?

[John Bender]

Out of the last batch of (whisper it) reject letters i got, one in particular has dumfounded me.

Check this out;

Dear Bender,
I've had time to read your treatments and I'm afraid I have hit a proverbial brick wall. Writing is a highly heuristic process and not an algorithmic one.Talent is not a genetic gift but a reward of tenacity; Tenacious self-critism. (Tenacity does not mean not taking no for an answer, it means analysing rejection and reassessing your life and it's origins.

You seem to me, bender, to convey an awesome sense of uncapatacable talent and this is my problem with you. What to potentially do: You may become a classic auteur with an highly developed sense of film and an highly developed oeuvre, and therein lies the alien anomaly; Is a gothic maverick with a fresh distinctive style condensed into a marketing concept of itself?

Finally I award you my applause and encouragement and i plan to predict a healthy, if cloudy, future. I'm afraid i cannot offer you representation.



Okay. Can somebody, anybody, please explain what the hell this fool is taking.
I realise that agents are busy people, and i realise this particular one has a problem getting oxygen to his brain, but still...What does this mean. I realise he's said nn. But what does the rest of it all mean.

Thanking you.

[sarumu1]

hey there bender. i agree. the letter is using way too many $5 words. But once you cut through the vocab, i think he's trying to say that your writing is good, but the concept isn't marketable (i may be wrong, but that's what it sounds like).
it may have been written by an assistant with too much time on his hands.
good luck.

[lilybet]

That was hysterically funny. Thank for sharing. You shouldn't spend two seconds trying to decipher what he was trying to say, he doesn't know what he was trying to say. Frame it and use it as a party game for your friends to try and interpret.

lilybet

[Paula413]

That one is worth framing.

[TinaRM]

Well - I think we all needed a reason to better appreciate the form letter that most of us get.

Good luck trying elsewhere!

Tina

[dude]

i am now dumber having read that.

[CRASH]

Could you please tell us which agency sent you that rejection letter? I want one too.

[gdover]

Thanks Bender for sharing the letter. I received a letter from an agent one time regarding a query letter I sent. Here's what he said...

Dear Mr. Dover:

No.

Signed,

(agents name)

I added it with my other stack of rejection letters.
gdover.

[Cornell]

Now that made me laugh! I could almost hear you speak in a very mundane, dead-pan sort of way, gdover.

[Writers Blockhead]

John, is that serious? If so, that's unbelievably preposterous. He or she must be Paul Thomas Anderson's agent to write that much pretentious bull@#%$.

[Nemesis Unbound]

Except that P.T. Anderson doesn't write pretentious bull@#%$ :)

[LuckyPenny72]

Hey Bender,

See my post, at least your rejection letter had someone respond to you who could successfully use the thesaurus. What was that Windows 2000?

Just think, the success will be so much sweeter once you make it. Then you can thank the individual for his/her words of "wisdom".

Good luck to you!

LP

[CRASH]

To set the record straight: Lescher is one of the nicest agents in the Biz. Steve, back me up.

[John Bender]

Dear all,
Glad it amused. I've tried reading and re-reading it, but no, nothing. I especially like the bit about reassessing my life and it's origins. "?"

Loved Gdover/Rebel's "No" letter. Classic stuff.

The agent who sent me this was a guy called Alan Radcliffe from ICM Ltd in London. So say Hello from me Crash.

As far as my stuff being unmarketable, that's a point. I recently filmed a 35 minute short which won the North-West of England first-time film-maker's award.

It was entitled "(Un)Happy Timothy." and shot in an a blue/purple/black fairytale style it told the ""story"" of a young quiet boy named Timothy who lives in a creepy mansion (we shot in an old hotel) and his parents(we never see their top/halfs) are resentful of him and refuse him everything. They tape up one of his eyes, so that he can't watch the other kids playing. They cut off his nose so that he can't enjoy the smell of perfumed flowers and when he complains they stitch his mouth shut

They place a "happy" mask in his wounds' place and to everybody it seems like he's happy (Metaphorically). When he attempts to peel off the mask they remove his fingers, leaving only one on each hand.

Anyway, still stuck with his "happy/Grin" mask he lives alone, outliving his parents. He develops a gift for sculpting marionettes and playing piano music.

His only love is an old shattered music box which he learns to compose music from and he falls in love with it's
pirouhetting ballerina's perfection. He becomes obsessed, and via a wish she comes to life, however she's covered in pin-sharp spikes and he can't hold or touch her - at all or she'll disapear.

