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Screenwriters Don’t Need An Agent When Starting Out – Scott Kirkpatrick

“Agents and managers are great. I don’t think you actually need one when you’re starting out.”

Filmcourage

Published

June 10, 2023

Film Courage: From your first book Writing For The Green Light [How to Make Your Script the One Hollywood Notices] you talk about how so many screenwriters devour screenwriting books. They learn structure and format but they don’t learn what to do once they’ve finished that screenplay.

Scott Kirkpatrick, Executive Vice President of Co-Productions & Distribution/Author: That used to drive me nuts. I would say that book specifically I wrote it because it was the book that was never written that I always wish existed in some capacity. Most of those books, I think it was Syd Field who wrote Screenplay, that was the one that really kick-started the whole three-act structure. It was this amazing book about how-to structure a script and how-to organize ideas. I know there’s some outdated things in it today but at the very end of it there’s five pages (that’s an exaggeration) but there’s this very thin chapter at the end that’s just Oh yeah, go get an agent and do those things and they’ll take care of it. I guess that’s the critical thing is a lot of people write a script and they just expect that that’s all they need to do and somebody else will carry it from there. Getting an agent or a manager isn’t necessarily the answer to that problem. Agents and managers are great. I don’t think you actually need one when you’re starting out. That’s my personal opinion, that’s not advice, but it’s my personal opinion is I work with writers who don’t have agents all the time. They manage themselves, they are able to just present themselves well and use their own ability to get the door open so to speak, they have a great personal branding that they’ve done on their own online, they’re extraordinarily professional, they make opportunities happen for themselves because they…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).

BIO:

Scott Kirkpatrick is the Executive Vice President of Co-Productions & Distribution for Nicely Entertainment—a Los Angeles-based production and distribution company that produces original TV movies and scripted TV series—where he brokers major content deals and has executive produced a variety of TV movies including “The Art of Christmas”, “Sappy Holiday” and “The Snowball Effect”. Previously, Kirkpatrick served as the Senior Vice President of North American Sales & Business Development for the London-based NENT Studios UK where he oversaw international television distribution deals on a variety of programs including BBC’s “The Cry”, Channel 4’s “Shameless” and ITV’s “Doc Martin”. Prior to this, Kirkpatrick served as Executive Director of Distribution for MarVista Entertainment, a Los Angeles-based production and distribution company that produces original TV movies and has managed international TV deals on major franchises, including “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers”. Before shifting to the distribution side of the industry, Kirkpatrick worked behind the scenes on major studio productions, including “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby”, and has produced and directed TV series and feature films including “Eye for an Eye” and “Roadside Massacre”. He is the author of the books “Writing for the Green Light: How to Make Your Script the One Hollywood Notices” and “Introduction to Media Distribution: Film, Television and New Media”. Kirkpatrick lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.