Screenwriting & Slavery to Freedom

I’d hate to admit to how many books on screenwriting I’ve read. I tend to agree you need just one to get you on track and then start writing. (And this blog, of course. Just for a little inspiration.) But with that said, I just starting reading John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story. 

Truby has been around a long time and has a lot of people who swear by his seminars. (Check out his website Truby’s Writers Studio.) I’m just a little slow coming to the table. But then again his book just came out in 2007. 

I think I’ll spend a few days pulling a few gems from his book. Here’s the first one.

“In the vast majority of stories, the hero’s overall change moves from slavery to freedom.”
                                                          John Truby 
                                                          The Anatomy of Story 
                                                          page 177 
Truby uses the word slavery to mean a way that life is out of balance. (Koyaaisqatsi, right?) Could be slavery to money, a career, an illness, an another person, a significant loss, a worldview, a prison, etc. The number 4 definition of The Free Dictionary reads, “The condition of being subject or addicted to a specified influence.” That’s a wide path.

That’s a simple thought but as I thought of several favorite films across many genres and I realized he’s right on track. Just off the top of my head I think these films would qualify the “slavery to freedom” concept:

Rocky
Good Will Hunting
Erin Brockovich
On the Waterfront
Big
Juno
Seabiscuit 
A Christmas Carol
Home Alone
Rain Man
Shawshank Redemption

Think about the script you’re writing now and ask how your main character is in slavery. That may help you if you’re having trouble with finding an ending.

 

Scott W. Smith

Finding Your Own Voice

When Henry Miller died in 1980 at the age of 88 he had over 40 books published. On Wikipedia it was written that Miller “was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of ‘novel’ that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is distinctly always about and expressive of the real-life Henry Miller and yet is also fictional.”

His work was praised by George Orwell and an inspiration to Jack Kerouac. He is the Harry in the 1990 movie Henry & June. Like many artists he was a controversial character who in his youth was active in the Socialist Party and whose book Tropic of Cancer when published in the US in 1961 lead to obscenity trials. But it is not his politics or his writings that I want you to look at today, but the process in which he became a writer of influence.

“I begin in absolute chaos and darkness, in a bog or swamp of ideas and experiences. Even now I do not consider myself a writer, in the ordinary sense of the word. I am a man telling the story of his life, a process which appears more and more inexhaustible as I go on….

I began assiduously examining the style and technique of those whom I once admired and worshiped: Nietzsche, Dostoievski, Hamsun, even Thomas Mann…I imitated every style in hope of finding the clue to the gnawing secret of how to write. Finally I came to a dead end, to a despair and desperation which few men have known, because there was no divorce between myself as writer and myself as a man: to fail as a writer was to fail as a man. And I failed. I realized that I was nothing—less than nothing—a minus quality. It was at this point, in the midst of the dead Sargasso Sea, so to speak, that I really began to write. I began from scratch, throwing everything overboard, even those things I loved. Immediately, I heard my own voice I was enchanted; the fact that it was a separate, distinct, unique voice sustained me. It didn’t matter to me if what I wrote should be considered bad. Good or bad dropped out of my vocabulary. “
                                          Henry Miller
                                          Reflections on Writing

 

Scott W. Smith

Screenwriting and Death

“I am not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”
                                  Woody Allen 

“It ought to be the business of every day to prepare for our last day.”
                                  Matthew Henry

 

There have been many high profile celebrity deaths in the last two weeks. It’s been kind of hard to miss that fact. A lot of people have been asking, “What’s going on?”

While the concentration of celebrity deaths in a short time is unusually high I don’t think anything is going on beyond what occurs 5,500 times everyday in the United States. That’s the number of people according to the New England Journal of Medicine who die everyday in this country. It’s just not something we tend to dwell on everyday.

Celebrity deaths from Marilyn Monroe, to James Dean, to Elvis, to Princess Diana, to Michael Jackson seem to grab our attention and provide never-ending discussions.  Death scenes in movies also grab our attention. Some of the all-time most memorable scenes in movie history are centered around death. Here are a few examples:

The shower scene in Psycho, the opening scene in Jaws, the closing scene in Braveheart, the vast number of bodies spread out on the field of battle in Gone with the Wind, and William Holden floating in a pool in Sunset Boulevard. The list goes on and on. (Tim Dirks’ filmsite.org has a whole list called Greatest Movie Death Scenes.) 

Since a major part of movies center around conflict then it’s natural that death would be at the center of some of our most memorable movie experiences.  Here’s some solid advise on how to write a death scene:

“In The Godfather, Don Corleone falls and has a fatal heart attack while entertaining his grandson. The physical life of the scene is superb: Brando slices an orange and places the peel against his teeth, pretending to be a monster. It not only adds an interesting texture but also breaks the stasis of the scene when the child bursts into tears and forces Corleone to comfort him. The physical life created a flow and opened the door for a very specific and interesting character revel. It is a very original way to write a death scene by juxtaposing play with death.“ 
                              James Ryan  
                              Screenwriting from the Heart
                              page 150 

 

Scott W. Smith

Simplicity in Screenwriting (tip #27)

In the past week I watched two modern classic films (Deliverance & Scent of a Women) and read the script again for Juno. Though these movies are different in genre and were made in three different decades they have at least one thing in common – they are simple stories.

