[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: How can a screenwriter make the distinction between a Hollywood ready idea and one that isn’t good enough?
Mike Thompson, Screenwriter/Script Consultant: Isn’t good enough…well you know it’s interesting, when I talk to people that are that are interested in my experience and what I have to offer, I always make it clear up front:
Are you trying to write a movie that you want to sell to Hollywood?
Or
Are you trying to write a movie that perhaps is indie faire or something else?
Because they are completely different animals. While I have dabbled in indie faire, I did a little independent horror movie years and years ago, it is a world that I am not expert in but I can tell you how and what you need to do to try and write a script that you will sell to Hollywood for a movie that will hopefully have a wide release in the theaters and be seen by millions of people.
That’s what I was drawn to because as a kid those are the movies I went to and those are the movies that I’m inspired by and those are the movies that I tend to write.
The biggest component in those types of movies and for people one of the biggest mistakes I see young writers making is I had a professor at film school who had a wonderful remark which was:
Real life is no excuse…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).
About:
Mike Thompson is a veteran Hollywood writer/producer, perhaps best known for his feature films, Dragonfly, starring Academy Award-winner, Kevin Costner, and Love Happens, featuring Emmy-winner Jennifer Aniston. He also co-created and was a showrunner of the FOX television series, John Doe, starring Dominic Purcell, and co-wrote and produced the indie horror film, Choose, starring Academy Award-nominee, Bruce Dern. In the documentary realm, he executive produced the multi-award-winning feature, A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar, and appears as himself in the cult classic award-winner, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. In addition to his produced credits, he is uniquely distinguished for having written and sold dozens of high-profile spec scripts, pitches and teleplays to nearly every major Hollywood studio, including multiple seven-figure deals and at one point, the “highest-paying scripter deal ever” ~ Variety. He has collaborated on projects involving the likes of Tom Cruise, Denzel Washington, Johnny Depp, George Clooney, Will Smith, Edie Falco, Chris Pine, Michael Keaton, Richard Gere, Academy Award-winning director Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump), and presently, blockbuster producer Jerry Bruckheimer (Top Gun: Maverick). Upon graduation from film school at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Mike began his career at Paramount Pictures, where he worked as an assistant to Academy Award-winning producer, Scott Rudin (No Country for Old Men), and subsequently for legendary producer, Larry Gordon (Field of Dreams), who set up Mike’s very first spec script sale at Walt Disney Studios. Mike lives and works in the mountains outside of his hometown of Seattle, near the U.S. military’s decommissioned Nike “missile site” where, as a kid, he cut his teeth on his first camcorder short films, thus inspiring The Missile Site Blog.
CONNECT WITH MIKE THOMPSON
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