“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
I don’t know if the Scriptnotes podcast was the first podcast I ever listened to, but it is the first one the I ever followed on a regular basis. And since I started listening back in 2011, it’s the one I’ve listened to the most. If you’re interested in screenwriting, then it’s a great place to start. (My goal is to finally launch my screenwriting and filmmaking podcast before Scriptnotes hits its 500th episode soon.)
But I was listening to Scriptnotes episode 492 tiled ”Grey Area” where hosts John August and Craig Mazin talk about a screenwriter who took money saved for screenwriting contests and used it instead to produce her own narrative podcast.
Playwright/screenwriter David Mamet says the best way to test your material is to put it in front of an audience. When he was a struggling playwright in Chicago that’s what he did. Instant feed back. It’s a little harder for screenwriters to just produce their own stuff unless they have production skills and equipment. (Or a small team of filmmaker friends.)
”I took one of my already-written pilots and adapted it for audio. Then, I hired actors and recorded it remotely over Zoom. I hired a composer to write original music, an artist to design a logo, and used YouTube to teach myself how to edit and process audio. And now I have an audio pilot up across podcasting platforms. Plus, it was such a fun experience that I wrote the remaining nine episodes of season 1 and we’re starting to record them this weekend!” —Paige Feldman
Producer/ manager Mason Novick found Diablo Cody when she was a blogger with a day job in Minneapolis (and not long after she graduated from the University of Iowa). He just stumbled on her writings one night and ask her if she’d ever written a screenplay. She hadn’t. But she did. Then a few years later she collected her Oscar for writing Juno.
That’s a once upon a time in Hollywood story that happens maybe once a decade (a generation?). But if Diablo Cody was starting out today I bet you’d find her gathering some actors in Minneapolis and producing her own narrative podcast on her way to greater success.
In the coming days and weeks I’ll share with you some of the technical aspects of recording, editing, and uploading podcasts.
P.S. If you don’t know the connection between the Mason Novick/Diablo Cody/Juno success and this blog then check out the post Juno Has Another Baby (Emmy)
So I started blogging in 2008, and around 2012 Adam Levenberg (author of The Starter Screenplay) said I should start a podcast. That just seemed like more work with very little payoff. But Levenberg’s a smart guy and I should have listened to him. But back in 2012, podcasts were off the radar for most people. (Scriptnotes began in 2011, but I listened to those early shows on my computer rather than my phone.) I point to the fall of 2014 when season one of theSerial podcast dropped. Since then there has been an explosion of podcasts and their popularity. (In the past year, I’ve listened to more free podcasts than watched movies, streaming and TV shows.)
By 2015 I was hooked on podcasts. I think that was the same year the Chris Krimitsos launched the first Podfest in Tampa, Florida. The had 100 gather for that event. Last year Podfest was in Orlando and I started watching the videos with an eye toward launching a podcast. Last week there was a Podfest Global Summit and I watched as many of those as I could. I’ve never heard the word niche spoken so many times in a short time.
But what is screenwriting if it’s not a niche market? In the next week or so I’ll try to pass on what I’ve learned about podcasting and why I think it’s a great avenue for screenwriter to explore. But before we get to narrative and non-narrative podcasting, and how you can launch your own podcast this month, I want to start with the basic concept of starting ugly.
“What is the foundational principle of Starting Ugly? Basically, you need to do some research and planning but then you need to put your ass on the line and take action! That’s your Start Ugly moment.
You can’t wait for perfection. Or to be perfectly organized. You can’t wait for approval. You have to be thoughtful in creating a plan, but more than anything, you must BEGIN.” —Chris Krimitsos Start Ugly
That reminds me of the story where Bob Seger told Glenn Frey (before he was with the Eagles) that if he wanted to break out from Detroit he needed to write his own songs. Frey said, “Well, what if they’re bad?” Seger said they would be bad, but to stick with it and that’s how you get to be good.
That’s why Scott Beck and Bryan Woods wrote around 30 screenplays before they hit it big with A Quiet Place. It’s why before he became a hit TV writer back in the day, Stephen J. Cannell said that because he was unable to land any film or Tv industry work he went to work for his dad. Then he wrote after work.
