Genres

How important is it for a writer trying to break into
the business to pick one genre and stick to it? You’ve had a lot of success
writing all sorts of
different stories, but isn’t that unusual? Isn’t it better to become a "brand
name," so to speak? I imagine the suits saying, "Let’s get that
new guy who wrote that great heist script to rewrite our Die Hard on a Carnival
Cruise
project."

–FALZONE

It’s true that some writers prefer to write in certain genres, and others
seem to have the choice made for them. Early on, I got pigeon-holed as a family
film guy, because the first two movies I was paid to write were kiddie lit
adaptations.

I have nothing against the family film genre — in fact, I think it’s one
of the most difficult genres to write well — but I didn’t want to spend the
rest of my career charting the inner turmoil of ten-year olds. My script for
GO was, on some levels, a calculated move to get producers and executives in
Hollywood to notice me as a more versatile, and hireable, writer.

So should your second script, or your third script, be the same genre as your
first? Only if that’s what you most want to write.

Writing a script is a huge commitment of time and brain-space, so you better
be sure any project you’re working on is really going to hold your attention
draft after draft. If, after finishing one broad comedy, you have a great idea
for another, don’t immediately kill it because you should "really" be
working on a thriller.

The right genre is the one that will actually get you to fire up your word
processor, rather than surf the internet.

Do you have a clear idea of the genre of the film before
you start to write? Do you write to a model, like the three-act structure?

–Lydia

Usually you have a pretty good idea what genre the movie is before you start
writing, at least in the broadest sense – a comedy, a thriller, an action movie.
And of course, within any category there are sub-genres. "Comedies" can
be romantic comedies, black comedies, action comedies, family comedies, spoofs
and so forth. You could spend a weekend listing all the different sub-genres
and still find movies that don’t fit into any.

More important than knowing where to put the video at Blockbuster is figuring
what approach you’ll be taking, and that’s where the real work comes in. For
instance, CHARLIE’S ANGELS is an action comedy, so logically it should do some
of the same things as LETHAL WEAPON or RUSH HOUR. But from its inception,
there were always going to be things about CHARLIE’S ANGELS that would be unique
and difficult.

First, the characters. The movie has three heroines who need roughly equal
screen time, each with their own subplots and love interests. Bosley needs
enough to do so that an actor will want to play it, but not so much that it
takes away from the Angels. And then there’s Charlie himself. He’s the disembodied
voice on a speakerphone box, yet we need to believe he’s a real person.

Second, the tone. Trying to escape the cheesiness of the TV show, early drafts
of the script played the world very cold and high-tech, almost like a MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE
movie. While we wanted the Angels to be super-competent when they were in danger
mode,
we needed them to be huggable when they were off-duty.
They needed to be like your best friends: rowdy, caring, impetuous and fun.
Also, we wanted the movie to be a love letter to Los Angeles: the sun is always
shining, colors are hot, and everyone looks great.

Finally, the action. Early on, we agreed the Angels wouldn’t carry guns. The
decision was less because of the social message than the action possibilities.
Gun fights are about people hiding behind things; we wanted the Angels punching
and kicking. We ended up hiring the fight team behind THE MATRIX to train the
actors in martial arts, and I can’t imagine the movie any other way.

Notice that all of these decisions were made BEFORE we started talking about
plot or structure. That was the right choice, because it meant we could develop
a storyline that would fit the movie we wanted to make, rather than dress-up
a pre-existing plot with details from our movie.

The actual outline we used for the movie was simply a list of 20 sequences.
It was less than half a page. But it took months to get there. During production,
some of the sequences changed for budget, schedule or location reasons, but
the underlying spine remained exactly the same.