Random Screenplay Advice

Tripped over this while searching through emails today. A friend of mine—already very smart and a good writer—was interested in writing a screenplay. From my Out Box, January 24, 2007:

Sally Hogshead was a speaker at the Screenwriting Expo this year and she mentioned the way to success in your career is getting clear with what you can do that nobody else can, and then hammer at it persistently. I like both of your stories, a lot, and think they have a good chance of becoming excellent dramas with their uneasy mix of moral ambiguity. These kinds of stories set your work apart from everyone else.

Here's a good first step: break down the first story into its necessary scenes. Identify exactly where the major story points are: Setup, Turning Point #1, Development, Turning Point #2, Climax, and Resolution. (It sounds like you've done this already.) Then flesh out the number of scenes needed to establish each section, adding in detail and dialogue where needed. You'll have a good 4 to 5 page treatment when finished... I used that kind of outline/treatment as a rough guide when I wrote Arousal and wrote the first draft in about a month.

If you're still in love with your story after writing the treatment, great! If not, then keep reworking it until you are. Next step is writing the script, which needs a whole other bag of tricks that I can help you with when the time comes.

But a few disclaimers would be well placed here:

The most important thing to remember is that screenplays are a visual medium... not a novel. Screenplays, then, are a blueprint for a final product and until they're being produced, they are effectively a business card for the project. They need to read very well to get others excited about helping produce. Imagine that a screenplay reader is in a hurry for work and can only read a page... but your script is so good that they read 2, then 3, then 5, then 10... until they realize they're on page 60 and are so late for work that they might as well finish it. Writing with long novel-like paragraphs is not, in my opinion, the best way to write a screenplay. 3–4 line paragraphs at the max. Few long speeches. Lots of white space on the page. Leave the director to come up with the fancy visuals later, even if that director is you.

Another common confusion—the objective with scripts is not to make a film from that script, but to sell the script to make the film and THEN write the script that you want to film. Scripts change a lot from the time they're bought to the time they get produced, so first write a script that gets people excited about handing you money, then swap it with the exact words you want to film.

Finally, scripts aren't stage plays. Filmmaking involves collaboration and the established norm is that everyone wants to add their 2 cents, sometimes holding back money unless they get some creative control. If you can find an executive producer (the money guy) who gives you complete creative control, then you'll be very very lucky. It took me years to accept this horrid truth. Still, many talented people out there can actually improve my writing, so it's not always a bad thing.

I will not read your fucking script

Below is one of the best articles I've ever read about what it's like to be on the receiving end of an aspiring writer soliciting feedback on their screenplay... and why that person is in the wrong to ask their professional film friends to offer feedback as a favor. Josh Olsen states it exquisitely: "...when you ask a professional for their take on your material, you're not just asking them to take an hour or two out of their life, you're asking them to give you—gratis—the acquired knowledge, insight, and skill of years of work. It is no different than asking your friend the house painter to paint your living room during his off hours."

I get a lot of people asking me for my opinion on their scripts. Actually, I don't mind reading their work—especially if I know they can handle brutally honest criticism—but the sad fact is that I'm a slow reader and I've got about a gajillion things on my plate at any given moment. So I started offering free feedback on just 10 pages and anything more than that I charge a hefty consultation fee. That cut out almost all feedback requests, presumably because when people see how much I charge for the time I spend on their work, they start respecting my time by not intruding on it, either.

My favorite section from this article:

It rarely takes more than a page to recognize that you're in the presence of someone who can write, but it only takes a sentence to know you're dealing with someone who can't.

(By the way, here's a simple way to find out if you're a writer. If you disagree with that statement, you're not a writer. Because, you see, writers are also readers.)

I can always tell in the first sentence or paragraph whether the writer really appreciates the technique of writing and the storytelling craft—and I'm never wrong. If the first sentence—the very first thing introducing the script—is clunky, has typos, or rambles incoherently, then what hope is there for anything that follows? The first page, the first paragraph, the first sentence, even the first few words are the most important things the reader will read. Will these few words propel the reader to the next sentence, the next paragraph, the next page? For half-hour TV dramas, you only get three pages before your script gets shitcanned.

Everyone can write, so everyone thinks they can write screenplays... but to write well enough to maintain a reader's interest? Extremely difficult. I'm no master, by any standard, but I wish more "writers" would embrace that same degree of humility. It would make it a shitload easier to give them the kind of feedback they so desperately need.

I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script
Wednesday, Sep. 9 2009 @ 10:00PM

We know you've been working very hard on your screenplay, but before you go looking for some professional feedback, you might keep in mind the following piece by A History of Violence screenwriter Josh Olson.

​I will not read your fucking script.

That's simple enough, isn't it? "I will not read your fucking script." What's not clear about that? There's nothing personal about it, nothing loaded, nothing complicated. I simply have no interest in reading your fucking screenplay. None whatsoever.

If that seems unfair, I'll make you a deal. In return for you not asking me to read your fucking script, I will not ask you to wash my fucking car, or take my fucking picture, or represent me in fucking court, or take out my fucking gall bladder, or whatever the fuck it is that you do for a living.

You're a lovely person. Whatever time we've spent together has, I'm sure, been pleasurable for both of us. I quite enjoyed that conversation we once had about structure and theme, and why Sergio Leone is the greatest director who ever lived. Yes, we bonded, and yes, I wish you luck in all your endeavors, and it would thrill me no end to hear that you had sold your screenplay, and that it had been made into the best movie since Godfather Part II.

But I will not read your fucking script.

At this point, you should walk away, firm in your conviction that I'm a dick. But if you're interested in growing as a human being and recognizing that it is, in fact, you who are the dick in this situation, please read on.

Yes. That's right. I called you a dick. Because you created this situation. You put me in this spot where my only option is to acquiesce to your demands or be the bad guy. That, my friend, is the very definition of a dick move.

