“For those of you who have seen Living in Oblivion (the best movie about making a movie), there is a wonderful scene that’s repeated throughout the film of various crew members sniffing the milk container on the craft services table after they’ve poured themselves a cup of coffee. Everyone makes a face, puts it down and walks away. That’s just one little jab pointed at all those filmmakers who don’t take care of their crew in the simplest ways.
Living in Oblivion is a great film that should be required viewing for anyone who wants to make a feature. You will laugh at the stuff that goes on, but just about every low-budget shoot I have ever worked on had at least one of those elements happen. I think the movie is a documentary. It’s a good way to avoid pitfalls. I walked out of the theater feeling like I had worked with half of the crew portrayed in the movie. If you want to make movies, see it.”
Kelley Baker The Angry Filmmaker Survival Guide; Making The Extreme No-Budget Film (part 1) Page 149-150
P.S. Living in Oblivion was written and directed by Tom DiCillo, who was the cinematographer on Stranger Than Paradise. If you haven’t seen that film, check it out because it’s a great example of “embracing your limitations.” Each scene in the black & white film written and directed by Jim Jarmusch was shot in one-take master shots.
“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:
Over the years I’ve learned to wear quite a few hats; producer, director, writer, cameraman, editor, etc.—but one thing I have little experience in is sound design. Thanks to The Angry Filmmaker, Kelley Baker, I know a lot more today than before I met him two days ago.
Years ago, I had one class is film school where the teacher showed us the George Stevens’ classic A Place in the Sun. When it was over he asked us questions like, “What sounds do you associate with the Elizabeth Taylor character?” and “What is going on in the background noise for Shelly Winters’ character?” None of us had a clue. We talked about sound design and then watched parts of the film again and I began to understand the details that went into a well crafted film. Though it’s been a big gap, what I learned from Baker took up right where that film professor left off.
Baker stopped into my office Monday as a quick pit stop on his way from Wisconsin to St. Louis. He watched a short video I’m on the tail end of production on and offered some wisdom on sound design and added that I should cut it the whole thing by a minute. A minute? It’s only four minutes long. A minute is 25% of the almost finished video. Later that night (just before midnight) 51 seconds had been painfully edited out and it’s a better project for it.
Baker is a USC film school grad, an independent feature filmmaker, and was sound designer on several high profile features including Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester, and My Own Private Idaho. That’s a pretty good resume. These days he spends a lot of time doing film seminars and passing on what he’s learned over the years to other filmmakers. (I’ll get into why he’s the Angry Filmmaker in later posts.)
But today I want to touch on one scene Barker sound designed for Good Will Hunting. It’s the scene where Will (Matt Damon) gets into a fight. Watch the linked clip and then read Baker’s comments below. (If you really want to dip your toes in sound design, first watch the clip without sound and then ask yourself how you would design the scene, Then listen to it with sound before you read Baker’s comments below.)
Baker told me that he asked director Gus Van Sant what he wanted for the fight scene thinking he might want big punches like those found in Raging Bull. Van Sant simply told him, “I want Revolution Number 9.” That’s the Beatles song off their White Album and what Van Sant was saying was he wanted chaos.
“We already agreed that the fight would be from Matt’s point of view—all the audio for the fight…You’re going to hear church bells, you’re going to hear birds, happy little birds, and you’re going to hear kind of a choir…There’s a lot more going on, but those three kind of stand out. And you have to think, “This is a fight, what am I hearing happy birds for? Why am I hearing church bells? What’s the whole deal with the choir? It’s easy. As a young man Will Hunting was beat up and knocked around and dumped on by all these foster parents and he talks about it in the movie.
The only time he’s ever happy and at peace with himself is when he’s fighting. When he’s beating the crap out of somebody. So to him to some extent—and this is only in my logic perhaps—it’s the happiest time for him when he’s invloved in a fight and he’s winning. That’s why you get happy birds, that’s why you get these religious type sound effects because he is at one. He is at peace when he’s in the middle of a fight.
Is anybody in the middle of watching the movie going to say, ‘Listen there’s a choir, he’s at one with himself because of his horrible childhood”? No, nobody’s going to say that. Are they going to pick up on it psychologically? I hope so. That’s the idea. I’m trying to tell you more about characters through sound and sound effects.”
Now watch the clip of the Good Will Hunting clip again. You may be a writer, not a sound designer, but look at the detail that professionals (including directors, actors, editors, directors of photography, wardrobe, set designers, sound designers, etc.) are looking for clues on how to best bring your story to life.
And just for good measure listen to the Beatles Revolution Number 9 to see Van Sant’s original reference point for the fight scene sound.
Yesterday I was fortunate to have lunch with The Angry Filmmaker (Kelley Baker ) and Jon Gann, founder of the D.C. Film Alliance, as they journeyed from doing a film workshop in Madison, Wisconsin to meeting with filmmakers in St. Louis. I’ll write more about what I learned about filmmaking over yesterday’s lunch (and it was a lot) later this week, but for today let me sum it all up in one word—”Stagecoach.”
Kelley and Jon noticed as they pulled into Cedar Falls fresh from a morning stop at the Field of Dreams in Dyersville) that the 1939 John Wayne/John Ford film “Stagecoach” was on the marquee at the Oster-Regent Theatre on Main Street. No, movies don’t take that long to get to Iowa (though many good ones never get here), but it was part of the theater’s 100 year celebration.
On Sunday afternoon I gave a short introduction to the classic western film and that info I learned meshed very well with Kelley’s own views on filmmaking and that is simply that filmmaking is a process that is best learned by doing. If you’ve read this blog much you’ve heard illustration after illustration of writers and filmmakers who simply learned their craft by writing script after script and making film after film.
