Back in January, I wrote a post about The Jazz Singer and how that movie was based on a Samson Raphaelson play and short story. The Jazz Singer was Raphaelson’s first film credit, but he went on to write and gain credits for more than a total of five decades. His two most well-known scripts were The Shop Around the Corner(1940) which starred Jimmy Stewart and was directed by Ernst Lubitsch, and Suspicion which featured an Oscar-winning performance by Joan Fontaine. (The film also co-starred Cary Grant and was directed by Alfred Hitchcock.)
It turns out he wrote a book back in the late forties called The Human Nature of Playwriting. I’m not sure if any screenwriting blogs have discovered this book, but I had never heard of it before. It’s out of print, but I tracked now a copy at screenwriter John August’s old stomping grounds—Drake University in Des Moines. I don’t know if August ever checked this book out from the Cowles Library back in his undergraduate days, but I’m guessing it’s been there a couple of decades.
So a couple of months ago when I was doing some post-production work in Des Moines I found my way to the Drake campus to do a quick read of Raphaelson’s book. Raohaelson was born in New York City in 1894, but according to an article by Smith Glaney he spent his teenage years in Chicago and studied English at the Illinois Institute of Technology. (He graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1917 and that’s where his papers are archived.*) In the sping of 1948, well into his career, Professor Fred S. Slevert asked Raphaelson to speak to the school of Journalism at U of I. A stenographer was on hand to record the entire four-month class. And that was the basis for the book. And there it sits on the shelf at Drake, right next to the classic Kenneth Rowe book Write that Play.
So for the next few days I’ll pass on some quotes from the class.
“The creative piece of writing—play, story, poem, rides on emotion. Usually on the emotion of the central character. By emotion I mean hunger, a desire, something burning under that character, humming and beating like a motor, sending him forward.”
Samuel Raphaelson The Human Nature of Playwriting
*Back in 1921 Raphaelson wrote the fight song for the University of Illinois— ”Fight, Illini!: The Stadium Song.” The next year he wrote the short story The Day of Atonement which got published and later became the play The Jazz Singer.
P.S. Excellent article where Betty Kaklamanidou compares Little Shop Around the Corner with the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan film You’ve Got Mail.
“Cinema has always been marriage of technology and human talent.” Francis Ford Coppola (older filmmaker based in Napa Valley)
“I think every filmmaker needs to make 20 awful films before they can make one good one. And I made my share of totally awful films with my friends.”
Bradley Jackson (younger filmmaker based in Austin) Interview with Ron Dawson
Screenwriter John August has a post on his blog titled Writing for Hollywood without living there where he has a first person account written by 26-year-old writer/director Bradley Jackson from Austin, Texas. Jackson recently earned more than $100,000 by winning The Doorpost Film Project (best film, best director, best script) and optioning a screenplay.
What separates Jackson from the traditional way of thinking about a career in production is he has no intentions of moving to Los Angeles. His plan right now is to stay in Austin where he has friends and family and to commute to L.A. as needed.
August’s readers made various comments on whether this is a wise thing to do and speculated if Jackson can really pull off a career writing and making films in Austin. Because my focus is encouraging writers and filmmakers who live in unusual places (and that includes some places even within the 30 mile zone in LA) three thoughts quickly came to mind;
1) It’s not like Bradley Jackson lives in a small town in Iowa. He lives in Austin, Texas which is one of the most interesting places in the United States. It’s a giant college town, has a solid tech and political base, and an intense creative culture. It’s home to the Austin Film Festival, SXSW and the last time I was in Austin I was told there are more live musical acts in a given night in Austin than any city in the USA. (Yes, that includes NY, LA and Chicago.)
2) Most people writing screenplays and making films make no money writing screenplays and making films. (Heck, even a good chunk of writers in the WGA, make little or no money in a given year.) Jackson just made over $100,000 in just the first two months of 2011 by winning The Doorpost Film Project and optioning a script. I’m not sure if that money is his, but whatever he takes home will go a lot further in Austin that it would in Los Angeles.
Jackson represents a new breed of filmmakers. He’s been making films since high school and by his own admission spent several years making bad films before he learned what he was doing. He got a film degree from UT—Austin where he was mentored by filmmaker/teacher Scott Rice. He’s surrounded himself with other talented filmmakers in Austin and became Kickstarter savvy which helped him fund his recent film. He’s busting his butt, writing scripts, and willing to fly in to L.A. as needed.
