Crafty by Alex Epstein

and scornful commentary. If the reader likes it, he might alert a story editor, who brings it to the attention of a development executive, who gives it to a production executive at a studio or a producer at a production company. Once a deal is struck, the production exec or producer sends the script out to a director, who, hopefully, sparks to the material and agrees to direct the script. Then the script goes to stars. Once a big enough star agrees to do the picture, the studio agrees to fund the picture, and we’re off to the races. Your screenplay does not get made into a movie until all of these people say “yes”: the reader, the story editor, the development exec, the production exec, the director, and the star. If the production exec, the development exec, the story editor, or the reader got out of bed on the wrong side that morning, your project is dead at that studio or production company. (If Tom Cruise sends in a friend’s screenplay, then it skips to the top. The production exec reads it and automatically likes it, it gets optioned, and if Tom agrees to star in it, it gets made. More about that in a bit.) A screenplay is a selling tool . It is a salesman for the movie. It sells your story to people you’ve never met, whom you’ll never meet, some of whom are in a permanently bad mood because you can write and they can’t. It has to sell to a reader who’s just out of film school and thinks he knows everything about what makes a great movie. It has to sell to a story editor