Woman of Steel

“There was absolutely no pressure on me because I was just sitting in Minnesota writing for my own edification.”
Diablo Cody on writing Juno

Happy 35th birthday Diablo Cody.

If you’re fairly new to this blog you may not know that a huge impetus for starting this blog back in 2008 was reading and hearing interviews with a then unknown Cody just as her first film Juno hit the theaters.

“The internet is a miraculous things. Just share as much as you can, self-publish, blog, podcast whatever you need to do. Just make sure you are not withholding your gifts from the world. Because you have so many opportunities now….We’re in a new frontier.”
Diablo Cody

Knowing that she went to school in Iowa and wrote Juno while living in Minneapolis and said various versions of the above quote propelled me to launch this blog on January 22, 2008 after I saw Juno in a theater in Cedar Falls, Iowa. That year she walked away with an Oscar in Hollywood for her script and I walked away with a Regional Emmy (Advanced Media) in Minneapolis for my blog.

I thought of Cody this week when I watched a video of screenwriter Shane Black (Lethal Weapon) and heard this comment:

“If you want to write or direct you kinda have to go to Los Angeles, I don’t really know anybody who’s done it from here.”
Shane Black giving a talk to students in Minneapolis

Now I love this whole Shane Black revival going on and think I’ll pull some quotes from him next week. But what’s ironic about that quote is it appears that talk was given around 2005 after his released of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. (The video was just uploaded last month but there is no mention of Iron Man 3.) Juno was released in 2007, meaning that around the time Black was making his comment Cody was sitting at a Starbucks in Crystal, Minnesota writing her first script.

A script that would not only get sold, get produced, make $230 million at the box office, but bring her an Oscar.

“I don’t know when I’ve heard a standing ovation so long, loud and warm.”
Roger Ebert writing about Juno after its screening at the 2007 Toronto Film Festival

Diablo Cody is a Cinderella screenwriting story if there ever was one. And, yes, she did move to Los Angeles and just finished directing her first feature Paradise. But I think it’s important to point out that she did it after establishing herself as a writer. As I’ve pointed out before, she had been writing poems, short stories and such everyday since she was 12, got her degree in Media Studies at the University of Iowa, started a blog, wrote for City Pages, and had a book published. That Oscar Award was earned on the back of 15 years worth of writing.

And Minneapolis wasn’t a one shot wonder. The next year Nick Schenk had a script he wrote in a bar called Gran Torino become Clint Eastwood’s biggest box office success. Also, in 2005, screenwriter Bill True from Minneapolis had his first feature produced.) All of this led Ken Levine to (a little tongue in cheek) write in 2008:

“Aspiring screenwriters always ask what’s the best way to break into the Hollywood? I say move to Minnesota.”
Writer Ken Levine (Frasier, MASH, Cheers)
How to sell a screenplay by drinking in a bar

So there were a few changes between 2005 and 2008. And now 2005 seems like a 100 years ago. Steven Spielberg made a prediction this week that the movie industry was ready for an ‘“implosion.” Who knows what that all means? But this blog celebrates not only where various writers come from, but what filmmakers around the world are doing today in a fast changing business. If the film business as we know it does implode, something else will rise up out of that rubble. (Just like Tony Stark and Shane Black both did in Iron Man 3.)

“I think that the Internet is going to effect the most profound change on the entertainment industries combined. And we’re all gonna be tuning into the most popular Internet show in the world, which will be coming from some place in Des Moines. We’re all gonna be on the Internet trying to find an audience.”
(Steven Spielberg in interview with Katie Couric on the NBC Today Show in 1999/ From the post Screenwriting Outside L.A. 101)

My guess is ten years from now there will still be a place called Hollywood that makes movies. Big movies. But there will also be a lot more people following the likes of Jeff Nichols in Austin, Tyler Perry in Atlanta, Billy Corben in Miami, and Edward Burns in New York—finding their own niche markets and telling stories they want to tell.

And ten years from now Shane Black and Diablo Cody will still be telling stories. They are proven talent and both proven resilient. (Both have received their share of criticism.) Think of Black as Iron Man and Cody as the Woman of Steel.

Related Posts:

Screenwriting’s Biggest Flirt
Beatles, Cody & 10,000 Hours
Screenwriting Quote #10 (Nick Schenk)
Juno Has Another Baby (Emmy)
Screenwriting Quote #65 (Shane Black)

Scott W. Smith

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“What if your script doesn’t sell?” (Tip #73)

