How do you get Hollywood interest in you script? Leslie's guest Attorney and Literary Agent Paul S Levine says, one very interesting way is to reverse engineer a book from your script, get it published creating the IPO and then go to the studios and distributors. The best part about it is that you get paid multiple times instead of just the $100K as a first time independent script writer. Leslie and Paul also discuss how and why to set up a writing partnership, necessary legal agreements to avoid future problems and much more.

Paul S. Levine ”wears two hats”–he is a lawyer and a literary agent.
Mr. Levine was born in New York City and was raised and educated in
Montreal. He received a Bachelor of Commerce, Magna Cum Laude from Concordia
University in Montreal and went on to earn a Master of Business Administration
from York University in Toronto. In 1978 he came to Los Angeles for the sunshine
and to start law school; he received his Juris Doctor from the University of
Southern California Law School in 1981.

He began his entertainment law career straight out of law school, as an
associate with the Law Offices of Stephen F. Rohde, where he specialized in
entertainment litigation and entertainment transactions for almost seven (7)
years. While there, he had the great fortune to represent Price/Stern/Sloan
Publishers (Roger Price created “Mad Libs”, Leonard Stern created television
series such as “The Honeymooners” and “Get Smart”, and Larry Sloan invented book
stores in airports in the 1970s); to represent the “King of Comics”, Jack Kirby
(creator of “Captain America”, “Spiderman”, “Incredible Hulk”, “Fantastic Four”,
“X-Men”, “Black Panther”, etc.); and to represent Elysium Institute, then the
only nudist colony in all of Los Angeles County.

Answering a “blind” advertisement in the Hollywood Reporter, he went to work
for the Business & Legal Affairs Department of Warner Bros. Television, where he
spent almost five (5) years. He then moved to Hearst Entertainment, where he
spent two (2) years as Resident Counsel. In October, 1992 he established his own
law practice in Santa Monica and in December, 1995 moved his office to the garage
next to his home in Venice, where he specializes in the representation of
authors, writers, producers, actors, directors, composers, musicians, artists,
photographers, galleries, publishers, developers, production companies and
theatre companies in the fields of motion pictures, television, interactive
multimedia, live stage, recorded music, concerts, the visual arts, publishing,
and advertising. He still practices as both a “transactional” lawyer and as a
litigator; for litigation, he practices civil, probate, and family law
litigation, and has yet to have to take a case all the way to trial. He settles
disputes before they need to be filed as lawsuits, sometimes directly with
opposing counsel and sometimes with the help of a good mediator. If litigation
does result, he settles the cases the same way.

In 1998, Mr. Levine opened the Paul S. Levine Literary Agency, specializing
in the representation of book authors and the sale of motion picture and
television rights in and to books. Since starting his literary agency, Mr. Levine 
has sold over one-hundred fifty (150) fiction and non-fiction books to at least
fifty (50) different publishers and has had many books developed as movies-fortelevision and feature films.