Query Loglines with No Agent

Question:

I have wrote a comedy that is pretty high concept and have started another. Here is the log line for both, just trying to get an idea from someone in the indusrty.

1. Two best friends with opposing views of women find themselves “breaking up” with one another when one’s sturggle to get over his ex-girlfriend turns desperate… Or do they?  The Break  Up meets I Love You, Man.

2. A pair of ex-cons on work release go undercover for the FBI  to bust a drug lord.  Bad Boys II meets Dumb and Dumber.

I have been pitching those ideas without representation to a lot of companies, and I seem to be making a lot of progress with them. I have  even some bigger ones that like the ideas, but this is where I am catching the heat. “The project sounds good, who is your agent?” My reply is I don’t have an agent, and they get back to me with we can’t take it unsolicited so try getting an agent to send it over.

I thought I would also throw in there that I am cold calling these places. Thought you might like the hustle!

What do I do with this?

Screenwriting Compass:

So this question can be broken down in 2 or even 3 parts. The first part is, do you really need an agent to get production companies to look at your script, and the other two questions are looking at your logline.

So here’s what it really means when a company tells you they can’t take unsolicited material after they have read your logline. It means they aren’t interested, and that’s a good way of sending you away. Rather than telling you, “your loglines aren’t great, leave me alone.”

In your case, your loglines do sound high concept, but not unique enough. So the question from the production company asking if you had an agent, was maybe to filter this script out. If you had an agent, they would have thought that the script was well executed and would have requested it. Hell, if it’s good enough for an agent, then it’s good enought for a producer.

Remember one thing. Everyone can take unsolicited material if it’s good enough. The question is being able to get it into the proper hands. And like I have always said, a good piece of writing will always find it’s way through this town.

So for the 2nd and 3rd part of this answer, lets just look at your loglines. I can’t tell you what every producer or agent is going to say, but I can tell you what I think when looking at these loglines… and I get 100 loglines a day sent to me.

“1. Two best friends with opposing views of women find themselves “breaking up” with one another when one’s sturggle to get over his ex-girlfriend turns desperate… Or do they?  The Break  Up meets I Love You, Man.”

First off, I had to read this logline 2 times to even understand it. That’s not a good sign. Toss in a spelling error in “sturggle” and you are already on the DELETE path for whoever is reading this. The best thing about this logline are the two movies you compare it to, but aside from that, the logline is hard to understand. You have two ideas here. They are “breaking up” with each other… and then they are trying to get over an ex-girlfriend. This logline needs to be cleaner.

Your 2nd logline:

“2. A pair of ex-cons on work release go undercover for the FBI  to bust a drug lord.  Bad Boys II meets Dumb and Dumber.”

So this logline just sounds too generic. It could be a good movie, and could be fun, but this is the type of logline that an exec would read if and agent sent to them, because it’s going to depend on the execution of the script. If the exec is familiar with the writer, and they know the writer can write funny scenes, then they will read. But from an unknown writer, a query letter, it’s going to be tough. When you have “ex-cons” and “drug lords” as keywords in your logline, that’s a sign of something pretty generic.