I was recently cornered by a young man of my barest acquaintance.

I doubt we've exchanged a hundred words. But he's dating someone I know, and he cornered me in the right place at the right time, and asked me to read a two-page synopsis for a script he'd been working on for the last year. He was submitting the synopsis to some contest or program, and wanted to get a professional opinion.

Now, I normally have a standard response to people who ask me to read their scripts, and it's the simple truth: I have two piles next to my bed. One is scripts from good friends, and the other is manuscripts and books and scripts my agents have sent to me that I have to read for work. Every time I pick up a friend's script, I feel guilty that I'm ignoring work. Every time I pick something up from the other pile, I feel guilty that I'm ignoring my friends. If I read yours before any of that, I'd be an awful person.

Most people get that. But sometimes you find yourself in a situation where the guilt factor is really high, or someone plays on a relationship or a perceived obligation, and it's hard to escape without seeming rude. Then, I tell them I'll read it, but if I can put it down after ten pages, I will. They always go for that, because nobody ever believes you can put their script down once you start.

But hell, this was a two page synopsis, and there was no time to go into either song or dance, and it was just easier to take it. How long can two pages take?

Weeks, is the answer.

And this is why I will not read your fucking script.

It rarely takes more than a page to recognize that you're in the presence of someone who can write, but it only takes a sentence to know you're dealing with someone who can't.

(By the way, here's a simple way to find out if you're a writer. If you disagree with that statement, you're not a writer. Because, you see, writers are also readers.)

You may want to allow for the fact that this fellow had never written a synopsis before, but that doesn't excuse the inability to form a decent sentence, or an utter lack of facility with language and structure. The story described was clearly of great importance to him, but he had done nothing to convey its specifics to an impartial reader. What I was handed was, essentially, a barely coherent list of events, some connected, some not so much. Characters wander around aimlessly, do things for no reason, vanish, reappear, get arrested for unnamed crimes, and make wild, life-altering decisions for no reason. Half a paragraph is devoted to describing the smell and texture of a piece of food, but the climactic central event of the film is glossed over in a sentence. The death of the hero is not even mentioned. One sentence describes a scene he's in, the next describes people showing up at his funeral. I could go on, but I won't. This is the sort of thing that would earn you a D minus in any Freshman Comp class.

Which brings us to an ugly truth about many aspiring screenwriters: They think that screenwriting doesn't actually require the ability to write, just the ability to come up with a cool story that would make a cool movie. Screenwriting is widely regarded as the easiest way to break into the movie business, because it doesn't require any kind of training, skill or equipment. Everybody can write, right? And because they believe that, they don't regard working screenwriters with any kind of real respect. They will hand you a piece of inept writing without a second thought, because you do not have to be a writer to be a screenwriter.

So. I read the thing. And it hurt, man. It really hurt. I was dying to find something positive to say, and there was nothing. And the truth is, saying something positive about this thing would be the nastiest, meanest and most dishonest thing I could do. Because here's the thing: not only is it cruel to encourage the hopeless, but you cannot discourage a writer. If someone can talk you out of being a writer, you're not a writer. If I can talk you out of being a writer, I've done you a favor, because now you'll be free to pursue your real talent, whatever that may be. And, for the record, everybody has one. The lucky ones figure out what that is. The unlucky ones keep on writing shitty screenplays and asking me to read them.

To make matters worse, this guy (and his girlfriend) had begged me to be honest with him. He was frustrated by the responses he'd gotten from friends, because he felt they were going easy on him, and he wanted real criticism. They never do, of course. What they want is a few tough notes to give the illusion of honesty, and then some pats on the head. What they want--always--is encouragement, even when they shouldn't get any.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to tell someone that they've spent a year wasting their time? Do you know how much blood and sweat goes into that criticism? Because you want to tell the truth, but you want to make absolutely certain that it comes across honestly and without cruelty. I did more rewrites on that fucking e-mail than I did on my last three studio projects.

My first draft was ridiculous. I started with specific notes, and after a while, found I'd written three pages on the first two paragraphs. That wasn't the right approach. So I tossed it, and by the time I was done, I'd come up with something that was relatively brief, to the point, and considerate as hell. The main point I made was that he'd fallen prey to a fallacy that nails a lot of first timers. He was way more interested in telling his one story than in being a writer. It was like buying all the parts to a car and starting to build it before learning the basics of auto mechanics. You'll learn a lot along the way, I said, but you'll never have a car that runs.

(I should mention that while I was composing my response, he pulled the ultimate amateur move, and sent me an e-mail saying, "If you haven't read it yet, don't! I have a new draft. Read this!" In other words, "The draft I told you was ready for professional input, wasn't actually.")

I advised him that if all he was interested in was this story, he should find a writer and work with him; or, if he really wanted to be a writer, start at the beginning and take some classes, and start studying seriously.

And you know what? I shouldn't have bothered. Because for all the hair I pulled out, for all the weight and seriousness I gave his request for a real, professional critique, his response was a terse "Thanks for your opinion." And, the inevitable fallout--a week later a mutual friend asked me, "What's this dick move I hear you pulled on Whatsisname?"
So now this guy and his girlfriend think I'm an asshole, and the truth of the matter is, the story really ended the moment he handed me the goddamn synopsis. Because if I'd just said "No" then and there, they'd still think I'm an asshole. Only difference is, I wouldn't have had to spend all that time trying to communicate thoughtfully and honestly with someone who just wanted a pat on the head, and, more importantly, I wouldn't have had to read that godawful piece of shit.

You are not owed a read from a professional, even if you think you have an in, and even if you think it's not a huge imposition. It's not your choice to make. This needs to be clear--when you ask a professional for their take on your material, you're not just asking them to take an hour or two out of their life, you're asking them to give you--gratis--the acquired knowledge, insight, and skill of years of work. It is no different than asking your friend the house painter to paint your living room during his off hours.

