John August

QandA

What if my agent doesn’t like my idea?

Film Industry, QandA, Writing Process

questionmarkHow much influence should an agent and/or manager have on the specs that you choose to write? I have an idea for my next project that one of my reps is enthusiastic about, but the other doesn’t care for at all. I love the idea and several execs to whom I’ve pitched it seemed to like it as well, but is it foolish of me to write the script anyway despite the knowledge that one of my guys may not be interested in sending it out when I’m finished?

— Jason
Los Angeles

Agents aren’t producers. Or directors. Or studio executives. But they deal with these people constantly, so they tend to have a pretty good idea what everyone’s looking for. If your agent or manager doesn’t care for your idea, it’s worth asking whether he, personally, doesn’t love it, or whether he, professionally, thinks it’s going to be a hard sell. Only the latter opinion actually matters, and perhaps not as much as you’d think.

Remember: Knowing the market isn’t the same thing as taste, and everyone’s taste is different. Nineteen readers can be non-plussed by your “Wuthering Heights on Mars” spec, but if a few key execs at Dreamworks love it, Spielberg will read it this weekend.

When I was writing Go, my agent was unenthusiastic, both about the concept and the chances of selling it. I finished the script and found another agent. In a way, the original agent was right — every studio passed. But it only took one “yes” to get it made. Go became my first produced movie and started my career.

I’m not telling you to dump your agent (or manager), but to keep his advice in perspective. Yes, he wants you have a long and satisfying career, but most immediately wants you to write scripts that will sell. Ideally, scripts that will sell for a lot of money. And his sense of what those scripts are may not jibe with what you’re doing. So listen to him, but don’t feel obligated to take his advice.

How to write dialogue

Words on the page, Writing Process

Continuing my efforts to blog less about the profession of screenwriting and more about the craft, I thought I’d offer up some thoughts on dialogue. As with my earlier post on [How to Write a Scene](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2007/write-scene), this isn’t an exhaustive tutorial by any means. But it’s at least a guide for how I do it.

1. Listen to how actual people talk
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We all watch movies and television, which is chock full of dialogue: good, bad and inane. One might think it helpful to listen to great actors speaking great words. It’s not. In fact, it will probably screw you up.

It’s like trying to paint landscapes based on how other artists paint landscapes. The best you can do is a crude approximation. In order to paint a great landscape, you need to get your butt out in the cornfield and paint what you see. There’s really no alternative.

Fortunately, the world is full of dialogue cornfields. Sitting at Fatburger for lunch, I eavesdropped on two engineers discussing fire door trim allowances, and two women in their 60’s clucking about how small the hamburgers were. Far more important than the content of the conversations was the flow, the back-and-forth. We tend to think of dialogue as a tennis volley, with the subject being hit back and forth between speakers. But when you really listen, you realize that people talk over each other constantly, and rarely finish a complete thought.

To get a sense of this flow, you need to stop paying attention to the actual words being spoken. It’s the auditory equivalent of un-focusing your eyes. Listen for which speaker is dominating the conversation, and how often the other party chimes in to acknowledge he’s still paying attention. (“Uh-huh.” “Yeah.” “Really?”) Questions are often not phrased as questions, and in real life, no one speaks with exclamation points.

How often should you eavesdrop? Pretty much constantly, with particular focus on finding interesting speakers. Some people are inherently funny, and if you soak up enough of their rhythms you can recreate them on the page fairly faithfully. But even the annoying woman ahead of you at the checkout line deserves a listen. You never know when she might come in handy.

2. Figure out the flow of your dialogue
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Generally, before I put pen to paper, I let the scene loop in my head 10 or 40 times. Those first cycles are silent, but eventually characters begin to talk. Based on what needs to happen in the scene, it’s often pretty clear who’ll be saying what. But figuring out the flow — the how, the when, the why — takes time. You can rush it, but you’ll often end up with too many words in the wrong order. Or worse, you’ll end up with characters talking at each other rather than with each other.

So imagine watching your scene, but in a foreign language with the subtitles turned off. What does the talking feel like? What’s the emotion behind the words? Who’s in control? There’s a classic drama exercise in which actors have to stage a scene speaking only faux-Chinese. That’s what you’re looking for at this stage. Not the words, but the texture.

3. Pattern out the information
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Conversations in real life are often empty (“these burgers are too small”), but movie conversations almost always involve an exchange of information (“the fingerprints don’t match” or “I’m not sure I ever loved you”). Your job as a writer is figuring out how your characters would tell each other the information.

Let’s say Bob needs to tell Mary that her dog has been eaten by a python. As the writer, you need to decide not only what facts Bob knows, but how he’s anticipating Mary will react to the news. This will determine not only how he starts the conversation (“Say, you were talking about how you wanted to get a new dog, right?”) but every subsequent decision along the way.

Of course, as the screenwriter you’re not solely interested in helping the characters convey information to each other; your primary focus is getting that information to the audience. The challenge is to do the latter while pretending to the former. So if it’s slipping a bit of exposition in a joke, or staging an altercation to reveal a piece of backstory, find a way.

