Insider screenwriting stories, plus occasional stuff on how to write a screenplay, by Phil Gladwin
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I’ve decided I’ll open the doors for a while and offer a screenplay coverage service like I did back in March.
I’m not doing a big announcement and razzle-dazzle buildup this time - that way I won’t get swamped, and I’ll be able to keep it going for longer.
If you want to read more about what the options are and how it all works just have a look at:
As you may know, this week it’s exactly one year since I first opened this site for business. As part of the birthday shenanigans I wanted to find you a decent promotion on Final Draft.
I’ve managed it.
If you’re a student, or a member of an educational establishment in any way, I’ve negotiated a great deal for you.
Final Draft is a pro level screenwriting tool. A tool that’s used by many of the world’s best screenwriters. A tool that frees your mind so you can just WRITE without distraction.
For the next week or so I’m being allowed to pass on to you a limited number of copies at a simply HUGE discount!
Right now I have 200 Final Draft Academic packages available. Considering how many people visit this site and read my Newsletter that’s not very many - and at the price I have for you I don’t expect them to hang around very long.
Just follow this link and secure yours before they all go.
As Alan Sugar might say, I’ve arranged a treat for you all.
It’s a fascinating piece from a long time Goldminer, who has some very, VERY interesting advice about getting those first gigs as a writer.
We were emailing and he mentioned how he had been working extensively behind the scenes as a writer for hire in Hollywood.
I asked him to write that up for you all – about his background, about the mind set he adopts, and about how he actually goes about getting the gigs – and he wrote me this article.
I think it’s an acute insight into the way the system really works for many, many pro writers.
(Including me – even this month the barriers to the latest gig I have been pitching for seemed to just fade away when I listened to what the script editor, the boss, really wanted me to write about.)
Anyway, without more fuss, here’s Curt:
(The emphases are mine.)
It’s an honor to elaborate on my adventures for the Screenwriting Goldmine readers.
I live in the Inland Empire, an area about an hour east of Los Angeles. This living situation has been both a positive and a negative in my journey to transition to full time screenwriter. It has allowed me the space to develop my own voice, but has hampered meetings and slowed the process of full time screenwriting.
In 2000 I was under the influence of iconic independent successes like Jon Favreau and Kevin Smith. I thought I could do it all produce, act, and write.
After a couple of anxiety ridden, busy, and ultimately fruitless years I realized that I was truly a writer. Therefore if I was going to have any kind of creative career I would need to focus my energy on mastering that craft.
Thus began the great writing experiment that included reading every book I could get my hands on that had been recommended by professionals like William Goldman, Syd Field, and Terry Rossio – and actually writing the three big tales that had been swirling in my imagination for years.
People read my scripts, liked them…and nothing.
You see writing the script is step one. We’re farmers and the script is the seed. The joy is in the harvest and the responses I was getting were: “Nice seeds.”
Madness.
So it came to pass that I was hungry to submit to the tutelage of a successful writer. I was in search of a mentor. My first inclination was to go big with a tried and true approach, so I went to a screenwriter’s expo presented by UCLA for their screenwriting graduate program.
In between classes I was sitting on the steps with my wife when I recognized the name on the tag of the fellow sitting next to me. I considered him a very accomplished screenwriter having five or six big movies released. We started chatting and I mentioned I had just pitched several concepts to Disney. As it turned out both of us were looking for representation.
What an eye opener. This cat with over twenty years in the business couldn’t get an agent and was now teaching screenwriting at UCLA. “Basically I prepare my students for unemployment,” he said off the cuff.
Discouraged, but with new resolve I called it a day, certain that UCLA at that time may have helped me write a better script but it wasn’t going to teach me how to sell it.
Some time around that night I stumbled across the Screenwriting Goldmine site.
The site was just a straightforward pitch with no bells and whistles. Phil Gladwin (”Frankk” as he was calling himself back then) claimed to be able to deliver the juice in fewer than fifty pages!
By this point I had written ten features, one actually made, written a couple of television pilots, and a commercial. In addition I had amassed a library of screenwriting books, the best of which I had read twice.
Suffice it to say Screenwriting Goldmine transformed my writing. I have the system memorized and can verbally roll it out as if it were my own. This is a testament to its extraordinary brevity and truth.
What’s more, Phil’s sage advice to enter the business sideways may raise an eyebrow, but is the key to success.
Anyone can punch keys and eventual print out a hundred and twenty pages. A few can get their intimates to read them. But who cares? I want to see my stuff on the big screen, not impress my friends. And here’s the secret none of the screenwriting books tell you… Agents Don’t Make Movies.
Let me repeat that because it’s invaluable in terms of money and time… Agents Don’t Make Movies.
Directors and Producers do. Some do it for art, others for commerce, and the best for both. These are the people who make screenwriters’ dreams come true.
I wrote a script for a producer who was in charge of DirecTV’s national ad campaign in the US for a couple of years. He’s a young guy who wants to transition to film producing. He is an industry professional. So I write for him, on spec, and working his ideas. However the last script I wrote for him went straight to Julia Roberts and Sylvester Stallone’s production companies, not through an agent but through his personal contacts.
Directors are even better. Unlike the producers who are after a sale, directors are artists too. Therefore an active director is always looking for great shootable short content, a movie trailer, or a commercial spec that they can either submit to festivals or use on their reels. Why not be their writer?
Check out IMDB. Why is it that Steven Spielberg, Tim Burton, and Martin Scorsese tend to work with the same writers? The answer is relationships. I don’t mean schmoozing people at cocktail parties. I mean you, the writer, must become friends with others who share your passionate vision and are willing to actually create what you’ve written.