“I’d come home every night and write for five hours—I had a snack and wrote from 5:30 to 10:30 and then had dinner. I did that for five years and couldn’t get an agent. I was basically doing spec (sample) scripts for television, but no one would read the stuff. I’d send ’em out and they’d come back—some unopened, some with nasty notes like ‘There’s nothing here.’” —Emmy winning writer/ producer Stephen J. Cannell GQ, “Exit Interview: A Final Chat with ‘A-Team’ Creator Stephen J. Cannell”
It’s okay to start ugly. And one good thing to come out of this pandemic is we’ve accepted all kinds of bad audio and video production. So the crazy thing is if, you start ugly now, no one is really going to know the difference. And as the pandemic draws to a close (some time) you’ll have improved greatly just by learning as you go.
Now if podcasting is still way off your radar let me point you to the The Messengers: A Podcast Documentary.
“What real writers follow are their characters. And what great writers follow are their characters as they evolve around a central dramatic argument that is actually meaningful to other human beings.” —Craig Mazin
This is the time of year when New Year’s resolutions are traditionally made. And if you need a little mojo before you write your first screenplay (or your next one), here’s a talk screenwriter Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) gave that may help. It was released on the Scriptnotes podcast in 2019, but just put on YouTube a few months ago. Super stuff and and another spin on screenwriting you can pour into your funnel.
Two things to pay particular attention to are his use of theme and a major dramatic argument. (Reviewing the movies Finding Nemoand Shrek will help you understand his illustrations.) Mazin also gets a little deep talking about the Hegelian dialectic but it’s an important concept to grasp.
Back 1998 screenwriter/playwright David Mamet touched on the dialectic when he wrote in his book Three Uses of the Knife that dramatic structure “is an exercise of a naturally occurring need or disposition to structure the world as thesis/antithesis/synthesis.” (So Mazin is in good company there.)
In my book, I point out what this looks like and add a helpful example:
A (thesis) + B (antithesis) = C (synthesis)
Mike Birbiglia says he used the thesis/antithesis/synthesis concept on his Netflix special The New One: Act 1: “All of the reasons no one should ever want to have a child.” Act 2: “How I had a child and how I was right.” Act 3: “And then in the emotional twist how I was wrong.”
He started with a point of view (thesis), he tested the opposite view (antithesis), and came up with a third view (synthesis).
So don’t get scared away when Mazin dips into philosophy. And, lastly, there’s Mazin’s charge for you to “torture your heroes” in your screenplays.
You can download the entire transcript of Mazin’s talk at Scriptnotes.
P.S. My manic meme making continues today with Annie Wikes (Kathy Bates) fromMisery(with a cameo featuring James Cann’s ankles) from the famous hobbling scene.
“The greatest obstacles to making films was getting access to equipment. And so my generation went to film school.”
Spike Lee on going to film school in the late ’70s & early ’80s American Black Film Festival
Mr. Robotcreator/writer/director Sam Esmail did his undergraduate film school work at NYU (with a couple of semesters in a Dartmouth College writing program) and then did his master’s in directing at AFI in Los Angeles. Recently before a live WGA audience, Esmail was asked by screenwriter John August if he thought his film school experience and studies were worth it to get where he is today.
“Are there any faculty members here? [Laughter from audience.] Film school’s expensive. It’s very expensive. In fact, I think the tuition at AFI is almost double what I paid at the time. It was a lot back then. And honestly, it wasn’t until after the first season of Mr. Robot that I was able to pay it all back. There was a point where I was like, ‘I’m either going to hit it big or die in debt.’ I didn’t really see a middle option there. I don’t know. The answer is, I don’t know.” —Sam Esmail Scriptnotes, Episode 449
And like Rhimes in that post, Esmail’s NYU, Dartmouth, AFI education also carries a total sticker price today of around $500,000. No extra zeros added. Five hundred thousand dollars. Of course, there are scholarships, grants, and schools with endowments, and less expensive film schools that can keep down the actual costs. But it’s wise to know how much you’ll actually owe when you graduate.
Even a $50,000 student loan can haunt you for decades, especially if you start working as a production assistant in Los Angeles. (Where the cost of living is high even if you have no student loans.) Check out Scriptnotes podcast episode 422 where August and Craig Mazin discuss the realities of low pay for assistants in Hollywood.
