More on"Used-Car" filmmaking--How I got an agent, how she gave me a 4-yr. college English course in 4 hours, and kept me writing/improving a manuscript (THANKS Again--JAYNE WALKER, of Berkeley, CA!)

https://www.abebooks.com/9780140245608/Feature-Filmmaking-Used-Car-Prices-Revised-014024560X/plp

What’s important to understand is that between me blindly typing up transcripts of my classes, and actually trying to write something to reach the mainstream book publishing advance money, it took a breathtaking set of miracles. In advance of you perhaps building your own individual pathway to the holy grail of getting published, here are some of the obstacles you could encounter, which I surprisingly overcame against all odds.

Not Really Writing a Book, but maybe finally learning how.

It took a while to realize that transcribing audio tapes/typewriting didn’t mean that a book was actually getting done. But still, at first, typing away every day gave me a nice, fuzzy productive feeling, and got me used to the daily process/grind. Using the basic typing tools of delivering words to a page helped me build some discipline. I grabbed onto this activity like a drowning man would to a life preserver. Fortunately my tape recorder had a stop-start foot pedal, so I just dug in to complete the transcribing job at hand. When I finally had a good pile of pages stacked in a collection box––the more pages I accumulated the more confidence I got––I decided to also add reviews and articles from the 15 years of my past moviemaking. That helped to fatten the pile, finally a thick, 380 page tome. So, YAY, I had completed a book. Whew!

I made some clean, velo-bound copies— initially, 30-40 page teasers for making partial submissions—selected some famous East Coast publishers and mailed off copies. The full doorstop-sized copy was only sent one place, to the Joyce Cole Agency in Berkeley, on the suggestion of my musician and author friend, Gary Thorp (he later authored "Sweeping Changes," (Walker Books, ©2000). And then I just waited.

I changed diapers, grocery shopped if Julie hadn’t, and occasionally rolled down the Point Richmond hill with infant Marlon in his stroller, to grab a delicious burger at Jumbo’s Cafe (where I filmed pat of MORGAN'S CAKE ). And weeks slipped by. Finally, the publisher’s rejections began pouring in.

Viking Penguin sent a No, on a small 3”x4” scrap of paper with their message––no signature, no mark from a human hand. And other publishers followed. Publishing houses, I soon learned, hardly bothered returning a full 8 1/2” x 11” page to deliver the news of one’s defeat. Oh well. But one day, soon after the first flurry of mail, a letter showed up from the Joyce Cole Agency. It was hand-typed, on agency letterhead, and nicely signed in ink. And what it said was quite positive. The agent there, Jayne Walker, wrote, “This is not a book, but I could see a Trade Paperback with the title, Feature Filmmaking at Used-Car Prices.” Suddenly I was awakened. I had an avenue, though a little more than vague, as yet, toward bringing in revenue for my family, and ultimately for my survival as an artist. In any case, I was suddenly determined to make Ms. Walker’s vision real.

So what were the odds that an agent at a professional literary agency would bother writing this kind of letter, especially when it was obvious the author was a novice? I would later discover that Ms. Walker had decided to begin her own agency, the Jayne Walker Agency, which partially explained her impulse to rein in any publishable books for her new venture. My timing had been perfect.

It’s almost hard to admit now that it took someone else’s intervention for me to proceed to the next step, because I’ve always wanted to believe that I and I alone was in charge of my workload and art destiny. But the actual fact is that without Jayne’s belief in my book, nothing important would have happened. But, of course, there was still a steep hill remaining, to deliver on that fateful letter. In my return phone call, Jayne gave me my first task:

“First thing I need you to do, Rick, is to write an Introduction, which covers your moviemaking history. With anecdotes. After I see it we’ll talk again.”

So, suddenly, I now had a job (and a boss), albeit a “spec” one! And it wasn’t set in motion on just my own accord. A professional had told me what I needed to do. And that was very powerful. I had a mission, and an avenue by which I could start directing all my efforts. And believe me, her words unleashed some energy toward writing that I didn’t know I had. I immediately set upon telling my story. And by the time I felt good about the results (about three weeks later) I had delivered about 120 pages, single-space, and mailed them off. Later, I had to laugh at how the norm of manuscripts is double-spacing, which means I had really sent 240 pages in normal page count! Anyway, to my great relief Jayne was pleased.

Happily, I was still on track for whatever plan/schedule she had in mind. I now received my next assignment by phone.

“What I need now is a Table of Contents and the first three how-to chapters. With that, I can sell the book,” said Jayne, matter-of-factly. “Let me know when that’s completed.”

