This Savage Art

Don’t waste people’s time with that shitty screenplay you wrote.

Popularity: 1% [?]

After reading about all the studio development news (or shall I say anti-development news) it’s easy to get depressed. Remakes, preexisting material (adaptations, sitcoms, board games?) and franchises are and will remain king. It seems that original specs are having a hard time seeing the light of day. The numbers would have you believe that in these hard economic times everyone is still going to the movies. Maybe they are but what is getting them there is a prior relationship with the material before seeing the film. Or maybe it’s just a new spin on an old show with current talent that makes it all seem so fresh. Whatever it is, Hollywood is betting on it.

I haven’t written a book or a franchise or a screenplay based on a soft drink. Now what?

Where does that leave me and everyone else like me? Back to the beginning. I think a big part of being in the film industry is being flexible. Adaptability is everything. This actually couldn’t come at a better time. I needed to change my game up. I was feeling a staleness coming to my writing. I felt myself reaching a point in my writing and never going beyond that point. Having a son forced me to step back a little and assess why after all this time I still want to put myself through this agony. I find myself caring less about the industry and the numbers and more about writing a better screenplay than my last one. I was in dire need of a new approach.

Part of this new approach is having a plan. Like writing a screenplay you need to figure out some of the moving parts before you get there. I’m still writing specs with no intention at this point to develop preexisting theme park material. Here is my plan, as in, this is directed towards me (your approach might be different):

• Make a list of my top ten writing projects with a little one-liner. Written, partial-written and unwritten projects. From that list deduct what to work on next. What will I have the endurance for? What is going to benefit me creatively? Will this help or hurt me in the long run?

• Get a HUGE cork board that can hold an entire screenplay of scenes. Approximately 40-60 index cards. Map it out all over again. Take a step back.

• Make a list the tools and techniques that work for me. I tend to lean on techniques used in literature – theme, allegory, blah, blah, blah. With all the moving parts it’s good to have some things laid out in front of you.

• Relax. Don’t write for the industry, it only leads to alcoholism. We all saw Barton Fink and what the industry does to writers. Seriously. Writing can be such a mind fuck that unless you are really in love with your ideas it can be a long, long painful haul.

That’s the plan for now. I’m sure I’ll add along the way.

So as I try to revitalize myself as a filmmaker by going to the IFP Script To Screen Conference this weekend maybe I can come up with some hard hitting questions for the panelists like, oh I don’t know, now what do we do? I’m sure I won’t be the only one asking.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Does anyone out there have PDF versions of Into The Wild and The Darjeeling Limited? It seems that the studios who so generously posted scripts for download on their sites have made them all unavailable.

Please contact me if you do.

[imdb Into The Wild] [imdb The Darjeeling Limited]

Update: Got The Darjeeling Limited PDF from Paul and Into The Wild from Gil. Thanks again guys.

Popularity: 17% [?]

John August breaks down the short script.

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Every man needs a website. Check out his Writings section for film criticism.

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[I decided to pull this post out of the sidebar because I wanted to add some more to it.]

Michael Clayton writer/director gets beyond the mechanics of screenwriting and to heart of the matter – imagination [via GreenCine - added podcast.] The podcast itself is a nice little film school compacted into a half an hour program hosted by the always enjoyable Elvis Mitchell. What I like about it is its a real inside take on the process of filmmaking from a doer. Not to take anything away from anyone. I’m a doer. You might be a doer. What I mean is he’s a pro writer turned director who isn’t talking out of his ass like some guru who has never been in the trenches. The real trenches. Twenty years of grinding it out only to emerge now with a project that is getting much attention. When I saw it in the theater all I kept thinking was how much I wanted to read the screenplay [you can download a PDF here.]

I attended a Script to Screen event that the IFP hosted around 2000-01(?) and Gilroy spoke with Raymond De Felitta about screenwriting. It was early on in his career and he was coming off Proof of Life. I remember thinking “that is what a pro screenwriter sounds like.” The guy walked the walk. As you will gather from listening to the podcast you’ll get the idea that he’s worked on his share of questionable films but it’s also where he learned his craft and how to swim the political waters of Hollywood. You can see the culmination of all that in Michael Clayton. You can also see the early films of Alan J. Pakula in it too which is a plus in my book. It is a shame the film got buried amongst the muck early in the year because as far as what Hollywood is celebrating right now as Academy Award fare, this is as good as I’ve seen in a long time.

Popularity: 92% [?]

PDF available online for download. Related: How to make your screenplay “read like the movie.”

Popularity: 44% [?]

All advice regarding screenwriting should be taken with a grain of salt maybe even approached with extreme caution. I’m in the mines like everyone else and I feel I’ve gained some knowledge and confidence over the years. I feel I’ve also shed a lot of the hype that’s been sold to me too. No one is “doing it wrong” if they choose a different method of writing than the so called masters or gurus of the screenwriting classroom. In a lot of ways talking about the process runs the risk of being pretentious if not boring to some so I’ll keep it to a minimum and try to keep this just to a timeline of my projects. There’s also a sort of superstition that the writing process should be held close to the vest for fear that you’ll foul up what is coming to you instinctually. Either way, it starts somewhere. With a new year upon us I think it’s time to use what works, trash what doesn’t and always, always learn more. This is how it started for me:

The very first screenplay I attempted to write many, many years ago was absolutely horrible. I was like a man in the dark trying to hammer a nail into the wall. I don’t even know if it’s floating around, probably on a diskette somewhere in my grandmother’s garage. It had something of an I’m not my brother’s keeper theme. One brother trying in vein to keep the other more fucked-up brother out of trouble. I got about 40 pages in and gave up. The loss to the world is minimal, trust me.

