Latest / Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast / IFH 679: Screenwriting a Multi-Million Dollar Movie Franchise with Aaron Mendelsohn

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IFH 679: Screenwriting a Multi-Million Dollar Movie Franchise with Aaron Mendelsohn · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

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  You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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  podcasts, just go to IFAH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Indie
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  Film Hustle Podcast, Episode number six seventy nine. There ain't a rule that
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  says that that dog can't play basketball. Air Bud broadcasting from the back alley
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  in Hollywood. It's the Indie Film Hustle Podcast, where we show you how
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  to survive and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles of the film biz.
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  And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another episode
• 0:38
  of the Indie Film Hustle Podcast. I am your humble host, Alex Ferrari.
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  Today's show is sponsored by Rise of the Film Entrepreneur How to turn your
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  independent film into a profitable business. It's harder today than ever before for independent
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  filmmakers to make money with their films from predatory film distributors ripping them off to
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  into a profitable career. If you're making a feature film, series, or
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  any other kind of video content, the Film Entrepreneur method will set you up
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  for success. The book is available in paperback, ebook, and of course
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  audiobook. If you want to order it, just head over to www dot
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  film bizbook dot com. That's film bizbook dot com. Now, guys,
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  I want you to imagine that you're early on in your career and you write
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  a movie about a dog playing basketball, and you think it's you know,
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  it's a nice little fun thing that maybe there's a couple of movies in it.
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  But then it turns into a phenomenon. And that movie was called Airbud,
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  and that movie turned into I think eleven feature film spinoff from the original
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  Airbud and keeps going on a yearly basis. Well, today's guest is the
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  co creator and screenwriter of Airbud, Aaron Mendelssohn. Now, I wanted to
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  have Aaron on the show not just to talk about Airbud and what was it
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  like to be the dog writer in Hollywood for a little while and what opportunities
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  opened up after he had such a fairly successful film with Airbud, but also
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  wanted him on the show because he wrote this amazing book called The Eleven Fundamental
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  Questions, A Guide to a Better Screenplay. Now, this book is one
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  of those books that kind of gets, you know, kind of passed around
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  in screenwriting circles as just this pretty amazing, simple, straightforward process on getting
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  your screenplay better. I mean, even Billy Ray, the Oscar nominated screenwriter
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  of Captain Phillips, said that this is a very smart way to deconstruct and
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  to demystify the job of screenwriting. So I wanted to have him come in
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  to talk a little bit about that, and of course to discuss Aarbide.
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  So, without any further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Aaron Mendelssohn.
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  I'd like to welcome to show Aaron Mendelsson Man, how are you doing Aaron,
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  I'm good. How are you, Alex? I'm good man, I'm
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  good. Just you know, hanging in here in this uh, this crazy
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  wacky world that we're living in. Yeah, likewise, where are you?
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  You're based em in La and i'mmin Burbank. I'm Burbank alright. So if
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  I threw a rock really hard from Studio City, I might it might land
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  into Luca Lake, and it might land into Luca Lake, and ripples might
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  splash onto me. Yes, exactly. M Yeah, it is a crazy
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  time. I don't I can't even I've talked about it so much as far
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  as the COVID's thing. But you know, we're doing what we can,
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  and the industry is changing on a daily basis. Nobody knows where the hell
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  anything is going. No one ever did, by the way, this is
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  obviously obviously, but now even more so, like before, there was some
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  sort of some sort of guidance, like you knew that on Friday there was
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  going to be released a blockbuster movie in the summer and it was going to
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  generate X amount of dollars more unlikely, we had that certainty. Yes,
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  we don't have that now. No, it's true, but it makes it
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  interesting. I think it it kind of it was good for the world and
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  Hollywood to kind of have a reset, have a little bit of a pause
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  button. You know, it's interesting that the Black Lives Matter issue has really
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  risen to the forefront during its time of reflection and reset, because boy,
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  I'm hearing a lot in the writer's community. How you know, we think
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  we're this progressive, liberal, m egalitarian community and it probably compared to a
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  lot of others, we are, but there's so much even systemic racism I'm
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  biased that happens in the writing community, in the screenwriting community and television writing,
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  that this has given us an opportunity to kind of reflect, yeah,
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  reset and see how we can do things differently going forward. There's there's there's
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  no question about it. Um, I mean, I mean I got growing
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  up. I remember watching you know, I'm a I'm a Latino man,
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  have been all my life and uh and um, I remember watching Luny Tuns
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  and watching Speedy Gonzalez and I'd be just like and I'm never thinking twice about
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  it, but like as I got older, like, whoa, that's pretty
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  messed up. Yeah, it's fairly like okay, all right, um so
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  look, it's it's it's something that's inbred and unbred inness, but it's ingrained
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  in the in the fabric, unfortunately, and something hopefully we'll be able to
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  do it, and we as as filmmakers and writers have the power to really
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  do some change because filmmaking, movies, television, storytelling is the most powerful
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  medium to start that change without questions. So we started off heavy, so
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  we're gonna go a little lighter now. Um so, um, how did
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  you get started in the business? I got started. I knew I was
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  going to be a screenwriter since I was five years old living in Anchorage,
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  Alaska. Um. And I knew I was going to go to UCLA and
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  I was going to be a screenwriter even when I was in kindergartens Missus McKinnon's
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  class. Obviously, I knew it, and I made it happen. I
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  went to UCLA. I studied screenwriting at UCLA and then emerged into Hollywood with
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  a script under my arm that everyone passed on, everyone shot passed on it.
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  It was well, it was a terrible script, so it's not surprising.
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  And then I wrote another one, and I wrote another one. I
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  got over this sort of illusion that you write one screenplay and the world's gonna
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  beat a path to your doorstep. It really was an iterative process for me,
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  and my screenplays got better. But what was interesting is the thing that
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  really broke through for me is that I wrote a script about my family.
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  I wrote a script about how my dad came out of the closet after twenty
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  seven years of marriage and how you know, obviously that threw something of a
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  hand grenade into the family. I mean, ultimately a good one because he
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  needed to be himself, but it was something of a disruptive event. So
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  I wrote a movie about that in the early nineties, and everyone passed on
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  it. It wasn't the right time, it was not the right time.
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  They were just not doing it. And finally, um Lifetime, the Lifetime
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  network, stepped up and we made the movie with Sheen Smart playing my mom
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  and John Terry, who you may remember from Lost playing playing my dad.
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  And it was something of a little groundbreaking film. And so that was sort
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  of my That was one of my first projects, and it really took kind
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  of like stepping back and writing something that was kind of highly personal. Uh.
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  That that that broke me through. So it's the opposite of everything that
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  everyone tells you not to write something personal, like don't yeah, yeah,
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  don't write a movie about your family. That's never going to sell. It's
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  basically the advice I've heard a thousand times. I know it depends on the
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  family. I mean, true families are interesting. You know my uncle,
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  my aunt Beana, but let me tell you her stories. No, Aunt
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  Pena is not interesting. You know, your dad coming out of the closet
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  and and marriage, you know, kind of breaking up because of it.
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  That's a little more interesting. Although even now, yeah, well, I
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  mean Grace and Frankie alone, I mean they built a series based on that
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  concept, that's right, and they took the whole thing, uh and added
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  a bunch of a bunch of spice to it, as they say. So.
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  Yeah. But and that's another thing really interesting to talk about is timing
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  because sometimes they're the certain script or certain movies, certain filmmaker, All everything
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  has to come together kind of like in this vortex and hit all at the
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  same time for certain projects to go where five years earlier, ten years earlier,
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  it doesn't happen as like the script like you were walking around with the
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  script that you remember, I remember What Unforgiven was bouncing around Hollywood for like
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  twenty thirty year. Bodyguard was bouncing around Hollywood for like thirty years. Yeah,
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  we'll be right back after a word, our sponsor and now back to
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  the show. Well, they weren't going to make westerns until finally, you
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  know, Clint Eastwood stepped up and said, you know, hey, I'm
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  the Western guy. Let's let's make this western Bodyguard. You know, they
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  had to get Whitney Houston, a big kind of iconic celebrity to do it.
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  So yeah, a lot of it's timing luck, a lot of it's
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  just courage. You know, someone a producer's studio as the balls to say,
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  uh, yeah, I'll take a chance with this. It's not it's
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  not a superhero film. It's you know, a strange social commentary with a
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  black lead in a white liberal neighborhood, and it's a horror film. I'll
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  take a chance on that, and uh and then they're surprised when people are
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  like, god, I've really wanted to see that. I've never seen that
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  before. But there's just not a lot of courage in this town. They
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  know that. It's you know, they wanted to have some precedent, but
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  isn't. But I mean even it's I've said this before in the show.
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  I mean, this whole town has run on fear. I mean the entire
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  town is run on fear and and mitigating loss, not gain, taking risks
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  for gains, but mitigating loss because if you lose, you lose your job,
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  you lose your reputation. And it's like one. It's like before.
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  I remember back in even in the eighties and the nineties, where studios would
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  take multiple swings at the bat every year with their films. They do thirty
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  forty movies, they take some risky stuff, they do some study stuff.
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  But now it's like every single one has to be a home run or people
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  get fired. Studios might even go down depending on the size of the budget.
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  Yeah, it's a shame. It's sort of a Reggie Jackson approach.
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  You know, it's all home runs or nothing. Like you said, there
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  used to be those they were happy to have singles and doubles with these kind
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  of lower budgeted dramas. The seventies were filled with the whole film you know
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  that were you know the conversation and you know these great um uh blow up
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  and these great taxi driver, Taxi Driver. I mean, imagine it had
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  you have to turn Taxi Driver into a superhero or super villain movie in order
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  to get it made today. And name well they did. They did the
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  Joker, right, that's the only really they'll do it. If we could
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  put the Joker in it, then maybe we'll give you twenty million bucks to
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  make this film. How much was the Joker to make? It wasn't that
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  much. Joker was probably eighty or ninety. Yeah, but that's that's and
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  that's still pretty low. And because it's not a it's a character piece,
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  it's not a special effects movie. It's it's a King of comedy but with
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  a guy with makeup on his face. And it's funny because Robert de Niro
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  and Scorsese was attached as a producer at one point. So it's just it
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  just comes full circle. See you could see what's his name, Todd who
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  did He probably said, okay, guys, I know it seems like an
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  art film. But the reality is this film has been made before and it
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  did well a comedy taxi Drivers, so you know, and we had the
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  superhero thing, so it's a hit. Come on, give some money,
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  and they made a lot of money with that film, ton of money.