Today I’m a writer. I’m not an actor/writer, or a producer/writer. Here’s another secret, my original stuff goes tends to be ignored. Why is that? Not commercial enough, not as well written, too big a budget?
None of those answers tell the whole story. There is some ego involved. Artists love their ideas. Business people really love their own ides. Sure they “like” mine, but when I write one of their’s, suddenly I’m a genius in their eyes.
Listen, you don’t have to take a two-year MFA program to grow as a writer. I don’t need another diploma. You should find a serious, a real, director or producer who has an idea not manifested on paper. Be the person who brings their idea to fruition. Your art, your voice will still be there.
Now the pressures of selling and creating the piece fall on better suited shoulders and you are free to write.
One caveat, when I say real, I mean it. Don’t waste your time with people who “want” to direct. Find someone who does it for a living in film, television, commercials, or online content. That person will invariable have ideas that you can develop (using Screenwriting Goldmine). The brilliant applicability of Phil’s method is that it is developed for the visual medium. It starts and ends with images.
Curt Sell, June 2008
…came about at the end of a three hour murder mystery.
It was about a nanny who had murdered two children in her care, and had eventually been tracked down and brought to book. She had lied and deceived, and wept, and seduced, and distorted, and it seemed like she was innocent, or that she was going to get away with it over and over again.
In the end she had been found guilty, and sentenced to umpteen years in prison for the murder of the two young children in her care.
Myself as writer, the script editor, the producer, the researcher, the Exec Producer, the guy in accounts, the courier who had dropped in and out of the office, we’d all been discussing how the script should end for months. We could not get it right.
We knew the girl was going to be in prison, but we just couldn’t get to the thought at the very end of the show, the idea the audience were going to take away with them.
We had tried what seemed like a million different endings: she denied it to her cell mate and protested her innocence to the last, she laughed about the murders, admitted her guilt finally, she wept for her own lost chances now she was inside, she’d been chirpy and happy and psychotically untouched by the whole thing.
All of those were fine for different reasons - and none of them really did it.
By which I mean none of those endings really gave the audience one last kick, one last injection of the Wow factor.
We widened our scope. We tried different images. For a while we ended on the families who had suffered the loss. We even tried going out by lingering on the tombstone of the murdered baby.
Nah. All cosy, predictable. Functional, of course, but unsurprising.
In the end it was the director, Tristram Powell, who gave us the thing, very close to him actually beginning the shoot.
He suggested a single line of dialogue that, when I heard it, made me shiver.
He wanted the murdering nanny to turn to her cell mate, and say words to the effect of:
‘When I have my babies I’m going to look after them properly.’
To my mind that is a simply STUNNING line.
As with all great lines of dialogue it’s to do with the pure compression of the huge thought behind it.
In this one sentence, at the last possible minute of the script, Tristram had opened a door through to a deep, dark evil at the heart of the nanny that none of us had ever suspected before.
First of all, the line paid off in a flash the debate that had run through the script about whether mothers should work and hire a nanny, or stay at home to look after their children. It showed that this murderer blamed the mothers of the dead children for hiring a nanny in the first place. It showed a MONSTROUS denial from her about what she had done, a total lack of repentance, which I still find utterly chilling.
And in the second place, well, the nanny was young.
Of COURSE she was going to get out of prison at some point.
And OF COURSE she was going to have her own children.
And those children were going to love her, and she would be able to love them, which is more than the mothers in the story would ever be able to do because of her. This on its own seemed monstrously unfair.
But of course there is the suggestion, you can’t get away from it, that even, maybe, at some point, her psychosis was going to surface again, and she was going to murder more children – her own children - too.
So while she faced 15 years or more in prison, all closure was just blown apart, and the script ended with what felt to me like the detonation of a bomb.
Like I said, the best line of dialogue I never wrote.
If you haven’t noticed already, you might care to wander over to the Screenwriting Goldmine forum.
It’s been completely redeveloped in the last week.
It’s now MASSIVE!
A writer could get lost in there for weeks.
To mark this I’m also running another forum competition. The winner will get to send me their screenplay, and I’ll send them back the same notes and coverage as they would have got from me when I was working as a full time script editor.
All you have to do is make comments in the forum, just talk to people, get to know other Goldminers, generally help the new forum launch with a swing - and for doing just that someone will win free coverage for their script.
To find out more you can either follow the Forum tab at the top of this page. (This will take you to the forum. Look out for the Monthly Competition thread very near the bottom of the page.)
Or, to go to the competition more directly, click on this link, scroll down and read the report on the ‘June Competition’:
Too creative to write?
How can this be?
Surely being too creative is the least of anyone’s problems?
Well, here’s an extract from an email exchange I’ve been having recently with a user of my Screenwriting Goldmine package.
It reveals how an excess of imagination can be a very damaging thing - and tells you what to do if you have that problem.
Here’s the email:
I just wanted to ask your advice regarding narrowing your ideas down. I have the opposite of writer’s block: my major problem is that I’m interested in pretty much everything. I’m attracted to any idea, and will happily and fickly flit from a project I’m bored with (perhaps just begun) to a new shiny thought that has grabbed my attention. I have notebooks full of half-begun narratives, scribbles, sketches and ideas, all of which I’ve lost interest in as quickly as my initial enthusiasm.
