This is a transcript of SYS 473 – How To Pitch To Producers With Greg Lyon .
Welcome to Episode 473 of the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I’m Ashley Scott Meyers, screenwriter and blogger with sellingyourscreenplay.com. Today I am interviewing producer and screenwriter Greg Lyon. He is an independent producer living in the San Francisco Bay Area. He’s also one of the industry judges for this year’s SYS Six Figure Screenplay Contest. He comes on to talk about his projects and offer up some great insight into the writing and producing project process. Since he’s worked as both a writer and as a producer, he’s got some great insight from both perspectives, so stay tuned for that interview.
SYS’s six figure screenplay contest is open for submissions just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/contest. Our early bird deadline is March 31st. So if your script is ready, definitely submit now to save some money. If you find this episode valuable, please help me out by giving me a review in iTunes or leaving a comment on YouTube or retweeting the podcast on Twitter or liking or sharing it on Facebook. These social media shares really do help spread word about the podcast, so they’re very much appreciated. Any websites or links that I mentioned in the podcast can be found on my blog in the show notes. I also publish a transcript with every episode in case you’d rather read the show or look at something later on, you can find all the podcast show notes at www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/podcast. And then just look for episode number 473.
Just a couple of quick words about what I’ve been working on over the last couple of weeks, I’m still plugging away on this NFT project with The Rideshare Killer. Not a lot to report. But just slowly I’m reaching out to more crypto type influencers and trying to see where that might lead. I’ve also started to really ramp up my own efforts to get my next feature into pre-production. I’m doing a rewrite on the script. Now it’s a low-budget very contained indie style rom com, sort of like a 500 Days of Summer. So I’m pushing ahead with a rewrite on that really trying to clean the script up. A lot of it is production stuff, I’m really starting to go through it now and think about how I’m going to shoot this. I’ve started to look scout out some locations. And again, this rewrite is sort of a real production rewrite. So, if I don’t think I can get a location, I’m just having to rewrite out of it. But interestingly, I’ve been using this site called gigster.com. And they post tons of properties you can rent to film that. And it seems like the prices are actually much lower than they were before COVID. Once COVID hit, I was talking to an actor that had one of my scripts, and we were sort of trying to find some locations for that project. And so, I was looking at the prices, and I just done The Rideshare Killer, you know, six months before COVID or I think it’s three months before COVID. So, I was very sort of aware of what the pricings were for these productions. It seems like the prices went down during COVID. It doesn’t seem like they’ve gotten back as high, interestingly, we talked about all this inflation. But this is one place where I don’t necessarily see it, seems like there are some pretty affordable locations on this website. So hopefully, we’ll have the money to buy some interesting locations, we have a little store, like a little lingerie shop that the couple goes to, we have a barber shop, some little things like that, but I was able to find them on this site. And, you know, it looks like we could afford their rates. The one big thing I’m still looking for is a dive bar, preferably here in Los Angeles, and specifically in the San Fernando Valley. But if the rate were good enough, I guess we get the cast and crew, we could drive a little further. If you know anyone or you yourself owns a dive bar, and it’s in the Los Angeles area and would rent it to us for probably seven or eight days. Please do let me know you can always email me just at info@sellingthescreenplay.com. Whenever I put out these notices on my podcast, I always get some interesting emails back. So, if you know of any place or you yourself work at a dive bar or you own a dive bar, please do just hit me up and let me know if this might be a possibility.
The contest and the festival are both moving along nicely. We’ve started to identify some really good scripts, and my daughter turns 13 tomorrow, so wish me luck on that. We’re doing a big birthday party for her tonight. So that’s been taking up a lot of my time. I’ve been pretty busy with that. Also, I wanted to comment on this new artificial intelligence app that is all the rage these days on the internet. It’s Open AI’s Chat GPT. Hopefully most people have heard about it. If not, you really should check it out. Just Google Open AI chat GPT to get a demo. It’s very sophisticated artificial intelligence that can write some pretty impressive responses to just about any question that you might ask it. A lot of people are using it for content generation, contracts. I saw a guy on Tik Tok. He’s some sort of like a renter property owner and he does a lot of rental agreements. And he went in there was able to cook up a rental agreement just type it in and edit it and kind of get some revisions, it’s basically just a big text box prompt where you type something in, and then it responds. So, you can literally, as I said, type in anything, and it will give you, you know, for the most part a pretty good response. So, I decided to try this with screenwriting. So, I go in there, I told it to write a scene where a teenager was trying to get a raise in his allowance from his mom, and give me a surprise ending. I thought this was a good little bit of conflict and drama, just a simple scene, it could pump out. So, you type this into this little prop. And I mean, it pumps this thing out in a few seconds, a fully written scene with characters and everything. I mean, it wasn’t a great bit of screenwriting. If someone sent it to me, and I was critiquing it, I would say it’s very on the nose, you know, sort of, you know, a well written screenplay scene, there’s a lot of context, there’s a lot of sub tax, there’s a lot of just stuff going on. This was just very straightforward, very on the nose. And it sort of lacked any real conflict. You