Scriptmag.com

Live Blog: 82nd Annual Academy Awards®

2010-03-06T19:34:00.000-08:00

2010 Writers Guild Award Winners

2010-02-25T06:54:00.000-08:00

compiled by Ray Morton

On February 20, 2010, The Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) and the Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW) announced the winners of the 2010 Writers Guild Awards for outstanding achievement in writing for screen, television, radio, news, promotional, and videogame writing at simultaneous ceremonies at the Hudson Theatre at the Millennium Broadway Hotel in New York City and the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. Susie Essman of Curb Your Enthusiasm hosted the East Coast show, and Seth MacFarlane, creator and star of Family Guy, hosted the West Coast show.

SCREEN WINNERS

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

The Hurt Locker, Written by Mark Boal; Summit Entertainment

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

Up in the Air, Screenplay by Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner; Based upon the novel by Walter Kirn; Paramount Pictures

DOCUMENTARY SCREENPLAY

The Cove, Written by Mark Monroe; Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions

TELEVISION WINNERS

DRAMA SERIES

Mad Men, Written by Lisa Albert, Andrew Colville, Kater Gordon, Cathryn Humphris, Andre Jacquemetton, Maria Jacquemetton, Brett Johnson, Erin Levy, Marti Noxon, Frank Pierson, Robin Veith, Dahvi Waller, Matthew Weiner; AMC

COMEDY SERIES

30 Rock, Written by Jack Burditt, Kay Cannon, Robert Carlock, Tom Ceraulo, Vali Chandrasekaran, Tina Fey, Donald Glover, Steve Hely, Matt Hubbard, Dylan Morgan, Paula Pell, Jon Pollack, John Riggi, Tami Sagher, Josh Siegal, Ron Weiner, Tracey Wigfield; NBC

NEW SERIES

Modern Family, Written by Paul Corrigan, Sameer Gardezi, Joe Lawson, Steven Levitan, Christopher Lloyd, Dan O'Shannon, Brad Walsh, Caroline Williams, Bill Wrubel, Danny Zuker; ABC

EPISODIC DRAMA – any length – one airing time

“Broken, Part 1 and Part 2” (House), Written by Russel Friend & Garrett Lerner & David Foster & David Shore; Fox

EPISODIC COMEDY – any length – one airing time (**TIE**)

“Apollo, Apollo” (30 Rock), Written by Robert Carlock; NBC

“Pilot” (Modern Family), Written by Steven Levitan & Christopher Lloyd; ABC

LONG FORM – ORIGINAL – over one hour – one or two parts, one or two airing times

Georgia O’Keeffe, Written by Michael Cristofer; Lifetime

LONG FORM – ADAPTATION – over one hour – one or two parts, one or two airing times

Taking Chance, Teleplay by Lieutenant Colonel Michael R. Strobl, USMC (Ret.) and Ross Katz, Based on the short story by Lieutenant Colonel Michael R. Strobl, USMC (Ret.); HBO

ANIMATION – any length – one airing time

“Wedding for Disaster” (The Simpsons), Written by Joel H. Cohen; Fox

COMEDY / VARIETY – (INCLUDING TALK) SERIES (TIE)

Saturday Night Live, Head Writer: Seth Meyers, Writers Doug Abeles, James Anderson, Alex Baze, Jessica Conrad, James Downey, Steve Higgins, Colin Jost, Erik Kenward, Rob Klein, John Lutz, Lorne Michaels, John Mulaney, Paula Pell, Simon Rich, Marika Sawyer, Akiva Schaffer, John Solomon, Emily Spivey, Kent Sublette, Jorma Taccone, Bryan Tucker, Additional Sketch by Adam McKay, Andrew Steele; NBC

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Head Writer: Steve Bodow, Writers Rory Albanese, Kevin Bleyer, Rich Blomquist, Tim Carvell, Wyatt Cenac, Hallie Haglund, JR Havlan, David Javerbaum, Elliott Kalan, Josh Lieb, Sam Means, Jo Miller, John Oliver, Daniel Radosh, Jason Ross, Jon Stewart; Comedy Central

COMEDY / VARIETY – MUSIC, AWARDS, TRIBUTES – SPECIALS

Film Independent’s 2009 Spirit Awards, Written by Billy Kimball, Neil MacLennan; IFC/AMC

DAYTIME SERIAL

The Young and the Restless, Written by Amanda L. Beall, Tom Casiello, Lisa Connor, Janice Ferri Esser, Eric Freiwald, Jay Gibson, Scott Hamner, Marla Kanelos, Beth Milstein, Natalie Minardi Slater, Melissa Salmons, Linda Schreiber, James Stanley, Sandra Weintraub, Teresa Zimmerman; CBS

CHILDREN'S EPISODIC & SPECIALS

“Welcome to the Jungle” (The Troop), Written by Max Burnett; Nickelodeon

CHILDREN’S SCRIPT – LONG FORM OR SPECIAL

Another Cinderella Story, Written by Erik Patterson, Jessica Scott; ABC Family

DOCUMENTARY – CURRENT EVENTS

“The Madoff Affair” (Frontline), Written by Marcela Gaviria, Martin Smith; PBS

DOCUMENTARY – OTHER THAN CURRENT EVENTS

“The Trials of J. Robert Oppenheimer” (American Experience), Written by David Grubin; PBS

NEWS – REGULARLY SCHEDULED, BULLETIN OR BREAKING REPORT

World News with Charles Gibson, Written by Lee Kamlet, Julia Kathan, Joel Siegel; ABC

NEWS – ANALYSIS, FEATURE, OR COMMENTARY

“A Private War: Expose: America’s Investigative Reports” (Bill Moyers Journal), Written by Thomas M. Jennings; PBS

RADIO WINNERS

DOCUMENTARY

2008 Year in Review, Written by Gail Lee; CBS

NEWS – REGULARLY SCHEDULED OR BREAKING

World News This Week − July 11, 2009, Written by Darren Reynolds; ABC Radio

NEWS – ANALYSIS, FEATURE OR COMMENTARY

Paul Harvey: An American Life, Written by Stu Chamberlain; ABC Radio

PROMOTIONAL WRITING AND GRAPHIC ANIMATION WINNERS

ON-AIR PROMOTION (RADIO OR TELEVISION)

“Vegas” (Dateline), “The Wanted” Promo, NBC Nightly News Promo, “Iran” (Dateline), “Cheat” (Dateline), Written by Barry Fitzsimmons; NBC

TELEVISION GRAPHIC ANIMATION

“Hudson Splashdown” (CBS Evening News with Katie Couric), David M. Rosen, Shannon L. Toma; CBS

VIDEOGAME WRITING WINNER

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Written by Amy Hennig; Sony Computer Entertainment

SPECIAL AWARDS

The Writers Guild of America, East presented special honors to: Alan Zweibel - Ian McLellan Hunter Lifetime Achievement Award; Gary David Goldberg – Herb Sargent Award for Comedy Excellence; Edward Albee – Evelyn F. Burkey Award for contributions bringing honor and dignity to writers everywhere; David Steven Cohen - Jablow Award for devoted service to the Guild, and Philippa Leverman - John Merriman Award for Study of Broadcast Journalism at American University. In addition, the Writers Guild of America, East Foundation presented the Michael Collyer Memorial Fellowship in Screenwriting to Antal Zambo of Wayne State University.

The Writers Guild of America, West presented special honors to: Larry David – Paddy Chayefsky Laurel Award for Television for lifetime achievement; Barry Levinson – Screen Laurel Award for lifetime achievement; Anthony Peckham (Invictus) – Paul Selvin Award, recognizing written work which spotlights constitutional rights and civil liberties; Carl Gottlieb – Morgan Cox Award, honoring longtime Guild service.

WGA News - Jan/Feb 2010

2010-02-16T12:39:00.000-08:00

by Ray Morton

iPHONE APPS GO UNION
In December 2009, the writers of iLarious became the first writers of content for an iPhone app to be represented by a labor union, the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE). Under this agreement, writers for apps such as This Just In (which delivers 10-15 jokes a day to the iPhone) will get to count their jokes written for the app towards WGAE health insurance and other benefits. Comedy writers covered by this new agreement hail from The Daily Show, The Onion, Human Giant and Saturday Night Live among other famous comedy programs.

iLarious went union because company founder and comedy writer Fred Graver is himself a member of the WGAE and knows how important union representation is to writers. “iLarious was founded to be the leading entertainment and comedy brand on mobile, by a group of writers, producers and performers - many of whom are members of the WGA, ” said Graver. “In a couple of years, mobile will be one of the dominant forces in our industry. It's important to the founders of iLarious that we bring the best talent to the table, and that we put a stake in the ground in this newly developing territory. The new means of producing content allows us to be owners and creators at the same time - and in the future, we look forward to being able to picket ourselves every few years.”

“Whatever the technology, writers will always benefit from membership in a creative community which is organized to advance their interests,” said WGAE Executive Director Lowell Peterson. “The job standards enjoyed by writers in film and broadcast TV were built over the years by creative people working together. Signing on with the WGAE is a very important step for creators of digital media to gain the standing and strength they deserve.”

In the past six months, the WGAE has signed 20 new companies creating content for digital media. These digital media companies who are covered by Writers Guild agreements have produced more than twenty-five web series currently available online and have additional series in development. Writers at these companies will become WGAE members. These writers were organized as part of the WGAE’s Writers Guild 2.0 initiative and demonstrate that writers working in digital media are interested in union membership.

WGA, EAST’S DIGITAL MEDIA SIGNATORIES TRIPLE IN 2009
Writers Guild of America, East, AFL-CIO (WGAE) added twenty-two digital media companies as signatories in 2009. Thirty writers have become guild members as a result of digital media work covered by guild contracts this year. The exponential increase in digital media projects covered by the WGAE is the result of the union’s focus on new organizing.

"The business models, distribution structures, and creative opportunities in digital media are still being developed. The fundamental goal of the Writers Guild 2.0 initiative is to ensure that creators are at the table as decisions are made about these basic issues,” said WGAE Executive Director Lowell Peterson. “The enormous potential of digital media won't mean much if writers and other creators can't make a living, or if they must cede creative control."

Rapid growth in signatories shows that digital media creators feel a strong need for guild representation. Digital media producers say they seek the same benefits in guild membership as any other writer, such as healthcare, credit for their work and a community willing to fight for their rights. New WGAE signatories announced in the last quarter of 2009 include: the original animated web series 9am Meeting, Confirmed Bachelors, Undead New York, and The Bear, the Cloud and God; the live action series The Battery’s Down, Downsized, Duder, Gavin Lance, and Alex Bloom and Ben Zelevansky; and production companies AGBK, Guy and Cut Films, Jamtown Films, and Respect Films.

WGA, EAST SUPPORTS AN OPEN INTERNET
On January 5, 2009 the Writers Guild of America, East (WGAE) responded to a request from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for comments on net neutrality and an open Internet in response to its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Net Neutrality with the following comments:

The Writers Guild of America, East, AFL-CIO, supports the proposed codification of the six principles described in the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking adopted October 22, 2009. We think it is critical that the extraordinary potential of the Internet not be stifled by corporate conglomerates that restrict access for their own commercial gain.
The WGAE represents people who write, edit, produce, and create graphics for television, film, radio, and digital media. Our members write television drama, comedy, news, and public interest programs; they write movies for major studios and for independents; they create original content for web television, for mobile applications, and for other digital platforms. Our members know first-hand how an open Internet permits them to create more innovative, informative content and to distribute it directly to the public.
While we support all six principles, the first (forbidding providers from blocking users’ access to lawful content of their choice) and fifth (requiring providers to treat lawful content, applications, and services in a nondiscriminatory manner) most directly address the interest of creators in maintaining meaningful access to the public.
The Internet and other digital media offer an unprecedented opportunity for creators to reach consumers and for people to watch and read what they want, when they want. This is very different from traditional media in which major studios, distributors, and television networks control the flow of movies and programs. We believe people would benefit from an Internet that offers a greater variety of options than what is currently available on television, radio, and the movie theater. Digital technology presents a vast range of possibilities to content creators and consumers alike, and it would be a tragedy to squeeze all of that into a narrow commercial band. Unless the Commission codifies the six principles, a relatively small number of major institutions might also come to control access to content on the Internet – big studios, network providers, or application and service providers.
The importance of the non-discrimination principle is highlighted by the proposed merger of NBC Universal into Comcast. One of the central purposes of the merger is to give Comcast better access to and control over the production of content. At the same time, Comcast will continue to expand its digital distribution business. Comcast will have a powerful incentive to use pricing to favor its own content [1].
This is not the only type of discrimination that threatens a robust, diverse Internet. As a practical matter, major entities can easily outbid independent creators of digital content for preferred access to audiences. This would be addressed by the Commission’s understanding of the term “nondiscriminatory” to preclude service access providers from charging for enhanced or prioritized access. Otherwise it is almost certain that most of the content consumers view will be produced by a relative handful of major entities – just as it is now in television and film. The enormous creative potential of a distribution system without mega-gatekeepers will be squandered.
Of course, it is possible that the biggest, best-funded content producers (e.g., major studios) will attract the most viewers because of superior content. Nothing in the Internet principles would impede this. Instead, the fourth principle endorses competition of this nature. The Commission should, however, preclude providers from interposing their own limitations on what people can watch and read, or post. It is simply inappropriate to stifle the flow of content – whether for ideological or commercial reasons.
We recognize that some people believe an open Internet encourages digital piracy. The WGAE strongly opposes piracy; our members lose when their work is unlawfully copied and distributed. However, we do not think permitting major commercial entities to control the flow of data and to restrict access to certain programming is an appropriate or effective method of controlling piracy. Everyone opposes car theft but no one proposes that we restrict access to the highways. Fighting piracy is an important task for law enforcement agencies. It is not grounds for restricting content creators’ access to the Internet. For this reason we urge the Commission not to adopt a definition of “managed or specialized services” which ignores the very real possibility that many or most consumers will get their Internet access and their “television”, and perhaps telephone, services from a single provider.

WGAW’S SHOWRUNNER TRAINING PROGRAM
The fifth edition of The Writers Guild of America, West’s annual Showrunner Training Program got underway in January 2010. The six-week industry training program, a partnership between the WGAW and television networks and studios, is designed for senior-level writer-producers to develop the essential skills necessary to become successful showrunners.

Each year’s program features high-profile speakers from various areas of the industry. This year’s 45 speakers include Steve Levitan, Shawn Ryan, Joss Whedon, Bill Lawrence, Phil Rosenthal, David Shore, Jason Katims, Paris Barclay, Ian Maxtone-Graham, Matt Nix, Yvette Lee Bowser, Glen Mazzara, Lifetime Television President JoAnn Alfano, and actor Blair Underwood. Additional sessions include other industry professionals such as actors, directors, and teamsters, as well as a visit to a post production facility with presentations from editors and Alicia Hirsch, Senior VP of Post Production at Fox Television Studios.

SRTP sessions are all-day seminars on four Saturdays, running through February 20. Employing lecture and interactive test-case scenarios, as well as large and small group discussions, the program gives participants an intimate setting to interact with some of Hollywood’s most successful and experienced showrunners. The innovative program’s core curriculum includes the following topics:

Session #1: From Writer to Manager (held January 9th)
Session #2: Managing Writers & the Script Process (held January 16th)
Session #3: Managing Production & Directors (held January 23rd)
Session #4: Managing Executives & Actors (to be held January 30th)
Session #5: Managing Post-Production (to be held February 6th)
Session #6: Managing Your Career (to be held February 20th)

The program also includes two half-day “break-out” sessions with WGA,West President and SRTP co-founder John Wells (ER, The West Wing) talking about “Budget & Scheduling,” and Stephen J. Cannell (The Rockford Files, Wiseguy) on “The Pilot Process.”

To select participants, writers on the Showrunner Training Program Committee considered more than 60 eligible applicants and accepted 21 writers and/or writing teams, all of whom were recommended by television showrunners and/or network and studio creative executives for the in-demand seminar slots covering both comedy and dramatic series. Participants in the WGAW’s 2010 Showrunner Training Program are: Jonathan Abrahams, Sally Bradford, Jill Cargerman, Chris Collins, Matt Corman, Adam Giaudrone, Jessica Goldstein, Peter Gould, Holly Henderson, Davey Holmes, Andre Jacquemetton, Maria Jacquemetton, David Lampson, Andrew Leeds, Amanda Lasher, Scott Marder, George Mastras, Bryan Oh, Chris Ord, Christine Pietrosh, Ron Rappaport, Rob Rosell, Far Shariat, Ben Watkins, Sarah Watson, Don Whitehead, and Alexander Woo.

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Ray Morton is a writer and script consultant. His books Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Making of Steven Spielberg's Classic Film and King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon from Fay Wray to Peter Jackson are available in stores and online. He analyzes screenplays for production companies, producers, and individual writers. Morton is available for consultation and can be reached at ray@raymorton.com.

Before the Oscars®: Looking Back at '09

2010-02-16T11:16:00.000-08:00

by Ray Morton

With one year ending, another one beginning, and awards season starting to ramp up, this is the time when those of us that write about movies present our lists of the Best and Worst cinematic achievements of the previous twelve months. Since my purview is screenwriting, I’m going to focus my attention on what I consider to be the best and the most dubious screenplays of 2009.

For me, hands down the best script -- and the best film -- of 2009 is Up (screenplay by Bob Peterson, Pete Docter, and Thomas McCarthy). In this time of remakes and recycling, when originality and imagination are at a premium and movies have lost much of their sense of wonder, every frame of this gem from Pixar was terrifically fresh, clever, and bedazzling. The story is jam-packed with inventive concepts – so many that it is almost impossible to synopsize the narrative in any way that makes it sound coherent (“Y’see, it’s about this boy that meets a girl. They fall in love and spend fifty years together. Then she dies and he is sad and then he’s going to lose his house, so he hooks it up to a bunch of balloons and sails it away with an annoying Boy Scout in tow. The two travel to South America, where they befriend a goofy flightless bird and encounter a crazy explorer whose henchmen are a pack of squirrel-obsessed talking dogs…” Huh?) and yet the material is so impeccably structured and emotionally true that all of the outlandish ideas make complete sense and so are totally believable in context.

I was also very impressed with The Hurt Locker (screenplay by Mark Boal) which I felt was Hemingway-esqe in the best sense of the term – marvelously spare and simple on the surface, rich and complex underneath – and District 9 (screenplay by Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell), which took an idea we’d seen before (in the film and television series Alien Nation) and by treating it with depth and intelligence and by peopling it with relatable three-dimensional characters (both human and alien), transformed it into a fresh and exciting sci-fi adventure, as well as a really good movie. In addition, I was a fan of a film that, for reasons I don’t really understand, was cited by many critics as being one of the worst of the year -- The Men Who Stare at Goats. I thought screenwriter Peter Straughan did a marvelous job of adapting some truly bizarre and seemingly improbable real-life material into a really smart and interesting fictional narrative that was both biting (in its savage view of the insanity of the military intelligence community) and sweet (in its depiction of the goofy-but-sincere higher-consciousness aspirations of the characters played by George Clooney and Jeff Bridges).

These qualities aside, the main reason that I liked all of these films is that they made me feel something – Up made me laugh and cry (continuously and often concurrently); The Hurt Locker terrified me and I found the war between a desire for normality and the excitement of living on the edge that raged inside of Jeremy Renner’s Sergeant First Class William James to be both disturbing and compelling; District 9 was exciting, funny, and in the end quite moving (the site of Sharto Copely’s transformed protagonist crafting a metal flower on a garbage dump was both heartbreaking and uplifting); The Men Who Stare at Goats found enormous heart and soul in the blackest of black comedy. I’ve said a number of times in this column that the primary factor that prompts me to recommend a script is if it provokes some sort of genuine emotional reaction in me. To put some words down on paper that move another human being is the hardest and rarest thing to do in writing and something that the authors of these scripts manage to accomplish in impressive ways. Bravo to them all.

As for the year’s other notable releases:

On the positive side, I feel about Inglorious Basterds the way I feel about everything Quentin Tarantino does – I can’t help but admire its bold and furious inventiveness, while at the same time wishing that it was actually about something other than all of that bold and furious inventiveness. I enjoyed Star Trek and Sherlock Holmes, although I would have preferred if both of them had been less frenetic and had the courage to be as smart as they were clever. Likewise, I wish both Up in the Air and (500) Days of Summer had been as deep as they were smart (although I definitely enjoyed the smart). Despite claims to the contrary, I didn’t think The Hangover was the funniest movie ever, but I laughed a lot and really admired its commitment to going as far as necessary for a joke. Where the Wild Things Are was a bit raggedy as a story, but I was impressed by its effortless fantasy and its willingness to embrace the darker sides of childhood without making a big deal out of it. There were things to like in Away We Go, Sunshine Cleaning, and Everybody’s Fine that helped to balance out the more annoying and cloying elements in each.

On the negative side, I thought that, while Avatar had some appeal as a viewing experience, as a script it was a dud – ham-fisted, derivative, and silly. The same goes for 2012 and Transformers 2. The most disappointing film of the year for me was Pirate Radio (The Boat that Rocked in the U.K.) – I am a big, big fan of screenwriter Richard Curtis’s work and while none of his scripts have been perfect, they have all been smart, witty, peopled with well-realized characters that are easy to care about, and full of heart. Pirate Radio has none of these qualities – it is long, unfocused, not particularly funny, filled with frustratingly one-dimensional characters, and missing the sweet soul that has been at the center of the rest of Curtis’s oeuvre. Everyone’s entitled to a bad day, though, so I’m hoping that Pirate Radio will turn out to be just a curious misfire in an otherwise stellar career. My vote for worst script of 2009 (or of mid-1970s, when it was allegedly written) is Woody Allen’s Whatever Works – a bitter, mean-spirited, and terribly unfunny script about miserable characters (or, in most cases, caricatures) behaving horribly to one another for ninety minutes before finally arriving at insights and resolutions that were probably just as stale thirty-five years ago as they are today. It’s hard to believe that the man that once wrote that “You have to have a little faith in people,” could produce something so excruciatingly misanthropic, but the result is frustrating and sad not just because of that, but also because it is yet another sign of the decline of a once magnificent writer.

In the end, 2009 was a mixed time for screenwriting and for movies. Still, any year that produce one great script, a few pretty good ones, and a number of okay ones has to be considered a pretty decent one. Let’s hope 2010 is even better.

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Ray Morton is a writer and script consultant. His books Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Making of Steven Spielberg's Classic Film and King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon from Fay Wray to Peter Jackson are available in stores and online. He analyzes screenplays for production companies, producers, and individual writers. Morton is available for consultation and can be reached at ray@raymorton.com.

Discussing January/February 2010 Issue with Andrew Shearer, Pt. 2

2010-02-05T07:53:00.000-08:00

Wow, talk about contrary advice… I’m the kind of screenwriter, like most of my writer friends, who sits in a room or a coffee shop all day and writes, only speaking to humans to order caffeine or talk to my writing partner when I want to tell him how bad his stuff is (to make myself feel better about my own crap.) I’m always working on “the one.”

So when I read Marvin Acuna’s article, “The Three Pillars,” which suggests that I better man up and get out there and start networking if I’m going to make it in this biz… I figured, I’m going to man up and get out there and start networking and make it in this biz. I can be likeable in real life. There is one friend of mine who seems to get projects off the ground in big part because he’s excellent at networking (and a great writer, which is the combo Acuna suggests).

Acuna also says you should focus on market intelligence. I actually read Variety every Sunday, but honestly, I forget most of it every time I sit back down to work on my “art” (except the part about the films that made a hundred million – man I’m broke!).

Then I turned the page in Script and read Wesley Rowe’s column, “Hitting the Boards.” He basically said screw that, don’t network, just tell people you have an award-winning script and they need to read it. Be the guy who doesn’t have to have the winning personality, believes in your script as art, and waits for it to speak for itself. Bold. It makes me feel good that sometimes a whole day goes by, and I literally never step outside. My feeling is, I think there’s good advice in both the Acuna and Rowe articles, but it really depends on your personality.

I know I’ll never be the networker my buddy is because I’m just not the producing type – I think that’s part of understanding what you’re good at and what you’re not. I’m praying my reps can sell “the one” once I write it. But I also know you absolutely have to have a likeable personality once you get in the room with executives. Nobody wants to work with a pretentious asshole who considers his script a work of art that can’t be modified.

Rowe says one can be satisfied that one’s script was better than the movie it was made into. I will admit that he’s right when he says you should really enjoy the script you’re writing. I’m having a hell of a good time writing the script I’m working on now. But I can’t agree that it will ever stand as a piece of art on its own. The finished movie is the art. If the movie turns out bad, the disappointment I would feel, would far outweigh the fun I’m having now while writing it. (I imagine anyway – I’ve never had a movie made.) So what do you think?

Click here for Pt. 1

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A redneck from Small Town, North Carolina (population 8,000, high school drop-out rate 40%), one day decided to tackle the film industry. Andrew’s film-school short, Son Up, based off his experience teaching at a juvenile hall, ended up winning seven festival awards and made the regionals for the Student Academy Awards. Andrew’s feature script version of Son Up, co-written with Nick Sherman, went on to win first prize at Cinequest. Then one day, the screenwriting gods shined their rarely shown light down from the Heavens and awarded the Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship to Andrew and Nick for their feature script, Holy Irresistible. The duo is now repped by Endeavor and Brillstein Entertainment. They have two projects in development and are lucky enough to be co-writing a spec with another writer they’ve admired for years.

