Living the Romantic Comedy

Million Dollar Screenplay Tips

In my Writers' Program courses at UCLA Extension there's all kinds of personalities, skill-sets, and intentions, within the same class, but some pre-pro writers are more dedicated than others.  So I've come up with a method to deal with latecomers.  On the first night of a course, I announce that I'll begin each class at 7:00 p.m. sharp by sharing "secrets of writing a million dollar spec script."  Those who get to class on time get to hear these tips - those who come even five minutes later miss out. 

I'm happy to say that my current crop of students tend to be prompt.  And it's occurred to me that these "secrets" - culled from my job of reading spec scripts and doing notes on projects in development for a major studio - might be of interest to Living the RomCom readers.

Instead of one long, long post, I'm going to deliver these tips in bite-sized blog pieces every day this week - five tips, Monday through Friday.  They represent aspects of craft and creativity which scripts that sell have in common.

Tip # 1: Selling screenplays are clearly, vividly rooted in their star role's point of view.

You cannot read the first page of Susannah Grant's Erin Brockovich (revised by Richard LaGravanese) without knowing that this is Erin's movie - for that matter, Erin's point of view is equally obvious on nearly every page after that.  Yes, it's a well-written script, period, and a great character - great enough to win Julia Roberts her Oscar - but a primary reason the thing got made (despite being a project that, in its subject matter, did not have a "mainstream hit" vibe) is that a major star like Julia fell in love with it.

Why?  One obvious reason is that every scene in the script is written from Erin's POV.  I don't mean literally: we're in standard screenplay format third person throughout.  But every scene gets Erin's emotions and thoughts across.  Every scene is conceived in terms of "What is Erin discovering and what are we learning about Erin?"  Every scene gives us Erin's experience.

In the opening sequence, Erin interviews for a job.  Dr. Jaffe, her would-be employer, clearly doesn't know what to do with her, and as he prepares to turn her down, he begins: "Look..."  The narrative following the line reads:

Beat.  By Erin's expression, she knows what's coming.

In the scene directly following, outside on the street, we read:

Erin is finishing a cigarette.  Her face has fallen - the enthusiasm and spirit she showed in the interview are now replaced by a desperate type of concern.  She takes a final puff...

If you were to remove both lines - the indication of Erin' reaction to being rejected, and the description of what shows in her face, on the street - you'd be removing our chance to know Erin and be in this experience with her.  It would be minimal, technically correct screenwriting - but it wouldn't create that "we are her" feeling.

After nearly 20 years of working inside and outside of the studio system on thousands of projects, I've come to firmly believe that the most important goal of a spec script is to get the reader to empathize and identify with the protagonist.  Accomplish that and any reader will go along for the ride.  And any major actor reading the thing will think, "This is my movie."

Writing for a star makes sense.  Stars want to play parts where the character's purpose is clear and strong, and the character's emotions are palpable and vivid.  These are people that people relate to.  We enjoy being with them and often we want to be them.  In great scripts, the protagonist's inner life is clear and vivid on the page.

Almost every selling spec script I can think of (that I read) has this quality.  The same basic principal holds true even for ensemble films; Rodrigo Garcia's forthcoming Mother and Child (which got Naomi Watts, Annette Benning, and Kerry Washington on board) is a script that makes the reader feel intimately involved with each of its major characters' inner lives.

Root your story in your protagonist's point of view.  Every reader will understand the story with an extra level of clarity, and every leading actor who reads it will know that the movie is about... them.

Shane Black Confronts Your Fears

I had the great good fortune to have screenwriter/director Shane Black visit my Writing the Character-Driven Screenplay class this past week.  The creator of the Lethal Weapon franchise, he also wrote The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight, and the by-now beloved cult fave Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

Revered by those of us who know how hard it is to write good, character-driven action fare, he also became infamous, back in the day, for having committed the crime of being one of the most highly paid scribes in Hollywood history. 

