Zack is a screenwriting expert who has worked for Final Draft (VP), Script Magazine, and has consulted for Saturday Night Live and Variety! On top of that, he has used his incredible background to start his own company called, ThinkAlike Media.
Zack and I met on Twitter awhile back, where he shares interesting stories and advice about his experience in the field of screenwriting (including a hilarious story about the time he was on the set of The Office, which he has so graciously agreed to re-share in this interview). For those of you who don't know, Final Draft is a huge deal in the world of film. Not only is it the best software that all the top screenwriters use (it's the equivalent of Microsoft Word for us), but the company offers excellent opportunities for writers to get introduced into the biz. It's an honor to have Zack here today to share his background and excellent advice for all you aspiring writers out there.
So without further ado, let's begin the interview!
You have an impressive career in the film and media industries. Tell us all about it!
I’ve always loved writing. As a kid I would fill notebooks with short stories that were pretty much just rip offs of movies I’d seen. Teachers were always very complimentary of writing projects I’d do in school, so that really drove a belief that I was good at it.
When I was 14 I saw the movie SCREAM, loved it, and bought a copy of the movie poster which hung in my bedroom. One day my eye was drawn to the credits at the bottom of the poster. I knew about Wes Craven and that he directed it, but I was noticing a different credit for the first time: SCREENWRITER (in that case, the great Kevin Williamson). I realized that it was someone’s job to write the movie and my career path was pretty much set from that day forward.
In college I double majored in English and Film, which meant I needed internship credit for both to graduate. My junior year I got an internship through the film program at a small, family run publishing company based just outside Baltimore called Script Magazine and was able to intern there for two consecutive semesters; one counted for English, the other for Film. Our publication was printed bi-monthly, distributed internationally in 50 countries, sold in all major bookstores and covered the craft and business of screenwriting.
The Editor-in-Chief was a woman named Shelly Mellott and she has become a lifelong friend and mentor. At the time, the company was trying to plan an event for screenwriters in New York City. It was seminars and workshops with writing teachers and pitch meetings with producers, but event space in Manhattan is prohibitively expensive for a small company like that. I came up with the idea to try and do it at NYU, cold called a few people in the film department and convinced them to let us use one of their buildings in exchange for free access for their film students. Planning that event, which was called The New York PitchXchange, became my entire internship. The event did well and after a year as an intern, after graduating, was hired as Marketing Manager full time.
All this time while I was still in college I was beginning to write short comedy scripts for classes and had a great teacher who suggested I try stand up so that I could build up credentials as a comedy writer. I was methodical about getting myself booked on shows and got to open for a lot of headlining comedians, like Jim Norton, Jeffrey Ross and Artie Lange. I was in school and interning in Baltimore on weekdays, then on weekends doing shows anywhere from New York to West Virginia, promoting each appearance on local radio morning shows. It was great. I got to be the opening act for Howard Stern’s Whack Pack Tour, featuring all the comedians from his show, and was picked by Stand Up Magazine as one of the Top New Comics in New York City in 2003. Once I graduated and was working, that became harder to keep up with and what I really wanted was to be a writer, so that year I wrote my first feature length script.
Script Magazine did that same New York PitchXchange event one year later and it was a success again. At that point, Final Draft screenwriting software was the biggest advertiser in Script Magazine and wanted to replicate our New York event in Los Angeles. We formed a multi-year partnership to create a much larger version of the event at Universal Studios, part of which required Script Magazine to relocate a staff member full time to Los Angeles to oversee the planning. Script Magazine was made up entirely of members of one family and then me, so there was only one choice as to who was moving and I was thrilled. I was 22 years old and two companies in the movie industry were paying me to move to Los Angeles.
Throughout that time I also got the opportunity to write a small column in each issue, highlighting a screenwriter who had recently sold their first script. Eventually that evolved into a longer feature article in each issue called Spec Sale Spotlight. I was listed in the masthead as both a staff writer and Marketing Manager. I got to interview dozens of prolific screenwriters over the years and had two cover articles in that time. I was also writing scripts of my own, got my first manager, and began training in the writing programs at Second City and Upright Citizens Brigade comedy theaters.
After the initial partnership between Final Draft and Script Magazine lapsed, FD decided to acquire Script. We all became part of the company, me in LA, them back in Baltimore. I continued to be a writer for the magazine, but was no longer Marketing Manager. Instead, Final Draft made me Director of Studio Relations. My job was to work closely with the studios, networks, production companies and high profile creative talent. I would work with productions to develop the software based on their preferred workflows, help train their staff and oversee the sales of Final Draft’s commercial software licenses. I can’t even begin to explain how many front row seats I had to writers working on episodes of TV shows we all know and love. I’ve seen scenes and dialogue being typed for the first time that are now burned into tv history.
