John August

Dead Projects

Shazam! It ain’t happening.

Dead Projects, Projects, Shazam

marvelBefore the holidays, I promised a post-mortem on Shazam!, the big-screen adaptation of the DC comic I’ve been working on since early 2007. In case you’re not familiar with the character, here’s what I wrote when I first announced the project:

Captain Marvel is a superhero roughly as powerful as Superman, minus the heat-vision and cold breath. What’s unique about the character is that in ordinary life, he’s teenager Billy Batson. Speaking the name of the wizard who gave him his powers (Shazam) calls down a magic thunderbolt, transforming him into the studly superhero. But he’s still a teenager in there.

If this to you sounds, “Like Big, but with superpowers,” then congratulations! You now understand Hollywood.

So that you may further understand Hollywood, let me briefly fill you in on what’s happened in the meantime.

I wrote a draft for New Line. Around the time I turned it in, there was a lot of speculation about whether New Line would continue to remain in business, but there was enough enthusiasm that the mini-studio ran the numbers and considered going into production before a potential actors’ strike. (The WGA strike hadn’t yet happened, but it looked inevitable.) Director Pete Segal was busy on Get Smart, costarring Dwayne Johnson, and rumors began building that The Rock would play Black Adam. A lot of people liked that idea, me included.

I would describe this draft as a comedy with a lot of action. It mostly centers on Billy Batson getting and learning how to use his powers, and discovering what happened to his parents that left him an orphan. One of the appeals of the project is that Billy is a comic book hero who actually reads comic books. Black Adam ultimately becomes the adversary, but he works much like Voldemort in the Harry Potter movies — a dark force to battle at the end, not a constant presence throughout. I wrote the draft I had pitched, and was very happy with how it turned out.

I got notes from New Line and the producers — mostly about set pieces, and keeping Black Adam from becoming too sympathetic — but before I could get started, the WGA went on strike. I couldn’t write, nor did I talk to anyone involved for 100 days.

When the strike was over, Shazam! was suddenly a Warner Bros. movie.1 The new executive at Warners said he agreed with the New Line notes, and told the producers I should go ahead with my rewrite. We weren’t on the official production schedule, but there were discussions about budgets and timelines. We were definitely Pete Segal’s next movie, and many of the stories coming out of the press junkets for Get Smart were about Shazam.

When we turned the new draft in to the studio, we got a reaction that made me wonder if anyone at Warners had actually read previous drafts or the associated notes. The studio felt the movie played too young. They wanted edgier. They wanted Billy to be older. They wanted Black Adam to appear much earlier.

(I pointed out that Black Adam appears on page one, but never got a response.)

I expressed my frustration that I’d wasted months of my time and a considerable amount of the studio’s money on things that should have been discussed at the outset. I asked for a meeting with the executive in charge. He and I had one phone call, then I got a new set of notes that didn’t gibe with what we had discussed. (The written studio notes, I will say, were well-considered. I disagreed with the direction they were taking the movie, but they were thorough and self-consistent.)

In retrospect, I can point to two summer Warner Bros. movies that I believe defined the real issue at hand: Speed Racer and The Dark Knight. The first flopped; the second triumphed. Given only those two examples, one can understand why a studio might wish for their movies to be more like the latter. But to do so ignores the success of Iron Man, which spent most of its running time as a comedic origin story, and the even more pertinent example of WB’s own Harry Potter series. I tried to make this case, to no avail.

I was under contract to deliver one more draft. So I took them at their (written) word and delivered what they said they wanted: a much harder movie, with a lot more Black Adam. This wasn’t “Big, with super powers” anymore. It was Black Adam versus Captain Marvel, with a considerable push into dark territory and liminal badlands like Nanda Parbat. It wasn’t the action-comedy I’d signed on to write, but it was a movie I could envision getting made. The producer and director liked it, and turned it in to the studio while I was in France.

By the time I got back, the project was dead.