He goes crazy - Alone - Everybody outside is constantly talking about how happy he is. so one night he composes a piece of perfect piano music - Lulling the whole town into tracing it's source. Everybody arrives at the mansion and while they're all inside he closes the door and burns it down.

Killing the whole town. Himself and his untouchable love.




The budget was 3'000, and became high-profile in my circle. I didn't get an agent, yet did attract a producer. However i developed it into a "lighter" feature-length adult fairytale and sent the tape along with the synopsis.

So maybe i deserved such a reply.

Plus: If anyone has any comments on the aforementioned storyline i'd really, really, really aspreciate it.

Thank You.

[wannabe]

John

It sounds beautiful and tragic and if you can get Tim Burton involved, you've got yourself a hit.

[John Bender]

Wannabe.

Thank you for reading: Alot of people have said things like "that's crap" or "What's the point in that?" so for you to read a vague outline and use the two words that i always have, makes me appreciative.

A few people have thrown the Burton label at me, I'm not familiar with his output, i once did a silent short in which "nature" allegedly fought back against people. The trees, the grass, insects, everything. They picked on a family and replaced their vision with the way nature viewed things.

A vunerable, powerless, silent witness to the chaos that goes on. Anyway, that got me a few "Weirdo-Childish-freak-Tim-Burton-wannabe" comment-reviews.

Anyway. Thanks again, by the way, do you feel it's possible for somebody NOT to "Make it Big" by simply NOT adhering to Mainstream movie-staples?

Cya.

[CRASH]

I was alluding to P.T. Anderson's agent, John Lescher over at UTA, a subject broached by another poster.

[PteranoDon]

Bender; it had some items reminisent of "Edward Scissorhands", a Burton film I recommend.

[Meltdown]

Wow, never got anything that... that... that


Hang on I'm going to go suck on some helium for about ten minutes and re-read it.

Okay maybe we whould start a forum for us no-zero types when it comes to how to make a movie.


I'm talking in deoth count the nuts in the crapper type detail - how.where to get a crew/ cameras, funding, distrubution, legal hoo-haw.

Reason I ask - there seems to be lts of funding in CAnada, but I have no idea where to go, what to do other than some attempt like Blair Witch thing.

Meltdown

[Couchguy]

Bender,

After reading the rejection letter and your treatment...Maybe the agent is trying to say this: Your writing is bizarre and unique, but it is SO bizarre and unique that your stories aren't marketable. You need to look at your work and say "how can I make this accessible to a wider audience"? If you fail to do that, you will fail to communicate ANY of your genius to the public.

Let's look at Tim Burton, since his name has been dropped a couple of times in this thread. He made a short film about a boy who reanimated a dead dog...bizarre, but unmarketable. What was his first "real" movie? A film about a man-boy looking for a lost bicycle. Bizarre, but marketable. After racking up some commercial successes, Mr. Burton is able to bring some truly bizarre tales (horrific creatures seize Christmas, and by the way, it'll be stop-motion animation...yes, Mr. Burton, whatever you say, Mr. Burton) to the screen.

So maybe that's what he was trying to say...learn to write "marketable bizarreness" or starve.

Your pal,
Couchguy
(works in Marketing...can you tell?)

[ksk2]

First thing he ever did, worked on it before leaving his post at Disney (gawd, imagine THAT working relationship!).

Story of a lad who fancies himself Vincent Price.

Turned it into a puppetoon that was shown at many festivals and recently on Exposure.

Led to bigger things.

If you're too "weird" for the people reading you, but very visual, hook up with an animator and amake a short that'll win awards and/or get you noticed. In some cases, a tape/demo reel goes farther than a spec.

Best, kosk

[Steve]

The best thing about the letter is knowing that the idiot who wrote it isn't trying to be a writer.

Looks to me like he recognized you have talent, but didn't understand your work at all and was afraid he'd sound stupid if he said so. So wrote a letter he thought would make him sound erudite, worldly and sophisticated and he ended up looking...stupid.

Stick to your vision and keep looking for someone who can appreciate it.

[Writers Blockhead]

I was just kidding about Anderson's agent. But I'm not a big fan of his writing. I know many on this board disagree with me. Hey, this is not "algorithmic" subject. It's a heuristic one :)

[Couchguy]

Al Gorithm? Isn't he running for President of the WGA? Running mate...Hugh Ristic?

Your pal,
Couchguy