[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Mike Thompson, Screenwriter/Script Consultant of TheMissileSite(dot)com: This is actually a story that resonates when people are struggling and trying to make it. I always tell them this story and it was about the script Dragonfly.
We wrote this script. Well, it’s funny, I mean it’s just a journey of discovery as a screenwriter. I remember the first script that I ever sold was for like $125,000. It was because my boss, I was an assistant at the time, I gave him the script because I wanted his help to maybe getting an agent.
To my shock he walked in the next morning and said I like your script. I think I’m going to buy it. And he made one phone call to Joe Roth that was the head of Disney at the time. I placed the call for him and sure enough, they had a conversation that I wasn’t privy to. The next thing I know, Disney bought the script.
What I later concluded was I was kind of long in the tooth for an assistant at that point, I was 25. I think my boss kind of wanted to move me out and that this was actually just an excuse that he gave to be able to do that and called in a favor with an old buddy.
To this day I think that’s actually what that was but it didn’t matter because we were on our way right. Once you get behind the secret knock to the door, you’re in and you have that confidence Okay, this can be done right and now let’s try and do it again.
We had a couple more bites at the apple at that level. We sold this silly comedy to Paramount and we were still fumbling in the dark trying to find our voice, trying to figure out who we are, what are we trying to say, what do we want to make movies about. We were at that point I think kind of just attempting to sell scripts and attempting to get a foot in the door and be viable in some way in this movie business that we had both watched as spectators while working for big producers and seeing how it worked.
We still hadn’t quite become writers with a voice if you will. When we got to the point of selling…(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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