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BPS 330: Inside the PIXAR Story Brain Trust with Rob Edwards · Bulletproof Screenwriting™ Podcast

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  You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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  podcasts, just go to IFH podcast network dot com. Welcome to the Bulletproof
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  Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number three thirty False when things change, I'll be happy
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  dark, windowless room in Hollywood when we really should be working on that next
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  screenwriting while teaching you how to make your screenplay bulletproof. And here's your host,
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  Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast.
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  Com. Enjoy this episode with guest host Scott McMahon. Okay, today's episode
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  I'm super excited by today. I have screenwriter Rob Edwards on It's Bonkers.
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  It's like over two hours long, but is just pack with such great information.
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  I wanted to dig deeper into one area that I have a particular interest
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  in. It's the Pixar Brain Trust storytelling meetings. So how does Rob fit
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  in? But here's a quick bio of Rob's work. Rob Grip and Detroit
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  moved out to Los Angeles and had an agreement with his dad that he would
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  find work in the industry within the first nine months he was there. Now
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  here's where Rob's hustle is on full display. Now this was back in the
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  mid nineteen eighties. He would call every production company in town and asked the
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  person on the other line if they wanted to hear a joke or a piece
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  of gossip. Most of the time, Rob was able to get a laugh
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  from them with his jokes, while those who picked the gossip would share even
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  juicier stories with Rob of their own. Now, all the people at these
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  production companies would ask what Rob wanted. Now, Rob didn't ask for anything
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  return, He just said that he would call back and let them know.
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  So when he calls back the people at these production companies they remembered him,
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  and when he asked for work, they were more inclined to hire him because
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  the fact that at least there would be a guy around the office who could
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  tell jokes all day. Robert worked these production gigs during the day and at
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  night write his scripts. Now the hustle paid off because he was eventually hired
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  as a writer for television before he was twenty one. Then that's crazy.
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  Since then, here are Rob's credits. He's been a writer on Full House,
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  in Living Color, The Fresh Prince of bel Air, which most of
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  the stories are based on his own experience while attending prep school in Detroit.
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  In fact, Rob went to the same school as Aaron Sorkin, who Rob
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  worked with on Studio sixty later on. Now, we didn't get a chance
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  to go into detail about working with Aaron Sorkin, but I do hope to
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  have Rob back again one day, so there's talk about more stories. You
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  know. Rob's work eventually landed him over at Disney, where he wrote Treasure
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  Planet and The Princess and the Frog. Rob was there at Disney when the
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  Pixar guys took over story development, and that is where we pick up the
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  story. I've always been fascinated by how Pixar continually knocks it out of the
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  park with their stories. In the book Creativity Inc. By Ed Catmill,
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  who was one of the founders of Pixar, explains how the development of this
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  brain trust group has been proven to be invaluable to the storytelling process for Pixar.
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  So I'm thinking, how does it work? What happens in those rooms
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  that is different than getting studio notes or working in a writer's room, and
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  now here today we need to find out because Rob worked firsthand in these brain
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  trust meetings for The Princess and the Frog. What I hope you get from
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  this episode is some real world strategies of how to make your stories better.
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  I mean, after all, it's not every day you get to sit in
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  on a Pixar storytelling meeting, So sit back and enjoy my conversation with Rob
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  edwords with the film Trooper. The goal was to try to help sort of
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  the uber independent filmmaker, the one that things have changed so much in the
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  filmmaking landscape. Obviously, you have the studio system, you have sort of
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  like the indie Hollywood like people that have one foot in the studio system and
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  put put in like the film international film market. And there's probably like ninety
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  percent of everybody now that has a camera and can edit movies on their laptop
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  right now. They've entered the scene. But there's a different sort of business
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  economics for them, and you know, we're just sort of discovering it.
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  And but at the core of all this is still telling a great story.
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  So because I also came from the video game world. For like twelve years,
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  I worked at Sony PlayStation and I was a cinematic supervisor there making you
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  know, movies for video games. But our department was considered fluff because at
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  the heart of all video games is the gameplay. So if movies and television
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  is, if story is king. Then in video games, gameplay is king
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  because you can have amazing graphics on your video game, but if it's sluggish,
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  if it's not fun to play, people put it aside. So I
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  wanted to if you would indulge me, just like, imagine this setup where
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  we have these uber independent filmmakers that they are learning the skill sets as a
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  filmmaker to shoot at it, you know, direct what it may be,
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  but we do see a lot of it fall short in terms of the storytelling
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  aspect of things. And with your history, with your experience, I'm really
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  curious about what you saw in the transition one working in writers rooms, working
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  in collaboratively, but then on top of that working with Disney, especially on
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  that transition when Pixar you know, came in, And I would really love
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  to know more about could you take us through a little journey of like how
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  the brain trust meetings work or because if if what I'm trying to do is
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  if there's something there, there's these nuggets there that we can then identify and
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  say, Okay, so if you're like an uber independent filmmaker and you're writing
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  your story right now, how can you simulate on your own by we were
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  talking about the accountability group, you know or masterminds. Could you create something
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  like that that's very specific to creating your own version of a brain trust group?
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  And if so, would be those inner workings that that we could apply
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  that'd be like, oh, like, how do you get in a room
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  where people can be free to be have candor without being consulting you know exactly?
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  Well, that's see, that's the thing I mean, the question is
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  is kind of the answer because it's that is the for me at at Disney
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  Pixar, I saw the pre John Lasseter Disney, you know, with Treasure
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  Planet. That was all you know, the old regime where there were levels,
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  levels after levels of middle management and uh and everybody, and you know,
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  sometimes a note would come down from on high, you know whatever,
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  and it would get some something simple like somebody would just read something and say,
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  hey, I wonder if we could do this, and then middle management
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  would just pound us and say this has to happen. You know, there's
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  no you know, uh, there is no other version. And we would
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  look at it and we would say, hey, look we tried this.
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  It doesn't work. It makes the movie bad. And they would say,
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  no, we got this note and you have to do it. And then
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  we would do it and it would go back to the person, you know,
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  the voice on high and he would say, what is this? This
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  is this is crap. They said, well, this was your note.
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  This isn't you know this addresses your note? Like no, no, no,
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  that was just a thought. You know, that didn't work. You
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  should have thrown it out. And that's what you know, middle management kind
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  of does to kill you. What's great about the brain Trust is that it's
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  it's too one is I'll say, the impossible part of it. We'll start
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  there. The impossible part of it is you're never going to find yourself in
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  a room with Brad Bird and you know, Anderson, the doctor, Bobby,
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  and that these guys are gonna say, hey, it's very important that
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  your movie is good, you know, and we'll invest in it with with
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  an artist's heart. And you know, that's very tough. Having said that,
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  you can construct rooms of filming before they were Pisarre, there were just
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  a bunch of guys who almost got shut down, you know. For Toy
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  Story, Toy Story was a mess. The first draft of Toy Story,
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  the first version, first set of reels of Toy story was a mess.
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  What he's yelling at everybody? You know, everybody was cowering in fear.
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  It was the most by their admission, the most unlikable film ever. And
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  then uh what what what Pete Peyton Bob said was that Pete doctor I said
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  that Andrew Setton kind of went into a room and figured it out. You
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  know, he went into a room with all of the texts, you know,
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  the Doc Truby whatever and Robert McKee and all the notes that they had
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  had from everything, along with his own thoughts about you know, movies that
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  he'd like, the notes that they had gotten. You know, why wasn't
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  picks, why it wasn't toy story working. We'll be right back after a
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  word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. And how had
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  they arrived at this place where even Steve Jobs was saying like, okay,
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  guys, maybe it's maybe this isn't maybe this isn't the right the right fit.
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  And he came out and said, I got it. It needs to
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  be this and this and this and those are the rules that you always see,
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  you know, in their ted talks and that you know of of what
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  they do, which they frequently break By the way, guys, in every
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  movie they have happy villages. They just don't call the happy villages. There
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  is a you know, there is an I want song. Everybody has to
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  state what it is they want. But those rules, basically what they do
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  is they enforce the rules and the way that the the the brain Trust works.
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  At least what I saw is that they start off. What you don't
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  get that you do get sometimes from your buddies is hey, a great movie.
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  Yeah, and that's that's the worst thing in the world. You know,
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  it's just it's the the uh, I would say, savagery of low
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  expectations. This is very good. Yes, don't change a word of it.
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  That's awful. What you say is, okay, what is the biggest
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  problem? That's where That's where andrewsand would usually start. So, okay,
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  what is the biggest problem. Let's start there, and then let's let those
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  things filter down because some of the smaller problems that people have may be things
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  that started with the bigger problems. When you see when you say a big
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  problem, is that the actual what's the biggest problem of the story not working?
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  Or what is the biggest problem in the story, or like, what
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  is the protagonist's problem. The biggest problem with the story not working. Okay,
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  and it and it is it is. Your buddy will say, oh,
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  it works, it just needs this a the brain trust says it's not
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  working. You know, the the the the default is it doesn't work.
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  These movies just don't work, you know. And if they are, if
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  they're good, it's still not good enough. You know, they're not great.
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  They're not everybody's favorite movie. You're not gonna you're not gonna turnstile.
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  You know, you're not gonna leave the theater, buy a ticket and come
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  right back in. Yeah. Yet, especially in the first second draft,
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  a lot of people will stop there. That's a that's a major problem.
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  I see a lot is it. Writers will say they'll do a draft or
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  two and they'll say, oh, great, you know this is good.
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  It all works, and then they'll stop. You can't. You have to
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  say, okay, well what you have to plus it? You have to
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  say, Okay, what's the next level of this? You know, we
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  have a really great uh eddemole has a has a has a great scene.
