Latest / Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast / IFH 757: What are the Essential Elements in ALL Successful Stories with Karl Iglesias

Transcript

IFH 757: What are the Essential Elements in ALL Successful Stories with Karl Iglesias · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

• 0:03
  You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
• 0:08
  podcasts, just go to ifahpodcastnetwork dot com. Welcome to the Indie Film Huscle
• 0:14
  Podcast, Episode number seven fifty seven. If it's possible to cut out a
• 0:18
  word, always cut it out. George Orwell broadcasting from the back alley in
• 0:24
  Hollywood. It's the Indie Film Hustle Podcast, where we show you how to
• 0:29
  survive and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles of the film biz.
• 0:33
  And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another episode of
• 0:39
  the Indie Film Hustle Podcast. I am your humble host, Alex Ferrari.
• 0:42
  Today's show is sponsored by Rise of the Film Entrepreneur How to turn your independent
• 0:46
  film into a profitable business. It's harder today than ever before for independent filmmakers
• 0:51
  to make money with their films from predatory film distributors ripping them off to huckster
• 0:56
  film aggregators who prey upon them. The odds are stacked against the end filmmaker.
• 1:00
  The old distribution model of making money with your film is broken, and
• 1:04
  there needs to be a change. The future of independent filmmaking is the entrepreneurial
• 1:08
  filmmaker or the film entrepreneur. In Rise of the Film Entrepreneur, I break
• 1:14
  down how to actually make money with your film projects and show you how to
• 1:18
  turn your indie film into a profitable business. With case studies examining successes and
• 1:23
  failures. This book shows you the step by step method to turn your passion
• 1:27
  into a profitable career. If you're making a feature film, series, or
• 1:32
  any other kind of video content, the Film Entrepreneur method will set you up
• 1:37
  for success. The book is available in paperback, ebook, and of course
• 1:42
  audiobook. If you want to order it, just head over to www dot
• 1:46
  filmbiz book dot com. That's film bizbook dot com. Now, guys,
• 1:52
  today on the show, we have returning champion Carl Iglesias, who's a screenwriter,
• 1:57
  author, script doctor and all around screenwriting guru. And his last episode,
• 2:02
  which was I think episode seven here on the BPS podcast, is one
• 2:07
  of the most downloaded episodes in the history of the show, so of course
• 2:13
  I had to bring him back at one point or another to dig in deeper
• 2:16
  to his methods and discuss the essential parts of what all good stories have the
• 2:23
  power of adding emotional impact to your writing, and we even talk a little
• 2:28
  bit about the Joker. So, without any further ado, guys, please
• 2:32
  enjoy my conversation with carl Iglesias. I like to welcome back to the show
• 2:38
  returning champion, Carla Glesias. How are you, sir? I'm doing great.
• 2:43
  Thanks, pleasure to be here. So you have a distinct honor of
• 2:46
  being one of my very first guests ever on the Ani film Huscle podcast.
• 2:51
  You were number episode number eight, Wow, and you were kind enough to
• 2:55
  give a fledgling podcast there an opportunity I need to interview you, sir,
• 3:00
  all those years ago, and that interview is done. I mean, I
• 3:05
  think that that's interviews downloaded tens of thousands of times over the course of the
• 3:08
  last four years. It's it's been one of the most popular ones. And
• 3:13
  we've always like, oh, we gott get you back on the show.
• 3:15
  We got to get you back in the show. We got so finally we
• 3:16
  like, let's let's do this after So, yeah, you're glad I finally
• 3:21
  found the time. No, but I appreciate it. It was such a
• 3:25
  wonderful interview talking about the craft. And I told and like I said,
• 3:30
  before, you know, you were one of the first people I reached out
• 3:32
  to because your book, Creating Emotional Impact was one of those really pivotal books
• 3:39
  that I read. It was actually it was a producer that I was working
• 3:43
  with on a movie, and they said, you should read this book.
• 3:46
  After they read my screenplay. They like, you should read his book.
• 3:47
  It's probably going to help you. And I was blown away by not only
• 3:53
  the emotional impact, but I remember just those little segments. There was a
• 3:55
  segment in that book that it's like, if you have this word in your
• 3:59
  screen play too many times, just go in and do a find and replace
• 4:01
  this word or replace this word like this, those like lazy words that you
• 4:05
  use for writing. It's like, when people read this, it's like those
• 4:09
  little things I had just blew my mind when I was writing the first time.
• 4:13
  Yeah, because the whole thing was from the reader's My whole concentration is
• 4:15
  the reader's emotional experience. So you got to remember that when you're writing a
• 4:19
  script, your very first audience and only audience, will be a reader reading
• 4:24
  that script, and if they pass on it, that's it. You're done.
• 4:27
  So you're really writing for one reader. And if you can get and
• 4:30
  if you can make kiss sure everything the reading experience, the description, let
• 4:33
  alone of course the craft of storytelling, right, but just the actual experience
• 4:38
  of reading a script is so important. What there I wanted before I even
• 4:42
  get into the questions, I want the audience to understand in regards to writing
• 4:46
  a screenplay, because I've written screenplays, I've written books. I much rather
• 4:50
  write books. There's so much more freedom. Oh my god, it's writing
• 4:57
  seems so easy because it's like less words. So it's less words, it's
• 5:00
  less pages. It's like, oh, it's easy. You know. My
• 5:02
  first book was a movie, and we go through movies all the time.
• 5:05
  My first book was like, I think, almost sixty thousand words and my
• 5:09
  second book's almost sixty thousand words, and I wrote them like water. It
• 5:13
  was just like, oh, this is easy. I can And the first
• 5:15
  book was it was a narrative story, so it was kind of like,
• 5:18
  oh, I could do this. I can do that. There's no economy
• 5:21
  at all. We're in a screenplay. You have to be so economical.
• 5:26
  And I want you just to explain to the audience that when you're reading a
• 5:30
  page, you need to look out into a sea of white. That is
• 5:34
  the goal is a sea of white space. Yeah, it's much white more.
• 5:41
  Yeah, it's as much as much white space as you can get.
• 5:44
  And you know, descriptions, how long should descriptions be? All this kind
• 5:46
  of stuff, So please just explain the whole sea of white Yeah. Well,
• 5:50
  I mean it's obviously there's also an art to it. There's a you
• 5:53
  know, a lot of producers and development executives that I talked to, they
• 5:57
  look for voice, right, it's the voice of the writer. And it's
• 6:00
  the same with fiction, but with screenwriting it's it's even better. So there's
• 6:03
  a sense of wittiness, of rhythm, of visuals, imagery, vividness.
• 6:11
  But the key is, uh, the best analogy I've found with screenwriting is
• 6:15
  that it's called it's visual poetry. Right, So, you know how poetry
• 6:18
  is very very uh haikus h exactly. Haiku is even is even more intense
• 6:26
  and short, right. Uh. But but if you think of poetry as
• 6:30
  opposed to prose, one of the one of the mistakes that I see a
• 6:31
  lot with beginning writers screenwriters is that they write as if they're writing prose.
• 6:36
  So it's like we call it's a very novelistic voice in the script that described
• 6:41
  too much when you really should think about how to describe the same thing with
• 6:46
  the least amount of words. So it's really more about poetry and visual poetry
• 6:48
  than prose. Yeah, Like I've I've read screenplays like the man walked into
• 6:54
  the bar. The bar was you could smell in the air, the stale
• 6:58
  cigarettes as he walked the floor, stuck to the bottom of his shoe,
• 7:02
  Like that's one. He was thinking about what he had for breakfast, and
• 7:05
  he was thinking and then and and and by the way, here's what he
• 7:08
  had for breakfast. He had bacon eggs, but the eggs were running not
• 7:13
  too runny, like and this is like two hundred pages, right, And
• 7:16
  that's and that's how it's written. And you're like, I look, don't
• 7:19
  get me wrong. When I wrote my first greenplay, I was not far
• 7:21
  off from that. It was like, it's something that you have to learn.
• 7:25
  It is because when you when you write in school, you know when
• 7:28
  you write, even if you're writing you know creative writing, they don't teach
• 7:30
  you the economy of of words and to make that impact so much and using
• 7:38
  dashes and there's like little tricks and techniques to kind of just move things along,
• 7:41
  and but when you read, and you'll know by the way, great
• 7:46
  page one, you'll know page one right, page one, you'll go.
• 7:49
  Now, Yeah, most executives can tell by page one if if it's going
• 7:54
  to be a good reading experience, even most readers. And I still remember
• 7:57
  an anecdote by Jerry Brook, the famous you know, prit Selectionian producer who's
• 8:03
  known to pick any script at random and open anywhere, and he reads one
• 8:07
  page and if he's not wiled by that one page, he throws it off.
• 8:11
  Wow. Just the challenge, you know, And I do talk about,
• 8:15
  you know, in my book when you talk about this, when I
• 8:16
  talk about describing and writing, it's not just page one that counts. It's
• 8:20
  not the first ten pages that counts, not the first act that counts.
• 8:24
  It's every single page. And the challenge you should have as a screenwriter is
• 8:28
  you should be able to pick any script, open it anywhere, and you
• 8:31
  should be completely engrossed and engaged by that one page, and if it makes
• 8:35
  you turn the second page and so on and so on, that's the key.
• 8:39
  That's that's the secret. The thing that I feel that screenwriters have been
• 8:43
  dealing with for years and now even more so than ever is what filmmakers are
• 8:46
  starting to deal with now in today's marketplace. So before and also on screenwriting,
• 8:50
  in the early days, there wasn't a lot of competition. There weren't
• 8:54
  a lot of people screenwriting. That concept of you could be a screenwriter didn't
• 8:56
  come in until arguably the seventies and the eighties is when it really started to
• 9:01
  come up. We may correct you on that at least way up. That
• 9:05
  goes all the way up to the nineteen tens, when what do you mean
• 9:09
  it's actually the very first Oh, yeah, you're writing, Yeah, to
• 9:13
  write a photoplay, the the photoplay, yes, yes, yes, it
• 9:16
  used to be. There used to be and how to industry for screenwriters all
• 9:18
  the way back to nineteen tens. But how much but how much competition?
• 9:22
  But how much competition? Like how many people were if it was books already
• 9:24
  printed, I guess, But everybody wanted to write screenplays right then. So
• 9:28
  it's amazing. Yeah, I agree with you one hundred percent. And there
• 9:31
  was some competition, without question, right in the seventies. I think sid
• 9:35
  Field is the one that kind of turned it. Uh, it blew up,
• 9:37
  It blew up, and then extreme yeah, yeah, Linda came out
• 9:41
  afterwards, and you know, they really were the catalyst of like now everybody
• 9:46
  and the technology was a you know, much more affordable and it was a
• 9:48
  big thing. So there was a lot less competition back in the days.