Four guys go take a boating trip, a prep school kid takes a caretaker job to make a little money over the Thanksgiving weekend, and a teenage girl gets pregnant. Simple.

“The story line idea (of In the Line of Fire) involves a Secret Service agent who survived the Kennedy assassination in Dallas and who must now prevent an assassin from killing the current president. That situation is complicated by the intensity of both the hero and the villain as they conflict over who will prevail. This brief statement summaries the movie. Many films are equally simple when reduced to a sentence or two in this way. Let this be our first lesson: Movie stories are usually simple…..Write simple stories and complex characters.”
                       Paul Lucey
                       Story Sense 
                       Page 5 

So while Deliverance, Scent of a Woman and Juno are simple stories certainly Burt Renyolds, Al Pacino, and Ellen Page played complex characters. Revisit the scripts of those films written by James Dickey, Bo Goldman, and Diablo Cody to see how they weaved their magic. And don’t confuse simplicity with being simple.

Related Post: Screenwriting & Time 
(Notice the time lock on the three films I mentioned? Deliverance & Scent of a Woman basically take place over a weekend and Juno takes place over the term of her pregnancy.)

 

Scott W. Smith

Travels with Steinbeck

“During the 1920s, at the height of his fame and literary power, Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) was more than a bestselling author. He was a troublemaker, a disturber of the peace whose novels were hotly discussed as social criticism more than literature.”
                                     Morris Dickstein 

Writers are curious folks. They explore the side roads of life physically, mentally and spiritually. Maybe no more than other people at the start, but after they’ve turned over a rock they tend to ponder what they find longer than most and then write down what they see. And what they write often makes the rest of us take a second look at what they’ve observed. 

And if the writer has done their job well it makes us curious as what inspired the writer in the first place. Over the years I’ve found myself in little corners of the country trying to get a glimpse what may have inspired people who have inspired me; Hemingway’s house in Key West, Marjorie Kinnan Rawling’s house in rural Cross Creek, Florida and Walden Pond where Thoreau lived for a spell.

Apparently John Steinbeck did the same thing. He writes in Travels with Charley about going to Sauk Centre, Minnesota which is now the proud birthplace Nobel-Prize winning novelist Sinclair Lewis. Though they weren’t always proud of their native son who brought an x-ray to the town with his writings and examined the lives they were living. Steinbeck who became friends with Lewis observed how Sauk Centre embraced Lewis after he died;

I had read Main St. when I was in high school, and I remember the violent hatred it aroused in the countryside of his nativity.
     Did he go back?
    Just went through now and again. The only good writer was a dead writer. Then he couldn’t surprise anyone any more, couldn’t hurt anyone any more. And the last time I saw him he seemed to have shriveled even more. He said, “I’m cold. I seem to be always cold. I’m going to Italy.”
     And he did, and he died there, and I don’t know whether or not it’s true but I’ve heard he died alone. And now he’s good for the town. Brings in some tourists. He’s a good writer now.

Main Street was made into a movie in 1923 and in total there have been more than 30 of Lewis’ stories that have become movies or TV programs. The most lasting of his stories made into movies seems to be Elmer Gantry. (The book was published in 1927 and caused quite a stir and was even banned in certain parts of the country.) But the 1960 film about a phony preacher would be a cliche if written today. 

Certainly fallen Catholic and Protestant leaders haven’t helped their cause in the last 20 years, but when’s the last time there was a positive portrayal of a minister, pastor, or priest in a major Hollywood movie? Maybe On the Waterfront in 1954? 

Related post: Screenwriting Quote of the Day #18 (Sinclair Lewis)

 

Scott W. Smith 

Happy 4th & 99th

“The United States is the only country with a known birthday.”  
                                           James G. Blaine

July 4th not only marks the birthday of the United States of America (and the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776), but it’s the birthday of actress Gloria Stuart. Don’t remember that name? Need a clue? Well, she’s most well known for her role as a 100-year-old woman. Gloria Stuart played the older Rose character in James Cameron’s 1997 film Titanic, the biggest money making movie in history. She turned 99 today.

I don’t know if Stuart has ever been to Iowa, but I like to point out that her character Rose is living in Cedar Rapids, Iowa when the audience is first introduced to her. For her role as Old Rose, Stuart became the oldest person ever nominated for an Oscar.

Stuart was born in 1910 and made her first film, Street of Women, in 1932. But it wasn’t until Titanic came out in 1997 that she became internationally known— seventy years after she graduated from Santa Monica High School.

“I was voted the girl most likely to succeed. I didn’t realize it would take so long.”
                          Gloria Stuart

Like they say, it takes a little time sometimes.

Screenwriting Quote of the Day #96 (Charles Bukowski)

For some reason my last post about a bar in Minneapolis and a film about a man named Walt Kowalski somehow made me think of the writer Charles Bukowski who had more than 20 of his stories made into films including Factotum that was filmed in Minneapolis. 