It makes it difficult me for to even get through your first screenwriting steps of generating ideas - an idea which I really like because it’s so similar to developing an art sketchbook. All the images I come up with seem very disparate, and I feel like I’m trying to impose a narrative upon them, rather than letting something emerge. I’m then increasingly dissatisfied with the basis of my narrative and throw the whole idea out, only to start the futile process again.
Am I destined to write short stories? If not, how do I gag my internal fickle teenager?
Jess
This is my reply:
In some ways I wish I had your problem, in others, well, I recognise it to be a curse.
I would always suggest the following steps when you are doing that first step of brainstorming and getting some seeds for your story:
1. ALWAYS make sure that you are thinking in terms of concrete scenes, with dramatic action - not themes, or moods, or concepts, or anything more vague. Be absolutely rigorous with yourself - if your idea isn’t a picture of people doing stuff then it shouldn’t be in the list.
2. Make sure that every scene you include like this really does make you catch your breath in some way when you think about it.
3. Make sure that you still think that when you come back two days later, or a week later. Any scene that has lost that power you throw out, then find yourself a new scene.
4. STOP when you have 10 of those scenes. And now put your mind into the next problem, the next step in the book.
5. Any other bright ideas that come up, you can note down, but your real job now is to go out and work with these seeds, structure your main story tentpoles, do the research, and, crucially, get onto the next phase, which is starting to work out your beat sheet.
And this is the reply Jess sent back:
…you’re right about focusing on dramatic action - I’m very prone to just thinking in moods and concepts, because that’s what I usually take from films, plays, books. But obviously the reason I connect with those moods is due to character and action . . . This sounds like an excellent excuse to re-watch some of my favourite films to try to identify the “catch your breath” scenes and look at how the writer creates the ambience I love so much through the action.You’ve also identified my other problem: trying to work through the steps too quickly and not letting my written-up scenes settle on the page or in my mind for long enough for me to become critically distant from them.
Jess’s comment here last is absolutely right - in screenwriting it’s very rare you can express theme except through the choices (ie actions or inactions) your characters make. If you start trying to do it any other way you will end up with a nebulous, self indulgent, BORING pile of paper. Not a screenplay.
Do let me know if you recognise any of this in your own writing - and whether you find it helpful advice.
(And thanks, Jess, for letting me use our conversation.)
At the time I saw it, Happy Go Lucky (the new Mike Leigh movie) had been running in my local arthouse cinema for well over a week, and the place was still packed out.
That’s good news if you’re me - as Happy Go Lucky is exactly the sort of movie I’d like to see a lot more of. Small scale, a very human story, some shimmering, elusive performances, strong roots in the real world - and the kind of bittersweet love for people, even the messed up ones, (especially the messed up ones) that works very well to counter the empty sugar highs and total violence that will no doubt dominate in the majority of the other big summer releases.
Sally Hawkins was unfathomably good as Poppy, the strange child-woman who grows up just a little. In one immence perfomance she was annoyingly chirpy, insanely optimistic, surprisingly powerful, totally adorable, gratingly silly, empathetic and surprisingly brave.
Eddie Marsan gave her a good run for her money as the convoluted, deeply unhappy Scott, even though ‘Scott’ as a concept was just one step too self-consciously a ‘character’ for me. Alexis Zegerman is quietly, unflamboyantly wonderful as the best friend - and I was extremely happy to see Sinead Matthews on screen too.
Sinead was absolutely fantastic when she played the deranged nanny in my own Trial and Retribution. and I just wanted her to get more screen time in this one. She’s definitely one to watch.
OK. So why didn’t it quite work?
Well, I loved the subtlety, the delightful meanders, and the light touch throughout. Yet I never managed to submerge myself in the experience. The friend I went with was sobbing by the end, for reasons she wouldn’t - or couldn’t explain - yet I remained just one step from involved, continually more aware of the technique, and the story choices, than I would have hoped.
I think one reason for that could have been the lack of the usual writing process.
Mike Leigh is one of the last people you would expect to follow conventional ideas of movie structure. His creative process is famous - months of rehearsals and workshops with the actors to discover their characters, then the introduction of the characters to each other and the improvisations, then the final decisions about the story very shortly before fiming starts.
Sounds great, but I’ve always felt this tendency can lead to character heavy, slightly disconnected, even slightly random, scripts - and I felt this was true here.
There was a lot of material that floated on the edges of the story, almost disconnected from the central narrative drive. I can’t help wondering what the movie would have been like had the flamenco sequence, and the tramp sequence, and the visit to the sister in law sequence, among others, been woven more strongly into a more direct, *very* slightly more conventional narrative, where the emotional content of those sequences had been bound more directly to a narrative thrust that was leading us through the story instead of allowing us to drift.
Small things, in the end. Probably more my problem than the movie’s.
Happy Go Lucky is simple, poignant, and beautiful. When you need an antidote to CGI and multiple fantasy deaths I strongly recommend you track it down.
are just two of the DVD interviews I’m giving away over on the forum:
http:/www.screenwritinggoldmine.com/forum
If you’ve made a comment in the forum you’re in with a chance - so why not head over there and look up the Competition Thread to find out if you’ve won one of the three DVDs - or, even better, whether you’ve won the full, free copy of Final Draft software, one of THE industry standard screenwriting packages…
Here’s the link again:
http:/www.screenwritinggoldmine.com/forum
It’s obviously that kind of a day:
Apoptotic Productions are looking for comedies:
224 S Main Street
Ste. # 103
Springville, UT 84663
info@apoptoticproductions.com
From their site:
‘At Apoptotic Productions, we are passionate about our art. We are committed to innovation and the development of new talent.
