Looking For Parking With Mike Le
You ever have one of those days where you trip over a rock in the ground and discover it’s actually part of a buried mountain? Well, I had one of those just the other day when I shot an interview request to Mike Le, creator of the webcomic Don’t Forget To Validate Your Parking.
I thought I found a comic by a Hollywood screenwriter, temporarily mothballed by the recent WGA strike. But as it turns out, Mike Le has a much more extensive resume than expected. The former personal assistant to Owen Wilson and Wes Anderson, current VP of Tyrese Gibson’s production company HQ Pictures, and adaptor of the Isaac Adamson novel Tokyo Suckerpunch (currently in progress at Sony with Tobey Maguire attached) talked to us about the state of modern cinema, and even a bit on how to get a screenplay sold these days.
Fellow writers, start your cut and paste.
1. You’ve seen Hollywood from the inside out, and thus know better than most what’s going on. Major studio releases see declining profits and the cost of doing business only climbs. Out of control prices affect every segment of film presentation–four dollar a gallon gas and eight dollar a gallon soda make a night at the movies out of reach of many consumers. Is the cineplex in its current state doomed to failure, or will it survive? If you think there’s a way the cineplex as an industry can save itself, such as improved concession offerings or child care, what are they?
Answer: The death of the theatre-going experience has been trumpeted for many decades. TV was supposed to kill off movie theatres. The same thing was said of cable, VHS, DVD, etc. Yet cineplexes continue to survive because film itself and the film-going experience continues to evolve: from black-and-white to color, from silent to sound, from square screen to wide screen, 3-D formats, CGI, surround sound, digital pictures, etc. Even with the high price of concessions and rising ticket prices, going to the movies is still one of the cheapest forms for an evening out for the family, especially compared to sporting events and concerts. But the main reason why the Cineplex will continue to survive is because no matter how good your home entertainment system is, nothing compares to the audience participation of enjoying a movie.
2. Recently Netflix announced they were closing Red Envelope because the independent film industry they were partially sponsoring was doing almost too well, and competing with major studio releases. Does Hollywood have any reason to fear the growing indie trend?
Answer: I can’t really speak on Netflix because there are conflicting reports as to why they closed Red Envelope. But as for independent films, the scene has been in tough times the last few years. The state of the economy has forced private money to take a down turn on funding independent films. Just a few years ago, the independent scene was flushed with cash from wealthy oil tycoons, real estate agents, Wall Street brokers, doctors and dentists, etc, all looking to invest in films because they were seduced by Hollywood and willing to buy their way onto the red carpet. Ask any independent producer today and they will tell you times are lean.
3. Companies like Lions Gate are regularly announcing that their DVD segments are doing better business than their film releases–in an era when you can make a dozen movies like The Chair for the same price as one Saw IV, does this bode poorly for the major production?
Answer: This bodes very well for all productions. The usual target for a film is to break even theatrically (recouping cost of budget, marketing, etc), and the real profits come from all the ancillary rights: DVD sales and rentals, cable rights, TV rights, hotel rights, airline rights, Itunes downloads, etc. Analogous to it would be something in the music industry, where an artist doesn’t really make money on the numbers of albums sold but from the tour. Many of the straight to DVD titles often do better than the theatrical releases only because the DVD titles are so cheap to make. It’s really hard to lose money on that kind of venture.
4. You make an excellent point mocking the National Treasure franchise in your comic Don’t Forget to Validate Your Parking, and it seems like the studios are getting more and more desperate to rehash the same old material. Is there any purpose behind that, or is it just an example of groupthink gone awry?
Answer: It’s not really groupthink gone awry – that would be more akin to too many cooks in the kitchen (like the old saying, “A camel is a horse designed by committee”). The trend in remakes is more about fear. Hollywood execs are motivated by fear. They are often afraid to be the first to say “yes” because no one wants to be wrong. Being wrong may lead to losing one’s job. It’s easier and safer to push a project that someone already said “yes” to, so you remake something that has a built-in audience: novels, comic books, articles, plays, old movies, TV shows, video games, etc. It also makes more economic sense. Financiers are hedging their bets when they make movies from existing properties, and audiences are only going to see more of this trend with the success of DARK KNIGHT. I think the days of just being a screenwriter exclusively is coming to an end. Our culture is saturated with multi-media and alternative ways to distribute content — that means the screenwriter of the 21st Century has to evolve to survive. You have to be able to juggle between writing for TV, films, comic books, webisodes, animation, blogging, etc. You must create product for every venue, and if executed well, every product is a potential movie idea. Hollywood is ran by corporations, corporations are made up of many different arms, and each arm is hungry to feed the other. Consumer synergy is the magic we all seek.
5. Stock Question Time: Because everybody’s wondering, and I can’t pass up a chance to pander to my own readers, how DO you sell a screenplay any more?
Stock answer: write, write, write. Network. Move to LA if possible. And once you have written the Holy Grail of scripts – bug as many people as possible to read it. No one ever gets annoyed when you hand them a well-written script. Like Steve Martin has famously said, “Be so good that they can’t ignore you.”
And so, that’s the state of Hollywood from Mike Le’s office, and he’s really rather clear: Another vote of confidence for the “theatrical experience”, Hollywood runs on fear, indie times are leaner than anyone saw coming despite the huge numbers of releases, and if you want to sell a screenplay, be better than anyone has a right to expect.
Look for upcoming films Boom and The Big Test coming soon from HQ, and also, I’m told, a reality show for BET called First In.
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Great interview, except this guy didn’t write Tokyo Suckerpunch.
I assume that’s “adaptor” as in “turning the original into a screenplay.”
Matt assumes correctly.
No, I meant the screenplay. He did not write the screenplay. I believe he was called out for this recently. Though I could be wrong. I just remember someone at one point saying that he was lying about that. But again, who really knows.