How A 22-Year Old Found A Hollywood Agent And Sold His First Screenplay by Todd Berger
Film Courage: How did you get a screenwriting agent right after college was it?
Todd Berger, filmmaker and co-writer of THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS: I went to school at the University of Texas and they used to do this thing called The Hollywood Showcase where they would take an hour’s worth of student films and they would show it out here in LA at the DGA (Director’s Guild of America) and the would invite alumni (alumni?) of the university just to come and see the short films, just like What are the kids doing back at school?
And so the year I graduated I had written a short film that played and I had written and directed one (so I had two) a puppet short that became the inspiration for THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS.
So you know I was living in Austin. I was delivering pizza. I was going to move to Chicago and do Second City and go to New York because I grew up thinking LA? Hollywood? Sell out? What am I going to sell out?
And so they picked two of my short films for this thing and I graduated like on Saturday and a couple of days later I came to LA just to go the screening, just because I’d never been to LA before and I just graduated and I was like “I’ll go to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I’ll go to the beach.”
And so I went to the screening and there is an agent at the screening who just happened to go to my college and he was just there to see the shorts and he liked my short film so much.
And he walked up to me after the reception afterwards and said “I loved your short film. Have you written any features before because I’m a literary agent and I represent writers?…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
Watch the trailer to Todd’s latest movie here [The Happytime Murders], in theaters August 24th.
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