25th Hour: Notes about David Benioff

For 'Hour' writer, rise to fame worth the wait
By JEFF GOTTLIEB Los Angeles Times

Friday, January 10, 2003

Hollywood -- David Benioff once submitted a short story about a computer virus to a well-regarded literary magazine. The editor wrote back, "You have a bright future . . . at Microsoft."

Benioff didn't even bother sending out his first novel. His second try was rejected by 34 publishers -- 20 of them in a single day. Fourteen publishers turned his third novel down, but No. 15 said yes, offering a $7,500 advance.
Now, Benioff is one of the hottest screenwriters in Hollywood, selling scripts for close to $2 million. Filmmakers and studios clamor for his services. The first of his films, the suspense drama "25th Hour," based on Benioff's novel and screenplay and directed by Spike Lee, opens today.

Benioff's odyssey is the kind of true-life fairy tale that stokes the dreams of striving writers.

In the 2 1/2 years since Benioff sold "25th Hour" to Disney, he has cut deals for five other screenplays and is on the verge of a sixth. In the meantime, his literary ambitions have not been forgotten: He has a contract for two novels and a collection of short stories.

After 10 years working as a disc jockey in Wyoming, a high school teacher in Brooklyn and a bouncer in San Francisco, Benioff finds his newfound fame and fortune sweet.

"No doubt I'm a competitive guy," said Benioff, a former high school wrestler. "So many people say no to you as a writer, and there are so few yeses. I hate losing."

Benioff's success isn't based on any proven track record in Hollywood, so when his script for "Stay" sold recently in a daylong auction for $1.8 million, Variety said the price "caused jaws to drop."

What seems to have impressed filmmakers and studio executives about Benioff is his range. Current projects include:

-- "Stay," to be directed by David Fincher ("Panic Room"), a thriller about a psychologist at an Ivy League college trying to prevent a student from committing suicide.

-- "Troy," a retelling of "The Iliad," to be directed by Wolfgang Petersen ("The Perfect Storm") and starring Brad Pitt as Achilles. Filming is expected to begin in April.

-- "Alpha," a military/political thriller that will be directed by Marc Forster ("Monster's Ball"). DreamWorks paid $1.25 million for the rights, and $500,000 more if it's produced.

-- An adaptation of George Pelecanos' mystery "Right as Rain," which Curtis Hanson ("8 Mile") will direct. Benioff is receiving more than $1 million for his script.

-- A remake of "For Whom the Bell Tolls," based on Ernest Hemingway's novel about the Spanish Civil War, for which he will be paid more than $1 million.
Before his Hollywood journey began, Benioff was a self-described "snotty New York novelist guy."

He went to Dartmouth and received a master's degree in Irish literature from Trinity College in Dublin, where he wrote his thesis on Samuel Beckett. From there, it was off to the University of California at Irvine for a master's degree in creative writing; his thesis was the novel, "The 25th Hour."
But even with studio executives asking for his services, Benioff remains insecure.

"I always dread I'll screw up," he said. "I think you can have some success, but you always know you're judged by the last thing you write.

"If anything, it's more profound now. Before there was very little to lose."

Copyright 2003 Journal Sentinel Inc.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
for shotsmag.co.uk

David Benioff arrived in the UK to promote his audacious debut novel 'The 25th Hour' which is described by veteran novelist, George Pelecanos as 'The kind of tough, honest, young-in-New York novel that you're always looking for but seldom seem to find'

A great endorsement for a first novel indeed.

I had the pleasure in meeting up with David during the week, starting with the launch party held in a basement club in Soho. The party was great fun, and as would be expected, packed with people eager to meet this young and talented writer. I especially enjoyed observing the young women 'eyeing up' the dark and handsome New Yorker as he talked modestly about his work. David Benioff is extremely well read, and his film-star good-looks prevent many realising the high level intellect behind his surface polish.

