Latest / Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast / IFH 773: How to Master Screenwriting in Hollywood with Mick Hurbis-Cherrier

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IFH 773: How to Master Screenwriting in Hollywood with Mick Hurbis-Cherrier · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: You are listening to the IFH podcast Network.
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  Speaker 2: For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting podcasts, just go to
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  Speaker 2: ifahpodcastnetwork dot com.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Indie Film Hustle Podcast, Episode number seven
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: seventy three. It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Walt Disney.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Broadcasting from the back alley and Hollywood. It's the Indie
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Film Hustle Podcast, where we show you how to survive
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles of
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: the film biz.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: episode of the Indie Film Hustle Podcast. I am your
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: humble host, Alex Ferrari. Today's show is sponsored by Rise
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  Speaker 1: of the Film Entrepreneur How to turn your independent film
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  Speaker 1: into a profitable business. It's harder today than ever before
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  Speaker 1: for independent filmmakers to make money with their films from
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  Speaker 1: indie filmmaker. The old distribute model of making money with
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  Speaker 1: This book shows you the step by step method to
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  Speaker 1: The book is available in paperback, ebook, and of course audiobook.
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  Speaker 1: If you want to order it, just head over to www.
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  Speaker 1: Dot filmbiz book dot com. That's film bizbook dot com. Well, guys,
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  Speaker 1: today on the show we have filmmaker and best selling
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  Speaker 1: author Mick herbis Cherier. Now, Mick is not only an
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  Speaker 1: award winning screenwriter working on multiple projects currently, but he
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  Speaker 1: is also an instructor, a teacher, and the best selling
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  Speaker 1: author of the textbook Voice and Vision, a Creative Approach
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  Speaker 1: to Narrative film production. Now, in this conversation, Mick and
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  Speaker 1: I go deep into what it's like to be a screenwriter,
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  Speaker 1: what truly is what the business is all about his
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  Speaker 1: kind of horror stories, what mistakes he sees young screenwriters make,
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  Speaker 1: his ups and downs, and so much more. So, without
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  Speaker 1: any further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Mick herbs Cherier.
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  Speaker 1: I like to welcome the show. Mick herbs Cherrier. How
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  Speaker 1: are you doing.
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  Speaker 3: I'm doing great? And you did perfectly. I thank you.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, it was we were we were. I wanted
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  Speaker 1: to make sure I got that name proper and didn't massacre.
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  Speaker 1: So I'm glad I did.
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  Speaker 3: How are you doing, my friend, I'm good. I'm very
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  Speaker 3: happy to be on your show. You know, I've seen
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  Speaker 3: a number of your podcasts, and I think that we
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  Speaker 3: have a kind of a similar mission. You know, we
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  Speaker 3: love films, We love good films. We want to make
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  Speaker 3: sure that good films continue to be made, and so
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  Speaker 3: informing people how what is a good film? What makes
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  Speaker 3: a good film?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it is a mystery because they're
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  Speaker 1: they're becoming less and less nowadays. Believe it's just it's
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  Speaker 1: not as easy to you know, when I was growing
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  Speaker 1: up in the eighties and the nineties, I mean, there
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  Speaker 1: were so many masters at work during that time period,
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  Speaker 1: and many of them are still at work, and every
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  Speaker 1: time I'm like, oh, that was a great movie, I'm like,
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  Speaker 1: who made it, I'm like, oh, someone from the eighties
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  Speaker 1: and nineties. But not to say that they're not amazing
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  Speaker 1: artists doing work today. I mean, look at Chris Nolan,
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  Speaker 1: I mean, look at Fincher. I mean these kind of
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  Speaker 1: guys who came up, Well, the Fincher came up in
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  Speaker 1: the nineties, but Nolan and those kind of guys, they're
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  Speaker 1: newer generation. There's so many great, great filmmakers and screenwriters nowadays,
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  Speaker 1: but it's harder to but it's harder to get a made.
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  Speaker 1: And that think that's the biggest problem is there's a
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  Speaker 1: lot of great scripts out there, but there's not a
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  Speaker 1: lot of great scripts that are being given the opportunities
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  Speaker 1: that they were given in the eighties, nineties and even
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  Speaker 1: in the early two thousands.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true. I mean I think it's much harder. Obviously,
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  Speaker 3: it's harder to sell a spec script, you know, these days,
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  Speaker 3: even if you have some sort of property that's an
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  Speaker 3: interesting property. What I've noticed recently is that so much
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  Speaker 3: depends on the team you put together, because that makes
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  Speaker 3: a producer, that makes a production company feel more comfortable
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  Speaker 3: and more safe that this is a team that has
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  Speaker 3: a track record. They know how to put this thing together.
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  Speaker 3: They recognize good stuff. I like the stuff that they've done,
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  Speaker 3: and they don't necessarily feel like they're taking a big chance,
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  Speaker 3: because you know, everybody's job all the way up the
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  Speaker 3: ladder is on the line, and.
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  Speaker 1: It's always to say no. It's their job is to
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  Speaker 1: say no. As much as they might want to say yes,
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  Speaker 1: their job is to say because there it's the whole
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  Speaker 1: town is run by fear, the higher town.
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  Speaker 3: Although interestingly, you know, I fairly reached just before COVID hit,
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  Speaker 3: I went on a you know, a pitch session to
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  Speaker 3: a number of different production companies. Their job is to
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  Speaker 3: say no. They don't like to say no.
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  Speaker 1: They don't.
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  Speaker 3: They don't because they don't want to be the person
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  Speaker 3: who said no to the thing that got made. So
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  Speaker 3: they're very always, very positive. And then I kind of
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  Speaker 3: lose them, you know, Alex, I was at a pitch
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  Speaker 3: session and it went well. We pitched. There were three
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  Speaker 3: of us pitching. It went spectacularly. It was for a
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  Speaker 3: television program, and the producer jumped out of his chair
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  Speaker 3: and said, okay, well we need for you guys. What
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  Speaker 3: we need to do is get money for you guys
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  Speaker 3: to write a pilot and get a Bible together. And
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  Speaker 3: I was like, my god, is it true. The first
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  Speaker 3: person we went to, we sold the show in the
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: room and I walked out and I talked to the
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: person I was writing with, who's much more experience than
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  Speaker 3: I am in some of these things, and I said,
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  Speaker 3: that was an amazing response that he just said yes
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  Speaker 3: right away. He said, oh, no, that's not a yes,
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  Speaker 3: and that we don't know what that is. No.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, I've never la in Hollywood in general, it's
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  Speaker 1: an art form of how they say piss off. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: it's really it is. It really is artful in the
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  Speaker 1: way that they give back negative critiques, but they do
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  Speaker 1: it in such a way that you don't even know
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  Speaker 1: that you're just being told to just grow off. It's
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  Speaker 1: what because they don't want to be the person. So
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  Speaker 1: this is the two fears. I don't want to be
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  Speaker 1: fearful enough to green light this, and then at bombs
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  Speaker 1: I lose my job. I don't want to also pass
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  Speaker 1: on the next big thing they when they find out
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  Speaker 1: about it, and I lose my job. So it's all
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  Speaker 1: about losing my job, So what's the bigger fear? And
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  Speaker 1: generally speaking, the bigger fear is to produce something that bombs,
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  Speaker 1: because that's more concrete. So that's why they say no.
