BY: Daiman Teer for The Simpleton Star
ATTENTION YOUNG WRITERS !!!! IF YOU ARE PAYING FOR IMDB PRO, ANY SCREENPLAY CONTEST, OR FOR SCREENPLAY COVERAGE – PLEASE STOP! YOU ARE GETTING ROBBED ! IT’S A GIANT GRIFT THAt WILL GET YOU NOWHERE.
UNLESS YOU ARE SUPER HOT AND WILLING TO SLEEP WITH ANYONE, OR YOU HAVE AN UNCLE MORTY IN THE BUSINESS, NONE OF THESE THINGS WILL GET YOUR FOOT IN THE DOOR AS A SCREENWRITER.
Trying to get into screenwriting is the Great American Hollywood Shakedown. It’s a multi-billion dollar extraction machine designed to strip-mine the bank accounts of every dreamer, writer, and actor from Brooklyn to Burbank. We are witnessing the industrialization of false hope. The gatekeepers have abandoned the search for talent in favor of a much more lucrative pursuit which is the systematic harvesting of your rent money.
For decades, the path to success was paved with hard work and a bit of luck. Today, that path is a toll road owned by trillion-dollar tech conglomerates and bottom-feeding middleman scams. They have turned the pursuit of art into a recurring monthly subscription fee. If you want to exist in this industry, you have to pay the vig. If you want your face to remain on the internet, you have to pay the tax. It is an era of digital feudalism where the creators are the serfs and the databases are the lords.
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Let us begin with the primary offender which is the Internet Movie Database. (IMDB) It is owned by Amazon, a company that could lose a billion dollars in a couch cushion and not notice. Yet they have turned the industry’s phone book into a digital protection racket. For an actor or a screenwriter, your IMDb page is your life’s work. It is your resume and your reputation all rolled into one. But the moment you stop paying for the professional version of that site, the execution begins.
They do not just take away your premium features. They mutilate your professional identity. They strip away your headshots. They delete your demo reels. They scramble your credits so you look like an amateur who just walked off a bus. They are essentially holding your career hostage for twenty dollars a month. They profit from the traffic your name generates and they sell advertisements against your credits. Then they turn around and charge you for the privilege of not having your own face erased from the digital record. This is not a service. This is a ransom.
NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!
It used to be an outstanding and genuinely informative website. Now it runs like a Gambino Family extortion racket aimed at aspiring Hollywood insiders. You’re forced to pay for what is basic access, and even then, the experience is far worse than it once was.
The new IMDb is almost impossible to navigate. It’s cluttered with aggressive, intrusive ads and flashing screens that feel deliberately overwhelming. There’s no longer any sense of structure or reliable information.
Even writing a film review — something that was once one of the site’s best features — has become frustrating. Many respected critics got their start as amateur reviewers on the old IMDb, but today your review will only be approved if it aligns with the film’s agenda or carefully avoids any real criticism.
Of all the websites that came from the great old days of the internet, IMDB is by far the worst fallen angel. It’s brazenly opportunistic and predatory. It’s a horror show.
But the IMDb racket is only the entry point into the swamp. Once you have paid for your digital existence, the screenplay contest sharks are circling. There are thousands of these festivals and competitions cluttering the internet. Most of them are nothing more than high-stakes bingo for writers who are desperate for a shred of validation. They charge fifty dollars here and eighty dollars there. They multiply those fees by five thousand hopeful souls and walk away with a quarter-million dollars in pure profit.
Now, with AI reading scripts for them, the grifting is out of control. Used to be that casting directors – with their workshops and pep rallies – were the true grifters in that respect. Now they have computers to carry the manure to the shit cart.
What do the winners get? They get a digital laurel leaf. They get a PDF of a certificate that is worth less than the paper it isn’t even printed on. They are sold the lie that an Official Selection at a third-tier festival in a strip mall will lead to a meeting with a major studio. It is a lie. These contests exist to sell you the feeling of being a filmmaker for the three seconds it takes to click the submit button. They are the Barbizon Modeling School of the digital age. They are selling a seat at a table that does not even exist.