Unfortunately, it’s not hard to find articles online where people talk about the reality of dying in debt due to student loans. In the past ten years, student loan availability and compounded interest have changed the game, mixed with young people (and their parents) not fully comprehending the ripple effect of massive student loans. That if you’re just making minimum payments each month, your loan amount can actually be growing.
And adding a monthly student loan in the amount somewhere between a new car payment and a house payment to your budget each month is an uphill climb for many. That includes doctors and lawyers—not just film school grads.
Esmail did hit it big. I’m not sure what percentage of 40,000+ film school grads hit it big, but it’s not a high percentage . (I once heard less than 1% of film school grads ever make a feature, which is different than hitting it big with a sustainable career. If you have more empirical data, send it my way.)
Would Esmail have found success without going to film school? Like with Rhimes, we’ll never know. He did say that contacts he had at AFI opened doors to agents and managers right out of the gate. Plus he picked up a few skills that allowed him to work as an assistant editor on a realty TV show.
At night after his day job he wrote scripts that got him meetings (via AFI contacts) with studios but no assignments or sales. He had a couple of scripts land on the Blacklist (starting with Sequels, Remakes & Adaptations in 2008) that brought sales, but didn’t get produced. Finally, he decided to write a contained story and eventually cobbled together the funds and a crew to direct the film —with help again from his AFI contacts. And in film school you make short films (ideally a lot), make mistakes, and learn while working with others.. Esmail didn’t go into directing his first feature film unprepared.
Cometwas released in 2014, ten years after Esmail finished his MFA from AFI. Mr. Robot premiered the following year. Since he was born in 1977, that puts him around age 37 or 38 when he hit it big. So factor that trajectory into your film school expectations.
The main thing that Esmail encourages others to do (regardless if you went to film school or not) is as soon as you finish writing your great script, start writing the next one. (That worked for Oscar winner Michael Arndt (Toy Story 3)—How To Be. a Successful Screenwriter.)
And keep in mind that while USC, AFI, and NYU have extensive lists of graduates in the industry, many went there back in the day—when the expense was more easily managed. Or had parents or other means to defray the costs. (One film school grad with no debt, and working in the industry in LA, told me that if his parents didn’t cover his car payment and insurance and help with rent he wouldn’t be able to make it there.)
If you’re set on film school, keep in mind there are less expensive options out there. And because high-quality equipment in relatively inexpensive, you can take the Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (A Quiet Place) path and make your own films even before you go to college. And when they did go to college at the University of Iowa, they majored in communications. It never hurts to have a college degree if you’re looking for a job outside the Hollywood system.
P.S. The one guy who hit it big that I went to film school with is David Nutter. But if I recall correctly, he wasn’t even a film major. He was majoring in music with the goal of becoming the next Barry Manilow ( Manilow was a hit maker through the ’70s and has sold 75 million records). But Nutter started taking film classes, and made some super student films that opened the door to directing Cease Firewith Don Johnson soon after graduating from college. A couple of decades later he became a multiple-Primetime Emmy winning director for his work on Game of Thrones. Read the post The Perfect Endingfor the upside of film school . (But, again, film school in the ’80s was a different game financially than it is today.)
Homework: Watch your favorite film 50 times and study what makes it work. How many scenes are there? How long are the scenes? How many camera set ups are in each scene? How many scenes feature just two actors talking? Watch it with the sound off. Listen to only the audio. What’s the major dramatic question? Where’s the conflict in each scene? How does each scene move the story forward? What changes from one scene to the next? How many scenes feature the protagonist/hero? How many locations did they use? Etc., etc. You can learn a lot from one film that costs you less than $20. (Indie films Winter’s Boneand Pieces of April are personal favorites of mine to re-watch since you have the added benefit of studying how they pulled of compelling movies on a limited budget. Lesson 1: Solid casting and a good script are more important than a big crew and expensive equipment.)
“Oh man, this is screwing with my whole reputation.” Craig Mazin on being an Emmy-winner
On Sunday, screenwriter Craig Mazin ruined his I’m not into awards-reputation by winning an Emmy for creating the HBO/Sky production Chernobyl . (Hear his acceptance speech for winning Outstanding Writing for a Limited Series, Movie or a Dramatic Special here.).
And then later in the night, as producer, he won another Emmy as the TV program won Outstanding Limited Series. Chernobyl won a total of 10 Oscars including direction, cinematography, sound mixing, sound editing, and production design.