“What if your script doesn’t sell?  Most of them don’t.  Doesn’t mean you should give up.  Writing involves a long learning curve.  Most scripts or early novels suck.  Usually, it takes three or four tries before some kind of talent and structure begins to emerge.  It’s frustrating to think that your initial efforts might be just that — early, learning efforts.  But the truth is, most of the time, that’s what they will turn out to be.  That said, scripts can have a long shelf life.  I’ve had at least three scripts sell years and years after I initially wrote them.  In one case, I sold a script a decade after I wrote it.  Sometimes, it’s just a question of timing — the area you’ve chosen to write about isn’t in vogue, but becomes so at a later date.  Or sometimes, your particular stock goes up and a producer will ask if you have anything else in the drawer.  The other thing about scripts is that they can be wonderful calling cards — even if they don’t sell or don’t get made.  It took 4 years from the time I wrote Blade until the day the cameras rolled.  During that time, that un-produced script probably netted me a half-dozen jobs because it worked as a writing sample.”
Screenwriter David S. Goyer (Man of Steel)
On Screenwriting

P.S. As an example of scripts having “a long shelf life”— A writer friend of mine Clare Sera recently sold a script that was completed six years ago with her writing partner Ivan Menchell. Their script Blended is currently being filmed in South Africa with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore in the lead roles.

Related Posts:
Don’t Waste Your Life (“I spent 18 years doing stand up comedy. Ten years learning, four years refining, and four years of wild success.”—Steve Martin)
What it’s Like Being a Struggling Writer in L.A.?
Bob DeRosa’s “Shortcuts”(“There are no shortcuts. There is only hard work.—Bob DeRosa)
Commitment in the Face if Failure (“I wrote five scripts, then I wrote Little Miss Sunshine and then I wrote four more before I finally sold Little Miss Sunshine. It’s an endurance race.” —Michael Arndt)

If your script doesn’t sell…you can always make it yourself:
“It’s a good time to be a filmmaker” (“The field has been completely leveled. You can go and make your movies. There’s tons of ways to get your movies out there now.”—Edward Burns)

Scott W. Smith

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“State of Cinema” (Soderbergh)

“I don’t want to bring this to a conclusion on a down note. A few years back, I got a call from an agent, he said look ‘Will you come see this film? It’s a small, independent film a client made. It’s been making the festival circuit and it’s getting a really good response, but no distributor will pick it up, and I really want you to take a look at it and tell me what you think.’ The film was called Memento. So the lights come up and I go alright, ‘It’s over. It’s over. Nobody will buy this film? This is just insane. The movie business is over.’ It was really upsetting. Well fortunately, the people who financed the movie loved the movie so much they formed their own distribution company and put the movie out and made 25 million dollars.

So, whenever I despair I think, OK, somebody out there somewhere, while we’re sitting right here, somebody out there somewhere is making something cool that we’re going to love, and that keeps me going. The other thing I tell young filmmakers— when you gonna go in and try to get money, when you go into one of those rooms to try and convince somebody to make it, I don’t care who you’re pitching, I don’t care what you’re pitching—it can be about genocide, it can be about child killers, it can be about the worst kind of criminal injustice that you can imagine—but as you’re sort of in the process of telling this story, sort of stop yourself in the middle of a sentence—sort of like you’re having an epiphany, and say: “You know what, at the end of this day, this is a movie about hope.”
Steve Soderbergh
Conclusion to his State of Cinema talk
San Francisco International Film Festival
April 27,2013

To encourage somebody, somewhere to make something cool that we’re all going to love is what this Screenwriting from Iowa…and Other Unlikely Places is all about. Thanks for reading.

Scott W. Smith

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Screenwriting Quote #183 (Jeff Nichols)

“I feel like when you write, you have to have a personal core to a story if you have any hope of it translating to an audience. There are certain emotions you have throughout your life that are palpable, you can feel them; they hurt. Every film I’ve made, I can point to one of those emotions, and for this one (Mud) it was going to be heartbreak. I can create all these plot lines, but they have to service that…By the time you get to the end of [the film], that thematic idea has just seeped into the story. You haven’t attacked it head on; you’ve been able to let your audience absorb it into their bloodstream.”
Writer/Director Jeff Nichols (Mud)
The Script Lab article by Meredith Alloway

Related Posts:
Emotional Transportation Biz (Tip #68)
Theme = What Your Movie is Really About
Michael Arndt on Theme
Writing from Theme
Robert McKee vs. Richard Walter (Opposite views on “personal” stories?)
Emotional Screenwriting (Tip #53)

Scott W. Smith

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Wes Anderson on Theme

Since I’ve written the last few posts (and many over the years) about screenwriters and filmmakers who either start with theme, or how theme plays an important part of the stories they tell, here’s a Wes Anderson quote showing how creative people often take a 180 degree approach to what other people are doing:

“If somebody asks me about the themes of something I’m working on, I never have any idea what the themes are…. Somebody tells me the themes later. I sort of try to avoid developing themes. I want to just keep it a little bit more abstract. But then, what ends up happening is, they say, ‘Well, I see a lot here that you did before, and it’s connected to this other movie you did,’ and…that almost seems like something I don’t quite choose. It chooses me.”
Writer/director Wes Anderson (Rushmore, Moonrise Kingdom)
Elvis Mitchell interview on KCRW’s The Treatment (H/T nofilmschool)

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Lawrence Konner on Theme

“The more you can find a theme that unites the plot and the character and think about that theme as you’re writing, the better off you’ll be determining the story’s structure.

