Places to get leads

Leads are simply names, addresses, phone numbers, fax numbers, and/or e-mails of agents, managers, producers, or anyone else who can help you sell your script. Thanks to that wonderful 24/7 research library in a case on our desktop or even our Smartphone—our Internet connection—we can Google or Bing or Yahoo or whatever and find literally thousands of addresses.

The best starting place (and fascinating entertainment about entertainment) is the Internet Movie Database (now in its 20th year) or IMDb.com. The following screenshot shows an example page, that of Charlie Chaplin:

IMDb has literally millions of pieces of information about practically every movie ever made and all the people who are in those movies, wrote them, directed, produced, designed sets, did stunts, composed the soundtracks, and so forth. More importantly to those of us trying to sell screenplays, you can also find current production companies, agents, managers—the leads we need to see out scripts!

While...