Film Courage: The opening pages of a screenplay, important or cliché?
Jim Agnew, Screenwriter: Well, clichés work for a reason but if you do it well, then it works. What do you mean? What’s the context of the opening?
Film Courage: How important are they? Are people really tossing something in a slush pile based on it?
Jim: Yeah, they do but if you can grab…it has to play professional, it has to read professional and it also has to have something happening in the beginning. It can’t be just exposition, people sitting around talking. Here’s another thing people don’t know is that producers will look at what the genre is and see the page count at the end and if you’ve written a script that’s 150 pages they’re like this person doesn’t know what they’re doing because no one should write a script over 115 pages unless you’re Quentin Tarantino or like Paul Thomas Anderson. If it’s a horror movie and it’s 140 pages they are going to be like What the…is going on? Because you know how many pages. If you look at most professional scripts (studio scripts or anything), they’re 105-to-112 pages like clockwork. Horror movies a little bit less, they’re like 98-to-104 but they see so many scripts and they know and you’ve got to keep in mind your time. You’re competing for their time against professional scripts they’re getting…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
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BIO:
Jim Agnew is a director, writer and producer, known for The Capture (2017), Rage (2014) and Game of Death (2011). A former contributor/writer to Film Threat who played guitar for the Industrial Rock group Hate Dept. Jim has worked with such directors as Dario Argento and John Carpenter as well as Oscar-winning actors, producers and writers.
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