During his week in the UK, David Benioff found himself teamed with our very own John Harvey, US thriller master, Jeffery Deaver as well as the wise-cracking and now chart-topping Harlan Coben, in events staged at Brighton, London, Milton Keynes and Manchester, before returning home to Los Angeles.

Benioff is a native New Yorker, now relocated to Los Angeles due his involvement in an array of Hollywood Projects. He worked in various eclectic jobs including a stint as a night club bouncer, but he continued selling his articles and short stories in GQ, Seventeen, and Zoetrope. Things changed when he got 'The 25th Hour' published as a novel, and then followed the sale of the film script to Hollywood for $1.8m. Filming started in May this year, with Spike Lee at the helm, and Ed Norton starring as Monty Brogan - the young, hip, would-be gangster on his last night of freedom before he is incarcerated in prison for drug dealing.

I found David Benioff a very modest and articulate writer, and one that is sitting on the barbwire divide that separates the 'crime novel' from the so-called 'literary novel'. What I found refreshing is David's lack of concern at being labelled 'a crime-writer' when others may have preferred the 'literary' label, especially considering his classical education.

However you wish to classify David Benioff, be it 'crime writer' or 'literary novelist', you really must read 'The 25th Hour'. It is a remarkable character-driven narrative detailing the final taste of freedom by Monty Brogan, a young New Yorker, forced to re-evaluate his life due to the shadow of prison bars that darken Brogan's door on this cold winter night in New York.

Q Thank you for taking time out of your hectic schedule to talk to Shots Magazine.

A No problem, glad to be here.

Q Can you tell us a little about how you started writing as you had short stories published in various magazines?

A Ever since I was a kid I think I wanted to be a writer, even in second grade I wrote poetry. It was either that or wanting to play for the New York Yankees.

Q ‘The 25th Hour’ reads more like a novella how did it become a novel?

A It was actually the third book I'd written, but the first to get published. The first I never sent out, and the second got rejected by every publisher in America. I remember once getting 30 rejection letters all in the same day, which was rather nice. The one theme of the rejection letters was - 'We like the writing, we like the characters, but it's huge, it's sprawling, it's all over the map.' They were looking for something a little more focused. So I started working on a story that took place in a compressed time frame. In my search for that story, I got thinking about something that could take place in the course of a day or even a night, and finally I came up with the last day of freedom.

Q Another debut novel that explored a similar theme (a last night before consequences are faced) was ‘The Ice Harvest’ by Scott Phillips. It was nominated by the Crime Writers’ Association as a Debut Dagger plus shortlisted on the Gold and Silver Dagger Award. Are you familiar with the book?

A Yes I am. In fact Scott Phillips is a friend of mine, he lives near me in Los Angeles and we've read together at bookstore events. He's a very good guy and a very smart writer . I remember talking to him once and he gave me a really great piece of advice which is very clever. We were talking how well you have to know your characters before you can write the book, and he said to me - 'I think is important to know what your characters grandparents did for a living. But the reader doesn't have to know'. That is a really good tip, as you really do have to know the background, but you also have to know how much information you should share with the reader.

Q A nice segue into your own characters or Monty Brogan, Jakob Elinsky, Slattery and, of course, Kostya the Russian.

A The only character that is based on a real living being in the book is Doyle -The Dog. Doyle appears in the first scene of the book, being rescued by Monty from the Westside Highway in New York. In Los Angeles I did live with a woman for a couple of years who actually did rescue a pit-bull from the side of a road - a dog named Olive, and Olive was a Bitch not a Dog, but aside from that, the dog was essentially the same character. The other characters….well there aren’t really human beings that inspired these characters, well not any one person in reality, they are more amalgams of people I know. Monty was that Character that everyone knows, you know, growing up in New York, he's the guy who when he walks into a room, he'd be the guy that everyone turned to look at. He's the guy that's got that magnetic personality, presence and charisma - that always interested me, like in high school, the guy who's the great basketball player, the guy who's good with all the girls. I think when things come easy to you, you look for the easy way out, and Monty is that guy, things have come naturally to him, things have come easily for him, so one of the pitfalls he falls into, is looking for the easy dollar.