3) Robert Rodriguez. While screenwriters and filmmakers have traditionally moved to Hollywood after they’ve gotten their first break, Rodriguez is the poster child for bucking that trend. Here’s part of what Austin-based Rodriguez told a group of filmmakers in LA back in 2003:
“One of the benefits of being outside of Hollywood—one of the reasons I think like this (shooting digitally) has to do with the fact that I don’t live here. Because (in Texas) you’re so removed you get to examine (how films are made) and say, ‘That doesn’t really make sense for us out here. Let’s do what makes sense.’ And you find a whole other way of shooting. And that’s one of the best things you can do for yourself even if you work here (LA). Try to get a birds-eye view of things and really question it and you’ll start coming up with different ways of doing things that work.”
As I’ve said before, when I was in film school many years ago students were encouraged to not be a jack-of-all trade, and a master-of-none. But the new kind of filmmakers coming up (who may be in middle school or retirement homes—and everywhere in between) are jack-of-all trades. And some of them are on their way to becoming master-of-all trades.
They can not only write, but they know their way around cameras and non-linear editing systems, they are aware of various fundraising methods, they devour DVDs directors commentaries & online tutorials at lynda.com, and they are keeping on track of new distribution trends and get exciting about the success that Edward Burns has had self-distributing his films and the things that Kevin Smith said at Sundance ’11:
“The piece of advice that Walter Gretzky gave (his son) Wayne Gretzky was this…’don’t go where the puck’s been, go where it’s gonna to be.’ The philosophy was simple, if you puck chase you’re always going to be behind the game…You want to be the person that’s where the puck’s going to be.”
These new kind of filmmakers are reminiscent of those rebel filmmakers like Lucas and Coppola who back in their youth were embracing new technologies and pursuing a life beyond LA.
Today this new kind of filmmaker is going where the puck isn’t and they’re not afraid to make a bad film or two in their quest to make good films.
And, of course, they read Screenwriting from Iowa daily.
“Tell me a story, to me, are still four of the most beautiful words in our language. I remember my grandfather, I would ask him those words—’Tell me a story grandaddy.’ And he would tell me one. In the south, especially the rural south, the telling of stories on porches—that passing down of oral history by telling stories is still the reason the South retains its love of story. Retains the mystery of story. And I don’t know any Southerner who does not love to exchange tales, tall tales. And I think the words ‘tell me a story’ has formed the entire basis of my art.”
Pat Conroy (The Great Santini, The Prince of Tides) My Reading Life/ CD interview
Below is a prime example of a tall tale. It was based on the book Big Fish:A Novel of Mythic Proportions by Southerer Daniel Wallace. Wallace had five novels rejected before Big Fish got published in 1998. The movie version Big Fish was written by John August and directed by Tim Burton. August is the one who was captivated by the book and set things in motion for it to become a movie.
“The writing was simple, and weird, and imaginative. It clearly offered a lot of cinematic moments. But what attracted me most were the things that weren’t even on the page. I knew that the son, Will, was a reporter in Paris, married to a pregnant French woman. That’s nowhere in the story, but I was absolutely certain it was true. There wasn’t a circus anywhere in the book, yet I immediately sensed where it would fit. In short, I knew so much about the story I wanted to tell that I had to write the script immediately.” John August
P.S. I always like to point out that John August, like Diablo Cody, went to college in Iowa. (He did his undergrauate work at Drake University in Des Moines.)
“Yeah I think I know what my father meant when he sang about his lost highway…” Hank Williams Jr. All My Rowdy Friends (Have Settled Down)
“You must break from cliché. You must ‘Give us the same thing…only different.’”
Blake Snyder Save the Cat
The movie Country Strong is no Tender Mercies. And there are some pluses and minus associated with that. While Tender Mercies is one of my all time favorite films, it did only make $8 million at the box office. Country Strong almost did that this weekend. But since I’ve been writing a good deal recently about movie clones it’s a good time to talk about avoiding clichés.
Tender Mercies is the 1983 Bruce Beresford directed movie for which Robert Duvall earned an Academy Award for Actor for playing a fallen (and alcoholic) county star. Horton Foote also earned an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Country Strong is the 2010 film written and directed by Shana Feste which stars Gwyneth Paltrow as a (recently) fallen (and alcoholic) county music star . And while Paltrow may get an Oscar nod, the screenplay won’t.
