John August

QandA

Your first time

Psych 101

On a panel discussion with Shauna Cross and Lawrence Kasdan (!) today, I made a point about first screenplays:

Your first script is like the first time you have sex. Yes, it’s exciting. You did it! High five!

But that’s not the best sex you’re ever going to have. In fact, it would be sad if it were.

In all likelihood, your first time was rushed and awkward, with some great moments but a lot of room for improvement. And the odds that your first experience will blossom into something life-defining are slim. So take it for what it is: a beginning. You will get better at it.

A mistake way too many screenwriters make is assuming that the first thing they write is The One. The One that will get them noticed. The One that will sell. The One that will transform their lives.

The fact is, there is no One. I can’t tell you what mine would be. The one that got me an agent? The one that got made? The one that Spielberg liked? Those are all different scripts, written years apart. I went from sleeping on the floor of my apartment to owning a house, but none of them changed my life in the way people would expect. Mostly, I just got a lot busier. It was less about the script, and more about the work.

Screenwriting is a career of continuous effort marked by occasional highlights, not unlike trial law or professional football: a single case or game might be notable, but it’s what you do on a daily basis that determines your overall success. ((Even looking through credits on IMDb is misleading, because the movies that get made are a small percentage of what a screenwriter actually produces. I’ve written 27 screenplays, eight of which are movies with my name on them. And only three of them predate my first produced film, Go.)) And, like trial law and professional football, you may discover that you’re just not cut out for it. But you need to approach screenwriting with the same perspective as a lawyer or linebacker. Expect it to be very hard work, with long hours and continuous setbacks.

And in that aspect, the screenwriting/sex comparison fails, because if your lovemaking is hard work with continuous setbacks, you’re probably doing it wrong.

Two from the file

Film Industry, News, QandA, Words on the page

The mailbag gets a little backed up here. I thought I’d reach back a few years to look at two unanswered questions.

questionmarkI am working on a romantic comedy and much of the comedy is situational, physical comedy. Is it appropriate to specify in the script a generic location and the physical actions of the characters? For example, if someone was going to jump out of his chair and run to chase a dog only to grab the leash and be taken over the hood of a car as the dog jumped for a Frisbee (whew!!), would it be okay to specify all that? I have been under the impression that, as the writer, it isn’t my place to dictate specifics…that is for the producer and the director.

— Ryan O’Donnell
January 18, 2005

As the screenwriter, it’s your job to give readers the experience of watching a movie. If you’re writing a movie with a lot of physical comedy, that means writing a lot of physical comedy. The same holds true for car chases, dance numbers, fight scenes and every other kind of cinematic moment that a layman would assume “aren’t really written.” They’re written. By writers.

Might some of those beats change based on directors, actors, choreographers and stunt people? Certainly. But your goal is create moments so funny and original that all parties involved want to do it your way. (Or at least, try to top it.)

questionmarkI know this might be a little strange but you’re obviously in the loop. What’s going on with the movie “Stay” written by David Benioff?

Additionally your commentary on CA: Full Throttle was interesting. What are the Wibberleys like?

— Sean Sullivan
January 25, 2005

Unfortunately, Benioff’s once-promising career was killed by Stay. (Too many people thought it was a downbeat follow-up to Go.) Last I knew, he was making a good living writing those things you get in the stores with the covers, and the words and the pages…

Instruction manuals. He’s writing instruction manuals. Mostly for vacuum cleaners.

As for the Wibberleys, they’re lovely people. If only a producer could convince them to write something commercial, as opposed to the [high-minded literary fare](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0436339/) they’re known for.

(In truth, David and the Wibbs are great and busy. One of the best developments since 2005 is that name-brand feature writers know each other better than they used to. The strike and the internet are equally responsible for this.)

One. Million. Dollars.

Words on the page

This fall’s ongoing financial indigestion is depressing, if not an actual capital-d Depression. The world’s smartest folks are busy asking difficult questions about the billions and trillions of dollars involved. I certainly don’t have the answers.

Instead, I’d like to attempt to answer a question that’s perplexed me for a while: What’s so special about one million dollars?

In movies, TV, and actual conversation it’s by far the most frequently quoted dollar figure to mean “rich,” despite inflation. The top-shelf reality competition shows (Survivor, The Amazing Race) use that as the prize figure. But it’s not just a lot of money. It’s been mythologized as the transformative tipping point between the life we have and some mythological Good Life in which profound satisfaction is possible.

Consider this discussion from Office Space:

PETER

Our high school guidance counselor used to ask us what you’d do if you had a million dollars and you didn’t have to work. And invariably what you’d say was supposed to be your career. So, if you wanted to fix old cars then you’re supposed to be an auto mechanic.

SAMIR

So what did you say?

PETER

I never had an answer. I guess that’s why I’m working at Initech.

MICHAEL

No, you’re working at Initech because that question is bullshit to begin with. If everyone listened to her, there’d be no janitors, because no one would clean shit up if they had a million dollars.

SAMIR

You know what I would do if I had a million dollars? I would invest half of it in low risk mutual funds and then take the other half over to my friend Asadulah who works in securities...

MICHAEL

Samir, you’re missing the point.