• 9:52
  Now there's just a ridiculous amount of competition for screenwriters. Filmmakers before too,
• 9:56
  had less competition in the marketplace. You could if you just made a movie
• 10:00
  in the eighties, it was sold. We'll be right back after a word
• 10:05
  from our sponsor. And now back to the show, Good Bad, Toxic
• 10:13
  Avenger was sold internationally, you know it was. There was less competition.
• 10:18
  So I think what we're talking about. The reason I'm bringing that up is
• 10:20
  because when you're a screenwriter now you've got to use every trick in the book
• 10:26
  to cut through all the competition and formatting and having that creative whitespace. I'm
• 10:33
  assuming you are a genius storyteller. This is beyond the storytelling. That's an
• 10:37
  assumption. I'll correct you on that one as well. Surely go for it.
• 10:41
  Tell me, tell me please. As much as much as the there's
• 10:45
  an importance in you know, the formatting and the description right and professional the
• 10:50
  number one thing above and beyond anything is the craft of storytelling. If you
• 10:58
  if you don't know the craft of storytelling, which I find a lot of
• 11:00
  people don't. They think they do, but they don't. They could have
• 11:03
  the most perfectly formatted script and the best written description wise, but you're still
• 11:07
  not gonna have a good experience after reading that script, right, right,
• 11:11
  right, So it's like there's that joke about you know that William Goldman,
• 11:13
  you know, when he was writing screenplays, he could write or Joe Estra
• 11:16
  has he could write a script in a napkin and it would sell for three
• 11:20
  million dollars, right, because it's not about the napkin. It's about the
• 11:24
  craft of storytelling. So at least for me, I mean obviously I'm biased
• 11:26
  because I'm all about the craft of storytelling, right, which is which is
• 11:30
  important thing, which is without question, I do not disagree with you in
• 11:33
  the least. But with that said, you know, when you're Joe estra
• 11:37
  House, when you're Shane Black, when you're Tarantino, when you're Arn Sorkin,
• 11:41
  you really don't have to deal with any of the rules that we're talking
• 11:43
  about, you, you know, because people are going to read it because
• 11:45
  of who you are, but that first, but that first script, that
• 11:50
  very first one. You can't have misspellings, you can't have grammatical issues,
• 11:54
  you can't like look good. You have to be tight. First impressions count.
• 11:56
  You know you've got I remember when I used to be a reader.
• 12:00
  That was my first my first entry level in the industry. Right, it
• 12:03
  has to be a script reader for Edward James almost And you know, we
• 12:05
  have all these tricks we could we look at the last page, we go,
• 12:09
  my guy, it's two hundred pages. We know the guy's an amateur.
• 12:11
  We look at formatting. So there's all these little things that you can
• 12:15
  do right away to kind of like already get the flags out of the way,
• 12:18
  right, so you see all these red flash you go, okay,
• 12:20
  that's going to be that's an amateur. And then you read the script so
• 12:24
  you don't want that. So you're right, and those are very fixable.
• 12:26
  You want to you know, checking for typos, make sure it's formatic correctly,
• 12:30
  and all the stuff. Make sure it looks professional. That is that's
• 12:33
  obviously the first step. It's tightening. It's tightening up the craft of just
• 12:37
  the presentation exactly. Yeah, with the storytelling involved and that's that's what you
• 12:43
  need to cut through all of this competition because look at look at look at
• 12:46
  Brockhammer. You're like, he'll just grab I mean, how many scripts does
• 12:50
  Jerry Brockkhmmer have in his office? I'm sure piled literally piled, piled,
• 12:54
  piled up. So if you're lucky enough to like if the gods are with
• 12:58
  you on the day that you picked up yours and goes Pirates of the Caribbean
• 13:03
  while yeah, what do you mean fighter pilots. No, that's not gonna
• 13:07
  work, you know, So it's so important. So I wanted to so
• 13:13
  we I haven't even asked you the first question yet. So the first question
• 13:16
  is this is gonna settle in. Guys, We're gonna be here for a
• 13:20
  minute. So explain to the audience what is the concept of emotional impact within
• 13:26
  screenwriting. It's something that is basically your bread and butter and your angle on
• 13:31
  the craft, which is when again one of my reasons I'd love to have
• 13:33
  different points of view on the same problem with just the craft of screenwriting.
• 13:37
  Right. Ah, Well, that's a really good question, and it's funny
• 13:43
  because I don't know if I look at it from a point of view of
• 13:46
  an angle or a niche, even though that's be my niche, because I
• 13:50
  feel that that's it's need everything, every it is the core of storytelling.
• 13:56
  Right, give me to create emotion, you know you mean to create emotions
• 14:01
  and yourself talking about the emotions of the characters, right, We're talking about
• 14:05
  the emotions of the audience. We talked about the emotions of the reader reading
• 14:09
  your script. Right, So whether an actor reads your script, they got
• 14:13
  to be emotionally moved by it. If a director reads your script, they
• 14:16
  have to be impacted by it. A producer needs to be impacted by it.
• 14:20
  The film needs to impact an audience. It's everything, and not only
• 14:22
  in screenwriting, but in music, in fashion, in everything. It's all.
• 14:28
  It's like life, right, Everything is an emotional impact on the reader,
• 14:31
  and it's what makes you like something or not like something. Right,
• 14:35
  you go to a movie, you say, I like this movie or it's
• 14:37
  my favorite movie of all time. The reason it is is because it was
• 14:41
  it emotionally impacted you more than the movie you forgot about that you saw on
• 14:46
  Netflix or whatever. Right. So for some reason, I feel like I'm
• 14:54
  kind of surprised that you know, everybody kind of talks about it, but
• 14:58
  not really right. They tend to focus more on structure and plot and characters
• 15:05
  and all that stuff. So this actually brings up an interesting point about when
• 15:11
  beginners learn the craft and they write a script, they usually go in disorder.
• 15:18
  There's three things, right. They start with plot, they try to
• 15:20
  figure out how, you know, how to develop their plot. Then they
• 15:24
  think of their characters, right, they put the characters in their plot.
• 15:28
  And maybe they're thinking about theme, which is what the whole story is about,
• 15:33
  right, whether they're trying to say with their story and so plot,
• 15:35
  character, theme is like the process that most writers as they start go through
• 15:41
  when you're an intimate intermediary writer. Right when you know a little more,
• 15:45
  you have a little more tools and craft under your belt, you start with
• 15:48
  character, right, so you think of character. Then they think about the
• 15:52
  plot, because the characters what they do and what they want create the plot.
• 15:56
  That's smart. And maybe then they think of theme. Theme is alway
• 16:00
  the last thing. It's also the least taught subject but the most important,
• 16:06
  and people don't think about this. So theme is something that I've really kind
• 16:08
  of like dug deep the last you know, five or six years because it's
• 16:14
  the most important thing in terms of it's it's what, it's what starts at
• 16:18
  all. In a sense, it's what do you want to say with your
• 16:19
  story? Now, I remember one of my favorite writers, Rod Serling,
• 16:23
  who did The Twilight Zone, you know, is like a course genius screenwriter,
• 16:29
  and he said, overall theme. So his process was theme number one
• 16:37
  leads the character, which leads to plot. So the process, and that's
• 16:41
  the process of most professional writers, right who write great stories, is theme,
• 16:45
  character plot in that order, not plot, character, and maybe theme.
• 16:51
  Right. So for me when I see when I read scripts, when
• 16:53
  I consult or teach, and you know, you may have a good plot,
• 16:59
  you may have some good characters, but a lot of the times we
• 17:02
  have a breakdown in theme. In other words, they may some maybe realize
• 17:06
  that they're trying to say something with their script, but it's not what I
• 17:11
  call successfully argue through the script. There's no thematic argument through the script,
• 17:15
  and so it doesn't work. Some doesn't work even though you may have great
• 17:18
  characters, great dialogue, maybe a good plot, some twist surprises. Okay,
• 17:22
  that may work, but there's something missing. And to me, theme
• 17:26
  is what takes a script from good to great. So it's like, for
• 17:30
  me, it's the most important thing. It starts with theme, which gives
• 17:32
  you characters, which gives you plot. But I'm getting a little ahead of
• 17:36
  myself there. So then, can you give us an example of a movie
• 17:40
  that really started with theme, character and plot? Do you have any ideas
• 17:44
  well? I don't know. Now, most great movies I don't know how
• 17:45
  they started. Yeah, you're right, yeah, yeah, although I can
• 17:49
  probably talk about the Little Miss Sunshine because there is a there is a clip
• 17:55
  of Michael arnd the writer, who's at a bookstore and he talks. He
• 18:00
  answered an audience question and he talked about how he came up with the idea
• 18:03
  for Little Miss Sunshine, and for him, it started with theme. And
• 18:07
  the way he started with theme is because he had he had heard a quote
• 18:14
  he had heard that Arnold Schwarzenegger talk about whatever had an interview and Arnold Schuseninger
• 18:19
  said, the thing that I despise most is losers. I don't like losers,
• 18:23
  right, so about life is about winners and losers. And he thought
• 18:27
  that that was such an arrog despicable thing to say, right beings that he
• 18:33
  had this idea for Milli Miss Sunschine now lim Miss Sunshine. So he started
• 18:37
  with theme because every single thing in Little Miss Sunshine is on point with theme
• 18:41
  in other was This is one of the best, And that's the reason why
• 18:45
  such a simple movie is so loved because it was so thematically rich. It
• 18:49
  was on point. Everything fits together, the characters, what the characters want,
• 18:55
  their emotions, their arts, the dialogue, the plot, everything is
• 18:59
  in service of that theme, right, which is what's the best way to
• 19:03
  live? Is winning a sign of success or is it just you know,
• 19:07
  being a human being and loving your family and just enjoying it? Right?
• 19:12
  So the grandfather in that movie who says, you know, it's not about
• 19:15
  winning, it's about trying and enjoying what you're doing. Right, And when
• 19:19
  you think about every scene in the movie fits that, right, especially the
• 19:22
  last one, Yeah, exactly right, And even simple scenes like the diner
• 19:27
  scene where there's ice cream. It's such a simple scene, but it's like
• 19:32
  everything about that about the theme of winnings and losing, and it's everything what
• 19:37
  the father says, which is all about being a winner, and everybody around
• 19:40
  them is rolling their eyes all come on and trying, you know. So
• 19:42
  when you think about it, A story is really an argument between two sides,
• 19:47
  right, and you're trying to tell the audience which side is the best
• 19:49
  way to live. That's what theme does? You know, It's not like
• 19:52
  how to manual for life when you think about it. We'll be right back
• 19:56
  after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show, right
• 20:06
  exactly. There was a last Year's Best Picture Winter Green Book. You know.
