I have no idea how many advertising copywriters have become produced screenwriters, but I have an idea how many would like to make that leap—about 100%. One of the great modern day success stories of an ad writer turning screenwriter was John Hughes.
Just found an article on John Hughes by Robert Nolan who hired Hughes at a well known advertising agency back in the mid-70s. (The Early Ferris Bueller: Remembering John Hughes in Advertising.) He writes that Hughes didn’t have much of a writing portfolio at the time he hired him but that it was Hughes’ hysterical jokes that he had sold to comedians for $5. that got him the job.
“One of the last times I saw John Hughes, he was sitting across my desk at Leo Burnett in Chicago and telling me he was quitting. It was early 1979 and he said he was leaving advertising to write screenplays. His first assignment, he said, was to write a script for a prospective National Lampoon movie called Jaws -3, People- 0. Selfishly, I told him that he was making a big mistake. That he’d never make it as a screenwriter. That he shouldn’t quit his day job. I felt so strongly about this that at the end of his last day at Burnett, I drove him all the way home trying to talk him out of it. But John was unmoved. His mind was made up.”
Robert Nolan
Hughes proved his old boss wrong and went on to write Mr. Mom, The Breakfast Club, Home Alone ,Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and around three dozen more films. Hughes, who passed away earlier this year, would have been 29 in 1979.
[…] I have no idea how many advertising copywriters have become produced screenwriters, but I have an idea how many would like to make that leap—about 100%. One of the great modern day success stories of an ad writer turning screenwriter was John Hughes. Just found an article on John Hughes by Robert Nolan who hired Hughes […] Original Source… […]
I love John Hughes’ stuff, and I wish you luck with your quest to be a screenwriter. 🙂 I look forward to reading through your blog, and I hope you’ll visit mine, as I too would like to be a writer, but just of plain, ole books… LOL… 🙂
Best entry to date. Remarkable.