The Year of Development Hell (Part 1)...

I have mentioned before that RnD optioned our feature film script Phobia, but I have only briefly spoken of our year in “development hell”.

It WAS the best of times… and the WORST of times.

We had been introduced to an agent through a mutual friend of ours. We met him and… I want to say that we liked him right away. But the truth was that we liked what he had to say and were not quite sure what to make of him.

He had “offices” in New York, Los Angeles, Vancouver and Miami. He was developing a stable of talent: actors, singers, musicians. He even had two stuntwomen and we (RnD) were his 1st writers. He spoke of how he had a dream of being able to help package projects; he wanted to open a production company and in time, turn it into a mini-major studio. He spoke with lots of passion and conviction.

A couple days before we met him, he signed an actor from the HBO show Oz and he was already representing an heir to a legendary musician’s family dynasty. We knew going in that he was a small boutique agency. We appreciated what we felt would be a personal touch.

We pitched our script at the Screenwriting Expo that year, as-well-as the Hollywood by the Bay event, the night before. Fourteen out of 15 execs that listened to our pitch wanted to see the script. They were ALL impressed that we had an agent, as-well.

We met with our agent, before leaving L.A. and gave him the contact info for all of the execs we pitched. He said he would take care of it… that was his job after all.

A week later, we began playing phone/e-mail tag with him. A week after that, we finally heard from him and he had optioned it. Sort of…

What our agent did, was partner with a small producer and get us to option the script to them. I stress that our agent did this because agents are NOT allowed to be producers or production companies. This was something that we did not know at the time.

He told us that we would get the WGA minimum for the script, but we would also be on set everyday and we would be co-producers, involved with most of the decisions… though without the ability to make the decisions. We were totally cool with that. Script sale. Hollywood movie. On set. Producer credit. He had us; we were willing to do anything after that, and he knew it.

The 1st note came in. Change the name. There was a film that had been released in 1980 named Phobia. What about Clinical? Clinical? We tried to come up with alternatives. But our agent had a hard on for Clinical, so, Phobia became Clinical.

(and so it began...)

to be continued...

Don.