Book Excerpt: Just Effing Entertain Me

2010-01-31T15:02:00.000-08:00

Script magazine contributor, Julie Gray is packing her bags and setting off on a whirlwind, worldwide tour to teach you how to get your Ideas to the Page to the Screen. She's off to NYC February 27-28 for an intensive two-day weekend workshop, then jetting across the Atlantic for UK workshops in London (March 6-7) and Oxford (March 13-14). After that, she's taking some much needed time off in Tel Aviv before heading back to the states to teach workshops in Chicago and Los Angeles in April and San Francisco in May. All workshops are $329 with deep discounts given to early-birds including a 10% discount at the Writer's Store and $50 off attendance at the Great American Pitch Fest in June. Sign up before February 12 to receive a free bundle of three podcasts from Julie's teleclass series Just Effing Do It!

The following is an excerpt from her book, Just Effing Entertain Me, coming out in late 2010.

Origin Stories

In the world of comic books, origin stories are the back stories for the superhero. How, why and when our superhero began his or her trajectory of internal pain and superhero-ness. You know - Batman and his murdered parents, Spiderman, the radioactive spider and his uncle's death for which he blames himself, Superman and his destroyed planet. Luke Skywalker and the loss of his aunt, uncle and very home. Wait - he's not a superhero. But this is still his origin story, isn't it? The beginnings of a lifelong adventure. A pivotal point in his life that changed him forever.

What is your main character's origin story? Regardless of genre, your main character is on an arc of change, right? What was that moment that defined the hole your main character has been trying to fill ever since? What defined them long before your story began? If there was a moment of origin for your main character, your script is then going to be the second most defining moment of their lives, right? Because your script is in some ways the continuation of a story that already began long ago.

Your main character's origin story doesn't have to be tragic - you might be writing a comedy - but the point is that something in your main character's life set them upon a path, positive or negative and now, because screenwriters get to play god, you are going to set a story in motion that will irrevocably change your main character once more. Change the direction of their orbit forever. And it's deeply satisfying, as a writer, because in real life while many do have defining moments, often it's more of a cumulative effect, right? Experiences pile up, one atop the other and slowly shape us, like a rock being battered by the sea. As we get older, we begin to soften and change.

But movies are life writ large - there are defining moments, pivotal conversations, forced decisions and cathartic, satisfying changes. That that's why we like to go to the movies - to look for patterns, closure and exciting outcomes when in real life, things can seem to move at a glacial pace. Even so - look at your own life - do you have a moment that defined you? Or a period of time? Something about where you grew up, something that happened in your family? A bully at school? A teacher who believed in you? That jerk who fired you and led you to your career today? Were you lucky enough to find the love of your life and that person lifted you up to a whole new level because they love you so? Or did you lose someone and that profound loss lent you a whole new point of view?

We writers have more in common with our main characters than we like to admit. Our main characters live out our fantasies - they get revenge when we were unable to. They speak the truth when we weren't heard. They overcome their fears. They have the perfect come back, romantic gesture or courageous response. They turn heartbreak into triumph, they take chances and they discover the truth about themselves. They overcome grief and find grace. They are us the way we wish we were.

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Julie Gray is the founder of The Script Department, Hollywood’s premier script coverage service. She also directs the Silver Screenwriting Competition and authors the popular screenwriting blog, Just Effing Entertain Me. Julie consults privately with a wide variety of writers and teaches classes at Warner Bros., The Great American PitchFest, The Creative Screenwriting Expo and San Francisco University in Quito, Ecuador. Julie lives in Los Angeles, California; her book Just Effing Entertain Me is slated for release in late 2010.

Meet the Reader - Book Review: The View from the Bridge

2010-01-31T13:08:00.000-08:00

by Ray Morton

Nicholas Meyer is one of Hollywood’s great, if-not-unsung-then-certainly-not-sung-nearly-enough talents. A self-described “storyteller,” Meyer has written novels, non-fiction books, stage plays, radio plays, liner notes, and reviews. He has also directed a number of excellent films, but is perhaps best known for being an expert screenwriter that crafts smart, entertaining, classically-constructed scripts filled with engaging characters and clever, literate dialogue. And now, with the publication of The View from the Bridge: Memories of Star Trek and a Life in Hollywood (Viking Press / $25.95/ ISBN 9780670021307), Meyer has added memoirist to his considerable list of accomplishments.

The book traces Meyer’s journey from his Manhattan childhood to the Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa to a job in the publicity department of Paramount Pictures that had him writing press kits by day while penning spec scripts at night. A gig as a unit publicist on Love Story led to Meyer’s first script sale (to Howard Minsky, Love Story’s producer) and his first publishing deal (a “making of” book aptly called The Love Story Story). The money earned from those transactions financed a move to Los Angeles, where Meyer began writing television movies and then, during the long WGA strike of 1972, his first novel – the Sherlock Holmes-meets-Sigmund Freud adventure The Seven-Percent Solution, which became a smash-hit best-seller and which served as his springboard into the screenwriting big leagues when he refused to sell the screen rights unless he was also permitted to pen the script for its 1976 film adaptation, an assignment that eventually netted him an Academy Award nomination. After writing and directing (his debut) the classic H.G. Welles-meets-Jack the Ripper time-traveling adventure fantasy classic Time After Time (1979), Meyer was drafted to write (sans credit) and direct Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), an assignment that led to a decade-long association with the crew of the Starship Enterprise, during which he also co-wrote 1986’s Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and co-wrote and directed 1991’s Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. During and after his involvement with Trek, Meyer continued to direct films (The Day After, Volunteers, The Deceivers, Company Business) and write screenplays (Sommersby, The Human Stain, Elegy), while earning a solid reputation in Hollywood as an ace script doctor due to his (mostly uncredited) rewrites on films such as Fatal Attraction, The Prince of Egypt, The Count of Monte Cristo, Tomorrow Never Dies and many, many others.

This is a terrific book. Written in a warm, witty style, it is chock-full of intriguing and sometimes quite moving tales about Nick’s life; his experiences in the Hollywood trenches; his insightful observations about the art, craft, and business of making movies; and a few difficult personal experiences that serve to put the whole thing in proper perspective. As evidenced by its title, a significant portion of the book is devoted to Meyer’s time in Starfleet, which was probably something of a commercial decision, but also an entirely appropriate one given his (quite deserved) reputation as “the man who saved Star Trek.” Finally, the book is filled with a real generosity of spirit that reminds us that, while the movie business is filled with movers, shakers, sharks, and stars, it is also filled with a lot of really nice people, of which Nick Meyer seems to be one. If you’re interested in screenwriting, movies, Sherlock Holmes, or Star Trek, this book is pretty much indispensable.

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Ray Morton is a writer and script consultant. His books Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Making of Steven Spielberg's Classic Film and King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon from Fay Wray to Peter Jackson are available in stores and online. He analyzes screenplays for production companies, producers, and individual writers. Morton is available for consultation and can be reached at ray@raymorton.com.

Tales from the Script: Advice for New Screenwriters

2010-01-29T11:26:00.000-08:00

In this entertaining video, celebrated A-listers share hard-won lessons about the pitfalls awaiting newcomers to screenwriting. John August (“Go”), David Hayter (“X-Men”), Bruce Joel Rubin (“Ghost”), Ron Shelton (“Bull Durham”), and Joe Stillman (“Shrek”) are just a few of the professionals offering priceless tips and inspiration. Their remarks are an exciting sneak preview of the book/film project Tales from the Script, which is hitting the marketplace in a big way this year.

Peter Hanson, a regular contributor to Script magazine and the moderator of Final Draft’s screening series in Hollywood, put together this special video to let fans know about his project. The book Tales from the Script: 50 Hollywood Screenwriters Share Their Stories (IT Books/HarperCollins) is available now from Amazon.com, and the feature-length companion movie, simply titled Tales from the Script, will be released this spring in theaters and on DVD by First Run Features (pre-order the DVD at TalesFromTheScript.com). To receive updates on this exciting project, become a fan on Facebook.

Enjoy the video, and pass it along!

Links:
Tales from the Script
Peter Hanson
Click here to order from Amazon
Facebook

Discussing January/February 2010 Issue with Andrew Shearer, Pt. 1

2010-01-28T13:12:00.000-08:00

Being a screenwriter in Hollywood, or rather, trying to become a legitimate screenwriter in Hollywood, is fucking hard.

Lately for me, it’s been a soul-wrenching experience, testing my very ability to sustain Hollywood’s never ceasing lashings. That’s why I was refreshed to read the Jan/Feb 2010 edition of Script magazine. Within it, I found comfort reading Peter Hanson’s article “The Agony of the Unproduced.” All of us un-produced screenwriters, despite our minor successes, need a pick-me-up here and there, and the pick-me-up in this article is the story of the guy who couldn’t take it anymore, so he quit. I know, it’s sort of sadistic, but that’s what’s making me feel good today. I’m still going. You’re still going. That guy quit. Hoorah – get to work – the next thing we write may be the one.

Aaron Ginsburg made me laugh today in his article “How (Not) to Fire Your Rep.” It’s a useful article if you have a worthless manager, and you’re struggling over the decision of whether or not to fire him or her. My writing partner and I used to have a fairly crazy manager who told me all too much about her personal life and boyfriends and cats. We finally fired her in what was the most painful phone call in my life, but which now that I look back on it, like Ginsburg’s experiences, makes me laugh – again, I’m a sadistic bastard but these are dark times, and I need a pick-me-up. Ginsburg reminds me that although things are a little slow in my career now, they used to be a lot worse.

“10 Things a Rep Will Never Tell You” is a great article by Jim Cirile, which isn’t exactly the trilogy of my pick-me-up, but it’s a necessary sobering splash of water after my brief high. Every time I think my manager is telling me all the answers to all my questions (because obviously we’re chums), I have to remind myself, he is my business partner. Here’s where I have to say, my manager is actually a really laidback guy who you can relax and have a beer with. But still, we’re business partners, so just like I don’t need to know about my former manager’s boyfriends’ medications, my current manager doesn’t feel like I need to know when someone thought our script really blew – just that they passed.

So the good news is, it’s 2010, I haven’t quit yet, I don’t have to fire a manager today, and my manager hasn’t fired me yet. Time to get to work.

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A redneck from Small Town, North Carolina (population 8,000, high school drop-out rate 40%), one day decided to tackle the film industry. Andrew’s film-school short, Son Up, based off his experience teaching at a juvenile hall, ended up winning seven festival awards and made the regionals for the Student Academy Awards. Andrew’s feature script version of Son Up, co-written with Nick Sherman, went on to win first prize at Cinequest. Then one day, the screenwriting gods shined their rarely shown light down from the Heavens and awarded the Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship to Andrew and Nick for their feature script, Holy Irresistible. The duo is now repped by Endeavor and Brillstein Entertainment. They have two projects in development and are lucky enough to be co-writing a spec with another writer they’ve admired for years.

Steve Kaire: Writing Partnerships

2009-12-14T12:47:00.000-08:00

Writing partnerships are like marriages. They can continue in bliss or end up in bitter divorce. Working with a writing partner can either reduce your workload by half or create twice the headaches.

Any kind of partnership is fraught with peril. If it fails, not only does the project come to an immediate halt, but your friendship may be over as well.

A well-chosen partner is a valuable lightning rod to create and bounce ideas off. That person’s strengths can balance your weaknesses. But there has to be a meeting of the minds on critical issues before a partnership is undertaken.

There’s a list of questions that has to be answered before both parties make the final commitment to work together: Do your writing styles mesh rather than conflict? Do you have personalities that work well together under pressure? Can you both invest the amount of time required from inception of the script to the ultimate marketing of the material? How will major disagreements be resolved when you reach an impasse? Will you be doing an equal amount of work and splitting the money equally, or will there be some other kind of financial arrangement? And if the worst-case scenario occurs and you both decide to go your separate ways, who does the material belong to?

All these questions and potential pitfalls should be discussed and solutions agreed upon in a written contract before any partnership is entered into. I’ve had my share of writing partners. In some cases the partnership worked very well, in other cases it failed miserably. The more you know and clear up in advance, the better your chances of having the partnership work out to the benefit of both parties involved.
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Steve Kaire is a screenwriter-pitchman who’s sold/optioned eight projects to the major studios without representation. He’s taught writing classes at the American Film Institute and has appeared on the Tonight Show’s “Pitching to America” with Jay Leno. His groundbreaking CD entitled, High Concept: How to Create, Pitch & Sell to Hollywood is a best-seller and is available on his website: ScriptwritingCD.com.

Staton Rabin: Breaking In: Zen and the Art of Guerrilla Script Marketing

2009-12-07T11:00:00.000-08:00

Well, it’s the holiday season again: Time for all good screenwriters to start typing up those query letters addressed to the North Pole. Yes, many of you have already sent your “wish list” to Santa -- asking for a new BlackBerry or, better yet, “$100,000 against a cool million” for your latest spec script. After all, you’re writing directly to St. Nick because you know the secret of success. Contacts.

We’ve all heard it before: “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” But I’m here to tell you that, when it comes to contacts, most of what you’ve heard about Hollywood is dead wrong. It’s not about the contacts you have. It’s about the contacts you make. And you make them based on the quality of your work, not on “who you know.” You want powerful advocates who admire your work, not people who are helping you simply because your second cousin knows Brad Pitt.

When I was growing up, my father was vice president for a major corporation. Part of his job was to meet celebrities and organize charity events, or get their endorsements for his company’s products. One day he’d be talking to Eleanor Roosevelt on the telephone, the next he’d be having lunch with My Fair Lady star Rex Harrison, or meeting Motown founder Berry Gordy. I was so jealous!

But when it came to meeting famous people, my father couldn’t have been less impressed. It was like pulling teeth for me to find out which superstar he’d had lunch with that day. You see, my father’s a class act, and doesn’t “name drop” or exploit his contacts for personal gain. So when I grew up, after I graduated from NYU film school and was looking for my first job in the movie business, he wouldn’t let me use any of his contacts. In short, I was in exactly the same position you probably are (or have been). I didn’t know anyone in the film business. I was on my own.

But that didn’t stop me. First, I did my homework. I learned everything I could about the movie stars and directors I most admired. Then I started writing letters to them. Letters to people like actor Jimmy Stewart, director Frank Capra, and dancer/choreographer Gene Kelly. And what happened?

I got personal answers. Encouraging letters. From almost every celebrity I wrote to. In those days, it wasn’t easy to find contact addresses for famous people. It’s a heck of a lot easier now.

Soon, I applied my letter-writing skills to my career. I started writing query letters to stars and directors asking if they’d read my screenplays or books. My ultimate purpose? To see if they might want to “attach” themselves to the project.

What did I talk about in those letters? I showed that I had really done my homework about their life, films and careers. I never said just the obvious: that I admired their performance in their most famous film from a zillion years ago. Instead, I complimented them on things they don’t usually hear: a lesser-known film performance, or perhaps some specific aspect of an interview they gave in a newspaper. If I mentioned one of their famous films, I talked about their performance in it in a very specific way, instead of just saying it was “great."

Of course, my business letters aren’t “gushing” fan mail. They are business-like, and contain my pitch, and I work very hard on my pitch. But I really think about who I’m writing to, and why. I think about what their needs are, and what’s important to them in their work and their life. There’s nothing “generic” about any letter I send to an actor, director, or film producer. And I never say things I don’t mean in order to “flatter” them. Neither should you.

So. If you write the right kind of query letter to a star, you don’t necessarily need a personal referral (though it can help) in order to get noticed. Even if you have a friend who knows a major Hollywood player, do you really want to exploit that friendship by asking him or her to submit your script to them as a favor to you? If you value your friendships, maybe not.

And even if your friend is happy to do you that favor, the star receiving the script probably knows it was sent over mostly as a favor -- rather than on the basis of the script’s merit. What would you rather have? Your script’s arriving on Tom Cruise’s desk simply because his dry cleaner did you a favor? Or the script being sent to Cruise because somebody powerful in the film business loves your screenplay, knows Tom Cruise, and tells him it’s something he ought to read? You may say it doesn’t matter how it gets there, as long as it does. I disagree.

The truth is, it’s not really your “contacts” that lead to success as a screenwriter, it’s the quality of your work. It’s much better to have contacts and referrals that you earn, through the merits of your work, than ones that are handed to you merely as a “favor” or through happenstance. No matter who you are and no matter what your background, if you’re talented, you can make contacts for yourself. The right kind of contacts, for the right reasons.

Keep pitching. See you next month.
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Staton Rabin is a screenplay marketing consultant, script analyst, and “pitch coach” for screenwriters at all levels of experience. She is also a Senior Writer and story analyst for Script, has been a reader for Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema, and is a frequent guest lecturer at NYU. Staton’s novel Betsy and the Emperor is in development as a movie with Al Pacino attached to star. Staton Rabin is available for consultations and can be reached at Cutebunion@aol.com

Discussing November/December with Andrew Shearer, Part 2

2009-12-02T12:28:00.000-08:00

Ah, the myriad of screenwriting advice we have to sift through in order to become masters of our craft -- it can drive you to drinking. William Martell’s article “Worldwide Cool” in the November/December edition of Script magazine suggests we should be writing scripts that appeal to worldwide audiences. Sounds reasonable. More potential for international box office. But the part that rubs me the wrong way is when Martell basically suggests screenwriters not write a script that “focuses on culture or politics or social issues that are unique to America.” What happened to write what you know? Write it because you can execute it with flying colors. As a producer, would you rather read a really well written script about an American cultural issue, or a poorly written script with a bunch of “really cool stuff” in it as Martell suggests, that appeals to a foreign audience? My guess is the well written American-centric script is more likely to get you your next gig because you’ve proven your talent (God willing).

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the realities of the business. I just don’t think it’s the best advice for new writers. My partner and I have an old script centered on a teenage, African-American kid in a juvenile-hall setting. It won screenwriting contests and had actors attached and still hasn’t been made. To put it bluntly, African-American-themed stories don’t have foreign appeal, so it’s tough to find funding. But should I not tell that very personal, important, moving story because, as Martell says, “people in Uganda watching the film on the wall of a building” don’t care about some U.S. issue? I care about the people in Chicago who do care about the issue.

Another screenplay my partner and I wrote, which also received accolades and was well-received around town, focuses on another American-centric story. It’s a comedy set in the world of small town, Christian fundamentalism. Again, very little foreign appeal. However, this is the script that has basically launched my and my partner’s careers. Well, pseudo-careers -- we’re getting there. Either way, every deal we have in the works is due to that script. Had we set out in the beginning, attempting to write some movie based solely on international appeal with a bunch of action and twists and turns and without any personal stakes, I’m not sure we wouldn’t have fallen flat on our faces. But that’s our story. Like I said in the beginning, it’s about sifting through the advice.

My partner and I are at the point now with some of the projects we’re writing where we certainly have to consider foreign box-office appeal, so I understand Martell’s advice. I just think depending on where you are in your career, that advice is not automatically the way to go. What do you think?

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A redneck from Small Town, North Carolina (population 8,000, high school drop-out rate 40%), one day decided to tackle the film industry. Andrew’s film-school short, Son Up, based off his experience teaching at a juvenile hall, ended up winning seven festival awards and made the regionals for the Student Academy Awards. Andrew’s feature script version of Son Up, co-written with Nick Sherman, went on to win first prize at Cinequest. Then one day, the screenwriting gods shined their rarely shown light down from the Heavens and awarded the Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship to Andrew and Nick for their feature script, Holy Irresistible. The duo is now repped by Endeavor and Brillstein Entertainment. They have two projects in development and are lucky enough to be co-writing a spec with another writer they’ve admired for years.

Meet the Reader: Feedback

2009-11-25T08:06:00.000-08:00

Feedback is a vitally important element of the screenwriting process -- without it, you will never know if your work is connecting with readers and audiences the way you want it to. For this reason, you should incorporate the obtaining of feedback into your writing process from the very beginning.

Start by pitching your premise to a few trusted listeners before you start writing. A well-conceived concept should be able to be clearly explained in a few concise and tightly focused sentences. If you are unable to express your premise this succinctly, or if your listeners don’t understand your sentences, then you may have some fine-tuning to do before you begin scribbling.

Once you have completed an initial draft, give your script to a few people to read and comment upon. It’s important that the people you choose are ones who will be able to read and analyze your piece with an objective eye and who will give you honest and constructive criticism. For this reason, I recommend that you seek out fellow writers and industry colleagues rather than simply handing your work over to friends and family members. Your dear aunt Sally may be a lovely person, but the odds are that she doesn’t have a solid grasp of the three-act structure, character arcs, or visual expository techniques. Also, she probably won’t tell you if there’s anything in your script that she doesn’t like because she loves you and doesn’t want to hurt your feelings. So, go to Sally for chocolate chip cookies, but go to your professional compatriots for creative input.

(If you don’t happen to know any other writers or industry-types, trusted acquaintances who don’t mind being blunt will do.)

Getting good feedback should be a proactive process. Don’t just hand your script to a few friends and then sit back and wait for general, generic responses such as “I liked it -- it was good,” or “I hated it -- it was bad.” These sort of responses are not helpful because they are not specific. Instead, you should direct the obtaining of feedback just as you direct every other phase of your writing.

• To begin with, don’t prep your readers. Simply give them your script and ask them to read it cold, without you telling them what it’s about or what you’re trying to achieve. That way, their reactions will be completely pure and they won’t read anything into the piece that isn’t there or couch their responses to tell you what you are hoping to hear.

• When your analysts have finished reading your piece, ask them to tell you your story. If the tale they tell is the one you thought you were writing, then you’re in good shape. If it bears little or no resemblance to your saga, then you may have some work to do. Then, ask your analysts some specific questions about your piece -- ask them to identify the main character and describe his or her arc; next ask them to identify the main theme of the piece as well as the highlights of the story -- the most exciting action set pieces, the funniest comedic bits, the tensest suspense sequences, the most horrific scares, and the weepiest emotional moments. If the elements your readers identify are the ones you planned for, then your script is working. If they’re not, then it’s back to the word processor.

• Once your analysts have responded, analyze their analysis. If one person has a problem with some aspect of your script, then it could just be that person’s individual issue. However, if a number of people have the same problem, then it’s likely that the fault lies with the script and will need to be addressed.

The most important thing to do with feedback is to listen to it. Writing is really hard and by the time an author finishes a draft, he or she is in no mood to hear that there’s a problem with their brainchild. Many tend to rationalize away criticism because they just can’t bear the thought of opening the whole story up and starting all over again. Avoid this impulse at all costs, because if you don’t, you may sabotage yourself in the long run.

After you have made sense of your analysts’ assessments, revise your script based on them and then repeat this process each time you have completed a new draft so that you can make sure that you stay on track. When the script has been finished to your satisfaction, hold a table reading so that you can hear the dialogue spoken aloud to get a sense of how the scenes play and the characters interact when the piece is actually performed. You will discover that some of your material works much better than you ever could have dreamed when it is brought to life; and you will discover that some of your material doesn’t pop quite as well in 3-D as it did on the page.

When you think you are finally ready to send your baby out to potential buyers, consider first submitting it to a professional script consultant or a reputable coverage service. This way you can get an industry-level assessment of your piece prior to exposing it to the scrutiny of the industry. Remember, you only get one chance to make a first impression and you want to be sure that you’ve caught and addressed any red flags before handing your script over to the people that will ultimately decide its fate.
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Ray Morton is a writer and script consultant. His books Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Making of Steven Spielberg's Classic Film and King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon from Fay Wray to Peter Jackson are available in stores and online. He analyzes screenplays for production companies, producers, and individual writers. Morton is available for consultation and can be reached at ray@raymorton.com.

Dwayne Alexander Smith: Screenwriting is Hard

2009-11-19T11:31:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: explicit language

I have a dear friend who, one day, called me up and asked me the most outrageous and absurd question that I have ever been asked about my screenwriting career. When he first asked me this question it sounded innocent, just a typical question that any aspiring screenwriter would ask a working professional about the business. But the more I thought about his question the clearer it became that this dear friend had just insulted me.

“How long does it take to get paid once you sell a screenplay?” That was it. That was his question. See what I mean? Doesn’t that sound innocent?

So I answered him … “It depends on who you sell it to. Some studios take longer to pay than others. Smaller companies can take forever. It just depends.”

My friend frowned. Not satisfied with my answer he decided to push further. “Does it take weeks? Months? What’s the average?”

“From the time I make the sale about a month,” I said. I also added a few more details like the payments came in steps connected to rewrites and not in one lump sum.

“And what’s the average amount a script could sell for?,” he then asked eagerly. “One hundred thousand? Two hundred grand? What?”

Okay, it was at this point in our conversation that I began to suspect that this was more than just an innocent inquiry about my pay schedule. “Why?,” I finally asked. “Why do you want to know this?”

My dear, dear pal looked at me with the most sincere expression ever and said oh so matter-of-factly … "Oh, I need to make some quick money so I figured I’d just write a horror film or a comedy or something and sell it real quick.”

I must have just stared at this motherfucker for two minutes straight. No words, just an astounded stare. Like I said earlier everything he asked sounded innocent … but this asshole had just spit in my face and in the face of the craft that I love so dearly.

You need to know a little more about this sucker to understand the scope of his insult.

He graduated from an Ivy League university. He teaches part time at another Ivy League school. He’s a decent screenwriter but all of his specs are artsy high-minded dramas that in my opinion are unsellable. Now are you beginning to see it? Here’s a translation of what this asshole was really saying to me:

“If Dwayne, a college dropout, can sell so many horror and comedy screenplays, then me, an Ivy Leaguer, can easily do the exact same thing any time I want. All I have to do is lower myself to his level and I’m in the money.”