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  She's auditioning the costumes for the New Incredibles. Okay, that's fine, but
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  what's the next level of it. You know, oh great, let's put
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  her on a chair and the tier goes back and forth and we have everything,
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  you know, we show everything as it's happening. Okay, awesome,
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  you know. Now it's plus you know, and then can you plus it
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  even more the reactions to it all that kind of stuff, because yeah,
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  I'm sorry, that's definitely like a flaw within like this world of the uber
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  independent, like they kind of work a script a little bit, but they
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  just get it too good enough. They're like, I think I can make
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  this right, right, right exactly, you know, and you can make
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  it. Really, you can make anything. And sometimes that's the best thing
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  a professional can do for you is just say, okay, this, you
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  can make this. This is fine. You know, you can roll the
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  cameras, it'll all, it'll all shoot well, but you're gonna get creamed
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  by the by the critics. You know. You're it's good enough for forty
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  four percent ripe tomato, you know, but you're not going to get that
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  ninety nine unless you super super push it. And especially with independent films,
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  there are fantastic independent films, and then there are some that you just say
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  like, oh, you know, I can yeah that when they when your
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  friends send you the links. Yeah, yeah, everybody knows you watch it.
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  It takes you four four times to get all the way through it because
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  you're just kind of like, okay, well this is this is okay,
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  but nothing is really gripping, you know, getting me gripped to the screen.
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  On the other hand, you'll see, like you know, the Marvel
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  films, the new you know, the new Marvel films, the obviously the
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  Pixar films, films that are well told. They drive you. You know,
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  you instantly have a character that you understand that you really want them to
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  achieve their goals, and then the opposition is just monumental. And then you're
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  just watching them be clever and cool and and wonderful and make their way through
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  the story. Yeah, well then that is that is a school of storytelling.
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  And the way that you get to that is that thing where you know,
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  somebody at the table, hopefully everyone at the table, says, look,
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  let's start with protagonists. What does the protagonist want and how much do
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  they want it? Straight up? You know, first question. I'll see
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  dozens of scripts, stacks and stacks of scripts, and I'll ask thembut I'm
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  twenty pages into this, I can't tell who you know, what the protagonist
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  wants. If I can tell who the protagonist is, I can't tell what
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  they want. And that just sucks. You know. That means you know
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  you have terrible friends read your script, you know with any honesty and told
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  you you know, look, it is a chore to turn the pages of
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  the script. Can I ask you with the I know that you know obviously
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  Pixar Disney is and it is animation. And in the pitch process, like
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  when the brain Trust group comes together, is it just is the initial meeting
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  just the script phase or do they come like here's the script phase with some
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  storyboards or you know, they put up a board and somebody acts it out,
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  or like how does the how does the other members acquire the story or
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  is it presented to them or do they actually read a script come into the
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  meeting? And I guess the second part of the question, is there like
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  a moderator, is you know right? Or is it more of a loose
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  like all right, everybody, this is a story we're making, you know,
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  Rob's news story. He's the director on it. We read the script
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  or we've seen the pitch, are ready for their pitch, or like,
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  how does that? How does the room work? Then I'm just curious because
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  if I'm going to do something like on an uper independent level, should I
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  come to the table with some storyboards and present it as much as possible.
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  I'm I'm just trying to figure out how I can the best I can to
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  simulate what they're doing in the brainch Yeah exactly, Yeah, well Anderson has
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  those things is be be wrong as early as possible. You're gonna be wrong,
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  you know, It's and again that's always the assumption. It is broken.
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  It was broken until the last possible second. And even Ron Clements and
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  John Musker, Yeah, you know Princes the Frog and your planet, yeah
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  planet, and you know, uh a little thing called Little Mermaid, a
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  little thing that those guys what Don Hall, the head of story He would
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  say, they like to leave the paint wet, meaning that you're always developing,
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  You're always you're always coming up with ideas. You're leaving that door open
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  for that new, wonderful idea to come in. Even when I was working
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  with Aaron Sorkin on Studio sixty, he would we would talk about Yo.
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  It was kind of a paperless office. You know, you don't write it
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  down, don't lock any idea down. It's just you're just talking out stuff.
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  So when you start off with with with with John Lasseter and I was
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  working on a project called King of the Elves, was based on a Philip
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  K. Dick short story. Okay, And what you do is you start
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  talking about who are the main character is going to be? You know,
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  And in this case it was kind of like I wanted to just for me
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  as a writer, I wanted to address some of what I was going through
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  with my I have two sons and and just this idea of what is it
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  What are you looking for a son to do? When do you know that
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  a son has is ready to go off to college, is ready to you
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  know, has become a man. You know, as a father, you're
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  always searching around for stuff. You're trying to figure out fatherhood as you go.
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  And so what is it? You know, what is that look that
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  you want to see in your son's eyes that says I'm ready? And how
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  do you get there? There? And can we do that? In the
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  in the in the course of this this story, which is essentially about these
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  sides, which is essentially about these uh elves and this guy who essentially inherits
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  and inherits this elf world. So yeah, so so so you start there,
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  Okay, well these are this is the emotional palette. This is what
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  I think is is going to be fun. Let me kill that thing.
• 18:41
  Sure, sure, go ahead, Sorry about that, you want to clean?
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  Where did I start? We're talking about your You're working a story about
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  you have two boys, but you know, when do you get that moment?
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  How do you how do you capture that moment when it's in their eyes
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  that they're ready for manhood, are ready to leave the nest or whatnot?
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  Yeah? Exactly, yeah, and so yeah, so for me, that's
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  what I was exploring. That's just what I'm exploring in life. And I
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  thought, okay, this is a great way to to to write it and
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  kind of you know, share it with people. I'll have a lot of
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  insights on it. It'll it'll be informative to me. It'll be a movie
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  that I would want to watch. Which start And then I was talking to
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  John about it and John said, oh, man, my son is sixteen
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  two, and there's this look they give you and and everything. We just
• 19:25
  started sharing stories about you know, just how do you get through to them?
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  And what do you give them? And you know, just how do
• 19:33
  you raise a boy? And we're sharing the story, shared story, shared
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  stories here, and I said, okay, excellent, I know, I
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  know what I'm going to do. So I go off from that basic conversation
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  because I know, okay, good, he's an audience I'm an audience member.
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  And that's another one of the Andrew Stanton Yeah that I cling to,
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  which is a film goer first, a film maker second. So I go
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  I set out to look at the story, which is very light. We'll
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  be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the
• 20:06
  show, and say, okay, what can I do? Basically, how
• 20:11
  can I get a rise out of John? You know, I'm gonna story
• 20:15
  what I do is going to get a rise out of John. What are
• 20:17
  going to be those real, great, honest moments that we can do?
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  So I go through what we know story team. We we kind of plot
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  and there's it's fantastical and it's all kinds of stuff, but at its core
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  it's got this really great emotional emotion to it, just like Princess and Froger
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  and Evos. Yeah, yeah, and and then and then you are pitching
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  kind of a wall of drawings. Uh, you know, first act is
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  on one wall. Actually second act is on it, so on two walls,
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  and then the third act is on the is on the next wall,
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  you know, because for a second act is always in two parts of two
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  yeah, with the midpoint and then uh you know. And and it's funny
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  because John will and I use this method all the time. John walks in
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  and he goes third act, he walks right up to it and he's,
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  Okay, where's that moment? You say, well, you know it's it's
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  there. And what he's looking for is what's the epiphany? What's that little
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  thing you know, where the the uh where you know where he is going
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  to turn into a star or when you know the both Tiana and Vine are
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  going to decide, you know, to uh that there to trade their journey
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  for their relationship all the things they want. What is that? What is
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  that moment? Like in yeah, in every you know, when when Luke
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  I was you know, when when Luke chooses the you know, the force
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  over the over the right, you know, what is that and what is
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  the and then you go back and you say okay, great, well,
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  what are the elements I need to tell? That's that story. And so
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  he's looking at that point at the mechanics, and then you go through it.
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  You pitch it once he's once he has bought off on that that moment
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  working great, Oh yeah, I can see that. I can see crying
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  at that moment. Then you go back and he says okay, you know,
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  he sits down in his chair and he says, okay, Act one,
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  Scene one, A flaming qualifier comes in from space and whatever, and
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  you're trying to give it as good a look as you can. Yeah,
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  you know, it doesn't help you to soft sell a pitch, you know,
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  even if it is rough, even if you just have little heads with
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  smiley faces on it. Yeah, you pitch it. You know, it's
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  your favorite movie. So you're you're you're going with it, going with it,
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  going with it, you sell out and go and then he says,
• 22:41
  okay, great, I see it got slow here, it got slow here
• 22:44
  whatever, I bought off on the ending. But and then you start doing
• 22:48
  your story map right, if you're gonna if you're gonna have Luke use the
• 22:52
  force to sell, you know, to to shoot down the desk Star.
• 22:56
  There should be a scene in the middle of the movie where he realizes that
• 23:00
  the force is stronger than, you know, than than just any mechanical concerns.
• 23:03
  What if we put a helmet on him or something some oraculous happen and
• 23:07
  then that'll be that And then how do we get him there? Well?
• 23:11
  Okay, cool? He should be a kid who wants to I don't know,
• 23:15
  he wants adventure. And how many of these movies start with, you
• 23:19
  know, I want I want to live more than the provincial life, or
• 23:22
  I want to you know whatever. Yeah, looking out of the window,
• 23:26
  Harry Potter wanting something, you know, something better than living under the stairs
• 23:30
  exactly, and you know, uh where Poe is looking at his his shelf
• 23:34
  full of things going on? Oh man, it would be so awesome to
• 23:37
  be a kung fu master o'neo looking, you know, seeing the rabbit.