There's a great story about Pablo Picasso. Some guy told Picasso he'd pay him to draw a picture on a napkin. Picasso whipped out a pen and banged out a sketch, handed it to the guy, and said, "One million dollars, please."

"A million dollars?" the guy exclaimed. "That only took you thirty seconds!"

"Yes," said Picasso. "But it took me fifty years to learn how to draw that in thirty seconds."

Like the cad who asks the professional for a free read, the guy simply didn't have enough respect for the artist to think about what he was asking for. If you think it's only about the time, then ask one of your non-writer friends to read it. Hell, they might even enjoy your script. They might look upon you with a newfound respect. It could even come to pass that they call up a friend in the movie business and help you sell it, and soon, all your dreams will come true. But me?

I will not read your fucking script.

Josh Olson's screenplay for the film A History of Violence was nominated for the Academy Award, the BAFTA, the WGA award and the Edgar.Link.

Red Letter Day

Can't say much, but today's a big day. After a year of writing and months of pre-production planning, I finally get to direct the pilot webisode for my TV series about the end of the world. We've already lined up the next episode and have two more slotted after that. All different directors, different writers, and different characters. I know the idea is highly scalable because everyone I speak to about it gets excited about their own take on the concept. When we get enough episodes in the can and launch our web site, I'll lay it all out. Until then, I'll be posting production pics from the set on this blog, on Facebook and via Twitter.

Crossing my fingers that all goes well today, especially the air conditioning. Nothing's more miserable than working on a film without functional AC between takes...

A romantic drama... about chess?

I had a small epiphany last week. I have neglected my writing. Sure, I write reams of stuff, but it's either business plan writing, blogs, IMs, emails, tweets, or Facebook status updates, but for over a year, none of it has been the soul-nourishing fiction writing. I miss that.

So I kick-started a story I've been thinking about this last year. It's a romantic drama set in the world of chess. That might sound pretty boring to some people, but I like to think of it as a sports film in the tradition of Wind. You don't have to know much about sailing to get wrapped up in Wind, and though the rules of chess remain firmly in the realm of the metaphysical, I do have some ideas on how to position chess in a far more appealing setting.

I'm already on page 9 of the first draft, which is 10% of a typical script. Watch this space!

Piracy is a Hydra

I went to a workshop on copyright the other night. It was extremely informative, but even the lawyer giving the lecture acknowledged that something major needed to be done to address the current situation of massive pirated downloads. Having worked as counsel for Tower Records, she represented them in that famous lawsuit against Napster because Napster had been dumb enough to specify in their business plan, "We're going to put companies like Tower Records out of business." Well, Napster went under, but then so did Tower Records. Ironically, Napster was reincarnated under a subscription-based model.

One attendee mentioned The Pirate Bay, which is an anti-copyright organization run out of Stockholm, Sweden. The Pirate Bay hosts a server indexing all BitTorrent files currently available, which means that if you go to their web site, you can find an "index" link to any film, movie, or song they have. When you use BitTorrent on that index link, it finds all the people who have a small fraction of that song on their computers and assembles all those parts into a complete file for you to watch or listen to. This is called, "hyperdistribution". As an American, by using BitTorrent, you have almost certainly infringed the copyright of the artists and their producers... but that doesn't seem to stop anyone from doing it. The Pirate Bay has gotten a lot of heat from the MPAA and record companies, and their offices were even raided by Swedish police in 2006. After that raid, however, The Pirate Bay was up and running again only three days later.

A few months ago, I discovered a site that goes a step farther—Watch-Movies.net. You don't even need BitTorrent to use this site. All you do is go to their site, type in the movie you want to see, and find the file that works the best for you. Invariably, these files are made from illegal camcorders in movie theatres, so you can see films still in general release. The quality is not always high, but if you're willing to sacrifice quality, then you can see practically any movie you want, for free, as long as you have access to the internet. Even though watch-movies.net stopped working quite suddenly (due to someone complaining, no doubt), Watch-movies-links.net Watch-Movies-online.tv Watchmovieslinksonline.com was started up not long thereafter.

A Whois lookup on Watch-movies-links.net returned this:

Registrant:
Name: Private Protection Co.LTD
Organization: Private Protection Co.LTD.
Address: NO.1111 Chaoyang Road, Beijing
City: Beijing
Province/state: BJ
Country: CN
Postal Code: 100000

Administrative Contact:
Name: Private Protection Co.LTD. Zhuhai Branch
Organization: Private Protection Co.LTD.
Address: NO.1 Meihua Road
City: Zhuhai
Province/state: GD
Country: CN
Postal Code: 519000
Email: ad9ad10c6983b7ffe00bb2a6fac1fdf4@domain-private.com

Dispute Contact:
Name: Todaynic.com,Inc.
Organization: Todaynic.com,Inc.
Address: 6B XIHAI Building, No.221 Renmin E Road, Xiangzhou District,
City: Zhuhai
Province/state: GD
Country: CN
Postal Code: 519000
Phone: +86.756-2281763
Nameserver Information:
ns3.01isp.com
ns4.01isp.net

As expected, Watch-Movies-Links.net is based in China, one of the largest violators of copyright. In doing research for my movie business plan, I learned China permits only 20 foreign movies to be shown annually in their country. If the tables were turned, and the best movies were always made in China, and the American government said I could only see 20 foreign movies per year—of which only a fraction were Chinese—I'm sure that I, too, would be a pirate without any ethical reservations. Since China is still under the yolk of communism, an ideology which divorces the individual from private property, I'm unsurprised when I hear Chinese citizens (proudly) call their country, "The nation of fake."

