Screenwriter John Logan's Keys To Success In Hollywood
John Logan, the A-list screenwriter growing so powerful that his agents wrangled him a contract provision stating he'd receive the sole screenplay credit on The Aviator, offers some helpful tips on how to survive the business in the NY Times:
1) Smile and pretend to respect a producer's insane note about how Howard Hughes really could've used a talking dog:
"You just want to bang your head against a wall," said Mr. Logan, whose next venture is an adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's musical "Sweeney Todd" for the director Sam Mendes ("American Beauty") and DreamWorks. "But I raise my notepad up and take notes, and I get past it. That's what you have to do. You hold your notepad like a shield in front of you and you take down ridiculous notes."
2) Rewrites are for bitches. Ditch rewrite and punch-up work the minute your agent actually starts to return your calls:
"Gladiator," with 5 Oscars and 12 nominations, put Mr. Logan on Hollywood's A-list. But it left him yearning for the control he enjoyed as a playwright, and he resolved to reclaim it. As he explained in a court deposition on June 9, 2004: "I've done rewrites, like, earlier in my career, and didn't like doing rewrites and haven't done one for years before that and haven't done one since."
3) And, of course, stay humble. No one likes an uppity writer:
"Call it tenacious, call it lucky, call it ambitious, call it fortune smiling on me, but I've had really good experiences," Mr. Logan said of his Hollywood career in a recent interview.