know, the characters weren’t that well drawn and things. So yeah, there’s definitely some issues, I would say. But, you know, as a scene, just like one scene, it had a clear beginning, middle and end, it definitely understood what I asked it in the prompt, like I put in, as I said, some specific things like the surprise ending, and it did cook that up for me. And I’ll give you the surprise ending just so you can kind of see for yourself and judge for yourself about how good it was. The surprise ending basically, as I said, the scene as the mom goes, or the mom and the son are talking, and the son wants to raise an allowance, the mom says, finally agrees says “Okay, we’ll give you the raise allows”, she leaves his bedroom. And then he looks at his computer, and there’s like a new message from some company that’s emailing him a job offer. So now he’s getting his raise allowance, plus, he’s getting this job offer. You know, it’s not a great surprise. It wasn’t set up. It’s not something, you know, a great surprise is sort of something that set up. You know, I see dead people is sort of the ultimate in sort of a surprise ending, you know, but it’s really well set up in the entire thing. This was not, this was a surprise ending, but it wasn’t like a setup and a payoff. So again, it was a surprise, but not a great surprise. And I would say that’s sort of how I would rank it. It definitely does what you tell it, but that’s not necessarily going to give you the greatest response. But I do see a lot of potential with this. I’m thinking on my next screenplay, I might go in and just scene by scene, tell it to write out each scene. There’s some sort of very interesting artificial intelligence learning that goes on. Because I did this, this example I gave with the mom and the allowance, I did it a few different times. And it definitely seemed to learn from each time because it used the same character names. And there were some sort of things that it was pulling from as I revise this scene, it was not just cooking up a totally new scene, it was sort of pulling some of this stuff out. So, it might be something to just go in. And as I said, just kind of crack out those scenes. I mean, if I were to do this as completely unusable, what have I really lost, I would just stop doing it. But what I find is that staring at a blank page is sort of the hardest part of the rewriting are sort of the hardest part of the writing process. And so, this would sort of get you past that first hurdle, sort of a vomit draft, it’s not going to be good, it’s not going to be anything that you can really show to anyone or even use, but it’s going to be just a scene on a page. And I find that rewriting is much, much, much easier than just writing onto a blank page. And this, as I said, this, I can see where this could kind of help with that. Anyways, I’m not writing a script right now, as I said, I’m doing this rewrite on my rom-com. But for my next project, I think at least to start off, kind of just see if I can get it to pump out a first vomit draft and then I’ll start revising it and see if it makes it easier. Maybe it just ends up not being easier. But at the very least I think because I think I even gave you some instructions on the slug line. So, at the very least you could kind of go through it, it would lay out the character names for you would lay out the slug lines. Again, I think it could be helpful in some ways, just sort of giving you that first vomit draft. Anyway, so that’s sort of my thoughts on it. I’d be curious to hear anybody else’s thoughts. Please do email if you’ve used this and you have some thoughts on it or if you’ve actually gotten this to work.
The other thing I’m seeing on tick tock now about this is people are getting very sophisticated in in how they ask queries. And so, there’s whole methodologies about you know, it doesn’t have to just be one sentence, you know, who was the president United States in 1939. It can be much more sophisticated than something like that you can really it can be multiple sentences can be you can tell it to revise something it can pump out like as I said, this example I saw with this rental agreement, it pumped out a contract the guy typed something in do revisions that pumped out a revised version of the contract. So, it really is pretty sophisticated. And it’s only going to get more sophisticated, obviously, it will get smarter. As the software gets smarter, the computer, the algorithm, all of this stuff, the behind-the-scenes stuff will get better. But in addition, we’ll get better, you know, the humans that are using it will learn how to use it most effectively. And I can definitely see, as I said, this thing improving a little bit, if it gets just a little bit smarter, it’s really going to be transformative, it’s going to really transform a lot of how the whole world operates. If all of this sort of very basic sort of low-level writing can be done by a computer, it as I said, it will be it will be transformative. Anyways, do check it out. If you haven’t checked it out. As I said, it’s just Google Open AI chat GPT. And you’ll find it you have to sign up with your email address, but right now, and it was it’s free, I think they’re going to start charging for it in the future. But it’s pretty fascinating. And it also it just it when you’re interacting with it. Like when you’re interacting somebody’s you get those little prompts. And you can tell it’s a computer and it’s infuriating. But there’s something about this, that’s so much smarter, you can tell it’s not a human, like it doesn’t feel like a human. But it also doesn’t feel like one of these chat bots, where that’s sort of just giving you automated responses and that we’ve seen, you know, those things have been around for years where you go to a website, you put in a question, you get an answer back. And you can just tell it’s not a person, it’s just kind of answering it in a very rudimentary way. And this feels much more sophisticated, as I said, has a weird feeling interacting with it. Because it’s not quite human. It’s not quite like a robot. So anyways, do check it out if you have any interest in this sort of thing, artificial intelligence and stuff. It really is fascinating. Anyway, those are the things I’ve been working on. Now, let’s get into the main segment. Today I’m interviewing writer, producer Greg Lyon, here is the interview.