Here’s one scene where all that talent is on display and why the series was able to stand out from a crowded field of creative talent.
Mazin’s trademark umbrage was nowhere to be found on yesterday’s Scriptnotes podcast John August asked him “Craig, what is it like to win an Emmy?”
“It’s pretty cool to know that people voted for you. It’s an election, that part’s cool. And it was really important that we won the big thing (Outstanding Limited Series) because that’s for everybody. I thought that was great. I’m so thrilled that Johan [Renck] won [for Best Directing] that was amazing for me to see. And winning the writing one was—those are our people. We’re part of this weird religious sect of writers and, as you know, we are disagreeable people. We fight amongst each other, we quibble, we argue, we complain, but we do love each other and we are our people, so to get that from our people was pretty moving. I don’t like to admit any of this. But it was pretty nice. I was happy.”
—Craig Mazin
To read all five of Mazin’s Chernobyl scripts click here.
Mazin is also co-host of Scriptnotes which is an amazing screenwriting resource of over 400 podcasts on ”screenwriting and things interesting to screenwriters”—and where his umbrage is often on full display. To commemorate Mazin’s Emmy wins, here are 10 Mazin-centric posts I’ve written over the years:
“What is the cost of lies? It’s not that we’ll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all.” Opening lines of HBO’s Chernobyl
I’m going to finish watching the five-part series Chernobly in the next day or two and will write about it more extensively. But today I thought I’d pull a quote from the writer of the HBO/Sky miniseries about the 1986 nuclear disaster.
“In thematic structure, the purpose of the story—listen carefully now—the purpose of the story is to take a character, the protagonist, from the place ignorance of the truth (or the true side of the argument you’re making) and take them all the way where they become the very embodiment of that argument. And they do it through action.” Screenwriter Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) Scriptnotes
In Craig Mazin’s talk How to Write a Movie he likes to refer a few times to Shrek and Pixar’s Finding Nemoas being great at thematic structure, but two personal favorites I like to return to again and again is Rain Man and The Verdictwhere the Tom Cruise character and the Paul Newman characters start out in one place in the opening scenes and are both changed and transformed by the end of those movies.
Mazin says if you just took the opening and closing scenes of movies with strong thematic structure you would see the anthesis and the synthesis of the theme played out. Two films that jumped to my mind are Erin Brockovichand Flight that show how that plays out on screen in dramatic fashion.
But not everyone agrees on the use of theme in screenwriting, and here are 10 writers and directors giving conflicting views on the topic:
“. . . I’m quite sure that I never thought much about theme before getting roadblocked on [writing] The Stand. I suppose I thought such things were for Better Minds and Bigger Thinkers. I’m not sure I would have gotten to it as soon as I did, had I not been desperate to save my story. I was astounded at how really useful ‘thematic thinking’ turned out to be.”
Stephen King On Writing, pages 206-207
“I’m not sure I know what themes are. I know English departments care about themes. So it’s possible to look at my work, as I guess anybody’s work, and infer a theme, but it’s not something which concerns me.” Playwright/screenwriter David Mamet MasterClass
“I’m personally a big fan of knowing what your theme is before starting. I think they can arise as you tell the story, but writing within and for a theme seems to me to help the process along.” Screenwriter Kelly Marcel (Saving Mr. Banks) Go Into the Story Interview with Scott Myers
“So usually, for me, I have a thematic idea—an inspiration —and then I build everything around that.” Writer/director Judd Apatow(The 40-Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up) Masterclass/Writing the First Draft
“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.”
Writer/director Wes Anderson (Rushmore, Moonrise Kingdom)
Elvis Mitchell interview on KCRW’s The Treatment
From the book Script Tease by Dylan Callaghan:
Question: What guides you through a story if you don’t outline? is it character or a certain voice? Diablo Cody: “I like to pick a theme. I know that sounds stupid. It’s not a super advanced technique. They pick a theme on Laverne and Shirley. I think about what the emotional core of the story is, what’s something I can play on across multiple story lines, and I go from there.”
