This is a fantastic interview Scott, thanks for posting and thanks to Daniel for sharing his experiences! It is actually a real inspiration to those of us still just starting out and hoping to break through. Have enjoyed reading and look forward to tomorrow's installment. And good luck to Danial with script #5!

Fully agree with Mark Walker's comment. Wow, what an inspiration. Assurance for the constant networking in my daily life, and a high water mark for sure! Cheers, good luck and thanks to Scott and Daniel. Good day and good writing. R.A.Johnson @Rojomayne

There seems to be a common quality or trait that keeps surfacing in all of these interviews, and it comes out here in spades with Daniel -- the "persistence" thing. It's in all of the guru advice books, but it's a blast to hear it come to life via the unique anecdotes, especially from the just-breaking-in folks. Thanks, Daniel and Scott, for making it real...

Encouraging. Interesting personal notes --- like staring at the cell phone, telling it to, "ring, damnit, ring." The really encouraging part for me was that all of the homework and the letters and the meetings and the effort and greater efforts paid off. The phone rang.

John, persistence is DEFINITELY important. Lawrence Kasdan wrote 10 scripts before he landed a writing gig in Hollywood. There's a Booker Prize nominee this year whose manuscript was rejected by over 40 publishing outfits. The subtext of persistence is that you are actually doing the work, accumulating the knowledge and experience you can only get from watching movies, reading scripts and writing pages. Go here and here.

Daniel, entertaining interview. I like your style: Daniel: I had such good luck reaching out to the astronauts with the space script. I thought, “Well, I’m writing a script, now, where a state is going to secede. I need some legal advice.” And who better to get legal advice from than the Supreme Court? So I wrote to all the Supreme Court Justices. Most of them, I got some sort of form letter back saying, “I’m sorry. We can’t help you.” But I got an actual letter back from Scalia saying, “This couldn’t really happen. This issue was settled with the Civil War. This is why we say ‘One nation under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance.” And even if it can't some true, really like the concept.

BTW, all the armed forces and most government agencies including places like the NYPD have offices whose sole purpose is to deal with Hollywood & the media. Most states and big cities have film depts.