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  Question the other day that said The Joker was the larger, the highest grossing
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  rated film in history worldwide. Did it finally did it break that Jesus?
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  Indeed? Yeah, that's and that says something to Hollywood. Did we want
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  this kind of storytelling? We want this kind of ore? Are not PG
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  thirteen are tough? Tough? Um tough themes um. I mean that's a
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  disturbing The Joker is a disturbing film. Yeah it is. I mean it's
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  a disturbing film. And his performance is so just well be see, I
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  knew this is gonna happen, Aaron, I knew this was gonna happen.
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  We're just gonna keep it going up. We digress. Um. So with
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  all of this, we were talking about great cinema of the past. Um,
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  you have to tell me a little bit about your time at the Criterion
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  Collection, Sir, Christian Collection was a green job. So when I was
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  at UCLA, I saw you, I answered an ad to go work for
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  a company called the Voyage. Yea voyager company got I forgot and they were
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  doing the early days of the Criterion Collection. These movies on LaserDisc. They
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  had just come out with Citizen Kane and their first few films on LaserDisc on
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  CIAB or CLVV. See, so now you see, you're talking a completely
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  different language than most people listening. I understood everything you said, so I
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  know what a CIV is, I know what a CLV is, and I
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  also know what a laser disc is. So for the kids listening, a
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  laser disc is imagine a DVD but the size of a record, and then
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  you would have to flip it. Um uh, if you'd have to flip
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  it at cat's ass, A cat's ass, A cat's ass is in the
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  shot, I'll just do this. I don't have the rights to his ass.
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  So if we could move him along that the gray, that's it.
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  He popped, by the way, that's he's a punk punk So m a
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  laser just has Imagine a DVD that's much bigger, but then the quality is
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  still standard definition, so it's very still but better than VHS. Bye bye
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  by Miles. But you would have to midway through the movie, get up
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  and flip it, flip it like a pancake, and then put it back
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  in and continue watching it. Now, if that on CLV, Uh,
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  now we're doing a laser disktatorial. On CLV you would have lesser quality but
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  more time on the side of the disc. I don't remember what the timing
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  was. I know on CAV per side, I thought I thought CAV was
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  half hour per side. I think it might have been an hour. CLB
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  was one hour. And CIAB also gave you the opportunity to interact more.
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  You could you could do more interaction with the CIAV laser disc, and so
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  the Criterion collections you may remember, would always have special edition um, you
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  know, a supplemental material at the end of the LaserDisc. So if you
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  got the CIAV version of of A two thousand and one to Space Odyssey,
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  which I produced, we had a whole side filled with extra goodies, um,
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  straight from Stanley Kubrick's estate that we added onto the to the end of
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  the film so you could take a real deep dive into the library of which
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  materials went into it. Did you speak to mister Kubrick at all? Were
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  you in contact with it? Are my boss? Did? Um? He
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  was? You know, he never left England. Uh. He sent a
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  new cut though he sent us like a two inch. He did a new
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  transfer for the He was a big fan of the Criterion collection. So he
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  did a new transfer of his film and fixed a couple of things, and
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  so we got a really pristine, beautiful print to strike them sounds. I'm
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  not sure that means, but two, it was a two inch tape.
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  It was like a mastering tape back in the day. Um it was and
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  two inches like you know, pro pro you're at at the high level that
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  it's probably like eighty inches, but now it's all digital. But but the
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  greatest pleasure I had was that I got to produce a special edition laser disc
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  of The Graduate, which is my favorite film. It's and uh so much
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  fun. We got a second audio track from this UCLA professor Howard I can't
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  remember his name, but he did this amazing second. He knew that film
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  like the back of his hand. I kind of. I was telling you
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  um off air that The Graduate was one of my favorite laser discs because when
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  I was in high school. When I saw it, Um, I was
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  collecting criterions back in the day, and it was the first kind of experience
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  to like film theory, like real, real film theory. And I mean
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  he analyzed every freaking frame of that. It was just magical to listen and
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  for people listening, for people are listening, you have to understand that the
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  I think Criterion was the one that came up with the concept of director commentary.
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  I don't think there was a director commentary prior to that. There may
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  have been one or two special editions here or there, but it really became
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  our whole media and the supplemental materials, and it really became Criterion collection became
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  the you know, kind of the penis in a file place, the bit
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  of files exactly. And I think they still you know, they have a
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  Criterion channel, they still come out DVDs. So it's but that was really,
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  you know, for someone who was in film school at UCLA at the
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  time, it was a dream job and it taught me a lot about are
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  retelling. So yeah, and we could talk about Criterion for about another hour,
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  but we will. We shall move on. Aaron. Um, now
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  I'm going to pitch you a movie. It's about a dog who um plays
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  basketball ball for a high school as I think high school team. Um uh
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  would that pitch work? No, By the way, that's a terrible idea,
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  horrible, horrible, absurd It's silly idea. And by the way,
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  we did pitch it like that. We we pitched air Bud and um,
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  everyone said that's ridiculous. So we ended up my old writing partner, Paul
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  Tamisee and I spect the script for air Bud and we didn't just you know,
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  think of this that that ridiculous idea, and then write it and then
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  go find a dog. We met the dog first. Obviously there were you
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  know, there was a uh we were with the Broadway Danny Rose of Agents
• 19:47
  back then. He represented us, he represented dogs, he represented you know,
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  one legged bearded ladies. Got it fair enough. We'll be right back
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  after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. So
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  like the uppersion, got it Uppersion Aunt of Agents. And so we came
• 20:14
  in the office one day and and there was Buddy sitting there and our agents
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  like, guys, guys got to check out this dog. This dog's remarkable.
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  He's obsessed with balls. We're like, ah, that doesn't sound like,
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  no, no, you gotta And he started throwing balls at this dog,
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  and you know, and and the dog would you know, bounce him
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  back to us and catch baseballs and hockey pucks and he's like, you got
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  to write a movie for this dog. He's David Letterman's favorite stupid petrick.
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  And we're like, okay, it's not exactly what we envisioned for ourselves when
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  we got out of film school. We're writing, we're gonna write Taxi Driver
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  and stuff, and we all are obviously gay, my gay father's story.
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  Um, but we saw that this was a pretty remarkable dog, and we
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  realized, okay, it's a pretty stupid pet trick really that this dog can
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  do. He'd been doing halftime shows and stuff like that. But we realized
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  that really, at the core, if we wrote a movie that's a really
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  a love story between a boy and a dog, and that the reason that
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  the dog plays basketball is because he realizes the boy loves basketball and the boy
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  is lonely, he just moved to this new town, and he sees like
• 21:30
  playing basketball with this boy would actually, you know, awaken this boy and
• 21:37
  enliven him and empower him. And then we knew. We knew when we
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  had that little post it note of kind of what I call the central idea,
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  which is everything the dog does he does for the boy. Once we
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  knew we had that emotional through line that foundation, we knew that we could
• 21:56
  prop up this movie, we could build the movie on on this kind of
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  silly gimmick and um and the movie just kind of flowed from us at that
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  point and we wrote it. And but then all the studios passed on the
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  script. They're like, this is ridiculous. You know, dog doesn't play
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  basketball. We're like, well we have one that does. They cannot be
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  bothered. Yeah right, really, you know, talk about courage. This
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  little Canadian production company, Keystone Productions, had made one or two like erotic
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  thrillers at the time, Skinnamax, Skinnamax style skin Imax films. They saw,
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  they saw the promise in this film. Uh, this should be a
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  this should be a script on how Firebudbud the making of start off with soft
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  car porn. Uh. Yeah, I wouldn't even tell you about the strip
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  club they took me to when they were shooting this film, because this is
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  a family obviously obviously obviously, so um I resisted, you know, so
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  we wrote that. They loved the script, they optioned it, and then
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  they brought on Charlie Martin Smith to direct. Charlie Martin Smith, you may
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  remember, was an actor in American Graffiti and a lot of other films.
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  Never Fry Woolf. He was kind of that toady character. Yeah, yeah,
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  yeah, I remember him. So he worked with Carol Ballard, never
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  cry Wolf. Carol Ballard did The Black Stallion, which is the most beautiful
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  moving films ever, and a Boy in a Horse, And so Charlie brought
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  that kind of ethos to the film, kind of a Carol Ballard asque,
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  gentle moving not a ton of dialogue. I mean, he really kind of,
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  like in our rewrite, encouraged us to really kind of make it more
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  moving and more emotional and quiet and more like Old Yeller and all these films.
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  And so I think that he did a beautiful job of conducting this film,
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  directing this film and making something that, um, you know, we
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  thought was just this kind of little, little silly film and it's kind of
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  become it's become a thing. Oh no, it's I mean I remember when
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  Airbud came out and I was like, like anybody else who saw the poster,
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  it's just ridiculous. But by the way, yeah they're right there,
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  Yeah, they're right there, They're right behind you. Um, it's it's
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  ridiculous a dog play basketball like the bus don't play basketball. But also for
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  everyone listening, Walt Disney picked it up, um to distribute it. Um
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  Disney itself from the Grave came out, he said, AFM and bought we.
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  Actually, we were at AFM in ninety seven or whenever after we shot
• 24:41
  the film. The film wasn't even finished. There was a promo reel that
• 24:45
  Keystone made and uh, there was a bidding war over the film just based
• 24:49
  on the promo reel because they saw the dog was actually doing this and that
• 24:53
  him was a good film, and they bought it. So and so Disney
• 24:57
  bought it at like hit Disney heard about it at AFM and there's like,
• 25:00
  no, no, no, we need I mean, it is a Disney
• 25:03
  film them. If you're gonna do it, that's that's a that's a that's
• 25:06
  a good route to go back then even um Disney would never release that in
• 25:10
  a million years today. Um. But again it's about timing, right,
• 25:14
  It's about that Disney plus would release it. But Disney plus, yeah,
• 25:18
  it's too small. I mean it's a four million dollars film. It looks
• 25:21
  like a little tiny character. It sort of has as a very low budget
• 25:26
  vibe to it. But um, yeah, but they recognize the sweetness of
• 25:30
  it. They also we recognized there was a ten film franchise in this thing.