“The most important decision I have to make: What is this movie about? I’m not talking about plot, although in certain very good melodramas the plot is all they’re about. A good, rousing, scary story can be a hell of a lot of fun. But what is it about emotionally? What is the theme of the movie, the spine, the arc? What does the movie mean to me?” Sidney Lumet Making Movies
“Every great work has something that’s thematic about it. Not a message, because I don’t think movies do messages very well. They fall flat. Socially, I mean, some great films were made back in the ’30s and ’40s and you can see that they were placed in the time they were made, but their themes are for all time. The biggest thing is the story, but within that you need some thematic element that gets the audience going, that reaches out to them.” Writer/director John Carpenter Creative Screenwriting, Volume 6, #1
“I try not to think about theme until later. If I’m adapting a book I’ll extract a theme if I can from something that’s already written, but if I’m writing something I don’t say, ‘oh, here’s the theme.’ I feel like the movie feels – this word I keep using – it feels ‘built’ if you start with the theme ahead of time. If you arrive at a theme that’s great. If there are themes you know you love, that’s great. But for me, if I start writing it seems it doesn’t matter to me early on. I know there are certain themes I automatically always go to, but it’s not anything conscious.” Screenwriter Scott Frank (Minority Report, Marley & Me) 2012 BAFTA Lecture
“The theme rarely is mentioned in the story; it is never rubbed in. The audience may not put it in words at all, but will recognize the theme and the fact that the story keeps in line with it. Suppose that you have taken for your theme the slogan, ‘It pays to advertise.’ These words may never be mentioned in the story, but the story itself will demonstrate the truth of that statement.” Screenwriter Frances Marion (The Big House, The Champ) How to Write and Sell Film Stories (1937)
pages 106-107
“I will say like any time that we’ve gone off and written things where we haven’t really honed in on any theme whatsoever, that’s where you start getting into the weeds and you start losing your sight.” A Quiet Place screenwriter Scott Beck (on how he and Bryan Woods work)
“Sometimes you never really quite understand what the movie’s about until you go into a matinée screening at the Oriental Theater on a Thursday afternoon.”
Francis Ford Coppola Lew Hunter’s Screenwriting 434
Upon hearing Emily Zulauf on Scriptnotes (Episode 387) use the phrase “smart with heart” in relation to Pixar movies, I thought this would be a fitting time to repost one of the most read posts on this blog. (And it’s even better with the Michale Arndt video link at the bottom of the post.) This was originally written in 2011 under the title Screenwriting the Pixar Way (Part 2):
“Toy Story 3 is about change. It’s about embracing change. It’s about people being faced with change and how they deal with it.” Lee Unkrich
Director, Toy Story 3
“All the Toy Story films have been about mortality. It’s all about ‘Who am I? Am I going to be replaced?'” Darla K. Anderson Producer, Toy Story 3
It’s debatable whether Toy Story 3 was the best film of 2010, but from a filmmaking perspective it’s hard to top the 4-Disc Blu-ray/DVD combo that Pixar created for Toy Story 3. It shows how meticulous the Pixar team ( of “hundred and hundreds of people”) is in creating such wonderful movies. The team discusses how they took four years to create Toy Story 3, first creating a full length animatic story reel (sort of a rough, moving storyboard).
You’ll also learn quirky things in the behind the scene footage like how director Lee Unkrich loves steamed broccoli.
But since this is a blog on screenwriting…on the second disc you’ll find an excellent 8-minute recap by Toy Story 3 screenwriter Michael Arndt on how he came at the story. He explains how he studied other Pixar films Finding Nemo, Toy Story, and The Incredibles to see how they set up their worlds, characters and stories. Here’s a recap of his recap:
—Usually a script is about 100 pages with three acts with the first act about 25 pages long, the second act about 50 pages long, and the third act 25 pages.
—Introduce your main character and the world they live in.
—Introduce character doing the thing they love most. It’s the center of their whole universe.
—Expose hidden character flaw. In Toy Story, Woody takes pride in being Andy’s favorite toy.
—Storm clouds on the horizon. In Toy Story it’s Andy’s birthday party and all the toys being worried about being replaced.
—Baboom! Something comes in and turns your character’s life upside down. The thing that was their grand passion gets taken away from them. Woody gets displaced by Buzz.
—Add insult to injury. Something that makes the whole world seem unfair. Woody doesn’t just get replaced, he gets replaced by a total doofus.
—Character comes to a fork in the road and a choice must be made. Take the high road (the healthy responsible choice) or the low road (unhealthy, irresponsible choice). If the character chooses the right thing you really don’t have a story.
