LA Screenwriting Expo

Clutching crib notes, fighting butterflies and wearing the stricken look of cattle being led to slaughter, aspiring screenwriters from Ireland to Australia awaited their once-in-a-blue-moon opportunity to pitch The Great Idea to a battery of Hollywood producers, agents and managers.

The New York Times reports on the LA Screenwriting Expo, where writers pay $60 to attend and $25 per pitch.

What every writer is hoping for, of course, is the mega deal. Troy Duffy sold his first script to Miramax for $1 million, as documented in a new film about him, Overnight, reviewed in the New York Times.

There is something both infuriating and sad about the way Mr. Duffy mistakes money and entertainment-industry curiosity for real power and actual achievement. His stubborn refusal to heed good advice is matched by an angry belief, born out of unacknowledged impotence, that studio and record-company big shots are secretly afraid of him. He has fallen into the fallacy, endemic among aspirants to post-modern show business glory, that a contract or a big advance means at least as much as a good album or an interesting movie.