Feste is not Foote, and it would be unfair to compare her to him. He wrote Tender Mercies about 50 years into his career. A career that included Broadway plays and an Oscar for Adapted Screenplay for writing To Kill A Mockingbird in 1962. (And later a Pulitzer Prize.) County Strong is just Feste’s second film. (Who knows what Foote’s early plays were like decades before he became known as “America’s Checkov”?)
And to Feste’s credit she not only wrote the film but directed it putting together a great cast that do their best with a script that crosses the line into a melodrama with a cliché or two—or three. It doesn’t help that last year Jeff Bridges just happened to win an Academy Award in Crazy Heart for playing a fallen (and alcoholic) county music star. In fact, bio pictures of fallen and or musicians struggling with fame, drugs and/or alcohol is such a well travel path (The Doors, Walk the Line, A Star is Born, Glitter, Sweet Dreams) that Judd Apatow found it fertile ground to parody with his 2007 film Walk Hard: The Dewey Coy Story.
“When it seems like you’re stealing—don’t. When it feels like a cliche—give it a twist. When you think it’s familiar—it probably is, so you’ve got to find a new way.”
Blake Snyder Save the Cat
“Clichés are shortcuts. The more you avoid taking them, the more interesting the places you’ll end up.” John August Avoiding cliches
When you start sampling movies about musicians you have to work hard not to hit a wrong note—be diligent to avoid the clichés. (Wait, did I just use a cliché?) I’ll give you one example of good and bad writing. In the opening scene of Crazy Heart, Jeff Bridges as Bad Blake pulls into the parking lot of a dive bar and empties a jug of urine. Not a word has been spoken and we’ve learned a lot about this character and we’ve seen something that no other film has shown before. Here’s a guy who lives on the road and doesn’t want or can’t take the time to make a proper restroom stops between gigs. (A little like the true “stalking astronaut in a diaper story” a couple of years ago.)
Now contrast that with (not really a spoiler, folks) Paltrow’s character finding a baby bird while in rehab and her husband played by Tim McGraw carrying the beat-you-over-the-head-metaphor-in-a-box through half the film. At least one point in the making of the film McGraw had to think, “Is this bird thing working? Seems a little forced to me.” And I don’t even recall a payoff with the bird.
Country Strong is the kind of movie I used to walk out of when I was younger (ie: Bolero) but now I’ve learned to enjoy the good things about any film. Here the music is top-notch and the studios gave Feste the great director of photography, John Baily (As Good As It Gets), so the film looks wonderful. And despite the 17% Rotten Tomatoes rating from top critics, the film has its moments. I thought the opening scene was a fresh twist and great start to the movie. But somewhere along the way my mind started drifting and I started to wonder how actor Tobey Maguire (Superman, Seabiscuit) got attached to this project as producer.
Later I found out and that’s where the story gets interesting. I discovered that Feste was once Maguire’s nanny. That’s not meant as a knock. That’s interesting stuff. Everyone needs a job until they break through and Feste was savvy enough to work as a nanny in LA to make connections in the industry. It worked. (I’d definitely recommend being a nanny over some of screenwriter Diablo Cody’s previous income streams. Heck, maybe you could be a nanny for Cody.)
“I went to work as a nanny for people who were in the entertainment business, so that I could get any information I could, even while I was watching their kids. I love children, so it was an easy gig.”
Shana Feste MovieMaker, December 2010
Along the way, Feste also cut her chops getting a BA at UCLA, a master’s in creative writing from University of Texas at Austin, and another graduate degree from AFI. Solid credentials. After AFI she went to work as an assistant at CAA for Richard Lovett, who was president of the agency. Again, brilliant move. Her first film The Greatest premiered at Sundance in 2009. Country Strong may not be the best film of the year, but I imagine there are few grads that she went to school with at UCLA, UT-Austin, and AFI who are in the position that Feste finds herself as a Hollywood player writing and directing features.
P.S. Feste was once a nanny for Courney Love. I imagine Love and many others will have a “no screenwriter” request for future nannies. I also have a feeling that the nanny agencies will be getting a lot of calls this week from filmmakers with MFA’s looking for work. So if you happen to live in LA and decide to sign up at one of the agencies like Buckingham Nannies you may want to keep that screenwriter thing to yourself.
P.S.S. If anyone out there has connections to Garth Brooks I have an idea I’d like to run by him that combines an old screenplay I wrote about county music and some ideas I got watching Country Strong.
