Looking back, the whole things seems like the sort of elaborate con enacted on an episode of Hustle. There’s the hook, the convincer, the scam and then the blow-off. And like the marks on Hustle, I went for it because it seemed too good to be true. And it was.

My name is Graeme and I wrote a spec script for someone else and never saw a dime.

I should have known better. I did know better. I’ve read others who have written about the dangers of falling prey to unfinanced entrepreneurs. I’ve had colleagues tell me “Never work til you see a cheque.” I’ve listened to others tell me they were working on “deferred payment” for startups and I thought to myself, “What a mug!” (especially after the startup failed mere months later). I did know better.

But I still went ahead and wrote a spec script anyway.

It all happened, initially by chance. It was a meeting at a work function with an acquaintance who, it turned out, used to work as a producer in the film industry in Hollywood with her brother. (She didn’t have much of a resume on IMDB, but her brother did.) The acquaintance was thinking of getting back into the film business—she was finishing a documentary. I asked if she would mind looking at some of the scripts I’ve written. She agreed and called me enthusiastically a week or so later.

“You’re good. We need to get your stuff produced. We should get together and talk.”

We met up at a bagel place on Eglinton and offered some notes on my work—some very helpful, some not—and she talked about some of the new projects she was pondering working on as a producer.

And here it comes…the Hook.

My Would-Be Producer was friendly with a Famous Canadian Musician and they were talking about producing a film together. Famous Canadian Musician had a few one page synopses of some ideas he had. The Would-Be Producer showed them and asked if any of them might be of interest.

They weren’t really. I thought all of Famous Canadian Musician’s ideas were hokey, or ponderous, or both. But the Would-Be Producer thought something could be made from them and was hoping I might be prepared to write a treatment—on spec.

The thing was, the more I looked at those one page synopses, the more I thought one of them might actually work. The Famous Canadian Musician wrote it as one clever idea stretched to its absolute limits where it now seemed hokey and ponderous. However, the wheels had begun spinning in my head. The puzzle-solving, how-do-you-make-it-work side of me that loves writing had started to figure it out: simply take the Famous Canadian Musician’s idea and make it the solution to a mystery. Instead of the idea being the whole movie, the Famous Canadian Musician’s idea was now the twist at the end of the third act. The movie would now be a quest to get to the idea and, finding it, how to escape from it.

And as soon as I had that in my head, I couldn’t help myself. I said I could probably, as a favour, come up with a treatment.

Fool.

I didn’t get around to writing the treatment for a couple of months but when I did, I wrote it quite quickly. And, sure enough, my plan worked. The mystery story I wrote was fast paced and (I thought) funny and when it connected to Famous Canadian Musician’s idea it took a mad 90-degree turn. I loved it. I sent it to the Would-Be Producer, who called one Sunday afternoon while I had friends over and loved it and raved about it and said Famous Canadian Musician loved it too.

And then came something I honestly should have seen coming. Would-Be Producer said, “Really for financing purposes a full screenplay is better. I don’t suppose you’d consider writing one?”

I said I’d think about it.

The treatment was a few days work and was done as a favour. But a feature-length screenplay was weeks, if not months of work. This was starting to become involved. I was hoping to work on a script for a screenwriting competition over the next few months. I didn’t really want to work on someone else’s script for possibly, if not probably, no money.

“Maybe you could offer to write a certain number of pages?” My then-fiancée (now my wife) helpfully suggested.

“It doesn’t work that way,” I explained, “I need to write it all or not at all.”

Looking back, I think my wife had the right idea.

But at the time, I was taking stock of my life. I was engaged to a wonderful woman, but I was working in a dead-end job for a rapacious employer disguised as a non-profit service organization. I had, with a friend, recently pitched a sitcom to a production company that worked with the CBC. Beyond that, my life goal of writing for TV and film seemed beyond reach.

Maybe, I thought, with a Famous Canadian Musician attached to the project, this was my way out.

I agreed to write the screenplay.

Fool.

Here’s the thing: I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy writing that script. The truth is, I loved the experience. I haven’t had such an enjoyable time writing something in my life. The central character just exploded on the page fully formed, with a voice that was perfect to the piece. The antagonist was great fun. The mystery unfolded well and the B-story had a flashback that came together effortlessly. There are scenes in that script that are among the best things I’ve everwritten.

I sent the Would-Be Producer the first 30 pages. She called back, gushing and enthusing. “This is amazing stuff.” The Famous Canadian Musician concurred—Would-Be Producer assured me he was even coming up with musical riffs for some of the characters.

I signed a non-disclosure agreement, which said I couldn’t disclose anything about what I was writing to anyone. I also signed an option agreement which effectively meant that, if we parted company, I couldn’t use any of the material I created. I didn’t really mind signing either. Would-Be Producer talked an amazing game. She was jazzed about the script, she thought that Peace Arts, a production financer would go for it in a second. And while I knew that film production was a risky venture, I thought I stood a good chance working with Would-Be Producer and Famous Canadian Musician.

