How do you get someone "important" to read your script?

I wanted to do a post like this because of something funny that’s happened recently to my Significant Other.  My S.O. is freelancer who runs a small entertainment related business that has company credits on IMDB…and yeah, business has been booming which means they’re racking up the online credits.  The business is mostly post production related, so imagine my S.O’s surprise when they started receiving a bunch of emailed script submissions.  Needless to say, we had a good laugh over this. My S.O. has never produced a feature film let alone optioned a script so getting something that says “Dear Sir/Madam” followed by a script query was…bizarre.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.  I’ve handled several forests' worth of paper in unsolicited submissions on most of my jobs so I get that people just send stuff out in mass to any company they can find, hoping for the best.

Think of the trees, people!  Think of the trees!

Heck, even I’ve been queried before.  A while back, I was working on a pretty high profile movie.  As soon as my credit showed up on IMDB, I started getting the strangest Facebook friend requests from people I didn’t know.  I rejected all of these and then I got messages from some of them.  They were people asking me if I could get them a job on the movie or if I could pass on their script to the producers.  Egad!  After I changed all my privacy settings, I got to thinking…if this is the wrong way to get someone to read your work, just how do you get someone "important" to read your script?

Right or wrong, the way I see it, most people only have about 3 options:

1) Make a connection and ask/get asked to send your script

One reason why I advocate the LA/NYC move so much.  The more you surround yourself with people who work in the business, the more likely you are to meet a CE/development exec or even a hungry young manager/agent/their assistant.  Besides more usual forms of networking, you can also always reach out to friends or friends of friends via email or Facebook…let people know you finished a new script, and see if anyone bites or can pass your work along…just don’t be obnoxious.  Beyond that, it’s just a crap shoot.  Some people are excited to read stuff and some aren’t.  I’ve met a few people while networking who have said those magic words “I’d love to read that” or “I’d love to read your work” and then handed me their card, but I’ve also gotten the brush off or even worse, something vague like “Oh…cool.”

2) Send it to a reputable contest

You might have to pay a contest fee but if your script does well enough/wins someone will probably reach out to you to ask to read it.  At the very least, you can make your script sound more enticing in a networking situation:

“What do you do?”
“I’m a writer.”
“What do you write?”
“Mostly comedy, my last script was a buddy comedy about a guy and his psychic dog.”
“Oh…cool.”
“Yeah, I really enjoyed writing it, and it was actually a semi-finalist for the Nicholl last year.”
“That’s awesome…you should send it to me, I’d love to read it sometime.”

3) Send an unsolicited query

If you can’t tell from my little anecdotes about IMDB and Facebook queries, I don’t think this is an especially viable option…but hey, if you want to try, knock yourself out.  Just understand that legally, unsolicited work is a problem.  Almost no one including me, my S.O., or a big company wants to read them.  Let's say you mail me your psychic dog comedy unsolicited and I read it and try to be nice and write you back with a bunch of notes.  Then, a couple years later, my company makes a totally unrelated psychic dog movie.  You might sue me and say I stole your idea, and that would suck.  So, it’s really in my best interest to just send your work back to you unopened (and keep a record of your name) which is what I did for several hours a day at one of my internships.

There is one exception to the unsolicited thing and that’s if you are a novelist.  While not all literary agents accept unsolicited queries, a good number do, and some even have twitters and blogs where they talk about writing a good query that will catch an agent’s eye (check out Pub Rants and Query Shark under YOU MUST READ).  So, if you’re a novelist with no connections, you might just be in luck.

Overall, like I said before, it’s all a bit of a crap shoot.   Even having someone “important” offer to read your work or ask for it doesn’t mean they will actually read it, or more importantly, it doesn’t mean you’ll get anything out of it besides a pat on the back (even if they really like it): “Thanks for sending, really funny stuff!”  Don’t let this discourage you.  Just try your best to meet people/make friends, put your work in reputable competitions, and don't forget to say please and thank you (it might seem like common sense, but from time to time I've seem people forget that anyone who agrees to read something for you, even a close friend, is doing you a favor…not the other way around).