This Savage Art

There’s a new feature at The House Next Door. Check it out.

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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.

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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.

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Support the WGA East writers on the front lines.

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One of my recent favorite stops on the interweb has been Mystery Man On Film. I like the fresh perspective that he brings to the table. A self-proclaimed student of screenwriting, Mystery Man is a forward thinker, looking for a better understanding of storytelling without drowning in the sea of books on the subject. Even though he does reference the works of Robert McKee and others he recognizes that story is about seeing a bigger picture. He makes a statement in this meme that I think sums up what film bloggers have probably subconsciously known for a while:

I believe that aspiring screenwriters could learn more from film scholars (aka “film bloggers”) then they would from most screenwriting gurus.

Analysis, reviews, food for thought and the invaluable script breakdowns via Miriam, this site recognizes the importance of balancing a well-rounded, fully developed screenplay with a good understanding of visual storytelling. It represents why I think the blogosphere serves a filmmaker’s need to explore the multi-disciplined craft of filmmaking but at the same time doesn’t just drink the Kool-Aid served up by the “gurus.”

Thanks Mystery Man, whoever you are.

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A dozen screenwriters are taking control of their careers by forming this new co-op.

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If you haven’t done so and want to apply you have to have all materials postmarked by today (5/1). From the Sundance Institute site:

In keeping with the Institute’s commitment to provide long-term assistance to the artists and projects it supports, the Feature Film Program is designed to allow Fellows to concentrate on distinct stages of the filmmaking process by attending three Labs: the January Screenwriters Lab is focused entirely on writing; the Directors Lab in June provides an opportunity to work with actors, crew, and advisors to rehearse, shoot, and edit specific scenes in a workshop environment; and the June Screenwriters Lab allows Fellows time to revisit and revise their screenplays based on the challenges experienced during the Directors Lab. Based on the specific needs of the project, many Fellows then receive ongoing creative and practical support as their films enter the production and post-production stages.

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“There is no doubt that most of the dullness of our movies is concocted in advance in the so-called heads of the so-called scriptwriters. Not only the dullness: They also perpetuate the standard film constructions, dialogues, plots. They follow closely their textbooks of “good” screenwriting. Shoot all scriptwriters, and we may yet have a rebirth of American cinema.”

– Jonas Mekas, Village Voice (November 25, 1959)

Author, filmmaker and Professor of Film in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison J.J. Murphy has written the kind of book that I’ve been waiting for for a long time. Think of Me and You and Memento and Fargo as an alternative to the slew of “manuals” on screenwriting out there. There is valid information in all of them but like we all know application of knowledge is everything. There is no magic bullet to writing a good screenplay.

What Murphy covers in this book is not a “how-to” for independent screenwriters but case studies of a dozen screenplays that range from the experimental collage of Gummo to the film noir reworking of Fargo (see the list here.) He goes on to say that independent film is a sort of amalgamation of art cinema and classic film design. What degree or side of the track the screenplay falls on is at the discretion of the writer. I wouldn’t say this is a bashing of contemporary commercial films but more a contrarian view. He allows us, through deep analysis, to see the moving parts of these screenplays. In contrast these films are more flattened dramatically, not so dependent on the overworked go-to devices of mainstream American cinema. This is not to say that these films don’t incorporate similar mappings like the three-act structure, most of them do with exception to a couple.

In Me and You and Memento and Fargo, the styles of these films are broken down into four parts with three film examples each part. In Part One we see Murphy dissect what is the Problematic Protagonist. Here he states and illustrates that manual writers like Robert McKee teach us that protagonist have to be goal-driven; ambivalence is boring and does not move the story forward. Here Murphy gives Stranger Than Paradise, Safe and Fargo as examples of how protagonists can take on different qualities and still remain interesting, Fargo probably being the most bold by shifting protagonists almost in mid-stream. Characters float through story damned by circumstance and we are engaged just for the pure enjoyment of watching these charismatic, odd and delusional characters make their way in an unpredictable world.

Continuing with Part Two, Multiple-Plot Films, we see how the use of ensemble pieces can tell interesting stories that get discouraged by the manuals. Trust, Gas Food Lodging and Me and You and Everyone We Know are the films chosen. By far the most interesting point made here comes from the two films that are created by women. Allison Anders, director of Gas Food Lodging flat out says the three-act structure is masculine in nature and that filmmakers should rely on a more intuitive and inventive approach especially if you are trying to put your name out there as a independent artist.

Part Three is where the waters get deep with Temporal Structures. These are films that deal with shifting expectations by altering time and orientation in the mind of the audience. By using Reservoir Dogs, Elephant and Memento Murphy shows us how the filmmakers use flashback, foreshadowing and overlapping time to create complex structures that challenge the viewer and probably ask more of the audience than most films. Just explaining Christopher and Jonathan Nolan’s Chinese box film Memento with its demanding exploration of time and memory is an impressive feat.

The collection of the more unorthodox films in this analysis is saved for last in Part Four. Here the films live in a dream state or even possibly a state of psychosis. They are Noncausal Structures. All conventional logic is nonexistent. The film’s world creates its own logic. Mulholland Drive, Gummo and Slacker have no predictable arc, plot points or reversals. Lines of plot drop out sometimes returning much, much later or not at all. It would be easy to say these films have no rules and are a random blurting out of thoughts on a page but upon analysis you can see this is not true. They are a whole creation unto themselves.

“Classical Hollywood narration is not intrinsically superior to either art-cinema narration or the combination represented by American Independent cinema” is the sentiment that concludes Murphy’s book. After reading it and seeing the numerous examples of how these films break the rules one can only ask the question, “why can’t I break the rules?” The answer is you can. The filmmakers discussed are very aware of what the rules are for Hollywood screenwriting, they just choose to not play by them. Screenwriting should have method though. To quote Murphy’s final statement,“Real innovation in screenwriting, as the various independent films in this study boldly attest, comes not from an ignorance of narrative film conventions, but from being able to see beyond their limitations.”

Reading J.J. Murphy’s book was very freeing and I would recommend it to anyone interested in telling a good story for film, not just the independent screenwriter. With emerging technology and distribution models changing the playing field for filmmakers the thing that will never change is the need for fresh inventive storytelling. This is why I think this book is very relevant regardless of where film exhibition is going.

Prior to reading I would suggest renting all the films or at least being familiar with them. The book goes into great detail when explaining the progression of structure of the films. Me and You and Memento and Fargo is an excellent addition to any filmmaker’s library but mostly anyone who has felt tied down by the manuals and in need of a creative punch in the arm.

Popularity: 28% [?]