It didn’t help that I did something really stupid. I looked at the Writers Guild of Canada basic agreement for screenwriters. The treatment would earn me a third of my then-annual salary. The first draft script—even as an adaptation—well, it was more money than I would see as a wage slave in a dead-end job.

The con was on.

I now threw myself into the script. It took every spare moment I had. And if the possible money, the connection to a Famous Canadian Musician and the enthusiasm of the Would-Be Producer weren’t enough, there was a final carrot dangled before me.

The Would-Be Producer told me she had shown the script to a Famous Canadian Director—one whose work I have loved since I was I was a university student. I saw the script I was working on being in the same vein as his earliest work and apparently he wanted to return to that genre after a decade or so directing TV and movies of the week. And apparently Famous Canadian Director loved the treatment and the first 30 pages.

“He really wants to see the full script before he goes on vacation at the start of June.” She told me. “Do you think you could do that?”

Of course I could. Never mind that I deferred other projects (including a couple of paying freelance gigs), that I was working crazy hours trying to fit writing a screenplay and a full-time day job in. It was a film from a story (element) by a Famous Canadian Musician being looked at by a Famous Canadian Director. How could it go wrong?

I should have seen it coming. Worse, I did. I read writer Mark Evanier on the subject of those he calls “Unfinanced Entrepreneurs” when he says:

Unfinanced entrepreneurs don’t have any money — or, if they do, they’re not dumb enough to risk it on their own projects.  They want you to assume the risk…

What is amazing about an Unfinanced Entrepreneur is his amazing gift for self-deception.  I can understand how these people feel the necessity to convince you that that their idea is certain to sell…but the ones I’ve met also seem to have convinced themselves.

Your average Unfinanced Entrepreneur is not asking you to write or draw for free.  His project is definitely going to go forward and it will make everyone affiliated with it, wealthy beyond measure — him, especially.  Any day now, he will be using all denominations of money lower than a fifty for Handi-Wipes.

When I read that I knew that was Would-Be Producer. But I still gave her a 120 page screenplay for free.

I sent in the script and more gushing enthusiasm came from the Would-Be Producer (although it seemed as though it was about the first 30 pages and she hadn’t actually read the script). There was a somewhat ridiculous script note from the Famous Canadian Musician, which I studiously ignored. And then I waited.

Even so, the blow-off happened quite suddenly. I sent an e-mail enquiring if Famous Canadian Director had read the script. He hadn’t. He decided to make the return-to-form film himself (and subsequently has). I asked Would-Be Producer if it might be possible to pitch an idea to her apparently-still-working-in-LA Producer brother. Would-Be Producer had always expressed her willingness to hook us up.

“No I can’t,” she told me, “He can only hear from Writers Guild members and you’re not a member.”

It was at that moment that, in spite of all the evidence prior to that, I realized I had been conned.

A year later, I asked Would-Be Producer if anything had happened, knowing full well the answer. I was told some people looked at it, didn’t like the script and that was that. It was on hold.

In the end, I had been used to create a script for someone else to help further their agenda, and I did it without any financial encumbrance to them. And now they didn’t need me—or the product I created—I was no longer of use to them.

It would be easy to make the Would-Be Producer, who was a friend, the villain of this piece. She did use me, and my desire to be in the film business to make me write. I often wonder, did she really talk to Famous Canadian Director about my script or was it more smoke blown in my face to talk up the free work I was doing? (It would also be easy to blame the Famous Canadian Musician—I’ve thought of writing him and asking how he felt being a party to scummy business practices, but having heard his immunity to criticism on the radio I decided against it).

But I can’t blame her. Would-Be Producer might have made the proposition so good I wanted to take part. She might have even believed her own delusion that funding was a strong proposition with the film. In the end, though, she was doing her thing—trying to take a creative property and get it to the next stage, and she’ll perform whatever game it will take to do that with as little actual financial risk as possible. I can’t condemn her for her nature because, the truth of the matter, though, is that it’s my own damn fault.

The first law of the con, according to Hustle anyway, is you can’t cheat an honest man. I wanted to have a screenplay produced so badly, I neglected Mark Evanier’s excellent point:

Unfinanced Entrepreneurs exist because of a fiction about creative people, so widely believed that even some of us writers and artists accept it.  The fiction is that writing and drawing are not assets…they are things we whip up out of thin air and which cost nothing to create.  If someone steals your work from you, you can always bat out another for nothing.

If you believe this, it’s your right, but you do our profession a grave disservice.  Every time someone tramples on our work — ruins it, changes it, mauls it, damages it — it’s because they have no respect for it.  And, generally speaking, they have no respect for that which cost them nothing.

In the end, I now have a piece of my hard drive taken up with script I cannot pitch elsewhere, cannot use, cannot even really discuss. It’s something that took hundreds of hours over three months to write. Something that I’m still immensely proud of even though no one will see it. I’m lucky that at least the experience of writing it was a good one.

My name is Graeme. I was conned into writing a script on spec—but only because I let someone.