• 20:10
  I I remember watching, you know, I had I had a screener
• 20:12
  for it, and my wife and I were and we started it late.
• 20:15
  We started it late in the evening. We're like, oh, we'll watch
• 20:18
  a little while and then we'll go and it we we wouldn't turn it off
• 20:22
  until it hit like midnight, and we were like, we gotta keep watching
• 20:23
  this and and then and what ill that's the emotional impact for you? Well,
• 20:27
  there's no there's. It moved you, It engaged you. You wanted
• 20:30
  to see the end of it. There was exactly right. And the thing
• 20:37
  that I found so amazing about that movie, which it's not a movie that
• 20:41
  I'm going to watch a thousand times. It's just not one of those films
• 20:42
  like Star Wars is one of those films or you know, you know,
• 20:45
  for me, Shawshank Redemption exactly and Shawshark Redemption, which is everybody in the
• 20:51
  show knows my my love for that film. But there's there's rooms that I'll
• 20:55
  watch a thousand times. But that movie the theme of it, and it
• 21:00
  was just two guys in a car. Essentially, the entire movie was two
• 21:02
  guys in a car. You know, for the most part of it was
• 21:04
  just like the banter between these amazing actors. The dialogue was remarkable, and
• 21:11
  you're just sitting there, I said, why was the movie about? For
• 21:12
  you? Like you said, what was the movie about? It's about friendship.
• 21:17
  It's about friendship. It's about friendship, It's about it's about the battle
• 21:21
  of societal norms, friendship overcoming racism. Yeah, yeah, friendship overcoming societal
• 21:29
  that the driver takes right, right societal norms and then on both sides,
• 21:33
  on both sides because he was he was an elitist. The the I forgot
• 21:37
  his name. He won the Best Actor. I forgot. There's a Vigo
• 21:41
  Morguson and the other guy. The other guy was an elitist because he was
• 21:45
  a very well educated man. And Vigo was in street thug and alone and
• 21:48
  disconnected completely, while this guy was ignorant, a street thug, but had
• 21:55
  a heart of goal and he had a moral compass and as rough and it
• 22:00
  was just but it was so simple. It was so like a good meal.
• 22:04
  It's a well executed meal. Right. That's not oither of my kind
• 22:10
  of maxims that I always tell students and clients, which is like, always
• 22:14
  aim for a simple story with complex characters, not the other way around.
• 22:18
  Right. A lot of people think of complex stories with twists and surprise and
• 22:21
  stuff, and then they come up with simple characters, which is not good.
• 22:25
  Right, So think simple stories, complex characters without question. Man,
• 22:29
  Now, what what are some key elements that you need for a very impactful
• 22:33
  scene? Which are the scenes? Are the building blocks of our of our
• 22:37
  story in this in this platform. Well that's another that's a big topic.
• 22:42
  So scenes is something that I find that a lot of writers don't know how
• 22:47
  to do, even though they think they do. Right. So they think
• 22:48
  of you know, they think of a scene with two people talking, and
• 22:52
  what they mostly do is basically, uh, it's just exposition. Right,
• 22:56
  They're talking about what they need to the audience needs to know for to advance
• 23:00
  the story. And so you have two people. Basically most of their dialogue
• 23:03
  is expositions. So the first thing that I tell people about scene writing is
• 23:08
  look at it as a mini story. Right. So if you think of
• 23:11
  a story, you think about three acts. Right, you think of a
• 23:15
  beginning, middle, an end. You think of a character who wants something,
• 23:18
  right, you think of conflict, what's standing in their way, and
• 23:21
  what do they do about it? Right, that's your whole script. Well,
• 23:23
  think about the same thing in a scene. In a good scene,
• 23:26
  you have a character who wants something is having difficulty getting it right, and
• 23:32
  you watch how they go about getting it, and sometimes they get it,
• 23:36
  sometimes they don't, and then you move on to the next scene. Right.
• 23:38
  So that's why I called dramatic scene So dramatic not in the sense of
• 23:42
  you know, melodramatic, like you know, hysteric people yelling at each other.
• 23:45
  I'm talking about dramatic in the true sense of the meaning of drama,
• 23:49
  which is a character not getting what they want. That is the essence of
• 23:56
  drama. And then that's also want something and not getting it right. And
• 24:00
  if you do scene, if you if you're able to construct scenes like that,
• 24:03
  you keep the audience engaged the entire tension they wonder either going to get
• 24:07
  it or not. Right, and especially if you have steaks, which is
• 24:11
  another part of the equation, right, high stakes, low steaks. It's
• 24:15
  got to be important for the character to get in the scene. So if
• 24:18
  we don't care, we're not going to care. Right, So it's kind
• 24:22
  it's kind of you got to have high stakes in the scene, right,
• 24:26
  a strong reason for a character wanting something and a desperation for them to get
• 24:30
  it. Uh, And and then we you have tension. And to me,
• 24:34
  tension is this kind of interplay between you know, us worrying that they're
• 24:38
  not going to get it or something bad's going to happen, and hope that
• 24:42
  things are going to work out for that character. So a scene like in
• 24:48
  a Hitchcock movie, Hitchcock is the bomb underneath the desk, a bomb underneath
• 24:52
  the coffee table, that whole concept of you know where, because that that
• 24:59
  scene to me, and there's a lot of Hitchcock. Hitchcock arguably he was
• 25:03
  very There were characters, and some of his best movies were characters driven,
• 25:06
  like Psycho north By Northwest. Some of his other ones were much more structural
• 25:11
  in plots. But he was the master of suspense. He all he cared
• 25:14
  about. All he cared about was suspense. That's all he cared about,
• 25:18
  that great tension. He really cared about manipulating the audience's emotions right right.
• 25:25
  And he even said that it's actually a great anecdote that was shared by Ernest
• 25:29
  Lehman, who wrote north By Northwest, and he said that you remember when
• 25:33
  he used to be on set in between takes and Hitchcock said, you know,
• 25:38
  it's amazing how how the movies. You know, we do this and
• 25:42
  the audience feels this, and then we do this and the audience feels that.
• 25:47
  It's almost like we're playing an organ at a church and each key is
• 25:51
  a specific emotion. And uh and Hechcock said, yeah, pretty soon we
• 25:55
  won't need the we won't need that, we won't need the movies anymore.
• 25:59
  Well, this kind of like put him to electrodes or something like that and
• 26:02
  you know, play all the different keys. But he was a master at
• 26:04
  that. And that example about the bomb on the table was really to explain
• 26:11
  the difference between surprise and dramatic irony. So the mc guarany is also known
• 26:17
  as reader Superior position or audience superior position, which is putting the audience in
• 26:21
  a superior position than the characters that they know something that nobody else they know
• 26:26
  that the characters. They know something the characters don't know. So his take,
• 26:30
  which he was right about, is that you could have two characters talking
• 26:33
  in a scene at a restaurant talking about the weather, right, and suddenly
• 26:38
  the bomb goes off because it was a bomb on the tabe but we didn't
• 26:41
  know this, right, so you have five seconds of shock and surprise,
• 26:45
  okay, And no other way of doing that scene is to actually have the
• 26:48
  two people talking in the scene and then put the camera down so you see
• 26:52
  the bomb ticking and it's got fifteen minutes to go, and then you go
• 26:55
  back again to the people talking about the weather. Now you have fifteen minutes
• 27:00
  of tension and suspense. So he said, yeah, fifteen minutes of suspense
• 27:04
  is a lot better than five seconds of surprise and shock, right, all
• 27:07
  right, So audience superior position is probably one of the most often used techniques,
• 27:12
  very effective for creating that engagement and creating that suspense and that tension,
• 27:18
  and then the concepts that you were just talking about before work, where a
• 27:22
  character in the scene needs to get something, and something stopping them is that
• 27:26
  conversation at that table could be all of that. But then you add into
• 27:30
  the mix there's a bomb underneath the table, right right, But the hitchcocks
• 27:34
  have gone very important thing that you left out that you cannot once the audience
• 27:38
  knows the bomb is there, you cannot blow the table up. You can't
• 27:41
  blow the place up because they will be very upset with you if you kill
• 27:45
  them and they didn't know about it, Okay, but if you let them
• 27:48
  in on it and you tortured them for fifteen minutes and you still kill they'll
• 27:52
  never forgive you exactly right, right right, Yeah. So so now you
• 27:59
  also have gone deep to Pixar and the magic of what Pixar has able been
• 28:03
  able to do because they're the master storytellers. I mean, they are just
• 28:07
  my favorite stories of old time, our Pixar. I'm a big fan of
• 28:10
  Pixar. I study their techniques and they all fit with what I'm talking about.
• 28:15
  So it's so and it's so fast, it's it's so fascinating their process
• 28:18
  with the creative like kind of round table or the mind, the mind,
• 28:22
  what is its brain? Trust. Yeah, so the brain Trust where they
• 28:25
  have like, you know, seven amazing storytellers that like literally rip apart stories
• 28:30
  and they put it together. And Pixar, you know, they haven't hit
• 28:33
  it out of the park every time. They have a hell of a good
• 28:34
  batting average, but they haven't. You know, there's cars too. But
• 28:40
  but but there's also you know up you know there, you know, and
• 28:44
  there's so many amazing stories and they let's say, there's like an eight out
• 28:48
  of ten, nine out of ten for Pixar without question the story. They
• 28:52
  still don't know how to tell a good story. What what do they do?
• 28:56
  What is it about them that that makes them able to pull those because
• 29:00
  like I just watched Toy Story four and I'm with my daughter and I was
• 29:04
  just like at the I'm like what this is? Why? Like I don't
• 29:08
  understand, Like I mean picture I'm a grown ass man and I'm like crying
• 29:12
  out a cartoon. They do make you cry. I mean Toy Story three,
• 29:17
  Toy Story two, that song and Toy Story two, Oh no,
• 29:21
  well they don't even get a story. You listen to that sad song that
• 29:26
  what's her name? The cow the cowgirl song is Yeah, the song the
• 29:33
  sad song about the toy, and it's a three minutes and you're just like
• 29:40
  or the first or the first five minutes of up the most the most amazing
• 29:44
  way to tell a story of an entire life's love. You're just like,
• 29:48
  exactly, how did you do? So they're very fit at that. But
• 29:52
  again you got to you gotta understand too, it's not just about that,
• 29:55
  right, I mean they don't. They don't take you to the movie and
• 29:56
  then show you just a sad scene and you go home. That's not no,
• 30:00
  right, no, no, no, the whole We'll be right back
• 30:03
  after a word from our sponsor and now back to the show plead experience.
• 30:14
  So that's the good thing about Pixar is that because there they write, they
• 30:21
  write for everybody. They're right for kids, they write for adults, right,
• 30:25
  every They get the four demographics, right, the four Q we call
• 30:27
  it right, young old men, women. But they tell what I what
• 30:33
  I call a complete story, right, A complete story is goat characters.
