ideas'. Is that something anyone here has heard?

A couple of moths ago, I heard from someone's agent or manager after I sent out a solicit. They like my idea, but wanted something contemporary and a writer friend of mine discouraged me away from turning it into a writing assignment.

I may be the stupid for backing away from the opportunity, but there was important value to my story remaining a period-piece, even though those are apparently harder to sell.
posted by vhsiv at 12:51 PM on May 17, 2012

> there has never been a worse time to be an aspiring screenwriter -- or a working screenwriter, for that matter.

Please explain. Is it a competition thing, an industry thing or a money thing?
posted by vhsiv at 12:55 PM on May 17, 2012

I couldn't agree less.

Fine. But I know what I'm talking about. The Nicholl entries are by and large a festering pile of crap. If you can't make it to the top 700 out of 7000 scripts, you are doing it wrong. One of the good things about the Nicholl is that it uses (mostly) industry readers who do know what current Hollywood standards are. Doing the most basic things right -- formatting, spelling, having a decent plot, length, structure and halfway believable characters -- will get you in that top 10% just because most Nicholl scripts make basic errors and are completely unreadable. Things start to get interesting in the top 5% but the number of entries which are of a standard where the writer could be entrusted with a feature or a feature rewrite? Not large.

It's a pretty bad time to be a studio screenwriter. It's not a terrible time to be a screenwriter. There are acres of pay cable hours to fill -- probably the most interesting place to be a writer now -- and lots of indie and European features being made. Most of the work is much more interesting than you average explosion fest (and trust me, I've written enough of the damn things). You have to do more projects to pay the bills, but most writers want to work more anyway.
posted by unSane at 12:56 PM on May 17, 2012

moths months
posted by vhsiv at 12:56 PM on May 17, 2012

Please explain. Is it a competition thing, an industry thing or a money thing?


It's a long story but the studios are now making many fewer films and developing many fewer scripts than previously. Almost everything they develop is high budget, high concept, and will only be entrusted to an A list writer. The B-list have fallen off the edge of a cliff.
posted by unSane at 12:57 PM on May 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

Does anybody here have any Nicholl Fellowship tales? Any wins? Any multi-decade efforts to get their story out there?

Maybe that part should go to AskMe (and not here)?
posted by troika at 1:08 PM on May 17, 2012

Almost everything they develop is high budget, high concept, and will only be entrusted to an A list writer. The B-list have fallen off the edge of a cliff.

Curiously, one of the few movie execs I know of took a look and said that my thing was too small. In my small head, my idea always felt high-concept (dumb, pop-culture totem connected to current events, deconstructed and marinated just a bit).

I asked the high-flyer for clarification, but I didn't rate a response.
posted by vhsiv at 1:49 PM on May 17, 2012

Please explain. Is it a competition thing, an industry thing or a money thing?

Some numbers -- from 2002-2007, about 1900 WGA writers were employed each year under feature contracts, give or take. The numbers fluctuated by a couple of percentage points.

In 2008, that number fell to 1,801, an 11% change from the previous year's high of 2,000 writers. Makes sense -- that was the year writer's strike. But the numbers didn't come back -- and then in 2010, it plummeted once again: 1,615, an 11.2% decrease from the year before. Earnings didn't fall as fast -- 9.9% change. Studios are willing to pay fewer people, but at a slightly higher rate. As unSane points out, there is no B-list anymore, it's all A-listers.

And while I too love television, numbers there haven't risen in the least -- in 2005, 3,265 writers were employed under WGA TV contracts, and in 2010, that number was 3,142.

(I culled these numbers from WGA annual reports, the most recent of which is available here.)

Unless there's a systemic change in Hollywood, these numbers may continue to decline. Studios are no longer interested in r&d -- they think they can do it all themselves. Gregory Poirier wrote a great column to that effect in Written By a couple months ago. His solution is television, but TV isn't absorbing the number of feature writers it needs to.


I was just thinking what an interesting concept it is to eliminate the writer from the artistic process. If we could just get rid of these actors and directors, maybe we've got something here.

