Latest / Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast / IFH 820: Screenwriting, The BAM Method, And How To Write A Screenplay That Stands Out with Mike Bierman

Transcript

IFH 820: Screenwriting, The BAM Method, And How To Write A Screenplay That Stands Out with Mike Bierman · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: You are listening to the ifh podcast Network. For more
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  Speaker 1: amazing filmmaking and screenwriting.
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  Speaker 1: Welcome to the INDIEILM Muscle Podcast, Episode number eight to
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  Speaker 1: twenty Cinema should make You forget. You're sitting in a theater,
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  Speaker 1: Roman Polanski.
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  Speaker 2: Film Hustle Podcast, where we show you how to survive
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  Speaker 2: and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles of
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  Speaker 1: And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another
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  Speaker 1: episode of the Indie Film Huscle podcast.
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  Speaker 3: I am your humble.
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  Speaker 1: Host Alex Ferrari. Today's show is sponsored by Rise of
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  Speaker 1: the Film Entrepreneur How to turn your independent film into
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  Speaker 1: a profitable business. It's harder today than ever before for
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• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Enjoy today's episode with guest host Dave Bullis.
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: My next guest is actually a forty five time award
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  Speaker 3: winning screenwriter and he's the founder of the popular Facebook
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: group Screenwriters who could actually write. We're gonna talk about
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: a lot of this stuff, including templates, and we're gonna
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: talk about his process of writing. We're gonna talk about
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: save the Cat and all that other good stuff. What
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: does he think about all of it? Well, why don't
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  Speaker 3: we all give it a listen with my guest Mike Bierman. Hey, Mike,
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  Speaker 3: thanks off for coming on the podcast.
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  Speaker 4: Oh my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
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  Speaker 3: Oh, it's great to have you. Mike. You know, you're
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  Speaker 3: somebody that's been on my radar for a while. You're
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  Speaker 3: you're the host of the screenwriters who could actually write
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  Speaker 3: Facebook group. You're a forty five time award winning screenwriter,
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  Speaker 3: so you know, obviously you're somebody that I've wanted to
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: talk to, and you know, just to get started, Mike,
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  Speaker 3: I wanted to ask you. You're a trial attorney, you
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  Speaker 3: know by day, and I wanted to ask you when
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  Speaker 3: did you get bit by the screenwriting bug.
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  Speaker 4: I'm actually not. I hardly ever practice anymore because between
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  Speaker 4: managing my daughter and doing the group actually takes an
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  Speaker 4: enormous amount of time. Given the number of posts I do,
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  Speaker 4: which you've seen, I'm sure you can understand that I
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: rarely practice law anymore. I'm licensed, I can practice, you know,
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  Speaker 4: do all the things I used to do. I just
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  Speaker 4: don't do it anymore because what happens is I end
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  Speaker 4: up with a bunch of court dates that I can't control,
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  Speaker 4: scheduled out at infinitum, you know, out into the future
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  Speaker 4: and cases can drag on for years. So rather than
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  Speaker 4: commit to those types of things, I'm doing something else.
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  Speaker 4: I try to avoid trial work, although I do still
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  Speaker 4: practice some entertainment law behind the scenes, including recently I've
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  Speaker 4: done some of that, but generally I don't practice that anymore.
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  Speaker 4: And the way I got started in screenwriting is my daughter,
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  Speaker 4: Erica Bierman. She's in Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Hunger Games,
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  Speaker 4: Mocking J one. Her scene was cut from Mocking J
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  Speaker 4: two it revealed too much too early, but she was
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  Speaker 4: also in Dumb and Dumber two. She was when she started.
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  Speaker 4: She was getting auditions, even very high level stuff, and
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  Speaker 4: I'd read the scripts and I'd say, Wow, you know,
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  Speaker 4: I just don't think this is written very well. I
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  Speaker 4: think I can do better. And so I bought The
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  Speaker 4: Screenwriter's Bible by David Trotdier, which is one of three
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  Speaker 4: or four books that I recommend everybody should have. I
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  Speaker 4: skimmed through it, I didn't read it, wrote a nineteen
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  Speaker 4: page short script submitted to the Page Awards, which is
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  Speaker 4: top three contests in the world, and took top twenty
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  Speaker 4: five scripts out of something like seven thousand scripts. So
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  Speaker 4: just self taught and started off with a bang.
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  Speaker 3: So the first screenwriting book that you ever bought was
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  Speaker 3: actually deod Tardier's book. Is that was that correct?
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  Speaker 4: Yes? And it's a great book. It's a really good
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  Speaker 4: overview to screenwriting. There are other books that I like
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  Speaker 4: for different purposes, but that's a great first book. It's
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  Speaker 4: hard to imagine a better first book to start with
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  Speaker 4: an and Dave Trider is actually a member of the group,
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  Speaker 4: so I highly recommend that book. And while we're on books,
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  Speaker 4: I also highly recommend Linda Aronson's The Twenty first Century Screenplay,
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: which is all about different structures non three act, all
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: types of different jumping time structures and very complex structures.
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  Speaker 4: And it's a great book because you can actually figure
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  Speaker 4: out what structure would best suit your story idea. If
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  Speaker 4: you know what you're doing when you start writing, you
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  Speaker 4: can custom pick a structure that would be the best
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  Speaker 4: skeleton to flesh out for your story. So that's an
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  Speaker 4: incredible book, very very complicated. She's a very high level writer,
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  Speaker 4: she's from Oxford University. A very meaty book and it's
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  Speaker 4: one you can spend a lot of time with for formatting.
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: I like your cut two is showing by TJ. Alex,
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: which is a pen name. I know people who know
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  Speaker 4: who that is. I haven't bothered to ask, But that's
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  Speaker 4: the best book for formatting. It goes into the most
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: depth any given situation. There are typically three to five
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  Speaker 4: professional acceptable ways you can choose from him to do it,
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  Speaker 4: and that is an essential book for screenwriters. Rick Toscin
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: also Richard Toskin also wrote Playwriting Seminars two point zero,
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  Speaker 4: which is most of a playwriting because he was dean
• 6:45
  Speaker 4: of theater at USC for I think about thirty years,
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: a very long time. But that book also crosses into screenwriting,
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  Speaker 4: and it's an excellent book that breaks down the analysis
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  Speaker 4: of story, whether it's playwriting or screen And so those
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  Speaker 4: are those are four books that I highly recommend.
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  Speaker 3: You know, it's it's funny, Mike, because the first book
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  Speaker 3: I ever read about screenwriting was also David Chardier's book
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  Speaker 3: about formatting. I went into a borders and remember them
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: when they were still around, but whatn't.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, I was sad when they went away.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, because now all that's left is Barnes and Nobles
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  Speaker 3: and maybe a few independent stores here and there. But uh,
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  Speaker 3: you know, it's sad to see that that part of
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  Speaker 3: it go.
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  Speaker 4: You know, Yeah, the brick and mortar bookstores are deaf,
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  Speaker 4: they're they're really enjoyable because you can you can browse,
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  Speaker 4: and there's a certain atmosphere and you can you can
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: kill a few hours and find things you have no
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: idea exist at the end of the internet. The Internet's great,
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: but there's a certain allure to a brick and mortar bookstore,
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: and hopefully those will come back. I should have mentioned
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  Speaker 4: also that Rick Toscan that I just spoke of, who
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  Speaker 4: I think recently got a Lifetime Achieving award from I
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: guess National damone of the Arts. He's actually in the
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  Speaker 4: screenwriting group as well, So we have some really high
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: end gurus in there, lots of pros. Well over one
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  Speaker 4: hundred produced films, films you've heard of written by members
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  Speaker 4: of the group.
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  Speaker 5: So I thought i'd mentioned that, Yeah, the there are
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  Speaker 5: some members of the group that i've you know, I've
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  Speaker 5: seen their posts about, you know, different things that they've
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  Speaker 5: they've written that have you know, been produced.
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  Speaker 3: For instance, I know somebody just wrote a the the
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  Speaker 3: the screenplay for the latest steven Sagall movie, and I
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  Speaker 3: remember he was in the group, and I was talking
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  Speaker 3: to him briefly. I think that's is that Charles or Chuck.
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  Speaker 4: I think his name is Chuck Asmeyer, end of the End,
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  Speaker 4: the End of the Gun, and he has I think
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  Speaker 4: he actually has another film coming out on that same
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  Speaker 4: deal with the same producer, not starring Steven Sagall. I
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: know more about it, but I can't. I can't say
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  Speaker 4: at this point that info is under wraps. But what
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  Speaker 4: I what I just told you is fine. He does
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  Speaker 4: have another film under that deal, and I think he's
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: either optioning or about to sell another script imminently. So
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: we have a lot of activity. I have two feature
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  Speaker 4: films in production myself right now. So you know, there
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: are a lot of There are a lot of people
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  Speaker 4: in the group with a lot of things going on,
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  Speaker 4: some really great stuff.
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  Speaker 3: So that's why the name fits so well. Screenwriters who
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  Speaker 3: can actually write and not just talk about theory.
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  Speaker 1: Right, We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: and now back to the show.
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  Speaker 4: Right. Well, you know there's a certain haughtiness and snottiness
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  Speaker 4: to it. I'm the first to admit it, and I
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  Speaker 4: actually did it on purpose because in reviewing screenwriting groups,
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  Speaker 4: there's one group in particular, it's just enormous. I won't
• 9:52
  Speaker 4: name it, but it has nearly twenty thousand members, and
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: the type of questions asked in that group are just
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  Speaker 4: my boggling. The the lack of thought going into you know,
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: posting a question with your name on it before you
• 10:09
  Speaker 4: put it up, it's just incredible. I think when I
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: started the group in my in my group description, I
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: named it kind of sarcastically because I was leaving the
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: other group just in disgust and wanted to try and
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: get people who were, if not more experienced, a little
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: bit more thoughtful about what they were writing and what
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: they were saying, a little more educated people in the
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: in the craft. And so I think I posted, you know,
• 10:35
  Speaker 4: screenwriting screenwriting Forum, hopefully without questions like is water wet?
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: And is it okay to kill my character? So the
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: whole thing kind of started out as a sarcastic announcement
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: of a departure from kind of like the Great Unwashed,
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: with people saying, you know, I'm a screenwriter because they,
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: you know, wrote something on a napkin once. To try
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: to attract people, even beginners, by people who are more
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  Speaker 4: serious about learning the craft, who are looking at it
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  Speaker 4: as a profession rather than as a hobby.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's uh. You know, I've joined other groups in
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  Speaker 3: the past as well, and a lot some of these questions.
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  Speaker 3: There was way too many questions about formatting. And for instance,
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  Speaker 3: there was actually a group that meant physically here in Philadelphia,
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  Speaker 3: and these the beginners who would show up but always
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  Speaker 3: ask about formatting and what I said.
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  Speaker 4: By a book, by a book, I mean, read a script,
• 11:32
  Speaker 4: buy a book. It's it's just not that. It's not
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  Speaker 4: that tough. And unfortunately, I'm sorry to cut you off there,
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  Speaker 4: but you know, unfortunately that is all too common in
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  Speaker 4: a lot of screenwriting groups. And one of the rules
• 11:47
  Speaker 4: I have a rules driven group for this purpose to
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: try and keep the group on focus. And you know,
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  Speaker 4: no political posts, and there are a bunch of other
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  Speaker 4: a bunch of other rules, but you know, one of
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  Speaker 4: one of the basic tenets of the group is search
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  Speaker 4: the group itself before you ask a question, because they've
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: been in people been in there for over a year,
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  Speaker 4: answering in depth almost anything you can think of. And
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  Speaker 4: also search the internet before you ask a simple formatting question.
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  Speaker 4: Buy a book, It's just not that tough. And so
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  Speaker 4: all you're going to do by by asking that type
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  Speaker 4: of question in an open form, is attract ridicule, show
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  Speaker 4: you have no idea what you're doing, and get a
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: bunch of troll responses. So you actually never get the
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  Speaker 4: right answer because even the people giving you the right
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: answer will be deluded by all the trolls. So and
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: that's very common, as you know.
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. You know, when when people would
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: ask that in the group, in the physical group, I'd
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: always say to the other person that was running it
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  Speaker 3: with me, I'd say, why don't we take these people,
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: put them in their own group and we can go
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: over like formatting, and then the other half of the group,
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  Speaker 3: you know, we'll work on actual you know, writing and
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  Speaker 3: getting too the structures and it. And you know, we
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: kept going back and forth on this, and I said,
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: because every meeting, we're sacrificing our strongest for our weakest.
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  Speaker 3: And what I mean by that is, you know exactly, yeah,
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  Speaker 3: just just you know, spending all this time on formatting
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: when you could buy fade in or final draft the
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: writer's do wet or whatever and it takes care of
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  Speaker 3: it all for you, or.
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  Speaker 4: You know, like well no, no, no, there's a miss
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  Speaker 4: a little bit of a misconception. It takes it takes
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  Speaker 4: care of the Uh. There's a difference between formatting and
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  Speaker 4: element placement on the page, and this is a common
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: uh misunderstanding or or people misstate this. The screenwriting software,
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  Speaker 4: there isn't any screenwriting software that actually formats per se
• 13:42
  Speaker 4: for you. What the screenwriting software does is it actually
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: puts the elements in place on the page so that
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  Speaker 4: you don't have to work in word counting spaces. For example. Uh,
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: you know, if you're going to do a parenthetical under dialogue,
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: the screenwriting software will put the position the cursor in
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  Speaker 4: the right place for you know, a play format or
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: screenwriting format for character or shot or transition or dialogue,
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: action note, special, whatever it is that you're trying to do,
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: it'll actually set it up on the page for you
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: with the right number of preceding, following and intervening spaces
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: in intervening character returns. But what it actually doesn't do
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: is format And so that's one of the things that
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: happens in beginning groups a lot, and I've seen it.
