Learning to Be More Spontaneous with Casey Neistat

”I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.”
—Steve Martin

”Embrace your environment and try to seek out a handful of ideas. . . You don’t need to live in New York for that to work. Find interestingness in your own life ”
—Casey Neistat

The above Casey Neistat quote reminds me of the time when I lived in Cedar Falls, Iowa and drove by a grain silo in the winter with a small group of people ice climbing up it. I thought it was interesting, but I didn’t pull over and spontaneously start shooting footage. I missed a golden opportunity at spontaneous filmmaking. At least someone did a short doc on the unusual activity. Interestingness 101.

This post has a little bit of a back to the future aspect to it. After all, silent film great Charlie Chaplin was known in his silent film days for getting an idea and going outside that day with some actors and shooting footage for a short film. That’s a long way from Titanic where James Cameron (and his crew of hundreds) spending years planning, shooting, and editing that hit movie.

But have you ever challenged yourself to create something in a week or two?

When last was started, I hadn’t even begun the Casey Neistat 30-day filmmaking and storytelling online class, and now I feel like I’ve wrapped my head around spontaneous filmmaking. (I was very fortunate to find an interesting character.) Here’s how last week went down.

Monday, May 9:

I watched Casey’s first message about how he just walks out onto the NYC streets looking for ideas to explore. (“Whenever you step outside here, you’re just kind of hit in the face with stories. And I think that’s true for wherever you call home.”) He’s looking for potential stories that will be compelling and emotional. It could be the noise of a chop saw and how the incessant noise of the city makes it difficult to get clean audio for his video, or wondering what it’s like to buy a counterfeit hand bag in Chinatown. It took me about 20 minutes to come up with four ideas to explore for my first project;  Brutalist architecture, my dog, my old Panasonic HVX 200, and kayaking. I decided on kayaking because it seemed like the most contained topic. There wasn’t a story yet, but I figured I’d at least get some good visuals. I knew that beauty shots alone wouldn’t be interesting, but it was a start. 

Lesson 1: Just start. I’m reminded of the Goethe quote, “In action, there is power, grace, and magic.” Or the more well known Nike ad campaign—”Just Do It.”

Tuesday May 10: 

Woke up at 5 A.M. so I could shoot my kayak in the water at sunrise. (That wasn’t the plan, but my puppy was my alarm clock.) Because the iPhone doesn’t handle dynamic range well, I knew the actual sunset would not be the best shot because the sun blows out. My best shot was about 30 minutes before sunrise at a boat ramp. It’s when the sky is the most dramatic as it’s transitioning from darkness to light. I finally was in the water around 6:45 and about 10 minutes into my trip I came up on a guy named Blake fishing on a dock, and he changed the direction of my entire concept. He’s a Full Sail University student originally from Louisiana and knew a thing or two about alligators. He instantly became my main character, and alligators became my focus. I interviewed him with my iPhone while sitting in my kayak as he stood on a dock where I found him fishing bathed in the early morning light. (He was the only person around the lake the morning I went out.)

Lesson 2: Don’t pass up the obvious. I paddled by Blake at first, but then an imaginary, miniature Casey Neistat popped up on my shoulder and told me, “Ahhh, you might want to go back and interview that guy.” Glad I did or my concept would be dead in the water. 

Wed—Saturday May 11-14

I shot more beauty footage around the lake, and looked for gators. 

Lesson 3: The little Joby GorilliaPod Magnetic tripod comes in very handy when shooting with an iPhone 13 ProMax from a kayak. Holding any kind of camera on kayak has a built in threat of dropping your camera in the water, but the Joby clamp and magnetic thingy gave me a measure of security.

Sunday May 15

Before going out to shoot a sunset Saturday night, my wife said to be careful because it was gator mating season. I’d forgotten that fact. On Sunday, it hit me that I could make that my hook to the story. So I recorded myself on-camera saying, “Is it dangerous to kayak in Florida during gator mating season? Let’s find out.”