We are currently accepting queries for feature length comedies. Please query with logline and synopsis.
We are looking for fresh, character driven edgy comedy. Send query to Submissions, Apoptotic Productions, 224 South Main St., #103, Springville, UT 84663.
You may also query via e-mail to submissions@apoptoticproductions.com ‘
Well, as I seem to be in the market for posting good leads for script submissions at the moment, here’s another one that might be worth your attention if you’re in any kind of film studentship at the moment in North America/Canada.
Here’s what the website says is their mission:
‘To find gifted screenwriters and directors across North America. Students and alumni from film programs throughout Canada and the US are strongly encouraged to submit High Concept Thrillers, Comedy, Family, Fantasy, Sci Fi, Horror, Action Adventure and Drama. The HollyNorth project gives you direct access to Hollywood decision makers that read all marketed specs. Quality over quantity is what sets the HollyNorth project apart from any other writing competition, or pitch fest in existence.’
I don’t know anyone involved in this, but it looks interesting - particularly the lack of reading fee!
Here are the details:
The HollyNorth Project
1000 Everett St
Los Angeles , CA 90026
Phone: 310.878.4592
Email: info@hollynorth.org
Web: http://www.hollynorth.org
The BBC Writers Academy 2008 has opened its doors for applications.
Simply put, this is THE current way into the BBC for screenwriters.
Those who are selected will be given extensive tuition, and when they’ve finished their training, most of them will be given gigs writing real shows.
If you want to write for British TV, you’d be crazy not to apply.
Here’s the link:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/opportunity/writers_academy.shtml
Thanks to Dr Bryan for pointing out it had gone live.
Read about more screenwriting opportunities on the Screenwriting Goldmine screenwriting forum.
I’ve just posted the winners of the March competition over on the forum. Go and find out whether you won in this thread here:
http://www.screenwritinggoldmine.com/forum/showthread.php?p=3736#post3736
If you weren’t aware of this competition, every month I give away a free copy of Final Draft, one of the industry standard screenwriting software packages, and some other runners up prizes.
And all you have to do to be in with a chance is to comment in the forum. See the first comment in the thread to see how it works…
You’ve finished your first draft, and you’ve left it alone for a couple of weeks so that you can get some perspective on it.
I know it’s burning a hole through your desk and you are desperate to hear what people think, but the worst thing you could possibly do at this point is give it to anyone else to read.
Seriously. You need to do more work on it before you let it out into the big wide world. With the smallest amount of effort compared to the labour you have already put in you can make it substantially better.
Get a coffee, and sit down somewhere where you can’t be disturbed. Get a pen. Read your script all in one go.
Make notes in the margins on everything you don’t like.
You are looking for places where, in the cold light of day, it’s clear your script doesn’t do what you hoped it would.
Just scribble your thoughts in the margins at that point and move on. Don’t think you have to fix the problem there and then.
And, crucially, (here’s the big money tip) every time you find that you are coming back to the script after your attention has wandered, draw a big line across the page.
There is something very wrong with your story at that point. It could be as simple as a bum line of dialogue, or a clumsy cut between scenes – or it could be something more terminal, like your story completely running out of jeopardy, or a sub plot spiralling out of control – whatever it is, the fact you stopped paying attention to the script at that point is a disaster. The good news is the clue to fixing it will lie somewhere just before that line.
Maybe you’ll have time to work when you get to the end of the script, or maybe it will be another day.
Your job is to go back through and do a mixture of attending to your notes, working out what to do about the places you drew the lines, and this mix of super practical simple stuff:
If you do all that, it shouldn’t take you more than a few big sessions, and your script will be so much better than it was just a few hours before.
NOW it’s time to send it out or get people to comment on it, or do whatever you want to do with it.
This is a controversial one. It’s a pragmatic piece of advice, that doesn’t feel very pure to me because it’s based on my personal taste rather than any rules of drama (if there are such things) - and it also flies in the face of the success of one of the biggest movie successes in recent years.
OK.
My basic proposition is that There Will Be Blood, that celebrated look at the dark side of the birth of the oil industry, with that elemental performance from Daniel Day Lewis and that script that boils and fumes with energy, is pretty well unwatchable.
More than that, I think it’s a severe case of Emperor’s New Clothes.
I think the film is BORING…
I think after the fuss dies down, it will quickly slip into being one of those movies that is referenced by film buffs, acquire a small, vehement fan(atic) base, and never again be watched by the vast majority of the world.
And it’s all because of a simple mistake the writer makes.
I started thinking about this because I couldn’t understand why the director and the director of photography had made the lighting choices they did. I’ve never seen such a lack of illumination on screen.
All the time I was in the cinema I felt I was constantly peering into a darkened room, and as the hours passed and the story unrolled, and dimly lit scene after dimly lit scene came by I grew increasingly desperate for someone to just put the electricity back on and let me see what was going on.
But then I realised that this lighting is very true to the emotional character of the film.
Watching the movie is one, long, darkness. Morally, aesthetically, so even physically. There isn’t a single character in the movie that you can like. Admire, maybe. Respect, certainly - but like? Not a chance.
The audience were strange too. The place was packed, as you’d expect with a movie that has had such universally great reviews, but I’ve never seen a more restless group of people. Shifting in their seats, people checking their watches, going in and out to the toilet, even the odd low conversation with no-one complaining. (I watched this in an art house movie theatre - believe me, that place has a solid respect for film, and wouldn’t normally tolerate conversations even for a few seconds.)