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: I've seen professional scripts where people actually said, when I
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: was script doctoring or rewriting a script, I'd say, hey,
• 14:44
  Speaker 4: you know this is going to be a lot more
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: work than you thought. Well, why is that? Is the
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: story that well, the story's okay, the problem is the formatting.
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: Everything's off. Well, that's impossible, I use final Draft. Well
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: that's a very naive comment. That shows how many screenwriting
• 15:00
  Speaker 4: formatting errors they're going to be because the software doesn't
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: actually format, it just puts things in the right place.
• 15:07
  Speaker 4: The formatting is the understanding of how to how to
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: direct the camera without using shot direction, for example in
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: the specscript, and how to properly write down the entire
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: skeleton of a visual film in writing using as few
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: words as possible, leaving as much white space on the
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: on the page as possible. And screenwriting software is just
• 15:37
  Speaker 4: the beginning. It's kind of like saying I have a Ferrari,
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: so now I'm going to be a you know, a
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: champion driver. There's an enormous difference between having the car
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: and being able to drive. It. Does that kind of
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: make sense?
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it does well because you actually touched upon
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: what I was going to was. Actually I was going
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: to say, was there were people who had Microsoft Word
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: Open and they were using like four tabs for a
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: character three tabs for this.
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: That is brutal.
• 16:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because they would turn in a script and I
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: would look at this and I'd go, it's all off.
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: And I said, what did you write this in? And
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: and that's where I'm saying, you know, the screen because
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: they would always say, well, Dave, you know, how do
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: we write this blah blah. I'd say, no, no, you just
• 16:15
  Speaker 3: use drug the software. That's what I mean about, you know,
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: buying final draft or whatever and.
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: The positions the elements correct. Yeah, that's then the other
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: The other thing beginners don't understand is, you know, they'll
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: go out and pick Helvetica or you know, I don't
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: even know the names of all the fonts, crazy fonts,
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: swirls and you know HP Lovecraft fonts, and Okay, that
• 16:36
  Speaker 4: stuff's great, uh if you're if you're writing a free
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: verse poem or something. But screenwriting is designed for every
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: page to be one minute of screen time. Now, obviously,
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: depending on action, depending on on dialogue, the level of vocabulary,
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: the the way the script's written, each page is going
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: to vary. Obviously, you have an enormous amount of action,
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: tightly written action a page to go conceivably several minutes.
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: But if you you know, okay that if you write
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: there's a two mile car chase down the dirt road,
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: that's not gonna happen in one minute, okay. So uh
• 17:19
  Speaker 4: it's the page length for filming can vary, but the
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: whole idea is, on average, one page is one minute
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: of film. Now. The only way you can do that,
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: if you think about it, is if you have a
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: particular font style, which is called a fixed pitch font,
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: and the standard for that is Courier, which is an
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: old news font. It's I find it fairly ugly font.
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: But they've developed all kinds of variant Courier fonts. So
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: there's you know, Courier Final Draft. They've patented their own
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: Courier New Courier Dark, which is one I really like,
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: and there there are a bunch of other variance of Courier.
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: And what it comes down to is no matter what
• 18:05
  Speaker 4: character you type, whether it's a special character, dollar sign,
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: hashtag or pound sign, exclamation point, period, comma, capital P,
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: small X, it doesn't matter whatever character you type, they
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: all take up exactly the same amount of space on
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: the page. And that's why you have to use a
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: fixed pitch font, and some people will try to cheat.
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: Let's say you're a novelist and you're overwriting your script
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: and you want to get it down from one hundred
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: and sixty five pages to one hundred and twenty where
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: somebody might actually read it, and you can't figure out
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: any way to do it because you're overwriting everything. You're
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: too greened to rewrite your script properly. So what you
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: do is you get the bride idea to go in
• 18:50
  Speaker 4: and change the font to some font other than final draft.
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: Go ahead and add a couple of lines one top,
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: one bottom, cheat the margins left, and write, and all
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: of a sudden, your page count drops down to one
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: hundred and thirty pages. You're within striking distance of your goal.
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: The problem is any professional looking at a single page
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: of your script will immediately throw in the trash. M h.
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And you know again, that's something that I've also
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: seen too, especially on the cover page, like they'll use
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: like a different font for the title, and you know,
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: like in all those specialized fonts and and some.
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: Artwork, artwork thrown down the margins.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: And now back to the show.
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah. In in spec script, Yeah, I have actually have
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: a book coming out being published by dose Blant Publishing,
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: and it's it's going to be called It's coming out
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: fairly surely. I'm essentially finished with the manuscript, the body
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: of it. I'm working on the uh, some of the pictures,
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: clearing copyrights, things like that. But the book's going to
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: be called Secrets of Screenwriting, with a subtitle of Collected Essays.
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: I don't want anyone to think that this is like
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: any of the other screenwriting books. It really isn't. It's
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: a collection of my long essay posts from the group
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: over the last year, and it's kind of a rambling,
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: disordered volume, full of all kinds of prolls of wisdom
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: that just occurred to me from a post or someone's
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: comment or something. I would pull out my phone and
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: write these gigantic, sometimes five and six page posts. They
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: probably have a mental problem. I don't know why I
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: do it, but I do. And a lot of people
• 20:47
  Speaker 4: asked me to collect those, or they wanted me to
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: archive them somehow so they could reference them. Several pros
• 20:53
  Speaker 4: have used my rewriting post, which is very populous, about
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: six pages long, one pro actually printed it out and
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: glued onto the wall above his computer messaged me to
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: tell me how useful it was. And I have a
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: copyright post people tend to like Screencraft. Publish part of
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: that copyright post, and I'm going to publish the whole
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: thing in the book with Screencraft's permission. They've already given
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: me permission to republish the whole but that should be useful.
• 21:25
  Speaker 4: I've kind of lost track of where I was, but
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: there's a plug for the book.
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: Do you know when that book's coming out, Mike.
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: I'm a the contract to get it out in the
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: next I think I've got sixty days or so to
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: get the manuscript, and that's not a problem because the
• 21:41
  Speaker 4: manuscript's essentially finished, and then the publisher has to publish
• 21:46
  Speaker 4: it within six months. So and we're shooting for Barnes
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: and Noble, you know, the brick and mortar stores. I
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: guess there'll probably be a hard hard copy hardcover version
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: and the you know, steam entered paperback type version. We
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: suspect it'll be oversized, probably a five by eight or
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: five y nine. It is probably gonna be about two
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: hundred and sixty pages, and it won't be like any
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: other It won't be like Trottier's Guide or anything like that.
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: That'll be fully index where you can go in and see.
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: You know, g I have this particular question I'm want
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: to look this is. This is more of different subjects,
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: the philosophies behind different ways of writing story things like that.
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: It's it's more say, form rather than subject driven like
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: a lot of books, So it'll be very different. It's
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: more of the kind of the book you sit down
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: in a in a coffee shop and read it to
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: get kind of like a mixture of opinion and method
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: and things like that. So it'll be very different.
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: Oh, very cool, because you know, I have a ton
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: of screenwriting books and this does sound very different than
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: all the rest that I have. Obviously because this is
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: a podcast, you can't see it, but next to me
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: is my library of screenwriting books.
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: But yeah, well you know that's just smart. I mean,
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: this is a is a very estheteric craft. It's a
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: very closed industry. A lot of the really good screenwriters
• 23:21
  Speaker 4: either don't have the time to help or don't want
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: to help. And I've actually seen sabotage in groups I've
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: seen I won't name any of them. But I've seen
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: professional or advanced writers who actually get paid all the
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: time to write giving wrong answers on purpose to throw
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: off either someone they don't like or somebody that you know,
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: they just decided to screw with. And of course that
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: doesn't that doesn't help anybody except the pro who's keeping
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: down the competition. So opinions are going to vary in
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: screenwriting books, and I have my own very strong opinions.
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: My book is going to be full of them. It's
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: going to be full of cursing. It's not edited, uh
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: it's it will be edited, but the language won't be
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: edited out. Sometimes if I'm angry about something, you know,
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: I'll flavor the post with a sprinkling of cursing because
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: that's just how it came out. To keep the book genuine,
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: it's the posts are actually going in as the original essays.
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: They're not being edited down to make it politically correct
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: or anything like that. So the book will offend some,
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: it will amuse some, and it should help everyone that
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: reads it, and that's fantastic.
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: You know, sometimes we need it. We need a little
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: tough love, Mike, and that's.
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: And that's what the book is I'll yell at you,
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: I'll prop you up, i'll beat you down, then i'll
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: lift you up again, and I'll i'll inspire you to
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: write better and to keep going. And then I'll i'll
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: beat on you a while for doing something a certain
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: way that's that's not a very effective or good or
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: or smart way, and then I'll build you up again.
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: So it's it's it's kind of a tough ride. But
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: enough people approached me to write it and said, geez,
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: you need to put all these things in a book.
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: These are terrific that a publisher actually approached me to
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: publish the book, So, you know, kind of a nice situation.
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it is an amazing situation. And you know, sometimes
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: we need that tough love, you know, just a funny anecdote, Mike,
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: I think that you'll really enjoy, you know. I once
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: time had a beginner approached me with a script and
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: they came into one of our group, but one of
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: my groups that I was running, and their script had
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: several pages within within the in the script with design
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: drawings on them of what they were talking about inside
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: the script.
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: It's not good, and it doesn't you know, it's it
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: doesn't matter if they're Picasso, and it doesn't matter if
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: they're Hemingway. Those things are not a good combination for
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: a specscript. If you're if you were hired by somebody
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: at dream Works who's absolutely visually driven, and you've already
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: got the job and they see you doodle in the
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: margins and say, jeez, what a great drawing. I'd short
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: like to see some of those in your script. By
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: all means, there's some artwork in the script, but in
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: a regular spec script you don't do that. You don't
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: put artwork in Every rule is made to be broken.
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: One of my most award winning scripts. It doesn't have
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: artwork in it per se, but I do some interesting
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: things with a couple of different fonts that are cut
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: in as JPEGs. One of the languages that the script
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: is written in is Galileean Aramaic, which was a language
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: spoken in the early Middle East which ended not too
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: long after Jesus' time. That's one of seven languages in
• 26:43
  Speaker 4: the script. Well, there's no font for that, so I
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: actually had to cut JPEGs into the script to put
• 26:48
  Speaker 4: in the original Galilean aramic which actually mattered because at
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: one point the language actually appears on the screen as
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: a special effect. So to save producers the four months
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: it took me to get four or five words, let
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: me see, we have a four words took four months
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: to get translated by one of the world's experts in
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: this language. So to save producers time if anyone picked
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: up the script, I went ahead and had the translation
• 27:19
  Speaker 4: already done and put in the script. So you know,
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: rules are made to be broken, but you need to
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: learn the rules and get good so you can decide
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: when you need to break them. I've never put our
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: work per se in a script, and I'm up to
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: I don't know thirteen features, with eight solely written and
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: then others co written with best selling authors and people
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: like that. And I had one person that wanted to
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: put artwork in the script and had a very frank
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: talk with them, and I said, look, you came to me,
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: you want me to write this with you. I like
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: the idea, I like the story. If you insist on
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: putting artwork in the script, you're going to write it along.
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: And that was it.
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: No artwork, you know, And that's something I want to
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: get into.
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: Mike.
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: Is you your screenwriting?
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: Uh?
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: You know your methods? And uh, you know, so when
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: you were starting out, you know, you had David Tardier's book,
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: and you know, obviously you know you're reading, you know,
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: you say to skin through that, and you were writing
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: down your own ideas. And so I wanted to ask,
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: did you ever adhere to any sort of like method,
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: you know, whether it be three acts, five acts, any
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: of that when you were writing, or did you just
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: simply just sort of had you had a starting point.
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: And you just went, okay, so three acts and basically
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: didn't read the book, just looked at the book for formatting,
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: hadn't read any any professional script that the like of
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: any movie that I liked. Just had seen a bunch
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: of scripts that I didn't think were written well that
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: had been sent to my daughter. There were some that
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: were written well. They were you know, by all means
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: that someone researches this. Oh she auditioned for that. Mike said,
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: the script is crap. Now, some of the scripts were crap.
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: A lot of them were just mediocre. So, and I'm
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: unusual in that I don't outline, and most writers do outline.
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: There are just a few, I would say, maybe less
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: than four percent, probably closer to two percent don't outline.
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: I don't know if I want to call it a
• 29:26
  Speaker 4: gift or if it's a curse. Most writers will actually
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: execute a complete.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: and now back to the.
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: Show, fleshed out outline that maybe thirty forty to fifty
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: sixty pages before they write the screenplay, and they'll actually
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: write it from the outline. I have never done that,
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: and I write natively, but I also have developed my
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: own trademark writing method that a lot of even pros
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: have commented publicly. They said that it's helped them a lot,
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: and a number of them are adopting. And I call
• 30:09
  Speaker 4: it BAM, which is the Beermann Asynchronous method. And with BAM,
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: what I do is I write the almost always write
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: the end first, and sometimes I write the beginning first,
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: but it's always either the beginning or the end, and
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: then I wrote write the other end of it, whether
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: it's the beginning or the end. So I always start
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: with the beginning and end when I start a script,
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: and frequently the very first thing that I will do
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: is write the end and write fade out the end,
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: and it'll be the first scene I write that's very
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: common for me. Then I'll go back and write the beginning.
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: And then typically what I do is I will tie
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: scenes into the beginning and end scene the first and
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: last by definition, and I will work back from the
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: outside in which sounds strange until you try it and
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: see what it does. I will tie you know, I
• 31:08
  Speaker 4: may write the end, then I'll write the beginning. Then
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: i'll write the second scene of the screenplay. Then I'll
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: go write three scenes back from the end. I'll jump
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: back and write, you know, the third scene at the beginning.
