Past mistakes
Now that you look back on your career, what was the single biggest mistake or wrong assumption you made early on that someone else could learn from?
–Damion
From the moment I got to Los Angeles, I felt I didn’t deserve to be here. I was never a classic movie buff; I didn’t have a favorite director; my Honda was rusting out, but not in a glamorous, beauty-in-poverty way.
I felt like a fraud, an imposter. Worse, I was taking up a slot that some genuinely deserving person should have gotten. Working in Hollywood was never my childhood dream. It was almost a flip-of-the-coin decision. For all I knew, the next Spielberg was stuck flipping burgers in Wichita because I had taken the last available opening.
Honestly, I felt this way for about three years. I kept waiting to get found out and sent back to the Midwest.
Thinking this way was easily the biggest mistake I made. When you don’t think you deserve to be in the room, no one else will, either.
But the truth, which took me an embarrassingly long time to realize, is that all of the smart, confident people I was meeting really didn’t know any more than I did. Okay, I had never seen Terrence Malick’s BADLANDS. But I had seen every episode of "Bewitched," and that was just as valid.
And I could write better than most of them. That seems like an egotistical statement, but considering I was marking myself lower in every other category, that lone bright spot was a beacon of hope.
It’s hard to synthesize this advice without making sound like insipid pabulum, "just believe in yourself." Perhaps it’s best expressed in the negative: "you’re no stupider than everyone around you."
Avoiding cliches
When you are writing a screenplay, how do you manage to focus on originality and avoid a multitude of clichés just slipping into the story some how?
–Christian
In the writer’s ongoing battle against clichés, he finds two basic enemies: verbal clichés ("as easy as taking candy from a baby"), and story clichés (the explosive with a count-down LED timer).
Eliminating the first kind is simply a matter of recognizing them and finding something better to replace them. I work incredibly hard on the narrative description in my scripts, tweaking it at least as much as the dialogue. With vigilance, the night never has to be "as black as coal" or "as cold as a witch’s tit."
The story clichés are harder to deal with, because certain genres carry them along like parasites. Action movies sometimes have the ticking time bomb, or mismatched partners, or heroes who somehow avoid being hit when a hundred bullets are flying their direction.
The key — and this starts in the conception phase of the script — is recognizing the inherent clichés in a genre, and figuring out how you’re going to handle them. SCREAM did a masterful job pointing out, subverting, and ultimately fulfilling teen-slasher clichés.
Sometimes, the best way to avoid story clichés is to look at the reality behind every character, every setting, every decision made in your story. Is Carla Ann really "a hooker with a heart of gold?" On closer inspection, she might be a nervous, self-deprecating dreamer.
Does the police station need a squad room full of desks and detectives milling about? Maybe your scene could take place in a courtyard, or by the photocopier, or in the cafeteria.
Clichés are shortcuts. The more you avoid taking them, the more interesting the places you’ll end up.
Robert Mckee
Have you taken Robert McKee’s screenwriting class? And if so, what did you learn from it? –Bill
To read his brochure, you’d think that everyone in Hollywood has taken McKee’s course, but the truth is, I don’t know anyone who has.
Whenever I hear his name brought up, it makes these tiny hairs rise on the back of my neck, because it usually means the speaker is going to cite some piece of screenwriting gospel, or use a clever word like "counter-theme."
I’ve never met McKee and have nothing against him, but to read his bio it’s clear that he’s not a very successful screenwriter and never really was. That’s not to say he can’t be a great teacher, just as many great film critics are not filmmakers, nor do I think that there’s anything wrong with a screenwriting class per se, especially if it helps you get off your ass and write. But I would rather have dental surgery than go through a structural analysis of CHINATOWN.
The downfall of these classes and books (Syd Field’s is the best known), is that the guru comes up with a theory about why scripts are good or bad, then manipulates the examples to prove his or her point. I remember one professor in graduate school who when confronted with counter-examples, would label some of the greatest movies ever made "failed films," simply because they didn’t fit her framework.
Overall, it’s worth reading a few books and taking a few classes to get a handle on how Hollywood talks about scripts and movies. Internalize what makes sense to you and chuck the rest. Kevin’s question goes right to the point: You’ll learn the most by reading a lot of screenplays, good and bad, and learning how they work.
The truth is, there’s no magic formula for writing a great script. (Or for that matter, a commercial one.) Anyone who tries to convince you that theirs is the One True Way is deluding themselves and you.
Screenwriting contests
What are your thoughts on screenplay writing contests? There are hundreds of them to choose from, and most of them charge around $50 to enter. Is this truly a viable way for an unknown writer to get discovered? Or is it a waste of money?