• 23:42
  You know that that that there's that call and then you say no, you
• 23:48
  know because again just whatever, jump on the thing. You have to say
• 23:52
  no to that call. And then you go through, like I say,
• 23:55
  the story math. What's going to get him into the second act? How
• 23:57
  is he locked in? Well, Luke, you're going to burn down his
• 24:00
  family. His family's anything keeping him in this world, his uncle who says,
• 24:04
  no, you're gonna sit here, you know, drink green milk and
• 24:07
  be a good boy. And and so you burn that down because Luke's first
• 24:14
  intention is just to is just to get the old man to the bar and
• 24:22
  be done with you know, look, I'll get to that far, but
• 24:23
  you know, you're all this other stuff is crazy talk and h and by
• 24:29
  the time he gets to the bar, he's kind of in it. And
• 24:32
  and then off they go. I'm the adventure or whatever, you know,
• 24:34
  And the first part of the adventure is is impossible because the planet has been
• 24:41
  destroyed. And then you're just going getting him deeper and deeper into it.
• 24:45
  All you're doing is looking at that endpoint, like when is he completely bought
• 24:49
  it? When is he going to sacrifice his life, take on this his
• 24:53
  role as you know, jetmaster and whatever and embrace the ways of the fourth
• 24:59
  Yeah, of course that's the whole thing. And you're gonna make it difficult
• 25:03
  for him all along the way. You're going to build up the opposition as
• 25:07
  much as you can. So going back to the brain trust, those are
• 25:14
  the elements you're looking at it and you're saying, Okay, you're telling this
• 25:18
  type of story. And a lot of times it's a straight up film theory.
• 25:22
  I don't know if you're a film student or whatever, but all you
• 25:25
  do in film school it is wonderful is you watch a ton of movie and
• 25:30
  watching old musicals, You're watching whatever. You know. For me, when
• 25:33
  I start a movie, I'll go, you know, I'm gonna watch every
• 25:37
  spaghetti western that ever was boom, you know, and I'll just I'll just
• 25:41
  go through my Netflix quew is just you know, just budding with stuff.
• 25:44
  I'm gonna watch every kung fu movie, every crazy kung fu movie that I
• 25:49
  can find, and I'll just go through every single everything, single weird one.
• 25:55
  I'll do all of my research. I'll just kind of become in bett,
• 25:57
  you know, just completely embedded in this stuff. Let it seep into
• 26:02
  my DNA, and then I really and then I'll see the matrix. I'll
• 26:04
  see, Okay, this is how these types of stories are told. If
• 26:07
  I can stay on this path, I think I'll be fine. And I
• 26:12
  think also I'll be satisfying the audience that that enjoys this type of movie.
• 26:21
  So yeah, and then off I go. Then I know, like I'm
• 26:27
  working on a project right now, there's the airport for yeah, a studio,
• 26:33
  I'll say studio. Yeah, but it's you know, completely mainstream.
• 26:37
  But it's one of the things I said was was the audience has seen a
• 26:45
  ton of movies like this and and the uh it's in the category of the
• 26:53
  of like Maze Runner and Insurgent and those kind of things, and the audience
• 27:00
  of that of that genre is often like they're really super skeptical, you know,
• 27:06
  if you if you show them like what is it? There's a ton
• 27:08
  of these kind of Percy and those things. You know, there are a
• 27:11
  bunch of these movies that come out and the audience has never absorbed, you
• 27:15
  know, just never takes them in. And then you're done. And so
• 27:19
  there are things that you need to do. There are tropes that they want
• 27:22
  to see, but they don't want to see the same tropes as they've seen
• 27:25
  in the other movies. So you have to mess with them and mess with
• 27:29
  them in a very clever way. So that it said an very early signal
• 27:33
  that Okay, this is cool, you know, forget your popcorn, lean
• 27:36
  in and enjoy the movie. Yeah, that's the plussing. That's the extra
• 27:41
  extra extra right, and hopefully, like a bad room would be a room
• 27:47
  full of people who don't all like making the same kind of movies. You
• 27:51
  know, they're going to pull you in every direction. Good. You know,
• 27:55
  you go into Marvel and all those guys have read every single comic book,
• 28:00
  throw off a reference. They will all go, oh, yeah,
• 28:03
  and this, and then you could do this, and then the room just
• 28:08
  explodes with everything, you know, all the minutia. Everybody will go,
• 28:12
  you know what's great about that issue? Was this and this and this happened.
• 28:15
  No, here's what I think. I think this is what made it
• 28:18
  great. But this, you know, this episode and this, this issue
• 28:22
  and this issue didn't do well because of this, and everybody will have their
• 28:26
  theory and great, if you can move towards this and away from that,
• 28:30
  you'll be fine. And that's generally what happens in those brain trust meetums is
• 28:36
  it's a yes and kind of table. That is that is literally the same
• 28:41
  principles of improv yes exactly. The whole teaching is an actor will give you
• 28:48
  something and the other actor has to say yes and yes. Literally, that's
• 28:53
  what it is. Act I act up here in Portland, so you know,
• 29:00
  just for my acting friends and stuff like that. So it's one of
• 29:03
  those things that's funny that you brought that up. Yeah, do more of
• 29:07
  that because it becomes for me. Yeah. I did a lot of improv
• 29:11
  in college, and I did some instand up as well, and improv.
• 29:15
  Yeah, after and even in my stand up I would leave. I'd always
• 29:22
  i'd consider it in quarters, right, I would do my introductions and kind
• 29:27
  of get everybody into like, this is who I am, this is where
• 29:30
  my comedy is going to come from, guys, so get you to it.
• 29:34
  Yeah, exactly ten jokes in this area, and then I would kind
• 29:38
  of like, Okay, now that we're friends, now that we know each
• 29:41
  other, here we go. You know, we're gonna go and go into
• 29:44
  this. And then third quarter I would just kind of kick back and I'd
• 29:47
  say, hey, let's talk about something, and I would just riff and
• 29:51
  and you know, I would just I would ask the audience a question or
• 29:55
  else, you know, or whatever, and I would just go on whatever
• 29:59
  I was given. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 30:07
  and now back to the show. Just lean into it and fly and then
• 30:12
  i'd of course wrap it up with some you know, some stuff that was
• 30:15
  money night and you know whatever, drop the mic and take off. But
• 30:21
  that that and and frankly, it's also the same kind of thing that happens
• 30:25
  in a TV room, like you had mentioned before, you know, in
• 30:27
  sitcom rooms, that's exactly what happens, because literally you cannot afford in a
• 30:34
  sitcom room for somebody to go yeah, I don't know, you know.
• 30:37
  So when I was running tables, I would always say buy it or beat
• 30:41
  it, you know, being okay, there's an idea on the table that
• 30:47
  I believe to be very good. If you think of a better idea,
• 30:52
  pitch it now. Otherwise we're going to build off of the idea we have,
• 30:56
  but we're not going to spend an hour and a half just kind of
• 30:59
  shooting, you know, just telling everybody why it's a bad idea. So
• 31:03
  so it winds up being really really great. So that's exactly what you find
• 31:07
  in the pis room. Somebody will say, well what if? You know,
• 31:11
  that's the first thing. What if? And anytime anybody says what if
• 31:15
  and whatever, the room gets really quiet. Even if you have even if
• 31:18
  you have your own what if you're like, okay, great, I'm just
• 31:21
  gonna get in line. Yeah, what if we turn the whole thing upside
• 31:26
  down and this happens, and then this happens, and instead of everybody going
• 31:30
  oh, shut up, you go, okay, if that happens, then
• 31:34
  this would also happen, and this and this, and then this would happen
• 31:40
  and this and this. All the energy winds up around that that idea.
• 31:45
  Boom boom boom, and you're just building a mountain off this idea, and
• 31:47
  hey, you know what's a great sequence with that? You can do this
• 31:48
  and this and this, and then somebody else will say, hey, and
• 31:52
  that will fix this scene because you can do this instead, and they'll start
• 31:55
  pitching the dialogue and everybody were cracking out the jokes and all that. And
• 31:57
  then sometimes you get to the top of that of that mountain and you go,
• 32:02
  I don't know, built this whole thing, and you say it's good,
• 32:08
  but it's not necessarily better than what we had before, or it's good,
• 32:13
  but it's a whole other movie or whatever, and then it gets quiet
• 32:16
  and everybody digests what we had, and then the next person says, well
• 32:21
  what about this? Boom? And then you start, you build again,
• 32:23
  same energy and everything. Everybody gets into everything. There is no there is
• 32:30
  some negative and because some people will say, ah, you know, we
• 32:32
  tried that and blah blah blah blah blah. But if you were going to
• 32:36
  make it work, here's what you would do. I say. So everybody
• 32:39
  is looking at it in terms of they're making the movie and that you get
• 32:45
  too, which is you know, uh, which I think is wonderful because
• 32:49
  Brad Bird is going to have a different idea in his head and Pete Doctor,
• 32:52
  Yeah, and Pete Doctor is going to have a different one than than
• 32:54
  Mark, you know, than than even even John. And John's gonna have
• 33:00
  you you know whatever, and everybody's gonna it's an orchestra, right. So
• 33:05
  John is, John's got a big heart at John's or whatever, and he's
• 33:10
  he's a big kids who he's gonna love the you know, a big block
• 33:14
  scene. Uh, Andrew is looking to make sure it's you know, you're
• 33:19
  checking the boxes. Uh, Pete's got you know, Pete's got his take.
• 33:23
  You know, Brad's a cowboy, you know, he he's he's doing
• 33:28
  his thing. And uh and in that symphony, you have like, Okay,
• 33:32
  great this is this wonderful set of ideas. Even what is it?
• 33:39
  Michael, Arn't you know who wrote to you know, a little sunshine?