• 25:34
  And they're like, Jay a minute, Okay, well, I mean
• 25:37
  so, so you got air Bud going, And so now it gets released
• 25:41
  and it does, it does fairly well, yeah it does. How much
• 25:45
  did you remember how much it made? I think it? You know,
• 25:48
  it made like thirty million at the box office, which is not a ton
• 25:52
  but for a four million dollars film, but Bud video it must have just
• 25:59
  sold hundreds of like on DVD. My house in the studio city I bought
• 26:04
  from the first residual check I got from the release of the film. Oh
• 26:11
  my god. Yeah yeah, And I can only imagine. So, so,
• 26:15
  how did the town treat you as a screenwriter because you're the Airbud guy.
• 26:19
  Now like Airbud guy can't he can't write taxi driver. That's just not
• 26:23
  it can't write taxi driver. So how did the town treat you? What?
• 26:26
  Doors opened up? Because I always love when I have someone on the
• 26:30
  show who's had um, not only success, but phenomenal success in a in
• 26:33
  a small way, in an area of our business. I'm always fascinated to
• 26:38
  see how that took you to the next place, or what opportunities presented itself,
• 26:44
  or how how the town treat you, because a lot of times there's
• 26:45
  this this kind of myth of like, oh, they just must have just
• 26:51
  pulled up the truck and just dumped money on him and he could do whatever
• 26:53
  he wants. I'm like, man, something, it's an interesting line,
• 26:59
  you know. Writing a film that was very specific like that and very genre
• 27:03
  a sub genre like that, it did open up some opportunities. My partner
• 27:07
  and I sold a couple of pitches. After that, we were hired on
• 27:10
  a couple of things. There are always family films, you know, so
• 27:14
  we definitely got pigeonholed, family comedy, that kind of thing. But we
• 27:18
  also, you know, because their bud was so so narrow that it wasn't
• 27:23
  like we were suddenly on the A list. It was very a small bucket.
• 27:29
  However, what's happened since is that ever since is that whenever we would
• 27:34
  try to or I we broke up a couple of years later, and I
• 27:37
  went off on my own. Whenever I tried to do something which is really
• 27:41
  my forte, which is character driven drama. They're like, they look at
• 27:47
  thirteen films on my you know, because I get credit on all the year
• 27:49
  Bud movies. I only wrote the first two. But they see this huge
• 27:55
  IMDb page filled with their Bud credits and then a couple of other family films
• 27:59
  that I've done, and they don't believe that I can do drama right.
• 28:06
  So I've had to try to reinvent myself by specking drama scripts, drama pilots
• 28:11
  to really to show and prove that I'm more than just kind of a one
• 28:17
  a one trick dog. And as like you said that, that franchise went
• 28:22
  on to spawn with twelve other movies sequels, I think because my daughters have
• 28:26
  seen all of them. Sorry, it's the Space Buddies, the Spooky Buddies,
• 28:33
  the Treasure Buddies, the and I can imagine. I can imagine they're
• 28:37
  just sitting around because I know you don't have anything to do with these so
• 28:40
  um, but I'm sure there's some executives some were sitting around like, all
• 28:44
  right, what can we do. It's got a bunch of puppies and put
• 28:45
  them on a treasure hunt. Oh then now they're in a haunted house.
• 28:48
  Oh now, let's put them in space. Yeah, sure, like a
• 28:52
  superhero. There was a superhero one too. I remember they all got superpowers
• 28:56
  as dogs like it, and they talk now where air didn't talk. Kiss.
• 29:03
  It's become something of a twisted um there are there are a lot of
• 29:07
  negative words I can say. But at the same time, they you know,
• 29:11
  they would send us a check every year when they would make these things,
• 29:14
  so I can't complain. You know. We originally envisioned maybe three Buddy
• 29:18
  films because the original dog play basketball a trilogy. He could play basketball,
• 29:23
  which was remarkable. He could play football, which became the second film,
• 29:26
  because he could catch these huge spirals. He also could play soccer, So
• 29:33
  we envisioned three, maybe four because of hockey and you know, volleyball,
• 29:37
  I mean maybe, yeah, well they did. I think they ended up
• 29:40
  doing volleyball, you know. I mean we envisioned at least it's sort of
• 29:44
  staying within sports, and we wanted to stay real where it really felt like
• 29:47
  this was a dog in a human world. And you know, but then
• 29:51
  eventually the sports movie started running out of steam, and the Keystone people came
• 29:56
  up with the quite brilliant idea to based on the puppies. We'll be right
• 30:02
  back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.
• 30:10
  And those puppy videos made a fortune. Oh my god, they made a
• 30:15
  fortune. They just kept They make them for like, you know, three
• 30:18
  or four million dollars every year, and they would sell like hotcakes. And
• 30:22
  because kids love their talking puppies. I mean, well, it's it's it's
• 30:26
  talking puppies. I mean, it's not a it's it's not hard. Like
• 30:30
  I always tell people, like, if you want to you want to make
• 30:33
  a successful movie, you have a dog save Christmas. Like that's yeah,
• 30:37
  you got a dog saving Christmas. You're good. Funny you should say that,
• 30:41
  because my next film, sir, is about talking puppies who save Christmas.
• 30:45
  And I think that's already been done. They're fully grown dogs, but
• 30:48
  they do save Christmas. Yet. So what I'm hearing from you is that
• 30:53
  you're very upset that this company has not taken the true essence of what you
• 31:00
  had in mind, the seriousness of what art the art of the basketball playings
• 31:06
  dog in the original film, and have bastardized it for money, for money
• 31:11
  of all things, I mean, Wellywood Bud business we went into the airbud
• 31:15
  business for the art of it, for the artistry, and you know,
• 31:21
  we wanted to make the joker of of of of of dog, of basketball,
• 31:26
  of basketball playing dog movies, all right, And they went off to
• 31:29
  make the green lantern. I mean, I mean the horror, sir,
• 31:33
  the horr um. And I'm assuming that you're so again, you're so upset
• 31:37
  about this that every time they said you're that residual check, you just rip
• 31:41
  it up. I just give it to charity. I give it to a
• 31:45
  dog rescue. Yes, fair enough, fair enough. Um. So it's
• 31:49
  very interesting, very interesting, um, the whole airbud saga. And it's
• 31:55
  you know you mentioned the I teach. I teach a couple of classes that
• 32:00
  loyal a Merrymount have been teaching there for a few years. And a big
• 32:01
  conversation we always have is do you brand yourself as a certain kind of writer
• 32:09
  or do you follow your muse because you may want to write a whole bunch
• 32:13
  of different things. And it really is a dilemma because if you do brand
• 32:17
  yourself, you actually can be at the top of or you can be on
• 32:22
  the lists. As you know, like Zach Penn very early on branded himself
• 32:27
  as a great action writer, at the action adventure kind of writer, and
• 32:31
  he's formulated a tremendous successful career out of this. You look at Jordan Peel
• 32:37
  and these other guys that are you know, are kind of sticking in their
• 32:40
  lane in terms of the kind of things they write, and they have a
• 32:44
  lot of success. But as writers, we often you know, we want
• 32:50
  to write different things. But then the problem is then the town doesn't know
• 32:53
  what kind of writer you are. So here I am the air Bud guy.
• 32:57
  They're like, oh, we've had a dog. I get approached with
• 33:00
  every dog movie, Lassie, you know, Rin Tin Tin Every dog movie
• 33:05
  or TV show comes my way, which is great. However, I'm really
• 33:08
  interested in writing, you know, more like the taxi driver. I'm really
• 33:12
  interested in true stories. So it's it is hard. It's a bit of
• 33:17
  a dilemma. I almost feel like, because I did follow my muse into
• 33:22
  independent films. Shortly after I did Airbud, I went off to Florida and
• 33:27
  shot a R rated independent character drama and it did nothing for my career.
• 33:34
  It set me back, as a matter of fact, right because I came
• 33:37
  back and they're like, wait, aren't you the airbud guy? What is
• 33:39
  this? Well, that's a very interesting conversation because the town in general,
• 33:45
  they need to put you in a box. They can't comprehend as someone who's
• 33:50
  multifaceted that could do multiple kind of storytelling. I mean, we all don't
• 33:53
  have the privilege of Tarantino's career, who jumps gen run, does whatever the
• 33:58
  hell he wants. But that's a that's an anomaly. He's an anomaly in
• 34:01
  the writing space. Sorkin, Um, even Sorkin stays kind of in his
• 34:07
  lane. Yeah, well, even you know Tarantino stylistically, Um, the
• 34:12
  style of writing, oh, his films is kind of the same. You
• 34:15
  could say the same thing about um Shane Black, Shane Black or Wes Anderson.
• 34:21
  You know a lot of these guys. They do move around into different
• 34:23
  genres, but the style is the same. But this town does want to
• 34:28
  put you in a box. And that's so. So the question is do
• 34:32
  you, like like your students saying, do you brand yourself? Because like
• 34:37
  when you were saying, You're like, I I got Niche down to this
• 34:38
  little bucket. But when you were saying that, in my mind, I'm
• 34:43
  like, yeah, but you were at the top of that bucket. Um,
• 34:45
  middle, middle, but no. But the point is, like every
• 34:49
  dog movie in the Dog Dog Family film Space, which is like a niche
• 34:54
  of a niche of a niche of a niche, you're the top dog.
• 34:58
  Oh god, I had the say it, oh so bad. Um,
• 35:01
  but you're but you, but you're you know, you're getting those phone calls.
• 35:06
  So as a working writer, it is it is a good thing to
• 35:09
  to kind of niche yourself down and create this kind of brand for yourself.