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: And then I'll know that I need a particular second
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: act scene or a break, and I'll go in and
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: i'll write that, and I'll just float it in the
• 31:32
  Speaker 4: middle of final draft of writer duet, which is what
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: I use now. I'll just float it in there and
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: I will then write whatever scene occurs to me that
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: I'm inspired to write, that I know needs to be
• 31:46
  Speaker 4: written at the time, and I fit them all together
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: like a jigsaw puzzle, and I attach them to the anchors,
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: which are both ends, and as I develop scenes in
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: the middle, I'll when I know I have two scenes,
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: sorry is a long answer. When I know I have
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: two scenes that are going to stick together. I won't
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: put any asterisks between them. I use like three asterisks
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: when I'm floating a scene, and I'll pull the asterisks
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: out when I tie two scenes together and I know
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: that nothing will go between those scenes, and then they
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: may still be floating somewhere in the second or third act,
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: somewhere in the middle of the script, and I just
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: build the whole script that way. When I write the
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: last scene, it's almost always a second act scene somewhere
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: in the middle of the script, and I write it,
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: rewrite that scene, and I'm done, because I also rewrite
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: as I go, so then the whole thing only needs
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: to be skimmed for continuity and for proofing errors. That
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: method is a method that I developed on my own
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: and gave a name to because people wanted to know
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: how it was writing. A lot of people who said
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: it sounds crazy tried it. I absolutely love it. What
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: it does is it prevents writer's block. If you're writing
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: from the beginning of a script seen by scene, and
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: you know where you're going, you may have a bunch
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: of things you already know you want to write, but
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: you can't link it up because you get stuck earlier on.
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: With my method, you never get stuck if you if
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: you don't know what you're gonna do next for a second,
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: you just jump ahead and write the next thing you
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: know you're going to put in, even though it may
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: not be connected to what you just wrote. Does that
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: make sense?
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: Oh?
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it makes sense much.
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: And so I've had I've had several pros, you know,
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: one guy eighteen produced movies, another guy twenty produced movies,
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: another guy six produced movies. They've actually all used it
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: come back and said, my god, this method is wonderful.
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: I don't know, I don't know why. I haven't, you know,
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: used this before. I never thought of it. I've never
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: seen it before. David Silverman, who is the creator of
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: the Wild Thornberrys, actually just recommended and endorsed this method
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: and said it was genius. So that's kind of nice.
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: The interesting thing is, I haven't had anybody given an
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: honest try after understanding the method, which I described in
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: my upcoming book. I haven't had anybody given an honest
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: try and say that it didn't work for them. I've
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: had a number of people who've refused to try it.
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: You know, jeez, that's scary. I can't imagine it, but
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: I've never had anybody who actually sat down and gave
• 34:32
  Speaker 4: it a good try who didn't benefit from it. So
• 34:36
  Speaker 4: that just developed again from learning to write my own way.
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: I didn't go to film school. I didn't go to
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: I wasn't a film major. I wasn't a screenwriting major.
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: I don't have an MFA in screenwriting. I just did
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: it on my own, and it works for me, it
• 34:51
  Speaker 4: works for a lot of other people, and interestingly, it
• 34:54
  Speaker 4: works for people who outline and for people who don't outline,
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: because all of the right Pa that I just mentioned,
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: with the twenty and eighteen six movies and the Thornberry's creater,
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: they all outline extensively. One of them is just an
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: absolutely encyclopedic outliner, and the method still worked for him.
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: So just kind of made sense to me, and I
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: started writing that way.
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: You know, you mentioned, you know, beating writer's block. You know,
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: I think that is. You know, that's something that I've
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: dealt with too, Mike is. At first I thought it
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: was writer's block, and I realized, you know, what I
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: think it was was decision fatigue. And what I mean
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: by that is, you know, you start your screenplay from
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: the beginning. So here we are, you know, Act one,
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: page one, and you know, we start to sort of
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: write this the.
• 35:49
  Speaker 4: Dangerous and deadly, scary, blank white.
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: Page fade in interior, right, but but you know it.
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: Was a dark and stormy night. Oh damn, I'm.
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: It's kind of like that movie Throw Mama from the
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: Train and Billy Christal keeps writing the same sentence and
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: you can't figure out what to go next, and and
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: uh so what you know? And it's basically, you know,
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: decision fatigue where you realize, oh my god, this screenplay
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: could go in like ten thousand different directions. And there
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: was actually a book I was reading about this, uh
• 36:21
  Speaker 3: the same sort of like you know, principle of you know,
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: decision fatigue, and you know what you know, obviously it
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: could go in ten thousand different directions. And his argument
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: was if you actually, you know, go back to the
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: theme and the and the the whole you know, the
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: main tension and everything of your screenplay, there really probably
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: isn't ten thousand ways it could go. Really, it has
• 36:42
  Speaker 3: to all tie in together so that way, you know,
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: see one, you know, we're not you know, we're on
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: an island and then seeing two. You know, all these
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: other different things are happening that have never been established.
• 36:52
  Speaker 3: If you know, if you get what I'm trying to say,
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: I do, and.
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: What the the decisions fatigue problem that you've labeled and
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: that you've designated is a very common problem. And the
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: band method, what I just said, you can see immediately
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: how that prevents it from happening. If you know the end,
• 37:13
  Speaker 4: you know where you're going. So, by definition, every single
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: scene you write is going to do one of three things.
• 37:22
  Speaker 4: It's either going to develop character or it gets thrown out,
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: or it's going to advance the plot, or it gets
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: thrown out or the holy grail of a scene is
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: that it develops character, reveals character, deepens character, and advances
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: the plot. That's what you should aim for in every
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: single scene. If you write a scene that doesn't do
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: any of those things, throw it out. You kill your
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: baby because it's not getting you to where you need
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: to be. And because budgets are determined by page count,
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: and whether your screenplay is picked up and produced or
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: not may very well depend on what your page count is.
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: If you can tell story a in ninety pages, or
• 38:14
  Speaker 4: you can tell story A in one hundred and ten,
• 38:17
  Speaker 4: and you can't get it down from one hundred and ten.
• 38:20
  Speaker 4: Story A ninety pages is much more likely to get
• 38:23
  Speaker 4: made than one ten because line producers and people who
• 38:28
  Speaker 4: determine how much a movie's going to cost to make,
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: they will assign, depending on genre, style, a bunch setting,
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: costume requirements, things like that, locations, they'll figure out special effects,
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: CGI goes on and on. They'll figure out a per
• 38:44
  Speaker 4: cost page on average of the screenplay. They'll multiply that
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: out and they'll say, Okay, your spring to make this
• 38:50
  Speaker 4: movie is going to cost us one hundred and ten
• 38:53
  Speaker 4: times whatever that page cost is. That's going to end
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: up being a lot higher than what times whatever the
• 39:01
  Speaker 4: page cost is, right, Yeah, So if you can write
• 39:05
  Speaker 4: the same story, tell the same story more efficiently in
• 39:08
  Speaker 4: fewer pages, even if nothing changes. I've rewritten scripts for people.
• 39:12
  Speaker 4: I did a rewrite for Creative Artists and untitled Entertainment
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: Package project, and the original script was I think, oh,
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: i'ven't looked at this in a long time. A couple
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: of years ago. The original script was somewhere around it
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: was one hundred and twelve pages.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: And now back to the show.
• 39:41
  Speaker 4: And they wanted it to be one hundred pages before
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: it went to budgeting. They wanted a hundred They didn't
• 39:47
  Speaker 4: want a hundred and twelve. So first thing, one of
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: the first things I was asked to do, was reduce
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: the page count. So when I rewrote the script, not
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: only did I I told them, I said, I think
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: I can hit one hundred pages. They said, that would
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: be great, that's what we had in mind. We'd love that.
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: So I actually hit ninety nine and a half pages,
• 40:06
  Speaker 4: which is one hundred pages. Okay, you know ninety nine
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: go to the one hundred page halfway down. So I
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: hit the goal. But not only did I do that,
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: I filled five major plot holes and I added a
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: whole new story arc. So I was able to make
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: the story more complex, more complete, get rid of problems,
• 40:25
  Speaker 4: and still knock twelve pages out of the out of
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: the thing. And so that's a successful rewrite, and they were.
• 40:32
  Speaker 4: They were very happy with it. So I kind of
• 40:38
  Speaker 4: forgot how we got here. But this is again why
• 40:41
  Speaker 4: you have a goal post in mind. You don't wander
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: off and get lost. Now I see how I found
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: my way again. If you know the end, everything that
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: you write is going to be advancing your characters, your plot,
• 40:55
  Speaker 4: moving all of the things you've created toward that end.
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: If you know where you're going, you don't stumble and
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: get lost. You always move toward that goalpost. There are
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: gonna be a lot of choices on the way that
• 41:08
  Speaker 4: you're going to have to make, but those choices are
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: now narrowed and focused by the fact that you know
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: where you're going. A lot of people who overwrite don't
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: have an ending in mind, and they'll wander this way
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: and that way, and they'll end up having, you know,
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: five or eight or ten scenes that don't contribute to
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: where they eventually end up. And you know, it happens
• 41:30
  Speaker 4: all the time. I read somebody wrote a comment yesterday, Gee,
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: I just finished my screenplay and I hate it. I
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: hate my own screenplay. It's not what I set out
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: to write. I don't know how I got here, I
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: don't like the ending, I don't like the story, and
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: it's not what I intended. So now I've got to
• 41:47
  Speaker 4: do a page one rewrite. That's because you didn't know
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: where you were going. Yeah, you know.
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: One piece of advice years ago that I heard. It's
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: the writer of Fight Club, Chap Paulknok.
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: He actually ripped terrific writer.
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he's phenomenal. He gave me the advice that he's like, right, right,
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: your beginning, he goes literally he goes, right, you know,
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: whatever opening, what do you want to do? And then
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: he says, go to the go to your last page
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: whatever that might be, and he goes, just write the end.
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: And he said, what you're you're going to do is
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: because it's going to feel complete if you do do
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: it this way. He said, then what you're going to
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: write so that way again, like you just said, it
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: was a goal and that's what he also, you know,
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: told me a couple of years ago, was it it's
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: a goal and that way you know at least you
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: know what you're going towards, and that way you correct.
• 42:31
  Speaker 4: So he has a similar that I didn't know he
• 42:34
  Speaker 4: said that, but he has a similar philosophy to to
• 42:37
  Speaker 4: what I do. And it sounds like he starts off
• 42:40
  Speaker 4: writing the same way. And by the way, you should
• 42:43
  Speaker 4: note I do that whether my screenplay is linear or nonlinear, Uh,
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: it doesn't matter. I write the screenplay nonlinearly, even if
• 42:53
  Speaker 4: it's going to be a linear form. So let's say
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: it's a straight three act you know first, the second
• 43:01
  Speaker 4: act break, you know, page twenty three. What you know?
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: If it's going to be a straight three act screenplay
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: and it has a linear plot, without flashbacks, without jumping around,
• 43:13
  Speaker 4: nothing fancy, just a simple straight story. And that could
• 43:17
  Speaker 4: be anything from a family film to a military film.
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: You know, you can do anything that way. The subject
• 43:23
  Speaker 4: matter doesn't matter, it's just how you choose to write it.
• 43:26
  Speaker 4: Time wise. You can use my form, and I do
• 43:31
  Speaker 4: use the form to write linear screenplays. I just don't
• 43:34
  Speaker 4: write them in order. I write the whole screenplay out
• 43:37
  Speaker 4: of order, but when you end up reading the screenplay,
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: it's in order. And it also works for nonlinear methods.
• 43:45
  Speaker 4: If you're writing something like fight clubs nonlinear, if you're
• 43:48
  Speaker 4: writing something that jumps around, and you have an unreliable
• 43:51
  Speaker 4: narrator and he may or may not be crazy, and
• 43:54
  Speaker 4: he may may not be who you even think he is,
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: you can still use that method and jump all over
• 43:59
  Speaker 4: the place and write the screenplay that's going to be nonlinear,
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: and write it in a nonlinear fashion, which sounds very
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: chaotic but actually makes sense when you're doing it. So
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: if you, as I always say, if you know where
• 44:14
  Speaker 4: you're going and you know where you're coming from, you
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: have a nice defined world that you're working with in,
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: you're not going to start writing you know, crazy stuff
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: about Mars in your story about you know, the kids
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: starting school in new school district because the parents got divorced.
• 44:32
  Speaker 4: You know, all of a sudden, you're writing about Martians
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: on Mars, right, and you're having a space shootout because
• 44:36
  Speaker 4: you had no idea where you were going with your screenplay.
• 44:39
  Speaker 4: And I've actually seen crazy stuff like that. I'm sure
• 44:43
  Speaker 4: you have too. People end up with like three different
• 44:45
  Speaker 4: stories in one screenplay. They get horribly lost, and then
• 44:49
  Speaker 4: they get right or back to writer's block. Oh you
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: know I don't want to write next. Yeah, because you
• 44:55
  Speaker 4: jacked the whole thing up. You got yourself in a jackpot.
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: You've written yourself into a core and nobody would know
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: what to write next because none of it makes any sense. So,
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: you know, learn a writing method and stick to it.
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: Like I said, my method works for me. It's worked
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: for everyone I know that's tried to do It's gotten
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: back to me on it. But you need to learn
• 45:18
  Speaker 4: to write in a consistent method that works for you.
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: However you write and stick to that, develop that method
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: and make it work for you. You know, Chuck has his
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: own method that's apparently similar to mine, and I think
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: that's a very smart method. It's funny. I admire that writer.
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: Maybe that's why I like him so much, because we
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: write in a similar convention. I don't know.
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, great mindstack a like right.
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: So well that's what that's what they say, you.
