Dreams on Spec
Encyclopedia
Dreams on Spec is a 2007 American documentary film
that profiles the struggles and triumphs of emerging Hollywood screenwriters. It was written and directed by Daniel J. Snyder
, who learned first-hand about the screenwriter's travails in the late 1980s when he was a teenager working alongside aspiring writer/directors Quentin Tarantino
and Roger Avary
in the famed Video Archives
video store in Manhattan Beach, California
.
, Nora Ephron
, Carrie Fisher
, Gary Ross
, Steven E. de Souza
, Ed Solomon
, Paul Guay, Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander
.
Writer-director Nora Ephron
(When Harry Met Sally and You've Got Mail
) describes why she believes there are so few women making films: "It's a very male business, and it has in vast portions of it—the whole action movie part of it might as well be the United States Army in 1943, in that the ethics of it are boot camp and action movies and guns and explosions and all the rest of it, and that—so that means that—that about 50% of the business is not only pretty much closed off to women, but women don’t even wanna be in it."
James L. Brooks
(Terms of Endearment) relates his love for screenwriting: "I never knew anybody who ever got a Writers Guild card who didn’t have a hard time when somebody said, 'What do you do for a living?' saying, 'I'm a writer.' Your—your voice always catches on 'a writer.' I think it takes about 14 years to not have the catch in your voice if you’re very aggressive. It takes longer if you're not. Because ... so many of us have dreamt about it forever as a dream that could not be realized."
Carrie Fisher
, who in addition to making headlines as a judge on the FOX
show On the Lot
is also a highly-paid script doctor, tells how she got started re-writing screenplays: "It was Spielberg
that asked me to rewrite Hook
—just to rewrite Tinker Bell. But that makes no sense because you can't just write one character. There is another character that they speak to. Although, you know, it was Robin’s character mostly, so I would improvise with Robin Williams
. Well, he and I do that anyway. So now you have two people that desperately need medication, but it's fine if they're off and you’re taking notes. And we had a very good time."
As to why some young screenwriters succeed while so many others do not, Paul Guay
(the co-writer of Liar Liar
, Heartbreakers and The Little Rascals) says, “The thing that separates more successful writers from less successful writers, the most important thing, is the perseverance.” The writer-director of Seabiscuit
, Gary Ross
, adds that the term “success” is rather elusive. “There’s a great line in J.D. Salinger when he talks about writing, he says, “The ultimate question is not ‘Were you successful or weren’t you successful?’ ... The real question at the end of your days when you’re judged as a writer is, ‘Were all your stars out? ... Did you live up to your potential?”
, and Portland, Oregon
. The documentary was shot in the widescreen, 16 x 9 aspect ratio
.
Cinematographer Harry Frith put a Panasonic DVX100 camera in a splash bag and took it into the water to film the scenes where aspiring writer David Stieve goes surfing on Venice Beach. Frith himself is an avid surfer.
For almost the entire production, director Daniel J. Snyder
worked at his day-job as a producer/director of non-fiction television. He only worked on Dreams at night, on weekends, and during his hiatus periods.
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
that profiles the struggles and triumphs of emerging Hollywood screenwriters. It was written and directed by Daniel J. Snyder
Daniel J. Snyder
Daniel J. Snyder is an American television and film producer whose feature-length documentary, Dreams on Spec, is the first documentary ever to look at Hollywood from the perspective of the much-maligned screenwriter....
, who learned first-hand about the screenwriter's travails in the late 1980s when he was a teenager working alongside aspiring writer/directors Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...
and Roger Avary
Roger Avary
Roger Avary is a Canadian film and television producer, screenwriter, olive farmer and director in the American mass media industry. He was behind the screenplays of the films Silent Hill and Beowulf...
in the famed Video Archives
Video Archives
Video Archives was a video rental store located in Manhattan Beach, California, owned and managed by Lance Lawson. In his youth, Quentin Tarantino, director of Pulp Fiction, was a clerk there...
video store in Manhattan Beach, California
Manhattan Beach, California
Manhattan Beach is the wealthiest beachfront city located in southwestern Los Angeles County, California, USA. The city is on the Pacific coast, south of El Segundo, and north of Hermosa Beach. Manhattan Beach is the home of both beach and indoor volleyball, and surfing. During the winter, the...