• 35:15
  But as a creator, you might want to go out somewhere and do other
• 35:17
  things. Has there ever been in Hollywood? I know there has to have
• 35:22
  been, but there's been, Like you know, let's say you know that
• 35:24
  the air bud guy, which is you, um, decides to write Taxi
• 35:29
  Driver, but sends it out under a pseudonym, and then it gets a
• 35:34
  whole lot of heat and who's this who's this writer? And then your agents
• 35:37
  like, no, he's like very Charlie Kaufman style. He doesn't even want
• 35:40
  to talk to anybody, and they're like and that just builds up the hype
• 35:43
  even more to the point where they're sending millions of dollars. But who's the
• 35:46
  guy. I'm like, I can't tell you. I can't tell you he's
• 35:49
  my client client privilege. I can't. Can you imagine you should do that?
• 35:53
  I'm saying, that's a brilliant idea, Like I should have done that.
• 35:57
  I should have done that. You still can't? Yeah, I still
• 36:00
  can. You absolutely could because by the time that they've already sent you the
• 36:05
  check out, Okay, if we're gonna give this guy two million dollars for
• 36:07
  this the script, we need to know who he is. I'm like,
• 36:09
  after the check clears will tell you who he is? Well reveal it,
• 36:15
  We'll reveal. Imagine if they've got you've got Shawshank Redemption in their hand that
• 36:19
  they just bought and they're like, well, who wrote It's like, what's
• 36:22
  the airbud guy? What the reveal? Blood draining from their faces? What
• 36:30
  have we done? It was like, UM, when Peter Jackson got where
• 36:35
  what's this guy? Who? The guy's used to run on UM new line?
• 36:38
  He hired Peter Jackson off the pitch for the Lord of the Rings films.
• 36:44
  UM and Peter had done The Frighteners and a couple other films and Heavenly
• 36:49
  Creep, which was a fantastic film, Heavenly Creatures and and um and Frighteners,
• 36:53
  which is also great. But look, he's not Cameron. I mean,
• 36:59
  he didn't have it that Spielberg. He didn't have a history of like
• 37:02
  massive films. And then they saw one of his first films. I forgot
• 37:07
  the name of it, but it's like this really bad. I think it's
• 37:13
  called bad something bad. It literally called something bad or like the word and
• 37:16
  then bad, bad, bad taste. I think it's called bad taste.
• 37:20
  Um. And it's like this Corman style heads exploding, horror comedy ish thing,
• 37:28
  like really bad. And then and then they said, oh my god,
• 37:30
  we've just given this guy two hundred million dollars, like what are we
• 37:35
  doing well? And that's a shame because that was early on in his career,
• 37:39
  right, it was a certain type of film. Yeah, they you
• 37:43
  know, he proven himself since, and but yet they still scared. They
• 37:47
  were still scared. Fear, you said, fear, fear, fear fear.
• 37:54
  So let's talk about your book. Um, you have a book called
• 37:57
  The Eleven Funtiment. Uh. Well, first of all, it's called the
• 38:00
  eleven Fundamental Questions, Question Questions, A Guide to a better screenplay, right,
• 38:06
  So what, um, so let's talk about that. What are these
• 38:07
  questions? And you don't have to give you the whole kitten kaboodle away now,
• 38:12
  but you have to buy the book together obviously. But if let's talk
• 38:15
  about a couple of questions. Well, first, you know, the inspiration
• 38:20
  for the book. I've I've had a story breaking technique for probably fifteen years
• 38:25
  now where I would ask myself a series of questions that were meant as kind
• 38:32
  of like a stress test to test the story, the storytelling and um.
• 38:39
  And then I started teaching that technique in seminars, and then people started saying
• 38:45
  you should, you should put it into a book, and so finally I
• 38:47
  wrote a book. It was actually ten questions, uh initially, and then
• 38:52
  Billy Ray, who I sat on the board of Directors of the Writers Guild
• 38:58
  with for many years and as a fellow ruined like me, he suggested an
• 39:01
  eleventh question, which became question number three. And so I added that,
• 39:07
  because you know, when Deweie Ray suggests things, you just it's I'm telling
• 39:15
  you ten fundamental questions doesn't work as well as eleven. There are actual there
• 39:20
  is science behind the number eleven. The number seven and the number nine on
• 39:25
  the psychology of like if you if you're ever looking, you'll never see a
• 39:30
  top four list. Yeah, never, You'll never see a top four.
• 39:34
  You'll see a top five, You'll see a top ten, and maybe a
• 39:37
  top three maybe, but never like a top six or you but you will
• 39:45
  see a top but you will see you see a top seven every once in
• 39:47
  a while, yea, or the seven best or something like that. So
• 39:52
  there's something to do with number. Like if you said twelve fundamental questions,
• 39:54
  doesn't it doesn't ring? Is it weird? It's weird? Right, We'll
• 40:00
  be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the
• 40:07
  show. It's weird and eleven. I get to say that my book goes
• 40:13
  to eleven for all for all those spinal tap fans out there. Yeah,
• 40:20
  you know, it's funny. As another digression, speaking of those numbers,
• 40:23
  one of the things I did at the Writers Guild was start the one hundred
• 40:27
  and one best Screenplays Greatest Screenplays list, right, that was a project of
• 40:31
  mine, and we got the you know, the membership of the writers Gould
• 40:36
  West and East to vote on it, and we decided it should be one
• 40:39
  hundred, but we're like, no, let's do one hundred and one because
• 40:42
  that's kind of interesting. It's like, what just missed, Well, let's
• 40:45
  add that to the list. One. So interestingly, when we did the
• 40:49
  one hundred and one Funniest Screenplays List and had it voted on, you know,
• 40:53
  had had the votes come in from you know, our ten thousand members,
• 40:58
  I swear to god, number eleven on the Funniest Screenplays List was no,
• 41:05
  No, and we did not make it happen it landed on number eleven.
• 41:09
  It was so perfect, and everyone thought, oh, this is rigged.
• 41:14
  You rigged it, Like, no, it was never eleven, I
• 41:15
  swear to God. And you know, the funny thing is with that movie
• 41:19
  I saw the other day that I saw like it was flying by my feed
• 41:22
  where I saw Rob Ryner come on, He's like yeah. When the movie
• 41:24
  first came out, people are like, why did you make this movie about
• 41:27
  this horrible band? Like this is this is like these guys are horrible,
• 41:31
  Like they truly thought it was a documentary, Like they had no understanding that
• 41:36
  it was a documentary. That's a success. You've like like Blair Witch like
• 41:40
  it, You've hit it. You've hit You've hit exactly the bulls eye on
• 41:45
  that. The Dog Show people are like, you know, I thought you
• 41:49
  were funny. You were doing a very straight documentary on Dog Show People,
• 41:52
  right, exactly. And so so let's take top three, the top three
• 42:00
  questions you would like to discuss in out of your eleven. Well, the
• 42:04
  first question is seems like the easiest and most obvious, but it's actually really
• 42:08
  important. The first question is what is my story about? And what's interesting
• 42:14
  about that one? Is it it um forces the writer to distill their story
• 42:22
  into I have it broken out into one sentence and then a four sentence log
• 42:25
  line. And you'd be surprised at how hard it is for us, we
• 42:32
  writers. We for we us writers to often distill our stories into a simple
• 42:40
  um uh. It's like a simple one sentence log line that tells the story,
• 42:45
  and that often tells us that our stories too complicated or it's unformed.
• 42:50
  So, like, I have an example here of what I think is a
• 42:53
  really good one sentence log line. You'll you'll figure out the movie here real
• 43:00
  quick. Hold one, let me find it. A good hearted but insecure
• 43:12
  king who suffers from a debilitating stutter. It's forced to work with an eccentric
• 43:17
  speech therapist to deliver the speech that will save his kingdom. It's as clear
• 43:23
  as day. That's a wonderful log line. For obviously that's Airbud two.
• 43:28
  Actually I think it was Airbud two airbut to the electric buggaloo. Um.
• 43:32
  But what's what about that log line is it not only describes the central character
• 43:37
  his best his best attribute as well as his fatal flaw, which, by
• 43:40
  the way, is not his stutter, but is actually his insecurity. Um.
• 43:45
  The his stutter is an antagonistic force. Um. We get the context.
• 43:50
  He's a king um and uh is forced to work with an eccentric speech
• 43:55
  therapist. That tells us really the whole spine of the film, The whole
• 44:00
  second act of the film is him having to work with an eccentric speech therapist.
• 44:04
  We know there's conflict there because he's eccentric and this king is insecure.
• 44:08
  To deliver the speech that will save his kingdom is the third act climax of
• 44:14
  the film. It's also the stakes of the film. So all of those
• 44:16
  really key story elements are baked into that one sentence. And if you can't
• 44:22
  do that with your film, you may have a film or a story that's
• 44:27
  overly complicated. So I always start there. I do a one sentence log
• 44:30
  line, and then I'll do a four sentence log line. Yeah. And
• 44:34
  that's one thing I found, even when I did my writing, and I've
• 44:37
  all the scripts of stuff, of scripts that I've read over the years,
• 44:40
  is that sometimes writers the stories they think they're so cool and they are so
• 44:46
  complex that it's not about being the most complex script. It's about being the
• 44:54
  simplest getting the message across. Because you have ninety minutes of ninety pages to
• 45:00
  tell, You've got this much to do, and that's right, and that
• 45:04
  you can't. You can have a really complicated story, but there has to
• 45:08
  be Going back to Billy Ray, he likes to say, what is the
• 45:13
  simple emotional journey? What is the simple which is goes to your point?
• 45:19
  It can't be the basic story, can't be over emotional journey. What's the
• 45:22
  emotional element that's going to really hook your audience. You notice even in some
• 45:28
  of the best action films, there's always this emotional undercurrent of family. It's
• 45:34
  about brothers, it's a mother daughter you know, or father daughter story of
• 45:37
  my cat's knocking my computer off, there's always some kind of um, you
• 45:44
  know, it's a family. Like you know, in the Fast and Furious
• 45:47
  movies, there's always an emotional story that winds through what could be the biggest,
• 45:53
  twistiest mission impossible movie ever. So what is the simple emotional journey is
• 46:00
  another good way of sort of summing up question number one, which is what
• 46:02
  is your story about? So that's an important one. I would say question
• 46:09
  four, which is kind of two questions, is very important. I'm just
• 46:15
  looking at it here to get it right. Who is the central character?