See, he’s under the same delusion that a lot of wanna-bee screenwriters are also under. Screenwriting is easy. It must be easy. Look at all the stupid movies that get made. Anybody can write that crap. Would my friend be asking me that dumb shit if I was a brain surgeon, or a composer, or even a plumber? NO!

Here’s a tip: If you’re writing screenplays because you think it’s an easy way to get paid … YOU’RE AN IDIOT.

Yes, yes, yes … anybody can write a screenplay but not just anybody can write a good screenplay. Not just anybody can write a screenplay that can sell. Want to know why?

Because good screenwriting is a craft that takes years to learn and even longer to master … and even then you still might not sell shit if you don’t get lucky.

So, finally I stopped staring at my dear friend and calmly said: “If you need quick money you better get yourself another plan because …

SCREENWRITING IS HARD YOU DUMB FUCK!"

Three months later my dear friend sold a horror spec for 750K and got signed to write Spielberg’s next movie. And if you believe that I have an artsy high-minded drama spec collecting dust in my desk drawer that I’m willing to sell you cheap.
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Dwayne Alexander Smith is a professional screenwriter represented by Circle of Confusion. He's sold four spec screenplays and been hired by studios for numerous rewrites. In 2008 he was hired to adapt Jim Croce’s classic song “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” into an action comedy. Most recently he created a hidden camera show called True Colors for Sony Television’s website Crackle.com.

Meet the Reader: Friday Nights With Dad

2009-11-12T09:17:00.000-08:00

Several weeks ago, I posted a blog entry about how -- thanks to DVD and cable TV -- it’s so much easier these days for movie fans to view their favorite films than it was when many of us were young. The post prompted a lot of discussions with different people about their early movie-viewing experiences, which in turn prompted me to consider my own early encounters with the cinema. Like many things in my life, those encounters sprang out of my relationship with my father.

My dad has been a movie fan for his entire life. Growing up in Queens, New York during the 1930s and 1940s, he was a fixture at his local neighborhood playhouse, The Corona Theatre, where he saw just about every movie Hollywood put out during its undisputed Golden Age. And he has retained great affection for film ever since (Gunga Din is an all-time favorite). When I was a kid, he would revisit these Golden-Age masterpieces and near-masterpieces (and sometimes not-so-masterpieces) when they were on TV. I would often join him in viewing them and he would tell me about the actors and their backgrounds, and the impact each picture had on him when it first came out -- and it was there on that couch that I first began to fall in love with the movies.

It was a frustrating romance, however, because, as anyone who was around in those pre-home- video days can tell you, watching movies on television could be a consternating experience. The screen was small and frequently fuzzy, the prints often dodgy, the story was interrupted constantly by an endless stream of commercials, and arbitrary cuts were made to the narrative in order to fit the picture into its allotted, always-too-short time slot (rendering the film sometimes impossible to follow).

Things improved when my parents moved us to New Canaan, Connecticut in the mid-1970s. A small, quintessential New England town, New Canaan had an excellent local library that would screen 16mm (remember 16mm?) prints of classic movies on Friday evenings during the fall, winter and spring. Here, finally, was a chance to see these great films in a rough approximation of they way they were intended to be seen -- on a relatively large screen, uninterrupted, and with the narrative intact. Needless to say, my dad and I both loved the idea and so began a Friday night tradition that lasted (on and off) for several years.

On designated evenings, I would eagerly wait until my dad arrived home from work on the 5:08 from Grand Central. He and my mom would indulge in their weekly treat of a Chinese dinner (with us kids having dined earlier on my mom’s patented race-car hot dogs and mac & cheese). Then my dad and I would put on our jackets (New England nights can be pretty chilly) and stroll the ¾ of a mile to the library, where we'd grab some good seats (of the folding-chair variety), settle in, and enjoy that week’s show.

We saw quite a few classics over the years, but three really stand out in my memory:

• The first was 1931’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, starring Frederic March in the title roles. Even then, I recognized how amazingly inventive the filmmaking in that picture was -- director Rouben Mamoulian’s delightful intoxication with the technical and artistic possibilities of cinema and his determination to push the creative envelope is evident in every frame of the film. Its effect on the audience that night was palpable. I also recall how racy the film (which was made in the years just before the Production Code was introduced) was, something that -- if the gasps coming from the audience were any indication -- the majority of that evening’s comfortably middle-class viewers were clearly unprepared for.

• The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) -- one of the crown jewels of Alfred Hitchcock’s early British period -- was a thriller about an ordinary English couple whose child is kidnapped by villains seeking to silence them after the wife witnesses a murder. The film was dark and tense and chock-full of atmosphere and suspense and I was absolutely enthralled with it. Most critics and viewers prefer Hitchcock’s expansive, 1956 color remake starring James Stewart and Doris Day, but for me the much more modest and moodier version is the one to beat.

• The film that I remember best from our bibliotheque cinema was 1939’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips, starring Robert Donat in an Oscar-winning turn as a teacher at a British private school looking back on his long life and career. It’s a sweet, lovely, gloriously sentimental movie that I really enjoyed. What made my viewing of it so special was that it's one of my father’s all-time favorite movies. It had made a huge impression on him as a boy and he had told me about it many times, but this was the first opportunity I had to actually see the film. I loved it, but I think knowing it meant so much to my dad and seeing him have chance to enjoy it again endeared it to me all the more.

When the show was over, we would put our coats back on and talk about the picture all the way home. These were always grand times and, to tell the truth, I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed going to the movies quite as much as I did on those chilly Friday evenings so long ago.
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Ray Morton is a writer and script consultant. His books Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Making of Steven Spielberg's Classic Film and King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon from Fay Wray to Peter Jackson are available in stores and online. He analyzes screenplays for production companies, producers, and individual writers. Morton is available for consultation and can be reached at ray@raymorton.com.

Staton Rabin: Breaking In: Zen and the Art of Guerrilla Script Marketing

2009-11-10T09:43:00.000-08:00

“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; …
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same …”
--"If," by Rudyard Kipling

Maybe, when he wasn’t writing classic short stories and novels like The Jungle Book, Kipling was secretly writing movie scripts. That might explain why his immortal poem, "If," is such useful advice for screenwriters. Trying to “keep your head” in this business is a never-ending challenge. But staying sane is critical to success. If you’re a movie star, producer, director, even an agent -- “crazy” might even be considered part of your job description. But if you’re a writer, it’s a luxury you can’t afford. If you want to succeed in this business, you need to be able to “keep your head when all about you are losing theirs …”

Last month, I promised to tell you what I’ve learned during my long career as a writer and story analyst. I quoted one of my favorite philosophers, baseball great Yogi Berra. Well, I’m about to quote him again. In his inimitable style, Yogi once said about baseball, “Ninety percent of this game is half mental." The same can be said of finding success as a screenwriter.

Sure, talent and knowing your craft are the most important factors in whether you win or lose this game. But the mental discipline you bring to the process of writing and selling your script -- your attitude, in other words -- is critical.

Make no mistake: having a “zen” attitude to your career doesn’t mean being weak or passive. Quite the contrary. You must learn to apply your mental and physical energies in the right amounts, in the right way, and at the right time. You must be creative and assertive (but not obnoxious) in how you market yourself and your work. You do your homework, work hard, and, to use another baseball metaphor, you keep stepping up to the plate for another turn at bat -- even if you keep striking out. And when it’s the bottom of the ninth inning, with two outs and three men on base, and you’re up at bat, you can’t choke.

Let’s apply this “zen” idea to a real-world script marketing situation. Here, as in baseball, the pitch is all-important.

Whether you call it a pitch fest, a screenwriting expo, or a screenwriters’ conference, it boils down to this: a chance to pitch your story to producers. Unfortunately, for many writers, it’s also a situation tailor-made for getting a whopping case of the heebie-jeebies.

There you are, at some big glitzy hotel, surrounded by thousands of other desperate screenwriters hopped-up on Starbucks lattes, waiting anxiously to pitch your script to CAA or Disney. I’m going to give you some tips here for sharpening up your mental game so that next time you go to one of these events, you’ll hit one out of the park.

1) You have no competition. Really. I know it may seem like the entire cast of Ben-Hur is competing with you at this humongous pitch fest or expo. But the truth is that if you have a great pitch, producers will want to read your screenplay -- no matter how many other pitches they heard that week. They don’t have a quota that, once met, forces them to turn away good story ideas. And, trust me, most of the other pitches aren’t that great.

2) There are a lot of nervous, depressed writers at pitch conferences. They will want to bend your ear. If you let them, they will suck the life and spirit out of you like Edward in Twilight. Don’t let them. Steer clear of these blood-sucking vamps and leeches. Leave them to their misery so you can keep your own spirits up.

3) You know how they tell you that you will have five minutes to pitch your story to each producer? Well, you’ve really got only one minute. By the time you find your producer’s table, boot the seat’s previous occupant out of it, and exchange friendly small talk with the producer to ease into your pitch, you’ll have just one minute left. So plan for that, and make the most of it.

4) Ladies, wear comfortable shoes. I’m not kidding. You will be doing a lot of standing and waiting around. If you wear shoes that don’t hurt your feet or back you will have a leg-up, so to speak, on half the writers in the room.

5) Don’t overbook yourself. Instead of pitching to 10 producers before lunch, consider limiting appointments to no more than three or four, and resting between pitches.

6) Expect last-minute changes and be flexible. You may book time with a film company that produces highbrow Oscar-caliber movies set on English country estates -- but they might be a no-show. So you get offered instead a chance to pitch to a producer of horror movies about man-eating washing machines. What to do? Grab the opportunity, and re-jigger your pitch to fit the replacement producer. (“You see, it’s kind of like Sense and Sensibility, but set at a crazy Maytag factory in Hampshire …”)

7) Stash your business cards and pitch appointment tickets in that clear plastic name-tag holder that is already hanging around your neck. That way, you won’t lose your tickets, and when producers ask for your business card after listening to your wildly successful pitch, you’ll be ready. You won’t have to frantically hunt around in your purse or wallet for your card while the next “pitcher” is breathing down your neck.

8) If possible, learn everything you can about the companies you’ll be pitching to -- before you get to the pitch event. Know what movies they’ve made, and if you’re a fan it can’t hurt to single out one for praise when you meet each producer.

9) Always remember to thank any producer who listens to your pitch. If you’re polite in this business, you will impress some people and astonish the rest.

10) Know that if you fail to attract interest in your pitches at this event, this isn’t “the end” for your hopes of breaking in to the business. Yes, it might be a sign that your pitch or script needs work. But you can always rewrite it or start a new script, send out query letters, and go back to the pitch fest or expo again next year.

Keep pitching. See you next month.
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Staton Rabin is a screenplay marketing consultant, script analyst, and “pitch coach” for screenwriters at all levels of experience. She is also a Senior Writer and story analyst for Script, has been a reader for Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema, and is a frequent guest lecturer at NYU. Staton’s novel Betsy and the Emporer is in development as a movie with Al Pacino attached to star. Staton Rabin is available for consultations and can be reached at Cutebunion@aol.com

Mystery Man: Steven Soderbergh's Moneyball Script

2009-11-03T15:01:00.000-08:00

Soderbergh opens his script with this sobering bit of news:

"Billy Beane's minor and major league career will be shown via filmed interviews with scouts, coaches, managers, players, and family members who were with him at the time. These interviews will comprise approximately ten percent of the film.

"Another ten percent of the film will consist of re-enactments of real events as remembered by the people playing themselves. The purpose of these scenes will be to provide set-up and perspective for subjects, situations, or relationships which currently appear in the screenplay without the requisite/normal amount of context.

"All that is to say an importation portion of this film will be written in the editing room. This isn't a cop-out; it's just a fact and entirely by design."

I will defend Soderbergh only this far: I'm guessing that he instinctively picked-up on the weaknesses of Zaillian's script, and he sought to, in an inventive way, make the experience more unique, emotional, personal, and generally, more realistic.

For that, I applaud him.

Having said that, Soderbergh should've retitled it 'FUBAR.' He re-shaped this flawed story into something so unnecessarily convoluted. His script contains not only the same problems as Zaillian's but also piles on more problems with weak, flat, phony dialogue and mountains of verbal exposition. Oh, the mountains of insufferable exposition, so high and so vast, they should be called "Soderberghs Himalayas."

Consider the differences between these two stories in how Billy met Paul DePodesta, a guy who is crucial in shaping Billy's new way of thinking about statistics. First, let's see Zaillian's scene. This starts on page 18. At this point, the team lost the division to the Yankees. They're about to lose their three best players. Their options are severely limited. You could cut the tension in Oakland with a knife. Billy had a heated discussion with his scouts and threw a chair. And now, Billy just had a very depressing meeting with the Indians' General Manager, who changed his mind about a deal after Paul, who worked for the Indians at the time, whispered something into the GM's ear. Billy has just left the office. He sees Paul.

Billy: You.

Paul: Excuse me?

Billy: Come here. [Paul comes out into the hallway.]

Billy: Who the fuck are you?

Paul: I'm Paul, Mr. Beane.

Billy: I don't give a fuck about your name. What are you doing?

Paul: Um... I'm doing my job.

Billy: No, I'm doing my job. You - are fucking up my job. You just cost me a left-handed setup man.

Paul: I like Rincon.

Billy: You like Rincon. You like Rincon. Was I talking to you in there? [Billy leaves. Paul works up his courage.]

Paul: Rincon has nothing to do with your problem. Your problem is you can't replace Giambi with another first baseman like him, because there isn't another one like him. [Billy stops walking.]

Following this moment, Paul and Billy eat at a Steakhouse. Paul enlightens Billy about what's wrong with current thinking about baseball statistics. Billy loves what he hears and hires Paul. Now, consider Soderbergh's approach. This moment starts on page 2 and PRECEDES the Inciting Incident of the Oakland A's losing the division to the Yankees.

Billy: JP said you're the guy I should be talking to.

Paul: JP is great.

Billy: JP is great. He said you just got promoted.

Paul: Yeah, I was advanced scouting and I just made Special Assistant to the GM.

Billy: Well, Cleveland's a monster franchise. I think John Hart and Mark Shapiro are super smart. They got a good thing going.

Paul: I have to say, it's nice knowing at the beginning of the year that you're probably going to the playoffs.

Billy: I'll bet.

Paul: I hear you extended.

Billy: Yeah, four years. It's good, you know, I can watch things happen. And we're close to getting a new stadium.

Paul: Which you need.

Billy: Which we definitely need. So let me ask you: can you work spreadsheets and all that stuff, like Excel? Can you manage a payroll?

Paul: Yeah.

Billy: Great, because I suck at that. And you're totally up to speed on all the league rules? I need to make sure I don't accidentally put someone on waivers or something.

Paul: I'm pretty familiar with all the league rules. Also, I used a software program to chart games when I was advancing. It might be worth buying. It's really helpful.

Billy: Is it expensive?

Paul: I know the guy who developed it, I'm sure we could work something out.

Billy: Great.

Paul: So let me ask you. Do you really think you can win with your payroll? No small market team has made the playoffs since the strike.

Billy: I will never use payroll as an excuse. Look, being a small market team, we're constantly being pushed to the edge of extinction by the big market teams. We can't do it the way the Yankees do it. They've got guns, and we've got bows and arrows. We've got to find a way to adapt or we're going to disappear, and I like a lot of the ideas coming out of statistical analysis. It could be our edge.

Paul: You know, I was playing blackjack once and a guy sitting next to me hit on seventeen and actually drew a four. And he's collecting his money, clearly thinking to himself: "This is a good strategy for playing blackjack." And that's when I realized: that's how most teams operate, they play like the guy walking into a casino, when they should be playing like the house.

Billy: (excited) Right, exactly. That's what we have to do. We have to be the house.

Paul: You've heard of Paul Drucker?

Billy: The management guy.

Paul: He's got a thing called the Naïve Question: "If we weren't already doing it this way, is this the way we would start?" And can I drop another name?

Billy: Hey, you're the Harvard grad, not me.

Paul: You've heard of him: Thomas Paine. "A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right."

Billy: That's fantastic. Look, Paul, you should do this. We should do this. Before somebody else does. Somebody with money.

Paul: How comfortable are you looking crazy? I mean, people have dabbled in statistical analysis, but to run a whole team based on sabermetrics - no one's really done it before. Some of the decisions we make will look really strange.

Billy: (trying to close him) That's our edge, them thinking we're crazy. The longer they think we're crazy, the better. By the time they figure out what we're doing, we'll have beaten them. So let's do this, right?

Can you not see the huge difference between those two scenes? Zaillian's version crackles with energy. It's short, fast, and snappy. It exists in the context of a huge conflict, that is, the Oakland A's team is up shit's creek and Billy is driven to save the team. Soderbergh's scene lacked life because this came before the Inciting Incident and there's no conflict driving the story or Billy. Zaillian's exposition in the steakhouse scene isn't bad because it's in the context of a problem. We need this exposition to figure out how to save the team. Soderbergh's exposition feels false and flat and nearly puts you to sleep because there's no conflict yet. There's nothing driving what's happening between these characters.

So let's come full circle back to the scandal. I'm inclined to believe (up to a point) the Brad Pitt theory. No star at his level would stay on a project when the dialogue has been butchered this badly. I do not for a minute blame the studio for pulling the plug on Soderbergh. I certainly would've done the same.

However, I will not give one shit about this project unless someone tells me that Aaron Sorkin (and his team of writers) fixed the problems in Zaillian's script and focused on the character's journey.

For An Intro to the Moneyball Disaster, Click here.
For Steven Zaillian's Moneyball Script, Part 1, Click here.
For Steven Zaillian's Moneyball Script, Part 2, Click here.
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Mystery Man is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. He blogs at MysteryManOnFilm.blogspot.com and tweets at Twitter.com/MMonFilm. And he has nice shoes.
A version of this post originally appeared on Mystery Man on Film.

Discussing November/December With Andrew Shearer

2009-11-03T12:58:00.000-08:00

Attention blossoming screenwriters who think screenwriting is a solitary art form: Read Script’s article Anything but Elementary: Sherlock Holmes by Ray Morton with additional reporting by Bob Verini, and realize, as Editor in Chief Shelly Mellott put it, “It is better when we all work together.” Morton’s article breaks down four different credited writers’ contributions on the new Sherlock Holmes movie, as well as how various directors contributed at different stages of the project and how much Robert Downey Jr. contributed on his own, too.

I think it’s an illuminating exercise to see how one writer can be brought on to solve a particular problem another writer couldn’t. Sometimes, it takes more than one perspective, more than one brain. Sometimes four. I hear writers complain all the time about how scripts get “rewritten by other writers” and about how they could “never work with a partner” and sometimes it seems like any time they have to leave the confines of their room and their laptop, they might breakdown because they have to actually speak to another human. If you want to write solo, people, write a novel!

Look, there’s nothing wrong with writing alone all day, huddled up in a room with the shades barely drawn -- we all do it. But my point is if you’re writing screenplays for the movies, you’re eventually going to have to collaborate. That means taking notes from directors, producers, maybe even working with another writer. Personally, I love getting rewritten! I get rewritten everyday by my writing partner. The best challenge in the world is to write something that doesn’t get sent back to me rewritten, but that comes back untouched. That’s when I know I’m on my game.

I echo Derek Haas’ sentiments he shared in Script Girl’s column about writing with his partner, “Working together makes us better at collaborating …” Now, I’m not saying you have to have a partner to be a good screenwriter obviously, but I am saying you have to be a good collaborator to be successful in the screenwriting business. In order to fund my writing career, I worked as an editor for many years in Los Angeles, and nothing annoyed me more than other editors who said “I can’t stand when the director stands over your back giving notes.” But they’re the director! Of course they should be doing that! Personally, as an editor, that’s a lot more exciting to me than sitting in a room editing by myself.

My point in all of this isn’t to say that we should all be happy when we get rewritten because I’m sure it burns really badly when you’re feeling wonderful about your work only to see it turned into a big, steaming pile of shit based on some seriously misguided studio notes -- handed down to the new writer who just replaced you. My point is you need to step out of the cave. Bounce your ideas off your peers, get notes, and practice collaboration. Because the people getting these jobs today are the ones who learned this a long time ago.
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A redneck from Small Town, North Carolina (population 8,000, high school drop-out rate 40%), one day decided to tackle the film industry. Andrew’s film-school short, Son Up, based off his experience teaching at a juvenile hall, ended up winning seven festival awards and made the regionals for the Student Academy Awards. Andrew’s feature script version of Son Up, co-written with Nick Sherman, went on to win first prize at Cinequest. Then one day, the screenwriting gods shined their rarely shown light down from the Heavens and awarded the Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship to Andrew and Nick for their feature script, Holy Irresistible. The duo is now repped by Endeavor and Brillstein Entertainment. They have two projects in development and are lucky enough to be co-writing a spec with another writer they’ve admired for years.

Mystery Man: Steven Zaillian's Moneyball Script, Pt 2

2009-11-02T12:03:00.000-08:00

There is a lot of entertainment value in the story. You have a baseball team losing its best players. The A’s do not have enough money to buy solid replacements. You have a protagonist with a clear goal of getting this team out of the cellar and engineering a winning season, and interesting enough, he does so with “bad” players. You have a strong masculine physical lead role. You have fast scenes with fast, smart, snappy dialogue, which I’m sure Pitt couldn’t wait to rattle off in front of cameras.

Those factors alone make the script passable, but the story as a whole gives me pause. Not only that, the idea of adapting this book, which was essentially about statistics and how scouts changed the way they viewed the statistical value of players, also gives me pause.

Why? There’s no theme or strong emotional hook to this concept. There’s too much emphasis on statistics and not enough on characters. After its all over, when you think, “so what was that all about?” you realize that this story essentially amounts to the audience saying, “oh, isn’t it interesting how the Oakland A’s re-thought the statistical game and came up with a winning team with undervalued players on a tight budget.” That’s not a movie. That’s an article for Sports Illustrated. That’s a made-for-TV-event targeted to the most hardcore-statistics-lovin’- baseball-fanatics. For a movie that’ll get distributed around the world, this kind of anecdote about a change in the way we view statistics is at best a side note for what should be a bigger story, for what should be a gripping theme and emotional hook, which should be centered on the character’s journey. We don’t have that here.

What do we have? We have 128 pages of Billy Beane playing hardball with his scouts, with the owner, with the coach, with Paul the economist, and he’s doing what he can to change the way people think about statistics to create a winning team. We have flashbacks to Billy’s past that only serve to show how the emphasis on Billy’s personal statistics during his brief attempt at playing baseball shaped his thinking as an executive and helped bring about change to how the scouts view statistics. Okay, so what? That’s just exposition. Billy goes through women as often as he goes through baseball players, which never changes, and from what I’ve read isn’t historically accurate either. So I have to ask, “How does that serve the story?” We’re occasionally shown Billy hanging out with his daughter, which likewise does nothing to advance the story but only serves to show a different side of Billy. Of course, I’m all for character depth and I do not believe it essential that every character arcs.

But in the end, you walk away feeling not as exhilarated as you had hoped because there’s an emphasis on the intellect over the emotion. That’s really evident toward the end when the story loses steam and fails to deliver the emotional goods as it should. The fact that there’s Bill James occasionally popping up to explain statistics to us only illustrates my point that there’s too much emphasis on things other than the character’s journey. James reminded me of the motivational coach in Jerry Maguire whose words had so much more heart and who existed solely to support the character’s journey.

Consider the greatest baseball films ever made. Pride of the Yankees, a favorite of mine about Lou Gehrig -- that’s a character’s journey. The Natural -- character’s journey. Field of Dreams -- character’s journey. Major League, Bull Durham, A League of Their Own -- all about the character’s journey.

What’s my mantra? Characters come first.

It’s so strange that throughout this script, various characters repeatedly talk about and watch The Natural, which only made me prefer that story over this one and which also reminded me that the best stories stay focused on the character’s journey. We know the theme in The Natural -- dreams deferred. Would you still pursue your dreams when the world thinks you’re past your prime? Great! I’m there rooting for Roy Hobbs like the rest of the world. But what’s the theme of Moneyball? I’m not sure, but I can tell you that statistics is not a theme. That’s a intellectual argument. If it was up to me, I’d de-emphasize statistics and emphasize something entirely different that gives us a strong theme and an emotional hook. Say, a theme about failure. How often and how long can you endure failure before you give up your dreams? Thus, we’d be rooting for Billy to “never give up your dreams.”

When you cannot easily articulate your theme, when the emphasis on a script is on something factual or on anything other than the character’s journey, it is an inevitability as sure as death and taxes that despite great scenes and snappy dialogue, the story will fall flat in the end.

Tomorrow: Soderbergh's Moneyball script
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Mystery Man is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. He blogs at MysteryManOnFilm.blogspot.com and tweets at Twitter.com/MMonFilm. And he has nice shoes.
A version of this post originally appeared on Mystery Man on Film.

Mystery Man: Steven Zaillian's Moneyball Script, Pt 1

2009-10-29T09:43:00.001-07:00

There is a character moment in the opening sequence that I loved, probably lost now forever. Fade In. We’re flying over the Oakland Coliseum at night, the floodlights on. We drift past the Oakland A’s three premier players painted on concrete, a good visual setup. These guys are essential to the story. We turn, dip, and float toward the A’s dugout. There’s the faint sound of crowds cheering. There’s the voice over of a sports announcer talking about an exciting game: “one out, nobody on, two on two to Saenz…” We descend into the dugout and over to the tunnel and into the “netherworld bowels of the Coliseum.” The cheering and the voices of the two sports announcers get louder.