Lesson 4: Because you’re continually developing your idea, your brain is like a pinball machine. You just have to recognize when you hit the sweet spot. I needed something that I could hook a viewer within the first 10-12 seconds. The promise of a premise is the way people talk about it in developing features and TV shows.

I’m currently listening to the Dave Itzkoff audio book Robin on comedian/actor Robin Williams who had off the chart talent as a spontaneous performer. But Williams admittedly could not translate that skill into a traditional style of writing a script.

“To be funny in print is a very hard thing for me to do. I can do it in performing, because it’s straight up—kaboom! But when I sit down at the typewriter I feel like an autistic child.”
—Robin Williams

So if you have ideas you want to explore, but have trouble sitting down and writing a story, explore some more spontaneous ways to create. Casey Neistat and Robin Williams are examples of people who work/worked best spontaneously on the fly.

Some screenwriters dictate to someone writing down their ideas, and some people audio record themselves. There’s no one size fits all way to create. You don’t have to just sit (or stand) at a computer. In fact, you don’t even need to have a computer. Quentin Tarantino, Spike Lee, and Woody Allen hand wrote some of their most beloved and award-winning screenplays. Judd Apatow wrote a screenplay on his phone during downtime from meetings and working on another film. While some resort to using notes on their phone or even emailing themselves ideas, there are several screenwriting apps for you phone or iPad/tablet. I bet there is someone in the world right now that is working on a feature film just spontaneously shooting actors with a smartphone.

The history of this blog owes a debt to spontaneity. Especially, when I was blogging daily I just had to jump in the water and start swimming. Even today it might just be a quote or something that serves as a nub for me to pick at until something more fully formed emerges.

Here are a couple of frames that are quick glance the video I shot last week. While I could have shot this with an Alexa camera and had a boom operator and sound team on a pontoon boat nearby, it wouldn’t fit my zero budget spontaneous experiment.

Now that I think about it, this style of just jumping into a story before it’s fully formed reminds me of the five years I participated in the 48 Hour Film project where you make a short film from beginning to end in 48 hours. I enjoyed that process. And the fringe benefit was I got to work with a great team of people all who volunteered their time, and each each with one some kind of award.

P.S. Much of the traveling I’ve done over the years I would classify as planned spontaneity. It’s a phrase I started using about 20 years ago when I backpacked across Europe with my wife. I had an overall idea of the countries we’d hit, but no real plan what days we’d be where, so we didn’t book any hotels or rooms. My wife (and others) thought I was crazy. But we did have a Rick Steves travel book, so we had a general idea when we’d go next. It was easily one of the best trips of my life. But buried within the spontaneity was years (decades?) of unofficial planning and dreaming to that the trip. Those that were close to Robin Williams said that what often came out as 100% spontinaity was stuff he had be thinking about a while. I’ve been wanting to do a kayaking story for about two years, so while it was a spontaneous decision last week—it was in the back of my head for a while.

Related posts:
Spontaneous Filmmaking with Casey Neistat

Scott W. Smith is the author of Screenwriting with Brass Knuckles

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Writing ‘The Fisher King’ (After Two Failed Starts) and the Influence of Howard Stern

He had a home, love of a girl
But men get lost sometimes as years unfurl
New York Minute 
Written by Don Henley, Danny Kortchmar, and Jai Winding.

The original spark for The Fisher King (1991) was screenwriter  Richard LaGravenese seeing two men crossing Third Ave. in Manhatten late one night. It triggered in his mind a bond between a handsome man and one who was mentally challenged. Informed by the book He: Understanding Masculine Psychology, this excerpt from The Moment with Brain Koppelman podcast covers how LaGravenese developed his idea.

RICHARD LAGRAVENESE:  “[The Fisher King] was the first script I’d ever written by myself, so I didn’t know what I was doing in term of structure. So the first [draft] was a really dense version that was really pretentious and heavy-handed, and he was a cab driver-philosopher kind of guy. And he sees this homeless man and at some point takes him to Vegas because he realizes he can make from from him. And I saw this ad in the Times about a movie named Rain Man that was being made—and it was almost exactly the same story. So I threw it out and keep the two characters. 

