From Ann Arbor to Smallville (David S. Goyer)

“Nowadays with the internet and all these other tools I don’t know that it’s entirely necessary to go to film school.”
Screenwriter and USC grad David S. Goyer (Man of Steel)
The Dialogue interview with Mike De Luca

Pyramids at Giza (Photo by Wilhem Joys Anderson/CC)

Screenwriter David S. Goyer was born in 1965 in Ann Arbor, Michigan and (I think) attended Michigan State before going to film school at USC. His first produced feature screenplay was Death Warrant in 1990 and since then he’s written more than 15 produced screenplays including Blade, Batman Begins, and Man of Steel. He’s also written three novels, several TV programs, and worked as a consultant on the video game Call of Duty. He has a website and blog at davidsgoyer.com. Last year he was asked if he had any advice on how to prepare for a career in writing/filmmaking:

“There’s no one tried and true path into film.  There are a number of good film schools — USC, UCLA, NYU, Columbia, Pasadena’s Art Center (Zack Snyder went there, among others).  But film school isn’t a requirement. There are tons of good books about writing and film.  Screenwriting programs like Final Draft.  And a host of screenplays available for download on the web.  Digital film-making is relatively cheap. In the end, there’s no substitute for doing the work.  Just know that the top of the pyramid is tiny.  Depressingly, only a small percentage of WGA members actually make a good living as screen or television writers.  And that number is dwindling.  So if you want to pursue this career, make sure you’ve got the fortitude for it!”
Producer/writer/director David S. Goyer
Questions and Answers

I’m on the tail end of writing three ebooks (beginning, middle, and end) culled from the best of the 1,500 posts on this blog. Goyer is a great example of someone who rose out of the Midwest and made his mark in Hollywood. And while he’s absolutely correct that the top of the pyramid is tiny, the pyramid is much bigger than it used to be. (And actually, there are multiple pyramids now. Can’t play in the NFL or the NBA? That’s okay there are other professional leagues around the world. ) This blog celebrates the various nooks and crannies of the world where screenwriters come from, but it’s also a voice for telling people there is room below the top of the pyramid to work in production and have your stories told—improve your skills—and make a living.

Filmmakers in days of old learned their trade making B-movies, today we have You Tube and webisodes. Go create knowing that everyone who is at that top of the pyramid started out at the bottom of the pyramid—no, they started not even on the pyramid. They just stared at it from afar.   When Goyer was a high school student had his eyes set on a career as a homicide investigator. But like that adopted kid from Smallville, Kansas that he wrote about in Man Of Steel they were both destined for Hollywood.

P.S. Speaking of alternative ways of getting your film made, I thought I’d tell you about a Kickstarter project by a reader of this blog. Right now writer/director Jonathan Ade has 241 backers and $27,107 raised but needs to hit $33,000 in the next 59 hours or he gets nothing. (Sounds like a log line right?) The film Lay in Wait has an intriguing log line:

A married woman in an extramarital affair must find her wedding ring in the woods before the sun sets.

The film will star Elizabeth Olin (Killing Season) and is being executive produced by actor Lucas Neff (Raising Hope). Check out Ade’s project at Kickstarter.

Related posts:

Screenwriting from Michigan
How Much Do Screenwriters Make?
How to Get Started Working in Production
Screenwriter’s Work Ethic (Tip #2)
The 99% Focus Rule (Tip #70)
“Don’t try and compete with Hollywood.”—Ed Burns

Scott W. Smith

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“Against the Wind”

“I found myself seeking shelter against the wind.”
Bob Seger/Against the Wind

“Run, Forrest! Run!
Jenny in Forrest Gump

Many of you weren’t even born when Bob Seger’s album Against the Wind was released in February of 1980. Some of you have never heard the title song on the album. And since this blog has a global audience, there are others who have never even heard of Bob Seger—or his Silver Bullett Band. But I don’t think there’s been a human being anywhere in the world, anytime in the history of mankind, whose heart would not resonate —to one degree or another—with the core experience of running against the wind.