By “dead,” I mean that it won’t be happening. I don’t think it’s on the studio’s radar at all. It may come back in another incarnation, with another writer, but I can say with considerable certainty that it won’t be the version I developed.2

Yes, that sucks. And obviously, I can only share my interpretation of what transpired. There were dozens of meetings and phone calls in which I had no participation. As a reader, you should certainly consider the possibility that I wrote shitty scripts they simply didn’t want to make. Because Warners controls copyright on them, I can’t put them in the Library for you to read yourself. So you have to decide whether to take my word on it.

The larger point of this retelling is to help readers understand that at every level in a screenwriter’s career, there are projects that simply don’t happen, mostly for reasons you couldn’t anticipate at the outset. I’ve had good experiences at Warner Bros. (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride) and bad experiences (Tarzan, Barbarella). My next movie is at that studio, so while I’m frustrated by the way they handled this project, I have no axe to grind. When they have a movie they want and support, they’re top-notch.

I got paid well to write Shazam, and I get to keep that money. The real cost is an opportunity cost — the other projects I could have written that might be in production now. More than anything, that’s one of the reasons production rewrites are so appealing to established writers: you know those movies are going to get made.

Also softening the blow is that I’m already writing a new project, one I might have had to pass up if Shazam had dragged on any further. The first half of 2009 is going to be very busy. So while I’ll miss Shazam, and the movie it could have been, I won’t feel too bad if this is the last post I ever write about it.

  1. Warners has a relationship with DC Comics that goes beyond the corporate kinship with New Line, so they apparently could have gotten involved even if New Line had remained separate. ↩
  2. Keep in mind that press releases often have little relationship to reality. The same week I found out that Shazam! was dead, Variety and several online news outlets ran stories about Pete Segal’s new overall deal with Warners, which highlighted Shazam! as his next project. I got several “Congratulations!” emails. ↩

Aquaman is a Pescepublican

Dead Projects, Projects, Psych 101

Recent articles about the political leanings of popular comic book characters got me thinking about the uncanny valley between fictional and real-world ideologies. We’re happy to have characters speak in broad terms — “With great power comes great responsibility” — but the minute they start referring to specific issues, we become very uncomfortable.

How does The Flash feel about immigration? Is Wolverine pro-choice? Does Black Canary support the First Amendment rights of hate groups? We don’t know, and really don’t want to know.

To be certain, comics sometimes do have their characters take specific, controversial political stands. Famously, Frank Miller’s Superman in The Dark Knight Returns is literally working for Reagan. But more often, we get placeholders and parallels to soften the blow.

Wonder Woman’s homeland of Themiscyra is isolationist, as the U.S has been at times. The Green Lanterns police the universe, like U.N. peacekeepers writ large. And X-Men are mutants who fight prejudice, discrimination and mutant-phobia.

Sometimes the analogies are transparent. Black Adam rules Kahndaq with an iron fist — he’s literally a weapon of mass destruction, and a danger to the free world. But the facile Iraq/Al-Qaeda parallels only go so far. Yes, he’s a tyrant, but there’s no religion or oil at stake, no greater cause beyond his own ego. If Black Adam were to get sucked into a magic scarab, or sent to the farthest reaches of the universe, there would be no more “Kahndaq crisis.” 1

And this is probably a good thing. I’d argue that the thematic success of comic book characters, and comic book storylines, comes from how closely they can approach the line separating Real from Too Real, without crossing it.

For example, this summer’s The Dark Knight is set in the most realistic Gotham City yet, but its characters still speak in broad philosophical proclamations. Just listen to Batman:

Sometimes, truth isn’t good enough. Sometimes people deserve more. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded.

Sometimes, dialogue should only be spoken while wearing a mask. His statement makes sense in abstract, but you wouldn’t want it applied to, say, the invasion of a sovereign nation based on false evidence. Even Commissioner Gordon seems to understand that Batman is better suited to villain-thumping than leadership. His improbable answer to his young son’s question about why Batman is running:

Because he’s the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now…and so we’ll hunt him, because he can take it. Because he’s not a hero. He’s a silent guardian, a watchful protector…a dark knight.

(MUSIC RISES.)