The ability for companies to brazenly violate copyright reminds me of the Hydra from Ancient Greek mythology. Hercules' Second Labor was to kill the Hydra, but "upon cutting off each of its heads, he found two grew back, an expression of the hopelessness of such a struggle". In this case, the MPAA, music companies, and the world's police are Hercules, and the Hydra is both the Pirates and the consumers who use BitTorrent. Try as they might, authorities can't seem to kill hyperdistribution. Shut down Napster? Here's BitTorrent. Shut down The Pirate Bay? They're up three days later. Shut down Watch-Movies.net? They switch domains. Sue consumers? You get a consumer backlash.

Why does piracy continue to flourish despite the continued assault from authorities? Because piracy at its core isn't a legal or technical matter, and thus cannot be solved with legal or technical tools. Piracy is in its essence a social problem only catalyzed by an unenforceable (and thus unrealistic) legal code and an astonishingly efficient delivery system. Rampant piracy is really just a symptom of users who want to consume content, and who aren't particularly interested in the hassle of paying for it. Sure, if it's easier to find content and pay for it than to download it over BitTorrent, they'll pay (thus the success of iTunes). But here's the bitter pill nobody wants to swallow: if a user goes out of their way to watch a pirated copy, they probably weren't a paying customer to begin with. Far from being a curse, users who watch pirated shows and movies and listen to pirated songs possess one unique benefit—a user who watches or listens to a pirated copy might like it enough to buy it on CD or DVD and/or recommend it to others... which is impossible if they never even watched or listened to it.

Sites like Hulu.com and ABC.com with its own media viewer show how the entertainment industry is evolving to come to viewers. Instead of not showing content online and "forcing" viewers into downloading episodes illegally, they're creating user-friendly parameters to make it easier for people to get the content they want, whenever they want it. The theory goes something like, if they're going to dally about with a mistress, at least we want to control who and where that mistress is... because we can make money off of that.

Lawrence Lessig makes an excellent point about copyright. The way the law is currently set up makes it too hard for providers to let users share, remix or use content. In an internet digital culture where sharing is the norm, copyright law is so restrictive that it's now stifling creativity. That's why I've become a fan of the Lessig's Creative Commons License.

My friend Nik said it best when talking about the pervasiveness of spam: "As long as you have a backwater country that doesn't crack down on spammers, you're always going to have spam. The only way to really fight spam is to manage it." Maybe one day, every country in the world will indeed have a police authority able and willing to protect the rights of every content producer around the world. I fear, though, that such a day will be long after my children have already grown up... and during that time, our culture will have since become accustomed to violating copyright as the norm.

Photography is your PAL

Today, I checked out InkTip's "produced films" page and found this disheartening snippet:

Juan Frausto of Vendetta Pictures has commenced principle photography on the horror feature ‘RoadKill,’ which was written by InkTip scribe David Zagorski...

Even in the film business, I see everyone confuse "principle" for "principal", almost as often as confusing "it's" for "its", but not often enough that I'm sure which version is the correct usage. Google searches inevitably lead me to Paul Brians' amazing grammar cornucopia, Common Errors in English. Indeed:

Generations of teachers have tried to drill this one into students’ heads by reminding them, “The principal is your pal.” Many don’t seem convinced. “Principal” is a noun and adjective referring to someone or something which is highest in rank or importance. (In a loan, the principal is the more substantial part of the money, the interest is—or should be—the lesser.) “Principle” is only a noun, and has to do with law or doctrine: “The workers fought hard for the principle of collective bargaining.” Link.

However, I did hear someone on NPR yesterday say "heart-rending", so I'm not worried about the decline of Western civilization just yet.

Economy of words

Here are some tips which may improve your writing. I use these tips myself because my first drafts are gut-wrenchingly awful.

"To be" or not "to be". In most cases, you can convert present progressive tense (I am seeing) to present tense (I see) with little effect to its final meaning. I'm all for nuanced writing, but being shorter and direct is usually more powerful.

The "I"s have it. How many of your sentences start with "I"? How many of your paragraphs start with "I"? Can you rework the sentence? Dare to be clever... but not too clever that you're writing in Esperanto.

Starting to try. Why say, "he starts to walk" when you could say, "he walks"? Why say, "he tries to drive" when you can say, "he drives"?

Boil it down. What are you really saying? How many extra, empty words are crammed into each sentence? Harrison Ford's long speech in The Fugitive was pared down to, "I didn't kill my wife!" and Tommy Lee Jones' reply, "I don't care."

Terminate your qualifiers. Much lost verbiage is in adverbs and adjectives. Do you need "quite", "very", "actually", or "really"? For specific adverbs like "honestly" or "stupidly", migrate those descriptions into the action and describe that with verbs instead.

Terminate your articles. Do you really need to use "a" or "the" all the time?

Specific action. Why say "move" when you could say "transfer", "migrate", "nudge", or even "insinuate"? Each word is a chance to push your story closer to the end... so use each chance judiciously.

Keep tempo. Writing words is like writing music, and—like good music—we know good writing when we read it: long movement, long movement, short movement. Long long, short. Long long. Short. Short. Loooooooong. Short short short. Ever wonder why they taught us poetry in high school?

Punctuate. Ellipses (...), em dashes (—), [as opposed to en dashes (–), used for spanning years like 1986–2008, and hyphens (-), used for compound adjectives like 'heart-rending'], semi-colons, colons, and apostrophes are all useful in spicing up flaccid paragraphs.

Write as you say, or as you think. Be true to mimicking your inner or outer voice and others will "hear" your words better.

Using these simple tricks, here's a random passage to illustrate my points. First draft:

I saw the kids yesterday in the park. They were playing some sort of silly game which I could not remember. I walked down to get a closer look and they didn't seem to mind. I love watching kids play. They have such freedom of expression. They rejoice in simply being.

