More proof that every copywriter has a screenplay.
Years ago, every copywriter of a certain age had the Great American Novel hidden in his desk waiting to be published. (Don’t laugh — I’ve seen the manuscripts.)
Now it seems it’s a screenplay or four.
Billboards are appearing in Hollywood saying such things as Kevin Costner, I wrote Sam Bingo just for you.
jaythewriter.com
There are variations. In one, the last name is crossed out and Kline is written in.
I can’t think of any good movie where these two actors could be substituted for each other, can you? But maybe that’s the running gag of the changing billboards.
The author of the billboards and scripts is not a young Hollywood aspirant (Lizzy Weiss before she sold Blue Crush?) or some studio insider with a juicy story to tell, but Jay Taylor, a 67-year old former agency head and copywriter from Tucson, Arizona.
Yes, he has four screenplays in different genres on offer at his www.JaytheWriter.com site.
I wish Mr. Taylor all the best with getting those scripts produced. I hope his screenwriting is as innovative as this in-you-face promotion method. The Arizona Star, a Tucson newspaper says he is “about as subtle as a calliope in a tin shed.”
“Please fax me which ones you want.” is what he says on his website.
Unfortunately, he has publicity in more and more places and most of it is negative. No, it’s slamming: “the sheer audacity of a pathetic individual” “idea that anyone would waste that kind of money doing something so retarded,” that from an anonymous agent in the LA Times, quoted on the www.defamer.com Hollywood insider blog.
What kind of money, you ask? Try $75,000 to $100,000. Even in LA, spending like that on billboard ads pitching your script seems excessive. (Some of the people seeing this billboard must wonder what new sitcom it’s pushing: OK, give me the punchline. Is it “See Ray Romano laugh his way to fame in The Mailroom Fridays, at 8?”)
Still, the marketing stunt got the writer a spot on the Tonight Show recently and the interest of at least one A-list star. Is he named Kevin?
*******
For a gentle view of this marketing campaign, see Creative Screenwriting, current (March/April) issue. More online sightings of this marketing effort are in these blogs.
For the strange paths that some well-known movies like Seven and While You Were Sleeping took to the Googleplex, read The Big Deal.