John August

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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."

Writer/director disagreements

Directors, QandA

What happens when you disagree with what a director does with your script?
Has that ever happened to you? Is there anything you can do about it?

–Jane

Disagreements can and do occur between writers and directors, and at least
in terms of feature films, the director almost always wins. After all, it’s
the director who is responsible for getting the film up on the screen, and
every department needs to support this effort.

However, it’s important to distinguish between bad disagreements and good
disagreements. Bad disagreements are easy to spot, because they often involve
shouting and name-calling and vows never to work together again. While there
may be genuine issues at hand, more often the battle is over ego, turf, money
and fear. These kinds of situations are movie poison, and usually hurt the
film.

Fortunately, most disagreements between writers and directors are good disagreements,
where they may have different opinions on characters, scenes or plotlines,
but argue only with the intention of making the best film possible. Remembering
the first rule of disagreements (the director almost always wins), a smart
writer will try to figure out not only what the director wants, but why he
wants it, and how to best achieve the outcome without hurting the script as
a whole.

In my experience, many directors use their writer conversations during development
and pre-production to answer their own questions about the project: What will
the movie feel like? Why is this moment important? How will I direct that actor?
The more confident and secure a director feels about the material going in,
the better the movie will hopefully turn out. So it’s generally worth it to
set aside your defensive tendencies and let the director explore the material.
Hopefully, you’ll find yourselves trying to make the same movie.

Disagreements during production are more treacherous, because exhaustion breeds
paranoia, and every hour of filming is literally costing thousands of dollars.
Often writers aren’t very involved during production, but if they are, the
most important thing they can do is make sure the story is still being told,
despite the obstacles and changes that arise.

In post-production, the director’s primary collaborator is the editor, and
the two of them will have the same kinds of disagreements as the writer and
director had during pre-production. The writer’s involvement during editing
is unfortunately rare, but can be extremely helpful. The writer generally has
the best sense of how the story was originally constructed, and can help nudge
it back into shape.