Q We've heard about two other projects that you are involved in. Firstly that David Fincher is working with you on your screenplay 'Stay' and that you've been commissioned to adapt George Pelecanos’ 'Right as Rain' into a screenplay.

A Hey where'd you hear that?

Q We'll we have our sources (laughing)

A Yes (laughing) very impressive…

Q Pelecanos is a big hero of mine.

A Me too, George is a huge hero of mine, aside from being one of the best writers in the game. Way before anyone had read my book (The 25th Hour), he read it and blurbed it, which for an unknown writer is a great thing. To have one of the masters of the genre giving you his stamp of approval was amazing. I'm also a big Elmore Leonard fan. In my opinion he is the American Master when it comes to dialogue. I got my Masters actually in Irish Literature at Trinity College Dublin where I wrote my thesis on Samuel Beckett, so Beckett is probably the writer I studied the most thoroughly, in fact he's the one writer that I've pretty much ready everything he's written (that's available). So although I would never attempt to write like Beckett, he is still is like the grand master to me.

'Right as Rain' is a terrific book and there is a lot of interest in Hollywood right now. Curtis Hanson ('L.A. Confidential') is talking about filming it so you can see it could be a fantastic movie.

'Stay' with David Fincher ……Well Fincher is probably the smartest man I've met in Hollywood, he's a brilliant guy. I've been meeting with him once a week, for like three hours each week, and it's been a little like film education. Part of the time we talk through 'Stay' but part of the time we talk about Hitchcock. Listening to David Fincher talk about Hitchcock is worth more to me than any graduate education in film could ever be. It is one hell of an experience.

Q So what’s next - are you going to work with screenplays or novels?

A A little of both, in fact I'm currently adapting Homer's 'The Iliad' for Warner Brothers, which is basically a retelling of the entire Trojan Wars.

Q Wow…That is brilliant ! I studied 'The Iliad' in my youth…amazing.

A Yes it is brilliant, it was also one of my favourite stories too.

Q How did it come about ?

A Basically I walked into Warner Brothers and I pitched. The basic pitch was 'How come nobody's ever made a movie of 'The Iliad' it's like the great epic of Western Literature?' Particularly in the wake of 'Gladiator' which has revitalised the 'Sword and Sandal' type of picture - showing that these types of movies can still make money. People in Hollywood are not too familiar with 'The Iliad' but that’s what I'm working on right now, and my next novel should be out in about two years.

A Thanks, and we appreciate you taking time out to talk to SHOTS and we wish you great success for 'The 25th Hour' as well as your future ventures, and enjoy your stay in the UK.

A Thank you Ali

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
questions by BBC.uk

We were inundated with questions for top Hollywood screenwriter David Benioff, so thanks for all your efforts. Read on for David's thoughts on Edward Norton's hairline, why he owes his career to Spider-Man, and how getting mugged was helpful for writing sword-and-sandals epic Troy.

What is the meaning of the title 25th Hour? Krista van Domburg

Thirteen publishers rejected the novel. After six months and a collection of polite "no's" I figured the book was doomed to a binary existence on my hard drive. But along came an editor named Kent Carroll, who agreed to publish the manuscript. He had one condition: change the title. Kent thought the original title, Fireman Down, would lead people to believe the book was about firemen. Fair point. He suggested The 25th Hour (the book title has a "The"; the movie does not; I don't know why). The story is about a man with one last day of freedom. The 25th hour is the hour between freedom and imprisonment, the hour when life changes irrevocably for one group of friends. But in a 24-hour day, the 25th hour is also the impossible hour, an hour that doesn't exist, that can only be created by the imagination.

