Successful screenwriters can live anywhere. There’s not even a debate over this. I understand people have many opinions on why you should live in Los Angeles, and how it can help you reach your professional goals as a screenwriter if you do live in Hollywood. After having lived here for awhile, I have found a number of reasons why storytellers thrive and love Los Angeles.
The Film and Television Industry is Here
This is not up for discussion. The people who make the decisions about what writers get hired are here. Yes, there are a few somewhere else on the planet, but the vast majority of them are here. Getting to the people who hire writers is much easier if you live within an hour away. This is obvious and why many successful screenwriters live in Los Angeles. Many of the people who will pay you to write live in LA.
Most Successful Screenwriters Live in Los Angeles
A filmmaker I know recently moved to Los Angeles from the Midwest. He was employed on the set of a successful television show. He soon found himself invited to join a writers group, filled with several successful screenwriters. Soon he was connecting with writers, reading their work and likewise. Los Angeles has the largest community of talented, dedicated and successful screenwriters in the world. Having a community of support to network and develop yourself is something you cannot find anywhere else except Los Angeles.
Best Cast and Crew
We make films and television with other people, and the best are in Los Angeles. Yes, there are wonderful people that live in New York and elsewhere, but the sheer number of talented, experienced and dedicated professional filmmakers in Los Angeles who need writers and their work outnumber any community on the planet. Do you want to tell your stories served by the best collaborators available? The answer is always yes.
A City of Motivation
Some people might not find this to be true, and you should find proper motivation wherever you might be, but Los Angeles does help motivate you. With everyone around you working in the storytelling business, it’s difficult to forget your focus. Everyone here is here for the same reason you’re here—-that’s what it feels like. If you’re outside of Los Angeles, you might be the only one with the dream of writing movies. In LA, it’s easy to feel the pressure and the unity of the work towards producing your writing.
Greatest Film School in the World
I love Hollywood because I can see people in person talk about their work and see classic movies all week long. The education I’ve received by seeing the people who made the movies that have a great influence on my work and craft has been priceless. The opportunities to learn in Los Angeles are incredible. I can’t tell you how many artists I have seen talk about their work that have now passed away. This is a very important reason for screenwriters to live in Los Angeles. You go to school forever and love it.
The Giants Were Here
To walk the streets of Buster Keaton and Billy Wilder has a great effect on me. It ties to me to ancient roots of my chosen craft and industry. I feel honored to work in the same city and feel bonded by the men and women who came before me. This is where everything started and this does help me stay humble and work as hard as they did. People forget our past here in Hollywood and it can mean as much as you want it to be.
The Inspiration to Succeed
The writers here, the filmmakers, the studios, the ancient ways, and the celebration of the art form in the cinemas—–all of these elements provide a bottomless source of inspiration. Do you need to live in Los Angeles to feel inspired? No. Can Los Angeles discourage the storyteller? Maybe. But it’s all up to the writer and the choices they make. I look at everything as the reason screenwriters can succeed. These reasons are why I am successful and continue to grow, which must be most important for my path as a screenwriter.
By: Gordy Hoffman
Hey Gordy,
The photo you chose to illustrate this post is of Orson Welles, John Huston and Peter Bogdanovich on the set of Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind.
Welles didn’t like Hollywood and Huston, who began his career as a screenwriter for Samuel Goldwin (the guy who used to say that screenwriters are schmuck with Underwoods, remember), escaped it for long periods and finished his life in Middletwon (RI).
Bellow and extract from a Rolling Stone interview with John Huston, conducted by Peter S. Greenberg in 1981:
“There are those in the movie business who look on Orson Welles as one of the great wasted talents. Why is that?
Well, it’s a combination of things. In the first place, he offended the establishment in two ways. He started off with Citizen Kane — which was conceived to be an insult to William Randolph Hearst. The industry was indebted to Hearst, and out of some extremely false sense of loyalty, mixed in with their own gains to be had materially, they went about detracting Orson, even while he was making it and immediately after it. And then Orson had the arrogance and downright insolence to have made the movie a great success. It was enormously popular. Right off the bat, in other words, he violated two cardinal rules. First, you’re not supposed to go against the establishment. And if you do go against the establishment, you’re supposed to suffer. I remember the trade papers, after the opening of Citizen Kane. Orson simply ran a recapitulation of the things that had been said against him, against the picture and so on. So he really made them eat dirt, as they damn well should have.
Then he made a very serious error as a poker player, which he is not. He was down in South America to do a picture (It’s All True) and he got caught up in the gala festival in Rio, the carnival. And I forget how much film he shot, but it was a lot. And in the middle of it, they told him to come home. He didn’t. He stayed down there and shot and shot until they wouldn’t send him any more negative. This gave him a reputation for irresponsibility. When he did finally come back, he was again in deep disgrace. What happened is quite understandable to me, because Orson is an artist. He was acting in the service of history. But the studio couldn’t have been less interested in history.
Or art.
Or art. Either one. They wouldn’t have sent a second unit out to see Washington cross the Delaware. Orson is not a man who can bow down to idiots. And Hollywood is full of them. Orson has a big ego. But I’ve always found him to be completely logical. And I think he’s a joy.
I also look on Orson as an amateur. I mean that in the very best sense of the word. He loves pictures and plays and all things theatrical, but there is something else that needs accounting for. So many of his things go unfinished. I don’t know why. That is one question I can’t answer. Even the one that we did together, The Other Side of the Wind. I haven’t seen a foot of it myself, and I don’t know why it hasn’t been released. Now there’s always a reason. But it’s happened too often with Orson for it to be entirely accidental.”
And an interesting link to be considered by every storyteller, then choose who they are:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10161493232030584&set=a.10151152951250584&type=3&eid=ARCK7MdhDwVhBSWdC4xY2IXTMqEhat6V0SzKb3pq6PdZPiNCXebxPNcsEo7hPln5UNWG3yz5a95iosCQ
Great reasons to remember to keep the dream alive!