Succeed in Anything!

Abstract

Succeed in Anything! is a feature-length screenplay—a comedy!—about Simon Sawyer, a young college graduate struggling to find the right job out of college. Simon spends all of his time reading self-help books, so much so that what he really feels he is an expert in is, well, self-help books (and he goes on to write one called Succeed in Anything!) The only issue is that no one would ever listen to or buy a self-help book from a recent college graduate with no experience. So Simon decides to hire an actor to play the author of the book. The book is a massive success, which is great, until the author realizes that he doesn’t need Simon anymore (all of the money is in the motivational speaker circuit, anyways). That leaves Simon alone, unemployed, and back to square one. That is, until a secretive underground cabal approaches Simon and he learns that all of the self-help books on the market are written by these same, few cabal writers; and all of the “authors” of self-help books are actually paid actors, propped up by this underground cabal. Simon faces a serious dilemma. Should he go on to join the cabal to work as a writer, or can he fight against this system and change self-help as we know it? How would he even do it and, again, who would take him seriously?