How did you find working with (and writing) for Spike Lee and Edward Norton? Did they contribute anything to the screenplay for 25th Hour? Ian Hylands

Both men are extremely intelligent and stubborn. The movie got made because they willed it into creation - when was the last time Disney funded a movie about a convicted heroin dealer? I had met with other directors about the script, and most of them didn't even realise the script was adapted from a novel. When I met with Spike, on the other hand, he had the book in front of him, dog-eared and underlined. Oddly enough, he convinced me to make the script more faithful to the novel. For example, there is a monologue in the centre of the book that I call the F**k monologue. I hadn't even considered using it in the screenplay because it seemed impossible to dramatize. But Spike loved the scene and I wrote it into the script as the F**k montage.

The first time I saw Edward on set he pulled back his hair and showed me his widow's peak. In the book, Monty Brogan has a widow's peak, but I hadn't mentioned it in the script. But Edward so wanted to be in character that he wore a prosthetic widow's peak for the entire shoot.

Spike and Edward both contributed to the script. Several one-liners are Spike's. More importantly, Spike wanted to direct an honest movie about contemporary New York, which meant directing a movie about post-9/11 New York. The novel and first drafts of the script were written before the attack, but the city changed, and pretending nothing ever happened would have been cowardly. Most of the 9/11 references in the film are visual. I wrote a couple of lines but that's basically the work of Spike and his cinematographer, Rodrigo Prieto.

Edward is masterful at improvisation - sometimes he and Philip Seymour Hoffman would deviate from their lines, but it almost always worked because both understood their characters so well. Also, there's a scene near the end of the movie where we see the characters from the F**k montage again. That was Edward's idea.

What experience was the catalyst that led you to writing 25th Hour? Louisa Thorman

Attending the funeral of a friend who died of a heroin overdose, and seeing his dealer a few pews in front of me. Also, going to a party for a guy who was about to begin a prison sentence the next morning. It seemed like such a strange purgatory, the moments between freedom and incarceration. And there's good drama in strange purgatory.

I thoroughly enjoyed 25th Hour when I saw it in New York recently. The American press emphasised that the film concerns life and mood post 9/11 in NYC. Do you feel your original story has benefited or been hindered by moving the plot forward to reflect the new status quo in NY? Nathan Tanner

Thank you, Mr. Tanner. As I just mentioned, I feel it would have been cowardly to avoid the subject. The city changed and there's no use pretending it didn't. That said, I do think the American press focused on the 9/11 aspect of the movie, but the American press focuses on the 9/11 aspect of everything, so why should this story be any different?

25th Hour (the movie) is not about 9/11. But it is about New York City in the months following 9/11, and anyone who lives there (or even spent some time there in those months), knows that 9/11 infected everything.

How do you handle the pressure and the responsibility that comes with adapting The Iliad - one of the most important books in literature? Mirtha

I don't type my sentences on an arena's pitch, surrounded by thousands of cheering or booing fans - I don't feel pressure to please a crowd. While working on Troy, I can't think, Oh my Lord, this is the mother of all epics, the cornerstone of Western literature. If I screw it up, classicists around the world will issue a fatwa and assassinate me with bronze daggers.

I can't measure up to Homer. His composition has survived for nearly three millennia and remains the world's most beautiful and mournful depiction of war. But the story of the Trojan War does not belong to Homer. The characters he employs were legendary long before he was born. Dozens of different versions of the War have been told, and my script ransacks ideas from several of them. The script is not, truly, an adaptation of The Iliad. It is a retelling of the entire Trojan War story. So I'm not worried about desecrating a classic - Homer will survive Hollywood.

Other than The Iliad, what sources are you using for the Troy screenplay? Mary

The Odyssey, The Aeneid, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Robert Graves' The Greek Myths and a good detail of critical literature, particularly the work of Bernard Knox, whose introduction to Robert Fagles' superb translation of The Iliad is probably my single favourite work of Homeric analysis.