Ashley
Welcome, Greg to the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I really appreciate you coming on the show with me today.
Greg Lyon
I’m glad to be here. Hopefully, I can provide some insights that will help your audience.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, I’m sure you can. So, to start out, maybe you can give us a quick overview of your background, where do you grow up? And how did you get interested in the entertainment business?
Greg Lyon
Well, there’s a number of things. First of all, I’m a CPA by trade. So, you know, I didn’t start out, I didn’t work in the film industry, I didn’t go to film school. And so, I really haven’t grown up in it. But I kind of got involved for two reasons. One, my daughter was very successful as a child actress, and, you know, we would go to auditions, and she would get highly picked, you know, she had a hit ratio of over 50% for this commercial that, you know, show, whatever. So, she was quite successful that way. And at the same time, I had a nephew that did go to the film school. And so, I said, you know, you know, there’s, there’s learning and there’s doing, you need to do it. So, I put up a little bit of money. And he and his buddies were going to go out and make, you know, make some films, some short films for practice. Now, at that time, this was pre really YouTube taking off as having channels and such. So, we kind of anticipated the change in the market. You still have your feature films and everything. But if you look around today, videos do very well. If they’re under 15 minutes, you want to see something that’s in the 5-to-15-minute range. If I go on YouTube, and I want to just check out some newscast or something like that. I don’t want to watch the whole one-hour newscast. I want to watch the part about Ukraine or I might want to watch the part about COVID. I want to see something under 15 minutes. I don’t have time to sit there and watch one hour newscast all the time. So, we were correct. We had the right idea. We were spot on ahead of the market, that this was going to happen. But there wasn’t the YouTube channels at the time. So, we went out and he did 13 episodes of a horror film, because he was in Lahore. And as it turns out, we started a web channel called Weekly Scare Me. And we did a whole thing with a hostess and everything. But he only made 10 films, out of the 13 they only make 10. And there were a lot of issues. We had one where literally the director melted down on the set, stormed off, and that was the end of that episode. And so, he found out the challenges of being a producer and getting these episodes made. And I found myself getting drawn in as a writer, because the writing was lacking finding people to write was lacking. And so, I wrote a couple of the episodes and I even played in one of the episodes as part of a chair of and I just kind of got dragged into it. And really interesting thing about this that I learned from him was that people don’t want to make films. They want to be hired, they want to be made. They want universal studios to come say, “Hey, make my next film.” But they don’t want to go out and make the film, they weren’t willing to put the time and the effort. And this is what Spielberg did. Back in high school, he was making films, there’s some interesting stories, but we don’t have time for that. So, as it turns out, I found myself getting dragged in here, he needed help, I became, you know, a PA, you know, I just run over there and help them do it. So, from there, we moved on, we said, well, let’s go out and just do a short film. Let me explain to everybody, short films are practice films. There are ways to show that you know, for your real, there are ways to get some experience. But it’s very, very difficult to make money off of that. So, the first one we did was called Sucks to be Me. And that starred Lisa Robin Kelly. And interestingly, it was her last film. She died within a year after that. And so, you know, we did a 25-26-minute film. And we learned a lot. We learned a lot from that. From there, we went in, I was living in Paris for a year. And I said, well, my daughter was over there. And we got involved with an acting coach to keep her going. And I talked with the acting coach, and we decided we would make a short film for him and his daughter. And as it turned out, you know, he works with some pretty big names. And he got us, Elsa Molins, from crossing lines. And so, we did this short film in Europe called Paul Vaughn. And I wrote it. It’s mostly in French, and I don’t even speak French. So don’t let language hold you back. But just make sure you get a good translation done. So, if you don’t say something like all the dog tastes good. But anyhow, so from there, we did that. And that was great experience filming in Europe, we got a chance to get exposure there and learn some of the ropes in Paris. Then we came back, and I was back in America. And we did our first feature film called Gibby. And it just kind of grew legs and just started rolling. And we raised our money and went out and filmed it. There’s good and bad to the film. You know, it was we made a lot of mistakes. And one of the biggest mistakes we made is we learned from Hollywood. We relied on them, we took people that had experience. And they weren’t very good. I won’t go into names. But there was some shortfalls in this. And I found out, you know, I knew better. And when you sit there and you talk to one of the lead actors, and they say you should have directed this film, because you know more about it than, than the director that or the DP or any of these people. And I was literally solving problems on the set. And this is one of the things that’s very interesting in script, writing, and screenplay and everything. If we get a chance, we can talk about it. But I found myself having to fix problems on the set. And I realized that I could make a movie better than these Hollywood experts. So, from there, we were sitting around one day, and we got a call from some people that have money and were making a film. And they were filming next week, and they just fired their producer. So, we came on board to help that out. I passed the assignment off to Kyle. Kyle is the one that’s trying to build his producing career. And Kyle jumped in and took over You Can’t Say No literally the week before, and had to bring it to fruition and get the film made. And he did a very successful job that got a very cute romantic comedy out of that, starring Peter Fonda and some other people. But if it did well, it pack the house that premiere at the Cinequest Film Festival, 700 people, and it’s now sold worldwide and rights. And so, it’s out there on the marketplace.