If Adam and Eve heard this song—once they were banished east of Eden—they’d have been just as moved as I was when I first heard it as a high school senior the year it was released. And every decade of my life this song has taken on new meaning. And if I make it to age 80 in a retirement home, I’ll be the one in the corner listening to this song cranked up in my ear buds on my retro iPhone 14  (just like I did with those jumbo Koss headphones at age 18) and I’ll still be seeking—probably more than ever— shelter against the wind.

The kid in the inner city Chicago, the businessman in Singapore, the factory worker in China, the mother in the favilla in Rio, the president of Pakistan, the actress in Hollywood, the computer programmer in India, and the farmer in Iowa—all know what it’s like to run against the wind. It’s a universal and primal.

In fact that screenplay you’re currently writing should have a protagonist who’s running against the wind. Indiana Jones, Jason Bourne, Erin Brockovich, Luke Skywalker, Ellen Ripley, Rocky, Superman, Batman, Bambi, Nemo, Dorothy, and more recently Django all spend a lot of movie time running against the wind. No conflict, no drama.

And since this blog celebrates storytelling and regionalism, this song and Seger’s Michigan roots (Lincoln Park, Ann Arbor, Detroit) fit right in. Seger spent fifteen years on the Midwest club circuit—with limited national success—before hitting it big nationally in 1976 with the song and album Night Moves. Seger is a study in persistence. And here we are fifty years after he first hit the Detroit music scene and he’s getting ready to tour again this month performing in many of the Midwest cities where he honed his act in the early years; Toledo, Grand Rapids, Dayton, Green Bay, St. Paul, Fargo, and of course, Detroit.

I saw Seger in concert the summer of ’78 at what’s now The Florida Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Florida. Few things were as magical and captivating in my teenage years as sitting in the dark with around 60,000 other people watching the flickering glow of lighters throughout the outdoor stadium and listening to the raspy voice of Seger.

Happy Valentine’s Day—in a melancholy sort of way.

Against the Wind
Bob Seger

Seems like yesterday
But it was long ago
Janey was lovely she was the queen of my nights
There in darkness with the radio playin low
And the secrets that we shared, mountains that we moved
Caught like a wildfire out of control
Til there was nothin left to burn and nothin left to prove

And I remember what she said to me
How she swore that it never would end
I remember how she held me oh so tight
Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then

Against the wind

We were runnin against the wind
We were young and strong we were runnin

Against the wind

And the years rolled slowly past
And I found myself alone
Surrounded by strangers I thought were my friends
Found myself further and further from my home and I
Guess I lost my way
There were oh so many roads
I was livin to run and runnin to live
Never worried about payin or even how much I owe

Movin’ eight miles a minute and for months at a time
Breakin all of the rules that would bend
I began to find myself searchin
Searchin for shelter again and again

Against the wind
Little somethin against the wind
I found myself seekin shelter against the wind

Well those drifting days are past me now
I’ve got so much more to think about
Deadlines and commitments
What to leave in, what to leave out

Against the wind
I’m still runnin against the wind
I’m older now but still runnin against the wind

Well I’m older now but still runnin against the wind
Against the wind
Against the wind
Still runnin
Against the wind
Against the wind
Against the wind…

P.S. Against the Wind did appeared in the movies For Love of the Game and Forrest Gump. Other Seger songs have been featured in movies over the years, but one of the most iconic scenes in modern American films is when Tom Cruise slides across the floor in Risky Business and dances to Seger’s Old Time Rock and Roll.

P.P.S. Against the Wind is Seger’s only number one album on the Billboard 2oo charts, and knocked Pink Floyd’s The Wall album out of the top slot after it topped the charts for 15 weeks.

Related Post:
Everything I Learned in Film School (Tip #1)
Screenwriting from Michigan
Screenwriting from Sunset Blvd. (Take 6) Features a few lines from Seger’s song Hollywood Nights

Scott W. Smith

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“Detroit is Not for Sissies”

Since I’ve been kicking around Michigan recently on this blog I thought I’d find a quote from a Detroit son. Producer/director/actor/writer Scott Spiegal went to Wylie E. Groves High School in Birmingham, MI with Sam Raimi.  He and Raimi wrote Evil Dead II, he directed Hostel: Part III, and acted in both Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2. The lesson: Chose your high school friends carefully.