I was wondering why The Gods of Olympus were excluded from Troy, as they all played a big part in The Iliad. Steph

Troy is an adaptation of the Trojan War myth in its entirety, not The Iliad alone. The Iliad begins with the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon over the slave girl Briseis, nine years into the war. The equivalent scene occurs halfway through my script. Meanwhile, The Iliad ends after Priam returns from Achilles' shelter with his grim cargo - long before the construction of the Trojan Horse, and a good 20 pages before my script ends.

This is a massive story that we're trying to tell in two-and-a-half hours. The narrative is crammed with some of literature's most intriguing characters: Achilles, Hector, Helen, Paris, Priam, Odysseus, Agamemnon, Patroclus, etc. All these characters have to emerge on screen as fully realized human beings. The battle scenes have to mirror the epic confrontations Homer described. The journey of the thousand ships from Greece to Troy has to be depicted. Everything takes times, and we're not making a 12-hour miniseries. We're not making a trilogy of three-hour movies.

There is no such thing as a faithful adaptation. Even when I adapted my own (very slim, very un-epic) novel, I had to eliminate one of my favorite characters, because there simply wasn't enough time to tell his story along with everyone else's. Every adaptation requires that the screenwriter make difficult choices - and in particular, difficult cuts. In the case of Troy, I chose to tell the human story: the story of Helen's love for Paris, of Achilles' epic duel with Hector, of the fatal trap that Odysseus sprung on the Trojans.

The gods do not appear on screen but their presence is everywhere and their influence profound.

What is your take on Helen of Troy? Was she the ultimate bad girl, or a victim of circumstances beyond her control? Cat

Well, neither, really. Tolstoy must have thought about Helen when creating his Anna - a woman famed for her beauty, bored with her marriage, abandoning her home for a dashing but somewhat feckless suitor. If we strictly adhere to the mythology, it would be fair to call her a victim of circumstances, for she was the prize Aphrodite gifted Paris upon being awarded the golden apple. But, as stated ad nauseam above, the gods are not floating about Mt. Olympus in this telling, and there is no deus ex machina. If Helen's will is free, the choice is her own, and the consequences on her own conscience. I think - I hope - that the script doesn't judge her for the choice, but doesn't shy away from depicting the devastation such a choice inflicted on innocent people.

If Troy is well received, do you think there would be any chance of a sequel, maybe in the form of The Odyssey? And would you write the script? Mike Devreux

As this is Hollywood, I'd say if the movie makes money (as opposed to whether it's well received or not), there's an excellent chance for a sequel. So an Odyssey is possible, or the studio could go in a different direction and take on The Aeneid. Either way, I wouldn't want to take myself out of the running prematurely, but currently I'm not keen on the idea.

Do you do any kind of research into the occupations, lifestyles and skills (biography) of your characters before writing up the script? Ame E

Yes. For 25th Hour, I had worked as a high school teacher and those experiences helped me create the character of Jakob. (I'd also worked as a nightclub bouncer, which helped me write the club scenes.) Frank Slattery is a bond trader, so before I wrote his chapters for the novel I spent a day with a friend on a trading floor down in the World Financial Center (one of the smaller buildings formerly adjacent to the World Trade Center). As for Monty, I've known drug dealers since I was 14. Not the gun-toting gangbangers hanging on street corners, but the dealers who sell to white boys like me. Other scripts I'm writing, which deal with environments and characters I've never encountered, require far more research.

Which comes first - characters or story? Tony Bufton

I don't agree with the bifurcation. A story is defined by its characters and characters are defined by their story. Most Hollywood movies start with a simple logline ("OK, terrorists have seized this skyscraper in Los Angeles...") and then generic characters are inserted into the action ("We've got a hothead New York City cop; we've got a nefarious villain with a snooty English accent..."). That's probably why I can't remember most Hollywood movies a week after seeing them.