Wow: ulcer-worthy. Here's the next draft:

Kids in the park yesterday. Some silly game—couldn't remember. I got closer and they didn't mind. When kids play, they're free... they rejoice in being.

It's not Fawlkner, but it's more efficient and less stilted. A few passes more and I might concoct this svelte passage:

Kids in the park yesterday... watching them, my epiphany: they rejoice in being.

Final tip:

Leave them laughing. When the story is finished, get off the stage!

Hodge

There are maybe 25–30 blogs on my Google Reader, but only one blog inspires me to read every single post and you'll soon see why.

I've been a faithful reader of daisy's blog for over two years, maybe three. daisy's tone is typically whimsical and irreverent, but occasionally insightful, too. And it is always extremely well-written... unlike the scores of mediocre bloggers/writers out there, daisy has a gifted ear for pacing—none of her blog posts drone on in perpetuity because she knows pricisely when to stop.

The following is a long post for daisy, but so moving that it brought me to tears. I repost it here in its entirety because it is just that damned good. Thanks, daisy.

Hodge: A Damn Fine Name for A Damn Fine Cat

I was in a wretched mood yesterday. It started with an annoying email first thing in the morning and just progressed from there. It seemed no one was listening, even fewer people were understanding, and I was on the verge of a full-fledged meltdown. When a co-worker mimicked the way I said "Hi-eee" when I passed him coming into the office, I almost through my 6" Subway sandwich at his head. And he's really a nice guy. Who absolutely does not deserve spicy mustard and pickles slammed into his face. Or shredded lettuce in his hair. Or slimy turkey stuck to his t-shirt. (Plus, I was hungry.)

And no matter what I did, my day just keep getting worse. After the MUNI driver kicked me off the train ("THIS IS THE LAST STOP! PLEASE EXIT THE TRAIN!") and then drove back in the direction I was going (I get on at the last/first stop), I seriously started crying. It was all just too much.

I was sending text messages that only a crazy girl would send. "Sorry I took my bad mood out on you." followed less than five minutes later with, "Not that you GIVE A SHIT anyway!" I saw the mental hospital in my immediate future. I was on a one-way train to Crazy Town. Except the FUCKING TRAIN LEFT WITHOUT ME.

So I did what any girl would do and asked my best friend to come into the city and have dinner with me at Zazie. I figured if my best friend and Zazie couldn't get me out of my funk, at least I would know my only other option was shock therapy. Which, frankly, was starting to sound rather appealing.

But dinner was good. And I decided to hold off on the straight jacket and padded cell for at least another day. And I was tired and sated and feeling lucky to at least have one friend who was willing to sit there and listen. Even though I was telling the same sob story for the seventeenth time.

After dinner, Maura drove me back up the hill and came to a stop in front of my building. "What's that?" she asked and pointed to what looked like some kind of bag moving in the street.

"I think it's just a bag or something," I said.

But she thought it was something else, so we drove up a few yards to investigate.

And it wasn't a bag. Nor was it a raccoon. It was someone's kitty. Who had just been hit by a driver who didn't even bother to stop.

For once, I'll spare you the excessive details, but I put my hand on him and saw that he was still breathing... but clearly he was taking his last breaths. So I did the only thing I could do - pet his warm, soft body so that he'd know he wasn't alone - until he finally stopped struggling and died.

Someone called Animal Control. And while we waited for them to show up, Maura and I directed traffic and buses around the cat's limp body. The police showed up and told us not to touch him, but just to keep doing what we were doing until someone from Animal Control got there. And so despite the exasperated looks, and the one driver who actually sped up and flashed his brights at us, we stood in the middle of the street and pointed the cars to "go around." We couldn't save the cat, but there was no way were going to let him get run over again.

About twenty minutes or so later, a neighbor came to see what was going on. They recognized the cat and said they thought their neighbor would know to whom he belonged.

Within moments, a barefoot couple in their pajamas ran out into the street sobbing. The man scooped the cat up and cradled him in his arms while they both cried. "Oh honey, oh honey," he kept saying to his wife who was too shocked to speak.

We let them grieve alone for a few minutes, but finally approached them to tell them what had happened. We apologized again and again. "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry there wasn't more we could do."

But they were grateful we'd been there with him. That someone had comforted him while he was dying. And that we'd protected his body from being hit again.

We told them Animal Control was on their way. And they sat on the sidewalk, holding their dead cat, and crying.

"I'm so sorry," I apologized one last time. "I'm so sorry there wasn't more we could do."

"You did everything you could," the man said. "And we're so thankful for that."

"What was his name?" I asked.

"Hodge."

"Bye Hodge," I said. "You were a good cat."

And I'll admit what I'm about to say next is incredibly selfish, but as I walked away, leaving the barefoot couple in the shadows clinging to their dead cat, tears streaming down my face, it hit me how wrong it was of me to waste an entire day of my life with a terrible mood that affected everyone around me. And how it just wasn't worth it. And how every moment spent moping or pouting is a moment I'm not living my life in the way that I want to.

And it's sad that it took such a terrible accident to remind me of that, but sometimes I'm stubborn and shitty that way.

And Hodge was a good kitty. Who was clearly so loved and will be missed by everyone who knew him. And even though I met him under tragic circumstances, I just know now that I am lucky to have met him at all.

Zak Penn's 8 lessons

Some useful movie tips from a guy I sat next to in 6th grade English class:

Zak Penn's Incredible Journey
by Zak Penn | Published June 13, 2008

Sure Zak Penn can write you a surefire blockbuster. He has proven that time and again with X-Men, Elektra, Fantastic Four. But that’s not all he can do. The Grand, an improvisational comedy set in the world of competitive poker that he wrote and directed, contains neither a superhero nor a highfalutin special effect, and is on DVD now. And with his long-awaited adaptation of The Incredible Hulk in theaters now, MM asked the in-demand scribe to share the “things he’s learned” in the business.