And the same was true for John Wayne and John Ford. While Stagecoach is #63 of AFI’s list of the greatest American films ever made and #9 on their list of top ten westerns. The film was nominated for seven Oscars and won two. It did not win for best picture because 1939 was one of the greatest years for films in the history of cinema.
Stagecoach joined Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Wuthering Heights, Ninotchka and The Wizard of Oz in losing the best picture Oscar to Gone with the Wind. Victor Fleming also won best director for Gone with the Wind.
But Stagecoach was the go to film for Orson Welles before he made Citizen Kane (1941). In fact, Welles not only watched the film 40 times, but when once asked who his favorite three film directors where said, “John Ford, John Ford, John Ford.” For what it’s worth, both Citizen Kane and Stagecoach did mediocre business at the box office when released.
But the more fascinating thing to me about Stagecoach from this blog’s perspective is that for both John Ford and John Wayne it was about the 90th film each had made. Of the 180 films between the two made before 1939 most people today wouldn’t recognize but one or two films. (John Wayne called his pre-Stagecoach films “poverty westerns.”) A good deal of those films where two-reelers that were 20-50 minutes in length. Though the popularity of these shorter films that played along side feature films died out in the mid to late 1930s, they proved to be a great training ground for actors and filmmakers since the beginning of film history in the late 1800s.
And if the 10,000 hour rule is true then the greatest benefit for actors and filmmakers today in working on short films is the learning process. What does the Angry Filmmaker have to say about short films?
“If you make a feature without having made a short film, you’re an idiot. Filmmaking is as much a craft as it is an art form and a business. First and for most you have to learn your craft.” Kelley Baker The Angry Filmmaker Survival Guide
These days it really doesn’t take much time and money to get some friends and some equipment together and make one to seven minute films. And there are plenty of film festivals to enter so you can collect some awards and this little thing called the internet for your films to perhaps find an audience and make a name for yourself.
If John Wayne can go from being born in little Winterset, Iowa to becoming one of the greatest on-screen legends via doing 13 years of ”poverty westerns”— just maybe there is some magic in just in the process of doing little things well until greater opportunities come your way.
P.S. And just because I delight in making odd connections, The Angry Filmmaker (who’s really a gentle soul from what I can tell) is from Portland which happens to be where writer Ernest Haycox was born and died. Haycox wrote 300 short stories and 12 novels and of who Ernest Hemingway once said, ”I read The Saturday Evening Post whenever it has a serial by Ernest Haycox.” Haycox’s short story Stage to Lordsborg was what screenwriter Dudley Nichols based based his script Stagecoach.
P.P.S. The movie Stagecoach was also John Ford’s first film to be shot in Monument Valley. Though I’ve been all over the county that area is one place I’ve missed and is in my top five place I want to see. I dream of staying at The View Hotel on the Arizona/Utah border someday. As John Ford found out, there is some beautiful land out there in flyover county.
Once upon a time (1978) in a land far, far from Hollywood (Utah) a film festival popped up that eventually became what is considered today as the granddaddy of film festivals in the United States—the Sundance Film Festival. I imagine 30 years ago if you asked most people if they wanted to go to a film festival in Salt Lake City a common answer would have been, “Why?’.
Of course, having Robert Redford involved didn’t hurt visibility, nor did the decision in 1981 to move the festival to Park City, Utah. And since that is a ski resort town they also moved the festival from the summertime to the winter as a way to make the festival more glamorous to the Hollywood crowd. Those changes all worked. And the festival that was originally started to increase filmmaking in Utah and highlight regional independent filmmaking has become a two-week suburb of Los Angeles full of celebrities and paparazzi.
So where do you go these days to see small, independent, regional filmmakers? Well, honestly, if you’re not making a film try next door because somebody there is probably between writing a script and editing the film. Small film festivals are everywhere as cities now see it as a marketing advantage—a way to seem with it.
But I want to tell you about a little film festival that is located in one of my favorite areas in the country—The Fly Way Film Festival began in 2008 and is held in late October in Pepin & Stockholm, Wisconsin. (It’s going on right now.) The two small villages on Lake Pepin (part of the Mississippi) while not large in number are a located in a beautiful area that has no shortage of artists. And begin located an hour and a half south-east of Minneapolis makes it not so remote.
This year 35 feature films and shorts will be show through this weekend. I met the director Rick Vaicius last month while sailing on Lake Pepin. One of the things I like most about the festival is they don’t charge an entry fee for filmmakers. I think that probably sets them a part from most (all?) film festivals right out of the gate. I don’t know if they’ll become the next Sundance (or even want to be), but I think it’s a festival that should be on your radar because what every filmmaker needs is a few cheerleaders in their corner.
As a taste of this year selections… Ballhawks is a documentary by Mike Diedrich that is narrated by Bill Murray. The film will be show tomorrow (10/23/10) at the Fly Way Film Festival and Diedrich will be on hand at the showing. (For those of you in Texas, the film is also showing this week at the Austin Film Festival.) The film is about a little known aspect of Chicago Cubs baseball that happens just outside Wrigley Field. Diedrich says it’s, “A story about hope, exuberance, shattered dreams and picking up the pieces to move on.”
Oh, and one for the trivia books. Pepin, Wisconsin happens to be the town that Laura Ingalls Wilder was born just outside of. (Before she wrote Little House on the Prairie, her first book was Little House in the Big Woods about the Pepin area.)
One more example of big things happening in small places. (Not to mention Bob Dylan playing here in Cedar Falls, Iowa on Sunday.)