What do you do to combat the sense of panic that comes with writer's block - or is this something you do not suffer from? Ben Hawtree

Panic doesn't last very long. Given enough time, it morphs into simple fear - and fear is a useful motivator. Writing is my job. Every day I go to the office, sit in front of the computer, and write. Some days are better than others, but every day I get something done. Writer's block, I think, is often the result of a frustrated anticipation for inspiration. But if you're writing for a living, you can't sit around waiting for the goddamn muses. You get your ass in the chair, you turn on the computer, and you write, and if the writing's no good you keep doing it anyway, because that's all you're good for.

I think Shakespeare said that.

I would like to get into scriptwriting and have done a lot of work experience with advertising and TV, but very little with movies. I was wondering how you first got into screenwriting and got yourself known to producers? Robyn Jankel

My path was circuitous and probably not advisable. Over the course of eight years I wrote three novels. The first I never bothered sending to anyone because it reeked. The second I liked, but publishers did not. Thirty-four of them rejected it. I didn't even know there were 34 publishers in America. But one good thing did result from this disaster - I got an agent. The third novel finally sold and became The 25th Hour. Before the book was published, my agent sent the galleys around Hollywood. Somehow Tobey Maguire got his hands on it. He read it, he liked it, he called me in for a meeting. I'd never met a movie star before Maguire. I was nervous. But we had a good conversation, and following that talk, he and his producers hired me to write the adaptation. That job allowed me to quit teaching freshman composition. In other words, I owe my career to Spider-Man.

Writers are often told the best way to write is to write from your own experience. Do you agree? Philip Meikle

Well, I haven't strapped on a bronze shield in recent memory. I think the old truism, "Write what you know," is too often misinterpreted as "Write your life story". For me, the fascination of fiction lies in the imagination. Stories allow us to experience other lives from other points of view. Still, everything I write is informed by personal experience. So while I've never lifted a sword in anger, I did have knives pulled on me three times growing up in Manhattan. I remember my thoughts when I saw the points of those knives and I'm able to draw on those memories when describing a character walking towards an angry man with a sword. Which isn't to say that anything in my life would prepare me to battle Menelaus on the fields of Troy, but is to suggest that we've all experienced fear, love, hatred, and desire. The circumstances may be radically different, but the basic human emotions run true through history and geography. I think the best short story I've written is about Russian soldiers in Chechnya. I'm not Russian, I'm not a soldier, and I've never been to Chechnya.

How do you structure your writing day? I am a struggling scriptwriter who just wondered if you had any advice. Liz Hill

My writing habits are deplorable and I wouldn't advise imitating them. I generally begin typing shortly before midnight and continue until the words on the monitor begin to blur - around 0430, most nights. Occasionally I can write for longer bursts and sometimes I even get work done in the afternoons, but for whatever reason I tend to get sharper as the day progresses. Silence helps. Late at night the phone stops ringing, cars stop honking - all I hear is the whir of the fan and the snores of my dog.

More important than schedule is the importance of writing every day (well, five days a week - writers need weekends, too). Generally I set internal deadlines for myself - I must get to page 100 by Friday, or I must finish that scene in the barroom before I go to bed.

Which is preferable to you - writing novels or writing for the screen? Stephen Walker

I know I'm supposed to answer novels. The culture I grew up in praised novelists as the true littérateurs and condemned screenwriters as the retarded mercenaries of the writing world.

Personally, I don't think there's anything intrinsically sacred about a novel or intrinsically tawdry about a script. Plenty of awful novels jam the shelves of your local bookseller. And a great script - I'm thinking of Jules Pfeiffer's Carnal Knowledge or Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation. - is just as worthy a literary artifact as a play or a novel.

