There are screenwriters who make a good living writing movies that many people would not recognize. William Martell is one of those writers. He has had a prolific career writing the screenplays for a host of movies including Trecherous (1994), Victim of Desire (1995), Hard Evidence (1995), Steel Sharks (1996), Black Thunder (1998), The Base (1999), and Soft Target (2006). These are movies that star talent like Gary Busey and Fred Williamson, Shannon Tweed and Joan Severance, and air late night on cable nets like Cinemax.

Martell also writes a notable blog on screenwriting Sex in a Submarine. This is what he has to say about himself:

I’ve written 19 films that were carelessly slapped onto celluloid: 3 for HBO, 2 for Showtime, 2 for USA Net, and a whole bunch of CineMax Originals (which is what happens when an HBO movie goes really, really wrong). I’ve been on some film festival juries, including Raindance in London (twice – once with Mike Figgis and Saffron Burrows, once with Lennie James and Edgar Wright). Roger Ebert discussed my work with Gene Siskel on his 1997 “If We Picked The Winners” Oscar show. My USA Net flick HARD EVIDENCE was released on video the same day as the Julia Roberts’ film Something To Talk About and out-rented it in the USA. I’ve also written a whole bunch of theatrical projects that never got made (I got paid) and was stupid enough to actually *turn down* the job of adapting Dan Brown’s ANGELS & DEMONS.

No matter what you may think about these type of movies, the indisputable fact is Martell and others who traffic in cable movie fare write for a living. They have the same job as an A-list screenwriter: Develop characters, work out a plot, and write a script that gets the movie greenlit.

This is an interesting interview with Martell on BBC TV.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLk2jc_eD5w]