We continue to move down the cinder-block corridor “dimly lit with wire-encased lamps like in a coal mine.” The announcer’s growing voice continues: “a ground out to second, Thom, is not what the A’s were looking for from Saenz – down by two in the ninth.”

We float into a room and see the solitary figure of protagonist Billy Beane bench-pressing “with the intensity of a soul expiating sins” as a nearby TV plays a game taking place somewhere else. Announcer: “- the A’s are down to their last strike and this Yankee crowd is on its feet. Rivera squints for the sign, gets it, delivers, and –“ Billy turns off the sound. He cannot bear this moment. He goes back to his bench pressing “like he’s trying to sweat out the impurities of deed or thought.” He sits up, switches the sound back on. Announcer: “it is bedlam in New York! The Yankees have done what no other team in MLB history has been able to do: come back after losing the first two games to win a Division Series!”

Billy sits up. He walks out as the announcer continues: “This is historic not only for New York, Thom, but for Oakland. The A’s have just set a new record, too, but not the kind you want: no other team has ever lost a division series after winning the first two games…” The TV shows the Yankees constructing a human pyramid at home plate while the A’s, including the ones we saw painted on the concrete, sit glumly in the visitors’ dugout, cameras zooming into their shell-shocked faces.

“Billy pulls himself up off the bench, walks over to an equipment area, selects a bat, regards his surroundings calmly… then suddenly swings the bat mightily at an open locker door, ripping it from its hinges… He attacks another locker, spreading its vents with a violent crash. He slams the bat into another locker… wood-splinters fly…”

That, my friends, is how you open a screenplay that will be greenlit by a studio for millions and millions of dollars with a premium director and global star attached.

A few thoughts about this sequence:

* Zaillian, first of all, gives us an intriguing shot that pulls you in as we float over an empty Oakland Coliseum and into its bowels. So often we think of strong openings as plot-related, that is, something exciting happens in the plot within the first five pages that makes us want to keep reading. Many times, though, intriguing shots can tease us with visuals that make you curious and want to keep reading to see where the shot and the story will take us. This is a great reminder to let your imagination take flight and consider unique experiences and new ways of looking at subjects we’ve seen many times before in film. There’s no limit to screenwriting, and yet, too often, we confine our imaginations.

* Zaillian also solves some tricky issues about the setting with this floating shot. This story is about the Oakland A’s, although this crucial, painful loss to the Yankees, which is the inciting incident, takes place in New York. You can’t change that. So we’re shown in this sequence the empty A’s stadium, how important these premier players are to thousands of Oakland fans by the fact that they’re painted on the concrete, which is contrasted later with their shell-shocked faces on TV after a stunning loss. Following this game, those players will become free agents, another huge loss to the organization.

* I love the shift in values over the course of this one sequence. At first, the juxtaposition of these words and images in the context of the baseball genre usually implies that this is a “reliving the glory days” kind of moment. The bread and butter of baseball is a romantic sentimentalism about the game. Here, you assume you’re hearing the ghosts of a past game that took place in the stadium in which there will be the inevitable thrilling victory. But we find that this isn’t the case at all. This is a very haunting present, complemented visually with this night shot and the darkened cinder-block corridor “dimly lit with wire-encased lamps like in a coal mine.” This haunting present leads to a very painful conclusion of a very important game that will set this entire movie in motion.

* I love how we’re first presented Billy Beane. He is so gripped by his turmoil about this game that he can’t watch it. He has to work-out while the game is being played. It’s a kind of manly expression of anxiety not seen in film before, I don’t believe, and without Billy saying a word, we understand his pain, not just because he’s bench pressing like his soul depends on it but also by seeing him turn off the sound of a moment he knew was coming that he cannot bear to hear. In that moment, we feel the sting of his loss. We know his obvious frustrations and goals for the Oakland A’s. We also get a sense of his past, too. He’s working out because he must’ve been a player. Or, at least, he aspired to be a player.

* Every detail in your screenplay is important in terms of the information you’re passing along to the audience. What did Zaillian do? He hooked us with an imaginative opening shot that sets up expectations about what we’ll be seeing in the film. He makes us want to keep reading. We want to know where we’re being taken and who we’ll be seeing. We think we’re hearing a sentimental glory moment and that expectation is turned on its head. He also slyly establishes the setting, the inciting incident, the principal characters, the protagonist, the protagonist's goal, backstory, and inner turmoil about his team, and he does all of these things in under two pages.

I dare you to do better.

Mystery Man is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. He blogs at MysteryManOnFilm.blogspot.com and tweets at Twitter.com/MMonFilm. And he has nice shoes.
A version of this post originally appeared on Mystery Man on Film.

Mystery Man: An Intro to the Moneyball Disaster

2009-10-27T09:34:00.000-07:00

Let’s talk scandal, baby!

Moneyball was in development a few years and championed by Columbia Pictures co-chair cutie Amy Pascal. It’s an adaptation of a popular book by Michael Lewis.

Whispering lips say the studio spent roughly $10 million to get this project off the ground. Steven Zaillian wrote a script. Everybody loved it. Soderbergh came onboard. Brad Pitt came onboard. The budget ballooned to around $57 million, which is quite risky. Baseball movies can be hit and miss. They rarely play well overseas, and you’re lucky to get $35 million domestic.

Soderbergh told ESPN: "My clearly stated goal is to set a new standard for realism in that [sports] world." He proceeded to tinker with Steven Zaillian’s script.

Just days before production was to begin, Amy Pascal gasped and pulled the plug.

Soderbergh’s tinkering gave the studio a case of cold feet. The project was put into limited turnaround, which meant that other studios had the chance to pick it up. They all politely declined.

According to Michael Fleming:

“Soderbergh and Pascal had discussions about his vision when the director signed on, Soderbergh last Tuesday turned in a rewrite that sources said was substantially different from a Zaillian script that Pascal -- and Pitt -- loved. Soderbergh took the film from a classically structured drama to a hybrid that has a documentary feel, complete with footage of actual ballplayers who witnessed Beane’s metamorphosis from player to exec who fielded competitive teams by using statistics instead of paying big salaries. Pitt didn’t read the script until last Wednesday, but he continued to back Soderbergh.”

Oh, but wait. There’s also the Brad Pitt theory:

“The new spin out of the Sony camp … is that Brad Pitt disliked the new script as much as Amy Pascal and that he is the one who secretly sunk the ship, though he didn't want to be seen as doing it.”

But then Anne Thompson wrote:

“That is not what I'm hearing from Pitt's camp. They say he was ready to make Soderbergh's movie. It's hard to imagine Pitt agreeing to make the movie with another director at this point. It would have to be Soderbergh or no one. Pascal was demanding certain changes that Pitt and Soderbergh refused to make and threw her foot down, perfectly willing to walk away. Point is, she would have made the movie a year ago. She can't afford for this movie to lose money right now, bottom line.”

But, of course, Pitt’s camp would continue to publicly back Soderbergh, wouldn’t they?

Then there was that infamous e-mail that made the rounds and got removed.

David Poland had many questions, such as “How could Soderbergh be shooting interviews for the movie on the studio dime without the studio knowing what his plan was?”

But no worries, Aaron Sorkin’s on it now. And, apparently, he has a whole team of writers.

And now Soderbergh has relaxed and joked about the whole sad affair:

"There have been a couple of times in my career where I’ve been unceremoniously removed from projects. I don’t waste a lot of energy on it. It doesn’t get you anywhere. As soon as it became clear that there was no iteration of that movie that I was going to get to direct, I immediately started looking around for something else to do. I have a couple of other things in development that I had hoped to move up, but actors' schedules wouldn’t allow it. But I have something I can get to after the first of the year, and I’m supposed to do my Liberace movie next summer. So my attitude when something like that happens is, ‘What’s next?’ You can’t dwell on it.”

Brad Pitt still sounds hopeful, but as he said, “It’s a weird climate right now.”

So let’s analyze the scripts, MM-style.

Tomorrow: Zaillian's script.

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Mystery Man is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. He blogs at MysteryManOnFilm.blogspot.com and tweets at Twitter.com/MMonFilm. And he has nice shoes.
A version of this post originally appeared on Mystery Man on Film.

Staton Rabin: Breaking In: Zen and the Art of Guerrilla Script Marketing

2009-10-15T10:31:00.000-07:00

I don’t have to tell you that there are too many writers trying to break into the film business these days. When it comes to writers and “Hollywood," I’m reminded of what baseball great and part-time philosopher Yogi Berra oxymoronically said about his favorite restaurant: “Nobody goes there anymore; it’s too crowded.”

Frankly, up till now, I’ve been hesitant to tell you all my secrets about how to break into the film industry. It feels a little like telling you about my favorite neighborhood restaurant -- a little hideaway with great food. If everyone knows about it, the place is going to get awfully crowded. Maybe I won’t even be able to find a seat at the table for myself anymore. Well, I’ve finally decided that the movie business can’t get much more crowded than it already is. I’ve had a seat at the table long enough. It’s time to give some other writers a chance.

I’ve been a story analyst for over 25 years. During that time, I’ve also sold six books to major publishers, gotten a big film deal with a superstar attached, have been in the Hollywood trades over a dozen times, and been profiled in The New York Times. I’ve even lectured about screenwriting aboard the greatest ocean liner in the world, the Queen Mary 2, where I became the only seasick screenwriting teacher on the Seven Seas.

In this blog, I’m going to show you everything I know about how to break into the film industry as a writer. For those of you who don’t read Script, I’ve noticed that a lot of what you’ve been told elsewhere is dead wrong -- designed to capitalize on writers’ anxieties.

To quote the sage of the Yankees, Mr. Berra, again, “You can observe a lot just by watchin’.” Well, in my long career in the movie business, I’ve learned a lot just by watching. And by listening to other writers’ stories and helping them with their scripts, I’ve come to better understand why my approach to breaking into the business has worked for me and my clients -- and why, too often, other writers fail or give up too soon.

You see, until I began teaching screenwriters about eight years ago, I didn’t realize that there was anything unusual about my approach to writing and marketing my own books and scripts, which explained my success. My approach was hard work, but it came naturally to me. I figured every writer used the same approach I did. But I was wrong.

I’ve since learned that there are a boatload of myths and misconceptions out there about how to break into the business as a screenwriter. I also came to understand how my own attitude, personality, and method of doing work and business gave me certain advantages and explained my success. There were big differences, I discovered, between the way I saw the world and the way most other aspiring writers did. And it’s those differences that became the key to my understanding of why some writers succeed, and others fail.

I spent some time picking out a name for this ongoing column. It’s no accident that the title seems almost as oxymoronic as any quote from Yogi Berra. After all, how can an approach to marketing a screenplay be both “zen” (peaceful, thoughtful, enlightened, restrained) and “guerrilla” (creatively aggressive and proactive) -- a seeming contradiction in terms?

Well, it turns out that those two words aren’t contradictions at all. And learning how to use both qualities simultaneously is one of the secrets to writing and selling a screenplay. As for the rest, stay tuned. That’s what this blog is going to be all about.
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Staton Rabin is a screenplay marketing consultant, script analyst, and “pitch coach” for screenwriters at all levels of experience. She is also a Senior Writer and story analyst for Script, has been a reader for Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema, and is a frequent guest lecturer at NYU. Staton’s novel Betsy and the Emporer is in development as a movie with Al Pacino attached to star. She is available for consultations. Contact: Cutebunion@aol.com.

Discussing September/October With Andrew Shearer, Part 2

2009-10-05T10:15:00.000-07:00

As new writers, it’s always hard to know whose advice to listen to. In film school, when sulky students got feedback they didn’t like, they’d complain, “If the professor knows so much about making films, why is he teaching, instead of making them?” Well if we already knew so much about making films, we wouldn’t have had to go to film school in the first place. I find the best guidance comes when it’s oriented toward making your project the best based on your own vision, not someone else’s.

Upon reading Staton Rabin’s article Screenwriting Snafus, I think she offers some great tidbits of advice, particularly “A ‘Typical’ Script," “Prozac®, Anyone?,” and “Waitress #1, Thug #2.” But honestly, the rest of the advice seemed to suggest we’re writing scripts for contest readers alone, as if we’re honing them for their tastes. Don’t get me wrong, I get what she’s saying -- I’ve read for several contests, and I feel her pain. But advice requires a little more nuance.

For instance, “Let It Be.” I agree, bad idea to fill your script with popular songs. But I think new writers will read other scripts and see examples of that and wonder why other writers do it. I recently read Judd Apatow’s Funny People, and it’s filled with references to popular songs. Most of them didn’t make the final film, but it was about “the read.” He wanted to evoke a certain emotion for that scene. My advice is to follow Staton’s suggestion for the most part. However, if there’s that one scene in your script where you think there’s that perfect song for it, I say put it in there. It doesn’t really matter if it makes the final film, it’s about evoking emotion. Be specific in your choice, but not obscure.

I also take issue with a few examples in the “Omit” section. New writers will see examples of “establishing shots,” “camera/editing directions,” and “This is John Jones” in professional scripts and wonder why they can’t use those techniques themselves. You can, you might just piss of Staton. My advice -- use them in extreme moderation.

Finally -- and contest readers will KILL me for this one -- “War and Peace.” Yes, the Hollywood standard for scripts is 120 pages or less. Yes, in general, if your script is less than a 120 pages, it gives you a better chance of winning a contest, so it’s probably good advice. However, out of the 40 contest scripts I read this summer, two that brought tears to my eyes (in a good way) were 136 pages and 126 pages. Two of the most awful scripts I’ve ever suffered through in my entire life, were 88 pages and 92 pages. So my advice is make your script read well! Make it a smooth, quick read. Have friends read it, get feedback before you submit it. The 136-page script was a character-driven script, filled with wonderful dialogue, and it read quicker than the 88-page script, which left me scarred for the rest of my life. Okay, that’s my humble take for the month. If my fellow contest-reading colleagues read this, I expect them to trash me.
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A redneck from Small Town, North Carolina (population 8,000, high school drop-out rate 40%), one day decided to tackle the film industry. Andrew’s film-school short, Son Up, based off his experience teaching at a juvenile hall, ended up winning seven festival awards and made the regionals for the Student Academy Awards. Andrew’s feature script version of Son Up, co-written with Nick Sherman, went on to win first prize at Cinequest. Then one day, the screenwriting gods shined their rarely shown light down from the Heavens and awarded the Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship to Andrew and Nick for their feature script, Holy Irresistible. The duo is now repped by Endeavor and Brillstein Entertainment. They have two projects in development and are lucky enough to be co-writing a spec with another writer they’ve admired for years.

Steve Kaire: 12 Brainstorming Techniques

2009-10-01T13:16:00.000-07:00

Odd Couples
This is exactly what the title implies. Two people are thrown together in a situation in which they’re stuck. In the film and TV series of the same name, it was a slob and his obsessively neat roommate. In The Defiant Ones, Sidney Poitier was an escaped convict chained to a racist played by Tony Curtis. War movies frequently had two enemies who found themselves in the same foxhole or building and have to cooperate with each other to survive. Enemy Mine had a human and an alien facing a similar situation.

The Blank From Hell
Here, you have to fill in the blank with a noun that hasn’t been done before. The Affair From Hell is the film Fatal Attraction. The Roommate From Hell is the movie, Single White Female. The Patient From Hell is What About Bob? The Doll From Hell is Chucky. And so on.

Fish Out of Water
This technique has been used in literature for a long time. You take a person out of their normal environment and place them in a radically different one. Examples would be Beverly Hills Cop, where a Detroit cop investigates his partner’s murder in the city of Beverly Hills. Another is Crocodile Dundee, where a crocodile hunter from the Australian outback encounters the urban jungle of New York City. There’s also the film Splash, which is literally a fish out of water story.

Amateur Blank
Here again the challenge is to fill in the blank with a noun that we haven’t seen before. I’ve sold two stories that were Amateur Detectives. Illustrations of movies in this category are Critical Condition, where Richard Pryor impersonates a doctor. The Couch Trip, where Dan Aykroyd escapes from an asylum and pretends to be a psychiatrist. Also, Trial and Error, in which actor Michael Richards passes himself off as an attorney.

Fairy Tales, Myths & Stories That Are Updated
Here you take an old classic and contemporize it. It’s the same structure, similar story, but occurs in the present time. Pretty Woman is really Pygmalion. Trading Places is a modern version of The Prince and the Pauper. The obsessive hunt for the great white shark in Jaws is not much different than the search for the great white whale in Moby Dick.

Information No One Else Knows
I’ve sold three projects that I initially saw on the news that fall into this category. The information is unusual, sometimes amazing, and the general public is completely unaware of it. The movie Con Air is based on the U.S. government's real airline that transports the nation’s most dangerous criminals from state-to-state. That was the basis for the film. The information revealed doesn’t always have to be true. In Men in Black, what is fascinating is the notion that there’s a secret government agency that tracks the whereabouts of aliens that are living on earth and which also has strange alien life forms working for them.

First Time
This refers to a situation which occurs for the very first time. There was a film in development that was supposed to star Michael J. Fox called Vassar. It was about the first guy to attend Vassar, an all female college. The conflicts and romantic entanglements are obvious in a setup of this type. Another example is the comedy My Cousin Vinny. A Brooklyn attorney who’s never tried a case before in his life is summoned to a southern town by his cousin, who’s charged with murder. The attorney, played by Joe Pesci, must win this case despite his inexperience and the fact that he’s totally out of his natural element.

Stumble Into
This technique has been around for a long time. It always involves an average person who by chance, is thrust into a monumental life-threatening situation they have no control of. James Stewart in Hitchcock’s Rear Window, is a man confined to a wheelchair who believes he’s witnessed the murder of one of his neighbors. Whoopi Goldberg is a telephone operator who overhears what she thinks is a spy plot in Jumping Jack Flash. In Cellular, a guy is mistakenly called on his cell phone by a total stranger who claims she’s being held hostage and pleads for him to help her.

The Ultimate Blank
Again you must fill in the blank with a noun that hasn’t been done before. If you substitute the word "Shark" in the blank, we would get the movie Jaws. Plug in the word "Dog," and we have the movie Cujo. Insert the noun "Cop," and we have the film Robocop.

Unintended Consequences
This method is almost always used in the science-fiction or adventure genre. An experiment is taking place and something goes terribly wrong. In The Fly, Jeff Goldblum is a scientist performing a genetic experiment on himself in an isolation chamber when a housefly flies into the booth and he’s transformed into a half-man, half-fly. In Jurassic Park, an amusement park has genetically engineered ancient dinosaurs for the public’s entertainment. The dinosaurs escape and wreak havoc on the guests. In the family film, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, a scientist who’s experimenting with miniaturization accidentally shrinks his children. His kids must then try to get from their yard back into their house and get the attention of their unsuspecting father to return them back to regular size.

Going to Extreme Measures
Here we start with a character who must take some extreme or outrageous action to reach his or her goal. In Tootsie, Dustin Hoffman is an impossible actor to work with. He can’t find employment until he dresses up like a woman and lands a role in a soap opera. In that same vein is the movie Mrs. Doubtfire. Robin Williams’ ex-wife has a new boyfriend and Williams is forced to don a nanny’s uniform in order to spend more time with his children and try to win his ex-wife back.

Fatal Character Flaws
This showcases a character who has a major weakness in his or her personality which causes them major complications. In Liar, Liar, Jim Carrey is a lawyer defending a client in the most important case of his career. But because of a wish his son made that caused his father to have to tell the truth for 24 hours, Carrey is forced to do the opposite of what his profession normally entails: lying. Another example would be A Christmas Carol. Here the character of Scrooge is an old, bitter miser who is given a chance at redemption when he is haunted by ghosts on Christmas Eve.
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Steve Kaire is a screenwriter-pitchman who’s sold/optioned eight projects to the major studios without representation. He’s taught writing classes at the American Film Institute and has appeared on the Tonight Show’s “Pitching to America” with Jay Leno. His groundbreaking CD entitled, High Concept: How to Create,Pitch & Sell to Hollywood is a best-seller and is available on his website: ScriptwritingCD.com.

Ray Morton: Abyssinia, Larry

2009-09-24T10:45:00.000-07:00

We lost one of the greats when Larry Gelbart passed away on Friday, September 11, 2009. Born in 1928, Gelbart was a truly gifted writer’s writer that refused to confine himself to a single format. He began his career as a teenager penning jokes and skits for the Danny Thomas radio show. He also worked for Jack Paar and Bob Hope and then became a staff writer on the classic radio sitcom Duffy’s Tavern. In the 1950s, he made the transition to television, most notably joining the bullpen on Caesar’s Hour alongside such other future notables as Neil Simon, Mel Brooks, and Woody Allen. In the 1960s he began writing both for the screen (his debut feature script was 1962’s The Notorious Landlady. He also worked on the screenplays of The Thrill of It All, The Wrong Box, and Not With My Wife You Don’t, among others) and for the stage (most notably collaborating with Burt Shevelove on the book for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) and continued to work in television (writing and producing The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine and contributing to a number of other shows as well).

The highest profile portion of Gelbart’s career began in 1972, when producer Gene Reynolds hired him to adapt the smash hit movie M*A*S*H for television. Gelbart spent four years with the show, first as executive story consultant and then as co-executive producer, writing or rewriting most of the episodes and directing a bunch as well. After leaving the Korean War behind, Gelbart wrote more screenplays (Oh, God, Movie Movie, Tootsie), continued to work in television -- both in series (Roll Out, United States, After M*A*S*H) and in MOWs (Barbarians at the Gate, … And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself) -- and in the theater (Sly Fox, City of Angels, Mastergate). He also wrote a book (his 1997 autobiography Laughing Matters: On Writing M*A*S*H, Tootsie, Oh, God!, and a Few Other Funny Things), articles, message board postings, blog entries, and even a few songs.

Although Gelbart had a masterful sense of plot and characterization, he was best known for his biting wit. A passionate humanist that admired decency, correct behavior, and noble effort, Gelbart was moved to furious indignation by anything -- greed, hypocrisy, prejudice, chicanery, self-righteousness, willful ignorance, war-mongering, the bureaucratic and institutional mentality -- that sought to impinge on peoples’ rights, lives, or dignity. Gelbart took aim at such targets with gusto and would lacerate them with barbs that were as truthful and searing as they were funny (and they were damn funny).

Gelbart obviously has a lot of really impressive work on his CV (the screenplay for Tootsie -- which is one of the smartest, funniest scripts ever -- borders on the sublime), but for me his greatest achievement will always be those first four seasons of M*A*S*H, which as far as I’m concerned are a virtual encyclopedia of really great writing.

To begin with, the approach was groundbreaking. Gelbart stated many times that when he was first approached to adapt the film for television, he had no interest in turning Robert Altman’s anti-war black comedy into just another service sitcom in the Gomer Pyle/McHale’s Navy mode. At the time he was writing the pilot, America was still in the midst of the Vietnam War and Gelbart felt it would be immoral to trivialize combat and its horrors. So he made the primary focus of M*A*S*H war itself and the show dealt with it unflinchingly -- the (often) dark comedy came out of the obscene situation that the show’s doctors found themselves in (repairing soldiers’ wounds so that they could be sent back to the front to be shot up all over again) and their struggle to maintain their dignity and their sanity in the midst of it. The operating room scenes were played straight (although often with a welcome gallows humor to cut the tension) and one of the show’s signature moments was the war-related death of one of its beloved regulars (McLean Stevenson’s Henry Blake in the classic episode "Abyssinia, Henry"). At the time, such a combination of comedy and drama was unheard of, but by insisting on it, Gelbart (along with Norman Lear and the writers at producers at MTM) helped make television comedy more smart, mature and sophisticated than it had ever been before (and, some might argue, has ever been since).

It was also really clever. Aside from generating an unending string of brilliant one-liners, Gelbart had enormous fun playing with the storytelling -- the show had heavily plotted episodes and virtually plot-less episodes and even an episode that was totally improvised. The show had verbal gags, sight gags, non-linear narratives, and multiple plotlines that magically intertwined at the climax. It found ways to make serious subject matter funny and found the profound poignancy in even the silliest of conceits. The invention and innovation was constant and thrilling -- you can practically feel Gelbart’s enjoyment as he pushed the envelope in every possible direction -- and is something that I still marvel at after all these years.

The characters in M*A*S*H were all sharp and funny and very real, most especially Hawkeye Pierce, who Gelbart used as something of a surrogate for himself and through whom the writer channeled his passion, his intelligence, his anger and vulnerability, his silliness, his profound respect for humanity and his hatred of anything that conspired against it. Gelbart had a virtuoso dexterity with words that grew out of his passionate love for the English language and he used Hawkeye’s dialogue to playfully twist them, tease them, and send them aloft with soaring verbal arias of wit, passion, nonsense, outrage and humor.

Gelbart left the 4077th after four years, feeling he had given it his all. The show continued without him for another seven seasons and morphed into something softer, preachier, and much more conventional. It was still entertaining and often quite good, but never again equaled the brilliance of the Gelbart era. I learned, and continue to learn, so much about screenwriting from those 96 episodes. And they still make me laugh.