Let’s be honest. Watching that movie was duty for a lot of that audience. An awful lot of them came with the hunger to see great movie making - and an awful lot of them were bored stiff by the end.
Emperor’s New Clothes. They won’t admit it, but in ten years time, who’s going to be watching There Will Be Blood?
Don’t make that mistake.
It’s your absolute god given right to write whatever you want, and if that includes writing one long howl of despair, or darkness, or misery, then you go for it. But just consider letting us into what you are saying.
I think Paul Thomas Anderson [the writer/director] got swept away with the undeniable strength, the terrible grandeur of his vision for those characters, and forgot to give us, the audience, a way into the movie.
We viewers are weak, we get tired, we need things to hold onto.
More importantly, and forget this at your peril, we need to like some aspect of the things we are watching.
If you’ve ever seen the British TV serial of Brideshead Revisited from 1980 - or read the
Evelyn Waugh novel it dramatised - you might well remember how that is the perfect example of what I mean.
The series runs for 11 episodes, and as they go by the story gets bleaker and more and more depressing, plunging into the impossibility of love, the impossibility of surviving the Catholic faith, and the way people’s lives can be destroyed by their belief in God, ending with broken hearts and loneliness in the depths of World War 2.
It’s hard to imagine a bleaker tale in some ways - it certainly has a far wider, far more genuinely apocalyptic canvas than There Will Be Blood - yet we stay with it all the way, for more than 11 hours.
I think that’s primarily because of the fantastic power of the first two episodes, which are delightfully warm, sumptuous, and charming, full of open hearted wit, full of and love. All of which seduces us - as it should. (It’s going to be interesting to see whether the upcoming movie works as well.)
If you want your audience to immerse themselves in your story, if you want them to come back in 30 years to enjoy it all again, then I strongly recommend you give us something to like about your world somewhere early on.
Even at the most basic level, even if you really don’t want to do anything charming, then just give us something warm, funny, engaging about the characters up front - just a beat or two - so when you strip that from them and take them to hell and leave them there, then we will have to follow, because you will like the people you are torturing and we will want to see what happens to them.
Your deep, dark, sombre masterpiece movie will have all the more impact in the end.
A lot of people write and ask me what are the chances of them getting their first script made.
My reply is always the same: “Negligible. It takes contacts, experience, years of banging your head on the door, a shed load of contacts, and and a hide thicker than a rhino.”
But ‘Juno’ proves that, sometimes, just sometimes, you don’t need to take the long way round.
Juno is a great, clever, touching, sharp, witty, INTELLIGENT way to spend an evening at the cinema - and apparently it’s the first screenplay by the writer (’Diablo Cody’).
Here’s where the writer explains something of the path that led to her first screenwriting outing hitting a multiplex near you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqyQqE9Rff4
Notice one thing. It’s about the quality of the writing, of course it is - her script is very, very smart. But it’s also about the fact that there was considerable buzz about her before anyone came to the script, and she’s terrific at selling her own brand of wit. You want to jump the queue, well, this is another way to do it…
Further to the recent newsletter about the Academy, here’s a blog post and discussion from December that may be of interest…
It’s a tough old writing world, for sure…
I’m delighted to announce that one of the regular contributors to this blog, Benjamin Ray, has taken first prize in the Thriller section of the 2007 Pacific Northwest Screenwriters Contest, with his script ‘Marcus and Faith’. (You may remember he posted sections of the script for workshopping on here a while back.)
Apart for the tremendous validation for his writing, his main prize is a years’ agency by 928 Talent Management. Judges included Daniel Yost, the screenwriter of Drugstore Cowboy.
I posted Ben a short series of questions. Here’s what he wrote back:
Hi Ben. Congratulations on winning this very prestigious competition. I know there were many entries, and the panel of judges was noteworthy. I want to start by asking how many competitions have you entered so far in your career?
When I started 7 years ago, I entered around 15 contests per year. The number went down every year. Now I enter only 5-10 contests per year. I always learn my lessons the hard way. I wasted lots of money, but now with experience and wisdom I’m more focused and I have a strategy.
What was the logline?
“Afflicted stand-up comedian wants to settle down. His dream is about to come true when he’s reunited with his high school crush, now a dancer, aspiring for Broadway. But one problem - she’s unknowingly embroiled in her father’s unspeakable and illegal high-society — PROSTITUTION, HUMAN TRAFFICKING and… MURDER. Welcome to the American Dream!”
Do you remember where the idea first came from? What was the initial spark?
Doing stand-up comedy, getting mild ulcers, maintaining a dead-end office job - and then having a stunning Venezualan tourist talk to me in the subway. Actually she smiled first and then talked and I gave her my clever business card…
Can you remember what convinced you it was a concept worth writing about?
Romantic relationships in my life started off like a movie but ended sadly. I was determined to write a gritty romantic action story, to fill in the gaps in my life.
Could you describe the writing process you used? (Did you go straight to script? Storyline first?)
First, I wrote the script like an over blown romance with “cool” action. Slowly it morphed into a dark gritty dramatic thriller with a romantic frame. I tried very hard to create something cinematic (not an independent film). I wanted the characters to live and talk cinema. I wanted to create a world that will inspire the audience to believe in “true romance” and a romantic R-rated American dream - with an NC17 rating.
Did you hit any walls in the writing of the script? Can you describe them? How did you get past them? Was the Screenwriting Goldmine method any help? If so, how?