I know, I know - I'm avoiding the question. If it seems that I'm protesting too much, it's because I am, because there is one part of me that feels I shouldn't be devoting so much time to a medium wherein the writer possesses so few powers to protect his writing. But the thing is, I love movies. And more than that, I love the potential of movies. Every time the lights dim at the theater and the projector illuminates the screen, I get excited. Ninety-five times out of a hundred I'm disappointed by the results, but that doesn't stop me from going back for more. Our ability to tell a story with moving pictures grows more powerful with every year, but the vast majority of movie writing is still horrendous. Why? Why do studios pay $200 million for special effects bonanzas featuring moronic dialogue?

OK, I'm cutting the ramble short. I'm sorry, Stephen. The answer to your question is that I enjoy writing both, though I love the authority that a novelist wields over the finished work, and I love the house I live in thanks to the scripts I've sold.

I really enjoyed 25th Hour for the casual narrative voice employed and it was nice to see a teacher who's not mono-dimensional! Besides being determined, what is the best advice you'd give an aspiring writer? Christina Cedillo

Thank you, Christina. My advice is find yourself a good first reader, someone willing to wade through your various drafts, give you the bad news when necessary, and duck when you throw bricks at their head. Also, instead of reading the various books on writing, read real books. I don't know if you're a screenwriter or a novelist or what, but it's far more helpful (and entertaining) to read six good scripts than one lame and dogmatic how-to manual on screenwriting.

When adapting a book, what is the first step after reading the material - especially when the material is so long and has so much depth. How do you decide what to leave out? Lucilla

I think the adapter's job is to find a narrative throughline and excise any material not critical for that narrative's success. That sounds a little surgical, and I suppose it is, but - as your question suggests - the most difficult task is deciding what to cut. In adapting my own novel, I cut a character (LoBianco) because he wasn't essential for the principal journey of the movie. Again, there is very little time in a script.

I sold Troy as a pitch, and the first thing I said in that pitch was, "I am proposing a ruthlessly stripped-down version of the Trojan War, concentrating on the two dominant heroes of either side - Hector and Achilles."

I don't remember the second thing I said in the pitch, because it was my first pitch and I was so nervous I sweated through my jacket.

Having adapted what was originally your debut novel for the screen (25th Hour), how hard did you find the transition from narrative freedom to a more constricting visual form of writing? Or were you always a screenwriter first? James Galvin

I was a fiction writer first (short stories and then novels). Anyway, it's a good question. The constrictions of screenwriting can be frustrating, but once you get the feel for it there's a pleasure to constriction. I've always loved writing dialogue, and a screenplay, obviously, is heavy on dialogue.

What is Stay (your original script) about and were you very surprised that it sold for so much money? Carla Miller

Stay is about a university student who, on a Wednesday, informs his psychiatrist that he plans to kill himself on Saturday. Well, it's about more than that, but I'm not supposed to give anything else away. Regarding the money, God yes. Not surprised - paralyzed with shock. When I got that phone call I lay down on the floor of my apartment. Standing had suddenly become too difficult.

What advice would you give to an aspiring screenwriter in terms of getting the completed script sold? Elena Duff

Selling a script without an agent is next to impossible. So get an agent. How? I wouldn't bother sending a script to an agency in the hopes someone will read it - that's a miracle on par with an actress getting discovered in a drugstore. First of all, exploit any contacts you have. Your sister's boyfriend's uncle is a hotshot at William Morris? Great - send him a script. Your old screenwriting teacher still has some connections in the business? Hassle your ex-teacher into reading your script. If that sounds obnoxious and pushy, well, it is.

In the absence of any plausible connections, condense your script into a brief (that means less than a page!) synopsis, copyright the synopsis (and/or register it at the Writers Guild) and send it off, with a cover letter, to various agents. If they're intrigued by your story, they'll want to read the script. If not, screw 'em. Move on. I could paper the walls of my house with the rejection letters I got for my first two novels and my first 50 short stories. There are a thousand No's for every Yes, but all you need is one Yes to begin a career.

Thank you for your questions and thank you for reading my answers.