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  Speaker 1: But they don't want to say no. They want they
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  Speaker 1: want your project to be the next big thing. They
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: wanted to make a billion dollars and to launch a
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  Speaker 1: franchise and all that kind of stuff. But that's just
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  Speaker 1: the way the world works.
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  Speaker 3: But yeah, you know, it's kind of a vice. It's
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: kind of a squeeze for them because you know, they
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  Speaker 3: need new content, they need new makers, they need fresh ideas,
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  Speaker 3: they need people who are good writers. They need these things.
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  Speaker 3: It's the lifeblood of the industry. But they are, you
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  Speaker 3: afraid of making some wrong choices. So that's sort of
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  Speaker 3: the thing that keeps people going is that you know,
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  Speaker 3: they need they need talent.
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  Speaker 1: But would I would argue that everything you just said
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  Speaker 1: really focuses mostly on television now as opposed to features. Features,
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  Speaker 1: if you notice, are not new ideas. They're all based
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  Speaker 1: on existing ip especially at the studio level. Indies are different.
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  Speaker 1: But indies are are are going the way of the DODO.
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  Speaker 1: They really are, and in many ways. It's not as
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  Speaker 1: robust of a business as it was in the nineties
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: because in the nineties, you know, you know, I was
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: speaking to some of filmmakers from that era and they said,
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  Speaker 1: the reason why my film got picked up was because
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  Speaker 1: there was a business starting to come around VHS home videos,
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: you know, then DVD's. There was an actual industry, a
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  Speaker 1: business way to make money with films like Slackers and
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  Speaker 1: Clerks and El Mariachi, and there was a business that
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  Speaker 1: that That infrastructure doesn't exist now because there's so much
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  Speaker 1: competition now for it that it's for features I'm talking about,
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  Speaker 1: but for television, it's all about original ideas. It's completely
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  Speaker 1: about original ideas.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting because there's no there's
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  Speaker 3: no way you're gonna get it if you're not a
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  Speaker 3: known writer. There's no way you're going to get a
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  Speaker 3: commission for a feature film. It's just not going to happen.
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  Speaker 3: But and and and you know, there's no way you're
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  Speaker 3: going to get money for a or a treatment or
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  Speaker 3: something like that to develop it. In television, that still
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  Speaker 3: happens because it's the wild West. Like which of these
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: you know, billion platforms streaming platforms are going to survive,
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  Speaker 3: and in order to survive, they need new content, they
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  Speaker 3: need original content, and so they're out there looking for
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  Speaker 3: that stuff. And you know, I also think, actually, you know,
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  Speaker 3: a young filmmaker these days, or a young writer, somebody
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  Speaker 3: who wants to be a writer or a filmmaker does
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  Speaker 3: have to think globally in term cinema, you know, because
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  Speaker 3: there's still those pathways for interesting feature films happening in
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  Speaker 3: international co productions. And sometimes that's the avenue to open
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  Speaker 3: some doors in Los Angeles, even if you if you
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: want to go there. You know, I have a very
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  Speaker 3: good friend Sami Zawabi, who is a Palestinian Israeli fantastic filmmaker.
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  Speaker 1: Will be right back after a word from our sponsor.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: And now back to the show.
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  Speaker 3: Wrote a screenplay in English that was supposed to be
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: in Hebrew and Arabic. Tried to get it done here,
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  Speaker 3: nobody would pick it up. And then he went to
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: France and French producers were interested. They got together with
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: let me see, it was like France, Israel and Luxembourg
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: and that was the co production. That film did extremely well.
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: It's a wonderful film. It's called Tel Aviv on Fire
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: Fantastic Film, and now you know he when he goes
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: to Los Angeles, people know him. He's created his own
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: and I'm not going to say brand, but he's sort
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: of developed a profile that people now can recognize and
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: feel comfortable. So and he's on his way.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And that's another thing. A lot of people think
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: the only place you can make it is Hollywood, but
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: you're absolutely they would be wrong because it is there's
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: such more of a global marketplace than it was in
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: the nineties and the eighties and the nineties. Even in
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: the early two thousands, it wasn't as of global place
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: because the Internet hadn't really taken hold yet. And it
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: really and I know people listening like a bunch of
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: old farts talking here, but you know, but I remember
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: logging into Netflix and looking at what they had to stream.
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  Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, this is all garbage, Like it's just
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Compolle before they had anything, was like, oh it was
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: complete garbage.
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: Uh you know on Google and think you can't trust
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: any of this stuff.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, this is all business. All this is horrible.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: So, but but because of the infrastructure that has been
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: built over the years, now with the streaming services the world.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: It's look look at squid Games. I mean, look at
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: a show like squid Games that showed up, Like, I
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: haven't seen a Korean based elephants show ever in my life.
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: And when I heard and I only watched it purely
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: because I kept hearing everybody talking, I'm like, if you
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: see squid Games, you see squid Games, I'm like, what
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: is this? I gotta watch it. And it became one
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: of the biggest shows in Netflix history from Korea, not
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: from America, but from Korea. In Korea.
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: This is just after what I can't remember the title offhand,
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: at the Spanish heist film.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what you were
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: talking about.
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's that again, you know, out of Nowhere, not
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: particularly popular in Spain, but a huge hit for Netflix.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: You know, another here. So there's a lot of those,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: those kind of things so international, and there's also opportunities
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: internationally that they're just not here in the US because
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: there's just everybody's here. Yeah, you know, but if you
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: go to France and have a France, Israel Luxembourg co production,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: the amount of competition you have in Europe is a
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: lot less than you have here to make films, especially
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: have a certain kind of genre and so on. But
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: I was going to ask you, how did you get
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: started in this insane business?
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  Speaker 3: Wow? Get started in? Like I Sometimes I feel like
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: I have three full time jobs. You know, I love
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: writing screenplays. I write screenplays. I don't relish, you know,
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: sacrificing a lot of things for years in order to
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: break in. You know. I also, you know, since the
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: time I was a kid, you know, I wanted to
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: be a college professor. That was a goal of mine,
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: even before films. That was a dream of mine. My
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: father was a college professor, My mother was a teacher.
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: My sister's a teacher, my brother is a teacher. You know,
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: there's so it's in the family. So I always wanted
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: to be a professor and cinema. And of course my
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: third job are the textbooks, which I sort of stumbled
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: in more recently. But I really love writing these books.