• 30:37
  We care about a good story, right, a thematic argument, right,
• 30:42
  So all of them are about something important, character transformation. There's got some
• 30:48
  funny scenes, it's got some sad scenes, it's got some tense scenes.
• 30:52
  Right, it runs the gamut of emotion. So you know, I talk
• 30:56
  about emotional impact, but a lot of people think I'm talking about the character
• 31:00
  emotions. It's not a character emotion. It's about the audience emotions. So
• 31:03
  when you think about the emotions, you like to go and pay money for
• 31:07
  you go to the theater, or watch TV or watch Netflix to feel these
• 31:12
  emotions. So the emotions that you want to feel is laughter, Right,
• 31:17
  if you want to watch a comedy, you want to feel romance. You
• 31:18
  want to feel love, you want to feel connection between human beings. You
• 31:22
  want to feel anticipation, you want to feel hope. You want to feel
• 31:26
  curiosity, you want to feel surprised. You want to feel tension. We
• 31:29
  like tension because it engages us, right, It create it keeps our brain
• 31:32
  locked in. Right, So all these emotions is what I'm talking about in
• 31:36
  the book and in my classes about how do you do that? How do
• 31:40
  you create curiosity? How do you create anticipation, how do you create suspense?
• 31:44
  Right, there's actually techniques, which is what the craft is about.
• 31:48
  Right, So you can teach the techniques. I can't teach people what to
• 31:51
  write. I can't tell you what ideas to write, or what story to
• 31:53
  write, or what characters to write. But I can tell you when something
• 31:56
  does not work. If I read a script and I'm not engaged by it,
• 32:00
  I'm bored with it, I don't care. I'm going to tell you
• 32:01
  why I don't care, and I'm going to show you how to fix that,
• 32:05
  because that's what I focus on. That's my specialty in terms of like
• 32:07
  the actual emotions of the reader and of the audience. They they they they
• 32:13
  have, I mean, obviously they have amazing batting average and and the stories
• 32:16
  that they continues to tell again and again. You just sit there going,
• 32:21
  how do you do? And it's and it is one good thing about them.
• 32:23
  If anyone listening is writing stories for kids, you've got to throw those
• 32:28
  inside jokes for the adults because that's what's that's what's going to make it better.
• 32:35
  It goes away from that. There's a difference between Saturday Morning I know,
• 32:38
  I'm agent dating myself, a Saturday Morning cartoons which are dedicated directly to
• 32:44
  kids, and then a Pixar movie which an adult would watch again and again
• 32:46
  and again and again, like look at cartoons, like my favorite cartoons Lounton
• 32:52
  cartoons. Was the road Runner cartoons, right with Wally Coot favorite character,
• 32:59
  and I mean adults enjoyed those, but those are out, you know,
• 33:04
  but that was there's some Okay, so let's okay, let's break this down.
• 33:07
  And you brought this up. Let's break down the road Runner and Wally
• 33:10
  Coyote and why they endure to this day. And they also there's no language,
• 33:15
  so every every language in the world can get it. Every every culture
• 33:20
  in the world pretty much got everything in it. So it's about it and
• 33:23
  we've been talking about simplicity. So let's let's let's break it down. Okay.
• 33:28
  Well, you got a character, right who wants something and I want
• 33:30
  something desperately, and what did you do about it? He's the most creative
• 33:36
  person in the world because he comes up with all these different ways and we
• 33:39
  appreciate that. We go, oh, that's very clever, right, and
• 33:43
  then we hope because he's been doing it because, believe it or not,
• 33:46
  we care about Wally Coyote, right, we can also care about the bird.
• 33:52
  But the bird just keeps running away, right. The bird is actually
• 33:53
  smart. There's no emotion, there's no there's no I would argue this,
• 33:58
  we root for coyote. There's no emotional connection to the road runner. There's
• 34:00
  emotional connection to the plight, the plight of the of the coyote, right,
• 34:05
  because we understand, right, And and the thing with Wally Coyote is
• 34:08
  that it's the epitome of perseverance, pitime of perseverance. And we all that's
• 34:15
  the thematic argument, right, And all those cartoons they talk about perseverance,
• 34:17
  how to how to persevere, how to keep going, how to come up
• 34:21
  with new ideas even if you fail. It's not about failing. It's about
• 34:25
  failing and getting up and try again a different way. And that is a
• 34:30
  life lesson. If I didn't hear one, you know. That's why we
• 34:32
  love it so much, because it's funny, you know, And I mean
• 34:36
  how we want to see how the coyote just keeps failing all the time.
• 34:40
  And I've only seen a couple if I remember, he only caught the roadrunner
• 34:44
  like two or three four times. I think in the time I got this
• 34:46
  reminds me there's actually a clip online. You could google it. I think
• 34:52
  it was, Oh, I don't know if it was Seth MacFarland or something
• 34:54
  like The Family Guy guy. Yeah, And he did a small cartoon of
• 35:00
  what happened the day that while coyote actually killed the road runner and his life
• 35:06
  afterwards. It was so funny. It's only four minutes long, and it's
• 35:10
  hilarious because it's like, you get this guy. The coyote is like so
• 35:13
  depressed because he has nothing to look forward to, and he's drinking and he's
• 35:16
  like, yes, not he has no goals, you know, And and
• 35:21
  I know we're laughing, but that is actually what happens in our business all
• 35:23
  the time. You see these people who win Oscars or have a two hundred
• 35:29
  million dollar, big, huge movie, and once they get to that success,
• 35:31
  it's to the top. There's nothing else there, Like they crash and
• 35:36
  their entire world comes crashing down around them. People who win the lottery.
• 35:39
  You see that happen all the time. But I am going to look up
• 35:44
  to which And by the way, this is one thing you have to understand
• 35:46
  about stories, is that there's a reason why we love stories. There's a
• 35:51
  reason why stories are shaped the way they are in terms of characters with goals
• 35:53
  and transformation, because it is we evolved with stories and stories kind of teach
• 35:59
  us how to live right, So this is like we're talking about the road
• 36:02
  runner. That's a lesson in perseverance and not giving up, right, That's
• 36:07
  something that they teach us in life as well. So it matches. And
• 36:10
  so when I talk to writers about storytelling and theme specifically, because theme addresses
• 36:16
  that is, you've got to make sure that what your story addresses is life,
• 36:22
  you know, like all the problems with life. So in terms of
• 36:25
  like perseverance or love, right, I mean, there's a reason why love
• 36:29
  stories are the most popular, and romance romances, you know, relationship stories.
• 36:37
  Yeah, no, of course, of course. And it was just
• 36:38
  it was those stories that kept us alive because you would tell the story about
• 36:42
  the tiger at the at the end of the river that killed the boy,
• 36:45
  and all of a sudden that story would go like there was a tiger that
• 36:49
  killed by the river, and that story kept going and kept the tribe safe
• 36:52
  exactly, And and those stories kept our survival mechanism is what made us evolve
• 36:57
  and survive up to now, right, long time. Yeah, there's never
• 37:00
  been a there's never been a culture without stories. Like every culture in an
• 37:05
  entire civilization from the very beginning has had stories from the moment, we're able
• 37:08
  to communicate with each other. We've had stories, and I think it's also
• 37:12
  just another way for us to share our life experience, so we can feel
• 37:16
  that we're going with it, through it with somebody else exactly exactly. Like
• 37:21
  It's bring up another very interesting point. Have you heard of mirror neurons?
• 37:25
  Yeah, I've heard of that. So the whole the reason we so connect
• 37:30
  to movies and to you know, it's all about this this concept of mirror
• 37:32
  neurons, which is we have we have neurons in our brain that that when
• 37:37
  we watch something, the brain thinks that we are doing it. And so
• 37:43
  when we when we see a character doing something on screen, your brain is
• 37:46
  thinking the same thing that you're doing on screen. And so that's there's that
• 37:50
  connection. Right, So you see things that look like life, and you
• 37:52
  see characters doing things and transforming, right, that in a subtle way teaches
• 37:59
  you how to do it. Is that why the Joker has gotten such a
• 38:04
  visceral reaction from the public because there's a lot of people who walk out.
• 38:08
  I was in the theater when I was watching, and there's people walking out.
• 38:12
  I think I haven't seen it yet. I won't I won't ruin it
• 38:15
  for you, but it is. But you you understand the concert. I
• 38:21
  loved it. I thought it was I thought it was a masterpiece. I
• 38:22
  think I think Joaquin Phoenix will win the Oscar. I mean, if he
• 38:28
  doesn't, it's a it's an absolute travesty if he doesn't win the Oscar.
• 38:30
  But but I was fascinated. I walked in with, you know, to
• 38:35
  get me to go to the movie theaters nowadays with a family and everything is
• 38:37
  rough, and to get me and my wife to go and spend the money
• 38:40
  on a baby, like it was like, you know, you know,
• 38:43
  you know, it's really hit the mainstream. When my wife turned to me
• 38:45
  and goes, have you heard about what's going on with the Joker? And
• 38:50
  I'm like, how do you know about? It's like it's everywhere. We
• 38:52
  gotta go see this movie. But it was fascinating to watch a character and
• 38:57
  the same thing happened to Taxi Driver. That's why Taxi Driver is because was
• 39:00
  obviously the Joker is taxi driver. Pretty much in many ways, the taxi
• 39:05
  driver rubs people the wrong way because you're going on a journey with Travis Prickle
• 39:09
  and you're feeling what it's like to be insane essentially, right, and not
• 39:15
  the one flow over the cuckoos nests insane, which was fun, Like this
• 39:20
  kind of insane. And I think that's why I think, I mean viscerally,
• 39:22
  people are reacting so interestingly the joke. It's just an interesting thing in
• 39:27
  today's world. It's forward to seeing it when I when I have a minute.
• 39:30
  Yeah, it's it is definitely my number one movie on my list to
• 39:35
  see. Yeah, but those mirror neurons is something very very very powerful.