• 46:17
  And what is their conscious and unconscious desire? So obviously who is the central
• 46:23
  character, it's good to really kind of home in on is this a you
• 46:28
  know, who's the one who is really the hero of the story that has
• 46:32
  the biggest art? Or is it a two hander or is it an unstumbled
• 46:37
  But more importantly, what is their unconscious their conscious and unconscious desire? And
• 46:43
  this is something after studying many many films that really kind of formulated in my
• 46:49
  mind. Invariably, your character, your hero sets out with a want,
• 46:53
  a conscious desire. I want this, I need this money because I'm broken
• 47:00
  and they're going to break my legs if I don't pay off the debt,
• 47:02
  or I'm in love with this girl, or you know, they want something,
• 47:07
  they're conscious desire, they go on a journey to get it. They
• 47:10
  have a flaw that's inhibiting them, a fatal flaw, which is another question,
• 47:15
  that's inhibiting them from being able to get to it. You know,
• 47:19
  they're fearful, they're insecure, they're greedy, they're whatever they are, or
• 47:22
  they're even too noble. However, during the course of the film, they
• 47:27
  often start to see that there's something else that they really want, an unconscious
• 47:31
  desire, and so then you get that tension between what they thought they wanted
• 47:38
  and what they discovered that they really want. So if, like in The
• 47:43
  Matrix, if Neo, what he really wants at the beginning of the film
• 47:46
  is just find out the truth about the Matrix. Find out the truth about
• 47:51
  the Matrix. But he never imagined in a million years that he would have
• 47:55
  anything to do with his unconscious desire, which is to be the one to
• 48:00
  acknowledge that he's the one and you know, and bring down the Matrix.
• 48:05
  He is so far from that. At the beginning of the film, he
• 48:07
  just wants to know the truth he's a cog, and his fatal flaw is
• 48:12
  his belief that all he is is really a cog in the machine, that
• 48:15
  he is too weak of a human to be the one and so are you.
• 48:22
  The low point of the film, which is when he says to the
• 48:24
  the oracle, I am not the one because he's given into his fatal flaw.
• 48:30
  Right now, I want to I want to take a character and put
• 48:35
  this onto the test, a character we all know, and I'd love you
• 48:37
  to analyze Rocky. So okay, so Rocky. We all have seen in
• 48:42
  Rocky. It's one of the most enduring characters of all time. As the
• 48:46
  one hundred and fifty movies, he's they're catching up to Airbud and the amount
• 48:52
  of sequels, but stallone is getting up there. So I don't know how
• 48:55
  many more of these we can do. Well, Yeah, he's had puppies,
• 49:00
  and Paulo Creed had puppies. Rightly, it's kind of the same that
• 49:06
  they've They've stole our thunder. That's exactly what's the loan thought when he was
• 49:12
  making the next one. Um, all right, so Rocky, So what
• 49:15
  is his external goal and what's his subconscious goal? Yeah? So there are
• 49:22
  some movies where you have a noble character, a character who does have a
• 49:29
  noble conscious desire, but it's an impossible journey. So I always say,
• 49:32
  either you have a character who's flawed and they have kind of this conscious desire
• 49:37
  which is a selfish desire, but then along the way they kind of fix
• 49:42
  themselves and and find a selfless desire that that we as an audience want them
• 49:46
  to attain. However, there are movies like Rocky where you have a character
• 49:52
  who does have a noble conscious desire. He wants to be taken seriously as
• 49:55
  a boxer. He wants to be taken seriously as a box She really feels
• 50:00
  like that he's a contender, he's he should be taken seriously, and no
• 50:06
  one's taken him seriously. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 50:15
  and now back to the show. That is a noble conscious desire.
• 50:21
  However, in his case, he has an impossible journey. He has an
• 50:24
  impossible journey where the entire world is basically against him achieving his conscious desire,
• 50:32
  which is to be taken seriously. In this case, the you know,
• 50:37
  inciting incident is that he gets plucked, he gets plucked by God to fight
• 50:44
  in this championship fight. But it's a gimmick, right, and he and
• 50:47
  he turns and he completely turns it down. Yeah, he sees, he
• 50:52
  goes, He's like, no, no, no, this is I'm gonna
• 50:54
  get my ass killed. I'm not ready for you, champ. Right.
• 51:00
  So that's a that's a case where he actually, you know, he's a
• 51:04
  reluctant hero. He saw something that an opportunity that was brought to him,
• 51:07
  but he knew at that place in the movie and the first act of the
• 51:10
  film, he's in no place, no condition to be able to go after
• 51:15
  that particular golden ring. But then with you know, the encouragement of this
• 51:20
  of his brother in law and this girl, you know with Mickey, his
• 51:24
  old trainer. You know, people who used to believe in him, or
• 51:29
  the girl down the block who has heryan. Usually it's love, it's family
• 51:34
  that sort of encourages the hero to overcome their trepidation and go on the journey.
• 51:38
  And so he does, and he's able to actually achieve even though he
• 51:44
  doesn't win, he achieves his conscious desire, which is to be very much
• 51:47
  taken seriously as a fighter. By the end of the film, he also
• 51:52
  achieves something of an emotional goal, which is he finds love, which is
• 51:58
  a nice Again, whether it's Stallone knew about great storytelling or he just kind
• 52:05
  of instinctually stumbled into it. He had this great plot, which is the
• 52:08
  the boxing plot and the training to become a fighter plot, but he also
• 52:13
  had this wonderful couple of emotional subplots, one involving Adrian, one involving uh,
• 52:20
  Adrian's brother, another one involving Mickey. He was kind of the father
• 52:23
  mentor figure, and it created this emotional journey that was under the boxing journey
• 52:31
  and uh, you know, but that's that's one where the conscious desire actually
• 52:36
  is the same as the unconscious desire, but the journey that is the impossible
• 52:40
  journey and the thing that's and I think that that little vein that he tapped
• 52:47
  into with the emotion of Rocky because prior to Rocky there were some boxing movies,
• 52:53
  uh but nothing nothing of that that um, winning the Oscar and all
• 53:00
  that kind of stuff. Um, but to sustain that character who is absolutely
• 53:06
  loved throughout the world and made but he made six Rocky movies and two Apollo
• 53:14
  Creed movie or Creed movies, and yet we're still on that journey, and
• 53:17
  we're actually going on that journey with him as he ages, and he's not
• 53:22
  hiding it anymore he did. I didn't think in five, I think he
• 53:28
  now, I know, I think five. We just it went from four
• 53:30
  to six. Let's just yeah, we'll forget five. Four. Yeah,
• 53:37
  yeah, the Quest for Peace obviously. Um. But but there's something about
• 53:40
  that character. And I think you're right it's not just a boxing because if
• 53:44
  it's just about boxing, who cares? Like if it's just about a dude
• 53:47
  want to because you could only see that movie so many times about him going
• 53:52
  to get the championship or losing the champion, like there's only so many of
• 53:55
  those stories you can do. But is that emotion it's Adrian, it's it's
• 54:00
  Mickey like when Mickey or spoiler alert when Mickey got killed and Rocky three um
• 54:06
  or when Apollo. You know that that emotion is what kept kept it going
• 54:10
  because it's not about you know, it's not about boxing, kind of like
• 54:14
  air Bud is not about a dog who plays basketball exactly exactly, and the
• 54:17
  word The films that fail are the ones that lean to heavily on their main
• 54:22
  plot, which is usually kind of an intellectual exercise, whether it's an action
• 54:27
  film or a you know that kind of thing. It's uh, it's the
• 54:30
  films that really go back and forth between or really more more effectively unite the
• 54:37
  emotional plot with the main sort of intellectual plot and have them bump into each
• 54:43
  other, and we see how, you know, Rockies pursuit of the of
• 54:47
  the Crown is filtering into his relationships with Adrian and Mickey and and Bird.
• 54:54
  His name was not Birt but yeah, um, you know the brother.
• 55:00
  Yeah, I know. Oh my god, Oh it's not driving nuts now,
• 55:02
  I can't believe. I can't remember what is was an Italian name?
• 55:07
  Was it like Saul? No? No, okay, hold on while while
• 55:14
  you're while you're discussing the next, um, the last question we will go
• 55:17
  over in this episode, I will look up. Okay, so I'm gonna
• 55:21
  say that, although now you're distracted, so I'm not gonna no, no,
• 55:25
  I'm but the audience is listening. Oh good, okay, I think
• 55:29
  you'll you'll actually the questions and have nothing to do with the thing I'm saying.
• 55:34
  You look it up. The third I'm gonna go back to um question
• 55:37
  three, and this is actually the poll. Polly, Polly, sir,
• 55:40
  let's move on. Let's now, we can move on properly, sir.
• 55:44
  It's poll. These are the important things, yes, exactly, and and
• 55:51
  third of the of the eleven questions you would like to discuss, okay,
• 55:54
  So the third of eleven questions I'd like discussed is actually question number three.
• 55:58
  A lot of my initial question in the eleven questions are kind of foundational first
• 56:02
  act, backstory kind of questions, and then you know, the later ones
• 56:07
  address low points and all that stuff. This question number three is the one
• 56:10
  that Billy Ray suggested to me, which is what is the central idea?
• 56:17
  So this is an important one because it's not to be confused with the log
• 56:21
  line. It's different from the log line. The central idea, as I
• 56:24
  say in my book, is the overarching notion or theme that drives the story
• 56:29
  forward and is tested in every scene. It's like the thesis of your story.
• 56:34
  Okay. So, and the question that opposes is often finally addressed by
• 56:39
  the critical test at the end of the story. So an example might be,
• 56:45
  well, when Harry met Sally is interesting because Nora Ephron, I'm pretty
• 56:50
  convinced thought of this central idea before she even came up or wrote the script,
• 56:55
  which is, can men and women be friends without sexigating in the way
• 57:00
  that's thesis. So she's like, I want to test that thesis. And
• 57:04
  so she, you know, introduces this woman who's coming off to this relationship
• 57:07
  and this man who just seems to be it's all about getting laid, and
• 57:12
  he throws them together where they form. They start to form this friendship that's
• 57:16
  this awkward friendship that starts to really grow over the course of the second act.