Then I tried like a sitcomy version of it where the Jeff Bridges character was an heir to a rubber magnate and he had to marry off this cousin of his or else he wouldn’t get the inheritance. And that was a terrible version, and I threw that out. And I kept the character of the cousin which was Lydia. So I got one thing from that. 

And then the third draft of it, I was driving in the morning and listening to Howard Stern and I went “Oh!”—and that clicked in. And suddenly it started to build itself.

KOPPELMAN: And when did you come up with that idea, “A selfish person  who commits a selfless act”?

LADEAVENESE: It was around that part when I was listening to Howard Stern I decided [the Jeff Bridges character] was a shock jock.

Have you had an idea, started a screenplay, or actually finished a screenplay only to learn of a similar story to yours has been made? Of course you have—  join the club. My first screenplay was called Walk-On about a walk-on football player. I was told by several people in the mid-80s that they’d never heard of a walk-on football player and that it was a fresh concept, but sports stories don’t sell. Six or seven years latter Rudy got made. The story about a walk-on football player, and now considered one of the most popular sports films ever made.

The real lesson from LaGravenese is when he found out his original idea was basically Rain Man, he pivoted. He picked up the pieces (two characters) and wrote a new version. That idea failed, so he picked up the pieces and put them in his little red wagon and carried them to his third version of his script which not only got sold, produced, but brought him an Oscar-nomination.

P.S. And it was not only The Fisher King script that evolved over time,  Howard Stern has evolved from his shock jock persona from the ’80s. Here’s a video where he sets up Don Henley singing a melancholy version of Boys of Summer.  (You can put Henley’s albums in the bin marked Understanding Masculine Psychology.)

Scott W. Smith

 

 

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The Coronavirus Writers’ Room (Part 3)

The continuing fictitious conversation between OLD PRODUCER (OP)—who’s 99-years-old— and YOUNG WRITER (YW).  Their goal in this two-person team is to develop (in a free-wheeling style)  a coronavirus-like story. (Part 1, and Part 2)

OP: So let’s review the bidding. We’re using the coronavirus to inspire our storytelling.

YW: And take our mind off of the havoc it’s doing around the world.

OP: We’re telling a contained story—maybe one location—that is going to take us from order, to chaos, to new order. 

YW: Through the eyes of a high school or college student.

OP: Which way are you leaning?

YW: College. I just think the clash of spring break with social distancing is too good to pass up.

OP: Last night, I decided to jot down a bunch of high school and college movies and TV shows to see what that would reveal.  Surprisingly, I wrote down ten high school films before I wrote one college film. 

YW: Can I see your list?

OP: Yeah, I started a look book and I’ll share my screen with you.

YW: Sorority queen/lawyer against the world.

OP: Or Reese Witherspoon against Reese Witherspoon.

YW: Why is American Graffiti in brackets?

OP: Because it’s a hybrid. That gap summer between high school and college, work, or joining the military. 

YW: You know what jumps out on me about that list?

OP: That those films and TV shows span over 60 years. 

YW: That you totally missed the spring break movies— that’s where I’d start. Spring Breakers, Where the Boys Are, and hello—Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise. 

OP: Point taken.

YW: But, it’s interesting  your list is full of comedy.

OP: I kept adding to the list and what do you think I came up with?

YW: More drama?

OP: Apparently the only thing better than comedy—is more comedy. And more high school than college.

The young writer scans the list of movies and Tv shows.

YW:Wow. What is it you say? Don’t reinvent the wheel. I haven’t seen all of those, but I’ve seen enough that the high school side has more quality and quantity. But together there is still a lot of comedy.

OP: Why do you think that is?

YW: Because your teenage years are so painful.

OP: Richard Pryor said all humor is based on pain. 

YW: So in the great high school vs. college smackdown it appears that high school is the clear winner.

