SCREENWRITER: Howard Casner (Los Angeles , California)
Q: Howard...when did you write your first
screenplay?
A: In 2001, when I first moved to Los Angeles
Q: To date, approximately how many
screenplays have you written?
A: I have written six screenplays, a TV pilot and one short on
my own. I have co-written three screenplays and one TV pilot.
Q: Which screenwriting competitions
have you entered and seen through to a final result?
A: I suppose
the easiest way to answer this question is as follows:
Q: My
screenplay Revelation made finalist in the 2007 Screenplay Festival
Competition.
My
screenplay Rough Trade made semifinalist in the 2007 Extreme Screenplay
Competition; quarterfinalist in the 2007 ScreenwritingExpo Competition;
quarterfinalist in the 2009 Champion Screenwriting Competition; and
semifinalist in the Outfest Writer’s Lab.
My
screenplays Rough Trade and Welcome to L.A. both made the top
twelve in the 2011 Great Gay Screenplay Competition and Welcome to L.A. made
the top five.
My
screenplay Mel and the Adventures of Sad Man made the second round of
the 2013 Outfest Screenwriting Lab.
My
screenplay, The Last Tree Standing Motel, made finalist in the 2014
London Film Awards Screenplay Competition; finalist in the 2015 Glendale Film
Festival Screenplay Competition; semifinalist in the 2015 All Access Screenplay
Competition; semifinalist in the 2015 Page Screenplay Competition; semifinalist
in the 2015 Austin Film Festival Competition.
My pilot The Dead Letter Office is a
quarter-finalist in the most recent PAGE Screenplay Competition.
Q: Approximately how many
screenplays did you write prior to entering your first competition?
A: I began entering contests with Revelation, my first screenplay .
Q: Did the competition(s) offer
feedback—notes, critique, etc.—on the script(s) you entered? If so, what was
the quality of the feedback?
A: Very rarely. When they did, the quality was fine, but the
closer you get to the final rounds, the more conventional I sometimes think the
judges are. For example, the most interesting feedback I ever received
was for the same screenplay but in two different contests. One was official
feedback, sent to me by the contest. The other was unofficial and off the record, which I got through someone I just happened to meet. My screenplays often tend to follow a certain pattern: I
introduce a question, usually an absurd one (like Waiting for Godot),
and then don’t answer it because it’s a question that can’t be answered;
instead the story is about how people react to the question and to the
realization that there is no answer (when I’m asked what my brand is, I say
European existentialism). For the unofficial response, the reader said that he so
wanted my screenplay to make finals, but it didn’t quite and I immediately
asked, “It’s the ending, isn’t it?” and he responded, “Well, it’s about the
only ending you can have, isn’t it?”, to me confirming some suspicions I have
about how my screenplays are received. For the official one, I got back notes by the first two
readers who both really got the screenplay and loved it, but both also
commented on the ending: one said that is was a brave ending and the other also
said it was about the only ending one could have. Then I got the third piece of
feedback from the one who determined whether I would make finals and he said he
didn’t understand the point of the screenplay at all.
Q: Did any of the competitions you
entered try to hit you up for pay-based services, such as script consulting,
proofing, etc.?
A: Oh, sure. But there were never any hard sales. It was almost
always in mass e-mails as a general advertisement of services normally provided
if one wanted to use them. The big one was Austin Film Festival who really
wanted the quarter-finalists to come to the writer’s weekend.
Q: If “yes” to the previous
question, did you take advantage of any of these services? Was this a negative
or positive experience?
A: Not when it comes to feedback. If it doesn’t come with the
entry, then I don’t bother. Very few actually offer anything like that in the
first place. Others do, but it costs extra and then the money starts adding up,
and it’s already expensive enough to enter. It’s tempting, because you might
find out why you didn’t do as well as you might like. But the money is the main
reason I haven’t. I did take the bait for Austin Film Festival and I had a
good time and met some people. It wasn’t negative, but I can’t say I got
anything out of it either.
Q: If you won or placed high in a
competition, did it have any effect, positive or negative, on your career?
A: No effect whatsoever as far as I can tell. I may have gotten
three requests for my screenplays from various productions companies or
managers over the years, but I have yet to hear back from any of them. Fellow
writers and people in social media get excited for awhile and it can be an ego
boost for a bit, but they soon forget. And since I’m a script consultant, I’m
sure it helps there as well.
Q: What types of prizes (monetary and
non-monetary) have you won from the screenplay competitions you’ve entered?