• 33:44
  He comes in and he I love the way he thinks because he thinks a
• 33:49
  lot like me. I'm a I'm a structured guy. Uh. You know
• 33:52
  when when I when I started doing sitcoms, there were two rooms, were
• 33:57
  three rooms. There was there was the room of guys who would think about
• 33:59
  the stories. There was story guys, you know, who would who would
• 34:04
  as you were breaking the story, they would sit down and say, well,
• 34:07
  it should be this and then this and then this, you know,
• 34:08
  and just plot out the plot out the story, knowing where the jokes were
• 34:13
  going to come. And then we would invite a larger group in and then
• 34:16
  those would be the joke guys would come in and say oh yeah, and
• 34:20
  then this and this. You know, they would have great dialogue. And
• 34:23
  I saw very early, you know, they were like, well, which
• 34:25
  room do you want to be? And I was like, I want to
• 34:28
  be in the room with the exect producer, you know, And that's the
• 34:31
  story room that those guys seem to be. Those guys are working all the
• 34:36
  time, and those guys anytime stuff was wrong, they would kick the joke
• 34:39
  guys out of the room, and a very small group of story guys would
• 34:43
  work would work through it. And story guys where the guys who would hold
• 34:47
  the pencil, meaning they would make the last decision. They would write down
• 34:52
  whatever the choice was. And and so I like that a lot. And
• 34:57
  even now as I'm working in chers and stuff, it's always the story guys
• 35:02
  who are kind of called in when things are really wrong. They'll say,
• 35:07
  okay, please help us, you know what's wrong with it, and you
• 35:10
  go in with your toolbox, unmotivated character. The third act moment doesn't work,
• 35:15
  Let's build back from that. What are the values that we're doing here
• 35:21
  and go through And before I go to the I just want to kind of
• 35:24
  recap sure, like make sure I'm I'm grabbing the essence of everything you're talking
• 35:29
  about. There's it sounds like there's a little bit of a I think your
• 35:32
  cable might be hitting I think it's hitting my shirt. So okay, yeah,
• 35:37
  you get you get a little story just you and I. Yeah,
• 35:39
  they go, okay, good, is it going clean? Clan clean?
• 35:42
  Yeah? Yeah, yeah, man, is that's not too bad? It's
• 35:45
  but I just it's such great information you have and it's just you and I
• 35:49
  on the video, so it's all good. Look like a prison shirt or
• 35:57
  hopefully that's perfect. So the well we can what I can gather from here
• 36:02
  is I like this concept of one make sure that the room that you create,
• 36:07
  the group that you create, if you're going to create your own brain
• 36:09
  trust group, you know, if you're writing a horror genre, you know,
• 36:15
  make sure you have people that like it, that helps have studied up
• 36:20
  on it. Yeah, exactly, that know that know the genre that no
• 36:22
  the tropes that have a passion for it, that that can gel with you
• 36:27
  as well as I like this idea that you start from the b end what
• 36:30
  is that one thing or just have that conversation, like what is the one
• 36:34
  thing you want on this film? The story? Is it the moment?
• 36:37
  What does that magic moment, that third act moment that makes it the payoff
• 36:40
  all worth it? And then reverse engineer go back from the beginning and work
• 36:45
  towards that. I like all that. I love this that little note you
• 36:47
  gave about the second act the midpoint of like, if the payoff and the
• 36:51
  third act, then that magic movie moment is it works? You have to
• 36:55
  give us a little taste of in the midpoint, which is great, you
• 36:59
  know, and it totally makes sense. But then obviously the people that you
• 37:01
  put together have to know, you know, their story structure or you know
• 37:07
  that they're just their film geeks or other filmmakers themselves that are have an opportunity
• 37:13
  to contribute to the storytelling process where you know, we all seem to do
• 37:17
  it. Anyway, after we watch a movie, we're like, why didn't
• 37:20
  not work? You know, like I think my wife, My wife and
• 37:22
  I just rewatched the remake of Poltergeist last night and were huge fans of the
• 37:29
  first one. I mean watched that many times over and seeing what happened,
• 37:32
  you know, our own analysis of taking away. And it's interesting the conversation
• 37:37
  you have just saying why why didn't it work? Because you're trying to figure
• 37:42
  out like what's gut wise, what's what's what's something's off? Whyden? Is
• 37:45
  it not working for us? And I think it was. I think it
• 37:47
  was like it took an hour, like originally a two hour movie into an
• 37:51
  hour and a half, and it was like go time from the beginning,
• 37:53
  like there was no one. It was just like bang bang bang, there
• 37:57
  was no time to catch your breath, and it it definitely felt rushed than
• 38:00
  all the wonderful cinematic you know, vision visions of the stuff. But it
• 38:07
  was there's some soul aspect missing. I think. See that's the thing.
• 38:12
  Because that and because I was going to ask you, okay, what what
• 38:15
  what did you think was was was missing? So in what part of the
• 38:19
  movie do you think it was missing from? If you if your conclusion was
• 38:22
  that it was soulless, and we and we're in the brain Trust meeting right
• 38:27
  now, so yea, yeah, yeah, this conclusion was that Polter Guys
• 38:30
  was souless? Where how do you fix that? Where? What? What?
• 38:34
  What had they taken out? Because you have in this case, it's
• 38:37
  empirical, right, you have a movie that works and a movie does not
• 38:39
  that does not work. That are the exact that are supposed to be the
• 38:44
  exact same movie, right, so you can kind of look at them side
• 38:46
  by side, you know. And I'm notorious for this. I'll get iTunes
• 38:51
  and I'll just i will watch five minutes of one movie, five minutes of
• 38:53
  another movie, the next five minutes of the next, and I'll just I'll
• 38:58
  completely go go through because a lot of movies will have If you watch Point
• 39:04
  Break and Fast and Furious, they're the exact same movie, right, and
• 39:07
  they will tell you they're the exact same movie, and uh, every you
• 39:15
  know, in every way you know, and and so the question is,
• 39:19
  okay, great, will those two work now? Now this one? Okay
• 39:22
  great? So so we're back to it's soulless. That's our problem. Where
• 39:27
  did that come from? Definitely? I think from watching the remake and being
• 39:34
  a fan, like you said, being so well versed in the first one
• 39:37
  and seeing it many times over. You know all the nuances, you know
• 39:39
  all the scenes, but mostly from the from it was there's a sense of
• 39:45
  wonderment and awe and sort of respect for this, this deeper conversation about the
• 39:51
  paranormal that was existed in the first one. We'll be right back after a
• 39:57
  word from our sponsor, and now back to the show again. We're talking
• 40:06
  about somebody remaking Spielberg exactly. Yeah, but Spielberg's got a bag of tricks
• 40:14
  that is very interesting. And when I look at Spielberg, I always look
• 40:16
  at man. I just had this conversation with Spielberg himself. Well, his
• 40:25
  daughter went to school with my son. So it was okay, it's kind
• 40:28
  of fun. You know. We got and and his and his other son
• 40:32
  too, karate class with my older son. So wow, okay, so
• 40:37
  it's just all this cross ower. But but we never like, hey,
• 40:40
  tell me about Jaws or whatever. But I did get a chance to meet
• 40:44
  the writer of Jaws, I said, Jenner with him a couple of months
• 40:46
  ago, and and we were talking just about those things of Manucia, of
• 40:52
  all of that stuff. And when I look at Spielberg, I always look
• 40:57
  at when I'm analyzing a filmmaker, the first couple of films, the first
• 41:00
  two films. I may have mentioned this failure, but that that that I
• 41:05
  always look at them when they're in their infancy, when they're trying to put
• 41:08
  together their bag of tricks, and then I try to find what is their
• 41:12
  worst film. And for Spielberg, it's nineteen forty one right there. And
• 41:16
  in nineteen forty one he is doing he's showing his bag of tricks, but
• 41:22
  he's doing everything wrong. And you can tell like, oh, this is
• 41:27
  what he what he does great, everything that he does great in the in
• 41:31
  the first couple of movies, he does really poorly. Here and everything that
• 41:36
  he did great like an Et. And this gets to the answer of what
• 41:39
  I was digging at with the two Poulter guys is that it's the first act.
• 41:45
  It's a first act problem that that you when you buy into something emotionally,
• 41:50
  it's if you don't feel it emotionally, it's because when we met those
• 41:53
  people, we didn't care about them exactly. You know, if it's a
• 41:57
  roller coaster ride, if if they're thinking, well, the best thing about
• 42:00
  we told you guys is the little girl gets sucked into the TV and whatever,
• 42:02
  there's a closet and all that stuff like that is not the best thing.
• 42:07
  It's about this family. It's about this guy who is who is you
• 42:10
  know, has moved his family into this into this new environment. He's worried
• 42:15
  that there is something wrong with the area. There's this drumbeat of weird things
• 42:21
  that have been happening around the area, and you're filling in the character.
• 42:25
  It's like it's like Jaws, It's like Et. It's everything. The conversation
• 42:30
  that they have at at breakfast in ET before ET shows up is the most
• 42:38
  important conversation you have. Yeah, I remember in Princess and the Frog,
• 42:44
  there was this whole thing of we were just we're trying to get them into
• 42:49
  the body as quickly as possible. And the note we kept getting back in
• 42:53
  the brain trust, because that's the other part of the brain trust, right,
• 42:55
  is you screen the movie. You're showing the movie to a lot of
• 42:59
  people, and they're giving you notes back. Everybody in the building, everybody
• 43:02
  at Disney, everybody a Pixar. You get reams of notes. Uh,
• 43:08
  I didn't think, you know, this is a problem, this is a
• 43:10
  problem. This is a problem. And then they put the notes into sections,
• 43:15
  so someone's about you know, the main character, or something about you
• 43:17
  know, the story itself. And then we were getting all these notes.