OP: Times of transitions have built-in drama.  

YW: And a world of change happens between the ages of 15 and 18.

OP: High school is also more universal throughout the United States. Only about 35% of adults finish college.

YW: Makes sense then that the college experience resonates with fewer people, so fewer movies.

OP: So I’d say let’s lean toward our hero being a teenager in high school.

YW: Sold. And a senior—because it has to suck to have the last two months of high school not really happen.

OP: What’s worse than that?

Young writer thinks.

YW: That play you’ve been rehearsing for months doesn’t get performed.

OP: What’s worse than that?

YW: They also get the coronavirus—or whatever we use to symbolize to change culture.

OP: Now we’re really making progress. 

YW: Got any more lists to share?

OP: Just one. If our hero is going to be on the screen for the majority of the time—and let’s say it’s a 90 minute feature—what kind of person would hold your attention for that long?  Here’s my mind mapping list. 

Young writer tries to connect the dots.

YW: You have comedians, and comedians turned actors, YouTubers, DJs, TV hosts, TV shows, podcasters. Again a lot of humor.

OP: Want to add to the list?

YW: Let me think. . . . What about Will Smith, Justin Timberlake, Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Taylor, Kanye, Chance the Rapper. Oh, and George Burns.

OP: Great. The hard part is over. All we need to find is am 18-year-old who can act, sing, do improv, play multiple instruments, and is really funny.

YW: How hard can that be? Is this mind mapping of movies and character a typical way of coming up with story ideas?

OP: Creativity is messy. It’s one way of mixing a bunch of things together and seeing what fresh and exciting can emerge. Here’s a video ofJoshua Brand talking about some of the influences on him coming up with the TV show Northern Exposure. (John Falsey was the co-creator.)  Followed by a second video of one of the best DJ performances in modern cinema. Robin Williams unleashed.

Scott W. Smith

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Kon, Zhou & Williams

Kon, Zhou & Williams—sounds like an international law firm, right?

If you enjoy the world of filmmaking and are unfamiliar with Satoshi Kon and Tony Zhou then the following seven minutes and 36 seconds of the video below are going to be a real treat. Guaranteed—or your money back.

Last month, in my post Time For A Cool Change I talked about taking some sort of detour after my 2,000th post in the coming months (as I approach the 7th anniversary of this blog). After seeing Zhou’s videos Martin Scorsese—The Art of Silence and The Spielberg Oner—One Scene, One Shot I started thinking about revisiting doing something more video based. I did a couple early on in this blog—and was encouraged by Scott Myers at Go Into the Story to do more—but I just found them too time consuming to produce.

But Zhou has given me a vision that doesn’t require shooting. I’ve already started a list of topic ideas.

Maybe as I hit the reset button in the coming months instead of writing an every weekday blog, perhaps I’ll create a video once a month. Or perhaps a 1 or 2 minute video once a week. Regardless, I love Zhou’s work (and his voice reminds me of the Richard Dreyfuss VO in Stand By Me). I hope you appreciate his film knowledge and time commitment to produce these as much as I do. Here’s his recent video on Robin Williams.

Scott W. Smith

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Off-Screen Quote #28 (Robin Williams)

“In Hollywood people are nice to you just in the first week after the [Academy Award] ceremony. Then they are like, ‘Oh, you just won an Oscar, right?’ Three weeks after the big party people are already thinking about the next year’s Oscars. Life goes on. Winning an Oscar is an honor, but, between you and me, it does not makes things easier.”
Oscar-winner Robin Williams (Good Will Hunting)
1998 Interview in Veja magazine with Ruben Edwald Filho via Forbes

Related Post:
The Breaking of Peter Bogdanovich —”Orson [Welles] had this line: ‘The terrible thing about LA is that you sit down when you’re 25 and when you stand up you’re 62.’ He was not wrong.” Director Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show)

Scott W. Smith

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Robin Williams (1951-2014)

