Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/370852
22 CINEMONTAGE / SEP-OCT 14 Here's how it works: Agents and producers submit material (scripts, books, plays, articles) to studio and network production executives, who promise to read the work as soon as possible, but instead send it off to their story departments for coverage. The analyst reads the material, prepares a synopsis and an analysis evaluating its potential as a film, and offers a professional opinion: Pass, consider or recommend. There are many passes, few considers and even fewer recommends. The coverage and the material then go back to the executive, who, in the case of a pass, reviews the coverage without ever reading the material itself, calls the submitter, and says something along the lines of "Liked it. Didn't love it." Only in the case of a consider or a recommend does anyone but the analyst actually read the material itself. It is, of course, every analyst's dream to find the real thing — a story that might actually translate to the screen as a major hit. CineMontage spoke to five top analysts about their daily fishing expeditions and about the big catches they hooked, as well as the ones that got away. VAL LEVETT Val Levett took a film degree at the University of Iowa and came to Hollywood with no clue as to what she wanted to do beyond her vague notion of a "film career." After picking up a bit of work as a freelance reader, she interviewed for a job at the Warner Bros. Pictures story department and went to work there, thinking it would be good for a year or two while she figured out where she wanted to go in life. Thirty years later, she's still at Warner. When her first child arrived, the studio allowed her to set up a crib in her office and bring her infant to work each day. Later, as her family grew, she was allowed to work from home. It was perhaps her commitment to motherhood and family life that made her receptive to a young adult book by an unknown British author when it arrived on her desk. The author was J.K. Rowling and the book was Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Levett loved it for its originality and recommended it enthusiastically. Then, in the daily flow of projects to be read and evaluated, she forgot about it, unaware that the studio had picked it up. A year later, she was at a school event and overheard one of the other mothers talking about this incredible book. It had been published here in the States with a different title — Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone — so she did not immediately recognize it as the book she'd recommended months before. She simply thought to herself, "That sounds familiar." Levett was, of course, thrilled to find that the studio was making the book into a film (with the same US title). Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) would go on to earn over 60 award nominations — including three Academy Award nods — and many wins. The film has grossed $969 million around the globe and launched what would become one of the most successful franchises of all time. When asked if she'd received a massive bonus for her contribution, she laughs and says, "Of course. Fifty percent of the profit." Did anything big ever slip off Levett's hook? Well, there was something by a minor writer whose three earlier novels had never caught on with the public, she reports. His name was Dan Brown, and his new book was The Da Vinci Code. She loved it. But Warner, for whatever reasons, decided not to pick it up. The film, of course, was eventually made and released by Columbia Pictures in 2006, and went on to earn $758 million worldwide and garner many award nominations, including a Golden Globe. DAVID CHURCHILL At sea after graduating from Northwestern University with a master's degree in Literature, David Churchill ended up teaching freshman English at LA City College. It was, he said, "a hateful job" because most of the students in his classroom were there not because they wanted to be, but because they were required to be. He quit and drifted into freelance story analysis, eventually ending up at Peter Guber and Neil Bogart's Casablanca Record and Filmworks. It was an ideal situation.