Like molasses

...this is how things move in this town. That's what my friend from undergrad/temporary manager told me over the phone on Monday. I've known Mark (not Amazing Joy Buzzards Mark, but Treasure Entertainment Mark) since my first year at UCSB, 1998. The first short film I ever worked on was a crappy western we co-wrote, he produced and other assorted friends helped put together.

Back in December, Mark called me with a potential job offer. He asked me to come up with a few pitches that fell into the criteria of being "Latino" themed, music driven, urban stories. Once I had something rough we'd meet in January, I'd pitch him my ideas and we'd take those ideas, develop a treatment and then pitch to a legit producer (i.e. with money) who wanted stories/scripts/ideas in the "Latin" arena. I pitched Mark and his partner my human trafficking idea. They loved it. A Mexican-American Goodfellas - their words.

Roughly two months and 18 pages later, the treatment was ready to go. We set up a conference call with the producer who was in Spain and about and hour later, he asked how quickly I could get the script written, given the treatment I said 6-8 weeks. To say the meeting went well, would be an understatement. He loved the idea, wanted to get right on it. Getting him to pay for me to write, just take a look at the blog title.

Mark is trying to work out the details for me, get me an upfront/option on the treatment, a nice payday for the first draft, rewrites and polishes - a decent step deal. So, right now I'm just playing the waiting game to see how serious this producer is. He wants this script, he's going to have to pay me to write it.

But if this falls through Mark is setting up meetings with two very interested producers, one who works at one of the major studios.

I need an agent.