“We work out the story on index cards to break it down.” Screenwriter Ted Elliot (Pirates of the Caribbean) on how he and writing partner Terry Rossio work
“While I always outline scripts, for me it’s 50/50 whether I use index cards or not.” Screenwriter John August
A few years ago the popularity of Blake Snyder’s bookSave the Cat! introduced a who new group of writers to using index cards in the screenwriting process. I’ve seen writers mount their index cards on walls, neatly place them in Moleskine* notebooks, and even stack them on their desk using a funky little system. Some even have a color coding system for their index cards. (Some technically use post-it notes.) But screenwriting via index cards has been a long-standing tradition in screenwriting circles.
“I write each sequence on (three-by-five index) cards. One card for each sequence. I usually end up with twenty-eight, thirty sequences per hour of film. I put them on the floor so I can see them from up here. Probably because I was a film editor. I think it’s very good training for a screenwriter because I can tell the actual lengths of sequences in terms of film. Frequently, before I write them, I know pretty much how they’re going to come out, in some strange way…I’ve rarely written anything that I‘ve looked at and said this doesn’t work at all, because the cards seem to tell me this.” Edward Anhalt (1914-2000)
2-time Oscar winning screenwriter Panic in the Streets (1950), Becket (1964)
One bonus of using index cards is they are cheap and another is you can find them easily in every city. If you’ve never used index cards here’s a simple little excercise you can do to get your feet wet. The next time you watch a favorite film at home get a stack of index cards and write down every scene in the movie. Just a line or two of what the scene is about and what characters are in the scene. When the movie is over flip through the cards and see if you get a feel of the story.
Now you just need to do that with your own ideas and stories. I find 40-60 scenes is what most narrative stories can hold. To borrow from Anne Lamott’s Bird by Birdconcept, you don’t need to write your whole screenplay at once, just chunk it out card by card. Not every writer uses index cards, but the next time you see a photograph of a writer in their office look at the background and see if you see any index cards laying around or mounted on the walls.
Even though my screenwriting software does index cards for some reason I prefer the old school, basic white 4X6 index cards (with lines). I like writing on the cards (in black ink) and like being able take them with me and just shuffle through the cards when they are not mounted on a board. Essentially I am doing what Anhalt is talking about—I’m running the movie in my head.
And sometimes like on the script I am working on now I just use the index cards to write down a thought or two. (Most recently I wrote down “Atlanta” and “Size 10 shoes” on a note card that was something I wanted to work into the script.) I could (and sometimes do) make notes to myself on my iPhone or place it on the bottom of the script, but the index cards are really my favorite way of keeping track of new ideas.
Anybody have any index card tips you use or index stories to tell?
*Moleskine has a Storyboard Notebook that has three 16:9 panels which looks pretty useful.
“There are index cards everywhere in Aaron Sorkin’s office…The writer of The West Wing and The Social Network likes to use those cards, tacked to a large corkboard, to keep track of key elements. Social Network’s pivotal scenes are still up there, with notes that read, “Mark and Erica in bar,” “Mark walks back to dormitory” and “Mark begins drinking, blogging, hacking.”
Christy Grosz Inside Aaron Sorkin’s Writing Process The Hollywood Reporter
“The problem with Our Thing (screenwriting) is that it’s fertile ground for delusion… Most unappreciated writers are unappreciated because they suck.”
Screenwriter Craig Mazin
First let me say thank you to all of the readers who helped this blog in October cross the 10,000 views mark in a single month for the first time ever. The first year I did this blog I barely got 10,000 views the entire year. One of the problems that first year is I wrote 1,000 & 2,000 word essays. Way too long for most blog readers. But as a throw back to 2008 here’s my longest —and most controversial post that I’ve ever written.
And really this post is way too long, so feel free to come back tomorrow when I’ll be back to shorter posts. But right now I’m kind of ticked off.
(11/5/10 Note: Because Mazin himself believed this post was “disguised mostly as a personal attack on me”—which was not my intent—I have removed a couple paragraphs that make reference to where he is from, where he went to school, and any mention of reviews of his produced films. And for the record, I have shot video on the campus of Princeton and think it’s one of the most beautiful in the county, and I have nothing but respect for the place. In fact, one of my favorite professors was a graduate from there back in the day when Einstein could be seen walking around . (Though, overall I think Harvard has produced much better writers.)
The past week has turned into anger week as I pulled several quotes from The Angry Filmmaker (who I happened to met last Monday) and I then dealt with the anger following an auditor’s report of abuses in the Iowa Film Commission who apparently misapproved 25 million dollars in taxpayers’ funds. So why not keep this thing rolling and talk about the angry screenwriters?
