John August

Genres

Playing to the core

Film Industry, Genres, Prince of Persia

Brian Lowry cautions against [taking Comic-Con buzz too seriously](http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118005970.html?categoryid=1682&cs=1):

> Surrounded by ardent fans, it’s easy to get sucked into Comic-Con’s vortex of enthusiasm, forgetting that even with 120,000 people descending on the convention center, that’s still a very, very self-selected group.

The same thing happens at Sundance: films that get a rapturous response in Park City often underwhelm at lower altitudes. Everything plays better to a hungry crowd, particularly one that has trekked a long way just to see what you’ve got.

But that’s not a reason to avoid either festival. If you can’t play to the base, you’re unlikely to push beyond it, either. A movie like Iron Man wants its geek bona fides before pushing further towards the mainstream. Where it gets trickier is a show like Pushing Daisies. Winning a small, ardent fan base can be self-limiting, particularly if it sets you off as a niche program out of the gate.

None of my projects are directly featured this year, though Jordan Mechner will be on a panel about his [Prince of Persia graphic novel](http://jordanmechner.com/blog/2009/07/prince-of-persia-panel-at-comic-con/) — a prequel to the movie — and Tim Burton will inevitably get questions about our next two movies.

Now that’s a gunfight

Genres, Words on the page

I’m busy working on Preacher, and it’s no spoiler to say that it features a gunfight or two. Last night, I [twittered to ask](http://twitter.com/johnaugust/status/2627321991) what people’s favorite gunfights were, Western or otherwise.

I got a lot of replies, but one name that kept coming up was Michael Mann. He consistently finds ways to send thousands of bullets flying while acknowledging the rules of physics. ((I have nothing against impossible gunfights like in The Matrix, Equilibrium or Wanted, but I’m trying to keep to keep this one a bit more grounded.))

I haven’t seen Public Enemies yet, but this clip shows the feeling he creates:

But when you’re talking about Michael Mann gunfights, you really have to discuss Heat. Here’s the showstopper:

I looked up Mann’s [screenplay for Heat](http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/Heat.pdf), to see what that looked like on the page.

Mann uses a lot of sluglines and short sentences to create the tempo of the fight. It’s chaos, and that’s reflected in the writing. He’s inconsistent with scene headers, and not especially concerned with establishing geography.

It doesn’t matter: action writing needs to create the feeling of an action sequence, not choreograph each bullet.

Bosko’s moving 90 degrees to the right, crossing the street. There would be no, there was no, and there never is any, warning. Neil Hanna and Schwartz with 12- gauges OPEN FIRE. World War III ERUPTS. Now we hear distant POLICE SIRENS.

CHRIS

is hit in the neck.

NEIL’S

FIRING 3-SHOT BURSTS that blow up Schwartz and a lamppost and hit a woman who falls over her shopping cart, shrieking. Hanna’s behind the lamppost.

BOSKO

across the street with his AR-180, opens up on the station wagon which takes HITS. A BLACK AND WHITE slides sideways and COP #1 with a shotgun runs across the street hollering at kids who stop and stare and drop school books.

COP # 1

Drop! Drop down!

CERRITO

over the station wagon roof FIRES a BURST at Bosko, then swings onto Cop #1 and fires, killing him. Cerrito jumps into the wagon.

THE STREET – WIDE: A BUS

The driver panics and slams on his brakes and his bus full of people stalls in the combat zone between Bosko and the wagon.

BOSKO (O.S.)

(screams)

Get the bus out of here...

NEIL

shielded by the green bag of money which has taken hits, FIRES at Hanna and backs to Chris.

HANNA

pulls Schwartz to cover.

CHRIS

dazed – holding his bleeding neck while Neil FIRES into the parking lot...

PARKING LOT

...hitting Casals getting out of his car. Casals sits down as if stunned.

MAN

pulling his car out of the lot ducks behind the wheel and crashes it into a parked car.

EXT. BANK – CERRITO

CERRITO

(to Neil)

C’mon! C’mon! C’mon!

Neil can’t rake it through the incoming FIRE from Hanna and Cop #2 to the station wagon and Cerrito and knows it.

NEIL

(to Breedan and Cerrito)

Go!! Go!!

ON STATION WAGON

Breedan floors it.

HANNA

re-emerges, kneels and PUMPS SHOTS into the station wagon.

BOSKO

rounds the bus with the AR-180 and OPENS UP

STATION WAGON

draws everyone’s FIRE. Breedan ducks and pilots it through the gauntlet.

NEIL

has taken off down the sidewalk, supporting Chris. TIGHTEN. He runs in among crowds of civilians. He knocks over a man, breaks through. People are screaming, staring, shocked.

INT. STATION WAGON – BREEDAN

getting BLOWN APART by Hanna, Bosko, and Cop #2 falls over the wheel and then is thrown back.

EXT. STREET – STATION WAGON

tires are BLOWN OUT.

It spins across the street on steel rims and crashes sideways into a parked car on the east side of Hawthorne.

INT. STATION WAGON – CERRITO

shot three times, holds his abdomen and bails, returning FIRE. Breedan, like a rag doll is half over into the rear seat and still being hit by more rounds. We HOLD on David Breedan. He’s dead.

CUT TO:

EXT. SIDE STREET – CERRITO

east up a side street past people who stand on their lawns and stare – traumatized.

WIDER

Bosko and Cop #3 chase Cerrito. Cerrito FIRES a long BURST. They can’t fire back because of the people.

