For an aspiring author, there may be no other career more lucrative than writing for film.

Every year producers receive scripts by the thousand, each averaging about 120 pages, from those who dare enough to follow their muse.

Of those thousands, a major Hollywood Studio buys only about 400 screenplays, and then proceeds to make around 10 films per year.

The odds of having a screenplay purchased, and then made into a film, are very slim.

Craig Titley, a successful screenwriter and Eastern alumnus, will conduct a screenwriter’s workshop at 10 a.m. today in the Tarble Fine Arts Center atrium as part of the Embarras Valley Film Festival.

The festival focuses on filmmakers and professionals in the industry from the region who are sometimes unknown, overlooked or whose achievements have not been recognized within community, said Robin L. Murray, the festivals co-project director and program chair.

Titley plans to concentrate on the basic art and commerce of screenwriting.

“Nobody ever teaches the business side of screenwriting, which is just as important as the craft,” Titley said.

Titley will share some of his tips and tricks for overcoming what he refers to as the four obstacles of screenwriting – writing a script, getting your script read, getting your script purchased and getting your script made into a film.

“Knowledge is power,” Titley said. “The more you know about each of those obstacles, the better chance you have of achieving success.”

Titley, originally from Mattoon, became interested in film at a young age.

“When I was a kid, I was always obsessed with movies and pop culture,” Titley said. “I was eleven when the first Star Wars film came out, and it blew me away.

Titley graduated from Eastern in 1989 with a bachelor’s degree in both English and business.

He then moved west where he enrolled in the Peter Stark Motion Picture producing program at the University of Southern California. He got into screenwriting after taking a class on the subject there.

“I put myself on a five-year plan – like Tom Cruise,” Titley said.

Titley had heard that when Tom Cruise arrived in Hollywood, he set a goal to appear in a major motion picture in five years.

Titley made a name for himself early in his career by selling his first script, which he described as a combination between “The Goonies” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” to director Chris Columbus.

Unfortunately, the script was never made into a film because of the release of Tim Burton’s “Sleepy Hollow” starring Johnny Depp.

During the next few years, Titley worked on the production crew of a few films before selling the script for a 45-minute special to the Fox network titled, “Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?” The special aired in 2001. Although Titley said he wrote the script “just for fun,” the show has been the subject of controversy ever since.

A 1999 Gallup poll found that 6 percent of the American public doubted the moon landings had occurred. Fox officials claimed skepticism had increased to about 20 percent after their show, which was seen by about 15 million viewers.

“I still to this day get fan mail and hate mail,” Titley said.

In the following years, Titley began to have great success, starting with “See Spot Run.” Next came the “Scooby-Doo” franchise, then the “Cheaper by the Dozen” franchise and most recently the “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” franchise.

The first installment, “Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lighting Thief,” directed by Chris Columbus, is scheduled for release in 2010.

Titley said the most rewarding part of his profession is watching an idea develop.

“Your driving along in your car and you get this idea, and then four months later you’ve got a 120-page screenplay,” he said.

His screenplays are like his children.

“When you get an idea, it’s like it’s being born” Titley said. “Then, you re-work it and watch it grow and change, and when you finally finish it’s like it’s grown up and your sending it off to college. Sometimes I even find myself thinking, ‘Man, I didn’t expect it to turn out like that.'”

Despite his success in Hollywood, Titley has not forgotten his roots in Coles County.

“I love Eastern,” he said. “I had great times, great friends and great professors.”

Frank McCormick, a retired Eastern English professor, had Titley as a student in his literary history and bibliography coarse and remembers him well.

“(Craig) is a genuinely good human being,” McCormick said, “In a Hollywood community that is self absorbed and given to excess, Craig has remained admirably level headed, and his mother, Bernice Titley, has good reason to be proud of her son’s accomplishments.”

He said Titley graduated with a 4.0 GPA.

“Craig was among the very most brilliant English majors to have graduated from Eastern within the past 35 years,” McCormick said. “All of us whom he connected with are very proud of his success as a screenwriter and of his generosity toward Eastern as well has his loyalty to the community.”

Jason Hardimon can be reached at 581-7942 or

[email protected].