John August

QandA

To live and die in LA

Film Industry, QandA

In your opinion, does a feature scriptwriter need to live in the Los Angeles
area to be fairly active in the business and sell work?

–K. Strom

Yes. As much as I want to believe that a fledgling screenwriter in Scranton,
PA, can take the industry by storm, the majority of writers working in studio feature films live and work in Los Angeles, at least in the early stages of
their career.

Could you do it in London? Sure. New York? Probably. Could you just commute
back and forth to LA, spending most of your time somewhere else? Maybe.

The real question is should you, K. Strom, move from wherever you live to
Los Angeles? That’s the $1000 question, and one that’s been raised at least
half a dozen times in the three years I’ve been writing this column. Basically,
if your life’s dream is to become a giant Hollywood screenwriter, then you
need to live in Hollywood. If you have different goals — indie films, for
example — your options are much more open.

The sequence of Go

Go, QandA

Did you originally write GO as an out-of-sequence story,
or was that something you and Doug Liman changed after the script was written?

–Chris

Although there’s hardly a trace of it left in the script, the deep underlying
story of GO originated from Alice in Wonderland. Even before I came to L.A.,
I’d been pondering ways to stage a modern Alice centered around a rave, with
a white Volkwagen Rabbit to get us into the action. (The White Rabbit would
ultimately become the Mazda Miata that Adam and Zack drive, and the Cheshire
Cat is still there, though now he speaks telepathically to Mannie.)

Fortunately, I never wrote that script, because it would have been horrible
– clever for the sake of being clever. But those Alice thoughts were still
rumbling in my head when in 1994 an aspiring director friend asked me to write
a script for him to direct as a short film. What I wrote was called "X," and
detailed a supermarket checkout clerk’s attempt to pull of a tiny ecstacy deal
at Christmas. My friend never got around to directing it, but other friends
would read the script and ask questions: who was Simon, and why was he going
to Vegas? What’s the deal with Adam and Zack? Are they cops or what?

I knew the answers, so two years later when I had the time, I wrote out the
full version as a feature. The first section, "Ronna," is the short
film script, almost verbatim. Rather than wedging all the new plot into the
first section, and ruining its tension, I started the movie over twice, each
time following a different set of characters. It became one story told in three
parts.

Inevitably and frustratingly, GO gets compared to PULP FICTION. While I think
they’re vastly different movies, the truth is, I don’t know if GO could have
been made without the success of Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary’s film.
While there had been plenty of non-linear movies before it (RASHOMON, MYSTERY
TRAIN, NIGHT ON EARTH), none had the kind of popular acceptance PULP FICTION
did. By the same token, GO
wouldn’t have worked told "straight."

Script writing software

Formatting, QandA

Would you recommend that a
beginning writer use script writing software? If so, do you prefer a specific
program?

–Mike

I used the style sheet formatting on Microsoft Word for my first few scripts,
partly because screenwriting software was still in its infancy, and partly
because I was too broke to buy any other program. If you already have a capable
word processor, you can certainly get by with that, particularly if money is
tight.

I now use Final Draft, which does a remarkably good job with a lot of the
script formatting drudgery. It’s worth downloading the free trial version to
see if you like it enough to spend $199 for it. Given that 80% of my day is
spent using that one program, it’s definitely worthwhile for me.

Secondary scene headings

Formatting, QandA

questionmarkI have a very simple question that has to do with secondary scene headings. I know this differs writer to writer, but let’s say you have a character who walks into a closet — how do you label it in the script? Is it:

INT. CLOSET – MOMENTS LATER

INT. HOUSE – CLOSET – MOMENTS LATER

THE CLOSET

What is the best way to go? Thanks in advance.

–Dustin Tash
The Oreogod

Of course, there’s no one best answer that’s appropriate for every situation. In most cases, I would opt for the first format, without the "moments later," which I generally save for a minor time cut. So it would look like:

INT. CLOSET – DAY

This is assuming the character is in the closet long enough for there to really be a scene. That is, a few lines, or at least some dialogue. Anything less, and I might not break out the closet at all, and just let the scene description handle the location:

After searching the room from top to bottom, Jamie steps into the dark closet and begins pulling boxes off the shelves.

When in doubt, use the simplest form that works for the moment.