Who are the angry screenwriters and what are they angry about? What screenwriter isn’t angry? It could be said that being angry is a prerequisite for being a writer. Something must drive you to write whatever you write and anger has to be one of the top things that motivates most writers. Want a short list of examples?
But today I want to address what’s bothering screenwriters Craig Mazin and John August. It’s mostly screenwriting consultants and those who give screenwriting seminars. The ones who aren’t successful screenwriters and who charge fees for seminars and script consulting.
Mazin started the thing a few days ago when he came back from Austin Film Festival and wrote a post called Screenwriting is Free on his blog The Artful Writer. Keep in mind that these are his unedited words, not mine:
“You go to screenwriting conferences because you want to be a professional. You want to sell a script. You’re a student. You want to learn.
Good for you. Listening to and questioning the people who do the job you want is a smart move.
What is NOT a smart move is listening to the people who DON’T do the job. And who are they? Oh, you know who they are. They’re selling books. They’re selling seminars. They’re ‘script consultants.’ And for a small fee, or a medium fee, or a goddamned flat-out ridiculous fee, they’ll coach you right into the big leagues!
Horseshit. Let me say it loudly and clearly: IF THEY WERE ANY GOOD, THEY WOULD BE DOING WHAT I DO, NOT DOING WHAT THEY DO.”
I actually can take either side of this argument. But what’s the fun in simply agreeing with Mazin? Perhaps Mazin’s heart is in the right place—he wants to save aspiring screenwriters from wasting a boatload of money. Good for him.
But his passion (Anger? Look at all those capital letters) leads him down the wrong path as a sweeping generalization against anyone who teaches screenwriting. John August adds fuel to the fire with just the title of his post “Those who can’t write, teach seminars.”Though August is more generous in his response.
Mazin believes if you are going to buy a book or take a seminar on screenwriting that there should be this criteria;
Don’t spend a dime unless the seller has worked, is working and is gonna BE working. Multiple credits. A hit or two would be nice. Or recent critical acclaim, like a script on the Black List. A recent spec sale, or a spate of new gigs. Awards and nominations never hurt….”
That’s the major flaw in Mazin’s thinking. That just because you can do something means you can teach it. I once took a screenwriting workshop from Alfred Urhy who not only won an Oscar for writing the screenplay Driving Miss Daisy, but his play of the same title earned him a Pulitzer Prize. For his play The Last Night of Ballyhoo he won his first of two Tony Awards. (I believe he is still the only writer to ever win an Oscar, a Tony and the Pulitzer Prize.) Can you get anymore solid writing credentials than that?
Even Mazin whose credits include Scary Movie 3 and Superhero Movie I think would say that Uhry is a well-respected writer. I think Uhry is a brilliant writer. But as a teacher Uhry was weak and even admitted that he didn’t know what to say about writing. Now the workshop was worth it just to hear Uhry’s anecdotes about Hollywood. (In fact, just his story of how he was taken off the project The Bridges of Madison County was worth the fee I paid.)
By the time I took the Uhry workshop at least ten years ago, I had already been through film school, taken extension classes in screenwriting at UCLA and workshops at AFI (including one with Linda Seger, who Mazin takes to task in his post), had taken Robert McKee’s seminar and had read hundreds of screenplays and quite a few books on screenwriting, and had watched thousands of movies, and written three or four unproduced scripts. (Yes, Craig Mazin, I know that that, and even the short films I’ve written and directed, technically only qualifies me as a failed screenwriter.)
Perhaps the best example of a successful screenwriter who wrote a weak book on screenwriting is Joe Eszterhas’ The Devil’s Guide to Hollywood: The Screenwriter as God!* Eszterhas was once the poster child for angry screenwriters. How many screenwriters have punched a star actor? (Or was it a big name producer?) Don’t look for an Oscar or a Pulitzer on Eszterhas’ shelf, but according to Box Office Mojo 14 movies from his scripts have a total domestic earning of almost $400 million.
He’s a successful screenwriter with a long career and I think Mazin would agree. But Eszterhas’ book on screenwriting, along with his book Hollywood Animal, will not help you much to become a better writer. Because his screenwriting book is really about Joe Eszterhas and his experiences in Hollywood. It’s full of interesting quotes by producers, directors, and writers that serves as kind of a disjointed history of the film business. If you like Hollywood anecdotes then Eszterhas’ book is a goldmine. But understanding the screenwriting process? You’ll get better insights from McKee (who Eszterhas hates along with a long list of people in Hollywood).
