Tip of the Year: Manager Jake Wagner

Just caught up with our buddy Jake Wagner, one of the hottest young managers in the biz, formerly from FilmEngine (Jake is about to land elsewhere but we cannot disclose where just yet.) As always, Jake fired off a flurry of great advice, and we just had to share this bit:

Jake's the one on the left.

If you’re in LA, most likely you know some people in the industry, even if they’re just assistants. Get some assistants who read a lot of scripts to read (your screenplay). That’s always the best way, because if an assistant likes it, they’ll start circulating it within the industry and to their boss, because they get kudos for finding a good script. 

As a manager, I always ask the assistants, have you read anything good lately? A lot of times tomorrow’s next big writers are the friend of an assistant or the actual assistant themselves. Assistants read a lot of scripts and they know the actual flow, so they know if something is good or not nine times out of ten. 

So I would say get to know some assistants, ‘cause those are forgivable reads too. If they pass on your script, who cares? Those aren’t the hands you want to get into eventually anyway. It’s just a way to move it up the ladder. So if they don’t like it, it’s no harm, no foul. But if they do like it, then they’re slipping it to me, they’re slipping it to people to impress them and earn their stripes. That’s where a lot of new writers come from – roomies of assistants.