This Savage Art

So here I am, back to zero. If you take a look at the progress bar on Where Are You Seventeen? you’ll see the tank is empty again. The next draft is upon me. After taking a few weeks to wrap my head around the changes I made I took some inventory you could say. I read Linda Seger’s book Making A Good Script Great which I highly recommend. She includes something that I really don’t see a lot of and that is what are the building blocks of a great scene. There are many helpful insights in the book but like all schooling there is a point where you have to trust your instincts and go for it. The downtime did get me thinking about how I write.

One thing I really got to understand is the power of the rewrite. As much as it can seem like an uphill battle it really is your greatest asset as a writer. If you are writing a spec screenplay it does not go out until you think it should. That freed me up in a lot of ways thinking that everything I was writing can and will eventually change but only for the better.

I’m also finding the value in economy. Lean and mean is the way to go. Write what you mean and mean what you write. Be as colorful as you want on the page but don’t bog down the screenplay by writing miles describing the look and smell of a car interior. Unlike writing a novel where you can do many things like recapture something for the reader in five pages of dense description, we are dealing with screen time. Compression and expansion.

During my break I collected a source of go to notes in case I get in trouble and need a refresher course. I’m going to break down Seger’s book into a checklist for the end of this current draft. Each section will ask relevant questions regarding the topic discussed. For example, under Creating The Scene I’ll list questions like, Do all my scene’s have a reason for being in my story?

Another thing I’m doing is reading then printing out all the columns from Wordplay and binding them up for easy reference. Seems that those two might know a thing or two about writing for the screen.

This may all seem a little insane to some but it’s something I’m taking seriously. The words of Seger, Rossio and Elliot are not gospel. They are guidelines that you can follow if you choose to and really good ones at that. Just don’t allow all this advice to turn you inside out. I think the minute you start freaking out about a plot point falling on page 24 instead of 27 you are going to be freaking out about other things that in my opinion have little relevance to storytelling. After hearing a podcast of Stuart Beattie speaking about his career he made it clear that at some point you need to throw it all out and write your story. The only rule, don’t be boring.

This is the draft that’s going out to a small group of confidantes. This one has to be on the money or at least pretty damn close. My plans are to write this draft, work on an outline to a new screenplay while waiting for and absorbing the feedback for Seventeen?, make changes accordingly.

So for now I leave you all, it’s time to fill up that tank.

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Directing a film takes nerves of steel. If you don’t have nerves of steel you better learn to fake it. You are the captain of the ship and one thing a crew cannot get behind is a wishy-washy captain. Mutiny is just around the corner for the ill-prepared director so be the ultimate expert on the film you are about to make. This is by no means bullshit. Here are some hands-on golden rules from director Atom Egoyan on how to make the gig work for you.

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If there every was a television show that deserved the film treatment this is it. Cinematical reports on the upheaval from the Miami Vice set. It seems that the rigorous demands director Michael Mann put on the film crew proved to be too great, 120 crew members have left since since filming began about six months ago. I hope it’s just industry hype because if any writer/director deserves a pass, it’s Mann. Look at the incredible rumor mill that followed Apocalypse Now! while it was filming and what an amazing spectacle that turned into. Hey, the guy has a vision…

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Rule #1: Never use your own money. That rule applies to all endeavors financial. And filmmaking. What are rules made for, class? There has been a long line of filmmakers who have had careers launched from the fruits of their labor along with their credit cards but at what cost? What about the thousands of others who have reels of negatives or stacks of video tapes in their closets as a cold reminder than no one really cared enough about their vision or opus or whatever you call it?

With the democratization of the process, making a film and launching a career can be done for less but it still needs to be done whether it’s $2,000 or $20,000. No matter how you break it down it still costs money and the consequences of a loss are not always financial. The New York Times ran an article yesterday profiling a couple of young filmmakers, Arin Crumley, 24, and his girlfriend, Susan Buice, 27 and their film, Four Eyed Monsters.

The film follows the journey of how they met online and sparked a romance, documenting it as they lived it. I’ve seen the diary video blogs of the filmmaking journey on My Space and it’s truly heartbreaking maybe because it’s so close.

There’s a quote from the article from director Sydney Pollack about his understanding of the modern film industry landscape; “The minute everyone is allowed in, something changes in terms of standards of excellence,” he said. “I don’t know whether that is good or bad.” Standards? Wasn’t the same thing said when rock’n’roll came into the fold? Punk? I can’t think of anything the film industry needs more right now than a shot in the arm. Not another DVD format. Not another iPod. Not another tired remake. What’s needed is some vitality, some vision. Shame on you Sydney.

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I just added a product preview feature from Amazon. Whenever you see a product link or display on this savage art… just hover over the link and a pop-up window will appear with product info you can check out. Ahhhh, commerce.

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Search Dictionary:

vit·ri·ol
NOUN:
2. Bitterly abusive feeling or expression.

Haven’t made it yet? Join the club. The club of thousands of screenwriters who still write despite the reality of rejection. Here is an article that was published in Written By about Michael Traeger, a 45 year old writer who was mad as hell and couldn’t take it anymore. So what did he do? He suffered silently and wrote and wrote and wrote. A stack of unproduced screenplays that are endulging something inside of him. Something cathartic, something filled with bile (kind of like this entry). Something that can’t be produced. Well, maybe not. He has written and directed The Moguls and now has the likes of Kevin Bacon and George Clooney checking out his work. Does this mean if you stick your middle finger up the ass of Hollywood long enough you will get produced? Who knows but you should read the article, if only to convince yourself that you should stick by your guns and write what you need to write, regardless of the outcome or the sale. If it’s good writing it will find a place. And if you want to find out if Traeger can actually write you can download a .pdf of his screenplay Vikings from that article. Oh yeah, he’s on Variety’s 10 director’s to watch list.

Figures, he’s a New Yorker. Hey, I’m 38 and I still have my health, cough. Thanks to Emon for the link.

Photo by Deverill Weekes

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So you have your structure air-tight, your plot points all fall in the right place but what about the scenes? What makes for good scene writing? There are a few resources out there that go into this, Making A Good Script Great is one of them. A recent post on The Thinking Writer has some of the basics of scene construction with some supporting information on dialogue, very helpful.

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Something you might want to check out today, The New York Times Sunday Magazine Edition: The Movie Issue. With a handful of politically charged films coming out soon we all get a glimpse of what it takes to get a war film made in Hollywood now.

Photograph by Dan Winters for The New York Times.

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