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Christopher Nolan, Sophia Coppola, Spike Lee, Charlie Kaufman, Quentin Tarantino. The list of fabulous writer-directors who are known to work well with actors is looong.
Alas, I’m not on it.
My background is theater so you wouldn’t think it so. It’s hard for playwrights to come to film, to discover that the priority pyramid is upside-down. Nobody is worshiping the sanctity of your words.
One recalls Samuel Beckett and Play, placing his actors in urns. U-R-N-S! Ultimate writer control. Get in the urn, look straight ahead, read my words!
Please don’t mistake me: I love actors. Some of the greatest experiences in my life has been the reinterpretation of my writing, taking it to mysterious and majestic places I had never conceived. Sometimes there are divine accidents, sometimes the chemistry doesn’t happen, and there’s precious little magic.
As a director I have fallen short of understanding the acting process. Some need coddling, some need an ass-kicking. Wells said the trick is to “make love” to your actors.
The screenwriter isn’t coddled. No one’s there to give you validation, raspberry bonbons or even Reese’s Pieces.
Still, if you’re a writer-director, taking an acting class is essential. Also, make a short or two. Anything to get you on the set, to get a feeling for the acting process. Learn how to motivate them, to see how they approach a scene. The Actor’s Journey is a complicated one, requiring study.
You want to say something, you go about saying it. If only it were that easy…
Life intrudes. So many distractions– work, family. Like Bugs said: “Another day, another carrot.”
If you commit to write a screenplay, it’s got to be a priority. You have to drive yourself. Often times it’s the lack of time and/or energy (see below) that stops you. Other times you just kinda…lose your way. I would suggest…
Examine the reasons why you’re writing. What motivates you? Money? Legacy? A need to tell a great story?
The dollar can motivate. Landlord wants his at the end of month, sure. Bukowski said he wrote better after eating a porterhouse steak than a nickel candy bar. Meaning: Suffering for your art is highly overrated. On the other hand, if you’re only in it for the $$$, you’re bound for a let-down. Any idea how many people write screenplays vs. how many WGA members are making it this year? The best writing is found at the core of emotion, something central to you that translates into universal truth. You must be all in. Go in full, or not at all.
Got an email asking me about writer’s block. I’ve never had writer’s block. Because I’ve got my Linus Blanket:
Outlining, for me, is a Linus Blanket. You might not need it, but you feel better with it wrapped around you. So, how does one outline? The Old School/Syd Field Method is to write out every scene of your movie on 3-by-5 index cards, place the cards on a table in sequential order, and then begin the vetting process of determining that every scene is necessary. You break it down by Act 1-2-3. Double-check the order of your scenes. Is it logical? Is it inevitable? Does it make sense? Is your movie compelling, void of fat, relentless?
I personally outline (though not in Syd Field-style, and not because Syd says I must do so). At Chicago Filmmakers or Columbia College, and with every client I work with, the screenwriter has the option to outline or not. This is about process. Your process. What process do you feel most comfortable with as a writer? Maybe you want discovery, you don’t want to know exactly what happens. One writer described it as taking a vacation and knowing not only every road you’ll drive but every twist in the road ahead of time. Some writers are more intuitive, the last thing they want to do is kill the spontaneous writing impulse by outlining.
Not me. I need my Linus Blanket!”
Pure Fear, of course. Totally irrational. Though I have seen people paint themselves into a corner. “My characters will determine plot, not some pre-conceived notion!” “The character s will speak to me!” I applaud their organic approach, then get an email two months later saying the characters stopped talking to them on page 72. What then?
One more email came in about subject not often discussed, but incredibly important: Energy. Meaning: What energy are you bringing to your writing? This has to do process—how many times a week do you write? What time of day? How many hours each session? There is no one right answer for these questions. Just as there are day people and night people, the time of day you pick isn’t the key—it’s the energy you bring to writing. I have a friend who wakes a 5:30am, is writing by 6 for two hours before heading to his 9-5 day job. He functions best this way. Another comes home from the 9-5, cooks a meal, maybe runs a couple miles, pulls out a six-pack and gets to work at 10pm when the household is quiet. Some people are weekend warriors, not even touching the script during the week. Some write 1 hour a day, 7 days a week. Some write 4 hours a pop a 2 or 3X. Some are weekend warriors, not even touching the script during the week. Some can close a door and steal valuable erergy at work. When you write is as critical as what you write. You have to bring good A- Energy to this. How you do that depends on your situation. Sometimes your feeling blocked might be entirely a case of poor energy. How do you know if you should shut it down for the night? Staring at the page for an hour might qualify (and haven’t we all been there!) looking for a solution and absolutely nothing coming. Time to shut it down. Live to fight another day. Know thyself. Day person? Night? Find the time. Max out the A-Energy.
