“In Hollywood, everyone is in the relationship business.”  This is the opening sentence of an excellent article by Patrick Goldstein in the Calendar section of today’s Los Angeles Times, entitled, “How Did These Films Get Made?” 

Mr. Goldstein’s article discusses several movies from 2011 that featured big stars or big directors, but which bombed at the box office.  Goldstein mentions the Jack Black/Steve Martin disaster, The Big Year, the Johnny Depp dud, The Rum Diary, and Clint Eastwood’s, J. Edgar as big movies that earned small returns.  The article poses the question, How did these movies that no one wanted to see get made?  What were the studios thinking when they said yes to these turkeys?

I wanted to include a link to Goldstein’s article.  Unfortunately, The Los Angeles Times website is poorly constructed and difficult to navigate and doesn’t even include this front-page piece by its lead Hollywood columnist from the entertainment section of its own paper.  The omission of this article from latimes.com begs the question, “How did this website get made?”

Back to Goldstein…  “In Hollywood, everyone is in the relationship business.”

What does that statement mean, exactly?  It means that in a business where, as William Goldman famously observed thirty years ago, “Nobody knows anything,” nervous executives at networks and studios would much rather foray into the unknown territory of “what’s going to sell and what isn’t” with people they already know, and especially with people who are already famous.  If a Clint Eastwood or a Johnny Depp movie bombs, no one is going to fire the executive who said yes to Clint Eastwood or Johnny Depp. 

Conversely, network and studio executives are almost universally unwilling to do business with people that they don’t already know or who aren’t already successful or famous.

I have mentioned over and over again on this blog that you, an unknown and untested writer who has never worked on a TV series before and has never sold a script, are not going to sell your spec sitcom pilot to a TV network or production company.  Your excellent, fresh, and original spec sitcom pilot may get you a meeting with a producer or a shot at a staff job on an existing TV series, but, if you have never worked as a writer in Hollywood before, you are not going to leap frog over dozens of successful and famous people who are already lined up to sell their scripts and their ideas to the networks and studios.

Despite all of the times that I have made this same point on this very same blog, I still get an e-mail every couple of weeks from somebody out there in Hinterland asking me how they can sell their spec sitcom pilot to Hollywood.  I assume that the people who send these e-mails do not read this blog, or maybe just don’t believe me.  

I’ll say it again for the zillioneth time: If you are not already a successful writer in Hollywood, you are not going to sell your spec pilot.

Executives in Hollywood may take their chances on a spec script written by David Milch or Aaron Sorkin, because those two writers are already hugely successful.  Executives are not going to even bother to read a script written by someone they have never heard of.  A producer might read your script, or another writer might read your script, or, on rare occasions, an agent might read your script, and, if they love it, they may call you and set up a meeting to discuss your future.  Your spec script may help you to get a writing job in Hollywood.  That is the only reason for writing a spec script.  You don’t write a spec script with the naive hope of selling it, because no one is ever going to pay you money for your spec pilot or episode.  The money for pilots goes to people who are already successful.  “In Hollywood, everyone is in the relationship business.”

You need to be in the relationship business, too.  How do you get into the relationship business?  First, you spend many months writing some excellent spec scripts.  Then, if you don’t already live in Los Angeles, you move here.  Then you work your tail off tirelessly, every day, without complaint, trying to meet people who can help you.  You have to figure out how to meet the people who can help you.  I can’t tell you how to meet the people who will help you because the “how” and the “people” are different for every writer. 

The unknown writers who are going to succeed in Hollywood have already written their excellent spec scripts and have already figured out to meet the people who are going to help them.  They are already in the relationship business.  If you want to be in the relationship business, I suggest you get real and get going.