Ashley
I’m curious, just if I can interject ask a couple questions about some of the things you’ve said. So where were you when you were making these shorts when you were making Gibby? Where were you living, were you near Los Angeles or were you we’re living in Northern California?
Greg Lyon
It’s the Northern California.
Ashley
And I asked that in the context of like, how did you get Shannon Elizabeth? Obviously, she’s from Texas, but she lives probably in Hollywood, I would guess. But how did you make those connections living in San Francisco to actually bring on a casting director actually bring Shannon Elizabeth into the fold of a movie like Gibby?
Greg Lyon
Well, it’s hard to say. You know, when I say about these front projects, behind the scenes, I work with a lot of people too, a lot of independent filmmakers, you mentioned American and Texas. And what happens is, with Shannon, well, first of all, I threw my connections, I met a very good casting director. You know, Sherry, she does a wonderful, wonderful job. But Shannon was drawn to the project, because she is animal conscious, she wanted to work with the animal. And we had Crystal there. And Crystal, the monkey is the one from hanging over, Night at the Museum. And so she wanted to actually work with the monkey, the two people were disturbed the monkey when they left, Shannon, and when she left, the monkey got agitated. And then when you can see it in the film, where the lead actress Katie, Katie was actor’s character name, when she starts to leave the set, she’s got to go off and practice with her teammates and leaves Crystal with Sean Patrick planner, she throws a fit, she you know, it’s kind of interested in those two people connected with the monkey. So, but Shannon was drawn by that. Vivica Fox is kind of interesting, two people I knew we had mind her up. And it just kind of comes about you know that finding and getting actors and actresses on film isn’t difficult if you know the right approach. The big problem is, is that a lot of people want to go on big money, and you just got to work with the ones that are within your budget. You know, if you’re going to go out there and go for gay low, or someone like that, you’re going to need a significant amount of money. So that that’s kind of how those things came about. What’s interesting about Gibby is, is that we had conversations with Rob Williams agent to actually play the father. And he would be a grandfather given his age. And they just passed on it and said, “No, we got to give them some time off.” And Robin Williams lives in the Bay Area and couldn’t come over and done this without travel and everything. And it wasn’t a long part. But they felt he needed time off before starting his TV series. And it was during that month that he actually committed suicide. So, you know, it’s just kind of the way things work out in life.
Ashley
Yeah. So, take us back. So, you’ve done Gibby, you’ve put some of these projects together, then where did your sort of career going? How did you get involved in this executive producing and just getting involved with some of these projects that are coming? You’re just in the Bay Area, people are coming through, you have a reputation? Like, how do you get on to some of these projects?
Greg Lyon
Well, okay, well, first of all, I get a, okay, having halfmoon films, I get a lot of people pitching us all the time; hey, I got this script, will you buy it? Will you buy it and, and I’d like to get to that topic if we get a chance. And so, I get involved. A lot of people coming to me looking for money, and 99.9% of the production companies aren’t going to give you the time of day. They just don’t, they’re not going to talk to you. But I talk to everybody. And that’s the nature of what I am. I’ll talk to people, I’ll try to help them out. I had this one guy that basically wrote his life story. And he had a good life story. But the script was terrible. I said, “Look, you know, I’ll help you with this.” You know, we worked out an agreement, but he didn’t want to help. You know, I kept trying to tell him, you got to go do these things. You got a 45-page script of your life, you need to make it 90 minutes into a feature film. And you got to clean up all this stuff. And that’s another thing about script writing. And part of the problems and he just wanted me to take a script to make a movie. Well, he didn’t want me to help him get it into shape to make the movie.
Ashley
So, talk a little bit like an American in Texas, you have an executive producer credit on that. Like what specifically did you do on that film? What kind of value did you bring to that?
