How do you get into a b-movie career?

[The One]

I honestly want to do something fun with my life. I wish I could work for MST3K as a writer of the show or work for Roger Corman and Jim Wynorski as a screenwriter. That would be great. I am not really into acting. But writing, yes. Anyone know anything about this, anything at all? How would one get into Corman's New Horizons/New Concorde and such?

[FearlessFreep]

Umm...maybe just try and fail at an A movie career?  :)

[The One]

A is for average. And B is for Brilliant.

[The Burgomaster]

The best way to break into a movie career is to start at the bottom, even if it's just answering phones or something. It will be nearly imposiible just to show up one day and try to get a job doing anything meaningful in the film industry . . . unless you have connections.

[Evan3]

So logically, my advice would be to get connections, if u figure out how to do that, let me know.

[nshumate]

Bill Martell, screenwriter of Cyberzone, Invisible Mom, Active Stealth, and a whole bunch of other direct-to-video and made-for-cable movies, has a website at http://www.scriptsecrets.net and an active messageboard attached thereto.  Check it out.

Bottom line:  You have to know how to write just as well as the guys who sell scripts that star Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts -- plus, you have design the script to come in under budget.

[Neville]

A solution could be writing scripts and, after registering your intellectual property, send them to all the studios you can find the addresses. Is a tough way of entering the arena, and what you write must be f*cking good to catch someone's eye, but it could work. I remember an interview with Eastwood, who owns the Malpaso studio, and said that many of the best scripts he's ever read were sent to him by mail, such as "The outlaw Jossey Whales".

[Evil Matt]

Under budget?  Great.  So that whole climax I have worked out where the billion solid gold robot monkey ninjas come out of the spaceship and light fire to the last century's fifty greatest works of art on the White House lawn while the two remaining members of the Beatles join KISS on stage in a live concert is out?  Bummer.

[Will]

Go to retromedia.com and e-mail Fred Olen Ray and ask if you can be an unpaid production assistant. You have to move to California if you're not already there, but he'll let you work for him.

[chopper2]

my best advice would be to move to a big city (this is a more convienent plan if you alreayd live in one) & volunteer for every b-movie-production-film crew, and work your way up. the other would be to just buy a nice video camera and make some b-film with your friends in your backyard, this seems to be the most effective since any piece of crap can be shot on video and sold for distribution at videostores. ever wonder where all these low-budget shot-on-vid. pieces come from, most likely your fellow neighbor or film school dropout.

[Fearless Freep]

Under budget? Great. So that whole climax I have worked out where the billion solid gold robot monkey ninjas come out of the spaceship and light fire to the last century's fifty greatest works of art on the White House lawn while the two remaining members of the Beatles join KISS on stage in a live concert is out? Bummer.

CGI can be a wonderful thing....

[Evil Matt]

I guess...but CGI KISS just wouldn't rock as hard.

[Fearless Freep]

Wouldn't be as flabby, either :)

[Evil Matt]

Hey, cut Gene Simmons some slack, man.  He just wants to rock n' roll all night and shamelessly hawk his likeness on everything from underwear to caskets every day.

[Damien01]

I think some actors that are good and are willing to work cheap do make it big in "B" type movies...

John Saxon and Richard Lynch (seems to be top quility actors at times)

I also think some actors that happen to have connections will find a job in a "B" movie...

Klaus Kinski (a success story because of "Connections" but he isnt that great of an actor, and then again I never did think this guy could act himself out of a paperbag)

Then there is those that did it themselves... student film makers with a camcorder and lots of friends...