The newest and perhaps most disgusting layer of this grift is the rise of artificial intelligence in script coverage. For a long time, coverage was handled by human beings who understood the soul of a story. Now, predatory companies are charging five hundred dollars for a professional analysis that is nothing more than a black-box algorithm. They take your blood, sweat, and tears and they dump it into a machine that costs them two cents to run. They don’t tell you this. They make you think that some great scribe is toiling away into the wee hours reading and analyzing your work. It’s a lie.
The machine spits out generic garbage about pacing and character arcs. It tells you exactly what you want to hear or gives you meaningless critiques that lead nowhere. These companies have no industry connections and no intention of helping you. They are taking five hundred dollars from a person who might be skipping meals to pay for it. They are selling a human service that has been completely hollowed out by a heartless computer program. It is the ultimate margin of greed.
Then we must address the film festival travel scam. Thousands of small-town festivals accept movies just to ensure that the filmmakers show up and spend money on local hotels and expensive airfare. They use the labor of the artist to subsidize the local tourism board. You are not a guest of honor. You are a customer. You are being used to fill seats and buy drinks while the festival organizers pat themselves on the back for supporting the arts.
The entire ecosystem is now built on the assumption that dreamers are stupid. They assume you will pay any price to see your name in lights. They have turned the American dream into a debt trap. They have created a system where the only people who can afford to succeed are the trust fund types who do not care about the monthly fees. For everyone else, it is a slow bleed of the bank account until the dream finally dies of exhaustion.
The gatekeepers do not want you to win. If you win, you stop paying. They want you to stay in the “emerging talent” category forever. They want you to keep refreshing your subscription. They want you to keep entering the contests. They want you to keep buying their special coverage. They have turned Hollywood into a casino where the house always wins and the players leave with nothing but empty pockets and a digital laurel leaf that no one respects.
It is time to expose this for what it is. It is a multi-layered scam that exploits the most passionate people in the country. It is a system that rewards the middleman and punishes the creator. We are living in the age of the great extraction and it is time for the dreamers to stop paying the ransom. We must tear down these digital walls and stop funding the very people who are standing in our way.
The industry is not a meritocracy anymore. It is a pay-to-play scheme run by tech giants and small-time con artists. If we do not speak out against the IMDb extortion and the screenplay contest grift, we are complicit in the destruction of the very art we claim to love. Stop paying the vig. Stop feeding the machine. The only way to win is to stop playing their game.
NOTE: 1) A very small handful of contests (like the Nicholl Fellowship or Austin Film Festival) still carry genuine weight with managers. However, it’s doubtful that it will retain any pertinent agency over the coming years. 2) Professional coverage can be useful if used as a developmental tool rather than a golden ticket.
A Bible Verse for Aspiring Writers
“For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.” Jeremiah 2:13 (ESV)
A Reason for This Verse
This verse is a powerful metaphor for prioritizing truth over illusions. The “broken cisterns” represent the false dreams, expensive-but-worthless programs, and predatory schemes that mimic success but offer no real value. The “fountain of living waters” represents genuine, durable wisdom—which for writers includes true craft, patient work, and authentic connection. It serves as a warning that any path to success that demands you abandon your common sense (or your values) to “buy-in” is likely a broken container, leaving you thirstier than before.
A Brief Prayer
Heavenly Father, We lift up all young writers navigating this competitive world. In a culture full of “broken cisterns”—schemes designed to sell dreams rather than nurture talent—grant them a spirit of discernment. Clear away the fog of false promises so they may recognize true guidance. When they are tempted to chase easy, transactional success, lead them instead to the “fountain of living waters”—to the patience of true mentorship, the discipline of hard work, and the resilience of a spirit rooted in truth. We ask that You would protect their creativity, their savings, and above all, their hope. May their words find a path that is not only successful but built on integrity. Amen.
