But one thing that was sort of interesting was that, early on, before anyone knew who he was, Van Sant got permission to make some short films based on the work of William S. Burroughs. He found Burroughs' phone number, called him, maybe met with him and asked if he could do it. Burroughs said he would have to call his agent.
Short films, it turns out, have no monetary value so no one cared especially and they let him do it. I don't know if this early association with Burroughs helped him later on.
I've heard that short films are easy to get accepted by film festivals. They're the glue that holds their programs together. So, I don't know. Maybe a short film based on a literary work could be your ticket to the big time.
I don't know if the same principle was involved, but there was a guy I was slightly acquainted with in high school. He may have still been in college when he got permission to adapt some short stories by Kurt Vonnegut for the stage. And I don't know if those short plays had any role in it, but he later adapted a couple of Chaim Potok novels into stage plays. This automatically made him a major figure in Jewish theater, a big gefilte fish in a small pond so to speak.
Shia LaBeouf was a bigger jackass than I thought for plagiarizing. All he had to do was ask.
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