For a while I was confused why Uhry & Eszterhas couldn’t unpack the mysteries of screenwriting as well as McKee and Seger. Then I came across this passage by Robin U. Russin and William Missouri Downs in their book Screenplay—Writing the Picture:
“It is interesting to note that few Hollywood screenwriting gurus have ever sold a movie (and Aristotle never wrote a play). This is because the ability to structure a story and the ability to analyze the structure of a story are two totally different talents. They come from different parts of the brain…Good writers seldom have an analytical understanding of what they do or how they do it. Instead they have a practical understanding of dramatic techniques.”
That’s not saying that writers can’t be good screenwriting teachers, or that screenwriting teachers can’t be good writer’s—but I think it’s rare to find one person who can do both well. There tends to usually be a dichotomy between the two. William Goldman comes closest with his Oscar-winning screenplays and his book Adventures in the Screen Trade. And though playwright & Oscar winning screenwriter David Mamet doesn’t think writing can be taught, he’s a pretty good teacher. (Ever read Mamet’s famous memo?) And based on his screenplay Big Fish and his blog, I would put John August in that category.
But keep in mind that a good deal of writers are introverts and public speaking is not at the top of their skill set. So even those few writers who can write great movies and can also proficiently write about the screenwriting process doesn’t mean that they could hold a room for a day (or even an hour) speaking about screenwriting. And now that we’ve whittled the number down to maybe a couple dozen people in the world (who are too much in demand as high paid screenwriters to even care about giving a seminar in the first place) there isn’t enough people to fill the demand to give screenwriting advice.
(Now the question of why there is so much of a demand for screenwriting advice is a whole separate can of worms for a post of its own.)
Of all the screenwriting books I have read over the years (way too many that I’d like to admit) most of them are written by writers who don’t have a single feature credit to their name. And those few that do usually have films that were either were poorly reviewed and/or box office failures. It would even be fair to say that almost every single screenwriting book is written by a failed or not very successful screenwriter. And if having a produced feature was the only criteria to teach in film schools then colleges and universities everywhere would have to clean house and who would fill those slots?
For what it’s worth, I doubt Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen would be very good teaching a class on songwriting. And I’m not sure how coherent a screenwriting workshop by Quentin Tarantino or Charlie Kaufman would be. The best way to write like those guys would be to extract some of their DNA and somehow infuse it into yours. If you can’t do that than you’re best off reading a lot of Elmore Leonard.
Sanford Meisner, was a frustrated and failed actor who went on to become one the greatest acting teachers in American history. His students included actors Robert Duvall, Gregory Peck, and Sandra Bullock, directors Syndey Pollack and Sydney Lumet, and writers Arthur Miller and David Mamet. (I’m guessing that at one time those wannabe actors, directors, and writers paid money to learn the Meisner Technique.)
I think that top screenwriters are gifted and talented people who simply tap into the magic in a way that works for them but is not easy to convey to others. Uhry was at least honest when asked by students why he did certain things in his script and he replied, “I don’t know.” I’ve read where the great Horton Foote gave basically the same answer. That’s the mystery of writing.
The best screenwriting teachers & seminar leaders (and I imagine the top screenwriting consultants) are really cheerleaders who help point the way based on their unique mix of education, & life and work experiences. Does charging $5,000. for script coverage seem high? Absolutely, especially when people are making feature films for under $5,000.
Are there scam artists? Sure, as there is in every profession from politics to religion. (You can insert punchline.) But I believe that teaching is an honorable profession and if you do it well you may be honored to some degree. You may gather a following. And sometimes when you gather a following you are well paid. Either accidentally, by good word-of-mouth, or via good marketing some of these screenwriting teachers have in fact become well-paid screenwriting gurus. But like A-list screenwriters, well-paid screenwriting gurus are pretty rare.
Mazin is correct that screenwriting is free. Mazin is correct that the best way to learn is reading screenplays, watching movies, and writing screenplays. (And thanks to computers and the Internet all of those are easier to do today than when Syd Field published Screenplay in 1979 and started the modern day screenwriting teaching cottage industry.) But to think that you can’t learn a kernel of truth and get a little inspiration from someone unless they are a successful screenwriter is just plain arrogant. (Whether any book, teaching DVD, workshop, expo, conference—or even college—is worth the price, is perhaps the big question. Remember the old maxim, “Make every purchase a wise investment.”