1. On the blockbuster summer movies, writing subplots that intersect with the main plot in the third act can be the difference between a good script and a bad one.

2. One of the most important qualities a director needs to have is stamina. Physical and mental stamina. Someone who knows him once commented that Peter Jackson’s ability to work effectively 16 hours a day is what separates him from his contemporaries. All the skill and intelligence in the world won’t help you if you are sick or asleep when the production needs you.

3. Comedic actors need not know they are funny in order to be funny.

4. Always stop arguing when someone says “yes.”

5. Directors are often better at taking notes than writers are. “That’s a good idea, I’ll do my best to address it” is a far more effective response than arguing.

6. Having a respected director on your set as an actor helps keep the cast and crew in line.

7. Directors should be good at firing people quicker. The faster you can pull the trigger on someone that’s not working out, the better off you’ll be.

8. The first 30 pages are the most important part of a screenplay, but the last 30 minutes are the most important part of a movie.

Taking Notes

You write your script. You measure out each word. You get the flow just right. Finally, when the spell check comes up clean, you scan everything to make sure each page contains a delicate balance of colons, semi-colons, em dashes and ellipses. You're done. Your script is a masterpiece.

You print and bind the crisp white pages, present them to the director, who has them forwarded along to the actors.

And then the lead actor throws your script in the trash.

As a writer, you like to believe you have grokked your characters better than anyone. And as a screenwriter, you're especially sensitive to lesser-than feather merchants trying to improve on what already works. Unfortunately, because the film business is political, you will usually have to choose your battles. But when a lead actor throws your script in the trash, it's time to pay attention because—guess what?—the actor has to say the lines you've written and, nine times out of ten, probably groks your character even better than you think you do.

This happened on Iron Man, in fact:

Q: Robert, is it true you threw the script against the wall a lot?
Downey Jr.: Sometimes the writers wrote stuff that was smart and cool and perfect, and other times I would go to them with ideas. By the time we got to act three I was like, I can't have this confrontation scene with Pepper: "But Pepper, can't you understand that I've changed? I've got to do right!" Unh-uh. We rewrote the scene, and I was scribbling it out on cue cards.

Gwyneth Paltrow: Robert would saunter in with his 88-liter coffee and his sunglasses, take the [pages], and literally ball them up and whip them against the wall and be like, "This is the worst scene I've ever read. We're not doing this." Robert cannot say something that he doesn't feel.

Q: How did the writers react to all that?
Downey Jr.: My thing is we should all feel free to ball each other's junk up and throw it against the wall because we're not here to serve a legal document, if you ask me. I don't care who you are or what you just won or what you just wrote. I don't think "genius" and "superhero script" belong in the same sentence. That said, those guys are awesome, and I really learned a lot. Link.

That's the right attitude, in my opinion (albeit it might have been done more diplomatically). As a screenwriter, your master is not the director, producer, or even the financier—your master is the audience. Your duty is to do the best work possible and if that means rewriting something on the fly by collaborating with a lead actor, so be it.

Anthony Simcoe, the actor playing Ka D'Argo on the sci-fi TV show Farscape, once asked series co-creator David Kemper if he would mind if Simcoe changed a line in the script. Kemper smiled and said, "Only if you make it better." Simcoe was impressed—in most TV shows, any line change would have to have been approved up and down a network's hierarchy. On Farscape, Simcoe's suggestions were approved 7 out of 10 times and when you watch the series, Simcoe's character is by far one of the most entertaining.

The point is that the (screen)writer doesn't/can't always have the best ideas, and writers should always be open to others' suggestions as opportunities to improve upon the initial concept. If you don't like the "stupidity" of outside interference, you might be happier self-publishing novels, writing for the theatre, or creating machinima.

A Door in the Mind

I have two seminal reading experiences in my lifetime. The first was sitting on my father's lap at age 5 and reading a book aloud. He asked me to read the same sentence without moving my lips... and I did. I knew I was doing something different but might not have sensed its true import had my father not shouted out with glee.

The other experence came about a decade later. I was an awkward teenager and hadn't yet found a rudder to steer toward my interests. My school had given me a long list of books to read over the summer, but those book lists were always a chore to be done. I simply didn't get reading. It wasn't fun.

And then my older cousin Chris threw me a book. "You might enjoy reading this." It was Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous With Rama. As I turned the pages, I felt myself completely transported into a world unknown, full of surprises and bizarre mysteries. The word "awestruck" probably best typifies my experience reading that book. (I understand why now—that book won the Campbell, Hugo, Jupiter, and Nebula Awards!)

Not long after I had finished Rama, I found myself constantly skulking around bookstores for my next fix. Clarke's Rama led to Issac Asimov's Foundation trilogy and robot short stories, which led to Piers Anthony's XANTH fantasy novels, which led to Whitley Striber's The Wolfen, and so on. By my early 20s, I had finally migrated to Heinlein's Future History stories and novels.

And none of that would have happened without Clarke's marvelous story about a massive ship in space whose inhabitants are inexplicably missing.

Thank you, Mr. Clarke. Thank you for opening a door in my mind.

Arthur C. Clarke
1917–2008

George Lucas on Charlie Rose

One of the best hours I ever spent watching TV. Lucas has a lot of insight to impart about the nature and traditions of cinema, among other things. The part I most remember about this interview was Lucas talking about fresco painting vs. oil painting (around 28 minutes). A must watch:

Tuesday, 7PM: Open for Business

As of 7PM yesterday, the WGA strike is officially over. This is great news—nay, fantastic news—and deserves some closing remarks.

Why did the strike happen at all? How could it have gotten so bad that writers thought their chances of getting a better deal would require walking out on work altogether? Why did the AMPTP offer so many rollbacks and no residuals on the internet before the strike, only to cave at the end of the strike?

Here's what I think...

