There are no guarantees in life.
That's Leila Basen's credo. Since the scriptwriter graduated from film
school in 1976, she's worked for some top shows. But at any given time, she
could cease to be the flavor of the month.
"In 1988 my career was in an upswing and I remember thinking, 'I'm never
going to have a bad year.' But then came 1996. I lost jobs that I should have
got. People said to me they didn't want someone who can write for television."
Bizarre but common, says Basen. Even a tiny remark made to a story editor
about being tired resulted in losing a job.
"I had just come back from writing a film for HBO in France and I said
to a friend that I was really tired -- I was feeling burnout. That was it.
I lost the job. But two weeks later, I learned I had a sinus infection."
It's an unpredictable industry; you never know what will take off next.
Basen subscribes to the philosophy of William Goldman, screenwriter of Butch
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
"His line was 'Nobody knows anything.' My thinking is, if you have a good
feeling about something and it comes out of your own experience, then there's
a chance you've got a trend. Today you wouldn't want to make a series about
an emergency room, but maybe five years ago you would have."
Since Grade 9, Basen knew she wanted to be a scriptwriter. She idolized
writers like Anita Los, who scripted Gentleman Prefer Blondes.
"It's sort of a solitary life, but there's some gratification in that your
stuff is on TV. And in some ways it's the world's best job for raising children
-- they think you're a typist."
The tough part is maintaining discipline and avoiding disappointment. "You've
got to deal with disappointment; for every good moment, there's probably five
bad moments. You have to mentally divorce yourself from your work and be open
to suggestions or changes."
Basen makes sure scriptwriting doesn't take over her entire life. All of
her friends are outside the industry -- something that not only gives her
personal satisfaction, but also a revolving host of story ideas. "If you didn't
do that, you'd always end up writing about the life."
For Bill Johnson, trying to break into the Los Angeles market has been
a tough but enjoyable slog. Fortunately, he hooked up with a Los Angeles actor
who wanted Johnson to rewrite his own screenplay. Johnson hopes it will be
the break he'll need.
"You need someone to mentor you. At least, that's the path I'm going,"
says Johnson, who took the risk of moving to Hollywood from Oregon. "For a
lot of people, it's simply a closed door. It takes lots of work, but if you
can get into the system, there's as much work available as you can do."
The most bizarre situation Johnson ever ran into was when he lost the chance
to see one of his scripts go big time.
"I was hired by a Holocaust survivor to ghost write a screenplay based
on a story he wrote about a group of Holocaust survivors after World War Two,"
he says.
"Steven Spielberg later requested to read the script. The old man was told
he could submit the script, but it had to be done through an agent. The old
man sent the script himself, without using an agent. I only found out after
the script had been returned unread.
"Within a few days, the old man passed away, so the script was never read
by Spielberg. If the old man had said something to me, I could have had an
agent submit the script. That's life."
Johnson hasn't reached the point where he can claim full-time status as
a screenwriter, but he's working on it. He teaches some online classes to
keep his body and soul together.
"It's an odd way of getting paid," he says. "You never know
when the money is going to come in. You could have $1,500 one week and then
nothing for two weeks. So I call myself a writer, freelance writer, teacher
-- all the things you do to make it work."
But Johnson has one secret wish that could help him leap over the biggest
writer hurdle: "I'd like to be independently wealthy."