• 57:21
  But as it grows, there starts to become the sexual tension between them,
• 57:25
  and we as an audience start to wonder and worry are they We want
• 57:30
  them to hook up, and yet we're worried that if they do, it'll
• 57:35
  ruin it. And in fact, you get the low point of the film,
• 57:37
  that wonderful shot after they've been in bed together and you start on Sally
• 57:42
  and she's smiling, you know, because she's happy and she thinks that you
• 57:45
  know, and then you pull out and you see Billy Crystal with this look
• 57:49
  of horror. So in that respect, the central the question posed by the
• 57:54
  central idea, can men and women be friends without sex getting in the way.
• 57:58
  The answer is no, ac according to Nora. But however, they
• 58:07
  work it out because you know what they do. By Act three, they
• 58:08
  go back to the foundation of their friendship and realize that actually what makes a
• 58:14
  relationship so successful is having a foundation of friendship. So in a way,
• 58:17
  they turned that fatal flaw. They turned that tension into actually something that made
• 58:24
  them grow as human beings and able to come together and have a permanent relationship.
• 58:30
  So that's a key if you can turn the low point into what I
• 58:34
  call critical test, which is then drawing from your failure and realizing what you
• 58:40
  need to do to overcome your fatal flaw and actually, you know, self
• 58:45
  actualize as a character. In that case, Harry and Sally needed to realize
• 58:52
  that, oh we can actually combine the two are the friendship that we formulated
• 58:55
  over several months is actually the key to having us sessful relationship. Once they
• 59:00
  were able to acknowledge that rather than run the other direction, that's when they
• 59:05
  were able to come together and have a you know, successful climax as it
• 59:08
  were. And anyone and anyone listening to this as has not has thought of
• 59:14
  even thinking about writing a romantic comedy has not watched when Harry met Sally,
• 59:17
  Shame on you and stop listening to this right now and go watch it.
• 59:21
  I mean, Jesus, when Harry mat Sally was I think, if not
• 59:24
  the highest one of the highest rated of ranked films in one hundred and one
• 59:30
  Funniest Screenplays List Exceptional script by Nora And I mean, I mean so many.
• 59:36
  I think any hall um is any one, Yeah, that's it's It's
• 59:42
  honest, it honestly should be. I mean it is a masterpiece, masterpiece.
• 59:46
  It's it's a masterpiece. What what one thinks of of witty Allen aside
• 59:52
  that all is um is truly was a was a masterful film, um and
• 59:59
  I guess that would be that would be considered romantic comedy too. We'll be
• 1:00:01
  right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
• 1:00:10
  I mean they absolutely, I mean, it's just with with his wonderful
• 1:00:15
  writing in it. I always I always put up certain films of a certain
• 1:00:21
  time period in my life if they were really good, Because if I watched
• 1:00:25
  something from nineteen eighty eight to ninety three ninety four, which is my video
• 1:00:30
  store years, my high school years where I thought John Claud von Dam was
• 1:00:36
  the greatest actor of all time and Steven Seagal should have won an Oscar in
• 1:00:38
  that time period of my life. If I've watched the movie, like and
• 1:00:43
  I remember vividly watching Annie Hall and going, god, that was good,
• 1:00:47
  you know, and watching Shawshank Jesus that was good, you know. And
• 1:00:52
  it didn't have anyone, you know, breaking a leg. It was amazing.
• 1:00:54
  That's just amazing story. And when Harry Metzali obviously, um, and
• 1:00:59
  that's just amazing. Really well craft the story down. Like we were talking
• 1:01:01
  about kings speech earlier, you know, on paper, I don't want to
• 1:01:07
  watch a movie about a prince who's got a stutter. Yeah, I know
• 1:01:09
  he's gonna and he's gonna learn, He's gonna have this guy teach him how
• 1:01:14
  to speak. For a speech like that, that does not sound good,
• 1:01:16
  But when you watch it, it did. When the one best picture that
• 1:01:20
  year Best Picture and Best Screenplay for David Seidler, and that was a spec
• 1:01:23
  script that no one would take a chance on it, I think he likes
• 1:01:29
  literally stuck it in him in um, either the actor's mailbox or the director's
• 1:01:34
  mailbox, got it to, you know, because no one would read it,
• 1:01:37
  didn't have an agent, but he believed. And it was because even
• 1:01:40
  though it seemed like a ridiculous idea, there was such a strong emotional story
• 1:01:45
  underneath it, and so much mistake for delivering this speech, and uh,
• 1:01:50
  you know, and it was a family his story of two guys that become
• 1:01:52
  sort of brothers and uh, you know, a relationship story and his family.
• 1:01:58
  And he was in the shadow of his of his brother who abdicated,
• 1:02:00
  who was supposed to be the king. He was never supposed to be the
• 1:02:05
  king. If you if you, as a screenwriter can connect emotionally, genre
• 1:02:13
  goes out the window. Um like the main plot. Almost a lot of
• 1:02:16
  times. I'm like, if you can connect with the audience on an emotional
• 1:02:21
  level, all the addressing of plot and structure and character, I mean obviously
• 1:02:27
  all that's needed to connect emotionally. Without it, you can't. But like
• 1:02:31
  I mean, I've I've seen Look if sometimes I'll watch a movie with my
• 1:02:35
  daughters and it's like something on Disney Plus or something, you know, like
• 1:02:38
  something that I would have never a million years watched by myself, And but
• 1:02:44
  they have this little nugget, just this live and it's not king speech,
• 1:02:50
  it's not going to be something that's long. It's not a meal, it's
• 1:02:52
  a snack. But that little snack of emotion holds me just a little bit
• 1:02:59
  and just goes. You know, that got me just and it might just
• 1:03:01
  be me because it was a daughter story or or something that happened to me
• 1:03:07
  in my past that connected with me. But it connects when it connects,
• 1:03:10
  even in these like like Lifetime, Like look at Lifetime, I mean,
• 1:03:14
  and and Hallmark, I mean they made a living at doing nugget nugget.
• 1:03:20
  I'm coining a phrase, nugget screenwriting, sir, nugget, emotional nugget screenwriting.
• 1:03:27
  But it's but it's true, like if you can connect emotionally, how
• 1:03:30
  many people watched air Bud and cried cried bald because of the dog, just
• 1:03:37
  because of the dog and the boy relationship, which is completely fabricated because that's
• 1:03:43
  obviously a dog doesn't think this way, just a suspensive disbelief here, but
• 1:03:49
  emotionally, like I remember watching um, what's Marley and Me? Oh Jesus
• 1:03:52
  Christ Marley and Me? And uh, the film in with the with the
• 1:04:02
  dog waiting at the train station. Oh, oh Hidalgo or something like that.
• 1:04:10
  Yeah, that Onechi I had never kids did this day make fun of
• 1:04:15
  me because I had to leave the room right right now. And and in
• 1:04:19
  the grand scope of things, uh, hitch, And I've seen that film.
• 1:04:24
  Um, And that's a whole different Thingichi like machine. Um. But
• 1:04:32
  I saw that film and I had similar feelings towards that film. There might
• 1:04:38
  have been a tear or two that busted through my eyeball at that time.
• 1:04:41
  Um. But in the grand scheme of cinema, not something that's on a
• 1:04:45
  list um or not story, not an important story, not something that's studied.
• 1:04:53
  But when you watch it, if you've had a dog, connect and
• 1:04:58
  that's why. That's why you That's why the dog that Saves Christmas movie or
• 1:05:01
  the dog that does anything kind of movie. If you can connect to the
• 1:05:05
  emotion of having a dog, anybody who's ever had a dog will connect to
• 1:05:10
  emotionally. Even if we project so much purity to our dogs, so much
• 1:05:15
  purity, their motives, their loyalty, their love is so pure that we
• 1:05:18
  project all these kind of human qualities onto them. And so when they're distressed
• 1:05:26
  or when they're going off after some you know, impossible quest or whatever it
• 1:05:30
  is. We get pulled in emotionally. But it's the same with brothers,
• 1:05:33
  sisters, fathers, children, whales, free Willie, wait, all those
• 1:05:42
  things. I mean, how many free Willies were there? There was like
• 1:05:45
  five of those. One of those I know free Willie, well, you
• 1:05:47
  know. But again it goes to the best friend. The whale is the
• 1:05:50
  best friend. The emotional dog is the best friend. It's all about these
• 1:05:55
  emotional connections. And this is why when my students they turn in their scripts
• 1:06:00
  and they're really the you know, complex action or horror or comedy, silly
• 1:06:05
  comedies. You know, they're just so I'm like, I read three pages
• 1:06:10
  and I'm zoning out because there's nothing pulling me in, And I just drill
• 1:06:14
  into them every day, every class. You've got to insert them, even
• 1:06:18
  in the silliest comedy, scariest horror film. You have to insert these emotional
• 1:06:25
  elements, family elements, friends, mentors. Dumb and Dummer. Got Dumb
• 1:06:30
  and Dummer, like the original Dumb and Dummer absolutely absurd, Like it's absurd,
• 1:06:34
  absurd, The whole the humor is absurd. I love it, by
• 1:06:38
  the way. It's crazy, but there's so much emotion and purity to their
• 1:06:43
  not only their friendship but their journey because he wants to he saw this girl
• 1:06:47
  and like you're saying, there's a chance, and that's what drives the story.
• 1:06:53
  But there's emotional but it's not just two dudes just walking around doing fart
• 1:06:56
  jokes all day, right, you know, it's emotional and their relationship is
• 1:07:00
  emotional. Right, So it's uh, you know, so a lot of
• 1:07:03
  times going back to the question what is the central idea? A lot of
• 1:07:09
  times what I'll do is try to think about the arc of the character and
• 1:07:13
  the emotional journey of the character and bake it into the central idea. So,
• 1:07:17
  for instance, the Matrix, which is a very heady oh but really
• 1:07:24
  is about self discovery and certainly ultimately love is the thing that convinces him that
• 1:07:29
  he is the one, you know, because she's whispering in his ear.