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: It's really a lot of fun. But cinema kind of
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: came into my life very early on. I was I'm
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: an American citizen that I grew up overseas. I was
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: born in Ismir, Turkey. You know, I've been in Columbia,
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: I've been in Puerto Rico really where I grew up,
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: with Singapore, and so two things. And so this is
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: like from the age of eight to thirteen, and this
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: is most of the seventies that I'm living in Singapore,
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: and so, uh, the Shaw Brothers were all over the
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: screens in Singapore, and my brother and I would just
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: go to Shaw Brothers productions. Every you know, kung fu
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: movie that came out, we were there and we had
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: we could not speak Chinese at all, did not matter,
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: you know. So I I mean, you know all those
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: films you know with those great titles like Blind Swordsmen,
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: the Blind Adventure, the Sentimental Swordsman, the One Armed Swordsman,
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: you know, five Deadly Venoms, five Fingers of Death, whatever,
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: and of course and of course any Annie Bruce Leie
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: year of course. Of course. So that that was like
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: one side. And then on the other side, being an
• 15:04
  Speaker 3: American and having never lived in America, have never never
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: been to the United States, I was obsessed with like
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: absorbing any American culture I could. And so when films came,
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: and US films came, even though they were heavily censored,
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: I would have to see them. Uh, you know, uh.
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: Soilent Green, you know, it was a big film in
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: the Patent was a big film, any James Bond film,
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: The French Connection, The Exorcist, even though it was like
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: like it was practically cut in half, you know, by censors.
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: It was a short film.
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: It was a short film, like I got.
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: But they and they still had the ambulance you know
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: in the uh in the parking lot, you know, promotional
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: thing going on. And then The Sting was one of
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: one of the great films. I must have seen that, like,
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: you know, fifteen times. I love that film. And then
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: at one point I saw a film called Mash, Robert
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: Ottman's Mash, And the only reason I want to see
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: it is because I knew that there was American football
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: scenes in it, and I was just obsessed with American football.
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: So I went and I remember, boy, I must have
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: been eleven, and I remember thinking, this film is making
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: me feel funny. I don't know what it is. I
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: don't quite understand what's going on, but it's not like
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: The Sting at all. Sure, sure, sure, And I think
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: I think that sort of started my whole love affair
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: with films and films that does kind of push the
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: envelope was right there.
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  Speaker 1: All right. Now, you've I've been teaching for many, many years.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: What is the biggest mistake you see screenwriters make early
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: young screenwriters make.
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: Young screenwriters Well, you know, struggling with the language and
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: struggling with formatting and stuff like that. I don't consider
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: that mistakes. That's just the way it goes. And you
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: know young young writers. You know, I teach a Hunter College,
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: and so not all of my students are young young
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: So when I say a young writer, I mean an
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: emerging writer.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: I think one thing is that is the lack of
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: patience to develop their craft. You know, they watch movies,
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: they feel movies deeply, and they know how to write.
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: Therefore they feel ready to write a magnum opus immediately.
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: And you know, you wouldn't feel that way listening to music,
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: thinking I'm gonna sit at the piano and write a
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: great song though I don't know how to play the piano, right,
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: But we feel because we know language and we use
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: words and we can write somehow, they feel like what
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: comes out right away has to be great, and I
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: tell them to, you know, And and it's because they're
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: fueled by passion, and so I tell them relax a
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: little bit, write a lot, right, you know your your
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: your first few scripts are not going to be that great,
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: I guarantee you, but you will learn from those scripts
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: and you will get better and better. It's like it's
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: like anything. It's like playing a guitar. It's like it's
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: it's it's like it's like Stephen Curry shooting three pointers.
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: It looks absolutely easy and effortless. When I watch Stephen
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: Curry shoot three points, I think I can do that.
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: That's easy.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: It looks so easy.
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: It looks so easy. But the amount of drilling and
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: training and practicing that he's put into those shots in
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: his life makes them look so easy. So, you know,
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: I that's the thing. I I give them the opportunity
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: to to be patient with their own progress.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, So I mean I feel too that a
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: lot of And this is definitely my It was definitely
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: me when I was starting out. Is there is that
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: little thing called ego that also creeps It creeps in
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: and everyone's like, wait, I've just written my opus. Why
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: has in Hollywood seen my genius? And the trucks of
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: money are just dumped in my front yard like I
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: don't understand and that ego, like many many filmmakers and screenwriters,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: walk into the business for the wrong reasons, meaning I
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: want to be rich and famous. I don't want my
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: ego stroked. I want to be on the red carpet
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff. And I always tell people,
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: because I've been around the block a little bit, I
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: got some strap. No, I just go like, what are
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: we gonna do about Bobby. I'm like, don't you worry.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: The business is going to take care of Bobby. It's
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: not a problem at all. Bobby's gonna be just fine.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: The other hammer is gonna come down any minute now.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: And if it doesn't come down any minute, it's gonna
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: come down in five years. Will be right back after
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: a word from our sponsor. And now back to the
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: show when he's still hustle and going, wait a minute,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: maybe what I'm doing is not working. And I always
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: try to warn people about that that pitfall, because I
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: was I mean, when you're young, you do things like that,
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: You're just like, yeah, obviously it's like you you know,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: you watch reservoir Dogs and you're like, I can do that,
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: and then you sit down and go why why is
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: my dialogue not.
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: A snappy or even worse? You start doing that again.
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: It's already been done, do you know.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: But you're not even doing it again. Well, you're doing
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: it again. It's it's it's derivative. So in other words,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: and by the way, how many I mean for us
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: at a certain age, you know when pulp fiction came out,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: how many pulp fiction ripoffs came out within the like
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: the next three or four years, it was just constant
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: pulp And you could see the writers of those movies
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: trying to imlate the tone and energy of Quinton And
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: that's not possible. It's because there's only one Quintin. There's
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: only one Sorkin, There's only one Shane Black, there's only
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: one Chris Nolan. These these people are so specific with
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: the way they write that you can't emulate them, and
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: you shouldn't because it's like me trying to emulate it anyway,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: like right.
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: And also, you know, a Sorkin wouldn't make a Scorsese film,
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: though he might Scorsese correct better than Charlie make a
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: Scorsese film, because only Scorsese makes a Scorsese film. Yep, Yeah,
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: you know I've been teaching long enough that I see
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: it in waves. You know, I remember when everybody wanted
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: to be David Lynchon, and I remember it when everybody
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: wanted to be uh oh, his first name is escaped
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: me Kaufman. Oh, Charlie Coffman, Charlie Kaufman. That was another wave.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, try to write like Charlief. You write like Charlie Kaufman.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: Are you kidding me?
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: Exactly? Are you kidding me? That was the error when
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: I couldn't self react structure to save my life, you know, right, exactly?
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: A Tarantino Kaufin just screwed everything up.
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: Anyway. And I think, you know, there there There have
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: been others, of course, but but you know, I actually
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: think that that's going away significantly these days because and
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: it's a very interesting challenge for teachers, and because there
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: isn't anymore that I can see a common like lexicon,
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: a common grouping of films that most of the students
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: in the class have watched. I'm seeing students breaking apart
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: into much smaller niches. Some of them love the long
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: form limited series television. Some of them are into Asian film,
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: some of them are into animated films. Really in a
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: big way. Some of them are into the narratives that
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: go into video games and they inhabit those niches with
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: great passion. So you mentioned, you know, you know, you
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: mentioned Chinatown. Nobody's seen Chinatown. No, you know, you mentioned
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: there's a few films that have stuck around that that
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: you can steal.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Godfather, Yeah, Godfather, god.