I listened to many coverage providers, which pushed me into a direction where I was getting lost and my vision was eroding. And I read too many screenwriting books that placed me in deep depression. These books are not being honest, they just want to make quick money and don’t really care to tell you the truth about screenwriting. Then I came across your Screenwriting Goldmine book. It’s uniquely honest and works on a sub-concious level. It awoke the giant in me. I still refer to it and read random chapters for inspiration. There are too many books out there - most are boring and too academic and there are not enough unique techniques or advice in these books. I only trust Screenwriting Goldmine right now. Your book is to the point and cuts out all the bunk. You’re not a film professor, you’re a screenwriter with brains, heart and soul and realism.
How long were you working on the script (weeks? months? years?) And roughly how many separate drafts, if it’s possible to say?
I worked on the script for 4 years, if I had 50 cents for all the drafts I had written, I would have my dream vacation in Barbados right now.
How long have you been writing screenplays?
I started in the summer of 2000.
Have you had to pass any major hurdles to keep on writing?
Yes, tons. Bosses, friends and wife and past girlfriends and relatives who are not supportive of my writing. Either they hate Hollywood or they are jealous of the players in Hollywood. I try not to analyze them. I tell them, movies, sex and television make the world go round. It’s that simple. Why hate me? I’m just a servant of my imagination - trying to create some entertertainment.
What are the major influences on your writing?
Stand-up comedians, 70’s and 80’s cinema, musicals, movie stunts, bollywood actresses, boxing, film directors, and of course screenwriters who think like an entrepreneurs.
Favorite movies? TV shows?
Saturday Night Fever, Do the Right Thing, Le Balance (France), Shakti (India), Carlito’s Way, Panama(Oliver Stone), Romeo and Juliette (Zeffirelli), Dallas (TV show), Hope and Glory (Boorman), Kill Bill, Rocky.
I’m sure I speak for everyone on the site when I say big congratulations on getting yourself a year’s agented representation through this competition! Will it change the way you approach marketing your work?
I want to change as a person and as a screenwriter - for every second in this business. I refuse to (and will not) live in my comfort zone. I plan to improve further my marketing business plan. An agent can renew or not renew your contract. It’s not a permanent contract or the road to guaranteed success. Also agents move around or change careers. And don’t forget, trends come and go, so eventually you have to become your own agent. I have 4 scripts. Two are ready. And when I finish the final two, I will move into directing and then producing. I enjoy writing, but if no one wants to option or buy my script, I have to make it into a movie and somehow work in the process of finding financing.
Once again, congratulations Ben.
I’m putting together a couple of science fiction pitches at the moment, and so I’ve been going back over some very old notes of mine. I started off writing science fiction short stories and submitting them to small press magazines like Interzone and Back Brain Recluse, so I have thousands of words of some very strange ideas that have never seen daylight.
Pretty well all of the ideas were no longer relevant. Good science fiction is always about today, which makes it date far faster than historical fiction.
But I did come across a photocopy of Robert Heinlein’s Rules for Writing. (Heinlein was an old school, and very successful, science fiction writer for those of you who aren’t genre fans. Starship Troopers was his, though the movie was a travesty of the book.)
I know a lot of you will have seen these rules already, but I can’t fault them, so they’re always worth another look - and if you haven’t seen them before, they’re well worth taking time to absorb.
Here they are. Five simple rules for writing success:
Too simple?
I don’t think so.
After all, can you really say you obey all five?
And what do you think would happen to your writing career if you did?
It’s past midnight on Sunday here in the UK, and I’ve just been counting the votes, and re-reading the quite exceptional comments that have been pouring in on this blog over the last month.
There has been so much fine conversation going on that it simply has to continue. I’ve set up a forum at http://www.screenwritinggoldmine.com/forum and I’ll be running a monthly scaled back version of this contest over there for the indefinite future. There’s details in the forum welcome message so make sure you have a look.
OK. Get to the point.
So although there were many many people who came along, had great conversations, and added so much of interest to this blog, there were two who had an overwhelming number of comments.
That’ll be… AMZ, and Deirdre!
Both very close to each other, with about 100 comments each, way more than their nearest competitor - and all highly relevant and on the ball.
They will be receiving their fully boxed up copy of Final Draft just as soon as the post office can deliver.
With regard to the prize for the best comment, well, there have been so many good things said, for a time it seemed like a very, very hard choice.
In the end it was simple.
Success at screenwriting is all about opening yourself up, taking risks, and taking action.
Both actually daring to write from the heart, and getting that writing out into the world.
With that in mind, I’m going to award the prize for the best comment to Gary, for his comment that kicked off the story scratchpad - that group writing project that so far has turned into 30 very readable pages of real screenplay.
Not only was he brave enough to step forward and expose himself by actually WRITING the very first - very striking - image, he also proposed a few of simple rules which, I think, have provided great parameters for the whole thing and helped make it such a great success.
So well done Gary. You don’t get anywhere unless you actually write. And your Final Draft is in the post.
Thanks to everyone who joined in, and let’s keep this community going. I can see writing relationships forming already, and, remember, this business is all about networking (That is, making friends in the business.)
Come to the forum and talk, and meet people, and exchange ideas. You never know where it might lead.
A comment AMZ made in one of the threads about Quarterlife:
http://www.screenwritinggoldmine.com/blog/the-great-final-draft-giveaway-2/2007/10/24/
reminds me of a discussion we were having and I’ve been meaning to write about for a while.
It’s fairly clear to me and a lot of the TV people I know that our future as writers/producers/directors is heavily bound up with the future of the internet. Personally I find that immensely exciting. Small budget with minimum interference is way more appealing than big budget and a battle of attrition with the many layers of script editors, execs, story consultants, series editors, producers and channel controllers that control any project nowadays.
