John August

Projects

Big Green Envelopes

Film Industry, Projects

One of the less-documented joys of being a working screenwriter is when you open the mailbox to find a big green envelope. It’s a very distinctive shade of green…

…which is only used for one purpose: a WGA [residual](http://johnaugust.com/site/glossary#residuals) check.

You never know quite when these envelopes are coming, or how much will be inside. Half the fun is guessing before you rip it open. If a successful movie you wrote has recently come out on DVD, the check could be for tens of thousands of dollars. Or for a movie like Go, it could be a few hundred, for showing on Cinemax. Regardless, it’s found money, and cause for jubilation.

Recently, I’ve been getting a bunch of little checks, on the order of $425.60. They’re payments for D.C., the staggeringly unsuccessful show I created for the WB in 2000. Although it only ran three episodes in the U.S., apparently all seven episodes ran in Europe.

Unbeknownst to me, the WGA did an investigation, and figured out that I was owed residuals for this. So they got Universal to pay me.

It’s not a lot of money, but strictly on principle I’m very grateful for it. Accountants are rarely lauded as heroes. So here’s a shout-out to the WGA collections department, and David DelVecchio in particular, for tracking down every last cent writers are owed.

Avoid CUT TO’s in a busy sequence

Charlie's Angels, Formatting, QandA

I’m piecing together a climax sequence that takes place in a park,
with dozens of cuts back and forth between four main characters as
they perform different activities at different locations within the
park. Is there an efficient way to format this without creating a new,
full slugline for each cut, and without using too many CUT TOs?

— Joseph
Uppsala, Sweden

Make friends with the slugline. That’s a single line, all in caps, which tells the reader that you’re focusing on something new. Here’s an example from [CHARLIE’S ANGELS: FULL THROTTLE](http://imdb.com/title/tt0305357/):

(Note: If the following text has bullet points, you need to clear your cache. On the Mac, hold down the command key while you press the Reload button on the toolbar.)

All eight "real" RACERS attack the course like modern-day charioteers, SLAMMING down each hill and SPRAYING dirt like shrapnel.

Some OFFICIALS try to stop Dylan, but she ROARS onto the course.

IN THE STANDS

Alex sloughs off her cotton candy and runs along the lowest walkway, trying to keep Dylan in sight.

ON THE SIDELINE

Natalie grabs an available bike and helmet, ready to join in the race.

ON THE COURSE

The pack is nearing the first turn. Emmers has the lead, with the Man in Black moving up quickly. Boxed in between two other racers, the Man suddenly

KICKS

one guy out of his way. The unsuspecting cyclist crashes in the dirt. This is no ordinary race.

At the fence, Stern YELLS into his wrist-mike:

STERN

Carter! Kalakana! Get up here now!

THE MAN IN BLACK

reaches into his jacket pocket, pulling out an antique revolver. As he closes the gap on Emmers, he starts to take aim. With both cycles heading up and down hills, it's difficult to get a line-of-sight, but their jumps are finally synchronized.

Sometimes, even those single sluglines can be too much, so you might consider embedding them into paragraphs.

Also from Full Throttle:

As the truck falls, we move into SUPER-SLOW MOTION. There’s a lot to cover:

IN THE CAB, we watch as the truck’s nose tips straight down to the floor of the canyon one thousand feet below. Keeping her cool, Dylan grabs the glowing tube and climbs out her door.

IN THE BACK, Alex RIPS open a nylon duffel bag. She pulls out an armful of silk. Clinging to the truck wall, Natalie KICKS loose the wheel chucks. The mysterious fan unit floats freely in the truck.

ON THE DAM, the men watch as the truck falls. The angels may have escaped their reach, but they won’t escape their death. The ARTILLERIST aims the rocket launcher.

IN THE BACK, Alex lets the silk fly. It WHIPS out of her hands, unfurling as a small parachute. Natalie pulls a ripcord, which starts up the massive fan blades.

Dylan climbs into the cargo area.

Meanwhile, the small parachute begins to pull out a much larger canopy, a massive rectangular wing of fabric.

ON THE DAM, the artillerist has a bead on the falling truck. He squeezes the trigger, launching a WHISTLING RPG.

IN THE TRUCK, the angels grab onto handholds near the fan unit. They see the missile coming.