Shane turned out to be an uncommonly generous, vulnerable, honest mensch of a guy.  I got to play James Lipton and ask the questions, and Shane gave us over an hour and half's worth of enlightening answers re: creating memorable characters and crafting effective big screen stories.  A few times in our conversation we talked about digging into one's dark places and dealing with one's fears in the writing process.  The last question of the night came from a student who wanted to know how Shane dealt with such fears - where the fear came from and what it was about.

"For most people, fear is daring to wish for something so bad that it matters to you, and then having that taken away.  Fear is, I'm not going to get the things I want, and I'm gonna lose the things I have already. That's what fear is, to me.  The idea of getting your hopes up? [When I was starting out] I would get my hopes up, and someone would say, What if they just smash you? And then you'll feel worse than ever! And I'd go: Oh, well, I know. I'd rather get my hopes up.

"Here's what the fear does: it's something called 'The Jack Story.' Jack Story's about a guy who's driving and boom, his tire blows out in a rain storm.  By the side of the road, flat.  He sees a farmhouse in the distance with a light on, and he thinks, I don't have a jack, I can't change this tire - but maybe the farmer has one.  So he starts walking through the rain and the mud and after a couple of feet he thinks, Well, wait a minute, what if I get to the farmhouse and the guy doesn't have a jack?  Then I gotta walk all the way back and I'm getting rained on and it's murder.  And he goes, Calm down, it hasn't happened, see what happens, play it by ear, okay?

"So he keeps walking and he thinks, Hmm, what if the farmer has a jack, he does, but I bring it back and it's the wrong kind.  And then I've made this whole trip and the expectations, and it gets ruined, and then I have to go back and I can't even drive - Ohmygod, it's even worse.  He goes: Relax. It hasn't happened, just relax... Three quarters of the way there, he thinks: What if the farmer has a jack, and it's the right kind, but what if he just doesn't want to give it to me, and he says, I don't know you, fuck you, go out in the rain!

"So the point of the story is, by the time he gets to the farmhouse it's like -- "  Shane knocks his fist on the desk.  "The farmer goes, Hello?  And the guy goes: You know what, take your jack and shove it up your ass!"

"Because you have in your head, already scripted, the conversation based on fear, and you've let fear just run rampant...  And I have to remind myself, Stop having conversations that don't exist.  I'll feel like I've talked to someone for an hour, but it's the future - the conversation I would be having, and inventing the things I would say, or I'm going to say.  And then I never have that conversation.  It's just wasted fear time, spent on all the bad things that could happen, instead of the really interesting things that might.

 

"Writing and getting away from your fear, is to me... You know, you might not sell a script.  You might not be good.  You might not this and you might not that.  What's the point in going down that path?  There is none.  I know it's tough to say, 'Don't be afraid,' or 'Think positive,' but...  There really is just no other way to go.  You're up against a wall, you've decided you want to do something, you're having some adversity - you can either play out your hand or quit.  And I suggest that... My career came down to one moment like that.

"I was working on a script called Shadow Company in 1984, and I was on page one, and I showed it to my brother - he hated it.  I sat down and I thought, "I can't do this.  I sat down to write a screenplay - I don't know screenplays, what am I doing, this is so stupid...  And I thought: I don't want to write!  I don't want to do this, I can't.

"I'm a one-finger typist.  And I said - Just do it."  Shane holds his one typing forefinger in the air, and jabs it an invisible keyboard.  "I went, 'The... rain... lashes...  Ground... Bla-bla-blah.  I started typing - I hate this, I hate this, I hate this, I hate this - and all of a sudden, I'm: Huh, okay that's a good line. What would he say there?  Okay, he says this... And three pages later, I had a scene, and it became a script - and it sold, optioned - and it got me Lethal Weapon."

"It came down to this.  I had a piece of paper in a typewriter and my finger poised to hit one key and I couldn't do it, I didn't want to do it all.  All I wanted to do was stop.  And I hit the key.  And now I have a career.  So that's the leap of faith.

"I walked through the fear.  You can walk through anything.  That's the fabulous truth that I've discovered, is that fear never goes away.  But it doesn't stop you from putting one foot in front of the other.  And, the most important realization of all, it can't stop you from being creative.  It can impede you, but it will not stop you from having great ideas.  Fear will do everything except shut you down, mentally.  It can't do that."