“Detroit is not for sissies, you better have your act together when you’re in Detroit. Detroit is a tough city, very very tough. There are great people there & there are some not so great people there. The movie industry has been incredible for the economy of Detroit. To see people working there was pretty awesome. There was some stuff happening there but I think they cut the incentive for the studios. Still it was cool to see some dough coming to the local economy but if they can’t get the crime problem under control…you can’t let your guard down for a moment and that’s whats really frustrating…Sometimes you just get lazy here in L.A. because the climate is so easy. There is some crime but it’s in pockets spread out all over. I don’t know, I guess I just really love the warm weather out here. Even the crime out here seems not as tough as in Detroit!”
Scott Spiegel
2011 Interview by The Black Saint at Horrornews.net 

Though both Spiegel and Ramai live in L.A. these days they have returned to Michigan to shoot films. Last year Ramai shot Oz: The Great and Powerful at Raleigh Michigan Studios in Pontiac. The film stars James Franco, Michelle Williams and Rachel Weisz and the script was written by Mitchell Kapner and David Lindsay-Abaire. It will be released next year.

P.S. Back in 2009 I spoke at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI  and afterwards was asked by a reporter if I thought if the idea to turn old car factories into movie studios would work to attract feature film production. My reply was that it wasn’t wise to try to build an industry around film incentives—because incentives come and go. And that the only jobs guaranteed with the studios being built was actually construction workers building the studios.  What do I know? I just a court jester in Iowa. Well, maybe you can add prophet to my title, because the Michigan great film incentives went away and in March of this year AP reported that Raleigh Studios has “defaulted on a $630,000 interest payment and could do so on another payment after failing to attract enough feature films.”

Maybe we’ve taken those inspiring words from the cornfields of Iowa in the movie Field of Dream—”If you build it, he will come”—too far. Where does the money come from if Raleigh Studios defaults?  AP reports, “If the studio can’t make the payment, the State of Michigan Retirement Systems is obligated to cover it. The retirement systems invested in the $80 million project.”

Related Post: Michigan’s Sam Raimi & the Guy with Greasy Hair

Scott W. Smith

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Kalamazoo Filmmaker (Part 1)

“You can live in Kalamazoo, Michigan…and make your own movies if you want.”
Joseph McBride
Writing in Pictures; Screenwriting Made (Mostly) Painless (Published in 2012)

It’s no accident that I posted McBride’s quote on Kalamazoo last week and led off with it today. I had in the hopper an interview I did with writer/director Cindy Gustafson who recently finished shooting her first feature film A Chance of Rain…and just happens to live in Kalamazoo, Michigan. And she just also happens to be a long time reader and commenter on this blog.

In fact, if I had a dream when I started this blog back in January 2008, Cindy’s Midwest journey to becoming a screenwriter and film director would be exactly what I would have hoped for. (Note: I did this interview before I interviewed Portland Filmmaker Edd Blott who recently completed principle photography on his first feature and is also a long time reader of Screenwriting from Iowa.)

Scott W. Smith: Okay, we’ll try to keep this interview short and concise.

Cindy Gustafson: You know this is my very first interview on this project.

SWS: Great. And this will be the first interview I’ve done by someone who’s made a feature and attributes part of her success to this blog.

Cindy: I read it every single day.

SWS: Great. So start out by telling me your writing process on your screenplay and film A Chance of Rain.

Cindy: Whatever I write about, it’s something I’ve been pondering. Some big mystery of the world that’s been on my mind.  I wrote it based on several intense conversations I had with people. I was thinking really hard about what we talked about and I went home and started to duke it out on paper.  I completed it really fast. It was a horrendous, puke on the paper kind of thing.  That first draft was long and all over the place—but that’s the way I write.  It took me three or four days to crank out scads of crap. It was like puking every thought I had on the subject. About where I thought these characters would go. I’ve always written whatever I’ve written as fast as I can—otherwise I forget where I’m going with it. And then you can sit down in a comfortable chair away from your computer and do the editing process. I had absolutely no intention of doing anything with this.  It was like, “you know, I’m a playwright and I had this idea that I couldn’t see on a stage.” It was like, you know, maybe I’ll write a screenplay.  So I went to Barnes & Noble and bought a few books on screenwriting.