• 43:22
  I you know, the story seems funny. I just don't care. I
• 43:25
  don't care about the journey. Yeah, And I said, well that's the
• 43:29
  first act problem. Same thing. And you didn't care because she wanted to
• 43:34
  have a restaurant, but you didn't care why she wanted to have a restaurant.
• 43:37
  So I said, well, hey, I saw this drawing of a
• 43:40
  dad. I love this story. Yeah, yeah, this keep going on.
• 43:44
  This is a great done. I don't want there was a dad picture
• 43:47
  of drawing of a dad and Basically, they were trying to figure out what
• 43:50
  the mom looked like. So they had drawn a dad just to figure out,
• 43:53
  you know, what were the features that that Tiana had gotten from both
• 43:57
  of her parents, and then that would be the mom. And there was
• 44:00
  this a drawing and I asked the character designer, what you know, what
• 44:05
  is this like? Oh, we explained it, and I said, well
• 44:07
  this is Can I borrow this? And I took it back into the room.
• 44:09
  I said, this guy is the most important person in the movie because
• 44:14
  daughters, that relationship between daughters and fathers, and we've been looking driving so
• 44:20
  hard to have a person to have an emotional reason why she wants to have
• 44:24
  this restaurant. Why not? Why can't it be the daughter the dream of
• 44:29
  a daughter and her father, and and that the legacy of that once the
• 44:34
  father passes away, she wants to continue that dream. And then there is
• 44:42
  no way the thing can't have emotion. It's a woman holding you know,
• 44:50
  it's it's what they did in up right the house at a certain point becomes
• 44:53
  you know that Karl is trying to continue the dream that he had with his
• 44:58
  with his wife. That's that's the And I could mention probably fifty other movies
• 45:04
  that are fueled with that kind of emotion. There is a reason why we
• 45:07
  tell stories in that way. And so once that happened, it was a
• 45:12
  tiny adjustment. It was about three pages and in the beginning of the movie,
• 45:16
  and everybody said, wow, what did you do? Did you rewrite
• 45:19
  the entire movie? Like, no, we just gave every time, you
• 45:22
  know, she says the word restaurant, you know what it means. And
• 45:27
  I had to hit it. I think in the middle, at the midpoint,
• 45:30
  when they're right before they dance, and then at the end when they're
• 45:34
  on the riverboat and they're looking looking out at the restaurant itself, and it's
• 45:38
  what gets Navine to back off. He wants to proposed to her, and
• 45:44
  it has such huge emotional weight that it's like, Okay, great, my
• 45:46
  job here, My job here has done the mechanics. The rest of the
• 45:50
  mechanics of the storytelling were I don't want to say inconsequential, but they were
• 45:55
  less consequential because we had launched the story correctly. You watch a movie like
• 46:00
  Man on Fire, they spent a ton of time. I don't think anybody
• 46:05
  dies until the midpoint of that movie. Yeah. The whole movie is about
• 46:07
  this broken guy's love for this little girl and how this girl redeems has his
• 46:15
  soul and makes him, stops him from committing suicide. Yeah, you know,
• 46:21
  the bullet doesn't go off. There is something, you know, the
• 46:23
  god of the story has a larger plan for this guy, and it's about
• 46:28
  this. It's about this relationship with this little girl. And you know,
• 46:32
  he starts coaching her about you know, don't be afraid of the gun and
• 46:37
  all that, and and they have this wonderful, wonderful relationship. So at
• 46:40
  the point when she's kidnapped, you're like, oh no, yeah, go
• 46:46
  down, because now this guy has license. You know, he is he
• 46:52
  is fired up. And if you look at I'm sorry when I say last
• 46:55
  example, but if you look at Taken, Taken follows the exact same model.
• 47:00
  That girl doesn't get kidnapped. Chill deep into that movie yet heartbreak,
• 47:05
  heartbreak, the pony versus the you know, karaoke machine, all of those
• 47:08
  scenes. If you're looking at it from an executive standpoint, you'll think,
• 47:13
  oh god, you know the movie is really about it. It's a shoot
• 47:15
  them up, and why is it taking sixty minutes before the guy fire is
• 47:21
  the first shot. You know, well, like, can't we just condense
• 47:23
  this and you have to as a writer, as an artist, say no,
• 47:29
  people don't watch buildings burn. They watch people saving the people they love
• 47:36
  that are in the building that is on fire. You know that that's drama.
• 47:40
  Yeah, it's interesting. You know you brought that up. It got
• 47:44
  me excited because you were saying, like how important to set up, how
• 47:46
  portant the first act is. And if you look at some movies back in
• 47:51
  the in the seventies, like even Exorcist, literally I think the first hour
• 47:54
  like nothing major paranormal like happens. I mean, the priest doesn't show up
• 48:00
  up until after the hour mark, like like all this stuff I remember about
• 48:02
  the Exorcist doesn't happen until like almost after the midpoint. You know. It's
• 48:07
  like, yeah, because the even like Rosemary's the Baby, same thing,
• 48:14
  uh, Gary Shining, Like yeah, exactly, Shining. You're just watching
• 48:19
  girls and bikes and yeah, yeah, it's just and and there are a
• 48:24
  little creepy things that happened. There's always got you know, a cat dropped
• 48:29
  out of the box. Uh. I was watching Alien, same thing.
• 48:34
  It's just the day to day workings of of space uh, space teamsters.
• 48:43
  And then and then midpoint the thing leaps out of the guy's chest and you're
• 48:47
  it's off, off and running exactly what we've been setting up before. That
• 48:52
  is nobody listens to Ripley. You know, these guys are are in it
• 48:58
  for a paycheck. You froze up, do you see me? Good?
• 49:04
  Yeah? Okay, sorry? Yeah that that that nobody listens to her,
• 49:07
  that that you know, these guys are are in it for a paycheck,
• 49:10
  and that something is wrong with the science officer, you know, and there's
• 49:15
  all these kind of your you're just setting up the dynamics, uh, and
• 49:20
  it's getting your heart is kind of in your chest. You know that something's
• 49:23
  got to happen. Yeah. Uh. And then when it does, it's
• 49:28
  just like bam bam, bam bam bam. And then you're left the best
• 49:31
  thing about looking at the third act versus it it's the thing, it's the
• 49:36
  thing that you are. You know, the lights go up, you walk
• 49:39
  to your car and you go, man, that was awesome. And that's
• 49:45
  the thing. You know, If that third act moment works, then it's
• 49:52
  all worth it. If it doesn't work, it doesn't matter what you did
• 49:54
  up until that point. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 50:04
  and now back to the show. Nobody's gonna you know, the the
• 50:09
  audience coming out of the seven o'clock show. I talk about this all the
• 50:13
  time because it's what it's what makes movies great. It's what makes the business
• 50:16
  of making a movie, even if it's an independent film. It's the audience
• 50:22
  coming out of the seven o'clock show, their reaction as you're in line for
• 50:27
  the nine o'clock show, and everybody knows that thing of like people who are
• 50:31
  going oh, snap, yeah, yeah, and they're like crying or they're
• 50:37
  like high fiving or stuff, and they're they're nodding at you because they know,
• 50:42
  like, oh, this is gonna be you know, you are in
• 50:45
  for a treat. This is gonna be magnificent and uh. And it's that
• 50:49
  thing that's what makes movies great. That's what makes movie going great, you
• 50:52
  know, and everything you know, Yeah, go ahead, now we can
• 50:59
  say it's fascinating. We were talking about the long setup and then we gave
• 51:01
  some examples, but you did mention even like the movie up and I think
• 51:05
  it's one of the greatest examples of the shortest most heartbreaking setups ever. You
• 51:09
  know, it's within You're in tears within the first whatever five minutes of that
• 51:15
  story of Carl. You know, it's beautiful, and they're just it's just
• 51:19
  building up, you know, remember, they're building up for the moment when
• 51:22
  he ditches the house to save the boy, you know, and and so
• 51:29
  and that's the whole you know that John, you know, was who walked
• 51:32
  into the room. Okay, what happens. He crashes the house, He
• 51:37
  throws all the stuff out, you know, to give it ballaced. He's
• 51:39
  run out of balloons, and you know, uh, and he goes and
• 51:44
  saves the boy. And uh, that's that's his Luke Skywalker moment, right
• 51:50
  right. And so so in the beginning, you want to say, well,
• 51:53
  if the house doesn't mean anything, right again, story math, If
• 51:58
  the house doesn't mean anything, moment's not going to mean anything. Everybody's going
• 52:01
  to go so what it's a house, Yeah, you know, get another
• 52:05
  house, like no, no, no, this house is very special because
• 52:07
  it is the embodiment of you know, his relationship with his with his wife.
• 52:14
  Yeah, yeah, exactly, ely and and I believe it at various
• 52:19
  times he calls the house Ellie, and it's the he's working towards the picture
• 52:24
  of the house on the on the mountain. Yeah, and so you're going
• 52:30
  to give him that, and then you're gonna take it away. You know,
• 52:32
  he's gonna get all the way there, realize it's it's not worth what
• 52:37
  he thought it would be worth. And then he's gonna go save the boy.
• 52:39
  Great, so you need and I forget who There is a one the
• 52:49
  co director of of Inside Out, Ronnie del Carman, I want to say,
• 52:55
  Okay, he I believe that was his sequence and that put him on
• 52:59
  the map as a star, or you know he's been on the map as
• 53:01
  a star anyway, because he's fantastic artists. But he was the guy who
• 53:07
  who walked through that sequence and said it's stripped it of its dialogue. He
• 53:12
  had temporary music that was that was wonderful for it. This this kind of
• 53:15
  very you know, ballad kind of thing, and it was amazing, you
• 53:22
  know, just a process of how that sequence came. It came to be
• 53:28
  because you know, obviously the first twenty drafts of that sequence were not that
• 53:34
  sequence. Yeah, you really had to kind of work on it, work
• 53:37
  on it work on it, and so it just wasn't it. It would
• 53:42
  make you cry. And I believe it's five minutes and thirty seconds long.
