Writers Guidelines

WRITERS GUIDELINES

Crooked Marquee is the movie-centric offshoot of sports website Crooked Scoreboard. Our material is fresh-squeezed daily from only the finest artisanal freelancers.

Basic info:

We’re not a blog. Nothing against ‘em, we just aren’t one. We only run 5-6 pieces a week, so we have to be choosy.
Pay starts at $50 per piece. There are no permanent, full-time, or staff positions available. Everything we publish is written by freelancers who sell us articles on a case-by-case, pitch-by-pitch basis.
Writers must be based in the U.S. and have a U.S. bank account.

What we want:

Opinion and analysis of movie trends, specific current films, or current news in the film world.
Actor or director retrospectives/appreciations/deconstructions.
Re-examinations of older films that are newly relevant for some reason. The reason can be as simple as the director or star having a new movie coming out, or the film’s subject matter being in the news. There usually needs to be a “news peg” — a reason we’re talking about this old movie today — but the more interesting and creative your angle is, the less that matters.
Personal essays related to movies (but see the caveat in the next section).
Pieces that are creative, satirical, or in some other way outside the box. If there’s an idea that made other editors say, “That’s too weird” or “Are you high?” — pitch it! I might also say that, but I might not!
Funny is good. If you’re not funny, at least be light-hearted. We can talk about serious and/or scholarly things here, but we try to avoid depressing or boring our readers. There are other sites they can go to for that.

What we don’t want:

Movie reviews. Those are taken care of.
Weekly columns. We’re open to recurring features, but they run on a “whenever you come up with a good topic and pitch it to us” basis, not a strict schedule.
Lists or rankings with basic premises like “10 Great Horror Comedies” or “10 Reasons We Love Movie X” or “All the House Party Movies, Ranked.” If we run a list, it needs a more original angle than that.
Clickbait, self-consciously contrarian hot takes, things that make smart people roll their eyes.
Celebrity gossip.
Speculation, predictions, guesses. Nothing about why we think Sequel X will be better than Sequel Z. No suggestions or demands for what should happen next in Franchise X. No guessing what the box office will be, or who will win the Oscars. We want commentary and analysis of things that have happened, not daydreams or wish lists about things that haven’t.
Things that aren’t about movies. We might branch out into TV or video games later, but not yet.
Personal essays that boil down to “Hey, I watched this famous movie that I’d never seen before, or that I saw as a child but re-watched with adult eyes.” Those are a dime a dozen. (Literally: if you write twelve of them, we will pay you 10 cents.) Pitch one of these only if your connection to or experience with the movie would be considered unusual, unique, or noteworthy by people who don’t know you. A pitch that essentially says, “I don’t know yet what I want to say about this movie; I’ll watch it and see what comes to me” will almost always be rejected. Watch first, then pitch.
Think extra hard before pitching something on one of these oft-pitched, over-discussed subjects: Star Wars, Kevin Smith, Zack Snyder, critics vs audiences, Marvel vs DC, superhero movies generally. Not that we never write about those things, but man, you gotta have a fresh take on it.

Exceptions to the above:

If you have a brilliant new angle on it that hasn’t been done.
If it’s really funny.

So pitch us! Send an email that includes:

A description of the article you want to write, with examples of how you’d execute it or a summary of what your basic point would be.
Links to a few specific things you’ve written that will show us you’re a good writer. (If you’ve never been published, you can send unpublished samples.)
A sentence or two about yourself. This isn’t a job application, so you don’t need a cover letter or a résumé. Can you write? And do you have a good idea for something to write about? That’s all we want to know.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Eric D. Snider
Editor, Crooked Marquee
[email protected]

P.S. You should browse our archives to get a feel for what we like (that’s solid advice for any freelancer pitching to any outlet), but here are some pieces that exemplify the above criteria:

Gorilla Warfare: How War for the Planet of the Apes Mirrors U.S. History

The Pitch Meeting for The Mummy

A Memo from the Umbrella Corporation

10 Things We Learned About Man’s Search for Meaning in a World Devoid of It from the Spider-Man: Homecoming Trailer

The Comedy of Kubrick

Consider This: Jurassic Park a Feminist Remake of Jaws

Neighbors: John G. Avildsen’s Uncomfortable Journey into Suburban Hell

13 Actors Who Did Better As Screenwriters

The Injuries of Indiana Jones, Cataloged

Unbreakable Through the Eyes of Someone with Osteogenesis Imperfecta

Keep Moving Forward: How the Rocky Films Got Me Through a Liver Transplant

Will Smith’s Bad Choices: A Fake Oral History