The Confinement Writing on Assignment
Writing an original idea is probably the most uplifting experience a writer can ever have. You get to create a whole world with interesting characters that live by their own moral principles. You get to create a storyline with intricate plot points that keep the stakes rising until the very end. When you’re writing your own idea, you get an almost god like power and you are set free by your own words. That is the reward of writing on speculation.
Writing on assignment is the polar opposite of writing on spec. Writing on assignment is when you are commissioned to write someone else’s idea. Writing is a very difficult job that is both creative and technical at the same time. Writing requires a lot of emotional drive, discipline, and talent. Producers and directors are fully aware of the skill set that writers have, so instead of writing their original ideas themselves, they seek out writers to execute the process for them.
The problem is when you’re a professional writer; most of your income will come from assignment and not speculation. So I have documented here, faithful reader, my tales and adventures in the world of writing on assignment (insert opening title sequence for HBO’s Tales from the Crypt).
Let’s start our tales at the beginning. Like many others who grew up in the 80s, I was a huge splatterpunk (fan of horror and all things punk and heavy metal). My favorite writer was Clive Barker and I wanted to grow up to become just like him. By some strange twist of fate I became a professional writer at the age of 21. As an undergrad, I was already selling short horror stories in small circulation genre magazines. I was once told that I have a huge religious following in the Midwest whom I will probably never meet.
When I decided to try my hand at screenwriting I ended up doing better than I expected. I remember going to the award banquet for Screamfest Film Festival where my script had placed as finalist. That fateful night was the first time I got to meet my life long hero Clive Barker. He saw me staring at him so he came up to me and introduced himself.
I shook his hand and said, “You’ve been such a great inspiration to me. I’ve tried to emulate your success by selling horror stories. It’s been a hard road but I’m not going to give up.”
Barker put his arm around me and replied in his thick British accent, “It’s very hard, but you’re going to make it if you stick with it. I can tell you’re going to make it someday. Stick with it.”
That conversation gave me new wings and an undying desire to write. I made sure to give many thanks to Rachel Belofsky since her festival made it possible for me to meet my hero. As luck would have it, Rachel would continue to make my dreams come true throughout my career.
One day I sent her an e-mail out of the blue asking if she knew anyone who was looking for a writer. I mentioned how I was teaching screenwriting at the college and how I had success in the publication world. She asked me to send her some of my stories. The next thing I knew I received an e-mail from a known director named Laurie Agard. She said she liked the sense of loneliness and isolation in my stories and was willing to meet with me.
Laurie and I met in LA and went out for tea. During our conversation she told me she was with the Directors Guild of America. She was too busy developing a project she already committed to and needed a writer to write a film she was shooting for the DGA Special Projects Committee. Just like that, I got my first assignment.
For Laurie, I wrote a drama called Megan, about a female psychiatrist in her forties who specialized in patients who suffered from loneliness. In actuality it was the doctor who needed the patients most because she was the one who was truly lonely.
The problem was I was in my early twenties and had no clue how women in their forties thought or behaved; so I had to do research. At first I hung out with the older staff women at the college and told them about my assignment and how I needed help. They told me about what women in their forties cared about and thought about. As great as their information was, it was still too abstract to me. I couldn’t feel it enough to write it.
So I thought to myself, what better way to understand women in their forties than if I just dated some? Now I couldn’t just walk up to any cougar on the street, grab her hand and check if she had a wedding band. That would’ve been awkward and I’m sure I probably would’ve ended up in jail sooner or later. Luckily for me, this all happened during the time Myspace was still considered cool.
During my teen years I had an interesting observation. I realized that good-looking women have the same lustful reaction to men with six packs as men do to women with big breasts. A lifetime of kickboxing had given me such a ripped six pack that even if I ate nothing but carbs and didn’t work out for months, it will still be visible.
So what I did was take a picture in the mirror of just my abs and put it up as my Myspace profile pic. My inbox was flooded by messages from random women asking me if I ever wanted to hang out sometime. I clicked on their profiles and looked at their ages. If they were in their forties, I would reply back asking if they’d like to meet up for coffee. And that is how I did my research for that film.
Writing the film was a very difficult experience. Laurie was very flexible with deadlines but they were still there. I had a lot going on at the time but I made sure I met all of the deadlines. I was happy to be writing but for the first time in my life writing actually felt like a job.
Shortly after I finished that assignment I got a phone call from my buddy Jeff Blaxland. He said that he was assistant producing a sci-fi series that needed an experienced writer. I agreed to take a meeting.