–Tim Wilson
The two screenwriting awards I know best are the Nicholl Fellowship and the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, both of which have a history of being a tremendous boon to a young writer. The benefit is not just being selected, but in the follow-up and guidance these programs provide. If you have a great script that feels right for these competitions - and by that I mean it’s not an obviously commercial action thriller or such - these might be places to consider.
Beyond these two, it gets murkier, and harder to separate the good competitions from the bad. In general, I’d say the ones associated with festivals are a little more reputable, and might be worth the entry fee. Just make sure it’s a real festival that’s run for a least three years.
I’m more suspicious of unafilliated competitions, because it’s never clear what their real motivation is. Some are run by upstart management companies who are trolling for young writers. Others are just in it for the cash. And even if it is an honest competition, having won a contest no one’s heard of isn’t going to help you in your career.
Writers on art direction and cinematography
I am a film school student in southern CA, and I just saw a preview for CHARLIE’S ANGELS. I was very intrigued with the mis-en-scene of the picture and I wonder: How much influence does the writer (in this case) have over the art direction and style of photography?
–Anonymous
Well, clearly you’re a film student because you used the term "mis-en-scene." In the case of CHARLIE’S ANGELS, I was more involved than usual during pre-production because of the overall coolness of the director, McG, and production issues that would end up affecting the script. So I saw storyboards and got to know Russell Carpenter, the director of photography. But that’s the exception, rather than the rule.
In general, a writer doesn’t have a lot of direct input on the art direction or photographic style of the movie. Unless it’s important, you don’t mention the color of the walls or whether the light is incandescent or fluorescent. Not only would all these details piss off the people whose job it is to make these decisions, they would make your screenplay unreadable.
That said, remember that it is the screenwriter’s job to evoke the experience of watching the movie through words. Somehow, you have to give a sense of the visual style of the movie without mentioning it all the time. For instance, CHARLIE’S ANGELS tweaks a lot of the conventions of the original TV show, with triptychs and wipes, so when appropriate I included those in the movie. And the plot itself lent a lot to the visual style, setting it entirely in Southern California and featuring three beautiful women who go undercover in all sort of disguises.
How much description is too much? The first time your script visits a location, you can give a sentence or two to describe it. More if you really have to. And if a character is wearing something important to the plot, you absolutely need to describe it.
Original films
These days, first time filmmakers are making works of true strength and originality. The music video school of direction is making movies so stylish that surpassing them would lead to incomprehensability. It seams as though tomorrow’s writers and directors have very little chance to distinguish themselves from the masses of post-Tarantino, super-fancy movies. Is there any way to be something new without reinventing the entire film industry? Must we make avant-garde insanity just to stand out?
–REJ Bach
At first, I thought you were being sarcastic, but on second reading I guess you really are a fan of current cinema. I am too. I think it’s an exciting time to be making, and watching, movies.
Every few months I find myself sitting on panels where an audience member asks a "question" that is really just an excuse to say that nobody knows how to make movies anymore. (Hint to future audience members: just because you say "Don’t you agree?" at the end doesn’t turn a polemic into a question.) I try to be polite and talk about how a younger generation is used to an accellerated speed of storytelling, and doesn’t need to have the dots connected as much, but my true instinct is to tell them to shove it. Yes, Hollywood is making a lot of bad movies, but Hollywood has always made bad movies. You’re just remembering the CITIZEN KANE’s and forgetting the TARZAN AND THE TROLL PEOPLE’s.
Where I disagree with you, REJ, is whether we’ve reached any kind of zenith in storytelling or stylishness. For all the flashy techniques we’ve seen, there’s a thousand more that haven’t been invented, and the backlash against some of the current trends will likely lead to other new ideas. For example, the bullet-time effect in THE MATRIX has been played to death, but in fact it was only one application of a much more important concept: camera movement doesn’t need to be constrained to temporal reality. The next wave of filmmakers will be able to take the concept further, and find new ways to visualize impossible things.
In terms of writing, "post-Tarantino" is a poor catch-all for storytelling that seems to break the normal mold. While it’s true that PULP FICTION had a big influence on a generation of young filmmakers, a lot of the ideas we credit to Tarantino had been percolating for years in less commercially successful films. I believe they would have found their way into a hit sooner or later. (And if I were Tarantino, I’d hate to hear that we were living in a post-Tarantino era. Come on. The guy’s still in his 30’s.)
I’m not a gambler, but I’ll bet every cent I have that some enterprising writer/director will be able to identify the new ideas bubbling under the surface and incorporate them into the next revolutionary mega-blockbuster. It’s the safest wager I could make.
Articles