- Griffin Mill
posted by incessant at 2:01 PM on May 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

Curiously, one of the few movie execs I know of took a look and said that my thing was too small. In my small head, my idea always felt high-concept (dumb, pop-culture totem connected to current events, deconstructed and marinated just a bit).

The major studios are only interested in two kinds of movies right now -- low budget genre (horror, comedy mostly) and high budget high concept. They aren't making mid-budget ($40-100m) movies any more. That slack is being taken up by other people -- Lionsgate, MGM and so on.

The WGA numbers are misleading because there has been a surge in the number of non-WGA projects being financed out of Europe etc. I haven't worked on a WGA project since the end of 2010, but I have worked on (mentally counts) four different projects since then, am about to start a fifth and am wrapping up a deal on a sixth and NONE of them are WGA. One of them is Irish Film Board / Nat Geo, one is European money, two are BBC Films, one is Telefilm, and one was privately finance but will probably go to a British cable broadcaster.

So according to the WGA numbers I am unemployed but actually I haven't had a day off in months.
posted by unSane at 2:20 PM on May 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

(unSane's experiences finding work right now is fantastic and laudable and shows he's a great writer with a lot of experience, but I can count on one hand the number of professional writers I know currently in a position such as his.)
posted by incessant at 2:24 PM on May 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I'm not saying it's all rosy and the WGA numbers absolutely reflect a seismic industry change for US-based writers. I've certainly felt that, even though I straddle the Atlantic. On a typical open assignment I am up against anything from 10-20 other writers, some of them big names, and all pitching their A-game.

Nevertheless there is rumbling in the studios about the number of $200m turkeys that are being produced (witness Rich Ross's departure from Disney recently after a string of failures which were mostly greenlit by his predecessors). There is strong downward pressure on budgets but an entire hire/fire cycle has been and gone so that now the studios, at the creative executive level, are stacked with people who have little conception of movies that aren't populated by superheroes, remakes, or based on presold properties like 50 Shades of Grey or (increasingly) comic books.
posted by unSane at 2:59 PM on May 17, 2012 [2 favorites]

> They aren't making mid-budget ($40-100m) movies any more.

So, the B-movies have all gone to European studios and funders. I'm guessing that the market is different than it was 15 or 20 years ago, but in Europe, they typically look at those B-pictures as 'Independent'.

Luc Besson made his bread and butter on B-movies made in Europe. Once his films got to the States, they were just European (Art) films. La Femme Nikita (~$10M), Léon (~30M), Taxi (~$15M), District 13(~$15M) - -- they're all very respectable, low-budget films, but they're French!
posted by vhsiv at 3:11 PM on May 17, 2012

So, the B-movies have all gone to European studios and funders.

Some, but not all by any means. There are a slew of equity funds and distributors who will put money into mid-budget films in the US, but it's an entirely different proposition than putting together a studio film and one which is a hell of a lot more work for everyone. You can't just assign a couple of junior agents to cover each studio and have a meeting every morning to match up open assignments with available writers.

On the other hand, those films are typically about ten times more fun to write and work on than the studio fare.
posted by unSane at 4:03 PM on May 17, 2012

On my MeFi search for 'Nicholl Fellowship, I found that dobbs had been working on his script for over a decade. Is that common?

I wouldn't think so and I hope not. I know some films take over a decade to get off the ground, write, produce, release. But ten years on one screenplay? A screenplay that he admits got into the finals of the Nicholl multiple times - and he still wasn't happy with it? There comes a point where it's no longer worth the effort of re-writing it. He's been with it too long. He's re-written it too much. And, frankly, if the only thing he's going to do is submit it over and over again to the Nicholl, he's probably never going to get his desired result.

We writers, we get attached to things. Sometimes we're perfectionists and don't want to let it go until it's perfect. Sometimes we don't want to let it go for fear of rejection. Sometimes the idea just seems to good to let go and... we don't. But I think there comes a point where it's unhealthy, like staying in a relationship past its used by date. You're trying everything to make it work, but it's never going to be quite the way you want it to be.

