Like a condemned man, penning his memoirs while awaiting the guillotine.
This next section takes me from learning if I properly re-wrote my ms., to finding out that it's hard even for an agent to land a pub deal, especially for a "specialty niche" market like filmmaking.
In my filmmaking book, I described the process of writing as if I were a condemned man, penning his memoirs while awaiting the guillotine. Yes, I know that was a bit overdramatic, but fortunately, desperation did propel me forward as I jumped through the hoops that my literary agent set up for me.
Finally Jayne called. And she didn’t mince words. Luckily, they were in my favor.
Oh, man, I’m suddenly floating...
“You’ve brought the manuscript to 90%, which is what was needed. And an editor will bring it the rest of the way. I’m heading for New York next week and will try to interest some publishers. I’ll call you after I return. Bye.”
I was in shock, amazed that I had actually written an acceptable manuscript. Me! A memory from high school suddenly surfaced. My elderly English teacher had suddenly started asking me to read aloud in class. I was terrible at it, and terrified––for dyslexic people like me it’s truly problematic. But she kept calling on me. Why, I don’t know.
At any rate, remembering my success with the rewrite now, I can only say it reinforces the Summerhill educational approach to learning, which I discovered years back from reading a book by that same title. At that unusual, open-curriculum school in England, they didn’t demand that their students take any classes that weren’t of personal interest to them. Then, later, when a student suddenly approached a teacher asking for assistance, all professional support was thrown his/her way. After that point, maybe all a student did was study anatomy. Math. Botany. Or art. And these now self-motivated kids were able to accomplish in a half year what it normally took two years of attending classes to finish. It was all about focus...and love of learning. (Summerhill school is still taking students: <https://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/>
At any rate, that’s probably what had just happened to me. I had experienced my academic years, from early grade school on through college as an underachiever, but here I was succeeding because the result meant something to me, and I loved the work.
So now, I was back to waiting to hear from Jayne, about whether or not my book had a publisher. Certainly, I had experienced such limbo before, like when applying for filmmaking grants. But this time was different. Sooner or later I would hear precise feedback from an agent, about a professional product I made, that could exact a sale price, a cash advance. As time passed, I used the break as a forced vacation of sorts, celebrating having done the hard work. Like being on an airplane going to a film festival, there was nothing to do but sit there and relax (of course with laptops and phones its all changed now, and not for the better). In any case, I hung out. Veged out. Did nothing creative, except maybe ordering a few good meals and attending a couple movies. It was probably a few weeks later that Jayne called, and I braced myself.
“Hi Rick. So here’s what I heard. I approached twenty-one publishers and out of those, a couple responded positively. (WOW, 21!). One, a nice guy from Simon & Schuster said he loved the idea of the book, but couldn’t, in good conscience, give us hope for a deal. He said that they had just put out a filmmaking book in lavish detail––big format, great index, loads of pictures––and it had stalled out at around 4000 copies sold. So no-go for that house. (4000 copies sold isn't enough?).
“Another editor I met with, Bob Miller at St. Martin’s Press, said that although he also loved your book, he was currently making a move to Warner Books and couldn’t fathom them taking anything that wouldn’t hit big numbers. He had edited a book called “Independent Feature Film Production,” so he knew filmmaking. But still, a NO. So two down.”
I can't remember now who the third no-go was, but in a nutshell no one had offered a book deal. No one had much faith back then (1987), that a book on filmmaking could succeed. In fact, no film book had ever sold well, up to that point. The audience for a filmmaking how-to hardly existed. And if a bookstore even bothered to have a Moviemaking section, it was usually hard to find, stuck in the back room’s dark recesses somewhere. So for Jayne, selling my filmmaking book appeared to be an uphill battle.
“So sorry, Rick. Nothing concrete yet. But I’ll keep at it. In the meantime, you may want to knock out a few more chapters from your outline. Bye.”
At this point, I didn’t have the stamina or inclination to immediately go right back to work on the manuscript. I was a little flat from the positive rejections. But about a month after the New York publishing houses report I got an unexpected call from Jayne Walker’s mother, which brought a surprise turn of events. She explained that her daughter had run into some health problem, and that she would have to terminate all her literary agency contracts, including mine. She hoped I understood, and wished me well before hanging up. Ouch! I was suddenly back to square-one. No agent. And all I had was just a rough-edited introduction and three unpolished chapters to show. So just that quickly, I was back on my own.
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Next comes the trial of myself either continuing on with my book (suddenly no professional support system), or abandoning it…as just a crazy, stupid time-wasting adventure. Fortunately, for the likes of Kevin Smith and Vin Diesel, others who used my book to make their breakthrough features, I didn’t quit.
PS. Please note that this full “Getting Published byViking Penguin” story, along with an on-set account of making my third feature, is covered in my ©2020 book, “NEW DARK AGES––How a Punk Movie EMERALD CITIES Got Its IMPROV” (free on KindleUnlimited): <https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08FZRB93P>).