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: Father, The Fight Club. Interestingly, the Graduate and I and I.
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: That's interesting. Let's ask my class, like, why do you
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: all know The Graduate if you don't know you know China? Uh?
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: And they say, oh, because it's it's placed all the
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: time on television, so they eventually they catch it. So
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: anyway you're here.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: You're absolutely right because you know, I mean coming up
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: there are there's a group of films. You know, there's
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: like one hundred or two hundred films that everyone's seen,
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: and it's it's it's very comfortably everybody understands. You know,
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: you've seen Goodfellas, You've seen most of Scorsese's work. You know,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: you might have not seen After Hours, but you definitely
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: saw Goodfellas. You might have not seen Last Temptation of Christ,
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: but you probably saw Casino. You know, like there's there's
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: a hand full of movies from directors and of writers
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: that people. But in today's world. You know, when we
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: were coming up, there were less films to watch, you know,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: we would get maybe twenty movies a year, twenty five
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: movies a year. Now we get twenty movies an hour.
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: Release. Everybody knew, like what the what the Oscar nominees
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: were and see them and the winners, and so I
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: could go into a class and say, all right, here's
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: an example and everybody would understand that example. These days,
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: I say here's an example, and I see like blank faces.
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: That's the challenging part of teaching. The good part is
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: you can. You can, you know, you can show them,
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: you know, a film like ed Wood and blow their minds,
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: you know what I mean, because nobody's seen it before,
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: and they think, oh my god, how do you know
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: about this stuff? You know, you can. You can show
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: them Raging Bulk, you know, and they're like, oh my god.
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: I never imagined I had this experience. The other day,
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: I was talking to these three students who are working
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: together and their film has some resonance with Wings of Desire,
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: and I said, of course, you guys have seen Wings
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: of Desire, never saw it, never heard of him vendor.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: Did they see City of Angels at least?
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: No? I know, so you know, they they watched it,
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: and they called back and they said, Professor, you've just
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: changed our lives. I thought, well, that was easy.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: It's yeah, because you're right. You're right. And I've even
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: seen that when I talked to filmmakers sometimes like you
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: know that movie that this like I was. I was
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: when I was color grading back in the day. I
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: was working with one of the biggest music video directors
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: in the in the world at the time, and I'm
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: color grading one of his music videos. I'm like, oh, so,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: do you want me to do this like very like
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: Blade Runner esque? And he's like, what's that?
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, you're a music video director. You've never
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: seen Blade Runner? Are you kidding me? I felt like
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: slapping the guy.
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: Don't you know you wouldn't even exist as a video
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: music video director without Blade.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: On it, without really without really in general.
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: Let alone all that jazz, you know, Bob Foss's all
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: that jazz. But exactly, I think I only got to
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: one of the main mistakes. I think you asked me
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: for three.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: No, no, it's just no just one of the biggest mistakes.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: But you know, there's can you discuss a little bit
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: about how I think one of the biggest things I've
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: seen when when when I read screenplays from from younger
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: or newer writers is their use of description and they
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: don't the concept of a sea of white is seeing
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: as much white as possible, and what that experience is
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: as far as screen because honestly, it was I think
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: it was Shane Black. I think when Shane Black showed up,
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: he made the screenwriting reading a screenplay experience like reading
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: a book, like reading a novel. His descriptions were so tight,
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: so small, but so descriptive. It was an enjoyable read.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: And that's when I think we began to think about
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: as this industry, like the script needs to be enjoyable
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: to read and also not have blocks of description that
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: are for like it's it's not a novel. So can
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about that.
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, a screenplay is a is a very
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: complicated man type of manuscript, dramatic manuscript, because it has
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: a technical function as a blueprint for production correct it
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: also has to present to the reader as a movie
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: going experience. But it also has to be a good
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: read in terms of its language, and it has to
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: contain some of the attitude of the movie, the tone
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: of the movie, the genre of the movie, in its language.
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: And this is kind of the more advanced sort of
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: level of screenwriting, and we're people more and more understanding
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: that you can push rules of screenwriting. You can push
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: some of the things in order to have a dramatic
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: effect or in order to develop a voice. I mean,
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: I was just reading the screenplay for BookSmart, which I
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: have to say was a great fun read. They break
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: the rules all over the place because they really want
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: to communicate the attitude of the movie, and they really
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: do so, you know, I tell my students and I
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: try and do this, you know, to be vivid and
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: pithy at the same time. And part of that means
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: you have to know language. You can't use lazy language
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: and be right in a vivid way, in a visual way,
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: which means that writers need to read. And that's one
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: of the that's like number two problem with with beginning
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: screenwriters is that they want to write, but they don't read.
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: And you're not going to get what you need by
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: watching the film if you read the scripts for that,
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: and there are a lot of great scripts out there
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: that they can read and they can see exactly how
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: this writer presented the material so that the reader and
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: the director sees it in a visual way. You know.
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: I go back to you know, I go back to
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: people like Lawrence cast And who I had a workshop
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: with when I was a student, was one of the
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: first people who really talked about this in any in
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: any way. And of course Paul Schrader was another one
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: who was a phenomenal writer. You know, I just funny.
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: I I helped with the republication of a bunch of
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: books by Edred Dimitric.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: and now back to the show.
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: And I worked on the on screenwriting, and I read
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: some of his screenplays and it's just not interesting to read.
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: It's kind of like, Okay, here are the shots, and
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: it genuinely was a blueprint for a film and rather
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: than a good read on the page. So you know,
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: I think that, in fact, this is the book that
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: I'm currently writing. I'm writing a screenwriting book. And you know,
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: you think, oh man, not another freaking.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: Screenwriting There's like three of those out there. There's not
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: that many, all.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: Right, So this actually has nothing. This actually has nothing
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: to do. I don't talk about structure. I don't talk
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: about building character, I don't talk about subplots or I
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: don't talk about any of that stuff. This is kind
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: of a style manual. The first half of it is
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: the proper way of writing a screenplay. It's kind of
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: like learning a language. You know, you learn French. You
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: got to learn the proper way of speaking French in
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: French one on one, French one or two. Then you
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: go to France and people are taught saying something else.
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: Of course, it's the same experience as screenwriters. They're taught
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: in a class. You know, this is how you write.
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: These are the rules of screenwriting. Then they go and
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: they you know, they read uncut gems and they say,
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: wait a minute, I was told that that wasn't allowed.
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: Oh no.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: When I started reading Lethal Weapon and you know, all
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: of Shane black stuff, I'm like, this is not this
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: is not or Quentin, God forbid, you read a Quentin script, Jesus.
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but yeah, but Tantano scripts leap right off the page.
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: They are in your lap, slapping you around as.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: You're reading it. No, there's no questions, no question, no question.
