‘American Made’: Mark Twain, Tom Cruise & the Sundance Kid

“Producers and directors buy a property because they like the story. Actors buy it because they see them­selves in a part. ”
Jerry Lewis in The Total Film-Maker
From the post Writing Actor Bait

Mark Twain’s one of my favorite writers from the South. [My character in American Made is a] kind of southern rascal, Huckleberry Finn kind of character in modern day. And also the fact that, the kind of flying that you could have in the 80s, that kind of adventure, those kind of escapades – that was it. You’ll never have that time period again, so these kind of cowboys were very unique. And also one of my favorite films, which was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, is based on a true story but had also that kind of you know – it’s a very layered film. It’s very humorous, but it’s also about American history.”
Actor Tom Cruise on what attracted him to the Gary Spinelli screenplay
ScreenRant interview with Alex Leadbeater  @ADLeadbeater

P.S. I grew up in Florida in the 70s, went to college in Miami in the early 80s and especially enjoy the Scarface to Cocaine Cowboys retelling of stories from that era. American Made puts its own topspin on the “same thing, only different” school of Hollywood filmmaking and I enjoyed the ride. Nice touch by director Doug Liman and editing crew for adding Linda Ronstadt’s 1977 version of Blue Bayou to the American Made soundtrack.

P.P.S. Speaking of American made, in this 2010 post I mentioned that Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, and George Cooney all lived in Kentucky at one point in the late 60s or early 70s. You can add Harry Dean Stanton, Jennifer Lawrence, and The Father of Film to the list from the Bluegrass State. Oh, and actress Sarah Wright, who plays Tom Cruise’s wife in American Made—she’s from Kentucky, too.

Related Posts:
Mark Twain’s Florida
Cocaine Cowboys and the Future of Film
Complex Stories/Simple Characters
Writing Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Thanks for the Plug TomCruise.com

Scott W. Smith

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The Only Thing You Have to Offer as a Non-Widget Factory Filmmaker

The thing I try to instill in students is like the only thing you have to offer is you. Your individual stories, your individual perception, your individual humanity, and figuring out a way to communicate that humanity to humanity at large—that’s the beauty of cinema once again, that you can have a six-year-old Iranian girl, or a 90-year-old British gentleman, and you can have an equal emotional experience if the filmmaker does their job right to it.

For me it would be a ballerina [Black Swan] and a wrestler [The Wrestler]—can I make you feel in their blood and their pain. That’s the goal. Because that’s one of the great things cinema does—is to bring us into other human experiences.”
Screenwriter/Director Darren Aronofsky  (mother!) 
Podcast interview with Tim Ferriss (At 53 minute mark when Ferriss asked Aronofsky about advice for filmmakers who don’t fit in the widget factory )

Related posts:
The Greatest [Cinematic] Invention of the 2oth Century (According to Darren Aronofsky)
40 Days of Emotions

Scott W. Smith

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The Greatest [Cinematic] Invention of the 20th Century (According to Darren Aronofsky)

Jennifer Lawrence in mother!

The following excerpt was pulled from a two hour podcast interview with filmmaker Darren Aronofsky as he talked about his film mother! (and the creative process and more) with Tim Ferriss.

Tim: What do you want the experience of your audience to be, or what do you want them to take away from any one of your films?

Darren: I guess I start off with the first rule of filmmaking is to never bore an audience. That is the worst feeling and experience when I’m watching a movie and my mind is wandering and looking at the colors splatter across the screen. I think you always want to engage an audience, not just visually, not just through sound, but emotionally. So I think that’s number one, to just give people an engaging emotional experience for two hours—whatever your running time is. And on top of that hopefully this you can layer in some ideas so that when people leave the theater people it’s not like 15 minutes later “What did we watch?” I don’t want to be the McDonald’s of movies where it’s just the wrapper all that’s left over. I want me to be thinking a bit and talking about it….You want to have an impact. In today’s landscape a lot of things are disposable. 

Tim: You mentioned emotional engagement— what are some of the ingredients that help create that?

Darren: It starts with the greatest invention of the 20th century that’s overlooked—which is the close-up. That’s the great thing about cinema —that you can stick a camera right in the face of Paul Newman—on those beautiful blue eyes. And you can go right into his soul, and when you you project it months later to an audience, or years later—potentially centuries later— you are anonymous in that audience, yet you can feel the empathy….In a movie, via the close-up,  you can be unconscious and fully be  in Paul Newman’s head. Even though you don’t know  exactly what he’s thinking, you can sort of study him and steal that thought. And that to me that’s the greatness of cinema.”

Paul Newman in The Sting

P.S. Looking forward to seeing mother! tonight.

Related posts:
“Don’t Bore the Audience!” (Richard Walter)
Stop Making Soul-less Movies 
Hollywood Hacks & Shipwrecks
“Winter’s Bone” (Debra Granik)

Scott W. Smith

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Postcard #148 (Gone Surfing)

Took this shot today in Cocoa Beach, Florida.

