May the Spec be with You!
By Christopher Rice

In a galaxy far, far away it’s known as the light-saber but here in Hollywood it’s called the “spec” … and every screenwriter needs at least two. The spec, or speculative, screenplay is the screenwriter’s weapon of choice when confronting the Hollywood reader and consists of three things: the title, the story, and you the speculator. So what are you speculating exactly? A sale of course! All you need to do is submit it to the studios and you’re career is on it’s way; you can practically smell the sharp sent of new cash, Italian leather, and the little inkpads the bank keeps mounted next to the black-inked pen for customers’ right index-fingerprint. The submission process … lets just say … is on everyone’s mind therefore making it unique and strict. So unique in fact that no one can give you a sure-fire way to successfully navigate the process. It’s mysterious. It’s a combination of talent, timing, and luck … and that’s just the plain truth. Everyone in town is looking for the next big movie; I call this the Hollywood Gold Rush. It’s all about that unseen spec floating in the stream just waiting to be discovered, polished, and presented as a shiny gold nugget.

You can’t submit to a studio until your represented by an agent or manager … but you can’t submit to an agent or manager to request representation to do so, either. Welcome to Hollywood; the living, breathing catch-22 … the business designed to keep you out. Still want in? Then you’ll figure a way to break through these obstacles and face the next: the readers.

We have a few unbiased-names: script reader, story analyst, threshold guardian, gatekeeper, intern, assistant, but above all … we’re the first audience … and we’re looking for professionalism. (We have a shit-load of biased-names just for the record … learn them and try to avoid the popular fallacies they reflect). Just like the Jedi has the light-saber and the writer has the spec, production companies have us … script readers; If all goes according to plan, the writer’s spec and company reader will confront each other in “battle” and only one of only three outcomes will unfold: the reader recommends it and will bet their career it’s the next Casablanca, the reader considers the project and it starts it’s climb up the ranks, or the reader doesn’t find it suitable for a second read and passes. Your goal is to get considered … recommending rarely ever occurs in this town … because Casablanca rarely happens.

Want to be considered? Right place at the right time with a little luck … that’s all. Without going into detail about what we look for (that’s another article) here’s just a couple obvious things you might want to consider:

Don’t try to stand out … you’re script will do that for you if it’s great.

You should be submitting nothing other than the pages of your script and two brads to bind it.

Title page: Title, name, phone number & email (we already know it’s copyrighted and registered – leave out the warnings). If your script’s cosmetics turn off the reader, they’ll skip over your script and read another which is the worst for you because the battles get rougher as the pile gets shorter.

And last but certainly not least, tell a great story. Do that, and your reader is bound to consider your material to their boss.

Christopher Rice lives in Northridge with his girlfriend, journalist Katie Christiansen. He started reading professionally at the age of 17 with goals of improving his sense of story as a director and has read for production companies, agencies, and a consulting corporation in Beverly Hills.