PREFACE

I did not sleep with Ana de Armas. 

That wasn’t me you read about, sailing around the Cap d’Antibes with George and Amal.

I did not take Leo for 50 large at Hold ‘em. 

However… that was me watching the producer’s newly-restored Karman Ghia spontaneously combust on El Camino Drive.

That was me taking my first lunch meeting with a producer at Fatburger and being pitched a job rewriting a Malaysian soft-core screenplay circumspectly titled “Sex Farm.” 

That was me guzzling Snapples served to me at different times by Gene Simmons and Jackie Chan in their homes. Gene handed it to me politely from his fridge; Jackie zipped the open bottle across a long table into my hand without spilling a drop.

That was me looking up from the script I was writing to see a mountain lion staring at me through the open kitchen door. 

That was me watching my boss at the talent agency assassinate his New York counterpart by ‘accidentally’ letting it slip that the counterpart was booking a comedian client on the side and skimming the commission.

That was me surrounded by three adult actresses at Vivid Video’s AFM booth and dropping my Diet Coke in slow motion as my fingers mysteriously stopped working. I can still hear them giggling when the can hit my foot.

But this is not a mem-wahhh. Those are far too often coffee table books of the soul, more likely to catch coffee stains than interest. This book is less about what happened to me than why it happened.

So if it's not about the Pretty People, or How to Write a Horror Script That Sells, why read it? I guess my first answer is ‘don’t.’ Most people can’t learn from other peoples’ experiences. They have to lick the frozen streetlamp themselves or boil the chicken in Nyquil on their way to TikTok fame. But if you are the kind who can take a little advice here and there, or who likes to peek behind the curtain a bit, grab a seat. I’m a middle-class screenwriter who has made a living for 25+ years in Hollywood. This is an achievement. It makes me good, lucky, and stupid. 

Good, because, well, you have to be, to last that long.

Lucky, because, well, you have to be, to last that long.

And stupid… because following your bliss in Hollywood is like staging Swan Lake in a minefield.

______________

The first inkling of this book came as a needle punctured the surface of my eyeball...

Although enjoyable to imagine, I was not in some jungle hell undergoing torture, nor in the cobwebbed basement of a ravenous ophthalmophage. I was in the Retina Institute receiving treatment for a burst blood vessel in the back of my eye. Such occurrences are treated medicaevally via the insertion of a hypodermic needle into the eye for the delivery of a $5000 miracle drug. Though my eye had been comfortably numbed, and I was floating on Valium’s serene sea, I was still able to feel the needle slide through the tissue. 

Let me share that one more time: I could feel the needle slide into my eyeball. 

Somewhere along the needle’s journey (through my eyeball) - between microbouts of despair, horror, fear, and anger – it occurred to me to wonder why I was here.

I knew the immediate cause. High blood pressure. But why so high? Did I have my parents to blame, gifting me the faulty DNA that also cursed me with the curly hair that crushed my childhood? Was it the writer’s legendarily torpid lifestyle, broken only by cat-Ninja videos and forays into Wordle? Or was it the superabundancy of cheeseburgers tossed back with careless gusto over time? (“…and a Diet Coke,” he'd say piously.)

Possibly. Or was it something else…

Was it the 25 years I’d spent working in Hollywood? 

Let’s consider that possibility:

High stress ✔

Lack of stability ✔

Constant rejection ✔

Financial worries ✔

Constant self-doubt ✔

Lack of positive reinforcement ✔

Mandatory ass-kissing ✔

Unpaid work ✔

Underpaid work ✔

Overpaid work followed by huge tax bill ✔

Keeping true feelings in check ✔

As I write these things down, I try to recall why I left behind the tomatoes and sweet corn of New Jersey. Why Hollywood? Why screenwriting? Certainly there are jobs with fewer checkmarks. Drug mule. Fluffer. Presidential press secretary.

The answer is simple. I love film. Screw that. I love movies, good and bad. And that’s a problem. Because Hollywood teems with people who know a great truth: Love is Leverage. They understand that those who love movies will do anything to get them made. Forget drugs, sex and sycophancy. That’s a Tuesday brunch. I’m talking something far worse. People who love movies will work for free. I’m put in mind of the moment in Doubt in which Viola Davis talks about her son’s molestation by a priest. And horror of horrors, she’s grateful for it, because at least one person has shown him kindness. Substitute ‘screenwriter’ for ‘little boy’ and you’ve just about got it. 

But this alone was not why I had a scimitar aimed at my eye jelly. 

It was all the vexations that had come between flipping the New York Times' full-page film ads on the golden Sundays of my childhood and thumbing the pages of an old Sports Illustrated in the geriatrically-engorged waiting room of the Retina Institute. 

Things like:

•       The producer who told me no one likes ‘hat movies.’

•       The production company that decided not to pay me for six months.

•       The phone that didn’t ring.

•       The day Robert Downey Jr. was arrested – just after a producer made a seven figure offer for him to be in a film I wrote.

•       The manager who ghosted me - twice. 

•       The executive who loved my ideas so much she handed them to her own client to write rather than pay me to do it. 

•       The producer who stole five months of my work and pumped them into the script for his billion-dollar franchise.

•       The day I lost $150,000.

•       The day I lost $500,000.

Kapow! A vein blows and I can’t see out of part of my eye. If this were a movie, my loss of sight would be accompanied by clarity of vision. All I got was a five-digit bill.

These incidents could remain the stuff of a hundred nightmares, the staple of a thousand bitch-fests. After all, every writer, every person who’s ever cared enough about movies to work for free, who’s ever watched his dreams spun into someone else’s gold, every one of these people has stories like that.

But as it happens, in addition to writing, I teach screenwriting to college kids. They’re the next generation of writers who’ll stare down the shark eyes of those who will profit from their talent. From time to time I tell them my stories of things that went sideways. They love war stories in much the same way people slow down at crash sites. The bloodier the better. ("All that wreckage but I'm still alive...") But then someone asked me a question after one of my tales: What should you have done differently? 

An HMI flares over my head.

This book contains those answers. It’s not a guide to writing, nor procuring representation, but it's filled with information I wish someone had told me when I started out. It’s a handbook of practical tips for screenwriters and other creatives. Things to avoid, things to do. How to live - not just make a living - as a writer.

It could save your career, your marriage, your bank account. Possibly all of them, as they are often an ungainly menage a trois.

About the title: the original one was ‘Oops,’ said the Mohel: Making the Cut in Hollywood.’ (Or Tips for Budding Screenwriters.) I was assured that that wouldn’t fly, because not everyone knows what a mohel is. But I really like the metaphor, so fuck it. I’m gonna use it. A mohel is the knife man at a bris, the Jewish circumcision ritual. You can imagine that “oops, I slipped’ is not the phrase you want to hear from the guy with a knife at your son’s matzoh balls. 

That title reminds me that Hollywood is stuffed with pricks and schmucks. Isn’t it odd that words for ‘penis’ mean anything from a shithead to a moron? (“Um, no," said every woman, ever.) 

The title is also a warning that not all mistakes can be fixed. (“Mr. and Mrs. Goldberg, I’ve got some difficult news…”) 

In goy that means, Shit Happens. 

I'd like to help you avoid some of the shit… and let you know that even if you can’t, things can still work out. 

________________

A final word, on partners. I’ve worked with four different writing partners over the years, as well as by myself. I don’t refer to them by name, nor do I mention them in every project in which they were involved. This is not because I want to claim all credit - quite the opposite. The mistakes that follow are mine and mine alone. They have each taught me many things, for which I have great gratitude and respect.