![]() ![]() The anonymity lost its allure, and I started to complain. I started to see less movies developed, less writers hired, less work for someone like me. ![]() I could work for weeks straight, then not again for half a year. ![]() Ten or 15 scripts into my tenure, I looked at where I was. Over five or six years, I ghostwrote scripts for films starring Will Smith, Jim Carrey, Angelina Jolie, and others, along with a TV pilot or two. I'd be provided an outline for the script, write scenes or a few in a row, then read drafts and rewrite pages along the way. I had to be fast, easy to work with, and not prone to complaining. The drill was this: A script assignment sale would happen, there was a splashy announcement in the trade publications, and my phone would ring offering me a flat rate to write some portion - or occasionally, large portions - of the script. As an example, the writer who sold the script might've been paid $250,000, and for my ghostwriting work, I was paid $25,000, along with a bonus if the film got made. I was a freelancer/contractor on the scripts I ghostwrote. The pay was often good, you made your own hours, and no one except the people who surreptitiously hired you knew you even existed. Schwartz in the early 2000s writing a script.Ī ghostwriter understands they're doing so without credit. If you couldn't get a writing job on a TV show or weren't on the "approved writers" list for studios - and your self-worth was not a consideration - there was money to be made as a ghostwriter A ghostwriter is hired by the script's credited writer or by the producer or studio to write, fix, or rewrite a script The hottest writers were always working on a few scripts at once ("stacking") and regularly subcontracted out vast portions of the scriptwriting work to another writer, or "ghostwriters." ![]() It wasn't uncommon for an actor or actress to have half a dozen scripts in development. There were always dozens or more writers working on scripts for the dwindling number of stars who could open a film. It got me in the writer's room and into the union.īut being successful meant befriending the next great showrunner, having the right agent, and parlaying one job into the next - things I wasn't very good at.įrom the late 1990s to mid-2000s, when movie studios were flush with development money, they made 25 movies a year and had 100 scripts in development - this was before the studios decided to just make five movies and didn't develop as much, so my end of the business dried up - so there was lots of work for writers like me. My first break in Hollywood was as a scriptwriter on the staff of several highly forgettable TV sitcoms. It has been edited for length and clarity. This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Robert Schwartz, a college and graduate school admissions essay consultant and founder and president of Your Best College Essay from Brooklyn, New York, about how he built his company. See more stories on Insider's business page.Here's his story, as told to writer Robin Madell.He grew his business after quitting Hollywood by learning from competitors and starting out cheap.Robert Schwartz is a college and graduate school admissions essay consultant.Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. ![]()
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