SWS: Did that help?

Cindy: Yes, for learning the basic mechanics of screenwriting.  Most of my reading was done AFTER I wrote the screenplay which was a little backwards but pretty useful as an editing tool.  Each book by itself seemed helpful. But then I would read the next book and I was like, “Oh crap, I screwed up, my script more closely follows this book’s advice on structure—but this other author really seems to know what he/she is talking about.”  And the books would point out that I had broken a lot of “rules.” It was really just insecurity of feeling like I had no clue what I was doing.  So it was like every book that I read screwed me up even more and more so I finally just gave up and did my own thing. Yet, I became a junkie and I had to read all of them because it became like a hobby to read about all of the different screenwriting “philosophies” out there.

SWS: Back in 1609 Lope de Vega wrote about the rules of playwriting in his book Writing Plays in Our Times yet said, “When I have to write a play, I lock up the rules with six keys.” Meaning he switched over to intuition.Somewhere in this process you stumbled upon this blog Screenwriting from Iowa; and Other Unlikely Places.

Cindy: Stumbled is right. I was probably Googling topics that you had just written about and the name of it struck me. I live in Michigan and I thought, “That’s an interesting title.” I read that first post and then I spent the next few hours reading every previous post.  I can’t remember when that was but you had just begun the daily posts.

SWS: I started the daily posts in January of 2009, and here we are three years later and you’ve written and directed your first feature. That’s pretty cool.  And that I could have a part in your learning process is a huge satisfaction to me.

Cindy: And I have to say more than any book, or anything, it was your blog that encouraged me to not feel crazy that I was writing a screenplay in Kalamazoo and then later to just go ahead and make the film.

SWS: I appreciate that. I read your script in 2011. Had you it finished much before then?

Cindy: Oh, yeah, because it sat in my drawer for a year. It was like, “Oh, okay, that was fun.” Then I put it in the drawer and went on. In the meantime, I wrote a play and directed it.

Scott: So you had a theater and writing background before you jumped into screenwriting.

Cindy: Yes.  I did some acting in college and community theater and I’m always writing something. As far back as I can remember I’ve always been writing something, sketches, in journals, plays, skits, parodies of commercials—I’ve just always had an interest in making fun of things. But a lot of my writing is for my own sadistic enjoyment.

SWS: Aaron Sorkin talks about being an actor and being 22-23 years old in a Motel 6 in Atlanta and just getting the urge to write. But he never thought of himself as a writer until then.

Cindy: The crazy thing is I still don’t consider myself a writer. I really don’t.

SWS: Yet you’ve just written and directed a feature film.

Cindy: (Laughing) I know.  Maybe somewhere in my subconscious saying I’m a writer puts pressure on me to actually write something and it takes the fun out of it, I don’t know.

SWS: I think the simple fact that you write makes you a writer.  Many writers from the top down feel like a fraud. Shane Black was staying stuff like that early in his career while being paid millions for his screenplays.

Cindy: I actually have a line in the screenplay where a character asks someone if he’s a writer and he says something like, “No, I do like to write, but I’m not a writer.”  I guess that’s me.

In the coming days I’ll post parts two and three of the interview with Cindy and you’ll learn how she landed LA talent (Matt Lanter, Eric Tiede and Hallee Hirsh) and shot A Chance of Rain using the Arri Alexa in Michigan, L.A. and Africa. Working the phones and the keyboard from a most unlikely place—Kalamazoo.

Related post: Kalamazoo Filmmaker (Part 2) 

Scott W. Smith

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Who is This Ben Foster Guy?

“Who is this Ben Foster guy? And where did he come from?” That’s how my search started.

Every once in a while an actor comes around and kind of stops you in your tracks. It happens when you’ve never seen them in a film before and they don’t even appear to be acting. To use a directors phrase, they are in the moment. They make you ask, “Where did this actor come from?” I’ve only experienced that a half-dozen times in my life. A few performances I can think of are Denzel Washington in Glory, Scott Glenn in Urban Cowboy, Brad Pitt in Thema & Lousie, and Edward Norton in Primal Fear. And it happened last week when I saw Ben Foster in The Messenger.

