Thread by @Cameron_Fay

On this day 15 years ago, I sold my first #script. I put a hashtag in front of script because I’m not good at Twitter.

Anyway, here’s a long ass thread that probably no one will read about selling that first #screenplay. I did it again. Hope it’s informative or entertaining 🧵

My career has had ups and downs since then, but overall I’ve felt very lucky to be a working writer the last 15 years. Some years were very tough, some were like a dream.

I should warn you, like with many success stories, there’s a fair amount of luck and privilege involved.

How I got reps is actually a long and crazy story in and of itself, so maybe I’ll tell that one another time, but in the early months of 2007, not too long after I graduated NYU, I was repped at mosaic and UTA. The script that got me repped was the 7th I had completed.

It was called UNNATURAL SELECTION. It wasn’t a particularly “high-concept” idea but most who read it found it to be funny and relatable in some way.

My reps planned to take it out wide as a way of introducing me to the town and of course with the hopes of selling it…

On Monday, Feb 26th 2007, my reps sent me a list of about 25-30 producers that they planned to send the script to. This list was still evolving, so they said they’d probably wait one more week before sending it out.

My jaw was on the floor while reading this list.

All of the biggest producers/production companies were on there. This already felt like a huge win. I couldn’t believe my writing was going to be read by people at all these places (even though I kinda knew it’d mainly be read by their assistants).

But that evening, unbeknownst to me, my manager at mosaic slipped the script to Mary Parent, former president of Universal, who now had a deal on the lot. And that night, at 130am, she emailed my manager saying she read it and loved it and had to have it.

On Feb 27th I woke up to her email forwarded to me by my manager. He said, “DO NOT HIT REPLY ALL! This is her email...”

I don’t think my manager understood how a forward worked vs. a bcc, but in any case my heart felt like it was going to fly out of my chest as I read her email.

At one point she said “this is the best script I’ve read all year.” Now, it was only the end of February and I wasn’t sure if she literally meant it was the best script she’s read in the last 2 months or in the last 12 months but either way, i took it as a good thing.

Moments later, my phone rang and it was my manager. He explained that things might be changing quickly for the script and to hang tight and stay by my phone. “You mean the cellphone in my pocket?” “Yeah. Keep it close.” I don’t think he fully got how cellphones worked either.

In any case, later that day, my reps all call saying Mary wants to meet with me tomorrow afternoon.

At the time I was working as a nanny for an actress whose son was 15 years old. We weren’t that far apart in age and were exactly the same in maturity level.

My days usually started at 3pm when I had to pick him up from high school. This is not a joke. So I asked if Mary could meet in the first half of the day. My reps told me I’d meet with Mary Parent whenever the fuck she wanted to meet me and I said yeah of course, totally.

Luckily she could meet at noon the next day. Plenty of time to also pick up the teenager in my charge.

The meeting with Mary and her exec, Alexa Faigen was the kind of thing I’d dreamt about since I was teenager and decided I wanted to make movies.

I was on the universal lot to talk about my script? This is real life?

Mary’s script was printed out, dogeared, written in like mad. The meeting lasted over 2 hours and by the end of it, she not only said she loved the script even more, she said she thought I SHOULD DIRECT IT.

I know this sounds crazy in 2022. It was seriously a different time in 2007. My first thought when she said it was, “nah, there are way better directors.” But thankfully I just nodded and smiled and didn’t talk her out of it.

So I left, hustled over to Santa Monica to pick up the teenager and went to work as a manny. The next morning, March 1st 2007, I was heading to the Sedona Film Festival with my then friend, now wife, Kandis because a short film I we made was playing there.

As we were about to get on the 10 freeway, we pulled over to get some food and use the ATM. While in the parking lot walking to the ATM, my then manager (Ilan Breil) called me:

“This day is about to get very exciting. You ready?” “Yeah, what’s going on?”

“Universal made an offer to option your script. $100k for a 12 month option, but we turned them down.” “Wait what??? Why did you do that??” “Trust me, we can get a lot more. The script is going everywhere right now.” “Just remember I’m a nanny right now. A manny. Just— please—”

“That’s a lot of money man. Maybe we should just take it-” “no, trust me, that’s an insulting offer. Mary’s gonna make Uni come way up. Hang tight. And don’t tell your agents I called you.” He hung up before I could get another word in.

In that moment, in the middle of that parking lot, I said a little prayer. I then went to the atm and took some money out. I had $600 (or so) to my name. My job paid me well, but even then, in LA, with roommates, it was just enough to get by.

So we get in the car and ride for Sedona. I’m staring at my phone all fucking day. I tell my parents that my script is being read by everyone in town. I talk about it with Kandis.

The whole day, my phone doesn’t ring. Not once. I’m testing it to make sure it works.

I’m thinking no one likes my script. We should’ve taken the $100k option. My career is over before it started.

Then, around 530pm or so, my phone rings. We were about to get to Sedona, red rocks all around us. The sun was setting behind us. And the call was from UTA…

I pick up the phone and it’s my whole team, Adam Weinstein, Tobin Babst and my manager Ilan Breil. All of these guys are amazing reps. None are still at their respective companies and I’m not currently working with any of them, but that’s a story for another day.

I love these guys for starting my career, for believing in me when I was just some dumb kid out of school, and I always will.

Tobin took the lead on the call, “this was a a wild day.” Adam and Ilan were chiming in, agreeing.

“So what’s going on?”

There’s a pause. A long fucking pause. My heart is in my stomach and my stomach is making it’s way out my asshole.

Finally, Tobin— “Universal is offering $500k for the script and wants to attach you to direct for another $300k with a $150k kill fee.”

I look over at Kandis and I’m smiling fucking big and giving her a thumbs up while she drives. She’s mouthing “what are they saying??” I’m writing it down as fast as I can, showing her my scribbles which read “$500,000!”

She starts mouthing “holy fuck! Oh my god!”

Tobin continues, “producers all around town have read and are begging for territories. So we can either take the offer from Mary and universal or roll the dice and try to get a bidding war going.”

I honestly don’t think it took more than half a second for me to say, “take the offer. I want to go with universal.” And they said, “we agree.”

I felt a real connection with Mary in that meeting. Maybe that was the whole point of it.

Maybe she wanted me to feel a connection to her so I would take their pre-emptive offer vs. trying to start a bidding war. I don’t know. But i think she really loved the script too.

In any case, I spent the rest of the spring/summer working on rewrites of the script, as they figured out if this would be a “pre-strike” or “post-strike” movie. Sadly, it became the latter.

And at the tail end of the strike, Mary called to tell me she was leaving to go run MGM, but that I’d be in good hands with her producing partner, Scott Stuber.

And in many ways I was.

I had actually also sold a pitch to Universal that summer after a meeting with Donna Langley where she thought something in the set up of my parents relationship could be funny for a high concept romantic comedy.

So when Stuber came on, we started developing the more high concept pitch instead of my spec.

Needless to say, neither movie ever got made. But March 1st will always hold a special place in my heart because it was the day my career as a professional writer started.

There have been ups and downs along the way. I’ve worked on movies that got made but I don’t have credit on them. I have credit on movies that I don’t really like or recognize. I mean, some of my work is in them, but they’re not mine. Not by a mile.

This business is weird. But I feel lucky to have kept working the past 15 years. And I’m more excited about a few projects I have in development right now than I have been in many years. They haven’t been announced yet, but I hope to share more about them soon.

Man, I have no idea if anyone will read this to the end. If you have, I hope it was somewhat informative or interesting. As my friend @unikunka has said many times, it just takes one spec script to change your life.