Efforts to place TDK’s Batman on a real-world political spectrum are doomed. Sure, he’s tough on crime, but he’s also anti-gun. He holds himself outside the law, but destroys his own phone-tapping technology. Is he a Conservative? A Liberal?2 A Libertarian?

Nope, he’s just Batman. And as a comic book character, he’s allowed to hold simultaneous incompatible philosophies.

I think fans are responding to this latest wave of superhero movies not because they’re more realistic, but because they safely insulate us from reality, letting us address epic themes without uncomfortable details. Law versus Chaos is entertaining in TDK, but messy when you look at Iraq. The military-industrial complex is, well, less complex when Tony Stark can simply stop making weapons. And become a weapon. Or something. (The important thing is, he beat up Jeff Bridges, who was visibly evil and bald.)

The episode of Heroes: Origins I was set to write and direct last year deliberately crossed that line between “somewhat believable” and “far too realistic.” It was structured as an installment of A&E’s great documentary series Intervention, and followed two addicts with superpowers. We never shot it — the whole series got shelved — but I’m not sure it would have worked. And the producers were certainly nervous. In Iron Man, Tony Stark’s alcoholism is fundamental but non-threatening; real addiction is too real, too uncomfortable.

On some level, we want to keep our heroes just pure enough to fight the bad guys without encumbrance.

  1. As recent history has shown, simply getting rid of the leader achieves less than you’d think in the real world. ↩
  2. Note: Dry humor at link. You have to read a few entries to get the gist of it. ↩

Time jumps and oil drilling

Dead Projects, Projects, QandA, Television, Words on the page, Writing Process

questionmarkI’m writing a movie that makes a time jump about 90 pages in, meaning at the beginning I’ve got a couple of 10-year olds who’ll be about 18 at the end. That’s not my problem though, since the jump is unavoidable and casting different actors actually makes sense in this case.

My question is: What’s the best way to label the new characters/actors? I checked your Big Fish shooting script in which you used terms like “YOUNG EDWARD” — but do I have to do this, if the older (or younger) characters never turn up again? Because “ADULT CHRIS” or “ADULT GINA” sounds a bit stupid in German. Could I just keep the original name after pointing out the leap in time or would that cause confusion?

Might sound like an insignificant detail to you, but it’s been bothering me for some time now.

— Fabian
Germany

Yes, you need to label them differently, because people will actually get confused. They might not when they’re reading through it from page one, but when they’re going back through the script looking for a specific scene, they will need to know immediately whether they’re looking at an 18-year old or a 10-year old. And if you do make it to the production stage, that chance of confusion increases exponentially, because scenes will be scheduled and shot out of order.

Given where your time jump occurs, I’d label the adult characters as such, or give them slightly altered names. (The young version of CHRIS becomes CHRISTOPHER as an adult, etc.)

. . .

questionmarkA two part question: I’m currently writing a spec script, a legal thriller set in Washington D.C. While I started it over a year ago — outlining, making notes, character sketches — I shelved it due to other work demands. Now I find that the subject matter (domestic oil drilling) is gaining topical currency in a way that I didn’t anticipate when I started out. Which is both good and bad.

A) Should I continue to write it, knowing that there is a strong possibility that it may be old hat by the time I finish (6 months to a year for a passable first draft. I have a day job!)? Or should I forge ahead in the hope that it may still hold some topical currency by the time I’m finished? And…

B) Since much of the story has to do with the law, and the subversion of a particular piece of legislation, how do I go about acquiring some fluency with legal protocol without enrolling in Law School? I’m a naturalized American citizen, so there is still lots I don’t know about the American justice system. If you were to approach material like this, where would you begin in order to make it at least plausible? Would you line up a couple of friendly D.C. lawyers and try to get some interviews? Try for an internship at the Dept of Justice? This material needs to be very well-executed for it not to be laughable (I’m after The Firm, not Pearl Harbor), and I’m anxious that the plot details at least make sound legal sense.

— Mark
New York

Yes, write it. No, don’t take an internship at the DoJ. But you’re going to need to hang out in D.C. to get the answers you want.