I met Jeff and the executive producer/creator of the series, Philip Kim, at a Starbucks by my house. Philip showed me the pilot he had shot for the show. At that time he was in dealings with Sci-Fi Channel about them picking it up. It was a post apocalyptic sci-fi series called Downstream. I showed Philip my resume and writing samples and got my second on assignment gig.
The crappy part of the story is that the deal fell through before I wrote a single episode. This is an important lesson for any aspiring writer out there. Never put all of your eggs in one basket because sometimes deals don’t go through the way you expected them to.
One day after MMA practice I was having a conversation with my coach Erik Paulson. He asked me what I did for a living and I told him I was a screenwriter. His eyes bulged in his skull and he pulled me into his office. His office was covered in religious artifacts. He told me that he had a religious story that he always wanted to tell. Just like that I was commissioned me to write his religious adventure film Eleven Eleven.
Let me you tell you right now, faithful reader, I am the biggest atheist in the known universe. Religious groups tell children that Victor Phan lives in their closets or under their beds and will get them if they anger their deities. Once again I found myself in the position of doing hardcore research. I bet you probably think I used to this as an excuse to date religious girls, but no. I did research the correct way this time and read the bible multiple times. I read it so much that if I heard sometime in public paraphrasing it wrong, I would correct them by stating the actual quote from memory and then citing where it’s located in the bible.
I met with my coach every Monday night at Lucille’s to show him the progress of my work. He would give me his comments and I would spend the week writing more. This assignment really felt like a job because I had to write material that went against the lifetime of science I was raised to believe.
After Eleven Eleven, I took some time off of writing and concentrated on my other talents. While I was in college I supported myself by making a living off of being a storyboard artist. I decided take a storyboard gig to give myself some time to recharge my writer’s battery.
I was hired by Reel Gem Films to storyboard a crime drama called The King of Silver City. It was a film about a convict who gets out of jail only to move up in the ranks of Silver City’s underworld. While storyboarding the film, I became very close with the directors and producers. They learned about my writing and producing background, so when it was time to hire someone write their next film, Jessica Meyer’s Tale of a Weekend Suicide, whom did they turn to?
Jess Meyer was the a drama about a writer who had great success with her first book but had trouble coming up with a follow up hit. While trying to write her novel in Big Bear, she witnesses a murder and is kidnapped. She spends time with her captor and eventually develops feelings for him.
The really cool thing about this assignment was that they actually had me onset during the production of it. The uncool thing about it was I was doing daily rewrites. Everyday the assistant director would tell me how many pages they had left to shoot. I would stay up all night to rewrite those pages accordingly so I can give them back to the assistant director in the morning. Now this definitely was a job. Even though I learned so much from the experience, it was really stressful and it negatively impacted my health, but at least I can say that I’ve done it.
After Jess Meyer had wrapped I had a meeting with the producers from Reel Gem to discuss moving forward. During that meeting, they talked about how their investors wanted their next project to cost little but rake in a lot of money. A light bulb immediately turned on in my head and I suggested they commission me to write a horror movie. I told them that horror movies are known for costing little and bringing in the dollars like an ATM machine. Fans of the genre tend to forgive things like bad acting and special effects hence less overhead for us. I told them I already have a story for them.
My most successful short story is a horror story called Thrillseekers. It’s about a group of friends who go to a local trouble spot called Sierra De Los Muertos, hoping to find ghosts. While there they instead find pain, terror, and depravity. This story is so hot in the publishing world that a different publisher buys it from me every year. To this day I’m still making money from this story!
I told Reel Gem that I’ve been looking for an excuse to adapt Thrillseekers for years. As fate would have it, they gave me the green light. I went back home and reread the story. I reworked it to work better on film. I sat at my Mac day and night churning it out. For the first time in my career, an assignment didn’t feel like an assignment. I did the same stuff as I did with the other films I wrote, but this one feels uplifting because this was an original idea. I was the creator.
I finished the first draft at 75 pages (which is pretty short because most horror films land on the 90 page mark). My editor, Clark Jones, already gave me his edits and I’ll spend the rest of today day inputting them. Tomorrow is the fateful day where I bring my draft to Reel Gem for them to decided whether to make it or not. It has been a hard struggle but a truly rewarding one. So whether they shoot it or not, I’m glad to have taken that assignment.
For the first time in my life I didn’t feel the confinement of writing on assignment.
Victor Phan and Clark Jones
Torture Chamber Productions
February 19, 2010