So now Larry Gelbart is gone. Luckily for us, he leaves behind a tremendous body of work for us to enjoy. That’s almost a consolation for having no new Larry Gelbart work to look forward to. Almost.
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Ray Morton is a writer and script consultant. His books Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Making of Steven Spielberg's Classic Film and King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon from Fay Wray to Peter Jackson are available in stores and online. He analyzes screenplays for production companies, producers, and individual writers. Morton is available for consultation and can be reached at ray@raymorton.com.

Meet the Reader: Today's Special

2009-09-17T09:14:00.000-07:00

I was in line at the supermarket the other day and noticed a bunch of DVDs of recent films (and even a few classic ones including, most curiously given the very American, very suburban setting, Francois Truffaut’s wonderful L’Argent de Poche) for sale in the checkout racks alongside the gossip rags, the horoscope scrolls, and the myriad flavors of breath mints. The sight caused me to stop for a moment and marvel at how accessible movies have become. During Hollywood’s Golden Age, the only place to see a movie was in a theater. If you wanted to see it again, you had to hope that it was a big enough hit for the studio to re-release it a few years later. After that, it was gone forever.

When I was a kid, if you wanted to see a film after it had completed its theatrical run, you had to wait for it to show up on television (initially in a big network premiere, and then later on the local late show) or in a revival house. This relative lack of availability led to a bit of obsessive behavior on the part of film buffs as they scrupulously collected revival house schedules and carefully scanned their weekly TV Guides to determine what was playing and then arranged their schedules around the days and times the films they wanted to see were going to be shown.

No such obsessing is required today, when practically any movie you might want to see can be purchased from Amazon or ordered from Netflix or downloaded to your computer, your iPod, or your cell phone and watched whenever and wherever you want. When it comes to availability, for film lovers, this is in many ways the best of times.

But in some ways, it’s also the worst. In the old days, a movie’s scarcity made it something precious. All of that waiting and planning and anticipating made seeing a particular film a delightful treat -- something to be relished and savored and treasured. Movies were something special. Today, however, with so many films so readily available, the medium has lost a bit of its specialness. After all, when something is as instantly obtainable as a pack of gum, it’s hard to regard it as dear. This is apparent in the way that films are often referred to these days. They’re no longer cinema or movies or even flicks -- instead they are products, or franchises, or content. I don’t know about you, but I find it pretty hard to get worked up about something that sounds like it was massed-produced in a factory, whipped up by a graduate of Hamburger U., or listed on the side of a cereal box.

I see this attitude reflected in a lot of scripts that I’ve been reading lately -- many of which, while well-crafted, seem slight, mass-produced, and easily disposable: generic, by-the-numbers constructs that recycle clichéd and tired characters, plots, and ideas with lots of polish, but little heart and even less soul. While all of this may be ideal for an industry that more and more is interested only in the ancillary products -- the endless sequels, videogames, action figures, and breakfast cereals -- it can squeeze out of a movie than in whether or not the film itself is any good, none of it is particularly memorable. Sure, I can buy these movies at my local Stop ‘n Shop, but there’s nothing about them that makes me want to.

So, all you writers out there, remember: Even though your work may end up in the checkout aisle, it’s not batteries or lip balm or corn chips -- it’s a proud continuation of the greatest storytelling medium ever invented.

Movies are special. Do your best to keep them that way.

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Ray Morton is a writer and script consultant. His books Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Making of Steven Spielberg's Classic Film and King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon from Fay Wray to Peter Jackson are available in stores and online. He analyzes screenplays for production companies, producers, and individual writers. Morton is available for consultation and can be reached at ray@raymorton.com.

Discussing September/October With Andrew Shearer

2009-09-15T09:32:00.001-07:00

For those of you who haven’t read Jim Cirile’s article, 10 Big Mistakes … in the September/October edition of Script, definitely check it out. It’s great advice I wish I had heard before my writing partner and I landed our agent a couple years ago. I’ve given some of this very advice to friends on the verge of acquiring managers or agents, but unfortunately only because I learned it through painful experience. If I may, I’d like to add Mistake #11: Know when they ain’t feelin’ it.

Just because you write a spec doesn’t mean your reps are going to hand it out to Will Ferrell. Their name is on the line too. This is something I’ve learned recently based on an experience my writing partner and I had. We wrote a spec a year ago, which received a lackluster response from our agent and manager. They had us do a couple re-writes and ultimately decided to send it out to six companies who already liked us based on our last script they had read. Only six, since the spec market sucked at the time -- after all, even specs with big attachments weren’t selling (something your agent says to downplay your hopes when your spec really isn’t that good). All six companies passed on our spec, and our reps never sent it out much beyond that. My partner and I were very frustrated at the time and fell into Jim’s Mistake #7, constantly trying to push a script once it’s been passed on, but I eventually realized what was in our own best interests -- and our reps’. As new writers in town, why damage our name with a spec that was most likely not going to sell?

I didn’t learn the lesson fully until recently when my partner and I finished another spec which received a much more enthusiastic response from our reps. They were immediately more willing to send it around internally, and now are already starting to send it out to the industry. So with our spec from last year, it’s not that they didn’t believe in us -- they were just looking out for our career. With our current spec, they have confidence they can attach actors, so it’s full-steam ahead. Know when you’ve done your job, and be willing to move on when you missed the mark.

The only mistake that Jim suggests that I take issue with is#10 -- “Is your concept sponge … er, movie-worthy?” Basically, he says “can you see it on the marquee?” I don’t think this is always the case. I think a good follow-up article to this one would be “How to deal differently with your manager and your agent.” When my partner and I first began working creatively with our manager, we attempted to impress him by presenting a slew of new loglines, all of which were ultra-high concept and marquee ready. But luckily, he encouraged us to back off because our first sample script that had been read around town had a distinct voice and was more character-based. He knew what execs would be looking for from us, and didn’t want us to fall off track. Tome, this is the sign of a great manager. Our current spec is still very marketable (and hopefully will show up on the marquee), but based on his advice, still contains our voice and is grounded in character. We could’ve churned out some real crap had we been encouraged to simply write for the marquee. However, I still think Mistake #10 is good advice if you can find the right balance and you have the right guidance from your rep. What do you think?

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A redneck from Small Town, North Carolina (population 8,000, high school drop-out rate 40%), one day decided to tackle the film industry. Andrew’s film-school short, Son Up, based off his experience teaching at a juvenile hall, ended up winning seven festival awards and made the regionals for the Student Academy Awards. Andrew’s feature script version of Son Up, co-written with Nick Sherman, went on to win first prize at Cinequest. Then one day, the screenwriting gods shined their rarely shown light down from the Heavens and awarded the Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship to Andrew and Nick for their feature script, Holy Irresistible. The duo is now repped by Endeavor and Brillstein Entertainment. They have two projects in development and are lucky enough to be co-writing a spec with another writer they’ve admired for years.

Barney Lichtenstein: A Story Analyst's Top-10 List: #5

2009-09-04T07:15:00.001-07:00

Having taught story analysis for film in the classroom and online through the Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension, I’ve trained a number of students who have gone on to cover screenplays for studios, production companies, and Sundance Institute. One of the tools used in the course is a top-10 list of professional screenwriting skills industry readers look for when evaluating material and writers. I call these methods “in-between details,” which are neither at the heart of premise, plot or characterization nor important issues of formatting and presentation -- they exist somewhere between the two. These in-between details often make a critical first impression, the following among the most significant, elaborated upon with examples and illustrations, which I believe can be quickly utilized. This week is my final lesson on the Scriptmag blogspot. For the full top-10, click HERE.

#5 The Big Payoff
Look for strong set ups, or what I call “planted seeds” and their payoffs. An additional tip here: the greater the irony in the payoff, the better: The warden in Shawshank Redemption, a man who perverts use of religion, discovers Andy’s Bible to contain a small pick ax, explaining how Andy escaped; in Star Wars, Luke not believing in the Force at first, but finally using it at the climax to defeat the Death Star; air tanks and their volatility are referred to several times throughout Jaws, but it’s the cop, the one man scared of the ocean, who resourcefully uses a tank to destroy the shark; in The Wizard of Oz, ruby slippers -- cinema’s greatest MacGuffin -- are touted from the outset as possessing mysterious powers which endanger Dorothy, their magic revealed at the climax as they help bring her home. When a writer offers these types of setups and ironic payoffs, even if the structure of the material isn’t perfect, he or she is more likely to improve it in development.

Determining what I call “planted seeds” can occur in one of two main ways: foresight or hindsight. For example, in Back to the Future writers Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale knew they wanted Marty McFly to invent the skateboard once back in the 1950s. As they didn’t want this feat to occur out of the blue, they set up Marty as an expert skateboarder early in the script, hitching onto various vans and pickup trucks to get to school.

Often, however, the situation happens in reverse. It is critical to keep an eye out for details which may become “seeds” that get paid off later. In Pirates of the Caribbean, an early sword fight showed Will’s character having trouble with a certain swashbuckling move. At the climax, the writers were sure to refer back to that in order to make his sword play with the villain that much more dramatic, particularly when he overcame the deficit. Details such as these are what distinguish memorable fight scenes from the forgettable by developing character in the course of the action.

Finally, many seeds are actually created in retrospect. A writer gets to the third act, or climax, realizes he or she wants something particular to occur, then sets it up by going back and planting specific seeds prior. If near the end you suddenly want your heroine to recognize the right man for her by a visual detail or remark, you may want to go back and plant the line earlier on. For example, a running line about Monty Python from Gwyneth Paltrow’s true love in the supernatural Sliding Doors pops up at the fade out, suggesting the beginning of their relationship as the film ends. Its repetition by him throughout the script could have easily been added had the writer initially decided to end on that comic line, then go back in a rewrite to set it up. Again, the more ironic one can make the payoff, the more satisfying it usually is to the reader.

Remember that not everyone is going to like your screenplay, no matter how well written. Star Wars and Home Alone were passed on by just about everyone in town. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was initially rejected by a dozen publishers, who have probably since started their own private recovery groups. The metaphor I like to use is that showing your work is like planting seeds -- when it hits the right soil, it will take root. Yet selling yourself as a writer goes beyond any one story, showing your professionalism by addressing details a story analyst admires, in a well-written screenplay, can only bring you that much closer to making a great first impression, as you find the right company for your project.

For tip #1 click here.
For tip #2 click here
For tip #3 click here
For tip #4 click here

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Barney Lichtenstein, former story analyst for Amblin Entertainment, New Line Cinema, and Largo Entertainment, teaches story analysis online for the Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension, and periodically assists with the training of new story analysts for the Sundance Institute and major production companies. He has served as a story editor for a multi-award-winning installment of the PBS series P.O.V., and for Voices, which won the Peabody Award, and is recipient of the UCLA Extension Outstanding Instructor Award in Screenwriting, 2006. Mr. Lichtenstein will be conducting a one day screenwriting seminar in September at UCLA Extension, comparing narrative structures of three 2008 Academy Award-nominated screenplays. Please click here for more information.

Meet the Reader: What I Look For

2009-09-03T08:50:00.000-07:00

I am often asked what criteria I use to evaluate screenplays in order to determine whether or not to recommend them. I don’t have a strict rubric or anything, but there are definitely things that I pay attention to and they are as follows:

First and foremost, the script has to be interesting. It has to be about a subject that I’ve never seen done before or else, if it's about a familiar topic or genre, then it can’t be by-the-numbers -- it has to introduce some new twist to the piece that is not completely predictable. And the script needs to be interesting from the get-go -- something intriguing (an attention-grabbing incident, a compelling piece of character-revealing business, etc.) needs to occur in the first scene and preferably on the first page, because if a script doesn’t grab me from the moment it begins, I’m going to quickly lose interest and tune out way before I ever get to that really cool scene on page 54.

I have to care about the protagonist. This doesn’t necessarily mean that I always have to like the protagonist, but I do need to understand him and have some degree of sympathy for his motives and goals. (This is especially important if you’re going to do a story about a bad or unsavory person that sees the light in some fashion. Such tales can be inspiring, but by definition, you have to begin the script with the character doing some sort of terrible things. If you don’t give me a reason to connect with such a person, then I’m not going to care when he has his eventual epiphany.) I don’t require the protagonists or supporting characters in every script I read to be three-dimensional (because not every type of film -- broad comedies, for example -- require their people to have great depth or multi-faceted personalities), but they do need to be lively and interesting, with compelling traits and quirks (although, with very rare exception, self-consciously “quirky” characters are usually a turn-off), habits, points-of-view, and senses of humor that bring them vibrantly to life.

The script has to be cinematic. The story has to be told through a combination of images, action, and dialogue (with the speeches serving to enhance and provide counterpoint to the bits and pictures) rather than be told though dialogue alone -- a script can’t just consist of a bunch of scenes of people sitting around talking.

The script has to be what it is -- if it is identified as being a comedy, then it needs to be funny; if it’s intended to be a horror film, then it needs to be scary; if it’s a thriller or an action film, then it needs to be exciting.

Finally, and most importantly … I feel something at the end. If I reach the end of a script and find myself experiencing an extremely powerful emotion of some sort -- if I’m smiling broadly because things have worked out well for a character that I care about; if my sides ache because I have been laughing so hard; if I am weeping because something profoundly moving or sad has occurred in the story; or if I am feeling any other feeling for any other reason -- then the chances are pretty good that I am going to recommend that script. If mere words on paper can provoke such a powerful response, then those same words brought to life on screen are bound to have an even greater impact on audiences. Not many screenplays can accomplish this and, since moving an audience is ultimately the point of all this, any script that can certainly deserves (and will get) my support.

I care about other stuff too -- the dialogue should be good, and I like it when scripts are properly formatted and use correct screenplay terminology and when the spelling, punctuation, and grammar are all mostly proper (because such things show that the writers care enough to be professional, which means that all of the other elements of the script are probably going to be equally polished). However, none of these things are deal-breakers for me because better dialogue and correct spelling and formatting and such can always be added -- heart and feeling can’t be.

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Ray Morton is a writer and script consultant. His books Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Making of Steven Spielberg's Classic Film and King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon from Fay Wray to Peter Jackson are available in stores and online. He analyzes screenplays for production companies, producers, and individual writers. Morton is available for consultation and can be reached at ray@raymorton.com.

Barney Lichtenstein: A Story Analyst's Top-10 List: #4

2009-08-28T08:11:00.001-07:00

Having taught story analysis for film in the classroom and online through the Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension, I’ve trained a number of students who have gone on to cover screenplays for studios, production companies, and Sundance Institute. One of the tools used in the course is a top-10 list of professional screenwriting skills industry readers look for when evaluating material and writers. I call these methods “in-between details,” which are neither at the heart of premise, plot or characterization nor important issues of formatting and presentation -- they exist somewhere between the two. These in-between details often make a critical first impression, the following among the most significant, elaborated upon with examples and illustrations, which I believe can be quickly utilized. Lessons will be posted on Fridays.

#4 Secondary Characters
Do secondary characters and even minor ones speak with their own distinct voices? Not every extra or store clerk must have something witty or profound to offer, but whenever appropriate, supporting or minor characters with distinct points of view should be adding color to the mosaic (i.e. Oracle’s musings in The Matrix; “plastics” touted by a materialistic party guest in The Graduate). Secondary characters who interact with your lead throughout the plot should ideally bring out some inner quality in your hero we might not see otherwise.

Watch a musical or epic with lots of well directed extras but a weak leading man or woman -- the experience won’t be wholly satisfying, but the overall production will seem much more professional than the other way around: A terrific lead but poorly written and directed supporting cast. The same can be said for your screenplay. Even if the story analyst has some issues regarding your hero or plot, if minor characters are written with vitality and engaging, unique details, it goes a long way towards promoting your work.

One way to approach minor characters is to go scene by scene, once the screenplay is written, polishing lines of dialogue and actions, giving distinct points of view to characters your hero bumps into. Better yet, when creating minor characters initially, consider situations or points of view on their behalf which may intensify, enhance or conflict with the overall scene. A woman who sells tickets at a metro train station, for instance, may love her job and with each ticket sold offers every bit of information about the fare, platform, departure and arrival times. Perhaps the ticket line for her booth is twice as long as others due to this quirk in her personality and the hero on the run has to hide in this line, slowing down his escape. Now you’ve used a minor character to add suspense and possibly new twists to the plot.

A great variation on this type of minor character can be seen in A Few Good Men, when Tom Cruise picks up a magazine from a news vendor on the street. Rather than mundane pleasantries, each keeps trying to top the other with time worn phrases such as, “A rolling stone gathers no moss," “Catch you later,” “Unless I catch you first,” etc. The playful banter with this minor character quickly makes us like Cruise’s character as an unpretentious attorney with a sense of humor, while the news vendor adds texture and appropriate comic relief to an otherwise intense drama.

One needs to be careful though and not make every minor character too distinct. Too much spice, so to speak, with minor characters can be detrimental in its own way. Finding a balance between creating background characters who stand out or blend in with the scenery is the key.

For tip #1, click here.
For tip #2, click here.
For tip #3, click here.

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Barney Lichtenstein, former story analyst for Amblin Entertainment, New Line Cinema, and Largo Entertainment, teaches story analysis online for the Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension, and periodically assists with the training of new story analysts for the Sundance Institute and major production companies. He has served as a story editor for a multi-award-winning installment of the PBS series P.O.V., and for Voices, which won the Peabody Award, and is recipient of the UCLA Extension Outstanding Instructor Award in Screenwriting, 2006. Mr. Lichtenstein will be conducting a one day screenwriting seminar in September at UCLA Extension, comparing narrative structures of three 2008 Academy Award-nominated screenplays. Please click here for more information.

Barney Lichtenstein: A Story Analyst's Top-10 List: #3

2009-08-21T10:20:00.001-07:00

Having taught story analysis for film in the classroom and online through the Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension, I’ve trained a number of students who have gone on to cover screenplays for studios, production companies, and Sundance Institute. One of the tools used in the course is a top-10 list of professional screenwriting skills industry readers look for when evaluating material and writers. I call these methods “in-between details,” which are neither at the heart of premise, plot or characterization nor important issues of formatting and presentation -- they exist somewhere between the two. These in-between details often make a critical first impression, the following among the most significant, elaborated upon with examples and illustrations, which I believe can be quickly utilized. Lessons will be posted on Fridays.

# 3 Making an Entrance
Writing should make the most of a lead’s entrance (the back of Sean Connery’s head in first James Bond film; Bugs Bunny leaning on Elmer Fudd’s shotgun). The opening line of dialogue from the lead should let us know much about the character (“Bond … James Bond;” “What’s up, Doc?”). Even if someone is just commenting on the weather, ideally it should reveal something (sees storm clouds coming when there aren’t any -- pessimist; expects sun when pouring -- optimist).

There are several ways to check and possibly strengthen a lead’s entrance. First, look at various lines and actions of your lead character in the first few pages after he or she is introduced. See if anything could simply be deleted, with the most dramatic moved up (similar to or, in some cases, the same as omitting needless opening scenes). Second, see if a mundane line of dialogue can be sharpened to bring more characterization to it. A hero who walks into a bar and says, “I’ll have a beer” isn’t as dynamic as one who walks in and says, "Cold in a bottle." The latter shows he’s familiar with the bar scene and probably has a richer inner life. He’s likely the type to talk in a more colorful manner, not spelling everything out overtly (meaning less risk of overwritten dialogue, which the reader appreciates). He also seems tougher, as his request doesn’t open itself up as much to the inevitable question from the bartender, “Which beer?” The hero probably doesn’t care. If he walks in, grabs a bottle from a man being served, hands the bartender 10 bucks and says to both, “I’m in a hurry,” now you’ve really grabbed our attention. There’s an element of mystery to the man, we want to know more about his circumstances.

Finally, juxtaposing a dynamic scene with a mundane one can create an entirely new context. If we’ve just seen a masked man in a black body suit pull off an elaborate jewel robbery, à la James Bond, walk into a bar in jeans and t-shirt, casually asking for a beer, as police outside comb the crime scene, his opening line possesses an irony and humor that give it an entirely new meaning.

Just showing something about your lead in his or her introduction isn’t enough. Creating an element of mystery is critical in introducing major characters. Any opening line or action should make us eager to learn more about your leads and their situations. Too often, this is a critical opportunity beginning writers, and sometimes pros, overlook.

For tip #1, click here.
For tip #2, click here.

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Barney Lichtenstein, former story analyst for Amblin Entertainment, New Line Cinema, and Largo Entertainment, teaches story analysis online for the Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension, and periodically assists with the training of new story analysts for the Sundance Institute and major production companies. He has served as a story editor for a multi-award-winning installment of the PBS series P.O.V., and for Voices, which won the Peabody Award, and is recipient of the UCLA Extension Outstanding Instructor Award in Screenwriting, 2006. Mr. Lichtenstein will be conducting a one day screenwriting seminar in September at UCLA Extension, comparing narrative structures of three 2008 Academy Award-nominated screenplays. Please click here for more information.

Meet the Reader: What Makes a Good Screenwriter?

2009-08-19T07:58:00.000-07:00

I was talking with a writer friend lately about what qualities a person needed to have in order to be a good screenwriter and this is what we came up with:

1. You have to love movies: You’d think that would be a given, but it never fails to amaze me how many people that aspire to write screenplays are quite comfortable saying that they never go to the movies or that they only like old movies or that they won’t watch anything made before 1950 or 1960 or 1970 or that they hate studio movies and will only watch foreign films or that they hate reading subtitles and that they only want to see the latest mainstream special-effects extravaganzas. Likewise, I’m always stunned when I meet budding screenwriters that don’t know the history of the movies or have never seen the great classics of yesteryear and of today. Quite simply, I don’t see how -- if you’re not in love with cinema and its amazingly plastic ability to tell every type of story in every type of genre in every type of way and aren’t tickled pink by the notion that the same medium that can give you Citizen Kane, The Rules of the Game, and The Red Shoes can also give you Animal House, Pirates of the Caribbean, and I Spit on Your Grave; if you don’t understand the history of the medium and the industry and the craft; if you don’t know and appreciate its masterworks -- you can ever write for it effectively. It would be like saying that you want to be a painter, but you don’t understand color, you hate Picasso, and you don’t like getting your hands dirty.

2. You need to have a nose for a good (movie) story: As mentioned above, the cool thing about cinema is that it can be used to tackle just about any type of subject matter, but to work as a movie, a tale must be interesting enough to hold an audience’s attention for two or three hours, contain a suitable amount of action (and by that I mean behavior and incident and visceral conflict, not just car chases -- although car chases are cool too) and be able to be told in ways that are kinetic and visual. People that can recognize tales that have these qualities (and maybe, just as importantly, also recognize those that don’t) have a good chance of succeeding as screenwriters. Those that don’t should probably stick to writing novels or plays or e-mails.

3. You have to know how to write: By that I mean you have to know the basic rules and concepts of dramatic writing -- things such as acts and conflict and inciting incidents and plot twists and reversals and climaxes and resolutions. You need to understand the purpose of each of these things, why they have been codified in the way they have, and know how you can bend or twist or even break these codes without compromising the dramatic integrity of your piece. In other words, all you rebels and iconoclasts and innovators out there -- you’ve gotta know the rules, especially if you want to break ‘em.

4. You have to understand that you are writing for a mass audience: Movies are meant to be shown to large numbers of people all at the same time in a collective viewing experience -- even the most obscure art film is meant to be screened for an auditorium full of people. This means that when you write, you have to do so in such a way that your material is understandable to the people that you want to come to see your film. This does not mean you have to talk down to your audience or dumb down the material or anything like that -- you simply have to remember that when you are writing a movie, you are not writing just for yourself or for your immediate circle, but for large numbers of people that are eager to experience your ideas. It’s up to you to make sure that those ideas are clearly communicated and, if the film fails to connect, to never take refuge in “they just didn’t get it.” As a screenwriter, it’s your job to make sure they get it.

5. You have to be willing to rewrite, rewrite, rewrite: It is always said that “writing is rewriting” and this really is true. In most cases (Mozart may have been the exception), the first draft of anything is really only good for getting your ideas down on paper and because of this most first drafts are sloppy and unfocused and unwieldy. It’s simply the nature of the beast. If you want your material to work, you need to shape it and edit it and refine it until it is razor sharp and communicating everything you want in exactly the way you want exactly when you want it to. Despite this, there are many, many aspiring writers out there that are unwilling to make any sort of serious revision to their work and, as a result, there are an awful lot of scripts floating around that contain some excellent ideas that are buried under tons of excess and dross. If you want to be a serious writer, you need to be ruthless with your work -- to hone the rough edges and throw out things that aren’t working, no matter how much you love them. You need to seek out constructive criticism, listen seriously to it, and then figure out what to do about it. You need to be willing to do whatever it takes to make your material the best that it can be. If you’re not, then why even bother in the first place?

And finally …

6. You have to love movies: In the end, it really all comes back to that, now, doesn’t it?

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Ray Morton is a writer and script consultant. His books Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Making of Steven Spielberg's Classic Film and King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon from Fay Wray to Peter Jackson are available in stores and online. He analyzes screenplays for production companies, producers, and individual writers. Morton is available for consultation and can be reached at ray@raymorton.com.

Will Chandler: Blogging From Southampton

2009-08-11T08:17:00.000-07:00

This is the final installment of Will Chandler's blog from the Stony Brook Screenwriting Conference.

Sunday morning, the workshop faculty gathered for a candid, intimate Q & A panel. The room was jammed full of conference attendees who came armed with a wide range of questions.