“[Robin Williams] was one of a kind. He arrived in our lives as an alien – but he ended up touching every element of the human spirit.”
President Obama on the death of Williams whose first starring role was as an alien on the TV show Mork & Mindy

“Robin signing on definitely was the linchpin for [Good Will Hunting] getting made.”
Producer Chris Moore
Good Will Hunting: An Oral History
Boston Magazine article by Janelle Nanos, January 2013

“We are food for worms lads. Because, believe it or not, each and every one of us in this room is one day going to stop breathing, turn cold and die…Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.”
English teacher John Keating (Robin Williams) in Dead Poets Society (1989)
Screenplay by Tom Schulman

Related posts:

Jonathan Winters (1925-2013)
Where Do Ideas Come From (A+B=C) Whenever I give a talk on creativity I always mention Robin Williams.
“The Greatest Gift” How the much loved movie It’s a Wonderful Life is a story rooted in depression, disillusionment, alcoholism and attempted suicide. 
Don’t Waste Your Life Screenwriting (2.0)

P.S. When comedian and actor Freddie Prinze (Chico and the Man) shot and killed himself at age 22 in 1977 I started to understand a connection between creative talent and depression, and sometimes depression mixed substance abuse.  And that even comedic ability didn’t not make one immune to suffering from depression and/or substance abuse problems. Johnny Carson, Jim Carrey, and Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody have all talked about their struggles with depression. Not all who suffer from depression take their lives as Ernest Hemingway, Vincent Van Gogh, or (apparently) Robin Williams—but I really believe there is something going on in the brains of some (many, all?) artists that helps them reach great heights, but also causes them to experience tremendous— even debilitating— lows.

Final thought: “All humor is rooted in pain.” —Commedian Richard Pryor

Scott W. Smith

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‘The Honeymooners’ Golf Scene

“The manly sport of golf—where you can dress like a pimp and no one will care.”
Comedian Robin Williams

Though The Honeymooners (created by Jackie Gleason) is one of those classic and timeless programs from the early days of televison, the original 30-minute program only had a one  year run. A total of 39 episodes aired from October 1955 to September 1956. Of course, the resuns will run forever.

Sketches of The Honeymooners first aired on Cavalcade of Stars before exanding to the 30-minute versions, and sketches of The Honeymooners also became a part of The Jackie Gleason Show, a variety show that began airing in 1956.

But it’s amazing to think that Gleason and the “Classic 39” writers—Herbert Finn, Marvin Marx, A.J. Russell, Leonard Stern, Walter Stone and Sydney Zelinka cranked out 39 episodes in one year.  Of those writers and the four main actors, only Joyce Randolph (who played Trixe—the wife of Art Carney’s character) is still alive. If anybody has any links to The Honeymoon writers talking about the process of writing that show please send it my way.

P.S. Tonight at 10 PM (ET) on The Golf Channel, In Play with Jimmy Roberts will be doing a feature on Caddyshack creator Harold Ramis.

Scott W. Smith

 

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Jonathan Winters (1925—2013)

“Everybody wants to be funny.”
Jonathan Winters

“In 1981, my sitcom ‘Mork & Mindy’ was about to enter its fourth and final season. The show had run its course and we wanted to go out swinging. The producers suggested hiring Jonathan [Winters] to play my son, who ages backward. That woke me out of a two-year slump. The cavalry was on the way.”
Oscar/Emmy/Grammy-winner Robin Williams
New Your Times article A Madman, but Angelic
4/16/13

Related Post: Screenwriting Quote #61 (Jonathan Winters)

Scott W. Smith

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Screenwriting Quote of the Day #61 (Jonathan Winters)

Mentioning yesterday that the character William Holden played in Sunset Boulevard was a screenwriter from Dayton, Ohio triggered in my mind an actor/comedian with Dayton ties, Jonathan Winters. Winters was born in Bellbrook, Ohio, raised in Springfield, Ohio and went to Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio (where Paul Newman also attended) where he studied acting and began developing his humor. He also studied cartooning at the Dayton Art Institute and became a local radio personality at WING-AM in 1949.