Speaking of Channel Controllers, have you heard of the concept of the Gate Keeper? As a TV writer here in the UK, my immediate customer base comprises a small number of gate keepers. For any project I might create, in the end, one of four or five Channel Controllers and perhaps a similar number of Heads of Drama have life or death sway. This handful of people, say, between 5 and 15 in number, acts as an impenetrable barrier between the work of any TV writer and their audience. You might be convinced your stuff is the best stuff ever written, and millions of people might have agreed had they ever got chance to see it, but, in the end, unless you can persuade one of these gate keepers you’re right, you won’t get anywhere.
Of course you can wait around for the Gatekeeper to be replaced, which does happen faster than you might think, but how much more appealing is it to reach your potential audience as directly as possible?
I’m talking a kind of grass roots internet TV, funded by multiple product placement and sponsorship, cheap membership subscriptions, and selling ads on the page in an Adsense model.
The competition and noise on the internet is incredible, but, since I believe in my work, and have stopped believing in the taste of the big broadcasters, I’m looking forward to the point when I and a group of like minded people will be able to take our chances and reach out directly.
The way the broadcasters are frantically developing their own web based projects to draw up their own online territories suggests it won’t be too long now.
Script writing is unusually politicised at the moment. I’ve just been reading two fascinating articles on the Writers Guild of America script writers strike.
Two points stand out:
From http://artfulwriter.com/archives/2007/11/where_i_stand.html
“If we strike… in many ways, it’s akin to a prison riot. We’ll kill a guard or two, light some mattresses on fire, a few snitches will get lynched… but after the smoke settles and the SWAT team is done, we’ll be back in our cells, and the Warden will still be in charge… Nevertheless, come what may, I’m with my union. Even though we rich guys get pilloried (while our dues fund this entire operation), I’m with my union. Even though we public dissenters get accused of shilling, selling-out, undermining and Disloyalty To The State, I’m with my union.”
And from http://johnaugust.com/archives/2007/pencils-down
“I’m contracted on two scripts right now, but they’ll be sitting unopened in their folders until the strike is resolved. I have a deal to write a spec for Fox, but that will also have to wait. Pencils down means pencils down. I’m not writing any features or television until there’s a contract. So what will I do in meantime? First, I’ll man the picket lines…”
Loving the loyalty. Script writing needs that kind of passion.
I also take the point about the prison riot, because do strikes ever really work out? Lech Walesa might disagree, but we had a thing called a miners strike over here, which many see as having led to an all out attack on our civil liberties that shows no sign of going away.
But in general I’m just so envious that American writers are loyal enough, and the union is strong enough, that they can actually have a strike in the first place!
Forget what happens, just the fact it’s possible speaks volumes.
A strike in the UK? Yeah, right.
I know a hundred script writers who’d bite your hand off for the offer of that kind of organised protest - collectively we have a list of grievances a hundred miles long - but there’s not a chance we’ll ever get organised enough to make it happen.
Failure of our union? Probably. There seems to have been progress in collective bargaining in the last couple of years, but over the long term it’s been nowhere near as active or aggressive as it needs to be. I stopped being a member a while back, because, sadly, there just seemed no point.
Failure of ourselves? Definitely. And I think it comes from our script writing style. Though we all love and revere certain American shows I think a lot of us, particularly the older guard, still find team writing reeks of creation by committee. I don’t know many writers who really enjoy big story conferences. (I feel the interesting stuff always gets washed out by the end of the day.) Most writers I know hold their freedom to write on their own very dear. Personally I hate it if a script of mine gets ‘polished’, and if I get through to the end I treasure knowing I did every word of every draft.
Team writing bonds and strengthens writing relationships, and turns out some stupendous television in the USA.
Solo writing divides most of us, makes paranoics of many of us, and, as the writers still mostly aren’t show runners, our high volume shows can still feel like they’ve been assembled by a rather dull committee on a wet Thursday.
So. It’s all too clear, isn’t it?
Divided we fall, time after time…
I’m posting this to answer some questions that have been coming up on the blog and in email.Firstly, I’m not giving much away when I say the competition for the most comments has still got a very even field - there are a couple of leaders at the moment, but they’re by no means unassailable - and remember there is a prize for quality not quantity.
But the important thing is there’s a real sense of community building - I love what’s going on in some of the threads with people helping each other, and there’s some great advice being given and some real critical thinking going on.
I’ve not been so present in the blog comments recently - sorry about that, (but I am reading every comment that goes up there). There are a couple of reasons - I’ve been working on a rewrite job which has just come in out of left field - but more interestingly for you I’ve also been working on formatting some exciting new features for the site. Over the next month or so I’m going to be announcing:
As you can imagine, this takes possibly two and a half days for me, which is a significant chunk out of my own writing time, so I won’t be taking many of these jobs on, and I’m still actually not convinced it’s the right thing to do. The thing is I’ve been sent so many passionate arguments from people who know the limitations of these types of critiques but would still find an experienced eye useful, plus so many horror stories of the critique cowboys out there, that really I can’t sit by any longer.
So when do all these new things arrive? Well, as and when I get the time to make it happen. I could just throw up a quick web page or two, but as this site is going to grow and grow I want to get certain site architecture questions as right as I can before I just charge headlong into creating a tangled mess of a confusion inside a locked box puzzle.
I’ll be sure to keep you posted.
Is there anything else you think the site is missing? Let me know…
This thread is for you to post your logline and for people to comment, suggest, even help you rewrite, until you have a logline that will dazzle any onlooker.