The most exciting experience in that role was when I got the chance to work as a script consultant for Saturday Night Live. I worked more hands on with them than any other show, helping develop a writing workflow to replace one that had been used for decades. That show’s production process is unlike anything else. Most shows aren’t 90 minutes long, most shows aren’t live, and any that meet those other two criteria are news shows with no characters/dialogue/changing sets, etc. SNL’s pace of production is unruly and is very demanding on the writers, as well as an entire Script Department that supports them through the ongoing revisions process. A big challenge is timing. The show is broadcast live, so it has to be rigorously planned and timed because there is no chance for editing and can’t come up too short or too long on time. That planning and timing is organized within the formatting of the scripts and Final Draft is a helpful technology to achieve it. I worked remotely from LA with producers for months and was flown to New York to be a full time part of the staff for one episode (Hosted by Tina Fey, Justin Bieber as musical guest) in which I received a credit as Script Consultant. I got to see it all happen up close and personal, working with the writers until the wee hours every night, and getting to be backstage helping during the show. I even got to go to the after party… and the after-after party! It was the experience of a lifetime and I’m still occasionally in touch with producers as various needs arise.
While still with Final Draft I of course continued writing (lunch breaks, nights and weekends) and formed a comedy troupe with friends from Second City and UCB that we called Drug Puppy. We became the Friday night mainstage show at ImprovOlympic Theater in Hollywood and I was the head writer. From there I began getting gigs writing on small late night cable comedy shows, some tv episodes, and produced some sketches for FunnyOrDie. Through that work I had become friendly with actor and comedian Christopher Titus. I wrote a TV pilot that he agreed to star in and had Barry Katz attached as producer, which led me to signing with the great managers at Kaplan/Perrone. I also had a feature spec screenplay that had Luke Greenfield attached to direct and has been optioned and released by a few different companies. To this point, that’s the script that has come closest to becoming a movie… GOALS!
At my day job, I helped Final Draft to grow internationally as well, working from London for two months to expand the way they work with studios in Europe, which is another experience that helped me expand how I saw my role in this industry. Eventually, I was promoted to Vice President of Sales at Final Draft and two years later, in 2015, the company was acquired for over $20M. I decided I wanted to leave rather than work for a much larger company that had bought them. I looked for other jobs and received a lot of offers from other companies in media and technology, but ultimately decided that if that many companies wanted to work with me then maybe it was time to start my own. So that’s when I began ThinkAlike Media. And another cool part? Shelly Mellott is now the President of Final Draft, running the company from the same basement in Baltimore where I was once her Script Magazine intern.
I see that you have your own business, ThinkAlike Media. Tell us more about it and who these services are targeted for.
ThinkAlike Media works primarily with very small companies in media or technology to market their businesses to other businesses. In one very big exception, we were also hired to consult for Variety, which is obviously a very large company. Most of my clients either have a new product or service used in some form of creative production, whether TV/Film/Music/Podcasting/Fashion, or small production companies that create digital content for other businesses, or a small production company who needs help marketing a film to distributors or press. I also have a few clients who have technology products completely unrelated to the media, which have been really fun to work on, because it’s helped me prove that my marketing skills can apply to products in other industries. As of April we’ll have been in business for 6 years and I’ve been able to grow it into a team of 5 people. We’ve helped hundreds of companies who we’ve helped to earn millions in revenue, including major product launches in China (you can read about that here: https://www.thewrap.com/chinas-screenwriters-are-finally-ditching-outdated-software-exclusive/).
Our website is ThinkAlikeMedia.com
You once told a memorable story on Twitter about going to a filming for The Office...a certain scenario that involved the hilarious Steve Carell! Would you mind sharing that story with us?
I work with NBC a lot and had a nice relationship through Final Draft with Greg Daniels and some of the writers/producers on The Office. I had helped them with something urgent one day and in a polite gesture of gratitude, invited me to come to set one day as a guest. The episode was shot at a cool nightclub in downtown LA called The Edison. The club has two stories, the top portion looks directly down into the bottom portion. The scene is set up on the bottom floor with much of the production equipment set up upstairs. I was positioned upstairs, but hadn’t been given a headset like the regular crew has, so I couldn’t really hear what the actors were saying as they were filming downstairs. This friendly crew member noticed and asked if I wanted a headset, I was so appreciative. I put them on and THE NEXT WORDS out of Steve Carell’s mouth made me LAUGH OUT LOUD. It echoed off the two story high ceiling. The director yells “CUT!” and the same crew member came over and took the headset away from me. I’ve been on DOZENS of TV sets, that has never happened, and I was absolutely mortified. Steve Carell is just THAT funny. It’s also just one of two times I’ve been embarrassed in front of him, the other was when a colleague mispronounced his last name right in front of him backstage at the WGA Awards.