His stay at WING was short lived because he had a tendency to go off-script and in an interview in 2000 Winter’s explained,  “I had to have some fun while I was there. Consequently, I was asked to leave. I remember the exact words: ‘Do the time. Do the temperature. And put on Nat King Cole.'” He then spent a few years in radio at a station in Columbus, Ohio. 

He eventually would move to New York and became a stand-up comedian. He found great success on TV even having his own TV shows The Jonathan Winters Show and The Wacky World of Jonathan Winters. He also recorded many comedy albums and Comedy Central Presents: 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time listed Winters at #18. His wacky, off-the-wall humor greatly influenced Robin Williams. Over the years Winters has appeared in over 50 films and in 1999 he was honored with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

In a day and age of reality TV programs and news filled with an unmarried woman having octuplets one wonders that if Jonathan Winters was starting his career today what he would have to do to be considered wacky and off-the-wall. 

“Now the freaks are on television, the freaks are in the movies. And it’s no longer the sideshow, it’s the whole show. The colorful circus and the clowns and the elephants, for all intents and purposes, are gone, and we’re dealing only with the freaks.”
                                                                        Jonathan Winters 

Update 3/28/08; So it turns out that my aunt worked at WING in Dayton when Winters was starting out on the radio and he had a thing called the breakfast club there where they would record before a live audience. And sometime while my mom was a student at Fairview High School in Dayton she did a couple skits at the  breakfast club with Jonathan Winters.  

Now I am working on a script that takes place in a retirement home, wouldn’t it be something….

Scott W. Smith

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Where Do Ideas Come From? (A+B=C)

“All the good ideas I ever had came to me while I was milking a cow.” Grant Wood (Iowa painter, American Gothic)

 

“The way to have a great idea is to have lots of ideas.”
Linus Pauling
1901-1994
Nobel Prize Winning American Scientist

Where do creative ideas come from?

Katie Couric once asked Jerry Seinfeld where his funny ideas came from and he said, “That’s like asking where trees come from.”

I hate to disagree with Seinfeld, but I think a better answer is ideas come from everywhere.

Here’s the formula that I’ve come up with; A+B = C.  There doesn’t that help? (Can someone pass that along to Jerry?) This is how Seinfeld connects things: “Now why does moisture ruin leather? I don’t get this. Aren’t cows outside most of the time?” Basic, funny and original.

People that are a lot smarter than me call it dialectical logic. That’s when you connect two unrelated things. A+B= C is simply the result of something new after we’ve connect two unrelated things.

When I was a kid there was this commercial for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups where a guy comes around the corner eating peanut butter from a jar (like we all walk around doing) and another guys from around the other corner eating chocolate and they run into each other. The one guys say, “Your chocolate is in my peanut butter” and the other guy says, “Your peanut butter is in my chocolate.” But they try the PB/Chocolate mix and both decide it’s good.

A (peanut butter) + B (chocolate) = Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. (By the way, that’s why these blogs are so long because I keep making connections.) My goal is make them shorter.

The confluence of the Allegheny River and the Monongahela River in Pittsburg form the Ohio River. A+B=C.

Illustrator Gary Kelley says, “Creativity is connecting influences.” If you go into his studio you’ll find a menagerie of art books and torn out photos from magazines that are there to inspire him. Sometimes he tapes them to his easel.

Creativity is not something that only a few mystical souls can tap into. (Granted the quality of the Seinfeld’s creative ideas is what sets him apart.) Nor is it just limited to the arts.

The story goes that back in the 60’s when a couple guys bolted a sail to a door and made the first windsurfer and became very wealthy from their new invention. Thomas Edison’s inventions were the results of lots of creativity–as well as a lot of trail and error.

Another story goes that the founder of the zillion selling “Dummies” books was in a bookstore and overheard a guy ask a salesperson, “Do you have a basic book on computers? Like computers for dummies.”

(This story has been disputed. As they say, success has many fathers.)