 

Classroom photos: Erik Cooper

Yakiimo

"We were in Japan in the wintertime, and we heard this... sound in the night.  We were in Shimoda, which is this tiny little town on the coastline.  And there was this calling, singing in the night..."

Simone sings, a plaintive call in a low, lonely tone:

"Ya-ki-imo-oh, yakiiiiii-mo...  And it sounded almost like the Muslim call to prayer.  Minor, beautiful.  And then we were in Fujisawa, hanging out after the show with the promoter and his girlfriend and we were walking home and everyone was drunk, walking to the train station, and then we heard it again. I was like, 'What is that, Ohmygod what is that sound, what is that singing?' - because it was incredible to hear it again, 'cause - Why would we hear it in this other town? 

"And they were all laughing, because it was this Yakiimo sweet potato truck.  These trucks, they drive around in the wintertime, all over Japan, they have a little fire, a little stove on the back of the truck, and they roast the sweet potatoes and wrap them in newspaper and people eat them, it's like street vendor food.  And they all have these recordings, or they're actually singing it, or each has made their own recording of it, they're all similar but different.  And I remember saying, I'm going to write a song with that in it, and I started to sing what I heard.  It was touching me in some way."

 

"And a year later, it was wintertime here in L.A., and I just sat down and wrote it.  It just sort of came out.  Very simple lyrics... And I felt so ashamed of it.  I still have a weird relationship with this song, like I don't like the recording I made for the record, I keep thinking I should have redone it, when I do it live sometimes it's perfect, and sometimes I'm beating myself up about it...  And when I talked to Bob about it, he said "You're so Japanese!"  Like I'm shameful about this thing: I want to give it to people, but I'm like, Oh, I'm so sorry that it's so simple, or I'm so sorry that it's not right, or... "

Simone has her hands out, cupped, offering - but with her head bowed, as if she'd rather be taking it away.

"But I named the album after it.  There's a theme running through it of longing and nostalgia.  And I feel like the Yakiimo song is some kind of simple distillation of that.  And the people I gave it to, people in Japan who know it, they're really impressed that a Westerner somehow connected with the feeling that they themselves have about the Yakiimo man. 

"To them, yakiimo is the thing you have - it's wintertime, going to school, your mother gives you some money and you get the yakiimo sweet potato and you hold it in your pocket on the way to school and there's this... When you hear the song, to them as well, there's this feeling of nostalgia, childhood, and that kind of loneliness in winter, trying to keep warm, something warm to hold... all of these things are present in it."

Here is the song's video, beautifully animated by Hideyuki Katsumata, and here are a few videos of actual Yakiimo vendors in Japan.

Simone White's new album Yakiimo has just been released in America by Honest Jon's Records.

From Dark to Dawn

In the third season finale of Mad Men, Don Draper, the walking quintessence of ad-manology, has to pitch his formerly taken-for-granted creative exec Peggy on staying with him, and he tells her why he needs her:

There are people out there who buy things, people like you and me.  And something happened.  Something terrible.  And the way that they saw themselves is gone.  And nobody understands that.  But you do.  And that's very valuable.

The speech is a kind of blank verse reiteration of what the series is about, a neat summation of what its auteur Matthew Weiner has understood about America and embodied in the arc of the show this past year.  

"And the way that they saw themselves is gone," says Don, his eyes glistening with the pain of his own private loss, for the Don that was is no more.  Season 3's end - spoilage is unavoidable here - takes a rich, ghastly gleefulness in ripping apart every relationship the series has so carefully woven together for its characters over the last three years.

But then - at the darkest of dark moments - comes the re-bonding dawn of a new enterprise.  There's a weird sort of Christmas-y, It's a Wonderful Life vibe to the place where our mad crew ultimately ends up this time around.  After every American dream has turned nightmare, each archetypal persona punished (the genius a fool, the wife declared whore), we realize we've been witnessing the birth pangs of a new world order.

And this time we'll all get it right, won't we?

We are ruined, and we need to remake ourselves anew.   This is the story the ad men feed upon, and it's the myth that Weiner and his impeccable company have rendered so rightly in this season's canny arc.  