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: Know, because you know, just to continue with what you
• 45:49
  Speaker 3: were just saying about, you know, no no writer could
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: fix you know, A screenplay has all those problems because
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: you know, there's no goal, there's no sort of central
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: narrative to it, right, you know. I remember what I
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: read a play years ago, and it was this this
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: guy had this idea for the this like anthology, i'm sorry,
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: a horror movie trilogy. And I read the first part
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: of it, the first screenplay. I read all one hundred
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: and some odd pages, and literally it was about these
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: two vampires who live in like this old mansion or
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: something that has all these catacombs underneath it, and it's
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: just about like it's almost.
• 46:25
  Speaker 4: Like shit, we haven't seen that one before, and.
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: It's just all these different people, like groups of people
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: go in there and they're getting killed. There's no there's
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: no goal, there's.
• 46:34
  Speaker 4: Nothing like literally, there's no story exactly a lot And unfortunately,
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: I'm hearing a lot of reports of this from screenplay
• 46:43
  Speaker 4: contest screenwriting contest judges that they're seeing a lot of
• 46:49
  Speaker 4: screenplays that have essentially no purpose. There's no story being told.
• 46:53
  Speaker 4: You know, Okay, I get it. It's slasher genre, and
• 46:57
  Speaker 4: we're going to see a whole bunch of blood, a
• 46:58
  Speaker 4: whole bunch of people killed, and then all of a
• 47:00
  Speaker 4: sudden we decide that's enough and we stop the movie.
• 47:03
  Speaker 4: But it never tells a story. That's that's not that's
• 47:09
  Speaker 4: not screenwriting. That's just dribbling out garbage. And this is
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: what happens when you have an unfocused person writing that
• 47:18
  Speaker 4: doesn't know why they're writing or where they're going. You
• 47:21
  Speaker 4: end up with something like that. You know, a lot
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: of writer's block. Also, jumping quickly back to that, because
• 47:27
  Speaker 4: it ties in here, is if you have problems in
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: your opening, in your first act, and the first act
• 47:34
  Speaker 4: is unfocused, not set up right, not structured right, you
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: really don't have any idea why you're writing, and that'll
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: be very apparent to the reader very quickly. By the way,
• 47:46
  Speaker 4: you don't know why you're sitting down and writing to
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: tell this story. That is going to cause you massive
• 47:51
  Speaker 4: writer's block, because if the first act is poorly structured
• 47:56
  Speaker 4: and poorly set up everything that comes after, it's like Domino,
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: It's like Jenga or Jackstraws or any of these things.
• 48:05
  Speaker 4: If you if you've set the foundation badly, there's no
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: way the house will stand. I even have a post
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: written on this and right about making an analogy to
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: you know, building a house. You know, don't build a
• 48:17
  Speaker 4: house on sand, Okay, build it on rock. I have
• 48:20
  Speaker 4: a whole essay on this, and that's it's all about
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: first act structure and knowing what you're doing in the
• 48:29
  Speaker 4: first act because that sets up the entire story, doesn't it.
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it really does. Like they say, if you have
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: the second or third act problems, you have first act problems.
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: Really correct, and again, most of those problems can be
• 48:44
  Speaker 4: solved by knowing the beginning and the ending right when
• 48:49
  Speaker 4: you start. But David silerman I just mentioned that while
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: Thornberry's creator wrote a it was very gracious, and he
• 48:55
  Speaker 4: wrote a recommendation for my book that'll be on the
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: you know, fronting side or back cover. I don't know
• 49:00
  Speaker 4: where it's going. There are a bunch of recommendations to fit.
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: And he said that using this particular method, you end
• 49:08
  Speaker 4: up with a much twistier, surprising plot, with all kinds
• 49:13
  Speaker 4: of fresh takes on things that isn't stale, that may
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: even surprise the writer. By writing using a different.
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: Method, we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: and now back to the show.
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: You end up with something that may even surprise you.
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: It doesn't surprise you in that you of the beginning
• 49:42
  Speaker 4: in the end, but how you get there can vary,
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: as I said, and so you may discover some ingenious
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: twists and things along the way, but you always know
• 49:50
  Speaker 4: where you're going. So there are a bunch of different
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: ways to tell the story, and the details may vary
• 49:56
  Speaker 4: of what is going in the story, the different more lessons,
• 50:00
  Speaker 4: and the different challenges that characters face, internal and external challenges.
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: You know, no stories, no story works if the protagonist
• 50:11
  Speaker 4: is perfect. Okay, we work with flawed characters, and some
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: of the best stories are told from the most damaged
• 50:18
  Speaker 4: flawed characters, and the story as they get the external challenges,
• 50:26
  Speaker 4: you look at how their character, their internal character reacts
• 50:30
  Speaker 4: to that and you see the character's character arc, which
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: can be you know, learning improvement, change changes the mechanism
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: that drives the character arc, or you can have you know,
• 50:45
  Speaker 4: some characters will go through some things in as sociopathic characters,
• 50:50
  Speaker 4: other damaged characters, and they may actually not have a
• 50:53
  Speaker 4: character arc. The secario, which I really like, evokes strong reactions.
• 50:59
  Speaker 4: Some people don't like the film because they think Emily
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: Blunt's character, the agent, the FBI agent she plays, doesn't
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: have a character arc. I argue that she does have
• 51:11
  Speaker 4: a character arc without getting too far into spoiler. She's
• 51:16
  Speaker 4: completely by the book and incorruptible at first, and then
• 51:20
  Speaker 4: at the end when faced with her own death because
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: she's going to go forward and reveal by the book,
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: reveal all the criminal and sketchy things that were done
• 51:32
  Speaker 4: that Josh Brolin's character very much, the CIA guy wants
• 51:37
  Speaker 4: her to say everything went by the book, to cover
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: up all the things they did. In the end, to
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: save herself, she falsifies a document to save her own life.
• 51:48
  Speaker 4: So my argument has always been. She does have a
• 51:50
  Speaker 4: character arc. She changes from the incorruptible you know, perfect
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: if you will agent, the idealized agent, and she changes
• 52:02
  Speaker 4: to somebody who, to save herself, falsifies the report of
• 52:07
  Speaker 4: what happened. So but anyway, you know, you start with
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: with damaged characters and you move them through the story,
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: and that's that's the story arc. That's why we're entertained,
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: is because we get to see change in a character.
• 52:22
  Speaker 4: If you have a character that you know is waterproof
• 52:26
  Speaker 4: and bulletproof and you know nothing ever happens to them,
• 52:29
  Speaker 4: which I've always felt was a big danger with Superman,
• 52:32
  Speaker 4: by the way, you know, that's why there's Kryptonite, right, yeah,
• 52:37
  Speaker 4: because if he has no fault, he has no weakness.
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: What are we going to do for a story? You
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: developed the the ultimate badass Marvel superhero that can't be touched,
• 52:51
  Speaker 4: that nothing can ever happen to them, Like the Silver Surfer,
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: There's there's really not a whole lot you can do
• 52:57
  Speaker 4: with that character. And that's why the Surfer had with
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: the appearances and things. You look at somebody like Deadpool,
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: who was in a very very damaged character who may
• 53:06
  Speaker 4: or may not even be sane and Marvel finally, you know,
• 53:10
  Speaker 4: Ryan Reynolds fought ten years to make Deadpool, and they
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: insisted on you know, the script being genuine to the
• 53:20
  Speaker 4: source material, and Marvel is very worried because it's you know,
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: totally not PC and it's dirty and filthy, and he
• 53:27
  Speaker 4: curses and he has sex, and he does all kinds
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: of bad things that heroes shouldn't do, and that makes
• 53:35
  Speaker 4: him fascinating. And that's why Deadpool killed it at the
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: box office. I honestly believe it was. It was probably
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: my favorite movie of the year. It's not probably not
• 53:45
  Speaker 4: gonna win any osters maybe special effects, who knows, but
• 53:49
  Speaker 4: entertainment wise, you know, I thought it was. I thought
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: it was a terrific film because you had such a
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: flawed character and it was just so entertaining to watch
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: him go through all that.
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: So yeah, and I also agree with that. The reason
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: I liked it was because it was so different than
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: all the other superhero movies that are coming out. Obviously,
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: you know, it didn't take itself too seriously. It was
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: completely different. It was a complete one eighties from all
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: the other superhero movies that were coming out, and it's
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: just I think that's why I enjoyed it so much.
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah, he break, they break the fourth wall the time.
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: You know, he turns and looks at the camera and goes,
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: you know, you know, gee, would a superhero really do this?
• 54:27
  Speaker 4: And you know, oh, there's a fourth wall break within
• 54:29
  Speaker 4: a fourth wall break, and they they constantly pull the
• 54:33
  Speaker 4: audience in. And those are things. Those are things that
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: were pretty much although you know, even in Greek theater,
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: in Roman theater, those are things the aside where the
• 54:44
  Speaker 4: actor turns and talks to the audience. Okay, those are
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: things that have always been in storytelling. In modern screenwriting,
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: they were pioneered by Shane Black, of course, with the
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: with the Shane blackisms, you know, one of the most
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: famous being you know, he's describing a mansion and I'm paraphrasing.
• 55:03
  Speaker 4: I don't remember exactly, but he'll say, you know, he's
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: describing the place, and he stops and he says, oh,
• 55:08
  Speaker 4: look guys, basically, and he's writing like this in the script. Look, guys, basically,
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: this is exactly the kind of place that you would
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: buy if you hit the lottery and you had millions
• 55:19
  Speaker 4: and millions of dollars and you wanted two great parties
• 55:21
  Speaker 4: for all your friends. This is this is the shit
• 55:24
  Speaker 4: you would buy. And he puts that in the script.
• 55:26
  Speaker 4: So Deadpool did much the same kind of thing. You know,
• 55:31
  Speaker 4: when I sat through the opening of Deadpool, by the
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: time they finished writing the credits, you know, calling the
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: director an overpaid tool and the writers, you know, the
• 55:40
  Speaker 4: real heroes journal I was fully satisfied with the price
• 55:43
  Speaker 4: I paid for the movie, just getting through the opening credits.
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: Also, Mike, you mentioned Shane Black. I saw that you
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: actually were able to meet Shane Black. Was that at
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: a writer's conference that.
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: Was at Austin Film Festival. So script called Needles, which
• 56:01
  Speaker 4: is an allegorical diabolical thriller that I found myself talking
• 56:05
  Speaker 4: about a lot because people are curious about it, and
• 56:07
  Speaker 4: that's how I went to Austin. I wasn't going to go,
• 56:10
  Speaker 4: and the director of Austin, Matt Matt Dee, called me,
• 56:14
  Speaker 4: I think, a couple times, convincing me to go because
• 56:17
  Speaker 4: apparently my script was going to finish pretty high. Frank Airbaht,
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: director of Shashank Redemption, Walking Dead creator, and you know
• 56:27
  Speaker 4: a bunch of other stuff. He'd picked Needles top ten,
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: of course, I didn't know this at the time, but
• 56:33
  Speaker 4: he'd picked it top ten scripts for the Science Fiction
• 56:37
  Speaker 4: Award and top ten scripts for the Horror Prize out
• 56:42
  Speaker 4: of eighty six and twenty seven scripts. So when you
• 56:46
  Speaker 4: do really well at some of these film festivals like Austin,
• 56:50
  Speaker 4: I made the top group where I got to have,
• 56:54
  Speaker 4: you know, secret meetings in special places with great people
• 56:58
  Speaker 4: that nobody else could go to. And those meetings often
• 57:02
  Speaker 4: had you know, twenty thirty forty people that's it from
• 57:05
  Speaker 4: the whole film festival, whereas people who wrote scripts that
• 57:10
  Speaker 4: did decently but finished lower, they'd be in a room
• 57:14
  Speaker 4: full of, you know, hundreds of people. And so I
• 57:18
  Speaker 4: ended up in a room, very small room, you know,
• 57:21
  Speaker 4: size of a small dining room, maybe a little bigger,
• 57:25
  Speaker 4: with Shane Black and a whole bunch of high finishers
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: and he was taking questions. So everybody was kind of shy,
• 57:35
  Speaker 4: and I think I asked the first question. I'm not shy,
• 57:37
  Speaker 4: I jumped up and I asked him about It was
• 57:40
  Speaker 4: something about working with Robert Downey Junior and Val Kilmer.
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: Their methods are very different, and what was going on
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: in Robert Downey Junior's life, which I won't rehash here
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: at the time, and you know, got to ask him
• 57:55
  Speaker 4: one on one questions right there, which I think they
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: actually put on a podcast on the radio, which is
• 57:59
  Speaker 4: kind of cool. But he had actually auditioned my daughter
• 58:04
  Speaker 4: for a film, and her audition went straight to him
• 58:07
  Speaker 4: and he really liked her, and we went back and
• 58:10
  Speaker 4: forth on a couple roles on that. Ultimately we didn't
• 58:14
  Speaker 4: we didn't finish one of the auditions. We chose not
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: to do. But I was a terrific guy, very very
• 58:21
  Speaker 4: generous guy with his with his time, and just extremely
• 58:26
  Speaker 4: gracious to other writers. So I got got some great
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: pictures with him. I can prove it happened.
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: Well, that's how I actually saw it too. I saw
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: you met him because when you were on John Fallon's podcast,
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: I actually saw That's one of the photos he added
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: was you and Shane Black. And I wanted to make
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: sure I asked you that, Mike, because Shane Black is
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: I don't think there's a screenwriter alive right now who
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: hasn't who doesn't envy or you know, look at Shane
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: Black as sort of like a guide in one way
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: or an other.
• 59:01
  Speaker 4: Well, I mean he's you know he's he's a pioneer.
• 59:04
  Speaker 4: He's a guy that did something that you know, in
• 59:06
  Speaker 4: modern times in screenwriting, nobody had done. And he did
• 59:10
  Speaker 4: it with He did it with dash and and bravado,
• 59:15
  Speaker 4: and he nailed it. So he he's a guy much
• 59:18
  Speaker 4: to be admired, you know. I also met Terry Rossio,
• 59:21
  Speaker 4: who was just absolutely incredible guy. And he was very,
• 59:25
  Speaker 4: very funny. And we were standing outside in front of
• 59:27
  Speaker 4: the hotel and I.