THE CANOPY extends to full berth, yanking taught a web of cables. The whole fan assembly flies out the back of the truck just moments before

THE RPG HITS.

The truck EXPLODES in a fireball that continues to fall towards the canyon floor. We LOOK UP to see

THE CANOPY, where the angels dangle from the crossbars of the suspended fan unit. We get our first good look at the vehicle, a type of ultra-light aircraft that resembles an Everglades swamp boat gone aerial.

ON THE DAM, the men watch with furious awe as the strange craft begins to fly up from the base of the canyon, catching the rising drafts. It’s heading into the sunset.

However you choose to do it, remember that you’re writing for the reader, not the director. You want to create the action sequence that feels most exciting on the page, even if the sequence of events isn’t exactly how you ultimately think a director will stage it.

Good Daniel Wallace interview up

Big Fish, News, Projects

[Strange Horizons](http://www.strangehorizons.com) has a new [interview with Daniel Wallace](http://www.strangehorizons.com/2004/20041011/dwallace-a.shtml), the novelist who wrote BIG FISH. It’s definitely worth checking out his perspective on the movie, and how the original writer deals with seeing his work changed in the process of adaptation.

Where to find Natural Born Killers novelization

Adaptation, Projects, QandA

NBK bookI was just reading your site in hopes of finding out more about your novelization of the film Natural Born Killers. It appears as though the book can still be found in some circles but at [exorbitant prices](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/offer-listing/0451183231/ref=dp_pb_a//002-9839875-9699269?condition=all). Do you happen to know of anywhere that I could order this book?

— MJD

The best advice I could give you is to save your money, because the book isn’t very good. You’re much better off reading Quentin Tarantino’s original screenplay. The only copy on the net I’ve found is an [awkwardly-formatted HTML version](http://www.godamongdirectors.com/scripts/killers.shtml), but it’s certainly better than nothing. [Update: A kind reader forwarded [this link](http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/Natural_Born_Killers.PDF) to a proper .pdf.]

The things you love can hurt you the most, and that’s certainly the case with Natural Born Killers. I first read Tarantino’s script in the fall of 1992, when I was in my first year of grad school at USC. His was probably the 10th screenplay I ever read. The moment I finished it, I flipped back to page one and read the whole thing again. It was that good.

So I counted myself incredibly lucky to get to work on the movie the following year. Oliver Stone had directed a heavily-rewritten version of it, and I was hired as assistant to the two producers while the film was in editing. Even though I was mostly answering phones and writing coverage, it was exciting to be one office away from a big motion picture in post. When I finally got to see the cut, I was disheartened: so much of what I loved about Tarantino’s screenplay had been changed. It was like waiting all year for Christmas and finally opening that big wrapped box to discover what you hoped was an Atari was actually Sears Pong. Same idea, but disappointingly different.

I know there are people who love the movie, and with good reason, but to me the film is too much of too little.

Then, remarkably, I got the opportunity to work on the novelization. Penguin had hired writers to do it, but the editor wasn’t satisfied with what they were producing. After reading my first script and talking with my bosses, she asked me to write a new book. It gave me a chance to go back to Tarantino’s original script and incorporate things that had been dropped from the movie, and add new sequences that detailed other pit-stops on Mickey and Mallory’s trail of terror.

I wrote the book in three weeks, while finishing my master’s thesis and working full-time. I slept three hours a night — but you can do that when you’re 23.

I was really happy with the book I wrote, but before the draft went to Penguin, one of my bosses decided to rewrite it. And rewrite it poorly. That’s not just my opinion; on a purely objective level, the text is a mess. Because there was no time for proper copy-editing, characters’ names are spelled different ways in different chapters.

It’s frustrating to have my name on a book that I hate. But I try to look for the positive: I was paid $7,000 to write the book, which was enough money to get by for six months before I got my next writing job. (That next job was HOW TO EAT FRIED WORMS, a charming kid’s book for which Natural Born Killers was a terrible, terrible writing sample. I owe Ron Howard a lot for even considering me.)

I can’t put my original draft of the novel in the Downloads section, because the publisher controls the copyright. But if anyone reading this post is an enterprising young editor at Penguin, I’d love to show you what the book could have been.