The only real criteria for any writer or teacher/consultant/guru should be “Are they any good at what they do?” In Seger’s defense, two -time Oscar-winning director Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind) is on record saying, “I’ve used Linda’s concepts from Making a Good Script Great on all my films starting with Apollo 13.” In McKee’s defense, Oscar-winning Akiva Goldman (A Beautiful Mind) credits McKee with helping him make the transition from a failed novelist to a screenwriter.
Honestly, these days there is way more than enough free info out there for anyone who wants to learn screenwriting. And if August and Mazin—along with Go Into the Story. Jeff Goldsmith’s podcast, Wordplayer— and other free screenwriting blogs were around in the 80s perhaps McKee, Seger, and the like wouldn’t have risen in popularity. But even if there is more than enough free info out there, what there will never be enough of is teachers who take an interest in their students and invest time to inspire, correct, and encourage them to be the best they can be in a given field.
My guess is Mazin’s not going to be impressed with a yahoo in a small city in Iowa who has a blog on screenwriting, a stack of unproduced feature scripts, or a couple dozen awards producing videos, TV programs, and short films. But then again my goal with Screenwriting from Iowa is not to mimic everything being done in Hollywood, but to come at things from a different angle and to encourage writers to write solid original stories in that vast, often overlooked, and despised area known as flyover county. (Or some other unusual place around the world.) And to echo the words of The Angry Filmmaker who said to me this week about a script I just finished, “Don’t wait for LA or NY, do it yourself.”
Now, if you want to read where I agree in part with Mazin check out the post I wrote a couple of years ago called, Screenwriting, Infomercials & Gurus. It’s a post that has a photo I took of Yoda when I visited ILM and a great quote from Tootsie screenwriter Larry Gilbart, “So many gurus and so few good writers. Where are all these lessons going?”
Another related post (and one of my favorites) is Can Screenwriting Be Taught? And finally let me say it’s not about screenwriting blogs, books or gurus but about putting in your 10,000 hours writing.
*Eszterhas’ memoir Hollywood Animal also won’t give you much practical advice on screenwriting because it’s really a book about Joe Eszterhas (it is a memoir after all) but it’s an engaging read if you want to will learn the details about Eszterhas’ affair with Sharon Stone, about his battles with alcoholism, and about how much he hates the business. Perhaps the real takeaway from Eszterhas is if you want to write like Joe Eszerthas you have to live the crazy life the Joe Esterhas has lived.
Update 3/28/11: This may be as close to a Charlie Kaufman seminar you’re going to find:
Now a post called 60 Best Blogs for Aspiring Screenwritershas listed Screenwriting from Iowa #7 saying, “Scott W. Smith philosophically peers into screenwriting and the creative process that goes into the craft.” Thanks for the shout out.
The saying goes that a number without a context is meaningless, but when I look at some of the blogs listed on there I am honored to be in such good company. The list appears to have some kind of connection to the University of Phoenix and Kaplan University. But whoever came up with the list really did their homework.
Scott Myers’ blog Go Into The Storyis well deserving in the top slot as is Big Fish screenwriter John August’s blog at #2. Ken Levine who wrote on the TV show Mash has his blog listed at #5 so I have no problem at all coming in at #7. (And just for the record, as far as I can tell, none of the other blogs have won an Emmy.)
As I wrap up the third year of this blog (and the second year of daily posts) it’s been a thrill to get some recognition. And it will also give me some added inspiration to get the content into book form.
On Sunday, I’ll be giving an introduction to the 1939 John Ford classic Stagecoach as part of the 100th celebration of the Oster-Regent Theater here in Cedar Falls. I look forward to that because it’s kind of encapsulates what this blog is all about. Not only does the film star John Wayne who was born here in Iowa (Winterset) but the script was written by Dudley Nichols* who was born in Wapakoneta, Ohio. How many could find either of those places without Mapquest or Google Maps?
* I mentioned Dudley Nichols back in October of ’08 in the post Screenwriting from Michigan as he was one of the first, if not the first, to graduate from the University of Michigan and have a screenwriting career in Hollywood. According to IMDB he was also the first artist to turn down the Oscar. (For his screenplay that became the 1935 film The Informer.)
Before Dana Fox was named by Variety in 2007 as one of the 10 Screenwriters to Watch, she was Dana Fox from upstate New York. (Because she’s a relatively new writer it’s hard to find many interviews with Fox, but one implied she spent time on a farm as a youth, which is always a nice contrast to Hollywood. Besides I needed another F-word for my title.) Fox got her undergraduate degree in English at Stanford and then earned her master’s at the Peter Stark Producing Program at USC. That’s when she first tried her hand at screenwriting and set her on course.