I wrote a pilot script and a bible for a TV series over a decade ago. I got really great reactions from producers and directors, but no traction from networks. (This is in Australia, by the way.) I worked on other things while it was doing the rounds. Several years later, I knew it was dead in the water as a TV show, decided to convert it into a stage play. That took a lot of work and a lot of drafts. I'm glad I did it, because I met a lot of theatre people on the back of it - and got the motivation to write for stage again (after doing a bit when I was young, then abandoning that to try to get my foot into film/TV). And I've written lots of short plays and a couple of full-length plays since then. (Many of which have been produced locally and one internationally.)

And I keep looking back at that TV script that became a stage play - the project I have re-written the most and one that has been read all over the world and made connections and opened doors. But it's never been produced. And I actually think the concept is a little dated now. I now think of it as a calling card script. I could update it. I could re-write it as a feature film. But it's well past time to leave it alone. Even if it's not ever produced, it was a good lesson and a great introduction to lots of people.
posted by crossoverman at 4:59 PM on May 17, 2012

As a former reader for the Nicholl fellowship, I can verify that many, many, many of the scripts submitted are close to unreadable. I've gotten everything from a 250 pg script written in longhand on legal paper (you guessed it, it was bad) to scripts that were very clearly written by someone whose grasp of the English language was tenuous at best.

The reader is not actually required to read the entire script if it's shockingly bad. I remember abandoning quite a few scripts after the first 30 pages, because it was clear that no, this person can't write AT ALL. Given that we each had up to 50 scripts a week to read, and that this wasn't anybody's full-time job, there was no reason to slog through something that was clearly not going to make it past the first round.

That being said, I read a lot of good scripts, and there are enough submissions that yes, even if you've written a pretty good script, there is a lot of competition for those top spots. I tended to be an overscorer; if I saw talent or potential I did the best I could to make sure the script moved on up the ladder. I was always excited and pleased when something I'd read landed in the finals. (It didn't happen that often).
posted by OolooKitty at 7:14 PM on May 17, 2012 [1 favorite]

The competition from the quarter finals is stiff, no doubt. You're in pretty good company when/if you get that far.

On rewriting: I've never rewritten a spec more than once. And it's a toss-up whether it makes it better. It is very hard to retain the dynamism and energy of a first draft when rewriting -- in fact that's probably one of the most important skills you can develop as a screenwriter. Anyone can tell you what's wrong with a script -- the money is in fixing it and not killing the script in the process. Sometimes you have to be incredibly gentle, other times you have to go in with a fire axe.

I know I'm done with rewriting when I start changing lines and then changing them back again.
posted by unSane at 7:48 PM on May 17, 2012 [2 favorites]

It's not a terrible time to be a screenwriter. There are acres of pay cable hours to fill -- probably the most interesting place to be a writer now -

This is very true. People interested in television should forget the Nicholls and get something together for the Warner Bros. Writer's Workshop (deadline June 1st). It's a fantastic way to break into television for someone without connections. All you have to do is write a spec script of episode of an existing show. (Here's the Ask Me I wrote while preparing to enter the WB program. Thanks for the answer, incessent.)

The competition is steep, in that a couple thousand people enter per year and they select ten or so for the program. The WB program gives you six months of (once a week) night school on the business of television. Then they work to place you on (Warner Bros) shows and help you find managers/agents. etc. Some years they have a 100% staffing rate.

I get asked a lot about how to break into television, and this is the only answer I have.

Side note: unsane, you really advise writers who haven't broken in to have entertainment lawyers? Why? Is it a features-specific thing? I don't have one and won't until I have a pilot of my own in development.
posted by Bookhouse at 11:29 PM on May 17, 2012 [2 favorites]

Side note: unsane, you really advise writers who haven't broken in to have entertainment lawyers? Why? Is it a features-specific thing?

I don't think it's feature-specific. It's an answer to the conundrum of 'how do I get my script read if no-one accepts unsolicited scripts?'. If you're not living in Hollywood and don't have any connections (such as being in the WB program) there is no other straightforward way of getting your script read. But if you have a decent attorney you can get it to the major agencies. Of course, that means you need to find a lawyer who'll take a flyer on you but that is MUCH easier than getting an agent.