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: Will be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: and now back to the show.
• 59:39
  Speaker 4: I asked him for I asked him if I could
• 59:41
  Speaker 4: get a picture. And you know, a lot of people
• 59:43
  Speaker 4: walking by him had no idea who he was. And
• 59:45
  Speaker 4: so he went walking by me and my ears pricked
• 59:48
  Speaker 4: up and I said, holy smokes, there he goes. And
• 59:51
  Speaker 4: so I went out politely introduced myself and he said
• 59:54
  Speaker 4: he said to I don't know if it was his
• 59:57
  Speaker 4: driver or somebody that was hanging out with him. He said,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 4: he said, I like this guy. Let's take about a
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 4: dozen pictures. And he turns to me and he starts
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 4: to direct to see he says, he says, Okay, we're
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 4: just a couple of guys hanging out talking here, there's
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 4: a there's a strange accident or happening in the distance,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 4: and all kinds of weird stuff is going on, so
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 4: we start acting like we're watching this. Of course, he
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 4: was much better at it than I was. And uh,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 4: I got like a dozen pictures of us making stupid
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 4: faces and kind of grabbing onto each other and going ooh,
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 4: went on. He's just hilarious and just a terrific guy.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: And I met h John Lee Hancock, and I met
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 4: uh with the blind Side, I wrote, I met Andrew
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 4: Kevin Walker, who that was great to meet him in
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 4: the game. And yeah, and those are a couple of
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 4: my favorite movies. So, uh, you know, the Evolution of Seven,
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 4: any anyone who aspires to be a screenwriter really needs
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 4: to read the story of Seven and what he went through,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 4: you know, as a tower record tower records clerk, trying
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: to get anybody interested in this thing. He finally gets
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 4: an agent on the phone, starts talking as fast as
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 4: he can and spitting stuff out, and the agent doesn't
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 4: hang up on him, actually is interested, starts asking him questions,
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 4: agrees to read the script, and then boom, all of
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 4: a sudden, it takes off from there, but you know,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 4: all the time to get to that lucky break. And
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 4: then you know, the director after director had him rewrite
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 4: the script. The original script had the head in the
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 4: box ending, which was, you know, shocking to the studios.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: There's absolutely amazing ending, and you know, oh, that's too much.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: We need to rewrite it. So they kept having him
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 4: rewrite the script, and then that director would go off
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 4: the project. The next guy would come in, Oh, I
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 4: love this project, Let's rewrite the script. So they kept
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 4: doing that, and then finally David Fincher came in and
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 4: a parent I read an interview recently, I wasn't clear
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 4: on how this happened. Apparently Andrew Kevin Walker sent him
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 4: the wrong script. He sent him the earliest, the first
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 4: version with the head in the box, and Fincher loved it,
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 4: and they went together and fought with the producers in
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 4: the studio to get it made. And my understanding, if
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 4: I recall, is Morgan Freeman is actually the reason why
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 4: the movie got made the way it did because at
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 4: some point Morgan Freeman came forward and said, look, if
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 4: you don't make it with that ending with the head
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 4: in the box, I'm gone. I'm walking and so that
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 4: did it. But I got to meet him, I got
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 4: to meet his brother. They were very nice and I
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 4: just heard him talk and I waited around, and you know,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 4: these people are normal people. I mean, they're not gods,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 4: and people idealize them. And I know who that guy is.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 4: I know his name. I've seen that actor on TV. Well,
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 4: when you really meet him, they're just regular people. Some
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 4: of them act like they're not regular people. Some of
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 4: them act like regular people. Most of them want to
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 4: be treated like anybody else. They don't want to be
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 4: you know, they've had enough of that. Some of them
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 4: aren't that way. You know, some of them have huge egos.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 4: A lot of them just want to be left alone
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 4: and treated like anybody else. So I waited in a
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 4: very short line because people were afraid to approach them,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 4: and went up and got to talk with them for
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 4: you know, it wasn't long, maybe five minutes, but got
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 4: pictures with them too. And so, so what is there
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 4: what's the what's the saying the essay fortune favors the bowls? Right?
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, there's also uh, what's the essays saying?
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's what I was going for. The essays I
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 4: don't remember if it's Fortune favors the bowls. It's something
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 4: like that.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I forget what that actually is, but I think
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: it's very similar to that. I think. But is there
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: any screenwriters you haven't met yet, Mike, that you really
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: wanted to meet?
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 4: Oh? I mean, I suppose there are a lot of there.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 4: There are a lot of great There are a lot
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 4: of great writers and a lot of great screenplays out there.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 4: I mean, my my favorites just you know, like you,
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 4: Shane Black, and Andrew Kevin Walker, Terry ROSSI Ar. I mean,
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 4: it's just amazing to meet them all in one trip.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 4: Just just amazing. But you know, I don't know if
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 4: I really have an answer to that. One of the
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 4: one of the shocking movies for me of the year
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 4: that didn't get a lot of press and play it
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 4: was Fences. I don't know if you've seen it. Yeah,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 4: the acting is terrific, that the dialogue is wonderful. It's
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 4: just it's a beautifully made film. It's a very simple film,
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 4: but the acting, the quality of the acting and the
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 4: writing the dialogue will just draw you in. I couldn't
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 4: turn the damn thing off. I sat down and started
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 4: watching it. I had places to go, people to see,
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 4: I had things to do. I had no intention of
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 4: watching the movie. And I mean I sat there with
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 4: my jaw dropped. Found that I've been standing there fifteen
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 4: minutes with a rowote my hand watching this thing. You know,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 4: my daughter got it as a sag screener and came in.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 4: And that's probably I would say, that's probably acting wise
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 4: and script wise, probably the best film I've seen this year.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 4: I don't know what it's going to do with the Oscars.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 4: I suspect Denzel Washington will probably win a Best Actor.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 4: Biola Davis certainly should be in the running for Best Actors.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 4: I don't know that she had enough screen time for it,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 4: but Denzel certainly she went. And you know, that movie,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 4: as I said with Deadpool, with the opening, that movie
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 4: is worth the price of admission if you only watch
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 4: the first scene where Denzel Washington is talking about death.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 4: The scene is so mind blowingly great that the whole
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 4: movie is worth watching just for that one scene. And
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 4: you know, it doesn't stop there, so he can't really say,
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 4: you know, any one particular writer. A number of the
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 4: writers that I'd like to meet are dead, so you know,
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 4: that's kind of a kind of a bomber.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 3: But but as we're talking about, you know, Defences, I
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: thought it was phenomenal as well. I think you know,
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 3: Denzel stole the show in that movie. You know, he
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: just plays that charismatic, tragic hero obviously because there's a
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: lot of regret in him in that man's life, in
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: that character's life, and you know, as he's sort of
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: talking to everybody, everybody in one way or another, sees
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: him at his best, sees him at his worst, and
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 3: it's sort of you know, one way or another also
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: at the butt end of his worst. And you know,
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: his son, he talks to his one son the one
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: way his other son. You know, he constantly wants more
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: from him, and he's he doesn't go about it the
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 3: right way, and you know, it's just a phenomenal movie.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, because he wants to, you know, he wants to
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 4: make the changes he couldn't make himself in his own life,
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 4: in his have his son live those. And and also
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 4: you know, excel as he did the way he did
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 4: because he's getting older and he sees, you know, his
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 4: own mortality, which we we know from telling you about death.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 4: So he he you know wants to live vicariously through
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 4: his son. Also, he's just an absolutely phenomenal movie. I'll
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 4: probably watch it again when we get off the phone. Wonderful,
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 4: wonderful film. I don't know if it if it kind
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 4: enough circulation buzz the box office to to win Oscars.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 4: You know that what the Oscars people pick frequently isn't
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 4: anything near what I think is the best. And other
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 4: people agree with that. But that's terrific writing. The dialogue
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 4: is phenomenal.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 3: So, and it's almost a self contained movie because a
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 3: lot of it happens in that one house. And you know,
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: I wanted to ask you too about about you know,
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 3: your screenplay for The Grocer, because that's completely containing self
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 3: you know, self contained screenplay and that one third pass
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 3: in the London Film Awards.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 4: Correct, Yeah, it won it one third and it's won
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 4: a bunch of awards. It just took third at London.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 4: It's uh, it's in the running in in another contest
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 4: that just made another cut. The Grocer is completely contained.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 4: It's one hundred percent contained. It is one location, the
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 4: entire screenplay. There there are some movies that try to
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 4: do that. It's very difficult to do it and carry
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 4: it off with a with a very entertaining movie, because
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 4: a one location screenplay is going to be very dialogue heavy.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 4: It has to be, unless, you know, you do something
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 4: completely avant garde and have a bunch of people sitting
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 4: in a room watching paint dryer ants crawl around, you know,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 4: some experimental thing, you know, I'll a racer head meets
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 4: Salvador and Ali or something like that. You're you're gonna
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 4: tend to be dialogue heavy. Needles is ninety seven percent
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 4: per one location, which is a desert saloon which may
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 4: or may not be in Needles, California, in the Mojave Desert.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 4: It's actually purgatory but appears otherwise. And it is only
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 4: two other locations that occur as flashbacks. One is a
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 4: very brief flashback to gold Gotha and it's I think
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 4: a quarter page, and the other flashback is like a
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 4: Pacific Northwest.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: and now back to the show.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 4: Rainy Mountain, Rainy Mountain, Winding Road. And that's it. So
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 4: you know, ninety seven percent contained grocers, one hundred percent
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 4: contained The entire story happens at a grocery store in
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 4: its parking lot. That's it, one location for the whole thing.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 4: And of course, you know you hear all the time
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 4: that's what everybody's looking for is one location. You bring
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 4: the you bring the cast and crew in, you set
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 4: the date, you get everything set up, and you never
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 4: have to move anywhere. Right. You look at a movie
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 4: like Spy Game, for example, which I love, they have
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 4: you know, Hong Kong, they have you know, settings in Vietnam, Langley, Virginia, China,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 4: Coastal China. You know, it's a Tony Scott you know,
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 4: big big bang, big budget, big stars, and it goes
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 4: all over the world. The Born films do that too.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 4: Those are very expensive to make and a lot of
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 4: the places where films like that want a film, like
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 4: the Middle East, these are not stable places where you
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 4: can just go set up a camera crew. This is
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 4: covered in argo. You know, it's no secret. There are
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 4: a lot of places you can't film and you have
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 4: to try and mimic, uh, you know, find another location
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 4: that works. Then you have to you know, if you're
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 4: not filming where they are, you have to build sets
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 4: that make it look like you're really there, and and
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 4: things like that. You know, Bridge's spies. They had to
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 4: had to. Uh, they're showing Berlin being divided east and west,
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 4: the communists and the and the democracy, and they've got
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 4: the they've got the wall being built right down the
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 4: middle of the city. I mean, that's all an incredibly
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 4: expensive scene to film. I turned to my wife. You know,
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 4: I've seen it many times. She hadn't. I turned to her.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 4: Last night we watched again. I watched it again. She
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 4: watched it, and I said, I said, imagine the cost
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 4: of the scene. How many people are there, all the
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 4: soldiers and uniforms, you know, as far as the eye
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 4: can see. It's just very, very expensive. Well it contained
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 4: screenplay does the exact opposite of that. It minimizes your actors.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 4: It minimizes your locations too minimalist, as low as you
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 4: can get one location. Now that there's even an extreme
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 4: uncontained screenplays. If you look at Ryan Reynolds buried, essentially
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 4: the whole movie happens with him in a coffin. That's
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 4: that's as contained as you can get. You're in a coffin. Okay,
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 4: So but anyway, that's that's considered a very desirable thing
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 4: these days. Hopefully somebody will hear this and asks to
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 4: read the script and buy one of those those scripts.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 4: I keep having people rave, man, this needs to get made. Well,
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 4: I agree with you. Let's let's sell the screen. Contact
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 4: my manager, we can make a deal. But that's that's
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 4: also a smart way to start off for writers that
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 4: want to learn to develop character and get kind of
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 4: be fuddled or thrown off by changing locations. They're always
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 4: posts in my group. You know, what do I do?
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 4: You know, how do I move the camera? I have
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 4: a camera, you know, in a bedroom, shooting out the
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 4: window at stuff happening outside. How do I write that?