When asked how important the ending scene is in a film, actor-director Peter Riegert offered “Endings are crucial. But whoever has the power in production will decide what it will be.” Using the example of Local Hero, a touchstone for many screenwriters, he said that the original ending had his character leaving Scotland and returning to his empty apartment in Houston, looking out on the lights of the city in melancholy contrast to the warmth of the quirky little village that had gotten into his heart. The studio told writer-director Bill Forsyth that he would have to shoot a new ending. They wanted Riegert’s oil exec character to fly back to Scotland and tie the story up with a bow. Forsyth would have none of it, but realized that he had to give them something. The studio had to believe that he was doing what they asked.

In the editing room, Forsyth found a stock shot of the village phone booth. He inserted it with the sound effect of the phone ringing. The juxtaposition suggested that Riegert was making the call but Riegert believes that if you were to ask Forsyth about it, he would say that the call had nothing to do with the oil exec or the happy ending that the studio wanted.

“How do I approach rewriting?” Ken Friedman (Heart Like a Wheel) thought about it a moment, “You’re always tinkering. I may do dozens of rewrites, but I don’t rewrite everything each time. I might go through once to make sure the main character is consistent, and maybe one time for the other major characters. Then I might do a dialogue rewrite or look for ways to create imagery in the scene. For each rewrite target something you’re trying to achieve.”

Malia Scotch Marmo (Once Around), who has done dozens of studio rewrites, said that there’s a difference between what executives ask for and what they want. “If you give them what they ask for, they will be disappointed. They don’t want you to be a ‘note taker,’ they want to feel like a writer rewrote it.” She suggested that writers need to think about why the note is being given and come up with an original solution that addresses the concern.

When the panel was asked if there were other skills that screenwriters should study to improve their craft, Andy Bienen (Boys Don’t Cry) immediately suggested acting classes, particularly scene study as a way of getting inside your characters.

Not sure if your scene is working, but not ready to have friends or colleagues look at it? Stephen Molton (The Kennedys, the Castros and the Politics of Murder) said that he reads his scenes into a recorder and then plays them back. Hearing your words read out loud “helps you work out the story but not dissipate the energy, You’re not risking disapproval by an audience or by someone who doesn’t understand where you’re headed with it.”

The room was filled with questions from every angle of screenwriting and students who were energized by the workshops, elective classes and evening events. No one wanted to go home.

The night before, actor-director Alec Baldwin and screenwriter-playwright Jon Robin Baitz shared clips from a few of their favorite movies. The easygoing banter between the two friends was an entertaining mix of what makes a good scene, examples of great dialogue and comparisons between screenwriting and playwriting.

Including clips from All About Eve, Chinatown, Being There, and Network, they each pointed out their favorite moments when a strong character conveys the perfect line. Baldwin advised screenwriters to study directing and become hyphenates in order to protect their work. The evening ended with a lively Q & A with the crowd.

When we headed out on Sunday, you could see that everyone was sad to leave, but eager to get home -- and start writing!

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Will Chandler, an AMPAS Nicholl Fellowship screenwriter, is the director of the Young American Writers Project (YAWP) through the M.F.A. in Writing & Literature Program at Stony Brook Southampton University. YAWP sends artists into schools across Long Island to teach screenwriting, playwriting, fiction, poetry, and personal essay. Chandler is also a screenwriter, having worked for a variety of studios and production companies as well as selling scripts on spec. Chandler also works as a script doctor with private clients. More information: Writers911.com, Twitter.com/ScreenWrite.

Barney Lichtenstein: A Story Analyst's Top-10 List: #2

2009-08-07T08:05:00.001-07:00

Having taught story analysis for film in the classroom and online through the Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension, I’ve trained a number of students who have gone on to cover screenplays for studios, production companies, and Sundance Institute. One of the tools used in the course is a top-10 list of professional screenwriting skills industry readers look for when evaluating material and writers. I call these methods “in-between details,” which are neither at the heart of premise, plot or characterization nor important issues of formatting and presentation -- they exist somewhere between the two. These in-between details often make a critical first impression, the following among the most significant, elaborated upon with examples and illustrations, which I believe can be quickly utilized. Lessons will be posted on Fridays.

#2 Setting the Tone
Look for predominant tone established quickly and kept consistent, balanced. “Seeds” should be planted if the tone is going to change significantly (i.e. a serious prologue at beginning of Life is Beautiful suggests darker events to occur in a film which begins as a lighter comedy; mother’s concerns about crib death at the outset of Terms of Endearment create the same effect). Too often, scripts either start as humorless and heavy-handed, or too light and frivolous. Make sure the author is clearly creating a specific, effective tone.

Readers may wait for a central conflict, but from the opening sentence they are responding to tone. We may have no idea where a script is headed at the outset, but we instantly make judgments about something as being funny, dramatic or frightening. Regardless of genre, tone is established with your opening shot, and it’s amazing how often writers overlook this or take it for granted, failing to exploit fully what should be one of the most important aspects of a screenplay. As Steven Spielberg has noted, “Whatever mood you establish in the first 10 minutes of any movie, for me, that’s the most critical time in a film -- the first 10 minutes and the last 10 minutes.” Whether writing a Hollywood horror flick or European character drama, the best filmmakers know how to capitalize on those initial images and lines of dialogue.

When it comes to fantasy genres, injecting the right amount of realism is critical in opening scenes, alerting the reader as to parameters of the universe explored. We readily suspend disbelief and accept the impossible throughout The Wizard of Oz, The Dark Knight, The Matrix, Spider-Man, Iron Man, E.T., and the Harry Potter franchise, not because we have simply been informed the genre is fantasy, comic book, or science-fiction, but because we comprehend that supernatural rules and occurrences possess a certain logic, while moments of human drama and even political statements place the fantastic elements in more meaningful context.

In terms of more realistic genres, balancing drama and humor can be equally critical in the opening pages of a screenplay to achieve the right tone. When Harry Met Sally interweaves genuinely touching real life stories from older couples as to how they met, keeping the hilarious banter between the jaded and non-committal leads from becoming overly glib, due to these reminders that fulfilling lifetime commitments do exist. On the other end of the spectrum, a dark prison drama such as Shawshank Redemption offers relief from its intentionally oppressive atmosphere through Morgan Freeman’s subtle wit and some (albeit sick) humor in the form of inmates taunting the “new fish” their first night. Had early moments of comic relief in Shawskank been non-existent, or worse, given over to broad slapstick (as easily could have happened in the hands of a less skillful writer), what followed could have been irrevocably damaged. It is not simply a matter of injecting details of drama or humor at the outset, but making sure their interplay adjusts nuances of tone to full advantage.

For tip #1 click here.

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Barney Lichtenstein, former story analyst for Amblin Entertainment, New Line Cinema, and Largo Entertainment, teaches story analysis online for the Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension, and periodically assists with the training of new story analysts for the Sundance Institute and major production companies. He has served as a story editor for a multi-award-winning installment of the PBS series P.O.V., and for Voices, which won the Peabody Award, and is recipient of the UCLA Extension Outstanding Instructor Award in Screenwriting, 2006. Mr. Lichtenstein will be conducting a one day screenwriting seminar in September at UCLA Extension, comparing narrative structures of three 2008 Academy Award-nominated screenplays. Please click here for more information.

Discussing July/August With Andrew Shearer, Part 2

2009-08-04T09:58:00.000-07:00

When I first read Wesley Rowe’s column “Hitting the Boards” in the July/August edition of Script magazine, it pissed me off. I was thinking, do burgeoning screenwriters really need advice on how to “up their quota” and figure out the best way to produce unoriginal work by having their own “twist on a classic” in their back pocket? Just last month, the subject of my blog was on the common concern voiced in Script about the lack of support for the unique voice in Hollywood. Shouldn’t we be encouraging screenwriters that if you’re focused on the money, you’re probably not going to make it in the first place?

Then I remembered, I’m fucking broke! My screenwriting partner and I have two projects in development that haven’t been set up yet and thus we haven’t been paid yet. We just finished a spec our manger and agent plan on packaging with actors, and we’re writing another spec for a very reputable company who has a good track record for getting movies made. Three of the projects are original, and one is a loose adaptation of a very unique book, which ultimately places it in the mini-studio market. We’re very close, but we’ve been “very close” for years now. And very broke for years now. You don’t get all this writing done by having full time jobs, right?

This brings me back to Wesley Rowe. What if he’s right? What if one of our “original” projects goes through, but the other three don’t happen? If we follow Wesley’s advice, perhaps we get really lucky, and we secure a financial future that allows more creative freedom to pursue our original work for as long as we want. Let the cynics say what they will, but I know for my writing partner and I, we’re not in it for the money, and a big paycheck will go a long way for us. Give me good food, daycare for my kid, good beer, and … HD? Not necessarily in that order.

And then there’s the re-writing gigs Wesley suggests. My partner and I had the chance to pitch for two re-write gigs thus far, neither of which we got, neither of which we were right for really. Both scripts were, shall I say politely, in really bad shape. Christopher McQuarrie of Usual Suspects fame once called re-writing a “soulless act” but also noted one can make up to a hundred G’s for a week’s worth of work. I thought to myself, I could live off that an entire year and write original work for 51 weeks -- or 40 and vacation 11. Anyway, I re-read Wesley’s column a few times, and it reminded me I’m constantly torn between remaining true to why I started writing screenplays in the first place and facing the reality that original work may not financially support an entire career. What do you think? Is Wesley’s advice right on or not?

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A redneck from Small Town, North Carolina (population 8,000, high school drop-out rate 40%), one day decided to tackle the film industry. Andrew’s film-school short, Son Up, based off his experience teaching at a juvenile hall, ended up winning seven festival awards and made the regionals for the Student Academy Awards. Andrew’s feature script version of Son Up, co-written with Nick Sherman, went on to win first prize at Cinequest. Then one day, the screenwriting gods shined their rarely shown light down from the Heavens and awarded the Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship to Andrew and Nick for their feature script, Holy Irresistible. The duo is now repped by Endeavor and Brillstein Entertainment. They have two projects in development and are lucky enough to be co-writing a spec with another writer they’ve admired for years.

Will Chandler: Blogging from Southampton

2009-08-03T07:08:00.000-07:00

“Film is emotional manipulation, not theory. What is the emotional wringer that you want to put your audience through?” I hadn’t even finished my first cup of coffee and screenwriter-instructor Christina Lazaridi already had the gloves off. With only three days of intensive workshops, there’s no time to lose. Connecting with her students, she draws out themes and conflicts from their work. “What is the sense of your main character’s day and what is he moving toward? You want to make the world alive.”

I have the easy job: eavesdrop as Lazaridi asks her students the hard questions and makes them think more clearly about their work. A screenwriter of original work, adaptations and documentaries, including the Academy Award-nominated One Day Crossing, Lazaridi is fluent in every type of film project and pushes her students to go deeper. She reminds them to “... pick the top thing that you want the audience to connect with. If your character is pulled in too many directions, the story will feel muddy.”

Throughout the morning, she reminded students how important it is to convey emotion in their work. “If you put emotional brackets around it, we will watch but not feel. What is the emotion that you want the audience to come out of this with? How do you want us to feel?” In the end, it’s emotion that connects us all to a script’s characters. A wise reminder for all writers.

Last night, filmmaker Bette Gordon interviewed screenwriter-director Peter Hedges (Pieces of April, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape). Hedges shared how he came up with the idea for Gilbert Grape. He had just started teaching writing at Northwestern University. On the first day, a student challenged “What, if anything, have you ever written?” Hedges responded “I will write a play tonight, we’ll start rehearsals on Friday and perform it on Sunday.” The student was impressed. Now all Hedges had to do was ... well, everything.

Sure enough, the short play was completed. Students loved it. Gilbert Grape’s story was eventually developed into a novel, which was optioned by Lasse Hallstrom. When Johnny Depp signed on, they had a green light and a start date. Now, the only thing Hedges needed to do was something he’d never done before: write a screenplay. He shared many of the ups and downs of that process with the audience.

Hedges said that he loves complex characters in the small moments of life that may not look dramatic on the outside, but from the character’s perspective, can be life changing. He is also fascinated by “how people like us can do the unthinkable.”

Contrasting screenwriting with playwriting, he cited the example of a character who expressed his anger with God in a seven page speech on stage; but in the screenplay, he just grabbed a crucifix off the wall and threw it into the fireplace. “Can you find that gesture or movement that conveys the emotional state?”

Hedges also discussed the challenges of writing and directing Pieces of April, which lost its funding three times and was eventually shot for $300,000 in 16 days. The story was inspired by a random meeting with an actress on a subway and his own mother’s death from cancer. And while he pointed to specific examples lifted from his life, he also said “writing is what I don’t write, what I don’t say.” Bring your characters to life, then let them breathe and trust your audience to understand them.

Tonight, actor/director Alec Baldwin and screenwriter/playwright Jon Robin Baitz discuss their all time favorite movie scenes.

Read Will Chandler's first Southampton blog here.

Will Chandler: Blogging from Southampton

2009-07-31T11:15:00.000-07:00

Will Chandler will be blogging from the Stony Brook Southampton Screenwriting Conference over the weekend.

This morning, at the Stony Brook Southampton Screenwriting Conference, I had a great time sitting in on a workshop with Frank Pugliese, Obie Award-winning playwright for Aven’U Boys and screenwriter on dozens of projects, including Shot in the Heart. He worked with students, listening to their ideas and asking probing questions. Pugliese reminded students that, if their scripts were instead formatted as standard prose text, “A screenplay is roughly 35 pages long. When you think about that real estate, that’s not a lot to work with. ... Your story needs to be really simple and small, but expansive in the same moment.”

When a student was struggling with her adaptation of a true story, Pugliese asked what she thought made a successful script adaptation of a novel. The student suggested that it happens when the screenwriter understands the essence of what the story is and serves that while letting the rest fall away. Pugliese agreed, affirming “Novels don’t tend to make great screenplays, it’s more like pieces of novels make great screenplays. The screenwriter finds the section of the novel that best illustrates the central theme of the book and uses that.”

With his extensive background in theater, Pugliese added that adapting a play for the screen is equally challenging. “Playwriting is about form and rhythm, screenplays have to translate that into pictures. The foundation of screenplays is about images ... and you have to juxtapose images as part of storytelling.”

Sharing some of his own secrets, Pugliese told students that when he’s working on a project, he keeps a notebook, filled with themes and ideas, but after he has outlined his story and begins to write, he closes the notebook and puts it away. He suggested that by the time he is ready to begin writing, his characters, their conflicts and motivations, and the story itself have been so internalized that releasing his notebook allows his characters more freedom to breath and come to life. To pore over notes while writing can kill spontaneity and make the writing feel flat.

Pugliese reminded students that “Films have a hunger for movement and a hunger for story. All of my characters are trying to do something. Even if they’re static, they’re active in trying to remain static.”

The 2009 Stony Brook Southampton Screenwriting Conference is in only its second year, but its outstanding faculty are all working screenwriters who also teach at NYU, Columbia, USC and UCLA. Some of this year’s teachers are Andrew Bienen (Boys Don’t Cry), Christina Lazaridi (Academy Award-nominee for One Day Crossing), Malia Scotch Marmo (Once Around, Hook) Ken Friedman (Heart Like a Wheel), Stephen Molton (Live by the Sword) and actor Peter Riegert (writer-producer-director of King of the Corner).

Each three-day workshop focuses on a key element of screenwriting, from story development to scene structure or adaptation. In the afternoons, a wide variety of elective courses are offered, from quick ways to outline your script to developing the psychological underpinnings of your characters.

Tomorrow I’ll be sitting in on “Understanding Film Structure” with Christina Lazaridi and at night there’s an interview with Peter Hedges (Academy Award nominee for About a Boy).

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Will Chandler, an AMPAS Nicholl Fellowship screenwriter, is the director of the Young American Writers Project (YAWP) through the M.F.A. in Writing & Literature Program at Stony Brook Southampton University. YAWP sends artists into schools across Long Island to teach screenwriting, playwriting, fiction, poetry, and personal essay. Chandler is also a screenwriter, having worked for a variety of studios and production companies as well as selling scripts on spec. Chandler also works as a script doctor with private clients. More information: Writers911.com, Twitter.com/ScreenWrite.

Barney Lichtenstein: A Story Analyst's Top-10 List: #1

2009-07-24T11:35:00.000-07:00

Having taught story analysis for film in the classroom and online through the Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension, I’ve trained a number of students who have gone on to cover screenplays for studios, production companies, and Sundance Institute. One of the tools used in the course is a top-10 list of professional screenwriting skills industry readers look for when evaluating material and writers. I call these methods “in-between details,” which are neither at the heart of premise, plot or characterization nor important issues of formatting and presentation -- they exist somewhere between the two. These in-between details often make a critical first impression, the following among the most significant, elaborated upon with examples and illustrations, which I believe can be quickly utilized. Lessons will be posted on Fridays.

#1 The First Page
Does the screenplay grab you in the first page, ideally the first sentence? It doesn’t have to be a bomb going off, but some aspect of characterization or plot which foreshadows or puts into motion a larger hook to come (mother packing bags at outset of Kramer vs. Kramer sets up walking out on marriage). Also, does it begin in the right place? Sometimes the perfect opening may be buried pages into the text -- keep an eye out for it.

Sometimes a central conflict, in terms of plot, is established on the first page, other times it may not appear until much later (ideally by the end of the first act, or your narrative will probably remain unfocused). In any case, the bottom of the first page should establish some conflict or question mark, regarding plot or characterization. If a screenplay hasn’t grabbed you in some way by the bottom of the first page, it’s in big trouble. This doesn’t necessarily mean the Joker robbing a bank or a shark eating a girl -- it can be a much more personal yet dramatic action, such as the mother leaving her son in Kramer vs. Kramer. There are two main ways to make sure you achieve this. First, distill your opening scenes as much as possible. Sometimes writers start with a three-page scene that would be much more powerful if condensed to just one. Occasionally, the opposite is the case -- certain scenes are rushed through that could use more time and detail. Usually, however, the trend is to overwrite in early drafts, so I’d suggest be on the lookout for that occurrence, particularly in opening pages.

Second, as noted, look carefully at the first five to 10 pages of your screenplay, or equivalent in the outline. It’s amazing how many scripts I’ve seen where just starting on page five, for instance, can make a huge difference. When Frank Capra screened Lost Horizon, the audience was bored throughout the first 10 minutes of expository scenes, so he took the first reel (each reel equals 10 minutes) and threw it into the studio incinerator, literally blowing it up. Don’t wait so long to get to that point of realization, if such is the case with your screenplay. If the opening pages contain potentially extraneous scenes or information, consider hitting the delete key.
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Barney Lichtenstein, former story analyst for Amblin Entertainment, New Line Cinema, and Largo Entertainment, teaches story analysis online for the Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension, and periodically assists with the training of new story analysts for the Sundance Institute and major production companies. He has served as a story editor for a multi-award-winning installment of the PBS series P.O.V., and for Voices, which won the Peabody Award, and is recipient of the UCLA Extension Outstanding Instructor Award in Screenwriting, 2006. Mr. Lichtenstein will be conducting a one day screenwriting seminar in September at UCLA Extension, comparing narrative structures of three 2008 Academy Award-nominated screenplays. Please click here for more information.

Mystery Man: Fahrenheit 451

2009-07-21T09:54:00.000-07:00

Burn, baby, burn!

So I did a lot of flying around the last few weeks, and I had the chance to read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, which was phenomenal. I loved it! When I’m involved in a big project, as I was last month, I’m riddled with ADD. It’s a struggle to focus on anything other than the project, but F451 held my attention from beginning to end, an amazing feat. It’s actually quite short, about 173 pages. One could easily get through it in one sitting (or a long flight). Then I watched the 1966 film adaptation by Francois Truffaut, which I’ll cover in a bit. You can also see the film instantly on Netflix. After that, I sat down to read Frank Darabont’s September, 2005, screenplay adaptation.

A FIERY BOOK ON BOOK-BURNING

There are many aspects about the book that I loved. In fact, it evoked a wide range of screenwriting thoughts.

You can get a summary of the story here.

First, I loved Ray Bradbury’s style. Wherever the story took him, he always capitalized on the heightened emotions of the moment, which is what we do, too. Consider these opening paragraphs:

It was a pleasure to burn.

It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning.

Montag grinned the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by flame.

He knew that when he returned to the firehouse, he might wink at himself, a minstrel man, burnt corked, in the mirror. Later, going to sleep, he would feel the fiery smile still gripped by his face muscles, in the dark. It never went away, that smile, it never ever went away, as long as he remembered.

Here’s another aspect I loved – the protagonist. Did Bradbury tell his story from the perspective of a sad, sympathetic victim who had all of his (or her) books burnt by the firemen? No. Bradbury gave us Guy Montag, a man who on the surface is very unsympathetic in his actions because he’s one of the bad guys! He’s a fireman who burns books!

But by giving us Montag, Bradbury cuts deeper into the heart. While Montag puts on a strong façade with his concentrated vigor about his job and seemingly unwavering belief in what he does, Bradbury carefully charts his inner turmoil and feelings of despair and need for something more out of life. That is the great power and glory of literature, and that is what’s at the heart of F451, the loss without books, the lack of creativity, imagination, free thinking, intellectual satisfaction, a sense of higher purpose and meaning to life.

This is also the very reason F451 would be a difficult book to adapt for the big screen because what makes the book so powerful is the inner turmoil of Montag which cannot so easily be seen on the surface.

So let me ask a question – is Guy Montag empathetic or sympathetic? Do I feel sorry for the fireman who burns books? Nope. At least, not until I understand him and his little world and the feelings he’s feelings. Only then can I appreciate the point of Bradbury’s tale, and root for Montag’s transformation. But that’s the essence of a transformational arc, isn’t it? One must be unsympathetic to a large degree before one can transform, am I wrong? Let me ask another question: is Guy Montag “like me?” No, not at all. Have I ever been in his shoes? Nope. I can’t say I’ve ever burned books or been part of an evil force like the firemen. But can I put myself in his shoes and understand his feelings? Yes. THAT is the power of great writing.

Another aspect I loved – elements of visual storytelling. In the opening, Montag walks home, encounters little Clarisse, a neighbor and teenager, who challenges his thinking about life, about burning books, and asks him the all-important question, “Are you happy?” Montag goes home, which is dark and dreary, to find his wife nearly-dead after taking too many pills. The medics revive her. As she’s resting peacefully, Montag looks out his window and sees Clarisse’s home. I loved the visual contrast between his home and hers:

Laughter blew across the moon-colored lawn from the house of Clarisse and her father and mother and the uncle who smiled so quietly and so earnestly. Above all, their laughter was relaxed and hearty and not forced in any way, coming from the house that was so brightly lit this late at night while all the other houses were kept to themselves in the darkness. Montag heard voices talking, talking, talking, giving, talking, weaving, reweaving their hypnotic web.

Another visual aspect that cannot go un-mentioned is what saves Montag toward the end. When he falls under the spell of books, when Captain Beatty catches him, when all hell breaks loose, when Montag finds himself on the run, the whole city looking for him, and the mechanical hounds are hot on his trail, what saves Montag? Water. The river. The antithesis of fire. Montag’s visual baptism of renewal.

Another aspect I loved – the subtext in the dialogue. Bradbury didn’t write heaping volumes, but careful consideration went into the few scenes he gave us. There were quiet moments of subtext, more specifically, denial about the emptiness they’re feeling, like the conversation Montag had with his wife, Mildred, the morning after her near-death experience from taking too many pills.

She watched his lips casually. “What about last night?”

“Don’t you remember?”

“What? Did we have a wild party or something? Feel like I’ve a hangover. God, I’m hungry. Who was here?”

“A few people,” he said.

Their lives were a lie. He was feeding the lie. She was ingesting the lie and embracing status quo. And when, toward the end of part one, Montag sought to address their emptiness by reading books, Bradbury gives us a scene between Montag and Mildred of heart-wrenching high drama where Montag tries to convince her to go on this journey with him to read books and figure out for themselves if they’re evil.

Post continues at http://mysterymanonfilm.blogspot.com/2009/05/script-review-fahrenheit-451.html

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Mystery Man is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. He blogs at MysteryManOnFilm.blogspot.com and tweets at Twitter.com/MMonFilm. And he has nice shoes.

This post originally appeared on Mystery Man on Film.

Meet the Reader: How Not to Spec

2009-07-09T08:08:00.000-07:00

Between contests and my usual work load, I have been reading a lot of spec scripts lately. In doing so, I noticed a number of things coming up over and over again that motivated me to formulate a little list of things that you probably shouldn’t do when writing a spec.

1. Don’t write adaptations of material you don’t own the rights to. Adaptation rights can be very difficult and expensive to acquire -- often far beyond the means of a humble spec-script writer. A number of people plow ahead anyway, seemingly in the hope that if a producer or studio takes a liking to their script, then the prodco will go to the trouble (and spend the money) to acquire the underlying rights. It won’t. It’s too much hassle. It’s much easier to simply pass on your script, which is what the prodco will do.

[Or you could adapt a work in the public domain. - Ed.]

2. Don’t write sequels to popular films. You may have a great idea for a follow-up to a popular film -- don’t waste a moment of your life writing it down. I think spec script writers that do are almost irrationally optimistic -- thinking that if they can get their script to the producers that control the rights to the parent film, then the producers will see how brilliant it is and decide right then and there to make it the next entry in the series. This will not happen. Sequels are big business and they’re developed in-house by a handpicked stable of highly-experienced, highly-paid writers. Outside scripts stand no chance whatsoever. This is simply a fact. Accept it.