—In Toy Story, Woody could make the right choice and say—”I had my day in the sun.” We identify with his pain. But he makes the unhealthy choice which leads to Buzz being pushed out the window which leads to other unhealthy choices. Woody then is forced by the other toys to find Buzz and bring him back—that’s your first act break.
—The character sets out on a journey where they have to get back what they lost and hopefully fix that little flaw they had when we first met them.
That sound you heard a while back was the cash register as Toy Story 3 ticket sales crossed the billion dollar mark.
Update 7/1/14: This video is now on YouTube.
Toy Story 3 is that rare film that not only was well received by critics and is winning awards, but at the box office it became the top moneymaker in 2010, the top animated film in history and is currently listed at #5 on the all-time world-wide box office list. All it took was four years, a few hundred talented people, and a little steamed broccoli.
I don’t know if Pixar is as an enjoyable place to work as it looks on the behind the scene footage, but I’d sure like to spend a week there sweeping the floors just to soak in the culture.
Update 1/25/11: Just announced this morning, Toy Story 3 earned a total of 5 Academy Award nominations including not only Best Adapted Screenplay (Script by Michael Arndt/ Story by John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, and Lee Unkrich) and Best Animated Film, but for the big daddy itself, Best Picture. PopEater quoted producer Darla K. Anderson saying, “We did take a lot of risks on this film — we had some moments of loss and poignancy. We risked Andy giving the toys away… And I wasn’t sure how people would respond to the film — but I knew we told the story we wanted to tell.”
Oscar Update: Here’s a video of Lee Unkrich receiving the Best Animated Feature Film of the Year Oscar for Toy Story 3 :
P.S. One of my favorite lines from Toy Story 3 is when the Piggy Bank says, “let’s go see how much we’re going for on eBay.”
And here are three more Pixar-related videos that were done since I first wrote this post.
“Smallfoot satisfyingly operates on multiple levels and is much deeper than it appears to be.” Adam Graham, The Detroit News
Smallfoot opens in theater today and so today as well I’m going to start Part 1 of an interview I did with Clare Sera who wrote the screenplay along with the movies’ co-director Karey Kirkpatrick. Of the course of this interview (which will be 3 or 4 parts), you’ll see the unlikely journey of Clare took on her way to writing a movie that has an eclectic mix of talent including Channing Tatum, James Corden, Zendaya, Common, Lebron James, and Danny DeVito.
I met Clare back in the ’90s shortly before she moved to LA. If the movie she worked on does beat Night School in the box office this weekend it will be her first view from the top of the mountain. Just keep in mind, she arrived in LA 20 years ago. While everyone loves a good Diablo Cody story—FIRST TIME SCREENWRITER WINS OSCAR!—Clare’s story is much more typical of working screenwriters in Hollywood.
Scott: So the title of this blog is Screenwriting from Iowa . . . and Other Unlikely Places and I think Scotland qualifies as an unlikely place for a Hollywood screenwriter to be from. Where were you born?
Clare: I was born in Glasgow but my parents immigrated to British Columbia—to Canada–when I was 4. My mom was pretty homesick so we would go back there at least every other summer which was great. So I did know my cousins growing up.
Scott: When did you first get involved in acting and writing?
Clare: Well definitely from childhood that was absolutely my thing. All the school plays and everything like that. After high school I went off to Europe backpacking — I didn’t go to college right away. But when I got back I just ended up doing odd jobs, but doing theater all the time, so I finally sucked it up and said I want to do theater. So I went to college in Vancouver for theater and actually the same year that I finally made that decision SAK Theatre came to my town which is Vancouver B.C. SAK Theatre came there to perform for the summer and I got hired to be one of the performers and then I ended up meeting Will [Sera] and getting married and moving to Orlando and staying with Will and SAK Theatre as a performer and then started writing plays for SAK. And when we moved out to Los Angeles my friend who had been at SAK Theatre was now in Los Angeles—Karey Kirkpatrick— and working full time as a screenwriter. He had just finished Chicken Run and he was like, “Oh, you know you’re a good writer you should you should try screenwriting.” He just made it look so easy, ’cause he’d done James and the Giant Peach and Chicken Run and he was getting ready to do his next whatever it was, and I was like, “Oh wow, screenwriting, that seems cool. If Karey can do it…”[laughs] so I started. I’ve still never caught up to him. But he really mentored me, and I took the Act One writing program at the same time, which was at that time it was like a month-long intensive, to kind of learn the basics of the craft and Karey took me under his wing and got me my start really.