After that experience I thought I should look into how to do this screenwriting thing. One of the first books I read on the subject was not the Syd Field opus but Screenwriting: The Art, Craft, and Business of Film and Television Writing. I still have the copy and it’s a good companion piece to Screenplay if you’re starting out. At that time I was struggling to take on a new screenplay. I was driving for a car service, going to NYU and had dreams of being the next Scorsese. Honing my skills to become that allusive hyphenate, writer-director. Well, we all know how dangerous that dream can be. Never compare yourself to another artist in your field. Steal from the best but don’t try to become them. Hey, I was young. Scorsese did serve a purpose though. He was a film school unto himself and I wouldn’t have such a voracious appetite for cinema and seeing the variety of films I have seen if I didn’t take a cue from that crazed cinematic genius with the bushy eyebrows from Elizabeth Street.

I was trying to find my voice and write from my experiences, something that a graduate of his School of Cinematic Obsessives always did. So I crafted the beginnings of a story wrapped around the rich background of the job that was paying my bills [along with various freelance production work.] What started out as a short story became Where Are You Seventeen? [a title stolen from a friend's story with a similar backdrop but a different take. Don't worry, I got his permission. In the end, it didn't matter anyway.] Writing it became an odyssey. Many, many drafts later I had a great collection of scenes but nothing to string it all together. Character has always been my strong suit but bottom line, you need a story. You can translate that anyway you want. It can be as heavy handed as Liar, Liar or emotionally subtle as The Passenger. All the bullshit about how you can’t trivialize your story by clarifying it into one sentence is just that, bullshit. If you can’t crystallize your story into a line or two you have a problem. Even if it’s just a very surface take on it, it needs to start with some core thesis. I’m not even talking about benefiting the audience or people you’re trying to sell the idea to. This is for the writer’s benefit.

So I had issues to sort out. Years passed until I finally got my shit together. Not knowing what to do with this collection of miscreants I called a screenplay I looked for compatriots. Others in the trenches. I come to terms with the fact that if I don’t get serious about my writing I’m just wasting my time. Harsh, probably but true. People do write just for the joy of writing don’t they? My m.o. was different. The screenplay is just the blueprint. I wanted to make films, you know, for a living. [Oh yeah, I made a screenwriter and many other like-minded individuals on the interweb and found I was not alone. The books are great but feedback is better. The right feedback. Just knowing that you are not alone in an endeavor that demands being alone was helpful but nothing will replace hard work and finding your story on the page by sitting down and doing it.

I set a timeline for myself that coincided with the Nicholl Fellowship and the Sundance Lab. It really didn’t matter if I won, I knew the odds. I knew my grimy little downer story of police corruption and a lonely cab driver sacrificing his own happiness for his mother’s mental health wasn’t even on the their radar. Or maybe it just sucks. Either way it was the boost I needed to get the newly titled Dyre Avenue to a better place. It is now in a better place, it can probably use another pass but it has come a long way and I’m proud of the work I have done to get it there. Yeah, so what. No sleep until I’m cold and stiff right? I needed to take all this knowledge and write something new. Something that had a sense of immediacy and urgency [a couple of elements I think I'm actually good at.] I took on the new one. The untitled one. First draft done.

So here I sit writing this entry that has taken up way more space than I intended it to but a fresh start is upon us so I thought I would purge. I feel the itch to make another short so that is something I will try to get in the can at some point. Rewriting, rewriting rewriting. A new screenplay is swarming in my head too. I have a lot of work to do. A lot of work.

Just a note: I don’t endorse any of the screenwriting books. They all have their place but I don’t look to any one of them for answers on how to fix my screenplay. They do have some value though. They give you ideas and creative solutions for some problems but no one books is the answer. Like I said, with a grain of salt. Like everything you’ve read here.

Popularity: 90% [?]

Now Juno will now be connected to the much celebrated first screenplay of one Brook Busey-Hunt. Name doesn’t ring a bell? How about Diablo Cody? Yeah, I thought so. We’ve heard the story. College educated young lady walks into scummy airport strip joint, has a moment of clarity where she wants to be on the pole, works the required amount of time it takes to gather enough information to write about it on a blog which eventually becomes Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper. Attention comes her way, Juno makes the rounds and she lands the white hot Hollywood career you keep wishing you had. The gender neutral nom de plume. The tattoos. The truck-driver mouth. It all strikes me as uh, a little calculated.

Truth is, Juno is a pretty solid film and an impressive achievement for a first-timer. Before I went to see it yesterday I really didn’t want to like it. I thought it was going to be filled with smug, I’m-smarter-than-you-pop-culture-infused-fuck-off-for-not-being-cool-enough-to-be-in-my-world dialogue. That is there, there’s no denying it but it slowly starts to melt away and gets a little more down to earth once we get out of the showy, self-aware first act. The dialogue does crackle and I can see why it is the selling point of her work but the screenplay does go beyond. It works. I noticed a kinship with films like Thumbsucker and Ghost World. Like those two films about teenagers in crisis, the characters ring true and the pressure of their circumstances force them to reveal who they are at the core.

Cody is kind of a polarizing figure in the screenwriting world right now. I mean, how many 13 year old female audience members know who the screenwriter of the film is? Is that necessarily a bad thing? I’m curious to see where her career goes. I know another screenplay of hers is on deck for Jason Reitman to direct again. And oh yeah, there’s the Spielberg television series too. By then we should know if she’s the real deal.

Popularity: 87% [?]

Mystery Man On Film announces his online revolution by planning to offer his free screenwriting book from his site.

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