So I wanted to know where Ben Foster came from and I was surprised to find that he was raised in a Fairfield, Iowa. (A town Mother Earth in 2006 listed first of “great places you’ve never heard of.”)  I was also surprised that, though Foster’s only 29, he’s been acting in films and TV for the past 14 years. I don’t recall ever seeing him before. Never saw him in Six Feet Under, 3:10 to Yuma, or Alpha Dog. And before he started acting in films and TV he was doing community theater in Iowa. And doing it well.

One article said he started doing theater when he was eight. According to IMBD he, “wrote, directed, and starred in his own play at the age of 12, a play that won second place in an international competition.” As an actor friend once told me the important thing for an actor to do is “get stage time.” Apparently, Foster got a lot of that in Fairfield, a small town of less than 10,000 people that had four community theaters in it.* Fairfield is an unusual small town that I’ve called the San Francisco of Iowa. There is no shortage of art galleries and vegetarian restaurants thanks in part to Maharishi University that is based there. (I saw David Lynch speak there a couple of years ago.) Interesting place.

Foster attended the Interlochen Theater Arts Summer program in Interlochen, Michigan when he was 14, and at 16 dropped out of high school and moved to Los Angeles and began working on TV and movies right away. But keep in mind, by that time he had already been acting for eight years. I imagine he had more stage time that most 16 year olds in L.A.

In 2003 he won a Daytime Emmy for his role in Bang Bang You’re Dead. And before that break through performance in The Messenger he had been in over 80 TV episodes or movies, and in total, acting for 2o years. It all kinda goes back to the 10,000 rule again, doesn’t it?

As a related side note, last week here in Iowa I happened to go a community theater performance of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. It was an entertaining and great performance by at the Waterloo Community Playhouse. I’ve been to theaters of all kinds all over this country and one thing that impressed me about this performance was the worked showed. I mean that in a good way. The work they did showed in the set and costume design, the blocking, the performances, the lighting, the music, everything.

At the dress rehearsal I saw the director, Chuck Stiwill, said before the show that there was a cast of just over 50 people and twice that working behind the scenes. (Who knew it sometimes takes 150 people to put on a show in community theater?) Some of the people had been working on the show for two months. Rehearsals were nightly, and yes, there were several children in the show. Perhaps future Ben Foster’s getting in their stage time.

Dream big, but always remember to be faithful in the small things that come your way. And keep in mind that there are also writing opportunites in community and regional theaters around the country as well as summer stock shows.

P.S. And if you know of an 8-12 year olds who are interested in learning filmmaking check out Apple Camp.

*Today Fairfield is home to the 522-seat Stephen Sondheim Center for the Performing Arts.

Scott W. Smith

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Filmmaking Quote #8 (Aaron Woolf)

“It still boggles my mind that people went to movie theaters to go see a movie about corn.”
Aaron Woolf (on his film King Corn)

On Saturday, while on a flight from Des Moines to Detroit, I met documentary filmmaker Aaron Woolf. He was in Iowa to show one of his films at The Fleur Cinema & Cafe. (The Fleur is a funky little theater that is supportive of the arts and helping develop local talent. Over the years I’ve had several short films shown there.)

This wasn’t Woolf’s first trip to Iowa. Before he moved to New York, he received an MFA in Film from the University of Iowa. He also produced & directed the 2007 Peabody Award-winning documentary King Corn which was shot in Greene, Iowa. King Corn played in theaters and on PBS. Woolf gave me a DVD of Big River which he produced as companion to King Corn. Big River also features Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, who were the two young men in King Corn who set out to see what happens when one tries to farm one arce of corn.

King Corn is still off many people’s radar but  it did receive a 100% rating at Rotten Tomatoes. Michael Phillips at the Chicago Tribune wrote that the film was,  ”A breezy diary from a pair of first-time farmers, as well as a wry rebuke to a nation devoted to eating cheaply but not necessarily well.” After seeing the film, you may never hear or read about high-fructose corn syrup without thinking about Iowa.