Greg Lyon
Well, basically, you’re here’s the thing with an American in Texas, I met Anthony through a film festival that he ran. And Paul Avant was one of the films in it. Very well received, you know, and one on awards. You know…neck of the woods, it was at Burbank and one best short film, this short foreign film, shot in Paris, written in French. So, it qualified as a foreign film, even though I live here in America. by having halfmoon films, people do reach out to us, and you get to know people and, you know, you know, through Cinequest, which I work with, you get to meet people, and they start looking for help. And Anthony reached out to me on that, and I came on board gave him a little bit of advice. And I put $10,000 into the film, and he went out and make it. The big problem with advice is nobody listens. You know, you included, so one of the things about filmmaking, let’s just bring that up. I’m going to talk about that real quick. It’s in my notes about writing, but you do not sell scripts. Okay. Let me explain that to you. You do not sell scripts. 90% of the films today come from source material, like, like books, you know, Harry Potter, comic books, the Marvel, you know, Disney made, all their films were a fairy tales, they weren’t original, he just went out and made all these fairy tales. They all come from source material. And so when you write a script, that few that get made into a movie, now I’m not talking about television, they bring the writers in, they go; here’s the topic. Here’s what we’re going to write on. Let’s go write this and every week, they knock out a script, or actually, I should say screenplay, I want to distinguish between script and screenplay. A script is what you’re trying to sell. It’s a story. A screenplay, both those TV writers, they tell them how the director film, you know, they put a lot of information in there, you read those things in first page, these are the actors, these are the care, you know, second page, here’s the location, they’ve already got all this stuff down handed to production, and all production has to do is go out and start doing their work. So, there’s a screenplays, you know, like in television, and then there’s a script that you’re trying to sell. And too many people write scripts, trying to tell them how to direct the film. And if you’ve ever seen the movie Sweet Liberty, it’s Alan Aldar writes a book and he sells the rights to Hollywood, and Hollywood comes in and changes everything. It’s a really good movie, actually. And so, don’t sit here and write your script trying to tell the buyer how to direct this film. And that’s the problem they get into, they want to put directions in there. They want to put edits in there, they want to say, oh, I need a drone shot here. You know, don’t. Don’t do that. Well, that gets us off a lot of notes about script writing.
Ashley
No, let’s go into that. I think that’s a great topic to cover here. Give me some of your other sort of things that you see all these scripts are getting submitted to your production company. What are some of the issues obviously, don’t direct, you know, right, but don’t be a director in the screenwriting stage. But what are some other similar things that you see writers doing that they can probably improve?
Greg Lyon
Well, we were getting on to the topic of how you sell a script. You do not sell scripts today. You have to be part of a team. And that’s the tough thing. Yeah, scripts do get sold. I just option this this script for this guy. You didn’t sell it, you optioned it. What happens is, let’s say you as a producer, like this guy script, and you’re going to go try to make this movie. But you don’t have $200 million in your reserves to go out and make it usually most of the small film production companies, they go out. And what they do is they say, “Okay, I’m optioning your script. I’m going to go and I’m going to then try to get people attached and raise the money to make this film. This is how I’m going to do it.” You know, he may not succeed, your film may never get made, or your script never gets made into a film. You got to realize you’re part of a team and part of that team is, is having representation. Part of that team is having a producer that’s going to go out and you’ve seen these movies, they’ve been done a dozen times, where they’re trying to pull together the pieces to make the film. You know, I’m going to be pitching Gibby the sequel to give it to a major streamer here soon. And they want to know the general idea before they’ll put up the money to make, and even if they put up the money, they’re just going to give me a letter that says they will buy this film. I got to still go out raise the money. So, this is what people don’t understand, to get your film made, you have to be part of the whole process and getting this script into the film. And I remember talking with the writer, I can’t remember his name of the King’s speech. I met him one time, and he spent seven years I think it was trying to get his story made into a movie. And so, in your case, I know you make some films, and you have to sometimes feel like you’re the little mother hand, who’s going to help me plant the wheat, who’s going to help me tend to the wheat, you know, who’s going to help me harvest the wheat, who’s going to help me make it into flour, then make it into bread? We all know that little story from when we were kids. And what happens there is that the mother hand had to carry this thing all the way through. And oftentimes people writing script has to be that person. And so, this is all part of it. But you got to just move the story into being a film somebody has to take charge.
Ashley
So, give us a simple analysis, as you’ve worked on some of these films, give us some similar issues that you see in production. That’s on the screenplay front. But maybe you can speak to it just in terms of these low budget productions that you’ve been involved in? What are some of the common mistakes that you see these folks making?
Greg Lyon
Well, I mean, first of all, I want to talk to it a little bit from a script standpoint. You know, there’s a bunch of things. You know, first of all, let me ask you, how much detail do you put into the scripts?
Ashley
Yeah, as little as possible.
Greg Lyon
Well, enough to tell the story. Okay? Now, if I write, and I say… Well, I think you have a screenplay with a waitress. That’s a good example. Do I need to write what the waitress is wearing?
Ashley
Yeah, I think in the example, we’re talking about my script, no, because it’s like a, a superfluous character that you never see again.
