As my main character from Dig Down Rob Moore would say, “Typical. F###ing Typical.”
I’d started to get success in my screenwriting career, which I hoped to carry the momentum from into achieving more success in my overall writing career. I had gotten some good advice from the people running the Santa Barbara Screenplay Competition, as they would often hold free webinars on Zoom providing solid advice to aspiring screenwriters in the form of recommending going to film festivals to network.
Only now, with the Writers Guild of America, the WGA, going on strike, networking was off the table. If I went against the union while they were looking to negotiate better conditions for current and future screenwriters, and they found out, I would be blacklisted, with no one in the industry willing to work with me ever again.
I didn’t want to lost the momentum I’d attained, but I didn’t know what else to do.
Luckily for me, the Santa Barbara team managing the competition held another free webinar – this time focused on offering advice to screenwriters on what to do during and how to handle the writer’s strike. This was a very welcome and much needed webinar, and I’m sure most, if not all, of the other attendees felt the same way.
This felt like one of the most beneficial webinars they ever held. They provided context to the writer’s strike, both in terms of the issues being negotiated for in this latest strike, but also in a historical context, as they had been through several of these strikes in the past.
They also gave an example of acceptable networking that could be done during this time, namely joining other screenwriters who were protesting. Even if you didn’t have your own signs, you could still find locations where writers would be picketing and join them, to show support, and to get to know other writers.
They also gave some of the best advice, which was simply to keep writing.
While the above was the best advice, the most applicable advice they gave for my purposes was to still attend film festivals. There were warnings that they issued. Under no circumstances could I network, bring up that I was a writer looking to make a deal, or negotiate one in any way. But I could still attend them, just as an attendee.
This was small, but it felt big at the time. Like most of their advice, I think it put all of us aspiring screenwriters at ease, getting a better understanding of what we could and could not do while the strike was ongoing. It allowed me to focus on developing a game plan for this next phase in my screenwriting career.
I had already bought tickets for my first film festival, and now felt confident in going without any issues. Tribeca was going to be the following weekend. There weren’t many tickets left, but I did buy one package to go for the last day of the festival. The hope was that this strike could be resolved quickly, allowing me to then network in one of the biggest film festivals in the world.
There weren’t many film festivals local to me, or without a reasonable driving distance after that. I also didn’t want to commit to going to film festivals every weekend, especially if this strike dragged on. But…there was the Toronto International Film Festival three months later. Another of the big film festivals in the world, and one that was relatively reasonable to get to, especially with three months to plan for. Just like with Tribeca, although the strike was going on now, it could be resolved by then, with three months to reach an agreement.
After an unfortunate setback, I now had a plan in place to carry out for the rest of the year.