I thanked her and hung up. Three chapters. OK. And again I started in. I decided to use my three-part summer Feature Workshop structure as a beginning point. I had divided that production into three month-long sessions; Scripting/Pre-Production, Shoot/Directing, and finally Editing/Printing of a 16MM film. All the steps of producing a feature film were contained within those three parts, so I used that template, reworking the terms just a bit. The first section would just be called, “Story Concept For a Feature Film.”

After writing for about a month-and-a-half I finally had the rough draft of three chapters (Story Concept For a Feature Film, Scriptwriting For a No-Budget Feature, and Beginning), and had mailed them off to Ms. Walker. In a few days I heard back. She called to say, It’s time for us to meet. She gave a date, time and her address in the Berkeley hills, and I arrived on the designated day.

Jayne lived up Euclid Ave. which was one of the steep streets that led to the Berkeley Hills from the UC Berkeley campus. It was a nice wooded area with a nearby park, that offered amazing views of the entire Bay Area, San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge beyond. Her apartment seemed quite modest as I was welcomed in. After our short introductions, she walked me over to a table upon which sat the three single-spaced Velo bound chapters I had sent. I sensed from her body language she was contemplating exactly which words to choose to begin our discussion. Finally she spoke.

“First of all, thanks for all the work you’ve done. This is a good start...”

“Oh...Good,” I automatically responded. But the tone of her voice didn’t really give me a reason to jump for joy. As she continued I understood why.

“But there is considerably more that needs to be accomplished.”

“Oh.” And I repeated, “OK.” I was alert, ready to deliver any work I could, to get the job done to her satisfaction.

“To begin with,” said Jayne, “the emphasis needs to be changed. It must be more about the reader’s needs to make a movie. It needs to support their dream, not yours.”

“I see.” As I very carefully listened to Jayne, I began to mentally revise the many pages I had delivered. And strangely enough, I hadn’t lost any energy from her criticism of my initial attempt. I was just happy she was sticking with me.

“So you need to rewrite these chapters, giving the prospective readers what they need. And I believe you can.”

I may have nodded, but remained silent, sensing she still had more to say.

“But before I let you go, I’d like to go over some basic rules of English, to make the writing more stable and accomplished. I teach English at Cal and, if you don’t mind, I’m going to give you a condensed version of my class.”

“That’s fine.” I let her know that I was game. And she dove right in.

“Starting at the beginning,” she began, “...you should understand that the first sentence of a paragraph should have something to do with the rest of that paragraph.”

With her comment, I remember realizing that my poor student days were showing. But again, I didn’t feel threatened or reduced in my commitment to improving the project. I somehow maintained my equilibrium, was almost thrilled in fact, to follow her rules of English carefully as she dug into the depths of correct usage. I kept notes as she talked.

Hours went by. I found myself (a) trying to absorb everything she said, and also (b) somewhat enthralled as she demystified my native language, correcting usages and word-patterns, past, present, future tenses of verbs, sentence structure, descriptive phrases, all the stuff that must be correct and crisp in order to make one’s written communication shine and be publishable.

The one-on-one class she conducted took about four hours total. As it ended, she took a big breath and announced that she had just delivered her entire college-level English class in one afternoon. I realized that I had just received an amazing gift. After thanking her profusely and agreeing on an approximate deadline for the redo I left, drove my car out from its steep parking slot, and rolled dreamily down toward the Berkeley flatlands and my Point Richmond home.

That meeting––Jayne’s determination to get a publishable trade paperback out of me––had put me back on track. I was excited to put her instructions to good use before I forgot anything. Having such a devoted professional in my life made all the difference. So I went back to square one and restarted my routine––banging away on my electric typewriter between 6AM-8AM each morning, and using high-quality, one-time black ink tape cartridges on my Smith Corona so that the well-defined letters gave the appearance of a finished work. And I bought bottles of White-Out in 3-packs, to avoid retyping chores. I can’t remember exactly how long those rewritten chapters took to complete, but probably another hard-working two months passed by. This time I delivered the pages in double-space, like I’d seen in her examples. And I just bundled up pages as requested, no Velo binding, and mailed them off again.

Almost instantly as I departed the post office the thought hit, How many times am I capable of rewriting these pages? Not an easy reckoning, as I awaited her verdict. If she again found major fault in either the content or the language I used, would I be able to spend another couple months of my life repeating work on this spec book? I hoped so.

This writing business was the only positive thing going on in my filmmaking career. And, of course, my wife and close friends still knew nothing about any of this. I continued to keep it bottled up, in order to preserve every bit of energy. So, how long would I deliver rewrites? I answered my own question with, “Forever––if that’s what it took to succeed in getting published and paid.”