Scott W. Smith

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‘Failure is generally funnier than success’

One thing we know is that failure is generally funnier than success. Every once in a while, we get to the point in the story where the guys in the show have a big win, and then we sit down and say: ‘Let’s write three episodes where things are going great for them.’ And we just can’t do it. It is too boring for the audience. The audience is invested in the characters and wants them to succeed, but if they do succeed, it is not interesting.”
Silicon Valley showrunner  Alec Berg (And former Seinfeld writer)
Tim Adams/The Guardian

Related posts:
Running from Failure
Normal is Not Funny
Jerry Seinfeld on What Drives Comedy

Scott W. Smith

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What Makes a Good Director (According to Harry Dean Stanton)

Actor Harry Dean Stanton grew up on a farm in Kentucky, served in the Navy and was stationed in the Pacific during WWII, studied at the Pasadena Playhouse, once recorded a song with Bob Dylan, was a roommate of Jack Nicholson before they both became name actors, and acted along side Paul Newman and Marlon Brando.

Stanton started in theater and his first IMDB credit is for Inner Sanctum in 1954. He’d go on to become one of the great character actors working on Cool Hand Luke, The Godfather II, Escape from New York, Repo Man, Paris, Texas and when he died ten days ago at age 91 his film Lucky was playing in theaters.

He had a film and TV career that spanned  over 60 year and over that time worked with the a who’s who of great directors including Francis Ford Coppola, Sam Peckinpah, John Milius, Wim Wenders, Arthur Penn, Norman Jewison, and David Lynch.

On a podcast interview with Marc Maron Stanton was a man of few words, but I did think there were a few nuggest in there including this brief exchange:

Marc Maron: What makes a guy a good director?
Harry Dean Stanton: Leave the actors alone. 

P.S. Two films I’d recommend of Stanton’s if you haven’t seen them are Paris, Texas written by Sam Shepard and The Straight Story (which mostly takes place in Iowa). I haven’t seen Sophia Huber’s documentary Harry Dean Stanton: Partly, but it’s on my short list.

Related posts:
Sam Shepard (1943-2017)
David Lynch in Iowa

Scott W. Smith

 

 

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Postcard #147 (Universal Orlando)

I made a quick stop at Universal Orlando today and walked around the City Walk on a lunch break. Tried to take an interesting photo of Universal’s iconic (and well photographed) logo at the park’s entrance.

Scott W. Smith

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Coppola’s Prompt Book for ‘The Godfather’

Francis Ford Coppola‘s prompt book for The Godfather is several inches thick and contains Mario Puzo’s book The Godfather with note after note by Coppola as he details what parts he wants to extract and emphasize in the movie. The prompt book was the foundation for which he wrote the script.

Coppola explains that the prompt book is a tradition carried over from his theater days. (Before Coppola got a master’s in film at UCLA, he received a theater degree from Hofstra University.) Coppola also says he based his prompt book on one that Elia Kazan had done for A Streetcar Named Desire. Kazan has written several books about his life and films including  Kazan on Directing and there are many other books that gleam insights from him that I’m sure was an encouragement to Coppola during his own difficult time of getting The Godfather made.

“When I started On the Waterfront, I was what they call unbankable. Nobody would put up money for me because I had had a series of box office failures…. One of my happiest moments was when I got the Academy Award for On the Waterfront.”
Elia Kazan
Kazan: The Master Director Discusses His Films Interviews with Elia Kazan
Jeff Young

In the below video, Coppola discusses part of the process that he went through in writing the script for The Godfather;

“On page 79 of the book we have the actual shooting of the Don. Whenever I felt there was a really important part of the book that was going to be in the movie I would sit there with my ruler and really underline—so this details the shooting. My margin notes are; THE SHOOTING! GREAT DETAIL. The Don is the main character of the movie, so as in Pyscho , we are totally thrown when he is shot. How would Hitchcock design this? Hitchcock was such a master about manipulating information for the audience, usually telling you things so that you were equipped to enjoy what you were seeing —rather than withholding information, he would give you information.”
Francis Ford Coppola

Scott W. Smith

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Screenwriting Quote #205 (Francis Ford Coppola)

“It’s true I rewrite a lot. You know, I don’t have that kind of talent that, you know,  I saw of kids who could draw beautiful pictures…my talent is I just try and try, and try and try again, and little by little it comes to something that I think is okay.”
Five time Oscar winning writer/director Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather)
Inside the Actor’s Studio interview with James Lipton

Related post: That Time William Goldman Got a ‘C’ in Creative Writing

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Double Down on Substance (Tip #106)

[Substance definition: Significance or importance]

I think if you put energy into how do I break into the industry, how do I get an agent, how do I – it’s putting the cart before the horse. I think that ultimately first and foremost practicing. Shooting it. And then reshooting it. And reshooting it. And rewriting. And just getting, working on yourself and getting better. But just doing it.

Like getting a camera. Getting whatever camera you can get your hands on. And making stuff. And then getting out there however you can. I actually think practically that’s the industry – you can’t say the industry will be the path to your door, but I think the best way to find your career is just to do what you do and get it out there however you can…. Double down on substance. And that ultimately is what everybody is looking for so hard out there. Everybody wants something that’s interesting and good.”
Writer/director Rian Johnson (Star Wars: The Last Jedi)
Scriptnotes Q&A with Craig Mazin (Episode 299)

Related posts:
The 99% Focus Rule (via Oscar winning screenwriter Michael Arndt)
Rod Serling on Breaking In
The Myth of “Breaking In” (Terry Rossio)
Follow Your Own Wacko Vision
‘I never saw myself as a sitcom writer, but I was waiting tables’—How Rob McElhenny helped launch his career with a camera he bought at Best Buy.
Filmmaking Quote #31 (Annie Mumolo)  “Whether it’s short films or whatever you can do, my advice is make your own stuff. I’m a real believer in preparation meets opportunity…”

Scott W. Smith

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