It’s a cloudy morning here in Los Angeles. We’re at the end of “May Gray”, but will be getting into “June Gloom” soon.
It doesn’t get sunny until the afternoon, and sometimes stays gray all day. The total opposite you would think of the weather one should expect in Southern California.
The clouds always look like they are about to burst into rain drops, but rarely do.
One of my favorite animated films is Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. I remember reading the book in elementary school and was fascinated with the concept.
If you’ve seen the movie I’m sure you can relate and say it’s one of the better animated films that have come out in recent years.
After seeing this movie I thought it would be cool to do a Horror version: Cloudy with a chance of Blood Drops. I”ll save the gory details for another day, but what are the chances of an R rated animated film being made I thought to myself.
I went to go see Neighbors 2 the other day, and saw one of the most absurd trailers I’ve seen in a while. It was for Sausage Party and to my knowledge, It’s one of the first mainstream R rated animated films.
It’s about a group of food products that live a peaceful life. Their goal is to get picked up by customers. It’s only a matter of time they realize they will be butchered, tortured, and ultimately eaten to death.
Frank, one of the sausages is voiced by Seth Rogen. Seth mentioned that he worked on the film for eight years before it got made. Everybody was nervous because of the content of the film. There hasn’t been something like this done before.
What studio was going to take a chance on this?
But Seth preserved and didn’t stop pushing for those eight years.
I’m sure you can relate. Whether it’s your script you’ve been trying to sell for a decade or getting your last film distributed, it’s a long lonely road.
Even people in Seth Rogan’s shoes have the same struggles.
The only thing us filmmakers and writers do is continue to fight for our projects day in and day out. We have to preserver and have thick skin to get past through all the naysayers and rejections.
If it was easy everybody would be doing it. It’s not the safe road. You live script to script, project to project and commercial to commercial.
But when it comes time to see your name in the end credits you know it was well worth it.
J.K. Rowling took Harry Potter to twelve publishers who said no to her. It wasn’t until the 13th try she got somebody to take on her book.
Theirs countless stories we can get into of scripts getting rejected and turning into Oscar gold years later.
If you’re struggling to getting that film project off the ground remember why you got into this business in the first place.
All you can do is keep going and never give up.
If you don’t want to wait ten years for your big break, and want practical feedback on filmmaking form world-class writers and directors, make sure you get your free ticket to Genre Summit.
Happy Friday,
Shant Yegparian