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: So so the book I'm writing, that's what that's what
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: it's dedicated to. The first half is like, here's the
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: proper way. Here are like, if you're a jazz musicians,
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: here are the scales, this is what you need to practice. Now,
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: here's how we improvise. Here's how professional writers write. Here's
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: how professional writers allow the reader as they're reading to
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: see a movie come off the page. And the one
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: thing that young writers get mixed sort of mix up
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: is that they think, Okay, I want to give them
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: that cinematic experience. Therefore I'm going to describe everything that's
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: in the scene. And that becomes overload, right because a writer,
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: a reader reading a screenplay doesn't know your world, doesn't
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: know your story. They're reading and they're finding the clues
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: to what that story is about, what is important, what's
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: not important. So if you have a character walk into
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: an office and you describe absolutely everything in the office,
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: it's a flat scene. You may be describing a lot,
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: but it's flat, and it's confusing because there's too much
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: visual detail. If you expend less language on the environment
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: and more language on those and more flamboyant language on
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: those things that are really important. Then the reader gets
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: gets that and holds that as an important thing. The
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: envelope on the desk right, which is which is?
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: Which is? Yeah, because if you're putting the envelope on
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: the desk is on an ornate wooden desk has succeed
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: It looks like the one from The Godfather, and its
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: way is this, and it just starts going and going
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: and going. You're just like, what am I supposed to
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: focus my energies on here?
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: Precisely? You know? And young writers love to write about
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: like the light is streaming and through the wind. Do
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: we need to know that? Who cares? You know? The
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: deep people take care of that, don't worry. And actually
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: that's another thing now that you're now that you've got
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: me talking. I think young writers are are resistant to
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: the idea of film being a collaborative art form. They
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: want to control everything, and you simply can't control everything.
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: They want to tell you how everybody is dress, what
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: their hair looks like, where the light is coming from,
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: the color of the world, camera, camera moves, the camera moves,
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: the camera moves. It's like, you know, no, take it easy.
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: Take all that stuff off your shoulders and then tell
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: your story, and then we'll get to exactly when you
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: were talking about Alex. It's clean, it's got energy. It's
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: got the energy of a movie that's unfolding before your eyes,
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: you know. So it's clean, it's got energy, and the
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: story jumps off the page and the actions reveal, right,
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: it needs to be revealed.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: I was reading the other day the script for Bound
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: by the Wisarskis. This is the movie right before the Matrix,
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: and in the script, in the script, it actually wrote
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: like there was a there was a very big love
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: scene between two girls. And this is also early in
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: late nineties, so this is being made so it's not
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: as open as it is today regards to that kind
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: of stuff. And they go at the end of it,
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: they go and we're not gonna cut this scene in
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: the script, and we're not cutting the scene.
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: That's radical. That's a radical thing to do. You're reminding
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: me of I just read the script for First Man. Yeah, Gazelle, Okay, yeah,
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: Now he takes a lot of liberties in that script,
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: which is fun. But you know, when you have a
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: track record and people know what you can do, you
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: can take more liberties than when you're a beginning writer,
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: for sure. But anyway, there's a scene in there where
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: Neil Armstrong goes into the capsule for some Gemini lift off.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: I can't remember the number of the Gemini lift off.
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: And it's a beautiful scene in the film where everything
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: is shown through Neil Armstrong's point of view and what
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: he hears and what he sees, which is nothing. It's
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: just like a little little triangle of a window. The
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: entire lift off, which is super dangerous, is told through
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: the image through this little triangle window. And he says
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: in that scene, he says, we're in, we see what
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: Neil sees, we hear what he sees, and we're not
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: fucking cutting away.
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: It's literally said that.
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: He literally says that in Uh, I don't know if
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: I can say that on your it's fine, it's fine, okay. Anyway,
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: he literally writes that we're not fucking cutting away to
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: an external shot or something anyway. So it's just very funny.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: He's like, because he knew what was gonna happen, He's
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: gonna go, oh, well, when can we get a wide
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: shot on this? And like, no, that's that's it, but
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: he's also write a director and he knows how he's
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: gonna execute it and so on. But he just wanted
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: to make that clear as a fun as a fun
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: thing to do. What was the script I was reading
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: the other day, just go, I was reading I think
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: it was Shane Black or Tarantino, and you know, you
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: start seeing some spelling errors in it, sparing air and
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: some even grammatical errors. And I always love to fulfilling
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: young screenwriters who're like, well, I was reading Shane blackscript,
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: and you know, he had a couple of punctuations, and
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: I'm like, he's Shane Black, that's right. If he wants
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: to misspell something, no one cares because he's Shane Black,
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: or he's Quin Tarantino, or he's Christan Nolan. Like they don't.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: They are at a whole other place that you are not.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: They've established themselves. And when you're coming up, I promise
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: you that True Romance and Natural Born Killers, which were
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: the first two scripts that Tarantino sold, were immaculate.
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly exactly. And you know the reason that you
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: if you're a young writer, the reason why you can't
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: afford to make any mistakes in your script is because
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: you lose the faith of the reader who doesn't know
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: who you are. And so if they can't trust that
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: your writing is in order, then when you do something
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: in the script that is funky or whatever or really
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: super interesting there like is that a mistake or is
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: this person in control of their language? So you have
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: to you know, I you know, I have a very
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: good friend who's an a list writer and he was
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: a former student of mine, and he would rather die
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: than submit something with a mistake, even though he I mean,
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: he just sold a script for like four million bucks,
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: you know, or five million bucks and one of the
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: biggest deals in the last ten years. And we worked
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: on a project and we sold. We wanted to write
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: the scripts, but the people who bought it from us
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: only wanted our treatments and they wanted to write their
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: own scripts because it was television. They have the writer's
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: room all very they you know, they don't want to
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: integrate new people. So we were happy, like okay, by wow, okay, bye,
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: you know, pay us for not writing the script line.
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: And so they wrote the pilot and they sent it
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: to us just so we could give them some feedback
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: on it. And they were like five typos and like
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: the first two pages. And my friend Bill said, can
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: you believe that? I said, well, yeah, I can believe that.
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: They'd have over six hundred hours of television produced already.
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: So what does it matter exactly?
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: At that point, it doesn't matter. And I think that
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: compareson to established people or even legends or masters as
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: young screenwriters is rampant. I mean, like you said earlier,
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: they're like, oh, Quarantino or and we keep using the
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: same name, or Kaufman or any of these, any of
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: these screenwriters, and they compare themselves to it, and you can't.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: You need to find your own voice, You need to
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: find your own path. Whatever they did, you can't follow
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: that path. It's so interesting. When I was starting out
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: in the business, I would analyze every I would read
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: every autobiography I can get my hands on on filmmakers.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: I would try to study the way they got into
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: the business. So you're like, Okay, so Robert Rodriguez made
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: a seven thousand dollars action movie, and all right, clerks, Okay,
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: so he did this and he did that, Okay, great
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: Ed Burns, Okay, he did this, this and this. You know,
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: Spike Lee did this, this, and this we'll be right
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: back after a word from our sponsor and now back
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: to the show. And you would start and I'm like, Okay,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: maybe I can get this way. And I was always
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: trying to hack my way in yeah, and I it
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: took me years to realize, You're like, that's their path
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: that can never be replicated ever because of the timing
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: of who they are and what they're like. You know,
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: when I had Richard link Letter on the show, I asked,
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: do you think do you do you think Slacker is
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: gonna if if Slacker shows up today, do you think
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: it finds an audience? And Rick and Rix's and straight
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: up like, you know, does it find an audience? And
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: Rick's like probably not.