Someone has just completed writing, editing, attaining feedback, and formatting their screenplay. Everyone who reads it says it’s amazing - polished, ready to go, the works. A lot of the subscribers to this blog are at that very stage. What would you recommend to be their first three steps to begin their journey into this industry?
The first thing I would ask is if that person has read many scripts, including recent ones that have sold in their genre. One mistake I made early on that I think a lot of young writers make is they set wrong expectations for themselves. They need to understand where the bar is to know how high they need to jump to get over it. I thought I’d write scripts, get feedback, rewrite them and feel great about them and expect others too as well. But I didn’t even realize the caliber of the scripts that those same people were going to be reading against mine. Great movies come from great scripts, but so do bad movies. So many amazing scripts are unproduced, just look at The Black List every year for proof of that. I’ve read scripts that have moved me to tears, that would be one of the best movies I’d ever seen, but has never been produced (it’s called THE END, written by Aron Coleite). So read scripts that have just sold to see the kind of material currently attracting the market and make sure you’re truly ready for battle.
Secondly would be to get that script read by someone who has read a lot of scripts. Family and friends will want to help, and that’s great because anyone can tell you if the story works for them, but you really need someone who understands scripts to give you real screenwriting specific feedback. The Black List website is an excellent resource for professional feedback, certainly the most reputable with a great track record of great scripts being discovered. They also have fantastic fellowship opportunities. There are other great contests and some not so great contests, so do your homework. The Nicholl Fellowships is a screenwriting competition run by the Academy that is obviously first class, the Austin Film Festival and Final Draft also have reputable contests. You don’t even have to win a contest to be worthy of someone else then reading it, even if you can advance by a round or two, then use that credential to entice someone else to check it out. Rinse and repeat to get as many people to read you as possible. Keep getting read until someone wants to help you with it. But expect feedback, expect to rewrite, expect it to be harder than you already know it will be. Professional screenwriters are akin to world class orchestra musicians, you have to truly master the instrument to even get considered for that job.
Third would be to get to work on your next script. If you only have one, you’re probably not ready yet. Write two, see which you like better, see which other people like better. You’ll be able to answer the question, “what else do you have?” and ultimately you’re going to need to write a lot of material to get good at the instrument. As soon as you write one, move on to another as best possible to keep your routine and momentum.
A determining factor for success in the entertainment industry would be networking. What are some ways that a new screenwriter can get out of their comfort zone and start building those connections?
Twitter is an amazing resource. (That's how I met Zack!) The writing community lives on Twitter because it’s a platform built for our skill set. Photographers kill it on Instagram, writers kill it on Twitter. Writers tend to be supportive of one another too, especially once you’ve been out on “the battlefield” together, when someone has been around and churned out a lot of work. There is a social gravitational pull amongst writers and Twitter is a great place for that to take place.
Although live events aren’t a thing right now during the pandemic, events like the one I used to plan for Final Draft have a lot of networking value. You can certainly learn a thing or two in the classes but I always felt the best value at events like that or film festivals is the people you meet. Some of my best friends in the industry are people I met at events while joking about some drunk screenwriting legend who needed to be helped out of an afterparty at the Austin Film Festival (Hey Paul!).
And a big one is this: PRODUCE SOMETHING. Make a 2 minute short film with an iPhone and put it online, put on a short play at a local theater, do something that you can show to people. A) it becomes something you can show to prove you’re really putting rubber to the road and trying to get better at your craft and B) you’ll work with other people to create it and get better at being collaborative, which is key to growth in this industry. If you can’t get along when you’re trying to work out creative differences, it’s tough to be liked enough to get hired frequently. Sure there are exceptions to that, but to the point of your question, it’s important to learn how to be creatively collaborative and learning that sometimes other people can make your idea better. Likewise, be open to helping others on their projects, every new experience helps to grow your network and make you better at the job.
Anything else you’d like to share with us today?
I’m afraid I’ve already been long winded here, so I’ll just say that while I think it’s possible to succeed in this industry from anywhere, there is no comparison to the advantages to being in Los Angeles. It’s a question I see asked a lot. If you want to be the best stock broker, you work in New York City. If you want to work in high tech you probably live in northern California. If you want to grow pineapples you move to Hawaii. The entertainment industry WORLDWIDE largely revolves around the day to day work and relationships that initiate right here within the Thirty Mile Zone of Los Angeles (for anyone who didn’t know where the name TMZ comes from). The pulse of creativity, the community, the opportunities are just undeniably more accessible to anyone who lives here and if this is the career you want, there are much worse lifestyles than what we enjoy in Sunny SoCal!
Here are a few links where you can check out more of Zack's work. Thank you for joining us and God bless!
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