The Biggest Mistake a Writer Can Make is to Pay Attention to Hollywood Trends

A recipe for frustration and failure in the movie business

What is the trend today in Hollywood?

I’m standing smack-dab in the middle of the town and haven’t a clue. As in algebra, however, let’s say that there is a trend and let’s call that trend ‘X’.

It’s too late to get in on that trend for the simple reason that it is the trend. If it is the trend today, it had to be in the pipe at least a year ago, and much more likely two or three or more years ago. To cash in on that trend by writing a script geared to it is to guarantee that by the time you go to market it’s already old news, stale, pale, and so last year.

During a strike years ago, since no one could market to the studios, a huge pile of spec scripts were written by writers, some of them well established. The idea was to have the scripts ready to sell after the strike. When the strike finally settled, there was a flood of cop-buddy police action melodramas, which appeared to be the trend at the time the strike started. Two writers well known to me and the community, however, a husband-wife writing team, wrote a spec script representing the kind of movie nobody was making at the time: a period piece, a historical costume drama. Happily for…