Though he was born in Germany in 1920 and came to the United States when he was three he never seemed interested in the American dream. He worked odd jobs around the country that provided him enough money to drink and write. One of those jobs was working for over a decade as a filing clerk at a post office.

An arrangement with publisher John Martin of Black Sparrow Books allowed Bukowski at age 49 to pursue writing full time. His first published novel was called simply Post Office. Bulowski died in Los Angeles in 1994.

“I never realized that there were so many movie magazines or magazines interested in the movies. It was a sickness. This great interest in a medium that relentlessly and consistently failed, time after time after time, to produce anything at all. People became so used to seeing shit on film that they no longer realized is WAS shit.”
                                                        Charles Bukowski

 

Scott W. Smith

Screenwriting Postcard from Minneapolis

“O muses, o high genius, now assist me!”
                                          The Inferno 
                                          Dante 

Stephen King says his muse is a working class guy down in the basement chomping on a cigar. I think his muse is related to screenwriter Nick Schenk’s. When his day job was over, Schenk wrote much of Gran Torino while sitting at Grumpy’s Bar in northeast Minneapolis. He told Colin Covert of Star Tribune, “Loading trucks every day, your back was tired but your mind was fresh…So I’d just roll into Grumpy’s, where my friend was the bartender, and write the stuff longhand on a pad of paper.”

I stopped in Grumpy’s Bar  yesterday late afternoon and was told that Schenk is considered family, though he doesn’t come in as much since the success of the movie Gran Torino based on his screenplay. It’s opened up writing gigs for him in L.A. where he now lives.

Grumpy’s is the kind of place that you could see Clint Eastwood’s character Walt Kowalski walking into and ordering a Pabst Blue Ribbon. If you’re looking for original stories and original characters look for them in the places you work and hangout. According to the owner of Grumpy’s, Schenk is a talented writer who has been at it a long time, but he also has a great ear for dialogue. And much of Eastwood’s character flowed from the banter that was kicked around that corner bar.

Though they shot Gran Torino in Michigan (thanks to their film incentives) the area around Grumpy’s is very similar to Walt’s neighborhood in the movie. The only beef with the movie from the bartender I talked to at Grumpy’s is that they didn’t shoot the film in Minneapolis. 

Since I’ve written about Diablo Cody writing much of Juno in a Target in the north suburbs of Minneapolis I thought you’d be interested in knowing that these two locations are probably less than 3 miles form each other. That’s around $300 million dollars of box office success written from the same basic area far from L.A. and far from that perfect little cabin in the woods everyone dreams about writing the perfect novel or screenplay. 

I don’t know if Schenk and Cody have crossed paths in L.A., but I’d like to at least think they’ve met back in Minneapolis at that kitschy Psycho Suzi’s Motor Lounge and celebrated their unusual journeys with a Tiki drink.

If you haven’t hired a working class muse maybe you should give one a call.

Related post: Juno vs. Walt.

 

word & photo copyright  Scott. W. Smith

Sam Shepard, Chekhov…and Al Franken

I’m up in the Twin Cities again for a shoot and happened to be driving through St. Paul yesterday when I heard the news that Al Franken was officially declared the winner of the Senate race that has been in limbo for eight months. It was a good day to be a talk radio host up here. Remember this is the state that once chose Jesse Ventura for Governor.

Because it’s tucked away in the upper midwest, Minnesota kind of flies under the radar for the rest of the country so they have to do some interesting things to get attention.  There’s a great mix of people up here and that’s helped  produced a variety of creative talent from Prince to Diablo Cody. 

A couple days ago I mentioned that Sam Shepard and Jessica Lange lived in the Minnesota -St. Paul area for a period of time while they were raising their kids. So I thought it would be fitting to find a quote from Shepard and I found this one from an interview he did in St. Paul back in 2004:

“I’m self-taught. I learn everything by doing it. I wasn’t born knowing how to write a play. You do it and hopefully you keep evolving. One really great thing happened was that I discovered Chekhov’s short stories. I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t really start reading them ‘til about 5 or 6 years ago. I’d always kind of dismissed Chekhov and didn’t really know why. When I came upon the stories, and started really reading and studying them, I couldn’t believe it. I read every single one.”
                                                  Sam Shepard
                                                  Interview with Don Shewey
                                                  Rock-And-Roll Jesus with a Cowboy Mouth 

 

Scott W. Smith

Screenwriting Software vs. Ballpoint Pen

“Making it up as I go along. I write with a ballpoint pen and scratch out lines and paragraphs, revising them as I make my way into the story, the characters letting me know what comes next. Once I’ve handwritten a page until I like it, I put in on the IBM Wheelwriter 1000. If I compose on a typewriter I’d spend more time x’ing out lines than writing. I don’t use a word processor, I can’t imagine looking at a screen as I write. I have to look at the words on unlined yellow paper, my only writer affectation. I used to aim for five clean pages in an eight-hour day. I’ll settle now for three in a somewhat shorter day, continuing to revise to maintain that sound I want.”
                                       Elmore Leonard
                                      (Novelist—Out of Sight, Get Shorty, Jackie Brown)
                                       AARP magazine
                                       July/August 2009 
                                       Page 33