The kind of research you need to do will be an ongoing part of the process. You research; you find something that helps your story; you hit a roadblock; you do more research. You’re looking for believable dialogue, but more importantly, a believable approach to the situation you’re presenting in your story. That’s why you need to find someone (better yet, a couple of someones) who approximates the kind of characters you have in your story.

When I was writing the pilot for D.C., I wandered around Capitol Hill introducing myself to young staffers, and got them talking about their jobs. A few were interesting enough that I kept up with them via email, and could easily ask them a question about their lives on or off the clock. The show wasn’t staggeringly realistic — it had roughly as much verisimilitude as Felicity — but the characters were doing and saying the kinds of things they would in real life. (Just faster, and with better hair.)

From what you’re describing, it sounds like you need attorneys and staffers who handle energy legislation. You can find them. If you know anybody working in Washington, you’re probably two degrees of separation from someone in that job. And if you don’t know anyone there, hop on the train and head to the Hawk n’ Dove bar at happy hour. Two beers in, you’re likely to meet someone who knows someone.

How to cut pages

Big Fish, Charlie's Angels, Dead Projects, Formatting, Go, How-To, Words on the page

One page of screenplay translates to one minute of movie. Since most movies are a little under two hours long, most screenplays should be a little less than 120 pages.

That’s an absurd oversimplification, of course.

One page of a battle sequence might run four minutes of screen time, while a page of dialogue banter might zip by in 30 seconds. No matter. The rule of thumb might as well be the rule of law: any script over 120 pages is automatically suspect. If you hand someone a 121-page script, the first note they will give you is, “It’s a little long.” In fact, some studios will refuse to take delivery of a script over 120 pages (and thus refuse to pay).

So you need to be under 120.1, both Big Fish and Go are more than 120 pages. I’m not claiming that longer scripts aren’t shot. I’m saying that if you go over the 120 page line, you have to be doubly sure there’s no moment that feels padded, because the reader is going in with the subconscious goal of cutting something.2

Which usually means you need to cut.

Before we look at how to do that, let’s address a few things you should never do when trying to cut pages, no matter how tempting.

  • Don’t adjust line spacing. Final Draft lets you tighten the line spacing, squeezing an extra line or two per page. Don’t. Not only is it obvious, but it makes your script that much harder to read.

  • Don’t tweak margins. With the exception of Widow Control (see below), you should never touch the default margins: an inch top, bottom and right, an inch-and-a-half on the left. 3

  • Don’t mess with the font. Screenplays are 12-pt Courier. If you try a different size, or a different face, your reader will notice and become suspicious.

All of these don’ts could be summarized thusly: Don’t cheat. Because we really will notice, and we’ll begin reading your script with a bias against it.

There are two kinds of trims we’ll be making: actual cuts and perceived cuts. Actual cuts mean you’re taking stuff out, be it a few lines, scenes or sequences. Perceived cuts are craftier. You’re editing with specific intention of making the pages break differently, thus pulling the end of the script up. Perceived cuts don’t really make the script shorter. They just make it seem shorter, like a fat man wearing stripes.

Fair warning: Many of these suggestions will seem borderline-OCD. But if you’ve spent months writing a script, why not spend one hour making it look and read better?

Cutting a page or two

At this length, perceived cuts will probably get you where you need to be. (That said, always look for bigger, actual cuts. Remember, 117 pages is even better than 120.)

Practice Widow Control. Widows are those little fragments, generally a word or two, which hog a line to themselves. You find them both in action and dialogue.

HOFFMAN

Oh, I agree. He’s quite the catch, for a fisherman. Caught myself trolling more than once.

If you pull the right-hand margin of that dialogue block very, very slightly to the right, you can often make that last word jump up to the previous line. Done right, it’s invisible, and reads better.