• 40:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: And I said the same thing to Ed Burns. I go,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: if Brothers McMullen shows up today, do you think you
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: can get it a theatrical and it makes thirty million
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: off of a off of a thirty thousand dollars? Do
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: you think that is gonna happen? He's like, absolutely not.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: If they were a product of their time, were in
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: today's world, they wouldn't. They will probably be just thrown
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: into the soup like everybody else, not that they don't
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: have any talent, and not that the movies aren't great,
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: it's just a different environment and a different audience as well.
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: That's true, that's true. But you know, I always do
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: a few exercises with my students to help them. I
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: guess the term, you know, to use the term of
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: Michael Raybegger, who with whom I wrote a co wrote
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: a book to find their own themes? Like who are you?
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: What are you interested in? What obsesses you? Yeah? What
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: are the genres of film that you that you like,
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: that you can be inspired by? But but how is it?
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: How do you make it yours? What are the things? Like?
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: Like I said, what are the things that obsessed you?
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: What are the things? Who are the people you know?
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: Who are fascinating characters? Who where the places you've gone
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: that you think this would be an awesome place for
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: a film. So, you know, a writer, you know, like
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: any other artists, has to find out what their unique
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: contribution is. But getting back to reading scripts, I do
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: when I finish my screenwriting one class, which is a
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: about all about the shorts, I give my students a
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: list of like five scripts that will take their language
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: to the next level, not to copy them, and they're
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: always quite different, uh genres. And then they are also
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: as contemporary as I can find.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: So do are they?
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: Are they?
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: Do they change? Or are they? Can you give? Can
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: you give those five scripts out now?
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: The names? Sure? I can? I mean there I find
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: these online. I just say, you know, I just Google
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: download pdf su tle and you find it, you know,
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: as you know, I'm sure you know that when when
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: award season comes around, you know the Yeah, they're.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: All available on Bulletproof Screenwriting dot TV.
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, I'll well like Jeff Nichols's film Loving uh
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: beautiful Guy. Yeah, and the script is the same. It's
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: a very elegant, a very quiet, very powerful script. The
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: language is super precise and it there's no flamboyance uh
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: to it, but it just tells its story in in
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: very simple language methodically, but really accumulates power over time.
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: The screenplays for Chernobyl are phenomenal. Oh yeah, they're just
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: perfectly written. You know. Jordan Peele's get Out is another
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: great script to you know, uh. D Reese, Uh, Mudbound
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: is a is a little bit more flamboyant. It is
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: a little bit more you know, uh uh, you know,
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: really indicating shots and uh and cuts. But but it's powerful.
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: You see the movie, you feel the movie. Like I said,
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: book smart, I like to give students All as Lost,
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: which has no dialogue, and that's like, what is it?
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: How long is All Is Lost? Is? Uh? I think
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: it's like forty pages or something like that, right, no sideways?
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: Oh, another beautiful script?
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, great script, debigranhics, leave No Trace is the simple script,
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: elegant script, beautifully written, beautiful film over kind of a
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: kind of an overlooked film. But I think it's a
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: phenomenal film. So that's that's the kind of stuff I
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: will give them.
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: Now, what what advice would you give on writing great dialogue?
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: Because dialogue is such a difficult thing to get the tone,
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: to get the the energy of a character, and also
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: how not to write on the nose, which is so
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: like It's like I love watching great television or great
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: movies and I'll just go, oh, I see where they
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: just dropped off that she's been divorced for five years
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: without saying, hey, hey dad, how does it feel being
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: divorced for five years? I don't know, son, it's pretty
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: hard as opposed as opposed to a look on the letter,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: like a look at the paperwork of Oh, I have
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: to sign the divorce papers. No one ever says anything
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: something subtle like that to get that information across. But
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: how do you write great dialogue?
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, you know, there's a first The first
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: thing you have to think about, and I'm going back
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: to beginning writers. The first thing that beginning writers, big
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: mistake the beginning writers make with dialogue is that they
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: think they have to tell the story in dialogue because
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: they don't trust that. They don't trust yet that an
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: audience will see an action and understand the inner life
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: of a character who performs that action. They won't they
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: understand the motivation of somebody who does a particular action.
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: They don't trust that yet. So they'll do the action
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: and then they'll they'll do exactly what you just said.
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: We'll see the divorce papers and they'll write the dialogue. Oh,
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: I've got to sign the divorce papers. You don't need
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: this to say it. We're seeing it right. Just so,
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: that's the first thing.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: Show don't tell.
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: Show don't exactly dialogue that's redundant, is kills your movie.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: It's just stop the momentum. It stops the momentum completely.
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: The second thing is that is that there's again it's
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: it's just that people who don't trust that their movie
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: can that they're already telling their story. Is that there
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: are many times when a look, a gesture, a glance
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: will say exactly what dialogue needs to say. So the
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: first the first in terms of dialogue, the first step
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: is to strip away all the unnecessary dialogue, and then
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: strip away a little bit more dialogue than that, and
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: then you know, you need to dig deeply into your
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: character and you have to say, so, what what is
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: the purpose of this dialogue? What does it reveal about
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: my character? Not what it doesn't tell about the story,
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: but what is it going to reveal about the character?
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: What kind of language would this person use? How many
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: words would this person use? I mean, I think that
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: Loving is a very interesting script in that sense because
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: he has he has two characters, especially especially the male lead,
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: who is super taciturn, not particularly articulate and doesn't talk
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: about things much, right, or a first man. We were
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: just talking about first Man, you know, he Neil Armstrong
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: is not somebody who talks about his feelings. He never
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: would have been an astronaut so you have to understand
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: the you know, the language your character uses and how
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: much language your character uses, and the fact that you
• 47:51
  Speaker 3: have to really understand that they inhabit that story as
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: in life, and so they wouldn't go, you know, explaining
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: things for people who don't know what's going.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: On, right, And I always find it's so irritating when
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: they when writers add backstory in a very brutal way
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: where they're just explaining it. I think the best example
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: of writing backstory or what's the word it's completely escaping
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: me when you have to tell the position exposition, thank
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: you very much is James Cameron. James Cameron when he
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: wrote Terminator. I think he's still one of the most
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: underrated writers of his generation. He's not as a filmmaker,
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: but as a writer. You read Alien script and you're
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: just like, oh my god, one of the most perfect
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: action scripts ever written. But if you read Terminator, there's
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: so much exposition that has to be laid out for
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: because we all know what the Terminator mythology is now,
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: but in nineteen eighty four, nobody understood what the hell
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: was going on. Yeah, And he's like, if you've got exposition,
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: write it in an action sequel, write it in something.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: So there he's literally explaining. Reese is explaining to Sarah
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: Connor what's going on as they're being chased by the terminator,
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: writing shooting, Boom, I'm from this boom and this is
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: what happens. Boom, he's a machine. Boom, he has flesh
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: over his body.