3. Don’t write sequels to your own scripts. Sequels are only made if the first film is a terrific success. Since a spec script by definition has not been made and thus can not have become a terrific success, there is no way to tell if a sequel is warranted. So if you write a follow-up to your own unproduced work, people are either going to think that you’re arrogant or naïve. Either way, they’re not going to take you seriously.

4. By the same token, do not write trilogies or 16-part epics (that last one’s not a joke, I once had to wade through a 16-part sci-fi/fantasy extravaganza. It was a painful, painful experience.

5. Don’t put your production company name on the cover of the script, especially if you don’t really have a production company (they’re actually legal entities, not just a name that your arbitrarily slap onto a cover page -- e.g. Joe Blow Entertainment). This is usually done to make it seem as if the writer is a serious player and not just another aspirant (“Hey, this guy must be for real -- he’s got his own production company!”), but if you’re writing a spec, it usually means you are an aspirant. Trying to make people think you are more than you are isn’t going to fool anyone and you’ll just make yourself look less so by trying.

The bottom line here -- when writing a spec, craft a good, original story and then let it speak for itself. If you’ve done your job well, then trust me -- it will speak volumes.

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Ray Morton is a writer and script consultant. His books Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Making of Steven Spielberg's Classic Film and King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon from Fay Wray to Peter Jackson are available in stores and online. He analyzes screenplays for production companies, producers, and individual writers. Morton is available for consultation and can be reached at ray@raymorton.com.

Discussing July/August With Andrew Shearer

2009-07-07T07:46:00.000-07:00

There seems to be a common concern in the July/August edition of Script magazine that original screenwriting in Hollywood is an endangered product. Editor-in-Chief Shelly Mellott mentions her concern over unique films like Away We Go and The Hurt Locker receiving proper attention. In Ray Morton’s article, “Going Global: Screenwriting in the International Marketplace,” he talks about how Hollywood is importing more and more remakes from overseas, once they’ve proven themselves in foreign markets. And of course we’re all aware that every third movie in the multiplex these days is a comic-book adaptation -- and now we’re on to toys!

But who’s to blame? The studios? In Morton’s article, he quotes screenwriter Don Handfield, “I wish these networks and the studios would take more chances on homegrown entertainment, stuff that might be a little more off the wall, instead of saying, ‘This was a hit in a foreign country so let’s adapt it.’” But you know what? I’m kind of tired of hearing writers bitch because I’m finding more and more that we don’t even go see the movies we claim to want the studios to make.

Last year, I saw an amazing, original, important film, Stop-Loss, in the theater. I tried to get anyone and everyone -- friends, writers -- to watch it. I couldn’t, even on DVD. Finally, after an entire year, one friend finally watched it (and loved it) -- after a year. Mark Boal’s article “Writers on Writing: The Hurt Locker,” about his journey to Iraq which inspired his screenplay, is electrifying. The film is playing in Los Angeles and New York right now and opened to stellar reviews across the board, the best reviews I’ve seen this year. Who of us will go see it? How many of us will go see the enticing Away We Go? It’s made $4 million over 4 weeks with a budget of $17 million. Why would a studio continue to make that kind of movie with a performance like that?

I read an article in Variety recently about the films bought from Cannes last year and their severe underperformance at the box office (Waltz with Bashir, Che, Synecdoche, New York). Maybe that’s why films at Sundance this year had such a hard time selling. What I’m saying is that I find that many of the people who claim to want these films made don’t make the time to go support them, despite many of the movies being wonderful films. And if the studio can’t make box-office profit, how can they make the films? What’s the solution? How can we keep unique writing thriving in Hollywood? And how can I get you whiners to go see The Hurt Locker and Away We Go?

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A redneck from Small Town, North Carolina (population 8,000, high school drop-out rate 40%), one day decided to tackle the film industry. Andrew’s film-school short, Son Up, based off his experience teaching at a juvenile hall, ended up winning seven festival awards and made the regionals for the Student Academy Awards. Andrew’s feature script version of Son Up, co-written with Nick Sherman, went on to win first prize at Cinequest. Then one day, the screenwriting gods shined their rarely shown light down from the Heavens and awarded the Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship to Andrew and Nick for their feature script, Holy Irresistible. The duo is now repped by Endeavor and Brillstein Entertainment. They have two projects in development and are lucky enough to be co-writing a spec with another writer they’ve admired for years.

Wesley Rowe: Proactive Protagonists

2009-06-30T08:39:00.000-07:00

Of all the notes a screenwriter can receive from a reader, one deserves a special, more fiery and rusty-nail-pierced coffin in hell: "The protagonist needs to be more proactive." I have seen it applied to nearly every genre, and it is almost never the story's actual problem. I think it's worth discussing here, though, because the issue of proactiveness reveals so much about who we are and what draws us to be writers and readers in the first place.

It is one of the most jarring of all notes, in large part because it sounds like such an all-encompassing, page-one rewrite sort of criticism. It is also one of the most frustrating because, while the reader may have found a flaw that needs to be addressed, he probably doesn't have even the foggiest notion of what the real problem is. It immediately puts you on the defensive and tempts you to debate story principles instead of critiquing your story.

A quick dissection of Back to the Future, for example, might help your case: It features a protagonist who sighs a lot at how lame his family is, listens to endless exposition by super-chatty dog lover Doc Brown, flees from terrorists in the only vehicle available, and finds himself the victim of a vicious case of oedipal trouble. Actually making this argument to defend yourself would be a mistake, though, because it will prevent your reader from teasing out the underlying problem.

Instead, probe your reader about the major beats of the story and whether each one "worked" for him or her. This simple, vague question focuses the reader not only on her response to particular story beats, but on her expectations for those beats. When you find the emotional spine of your story and get the pieces of the story integrated with its genre, the passive character complaint will hopefully drop away.

One of my favorite horror characters is the teenage boy in The Hills Have Eyes (both Wes Craven's original and the remake). He is the only character with direct evidence that something dangerous lurks, yet he fails to tell anyone about the slaughtered dog. Whether his motive is fear or denial is never explained, yet the behavior is frustratingly human. Similarly, Marty McFly's perspective of teenage repression, and his exasperated inability to even find a ride to the lake for a night of romance, is identifiable to anyone who ever felt oppressed by the limitations of youth. His eventual triumph -- fixing his family -- is really the fulfillment of a collective wish that we could control the things beyond our control.

We live from one decision to the next, and so generally do our heroes. What makes drama or comedy captivating is the uniquely realized relationship between the circumstances and the character. Monster protagonist Aileen Wuornos' turn toward serial killing starts with a violent but nonetheless passive case of self-defense. Another protagonist, such as in Thelma & Louise, might have stopped after the first murder.

Readers, along with the rest of us, are cut from the same cloth as the prototypical hero of the Hero's Journey story archetype. Even when "called to action" on page 12, we keep looking for an easier path until page 25 or 30. Even then, we have to be chased into action by an old Volkswagen van bristling with terrorists. We only start to take the reins when the stakes have raised to a point that we will be destroyed if we don't forge ahead. If only we could find a way every day be the daring Hero of the third act Confrontation! But I usually feel like I'm muddling through an endless series of second-act complications.

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Wesley Rowe, a freelance writer and independent producer, draws upon work experience ranging from, more recently, creative executive positions at two studio-based production companies, to, in his youth, designing mechanical parts for an NASA satellite that tested Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. He lives in L.A.

Meet the Reader: Flashback Back(f)lash

2009-06-24T09:06:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading a spec script that began with a flashback. Literally -- the first words in the script were:

FADE IN:

FLASHBACK

Aside from the fact that this opening makes it clear the author of this particular script doesn’t understand that to in order to flashback, you must first have something to flash back from, it serves as a good example of a really irritating (to me, anyway) trend that I’ve seen develop in spec scripts in recent years -- the overuse and misuse of the flashback device. I would estimate that 75% of the specs that I read these days contain at least one flashback and at least 40% are riddled with the things. I’m not really sure how to account for this, but I suspect it has to do with the heavy use of the device in popular films such as the Tarantino oeuvre and Memento and of television series such as the various CSIs, Family Guy, Scrubs, and Lost. No matter what the reason, however, the use of the flashback has become epidemic in recent years and that’s something I take issue with for a number of reasons:

1. It’s bad writing. The flashback is a tool designed to provide exposition to the audience that cannot be comfortably incorporated into the primary narrative. From this perspective, any use of a flashback can be considered a failure on the part of the writer to find a coherent way to place all of the information needed to tell a story into that story. There are, of course, many valid creative and practical reasons to employ flashbacks, but in most of the specs I read, it appears as if the device has been used because the writers weren’t clever or skilled enough to fit the exposition in any other way. As a result, the final product often comes across as unimaginative, clumsy, and ham-fisted.

2. It’s bad storytelling. A flashback is by its very nature an intrusion into the primary narrative, which is why traditionally the device has been used only sparingly. However, most of the specs that I read tend to use them very liberally. As a result, the primary narrative is constantly being interrupted, which makes for some very choppy and often very hard to follow storytelling. This is an especially big problem when -- as often is the case -- these multitudes of flashbacks are concentrated in the first 10 to 15 pages of the screenplay.

Since the purpose of a flashback is to provide information vital to our understanding of a script’s plot or the characters, it follows that, for a flashback to be effective we would first need to know what that plot is or who those characters are first. Which means that, ideally, a flashback should be introduced well into the story -- after the plot has been set up and the characters established. Despite this logic, many of the scripts I read begin using flashbacks on the first page and often in the first paragraph, before the writer has the chance to establish much of anything.

The problem with doing this, of course, is that before the readers can figure out what’s going on in the script’s present tense, they’re yanked out of that situation and plopped down into an entirely new one only to be re-yanked and re-plopped back down into the original circumstances a few lines later. If this happens -- as it usually does -- over and over again, the result is almost always total narrative confusion and disorientation. To repeat a piece of advice I’ve given on several previous occasions, if you can’t get through the first 10 to 15 pages of your screenplay without flashing back, then perhaps you should consider starting your script at an earlier point in time, since your story so obviously does.

3. It’s gimmicky. In the past decade, non-linear storytelling -- the jumping back and forth from past to present to future rather than simply telling a story in chronological order -- has become all the rage. While I do think that non-linear storytelling can be an interesting and effective tool when it is an organic outgrowth of a particular piece’s theme and/or content -- Memento and Betrayal come to mind as excellent examples -- otherwise I think it’s just a gimmick -- something tossed in to jazz up a piece to make it seem more exciting. My feeling about this is that the excitement in your script should come from your story, not the way the story is told. If the tale you’re telling isn’t inherently compelling, then all of the bells and whistles in the world aren’t going to make it so. If it is, then trust it to take us where you want us to go.

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Ray Morton is a writer and script consultant. His books Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Making of Steven Spielberg's Classic Film and King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon from Fay Wray to Peter Jackson are available in stores and online. He analyzes screenplays for production companies, producers, and individual writers. Morton is available for consultation and can be reached at ray@raymorton.com.

Mystery Man: On Adaptations

2009-06-16T09:27:00.000-07:00

Let me get on my Project Gutenberg soapbox.

One of the most under-appreciated opportunities for aspiring screenwriters is Project Gutenberg. As many of you know very well, most of the assignment jobs screenwriters pick-up are adaptations of known works. I truly believe that before you ever step onto the world stage with your writings, you should already have lots of good experience under your belt adapting books into screenplays.

I’d say you should adapt at least 5-10 books just to be safe.

No, I’m not kidding.

Your fabulous, original, award-winning screenplay may open a couple of doors and get you a couple of meetings, but the question will inevitably surface, “Have you ever adapted a book before?” And what’s the correct answer to that question? “Are you kidding? I love adaptations. I’ve already adapted this, this, this, this, and this.”

But, wait, how do you get around that little copyright thing?

Thus, new writers should take advantage of Project Gutenberg, which has over 25,000 free online books that are all in the public domain. Consider the fact that a couple of scripts on the 2008 Black List are adaptations of classic works in the public domain. There was, as I recall, A Tale of Two Cities, from Dickens, of course, and Galahad, a retelling of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table through the eyes of, well, Galahad. That’s not unusual. Playwright Tom Stoppard made a name for himself with Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead, which was a play about two very minor characters from Hamlet in a world that sort of echoes Waiting for Godot.

In any case, something you may want to do for yourself in 2009 is adapt a book into a screenplay. Do this not for the sake of getting a sale but for the more important experience of internalizing a story and transforming it into a film. And do that at least 5-10 times. And yes, many of those are books have been adapted endlessly over the years. So try to look at the source material from a completely fresh perspective. Do a modern reinterpretation. Do the story from the perspective of a secondary character -- or the antagonist, like Gregory Maguire did with Wicked. Restructure the book. Make it non-linear. Do it in reverse. Explore aspects about characters that didn’t get explored back then, like sexuality. What if the lead was a female instead of a male? Or vice versa? Consider adapting lesser known works by famous authors. Take one of those generic science, political, or social works of non-fiction and be totally inventive with it as Kaufman did in Adaptation. Adapt a book no one has ever dreamed of adapting. Add an unexpected twist. What would the story be like if something didn’t happen or happened differently? Write a sequel.

There was a recent roundtable discussion in the Hollywood Reporter with Oscar-hopeful screenwriters on adaptations. British playwright David Hare said that when it comes to adapting literary works for the big screen one must be “promiscuous to be faithful. You can't simply step your way through a book with perfect fidelity. If you do, the whole thing is completely dead.” Pay attention to these guys!

And finally, consider Project Gutenberg’s Top 100 authors:

Dickens, Charles
Twain, Mark
Shakespeare, William
Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir
Austen, Jane
Thomson, J. Arthur
Jacob, P. L.
Verne, Jules
Maspero, G. (Gaston)
Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank)
Litchfield, Frederick
Wilde, Oscar
Carroll, Lewis
Wells, H. G. (Herbert George)
Beard, Charles A. (Charles Austin)
Beard, Mary Ritter
Poe, Edgar Allan
Homer
Burroughs, Edgar Rice
Sayce, A. H. (Archibald Henry)
Stevenson, Robert Louis
McClure, M. L.
Dumas père, Alexandre
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von
Spicer, William Ambrose
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm
Nichols, J. L. (James Lawrence)
Aesop
Burbank, Emily
Jefferis, B. G.
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Doré, Gustave
Hugo, Victor
Milton, John
Landor, Arnold Henry Savage
Dawson, William Francis
Joyce, James
Conrad, Joseph
Grimm, Jacob
Grimm, Wilhelm
Pope, Alexander
Tolstoy, Leo, graf
Kipling, Rudyard
Pierce, Ray Vaughn
Stoker, Bram
Brontë, Charlotte
Plato
Kafka, Franz
Buckley, Theodore Alois
Montgomery, D. H. (David Henry)
Montgomery, L. M. (Lucy Maud)
Dante Alighieri
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor
Wodehouse, P. G. (Pelham Grenville)
Lang, Andrew
Balzac, Honoré de
Guizot, François Pierre Guillaume
Eliot, George
Defoe, Daniel
Williamson, Robert Wood
Potter, Beatrix
James, Henry
Jowett, Benjamin
Alcott, Louisa May
Sunzi, 6th cent. B.C.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de
Campbell, Douglas Houghton
Clark, Bertha M.
Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider)
London, Jack
Speed, Harold
Ibsen, Henrik
Stanton, Henry
Garnett, Constance
Andersen, H. C. (Hans Christian)
Scott, Walter, Sir
Shaw, Edward R. (Edward Richard)
Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich
Giles, Lionel
Wyllie, David
Rawlinson, George
Hardy, Thomas
Stockton, Frank Richard
Darwin, Charles
Berens, E.M.
Swift, Jonathan
Machiavelli, Niccolò
Barrie, J. M. (James Matthew)
Rolt-Wheeler, Francis
Henry, O.
Thomson, Alexis
Miles, Alexander
Maupassant, Guy de
Melville, Herman
Shaw, George Bernard
Dudeney, Henry Ernest
Bierce, Ambrose
Davis, Richard Harding
Seaman, Owen, Sir

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Mystery Man is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. He blogs at MysteryManOnFilm.blogspot.com and tweets at Twitter.com/MMonFilm. And he has nice shoes.

This post originally appeared on Mystery Man on Film.

Meet the Reader: The Long and Long of It

2009-06-11T07:19:00.000-07:00

In a recent article, I endorsed the long-standing “rule” that a spec script should never be more than 120 pages in length, a position that a number of my readers -- who I assume are spec-script writers that have had their overlong pieces rejected -- took exception to. As objectors to this rule often do, they cited a number of wonderful films that run longer than two hours and so, given the old rule of thumb that one page of script equals one minute of script time (which is, by the way, pretty darn accurate), must have had screenplays longer than 120 pages: The Godfather, Pulp Fiction, The Dark Knight, etc. My readers are correct -- these are all great movies with screenplays much longer than the accepted norm. However, they have overlooked one very important point -- none of these films began life as a spec.

Movies begin their journeys to the screen in a number of different ways -- as spec scripts from outside writers, as adaptations of best-selling material from other media (books, plays, comics, old TV shows) to which a studio or producer has acquired the rights, or as properties developed by talent (actors and directors) as projects for themselves. If a project begins life in one of the latter two ways, then the script “rules” tend to be loosened. If it takes three hours to tell the story of a particular best-selling novel, then a studio will let both the script and the film run that long (if doing so will make the film a gigantic hit). And if a highly sought-after star’s or director’s pet project runs long, the studio will allow it to run long in direct proportion to how much that particular talent’s name is worth at the box office. But when it comes to original pieces of material, the rules tend to be adhered to pretty strictly (at least in the initial evaluation stage). Besides the usual concerns about budgets (the cost of a film rises exponentially the longer it runs) and the desire to make movies as short a possible (so that they can be screened as many times a day as possible), there is another and I think extremely legitimate reason for this.

A spec script is an original story conceived directly for the screen. To attempt one, a writer needs to have a firm understanding of the parameters of cinematic storytelling. For many reasons, both creative and practical, it is generally accepted that the running time of the average commercial narrative film should be somewhere between 90 and 120 minutes, so a screenwriter needs to figure out how to tell his/her story in that amount of time. The existence of the thousands and thousands of feature films made over the past 90 years proves it is possible to do so, and numerous paradigms and guidelines have emerged that, if followed, can help a writer get the job done. So when anyone involved in motion picture story development picks up a script that runs longer than 120 pages, he or she is going to assume that the writer couldn’t get the job done and that the script is either going to be poorly structured or contain lots of extraneous material -- or both. And 99 times out of 100, that development professional is going to be right.

Now, you may indeed have a story that truly justifies a page-length longer than 120 pages and if you do, then the reader will recognize this and is not going to penalize you for running long -- after all, a great story is a great story. But just make sure that you aren’t fooling yourself, because I warn you that in all of the years that I have been reading and analyzing specs, I have only once come across one that ran longer than 120 pages and deserved to. The rest all needed to be seriously restructured or else have 10 or 15 pages chopped out of them.

Ultimately I think the lesson here is that you have to be as ruthless in editing and streamlining your work as you possibly can be, because if you don’t, someone else will be. The difference is that if you do it, you’ll end up with a leaner, tighter, and probably better script. If someone else does it, all you’ll end up with is a PASS. As my old high school English teacher, Sister Catherine, always used to say: “Brevity is a virtue.” And, as she also used to say: “Listen to Sister Catherine.”

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Ray Morton is a writer and script consultant. His books Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Making of Steven Spielberg's Classic Film and King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon from Fay Wray to Peter Jackson are available in stores and online. He analyzes screenplays for production companies, producers, and individual writers. Morton is available for consultation and can be reached at ray@raymorton.com.

Discussing May/June With Andrew Shearer, Pt 2

2009-06-08T07:37:00.000-07:00

When I first saw the title of Mystery Man’s recent article I [Heart] Unsympathetic Protags, I was very excited, as I naturally “heart” unsympathetic protagonists. But after reading it, I’m not so sure “unsympathetic” is the right word anymore. (And yes, his name is Mystery Man -- check out his “head” shot in the mag.) On one side of the coin, I think Mystery Man is right on when he talks about how you can enjoy an unsympathetic protag for his “contradictions and depth” and how you sympathize with the people affected by that protag.

Although not a protagonist, I think the substance of that idea is what makes The Joker from The Dark Knight so fun to watch. Ray Morton mentions in his article, Good Examples: Jonathan Nolan on The Dark Knight, that writers Nolan and Goyer left out any kind of definitive backstory to The Joker on purpose. So instead of winding up with forced sympathy for The Joker, we’re left with a Joker maniacally offering contradicting reasons for his scars, making him all the more fascinating to watch. But more often, despite how unsympathetic a protagonist you construct, I think it’s important at some point to eventually feel at least a little sympathy for him or her.

The very first film I think of when I think unsympathetic protagonists is In the Company of Men, the dark comedy by Neil LaBute. It’s a brilliant film about two corporate execs who are so bitter about love, they decide to find a woman, simultaneously date her, then both break up with her at the same time to screw all women over in one fell swoop. See it if you dare. These guys are the definition of assholes, no holds barred, but when one guy starts competing with the other for the girl, we actually start to feel sympathy for the guy losing out. It doesn’t make the guy a “sympathetic” person in general, but having sympathy for him during his pathetic downfall is the only reason the story stays engaging.

Mystery Man cites Clint Eastwood’s character in Gran Torino as unsympathetic, but I disagree. He is flawed, not unsympathetic. His racial slurs, the way he takes things into his own hands, are flaws which make him interesting to watch. But we also know he just lost his wife. If that doesn’t immediately make him a sympathetic protag, then I don’t know what does. I think this last example underlines the point that a deeply flawed protagonist is often one audiences will wrap themselves up in, but not a purely unsympathetic one. I agree with Mystery Man -- down with the wimpy execs and the phony pro-readers! But the movie I want to see, the ride I want to go on, is the one where I’m presented with a protag so flawed there’s no way I’ll ever love him or her, but then by the end, I feel true sympathy for what they are going through. What do you think?

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A redneck from Small Town, North Carolina (population 8,000, high school drop-out rate 40%), one day decided to tackle the film industry. Andrew’s film-school short, Son Up, based off his experience teaching at a juvenile hall, ended up winning seven festival awards and made the regionals for the Student Academy Awards. Andrew’s feature script version of Son Up, co-written with Nick Sherman, went on to win first prize at Cinequest. Then one day, the screenwriting gods shined their rarely shown light down from the Heavens and awarded the Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship to Andrew and Nick for their feature script, Holy Irresistible. The duo is now repped by Endeavor and Brillstein Entertainment. They have two projects in development and are lucky enough to be co-writing a spec with another writer they’ve admired for years.

Women & Hollywood: Vendela Vida

2009-06-04T08:47:00.000-07:00

I knew nothing about Vendela Vida before I spoke with her a couple of weeks ago in conjunction with the release of her first film Away We Go which she co-wrote with husband Dave Eggers. (The film opens Friday and I liked it very much.) I very much enjoyed the conversation and am now going to make sure I read all her books which includes And Now You Can Go and Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name. She also co-edits The Believer magazine.

Women & Hollywood: Talk about how the idea for writing this film came about.

Vendela Vida: It started in 2005 and I was pregnant with our first (we now have 2 children) and I basically started taking notes. As a writer that’s how I process the world. I go out and take notes of things that have happened. I was basically surprised when I was pregnant at how much it was an invitation to start talking to me about their experiences with pregnancy and birth and give me advice that I hadn’t necessarily asked for on how to raise my child. It was basically my way of processing other people’s reactions to pregnancy and also my own reaction.

I was taking these notes and a lot of them were about funny stuff I had overheard, conversations I had or things I read in books and didn’t quite know what to do with. I would come home and tell Dave and we would laugh about it and say that would be a funny scene in a movie so we just started experimenting with dialogue for these two characters. We knew the material lent itself more to a movie than a novel because there was so much dialogue. It felt very cinematic to us. We started writing scenes not expecting it to evolve into something we were just trying to make each other laugh. It kind of just went from there.

W&H: Had the two of you ever written together before?

VV: No. The screenplay format seemed to lend itself to the collaboration much more so than obviously a novel.

W&H: Did you write Verona intentionally as a mixed race woman?

VV: Yes we did and we wrote her with Maya Rudolph in mind. It was important to me that she be mixed race and it was also important that she and her partner not have any conversations between the two of them of her being mixed race. Other people could comment on it but it’s never an issue between Burt and Verona.

W&H: What’s the difference between writing fiction, non-fiction and film?

VV: I love writing dialogue and with film the pleasure and difficulty is that you are constricted by space. In a film you have to make sure the dialogue is advancing the plot. With a screenplay you are writing a skeletal outline and you know that the director and actors are going to bring so much more, whereas when you are writing a novel it is all on you. Every period is one you. Every quote is on you. It’s fun to do a collaboration especially because when you are writing a novel you are spending so much time with yourself in your room with your thoughts. I do love novels and they will always be my first love but this was a great experience especially because we started writing after I finished my novel Northern Lights Erase Your Name which is set in the Arctic circle. It’s kind of a dark novel in many ways so it was refreshing to write something more lighthearted.

W&H: I was intrigued that you write the non-fiction book Girls on the Verge (about girl gangs.) Why were you so drawn to that world?

VV: It kind of came about by accident. I wrote one essay in grad school about a female gang initiation ritual I had observed in San Francisco and people suggested that I write another and pretty soon I had a book. I wrote the book when I was a lot younger and I don’t know if I would have written it the same way now but I am very proud of it.