Hollywood moguls were under pressure with their Wall Street investors to perform financially. The AMPTP was watching an emerging new media—the internet—where they they had been labeling webisodes and mobisodes as "promotionals" to encourage viewers to get hooked on a given series. Once a full episode had been broadcast, it was cheaper to re-broadcast those episodes and also label them "promotionals". Because webisdoes, mobisodes, and full-episode internet broadcasts were considered promotionals, aka "freebies", nobody can be paid from them or the AMPTP loses money.

Since the writers went on strike in 1988 and were convinced then to accept a debilitating residual rate on video rentals for VHS (the AMPTP's tack then was, "we don't know yet if there will be any money in home video rentals or DVD sales, but don't worry, we'll take care of you next time..."), the AMPTP thought they could pull the same stunt again. After all, the WGA is a guild, i.e., a loosely knit, geographically decentralized group, not like a company of workers, so if a strike occurs, it should be easy to whittle down the writers' collective resolve as the months would drag on. And to remind the writers on who's the boss, the AMPTP would start by offering writers 34 pages of rollsback on pension, health care, etc. so writers have to claw past all those rollbacks first and not have enough gumption left over to dispute the Big Kahuna, internet residuals. Essentially, divide & conquer.

What they didn't count on was:

1. Writers have a long-term memory. The DVD medium for digital entertainment is already on its way out, soon to be replaced by the internet, and writers haven't forgotten how they got screwed the last time around with the residual rates for home video rentals and DVD sales. Like an abused lover, writers grew some self-respect since the last strike.
   
2. Writers had the high moral ground. Writers weren't asking for a lot, just to receive residuals as authors of their work as if they were book authors and songwriters. Even then, they weren't asking for a set fee, but a percentage of profits—"If you don't get paid, we don't get paid." Writers slept the sleep of The Pure; their resolve was absolute.
   
3. Writers are writers. The AMPTP might have waged an effective war in the trade magazines, but writers make their money with words, so over time, the court of public opinion swayed in their favor. It's kind of absurd for the AMPTP to tell Wall Street investors they expect to make tons of money off new media but tell writers there's not enough money to pay residuals fees to compliment meager upfront costs.

The strike's over. United we stood, united we won.

EPILOGUE
Every battle has its compromises and some items were left on the table. The WGA wanted to bring reality TV writers under the WGA umbrella, but had to cut that lifeline, for now. Most of us would assume reality TV shows don't even use writers... I mean, it's reality TV—what's there to write? While that's true to an extent, the AMPTP does hire "Consulting Producers" or "Story Editors", which is basically the AMPTP trying to give a title to these people which doesn't include the word "writer" for fear the WGA would try to have them covered, which means the AMPTP would then have to pay benefits, pensions, meaning less profit. But what does a "Consulting Producer" or "Story Editor" actually do? They create situations (scenes), they might help cast talent that best interact with each other (character creation), and develop each episode's rough storyline (story arcs). So in many respects, these people are a new breed of writer.

Thus, they also ought to be covered by the WGA.

But you can't win them all. Looking forward to 2011...

Selecting a Screenplay

This is one of my favorite stories from NYU film school.

Our screenwriting teacher, Mary, used to write for a half hour drama TV show in the 60s. One day, her boss pulled her aside. "Janice chooses the scripts we shoot every week, but she's out sick today. Can you fill in for her?"

"Me? I don't really know the first thing about sorting through scripts."

He leaned closer. "Trust me, it's easy. Come on, I'll show you." He led her down the hallway to the Script Room.

The Script Room was a smallish room, probably 10 by 10 feet, but felt much smaller because it was stacked from floor to ceiling with screenplays in US Letter-sized envelopes. Mary reeled back, eyes wide. "My God, there must be 10,000 scripts in here... there's no way I could read all of them!"

He smiled. "Don't worry. Take this script, for example." He grabbed the first envelope in arm's reach, raising his eyebrows at its 2 inch thickness. "Too many pages. If 1 page is 1 minute of screen time, and we only do 30 minute dramas, this is War and Peace." He threw it out.

"You're not even going to open it?"

"What for? They obviously sent it to the wrong producers." He picked up another script. "And this one has a coffee stain on the outside. This tells me, 'breakfast writer'—we don't work with breakfast writers." Trash.

He held up another, gently bouncing it in the air. "Ah, this one is about right."

"Sorry?"

"The weight. If the envelope is the right thickness and the writer used the correct paper stock for a 30 page script, then the envelope should be a certain weight." He set it aside. "This one is probably a legitimate script. Next you open the envelope. If it's not typed—"

"—I throw it away."

"Right." He picked up another envelope and opened it, smiling. "Blue cover", he said, and slid the script back inside, dropping it in the bin. "If they don't use screenwriting format, throw it away. If they use binder clips instead of brads, throw it away. If they use 3 brads instead of 2, throw it away. If it's a comedy, throw it away. After all that, you should only have about 100 scripts left. Of those 100, read the first 3 pages of each, which is about 10% of the entire script. If you're not immediately taken in by those 3 pages, then you're reading 3 minutes of dead screen time—which means viewers will have changed channels, meaning: throw it away. Finally, you'll end up with 10 scripts you've read from page to page and you'll love only 5 or 6. Of those, recommend your favorite 3 scripts and we'll choose 1 to produce."

Moral to the story: when submitting a screenplay or a manuscript, no problem is too small to fix. Typos on the first page are strictly verboten!

A cause worth dying for

A man without a cause worth dying for is not fit to live.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.

I've been trying to put into words, succinctly, exactly why the WGA strike is a battle worth fighting. It becomes especially difficult to justify when you see people losing their jobs because of the strike. Worse, they're usually not even writers, just innocent victims caught in a crossfire.