• 39:39
  You feel for what the character is going through, exactly right. It's the
• 39:44
  whole the whole thing of empathy. Right, It's like, and that's the
• 39:46
  thing whenever, no matter what if the character is good or evil, or
• 39:52
  im moral or moral or a good person of bad person, the fact that
• 39:55
  you know he's the main character will be right back after a word from our
• 40:00
  sponsor and now back to the show. And there's also absolutely techniques and tricks
• 40:12
  to make you connect with to make you care. Right, So it's important
• 40:14
  to make you care because you can care about a character. You cannot care
• 40:15
  about a character. If you don't care about a character, it doesn't matter
• 40:19
  what they do. Your script is done so you got to learn how to
• 40:22
  care about the character. And so I bet you, even even though I
• 40:24
  haven't seen the movie yet, I bet you that that the filmmakers take the
• 40:29
  time to make you care about Waking Phoenix's character before you see him do what
• 40:34
  he does right, which I'm assuming is negative, and you kind of root
• 40:38
  for root for him right because you care. And that's where I think the
• 40:43
  problem lies, was that you're rooting for a crazy man, You're rooting for
• 40:45
  a murderer. And it's like, look like, at least with Silence of
• 40:49
  the Lambs, I love Hannibal Elector, like Hand of Elector is such a
• 40:52
  Charming's a cannibal. He eats people. But yeah, but we have but
• 40:59
  we had Jodie Foster as the But then later in the other movies like Hannibal
• 41:02
  and things like that, he became the main character. Here's the thing,
• 41:06
  though, they may he may eat people, right, but they were,
• 41:08
  but he only eats the people that well maybe not that he did that deserve
• 41:13
  it right. The way the film ends, you know, we feel this
• 41:16
  poetic justice of him eating doctor Chiltern at the end. And it's the same
• 41:20
  that shows like Dexter, for example, right, Like Dexter is a serial
• 41:22
  killer, but he kills the wrong people. He kills the people who deserve
• 41:25
  it, and so that makes us feel good and that and that's and that's
• 41:30
  the thing that you're exactly right. Like anytime you know, the quickest way
• 41:35
  for you to hate somebody on the screen, it's one of those old tricks,
• 41:37
  like have the villain kick the dog, like you even kill the dog.
• 41:40
  Yeah, you kill the dog, eat the dog, whatever you want
• 41:44
  to do. For Stephen King once say that of all the hate letters he
• 41:47
  got was when he actually killed the dog in one of his novels. Like
• 41:51
  he could do it. He could kill people in the most amazing ways.
• 41:54
  But if he kills the dog, he's going to get the hate crowd,
• 41:58
  right, And that's like the easiest way. It's the easiest way for you
• 42:01
  to hate somebody right away is have them hurt an animal, hurt a kid.
• 42:06
  And that's not really the and it's not the only thing. There's a
• 42:08
  whole bunch of stuff. When I read scripts clients and I say, and
• 42:12
  I'm very aware of what connects us and what disconnects us. So there's going
• 42:15
  to be times in the script where I go Okay, you know this what
• 42:20
  he did or said, there is a disconnector it disconnects us. So do
• 42:22
  you want to keep it there? Is there a reason why you want it?
• 42:24
  Or is it accidental? Because a lot of times the writers don't know
• 42:28
  what they're doing right, they're just writing the script, and if they don't
• 42:30
  realize that, they just disconnected the audience from the character and they don't know
• 42:34
  why. They don't know why the scene's not working, they don't know why
• 42:36
  the script's not working. And I could tell them, well, you just
• 42:38
  disconnect us us here. It was intentional, but we don't care about the
• 42:45
  character. So everything that happens after that, we don't care about the character.
• 42:47
  You're done, So what are some of those elements and techniques that help
• 42:52
  you create a character that you have strong emotional ties to? Because that is
• 42:57
  also agreed. I mean, I watched I was watching a show the other
• 42:59
  day and it was just like, ugh, I just like the plot was
• 43:02
  the plot was, plot was good. But I'm like, if I get
• 43:06
  up and go to the bathroom and I tell my wife just keep playing it's
• 43:07
  fun. You don't have deposit. I'm disconnected, right, But then you
• 43:12
  watch other shows or you watch other movies and you're just like, think about
• 43:15
  the classics, right, think about the classic sitcoms, right, like Friends
• 43:20
  or you know the Seinfeld Office or Seinfeld right there, Classics or Cheers.
• 43:24
  I mean, because you care about the characters. Right, It's like you
• 43:29
  want you don't care even if the jokes are not funny or you know,
• 43:32
  I mean they are, but even if they weren't, you would still want
• 43:35
  to be with those characters. You just want to be in the same room
• 43:37
  with them. And that's why you keep tuning in week after week after week,
• 43:40
  you know. So what are some of those elements that create those that
• 43:43
  emotional So there's I mean, there's a whole bunch of them, right.
• 43:45
  I have a whole chapters in my book, but in terms of connecting emotionally,
• 43:52
  right, So there's there's three things that I talk about and you can
• 43:54
  see that very well with Pixar as well. So when I teach my classes
• 43:58
  on that, I show the picts are and show you how it's done,
• 44:00
  and then show you the people that don't do it right. So there's so
• 44:05
  there's an element of what I call pity, humanity, and admiration. Right,
• 44:09
  So there's if you can create pity in the character, meaning we care
• 44:14
  about something that happens to them. Right, So, something happens and it
• 44:16
  could be any character. You mean, any character. You don't know anything
• 44:20
  about them, and if something happens to them that is that makes you feel
• 44:23
  sorry for them. Like let's say they're they're bullied by someone, or they
• 44:28
  just got robbed, or they lost their wife, or they just lost their
• 44:32
  dog or whatever. Whatever. It is, anything that makes us empathize and
• 44:36
  we feel sorry. And there's hundreds of those. Right, So empathy and
• 44:39
  pity is one of them. Right. You cannot you because of the way
• 44:45
  we're built as humans. We cannot not care if you feel pity for someone,
• 44:47
  and it could be a villain as well. That's what they do with
• 44:51
  addible lecter, right. The fact that doctor children abuses we feel we feel
• 44:58
  sorry for him, even though he's hand is a cannibal. Right. So,
• 45:01
  so pity is one of them. Humanity is very important, and that
• 45:05
  basically is show the character the character's humanity in a sense, make them,
• 45:10
  make them care about something other than themselves. So a character who's not selfish,
• 45:15
  so a character who cares about something, whether they care for a dog,
• 45:17
  they care for a pet, they care for a plant. They do
• 45:21
  this in the leon the profession. You ren my mind, that's very well.
• 45:27
  He's a killer, right, he's a hitman, but we care for
• 45:29
  him because when you go home, he drinks milk and he takes care for
• 45:31
  his plant. We know, Oh he's a good guy. You know,
• 45:35
  he just happens to kill bad guys. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so
• 45:40
  that's one of them. So show humanity, show that you care about something
• 45:44
  a cause you have a friend you care for, You care for your parent
• 45:47
  who's sick. I mean all this stuff, right, you talk somebody in
• 45:51
  bed, you bring him soup. There's there's thousands of those. So humanity
• 45:54
  is the second one. And then the third one is the one that most
• 45:58
  people know about, is admiration, meaning that you give the character traits that
• 46:01
  we all admire in a human being. So think about like in your dating
• 46:05
  days, you had a list of the admirable trades, admirable trades you wanted
• 46:08
  and you made because that's what most people admire. So somebody who's beautiful or
• 46:13
  handsome, somebody who's smart, somebody who's funny, somebody who's the best at
• 46:17
  what they do right. So the best cop, the best agent, the
• 46:21
  best soldier, the best whatever, right, best surgeon, and there's a
• 46:25
  whole bunch of stuff. Somebody who's courageous as opposed to Indiana, like Indiana
• 46:30
  Jones brave, the list of positive traits that are admirable in a person.
• 46:34
  So when you combine those three and it's funny because talking about Pixar again,
• 46:38
  I showed the clip in Wally when we meet in the beginning, we meet
• 46:43
  Wally and he's doing the garbage thing, but there's the same way. He
• 46:45
  finally goes to his house, to his little home, and it's only a
• 46:49
  three minute, a three minute scene, but in those three minutes you get
• 46:52
  about twenty plus little tips of all this stuff that I talked about, right,
• 46:59
  and those twenty things are kind of like designed to make us care about
• 47:01
  that character. And he's a robot, he's a garbage cleaner, right,
• 47:06
  but yet you see you feel sorry for him, you see his humanity,
• 47:10
  you see that he cares about things. They're showing us how human he is,
• 47:15
  right, And there's a lot of that admirable traits in there, about
• 47:16
  all the little things of how he keeps his house and he collects things,
• 47:20
  and he likes romantic movies and and he sings to himself, and there's all
• 47:22
  these little things that just add up. Those are called the little touches,
• 47:25
  character touches, and that's what you want in you know, in all your
• 47:30
  characters. You know. Yeah, it's yeah, I was thinking about that
• 47:34
  movie, like there's no dialogue. There's barely any dialogue in that movie.
• 47:37
  Yeah, it's my like my top five favorite movies of all time. That
• 47:40
  was up and uh, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Toy Story, Toy
• 47:46
  Story two, Toy Story three to Story four, all four of them,
• 47:50
  it's amazing. All four of them are actually really good. They always hit
• 47:53
  it out of the park with the Toy Story. Yeah, without question.
• 47:57
  Now there's another thing that I think a lot of screenwriters have a problem with
• 48:01
  is the dreaded dialogue and being able to write realistic and sharp dialogue and and
• 48:09
  and so one. I want any any help you can give us to help
• 48:13
  dialogue in the world will be for But also the talk on the nose dialogue,
• 48:17
  which I when I wrote my first few screenplays, it was horrible.
• 48:22
  It was I was just I would get that note back constantly. But like
• 48:24
  dialogue's on the nose, and I'm like, what is this on the nose?
• 48:28
  Mean, like, I don't understand what. I didn't even know.
• 48:30
  I was so ignorant to the process, I didn't even know what under So
• 48:34
  please explain on the on the nose dialogue and then how to avoid on the
• 48:37
  nose dialogue. All right, Well, I'll tell your first question, because
• 48:40
  I had a funny remark for that when you said, how do how do
• 48:44
  we become good dialogue writers? I was going to say, well, there's
• 48:46
  a there's a very simple process, but it might it might require a little
• 48:50
  bit of surgery, which is, go and take Aaron Sorkin's brain and put
• 48:53
  it inside your skull, and then you'll be a good or tuaranty you know,
• 48:59
  exactly exactly so, But all joking aside, the craft of dialogue is
• 49:06
  probably the most important thing. Not I mean, I've done theme and scenes
• 49:08
  and craft of whatever. Right, So I like this analogy that Ernest Hemingway
• 49:16
  shared with writers where he said that a great story is architecture, not interior
• 49:20
  design. Right. So architecture of a story is the structure, the theme,
• 49:25
  the plot, the characters. It's the foundation of a good story,
• 49:28
  right, So it's a solid story. Dialogue is interior design, right,
• 49:32
  So it's like it's all the little color of your walls and your posters,
• 49:36
  and I'm looking at your room, right, there's this very specific interior design
• 49:38
  going on, Right, that would dialogue be. So you could have a
• 49:43
  solid house that is standing on its own. But if the room has no
• 49:46
  good interior design, it's still gonna look kind of yucky. Right, You're
• 49:49
  not gonna have a good feeling about it. Right, if your room was
• 49:51
  empty. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now
• 50:00
  back to the show. So that's what dialogue is. You could have a
• 50:05
  really good script, but with terrible dialogue, it's still not going to create
• 50:08
  that emotional impact you want in the reader. Right. And by the way,
• 50:12
  it doesn't mean you're not going to sell your script. It just means
• 50:15
  they're going to hire a a rewriter to do the script. And as a
• 50:21
  matter of fact, I don't know if you know this, but in Hollywood,
• 50:23
  dialogue writers are hired at six figures for a couple of weeks work just
• 50:29
  to punch up the dialogue because that's how important it is. Right. So
• 50:31
  it's can of stop you for a second, because I want to make this
• 50:35
  really clear for people, because this is a wonderful analogy. If you have
• 50:37
  the most beautiful home designed mansion, but the interior design is tacky and bad,
• 50:45
  the value of the entire house goes down. Yes, And it's that
• 50:50
  simple, and I think that it's a great, great analogy for screenwriting.