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 4: You know a lot of people get hung up on
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 4: all that, and that's all formatting. A lot of people
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 4: get hung up on that stuff. If you have a
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 4: single location, you can concentrate much more on character, can't you.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's very true.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 4: And we look like Fences. You mentioned Fences was a play, okay,
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 4: and the movie the movie feels like a play when
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 4: you watch it very much. You know, Samuel Beckett Theater
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 4: of the absurd, he has he had a play that
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 4: was I think half a page or a quarter of
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 4: a page. He has plays where the entire play there
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 4: are two people in trash cans talking to each other.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 4: You talk about dialogue heavy, you talk about illusions. You
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 4: need to get an encyclopedia out, and people said this
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 4: about needles. You need to get an encyclopedia to understand
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 4: everything going on because it's so deep with illusions, because
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 4: you know, they've got to talk, or it's going to
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 4: just be two people with their heads sticking out of
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 4: trash cans. The whole thing. You know, Beckett has somebody
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 4: buried up to their neck in fand the whole play
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 4: is one character buried up to their neck and fant
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 4: all you see is their head. That's minimalist. Okay, well
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 4: that's what you shoot for. Maybe not that extreme, because
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 4: it's very hard for something like that to be entertaining.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 4: You have to be a master to pull that off.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 4: But what you want to do if you're starting out
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 4: is pick a setting that you don't move from. Work
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 4: on developing and deepening and broadening your characters and examining
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 4: the moral challenges, the philosophical ideals they have as they
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 4: deal with whatever situation you're creating, and go ahead and
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 4: develop the characters and worry more about that than jumping
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 4: all around in like a Borne. There's nothing wrong with
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 4: the Born films, but you know, jumping around, you know,
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 4: elevators and trams and planes and going all over the place,
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 4: concentrated on the character and buildings developed the character. There
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 4: was a there's a play on Broadway called Blackbird and
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 4: Sandasty subject matters a chad mall station and stuff like that,
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 4: but it basically has a Erica was up for a
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 4: role in as playing I think one hundred and fifty
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 4: five shows at the Belasco Theaterre with Michelle Williams and
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 4: Jeff Daniels, and they were gonna make it three Erica Bierman,
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 4: and she actually got the preliminary offer on that. We
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 4: were waiting for the final contract to come through. And
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 4: the director wrote the little tiny part out at t
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 4: end so they went with a cast of two. The
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 4: whole play is the cast of two for whatever the
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 4: length of a full length Broadway play is. And it
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 4: is a woman grown too. I don't need to go
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 4: into this too much, but basically it's a woman grown
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 4: to womanhood who was basically a child, young adolescent when
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 4: she was entered into a sexual relationship with a guy.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 4: It's not like forcible rape, but it's statutory rape. And
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 4: he ends up, you know, living his life and having
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 4: a family in a business and she actually shows up
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 4: at his business years later and confronts him.
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 3: Oh wow.
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and so very very intense, very dialogue driven, character driven,
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 4: and very contained. You've got something that has more than
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 4: one location. It does have more than one location, but
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 4: the vast majority of it is one location. And so
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 4: that's the kind of thing that for a play or
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 4: for a film, cuts your costs down dramatically. And that
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 4: is what has recently of late been in demand. And
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 4: you hear people screaming all the time, I want contained screenplays.
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 4: That's what they're talking about.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know that. That's something that I try to
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 3: do as well, Mike. And and what the way I
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 3: tried to do it was, I wrote I wrote three films,
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 3: three screenplays at a summer camp. I called them my
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 3: Camp trilogy. And and so that way, you know, it's
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 3: kind of sort of like Friday the thirteenth in a way,
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 3: you know, because always going to be at this camp.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 3: We're not really there's no big uh set pieces, you
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 3: know what I mean. And it can be done, you
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 3: know where horror is the sort of the main character,
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 3: and you don't have to you know, go out and
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 3: get you know, a list actors.
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 4: You could just you know, have that. Horror is very profitable.
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 4: They can be made for not a lot of money.
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 4: And if you're getting into contained horror where you got
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 4: very few locations, that should be very desirable material. If
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 4: it's written well, should be very marketable. Yeah.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 3: Uh so I I've actually pitched a few of them,
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 3: and uh, well that's a whole nother story del together.
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 3: But but you know, but you know, just going back
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 3: to Buried, you know, I agree. You know, I actually
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 3: knew what the whole concept was going in and I
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 3: always wondered, how are they going to carry this for
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 3: the whole movie. I was pleasantly surprised at how they
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 3: carried that throughout the whole movie. Be different things.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 4: Well, his acting, you know, in Deadpool, it's full of
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 4: all kinds of self deprecating humor. Of course, and Ryan
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 4: Reynolds says at one point, oh, Ryan Reynolds made it
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 4: this far in his superior acting method, you know, talking
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 4: about he's a good looking guy. Okay, well, and Buried
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 4: he acted the hell out of it. You know, you're
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 4: not the best looking guy in the world with a
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 4: blue light and a little, you know, low wattage blue
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 4: light in a coffin. The whole screenplay that was carried
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 4: by his acting. He killed it. He did a beautiful
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 4: job acting. So you know it needed a strong actor
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 4: to pull off. You put somebody who's just a pretty
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 4: face in the box who can't act, and you got
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 4: a flop.
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, that's very true.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 4: But you know, Ryan Reynolds happens to be a pretty
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 4: face and he also can act, and he ended up
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 4: nailing that. And yes, it was engrossing from beginning to end.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 4: Another film that I expected. I watched it for the novelty,
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 4: which I suspect you did to knowing what it was
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 4: going in saying you know, there's there's no way they
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 4: can pull this off, and then found myself via I'm
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 4: very entertained in watching the whole movie. And that's that's
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 4: a great example of a successful contained almost completely contained.
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 4: There are some other locations, but not much. I think
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 4: maybe three locations the whole thing.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: and now back to the show.
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just also I made sure to go out
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 3: and get the screenplay because you know Scott Myers from
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 3: going to story dot com, he was always mentioning it,
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 3: and I made sure to coach. You got his posts
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 3: about it where he dissected the whole movie. You know,
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 3: was you know, I was blown away again. You know
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 3: how they were able to do that and they always
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 3: The way they did it obviously is they raised the stakes,
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 3: you know, constantly adding in new twists and turns. Okay,
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 3: you know he has you know, uh, well, I probably
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 3: should't go into it because in case, everybody hasn't seen
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 3: it yet.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 4: But but you know, it's kind of old to worry
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 4: about spoilers now. But I mean, yeah, you know, the
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 4: one thing goes wrong and then the next thing goes wrong.
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 4: You know, his light starts running out. I mean, you know,
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 4: it just goes from one thing to the next. And
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 4: that's what you have to do in a screenplay. You
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 4: need to keep raising the tension. You know. One of
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 4: one of my criticisms of Manchester by the Sea is
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 4: I just never felt the stakes were that high, and
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 4: I never it just didn't feel like it was increasing tension.
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 4: It's a very stately paced piece. Yeah, case the Affleck
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 4: did a fine job acting, so did the others. But
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 4: it's not a short movie, and it just moves a
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 4: little long at a very very stately pace. I like
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 4: the film. It wasn't my favorite film of the year
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 4: by far. I suspect the Academy you'll like it. It
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 4: has kind of a downer ending for them.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: But.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 4: It's it's a film that's a good example of one
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 4: where I didn't feel that they kept raising the stakes.
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 4: They didn't have sufficient stakes. Now, to give you an
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 4: idea of what the effect of that is, my wife
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 4: fell asleep four or five times trying to watch the movie.
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 4: We got a huge fight because I said, I said,
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 4: now's the time, let's watch me and Chester I said, no,
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 4: I'm not watching that thing. You know, I can't stay awake.
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 4: I said, no, no, no, you you really will get
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 4: in it. You know, it'll have an interesting emotional impact
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 4: on you, and you'll you'll get, you know, very particular
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 4: feeling and I want to talk to you about it.
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 4: So you know, let's, you know, drink some coffee and
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 4: let's let's sit up and watch this thing. And I've
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 4: watched it four times. I like it more each time
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 4: I watch it, and you know that's how. One of
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 4: the ways that I learned to write well is by
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 4: watching movies. Okay, I don't, it'll probably surprise you, and
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 4: I do not recommend this for most people. I read
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 4: very few screenplays by other writers. I don't go read
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 4: all the Oscar winning screenplays that are depending. I don't
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 4: do it. I watched the movies and I absorb it
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 4: that way. Is there a reason to read the screenplays.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 4: Absolutely most screenwriters do, and I strongly recommend that people
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 4: start out that way. I don't think I've read more
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 4: than five pro scripts on produced movies. I just don't.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 4: I just don't read them. I'll watch the movie. There
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 4: is a reason, if only to see the differences in
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 4: execution and planning. There's a great reason, you know, looking
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 4: at the spec or the shooting script and then what
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 4: they actually got can be a very rewarding and instructive experience.
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 4: It's just not something I do. That's me personally, which
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 4: again shows you that you know there are different ways
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 4: to do things and still do well and get to
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 4: the endpoint where you want to be. There are pro
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 4: writers I know that read every single script for Academy
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 4: Awards scripts they read every single script for every blockbuster
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 4: that comes out. I don't do that. I would rather
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 4: write natively without I'm not gonna say copying, but you know,
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 4: just my own way. Does that make sense?
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it makes perfect sense, Mike. I. You know, I
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 3: like to I have a whole collection of screenplays, and
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 3: you know, I always find that my favorite person to
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 3: write screenplays and my favorite author is Quentin Tarantino. I
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 3: just love the way he writes. I think it's entertaining.
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 3: And I also feel though that I also can pull
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 3: from the movie so if I like, for instance, I
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 3: have the screenplay for Hell or High Water, but I
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 3: actually saw the movie about three days ago before I
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 3: actually heard the screen play, and I like the movie,
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 3: you know, just as well. And I will probably probably
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 3: end up reading the screenplay as well, just to see
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 3: what the differences are. But I really enjoyed the Hell Higwater.
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 3: Have you seen that yet?
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 4: Yes? And for you know, I don't want to say
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 4: anything bad about Quinton. He has movies that I absolutely
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 4: love that are wonderful films, and he's a groundbreaking guy.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 4: I will say he overwrites. And you know, if you
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 4: look at the screenplay for Hateful eight is I don't
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 4: like the film, and you know, the screenplay is one
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 4: hundred and eighty nine pages or somewhere thereabouts, and a
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 4: lot of people I talk with think he could have
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 4: cut an hour out of that movie. But he's also
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 4: written some just you know, some phenomenal stuff, you know,
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 4: in Glorious Bastards, reservoir Dogs, pulp fiction. I mean, he's
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 4: great stuff. He's another one though, he's an outlier. He's
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 4: he's very very smart, he's very gifted. He you know,
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 4: he still writes screenplays out long hand in a square
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 4: deal notebook. Okay, so's he's a different kind of guy
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 4: and he's made his own path. He's not somebody that
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 4: I would emulate writing, because there aren't. There are a
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 4: lot of people that try, and they just don't get
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 4: away with it. They can't pull it off. He's a
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 4: very difficult guy to try and copy, not copy like
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 4: rip off, but to try and emulate his style. He's
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 4: a he's a really difficult guy to do that on
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 4: you know there are it'd be like it'd be like
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 4: trying to write poetry like E. Cummings. You know me up,
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 4: it does out of the floor quietly stare a poisoned mouse,
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 4: and now I lose it? Who asks, you know, what
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 4: have I done? You wouldn't have? Okay, all in lower case,
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 4: no punctuation. You know, Cormack McCarthy, same thing. Go read
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 4: James Joyce, you know, go read one of the Cormack
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 4: McCarthy books. Where's the punctuation? Did the printer lose all
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 4: the periods that gavas and you know there isn't any
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 4: So why can he do that? Well? He blazed his
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 4: own way and he's phenomenal. Okay, So you know, do
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 4: you want to go be the next Cormack McCarthy and
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 4: go turn a book into your publisher that has no
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 4: punctuation marks? Probably not a good idea. It's just like
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 4: copying Shane Black. There's a conversation in my screenwriting group
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 4: brought up by a pro today this morning about how
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 4: a producer wanted him to add back a bunch of
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 4: unshootable commentary into the script that didn't have any well,
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 4: traditional wisdom says, and I wrote a post going my book,
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 4: you know, on Sally Bigfoot, write this big scenario about
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 4: Sally Bigfoot in our family. Okay, about unshootable garbage in
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 4: somebody's head that you can read on the page, and
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 4: then one ends up there. So I write this big
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 4: long thing about Sally Bigfoot, and it's like a page
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 4: and a half long, and then what somebody could actually
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 4: shoot from that script is like five words one line long,
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 4: because none of the rest is shootable. Okay, Well, there
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 4: was just this conversation that strangely, a producer was asking
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 4: this professional, multi produced guy, novelist. I'm not going to
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 4: name him here now for certain reasons, but this guy
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 4: has multiple films out and he turned in a nice
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 4: titleing script. He's an action writer. And the producer said,
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 4: you know, this is crap. What are you giving me?
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 4: I'm not saying he said, it's crap. Okay, he said,
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 4: I'm not happy with this. What are you doing here?
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 4: I want a bunch of commentary and other stuff you
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 4: know built around here. And he said, you know, well
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 4: you can't film any of that. He said, yeah, that's great.
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 4: It's the exact opposite of traditional wisdom. Okay. You see,
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 4: he asked to write stuff into the script to make
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 4: it longer, to entertain the reader, and to try and
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 4: get a particular a list actor. I can't mention who
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 4: they think they can lure in with this particular technique
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 4: by writing a bunch of stuff that they will never
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 4: be able to film. They will not change the film
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 4: script one bit, but that they want in there now.
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 4: The producer's the boss. If your producer tells you to
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 4: do that, then you do it. And that's the right
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 4: answer for that project. This is why the rules are
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 4: made to be broken. Wenton. Tarantino broke the rules. Shane
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 4: Black broke the rules. Cormac McCarthy broke the rules. E. E.
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 4: Commings broke the rules. James Joyce broke the rules. There's
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 4: a guy. There's a guy I can't remember his name,
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 4: which is sad Ny who wrote a novel it's also
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 4: in my book called Gadsby. I think it's called and
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 4: this writer Sadly again, I can't remember his name, but
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 4: he wrote an entire novel fifty thousand words, without using
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 4: the letter E in the whole book.
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 3: So it's not the Great gas it's just Gatsby.
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 4: Now it's Gadsby. It's like Gadsby. So he managed to write.
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 4: He managed to write an entire novel without using the
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 4: letter E in any word inside the covers. It appears
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 4: on the cover as they describe what he's done, because
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 4: if you use the word novel, it is an E obviously.
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 4: So now when they say, oh, this guy wrote a
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 4: novel without the letter E, well then you've used several
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 4: e's avenue on the cover.
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: and now back to the show.