Scott: Our paths crossed in your SAK Theatre era back in the mid-’90s. It’s interesting because Scotland has the huge fringe festival now but you weren’t a part of that. And Vancouver, British Columbia is now popular for movies and TV but that probably wasn’t happening when you were out there. Then you were in Orlando in the ‘90s when it had a minor Hollywood East film movement and you missed that, too. But you were in Orlando as Wayne Brady as he was coming up as a teenager. Did you mentor him?
Clare: He very sweetly gave Will and I props for his improv career. But I met Wayne actually doing an industrial in Orlando and we just hit it off immediately. He was maybe 17 at the time. And I said you have to come to SAK and do improv. And he didn’t know improv. So I guess I did introduce him to it. I mean I think he probably did three workshops and I said come play. His talent was all there but yes, SAK was the first place that he that he first improvised.
Scott: So that’s so that’s kind of like the movie Don’t Think Twice where you have this tight group of performers that are all struggling and trying to make it and somebody breaks out. Was Wayne that guy?
Clare: It was exactly that story, because we all we knew each other in Orlando and then we all moved out to L.A. at the same time to improvise together. The main group that was at SAK which was Joel McCrary, Danno Sullivan, Dave Russell and Matt Young. And Wayne was here and so Wayne hooked up with us again. So we started improvising out here in Los Angeles. We called ourselves Houseful of Honkeys. And it was exactly like Don’t Think Twice out of our whole group the producers from Whose Line Is It Anyway? came to see a show and then Wayne and I were invited to come and do Whose Line? And I mean it’s so— except that Wayne and I were not together romantically— like Don’t Think Twice. But it was it was the black guy and the girl that both got invited to Whose Line? And then after the rehearsal process which is kind of bad process, and I did not do well in that atmosphere. And Wayne actually didn’t do great. Actually, nobody did, but he’s such a killer song improviser they decided to take a chance on him with one taping and, of course, once he was in front of an audience he was just fantastic. And that was the at the end of Wayne being able to be a part of our company and it was tense. It was just like in Don’t Think Twice. [Where the core group breaks up.] I mean it’s hard.
Scott: Was there the discussion where people in the group were like “Why did he get chosen? He’s the new guy?” Was there any of that talk?
Clare: No, there was never that because Wayne’s talent is amazing. So there was never like I don’t know why they picked Wayne. It’s quite obvious why they picked Wayne.
Scott: At the same time there’s a line in “Don’t Think Twice” where they kind of say you can’t do improv forever and they kind of realize that. Did you have that moment where you realized you needed to maybe go in a different direction creatively?
Clare: Yeah I did. Definitely. I mean it’s not true you can’t do improv forever because all the Whose Line? guys— that’s what they do. But I had actually felt that before we had the full kind of breakup of our group, because I realized that I didn’t really want to pursue an acting career. I loved improvising with those guys but I wasn’t interested in pursuing acting. But I really loved writing at SAK, so [screenwriting] seemed like the next obvious step for me.
Scott: So then you had your Wayne Brady breakout moment where you got writing assignments to work on Curious George and Blended. Can you summarize the baby steps you took in your writing career?
Clare: Yeah, I basically became Karey’s writing assistant for a couple of years, which was really wonderful because I got to go to studio meetings with him and I got introduced to the world. I watched him get notes and saw kind of how brutal [the business could be]. So it made it much easier for me to transition into it. And from that I became a writing partner with him for a while, and then he got me the interview for Curious George, but we came in separately as writers and then he left the project quite early to go and do something else and I stayed on Curious George and that was the start sort of my career separate from Karey. I met on that project another fellow named Ivan [Menchell] that I ended up writing Blended with. [That film starred Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore.] But I kind of continued to do both writing solo projects and writing with Ivan and now I feel like I’ve been writing more again on my own. And it is a bit of a tough time. Mike [Birbiglia] was talking about this on [the podcast] Scriptnotes, All of my work has been for studios which has been amazing. I have ended up writing either myself or with Iven features for every studio in town. I think I’ve written a script for every studio in Hollywood which has been a wonderful experience and pays well but they don’t always make them. They want to make family films, but when it comes time to pull the trigger they choose their project that’s got a bigger IP. It’s got a bestselling book attachment. Or it’s got a superhero.