• 50:53
  I've never heard that before. I think it's so so important because it is
• 50:58
  the house is the foundation, with the theme, the structure, the characters,
• 51:01
  but that dialogue is the painting. What color is it? Paint?
• 51:05
  Is a neon green paint? And you know, I mentioned that every single
• 51:10
  time with clients and students because when I give feedback and something is not working
• 51:15
  at the foundation level, right, I say, okay, you know thematically
• 51:19
  a character or story, something is not working. And they come back to
• 51:22
  me and say, oh, but what about that little scene where this character
• 51:23
  says this and that is a nice at a speed line? And I'm going,
• 51:27
  yes, it is, but I don't care. I just don't care.
• 51:30
  You're talking about your house is crumbling and you're talking about what poster to
• 51:34
  put in your wall. I mean, come on, right, that's exactly
• 51:37
  it. So that's a great analogy. I love that analogy, you know,
• 51:39
  thank you, Hernest Hemingway. But but that's that's the thing. And
• 51:45
  so writers sometimes do not understand that the foundation has to be sold before they
• 51:49
  think about the interior design. So, but dialogue is one of is the
• 51:52
  interior design and on the nose dialogue, to come back to your question,
• 51:57
  is probably one of the biggest challenges with writers because there's there's different levels of
• 52:02
  dialogue. Right, So there's dialogue, and I break it down into these
• 52:07
  four categories in my book. Which is emotional impact, which is the lines
• 52:10
  that make you smile, that make you laugh, witty lines, sarcasm,
• 52:15
  all the stuff that they create an instant reaction, right, so they they
• 52:19
  like, ooh, that was a great line. Right, that's an emotional
• 52:22
  impact. Then you have character, which is character voice, which is what
• 52:28
  the character says and the way they say it reveals their personality, reveals their
• 52:34
  opinions, their traits, et cetera, etcetera. So those are character that's
• 52:38
  what called individuality for dialogue. The third one is exposition, and unfortunately most
• 52:45
  writers tend to focus on exposition, and that's where you get the on the
• 52:49
  nose claim right feedback because exposition is character saying information that you feel the audience
• 52:57
  needs to know to figure out what's going on in the scene or in the
• 53:00
  story. Unfortunately, that's all they do, right, So another feedback you
• 53:06
  get with dialogues, and all the dialogue sounds the same, all the characters
• 53:08
  sound the same, because it's really just your voice, and all you care
• 53:12
  about is giving expositions. You don't care about character, You don't care about
• 53:14
  emotional impact. The opposite of on the nose is subtext, and that's the
• 53:19
  fourth category, and that's probably the hardest thing to master. It's usually where
• 53:22
  you get to the professional level and you're a master of dialogue, that's when
• 53:25
  you get subtext. And that's when the line of dialogue kind of implies things
• 53:31
  you don't state it on the nose. On the nose means you're stating exactly
• 53:35
  what the character is thinking and what he's feeling. Right, So I'll give
• 53:42
  you an example on the top of my head. If you're a friend of
• 53:45
  yours, you know who you don't really like, comes to visit you,
• 53:50
  right, and you say, oh, it's you right in the in effort,
• 53:55
  right, we understand that's subtext for I don't like you, right,
• 54:00
  but if he says, oh, it's you. It's all about performance.
• 54:04
  But no, so that would be right, So that would be like the
• 54:07
  subtext, right or you know what he's thinking, you know what he's feeling
• 54:09
  without saying it. Now, A beginner writer who's gonna write on the nose
• 54:15
  dialogue would be, Oh, I'm really unhappy to see you right now.
• 54:20
  Right, that's you're stating exactly what he's feeling. That's on the nose dialogue.
• 54:23
  So you mean I'm not happy right now, or I'm so happy to
• 54:28
  see you. That's on the nose. So you mean basically the room Basically
• 54:31
  Tommy Wizzo's The Room is basically the entire movie is the on the nose dialogue,
• 54:37
  which makes it so beautiful and wonderful of that movie. Absolutely, it's
• 54:40
  one of my fas so bad that it's good. It's one of my favorite
• 54:44
  movies of all time, purely because it's so bad. And when you said
• 54:49
  that, I'm like, wait a minute, that sounds familiar. That's like,
• 54:51
  oh hi, Tommy, I just walked in the door. Thank you,
• 54:53
  how was your day? It is pure on the on the those dialogue
• 54:57
  Also another thing, and if I may dissect the room here for a second,
• 55:01
  when you're writing a scene, and I think writers should understand this,
• 55:06
  is that you really need to pick the most important and interesting part of the
• 55:09
  scene. So what a perfect scene, just this wonderful scene in the room
• 55:16
  is this scene that they go into a cafe and the scene starts with two
• 55:22
  people we've never seen before in our life ordering, I'm gonna have a coffee.
• 55:27
  I'm gonna have this great Two other people should go right behind them in
• 55:30
  line order. We don't know who these people are. The third people are
• 55:35
  our characters, and they order. So you sat there for a minute and
• 55:39
  a half watching someone else order for no reason. And that's the most interesting
• 55:45
  part we would have should have picked it up at our characters or happens in
• 55:49
  scenes is like what do you cut a lot? Because a lot about our
• 55:51
  brain just wants to set up the scene right. So the examples I usually
• 55:54
  give is like, if you're going to show an interview scene, right,
• 55:57
  somebody at a job interview, you're not going to show the guy driving there,
• 56:00
  or even like even before like getting ready for his interview, driving finding
• 56:05
  parking, getting up on the elevator, checking in with the receptionist. Uh,
• 56:09
  you know, waiting reading a magazine until he's called to the interview.
• 56:12
  You're gonna cut right at the interview, right, So that's that's uh,
• 56:16
  that's what it's about. Yeah, it's it's you know, and that scene
• 56:21
  specifically, you might even have to have them ordering the coffee. They should
• 56:23
  just maybe just be sitting down at the coffee shop with the coffee, unless
• 56:27
  the ordering really is moving the story along. That's fat that could put y.
• 56:30
  Yeah. So actually, one of the first questions you should ask yourself
• 56:34
  with with the scene writing is what's what's the point of that scene? What's
• 56:37
  the purpose of that scene? Right? Do you have any do you have
• 56:40
  any tips on how to create good subtexts in dialogue? I do, because
• 56:45
  I show a whole bunch of techniques as well in in uh, in the
• 56:49
  book on Subtext. I mean there's there's a whole bunch of them. I
• 56:52
  mean the ones that come to mind is implying things right or even not even
• 56:58
  saying a line, like think about how if the character can actually do something
• 57:00
  that implies something as opposed to So it's all about implying things right. Subtext
• 57:05
  means the meaning behind the text. Right. So, going back to our
• 57:09
  examples with your friend, if you say, oh it's you, right,
• 57:14
  Oh it's you, doesn't say anything, but we know in the context,
• 57:16
  if we know the way you said, or we know before that you hate
• 57:19
  the guy, right, we know that oh it's you means I hate you
• 57:22
  and I don't. I'm not happy to see you. Right. So that
• 57:24
  would be an example of subtext applying line all right, So something like physicalizing
• 57:30
  the line sometimes so so like something like if a woman, a woman or
• 57:37
  a wife knows that her husband's cheating on him and she hasn't told him yet,
• 57:40
  and he walks in and he's like, hi, honey, and she's
• 57:43
  washing the dishes right, and she and she's like, oh, I'm doing
• 57:45
  it right. And the way she's washing the dishes says everything about what that
• 57:51
  seems about physicalizing and then and then he's starting to pick up on it.
• 57:54
  And then it's like and then, but no one's saying you cheated on me.
• 57:59
  Why it's all done within It's all done within the scene. Right.
• 58:02
  That's subtext basically exactly. Yeah, And there's a whole bunch of oh,
• 58:07
  there's that. Yeah, there's there's many ways, but subtext is an art
• 58:09
  form though that nuts it is. It is and in a craft as well,
• 58:14
  you know. Yeah, its to like little bunch of techniques and give
• 58:16
  you examples of it shows you that there is a technique, so you can
• 58:21
  you can definitely apply that. So yeah, I mean you script doctor Locke.
• 58:23
  You also you also consult a lot with screenwriters. What is the biggest
• 58:28
  thing you see? Like what what do you come in to fix the most?
• 58:31
  Like what is the thing that you're like the house? The house you
• 58:35
  come into to analyze the structure of the house and the interior design, and
• 58:40
  what is the thing that you see? Like, man, if people to
• 58:44
  just get this right, it would be so much better. It depends there's
• 58:47
  so many of so many different things. That depends on the student. And
• 58:51
  I also teach you c LA, so it's kind of like depends on where
• 58:53
  the student's level. So, like I said, sometimes as student can or
• 58:58
  a client can write great character and great dialogue, but the scenes are not
• 59:01
  working or the story is not working. A lot of the times. It's
• 59:05
  theme. That's the reason why I feel, you know, one of the
• 59:07
  things that I've come to realize is how important stories are for us humans and
• 59:13
  why that is. And that's really theme. So if you really know how
• 59:15
  to write to theme, right, because everything connects to it, like the
• 59:22
  characters and the character are connects to theme. The dialogue will connect to theme
• 59:25
  if you have a good thematic argument and then of course the plot. So
• 59:30
  so that's the thing. And if theme is a foundational issue, right,
• 59:34
  I remember Rot Serling saying it's where it starts. So you have to know
• 59:37
  theme. You have to know what you're trying to say, right, and
• 59:39
  then figure out your character who's going to convey that, and the plot and
• 59:45
  you know the ending of it. Now you had one of your theme would
• 59:50
  be the answer. Okay, So you also you also wrote a book called
• 59:53
  one hundred and one Habits of Highly Successful, right, your very first book.