And then I read this bit by John August and I felt he had reached into my body and strummed a perfect harmonic (boldface and italics are mine):

I got an email yesterday from a friend (and USC classmate) who works as an editor on a TV show. He was upset that in my blogging about the strike, I hadn’t talked about the many below-the-line crew members who have lost (or will soon be losing) their jobs as a result of production stopping.... many of the non-writing, non-acting folks who are integral to making movies and television feel that the WGA was cavalier in calling the strike.

The thing is, we’ll never know.... The better question — the question I asked my friend the editor — is whether there’s anything he’d strike for, even knowing that it would (at least in the short term) hurt him, his colleagues and others inside and outside of his industry. If the answer is “no,” that a strike is never an option, then he should be prepared to lose his health, pension, and other benefits. Because that’s how they were won.

P.O.V. I.S.P.

This chant heard today at NBC's picket line:
"On an Internet download where if a writer doesn't get paid, it's called PROMOTIONAL.
"On an Internet download where the studio doesn't get paid, it's called PIRACY."
Link.

From the Horses' Mouths*

* no WGA writers were used to script the following interviews.

Which pencil goes down?

Writers can write spec scripts, but they have to be truly spec scripts—outside of any contractual relationship, expressed or implied, with a producer. —WGA spokesman Gregg Mitchell

In the midst of this writers' strike, many writers are still unclear what they can and can't write.

Take this L.A. Times article:

"Surely, we can write a spec, right?" asked Tim Fall, another WGA screenwriter and actor....

A few minutes later, Fall [had] resolved the spec issue, sort of. "My lawyer e-mailed me," he said, holding up his BlackBerry. The verdict, he said, was that writers "are not enjoined" from writing spec scripts, but that it was nonetheless "potentially a gray zone."

Great. Big help.

What are the guidelines in this new war zone? For starters, the WGA has drawn up its own Strike Rules:

1. Stop writing for all struck companies immediately.
   
2. Do not deliver or submit any literary material or any documents to a struck company.
   
3. Do not negotiate with a struck company.
   
4. Notify struck companies to return your literary material.
   
5. Do not discuss future employment, sales or options with a struck company.
   
6. Do not negotiate with a struck company to obtain financing for development or production of a project.
   
7. Honor all Guild picket lines and do not enter the premises of any struck company.
   
8. File with the Guild copies of all unproduced literary material written for a struck company ("script validation program").
   
9. Inform the Guild of the name of any writer you have reason to believe is engaged in any strike breaking activity or scab writing.
   
10. You have the obligation to picket and/or perform other strike support duties.
    
11. Do not attempt to negotiate a settlement of the strike with any struck company.

That sounds to me like WGA writers are still free to write whatever they want as long as it isn't intended to be for pay. You can write a spec screenplay for yourself, but—for the duration of the strike—not with the intent to sell that spec to anyone in particular. Obviously, that's cold comfort to serial TV writers, but feature writers can dig out their wildest script ideas and go crazy. These scripts might get sold one day, but they're not being written to be sold. A hazy difference, perhaps, but an important one. Writers have writing in their veins... telling a writer not to write at all is like telling the sun not to rise.

The WGA also has this to say about non-members:

The Guild does not have the authority to discipline non-members for strike breaking and/or scab writing. However, the Guild can and will bar that writer from future Guild membership. This policy has been strictly enforced in the past and has resulted in convincing many would-be strike breakers to refrain from seriously harming the Guild and its members during a strike. Therefore, it is important for you to report to the Guild the name of any non-member whom you believe has performed any writing services for a struck company and as much information as possible about the non-member's services.

In a union-happy town like L.A., having your WGA membership barred is pretty bad news. Some writers are cavalier about crossing the picket line, which is highly risky, because if the WGA doesn't unconditionally and indefinitely welcome them into the picket line (as wise strikers would do), it's career suicide.

Why Writers Must Strike

WGA member Harold Gould explains, without hyperbole or venom, why writers must strike:

Monday, 12:01 AM: Closed For Business

As I type this, negotiators for the Writers Guild of America sit opposite negotiators for the American Motion Picture and Television Producers. Their meeting will hopefully avert a crippling industry-wide strike. We'll see how that plays out.

I hate strikes. I do. I loathe them. In my experience, strikes usually incur an unreasonable degree of collateral damage to the faultless public. No matter how you slice that, strikes typically fuel a venomous word of mouth from which few participants ever totally recover. On top of that, strikes have always felt to me like a legal equivalent to bullying... and blackmail. And I'm not even a dues-paying WGA member, so this writer's strike doesn't really affect me. Or does it?

I do get offered film writing gigs of all sorts.

Thus, after having studied what writers are fighting to achieve with this strike, I can't, with a clear conscience, accept any writing contracts from producers for the entire duration of a WGA strike.

Writers are not asking for the moon, and it seems like they've taken every step to appeal to the AMPTP's common sense. However, when logic fails...

Pencils down means pencils down.

Respectfully, then, this is for all producers out there: for the duration of a WGA strike, I cannot accept any writing work for motion pictures, including: script & story consultation, feature script writing & rewriting, outlines, treatments, log lines, dialog polishes, character bios. Nothing. My writing factory will be closed for business until further notice, which is a polite way of saying, "Please don't ask me to do any writing work." It will just result in an awkward conversation as I offer a ham-fisted explanation why a non-WGA member is essentially joining a WGA picket line.

Perhaps my response would be this simple: one day I will be a WGA member and on that Day of Days, I couldn't proudly stand beside my WGA colleagues with the knowledge that, in their greatest hour of need, I was a scab undermining everything they risked their livelihoods to secure. Most important of all, one day, all the benefits the WGA are fighting for now, will benefit me, so accepting work during a writers' strike would be like shooting myself in the face.

If this morning's negotiations fail, the WGA's strike is scheduled to begin Monday, November 5, 2007 at 12:01 AM.