• 53:47
  It is not very long in in in pure movie movie terms, but by
• 53:52
  the end of it, when you know, just that pan across the doctor's
• 53:55
  office, oh my god, you know, just every one of those moments
• 54:00
  is completely iconic. It's just it's truly wonderful. And then it gives him
• 54:05
  license to do everything that he does, which is he won't sell the house,
• 54:09
  smashes the guy on the head when he you know, when he's when
• 54:12
  he's threatened, and now he's going to you know, go live this dream
• 54:16
  and go to uh, you know this this waterfall great, is amazing.
• 54:22
  I was curiously you with your thanks. We've history of like writing on your
• 54:28
  own, working in rooms, you know, in television and and now working
• 54:31
  like obviously the last few years and animation is the advent of visuals, like
• 54:37
  because I don't know if you have an opportunity with the Princess and the Frog
• 54:42
  to go down to New Orleans too, or you're part of the research crew
• 54:45
  because you know, you were mentioning like how Lasseter was such a huge proponent
• 54:50
  of research, like just getting as orb into your DNA, like like you've
• 54:53
  probably already done prior, but I was curious. You know, we have
• 54:59
  the TV room. We're seeing like this explosion of Golden Age of television,
• 55:02
  just amazing shows left and right, and I can only count like because the
• 55:07
  power the writers there, like in writers together pushing each other to make it
• 55:12
  great. And then you have animation which allows you to I mean my past
• 55:16
  working with so many PlayStation work with visual effects, we always had to work
• 55:21
  with visuals. We always had something to draw from to try to make it,
• 55:23
  you know, better, And I'm wondering, like, because now you
• 55:27
  have visual cues like you mentioned and Princess of the Frog, here's a drawing,
• 55:30
  a sketch drawing about the fathers, Like that is huge for me,
• 55:35
  And I was wondering, have you seen I guess, like, how could
• 55:42
  like an independent you know, borrow from this concept of like should they just
• 55:46
  intundate themselves with so many look frames or drawings or initial sketches anything like that
• 55:52
  to like inundate themselves of what their world would look like. So if they
• 55:55
  brought in their own makeshift brain trust group, so everybody connect to like oh,
• 56:00
  what's that? What's this? Or you know, how's this fin the
• 56:02
  story? I don't know from your any like stories you could share of like
• 56:07
  just like you said, you're walking around, you're seeing artists or somebody.
• 56:10
  Pretty much the film made in like visual format before even like even one written
• 56:17
  word is put on an actual traditional script. I guess I don't know,
• 56:21
  right well, that's the that's the fun of the new the new tools,
• 56:25
  we'll call it is it's I know that Robert Rodriguez his his process is very
• 56:32
  similar to the Pixar process, which is interesting. He kind of pre shoots
• 56:37
  his movies and he will just with a handheld camera or I don't know,
• 56:43
  a cell phone or whatever. He'll get his actors in a room and he
• 56:45
  films his rehearsals and he takes them back and I don't know if he's using
• 56:51
  you know whatever, you know, final problem, whatever it is. But
• 56:53
  you know, as easy it is as it is to edit something. He
• 56:57
  just edits it at home and then he goes in the next day if they're
• 57:00
  shooting the next day, and he'll show it to everybody like this is this
• 57:04
  is what this is, and here's what I think is wrong with it,
• 57:07
  here's what I did to rewrite it, and here we go. You know.
• 57:09
  So the second thing you see will be that Woody Allen shoots an entire
• 57:16
  movie, edits it and edits it, shows it, you know, it,
• 57:22
  takes a look at it, and then I don't know if he gets
• 57:23
  outside feedback or or anything. I assume he does, and then reshoots the
• 57:29
  entire movie. It's always in his budget that he will shoot it twice.
• 57:32
  So you do it, and obviously that you know, the first version is
• 57:37
  not just everybody kind of slogging through not wearing their costumes and stuff. It's
• 57:40
  an actual movie, you know. And then he shoots it again. So
• 57:47
  and I think that that that is a great way to go if you can't.
• 57:54
  Ridley Scott storyboards his own movies top to them, and I believe shoots
• 58:00
  the storyboards and show you know, shows shows those. So that the first
• 58:06
  draft, and the way I look at it is, you know, from
• 58:07
  a Disney perspective, is that when guys are drawing, right, they take
• 58:12
  a blue pencil. It's very light, you can barely see it, and
• 58:14
  they just start drawing and whatever, and they're just and the lines are everywhere,
• 58:17
  and they're it's a complete mess, and they're drawing over themselves and they're
• 58:22
  doing whatever, and then they start to see it, and then they'll they'll
• 58:25
  they'll take out a black pencil and they'll start tagging it down and they'll you
• 58:30
  know, okay, great, here the eyes, here's where the eyes go,
• 58:32
  here's whatever, because you're kind of trying to see it on the page,
• 58:37
  and only a handful of people can just start drawing with a black pencil
• 58:42
  and go you're sketching, sketching, sketching until you see it. If you
• 58:45
  if you listen to a band right, the band will go you know,
• 58:50
  it'll sound terrible the first and then they'll kind of gradually, you know,
• 58:54
  come down to whatever they're doing. Sculpture is the same way. It's a
• 58:59
  blob, an amorphous blob for so long, and then they start to tack
• 59:02
  down little sections. And writers are the only ones who don't do that.
• 59:07
  Writers, I'll see them go, oh, I have an idea, you
• 59:10
  know, faded go in, you know, and here broke the store day,
• 59:15
  and like, who does that? Nobody does that? You don't think
• 59:19
  that way. You say, I want to make a movie, I think
• 59:22
  it should be kind of like this movie that I loved when I was a
• 59:25
  kid, or it should be. I want to make the best you know,
• 59:32
  badass six year old whatever magical power movie that I can. Here is
• 59:39
  a precedent of other you know, badass six year old. Here's where some
• 59:45
  have gone right and others have gone wrong. And this is what moves me
• 59:51
  about this kind of movie. This is why these kinds of movies are my
• 59:53
  favorite movies. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and
• 1:00:02
  now back to the show. And this is where others have fallen afield.
• 1:00:08
  I think my movie is somewhere in here, and and then you get out
• 1:00:14
  like I'm old school. So I have like I have, you know,
• 1:00:17
  just a clipboard and a fountain pen, and I will sit down and I'll
• 1:00:22
  just start writing. And it's rarely dialogue. It's just what do I love
• 1:00:28
  about these kinds of movies? I love this, I love this, I
• 1:00:30
  love that. Hey, my favorite scene in one of these things was blah
• 1:00:34
  blah blah blah blah, and and my least favorite scene is blah blah blah
• 1:00:38
  blah blah. Excellent. I like to eat my dessert first, so if
• 1:00:44
  I'm writing, I will say, well, here are scenes that should be
• 1:00:47
  in my movie. You know, these are great scenes. And if I
• 1:00:52
  can just string a clothes line between these scenes, I think I'll be okay,
• 1:00:58
  because these are the classic scenes. There should be the mentor scene and
• 1:01:00
  the and so and the equipment, you know, the badass piece of machinery
• 1:01:06
  you know, or the you know, the great gun or whatever it is,
• 1:01:08
  you know, a cool monster, a you know, fantastic spaceship a
• 1:01:14
  you know, always kind of I'll put those in and then I'll say,
• 1:01:16
  okay, well, wait now I'm going to try to make myself crying the
• 1:01:20
  third act and go, you know, yeah, and that's yeah. But
• 1:01:24
  but it's always starting from like a morphous a morphous you know, the the
• 1:01:29
  ink, you know, the paint is wet, there's no paper. I'm
• 1:01:32
  just freestyling until I find like it should be this, and then I'll start
• 1:01:40
  to give it shape and tack it down, and then only last the last
• 1:01:46
  like it's it's. I often will write the entire thing by hand, and
• 1:01:53
  then after I've gone through the whole thing, then I type it into software.
• 1:01:59
  Interesting, do you know, is there a difference for you between like,
• 1:02:02
  uh, plot in character or is it the same like because I could
• 1:02:07
  see like doing an outline constructing like the logic of the world of where you
• 1:02:13
  want this moment to go for the protagonists and maybe the protagon, like you
• 1:02:16
  see like a major change that's going to have to happen for this character.
• 1:02:20
  But once you kind of maybe have like the simple idea laid out, then
• 1:02:24
  do you do you go in and start like thinking like, Okay, the
• 1:02:28
  Dad character a lot right now, my early drafts are serving exposition. Well,
• 1:02:32
  then how do I make that character more interesting? Because there was this
• 1:02:37
  whole I think you were talking about, like in Jason Buff's podcast about how
• 1:02:44
  like in Finding Emo, there was all these wonderful characters, all the supporting
• 1:02:47
  characters, even no matter how small the character is, Like each fish had
• 1:02:52
  some interesting best story, one scar one like was nervous or I don't know
• 1:02:58
  it was this. It was just rich with content because our context, because
• 1:03:02
  it was so each character was so unique that way, as opposed of just
• 1:03:06
  being serving up exposition. Do you see that within those group meetings you have
• 1:03:10
  or or sometimes somebody goes, I have this is the character. I don't
• 1:03:15
  know what story was going to happen with them, but I don't know how
• 1:03:19
  like did you see it built by ways? Right? Right? No?