• 1:07:31
  Right, I knew that you because I said, you know the artcle that's
• 1:07:36
  not a very good impression of Kerry and Aws. I'm just saying I do
• 1:07:42
  a much better, Larry Fishburn. That's exactly Neo exactly. So the central
• 1:07:50
  idea for um for the Matrix is Neo can only get over his sense of
• 1:07:59
  being a cog in the wheel and except that he and be the one is
• 1:08:05
  when he accepts that he is the one, when he believes that he's the
• 1:08:09
  one. So if you think of the of like the arc of Neo over
• 1:08:13
  that film, he wants to know what the matrix is, he wants to
• 1:08:16
  know the truth. After he learns the truth, he's kind of happy to
• 1:08:20
  be a foot soldier in Morbeus's little army, but God forbid, he doesn't
• 1:08:29
  want the responsibility on his shoulders. He's resisting. He still believes he's a
• 1:08:32
  cog, like we all kind of do that we're powerless. It's only when
• 1:08:38
  he gets over his belief that he's a cog and believes that he is the
• 1:08:43
  one, when he is able to be the one. And that is really
• 1:08:48
  the central idea of the film. And it really that notion is tested in
• 1:08:53
  almost every scene in the movie in one way or the other. That thesis
• 1:08:58
  can only be one when he believes he's the one is tested in every scene
• 1:09:02
  in the movie in some format or another. So that's why it's really important
• 1:09:05
  to have a central idea, because what it does is create something of an
• 1:09:10
  emotional spine that ties your story together. Otherwise you might have something that kind
• 1:09:14
  of meanders or fuels episodic and isn't cohesive. And that's why that film and
• 1:09:20
  that franchise specifically that film, though ums has aged so well and people look
• 1:09:28
  at it as it's a masterpiece, it really is truly a masterpiece of its
• 1:09:31
  time. Um. There's a lot of films that came out in that era
• 1:09:34
  that were visual effects heavy and action and all that stuff, but we don't
• 1:09:39
  speak about that. But because they're not held at the same level as the
• 1:09:43
  matrix. Is why because of that emotion that because get a little philosophical here,
• 1:09:50
  we all have to once we believe we can do we do? You
• 1:09:57
  know it? Who is? It's a movie about faith. It is your
• 1:10:00
  movement right and and and and generally in our industry as a whole. And
• 1:10:04
  I'm really going to go deep here. Um, we'll be right back after
• 1:10:09
  a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. We won't
• 1:10:17
  achieve what we want to achieve until we believe we can achieve it. And
• 1:10:21
  if that's the starting point, Like if you can't believe you're going to write
• 1:10:25
  a screenplay, you're never going to write a screenplay as like as Henry Ford.
• 1:10:28
  As a Henry Ford. I think he said, like, if you
• 1:10:30
  believe that you can or you can't, you're right. Good. I mean,
• 1:10:34
  if that's you're you're absolutely. If you really can't or you really you
• 1:10:38
  can't, you're right. So it's up to you to believe to move forward.
• 1:10:41
  I do want to ask one more question, um, before I ask
• 1:10:44
  you my series of questions, ask all my guests, because we could talk
• 1:10:45
  for hours, I know, Um, can we put a test? Can
• 1:10:49
  we put the test to the three questions we've just talked about to one film
• 1:10:54
  that I'm I'm just beating it up in my head trying and I haven't seen
• 1:10:57
  it in a while, and I actually have to watch it again. Are
• 1:10:59
  you ready? You're ready? See what we could test this one? All
• 1:11:01
  right? Airplane? Airplane? Airplane? So yes, So so I remember
• 1:11:09
  it. You tell me what is the emotion simple emotional journey of airplane?
• 1:11:15
  Um? Well, obviously to survive the plane? Um well, I mean
• 1:11:18
  there's that. There's that's the plot. The plot is to land. But
• 1:11:21
  if I remember it, and again I haven't seen it probably in like ten
• 1:11:26
  years, other than like in a in a sitting. I've seen clips of
• 1:11:29
  it over over the last ten years. But if I remember correctly, the
• 1:11:32
  main character who was the pilot, there was an emotional there was some sort
• 1:11:38
  of emotional attachment to the stewardess got stewardess flight attendant sorry they called their students
• 1:11:44
  back then a flight attendant. Um. And there was that kind of there
• 1:11:48
  was something drawing those two together. And there was a love story at the
• 1:11:50
  end of the day. If I'm not, if I I just remember all
• 1:11:54
  the funny parts, I don't because it's just so funny. If you remember
• 1:11:58
  the Robert what his name, Robert Hayes. Yeah, um, he was
• 1:12:04
  a broken, broken guy with a drinking problem. You know, he drink
• 1:12:09
  brote in his eye. He had a drinking problem because he led a mission
• 1:12:13
  yes where yes, George Zipper or whatever crash right. So it was funny,
• 1:12:19
  but at the same time it's it's a true emotional thing. He led
• 1:12:23
  a failed journey as a pilot. He people died under his watch. Yep.
• 1:12:28
  It's led to him having a broken kind of life where he couldn't love
• 1:12:31
  or be loved. Um. And he is stuck on this plane and he
• 1:12:35
  gets pulled reluctantly into the pilot seat, and he's able to do it by
• 1:12:41
  virtue of Julie Haggarty's kind of see love for him. No, now I
• 1:12:46
  remember it now it all came coming back. But that's right, so youth.
• 1:12:49
  So that's the driving force of it. I mean, the movie is
• 1:12:54
  remembered because it's just so damn funny. I mean it's still at an emotional
• 1:13:01
  story. But but but without but listen again, without that emotion, you
• 1:13:06
  don't the story can't move. It's just a bunch of gangs. It's just
• 1:13:12
  then it's just gets comedy at that point. Um, you know, once
• 1:13:15
  sketch Comedy Kit out after once sketch Comedy Kit, and there's no emotional throughput
• 1:13:19
  um or line or foundation. So I just wanted to bring Airplane up because
• 1:13:24
  it's a it's a unique because that's a slapstick comedy. Well yeah, this
• 1:13:28
  is why those those slapstick spoofs, you know, the scary movies and things
• 1:13:32
  like that. Some of them work, most of them get terrible reviews.
• 1:13:36
  A lot of them fail. Um, they have to be under ninety minutes
• 1:13:40
  because they just cannot sustain. Airplane is kind of considered a classic because not
• 1:13:45
  only are is it funny as hell and the jokes really work and most of
• 1:13:50
  them, yeah, yeah, there's something that day some of them, some
• 1:13:54
  of them wouldn't play so well today, right, or Blazing Saddles the same
• 1:13:58
  thing. I mean, Jesus, I know, right, Blazing Chaddles too,
• 1:14:00
  but they had but even Blazing Saddles too, there's no strong optional their
• 1:14:05
  root interest in that week. It's a friendship between a broken uh you know,
• 1:14:10
  uh shooter who was shot you know, Gene Wilder and Cleveland Little who's
• 1:14:16
  a a hero who happs to be black at a time where you cannot be
• 1:14:20
  hero in a black and black all right, So and they formed this friendship.
• 1:14:26
  This this one was love story between these two guys. So you're rooting
• 1:14:30
  for them, all right. I'm just I'm playing as we're talking, I'm
• 1:14:33
  playing vac scenes in my head. I'm just laughing because I mean, Blazing
• 1:14:36
  Saddles just, oh my god, it's so good. It's it's I'm not
• 1:14:42
  sure if Blazing Saddles would work today or not, but it's you know,
• 1:14:46
  it's an anti racist film. No, Mel actually talked about that. I
• 1:14:49
  mean, he did the Hitler like, uh, whether it that Hitler movie.
• 1:14:53
  Um uh yeah, not silent movie, but the Yeah, but A
• 1:15:01
  History of the World Part two, yeah, and and well History of the
• 1:15:05
  World Part two had like Hitler, Well, no, the producers, the
• 1:15:10
  producers for God's Sex. It's a the producers one of the greatest. I
• 1:15:13
  mean, it's a it's it's it's about a play about about Hitler every time.
• 1:15:16
  Yeah. So but I actually, I actually just saw a recent interview
• 1:15:24
  with mel uh mel Brooks, the writer of Blazing Saddles, who said that
• 1:15:30
  today it wouldn't get produced. There's no way a studio would produce that film
• 1:15:34
  today. Um. But if you look at it, it is and it's
• 1:15:39
  an anti racist, it's completely making fun of it. And you when you
• 1:15:42
  make fun of things like that, those image, that imagery, that that
• 1:15:46
  kind of toxic stuff that they're talking about, Um, it just brings them
• 1:15:51
  down, It takes them off their pedestal. And like Hitler, like you
• 1:15:57
  know obviously, like you know, spring time for Hitler, I mean he
• 1:15:59
  just hid him. Chaplain did it. Chaplin did it as well, and
• 1:16:02
  the in The Dictator and The Great Dictator. So there is a there's a
• 1:16:06
  place for that. Um. Now we'll offend people. Obviously it's gonna offend
• 1:16:11
  somebody because that's the world we live in. Um. But again, Aaron,
• 1:16:15
  we could talk for at least some of the two hours about story and
• 1:16:18
  this. This is fantastic. I love this interview. I'm gonna ask you
• 1:16:21
  a few questions. I ask all my guests, Um, what are three
• 1:16:26
  screenplays every screenwriter should read? Ooh, um okay, I would say,
• 1:16:34
  um, wait, caught me off guard? Um. I would say shawsh
• 1:16:39
  anchor Damnation, Yes, ban after my own heart. I love that one.
• 1:16:44
  Um. I would say, I love Network. I love the screenplay
• 1:16:48
  M for Network, Uh, written by um, what's his name? You
• 1:16:54
  know, the guy with the dude and the stuff? Yeah, got it?
• 1:16:58
  Yeah, that guy. I'm really bad at names. And it's bad
• 1:17:00
  because you know, screenwriters are always you know, forgotten. They like who
• 1:17:04
  about that? Yeah? Who? It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter who's
• 1:17:08
  who's the DP? Yeah he's the guy, you know. Um. And
• 1:17:15
  so I would say a network in terms of really great sort of like societal,
• 1:17:21
  um, societal kind of like being able to tell a story that really
• 1:17:26
  holds a mirror up to society's foibles and and all of that. And I
• 1:17:30
  think you could release it in theaters today and it would probably get the same
• 1:17:33
  reaction. Yea, it might even be more relevant today. Um what else,
• 1:17:41
  Um I actually really liked. I would say get Out would be a
• 1:17:46
  good one to study. That's great script because it's it's a great script.