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 4: But if you go to the actual story itself inside,
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 4: nowhere does the letter E appear. Now you talk about
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 4: writer's block, and that's what my essay was about. Next
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 4: time you think you have writer's block. I've written a
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 4: number of these. You know, look at what Lucretius wrote
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 4: De Rare. I'm not sure on the nature of things,
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 4: this epic poem that this guy wrote, you know, in
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 4: a toga in a cave with a candle, using squid
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 4: ink in a feather pen, and the type of Einsteiny
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 4: and physics and philosophy, you know, the incredible deep thinking
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 4: this guy did under these conditions. And Abraham Lincoln studied
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 4: law by candle. Okay, that's that's that's tough. Okay. Uh.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 4: This guy did it, you know, in like fifty four BC,
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 4: writing in squid ink and he's talking about where the
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 4: universe ends. I mean really, so you want to you
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 4: want to talk about writer's block, uh, and do something
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 4: that's that's a remarkable achievement, but certainly less than than that.
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 4: Look at at this gads Gadsby book, and again it's
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 4: going to be in my book. But the guy writes
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 4: a whole novel without the letter ease. So next time
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 4: you think you have writer's block, imagine writing a novel
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 4: without using one of the letters of the alphabet a vowel.
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I would have linked that this year notes
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 3: as well. Actually, uh, I'm gonna about that about that
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 3: novel too, Mike, because that is uh.
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 4: I don't know, I'll get you the info on him.
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 3: Well, I was gonna look it up to when I
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 3: put it in the show notes because I you know,
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 3: I I don't know if that if that's an exercise
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 3: in bravery or or it just admit complete madness. Maybe
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 3: maybe both, right, but uh.
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 4: I think it's an next It's brave and it's also stubborn.
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 4: I mean, you've got to be let me see, if
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 4: I'm finding for you, you've got to be mentally tough.
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 4: Two it's Gadsby G. A. D. S. B Y nineteen
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 4: thirty nine by Ernest Vincent Wright with W R I
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 4: G H T. Now, the sad thing is, you know,
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 4: nobody remembers this guy's name, Ernest Vincent Wright. So did
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 4: he take a gamble? You bet he did. He turned
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 4: a novel into his publisher with no ease in it.
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 4: That's a gamble, okay. And did his gamble payoff? I
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 4: don't know what's a payoff? His book got published. You
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 4: can still read the book today, you can. It's a
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 4: novelty item. You can go look it up and say,
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 4: holy smokes, how'd this guy do this? And go skim
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 4: the text? And he doesn't read like a traditional book
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 4: because he can't use the word e He's got to
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 4: write very strange, you know, circuitous roots to avoid using ease.
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 4: Was he a success? I don't know. I couldn't remember
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 4: his name and I'm a writer. His family didn't renew
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 4: his copyright really, so yeah, I mean, none of his
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 4: heirs after he died, none of his copyright ran, none
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 4: of his errors cared enough to pay the copyright fees
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 4: to recopyright re up the novel.
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 3: Jesus.
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 4: I know.
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 3: So that's amazing. You know you know, we were talking
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 3: about copyright stuff and you know of the things that
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 3: you mentioned too in the group. Uh, you know, as
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 3: you talked about copywriting, was about you know, about the
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 3: w g A and also about you know, the US
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 3: Patent Office, the copyright Office, and I mean, you know,
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 3: all of that is is really good stuff. And when
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 3: I hear stuff like this happening, Because when I hear
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 3: stuff like this happened, or where I hear stuff like
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 3: you know what happened with Georgia Merrow and and and
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 3: the original Living Dead, I mean you realize just how
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 3: important all this stuff is.
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's another thing most uh you know my
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 4: book will help with that. Shamelessly plugging the book yet again,
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 4: but I mean, I I'm I'm involved in the project
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 4: where they had they had some issues because somebody tried
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 4: to steal the project. There are other in my In
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 4: a year or so in my group, there have been
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 4: I used to have them written down something like between
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 4: nine and a dozen stolen scripts where people have actually
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 4: come in and said, you know, my script got stolen
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 4: and actually had some kind kind of substantial evidence, in
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 4: significant data and story behind it, not just like oh
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 4: I wrote a script and dog damn that Star Wars.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 4: They stole my script. No, nothing like that, like actual
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 4: matching dialogue. And I've had it happen. I've had it
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 4: happen to me. I won't say who. I had another
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 4: writer take some stuff from one of my scripts. And
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 4: there are, you know, in a group of less than
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 4: three thousand people. And it wasn't three thousand the whole
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 4: time the group started at one me. It's not advertised
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 4: I reject about ninety percent of applicants. But in that
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 4: small group, in one year, we've got somewhere approaching a
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 4: dozen stolen scripts where people someone ripped off somebody else's work.
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 4: And there are trolls that go in these groups. That's
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 4: why I've met people. I'm very careful about this. There
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 4: are trolls that go in groups say, you know, producer
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 4: looking for someone to write our story, and you know,
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 4: we need you to submit ten pages. Well what they
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 4: do is, you know, and then we'll judge and we'll
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 4: pick who's going to get the running assignment. Well, Dave,
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 4: who gets the writing assignment? Tell me, no one gets
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 4: the running assignment. They assigned the ten pages that say
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 4: it's one hundred page screenplay. So that's ten ten page divisions.
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 4: They assign it to twenty writers. So have they put
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 4: up an ad in the group for you know, no money.
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 4: You have to prove to us who you are. You're
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 4: going to write ten pages. We'll tell you what to write,
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 4: and then we'll get back to if we like it. Well,
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 4: keep holding your breath, we'll call you blue boy. You'll
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 4: be in the corner turning blue because they're never gonna
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 4: call you no matter how good you were, because what's
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 4: going to happen. They don't have any money, and what's
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 4: going to happen is they're not really looking to hire
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 4: a writer. They're looking to steal writing. So they give
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 4: each they give ten scenes they want written ten pages.
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 4: Kind of a simplistic example, but I'm making it easy
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 4: for the math. One hundred page script, they divide it
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 4: into ten segments, however many scenes each. You know, script's
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 4: typically sixty eighty scenes. But let's stick with this example.
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 4: So you know, you're gonna write these ten pages for us,
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 4: and they give that same pages to the same ten
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 4: pages to two writers. Then they take the next you know,
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 4: eleven to twenty and they give that to two more writers,
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 4: and they do the same thing all the way down
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 4: the line. So they have twenty writers writing their one
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 4: hundred page script twice. So they what they then do
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 4: is they then pick through it all. They pick what
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 4: they like, what they don't like. They throw it all
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 4: together and they have maybe even that guy, rewrite the
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 4: whole thing, the whole script sitting they're written for him.
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 4: They just rewrite it, pick what they like, pick, well,
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 4: that was a guy had a great idea. Well, you
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 4: know we'll keep that. We're screwing him, so why not
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 4: keep it? And then they get the whole script written
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 4: form that only needs a rewrite, and they pay nothing.
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 4: And you know, these people aren't scrupulous, And this happens
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 4: all the time in writing groups. You know, send me
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 4: a writing sample, send me, send me, you know, ten
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 4: pages of my original script. Here's the story. You you
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 4: give me the first ten pages, so you know those
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 4: are those are all pitfalls, not copywriting. You want to
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 4: register with WGA. You got an extra twenty bucks, Sure,
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 4: register with WGA. Is your script copyright protected? Absolutely not.
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 4: WGA serves a lot of good functions. The Script Registry
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 4: is does not take the place of copyright. It's it's
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 4: it's it works as some evidence of when something was created,
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 4: not a copyright. Don't even get into federal court with
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 4: a WGA registration on a copyright case. So you know,
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 4: beginning writers need to learn that kind of stuff. And
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 4: a lot of it's counterintuitive, a lot of it. You know,
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 4: people aren't going to tell you. They don't know. There's
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 4: a lot of terrible information. I'll do it here. I'll
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 4: kill the poor man's copyright for you. Poormian's copyright. Write
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 4: your script, fold it up, seal it up really well
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 4: in an envelope, and mail it to yourself and there
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 4: now you're protected. Right, No, absolutely not does nothing. It's
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 4: never protected anybody in any court that I can I
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 4: can name, or that anyone I know can name. It's
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 4: absolutely worthless. And yet this myth of the poor man's
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 4: copyright persists. These are things that you need to learn
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 4: and and books like you know, David Trottier, Dave Trottier's
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 4: Screenwriter's Bible and others will address some of this stuff
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 4: for you. So you think you're going to be a screenwriter,
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 4: spend twenty bucks by a book, read it, learn something. Yeah,
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 4: and I get into arguments. I get at arguments to
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 4: people in my group. I'm a I'm a lawyer, and
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 4: they want to argue with me about the law. They
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 4: tell me I'm wrong. I had somebody do it a
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 4: couple of days ago. She was somebody asked a question
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 4: that ran into legal territory and didn't ask it to me,
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 4: just threw it up in the group. And I'm not
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 4: this person's lawyer, but you know I can give you
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 4: throughout general legal advice to writers and stuff. So I
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 4: answered the question and she's like contradicting my answer with
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 4: the complete wrong answer.
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: and now back to the show.
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 4: So I tried to gently guide her back and now, no, no,
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 4: look at it, it's really this way, And she told
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 4: me I was wrong. So you know, you really writers
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 4: need to have a basic understanding of certain things just
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 4: to survive and be viable. The writing is a strange occupation.
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 4: You have to be able to actually write stuff. But
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 4: then there's the business end of writing, which is completely
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 4: different from the creation end of writing. And again, like
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 4: David Trottereer's book and you know other books, they actually
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 4: will talk about both. And you know, Linda Arnson's book
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 4: talks talks about you know completely story UH story theory
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 4: and UH structure and plotting. That's the whole book. Genius
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 4: Genius book. Rick Toskins book talks about playwriting seminars too.
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 4: He talks a lot about the business and his very
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 4: practical guide. He analyzes plays. He bridges the gap between
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 4: playwriting and screenwriting. And then he talks about the business
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 4: of you know, Okay, you're sitting in your in your room,
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 4: over your garage and kind of saw Georgia churning out
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 4: this stuff. Isn't it great? Oh? You love it? And
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 4: what are you going to do with it? No one's
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 4: ever going to read it if it doesn't leave the garage, right, Yeah,
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 4: very true. So there's a business send And if you're
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 4: let's say you're an idiot of on let's say you're
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 4: you know, a beautiful mind, you're this gifted mathematician or
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 4: you know, if this guy was in a cave in
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 4: Afghanistan scribbling the most brilliant mathematics anyone had ever seen,
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 4: all over the cave walls, using you know, burnt bone
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 4: and scratching with a bone and you know, highlighting with
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 4: a with a piece of ashed out stick and a
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 4: little blood dot here and there. No one's ever going
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 4: to see it, right, So the most brilliant mathematician in
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 4: the world, no one knows who he is, he ends up,
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 4: you know, he he demises, and then you know, three
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 4: thousand years later, someone finds his cave art and recognizes
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 4: his high level mathematics, which is wonderful. And you know
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 4: everyone else, all the uninformed, think it's cave art. You know,
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 4: look at this, let's add some let's add some fags
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 4: to this, right, and they're modifying the formulas. Okay, so
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 4: you know there's a big to send to this too.
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 4: Unless you're going to be a pure hobbyist and just
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 4: write this stuff for your wife or your spouse, your grandma,
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 4: your dad, your mom. Oh look how great this is.
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 4: Give it to your kids. There needs to be a goal,
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 4: and that's the business end. And so like the books,
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 4: like I said, Playwriting Seminars to two point zero and
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 4: the Screenwriter's Guide, a Screenwriter's Bible, those are books that
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 4: discuss the business end as well. Okay, books like Aaronson's is,
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 4: you know, focused all on structure and plot and story
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 4: function and character function and all those things to an
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 4: extreme depth, like biblical depth. It's that in depth, but
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 4: it really doesn't There's some in there, but it really
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 4: doesn't approach the business as much. Your cut too is
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 4: showing by TJ Alex. I recommend. I think there's a
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 4: little business in there too, but that's not why I
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 4: go to that book. So you know, you need to
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 4: learn and you need to learn the business stuff too,
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 4: And that bridge is a nice gap to contests, which
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 4: you mentioned earlier.
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, And one thing I want to ask Mike
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 3: is have you ever I mean I wanted to obviously
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 3: ask this because you know we're talking about books again.
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 3: Have you ever read any of like the Big three
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 3: or four books that sort of come across you know,
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 3: everyone sort of comes across them, and those books obviously
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 3: screenplay by Sidfield Save the Cat Story. Have you read
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 3: any of those books?
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 4: Let me be as fair as I can be. I
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 4: read Save the Cat. Save the Cat is an approach.
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 4: It's extremely formulaic. You need to know it because a
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 4: lot of studio execs will be expecting, you know, Save
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 4: the Cat Story beats and they'll go to, you know,
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 4: page sixty seven of your script, page twelve A year
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 4: script page you know, twenty four of your script, page
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 4: five of your script, and they're going to be looking
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 4: for story. Save the cat. Story beats that. Blake Snyder,
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 4: by all reports, a wonderful guy who died young. It's
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 4: a shame. Its supposed to be a great guy, and
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 4: he wrote two of the worst movies ever written. You know,
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 4: blank check or shoot a Stop or my Mom Will Shoot,
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 4: which could have torpedo Sylvester Stallone's career dodged a bullet
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 4: on that one. So you know. That book was an
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 4: analysis done by Snyder over a great deal of time,
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 4: looking at looking for a formula, common theme, a thread
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 4: running through the most successful and admired movies, and he
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 4: distilled it down into a formula. It just like a
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 4: log line formula. Distials everything down and you start plugging
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 4: your stuff in to get a good log line. Well,
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 4: at some point, not every film has a log line.
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 4: You can write with a standard log line formula. Once
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 4: you understand what you're trying to accomplish, you may want
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 4: a very from the formula for a particular project because
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 4: you may not be able to capture the log line
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 4: well in twenty five words written, you know so and
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 4: so must do this, or you know, and beat such
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 4: and such villain, or this will happen, you know, blah blah. Okay,
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 4: so that may not be the best approach for a
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 4: movie that that you're working on. And so, yeah, I've
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 4: read Save the Cat. I think Save the Cat tends
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 4: to put writers in a box and it makes you
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 4: stick to story beats that people pull their hair out.