.
Synopsis
The film follows three aspiring screenwriters as they struggle to turn their scripts into movies. David is a hip talent agent's assistant with three scripts circulating around town. He's plugged into "young Hollywood" - and when he's not working or writing, he's usually hanging out at the beach. Joe is a middle-aged family man who has split time over the last three years between caring for his autistic daughter and writing what he believes could be the great American screenplay. And Deborah is trying to become one of the few African-American women to ever write and direct a feature film, though she's struggling just to pay her bills while she searches for money to produce her script. Between these stories, the film intercuts critical insight from such Hollywood screenwriters as James L. BrooksJames L. Brooks
James Lawrence Brooks is an American director, producer and screenwriter. Growing up in North Bergen, New Jersey, Brooks endured a fractured family life and passed the time by reading and writing. After dropping out of New York University, he got a job as an usher at CBS, going on to write for the...
, Nora Ephron
Nora Ephron
Nora Ephron is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, novelist, playwright, journalist, author, and blogger.She is best known for her romantic comedies and is a triple nominee for the Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay; for Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally... and Sleepless in...
, Carrie Fisher
Carrie Fisher
Carrie Frances Fisher is an American actress, novelist, screenwriter, and lecturer. She is most famous for her portrayal of Princess Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy, her bestselling novel Postcards from the Edge, for which she wrote the screenplay to the film of the same name, and her...
, Gary Ross
Gary Ross
Gary Ross is an American writer, director, and actor. He is best known for directing Pleasantville and Seabiscuit, both of which featured Tobey Maguire in the lead role...
, Steven E. de Souza
Steven E. de Souza
Steven E. de Souza is an American producer, director and screenwriter. He is among a handful of screenwriters whose films have earned over two billion dollars at the worldwide box office.-Life and career:...
, Ed Solomon
Ed Solomon
Ed Solomon is an American writer, producer and director. After graduating from Saratoga High School and UCLA, Solomon came to fame as one half of the writing duo that created the 1989 film Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and its sequel.Solomon was born in Saratoga, California...
, Paul Guay, Larry Karaszewski and Scott Alexander
Scott Alexander
Scott Alexander is a British millionaire and nouveau riche socialite featured in Britain's Biggest Spenders and often quoted as being "the most vain man in Britain". Alexander is frequently seen in media...
.
Selected quotations
The established filmmakers interviewed for the documentary offer anecdotes about working in Hollywood.Writer-director Nora Ephron
Nora Ephron
Nora Ephron is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, novelist, playwright, journalist, author, and blogger.She is best known for her romantic comedies and is a triple nominee for the Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay; for Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally... and Sleepless in...
(When Harry Met Sally and You've Got Mail
You've Got Mail
You've Got Mail is a 1998 American romantic comedy film directed by Nora Ephron, starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. It was written by Nora and Delia Ephron based on the play Parfumerie by Miklós László. The film is about two letter-writing lovers who are completely unaware that their sweetheart is in...
) describes why she believes there are so few women making films: "It's a very male business, and it has in vast portions of it—the whole action movie part of it might as well be the United States Army in 1943, in that the ethics of it are boot camp and action movies and guns and explosions and all the rest of it, and that—so that means that—that about 50% of the business is not only pretty much closed off to women, but women don’t even wanna be in it."
James L. Brooks
James L. Brooks
James Lawrence Brooks is an American director, producer and screenwriter. Growing up in North Bergen, New Jersey, Brooks endured a fractured family life and passed the time by reading and writing. After dropping out of New York University, he got a job as an usher at CBS, going on to write for the...
(Terms of Endearment) relates his love for screenwriting: "I never knew anybody who ever got a Writers Guild card who didn’t have a hard time when somebody said, 'What do you do for a living?' saying, 'I'm a writer.' Your—your voice always catches on 'a writer.' I think it takes about 14 years to not have the catch in your voice if you’re very aggressive. It takes longer if you're not. Because ... so many of us have dreamt about it forever as a dream that could not be realized."
