Great anecdote to demonstrate some important points worth remembering. I work as a dev exec as well as a writer and filmmaker. I know first hand about the need to have at least half a dozen projects in various states of development and a colleague/friend of mine usually has ten or twelve on the go. At any given moment there’ll be a couple in the process of collapsing, a couple in the process of seeking money and one or two others in limbo or just getting started. Just today I found out that we have finally gotten a meeting with ACTRA (the SAG equivalent in Canada) so that we can hire union talent for my microbudget scifi through their independent film program (moving towards casting, yay!). Then I got word that a project I wrote didn’t get production financing (sigh, a step back that will delay production for months – at the least) and was told five minutes later by my producer that a TV project has gotten interest from a co-producing partner with a strong relationship with AMC who has sent it on with his endorsement (yay, a project that was in limbo gets a step forward). What a rollercoaster.
None of this is a “success”, of course – everything is tentative at best. But if I was only on one or two projects I could easily be sitting around doing nothing for months at a time. And Lord knows that’d be depressing. Ultimately, success will come when I’m able to make – at least some of the time – the kinds of movies that I want with the stories I want to tell. And if I have a “virtual mentor” in this it would have to be John Sayles. He has built a straight career in Hollywood as a screenwriter and script doctor and used that as leverage to make his passion projects. Of course, I should dream of being as good a filmmaker as Sayles but I love that model and I have spent the last several years trying to build a conventional film career as a means to build up the networks and experience to follow a similar path. I’ve also been finding it helpful to read your blog and the writing of Jon Reiss to think about the producing/distribution/marketing end of filmmaking in a way that I hadn’t previously. Thanks!

best
Shawn

You’re right – there is a lot of grey area where this is concerned! I consider A list to be the actors you see STARRING in big studio films in the theaters (not supporting roles). Now… this is just a general rule of thumb and certainly not absolute since there are A list stars who appear in smaller non studio films, but that is the yard stick I use in general. Everybody else is B list or lower…

Hope this helps!

Stacey

I have been reading your blog and film specific stuff for a while now and something that keeps coming up is the use of the term A list stars and B list stars. I have my opinion of who I would consider A list and B list but is this a term that you use loosely or has it got a definite hierarchy? I look at some of the examples of films that are being packaged or completed as having B list stars but when I look at the names of these actors, as good as they may be, I certainly wouldn’t call them B list.

If you wouldn’t mind clarifying what your definition is it would help clear it up in my head when I read on in the future.

Thanks. Peter.

Y’know what? I had pretty much the exact same thing happen!

We had an offer with a B+ actress, and a couple of others, for the lead in one of my projects, it went on for weeks, despite calling and mailing the agent every now and again, no response. So we thought it was going nowhere and offered it to someone else.

Then came that email from the first actress’s agent saying she wanted to do it. We were made-up, sent the deal memo etc, chased that up loads of times, no response as usual, but others were getting interested. Withdrew our offer to the second actress, not at all popular with her agent! Weeks, no, months go by.

Then we hear from one of the agents whose client we’ve offered the male lead to, that the actress we thought we had, has dropped out! Not from her agent, another one! Apparently a project she’d been attached to for some time before ours got going so she went with that one.

Of course we went back to the second actress but the agent was so annoyed with us pulling the offer they wouldn’t pursue it again.

So, back to square 2. A period of a high followed by a knock back. But hey, one of my fav expressions in this is, ‘A calm sea never made a good seafarer’ So, we’re learning…..