How To Make It In Hollywood Before You Make It: The Documentary Screenplay

By Christopher C. Odom

FADE IN:

ext. Hollywood sign – day

int. interview room

SUPER

CHRISTOPHER C. ODOM, The Executive Producer

CHRISTOPHER

How to make it in Hollywood before you make it? 

(laughs) 

Interesting question. I went to a big film school and it was great. There were studio chairmen of major studios that taught courses, there were presidents of major agencies taught courses, but at the end of the day, all I had was a warm feeling inside and a really cool frame to stick on my wall.

And what I realized was, although these really powerful men could tell us what it’s like working with Tom Cruise and Bruce Willis, they really couldn’t tell me how to make it in Hollywood before I make it. They really didn’t know how to make it today. When they made it, there was no VCR, there was no cable, there was no cell phone, there was no internet.

(more)

CHRISTOPHER (cont’d)

All of these are things that you use today to make it in Hollywood. I decided to put together a project that would tell people how you can make it in Hollywood today, with people that are relevant, people that are much closer to people like you and me that are in various stages in their career: just about to break out, or maybe they just broke out, or even hopefully they might break out; how to make it in Hollywood before you make it.

FADE OUT:

SUPER OVER BLACK

Who are you?

INT. INTERVIEW ROOM

SUPER

BEVERLY NEUFELD, Screenwriter

BEVERLY

My name is Beverly Neufeld. I am this many years old.

(waves three fingers)

I write screenplays.

(jokes)

And many writers don’t think that they can call themselves a screenwriter until they’ve gotten paid for it and I have so now I can say I’m a screenwriter. Well, besides

(more)

BEVERLY (cont’d)

reading scripts, my first paying gig was to rewrite a script about children who built a monument against the atomic bomb. I got it kind of soon after graduating from school.

SUPER

KEN COSBY, Screenwriter/Actor/Comedian

KEN

Hi, I’m Ken Cosby. I’m a screenwriter, actor, standup comedian and jazz musician. I teach screenwriting at USC, currently which I’ve been doing that since 1996 and most recently booked a gun control PSA directed by Scott Hicks who directed the movie “Shine” as I played an OG thug.

It’s been working out actually relatively good except for the fact that I have a tendency to book thug roles all the time.

And when most people meet me, they says, “You’re the furthest thing away from thug I can possibly imagine,” and then they see my reel and they’re like, “How can you do that?” 

It’s like well, because I’ve always patterned myself out mainly concentrating on character work more than anything else, so it gives me a lot of range.

SUPER OVER BLACK 

ANNIE LEE, Actor/Producer

ANNIE

My name’s Annie Lee and I’m an actor and I guess slash producer. Me and my dad and my sister, we have an independent production company called Prime Media Pictures and we just finished an independent film called “Close Call” and basically I was the lead actress in it.

It was pretty much like a family affair, so I was pretty much like one of the producers. And while we were shooting, if I wasn’t shooting I’d be doing like everything else, too.

SUPER 

LANCE MOSELEY, Actor/Producer/Comedian

LANCE

Hi, I’m capital L, capital A, lower case n-c-e, LAnce Moseley, originally, from a small town outside Akron, Ohio. I kind of wear a bunch of different hats. I have danced in the NBA for the Atlanta Hawks doing halftime shows dressing up like a NBA referee, going out into the dance floor and doing dance routines, stripteases.

LANCE (cont’d)

I’ve done standup comedy. I’ve had my own TV show on the Playboy Channel, hosted E! Entertainment’s “Wild On” out in Park City, Sundance for the film festivals, a bunch of smaller just here and there acting gigs. Hosting kind of is my predominant thing.

SUPER

YOLANDA CRUZ, Producer/Director

YOLANDA

My name is Yolanda Cruz. I’m from Oaxaca, Mexico. I’m a producer/director. I always have been involved in the sort of performing world, you know, nothing professional, but I always thought that I had something to say. And I had done a lot of community work and I was doing theater to communicate some of my ideals and I did photography, I did writing, and then I got into filmmaking and it just came out very naturally.

SUPER

O2, Musician

O2

As an artist, I would have to describe myself as obviously being creative because that’s something that you just have to tap into as an artist.

O2 (cont’d)

You have to be able to release yourself as a person to achieve what you want to do artistically, and a lot of times that means stepping away from a project, that means distancing yourself from a project in terms of not making it as personal as you would want it to be.

Now sure, you have to do that usually at the beginning or during the actual process of making the project, but once you get to that point, it would behoove you to actually step back and look at it from a third person point of view to see what things you can do better. I should say to improve the project if it can be improved, and if it can’t, then you learn something new and you move on and take the experiences that you’ve learned from that and apply it to new applications that you would be using in the future.

SUPER

NESSA LAVERTY, Actor/Singer/Dancer

NESSA

Nessa.

(laughs)

I’m from Ottawa, Canada. I’ve been in Los Angeles for just over five years now and I am an

(more)

NESSA (cont’d)

actress, a singer and a dancer. Well, it was kind of like a transitional period for me when I first moved to LA. I came out here as a dancer initially. I was trained as a dancer all my life. I did take theater in university, it was my minor, but dancing was the pursuit of my initial intention.

So the acting sort of just came as an accident. I had to fill in for somebody at the last minute in a play and I sort of got hooked. I really enjoyed the experience and so I decided to get into classes. And the connections I’ve made in the dance world have sort of, you know, fell over into the acting world.

SUPER

AUGUSTINE L. CAVANUAGH, A.K.A. “Auggie”, Actor/Screenwriter

AUGGIE

Augustine L. Cavanaugh III, better known as Auggie. I’m an actor, but I also have been and hopefully will be a stuntman, model, and I’ve dabbled into writing now, screenplays. I’ve got a short story actually in the works and I collaborated with a friend on a feature length film script called “Fast Life” which is loosely based on my life.

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Christopher C. Odom is an Award-Winning Writer, Director, Producer and Author who earned his Master of Fine Arts in Screenwriting from the University of California, Los Angeles. An Associate Member of the Writers Guild of America, west Independent Writer’s Caucus, Christopher has won numerous screenwriting and filmmaking awards. His work has been nationally televised and screened in cities worldwide, including Tel Aviv, Berlin and Cannes.

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