Jack London said, “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”

Many of us are guilty of saying, “if I could just head to the beach or the mountains and just get a little place without all the day-to-day distractions then I could really get some ideas down on paper. No kids, no work issues. No people problems. Just a place of nirvana where my creativity would be free-flowing.”

There’s a word for that—fantasy. And being from Orlando originally I can tell you that’s not Fantasyland. Ask anyone who’s ever worked at Disney World about kids, work issues and people problems. (Speaking of Fantasyland, does anyone else miss Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride?)

There was an episode on The Andy Griffith Show were (I think) Andy wants to be a writer and he get the typewriter and the cabin in the woods and he’s ready to go. As soon as he tidies up the place. It’s easy for writers to find reasons not to write.

After I go to this seminar…

When I get a new computer…

When I get that new software…

Then I’m really going to start writing. I’ve done all those things. I also used to buy pants a little tight because I was going to lose a few pounds. As the saying goes, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

You need to go at inspiration with a club? Okay, but how do you do that?

“In action, there is power, grace and magic.” Goethe

You simply start writing. It may just be notes on a paper, but it’s a start. (I like Vicki King’s book How to Write A Screenplay in 20 Days because she pushes you to write.) It may not be any good. It probably won’t sell. (Though Stallone says he wrote Rocky in less than a week.) But you will learn a ton about writing and yourself. And it will give you confidence for the next script.

Musician Jimmy Buffett said on a 60 Minutes interview, “I’m not an every note kind of guy, I’m a capture the magic kind of guy.”

When you start writing you are taking those first steps toward capturing the magic.

The creative process is hard to explain and hard to show on film. But the movie Pollack with Ed Harris has a wonderful scene where we see the spark of creativity that became Pollack’s signature style. He’s in the process of painting when he accidentally spills some paint on the canvas and he does it again and then again. He has an epiphany, and it happens not while he’s reading a book on painting, but while he’s painting.

Creativity is a messy process. You’re going to get paint on your shoes. But you will make discoveries in the process.

A great example in the photography world is Ansel Adams. Adams was a brilliant photographer though it took decades of photographs before the world came to understand that. He would often go into the mountains with a donkey carrying his large format cameras and would often camp out to watch what the light would do.

He is known particularly for his early photographs in Yosemite National Park, but one of his most famous photographs is called Moon Over Hernandez.  He captured that photograph late one afternoon while driving in New Mexico. By the time he pulled over and set up his 8X10 camera the light was fading fast and he couldn’t find his light meter so he had to guess on the exposure. His experience paid off but he was only able to take one shot before the light was gone on the cross that grabbed his eye. It is one of his most recognizable photographs.

He had a firm understand of his craft so he could recognize and opportunity when he saw it. He captured the magic.

Stephen King says that a writer he is like a paleontologist. He sees something interesting buried in the dirt and he goes over and brushes away the dirt. He’s unearthing stories.

What is important is to write down what you find. Comedian Rodney Dangerfield was asked how he came up with so much material and he said that three funny things happen to everybody everyday, he just writes them down.

One real estate expert says the secret to his success is “Always be looking.” When you need to find a deal on a house over the weekend it’s difficult. But if you’re always looking there’s a good chance you’ll find a good investment.

You need to cultivate looking for ideas. It may come in an article you read, a person you meet, or seemingly out of nowhere. Think of it like filling a blender with things that interest you. You mix it all together and out of the overflow comes your original ideas.

It is all about discovery.  Recently I heard on the radio a fellow talk about what it’s like to re-enter the world after being in prison for years. He said when you first get out you’re in sensory overload. Colors are more vibrant; you hear sounds more clearly. He said when he first got out he wanted to run to people and say, “Do you see those colors?” His senses were alive.

Keeping your senses alive to the world around you heightens your experiences and makes you feel alive.  And when our senses are alive we are more likely to be creative (idea-prone) because we are making new connections.

