On Wednesday, I volunteered to sit on a screenwriting pitch panel at The Academy of Art College. My screenwriting teacher teaches a couple of classes there and she asks her ex-students every semester to help her out. When you sit on pitch panel, you learn a lot about how to actually deliver a pitch so it’s good training.

The guy who sat on my pitch panel with me actually got his screenplay optioned on a pitch panel. He went to some pitch panel in Hollywood, pitched his movie about a dozen times, and got a call from a couple of young producers. The young producers works for the guy who just produced Jet Li’s newest film “Unleashed”.

So my pitch panel buddy has optioned his screenplay, but said the Hollywood lawyers’ fees ate up most of it. He wanted to have a professional contract in case his script is ever made into a movie. And now he’s do rewrites for free with the young producers and he said the process is going really, really well.

Interesting huh? My pitch panel buddy said this is his sixth screenplay, and when he told me his idea I was even impressed. His screenplay is very topical and is a thriller having to do with GPS technology. It kind of reminded me of GPS technology “Panic Room” type movie, low budget but very, very exciting.

I was really happy for him, and I was like wow, someone I know actually got his screenplay bought by Hollywood. Okay, maybe not for very much money since options I hear start as low as $35,000, but still he got paid for his work. Pitch panel buddy guy didn’t want to say how much he got, but he said it wasn’t much. But if his script get made into a movie, he said his Hollywood lawyer got him a really, really good deal. He better have gotten a good deal since he said the lawyer spent 1.5 months with the producers trying to hammer out a contract.

And then I started to get depressed. Okay, maybe I got depressed because afterwards we went to the W hotel for drinks and sat on the couches in the lobby and I watched couples grope each other as they we were waiting for the lift and I was like “I want to be groped in the lobby of a nice hotel by some guy waiting for the lift and a night of some majorly serious shagging”. Okay, maybe not any guy and for god’s sake not the old wrinkly 60 year old dude who looked like he was wearing a dark brown shag rug on his heard and who was feeling up the 20 something girl, but some cute guy who was very smart an very sweet.

But no, I think I got depressed thinking I’ll never be a writer who makes a living as a writer. I mean, what are the chances of that ever happening. Sure I can get paid, but not enough to quit my job and have as my next career – creative writer. And I’m like maybe my writing is just a hobby that I have and then I don’t have to stress about ever finishing anything. I can just start projects and never finish and not worry. But that’s an even more depressing thought isn’t it?