A great ad makes us believe in that new story about who we, however wounded, can be.  A great series is only as great as the boldness of its over-arching storyline, and in this, Weiner has mined a motherlode: reframing its first three years as essentially prologue to The Real Story, the whole Mad Men shebang has been reborn, or rather, revealed for the creation myth that it was apparently intended to be.  

The theme's right there each week in the credit sequence, a choreographed disintegration from the get: everything falls apart, but that falling body never does hit the ground.  The darkness that's swallowed us turns out to be the slick suit jacket of the same executive, renewed, reborn, set back in his chair.

In this regard what really counts is who we've gotten back on board for the next resurrection.  Throughout every Mad Man fan's long, dark wait till the start of Season Four, it'll be heartening to know that the dawn brings Joan.

  

Man at Work

 

Somehow, Living the RomCom got nearly to the end of this year without once mentioning Michael Jackson - no small feat, given the blitzkrieg of overkill information we've been subjected to since his demise this past June (I know, you're thinking: Wait, wait - Michael Jackson died?!  Why didn't anyone say so?).  The jaded Industry Insider demon that lurks within me, hearing that a documentary of his concert rehearsal footage was being rushed into production, heaved a cynical sigh.

Fie on said demon.  I have seen This is It, and I'm here to merely tell you that I'm glad I did.

Once you get past the tearful testimonials from the show's music and dance crew and some slapdash "putting our icon in historical context" footage, you're suddenly thrust into the rehearsal for the show's first number, and here's the thing: When you watch Michael Jackson singing and moving his way through Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' in the privacy of an audience-free rehearsal hall, all the rest of it - the celebrity lunacy, the sordid child abuse trial, the self-induced disfigurement, the everything baggage that usually comes with this superstar's name - falls away.

All you're seeing is an astoundingly talented artist at home (for clearly, the stage was his second, if not his first native residence), doing what only he could do.  And watching this breathes new life into the word awesome.

Honestly, I would rather see Michael Jackson like this - smudged in focus, rough around the edges, half in and out of actual performance mode - than to have seen the finished live show.  Even the circumstantial stylistic choice, born of utility - Jackson is almost always shot in full, with closeups rare, and a lot of hand-held angles - gives you the sense of "the real thing," as opposed to the unreal polished perfection, inevitably crowned with over-the-top pyrotechnics, that a stage show would deliver.

Credit director Kenny Ortega for pulling it together, and for letting This is It, with its few but telling glimpses of MJ-the-human-being, provide us with some sense of intimacy - at least, as close to intimacy as one could get with such a heavily-guarded phenomenon.  His razor-sharp band-leader's acumen (a brief discussion of feel and tempo in The Way You Make Me Feel is priceless), his high-as-the-sky standards (e.g. the awkward apologies about having to conserve his voice), and above all, his joy at being able to dance so well (there are dancers half his age who'll never come close) - all of this leaves you with a credible portrait of an incredibly gifted man at work.

All the glitz that was meant to go with this - the elaborate videos, the sets, the fireworks - is the least interesting and appealing aspect of the experience.  The documentary's low point is a hokey-shlocky "save the world" themed song, all of its bells and whistles being applied to one of Jackson's least effective efforts.  The only moment to savor here comes at the literal end of the performance, when he makes a technical decision about how the last bit should be blocked and handled, and you think - Right! - because the man's showman instincts are so invariably spot on.

There's also a few moments of fun and generosity - watch, for example, as he urges guitarist Orianthi to hit and sustain her highest possible note on Beat It, saying, "This is your moment to shine!" - and of course, there's always a poignant sadness in the subtext.  Why did it all have to go the way it went, given how incandescently alive this man was?

Questions like this have been much on my mind lately in the wake of my father's passing, and they're not really meant to be answered.  As the singer sang, Why? Why?  Tell them that it's human nature. 

Let the critics and historians try to make their sense of Mr. Jackson.  For anybody else asking, What was the deal with this guy?, this sketchy, incomplete, "Michael Unplugged" of an almost-concert film will be one good place to start.