• 1:03:22
  That that that it's the interesting thing is and it's it's it's fantastic question because
• 1:03:30
  it is I think at the crux of most I'd say a good and ninety
• 1:03:38
  percent of filmmakers don't understand this one specific thing, which is that there should
• 1:03:45
  be no difference between character and story. But there is a huge difference between
• 1:03:50
  character and plot. Okay, the plot is just I was in this uh
• 1:03:57
  it was a masterclass in France, in Marseille, and this there was a
• 1:04:01
  guy who'd done this web these webcasts and stuff like that was you know,
• 1:04:04
  really charismatic guy, really energetic, you know, great storyteller in quotes,
• 1:04:10
  and I'd done this thing and I'll talk about it a little later because it
• 1:04:16
  remind me to tell you this thing because I think it helps all writers,
• 1:04:20
  everybody that I've done it with, with writers, it makes them a lot
• 1:04:25
  better. But this guy is telling this story and he's going on, he's
• 1:04:30
  pitching me this this movie, and he says, oh, and then an
• 1:04:34
  alien comes in and bla bla bla blah blah. He's pitching, pitching more
• 1:04:38
  and more. The Italian guy right, He was like, yeah, and
• 1:04:41
  then this happens, and then and then they fall into an abyss and then
• 1:04:44
  a guy has a gun and whatever and he shoots his grandma and whatever.
• 1:04:47
  And he's just going through, going through and going through, and I'm watching
• 1:04:53
  the audience and I and I stopped him for a second. I say,
• 1:04:55
  watched the audience as you're as you're doing this, keep going, And he's
• 1:04:59
  what and then this happened. There was a big explosion and whatever. And
• 1:05:03
  I said, I said, what what what do you think I saw?
• 1:05:06
  Uh, after about two minutes, everybody started talking to each other. He
• 1:05:12
  just tuned him out. There were a couple of his friends in the back
• 1:05:15
  that were kind of smiling. Really towards the end, everybody was just everybody
• 1:05:18
  was just hiding from the thing because he was. Because it was it was
• 1:05:25
  mostly sorry, I mean to do something to the screens. Have I have
• 1:05:30
  flux? And I didn't realize that it's been it's been kind of making the
• 1:05:35
  image of more sleepy as we But yeah, so I said, look at
• 1:05:44
  the audience, and the audience has just completely tuned him out. I said,
• 1:05:46
  why as well. Uh, he couldn't figure it out. I said,
• 1:05:51
  well, because you lost your character. First, you didn't make me
• 1:05:56
  care about your character. And second, as it's going on, you were
• 1:06:00
  just it's just getting more and more. You were using plot to try to
• 1:06:04
  save you from character. And I said, okay, And I pitched his
• 1:06:08
  own his story the same way, and I pitched it all character. Yeah,
• 1:06:13
  this guy comes in and more than anything else in the world, he
• 1:06:15
  wants this. Oh but you know this guy also wants it and blah blah
• 1:06:24
  blah, and he wants it even more so at the very beginning, the
• 1:06:26
  guy boom whatever, he takes it from him, and now he's sitting there
• 1:06:29
  going, oh, no, what am I gonna do? Now? Aliens
• 1:06:31
  attack and blah blah blah and whatever. And everybody's leaning in as I'm as
• 1:06:35
  I'm telling the story because you care. You know, you give a crap
• 1:06:39
  about the story. Before he was doing plot, what I was doing was
• 1:06:43
  character. And you know, if it's if it's finding Nemo, every character
• 1:06:47
  that Marlin passes should develop him as a character. You're going from the journey
• 1:06:55
  of a guy who's overly cautious to a guy who's going to let his kid
• 1:06:58
  do this thing. In The Incredibles, everything that passes Bob pars. You
• 1:07:03
  know, we set him up as a guy who will save everybody at any
• 1:07:08
  time, you know, whatever you're doing. The whole thing, everybody that
• 1:07:11
  he passes, every experience that he has, is is basically kind of to
• 1:07:16
  show that his addiction has gotten out of control, you know, and until
• 1:07:23
  he even finds an enabler in the nail. Oh great, Actually, I'm
• 1:07:26
  gonna go off and do this thing, and I'm just going to completely ignore
• 1:07:29
  my family, right because those are the two values that are at stake.
• 1:07:31
  It's it's do you are you going to reclaim your your your glory at the
• 1:07:36
  expense of the thing that you that that you know, your future, you
• 1:07:42
  know your family. You were once this guy, now you're this guy.
• 1:07:45
  You need to be more than mister incredible, she says pointedly, you know,
• 1:07:49
  thematically in order to do it. So every single scene is going to
• 1:07:54
  be him deperately clinging to his former life. He's in the meeting with his
• 1:07:58
  boss and he's looking out side and he can't can you know, And he's
• 1:08:01
  just seeing a guy getting his pocket picked and he can't give it up.
• 1:08:05
  You know. He's he's there with the old lady, and the old lady
• 1:08:10
  is worried that she's going to lose her thing, and he can't you know
• 1:08:13
  that that his his new life. He just won't do it. Everything,
• 1:08:16
  everything he's doing is kind of these things butter butterressing it but against each other.
• 1:08:23
  That's the nature of storytelling. That is character. You're developing that character
• 1:08:28
  to the point where the character has to make this decision of like, you
• 1:08:33
  know, I can either go and try to save the you know, save
• 1:08:39
  the city by myself, which I know I cannot do, or I can
• 1:08:43
  trust my family to help me. I can do this as a family,
• 1:08:46
  and off you go. Yeah, you know that. That's that that in
• 1:08:51
  that way, as you're telling the story, it's very clear what's muscle and
• 1:08:57
  what's bone. You know that that or what's wheat and what's chap right that
• 1:09:02
  that any scene that doesn't have him moving towards either on the upside where he's
• 1:09:13
  he is completely like, yes, regaining your former glory is the most awesome
• 1:09:17
  thing in the world you can do. That's the bill to the midpoint,
• 1:09:20
  and he's and then at the midpoint, ha ha, I've killed all these
• 1:09:26
  people and now I'm going to kill you, and he can't get out of
• 1:09:28
  and whatever. Now I can't get out of the room, and he's you
• 1:09:30
  know those those little yeah whatever wind whatever, and now, oh no,
• 1:09:35
  this is where it's gotten you to the you know, to the terrible,
• 1:09:40
  terrible midpoint. And then it's the family is going to go rescue him,
• 1:09:45
  right, So now you're on the downslope, and so everything that happened from
• 1:09:48
  that point on is look how cool this family is when the family is unrestrained.
• 1:09:57
  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back
• 1:10:03
  to the show. Yeah, until you get to this point where it's he's
• 1:10:10
  bemoaning the fact that, you know, it's almost a false act too.
• 1:10:13
  Right, the rocket is headed towards the city and Bob is sitting there saying,
• 1:10:18
  oh, I can't believe what I've done, you know, do guys
• 1:10:21
  this is really terrible. And his daughter he says, yeah, yeah,
• 1:10:25
  blah blah blah, daddy, you know whatever, And she saved them ball
• 1:10:28
  very easily because he's not thinking about family. He's thinking about himself. Right.
• 1:10:32
  So we're driving, driving, driving for that moment, and that's all
• 1:10:36
  character. You know, every scene in that is a scene that you absolutely
• 1:10:42
  need and none of it is, but none of it should feel like plot.
• 1:10:48
  Yeah, it is all to drive the guy towards making that decision.
• 1:10:53
  It's really interesting because we started our conversation about talking about mastermind groups or accountability
• 1:10:59
  groups, and like how it's so much easier to look at somebody else's problem
• 1:11:02
  or look at what they stand for because we can see from an outside perspective
• 1:11:08
  what's in front of them. But we as individuals are so wrapped up in
• 1:11:13
  our own stuff. We can't, like you mentioned, we can't see our
• 1:11:15
  own get out of our own way. It's all. And we were talking
• 1:11:18
  about there's so much things that we have to unlearn to be able to be
• 1:11:24
  and then we're here we are talking you know, character and story and all
• 1:11:30
  these characters or especially with the Pixar stories we were talking about, and and
• 1:11:35
  you know the stories we were mentioning. There's there's this aspect of baggage or
• 1:11:41
  that there's these known beliefs that they hold on too for so long. But
• 1:11:45
  that third act moment, that John Laster moment he's talking about, has to
• 1:11:48
  be this let go of all that in order to have that transformation at the
• 1:11:54
  end. But it's funny because we were talking, we started talking about it
• 1:11:57
  in real life and we're seeing it happen in story's It's like, oh wow,
• 1:12:00
  that's that's fascinating and and and really that's why I think, that is
• 1:12:03
  why I like to look at well screenwriting everybody, you know, it's the
• 1:12:10
  technology of screenwriting. But really we're storytellers, right, guys in rocking chairs,
• 1:12:15
  you know, saying hey, is this is what's important. And that's
• 1:12:19
  why is because we always we make the same mistakes, you know, all
• 1:12:25
  the time, as human animals, as machines, whatever that we are,
• 1:12:28
  that we we make the same mistakes all the time, and so we tell
• 1:12:33
  ourselves these stories like let go you know of that and embrace the new.
• 1:12:40
  One of the things I'll say, like in masterclasses all the time is you
• 1:12:44
  can learn how to speak French without learning, without forgetting how to speak English.