“ An idea is nothing more nor less than a new combination of old elements.” James Webb Young

Or A + B = C

“An idea is a feat of association.” Poet Robert Frost

A + B = C

Arthur Koestler: wrote a whole book on the creative process and says this: “The Creative act…uncovers, selects, reshuffles, combines, synthesizes already existing facts, ideas, faculties, skills.”

Stephen King writes, “Let’s get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.”

The more you have in your brain to select and reshuffle, the more creative you will be. My favorite quote in regards to this comes from a creative giant of our day Apple & Pixar’s Steven Jobs:

“Expose yourself to the best things humans have done and then try to bring those things into what you are doing.”

Paul Schrader who wrote Taxi Driver once thought he could write a screenplay with Bob Dylan but realized he couldn’t because while most people think in terms of one, two, three, A, B, C and Dylan thinks in terms of one, blue, banana. ( So in Dylan’s case it may be 1 + Blue + Banana = The Times They Are a-Changin’.)

Just a different way of connecting the dots. Like that fellow in A Beautiful Mind with his string connecting letters in newspapers. Although that’s a result where the mind goes into the realm of bizarre in making connections that aren’t healthy.

But I love the scene in Jerry Maguire after Jerry has been fired and he stands before the entire office and asked who is coming with him on his new venture. No one moves. His secretary says she’s close to another pay raise. Total embarrassment for the Tom Cruise character. He’s humiliated so what does he do? He turns to the fish tank and says “The fish are coming with me.”

And the fish becomes a motif throughout the film.

Chances are if you asked the screenwriter Cameron Crowe how he came up with that scene he wouldn’t know. But he captured the magic.

Pieces of April was written by Peter Hedges (who grew up in Des Moines, Iowa by the way) and is a story about a wayward young girl who wants to make amends with her family as her mother is dying of cancer and she wants to cook dinner for everyone at her small New York City apartment.

As her family drives in from the suburbs her oven breaks and her single goal in life is to find a way to get the turkey cooked so it doesn’t turn into another family disaster. It’s a wonderful film. Hedges said he heard a similar true story years ago and connected it with his mother dying of cancer.

So when you hear a story or have a thought that strikes your fancy write it down. Your own background and twist on life will give it originality. Juno was not the first unplanned pregnancy movie in history or even of 2007. But Diablo Cody’s slant gave it originality and that originality was what earned her an Academy Award. (Though I must add that just because your ideas is original don’t expect it to always be that well received.)

Cody has said in interviews that she doesn’t know where the idea for Juno came from. You can control the influences you put in your life, trying to force results is moving beyond the veil of mystery.

If Grant Wood really did get his best ideas while milking cows it could have been the regular, mundane, repetitive work that was the key.

Julia Cameron writes about this in The Artist’s Way. She quotes Einstein as having asked, “Why do I get my best ideas in the shower?” She said Steven Spielberg claims some of his best ideas come while driving on freeways. Many writers, (like Hemingway) have been regular swimmers and others (Stephen King) have been walkers. All activities that seem to stimulate creative ideas.

Musician Jack Johnson hits the waves as he told Rolling Stone magazine (March 8, 2008), “You’ve got to fill up your mind. When I get home from a tour, I put away the guitar and surf a lot. After a while, the songs just start comin’.”

One person who often tops many people’s “most creative” list is comedian Robin Williams who is an avid bicyclist. That is an artist brain activity that fills the brain with images. One of the things that makes Williams fun to watch as he does improv is the rapid-fire way his brain makes connections. (He is not only unusually gifted, but many people forget that he was trained at Julliard.)

An excellent book on ideas is How To Get Ideas by former advertising art director Jack Foster. And the documentary Comedian with Jerry Seinfeld shows the hard work of making funny connections as we watch him develop fresh comedy material.

Your creativity comes out of the overflow of the people, places, and things you pour into your life. So be curious and connected. Fill your blender with influences and the next time you need a creative surge remember the simple formula A+B=C.

If that doesn’t work try milking a cow.

Scott W. Smith is the author of Screenwriting with Brass Knuckles

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