This Savage Art

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

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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.

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John August breaks down the short script.

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

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Earlier I reported that my screenplay Dyre Avenue got into the upper ten percent of this year’s BlueCat Screenplay Competition run by Gordy Hoffman. This is the second time I’ve submitted to this competition. Well, I didn’t win but I look at it this way, I paid $45 for coverage on my screenplay, if I place in any of the upper slots, great! Bonus!

I just got my screenplay analysis back from the judges but I won’t bore you with the details. Unless you have actually read the screenplay it’s not really relevant but it does end on this note:

A great script like this really deserves the polish.

In the immortal words of Carl Spackler, “So I got that goin’ for me, which is nice.”

I better get to work.

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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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Sometimes being an independent filmmaker is like the celluloid life of a New York cop. You trudge through a career trying to make a difference but in the end you don’t know if you even made a dent. Cynical, maybe, but that’s how I felt a couple of weeks ago after having lunch with a Nicholl Fellowship winner. This writer played the game. He came out of a major screenwriting program then won the Fellowship, the most prestigious award that can be granted to a screenwriter. Got heavily courted by Hollywood, got a manager, got optioned, got major star interest. Manager relationship went sour, broke off with his representation. Options didn’t take. A significant amount of time has passed between the award and now. Back to square one without representation.

It was tough to hear this story because I know it is so common for so many — to try and because the planets didn’t align have a hard earned accomplishment like finishing a screenplay you’re proud of fall short of a deserved destination. I guess the more obvious insult to injury was that this writer won the Fellowship — basically saying “We the Academy aka The Industry, deem this work exceptional and worthy of such accolades.”

Is the Nicholl just the SAT for the film industry or is it the ticket for a screenwriter’s career? Can be. Truth is, and as the numbers¹ serve me, most winners don’t go on to have their screenplays produced but it is definitely a jumping off point.² It’s a chance to meet the industry and probably get representation. What you do with all of that is really up to you. More so, what this really illustrates is there is absolutely no logic or stock answer to how to get a pass into the club. It just makes you question the whole process. Maybe the real question to ask is — other than the money rewarded³, is a Nicholl Fellowship screenplay relevant in today’s Hollywood? Probably just as relevant as any other well-written, producible screenplay — you just jump to the head of the line.

Before we went our separate ways this writer told me an unrelated story of a well known and proven producer who was responsible for some significant achievements in filmmaking. He said “Back then we weren’t interested in how commercial a film was, we just set out to make the best film we could possibly make.” Well, maybe not so unrelated.

A final note, the writer I’m speaking of submitted his screenplay three times to the Academy before the Nicholl Fellowship was awarded.

[...]

As a coda to this entry I would like to add my personal take on contests and fellowships for screenwriting and/or filmmaking; take them all with a grain of salt. Your career shouldn’t rest on the outcome of a committee regardless of who they are. Sure, a big fat check and a little attention would be nice but the odds are against you. Should you bother? Absolutely. If you feel your work is ready to go out there and compete (let’s not fool ourselves, it is a competition) with others for that golden ticket then do it. I entered Dyre Avenue in the Nicholl, the BlueCat Screenplay Competition and the Sundance Lab last year and got an overwhelming “no” across the board. This year I reentered BlueCat with a new draft and got in the upper 10%, still waiting on Sundance Lab. None of this is stopping me from my mission of turning my current screenplay into my first feature.

Be selective with your choices. Make sure the competitions are legit and they can actually advance your career in some way otherwise what’s the point? Be proactive. Keep writing and pursuing your goals.

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1. Of the 96 scripts that have earned their writers Fellowships from 1986-2006, 13 have been produced [↩]
2. Many Fellows have used the award to launch rewarding careers.[↩]
3. Up to five $30,000 Fellowships are awarded each year [↩]

For $175 iScript will professionally record a mp3 version of your screenplay. [via Complications Ensue]

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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.

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Taking scribosphere nerdery to new heights the Scriptcloud plugin allows you to extract words from your screenplay to produce a custom made tag cloud.

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