Woolf’s narrow focus on making a film about corn is part of a strategy that Woolf thinks is good advice for documentary filmmakers:

“Find the smallest focus possible for your film…In our case, it turned out that even the story of one acre of corn was a colossal topic, and we were still left with dozens of storylines that died a lonely death on the cutting room floor.”
Aaron Woolf
Independent Lens

Woolf’s latest documentary is Beyond Motor City, a 90-minute look at the rise, fall & future of Detroit. The film will air on PBS February 8, 2010.

Scott W. Smith

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Once Upon a Time in Hollywood… (Part 2)

Once Upon a Time…between 1890-1927.

The history of movies did not begin in Hollywood, California. After decades of advances in photographic techniques in the nineteenth century an inventor born in Milan, Ohio and raised (and homeschooled) in Port Huron, Michigan developed the motion picture system as we know it today. Thomas Edison (and his assistant  William K.L. Dickson) worked together on the new invention that changed the way people viewed entertainment.

Work took Edison to Canada & Kentucky before he would eventually land in New Jersey and his inventions earned him the nickname “The Wizard of Menlo Park.” (Dickson is also known to film historians as the filmmaker Fred Ott’s Sneeze in 1894.)

Edison held patents on over 900 of his inventions including the incandescent light bulb, the phonograph and around 1890 the film camera as we know it. Dickson developed the kinetograph, a sprocket camera and George Eastman (of Eastman-Kodak fame) developed the 35mm film that would pass through the camera and capture multiple images quickly.  (A technique commonly used for the last 100+ years in the film industry.)

The main problem with the early camera was it was so large it had to be permanently housed in a studio built in West Orange, New Jersey specifically for it. The studio had a track in it that allowed them to rotate camera positions to capture light coming from an opening in a room.

It’s important to look back at the early developments in film history to how Hollywood became Hollywood as we know it and why recent inventions have shifted the direction for the future of the film industry.

In the years leading up to 1900 the popularity of film grew rapidly. First using machines that allowed people to individually watch short films and evolving to nickelodeons in 1905 that projected the film images in storefronts that allowed small groups of people to watch the same film together. Within two years there were close to 4,000 nickelodeon theaters in the U.S.

New films had to be made quickly as audiences grew. And film moved from showing vaudeville acts such as juggling to telling stories. These films were usually less than ten minutes in length and made in a couple days. In 1903 Edwin S. Porter made the 12-minute film The Great Train Robbery which was seen as groundbreaking for its use of indoor/outdoor shots and use of cross cutting.  The film toured the country for years.

This all set the stage for a stage actor and playwright named D.W. Griffith in 1908 to make the film The Adventures of Dollie. Films began to grow in length as well as artistic merdits—as well becoming more economically viable.

Griffith changed the direction of the film industry in 1915 with the release of the longest and most expensive film ever made, The Birth of a Nation. The $100,000 film made $50 million dollars at the box office.

Distribution rights and patent infringements all played a roll in this emerging and profitable new industry.  New Jersey, New York (as well as Chicago and Jacksonville) all played a roll in the early development of movies. The New York area and Chicago were a natural start because that’s where the stage talent was located and Jacksonville for its warmer weather and sunshine. But there would be a shift in the film industry. (A common theme we’ll see.)

The industry eventually landed in southern California because of its combination of sunshine, warm weather and the diversity of nearby locations such as mountains, deserts, oceans, cities, open ranch land—and cheap labor. Remember places like New York and Chicago had a long established theater and vaudeville companies that were very popular. Experienced talent does not come cheap. (But producers were just as interested in producing cost efficient films as producers today. So a new industry was born on the backs of those with little or no experience in the new industry. Sound familiar?)

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica by 1915 there were 15,000 people working in the film industry and 60% was located in southern California. During this time films were all black and white and silent. The format worked well for the antics of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and the beauty and talent of Mary Pickford.

But that would all change as well in 1927 as talkies came on the scene as we’ll learn in Once Upon a Time… (part 3).