She spent two years as a writer’s assistant for Al Gough and Miles Millar who were creating the TV show Smallville, and also worked with screenwriter John August (Big Fish). Her first film was The Wedding Date in 2005, followed by What Happens in Vegas (which starred Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz and pulled in $80 million) , and earned a co-writing credit on Couples Retreat starring Vince Vaughn.
I first read the phrase “The Fempire” in a 2008 article by Peter Howell describing the self-designated title of screenwriters and friends Diablo Cody (Juno), Lorene Scafaria (Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist), and Fox. (Playwright-turned-screenwriter Liz Meriwether is a recent addition.)
I heard a screenwriter recently say that you have to buy your way into Hollywood one way or the other. In Fox’s case it was a combination of an education that included Stanford and USC which I’d guess was between $150,000-200,000. in total expenses, which put her in a position to be a low-paid writer’s assistant where she could get coffee for the writers for several years.
“I’m a believer in paying your dues. I won’t say, ‘I have two degrees; I shouldn’t be getting your latte.’ Because I paid my dues when I got to the table, I actually had something to say.”
Dana Fox
The Wedding Date may not be at the top of your Netflix choices, but that’s what launched Fox’s career and I know more than one writer that would like to see their name in the credits with Debra Messing and Dermot Mulroney.
“When I was 12 or 13, I wrote a spec M*A*S*H episode.”
Jane Espenson
So I was over at screenwriter John August’s website yesterday and he had a quote there from screenwriter Jane Espenson, so I went to her site and found that she started blogging again after taking a little sabbatical from blogging. Jane’s credits are extensive; Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Battlestar Galactica, Gilmore Girls, The O.C., Star Trek; Deep Space Nine, Caprica—you get the picture.
But before all those credit, and before her graduate and undergraduate work in linguistics at Berkeley, Espenson was raised in Ames, Iowa. I poked around a little and found this quote from an interview Espenson did with Roz Kaveney.
“I grew up in Ames, a small town in Iowa very far from the TV industry, and I always knew I wanted to write for TV. I was a big fan of Barney Miller and Starsky and Hutch, and The Love Boat. I knew which shows were guilty pleasures and which were the well-written ones. The nice thing about Barney Miller or M*A*S*H or The Odd Couple is that the characters are well defined. You knew how the characters would react: you could imagine a scenario in your head and have an insight as to how it would play out. A show that is a guilty pleasure has wonderful moments that make you laugh and fall around but does not have such well-defined characters.” Jane Espenson Reading the Vampire Slayer, Roz Kaveney
Something to mull over for those of you interested in writing for TV. And from the odd connections section, that means the writer of Big Fish (John August) went to college (Drake/Des Moines) just about 30 minutes away from where the writer of 23 episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer went to elementary school in Ames. Not quite sure what that means, but if I don’t point those things out who will? But the bottom line is writers come from everywhere.
If you are wondering how Espenson made the transition from Ames and Berkeley to Hollywood— she was a part of the Disney/ABC Writing Fellowship. The group that helps with “talent deveolpment and diversity” in the film/TV industry. (I’m guessing that means women, African-Americans, Hispanics, etc.) The long-running program is currently accepting production associates April 1-16, and submissions for the 2011 Televsion Writing program opens May 2010.
I guess the other take-away from Espenson’s quote is writing well defined characters is good. (Though some “guilty pleasures” air as well.) Years ago, Lew Hunter recommended the book to me Writing the Character-Center Screenplay by Andrew Horton. In the first line in the preface, Horton writes, “Strong characters hold our interest in life and on the screen.” That’s true of Buffy and all those wacky characters in Big Fish, and hopefully in the screenplay you are writing.
Bonus triva— Buffy fans know that in season four there was an episode titled Goodbye Iowa (which wasn’t written by Espenson, go figure).
“When I meet with recent film school graduates, I remind them that whatever happens next in the industry won’t be something my generation does. It will happen among the 20-somethings, the narrative entrepreneurs who figure out how to make the next great thing. Rather than seeking permission to work in the existing industry, they’ll make their own.”
Screenwriter John August What’s wrong with the business
Love the phrase “narrative entrepreneurs” and I’ll be running with that thought the next couple days as I look at new filmmaking tools.
