Q: What do these twelve films have in common?

A: They were all written by a guy who had the pleasure of sitting next to me on a Southwest flight from Burbank to Oakland a few years back.  His name is Ehren Kruger.  And I have to say, he was very gracious about the whole thing.  Ehren didn’t ask for my autograph, didn’t ask if I could slip his latest spec screenplay to my agent, and didn’t complain about what hadn’t gone right in his career.

That’s class.

Last week, in response to fellow Offender Phil’s effort to beef up L.A.’s dwindling pool of aspiring screenwriters, I tried to answer the question, “Do you have to live in L.A. to make it as a screenwriter?” by deftly deferring the question to A-list writer Mike Rich.  This week I deftly defer to A-list writer Ehren Kruger.

Here’s Ehren:

I don’t think a screenwriter needs to live in LA, but I do think a screenwriter needs to be able to show up for a meeting.  I’ve lived in San Francisco basically my whole career, but if there’s a project that needs me in Los Angeles tomorrow, I can be there.  That’s also the attitude of the professional screenwriters I’ve worked with who live in New York, Seattle, Hawaii, Wisconsin and even Nebraska.

Writers need to be living wherever they feel they can best draw inspiration — and motivation.

That said, for writers who are just starting out with their careers, I think there’s a great value to living in Los Angeles, primarily because it helps demystify the place.

When you’re living thousands of miles away, the legendary Hollywood studio lots can seem like impenetrable medieval castles — but the more time you spend around them, meeting the (mostly young) people who work there, getting a sense of how various business interests collaborate to turn 100 pieces of paper into a $100 million movie, the more the entire process feels accessible and even achievable.

As for myself, after my college graduation, moving to LA was the first thing I did.

I spent four years working assistant jobs — at an agency, a production company, a TV network — while writing at night and on weekends.  I read a lot of good and bad scripts, I observed agents pitch projects to producers and producers pitch them to financiers, and I watched stories, deals and companies come together and fall apart.

And easily the most valuable thing I learned in those four years was to witness just how many people in Hollywood come to work every day, first and foremost, hoping to read some good material.

(note to Hollywood execs – it’s a funny thing – I happen to have about six hundred or so pages worth of “good material” lying around to brighten your morning, so please, don’t be shy, and queue up in an orderly fashion)

Okay, let’s recap:  Ehren grows up in northern Virginia, attends NYU, graduates, then moves to L.A. to chase his dream of making movies.  Just like Phil and Garant and Lennon advise.

So far, so good.

He works for four years as an assistant in the business, toiling away at scripts in his free time, then gets his first big break by winning a Nicholl Fellowship in 1996.  All while living in L.A..

Still right on track.

He options his Nicholl winning script, “Arlington Road,” to a producer for a whopping $5000, and, at around the same time, sells another script to a cable TV network.  Figuring he has enough money to write full time for a year or so (good God, Ehren, what did you eat back then – oatmeal?  top ramen?  Jerry Bruckheimer’s compost?), what does the young man do?

People, listen up: he moves to San Francisco.

Just as his career is getting started.

I asked him what on earth possessed him to move to San Francisco, a town known more for its lingering Deadheads and mime troupes than its movie studios,  a mere three months after his modest first sale.

His answer:

Vertigo, Bullitt and The Conversation!

So not only is the guy an absurdly successful screenwriter who’s had a movie come out every year – every year – for the last twelve years, he also has good taste in cities.

I asked him how his agent at the time reacted.

She wasn’t philosophically opposed to me moving as long as I didn’t stop writing.  Provided I was willing to travel to meetings on my own dime and whenever she recommended I do so, that was OK by her.  (Better to be four hundred miles away writing than to be on Hollywood Blvd. NOT-writing.)

Yes!  Thank you!  Better to be 400 miles away writing than to be on Hollywood Boulevard not writing.

Okay, so I’ve carefully analyzed Mike Rich’s and Ehren Kruger’s stories to distill the secret to succeeding as a screenwriter even if you don’t live in town.

You ready?  Here it is:

1. Have your contest winning screenplay produced.

2. Have gobs of writing talent.

3. Write.

4. *

That’s it.  Simple as a pimple!

(about the asterisk: as you tackle #3, don’t forget to tell stories that are both completely specific to you and your voice, yet universally relatable; create characters that are both quirky yet familiar, edgy yet sympathetic; follow all the basic rules of the three act structure, yet surprise and delight your reader by confidently breaking those rules; don’t try to guess the marketplace, yet write pithy, marketable movies; address every studio or producer’s script notes in a way that answers all their concerns yet doesn’t water down your original vision; and when you’re just about to pull your hair out, remember these are first class problems that most aspiring screenwriters would die to have; and lastly, get lucky – really, really lucky.)

Where was I?  Oh yeah, here’s the kicker about Ehren and Mike: they’re both nice guys.

I haven’t shared a flight with Mike Rich, but in the handful of times we’ve bumped into each other, he didn’t sneer at me or kick me in the groin.

Now Ehren and I did share those 45 minutes together, so I got some sense of the man, and my sense is this: he’s modest, approachable, bright.  He looks like he should be teaching Scandinavian Literature at Binghamton College or someplace.  And if he did that, I could take his place and discover for myself whether director Michael Bay is a sociopathic diva who throws staplers at assistants for not bringing him lattes with enough foam in them or an even tempered professional who nurtures his staff with heaps of praise and free pizza on Fridays.

Back to Ehren and Mike.  Talented, modest, and seventeen movies between them in twelve years.  God is not supposed to give from both hands!  In their case, it looks like He gave from all thirteen!

Okay, okay, there’s probably more to say – but I gotta take a nap – it’s exhausting writing about your wildly successful peers (seriously, I nearly passed out just downloading their posters).

Sometimes nice things do happen to nice people.  Especially when they’re talented, work their ass off, and jump on airplanes a lot.

Congrats, fellas!