Aspiring screenwriters struggle to break into shrinking industry. ‘It shouldn't be this hard'

Los Angeles Times

05-05-2025

Since the start of the year, Brandy Hernandez has applied to nearly 200 entertainment jobs.
The 22-year-old film school graduate, who works as a receptionist at the Ross Stores buying office in downtown Los Angeles, said that for most of those applications, she never heard back — not even a rejection. When she did land follow-up interviews, she was almost always ghosted afterward.
'I knew that I wouldn't be a famous screenwriter or anything straight out of college,' said Hernandez, who graduated from the USC School of Cinematic Arts in 2024. But she thought she'd at least be qualified for an entry-level film industry job.
'It shouldn't be this hard,' she kept thinking.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a widespread production slowdown, the entertainment industry's recovery has been delayed by the dual Hollywood strikes, some of the costliest wildfires in California's history and an industry-wide contraction.
Studios scrambling to cut costs amid the turbulence were quick to slash low-level positions that historically got rookies in the door.
'You almost feel cursed,' said Ryan Gimeson, who graduated from Chapman University's Dodge College of Film and Media Arts in 2023, in the early days of the writers' strike.
And while screenwriting has always been a competitive field, industry veterans attested that the conditions have rarely ever been harsher for young writers.
'In the past 40 years of doing this, this is the most disruptive I've ever seen it,' said Tom Nunan, founder of Bull's Eye Entertainment and a lecturer in the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.
The landscape is especially dry in television writing, according to a jobs report released last month by the Writers Guild of America.
TV writing roles dropped 42% in the 2023-2024 season that coincided with the strikes, the report said. About a third of those cuts were to lower-level appointments.
It's a far cry from the TV business Liz Alper broke into 15 years ago.
Alper, an L.A.-based writer-producer and co-founder of the fair worker treatment movement #PayUpHollywood, came up in the early 2010s, when opportunities in scripted television were still plentiful.
The CW, for instance, was putting out three original one-hour shows a night, or about 18 to 21 original pieces of programming a week, Alper said. That translated to anywhere between 100 and 200 staff writer slots.
But in the last five years or so, the rise of streaming has essentially done the opposite — poaching cable subscribers, edging out episodic programming with bingeable on-demand series and cutting writing jobs in the process.
The job scarcity has driven those in entry-level positions to stay there longer than they used to. A 2021 #PayUpHollywood survey found that most support staffers were in their late twenties, several years older than they were on average a decade ago.
Without those employees moving up and creating vacancies, recent graduates have nowhere to come in.
'I think if you have a job, it feels like you've got one of the lifeboats on the Titanic, and you're not willing to give up the seat,' Alper said.
The entertainment job market has also suffered from the ongoing exodus of productions from California, where costs are high and tax incentives are low.
Legislation that would raise the state's film tax credit to 35% of qualified spending — up from its current 20–25% rates — is pending after winning unanimous votes out of the Senate revenue and taxation committee and the Assembly arts and entertainment committee. Supporters say the move is critical for California to remain competitive with other states and countries, state legislators have argued.
Meanwhile, young creatives are questioning whether L.A. is the place to launch their careers.
Peter Gerard, 24, moved to L.A. from Maryland two years ago to pursue TV writing. After graduating with a data science degree from the University of Maryland, he sensed it was his last chance to chase his dream.
Within weeks of arriving in L.A. in April 2023, he landed a handful of job interviews and even felt hopeful about a few.
Then the writers guild went on strike.
'I came moments before disaster, and I had no idea,' he said.
During the slowdown, Gerard filled his time by working on independent films, attending writing classes and building his portfolio. He was fine without a full-time gig, he said, figuring L.A. would work its magic on him eventually.
Such 'cosmic choreography' touched writer-producer Jill Goldsmith nearly 30 years ago, she said, when she left her job as a public defender in Chicago to pursue TV writing. After seven trying months in L.A., her luck turned when she met 'NYPD Blue' co-creator David Milch in line at a Santa Monica chocolate shop. Goldsmith sent him a script, the show bought it and she got her first credit in 1998.
Goldsmith, a lecturer in the UCLA MFA program in the School of Theater, Film and Television, said she tells her students such opportunities only come when they meet fate halfway.
But hearing veteran writers mourn their lost jobs and L.A.'s bygone glory led Gerard to question his own bid for success.
'I felt sorry for them, but it also made me realize, like, 'Wow, there's a lot of people who want to do this, and a lot of them are much further along than me, with nothing to show for it,'' he said.
As the youngest staff writer in her current writers' room, Lore V. Olivera, 26, has gotten used to her senior counterparts waxing nostalgic about the 'good old times.'
'I think they're definitely romanticizing a bit,' she said, 'but there is some truth in there.'
Olivera landed her first staff writer job in 2023, a year after graduating from Stanford University. The process was straightforward: her reps cold-emailed her samples to a showrunner, he liked them, she interviewed and got the job. But Olivera said such success stories are rare.
'I was ridiculously lucky,' she said. Still, getting staffed is no finish line, she added, just a 20-week pause on the panic of finding the next gig.
Olivera is also the only staff writer in her current room, with all her colleagues holding higher titles like editor or producer. It's a natural consequence, she said, of showrunners facing pressure to fill limited positions with heavy-hitters already proven capable of creating hits.
Olivera said she knows not every 26-year-old was getting hired a few decades ago, but even her elder peers agreed the industry has lost a former air of possibility.
'It's definitely a slap in the face when you get here and you're like, 'Yeah, it's going to be a few miserable years, and then I might not even make it,'' Olivera said. 'Not even because I'm good or bad... but just because the industry is so dead and so afraid of taking chances.''
Jolaya Gillams, who graduated from Chapman's Dodge college in 2023, said that her class had talent in spades. But the industry hasn't given them anywhere to put it.
Instead, studios are pouring money into remakes, the 24-year old said, even as consumers have displayed their appetite for original material.
'I hope that we move into an era of film where it's new, fresh ideas and new perspectives and having an open mind to the voice of our generation,' Gillams said.
Until then, the filmmaker said she'll continue to create work for herself.
During the strikes, Gillams and a production team with no budget made the short film 'Sincero,' which won the audience award for short documentary at the 2023 Newport Beach Film Festival. As she continues the search for a distributor for the doc, she already has another project in the works.
Weary from the 'black hole' of job applications, Hernandez said she, too, is focused on bringing her own work to life. In an ideal world, that leads to a film festival or two, maybe even agency representation. But mostly, what drives her is pride in the work itself.
'If I'm successful in my mind,' said Hernandez, 'I'm content with that.'