CUT TO:

EXT. SAFEWAY – TRACKING NEIL + CHRIS – DAY

and the money – running, skipping and dodging past all manner of pedestrians, newspaper coin boxes, fruit vendors and parking meters. People dodge, scream and fall down. It’s chaos.

TRACKING HANNA

a half block behind, chasing Neil – pushing through the same people.

HANNA

(shouts at pedestrians)

Get down! Get down!

EXT. SAFEWAY PARKING LOT – NEIL + CHRIS

Neil – supporting Chris – throws a lady, who was getting out, back into her Olds Cutlass. He dumps Chris and the money in the back seat and turns on Hanna.

NEIL

extends the collapsible stock braces on the roof for accuracy and FIRES over the roof of other cars and through people at Hanna closing in 5o yards away.

CUT TO:

EXT. SAFEWAY – HANNA + CIVILIANS

who panic. SHOOTING. Windows EXPLODE. A lady holds her ears and shrieks. A newspaper coin box SHATTERS. A man’s bag of groceries explode milk and eggs everywhere. He goes down.

HANNA

doesn’t have a clear shot and drops, dragging people down with him.

NEIL

behind the wheel – burns rubber pulling out of the lot over curbstones and through a fence into the alley.

For another example of scripting a gunfight, I’d point you back to the Alaska pilot. You can see the gunfight [here](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2009/alaska-the-satchel-boy), and read the script in the [Library](http://johnaugust.com/library).

How much does a short story earn in a magazine?

Follow Up, Genres, QandA, The Variant

questionmarkWould a writer of your stature have made more by publishing The Variant in a literary magazine?

— Brett

I really had no idea what people were getting paid for short stories, so I asked Matt to dig up some numbers based on [The Variant’s](http://johnaugust.com/variant) 7,123-word length.

These are rough and gathered from feedback writers give to [duotrope.com](http://duotrope.com) and various publication websites. If any short story writers have more firsthand information, please share.

Matt chose a range of literary and genre magazines — but to be honest, I’m not sure The Variant would have found a home in any of them, with or without my name value.

Literary magazines
—–

* The New Yorker: $7,500 (estimate based on Dan Baum’s
[tweets](http://www.danbaum.com/Nine_Lives/New_Yorker_tweets.html))

* Kenyon Review: $356 ($.05 per word)

* New England Review: $230 ($10 per page)

* Ploughshares: $575 ($25 per page)

Genre magazines
—–

* Asimov’s Science Fiction: $427 ($.06 per word)

* Strange Horizons: $356 ($.05 per word)

* Carve (Raymond Carver): $20-50

Given these numbers, I doubt I would have been better off trying to get The Variant into a printed magazine. It made less than $1,000 in its first week, but it will be available online — and earning money — for at least the next few years. And if a reader likes the short story, it’s much easier to send a link to a friend than a printed story.

What does “execution dependent” mean?

Big Fish, Directors, Film Industry, Genres, QandA

questionmarkI’ve been taking a pitch and treatment around to producers, and people are responding very well to it–but one note I keep getting is that the idea is very “execution dependent.”

What exactly does this mean? It’s a high-concept comedy idea, easy to sum up in a logline. So what makes one high-concept idea more execution-dependent than another? Or is this a euphemism for “not high-concept enough”?

I’m planning to spec it out anyway, but I’d love to get a handle on what makes an idea more or less execution-proof. I’ve read your (excellent) answer about the [family of robots](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2003/good-writing-vs-the-idea), but that seemed to be about high concept and low concept, while this is something about the idea itself.

— Andrew
Brooklyn

“Execution dependent” means that the best version of the movie is a hit, while a mediocre incarnation is worth vastly less. It’s not a diss. Most films that win Academy Awards are execution dependent, as are many blockbusters.

For example, Slumdog Millionaire is completely execution dependent. If it didn’t fire on all cylinders, you would never have heard of it. It would have been another ambitious indie failure.

Raiders of the Lost Ark is also extremely execution dependent. There have been countless movies with adventurers seeking treasure, but the combination of elements in Raiders just clicked. If Raiders were twenty percent less awesome, it wouldn’t have a place in film history.

Other examples I can think of: Juno, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Dark Knight, The Piano, Titanic, Silence of the Lambs, Babe, Fargo, The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Usual Suspects, Sling Blade, Se7en. Some of these are high concept, others aren’t. But in each case, the film’s relative success is largely a factor of how well-made it was.

Here’s a good test for whether a project is execution dependent: How many different directors could you imagine making it?

If there are five or fewer directors on your list, that’s a highly execution dependent project. And that can be a stumbling block. For Big Fish, the studio was willing to make it with Steven Spielberg or Tim Burton. Get one of them, and the studio will make the movie. Otherwise, it’s turnaround.

Many films are much less execution dependent. Consider Paul Blart: Mall Cop, or Obsessed. I haven’t seen either movie, but instinct tells me that the list of possible directors for each was much longer. Neither film needed to be perfect in order to succeed. Rather, they needed to be marketable. Both were, much to their credit.

From a studio’s perspective, there is some safety in picking movies that “anyone could direct.” You’re less likely to hit a home run creatively, but you’re also more likely put runners on base.

When a studio or producer trots out the phrase “execution dependent,” that may be a euphemism for a couple of things they’re not saying:

1. “I like it, but it would have to be perfect, and we mess up movies right and left.”
2. “I can’t think of five directors who could do it.”
3. “I can imagine getting fired over this movie.”
4. “I might buy it as a spec.”
5. “I hate the idea and I’m just trying to be nice.”

I hope it’s not the last one. Good luck with the spec.