Non-fiction is a lot harder than fiction because you have to be so true to facts. I remember being in a small apartment in NY with all these files and transcripts wishing this person had said this. But you can’t tinker with facts. That’s why I turned to fiction because you so have the opportunity to make things up.

W&H: Women’s novels gets pegged as chick lit just like women’s films get pegged as chick flicks. Any thoughts on that?

VV: It’s hard for me to say because I always look for films and books by women so for me they don’t feel pigeon-holed because I am actively seeking them out. I have Wendy & Lucy in front of me. Whenever there is a female writer or director I go out of my way to find their work.

W&H: Do you have any advice for women writers?

VV: Write female characters that you feel are strong and real. That was the one thing we were trying to do when we wrote Verona. We wanted to make her as real as possible and make her have moments when she was happy and moments when she was not. You have to make female characters as well rounded and representative of the women you know in real life. I don’t think I am in a position to give anyone advice but I look to make female characters real and that’s the responsibility we share as women writers.

W&H: You do so many different things in your life is that how you balance writing novels by yourself?

VV: When you write you are very solipsistic. I am by myself trying to create something and it feels very detached from the rest of the world. So for me one of the most important things is teaching. I teach at 826 Valencia. I teach a number of classes but my favorite one is writing the college essay in October. It is the most rewarding class because you’re helping kids get into college and helping them see themselves in a way they might not realize is unique.

W&H: Do you have an amount of hours you write each day?

VV: I do it by the word count. I used to do it by the hour but I would find that 3 hours and 45 minutes would pass and then I would get to work for 15 minutes. That has been the solution for me. Word count can vary between where you are in the book. It’s always something that’s realistic but is still pushing myself a little.

W&H: What’s next for you?

VV: I’m finishing up a novel that’s set in Turkey about a woman who is 48 has two kids and her husband has passed away. She goes to Turkey to revisit where her marriage started. I have to turn in the final version this week.

Away We Go opens Friday and will roll out across the country over the next few weeks.

Read Script's interview with Vida and husband Dave Eggers in the upcoming July/August issue.

Stay up to date with Women and Hollywood at Womenandhollywood.com.

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Melissa Silverstein is a marketing consultant, writer and blogger. She specializes in the area of women issues, with an emphasis on women and Hollywood. Her blog Women & Hollywood has become a respected site for issues related to feminism and pop culture. In 2008 it was named by More Magazine as one of the “blogs to watch,” and in 2009 it was named “Best Hollywood blog” by totalfilm.com. She is also an entertainment correspondent for wowOwow. Read her full bio at http://womenandhollywood.com/bio/.

Meet the Reader: Readers (Don't) Suck

2009-05-29T06:55:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in my last post, Script recently reprinted an old column of mine call “How Not to Annoy a Reader” -- a humorous list of do’s and don’ts for screenwriters based on the mistakes I’ve encountered in the thousands of screenplays that I’ve read over the years. I also reported that the response to the reprint was generally positive, although there were a few negative reviews as well. One of my favorites was a delightfully cranky diatribe against the very idea of readers. The comment echoed the usual complaint that writers have against professional readers, which goes something like this:

Readers are all angry, low-paid cretins -- would-be writers who couldn’t make it and are now so full of spite and bile that they hate everything they read even when it's brilliant and routinely pass on terrific screenplays because they are so jealous of genuinely talented writers that they do everything they can to sabotage those writers’ careers. Even if readers do like something, it doesn’t matter because they are so lowly and unimportant that no one listens to them anyway. The commenter went so far as to opine: “If a 'reader' is reading your script, nothing will happen with it. Readers are the step before the producer’s assistant. You need to meet producers and directors to have a chance at getting your work made.” It’s a popular assessment, but it’s not accurate and I thought it might be a good idea to set the record just a little bit straighter.

Readers are the first link in the development chain -- it’s their job to take the piles of scripts that a production entity (a studio, production company, or independent producer’s office) receives and separate the wheat from the chaff. They carefully read (not just skim through the first 10 pages while watching TV, talking on the phone, and eating crullers, as many urban legends allege) and assess (in a carefully written report) each piece, passing on the obviously bad or unsuitable (if you’re reading for a company that’s forte is horror films, then a rom-com, no matter how well written, just isn’t going to cut it) scripts and then identifying the strengths and weaknesses of those that remain, before finally either suggesting that the production entity give a piece serious consideration (this rating is usually given to a script that has a great deal of promise but that also has a number of significant problems that need to be solved) or else heartily recommending it as an absolute slam dunk (this rating is given to scripts that are pretty much perfect. For obvious reasons, it is given only rarely). Depending on the structure of the company, a reader usually reports to a story editor or a development executive -- not the producer’s secretary. If the office is small enough, the reader may report directly to the producer him/herself. Obviously, the reader is not the one that makes the final decision or anywhere near about whether a script is bought and/or made, but it is his/her initial assessment that sets the wheels in motion. I can count five or six scripts (including one pretty big Oscar-winner) that were produced by companies that I worked for and that I know I did the initial assessment on. I am in no way claiming that I’m responsible for getting these scripts made, but I know that I certainly played a not-unimportant role in the process.

Most readers are pretty darn smart, many are highly educated, and yes, many are aspiring writers. Almost none of the ones I’ve met are particularly angry, although they can sometimes get a bit sarcastic (so would you if you had to read as many bad scripts as they do). They do pass on a majority of the scripts they read -- not because they’re jealous, but because most of the scripts out there just aren’t very good (sorry, but it’s true). Because they read so much junk, most readers I know are thrilled when they come across a good script (because reading one literally restores your faith in the art form) and rather than kill it, do whatever they can to bring it to the right person’s attention. (Sometimes going to ridiculous lengths. Several years ago, I read a script that I thought was terrific. The prodco I read it for passed, so I’ve been carrying it around ever since and give it to anyone I think might be interested. No takers yet, but I’m not giving up.)

It hurts to have a script rejected -- it is, after all, your sweat and blood -- and when this happens it is probably easier to blame it on some imaginary villain than to accept the fact that your piece just wasn’t up to snuff. But if you’ve come up with something extraordinary, then believe me, a reader’s going to be your very best friend -- a friend that may need to borrow a dollar to get a cheeseburger (because that whole low-paid thing is true), but a friend nonetheless.

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Ray Morton is a writer and script consultant. His books Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Making of Steven Spielberg's Classic Film and King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon from Fay Wray to Peter Jackson are available in stores and online. He analyzes screenplays for production companies, producers, and individual writers. Morton is available for consultation and can be reached at ray@raymorton.com.

Creating Your First Web Series: Zerks Log

2009-05-18T12:33:00.000-07:00

You never have a second chance to make a first impression.

It’s cliché, but true -- especially in the world of entertainment. When an agent, manager or executive sees your work for the first time, he categorizes you in his mind: comedy or drama, TV or film, good or not good. If you’re not on your game, you can spend years fighting against that first impression.

When you’re considering putting your work online, give careful consideration to the fact that it will live forever. Bad screenplays can be tucked away, horrible student films can hide on your DVD shelf, but online content -- especially a first publicized Web series -- can cement your brand for years to come.

Production company StoryForge Labs was recently wrestling with this very issue. Founded to create sci-fi entertainment, they wanted their first Web series to be representative of their years of production experience. “We wanted to make something fun that would be manageable to produce,” says Executive Producer Steve Lettieri, “and also showcase what we were about in terms of sci-fi storytelling and visual effects.”

Out of that thinking came Zerks Log, an 18-episode Web series about the captain of the Venturi 553, a long-lost alien spacecraft, whose video log entries were discovered in the ship’s black box. The narrative of the story leads up to the ship’s mysterious disappearance, as explained by the hapless Captain Zerks. His underplayed comedic tone colors his thoughts on mundane ship business, romantic aspirations, and the serious questioning of one’s own life purpose.

The show’s camerawork is simple: a single locked-off shot, where Captain Zerks shares his thoughts. It’s a familiar set-up to fans of reality TV or LonelyGirl15: a confessional given straight to camera. But the production values are extremely complex. The costume, character puppetry, makeup, and visual effects are top-notch.

Of course, Lettieri and his team at StoryForge want their show to be successful. Lettieri states, “Like [most] of us working in the Web video space, we’re still trying to figure out the business model.” Beyond revenues and audience numbers, part of the measure of success of the show is to introduce a small corner of a larger story. StoryForge has already released two issues of In The Engine Room, an online comic based on the engineers hard at work in the belly of Zerks’ ship. This type of meta-content has already proven success for TV shows like NBC’s Heroes and ABC’s Lost. Lettieri promises more locations and characters in the second season of Zerks Log, already in pre-production. In the future, the expansive story they’ve begun to tell could be licensed, leveraged, or sold.

But perhaps the most crucial benefit of creating Zerks Log is the razor-focused publicity StoryForge is generating for their work. Lettieri and his team have created a great first impression as excellent production artists, with a unique point of view on science-fiction.

It’s easy to envision a scenario where a Hollywood studio producer needs someone to create aliens for a big-budget feature film, or a TV show’s executive producer needs a writer who’s had experience with underplayed sci-fi comedy. In either case, StoryForge has created the first essence of a brand that may pay lasting dividends.

You can watch Zerks Log at: http://zerkslog.com

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Alec McNayr is a writer and executive producer at Space Shank Media, a digital media production company. He serves as a member of the International Academy of Web Television, the voting body for the Streamy Awards.

Wesley Rowe: The Common Touch

2009-05-13T14:55:00.000-07:00

It has been argued by various teachers -- convincingly, I think -- that students stand to learn more from the failures in their chosen art field than the successes. The best failures to learn from are your own, and writing teachers -- from actual instructors to the members of a writers group or just interested friends -- can provide you with very useful critique of the mechanics of your work.

But it's a truism in Hollywood that commerce comes before art. If you want to make money as a screenwriter, you must learn not only what interests people very much like yourself, but the vast swath of America (and the world) that is not. As helpful as these "instructors" can be, their very interest in your screenplay makes them highly unlikely to have tastes in line with the "bubba factor" -- masses that must turn out in droves to a Hollywood movie for it to be profitable. In this regard, people like you don’t have much more insight than you, though they may be able to inform you that the general audience wants or needs you to "keep it simple, stupid (KISS)."

While you can't reach 100 million bubbas on the phone, they have a highly evolved method of communicating their loves, wishes, disappointments and appetites. No, not voting on American Idol. Box-office data. Movie tastes are tallied in dollars.

So, which box-office lessons offer the best instruction on Wide America? The answer is different for everyone. The failure with the most to teach you is the one you didn't see coming or, even better, the one whose box-office failure you still can't fathom. Conversely, the success of a movie you loathe can show you a lot about your blind spots as an aspiring writer.

Even though each individual's tastes are different -- and you, Dear Reader, are the absolutely unique snowflake your mom has told you over and over that you are -- I can make a few educated guesses about what movies might teach you a lesson. You are, after all, a film buff. And the very definition of a movie that film buffs love but bubbas don't is the "cult classic."

The classic I'll pick this time is The Big Lebowski. It only made $17.4 million in the U.S., and about half that internationally. And it must not have wholly satisfied those people who saw it, reflected in its 37% drop in box office from the first weekend in release to the second. Yet your interest in screenwriting makes you quite likely, in my experience, to rank it among your top 5 or 10 comedies of all time, and you probably own a copy. This is the kind of disconnect between student and bubba that is instructive. Lebowski is a big blind spot for me (I own a copy), but I'll give you my most objective effort at gleaning lessons (spoilers!):

1. Don't do drugs. People in big, coastal cities tend to overestimate the "drug tolerance" of people everywhere else. Harold & Kumar smoked a lot of pot in New Jersey to the tune of a very Lebowski-like $18 million. Half Baked did the same.
2. Don't kill the one character in the movie who absolutely doesn't deserve it, and certainly don't do it near the end. It leaves a bad taste.
3. Don't leave a lot of fat in the second act. The thing with the private detective in a VW bug was funny, but probably asked too much of attention spans.
4. Don't go watch the movie again until you get to the end of the list.
5. Don't build a third act from a series of anti-climaxes. The Dude's "big realization" leaves him with no one to pursue. He and Walter brawl with the red herring (the Nihilists), and then the funeral home, and the funeral, and finally the last scene at the bowling alley, but it's not the tournament we've been hearing so much about ...
6. But that's what happens when the movie's main inspiration is The Big Sleep, which is legendary for its anarchy and lack of cohesion. Best to avoid that, too.
7. Bubba probably hasn't seen The Big Sleep.
8. Don't expect a broad audience to dig the resonance between the anticlimactic ending and your theme of nihilism. Corollary: use language everyone understands.

Please critique or rage in the comments section. Or drop a suggestion for other movies that bear such discussion, and maybe we'll get to them in a future episode.
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Wesley Rowe, a freelance writer and independent producer, draws upon work experience ranging from, more recently, creative executive positions at two studio-based production companies, to, in his youth, designing mechanical parts for an NASA satellite that tested Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. He lives in L.A.

Dr. Format: The Industry Standard

2009-05-12T14:17:00.000-07:00

I hear constant references to the industry standard for formatting. Does it actually exist, and, if so, where was it last spotted? And why is there so much confusion around it? I’ll explain and explode a couple of myths along the way just for fun. This should relax you to the point that you’ll not only feel encouraged to write (in correct format), but you’ll get a positive bounce in your immune system as well.

Myth #1 – There is only one specific standard that all writers, producers, readers, and agents adhere to

Screenwriters craft two types of scripts -- spec scripts and shooting scripts -- and each has its own standard. Unless you are being paid in advance to write, you are writing a spec script. Thus, the vast majority of writers write specs. The industry standard for spec writing is explained in The Screenwriter’s Bible. Shooting script style is found in The Hollywood Standard by Christopher Riley. Both major software applications, Final Draft and Movie Magic Screenwriter, are defaulted for spec writing conventions, so you can feel safe with the tabs and margins they preset for you. In addition, both software programs allow you to select shooting script conventions (such as scene numbering) if needed.

Have you noticed that just about everyone has their own idea of correct spec format? The good news is there is one generally accepted industry standard for spec scripts. However, you may see slight variations on the same theme. Let me explain with an example.

One maxim is that dialogue should be indented 10 spaces (one inch) -- that’s the standard -- but I’ve seen scripts written for a particular production company indented 12 spaces. In my view, and in the view of most professionals, the specific number is not crucial in this case. And that leads us to our next myth.

Myth #2 – Your script must be perfectly formatted or it will be thrown out

Virtually all producers, readers, and agents are fine with occasional errors, but when those errors become distractions, the reader may lose patience. Does that mean you can get lax about formatting your script? After all, isn’t the content more important? The story is more important, but its presentation can enhance its chances in the marketplace. May I illustrate with an example?

Suppose I offer you a piece of delicious chocolate cake. You say, “Yes, yummy.” So I grab a chunk with my hand and slap it down on the table. You say, “That’s not very appealing.” And I reply, “Isn’t the content more important than the presentation?”

It’s true that many professionals don’t care much about formatting specifics as long as you are close and the script “looks basically okay,” but others are sticklers. So it is in your best interest to adhere to the industry standard for spec writing as best you can. On the other hand, don’t drive yourself nuts trying to make the script perfect. As I like to tell my students and clients, “The goal is excellence, not perfection.”

The bedrock of spec writing

You want to sell your script. The path to a sale is through the reader. In terms of formatting and spec writing, the reader wants three things -- clarity, readability and uniformity.

CLARITY. You cannot afford to lose or confuse a reader that usually reads quickly. Lately, I’ve seen some sloppy writing. I occasionally stop reading and wonder where I am or whether or not a particular scene is a flashback, or what happened, or whether or not JIM the same as the MAN back on page 7. When in doubt about what to do, err on the side of clarity.

READABILITY. The essence of spec screenwriting is to say as much with as few words as possible. The current trend is towards "lean and clean" screenwriting: shorter screenplays, shorter paragraphs, shorter speeches, and more white space. Your script needs to flow like a river into the mind of the reader. Make your script an “easy read” of a compelling story.

UNIFORMITY. A reader wants your script to be formatted more or less like other scripts he or she has read. And that means adherence to the industry standard for spec writing.

Now relax, have fun, and keep writing.

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Dave Trottier (Dr. Format) is the author of The Screenwriter’s Bible and a produced screenwriter with 10 scripts sold or optioned. As a script consultant he provides absolute honesty at reasonable rates, and evaluates screenplays in 14 key screenwriting areas. Hundreds of his clients and students have sold their work or advanced their writing careers. For a free newsletter and information, visit Keepwriting.com.

Who Saw Star Trek?

2009-05-11T08:38:00.001-07:00

Who saw Star Trek this weekend? What did you think?

Meet the Reader: Here We Go Again ...

2009-05-06T13:51:00.000-07:00

The "Meet the Reader" column ran in Script from 2001 to 2006, at which point it was pulled from the print edition so that it could be moved to this website. Although this took a bit longer to accomplish than originally expected, we’re here now and so I’ll carry on as I did before, offering observations and tips for screenwriters inspired by the hundreds of scripts that I read and analyze each year.

During the print hiatus, Script reprinted one of my old columns in the site. How Not to Annoy a Reade r was a humorous list of mistakes for screenwriters to avoid that I developed based on the errors that I have encountered in script after script. The response to the reprint was generally very positive -- I received many complimentary notes from as near as Hollywood and as far as Lebanon and Iran. However, one response was not so favorable. Fed up with the avalanche of edicts that shower down upon scriptwriters from the experts -- the myriad of analysts, teachers, how-to-book authors, and gurus that make up the screenwriting support industry, all of whom insist that their rules are the rules, despite the fact that the advice offered by one often conflicts terribly with that given by another -- one reader opined, “Ask one simple question to three of you and get 250 totally contradictory answers.”

All of this confusion generates a great deal of anxiety, which is only made worse by the insistence by many of the experts that if a screenwriter doesn’t follow every last bit of their advice, then he/she can expect that his/her script will be forever consigned to the seventh circle of development hell. I encounter this anxiety all of the time in nervous writers asking if it's true that if their first-act plot turn occurs ¾ of the way down page 22 rather than ½ of the way down (because that’s the way some screenwriting book said it had to be), if a particular bit of dialogue runs longer than three lines (because a script analyst said it couldn’t), or if their actions scenes were punctuated with a few periods instead of solely with exclamation points (because a renowned screenwriting guru said this was the only way to let the reader know that the scene was supposed to be exciting), then I will give their script a pass and have them permanently blackballed from the industry. (I’m not making any of this up, by the way. These are all actual bits of advice given to screenwriters by some alleged “experts.”) To help alleviate this anxiety, I thought it would be a good idea to answer the eternal question -- are there really inviolate “rules” for screenwriting? At the risk of further irking my already irritated reader, the answer is yes. And no.

There are very definitely some core principles of dramatic construction -- those first codified by Aristotle in his Poetics and re-explained in various ways over the eons, perhaps most clearly for screenwriters by Syd Field in his book Screenplay -- and, yes, they must be followed, because if they’re not, you may wind up with a ream of pages filled with words, but you’ll never have a story. There is also a standard format for screenplays that must be adhered to because it’s the common blueprint of filmmaking, and if you don’t use it properly no one will know how to interpret your tale for the screen. Finally, there are also the basic rules of proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation. You have to follow these because you want people to understand what you’ve written and because you’ll look like an illiterate moron if you don’t.

As for all of those other rules -- those suggestions, guidelines, tips, and imperatives that insist that certain story points must occur on certain pages, require that there be a strict percentage of ink to blank space on each sheet, and insist that character names in comedies can end only in “k” -- some of them are useful and many are just silly. So, my advice is to implement the ones that help your script and forget the rest. Ultimately, the only rule you have to follow is the prime commandment of storytelling: tell a good one, because if you don’t, then following all of the rules in the world ain’t gonna help you.

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Ra y Morton is a writer and script consultant. His books Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Making of Steven Spielberg's Classic Film and King Kong: The History of a Movie Icon from Fay Wray to Peter Jackson are available in stores and online. He analyzes screenplays for production companies, producers, and individual writers. Morton is available for consultation and can be reached at ray@raymorton.com.

Discussing May/June With Andrew Shearer

2009-05-04T14:32:00.000-07:00

Greetings, avid Script readers, and welcome to the first edition of the issue discussion blog. I look forward to many insightful, productive conversations as well as the spirited and conveniently anonymous disagreements that naturally follow.

As screenwriters trying to make it in Hollywood, we already know reality bites. Only about five percent of all professional specs that go out sell these days. Audiences are watching movies on smaller and smaller screens with shorter and shorter attention spans. And the traffic out here makes our struggling lives all the more hellish. However, Phil Gladwin’s article Reality Bites: Writers Get Clever inspired me to look at how reality sucks in a newer, more positive light.

Let me be clear that I’m someone who downright loathes reality TV and arrogantly prides myself on having never seen an episode of Survivor or American Idol or the next one of whatever. But while reading Gladwin’s retelling of Jade Goody's story, I actually got caught up in it as a dramatic, true-to-life concept. I enjoyed it on the page before it was ruined by the exploitative presentation reality TV often lends itself to. And that got me very excited. It got me thinking about how we as writers often complain about what’s wrong with current trends and simply stick to what we’re comfortable with. But as Gladwin’s article points out, with the decline of reality TV and the rise of new media, we’re arriving at the next step in our yet-to-be-written history as writers: What will our stamp be on the direction of new media content?

Personally, I’m not that interested in watching a podcast or anything really on a screen the size of a Gameboy. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t enjoy writing the content if it’s a good story! It’s pretty exciting too because even writers can do it yourself -- inexpensively. Short films, the kind that go to festivals, cost money (my credit card bill reminds me of that monthly). And they usually require a lot of production. But the kind of new media content intended for the Internet needs only a unique script, a cheap camera, and a couple people willing to get in front of it. Okay, maybe a little more than that. But go watch the shorts on http://www.funnyordie.com/, Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s online shorts site, specifically “The Landlord.” Ninety percent of the pie is creativity -- some of their best videos are the cheapest.

Also, take the example in Robert Gustafson’s and Alec McNayr’s article Anytime Creativity Strikes. The idea of a talk show in less than five minutes is immediately interesting simply because it’s never been done. Now obviously, as the article points out, those guys already had access to celebrities which draws audience. The same goes for Funny or Die.

That brings me to my question. What are you watching? Webisodes, podcasts? Are you writing any content for new media? Where do you think is the direction of new media content?

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A redneck from Small Town, North Carolina (population 8,000, high school drop-out rate 40%), one day decided to tackle the film industry. Andrew’s film-school short, Son Up, based off his experience teaching at a juvenile hall, ended up winning seven festival awards and made the regionals for the Student Academy Awards. Andrew’s feature script version of Son Up, co-written with Nick Sherman, went on to win first prize at Cinequest. Then one day, the screenwriting gods shined their rarely shown light down from the Heavens and awarded the Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship to Andrew and Nick for their feature script, Holy Irresistible. The duo is now repped by Endeavor and Brillstein Entertainment. They have two projects in development and are lucky enough to be co-writing a spec with another writer they’ve admired for years.

What Do You Think?

2009-05-04T07:24:00.000-07:00

Dear Script readers,

I recently received an e-mail that asserts that Script paints too rosy a picture of the screenwriting business. We don’t, the writer claimed, focus enough on the despair and frustration inherent in a career as a screenwriter.

My first instinct was to bundle up a few recent articles to send the e-mailer's way: interviews with A-list writers explaining their struggles against studio notes that grind against their artistic sensibilities. Or about the niceties of team writing and arbitration on countless blockbusters. Aaron Mendelsohn’s moving strike article outlining how, perhaps despite the fact that he has written one of the most profitable franchises in Disney history, he sometimes wonders from month to month how he’ll pay the mortgage. Discussions of new media and reality outlets that circumvent WGA protections by declining to call writers writers. And columnists who -- while lending a decidedly humorous bend to the news -- explain in issue after issue how writers are pushed out, lied to, and downright disrespected in the creative process. Not to mention writers we’ve covered full of hope and promise who have seen their projects crash and burn, or haven’t landed a job in years, or have produced a verifiably intelligent blockbuster, only to have an actor or director take credit for writing the majority of the material (or, conversely, blame the writer above all others when a project bombs due to too-many-cooks syndrome).

In the theatre, they have an adage: If you can imagine yourself doing anything else in the world, by all means, do it. I’m certain the saying has been applied in many screenwriting books and workshops as well. But the point is, even after knowing all of that, thousands of people -- maybe you -- work or aspire to work as scriptwriters for film, television, videogames, and new media. And when you achieve that work, is it wrong for a publication such as ours to celebrate those achievements, especially when very few outlets do?

This year, Dustin Lance Black and Simon Beaufoy did not discuss the darker side of the business in promoting their Oscar®-winning films. Instead they discussed the creative challenges of their respective journeys as they researched their screenplays. Is talking about the creative process over contempt for the studio too rosy a picture? Shawn Ryan changed the face of cable programming with a small cop drama that focused on character over set-pieces. Isn’t that worth celebrating?

If celebrating these writers and their stories is painting too rosy a picture of an industry often filled with disappointment and bad news, then I guess we’re guilty. We aren’t oblivious to the fact that sometimes it takes an invocation of the gods and the movement of heaven and earth to get someone to look at your script. But we do think that there's something of value in examining the successes as well as the failures and frustrations in this industry.

What do you think?

Maureen Green
Web Editor

Scriptmag.com

Live Blog: 82nd Annual Academy Awards®

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Discussing January/February 2010 Issue with Andrew Shearer, Pt. 1

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