Bad dialogue tends to spray out information in every direction, whereas smart dialogue sneaks the facts in while you’re otherwise entertained.

4. Write the scribble version
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The [scribble version](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2007/scribble-version-final-scene) is the very rough draft of a scene, devoid of formatting, punctuation and other garnishes. My scribble versions tend to be largely dialogue, with an emphasis on the overall flow rather than finding le mot juste.

5. Write the nice version
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Once you have the blueprint for the scene, it’s time to go back and start worrying about getting each word right. Great dialogue has a melody to it, and achieving that is probably unteachable. But you can write pretty good dialogue simply by reading each line aloud, over and over, smoothing off the awkwardness through better words or a different composition.

Movie dialogue is how characters would speak if they had a few extra seconds to compose their thoughts between lines. It’s just slightly optimized. But it’s very easy to overshoot and end up in soap opera land. Keeping dialogue real but efficient is one of the hardest challenges in screenwriting.

6. Ask: Are characters listening, or just speaking?
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Once you have the scene finished, take a look back and make sure your characters aren’t just speaking because it’s their turn. That’s a common problem, perpetuated (I believe) by the prevalence of exposition-heavy crime dramas.

  • BOOTHE
  • Two campers found the body in a culvert five miles down river.
  • GARMAN
  • Toxicology shows arsenic in the well.
  • BOOTHE
  • Looks like we got ourselves a serial killer.

While actors could probably pull this off as a conversation (with a lot of head nodding), it’s not hard to get Garman listening and responding:

  • BOOTHE
  • Two campers found the body in a culvert five miles down river. Once we get the toxicology back…
  • GARMAN
  • Just came. Arsenic in the well.
  • BOOTHE
  • Looks like we got ourselves a serial killer.

7. Ask: Is there a shorter version that works as well?
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Many times, the best way to improve dialogue is to cut it. Once you’ve let a scene sit for a while, revisit it with a red pen and look for what could be cut. If a piece of information isn’t essential, it should probably go. And a joke isn’t worth it if you’ve had to break the scene to achieve it.

Trusting your audience

Rave, Television, Words on the page

Spoiler Warning: If you have “Heroes” sitting on your TiVo, watch it first.
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Last night’s “Heroes” did something I wish more shows would try: they trusted their audience to fill in missing scenes.

If you’ll recall, near the start of the episode, bad guy Sylar escaped, locking Claire’s Faux-Daddy in his cell. Sylar then went to Claire’s house, to chit-chat with Mom and await Claire’s return — presumably so he could eat her brain. Growing bored, The Man of Endless Eyebrows eventually revealed his menace and got all telekinevil.

Something had to happen, or Mrs. Bennett would certainly end up dead. But the options were few. Claire was off visiting Trailer Park Mom in Kermit, Faux-Daddy was locked in the cell, and Hiro was trapped in a thunderously dull subplot about his father.

So it was a genuine surprise when Faux-Daddy showed up, guns blazing. A few steps behind him, we saw the not-really-mute Haitian Guy who works for him, and realized, “Aha!”

Simply by putting Haitian Guy in the room, the writers were able to omit the seemingly obligatory scene in which Haitian Guy finds Faux Daddy, frees Faux Daddy, and nods silently as Faux Daddy shouts that, “We have to get to my house, now!” As television viewers, we’re sophisticated enough to figure out what we missed — and therefore, not really miss it. But too rarely do shows really trust us to make these logic leaps.

My kudos to the hard-working writing staff for not writing that scene. (Or, if they did, kudos to the editors for omitting it.) I almost guarantee they got a network note saying it was unclear how Faux Daddy got out, but one benefit of being the hottest new show on television is the ability to ignore notes.

What is independent film?

Film Industry, QandA, Sundance

How do you define an independent film?

— Lee Myers
via imdb

Classically, an independent film was one that was made outside of the conventional studio system, be that Hollywood, Bollywood or Pinewood. But with the rise of the “independent” labels of the major studios, such as Fox Searchlight and Paramount Vantage, that distinction is pretty much moot. Also, consider that the last three Star Wars epics were made independently (by Mr. George Lucas). Any movie with fast-food tie-ins really shouldn’t qualify, in my opinion.

I’d argue that the term “independent film” should be reserved for talking about the movie itself, rather than how it was financed.I propose labeling conventional movies “dependent films.” Try it. It’s fun. There’s a reason the word “independence” so often shows up in proximity to “revolution” — a shared spirit of frustration, anarchy and apple-cart-upsetting. From their conception, independent films aren’t just made outside of the studio system. They are made in opposition to the studio system, with its relentless need to round off the corners and soften the blows. And in standing against the status quo, independent films help to change it.Think the early years of Miramax, with the first movies by Soderbergh, Tarantino and others.

Of course, my proposed redefinition of independent film can’t accommodate many of today’s darling indies, which mollycoddle their audiences with a careful recipe of quirk, warmth and family dysfunction.I blame THE FULL MONTY. Just the very term “indie” seems to embody that spirit of fuzzy cuteness. I would call on filmmakers to start feeding their movies after midnight, and let their vicious little monsters roar.