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David H. Steinberg Profile picture
David H. Steinberg
@DavidHSteinberg
Executive Producer and Showrunner of the multicam comedy-drama-mystery No Good Nick on Netflix. https://t.co/YyTzgTmYRw
Marian (Kelly) Mangoubi ☘️🇮🇪 Profile picture 1 subscribed
Oct 14, 2022 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Been thinking about the state of the industry lately (as many of us are) and trying to answer the question of whether it’s worse now than ever before. Is it harder to break in than ever before? Is it harder to maintain a career than ever before? I don’t know. It sure seems bad and I certainly don’t think the consolidation of mega corporations has helped to nurture the next generation of creators.
Apr 28, 2022 • 27 tweets • 5 min read
A producer or exec read your material, liked it, and wants to meet with you. Congratulations! Now what? 📜How to take a general meeting. A guide for newly repped writers.📜 When I first started out, no one told me anything so I did everything wrong. Like I-wore-a-suit-to-the-general-meeting wrong.
Apr 26, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Part of not going crazy in this business is keeping your expectations realistic, esp. with how long things take. Say you sign with a new manager and they say I'm going to set some general meetings for you. You think you'll be in that room in two weeks. Here's why it's 3 months.🧵 Make list of producers: 1-5 days
Call/email list, trade calls, connect: 1 week
Send script: 1 sec
Read?: didn't get to it this weekend
Read?: really swamped
Read?: sry oot
Follow up, "client is getting heat" (lie) "I'll read it this w/e" (lie)
Prod. reads script: 1-2 months
Jan 15, 2022 • 19 tweets • 3 min read
I'll bite, w the caveat that I'm not an accountant and although I did take tax law that was 30 years ago so my details COULD BE WRONG. I think I know the general gist of the answer but I'm less confident of my expertise than say which kind of M&Ms are the best (peanut butter) 🧵 Forgot the old days when you would create a C-corp at 200-200K per year+. That's irrelevant. Due to tax law changes the approach these days is to create an S-corp and the threshold is lower.
Dec 29, 2021 • 24 tweets • 4 min read
Some of you know I dabbled in NFTs earlier this year, offering tokens of produced scripts to test my theory that NFTs in scripts are owned by the writers as part of the reserved publication right. I continue to believe that crypto/NFTs can revolutionize the industry. 🧵 I know, I know, I don’t want to be your annoying relative at the Thanksgiving table talking about crypto and bitcoin and NFTs but hear me out and I’ll explain for people who don’t give a shit about any of that crap why this is A GOOD THING for creatives.
Dec 26, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Tomorrow is the start of the My Top Tweets of the Year countdown. As a reminder, here were last year's top three: ▁ ▂ ▄ ▅ ▆ ▇ █ 𝕟𝕦𝕞𝕓𝕖𝕣 𝕥𝕙𝕣𝕖𝕖 █ ▇ ▆ ▅ ▄ ▂ ▁
Dec 10, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Not sure if you all saw this story over Thanksgiving about how car rental companies rent you cars they don't have and then try to charge you 4x the price when you're desperate but I just had a run-in with shady @Avis. nbcnewyork.com/news/local/nyc… I had to go out of town for a competition my daughter was in and rented a car with @Avis. Pick up was noon on Friday two weeks ago. At 10:00am they called saying they had no cars and the reservation was cancelled. I said I have a contract. They said too bad. I was panicked.
Dec 9, 2021 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
I've been fielding a ton of questions in DMs and got this great one from @Theredkeys11 about how to attract a showrunner for your project. I have a lot of thoughts! Image It goes without saying that we have to have a personal connection to the material! Whether it’s the characters, world, or premise, we have to love it enough to go all-in because that’s what it takes to make it through the development gauntlet.
Dec 7, 2021 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
How to interview a potential entertainment lawyer for creatives: First, establish how hands-on they are. Do they review everything personally or do they delegate? Trade-off is expertise vs. speed. Second, what's your tolerance for mistakes. Mine is zero and my lawyer knows that. In other words, type A writer, hire type A lawyer.