Taxi Driver, is a brilliant example of this. A theme to that movie would be alienation leading to violence. You pick a character who you want to be alienated. Well, what better place to put somebody alienated than New York City? And then what better job to give them than taxi cab driver, sort of interacting with people all day and yet not?

There’s no rule as to whether a character comes before the theme, but they both have to be there. Setting should support the theme, character should support the theme, and the story should support the theme. And the theme should be an active one. Generally, you think of a story first, something that interests you. Then, you have to think about what theme you want to support because otherwise, I think you get lost.”
Screenwriter Lawrence Konner (Boardwalk Empire, Mona Lisa Smile, Planet of the Apes—2001)
On Screenwriting

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Michael Arndt on Theme

“Winning takes care of everything.”
Tiger Woods quote and now controversial Nike ad

“It took me time to realize plot, characters and all that were important, but it really had to be about something.”
Carl Foreman

“I read a lot of comedy screenplays and the disappointing thing—the reason most of them don’t work is because they’re not about anything. If your story isn’t about anything—or your character just wants a pretty girl and a bag of money then it’s not going to add up to anything. It may be funny—but most comedies are funny in the first act, they’re funny in the second act, and then they either get sappy and sentimental in the third act or they just fall apart. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted Little Miss Sunshine to have a climax at the end. One of thing things that was an impetus to write the script is I remember reading this interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger where he was talking to a group of high school students—high school students—and he said, ‘If there’s one thing in this world that I hate it’s losers. I despise them.’ And I thought there is just something so wrong with that attitude. That there is something so demeaning and insulting about referring about anyone as a loser. I wanted to attack that idea that in life you’re either going up or you’re going down, you know, it’s all about status and impressing other people… It’s this winner take all society where one person is going to get the million dollars and everyone else is a loser, and I just despise that mentality. And so I wanted to just totally attack it….And to a degree a child’s beauty pageant is the epitome of the ultimate, meaningless competition that people put themselves through.”
Screenwriter Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine, Toy Story 3)
2007 talk at Cody’s Books 

Related posts:
Writing from Theme (Tip #20)
Sidney Lumet on Theme
Eric Roth on Theme and Loneliness
William Froug on Theme
Aaron Sorkin on Theme, Intention & Obstacles
Diane Frolov & The Theme Zone
Coppola Vs. Serling

Scott W. Smith

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Character Introduction (Tip #71)

“You always want to start your story with the characters doing what’s essential to them. The most important thing to them.”
Michael Arndt
Little Miss Sunshine DVD Commentary

Examples of this are Rocky opens with Rocky boxing and  Arndt’s story Little Miss Sunshine opening shot of Olive being enthralled watching a beauty pageant on TV. What are some of your favorite and/or most effective scenes of introductions to characters from movies? (If there’s a You Tube link shoot it my way as I’d like to include a few of them in this post.)

Related Post: Starting Your Screenplay (Tip #6) Includes this quote: ”Who is your hero, what does he want, and what stands in his way?”—Paddy Chayefsky (Network), Three-time Oscar winner

Scott W. Smith

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“Film as Art”—Michael Arndt

“One of my favorite films is LATE SPRING by Yasujiro Ozu. To me, it represents film as art.”
Michael Arndt
Interview with Writer Michael Arndt (Toy Story 3)

Related post: Screenwriting from Japan

Scott W. Smith

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Hollywood=Factory Town

“In many ways, though, my life has remained much as it was in 2000. I still rent the same one-bedroom walk-up in Brooklyn, and I still spend my days sitting in a chair and staring at a computer (though the chair is more comfortable and the computer is nicer). The main difference is I don’t worry about having to get a day job. (Not yet, anyway).”
Screenwriter Michael Ardnt
(Writing in 2006 soon after the release of Little Miss Sunshine)

“I live in New York, I still rent an apartment in New York, and I taught myself to write living in New York. There is a tiny, tiny little industry there where I can be reading scripts there, but the idea of going to Los Angeles and being a struggling screenwriter in Los Angeles—I just couldn’t do it. It was just too much for me to take. And in a way, I don’t think I would have written Little Miss Sunshine if I’d been living in Los Angeles, just because it’s such a factory town, you know. I hesitated for a long time to write this movie just because I knew it’s such an odd and idiosyncratic movie—and so low budget, and so small scale—that it didn’t seem like anybody was going to be interested in making it. And I think you just internalize the values of that environment. I’m going to move back to New York after I finish with Pixar [writing Toy Story 3] and I hope I stay there. 
Oscar-winning screenwriter Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine)
2007 talk at Cody’s Books (Before he won his Oscar and before Toy Story 3 was released)

Related Post:

Hollywood Hacks & Shipwrecks
The Outsider Advantage
One Benefit of Being Outside of Hollywood
Why You Shouldn’t Move to L.A.
What’s it Like to Be a Struggling Writer in L.A.

Scott W. Smith

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