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.

“Good job.”

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 from high school 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 of 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, 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. And that’s probably what had just happened to me. I had experienced my academic years, from early grade school on through college as an under-achiever, 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!). “But 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.”

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.

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. I stared at a velo-bound master copy of what I had sent out with Jayne, and wondered if I could finish the job without her help. How I overcame my worries and self-doubts to continue is hard to imagine, but I did. I guess I saw no advantage in quitting. And how else would I spend my days? It was basically all I had. Back into my routine, typing away between 6AM-8AM (wife to work, baby in diapers needing bottle), the writing rhythm returned. It was sometime after I had a full manuscript in hand, all chapters completed, that it hit me. Maybe I could approach the same interested editors Jayne had found, as a new starting point. Perhaps they could recommend other publishing houses...or a new agent?

First off, I phoned editor Bob Miller at Warner Books—he remembered the title and repeated his apology for passing on it. When I broached my need for a new agent (mentioning that Jayne was out of commission), he was helpful, supplying me with a name––Carol Mann. Without hesitation, he added, “She’s Nice.” Good, I thought, I like nice people. I had no idea she was also a top New York agent. If he had told me that, mentioned her reputation, I might never have made a call. I wrote down her name and phone number, but didn’t call that day I knew I didn’t have the proper brain-power or energy yet, to clearly pitch my book. So instead, over a few days, I spent time designing a small film-strip logo to decorate the front cover, to enhance my future velo-bound submissions.

Later that week, as I watched my now year-old son sleeping nearby in his crib, I called New York information, for the central number at Viking Penguin Books. For some reason, I decided to try that publishing house again. Keep in mind that, in those mid-1980s days, a long-distance call cost a pretty penny. So I was wasting money as well as being crazy.

After a couple rings a nice sounding woman at what I assumed was the receptionist desk answered, saying the standard spiel, “Viking Penguin Books, how may I direct your call?”

“Hello...” I said, preparing to pose my important question. “Just wondering if you might know an editor who would be interested in a filmmaking book.” There was hardly a pause before the woman answered.

“Well...there is a lovely young lady here, who seems to be fond of talking about movies. Her name is Lisa. Here’s her extension (and she gave me the digits to punch in). Good luck.”

And that was it. If you’ve seen the movie, It’s A Wonderful Life, you know that I spoke with the female-version of that angel, Clarence, who helped Jimmy Stewart to regain his will to live. In my case, I was helped by a receptionist who had broken all the Viking house rules (they are forbidden to give out names of editors, etc. I learned this later, when I tried the same approach for another book and got nowhere with the person who answered). Anyway, I wrote down the information, and again waited to make the call. I wanted to be at my best before I gave it a shot.

More weeks passed. Then I noticed the name Lisa and the New York number in my notebook. I barely remembered who it was, how I got it or why (crying babies can do that to brain cells). But Marlon was napping at that moment, and it being around 11AM, California time––I added it up to be 2PM in New York–– I thought, What the hell! I did feel better than usual for no reason I could discern. So I decided to give The Big Call a try. I was fairly calm as I dialed Lisa Kaufman's extension (just another shot in the dark...).

“Hello?”

I had expected an answering machine, but suddenly what seemed to be a very young woman was on the line.

“Hi,” I began. “Just wondering if you’d be interested in reading my book on low-budget feature filmmaking?”

“How did you get my number?”

For some reason I answered, “I can’t remember.” In that moment of pressure I couldn’t think straight, felt incapable of supplying an answer that involved trying to explain who the Clarence-like Viking phone operator was. Fortunately, Lisa let the conversation move forward.

“What’s your book?”

“It’s called Feature Filmmaking at Used-Car Prices, and tells how to make a movie the cheapest way possible.”

“Have you done this? ”

“Yes. I’ve made three features this way...and taught a production class. My movies are, A Man, a Woman, and a Killer, Showbo...”

“Don’t say anymore,” Lisa interrupted, “I want to read it. Is it a complete manuscript?”

“Yes.”

“OK,” she said, “Send it to me here at Viking.” She gave me the Viking Penguin address and said she’d look for it. And, “Bye.”

Well, that was interesting, I thought, grabbing a diaper from the box. Back to Mr. Mom activities. Just another blind attempt––more wasted long-distance minutes, printing expenses and postage. But I sent a manuscript copy off the next day and then tried to forget about it. I thought, No sense in dwelling on such an off-the-wall and fluky submission.

(More coming up!)

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