Hey guys, new here. Going to tell you a brief story.
I've been querying away for a month or two now, learning from mistakes as I go. One of the sillier time-wastes has been querying any and every production company that has an email listed on IMDBPro. As you would guess, this has resulted in numerous automatic return emails and non-responses.
However, I found one listing there for an executive's email address at a major production company (it's owned by one of the 5 or 10 most powerful figures in Hollywood). So I queried said executive and got a response back from an assistant (summarized):
"We don't take unsolicited material, sorry. By the way, how the hell did you get our executive's email address??"
To which I apologized for being intrusive and told them how I found it. They then thanked me in a follow up email and said off-hand:
"We don't take unsolicited material. You'll have to go through our agent, Mr. ___ at ___."
I look up this agent, and without telling you his name, he is BIG. Like Ari Gold type big (though seemingly not a crazy person).
So I figure I have nothing to lose, and I give it a shot. I get the agent's email address and send him a quick note: "Hey, the folks at ____ production company told me to get in touch with you regarding my screenplay." And I followed it with my standard query. And lo and behold...it WORKED. His assistant emailed me back and requested the script for him (or likely his assistant) to read.
I know this all premature and will probably amount to nothing, but it still feels crazy and fortuitous that I walked backwards into the ear of a top top top agent who otherwise would never give an unproduced, unsigned writer the time of day.
So the question is...how to I make sure I don't squander this opportunity? Any thoughts?
I've been querying away for a month or two now, learning from mistakes as I go. One of the sillier time-wastes has been querying any and every production company that has an email listed on IMDBPro. As you would guess, this has resulted in numerous automatic return emails and non-responses.
However, I found one listing there for an executive's email address at a major production company (it's owned by one of the 5 or 10 most powerful figures in Hollywood). So I queried said executive and got a response back from an assistant (summarized):
"We don't take unsolicited material, sorry. By the way, how the hell did you get our executive's email address??"
To which I apologized for being intrusive and told them how I found it. They then thanked me in a follow up email and said off-hand:
"We don't take unsolicited material. You'll have to go through our agent, Mr. ___ at ___."
I look up this agent, and without telling you his name, he is BIG. Like Ari Gold type big (though seemingly not a crazy person).
So I figure I have nothing to lose, and I give it a shot. I get the agent's email address and send him a quick note: "Hey, the folks at ____ production company told me to get in touch with you regarding my screenplay." And I followed it with my standard query. And lo and behold...it WORKED. His assistant emailed me back and requested the script for him (or likely his assistant) to read.
I know this all premature and will probably amount to nothing, but it still feels crazy and fortuitous that I walked backwards into the ear of a top top top agent who otherwise would never give an unproduced, unsigned writer the time of day.
So the question is...how to I make sure I don't squander this opportunity? Any thoughts?
Comment