Texas Man Leaves Over 200 Screenplays in his Estate

By Hunter McCall

Monday, May 09, 2016

(Alpine, Texas) A man who died last winter willed his estate to two attorney’s he only met once, leaving them an estimated half a million dollars each, over 200 unproduced screenplays and a barn full of over 200,000 rejection letters. 

Alan Fulk was 89 when he died last December. He lived alone on a 1,160-acre ranch in Brewster County, Texas. He inherited the farm from his father. He had no family or children.

Ronald Behle, an attorney, said he helped prepare Fulk's will around 1991, and never saw him again. Behle had helped with the estate of Fulk's father, who died in 1987.

"He was a loner, and a lot of neighbors didn't know who he was," Behle said. “However they knew who he was at the high school. He contributed hundreds of thousands over the years to their theater program,” the lawyer added.

The local high school’s 200 seat theater is named after Fulk.

What Fulk did have was a love of theater and an inclination to write. Beginning as a young man he wrote and wrote and wrote. And he also wrote letters to agents, producers and actors. He wrote letters to Hollywood journalists. Behle showed us shelf after shelf of file folders full of rejection letters. Behle estimated that the files in Fulk’s cattle barn contained over 200,000 rejection letters.

“The man literally wrote ten letter each day to the Hollywood elite filmmakers and agent.”

When asked why Fulk wasn’t more successful, Behle said, “The movie industry must be closed. I’m no genius; I’m just an old country lawyer but some of these stories border on brilliant.”

Fulk took great pains to keep a journal of his efforts to gain a foothold in Hollywood. According to the journals, the Texas rancher religiously wrote 10 letters each day of his adult life. That ads up to over 200,000 letters in a period of 60 years.

Fulk even managed to write scripts and letters from the battlefields of the Pacific. Fulk wrote in his 1944 journal, “bored on this ship waiting to die. Might as well write.”  It is unclear if what he wrote on board the various ships were movie script or letters to literary agents, but it is clear he was an active writer as a soldier.

Fulk continued his screenwriting efforts as a college student at Midwestern University in Wichita Falls. The west Texas man majored in English Literature and graduated with honors in 1943. He then went to war.

According to the journal his last letter was mailed to Jim Toth of the Creative Artists Agency two days before his passing.

As far as Behle could tell from the journals, only 27 of the scripts were read by industry professionals. “Mostly, Hollywood didn’t have time for Mr. Fulk.” the attorney said, “Fulk collected cold impersonal rejection letters.”

A review of the plot lines reveal that about ten percent of the 213 scripts were for western films. Attorney Ken Logan said, “I thought they would be of more value, because that is what Mr. Fulk seemed to really enjoy. But after talking to several experts in California, I’ve learned the rest of the world doesn’t appreciate the western and they are a very hard sell.

Industry experts explained that about 30 percent of a film’s revenue comes from theaters in the United States and the remaining 70 percent from foreign sources.

But what accounts for the rejection of over 193 screenplays that were not westerns.

Behle said, “Well it is a very confusing story. On one hand you have a man that never quiet trying to be recognized, not even for a single day, and that is an inspiring story. But on the other hand you have a story of pure and utter rejection, even sloth. Imagine the man’s heartache over the fact that he couldn’t get his work read.”

Behle continued, “What what does that say about the film industry? It’s very disturbing to learn that that an entire sector of the nation’s economy is closed to innovation and new talent. We used to be a capitalist country were there was a market for new ideas.”

Why did Fulk will his estate to the two lawyer?

Logan said, “My only guess is he was thinking that maybe we would be able to get a script read or at least place them as a collection in a library where they could be studied. And then frankly, there wasn’t anyone else to leave them to. This is a very rural part of the state.”

Behle is currently overseeing the sale of Fulk's real-estate property, which is appraised at $1,054,000. Behle declined to say how many bidders he has but said that a sale is "imminent."

Fulk also had about $230,000 in cash and CDs.

As for the sale of the screenplays, the attorneys are shopping them around Hollywood and New York.

"It's been one of the oddest things I have ever had to deal with in 30 plus years of practicing law," Behle said.

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