Movie quotes
It has always bothered me that screenwriters are left out of the credit for famous quotes. For instance "Here’s looking at you kid," or "Put your lips together and blow," are almost always credited to the actors or even referenced as the movie directed by "so and so." Even worse, some movie theatre chains throw quotes from famous films up on screen prior to the previews and NEVER credit the screenwriter. Where is the screenwriter?! Do you have any feelings about this? Does the Writers Guild of America take a position on this?
–Robert
Although I am not an official spokesperson for the WGA in any way, I can safely say they’re against it. They’re probably even outraged. But in the whole pecking order of guild priorities, it’s certainly quite low.
Personally, I feel it’s always wrong to quote an author without giving credit. It’s also wrong to bring a four-year old to an R-rated movie, but it happens so much I’ve given up being angry about it. For better or worse, I’ve become complacent about a lot of things that used to really piss me off.
If you feel like becoming an activist for this issue, you might direct your first missive to the good folks at National Cinema Network (www.ncninc.com), the company that actually creates and markets most of those pre-show slides you see. While you’re getting them to properly attribute their movie quotes, would you also get them to make their jumbles harder? It’s a little insulting to have to decode a famous movie star when given "M O T S A N K H."
Copyright and changes
As a budding screenwriter, I’ve sent something away to be copywritten. Since it’s been sent out, I’ve made a few minor changes to it, including changing a character’s name and deleting a scene. Is it possible to make changes to the registered screenplay, and still have it protected without having to send in the new draft?
–Matt
"Copywritten" seems like it should be a word, but it isn’t. The problem is the "written" part. Copyright actually has nothing to do with the process of writing. It’s a legal protection on a piece of intellectual property that can be transferred, sold or bartered. Columbia Pictures owns the copyright to GO, even though they didn’t write it.
The word you’re looking for is "copyrighted." Based on the lawsuits we all read about, in which rap stars get sued for copyright violations after sampling three seconds of a song, it’s understandable that you want to be hyper-vigilant about copyright.
Vigilant is not the same thing as paranoid, however, which is what you’re being.
Copyright is actually a fairly broad protection of intellectual property; that is, an idea and its execution. Changing a character’s name or deleting a scene doesn’t fundamentally alter your work, and wouldn’t fundamentally alter your ability to protect it.
How much needs to change to make re-registering your script worthwhile? That’s obviously going to depend on the project. If you rewrote the last act so that the big action climax takes place on the space shuttle rather than a yacht, then sure, maybe that’s worth re-registering. But if your rewrite just changes some dialogue and fixes typos, then forget about it. While such tweaking hopefully makes your script better, it doesn’t change anything in the grand scheme of things.
Finding confidence
As a fledgling screenwriter/English major in college I often feel insecure about my work. How did you get over this as a writer and any advice for the rest of us?
–Jeff
Alas, the flip side of Insecurity tends to be Arrogance. I highly recommend the former over the latter.
Ideally of course, you’d find a middle ground called Confidence. Maybe you’ll be lucky, and that will come early in your career. Until then, here are a few pointers in no particular order of importance:
- Remember that you’ll never please everyone with your work.
- Seek out the opinions of people you trust and respect.
- Don’t make changes based on opinions of those you neither trust nor respect.
- Remember that first drafts are never perfect.
- Strive to make every sentence as good as it can be, even if it’s just a
character walking through a door.
- Just because someone is more successful than you, doesn’t mean they’re
more talented.
- Role models are fine, but remember you’re only seeing their successes and
not their failures.
- Patience is a virtue, but impatience might make you work harder.
- Most good writers weren’t popular growing up.
- You will fail and succeed at various times for various reasons you can’t predict. Know this going in, and you’ll roll with it when it happens.
Script writing software
Would you recommend that a beginning writer use script writing software? If so, do you prefer a specific program?
–Mike
I used the style sheet formatting on Microsoft Word for my first few scripts, partly because screenwriting software was still in its infancy, and partly because I was too broke to buy any other program. If you already have a capable word processor, you can certainly get by with that, particularly if money is tight.
I now use Final Draft, which does a remarkably good job with a lot of the script formatting drudgery. It’s worth downloading the free trial version to see if you like it enough to spend $199 for it. Given that 80% of my day is spent using that one program, it’s definitely worthwhile for me.
Story first, then characters
I often find myself writing half of a screenplay, and then throwing it on the scrapheap because my characters have totally lost their direction. How do I build on my characters to help me, by taking the story in their own direction?
–Colin
In your case, I would urge you to really figure out the end of your story before you begin writing. Otherwise, it’s very easy to keep writing scene after scene and end up with interesting characters in a mess of a story.
One trap that many beginning writers encounter - especially those who’ve read some of the more notorious screenwriting books - is taking the truism "character-driven story" too literally. Yes, the most successful and engaging movies are those where the characters seem to be in control of their own destiny, where every turn of the plot seems to derive from an element of their personality.
But it’s naïve to think that all a writer has to do is come up with amazing characters and watch them go to work. The truth is, great characters are useless unless we see them doing interesting things - and coming up with those things is the screenwriter’s job. Don’t start writing until you know both who your characters are and what they’ll be doing.
Similar plotlines
I’m a great fan of movies. After so many years of watching films I decided to write something. One day I conceived a subject. I developed it in my mind until I decided to write it down. But, unfortunately or fortunately, I saw VANILLA SKY. My main story and character is very much like that film. Even some details are exactly the same. What would you do if you watched a movie that is very close to the story you’re writing?
–Anonymous
A philosopher who’s studied up on the nascent field of memetics might argue that people don’t actually think of ideas. The ideas are already out there, competing with each other to get people to think them.
In the case of your movie, there was an idea floating out there about a guy who was experiencing life strangely because, it turned out, he was already dead and dreaming. This idea came to you. Unfortunately, it also came to Cameron Crowe, in the form of the Spanish director Alejandro Amenabar’s movie ABRE LOS OJOS.
Back in college, I kept thinking about doing a movie or TV series about an asteroid headed for Earth. I wasn’t the first person to come across this idea. I opened the trades one day to find that ARMAGEDDON and DEEP IMPACT were suddenly racing into production. I was a little bummed, but reassured to think that at least I was capable of a commercial idea.
If you’re halfway through a script and you see a movie that is almost exactly your story, then you have fair reason to moan and cry and tear your hair out. In general, though, writers who abandon one of their projects because "it was too much like" whatever, were just looking for an easy excuse to stop writing it.
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