Note: This interview was done before Clare got the writing assignment on Smallfoot. And every once in a while a family film gets made. Go see Smallfoot this weekend (and when it opens in Scotland) and help Clare have one of those rare feats for any screenwriter of having a movie be both well received by critics (65/72/92% on Rotten Tomatoes) and at the top of the box office.
In Parts 2 and 3 of this interview, we’ll learn what Clare discovered working with legendary director Garry Marshall, and her words of encouragement to up and coming writers and filmmakers.
“The key advice I’d give [any filmmaker] is when you’re starting out make things as cheaply as possible. There is a path for making things so cheaply that the minimal value that most independent films get can still help you to recoup your budget. And that’s a path that the Duplass brothers took really well, and I think it will always be a path. There’s always going to be an appetite for movies of a certain sort and if you can achieve quality with a very low budget you can find a path with an independent film.” Indie film producer Keith Calder
Interview with John August onScriptnotes, Episode #342
Note: The keyword in the title of today’s post is “a.” This is a path, not the only path. But, as I mentioned yesterday, before Scott Beck and Bryan Woods had their names attached to the current #1 box office Hollywood hit (The Quiet Place), they made a bunch of low-budget films in Iowa.
“Throughout high school and our college years we just keep making movies and feature films for practically no budget.” Writer/director Scott Beck #AlwaysAHawkeye video
P.S. Yesterday I went to see the documentary film Long Time Coming at the Florida Film Festival. It’s the debut feature film of Orlando-based filmmaker Jon Strong. It was the second showing of the festival because the first one sold out hours after tickets went on sale.
I don’t know the budget of the film and Strong did say during the Q&A that the film was in the works for two years. But my guess is it’s an example of a film that was made without a large budget and one that will find a distribution path at ESPN or Netflix. Production-wise Long Time Coming reminded me of another baseball-centered film No, No: A Dockumentary (on picture Dock Ellis) which I saw at the Florida Film Festival a few years ago.
No, No was also very heavy on interviews of past players. And if my memory is correct, the director said the bulk of the interviews with former Pittsburgh Pirates players was shot over a reunion weekend. Shaping those interviews into a story, finding archival photos and videos (and securing rights and funding to use them) is what can take months and years.
But No, No is a good example of a film that had a niche audience and found distribution. It’s not a bad idea to find a film in your genre that you like and find out as much as you can about how it got funded and found distribution.
In the podcast Launch novelist John August gives an insider look into the book making process, down to the font selections and the voiceover narrator for the audio book. Because August is also a screenwriter, there’s a better than average chance that his book Arlo Finch in the Valley of Firewill become a book.
But in another podcast this month he answers the question from a frustrated novelist named Matthew who’s had novels optioned, even screenplays written based on his books and stars attached to the projects, but still not a single movie from his work has come to fruition. Here’s part of John August’s answer why:
“Most books that get optioned don’t get made into movies. Most scripts that get written don’t get made into movies. And when I see authors being so excited about the film rights sold, or it’s going to be a movie, I’m happy for them, but I also want to pull them aside and let them know that like if it gets made into a movie, that’s winning the lottery. That so rarely happens…But other times, like Big Fish, it happens. And so you just don’t know. And you have so little control over it, Matthew. That’s the remarkable thing. As the author you control everything. And every word and every comma. Movies seem like they’re made by magic. Like 200 people are off making your movie. Except most times they don’t get made. They get optioned, they pay someone to write a script. That script sits on a shelf and it doesn’t happen.” John August Scriptnotes, Ep. 334
P.S. Speaking of Big Fish (screenplay by John August, based the book by Daniel Wallace), I had breakfast with several people Saturday to remember a man named Jim who died recently at age 85.. At one point they wanted everyone to share a story about this him. I shared a story and then I recommended to Jim’s adult children that they watch Big Fish. Jim was from Kentucky and like a lot of people from the south, Jim could tell a yarn are two. In fact, you never were sure which stories were true and which weren’t. Which is part of the Big Fish story.
Screenwriting from Iowa 