![]() ![]() Most of the writers on the site get multiple contracts per year in return for their $25 annual fee. We created the Hire-a-Writer directory so we could refer them to a bank of writers we had vetted for those purposes. People regularly contact the QWF asking how to find someone to help them with their writing projects, whether as a mentor, an editor, or a ghost writer. The directory also includes professionals who can produce original articles, commissioned biographies, ghost writing, media releases, and speeches.Ĭonsult the Hire-a-Writer Directory Are you a qualified writer? You can read about this, and lots of other exciting stories in my new book THE RISE OF THE MEDIAVERSE.Whether you need help structuring your novel, juicing up your memoir, polishing your poems, or fine-tuning your dissertation, grant application or book proposal, there’s a writer in the directory with the skills to help you. But I did get a great education both in how to write a screenplay and also in the ways of the movie world. So the script for Prime Directive sits on my shelf along with my several novels that also no one wants to publish. The new head of SONY Tristar had his own ideas. So Prime Directive was orphaned, as they say in Hollywood. “You better take a look at the NY Post – page 6,” she said. I went home to you know who and said, “We’re going to make a movie!”Ī few days later, she called me at the office. “I’m gonna green light Prime Directive,” he said. In any event, Sagansky agreed to work with me on the screenplay, and over the course of the next year, we went back and forth, meeting in NY and LA several times to revise, rewrite and refine the script.įinally, I sent off what must have been the 100th revision. This is what in yiddish we call chutzpah… or stupidity. “Have you ever written a screenplay before?” Sagansky asked me. “Let’s hire a writer.”Īt this point, I should have said, “great idea.” But instead, I said, “I can write the screenplay.” I won’t go into details, but… well, it rocked. There was a hero, a love interest, and the climax of the story at Dealy Plaza on November 22, 1963, when JFK is assassinated. The organization then inserts people into a specific time and makes small changes that improve the human condition – stop wars, prevent plagues, stuff like that. It was called Prime Directive, and it was about an organization of time travelers in the future who go back throughout time and recruit people to join them. A paragraph became a page which became 5 pages and so. This started a dialogue with Sagansky that went on for weeks. Quite frankly, I never expected much would come out of it, but I wanted to be responsive to his kind offer… and I wanted to get you-know-who off my back. Each idea was little more than a paragraph. The next day, I fired off three ideas for movies to Jeff Sagansky. “The head of a Hollywood studio calls you up and asks if you have any ideas for movies? Do you think that happens every day? Make something up!” That evening, I told my then (and now mercifully ex) wife about the call. “We don’t do non-fiction, but if you ever have an idea for fiction, call me.” “I just met with Idei,” Sagansky told me. He was, at that time, running SONY Tristar, SONY’s movie studio. Idei, who was then Chairman and CEO of SONY, as well as a string of lectures around the country.Ī few weeks after I got back, I got a call from a guy named Jeff Sagansky. SONY was so interested in the project that they flew me to Japan for a series of meetings with Mr. Today, we pretty much only use iPhones, but Hi-8 were the smallest cameras I could find. Instead of dragging around what was then giant professional TV news cameras – betacams, the VJs worked with small, hand held Hi-8 video cameras. It was, at that time, a very radical idea, but much credit to Paul Sagan, who was running NY1, who went with the concept all in. Instead of using conventional crews, the whole 24-hour local news channel would instead use VJs, (or MMJs as they are now called) – reporters who shot, scripted, edited and produced all their own stories, on their own – no camera crews, no editors and no field producers. ![]() In 1990, I was working on my first TV station in the United States, Time/Warner’s NY1. The story of my first almost motion picture with a major studio: ![]()
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