Carrie Fisher
Carrie Fisher
Carrie Frances Fisher is an American actress, novelist, screenwriter, and lecturer. She is most famous for her portrayal of Princess Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy, her bestselling novel Postcards from the Edge, for which she wrote the screenplay to the film of the same name, and her...
, who in addition to making headlines as a judge on the FOX
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
show On the Lot
On the Lot
On the Lot is a short-lived reality show competition produced by Steven Spielberg and Mark Burnett. The show, which aired on Fox, featured filmmakers competing in weekly elimination competitions, with the ultimate prize of a million dollar development deal at DreamWorks...
is also a highly-paid script doctor, tells how she got started re-writing screenplays: "It was Spielberg
Steven Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg KBE is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, video game designer, and studio entrepreneur. In a career of more than four decades, Spielberg's films have covered many themes and genres. Spielberg's early science-fiction and adventure films were seen as an...
that asked me to rewrite Hook
Hook (film)
Hook is a 1991 American fantasy film directed by Steven Spielberg. The film stars Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, Julia Roberts, Bob Hoskins, and features Maggie Smith, Caroline Goodall, Charlie Korsmo, Amber Scott, and Dante Basco. Hook acts as a sequel to Peter Pan's original adventures, focusing...
—just to rewrite Tinker Bell. But that makes no sense because you can't just write one character. There is another character that they speak to. Although, you know, it was Robin’s character mostly, so I would improvise with Robin Williams
Robin Williams
Robin McLaurin Williams is an American actor and comedian. Rising to fame with his role as the alien Mork in the TV series Mork and Mindy, and later stand-up comedy work, Williams has performed in many feature films since 1980. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance...
. Well, he and I do that anyway. So now you have two people that desperately need medication, but it's fine if they're off and you’re taking notes. And we had a very good time."
As to why some young screenwriters succeed while so many others do not, Paul Guay
Paul Guay
Paul Francois Guay is a retired American professional ice hockey player. He is now an assistant coach for his high school's hockey team.-Playing career:...
(the co-writer of Liar Liar
Liar Liar
Liar Liar is a 1997 American comedy film written by Paul Guay and Stephen Mazur, directed by Tom Shadyac and starring Jim Carrey. Carrey was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Comedy/Musical...
, Heartbreakers and The Little Rascals) says, “The thing that separates more successful writers from less successful writers, the most important thing, is the perseverance.” The writer-director of Seabiscuit
Seabiscuit (film)
Seabiscuit is a 2003 American biographical film based on the best-selling non-fiction book Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand...
, Gary Ross
Gary Ross
Gary Ross is an American writer, director, and actor. He is best known for directing Pleasantville and Seabiscuit, both of which featured Tobey Maguire in the lead role...
, adds that the term “success” is rather elusive. “There’s a great line in J.D. Salinger when he talks about writing, he says, “The ultimate question is not ‘Were you successful or weren’t you successful?’ ... The real question at the end of your days when you’re judged as a writer is, ‘Were all your stars out? ... Did you live up to your potential?”
Production notes
Dreams on Spec was filmed in 2004 and 2005 in Los Angeles, CaliforniaLos Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
, and Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
. The documentary was shot in the widescreen, 16 x 9 aspect ratio
Aspect ratio
The aspect ratio of a shape is the ratio of its longer dimension to its shorter dimension. It may be applied to two characteristic dimensions of a three-dimensional shape, such as the ratio of the longest and shortest axis, or for symmetrical objects that are described by just two measurements,...
.
Cinematographer Harry Frith put a Panasonic DVX100 camera in a splash bag and took it into the water to film the scenes where aspiring writer David Stieve goes surfing on Venice Beach. Frith himself is an avid surfer.
For almost the entire production, director Daniel J. Snyder
Daniel J. Snyder
Daniel J. Snyder is an American television and film producer whose feature-length documentary, Dreams on Spec, is the first documentary ever to look at Hollywood from the perspective of the much-maligned screenwriter....
worked at his day-job as a producer/director of non-fiction television. He only worked on Dreams at night, on weekends, and during his hiatus periods.