John August

Go

Music of The Nines

Go, Projects, The Nines

Alex Wurman, the composer for The Nines (as well as many other great scores, including March of the Penguins and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind) has posted five tracks from the movie on his [website](http://www.alexwurman.com/Music%20Clips/MusicClips.html).

Of them, “[Cold Turkey](http://www.alexwurman.com/Music%20Clips/MusicClipsP.html#)” is probably the most interesting without a visual to go with it. The “[Knowing Theme](http://www.alexwurman.com/Music%20Clips/MusicClipsP.html#)” is notable because of a unique logistical problem: it plays on-camera, so Alex had to write this primary melody for the movie months before we started shooting.

Will there be a soundtrack album? Quite possibly. In addition to Alex’s score, the songs are pretty great. Julianne Jordan was our music supervisor. (She also did the soundtrack to Go.)

Do screenwriters get a chunk of foreign TV money?

Film Industry, Go, QandA

questionmarkDo writers ever get a percentage of the substantial profits from the studios’ licensing their films to international TV networks?

— Marilyn Mallory
via imdb

Writers do get a portion of the revenue, in the form of residuals. These payments are roughly analogous to the royalties songwriters and novelists receive, but with some important distinctions. (For clarity, I’m only going to talk about residuals for movies, because residuals for TV shows work a little differently.)

For starters, you don’t get residuals on theatrical release. Whether your movie makes one dollar or one billion at the box office, you don’t get residuals on that. It’s only when the movie shows up in subsequent markets, like home video or television, that you start getting more money.

The formulas for how much money the writer is supposed to get are complicated and contentious, and are often a big issue in negotiations between the WGA (which collects residuals) and the studios (who pay residuals). Even a fraction of a percentage can translate into thousands of dollars for a screenwriter. For example, I’ve made far more money from the residuals on Go than I did for writing and producing it.

Residuals are paid quarterly, and arrive in big green envelopes. It’s always a guessing game how big the checks are going to be: sometimes just a few dollars, sometimes well into six-figures. But it’s always exciting to get money you weren’t quite expecting.

It’s important to explain what residuals aren’t. They’re not “a piece of the back end” in the way that a big movie star gets gross points. Residuals have nothing to how profitable the movie is: you get paid the same per DVD or run on HBO whether the movie is a giant success or a dismal failure. (Of course, a hit movie should sell more DVDs and play more often on television, so in the long run, you’ll come up ahead.)

How accurate is the page-per-minute rule?

Big Fish, Charlie, Charlie's Angels, Corpse Bride, Go, QandA

questionmarkEvery screenwriting book I’ve read, class I took, and
basically the first rule I learned says:

ONE PAGE OF A PROPERLY FORMATED SCRIPT = APPROX. A MINUTE OF SCREEN TIME.

I know one page of say a battle can last five minutes whereas one page of quick
dialogue my last ten seconds if the actors talk fast… So my question is,
is this rule true?

Has your 120 page script been a 2 hour movie or was it more like 90 minutes?

My main reason for asking this is I want to make my own low-budget movie.
And the best tips I get say keep the script 90 pages or shorter. And to
make it a play (dialogue heavy, one location).

However, from my short film experience and being an editor, I saw a 90 page
script of a friend be only 55 minutes when edited. And I know Kevin
Smith’s CLERKS was 164 page script, but is only a 90 min movie because of
the dialogue.

So, how can I find an accurate length of the movie before I shoot it. Or
should I have a 130-page script if I want to make my own feature? How do the
big boys figure out if there’s enough actual screen time on the pages?

— Matthew Kaplan
New York City

Your instinct is right: the one-page-per-minute rule of thumb doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny. True, most screenplays are about 120 pages, and true, most movies are around two hours. But the conversion rate between paper and celluloid is rarely one-to-one .

That’s why when a movie is in pre-production, one of the script supervisor’s first jobs is to time the script. She or he reads through the screenplay with a stopwatch, estimating how long each scene will play, then adds up the total running time. Generally, they go through the whole script twice, averaging the times.

How accurate is the script timing? Well, that depends on how well the script supervisor has factored in the director’s style. Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain featured long, contemplative shots of the heroes herding sheep, which another director might have dropped altogether. But generally, the script timing is in the right ballpark.

Although a script supervisor has more experience, you can time a script yourself. My advice would be to read the dialogue aloud, while trying to pad for non-spoken moments. It’s easier with some scripts than others.

As far as my own films:

Go was 126 pages, but came out at 103 minutes — without any major scenes left out. It wasn’t play-like, but the pacing was quick.

Big Fish was 124 pages, and 125 minutes long. To my recollection, only one significant scene was omitted, so the page-per-minute rule came close.

Both Charlie’s Angels movies went through so many drafts during production that an accurate page-count is impossible. But the first drafts were around 120 pages. The original film was 98 minutes; the sequel was 106. The pacing was obviously quick.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: 128 pages, 115 minutes.

Corpse Bride: 73 pages, 76 minutes.

Is that how the line was supposed to go?

Go, QandA

GainesSomething that’s always bothered me about Go. When Ronna is in Todd’s apartment she says “Todd, I would never fuck you like that.” And he says, “How would -you- fuck -me-?”

Like, how would a nothing like you ever screw over a big drug dealer like me? But he just explained how she could fuck him: twenty hits is intent to distribute. Did you mean for the line to be read like “How -would- you fuck me?” As in, why should I trust you? And if so, how did the director fuck that up so badly?

— Rebecca
Los Angeles

Actually, the intent behind the line is completely different — and this is an example of how acting choices and editing room decisions can impact a scene. If you download the [original script](http://johnaugust.com/site/downloads), you’ll see that the scene in question actually reads:

  • GAINES
  • You come here out of the blue asking for twenty hits. Just so happens twenty is the magic number where intent to sell becomes trafficking.
  • RONNA
  • Todd, I would never fuck you like that.
  • GAINES
  • How would you fuck me? Would you strap it on?
  • He climbs over the sofa to a dresser. In a drawer, he digs down through a pile of socks to find a wide-mouthed bottle. And an empty Tylenol bottle. Blows out the dust.

The “Would you strap it on?” line makes it clear that he’s sort-of-joking, in a very sexual way. Unfortunately, on the night we shot this scene, the energy was all wrong.

The producers and I still talk about that bad night, because [Timothy Olyphant](http://imdb.com/name/nm0648249/maindetails), who completely nailed the role of Gaines otherwise, was not finding the right rhythms. That’s incredibly frustrating as a writer on the set, because you can hear in your head just how the line should sound, but nothing you do can get it to come out that way. And this isn’t a criticism of Tim or director Doug Liman. Everyone has bad nights; they’re usually not captured on film for posterity.

In fact, the next night we ended up re-shooting Gaines’ side of the later Claire scene, when Tim suddenly had a breakthrough and really figured out how to play the moments. Those are some of my favorites moments in the movie, and it’s all credit to Tim’s acting.

That still left us with some challenges cutting together the Ronna scene. Ultimately, the version that worked best dropped the “Would you strap it on?” line. But you’re right: the inflections in the previous line don’t really make sense. I cringe a little when I watch it.

The other reason I miss the strap-it-on reference is that it played into Ronna having balls. In an earlier scene, Ronna said she’d go straight to Todd, because buying through a middle man would cut her profit: “That’s like, a hundred dollars I’d be pissing out my dick.” I love that Ronna sees herself as hard-boiled, even when she’s terrified.