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2005 BlueCat Winner Shares Experience on Selling Script

June 30, 2005, Rick Stempson and I were in a not uncommon position among aspiring screenwriters. Over the past two and a half years we had entered our script into a number of screenwriting competitions, e-mailed query letters to hundreds of producers and agents, and had Priority mailed our script down a few dozen dead ends. Our reward: An impressive stack of “Thank you, but not interested” letters.



Fade To: July 1st, 2005.

Heather Schor of the Bluecat Screenplay Competition called to inform us our script was one of five finalists. We now had hope. And hope actualized when, 15 days later, another call came in. This one was from Gordy Hoffman, telling us that we had won the competition.

Time to celebrate...but only for ten minutes. It was about that long into Gordy’s call when he let us know that the script we had written would not make it in Hollywood. We needed to do a re-write. We needed to make the script funnier, more inspiring and, quite simply, we needed to make it better.

We received the announcement call on a Friday. By Monday we had lopped off the last 12 pages of our script and written a new 20 page ending. Rick and I were now ready to sell the script, right?

Not even close. This was the first of literally dozens of re-writes that spanned the next eight months. Producers came on board, an actor, and a director -- every one of them wanted changes. Some changes were simple, while others were quite complicated, but all required serious laptop- grinding work. Gordy had tried to inform us of the amount of work that needs to be put into any script worth its salt. “Every scene has to be brilliant, golden!” he would say. But we were still caught off-guard.

We bitched. We moaned. And we did the work. Always did the work.

And now GARY THE TENNIS COACH (we even had to re- write the title) is scheduled to start filming in October, right near home in Austin. Ego pounding rejections, landing agents, writing into the wee hours, attaching a star and a director, allowing our lives to become neurotically unbalanced, finding financing – it has all been a wonderfully lovely screenwriting heaven/hell. And, at its core, it has been a Bluecat production.

-Andy Stock



Andy and Rick Stempson are currently working on a rewrite of GARY with director Danny Leiner, as well as a spec script and sitcom pitch.

Updated: 07/30/2006

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