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 4: Oh my god, I added a scene in my Save
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 4: the Cat moment, my dark Night of the Soul moment
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 4: moved and now it's you know, for pages past words
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 4: supposed to be Oh my god, I'm gonna jump off
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 4: the roof. No, tell your story, Tell your story and
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 4: learn what Save the Cat is. In case you have
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 4: somebody that really wants the beats to line up and
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 4: you're writing for them, well then maybe you've got to
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 4: break out Save the Cat. As far as the other ones,
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 4: you know, Sidfield and all, I've started to read some
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 4: of them. I find a lot of their stuff. Yes
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 4: they're acknowledged experts. Yes they're much better known than I am.
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 4: Of course, I'm just a guy. You know, they're famous. Well,
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 4: a lot of their stuff is very philosophical and kind
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 4: of hard to put your finger on exactly what they're
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 4: saying and how do I apply this to my script?
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 4: So you know, I looked at some of that stuff
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 4: and didn't find it immediately helpful, so I ignored it.
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 4: I taught myself. And you know that's you know, there
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 4: are conventions, there are rules, and once you learn them,
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 4: you can also learn to break them and get away
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 4: with it if you know what you're doing. And as
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 4: far as those guys go, some of the most most
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 4: well read writers, screenwriters I know that have read every
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 4: single one of those books, that can quote you from
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 4: the books and tell you what page number is on
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 4: they've never written a good script. There was there was
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 4: one guy in my group who's no longer a member,
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 4: who's any social guy. Threw him out, but that's on aside,
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 4: and he just incredible knowledge on all these all these
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 4: writers theories, and you know all you know McKee and
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 4: Sidfield and you know every other every other theoretical uh
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 4: theoretician on storytelling. And by the way, Aaronson also is
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 4: big on that, except she wrote a book that's a
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 4: very practical nuts and bolts guide. That is, it's not
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 4: all just theory. It's loaded with theory, but it gives
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 4: you guidelines to actually fix the engine. Okay, they tell
• 1:47:50
  Speaker 4: you how to build the engine, tell you what the
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 4: engine is, and then it'll let you put the engine together.
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 4: A lot of these guys will say, let's talk about
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 4: an engine, and you know, before long you're sitting there
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 4: in a yoga position, staring out at a little plant
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 4: growing by hisself in the desert. Okay, like he's then
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 4: in the art of motorcycle maintenance. Right, yeah, So you know,
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 4: there's practical and there's impractical, and there's there are people
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 4: that write all kinds of great stuff and I can't
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 4: I'm not knocking these these great you know, well known
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 4: philosophical guys like the key in Field. I haven't read them.
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 4: I've skimmed little bits of them and said, you know what,
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 4: this isn't answering my question, or this isn't for me
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 4: and maybe for you. I'm not saying it isn't for you.
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 4: It could well be for you. My book isn't going
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 4: to be for everybody. That's for damn sure. So you know,
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 4: find your approach that works and stick to it. But
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 4: the guy that I was talking about a minute ago,
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 4: he bloviated endlessly in the group and ever, Oh this
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 4: guy knows everything. Oh my god, he's the best expert anywhere,
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 4: and he really didn't know a lot. It was incredibly impressive.
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 4: And then one day he came into the group and
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 4: he said, I've been doing this twenty years and I've
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 4: never finished a script. Can you guys help me. I'm
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 4: not kidding. I could show you the post so this guy,
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 4: this guy could quote you chapter and verse from Sidfield McKee,
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 4: from any but you know the the hero's journey, you
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 4: know all the different theories and story methods of writing.
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: and now back to the show.
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 4: There are a lot of different people that have, you know,
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 4: the two hundred and thirty seven steps of the Hero
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 4: and all these other approaches. And I'm not saying there's
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 4: anything wrong with those. They may be the best thing
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 4: ever for you, but they may not work for me.
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 4: You got to find what works for you. And so
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 4: this guy could tell you what anybody wrote about anything,
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 4: very convincingly. And you know, six months later you find
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 4: out the guy has never finished the script.
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's I wonder. You know, it's almost like a
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 3: fear of failure to start or something. I mean, but
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 3: then again, twenty years, I mean, wow, I mean that
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 3: is just maybe he just maybe he's got a ton
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 3: of screenplays started but never actually finished. Maybe I started, that's.
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 4: Well, one one screenplay worked on over ten years, never
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 4: finished it. You know, I knocked out. I knocked out
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 4: a rewrite in five days that was accepted. Ninety nine
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 4: out of one hundred pages were accepted. First pass. I
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 4: got some notes. They said, we want to change a
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 4: couple of things on this one page that may cascadeness
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 4: something else. Can you do that for us? I said sure.
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 4: I rewrote it in about ten minutes. I spent about
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 4: twelve hours rereading the script, thinking about everything, making sure
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 4: that I wasn't setting myself up for a jackpot, a
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 4: story hole continuity here. Couldn't figure out anything that was
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 4: affected by this in any way. And when I hadn't
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 4: turned it in and they said, oh my god, we
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 4: love it. You're done.
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I want to do a guy Mike, Uh,
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 3: he couldn't write ten pages in three months, and yeah,
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 3: I and he wanted to be a screenwriter, And I said,
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 3: you got it. Turn in three or ten pages, at
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 3: least ten pages, and I give him three months to
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 3: do it, and because each month I would check back in,
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 3: because that's that's what you had to do to join
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 3: the one writer's group was that you had to actually
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 3: have written something. And I said, just show us something.
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 3: I said, write ten pages. And the first month I
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 3: didn't do it. My wife, my wife, and I I.
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 4: You got it.
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 3: And in the second month, another excuse, third month, and
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 3: finally I said, you know, I don't think your heart
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 3: is into this. I think your brain is. I think
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 3: you want that that notoriety. And then when we want
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 3: to exactly and.
• 1:51:58
  Speaker 4: I have a whole post on this. I have a
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 4: whole post on you staring at the blank page and
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 4: being able to put anything fucking commit write something. You're
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 4: not a writer if you don't write. So I have
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 4: a whole essay on this that people found very useful
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 4: and with seven or eight different bullet points about what
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 4: is really going to happen in your life? What is
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 4: going to go wrong if you write a piece of shit?
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 4: What is really going to happen to you? If you
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 4: sit there and you hack away at your keyboard and
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 4: you write a just a piece of roadkill that a
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 4: dog wouldn't need. Guess what, nothing happens. You can rewrite it.
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 4: You could start over three years later, after you've written
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 4: two good ones. You'll laugh at your first one, and
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 4: maybe you'll have ideas to go back and fix it.
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 4: But that fear of writing, I like I said, I
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 4: wrote a whole essay on this. It was very well received.
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 4: If you be in the book fear of writing, if
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 4: you don't put it down on the page. The one
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 4: thing I guarantee you is you will never get anywhere.
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 4: If you don't actually commit to write, you will never
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 4: accomplish anything. Mike.
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 3: That is so true. And you know, Mike, we've been
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 3: talking for about an hour and forty five minutes.
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 4: Now, Wow, I haven't even kept trying.
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well I have a timer right in front of
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 3: me of how long everything. But but so that's the
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 3: other reason, I know, you know, Mike, I don't want to,
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 3: you know, take up any more of your time. I
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 3: know you know, you know you've got a million things
• 1:53:29
  Speaker 3: going on as well. So you know, Mike. Inclosed, and
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 3: I just want to ask you one one final question.
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 3: Is there anything that we didn't sort of talk about
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 3: that you wanted to get a chance to or is
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 3: there anything that you wanted to say to sort of
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 3: put a period at the end of this whole conversation.
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, every writer's different. What works for me works for me.
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 4: That's a good place to start to look at, but
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 4: it doesn't mean it's going to work for you. If
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 4: you find a method that works for you, no matter
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 4: how many people tell you it's wrong. If your work
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 4: product is good, it doesn't matter how you get there,
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 4: as long as you're not stealing it. Do whatever works
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 4: for you. Learn the rules, the conventions of the trade.
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 4: Some of them people can't even say why it's done
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 4: that way. It's just done that way. Some of the
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 4: rules you're going to not be able to break, and
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 4: some of the rules you will be able to break.
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 4: When anyone tells you absolutely, oh this is wrong, that's wrong,
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 4: absolutes usually don't work. Learn a way to write that
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 4: works for you, and use that method. It probably won't
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 4: work for me. Mine may not work for you. But
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 4: there isn't necessarily a right way or wrong way you
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 4: need to get a high quality finished product out. If
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 4: you stand on your head and gibber and shriek and
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 4: right upside down, left handed and I gets it done.
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 4: Go for it. That's what you need to do. And
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 4: you need to write. A lot of people say, right
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 4: every day, you know, write three pages every day. You
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 4: have to where you're not a writer, Well, I'm not
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 4: a writer. I don't write every day. I write every
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 4: day in my group, but as far as writing content,
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 4: I don't. So that's another rule. You know writers write
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 4: every day. Well, some writers write every day. There are
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 4: plenty of writers that don't. I write when I'm inspired,
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 4: when I have great ideas, when I'm on an assignment.
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 4: If I don't have anything going on, I don't feel
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 4: like writing, and I sit down to write, I'm gonna
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 4: write crap. Right, So I'm not inspired, I'm not motivated.
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 4: I have no direction. Then without a goal, I'm just
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 4: going to meander along and write a bunch of forgettable
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 4: stuff that will end up in a folder that I
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 4: just wasted a day. Instead, focus before you start to write.
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 4: Common writer's errors. A new writer has no idea what
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 4: they have to say, what their voice is, why they're writing.
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 4: You need to try and discover your own voice and
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 4: figure out what it is you want to say. You
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 4: need to have something to say when you sit down
• 1:55:53
  Speaker 4: to write. I'll close on that.
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 3: I couldn't agree more. Mike, Mike, where people find you
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 3: out on? Sorry? I know I said that was the
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 3: last question, but that this is the last question. Where
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 3: can you find you out online?
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 4: My information's up on IMDb under Mike Lee Bierman. Most
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 4: of my projects are in development, which means unless you
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 4: have pro you can't see them. But there's plenty there
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 4: my contact informations there. I'm also I can also be
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 4: reached through the Facebook group screenwriters who can actually write
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 4: if you're going to apply. I do vet people. I
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 4: do not let people unless there's celebrities and they contact
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 4: me separately, which has happened a few times. I don't
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 4: let people in using false names because deals are made
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 4: in the group contracts form. You need to use your
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 4: real name and you need to show interest in writing.
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 4: If I pull up your profile, it's got a bunch
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 4: of stuff about playing on the Xbox and what's your
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 4: favorite whiskey and what's your favorite color ferbie, You're probably
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 4: not getting into the group. So those are a couple
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 4: of ways to find me. In my emails online and.
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 3: Everyone I will link to all of that in the
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 3: show notes. And again, I just want to say that
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 3: Mike's group is phenomenal. It is the best screenwriting group
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 3: that I'm aware of on Facebook, and it is just
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 3: everybody in there is always doing awesome things. And that's
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 3: sort of what I want to always wanted from a
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 3: screenwriters group, you know, is people actually doing things. There's
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 3: actually like three screenwriting groups I'm a part of on Facebook,
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 3: and finally you know, they're they're great. They're yours. Mike
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 3: Screenwriting You has one, and Scott Meyer's going to Stories
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 3: another and those three.
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 4: Sure, he's great. He's a Facebook friend of mine. I
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 4: don't really know him very well, but he's great, no
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 4: question about it. Yeah, one, go ahead.
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 3: Sorry, I'm just gonna say those three are what actually
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 3: keep me on Facebook, because otherwise I'd just be like,
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 3: there's nothing really keeping me here.
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 4: Hey, one final thought, shameless plug. You can look for
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 4: my daughter and look for me. I'm finishing with co
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 4: writer co producer Ramsey Stoneburner, exec producer Guy Francisco Poland,
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 4: and associate producer Craig Talis. We're working on a feature
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 4: film called The Shoes, which we've finished shooting about two
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 4: thirds of it. We've just added nay list person and
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 4: we're gonna be finishing that up in the next couple
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 4: of months. So got a couple films in development, but
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 4: that one is one that is directly at least partially
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 4: under my control.
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 3: Oh awesome, fantastic, Mike. And you know, I looked forward
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 3: to seeing you, know everything you're up to, and I
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 3: know we'll be talking in a group Michael I Bierman. There,
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 3: I finally got it out. I have a head cold,
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 3: by the way, that's why it sound so terrible.
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 4: But oh you actually you sound great, no idea.
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 3: Oh good, Yeah, that's why I'm having some trouble talking.
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 3: I can't breathe my nose too well. But it's been
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 3: a pleasure having you one Mike, and I want to
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 3: say thank you so much, and again I will be
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 3: talking to you very very soon.
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 4: Thank you so much for the opportunity. I really enjoyed it.
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 3: I'm glad you did. My friend take care, okay, bye bye.
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 1: I want to thank Dave so much for doing such
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 1: a great job on this episode. If you want to
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 1: get links to anything we spoke about in this episode,
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 1: head over to the show notes at Indie film huscle
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: dot com, forward slash eight to twenty and if you
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 1: have it already, please head over to filmmaking podcast dot com,
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: subscribe and.
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 3: Leave a good review for the show.
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 1: It really helps us out a lot, guys. Thank you
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 1: again so much for listening to guys. As always, keep
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 1: that hustle going, keep that dream alive, Stay safe out there,
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you soon.
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to the Indie Film Hustle podcast at
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 2: indiefilm hustle dot com.
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 3: That's I N D I E F I L M
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 3: h U S T l E dot com.