Here at the Austin Film Festival for a few days, for the Screenwriter's Conference. I was last here ten years ago, and was seriously discouraged enough to focus on putting together a kind of day career that would allow me to get me out of debt. Ten years ago, it seemed that every panelist or presenter said, "99% of the scripts I read suck." It was as though they had had a pre-conference meeting, because no one said, "The majority of the scripts I read are bad," or "Almost everything I read is sub-par." No, everyone said "99%" and everyone said "suck."

The larger problem, this year (although, the first panel I attended? "Suck" was uttered two minutes in) is that no one is buying anything. Producers, managers, agents and executives who have made time to attend can best be described as "cautiously realistic." No one is buying anything, and even if they were, they would be buying only comedies and thrillers. I finally snagged one agent long enough to say, "Talk about drama."

"Drama is tough."

"I know. So please validate this. If I wrote `The Lovely Bones' as an original spec screenplay, it would never get made. The only way it's getting made is because it's a literary property to begin with and they adapted it."

He agreed. I have long played with the idea of returning to my script "Wildflowers of the West" and writing it as a novel. I don't know how I will find time to do this, since I am at work on another novel, and the unfortunate focus I put on my day career has resulted in very limited hours for sleep, let alone living a creative life. I realize this is a luxury problem, when so many people, many of them my friends, are unemployed.

Austin in the meantime is the great city it has always been. I haven't been able to see many films; today, only a series of shorts in lieu of attending yet another panel to hear the advice "Believe in yourself." I was standing in line for "Precious" when I realized that I would be standing in line for another hour and a half for a film which would be opening in New York very soon, and I was better off spending time with an old friend who happened to be in town.

Off now to find some barbecue and attend at 10:15 screening of a film with a promising premise. Stay tuned.

Labels: Austin, screenwriting contests, Wildflowers of the West

posted by Elizabeth at 9:41 PM