Greg Lyon
Bingo. Exactly. So, you know, the question is, like, take Tom Hanks movie, The Man with One Red Shoe. What color was his shoe? Red, you know, it’s very important to the story, because that’s how the spies tracked onto him and everything else. But yeah, you have to put enough detail to tell the story. You don’t have to put too much detail. And when I was early writing, and I tried to put too much detail in there, and I realized that why am I saying this? You know, if I say something like a chicken coop, you know, so you know, you want to tell enough still detail that production gets the information. But when you write a script, they’re going to go and they’re going to break every part of it down. And the better you can do the help that out. Now, let’s take the story, Rocky, we all know Rocky one of the best scripts ever written. Because he sold it made a movie did really well. And to this day, it’s a classic. In that script, you remember the iconic scene where he runs, part of his training routine was running through town and running to the library and running up the steps of the library. But at the end, when he was ready, he was ready to fight. He sprints through the town, he runs up the stairs, he doesn’t just step up, the he runs up the stairs gets to the top. And the script says “he made it.” How does the director show he made it? You can’t do that. You can’t you can’t write that. Now Stallone was the writer and the director were there, somebody on the set said do a little dance. So, he does his victory dance, you know that he made it that showed that he arrived. And that’s one of the things that people have to understand is that when you say “he arrived”, that’s good in a book, but in directing that you can’t direct that. So, somebody has to think of an action because you only have action and dialogue. And so those are the two parts there. And then here’s the number one thing. Does your story have payoffs? Well, what’s the payoff? Well, Ron Howard called some powerful moments. Ron Howard directs a lot of films and he talks about these powerful moments like Kurt Russell reaching down to Scott Glenn was it, in Backdraft? When he’s reaching down trying to save them, and he goes, “Let me go, let me go.” And Russell says, “You go I go”, that’s a powerful moment. These payoffs have to be in your story. Otherwise, I could take a camera and just follow you around for a day and call it a movie, you know, but if it’s a comedy, does it make you laugh? Does it have humor? I’ve seen movies that are comedies that don’t make you laugh. And I think you and I had that discussion about rom-coms. Rom-coms aren’t all that funny. A lot of them aren’t. They’re entertaining, but they’re not always funny. But they call them rom-coms. That’s a horror film. Does it have you scared to death hiding behind the couch? You know, if it’s an action movie, are you gripping the edge of your chair trying to hold on while they’re flying through the galaxy? You know, these are powerful moments, and you got to have those in there. Otherwise, it’s just a boring film. And even dramas, dramas have a tube. And although it’s not as notable, but you have these conflicts that arise, and things happen. So that’s part of it there, does it have payoff? Another factor is, Flow. Does story flow? Or does it start gapping? And then people started going, how do we get to this point, you know, so does your story flow? That’s very important. And I’ve seen where people just cut off a scene, they dropped the scene. And I’m going, “Wait a minute, you know, something just happened to you drop it.” Now I understand being creative. You know, you’re trying to, you know, maybe keep things hidden and stuff, but you know, but for normal stories where you’re in sequence, don’t drop a scene. The fourth issue is the lack of detail. Again, we talked about that. But the question becomes, who is this person? I mean, who is this character? Who is this location? Where is this located, give us some things. And you have to be very careful with that. I’m working on a graphic novel of a script I wrote, so that I can help sell it. And it’s just been released. And I’ll be glad to send you a copy. But what happens is, when going through this having the artist drawing the graphic novel, he drew kind of a suburban homeless shelters. And in my mind, I had a downtown rundown brick, homeless shelter. And even though later on, you pick up from the context, before and after, he thought, a nice looking suburban one we had to kind of deal with that. I didn’t put enough detail into the script, that he could draw it the way I want it. And so those are things you have to be careful about. If it’s important, get the detail in there. If it’s discretionary, let them decide. And see, this is again, I’ve talked with this one; I should say traded emails, she was trying to sell me her script, I read her script. What happened was in her script, she had three scenes to open. They were in the kitchen, they go into the living room, they decorate the tree, mom goes up to the bedroom and gets the young baby son. I sat there I go, “What are you doing here, you don’t need three scenes, just have everything in the living room decorating the tree, have them walk in with all the stuff, you know, from the kitchen, if you want the cookies and stuff, and have the mom in her by bringing the baby down.” You know, just cut this down to one scene be efficient in that one scene. And then I talked to her a little bit more about that. And I said; look, let me show you an example. And I rewrote her first scene. And she goes, “Oh my god, I can’t believe that.” You know, you got them like this. I go well, you didn’t say that. You didn’t say how they were going to, I kind of wrote how I envisioned it in my head. But she envisioned them wearing different outfits, you know and stuff. And so, if you don’t put it in there, you’re putting it up to the director’s discretion or I should say production because usually it might be wardrobe or somebody else that makes up the decision. So, you want to put enough of that detail so that you convey the message to him or they I had them in pjs getting ready to decorate Christmas tree. She didn’t like that, you know? So, this is kind of the example of what you have to do. And now, how much detail? Go back to Ben Hur. And Ben Hur, do you remember that great chariot race?
Ashley
Sure.
Greg Lyon
How many pages do you think it was?
Ashley
Yeah, it’s a good question. I’m guessing not very many.