Scott W. Smith

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The Art of Dramatic Writing (part 1)

So it’s been just over six months since I had the crazy idea to go daily with this Screenwriting from Iowa blog. Like Lance Armstrong I don’t know if I’m going to return next year or if December 31, 2009 will be the finish line for the daily gig. In the meantime, I continue to hunt for helpful quotes and such. For the next couple days I’m going to go to revisit my most tattered, torn, and highlighted book on writing — The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri. 

I’ve flipped through it so much over the years that it’s now two books because the spine is broken. There’s a rumor that you can’t get into the Writer’s Guide of America unless you’ve read this book — and memorized the first chapter. First published in 1946 the examples are from theater, but it fits all dramatic writing. (Hence, the title.) If you haven’t read this book do yourself a favor and order it right now.

“No two dramatists think or write alike. Ten thousand playwrights can take the same premise, as they have done since Shakespeare, and not one play will resemble the other except in the premise. Your knowledge, your understanding of human nature, and your imagination will take care of that.”
                                                    Lajos Egri
                                                    The Art of Dramatic Writing
                                                    page 11 

Your living in Iowa, Alaska, Ohio or Oslo is part of where your originality comes from. Write local stories with a universal appeal. Heck, if you live in Michigan or Louisiana I have to think that’s an asset now that producers are looking to make movies there due to the great tax incentives those states offer.

Egri makes a great point. Whenever you talk about learning to be a better screenwriter there is always someone ready to shout “you’re teaching a cookie-cutter approach.” I understand the thought and probably was shouting that at teachers when I was a 20-year-old in film school, but it really is a silly thought. There are simply guidelines that have worked worked for at least a couple thousands years. Things like, say, conflict are good to have in your story.

But the originality comes from what you bring to the table. Your education and family background are things that make your see the world in a particular way. There are things you’ve seen and done that will shape your writing. That’s were originality flows from.

As I’ve mentioned before, in 2006-07 there were four movies about unplanned pregnancies (Juno, Waitress, Bella, Knocked Up ). Four movies that centered around the same subject. And all four are different. Originality in filmmaking has less to do with avant-garde ideals (or shaky camera moves or the latest digital plug-ins) than it has to do with your imagination.

 

Scott W. Smith

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Screenwriting & Liberal Arts

I took the above photo at Calvin College after my screenwriting talks this week. It’s part of Calvin’s Crossing, a pedestrian bridge designed by architect Frank Gorman that spans a little over a football field in length connecting the main parts of campus with the DeVos Communications Center over one of the busiest roads in Grand Rapids.

While the bridge has a practical purpose for Calvin students, it’s a fitting metaphor for all writers, filmmakers, and video producers. Too often creative folks distance themselves from the other disciplines of life. (You could call it a superiority complex.) In fact, there is a growing trend for young filmmakers to just go to film schools that only teach film and digital video production. (Technical skills are always easier to develop than writing. Which is why there are many beautifully photographed movies with shallow stories.)

At Calvin the communication center is where the video and radio studios, the video and film theater, and the video editing suites are all located. But Calvin is a liberal arts school so students head over the bridge to fill their minds with art, literature, languages, philosophy, politics, history, mathematics, religion and science with an emphasis on knowledge and truth rather than livelihood.

The knock on a liberal arts education has always been in line with it doesn’t prepare you for any job except to maybe teach. But if you look at the info where liberal arts grads end up you might conclude that liberal arts majors are prepared for just about every job. Margaret W. Crane wrote in the article For the Love of Learning, “a liberal arts background prepares you to think, analyze, and contribute meaningfully to the world around you.” 
 


While speaking at Calvin this week one of the things I mentioned was when I was a student at the University of Miami a professor told us film school students that you don’t go to school to learn to make films, you go to school to learn what make films about.

Screenwriter/director Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver) did go to UCLA for his Master’s work in film studies, but he did his undergraduate work with an emphasis in pre-seminary at Calvin College. While later rejecting the doctrine, he has credited Calvin College with teaching him to think.

When Suzanne O’Malley, who’s written for the TV show Law & Order, taught a seminar a couple years ago at Yale College called “Writing Hour Long Television Drama” where the class came together to write a 47-minute television program. Something a little different at the liberal arts college.