Edvard Munch, painter of The Scream, once said the test of great art was its correspondence to life. If people recognized truth in it they would take off their hats, as if in church.
Spend a few hours on the internet looking over screenwriting sites, you’ll find a glut of NON-truth. Lots of slick sites, lots of claims. Very few authentic voices like William Martell.
William Martell is a working screenwriter, an author, a teacher. His site, Sex In A Submarine, is excellent. His voice is authoritative because the man has actually written scripts that were made. His insights are gleaned from decades in the trenches. Like the old Merrill Lynch ads said: When Martell talks, people listen. Least I do…
Here are a few tastes from his blog:
I liked his article entitled Are You Flexible? (scroll down) about one of a stalled project starting up without him:
“What you discover when you brainstorm is that there are hundreds of possibilities for your story and if you challenge yourself to keep going – possibilities that you never knew existed. The story doesn’t have to work one way, it can work hundreds of different ways. To find the way that works best, you need to open your mind to every possibility…
Screenwriting is often problem solving. But you must be willing to solve the problems. To look at your screenplay objectively, and realize that even though you love the idea of kids dancing on the beach, that may not fit the dark and violent horror story you are trying to tell. Instead of fighting for your “vision” when it doesn’t work, fight for the screenplay and make sure it works. Be flexible enough to see when something doesn’t work – even if it is something that you love. A script that you love but doesn’t work at all (or stalls out at page 52 and you never get to Fade Out) isn’t a good script. You want to make that script work, and make it work all the way down the line so that it can be made into a movie and be seen by an audience. Hey, that might mean the crusty old guy you originally envisioned ends up being a woman in her early 40s. If that makes the script better, you make the change.”
No Middle Man! (scroll down) is about his struggles pitching to Network production execs.
“Much of my career is due to middle men – they pass the script to their best contact – but that also means a bunch of deals that never were is due to middle men screwing things up. Sometimes you get a Devo with kind of a “tin ear” and they completely fumble the pitch to their boss. Sometimes you get a person who knows someone looking for an action script, and they want to submit your women in jeopardy script (WTF?). Sometimes it’s the middle man who is the problem…
…But part of this business, or any business, is that you not only have the connections that you have, you have the connections that your connections have. I don’t have time to know everybody, I’m writing screenplays. I know a small handful of people, and my scripts sometimes travel to people I do not know. But each person knows someone who knows someone else – it’s networking. The thing about networking is that it’s one of those chains that is only as strong as its weakest link – so you should always expect a bunch of links and chains to break. There is no sure thing, it’s all a numbers game. There will always be people between you and the decision maker, and some of those people may screw things up for you. But others may champion your work and open doors for you. I often have people who read something long ago and remembered it, and maybe submit it at their new company.”
He had me laughing at a recent post about LIMITLESS! (scroll down)
“There are lots of people on message boards who think they will sell their first screenplay for a million bucks and date underwear models while sipping champagne and floating around in Spielberg’s pool. That’s the LIMITLESS version. The more realistic version involves writing a stack of scripts, rewriting them, doing all kinds of hard work and networking, and maybe landing an assignment that never gets made. Sure, I know a couple of people from message boards who worked their asses off and actually sold their scripts (not the first scripts for either one) and the scripts actually got made into theatrical movies with stars. Cool. Those are the couple that I know who seem like overnight successes – and I know a whole lotta people…
…But if you were to find one of those people who might be floating in Spielberg’s pool surrounded by underwear models, that Cinderella story of theirs that sounds a lot like LIMITLESS? Fiction. 99.9% of those overnight success stories had some very long and very dark nights. The LIMITLESS people like to point to those folks… without ever digging very deep into their legends to find out of they are true or not. LIMITLESS people would rather believe the fantasy than search for facts they’d rather not know…”
Last but not least, check out his prose poem to the American Film Market. Epic, indeed!
LOBBY RATS I KNOW
Out by the pool I bump into a guy I know with an interesting background. Max is from Russia, works as a machinist, and loves movies. So he bought a consumer video camera to make his own films, and ended up making someone else’s films. This German guy who had a hit slasher movie in the early 80s and spent all of his money on booze and drugs and broads, ran out of money and decided to make some direct to DVD movies, but had nothing. So he put an advert of Craigslist looking for a camera man with his own camera to film his next horror movie. Max responded to the advert… and ended up filming a bunch of “no budget” movies for this crazy German guy. The crazy German guy found a furniture store that would let him shoot there at night, so he had sets! Actors and crew are from Craigslist, and most get paid zip – they are interns or working for a credit and meals. The crazy German guy’s films are famous for being awful – he doesn’t have a script, just makes up the story as he goes along – but because he makes horror movies about real life serial killers, his films sell to distribs. LionsGate has taken most of them. Max makes a few bucks for providing the camera and shooting the movies… but the crazy German guy makes $100k in profit on every film, and is now a millionaire while Max has made pizza and beer money.
