Suddenly I had something to say, and I had characters who wanted things and weren’t afraid to be vulnerable about their failures.Ĭharacters who weren’t afraid to admit that maybe they needed to make some changes if they were ever going to be happy. It got me a new manager and he got me a bunch of new generals. That relatability reinvigorated why I cared about writing. This didn’t actively make my writing better, but it did make it relatable. They thought one thing would make them that way, and throughout their journeys realized that maybe life was a little more complicated with that. Then I got really weird, and I started writing screenplays about characters who wanted to be happy.
I started waking up every day and thinking about happiness.Īnd every night, before I went to bed, I asked myself if what I did that day made me happy. What happened was… My Pursuit of Happiness I wish I could tell you there was a magic way I got happy, or that I sold a million dollar spec and gained some perspective on life. I was getting better at writing, but not everything I had come up with was commercial or even viable in the marketplace. I was still struggling to be the person on the call sheet bringing in money. I was still being asked to do free work by influential producers. I had movie at SXSW.īut I also was still doing odd jobs and uncredited rewrites to pay the rent. Later that night I washed my face and stared in the mirror. It was a good answer, if you like a surface-level analysis of happiness. I talked about how I knew Hollywood was a grind, and that a lot of “breaking in” wasn’t about one success, but the struggle to keep the successes coming. I put ideas on the page that people valued. I wasn’t sure how to answer, and wasn’t sure if I ever had to think about my life in this way. And the precocious guy behind it asked: “You’ve talked a lot about Hollywood and living in Los Angeles, and I just wanted to ask you.are you happy?”įor a moment I stuttered. Make connections that can pass your script up the ladder.īut then another hand went in the air. I was in the Q&A part of my lecture, and I was getting the typical questions. I was Skyping into a class at Boston University, my Alma Mater, and the class was winding down. But I want to tell you about how I had to encounter that dream head-on recently, and what I learned from that experience.Īmong my side jobs, I teach a lot of screenwriting courses. Still, I can call myself a writer, and I always thought that would be the dream. Other years I do a ton of side jobs to make ends meet.
I have been writing professionally since Shovel Buddies sold in 2015. who is happy? Sounds improbable even by Hollywood standards.
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