“We’re drawing from The New York Times, from Shakespeare, from Sun Tzu, from [John Lewis] Gaddis, one of the professors here, looking at all different kinds of serious work and blending that into our plot and story line,” she said in a Yale Daily News article by Andrew Bartholomew.

And just to connect all the dots. Yale is actually made up of 12 residential colleges and the one O’Malley taught at was Calhoun College, which is actually where actress Jodie Foster graduated from with a B.A. (with honors) in literature — after she was nominated for best supporting actress in Taxi Driver. She went on to win two Oscars after graduating from Yale. (Maybe a liberal arts degree should be a requirement for all child actors.)

So at least for Schrader and Foster their undergraduate liberal arts backgrounds haven’t hurt their now pushing 40 year careers in Hollywood.

Even if you’re out of school (or never went to school) read and study widely because it will add richness to your writing and your life.

Text and photo copyright 2009 Scott W. Smith

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Screenwriting from Grand Rapids

“You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me?”
                                         Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro)
                                         Taxi Driver
                                         Written by Paul Schrader 

No Bobby, I’m not talkin’ to you. But I did spend a couple days talking to students (and a few visitors) at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan the last couple days and the above photo was one of the movie posters hanging outside the video theater where I spoke.  Calvin’s most famous film alumni is Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader.

I would like to thank Prof. Bill Romanowski for the invite and and all the support staff, other professors, and students for the opportunity to speak, as well as the sponsorship by the Gainey Institute and Communication Arts & Sciences department. It sure is more fun to talk about this stuff than write about it.

I not only got to meet a lot of eager students, but had lunch yesterday with a New York actor who’s recently been on Law and Order and had a director from L.A. sit in on one of my seminars. (He was in town raising funds for a film that would take advantage of Michigan’s 40%-42% tax incentives.)

Those tax incentives are bringing a film called The Genesis Code not only to Michigan, but they will be shooting part of the film at the Calvin College campus. But Michigan is learning quickly about Hollywood’s ways as people have gotten excited about films starring people like Samuel L. Jackson, Joe Mantegna and Robert Duvall scheduled to shoot in Michigan only to see them postponed for one reason or another.

It was an interesting time to be in Michigan because not only is Detroit hurting because of the decline in auto sales, but the whole economy of the state is effected because many of the smaller cities are made up of manufacturing plants that produce parts for the  automobiles that people aren’t buying.

So people are both excited and skeptical about the possibilities of a film industry bringing jobs. Enrollment at schools and colleges that teach film and video is up. I saw people shooting footage around the Calvin campus including this young fellow that I snapped a picture of as he was in action. This kind of thing is happening all over the country. 

While at Calvin College I learned that they have a few other grads who are working in the film industry, but the most impressive to me is Jeannie Claudia Oppewall. She’s is a four time Oscar nominated production designer/art director who’s worked on two of my favorite films, Seabiscuit and Tender Mercies.

And for what it’s worth, she’s worked in Iowa twice on The Bridges of Madison County and the yet to be release Ellen Page film Peacock. And just to come full circle she was once married to Paul Schrader.

Schrader’s divorce played a part of his state of mind before writing Taxi Driver, as did Jean-Paul Sartre, “Before I sat down to write Taxi Driver, I reread Sartre’s Nausea, because I saw the script as an attempt to take the European existential hero…and put him in an American context.” Schrader has also said that part of the inspiration for picking a taxi driver to represent loneliness was based on the  Harry Chapin song Taxi about a taxi driver who used to dream of being a pilot and one night gives a lift to his old girlfriend.

…And me, I’m flying in my taxi, 
Taking tips, and getting stoned, 
I go flying so high, when I’m stoned.
                                          Taxi
                                          Harry Chapin 

Before that song was a hit in 1972, Chapin had actually written and directed a documentary called Legendary Champions which was nominated for an Oscar in 1969.

And lastly, AFI lists “Are you talking to me?” as the 10th most popular movie quote of the last 100 years. So yes, it is possible to be born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan and to write a screenplay that leaves an imprint on film history. (Though it’s okay to start out with slightly lower aspirations.) 

Scott W. Smith

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