I generally don’t try to kill widows in action lines unless I have to. The ragged whitespace helps break up the page. But it’s always worth checking whether two very short paragraphs could be joined together.4

Watch out for invisible orphans. Orphans are short lines that dangle by themselves at the top of page. You rarely see them these days, because by default, most screenwriting programs will force an extra line or two across the page break to avoid them.5

Here’s the downside: every time the program does this, your script just got a line or two longer. So anytime you see a short bit of action at the top of the page, see if there’s an alternate way to write it that can make it jump back to the previous page.

Nix the CUT TO:’s. Screenwriters have different philosophies when it comes to CUT TO. Some use it at the end of every scene. Some never use it at all. I split the difference, using it when I need to signal to the reader that we’re either moving to something completely new story-wise, or jumping ahead in time.

But when I’m looking to trim a page or two, I often find I can sacrifice a few CUT TO’s and TRANSITION TO’s. So weigh each one.

Cutting five to ten pages

At this level, you’re beyond the reach of perceived cuts. You’re going to have to take things out. Here are the places to look.

Remove unnecessary set-ups. When writing a first act, your instinct is to make sure that everything is really well set up. You have a scene to introduce your hero, another to introduce his mom, a third to establish that he’s nice to kittens. Start cutting. We need to know much less about your characters than you think. The faster we can get to story, the better.

Get out of scenes earlier. Look at every scene, and ask what the earliest point is you could cut to the next scene. You’ll likely find a lot of tails to trim.

Don’t let characters recap. Characters should never need to explain something that we as the audience already know. It’s a complete waste of time and space. So if it’s really important that Bob know what Sarah saw in the old mill — a scene we just watched — try to make that explanation happen off-screen.

For example, if a scene starts…

BOB

Are you sure it was blood?

…we can safely surmise he’s gotten the necessary details.

Trim third-act bloat. As we cross page 100 in our scripts, that finish line become so appealing that we often race to be done. The writing suffers. Because it’s easier to explain something in three exchanges of dialogue than one, we don’t try to be efficient. So you need to look at that last section with the same critical eyes that read those first 20 pages 100 times, and bring it up to the same level. The end result will almost always be tighter, and shorter.

Cutting ten or more pages

Entire sequences are going to need to go away. This happens more than you’d think. For the first Charlie’s Angels, we had a meeting at 5 p.m. on a Friday afternoon in which the president of the studio yanked ten pages out of the middle of the script. There was nothing wrong with those scenes, but we couldn’t afford to shoot them. So I was given until Monday morning to make the movie work without them.

Be your own studio boss. Be savage. Always err on taking out too much, because you’ll likely have to write new material to address some of what’s been removed.

The most brutal example I can think of from my own experience was my never-sold (but often retitled) zombie western. I cut 75 pages out of the first draft — basically, everything that didn’t support the two key ideas of Zombie Western. By clear-cutting, I could make room for new set pieces that fit much better with the movie I was trying to make.

Once you start thinking big-picture, you realize it’s often easier to cut fifteen pages than five. You ask questions like, “What if there was no Incan pyramid, and we went straight to Morocco?” or “What if instead of seeing the argument, reconciliation and breakup, it was just a time cut?”

Smart restructuring of events can often do the work for you. A project I’m just finishing has several occasions in which the action needs to slide forward several weeks, with characters’ relationships significantly changed. That’s hard to do with straight cutting — you expect to see all the pieces in the middle. But by focussing on something else for a scene or two — a different character in a different situation — I’m able to come back with time jumped and characters altered.

Look: It’s hard to cut a big chunk of your script, something that may have taken weeks to write. So don’t just hit “delete.” Cut and paste it into a new document, save it, and allow yourself the fiction of believing that in some future script, you’ll be able to use some of it. You won’t, but it will make it less painful.

  1. But! But! you say. In the Library ↩
  2. Go is 126 pages, but it’s packed solid. Big Fish meanders, but those detours end up paying off in the conclusion. ↩
  3. Page numbers, scene numbers, “more” and “continued” are exceptions. ↩
  4. I try to keep paragraphs of action and scene description between two and six lines. ↩
  5. While I rag on the program, Final Draft is smart enough to break lines at the period, so sentences always stay intact. It’s a small thing, but it really helps the read. Other programs may do it now, too. ↩