I’ve been writing screenplays for decades, but I have yet to sell one. I’ve had some close calls, and I’ve been hired to do assignments, but I’ve never sold a spec…
…SO far.
Instead, I keep at it, in spite of an annoying pattern that should have put me off of writing forever. It’s a pattern that all writers can relate to; every scribe I’ve ever spoken to has similar stories to tell.
The pattern? Good idea, bad timing. Let me cite a few examples…
In the early 1990s I decided that, since I loved the Universal horror movies and there hadn't been a serious Dracula movie since the 1979 John Badham version (which I loved), I would write one (and yes, I’m aware that Dracula was a leading character in 1987’s Monster Squad).
My bright idea was to make it like 1958’s It! The Terror From Beyond Space or 1979’s Alien (which I always felt was kind of a big-budget remake of the low-budget 1958 film) with a monster terrorizing people in a confined space. So naturally, I thought: why not write an entire script just about Dracula's voyage from Transylvania to England? I used the chapter in Bram Stoker's novel that detailed the doomed voyage of the Demeter as a jumping-off point, but added a woman and her child into the mix; they come under Dracula's spell as he slowly decimates the crew (an idea inspired by the Candice Bergen-Sean Connery relationship in 1975’s The Wind and the Lion).
I finished the script in 1991, and sent it to an agent at the Gersh Agency whom I had briefly worked for as an assistant. And right at that time, it was announced in Variety that Francis Ford Coppola was making a new version of Dracula (released a year later as Bram Stoker’s Dracula, from a script by James V. Hart, who began writing it in 1977), so the agent felt there’d be no interest in another Dracula script for some time.
After some years had passed, I thought of putting the script out again as a potential cable movie, or even turning it into a novel. Then in 2012 I heard about the novel Dracula's Demeter and the film adaptation of it that was in the works; since that time I also keep hearing about the potential The Last Voyage of the Demeter, a film which has been in pre-production for years. So my script sits on a bookshelf in my apartment unread and unrealized, alongside another example…
In the mid-1990s, a couple of years after the Dracula disappointment, I wrote a script about 1920s Arctic explorers, based on a true story. I thought Matthew McConaughey would be great for the lead role and had a producer friend get the script to him. He liked it, but felt he was a bit young at the time to play the lead character, who was in his 40s (a decade older than McConaughey at the time), so he passed. But he did say he'd be open to seeing more of my work, so thinking about what kind or role would be appropriate for his persona, I wrote a script about an Evel Knievel-type motorcycle daredevil. Just as I finished it, I read in Varietythat the next film from Rob Cohen, director of Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, would be a biopic about Evel Knievel..... and attached to star was Matthew McConaughey.
When a few years had passed and that film hadn't gotten off the ground, I thought okay, let's rewrite the script and try it as a Showtime or HBO movie. And just as I finished the rewrite, I read that TNT was doing a TV movie about Evel Knievel starring George Eads, which did get made.
Again, right idea, bad timing - twice.
And then there was that time that I thought a movie about tornado storm chasers would be a good idea, until this guy named Spielberg announced his next project would be a film called Twister...
These are just a few examples. There have been others. Many others. And I know it’s not just an isolated phenomenon that happens only to me. Some years ago, one of my friends had an idea about the toys of a child that come to life and experience all kinds of adventures when the kid is out of the room. No sooner had they told me about it than Pixar’s Toy Story was released. And one of my bosses at Nelson Entertainment was working on a spec animated musical about ants, until… well, you know.
So what’s going on here? Is every screenwriter’s home/apartment/phone in Los Angeles and vicinity bugged so execs can steal their ideas?
It's one of those things about which I used to warn my scriptwriting students: there are certain ideas that just simply ride the zeitgeist, floating through the air like radio waves, and as writers, we always have our story antenna up, so it's not uncommon that several different writers will tune in to the same - or a similar - idea.
That’s how competing King Kong remakes were announced almost simultaneously in the mid-1970s (Universal’s was put on the back burner, while Dino DeLaurentiis’s became one of my guilty pleasures). A couple of father/son body-switching movies were also released around the same time (Like Father, Like Son in 1987, Vice Versa in 1988), and two Robin Hood movies competed in the early ‘90s (Kevin Costner’s made it to theaters, while Patrick Bergin’s went to Fox TV), and so on and so forth.
I could give a dozen examples of how I've begun developing ideas or even written full scripts only to learn that an almost identical project has been sold or gone into production. You’d think it might be discouraging, but I love writing too much to give up just because synchronicity exists.
I find some comfort in this thought: my instincts are good, only my timing is lousy.
So far…
Bruce Scivally has worked as an editor, producer, writer, director and even special effects assistant on music videos, TV specials, feature films and documentaries.
He worked in the business affairs departments of Nelson Entertainment, Sovereign Pictures and Cinergi and is the author of the books Dracula FAQ, Billion Dollar Batman, Superman on Film, Television, Radio and Broadway and co-author of the book James Bond: The Legacy with John Cork. Currently, he is one of the producers of The Miracle Show for Questar Entertainment.
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