Here’s an interesting screenwriting blog worth spotlighting: The Word Player.

Hook: “Creating one original feature film pitch every day for a year.”

Writer: David S. Rielly

Location: Glendale, CA

Occupation: Freelance copywriter for the last 5 years. Before that, TV and film development exec.

Blog origins: Here

In my experience, ideas are cheap… it’s the execution that’s expensive. The days of the writer selling a feature pitch for millions without the accompanying polished, ultra-tight, already-written screenplay are all but gone, and besides, it’s much cheaper for a producer or studio to option or buy a script than to “steal” an idea, develop and write it on their own and risk a lawsuit and bad publicity if the film is a success.

Unfortunately, the days of original screenplays (i.e. not reboots, reimaginings, sequels, adaptations, etc) being made into studio films also seem to be in danger (but I digress).

I am going to put my belief that it should be relatively easy for writers to come up with movie ideas to the test, and write a new one every day for the next twelve months, starting this Sunday March 1.

I am going to hone my abilities to write taglines on these film pitches because I think I would be great at it in “real life” and I want to put that belief to the test.

Recent post: Beck and Call

It’s one thing to enjoy celebrity excess from the outside looking in, but quite another if you’re experiencing it firsthand behind closed doors…

Struggling but proud musician ALEC SIRK runs up such an enormous mountain of debt that he throws himself on the mercy of “GENEROUS JIM” GYPSUM’s shady Hollywood debt restructuring company. The deal is this- all the debt goes away if Alec becomes one of a phalanx of SERVANTS living in the mansion of aging, wildly eccentric movie star PARKER CONRAD and serving his every whim 24/7 for one year. Alec is about to say “no” when gorgeous and equally as debt-ridden would-be singer SAMANTHA FRIENDLY walks into Gypsum’s office to agree to the same deal. When he says to himself “how bad could it be?” Alec has no idea how bad it WILL be…

“And you thought your boss was crazy…”

There’s that saying: “To find one great idea, you must first come up with a thousand bad ones.”

Hopefully David’s batting average will be better than that!

I emailed David and he provided these further thoughts about his blog:

that’s a big part of my impetus to go through with this project. i’ve written five unproduced scripts, and when I looked back I could see that three of them were centered on the first concept I had available rather than the best of a litter. by the end of this year, my goal is to have created at least five tight and pitchable as hell conceits, the kind of pitches I could only come up with by stripping my brain of all the obvious stuff and plowing deep into uncharted territory.

David’s point above is spot on: I read way too many scripts where the underlying story concept just isn’t that good, let alone great — and great is what you need to sell a script to Hwood.

Beyond that The Word Player underscores the importance of generating lots of original story concepts — because when you sell your spec screenplay, sign with an agent and manager, and they send you around Hwood on a dozen meet-and-greets, the first question out of these producers and execs’ mouths will be, “What are you working on next?” If your cupboard is bare, that won’t be a very long meeting. And you won’t have a very long screenwriting career.

The L.A. Alternative did a feature here on David and his blog.

You can check out The Word Player here.