• 1:00:00
  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back
• 1:00:07
  to the show. What are some top habits that if screenwriters should do to
• 1:00:14
  be a good screenwrit And I'm going to say with the first one, probably
• 1:00:16
  just right, but what some other ones that's basically it, that's just right,
• 1:00:22
  just right, just right. There's there's one hundred and one habits in
• 1:00:24
  there, and all the big, big time writers talk about what they do
• 1:00:28
  in all those specific habits. So there's a lot to read. But but
• 1:00:32
  yeah, pretty much it comes down to uh, ask to the chair,
• 1:00:37
  right, like putting your butt on the chair and dedicating the time. So
• 1:00:40
  a good tip is to schedule the time. You know, like you know,
• 1:00:44
  when you have your calendar and you schedule your dentist appointment, you don't
• 1:00:46
  miss that, right, so you you you show up for that, right.
• 1:00:51
  So a good take, a good technique is to actually put in writing
• 1:00:54
  time in your calendar with with a start day, a start time, and
• 1:01:00
  so that you get those notifications on the mac that says, you know,
• 1:01:02
  your meeting starts in thirty minutes, you know, and uh and and so
• 1:01:07
  if you actually write down your writing sessions, at least you'll show up and
• 1:01:09
  hopefully dedicate yourself to writing. So that's a that's a habit right there.
• 1:01:15
  How about for screenwriters who I've heard this a thousand times, I only write
• 1:01:17
  when I'm inspired. It's when I when I get the inspiration. And these
• 1:01:22
  are the same These are the same guys who have the screenplay they've been working
• 1:01:24
  on for seven years, the one screenplay, not the twenty the one screenplay
• 1:01:30
  and every time you talk to me, like, how's that screenplay going?
• 1:01:31
  Almost there? Yeah? Almost almost, just just a little bit almost there.
• 1:01:37
  So so the answer and this is actually came from uh actually who said
• 1:01:43
  that to me? I forget now, but one of the writers in the
• 1:01:46
  one on one Habits book who said, uh, you know, does does
• 1:01:52
  a plumber have plumbers block? He has to go and he has to fix
• 1:02:00
  what he needs to fix. He shows up on time. That's his job,
• 1:02:02
  right, he doesn't have You don't go to your office job and say,
• 1:02:06
  oh I don't feel like it today, Right, you go, you
• 1:02:08
  do it because there's a lot of steak. That's that's the problem with writers.
• 1:02:10
  They don't have a lot at steak, right, I mean, because
• 1:02:14
  nobody's forcing you to write right. There's no deadline, there's no put somebody's
• 1:02:17
  not putting a gun on your head. So that's another another tip for you
• 1:02:21
  guys is to make sure you give yourself steaks, like, give yourself deadlines,
• 1:02:24
  get yourself like. One great trick is, uh to tell people that
• 1:02:30
  you're gonna write right, that you're gonna finish the script by let's say three
• 1:02:34
  months from now, right, so in uh, February first, right,
• 1:02:38
  you're gonna and you tell people you're gonna, I'm gonna finish my script February
• 1:02:42
  first. And if I don't finish my script by February first, I'm gonna
• 1:02:47
  have to donate one thousand dollars right to the NRA or to the Trump campaign
• 1:02:55
  or to not yeah, Nazi lovers or whatever, but any basically anything that
• 1:03:01
  you totally abhore hate, and you're going to force yourself and believe me,
• 1:03:07
  if somebody's gonna hold down down to it. So actually you're gonna have to
• 1:03:09
  give the thousand dollars to your friend so that they're gonna send it, and
• 1:03:14
  they will send it if you don't give them the script by February first,
• 1:03:19
  and I guarantee you you will finish your script by February first. There's actually
• 1:03:22
  there's actually websites dedicated to this. There's one called stick. There's one called
• 1:03:25
  I think stick dot com, which is like the character sticks, and you
• 1:03:29
  do a public yeah, you put it, you put up your thing,
• 1:03:31
  and it does exactly that they'll deposit if you don't, if you don't supply
• 1:03:36
  it, they will deposit it directly into the opposite, believe me. And
• 1:03:39
  that's suddenly now you have stakes, Now you have motivation. You will,
• 1:03:43
  you will, You really need to finish that, right, you will write.
• 1:03:45
  You will write. Now it may not be good, but at least
• 1:03:49
  you'll finish it. And that's step number one. You have to finish it,
• 1:03:52
  and then you can go back to it and fix what's not working.
• 1:03:54
  Can we talk about the rewriting process a little bit because that is such a
• 1:04:00
  that is such a oh my god. But I also like I found myself
• 1:04:05
  when I'm writing a lot of times, and this is old, the old
• 1:04:09
  verses of me is I would I would rewrite as I write because there was
• 1:04:12
  an excuse to not continue. So you have the greatest first chapter, or
• 1:04:16
  the first the greatest first twenty pages ever. Yeah, but it's useless because
• 1:04:21
  you haven't finished seek I'll meet you halfway on that one. This is actually
• 1:04:25
  it could be a good trick. And it's actually Eric Roth who's the big
• 1:04:28
  time screenwor or his gum. So. Eric Roft's technique, which I think
• 1:04:31
  is pretty pretty effective, is that every day he rewrites from page one,
• 1:04:36
  but every day he adds to it. So that's so he so Let's say
• 1:04:41
  the first day that is the first scene, right, there's three pages of
• 1:04:43
  ten pages. The next day is going to rewrite page ten and continue to
• 1:04:45
  page fifteen. The next day is going to go page one to page twenty,
• 1:04:49
  the next day is going to go to But he's always starting from scratch,
• 1:04:53
  so that by the time the script is done, he's rewritten it like
• 1:04:56
  thirty or forty times, right, So I think it's a really good techne
• 1:05:00
  It takes a little longer, but that's his technique. And and you know
• 1:05:03
  you can't you can't have that one. But that's but that's like samurai level
• 1:05:09
  writing, like you're talking about a master. You're talking about like to be
• 1:05:12
  a first time writer doing that. Like who says you cannot be a master?
• 1:05:15
  Right off the gate, we talked, Carl, Carl stopping, Alex.
• 1:05:19
  We're talking about techniques here. We're not talking about We're not talking about
• 1:05:23
  talent, okay, Tarlent Right. Talent is that thing that you either have
• 1:05:27
  it or not or you keep you keep getting feedback or you yeah, good
• 1:05:30
  story, that's fine. But we're talking about writing habits here. Anybody can
• 1:05:34
  do these habits, right. You can't deadline anybody can do the rewriting trick,
• 1:05:40
  there's another bet if they stick. Somebody else is known for the break
• 1:05:43
  the chain. Have you heard of that one? No? No, no,
• 1:05:44
  haven't. What's talk on? So this was to be Jerry Seinfeld's technique
• 1:05:47
  for making sure that he wrote jokes every single day. And so what he
• 1:05:51
  did is that he had his calendar and every time he wrote, he would
• 1:05:56
  put a big X right, and then the next day an X and X
• 1:05:59
  and another. And his job when he looked at his calendar was to not
• 1:06:03
  break the chain. Like you have. You have to make sure he had
• 1:06:06
  an X every sing because if he didn't do it one day, he would
• 1:06:09
  break the chain. You would see this whole of the chain of xes.
• 1:06:13
  So that's a really great trick. Like you look at that chain, you
• 1:06:15
  go, oh my god, look at all those things in a row.
• 1:06:17
  I've been so productive. I don't want to break the chain. So you
• 1:06:21
  just keep doing it. You know, that's very very very powerful. And
• 1:06:25
  the longer that and the longer that chain is, the less you're gonna likely
• 1:06:28
  you are going to break you Like, I have my chains going through five.
• 1:06:30
  My chain's been going for five years and it's just like it just keeps
• 1:06:33
  going and going. That's very powerful. The Eric Roth one I love,
• 1:06:38
  and I think it's a wonderful way you could do that. That's so simple
• 1:06:42
  because we're not talking about we're not talking about some people rewriting the same chapter
• 1:06:45
  one or first scene right and never never writing anything new. But that's where
• 1:06:48
  I write something new. But that's the thing, that's the discipline. That's
• 1:06:53
  the discipline that I'm pointing out, is like you have to have the discipline
• 1:06:56
  to keep going and make sure you it's that's why it's like I think it's
• 1:07:01
  a little bit more samurai in the sense of the just the discipline aspect of
• 1:07:04
  it. But in theory, I think it's a fantastic technique. It's a
• 1:07:08
  fantastic habit. Everybody could be a samurai and if they if they apply and
• 1:07:13
  in practice, I agree. I agree. Maybe I'm a Maybe, maybe
• 1:07:17
  I'm a little too cynical. Maybe I just I got too I got too
• 1:07:19
  much trapnel. I got too much trapnel in me, my friend. That's
• 1:07:24
  right. I'm in the midst of this. I'm still you're away from Hollywood
• 1:07:28
  right now, like I'm in it. I still am very cynical. I
• 1:07:30
  just seem too much, but I think some fresh air. Yes, exactly
• 1:07:35
  exactly. The stench of broken dreams are out here, sir, and I
• 1:07:41
  can't no, but but we're here to help. But we're here to help,
• 1:07:45
  and that's why I do the show. I want filmmakers to understand the
• 1:07:48
  realities of what the business is, but yet to continue to follow that dream.
• 1:07:51
  Because if we don't, what is the reason why we're here? I
• 1:07:55
  mean, if not, we could all be accountant somewhere making money, or
• 1:07:58
  we could all be a lawyer somewhere doing stuff. We're here. We're crazy.
• 1:08:00
  We have to understand. We're all nuts just for even being here.
• 1:08:03
  And this is a crazy business, absolutely, and to try to make money
• 1:08:09
  in this business is even more insane. We're carnies, we're carnival folk essentially.
• 1:08:15
  All right. So I'm gonna ask you a few questions, ask all
• 1:08:17
  of my guests, sir, what are what are the three screenplays every screenwriter
• 1:08:23
  should read? Ooh, that's a great question. It really depends on genre.
• 1:08:31
  Why, yeah, well not just genre, but why would you read?
• 1:08:35
  Like if you say, if you like, for example, for me,
• 1:08:38
  like if you had a problem with dialogue, I would tell you which
• 1:08:42
  dialogue script story you know, Like I would say, go read the Tarantino
• 1:08:45
  script or uh, you know Aaron Sorkin or David Mammott, right, Or
• 1:08:48
  if it was for descriptions specifically, like I would say, read a Tony
• 1:08:51
  Gilroy or read a Shane blackscript. Right. I mean, so that's so
• 1:08:56
  very very specific. You have craft elements that some scripts are better than others,
• 1:09:01
  but overall, for overall great storytelling, I would say, read any
• 1:09:05
  any Pixar script if you can get your hands on it. But but you
• 1:09:12
  know, I would go for my favorite filmmakers, like you know, Billy
• 1:09:15
  Wilder as read something like a hot read The Apartment, which is one of
• 1:09:17
  my favorite movies of all time, Blade Runner, you know, Inception.