But he’s not. Samir has it right: the question of what you’d do if you had a million dollars is essentially the same as what you’d do with a million dollars. Sure, you could answer, “If I had a million dollars, I’d light myself on fire and jump out of a tree.” But the question strongly implies “What would you do that you couldn’t do right now if you had a million dollars.” And while rich people often do stupid things, stupidity itself is free.

And Michael is right, too. The question is sort of bullshit. I’d argue that the phrase “and you didn’t have to work” is easy to challenge. Could you really retire on a one-time windfall of a million dollars? Even before taxes and inflation, it’s [less than you think](http://www.usnews.com/articles/business/retirement/2008/06/03/is-1-million-enough-to-retire-on.html):

> If you drew down 4 percent of your $1 million nest egg every year, a share many financial advisers recommend as prudent, you would receive about $40,000 annually, before adjusting for inflation — a pretty comfortable salary outside major metropolitan areas, especially if your house is paid off. Of course, how far that $3,333 a month goes depends on your lifestyle, health, and inflation.

Forty thousand dollars is not what most Americans would consider rich. It’s not first-class to Paris.

Of course, this is logic talking. And our mythologizing of one million dollars is more emotional than rational. I have a few working hunches why a million dollars seems so special.

1. **We have no personal frame of reference for “million.”** Most Americans earn five figures ($10,000 to $99,999). If we buy a house, we’re likely dealing with six figures ($100,000 to $999,999). But few Americans will ever encounter seven figures in relation to their own finances. So it seems like a magical and unobtainable sum.

2. **All rich people are millionaires, so all millionaires must be rich.** This failure of the symmetric property has been pointed out in books like The Millionaire Next Door, which shows that cost-containment and steady investment is a more realistic lifestyle for the average millionaire. Along the same lines, having a million dollars isn’t the same as making a million dollars. It’s easy to confuse assets with income. When stocks and home prices were rising, an increasing number of Americans became millionaires on paper. ((“On paper” is really a terrible term, because I don’t know any millionaires who keep a million in gold laying around.)) But since that’s not spendable cash, it’s not what most people mean by millionaire.

3. **What matters is the million, not the actual value.** Americans would rather have the million dollars than 750,000 euros. And two million dollars doesn’t feel twice as good as one million.

When a million is meaningless
====

Despite these defenses, I think the million dollars’ cinematic days on top are numbered, and screenwriters would be wise to avoid the figure in scripts. It’s simply not enough money to have a clear meaning. Consider:

EVELYN

Have you met Tom, her fiancé? His apartment in New York cost almost a million dollars!

Is the proper response…

TAMI

I always knew she’d marry money.

or…

TAMI

What is that, a one-bedroom?

(In fact, a million could be as little as a loft.)

If you need to have characters talk about money, you’re much better off referring an object (or service) than its price.

EVELYN

Her ring cost more than my car.

TAMI

She gets her hair done by this woman who flies in from Paris. Can you imagine?

EVELYN

She ripped out the limestone in the bathroom because it wasn’t organic. Turns out they don’t make organic limestone. So she got this stone from Italy. Used to be a church.

Billion is the new million. Sort of.
====

For now, I think you can safely get away with calling a billionaire rich. ((I’m speaking of the U.S. definition of billion, which is a thousand million.)) Keep in mind, it’s a staggering amount of money, so any character thusly defined would have to have a plausible explanation. For example, rich as he is, Will Smith is likely not a billionaire. With rare exception, you become a billionaire though canny investments or lucky inheritance.

Do millionaires dream of being billionaires? I don’t golf, so I haven’t heard this topic come up in conversation. But my experience of earning money in Hollywood has been that one’s financial ambition caps out at a certain point. The dream of a million dollars is a life free from financial worry: paying for the mortgage, college, and retirement. Once those fears are addressed — at a figure likely significantly higher than one million dollars — there is less to reach for financially.

So while I don’t advocate using the million dollar figure in scripts, I think it still has some real-world years ahead of it as a psychological milestone. Wealth isn’t simply what you can buy; it’s how much protection you have from poverty. A million dollars may not be “rich,” but it’s a comforting distance from poor.

Things We Think About Games

Story and Plot, Videogames

book coverI have an essay in the new book Things We Think About Games, a minor rewrite of [“Seven things I learned from World of Warcraft.”](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2007/seven-things-warcraft)

While I wouldn’t recommend buying the book just for my contribution, I’m happy to report the rest of Will Hindmarch and Jeff Tidball’s little book is terrific, full of observations and advice for gamers and game designers. Having worked with several of the latter, I’m struck by how nascent and unformed that field is. The fundamental questions are still being asked, and answered different ways: How do you make story playable? How explicitly do you set the rules? How much “work” is a player willing to do?

Whether MMORPG or paper-and-dice, alien-zapping or world-building, games have an active social component unlike anything you find in film or television, which makes them a uniquely challenging art form. Yes: you can watch a slasher movie with your friends, shouting back at the screen. But the film itself is unchanged by your participation. Not so with a good game, which demands involvement far beyond passive entertainment.

So if you find yourself thinking about games, I’d encourage to think along with this book.