Story Maps: How To Write A GREAT Screenplay by Daniel Calvisi
Film Courage: Dan, how was it to get your first job as a script reader and (if you can) paint a little bit [of a picture] of your life at that time?
Daniel Calvisi: Well, I’d gotten out of NYU film school and I definitely was interested in screenwriting. That was kind of my focus coming out of film school. I really wanted to get into script reading and I had been interning at the Tribeca Film Center in New York for a company that was co-owned by Robert De Niro’s production company and in the same building was Miramax Films. And so I just kind of got to know some people there and it’s funny, my first reading job for them was for their genre division called Dimension films. I remember getting a referral but the guy said that they were not hiring now “Don’t bother calling them.” And because I had a lot of initiative, I called anyway. The first thing the supervisor said to me when he picked up the phone was “Oh…we have a reader job open. Do you want to test for it?” So I did a test coverage which is they give you a script that they’ve already had coverage on. I did coverage on it and they evaluate you on that coverage because they already know the script really well. And so that’s how I got working for them. Then I transferred over to the Miramax division which was their parent company and I had also been freelancing for a number of other companies in New York City (other production companies and studios)…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
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