A: I received some money from the Great Gay Screenplay
Competition (I don’t remember how much, but it paid for my airplane ticket
there). They also did a staged reading of the screenplay, which was great. Glendale
Q: Other than any material rewards
and/or valuable feedback, what have been the most satisfying aspects of winning
a competition?
A: Just the ego boost.
Q: OK, let’s say you’ve just won one
of the big screenwriting competitions. What can a writer expect to happen?
A: It depends on the contest, of
course. Based on what other writers have told me, you can expect some attention
from agents and such. But more than once I’ve been told what happens is that
you may get a manager or agent who will finally return your calls when they
wouldn’t before. Then after a few months, if they haven’t made any money off of
you, they’ll once again stop returning your calls. Of course, some writers have
gone on to get other work even if their particular movie didn’t get made. And there
are others who have used the attention from the competition to make their movie
themselves. So in the end, doing well in a competition can get you attention,
but that attention is short lived and may not help at all without other factors
weighing in or your ability to take advantage of it in some way, which not
everyone is able to do.
Q: Have you ever submitted one of
your early screenplays into a competition? If so, is it something you now
regret—and why?
A: I entered my first screenplay (Revelation)
into a competition and it did well. No, I don’t regret it. I have worked on it
since then and improved it, but it had a lot of strong aspects to it from the
get go. Of course, I had been writing for the stage for a number of years, so I
may have had a leg up on others who have written their first screenplay.
Q: Do you feel that adding "I
won/placed high in the [name of script comp]" to query letters and pitches
prompted any additional interest from agents, managers and/or production
companies you queried?
A: No, but I actually think that the problem is not what is in
your query letter but that I’m more and more convinced that the vast majority
of producers, agents, managers, etc. just don’t read them anymore. Every once
in awhile I hear from a writer friend that someone responded to their query
letter, but at the same time, it happens so infrequently, I feel like it’s more
of an urban myth. There are always exceptions, but often if an
agent, et al., is going to respond to your placing in a competition, they will probably
more often contact you before you can contact them.
Q: Overall, what do you feel were
the positive aspects of entering a screenplay competition?
A: The ego boost, and if you do rather well over a series of
contests with the same screenplay, a confirmation that there is something about
the screenplay that is connecting to the reader.
Q: Overall, what do you feel were
the negative aspects of entering a screenplay competition?
A: Loss of money without any getting any real forward momentum
on one’s career.
Q: What is your current status as a
screenwriter?
A: Still struggling and waiting for that break, something to
happen that I have the ability of taking advantage of. I’ve been paid for one
work for hire by Here [TV] Network, but the movie was never made. I rewrote a
screenplay The Compass and have writing credit on it; it’s in
post-production. And I have started shooting a web series. Other than that, I make my living doing screenplay
consultation and reading for competitions.
Q: Any parting comments, thoughts,
or words of advice for screenwriters considering entering a competition?
A: My first thought comes from my being a reader for many
competitions. I read so many screenplays that, to be honest, don’t have a shot
at doing well because they are unreadable, hard to understand or follow, or
just so formulaic that they are bland and dull. Entering contests is expensive,
so I think writers should do whatever they can to make sure that their
screenplay at least is at a level to make quarterfinals. I would at least suggest that beginning writers enter
contests that give feedback, whether they have to pay for it or not, in order
to have some idea as to how their screenplays are being received. More
experienced writers probably have other avenues or better insight into that and
may not want to get feedback and have no need for it. I also think it’s important to realize that the world of
movie making is changing. I sometimes get the feeling that my fellow writers
think that screenplays are bought and sold as in the 1980’s with the studios
being the major game in town. But they’re not any longer and studios make a minority
of films that hit the theaters every year. Most writers have to, in some way,
produce their first one or two projects first, whether a feature, short,
webisode, etc., before they can reach a level where they can make a decent
living or get into the studio world. And so contests should be looked at in the
same way: not as a way to get your screenplay bought and sold, but as something
that one can use to somehow get their product made through their own efforts.From that perspective, contests can play a role in that they
can help one get interest in a production of a screenplay that does well. I think I would like to interject one last thought, but this
is aimed at contests. Sometimes I get the idea that they also think the
way screenplays get made is still the way they are when studios were king and
that screenplays are still bought and sold as they were twenty years ago. I
wish they would recognize that times are changing and if they really want to
help new screenwriters, they need to focus on helping writers getting
their work produced in other ways. All I can think is how amazing that would be
for the future of film in the U.S.
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Learn from those who have done it! My interviews with 16 working screenwriters!