Greg Lyon
It wasn’t even a page, it was one sentence. They race. And so that’s what happens. Go back to Shakespeare. Read Shakespeare. Shakespeare focus more on the story and the dialogue than the action. He says, you know, Romeo, entered the courtyard. They fought. They fought, and it’s been directed a billion times in play and in movies, how they fight. So, it just becomes a matter of that. Now, of course, as you move your story to a screenplay, the production wants enough. And they they’re going to change stuff. But they want enough information. If they have to sit down and go back and write your script, fill in all the detail, then then they’re not going to buy it. So, it becomes a balancing act between too much and not enough. And so, I can’t help you.
Ashley
Oh, yeah. So, all great points. I wonder just if you know, with your production company getting all of these pitches, I wonder if you could just quickly give us a few tips for people screenwriters, specifically, that are pitching companies like you like what do you see in a query letter and a cold phone call and in however people contact you, maybe there’s some things there that you see them making mistakes? But how can you maybe offer them a little advice about how to just get someone in your position to even read their script?
Greg Lyon
Well, okay. First of all, you run a service for script people. And let’s just simply script in the screenplay, again. It’s networking. It comes down to networking, getting out there meeting people, talking to them, and just letting them know, I met this one lady at Cinequest. And she had a script that she had entered in the screenplay contest. I guess it didn’t do that. Well. And she asked me to read it. And I read it. And she actually sent me another script, and the two scripts, I read them both. And I go; wow, if she took these two stories, and merged them together, she’d have a good script, I tried to get back to her and talk to her about that never heard from her again. And she had approached me trying to get money. And let me give you a little hint here. She had been talking to one company, that for 75,000, they put the package together, they wanted her to put up $75,000, they would take her scrip and package it and try to get it out there in the market.
Ashley
And I want to just cut you off there, because that’s a very common thing that I’ve heard screenwriters run into. And for the most part, again, I can’t speak to this specific example. But as a screenwriter, you don’t want to get involved with people that are asking you for money to help put a package it’s a very common scam that people do run into. So, it’s definitely something to look out for.
Greg Lyon
Well, it’s not a scam.
Ashley
It can be a scam. Not always, obviously, there’s some people that are good intentioned things. But I’ll say this, I’ve been in Hollywood a long time, I’ve heard of a lot of people do this exact thing. There are things where they invest, you know, 5000, 10,000, 20,000, 50,000 into a production, oh, we’re going to get the package, we’re going to do things I’ve never heard of a single film actually succeeding and coming out of that the screenwriter has spent money. And then 100% of the cases I’ve heard of, there’s never actually been a production that came out of it,
Greg Lyon
Right. But it’s still not a scam. In other words, if you want to go out and make a film, you need certain things to get made. You need artwork, you need a script, you need some projections, it cost me $7,500 to go project the cost of how well a film will do in the marketplace. And so, the company we work with, and that’s pretty cheap. So, for 7500 bucks, I can get that. For 500 bucks, I can get a script for it, and the artwork, you’re going to look at 2500 to 5000, all these things, it adds up. And so, 75,000 isn’t an unreasonable number to get the package made to go sell your script.
Ashley
And I think the problem is though is that 99% of the time, the companies that are doing it, they’re doing it for the $75,000, they’re not doing it because they really believe in the script or they believe in the writer. And that’s the disconnect. I mean, and that’s the thing as a producer, real Hollywood producer understands that they have to take on those costs. And they don’t expect the screenwriter to pay them. If you’re the screenwriter and you’re paying for those costs, that’s all well and good. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a scam. But it means that this producer doesn’t really believe in your project enough to put their own time and money into it.
Greg Lyon
And that’s a key point. That’s a key point. In other words, right now, if somebody came to me and asked me to help them make their film, we would do exactly what they want. You know, we will give advice, we will help them do all the project, we had one company, a bunch of college kids, and they had a film they were working on, and they send stuff over. And they had they sent their artwork over and I go, “oh, oh, my god, I can’t do this. This is terrible. This isn’t very good.” And so, we gave them some tips on it. And they went back and they made “Wow, this is a good poster.” You know, they just had some gals sitting out in the desert, looking scared. And it just, I’m sorry, that’s not going to work. And we said, “We’ll do this…”, it was a horror film. We had them using the you know, what the board… blanking on that right now. But chop the head off sitting on a director’s chair. It was about a bunch of little small production, independent productions, going out in the desert and making a horror film. So, we had a director’s chair with a bloody head and, and the chalkboard. And so anyhow, it was a lot better what they came back with, we didn’t go make the poster for him, we just came with a couple tips. And so, we do we talk to people, and we will give them advice, but only to a certain point, you know, we’re not going to sit there and do it for you. Now you can pay us, and I’ll be glad to go out and make you a poster $5,000. You know, we’ll get models and professional photographers and everything. But it’s not cheap, you know, and these things cost money. We’ll help anyone any way we can. But you’re right. The key for you is, is that these guys aren’t going to put money into your project if they don’t believe it.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. So just I like to wrap up, this is all great advice. And I hope screenwriters really do listen to that. Because I think that’s a really great point. But I’d like to wrap up these interviews just to ask the guests. Is there anything you’ve seen recently that you thought was really great? HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, anything that’s out there that maybe is a little under the radar that a screenwriting audience could appreciate?