• 1:09:24
  I mean, it's all, you know, I can just name all my
• 1:09:26
  favorite movies and say, go read that script. You know. Now,
• 1:09:29
  what advice would you give a screenwriter trying to break into the business today,
• 1:09:32
  Write a great script. I know you probably heard this a million times,
• 1:09:36
  but it really I'm telling you. I mean, so many people are so
• 1:09:40
  worried about the marketing and the networking, pitching, pitching and all this thing,
• 1:09:46
  and they don't realize all they need is just one great script. We'll
• 1:09:51
  be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the
• 1:09:59
  show. I'm not saying only write one script. I'm saying, just write
• 1:10:03
  a great script, because you can literally drop it anywhere or anybody you meet
• 1:10:09
  by accident, even if it's the accountant or you know. I'll tell you
• 1:10:13
  find one of my clients recently. They're writing a script and they're writing it
• 1:10:18
  for a specific actor in mind, and they've been working on it for a
• 1:10:21
  very long time. And out of the blue, he's a tennis player,
• 1:10:27
  and he tells me that, out of blue, that one of his tennis
• 1:10:30
  partners that he plays on a regular basis is the head of accounting for Netflix.
• 1:10:34
  And I'm going, okay, dude, because all this time he's been
• 1:10:38
  waiting to send it to the actor's production company, right, And I say,
• 1:10:42
  dude, just make sure you write you finished, to make sure it's
• 1:10:45
  a great script, right, and then give it to the accounting guy a
• 1:10:48
  Netflix, because I guarantee you that if he loves that script, he's going
• 1:10:53
  to give it to the right people at Netflix, who then will show it
• 1:10:57
  to that actor and the actor will say yes to net Flex and not to
• 1:11:00
  these two unknown writers. Right. So that was my advice to them.
• 1:11:04
  But that's the thing. So write a great script and you can show it
• 1:11:09
  to the you know. In my in my one on one Habits book,
• 1:11:12
  I heard so many stories of how these writers broke in and and a lot
• 1:11:16
  of them were I give it to I wrote this great script and give it
• 1:11:19
  to the secretary of this of the friend of a friend of a friend of
• 1:11:23
  what. And you hear so much of these stories of just somebody. I
• 1:11:28
  mean, think about it. If you saw a great movie, right,
• 1:11:30
  wouldn't you die to tell your friends about it? Right? And it's exactly
• 1:11:34
  that somebody reads a great script no matter who it is, they they're gonna
• 1:11:38
  chances aren't especially if you're in laed chances aren't there. They know, somebody
• 1:11:42
  in the industry says, hey, I read this great script. Could you
• 1:11:44
  want to read it? Of course? You know, it's all about word
• 1:11:46
  of mouth, you know, And it was a yeah, it was.
• 1:11:49
  It was how Tarantino got in because Tarantino was trying to knock on doors for
• 1:11:54
  for years, about ten years, and finally someone said someone read like I
• 1:11:58
  think it was a Natural Killers I think it was, or true Romance,
• 1:12:01
  and then handed it to somebody handed aside right exactly, and he got it
• 1:12:06
  right. So I mean, you know, Michael Arendt wrote ended up being
• 1:12:12
  hired by Pixar strictly on the strength of a little Miss Sunshine, who when
• 1:12:15
  they read the script and hired him was before the movie came out, So
• 1:12:19
  strictly on the on the strength of the script that he got hired. So
• 1:12:24
  that's that's why I keep saying, write a great script. Learn, take
• 1:12:27
  the time to learn the craft, take the time to write and rewrite as
• 1:12:30
  many times as it takes to write a great script. And when you finally
• 1:12:33
  have a great script, then you can go ahead and try to network and
• 1:12:39
  try to tell people about it, or enter it in a reputable contest like
• 1:12:42
  Austin or the Nickel, and just just have a great product. Because right
• 1:12:45
  now people are just jumping the gun. They're just trying to make connections and
• 1:12:50
  and and and you know, friendships and relationships within the business, right,
• 1:12:56
  which is important. But the first thing they care about is if you tell
• 1:13:00
  them you're a screenwriter. The first thing says, Okay, tell me about
• 1:13:02
  the script you wrote. Tell me about your best script, because that's all
• 1:13:05
  they want to know. They want to read a great script. Everybody's looking
• 1:13:08
  for a great script in this town. Nobody has a job in this town
• 1:13:11
  without a great script, right. No, actors have nothing to say,
• 1:13:15
  directors have nothing to direct agents. I mean, think about all the crew
• 1:13:18
  production. I mean there's like thousands. The entire town runs on a script.
• 1:13:26
  You gotta have a script. And that's why it's such I mean,
• 1:13:30
  to me, it's the best profession, right, because it starts with you,
• 1:13:32
  the writer. Right, you write a great script and everything will go
• 1:13:36
  from there. But if you don't have that great script, if you're like
• 1:13:41
  you know, you're trying to market without or you're trying to sell a script
• 1:13:43
  that's not ready, you're just wasting your time because you know, let's let's
• 1:13:46
  say let's say you have a great idea for a script, right, and
• 1:13:49
  you tell an executives that you just run into somebody at a lunch place,
• 1:13:53
  right, and you say, hey, I wrote the script and it's about
• 1:13:55
  let's say they pitch them like Blade Writer or something, right, and let's
• 1:13:57
  say Blade Rind was never made. It's kind of like that movie Yesterday with
• 1:14:00
  the Beatles, I love that, right exactly. So imagine you were a
• 1:14:04
  screenplay a screenwriter in an age where nobody knew all the great movies that have
• 1:14:09
  ever made, Chinatown, the Godfather, write all this is that, right,
• 1:14:12
  and they say you're the writer. You'll be the hottest writer in the
• 1:14:15
  world. Right, that's probably an idea for a movie. Right, So
• 1:14:18
  imagine you're not. Let's say you pitch a great idea, right, and
• 1:14:23
  the executive, oh, wow, that's a great idea. Can I read
• 1:14:26
  the script? Yeah, okay, you send them the script. The script
• 1:14:29
  is not is not good, not ready. The idea is good, the
• 1:14:31
  script is not ready. The reader is going to read it. They're going
• 1:14:35
  to do coverage on it. Pass. That's it. You're done, And
• 1:14:39
  chances are you're running. You run into this other that same executives again with
• 1:14:44
  a second script, with with a better version of your script. And believe
• 1:14:46
  me, you already you you got a bad taste in his mind right about
• 1:14:51
  that. So they're not going to be that enthusiastic to read your script again
• 1:14:56
  or to read another script of your So don't break you know, you only
• 1:15:00
  have one chance to impress, and so make sure you have a solid script,
• 1:15:02
  make sure you learn the craft, take the time, take the classes,
• 1:15:06
  read the books, whatever it is. Is so much free information out
• 1:15:10
  there right now I have especially on your site, right, kudos to you
• 1:15:15
  for that. And there's other big time websites that have a lot of free
• 1:15:20
  information like going to the story with my class c l A right, so
• 1:15:28
  exactly and so you know, and then get get you know, get coverage
• 1:15:33
  if you want to see how your script is doing if it's ready, right,
• 1:15:35
  there's a lot of reading services like yours, but for you know,
• 1:15:40
  less than one hundred dollars, you can get a reader to say if your
• 1:15:43
  script is good or not, and then you don't lose that important first impression
• 1:15:47
  from a real executive, right, so get that out of the way,
• 1:15:51
  or send it to a to a contest to see, you know, except
• 1:15:55
  the contest stake longer to get feedback back readers. I think the reading services
• 1:16:00
  good way to start. And then if you know, you may the reader
• 1:16:03
  will just tell you what's not working. Andy say, okay, it's not
• 1:16:05
  working, and they may tell you why. But a lot of them they
• 1:16:09
  don't tell you. And that's when you go to a consultant because the consultant
• 1:16:11
  will be able to kind of like go deeper and analyze why something is not
• 1:16:15
  working and tell you how to fix it. Right. So I consult as
• 1:16:17
  well, And it really depends on the consultant's knowledge of the craft. Right.
• 1:16:24
  So the more they know about the craft and know the more they know
• 1:16:26
  what works in the script and doesn't, they'll be able to help you.
• 1:16:30
  So that's what I would suggest. But take the time to write a great
• 1:16:32
  script. That's probably the biggest mistake I see writers make that they just market
• 1:16:38
  too soon, right, So that's the doors. Yeah, And where can
• 1:16:43
  people find out about you and your work? Just go to my website,
• 1:16:46
  Carli Glacis dot com. My books are the one on one habit of how
• 1:16:50
  successful screenwriters and the big one the writing for emotional impact, which is all
• 1:16:55
  the techniques that I talk about to create that emotional engagement in the audience.
• 1:17:00
  Feel that it is probably the key to the craft. Uh. That's also
• 1:17:03
  about one on Amazon and on my website and everywhere books are sold. But
• 1:17:09
  you can get all the information from my website. So carl Guisas dot com.
• 1:17:12
  Yeah, absolutely, And then we have some of your courses on indie
• 1:17:15
  film Hustle TV as well. Yeah, so we'll be able and they're great
• 1:17:18
  and I saw I want before I ever had the pleasure of meeting you,
• 1:17:21
  sir, I was taking that DVD course and reading that book. So thank
• 1:17:27
  you so much, Carl for all the work you've been doing to help the
• 1:17:29
  screenwriters. Ask my manager, I would love to talk about the craft and
• 1:17:31
  it's a pleasure. Thank you, Thank you, my friend. Thank you
• 1:17:35
  Carl again for coming back on the show and dropping the knowledge bombs on the
• 1:17:40
  bulletproof screenwriting tribe. I truly truly appreciate it, my friend, and I've
• 1:17:44
  partnered with Carl to bring you his screenwriting masterclass series on Indie Film Hustle TV,
• 1:17:51
  which includes how to craft dialogue, how to create themes, how to
• 1:17:57
  dig into plot, how to use some of the best habits that the biggest
• 1:18:01
  screenwriters in the world have, and much much more. And you can check
• 1:18:05
  all that out at indiefilm huscle dot com Forward Slash seven fifty seven and if
• 1:18:10
  you have it already, please head over to Filmmaking podcast dot com, subscribe
• 1:18:15
  and leave a good review for the show. It really helps us out a
• 1:18:18
  lot, guys. Thank you again so much. For listening. Guys,
• 1:18:20
  As always, keep that hustle going, keep that dream alive, Stay safe
• 1:18:25
  out there, and I'll talk to you. Thanks for listening to the Indie
• 1:18:27
  Film Hustle podcast at Indie Film hustle dot com. That's I N D I
• 1:18:31
  E F I L M h U S T l E dot com