Should I Produce My Own Screenplay?

Or, more appropriately, Am I Crazy Enough to Produce My Own Screenplay?

A celebrity friend of mine recently encouraged me to join intro.co which is an app that allows you to connect with an expert in almost any field. If you want a fifteen-minute, one-on-one chat with Alexis Ohanian (the founder of Reddit), it’ll cost you more than $1500, but you can do it.

Image by Freepik

I decided to join as an expert in screenwriting. I had a one-on-one session with an ambitious young writer who wanted to know if it made sense to continue shopping his screenplay, which he’d been doing for more than sixmonths without a bite, or to just raise the funds and produce it himself.

He’s not the first person to ask me that; I’ve had several consulting clients who hired me to help them whip their screenplays into shape that have done so with the intent of either raising the funds to produce the film or financing it themselves, and part of our discussion was whether it made sense for them.

Let’s discuss the pros and cons.

I’m going to start this conversation by being fully transparen…