• 1:17:51
  It works as a pure genre film, it works as a great character story.
• 1:17:56
  It kind of is follows the formula of the eight sequence is which I
• 1:18:00
  teach in my three acts eight sequences. Um, you know, uh first
• 1:18:04
  acts, second act, midpoint, it has a low point, so it
• 1:18:09
  follows a lot of the sort of the formula of good writing or typical writing.
• 1:18:14
  But it also then um also kind of like has this undercurrent of of
• 1:18:20
  satire to it that's very kind of clipped in there and horror and and I
• 1:18:25
  mean there is that's our horror, like um, oh god, uh George
• 1:18:29
  Romero, Day of the Dead, Night of Living Dead. But Day of
• 1:18:32
  the Dead was a day that that was the one than the Dawn of the
• 1:18:35
  Dead. Yeah in a mall, Yeah, the mall one that was completely
• 1:18:39
  satirical about yeah everything. He was trying to say that great horror can do
• 1:18:44
  that. Yeah. Okay, So those those are very three good choices.
• 1:18:47
  Um, what advice would you give a screenwriter wanting to break into the business
• 1:18:50
  today? Okay, so this kind of goes back to what we were talking
• 1:18:56
  about earlier. UM, I know, at what people the inclination might be
• 1:19:02
  that I need to write My Avengers or I need to write something that is
• 1:19:06
  like, uh, you know, a home run, big box office film.
• 1:19:11
  But what people are really looking for our unique voices, and they're looking
• 1:19:15
  for disruptive stories. So and this today, better than any time in history,
• 1:19:23
  is a great time to tell a story from a point of view that
• 1:19:26
  has not been told before. Whether it's l LGBTQ stories you know, of
• 1:19:32
  African American stories, Latino Asian stories. It's time. It's a good time
• 1:19:38
  now to tell stories that are not just white male hero stories. You know,
• 1:19:45
  and you don't have to be um. And that's the other thing is
• 1:19:48
  that I often my writers of color that are in my class, the women,
• 1:19:55
  you know, they feel this pressure to write stories about women and writers
• 1:20:00
  of color. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and now
• 1:20:09
  back to the show, and they really want to write something else and might
• 1:20:14
  do it. Write something else. There's no better time than right now to
• 1:20:16
  write something. Write the story that you want to write, even though it
• 1:20:20
  seems fringe or weird, or or plays with structure. Agents producers, they
• 1:20:28
  are looking for fresh voices, wild stories, you know, stories told from
• 1:20:35
  the fringes. But again, even in those kind of stories, as long
• 1:20:39
  as there's an undercurrent of human emotion that we all can relate to. This
• 1:20:44
  is why Parasite did so well. Parasite is really a story of a family
• 1:20:48
  who was aspiring to be greater than they were, and they kind of went
• 1:20:51
  the wrong route to do it and paid the price. But you know,
• 1:20:58
  it was a family story, but it was twisted as hell. So I
• 1:21:01
  would say the advice is to write something disruptive, Write something Dad's going to
• 1:21:09
  surprise, not something that people are going to expect. Fair enough, what
• 1:21:15
  is the lesson that took you the longest to learn, whether in the film
• 1:21:16
  business or in life. You know, it really is about character. And
• 1:21:21
  this is such a and I tell my students this too. I used to
• 1:21:24
  come up with these really big gimmick, great high concept movies and I would
• 1:21:30
  just sort of like, you know, pour everything into the concept and not
• 1:21:33
  think enough about the character. You know, it's this character. What is
• 1:21:38
  what's their what's their central major flaw? What? What do they want?
• 1:21:42
  What do they think they want? Who are they? What are there?
• 1:21:45
  What's their personality? What's their backstory? Where do they come from? So
• 1:21:48
  now I really forced myself to think a lot about my character. How can
• 1:21:54
  I make my heroes different than you know? Usually you make the supporting characters
• 1:22:00
  really interesting, but the hero is really vanilla and generic. How can I
• 1:22:02
  make my you know, maybe instead of a white male lead in this horror
• 1:22:06
  film, I'll make it a diminutive, mute, cleaning lady of a woman,
• 1:22:13
  And maybe my film will be more interesting with a character like that.
• 1:22:16
  Who I've really thought about her backstory, that she's mute and yet she's also
• 1:22:23
  full of a spitfire and spunky. She loves while watching dancing. Uh.
• 1:22:29
  You know, she believes in you know, that monsters are not necessarily monsters.
• 1:22:32
  She yearns for love but also knows when to let it go. You
• 1:22:35
  know, think about all those character traits before I actually write. Sounds familiar,
• 1:22:42
  sounds familiar. I don't it should be a movie. I think I
• 1:22:45
  think I should right down to a movie. Absolutely, When you were saying
• 1:22:48
  that there was a character that I was remembering. That is such a wonderful
• 1:22:53
  character, Leon from the from the Professional, or Leon m. John Renault.
• 1:22:58
  He loved watching Old Like, you know, he took care of a
• 1:23:01
  plant, like that was a thing. You mean, I'm assuming you say
• 1:23:05
  that movie right, Here's yeah, he's he took care of the plant.
• 1:23:09
  He used to watch I think it's either Charlie Chaplin or no Dancing. He
• 1:23:12
  fred a stare, So he was an innocent child. Like, that's so
• 1:23:15
  different of a hitman than a hit man would have been. Like, imagine
• 1:23:20
  if that would have been just a gruff dude that was a war vet cliche,
• 1:23:27
  right, But he's completely different. And then he has to take a
• 1:23:30
  girl, and then he has to teach a girl how to be a hit
• 1:23:31
  man. That's that's interesting, more interesting, far far more. And that's
• 1:23:38
  true. And if you take the time, and sometimes it takes half a
• 1:23:41
  day, you know, we're a day to really think about your character without
• 1:23:45
  like you know, getting into the script and the plot, think about the
• 1:23:47
  character and how to make your character. Actually, my question too in my
• 1:23:53
  thing is how are you honoring and disrupting your genre? You want to do
• 1:23:57
  the same thing with your central character. How is your central How are you
• 1:24:00
  honoring your genre with your central character, but how are you also disrupting the
• 1:24:04
  genre with your central character? You know, how can you make them different,
• 1:24:09
  something that makes them pop and it makes them interesting? You know?
• 1:24:13
  Um? Uh, Cameron Crowe is really good at creating characters like that.
• 1:24:17
  Um, you know, as good as it gets. And no, that's
• 1:24:20
  James, that's James. James Brooks and Cameron Crowe. They spent a lot
• 1:24:25
  of time thinking about their characters Greta Gerwig before they actually even think about what
• 1:24:30
  the plot is. Now, what is What was the biggest fear you had
• 1:24:34
  to overcome to write your first screenplay that I would be exposed as a fraud.
• 1:24:45
  Yeah, a lot of people get that the answer. Yeah, it's
• 1:24:48
  just you know, my concern that I would write this thing and it would
• 1:24:53
  suck and people would hate it. And you know what, my first screenplay,
• 1:24:58
  probably half the people did hate it, and the other half of the
• 1:25:00
  people said, ah, you got promised, but call me later, kid,
• 1:25:05
  And it was them. It was the positive, constructive encouragement that I
• 1:25:11
  got from the handful of people that saw that in my first script that I
• 1:25:15
  had some promise that I was. I was going for something that encouraged me
• 1:25:19
  to write the second one and do it better. But boy, getting over
• 1:25:24
  the fear of failure and rejection. It's a big one. And then what
• 1:25:28
  is and what did you learn from your biggest failure? They're the character thing?
• 1:25:33
  Okay. You know one of the first films that my old partner and
• 1:25:39
  I wrote was some kind of Jack in the Beanstock Story and it was just
• 1:25:44
  filled with gimmicks and we just didn't spend any time really thinking about Jack's character.
• 1:25:49
  And it was this huge It was like it went out to the town.
• 1:25:53
  It was going to be this auction. The agency was all thought,
• 1:25:55
  this was gonna this was like I think right after air Bud was getting made
• 1:25:59
  and we were, you know, kind of hot, and or after Disney
• 1:26:03
  bought it, but it hadn't come come out or something, and it's just
• 1:26:08
  everyone passed. And it's because they just the emotional thing. They weren't pulled
• 1:26:12
  in emotionally with this character or his journey. And that's when I realize,
• 1:26:16
  I have to spend more time thinking about character and emotion. Now, where
• 1:26:23
  can people find out about the book about your work? And uh? And
• 1:26:27
  and find out more about you. Well, you can go to my website
• 1:26:30
  Aaron Mendelssohn dot com and that's Mendelssen shn dot com. Or you can also
• 1:26:34
  find my book The Eleven Fundamental Questions on Amazon, but on my website there's
• 1:26:41
  a link to the Amazon page through through the website and you can also sign
• 1:26:46
  up, you know, to be on my mailing list and get updates and
• 1:26:50
  that kind of thing. Very cool, Aaron Man, thank you. It's
• 1:26:54
  like I said, oh, we could keep talking for at least another two
• 1:26:56
  three hours, So I do appreciate you taking the time out um to talk
• 1:26:59
  to the tribe and hopefully helped them along their screenwriting paths. So thank you
• 1:27:02
  so much, brother, I appreciate it. It's been my pleasure. Thank
• 1:27:04
  you, Alex. I want to thank Aaron for coming on the show and
• 1:27:09
  sharing his knowledge and experience with dog to play basketball as well, So thank
• 1:27:15
  you Aaron. If you want to get a copy of his book or reach
• 1:27:18
  out to Aaron, please head over the show notes at in the Filmhustle dot
• 1:27:21
  com for it Slash six seventy nine, and if you have it already,
• 1:27:26
  please head over to Filmmaking Podcast dot com. Subscribe and leave a good review
• 1:27:31
  for the show. It really helps us out a lot, guys. Thank
• 1:27:34
  you again so much for listening to guys as always, keep that hustle going,
• 1:27:38
  keep that dream alive, stay safe out there, and I'll talk too
• 1:27:41
  soon. Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.