So my Russian friend Max decides to make his own horror movie… doing things exactly like the crazy German guy did it. Craigslist for cast and crew and script, found locations, and lots of improvisation. But now he can’t sell the film. Horror isn’t selling like it used to, and his story has no hook at all, and I have not seen the movie, but it may be bad. Really bad. So he is at AFM as a Lobby Rat, trying to get someone to take his film. He has screeners on DVD in his coat pocket and “flaps” in a briefcase. I ask him how it’s going and he says “Good” but doesn’t mean it. I feel sorry for the guy – he watched the crazy German guy make over a million bucks, and when he tries to do the same thing he can’t even make a dollar. He told me he’s been offered a job shooting porno movies, and is giving it serious consideration.
In the lobby I bump into a director I know who is seriously in need of work. He lucked into making a couple of films and the people who hired him to direct his two features are not interested in hiring to direct anything else. So he’s in the lobby looking for work, and asks me if I have any script projects in the works that need a director. I answer “maybe” and say that I’ll keep him in mind, but I’m really not sure I can recommend him to a producer. Both of the movies of his that I’ve seen have had basic direction problems (violated the 180′ rule, missing key shots, bad acting, and many other issues). Best I can do is forward his reel, and let the producer make the decision. Why is it that people who luck into a job think their luck will hold?
The girl in the Backless Sundress passes by and I decide to just stare at her chest long enough to read the company name on her badge… but she turns away just as I turn towards her and I can only see her perfectly tanned back. No tan lines. Hmm.”
Bill, lots of respect here. Hang in there.
Sex In A Submarine.
Do I write from personal experience? Sure. Dialogue from daily, real-world insanity can’t be beat. Try this exercise: Write down something you hear this week. On the subway, on the line at Target…you’ll know it when you hear it. Check out the repetition, the interruption, cursing, lost thought, imbecility, dialects. These are hard to create from scratch.
Does that mean you have to be a murderer to write a murderer? Of course not. But it might explain why a 19 year-old at Columbia College might have trouble finding a short film subject. Lack of real-world experience never helps a writer. Do you have to go through hell in a relationship to write about one? Not necessarily. But as Bukowski said, it doesn’t hurt.
A student of mine was a Marine interrogator. When she wrote a war piece on Afghanistan. Yes, there were interrogation scenes and they were helped by her expertise. But that’s not why she wrote the script. She had something to say about the war, it was her passion. So, bottom line, write what you know.
Although…
Recall the scribe who said: “You think your life will make an interesting movie. Trust me, it won’t.”
Hitchcock defined suspense:
“Suppose there’s a bomb hidden in a room and it’s set to go off at one o’clock. If the audience doesn’t know the bomb is there, it explodes, there’s a big boom, and the audience says, ‘What the heck was that?’
But if the audience does know about the bomb—if they know exactly where the bomb is hidden and exactly when it will go off—that’s when you create suspense. Someone goes to open the cupboard where the bomb is hidden…but at the last moment, someone else calls the first person away. Someone comes in and invites everybody to go outside to play croquet…but nobody’s interested. A dog starts sniffing about the cupboard…but the dog’s owner says, “Bad boy!” and pulls the dog away. The tension builds each time it looks like someone might find the bomb, or convince everybody to leave the room safely. By the time one o’clock rolls around, the whole audience is on the edge of its collective seat.”
So much of storytelling is about withholding information. Who has the information? When do you give the audience the information? Knowing when to give and when to hold back is the essence of suspense. But that isn’t the only genre where this applies. Withholding information is as important for romantic comedy as mystery. What you don’t want is exposition. Anyone can have the husband blather on about his cheating wife. Fellini shows the man playfully following a dog, turning a corner to find his wife kissing a strange man.
Where do the twists/reveals/surprises happen in your story? Have you outlined, thought it all out? Did you provide red herrings, false leads? Understand when to give, and when to withhold information.
Put your protagonist in a double bind. If he does X, something bad happens. If he does Y, it’s worse. Force them to choose…
This is an impossible situation, with true and terrible stakes. How characters react is why we go to movies. Putting ourselves into that brutal, ridiculous, hilarious moment with them. DeNiro in Deer Hunter, not wanting to die but stepping in to play Russian Roulette because– if he doesn’t– Christopher Walken will die. Or Godfather 2, when Michael realizes that Freddy has betrayed him ( in the Cuban nightclub). Watching Pacino’s face, his “heart broken”, having to decide if he will kill his own brother or not.