Dec 2, 2021 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
Welcome back to our deep dive into your Writing & EP Services contract! We're racing to the end today so briefly ¶14 says this is a work for hire, ¶15 says they're entitled to equitable relief, ¶16 says if they owe you any other money (not sure why they would) it's at WGA scale. ImageImage Link back to page one where it all started:
Nov 29, 2021 • 22 tweets • 4 min read
So you wanna know about deficit financing of television shows and how they're sold into syndication? Okay, your funeral! Read on... How are tv series financed, produced, and licensed in the traditional broadcast tv model? I’m talking about ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CW-- the networks that “air” shows that are regulated by the FCC and you can get them free with an antenna.
Nov 29, 2021 • 26 tweets • 6 min read
Welcome back to our deep dive on your Writing and EP Services Contract. We’re on pages 6-7 today discussing Paragraph 11, CONTINGENT BONUS. ImageImage Here's our link back to page 1 if you're just joining us:
Nov 22, 2021 • 37 tweets • 6 min read
Welcome back to our deep dive into your EP and Writing Services Contract for that show you sold! We're on page 5 and today we'll be discussing ARTICLE 14! This doesn't seem like fun one, but honestly it's the most important discussion of the whole contract. Trust me. Image Here's the link back to page 1:
Nov 17, 2021 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
Welcome back to my deep dive into a Writing & EP Services Contract and welcome to page 3. Paragraph 6, PILOT SERVICES. Networks that make pilots will have a separate provision for your producing services of the pilot episode which may be more or less money that your episodic fee. Image (Link back to the first page of this thread)
Nov 14, 2021 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
This discussion of “rolling it over” reminds me of the maxim Even guaranteed money isn’t guaranteed until it’s in your bank account. And here’s why… Long story short, when things go south they can always ask you to accept less than the guarantee, roll it over, accept 50c on the dollar etc. And as discussed above your ability to say no depends on your relationship and power.
Nov 12, 2021 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
Paragraph 3, DELIVERY (and welcome to page 2 of the contract). Delivery isn't very exciting, it just says "time is of the essence" which is a legal term for "you can't say the dates specified weren't real deadlines." Image Programming note: I've split the thread on purpose. For page one of the contract and the beginning of the thread go here:
Nov 9, 2021 • 24 tweets • 4 min read
You sold a pilot! Congrats! In 2-12 months you'll have a contract (usually-- sometimes there is no contract! They pay you off a COA & only draft the agreement "if it goes"). Want to know what's in it? What's it all mean? Take a deep dive into a WRITING & EP SERVICES CONTRACT! In this thread, I'll post pages from an actual contract (albeit an old one from 2011) and explain what it all means. New paragraphs will be discussed daily!
Apr 25, 2021 • 23 tweets • 5 min read
You’ve heard stories about the 100-day WGA strike in 2007-2008 that paved the way for streaming royalties. But I’m guessing you’ve never heard this story. How one heroic writer stood up to the biggest villain of the entire WGA strike. That’s right, I’m talking about Taco Bell. The strike started on November 5, 2007, and shortly thereafter, Taco Bell decided to lend its support to the striking writers the best way it could think of: by exploiting us for free labor!
Feb 26, 2021 • 63 tweets • 9 min read
“I think it’s ready.”
*panic* I had just turned in my latest draft of Slackers to my agent @JewerlRoss on Thursday, September 9, 1999, and I’m ready for more notes. Something like, “Can you make it funnier?” which was his main note on the last draft.
Jul 20, 2020 • 20 tweets • 4 min read
I haven't done a tv arbitration like that but I can give a bit more info about why tv credits are even more complicated! Pilot arbitrations determine "created by" which trigger (per episode) royalties and backend (in addition to residuals) and can happen if there are multiple writers. But episode arbitration is rare for one main reason: the showrunner.
Jul 20, 2020 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
No, no WGA signatory company can “screw the writer” since credit are determined by the WGA. The companies must abide by the credit rules and when there’s more than one writer vying it does to arbitration (unless they agree). It’s quite complicated but allow me to explain! I’ve been an arbiter dozens of times and even the arbiters get confused. I’m going to first break down how it works and then explain why it matters.