Greg Lyon
You can’t say under the radar.
Ashley
Okay, yeah. So, remove that little piece.
Greg Lyon
Everything Everywhere at Once, is absolutely brilliant film.
Ashley
I haven’t seen it. So, I’ll definitely have to go check that out.
Greg Lyon
I cannot wrap my head around how anyone could write that. It is just an amazing film to be jumping around. And again, see, you know, when we talked about that thing, you know, I read this one script where this, these three people are being chased through the woods, and you know, and then all of a sudden, it just drops to scene. And the next scene, one of the characters is robbing dead people on a battlefield. You know, it’s like, “Hi, how do we make that leap?” You know, there’s a gap there. And so, you know, Everything Everywhere at Once uses that technique. It is jumping all around. But essentially, you have the continuity of the stories, when they’re jumping around, you have to understand that they’re, I don’t want to say anything, give away the movie, but then you have to understand that these different stories are intertwined. But the story itself doesn’t get the little individual stories.
Ashley
Yeah, I’ll definitely have to check that one out. I know, I’ve heard good things about it. What’s the best way for people to keep up with what you’re doing? Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, you have a company website for your production company. Anything you’re comfortable sharing our roundup for the show notes, and then people can just click right over to it.
Greg Lyon
Okay, well, there’s halfmoonfilm.biz, but we don’t do a lot on that. We don’t have someone maintaining it constantly updating. We just updated occasionally. Twitter, I use political so I don’t go in there and post stuff about the company. We’re not on Facebook. I just won’t be a part of Facebook. I dropped out a long time ago. I imagine if our next film comes around, we would try to do something on Facebook. What you’re seeing is that a lot of the social media is being taken over by commercial, so you’re not really seeing any more. On TV, I really enjoyed the last kingdom. Now what that that’s really good on Netflix. Yeah, that one I really enjoyed, who traded and his character. But yeah, I you know, there’s a lot of things I see but I also see a lot of garbage. And I’ll tell you right now 90% of the scripts I see are bad.
Ashley
Greg, I really do appreciate you coming on and talking with me today. It’s been a great interview, and we’re sure we’ll have you back in the future.
Greg Lyon
Okay, sounds good.
Ashley
Perfect. Greg, will talk to you later.
Greg Lyon
Take care.
Ashley
I just want to talk quickly about SYS Select. It’s a service for screenwriters to help them sell their screenplays and get writing assignments. The first part of the service is the SYS Select Screenplay Database. Screenwriters upload their screenplays, along with a logline, synopsis and other pertinent information like budget and genre, and then producers search for and hopefully find screenplays they want to produce. Dozens of producers are in the system looking for screenplays right now. There have been a number of success stories come out of the service. You can find out about all the SYS select successes by going to sellingyourscreenplay.com/success. Also, on SYS podcast episode 222. I talked with Steve Dearing, who was the first official success story to come out of the SYS select database. When you join SYS select you get access to the screenplay database along with all the other services that we’re providing to SYS select members. These services include the newsletter, this monthly newsletter goes out to a list of over 400 producers who are actively seeking writers and screenplays. Each SYS select member can pitch one screenplay in this monthly newsletter. We also provide screenwriting leads, we have partnered with one of the premier paid screenwriting leads services so I can syndicate their leads to SYS select members, there are lots of great paid leads coming in each week from our partner. Recently, we’ve been getting 5 to 10 high quality paid leads per week. These leads run the gamut. There are producers looking for a specific type of spec script to producers looking to hire a screenwriter to write up one of their ideas or properties. They’re looking for shorts, features, TV and web series pilots all types of projects. If you sign up for SYS select, you’ll get these leads emailed directly to you several times per week. Also, you get access to the SYS select forum, where we will help you with your logline and query letter and answer any screenwriting related questions that you might have. We also have a number of screenwriting classes that are recorded and available in the SYS select forum. These are all the classes that I’ve done over the years, so you’ll have access to those whenever you want once you join. The classes cover every part of writing your screenplay, from concept to outlining to the first act, second act, third act, as well as other topics like writing short films, and pitching your projects in person. Once again, if this sounds like something you’d like to learn more about, please go to sellingyourscreenplayselect.com. Again, that is sellingyourscreenplayselect.com. On the next episode of the podcast, I’m going to be interviewing writer director Carter Smith. He just did a really cool indie film called Swallowed. We dig into that film, how he was able to get it produced, as well as talking about some of his earlier projects, doing music videos, and working as a professional photographer and then making that leap from photographer to film career. So, keep an eye out for that episode next week. That’s the show. Thank you for listening.
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