“I didn’t know I knew how to make a movie until I was doing it.”
—Celine Song
The Hollywood Reporter
Before Celine Song’s Oscar nomination for her Past Lives screenplay, she’s had an interesting journey. Born in South Korea, raised in Canada, and got her MFA in playwriting from Columbia University in New York City. She then spent a decade doing off-Broadway plays including Endlings which unfortunately debuted with New York Theater Workshop in March 2020 just days before New York theaters began shutting down because of the pandemic. But as the saying goes, every ending is a new start.
Here’s a quote from Song that mixes her background in theater and filmmaking that I hope you find helpful. Especially if you live in an area where there are not a lot trained actors.
”Theater is just all table reads. Theater is just reading after reading. And I actually have trouble seeing what I have written, either a play or a screenplay, unless I’ve heard it out loud in a little room full of my friends. . . . How good the performance is in the reading is not helpful. In fact, I really don’t personally ever invite actors to the reading of my first draft. Because actors can make the script sound a lot better than it is. And we love actors and reply on them so much, but I think sometimes what happens is the actors are also auditioning for the role when they’re reading it, and that’s undo pressure on the script. So I think the performance part of it is not necessarily valuable for a script, because what you need from that reading is objectivity. What you need from that reading is the way that story and the writing itself is hitting the first very small audience. I usually invite fellow writers or people who are not in the industry, but are able to read on site. . . . You just want to see the way the script is hitting them live, because that’s where you’re going to learn if the script is working.”
—Oscar nominated writer/director Celine Song (Past Lives)
Scriptnotes podcast (#630) interview with John August
Here‘s the trailer to Past Lives which Song received a Best Original Screenplay Oscar nomination (and the film also earned a Best Picture Oscar nomination).
Related article: What Is a Table Read?
Scott W. Smith is the author of Screenwriting with Brass Knuckles and runs the Filmmaking With Brass Knuckles YouTube channel.