The Incomplete Zach Helm Manifesto

Look out for Zach Helm. The buzz train is full steam ahead. A tale of a DePaul graduate who gave up the dull life of re-writing the work of other scribes in order to stick to his guns and write from the heart. As a result, Helm penned the spec Stranger Than Fiction, a romantic comedy that now stars Will Ferrell as the IRS agent hearing voices in his head seemingly authoring his own life (one of the hottest scripts in town last year).

Helm now finds himself directing his first feature from his script entitled Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium. The film is currently shooting in Toronto with Natalie Portman and Dustin Hoffman about a magical toy-store owner in search of a successor. He is also reportedly working on an adaptation of Matthew Collin's 2001 book, This Is Serbia Calling, a nonfiction account of the Belgrade radio station that helped run Slobodan Milosevic out of power.

The following is an incomplete list of his manifesto that got him out of the re-write business and onto the big screen.

Rule No. 1, Section One: "I will no longer allow financial need or career ambition to determine the direction of my work. I will not put myself in any position in which my work is owed to another party."

No. 2: "I won't take re-write jobs, I won't script-doctor. There's a lot of money to be had, lots of money for spending two weeks of work on a script, but I can't do it. I have a slight ethical …It would be very hypocritical of me to try to reserve all this creative power and try to hold on to my scripts as much as I can and then go take some first-time writer's script and bang it up."

No. 3: "I will not sell my work simply to the highest bidder, but instead to those parties that I feel will best represent and develop my work."

No. 5: "Any deal struck in regards to my work will forgo any immediate financial gain if it may mean the surrender of creative control or participation in the work's development."

No. 6: "I will not write for writing's sake. I will write only when inspired to write"

On the subject of his scripts, Helm states: "[t]here's this sort of sincerity to it. There's a lot of emotion to it. It's honest without being cynical, necessarily."

Read how The Manifesto changed his life in Vanity Fair.

The WNEP Theater in Chicago once described him in this way: "Zach Helm is a writer from Los Angeles, California. His plays include Chapters on American Artistry, Last Chance For A Slow Dance, Harold, and his two new works Polonius and The Darkness. His screenplays include The DisAssociate which will be directed by Chris Noonan at Dreamworks and the adaptation of the Caldecott winning Sector 7 for Paramount. He is a merit scholar graduate of DePaul University, former performer at the Lollapalooza music festival, the protege of acclaimed literary theorist Joe Wells, and retired spelling champion."