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: Boom.
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: It was all but it's done like this as opposed
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: to them sitting down a coffee like, well, you know,
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: I'm from the past, and it's beautiful. It's a beautiful technique.
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, you know with exposition, exposition is tough because
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: x X Okay, what we do is we do narrative.
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: Narrative is the act of telling a story. Exposition is
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: not the act of telling a story. Exposition is the
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: act of explaining something. Right. So that's why if you
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: don't handle your exposition, well, it puts the brakes on
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: your story and it becomes uncomfortable. The first thing is
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: you ask yourself, do I need this exposition? You know,
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: think of thelm on Louise. We never know what happens,
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: what happened to Louise in Texas.
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: And now back to the show.
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: We never know what happens. It is in Chinatown. Do
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: we need it? We don't need it. Maybe it's better
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: in the minds of the audience. They can imagine what happened.
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: So do I need it? Do I need all of it?
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: Because sometimes you can pare it down a lot. Do
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: I need all of it in a chunk? Or can
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: I pepper it throughout the script? And then and then
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: like you say, put it in a put it in
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: a scene of action and tention or comedy that comedy,
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: you know, it's sugar that lets anything go down. And uh,
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: and of course motivate it. You know you can't. You
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: can't have a scene with two lawyers or one lawyer
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: says the other, my client's going to plead the fifth
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: You know what that means. That means he doesn't have
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: to testify against himself. Of course that he knows what
• 50:59
  Speaker 3: that means. So find the scene guy And the lawyer
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: goes to the to the defendant's mother and says, I
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: don't want you to worry. I'm going to have him
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: plead the fifth And she's like, what's that? Is that dangerous?
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: What does that mean? But it's okay, it's okay, take
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: it easy. It just means he doesn't have to testify
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: against himself. And now there's a reason for exchanging that.
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: Information right exactly as opposed to it being the other
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: way around. You know what that means? Yeah, it's like,
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: do we know what john Wick did prior to John
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: Wick going crazy because they stole his car and killed
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: his dog? Like do we do? All we know is
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: that when they say his name, it's like the Boogeyman
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: walking into the baddest, baddest MFS guys in the world,
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: the criminals of the world are like, wait a minute,
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: john Wick, Like, I just watched the movie. Did you
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: watch Nobody?
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: Not yet?
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: No, it is wonderful. It was written by Derek Derek
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: for her his last name, but he wrote john Wick
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: and you can sense the john Wick esqueness of him
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: in there, and you like and they have scenes like
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: that where someone's doing research on on Saul. I can't
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: remember his name, better call Saul him the main actor
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: bot Odenkirk, thank you. And when they and when the
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: person sees it, they're like, yeah, don't pay me, I'm
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: out of here. And that that's how much of a
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: bad ass he is. I was like, oh, so brilliant,
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: but no one knows, like and he says that, I
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: think at one moment, he's one sentence to explain who
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: he was, and that's it. In the entire movie, he
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: explains one sentence of who he was, and you're like,
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: that's all you need. You don't need flashbacks, you don't
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: need to see a scene of him being a bad
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: ass one thing. But like, even I don't even think
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: it's been explained yet what John Wick has done in
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: the past. They just know he got and for three movies,
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: you still don't know what john Wick did or why
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: he's just renowned. I mean, everyone just knows he's a.
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: Bad as the table. I don't know.
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: No, he did something, and there's been some little things
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: of like how he left, but the reason of how
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: his legend became who he is has really never been
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: explored very off, very much. So it's it's it's it's
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: sometimes better leave it.
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: That's true, and I think that that's really interesting. I
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: don't really thought about John john Wick that much, but
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: it would be what would be interesting to look at
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: John Wick is where do we get the sympathy for him.
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: Where do we get like we like him, you know,
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: we want oh we don't want him to die, you know.
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: And why what is that? Where is that located? Because
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: I'll tell you.
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: Oh, I'll tell you why there's there's We'll just go
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: back to the first movie because now the second third movie,
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: we already loved John. John seems like he's trying to
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: do the right thing. So he's trying to he's trying
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: to be a good guy. Secondly, they stole his car,
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: which is a badass car, and that gets a certain
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: demographic of the of the audience. So like, you don't
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: scratch a man's car. I mean, it's in pulp fiction,
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: you don't. You don't do that. You don't mess with
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: another man's vehicle. So there's that. And third, the oldest
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: trick in the book they killed his dog. What do
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: you want to do to establish a villain have him
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: kick a dog?
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: Of course it's.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: The oldest, it's the oldest trick in the book for writers.
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: So what do they do? They killed his dog. And
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: of course the villain is just such a dumb ass
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: on time. He's not even a badass. He's a dump
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: because if he was, but it's a perfect example. The
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: guy who does all of this and sorry for all
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: the spoilers you've en't seen John Wick. But if this
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: all happens in the first fifteen minutes, the bad the
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: idiot who he doesn't know what he's doing. First of all. Secondly,
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: if that character would have been an absolute badass, it
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have worked as well. It needed to be a
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: complete buffoon who He was a complete just ego centric,
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: over the top buffoon who did all of this. It
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: makes it all the leader of what's going and then
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: the dad is the real bad gass.
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: You see. You filled it in for me because I
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: did not see the first I missed the first John Wick.
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: I picked it up because I watched I watched the
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: one where he fights Boba Mariyanovitch because I'm a basketball fan,
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: so like, oh that I got to catch that.
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: John Wick one. John Wick One honestly is as far
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: as action is concerned, it is such a well written script.
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, Keanu is Keanu, you know he is he is?
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: Uh he is obviously Jesus but uh no. But all seriously, though,
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: that that first film, there's a reason why there's so
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: much love for that character that it spawned two and
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: three and now they're going to do four and five
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: back to back. Uh. And the thing is also that
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: we feel for the character because he you know, he
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: lost his wife. He's trying to he's trying to turn
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: a new lead, he's trying to reinvent himself. He's trying
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: to all things that check little boxes inside it pull
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: on certain strings of our heart that you normally don't
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: see in an action hero. And then he's and he's quiet.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: That's the other thing. He doesn't talk. He's a man
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: of action. He has a little bit of dialogue. One
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: of the best scenes in the first John Wick is
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: after John someone said a hit squad for John Wick
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: and burnt his house down or about to burn his
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: house down or something like that, and he dispatches all
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: of them, and then the cops show up, the cops.
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: This is what's so beautiful about this movie. The cops
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: show up, knock on the door, and the cop is
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: there and goes, hey, John, how's the that going? And
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: then he looks inside, without blinking, he looks inside, he
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: sees a dead body. He goes, you're working again, John.
