[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: How did you go from reading screenplays for free to getting hired to be a script reader?
Andrew Zinnes, Author/Senior Teaching Fellow/Script Doctor: Right. That job I was talking about, working for that producer, that first thing that cracked me into the system, that I was reading them for free.
I was an intern in my mid-twenties. It was a foot in the door, right?
Then I got the job with Norman Lear and that’s when I was sort of being paid to read scripts.
That was one of my main jobs besides administrative duties of being an assistant to a producer or vice president at a production company, that was one of my main remits was to read scripts.
Many years down the road after working for several production companies and networks and things like that I switched over to the dark side and became a writer myself.
As a way to pay the bills, I offered my vast knowledge of story theory to be a script reader, I’ve worked for various companies like Script Shark, I don’t even know if they’re still around anymore?
I would go over to their offices, pick up a load of scripts that people wanted covered or get notes on and I would read them and have to turn them around in a week or a few days.
I would have to give them my thoughts on what they could do to make it better.
Film Courage: As an intern, you’d gone to film school, flown from the [Washington] DC area to LA and you were doing an unpaid internship?
Andrew: Yeah.
Film Courage: May I ask were you doing any moonlighting to pay the bills? How does one do that in an expensive city like LA?
Andrew: What I was predominantly…the temping was really how I made my money.
Yeah, it wasn’t glamorous at all. I’d signed up with like three or four of them. I assume they’re still around? But I had to sign up with them and call in every morning and say,
“Do you got anything?” And then they would say they…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).
About:
Andrew Zinnes is Senior Teaching Fellow at the University of Portsmouth, UK. He has worked in development at Paramount Pictures and at USA Networks. He left to become a script analyst, and worked for Morgan Creek Productions, Artisan and several script analyst companies. Using his documentary filmmaking experience, Andrew was the perfect co-author for The Documentary Film Makers Handbook. He has taught documentary at the NY Film Academy and has lectured on filmmaking at schools and colleges around the US. He is a founding partner of the film company Crazee Pictures.
CONNECT WITH ANDREW ZINNES
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