Do you have a gut-ripper like this? What does your POV character have to lose? What does she love? How does her inner journey and fears conflict with what the story forces her to do? How far will she go? Where’s your double bind?
Five pages! It’s been drummed into your head. That’s all you have to keep the reader’s attention. Took you 8 months to rewrite the freakin’ thing but you’ve got all of five pages to make it happen or it’s the recycle pile for you. Terrific. So how do you stand out? Do you go for the home run and try something outrageous?
The first five pages should establish four things: World, Tone, Key Characters, and Conflict. You also know that two people talking over a table for the first five pages of the movie is not visual. It would be suicide to start your movie with a single five page Interior dialogue scene, right?
Then you watch Inglorious Basterds and watch Tarantino take not five, but ten minutes for the opening set piece…
Suicidal? Not if you can pull it off. With so many spec scripts seeking the light of day, maybe taking a risk is the way to go.
I’ll catch grief for this. Yeah, I’m a romcom hater. I’m not the only one, either…
I like what Ebert said in a recent review of the movie Couples Retreat: “The concluding scenes are agonizing in the way they march through the stages dictated by an ages-old formula. We know all four couples must arrive at a crisis. We know their situations must appear dire. We expect a transitional event during which they realize the true nature of their feelings… We expect sincere confessions of deep feelings. And we know there must be a jolly conclusion that wrap everything up.”
There’s formula and there’s formula. It’s hard to get beyond the predictability of this genre. Also, the lack of stakes…
Our heroine wants to go back for her 10th High School anniversary but has no one in her life. She hires a hunk to pose as her man so all her old high-school friends will never know the terrible truth! She falls for the hunk—of course—and consequences ensue. She couldn’t admit she didn’t have anyone in her life because, well, she just couldn’t!
Yuck.
No Grammar Police here. This one goes out merely as a public service. You learned this stuff in 7th grade, so why I do read so many scripts that mistake it’s and its? You spend six months writing a phenomenal story only to get tripped up by mistaking their and they’re?
The President would be capped in your screenplay. So would a Congressman, the Plumber, even Mom and Dad.
They’re/Their/There. “They’re” is the contraction of “they are”. “Their means it belongs to them. “There” is a place. They’re going there with their parrots?!”
Too/To/Two. “Too” means also. “To” is the opposite of from or modifies a verb into the future. “Two” is the #2. If the two of you are going to Florida, please bring me, too.
Then/Than. “Then” means sequence, that something happens first. “Than” indicates comparison. He’s heavier than I am. Jimmy moved to Green Bay, then I did.
It’s/Its. “It’s” is “it is”. “Its” indicates possession. For all its grand design and fabulous decor, it’s a shame we’ve been stuck on this Blue Line train for an hour.
Which/That. “Which” indicates choice. Which one? “That” is just one, no choice. Of the two flights, that’s the one which will get us to Costa Rica faster.
Farther/Further. “Farther” means more than far. Further just means more, not distance. Please, how much further? I can’t run any farther, I really can’t.
Lay/Lie. Lie means recline. Lay means to place. Lie down on the bed. Lay the pepperoni pizza on the table.
“It’s”, not it is. “Can’t”, not cannot. Dialogue flows better using these.
There are certain words that almost always have a comma when at the beginning or end of a sentence. “Yes, I mean you. No, I don’t mean her. I meant him, too. Right, that’s all of them.” A sentence rarely has more than two commas. Where it would cause too many pauses in a sentence, excessive commas may be dropped. “Gabrielle, you too.” Note that it’s not “Gabrielle, you, too.”
Another use of commas is to separate description from a person or thing: “This is even better than being kissed by Jordan, the cute trombonist.” You know it needs a comma because it’s a contraction of two sentences. “This is even better than being kissed by Jordan. He’s the cute trombonist.”
“Larry’s friends can’t drive. They grew up on a commune in the 60s with no cars. His friends’ hippie parents went green, man.” Note that the apostrophe comes after the ‘s’ when it’s plural and the second ‘s’ is dropped.
Also note that “its” is a pronoun possessive adjective, like my, your, his, her, our, their…none of which have apostrophes.
Everything happens in the now in a screenplay. “Trinity explodes through the window and tumbles down the stairs.” Not, “After Trinity had fallen through the window and tumbled down the stairs…” If there’s an ed on the end of your verbs, there’s a problem.
A sentence with fifteen or twenty words is probably a run-on sentence. Consider breaking it into two sentences.