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: He's like, na, man, it's just an accident, okay, just
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: checking and walks back, just walks backwards, just like have
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: a good night, John. Like that. That mythology that they've
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: created for that character is so wonderful that now there's
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: a show. I know the showrunner of the show, and
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: he's writing a show about the world that they created
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: that Derek was able to create. So it's just it's
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: just beautifully written and hasn't look we see action movies
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: coming go when we see action heroes come and go,
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: and you know, this is not a John Claude vond
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: A film or a Seam As the Gulf film. This
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: is a well written, well performed, well directed action But
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: that's three But at the end of the day, it's
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: about emotion. It's about emotion and connecting to that character,
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: and it's not just about the spectacle. Spectacle's fun, but
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: we've seen an action before. It's his character that moves everything.
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, But what's interesting is how little, how little one
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: needs to actually because we're so used to genres and
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: watching films, how little one needs to actually use for
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: all of that to come in for the audience, and
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: then they get to the other stuff. You know, we
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: feel in a lot of stuff, and this is one
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: of the other things about writing, And this is one
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: of the things about using genre. You know, audiences have
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: seen so much. They understand film noir, they understand westerns,
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: they understand the tropes that are used, they understand the
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: melodrama that nowadays writers can use these genres as shorthands.
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: Just a little hint of noir brings the whole genre
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: and many of the issues are the themes of the
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: genre into your movie. So we don't use them fully anymore.
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: We just liked like a little shorthand and it accents
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: our films.
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: And like in you're watching movies like from the seventies,
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: they had to do things so differently than now because
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: there's been so much content from the moment of the
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: seventies up until now. We're talking about fifty years that
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: there's generations that have been raised on watching movies again.
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: And also in the eighties is when we got vhs.
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: That changed the game. Now we could watch things a
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: thousand times again and again, so there's we're so much
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: more the audience is so much more educated, which is
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: good and bad. Good because like you said, you can
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: use shorthand, but bad because now you're like, well, I
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: got to come up with something that they haven't seen before.
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah. The other thing too, is that you know, you
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: have that generation of films that you were a filmmakers
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: that you're talking about, the Fincher's and the Tarantinos and
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: these people who are so film literate, who you know,
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: are so profoundly knowledgeable that and they're incorporating all this stuff,
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: and so it almost is like little what can I say,
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: a little master classes in every film.
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: You know, every scene, every scene is a master You
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: watch the opening scene of Social Network and that's a
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: masterclass in dialogue, in direction.
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: That's another script I'd give my students to read this.
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, well, that's just I mean, that's probably Sorkin's
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: best script in my opinion, and he's written some doozies,
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: but it's just such a tight, tight, tight, tight film
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: and the way that Fincher and it's it's probably Fincher's best.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: and now back to the show. And I love Fight Club. Yeah,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: I absolutely adore Fight Club and seven seven is a
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: masterpiece in this genre as well. But we could just
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: geek out forever. Yeah, yeah, Nick, But let me ask you, so,
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: what's up next for you? What is the book you're writing?
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, the book I'm writing is I was mentioning
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: you before. It's a screenwriting book. Really. It's like I said,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: it's not about drama, it's not about structure, it's not
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: about character. Really, it's a style manual. Here's the proper
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: way of writing screenplay, and then here's the way professionals
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: push break the rules to you know, for dramatic effects
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: and what you can get away with angle. Yeah, it's
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: a mastering screenplay form and style is what it's called. Okay,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: So yeah, that's that's next up. And I'm also working
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 3: on a couple of screenplay Like I told you, I
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 3: just we just me and a friend of mine just
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: sold something to Sony. It was just we just sold
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: treatments for a series. Now they got it. So that
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 3: sort of freed me up to work on some other projects. Yeah,
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: I have two scripts screenplay projects I'm working.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: On, very very cool man. And I'm gonna ask you
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: a couple of questions. Ask all my guests, what advice
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: would you give a screenwriter wanting to break into the
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: business today?
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: Oh wow, that's a I would say for a screenwriter,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 3: I would say write a lot, but I would find
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 3: ways to get your work made, even if it's just
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: you know, pulling together friends who are directors and crew,
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: and get your stuff, see your see your writing finished,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: even if you just posting it on the web. And
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 3: also be flexible with the form that you are interested in.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: Because writers these days, you know, writing for television, if
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: you're in a writing room, it's a different skill than
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: if you are creating a television show or writing a
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: feature film. It's a very different skill. Be prepared to
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: write shorts, small shorts for YouTube, be prepared to write
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: for TV. We have to be a little bit more.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: Writers need to be a little bit more sort of polymass,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: you know, they need to know a broader range of skill.
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: And I would say, just keep knocking on doors, you know,
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: just keep knocking on doors. It takes you know, it's
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: always been like this. It takes tenacity, It really takes
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: tannasty and always maintain and enthusiasm and energy and passion
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: for your own work, because it can be tough and
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: you can start to lose that. And no producer wants
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 3: to hear somebody pitching the script that they're not dea writers,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: not particularly interested in.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: It is about skill, experience and luck. And luck has
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: from speaking to the people I've had the pleasure speaking to,
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: they always tell me I was lucky. It was the
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: right place, right time, right script. And but the point
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: is you can't put yourself in that position unless you're
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: knocking on doors.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah. But there's a quote in the world of chess
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: which is, uh, the people who work the hardest of
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: the luckiest.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, exactly exactly. If you keep knocking on those doors,
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: it's like one day someone's going to open and go,
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: where have you been? Here's a million dollars.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: Meet people, don't don't drop people, seek out other talented
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 3: people and stick to them.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: Yep, absolutely no question.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: And you know the other thing about about I mean,
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: I'm not somebody who thinks that you have to go
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: to film school, although film school offers a film school
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: offers a broad range of experiences in a more compressed form.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: And you know, my first book I wrote basically, you know,
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: out of a friend who said, you're writing us all out
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: of a job. It's all there. Why do they need
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: teachers anyone? That was exactly my goal with that book.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: But students, when they're in school, that's where you form
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: the peer group that is going to be your first
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: professional account, first professional relationships out of school. And so
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 3: you need to find those people you can work with
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: and start collaborating with them as soon as possible, and
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: don't don't let them go.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: I agree with you one hundred percent.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: Nick.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being on the show, my friend.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: I truly appreciate it. Continue the great work you're doing.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 3: Brother, all right, all right, take care and it was
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 3: a pleasure.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: I want to think Mak so much for coming on
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: the show and dropping his knowledge bombs. If you want
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: to get links to anything we spoke about in this episode,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: including how to get his new screenwriting book, head over
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: to the show notes at indifilm muscle dot com forward
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: slash seven seventy three, and if you have it already,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: please head over to Filmmaking podcast dot com, subscribe and
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: leave a good review for the show. It really helps
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: us out a lot.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: Guys.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: Thank you again so much for listening to guys. As always,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: keep that hustle going, keep that dream alive, stay safe
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: out there, and I'll talk to you soon.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to the Indie Film Hustle podcast at
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: Indie film hustle dot com. That's I N D I
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: E F I L M h U S T l
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: E dot com.