Usual rules apply…
This thread is for anyone to post any of their writing for anyone to critique.
Once again, as I have no clear idea on the copyright situation, I’m going to say you post under the clear understanding I’m not responsible if your idea gets swiped and turned into the next $200m movie without you! (Though, once again, the fact that any idea is posted up here would seem to tie that idea to you at this time, which may be a good thing? I don’t know. )
Normal site rules apply - minors read this site regularly, so keep it clean and keep the comments constructive and on topic please. It’s the easiest thing in the world to dismantle - making something better is the art.
I’m also going to reserve the right to delete posts or comments if I judge they’re getting off beam for any reason.
Enjoy!
This is for anyone who wants to throw in story ideas, with the eventual idea of evolving a group project, maybe even a team writing project.
I have no idea how copyright works. I think technically it resides with the people who made the comment, but I wouldn’t count on it. I advise you all to consider whatever you put up here as entering the public arena.
Remember we are a PG site, and have fun!
Writing’s a cruel game, no doubt. Over the years I’ve been sacked and rewritten and cut to pieces more times than I care to remember, and I’m sure there isn’t a writer in the game who hasn’t had similar experiences. It can be utterly heart breaking, and it may damage confidence deep inside, which can take a long time to heal.
So here’s another experiment.
With the idea that getting things off your chest helps no end, feel free to write up your own jolly tale of how the industry found another unusually subtle and delightfully cruel way of knifing you in the back. I’m sure people will benefit from finding they’re not alone in this.
RULES:
I’ve been getting excited about a new service I could offer here on the site.
What about you uploading your script, and a week or so later getting back an MP3 with the thing brought to life? Either read by a single actor like on the Screenwriting Goldmine audio book, or, at slightly more premium rate, read by a group of professional actors in a workshopped reading, just like the sort of readthrough a script gets before production starts.
Hearing your work always gives you an idea how your dialogue is playing, and hearing pro actors go at the whole thing on an audio production would be a great way let to let you judge how compelling - or otherwise - your story is.
Is that the sort of thing you would find useful? Or would you feel it to be a distraction from the side issue of writing?
Let me know…
Click on the Great Final Draft Giveaway tab above to find out how you can get hold of a copy of the Final Draft screenwriting software package for free…
I’ve given the original contents of this post its own page to make more room for new material at the head of the blog - just click the Final Draft Giveaway tag at the top of the site to read the original post and find out how I’m giving away three copies of Final Draft.
The discussion thread continues untouched in the comments, and it’s getting a real life of its own, so have a look.
I’d hoped to bring you two warm recommendations of two movies you had to go and see at all costs. Both from this side of the Atlantic. Both getting great reviews, from all the British national newspapers right through to Rottentomatoes.com
Sadly…
Control is the story of a little ol’ Manchester band called Joy Division. They ploughed a determined furrow of melancholic post punk back in the late 1970’s, before executing a surprise leap over the ghetto wall and turning into one of the most influential bands of all time. I love their music, so watching that aspect of the movie was no hardship whatsoever.
But there was also the matter of the main story: the increasingly tortured life of their visionary lead singer, Ian Curtis.
He married young, had a baby, fell out of love with his wife and into bed with a fan, and spent the rest of his time being torn apart between these two women - to the point where the movie suggests this was a major part of his suicide at the age of 23.
I have no idea of whether this is a reasonable assessment of what actually happened, but in its own terms the movie fails totally, because the writer simply didn’t bother creating characters for either of the two women.
It’s not that he can’t write characters - most of the time the men were depicted brilliantly. He just didn’t give the women anything to do, or even anything interesting to say.
It’s a very simple question really - how can you hope to engage an audience in a man being torn apart over two women when you don’t give the audience any reason to see why he would love either of the women?
And The Counterfeiters.
Another ‘true’ story. A set of skilled Jewish counterfeiters are charged with undermining the British and American economies by forging truck loads of paper money inside a concentration camp.
Enormous stakes, split loyalties, and the primal struggle between duty to the cause and preservation of the self. Hard to go wrong? So you’d think. Yet it crashed off the rails within ten minutes.
It opens with the lead character on the beach at Monte Carlo, after the war. He’s grizzled, dazed, bitter, emotionally frozen, has obviously been through some terrible ordeal. He picks a woman up at the casino - she sees the mark of the concentration camp on his arm. From there we plunge back 10 years, to the point where he was first arrested, and then the story in the camps begins.
That little introduction does one, terrible thing to the movie. You KNOW he survived, and you KNOW his mental state at the end of the movie. Any suspense ended there and then.
Apparently the director chose to do this deliberately. He thought the subject material was too grave, too important to be treated as a mere thriller. (I’d love to know whether the writer agreed with that.)
If the movie had managed to deliver on any of the rest of its potential, that might have been valid. But, amazingly, with the chosen structure (and lots of other little story telling problems) watching the life and death struggle of what was effectively a whole people was a bizarrely unaffecting experience.
If you want to see what this movie could/should have been, rent The Pianist, by Roman Polanski. No thriller structure either, but boy does that movie engage you.
I really hate to write bad reviews, and I particularly hate reviewers who sit and sneer. It’s so easy to do, and it belittles the effort and labour and love of the hundreds of people who spent months, possibly years, making the movie. The only reason I wanted to talk about these two was because the flaws were so clear, and so visibly to do with the writing, hence relevant to this blog.
Next time I see a film I don’t enjoy I’ll keep it to myself, promise.
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