Even for an agency which does accept unsolicited scripts/responds to query letters (are there any?) having a submission from a known attorney skips the slush pile and stops people fucking around with you.

Even if you have connections, a lawyer will help you decide which is the best agency for you. They will know the reputations of the individual agents and how you are likely to be treated (ie, are CAA lying about what they will do for you?).

The best part is that at this stage it costs you nothing because the lawyer is in it for 5% of your contracts.
posted by unSane at 4:39 AM on May 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

That's interesting. Most of what you're discribing are duties assigned to my manager. I didn't realize a lawyer would do all that (and for half the commission.)
posted by Bookhouse at 8:15 AM on May 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Regarding Dobbs' 10-year script (I actually think it's closer to 14)... he has written and completed other scripts simultaneously. It's not like he just has one thing he does during those years.

Last summer he took the 14 year script online and wrote over a 24 hour period, attempting to break his block on it. I think he sent out 80 pages which he typed from scratch and then the project just stopped and he hasn't sent out another word (and his web site is dead/gone). However, off the site, he finished the script--claiming the 24 hour thing cured him of the block. He's very happy with the script and submitted it (and 2 others, I think) this year. He has high hopes.

He has said repeatedly that he, like unSane, thinks that if you can't make the top 10 percent in Nicholl with every script you're not a very good writer (yet) as he thinks the lower 90 percent isn't much competition.

Good luck to every Mefite who entered this year!
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 8:31 AM on May 18, 2012 [2 favorites]

Of course, that means you need to find a lawyer who'll take a flyer on you but that is MUCH easier than getting an agent.

Ten years ago, this was true -- back then, I got a fantastic lawyer with a phone call. Today, I know of zero entertainment lawyers of any worth who would take a flyer on an unknown writer and spend time submitting their material for hoped-for revenues who-knows-how-long down the line. I do, however, know of a few managers who would do that. Email-querying managers is the current preferred method for unknown writers to expose themselves to representatives.

And I'm just not going to let the "you must place in the top 10% of Nicholl or you aren't a good writer yet" thing go -- it simply isn't true. I know two successful pros who never made the Nicholl quarterfinals with the exact same scripts that became their first options or sales.

Do not use the Nicholl as a measuring stick. No one single contest can do that. The measuring stick you should pay attention to is the check someone writes to pay for your material.
posted by incessant at 9:27 AM on May 18, 2012 [4 favorites]

And with respect to all the million small pains you need to take to get anywhere close to figuring out the difficult skill set of screenwriting, I sometimes wonder if Nicholl readers would be more likely to reward the tight structure "The Day The Clown Cried" or "Gigli" than anything by Paul Thomas Anderson.

There is no contest for good taste. I remember checking on the winners a few years back and one of the top entries was something about an angry divorcee starting a kingdom on an oil rig.

Oh here it is.

"A quirky comedy about an oil-rig worker (Bob) who just discovered his wife is having an affair and leaving him. So naturally he takes over an abandoned oil rig in the middle of the ocean and declares it a country. A convenient Latina pops up on the rig as well, thus adding some romance too..."
posted by steinsaltz at 10:57 AM on May 18, 2012

left out an "of."
posted by steinsaltz at 10:57 AM on May 18, 2012

I remember checking on the winners a few years back and one of the top entries was something about an angry divorcee starting a kingdom on an oil rig.

Ehren Kruger's Arlington Road (1999) was the Nicholl Fellowship winner that put him into everyone's rolodex.Take that for what it's worth.

(It's my understanding that it's Scott Frank's rewrite on The Ring (2002) that made it valuable.YMMV.)
posted by vhsiv at 12:01 PM on May 18, 2012

A convenient Latina pops up on the rig as well, thus adding some romance too...

That old chestnut! The latina ex machina!
posted by unSane at 12:55 PM on May 18, 2012 [3 favorites]