• 1:12:48
  You know, you can accept a new philosophy, a new way of
• 1:12:51
  thinking. Just try it out and then if you want, you can go
• 1:12:56
  back to what it is is you do. But a lot of people will
• 1:12:59
  say like, well, in a minute, I don't like, you know,
• 1:13:00
  I'm not such a big fan of Disney movies, and you guys are
• 1:13:03
  you know you guys, it's all a factory and blah blah blah, and
• 1:13:08
  I'm not going to make movies like that. I'm like, okay, well,
• 1:13:10
  let me see what it is you've done. Yeah, it's morphus horrendous
• 1:13:15
  kind of what and like, what are you doing? You haven't you've so
• 1:13:18
  resisted all of the kind of rules, and not just necessarily like the Disney
• 1:13:24
  rules or the Pixar rules, but just the rules of general storytelling. You
• 1:13:28
  know, like of that fifty characters, fifty main characters is not a good
• 1:13:33
  way to go. You know that that a film without conflict is not is
• 1:13:39
  probably not going to work all that well. Right, A film that is
• 1:13:43
  about something that nobody in the world cares about is not going to be uh
• 1:13:49
  is not going to be enjoyable. There are but a film, a terribly
• 1:13:57
  constructed film about something I really care about, and a you know, a
• 1:14:01
  person who is who is wonderful, who I want to see more of,
• 1:14:06
  And you know that that film is going to go through the roots. You
• 1:14:11
  know it's gonna be be I'm gonna enjoy it. I'm gonna and people are
• 1:14:14
  gonna say, like, what was that that you were you kept talking about.
• 1:14:16
  You know, I'm gonna go on social media. It's like, okay,
• 1:14:19
  look, I'm gonna go on on the limb and just say that this
• 1:14:21
  movie was the best movie you know, that I've ever seen. And that's
• 1:14:27
  especially from the indiast side. That's what you really likes. Goes in,
• 1:14:32
  breaks into a house, eats porridge, sits in a chair, eats all
• 1:14:39
  the porridge, sits in a chair, breaks it, and then sleeps in
• 1:14:42
  a person's bad So it is an active crime going on. And then three
• 1:14:45
  people return. Three characters return and and one is eating, one, one
• 1:14:51
  is eating, one discovers something is wrong, one sits down, one sits
• 1:14:56
  down, one is oh my god, whatever, and then they go pursue
• 1:14:59
  it. So the baby bear is the is the protagonist of the story.
• 1:15:02
  Now go tell the story, but tell the story in you know, what
• 1:15:08
  are you going to do with the story now you know now you have your
• 1:15:11
  own edge to it. Are you going to tell a story about a boy
• 1:15:15
  who really wants to go to sleep? Are you going to tell a story
• 1:15:18
  who's about a kid who's really hungry? Are you going to tell a story
• 1:15:21
  about a kid with anger issues who is trying to hold it down whatever that
• 1:15:26
  angle is. You know you have you now have the form war, you
• 1:15:29
  know the format, and you can go and tell tell that and then get
• 1:15:32
  good at that, get good at telling that story of doing your cover of
• 1:15:36
  Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Then once you're feeling that, now go start
• 1:15:44
  pitching your own stuff, you know, get that. And the way I
• 1:15:47
  look at it is, you know, you've just seen you just saw Star
• 1:15:54
  Wars. You know you just saw you know, the jj Abrams Star Wars,
• 1:15:58
  and as you were leaving the building, it burned down. There was
• 1:16:01
  an oil fire. The whole thing burned down, you know, all the
• 1:16:03
  friends, everything, And now everybody turns to you and said, oh,
• 1:16:08
  what was it? You know what happened? Yeah. A lot of people
• 1:16:11
  when they pitched, they'll go, okay, well there's a ship and bigger
• 1:16:15
  ship. This kid comes in and he's take out garbage, and then it's
• 1:16:21
  this kind of hipstory. Who was really mean? There's a soccer ball but
• 1:16:30
  you know it does whatever, and it's like, no, you know,
• 1:16:34
  how do you tell that story? You are the last lifeline of this of
• 1:16:39
  the greatest movie ever made. How do you tell it and have that behind
• 1:16:45
  you, but with a story that you already know. Get comfortable with that
• 1:16:49
  if it's it's your tape recorders, whatever, and then go. Then you
• 1:16:53
  have that set of skills and you're not pitching garbage, and you also are
• 1:16:57
  learning from those reps. This pitch as well. This does not pitch well.
• 1:17:01
  You know, this is the essence of storytelling most of the time.
• 1:17:06
  And I mentioned it before, most of the time. Like right now,
• 1:17:09
  I'm doing a you know, this superhero thing, and I watched everything.
• 1:17:15
  It's everything, and I rewatched everything from the point of view of me making
• 1:17:21
  this new movie, and I'm taking notes on it, like, oh great.
• 1:17:26
  You know, they spend a good iron Man spends a good long time
• 1:17:30
  in the middle of the movie just becoming Iron Man. Yeah, Man spends
• 1:17:33
  a good long time in the middle of that movie. And in both you
• 1:17:38
  know, first versions, you know when when Uncle Ben dies, spends a
• 1:17:44
  lot of time on the suit and the web and the thing, you know,
• 1:17:46
  the mechanics of becoming Spider Man. That's a big part of our enjoyment.
• 1:17:51
  They don't just put on the suit and oh here I go. It's
• 1:17:56
  it's a big part of the journey. So great I have to have that
• 1:18:00
  in mine, you know, and just kind of going through it, understanding
• 1:18:03
  it, and then when I pitch it, I'm pitching it like a Star
• 1:18:08
  Wars. I just had this meeting a day or two ago, you know,
• 1:18:13
  and I'll get up, I'll warn around the room, you know,
• 1:18:15
  I'm shooting stuff down whatever. You know. I have this, this this
• 1:18:19
  total enjoyment because I love these movies. You know, I want first I
• 1:18:24
  want them to make my movie. But second, I can't wait to see
• 1:18:29
  my movie, you know. I can't wait to be in the line,
• 1:18:31
  you know for the nine o'clock show when the seven o'clock comes, you know,
• 1:18:34
  comes out. So I love that. So that's my little soapbucket.
• 1:18:39
  I'm glad I said it in the other one and and I'm hopefully, like
• 1:18:44
  I said, I hope it's valuable to your Actually it's extremely valuable because I
• 1:18:48
  had, you know, with my podcast, I have just people will email
• 1:18:50
  me, you know occasionally, and just they's just asking advice or opinions.
• 1:18:57
  And I made a point to a young filmmaker, I said, if you
• 1:19:00
  kind of want to test yourself as a filmmaker, whether or not you're a
• 1:19:03
  good director or not make a short film based off of some very famous short
• 1:19:10
  story that's in public domain, something that has proven like that exists, like
• 1:19:15
  an Edgar Allan Poe story. That's something that's like, Okay, this exists.
• 1:19:19
  This is a historically well known story that has all the elements in there
• 1:19:27
  that make it successful. So if you can one write it, adapt adaptation
• 1:19:32
  of it, and then two, if you're a director, you can test
• 1:19:35
  your directing chops that way because it's all the elements are there. You know,
• 1:19:40
  the stories solid, you know it's a you know, short enough that
• 1:19:44
  you can make it within your means, and then if it falls flat,
• 1:19:46
  then you can go back and figure out why it fell flat, because it
• 1:19:49
  then it puts you because you can't blame anything like I can't blame the story
• 1:19:55
  didn't work or the screenwriter didn't write it right or something like that. It's
• 1:19:59
  will be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to
• 1:20:05
  the show. I mean there's all these elements there of like you really really
• 1:20:11
  want to test yourself as a director, that's a good thing. And look
• 1:20:15
  at the look at this exc you know, out of Sundance right there.
• 1:20:17
  The Birth of a Nation's sold for fourteen seventeen four, right, and that's
• 1:20:23
  that was a take on they already established movie. You know, it's his
• 1:20:28
  riff on this movie that you can't wait to see because it's definitely a long
• 1:20:31
  overdue take on that movie. Yeah, exactly, exactly, Yeah, and
• 1:20:34
  it should it should be fun and and that enhances the viewing of the movie.
• 1:20:40
  And I think too. Yeah, with a lot of short films that
• 1:20:45
  I see, I'll always say, like, what short films did you watch
• 1:20:47
  to inspire you to do this? Because most of the short films I've seen,
• 1:20:51
  especially the you know, the good one, you know, the Pixar
• 1:20:55
  ones and also the really good live action ones, are very very simple.
• 1:21:01
  One one person or two, you know, in a relationship, and then
• 1:21:05
  that slowly evolves over time. There was a you're talking about riffs on some
• 1:21:12
  There was this YouTube thing that happened that I thought was great. Was the
• 1:21:15
  Power Rangers thing with I don't know if you saw that the fan film or
• 1:21:19
  which one, Yeah, the fan film, the Power Rangers fan film.
• 1:21:21
  I guess they had to take it down, but it was fantastic. It
• 1:21:26
  was like I'd never you know, this guy's take on Power Rangers. You
• 1:21:31
  know, the wink is of course it's Power Rangers, but it's like the
• 1:21:36
  yeah, you know they're Dams vander Being and stuff like, oh, this
• 1:21:41
  is this is seriously enjoyable. This guy can I can't wait to watch this
• 1:21:45
  guy make a movie. You know, the Deadpool trailer, you know,
• 1:21:49
  the little sizzle off of that. You know, that's the first time director
• 1:21:56
  and now of course the biggest highest grossing I take my for a time director.
• 1:22:00
  It was you know, it is something that we've seen before, you
• 1:22:05
  know, you know, it's it's a thing, and the way he did
• 1:22:11
  it was just fantastic, you know, and obviously like because the other thing
• 1:22:15
  that I would put to that is the short story that you adapt should be
• 1:22:19
  one that you absolutely love, and the way that you do it should be
• 1:22:24
  you should be showing everything that you do great. You know. If you
• 1:22:27
  are a great cinematographer, it should be a beautiful movie. If you are
• 1:22:30
  great with character, it should be or whatever. If you're funny, you
• 1:22:34
  know, don't try to wake funny if you're not funny way by all means,
• 1:22:39
  because one bad joke will kill you, you know, as far as
• 1:22:43
  the enjoyment of it. But yeah, if you can work. If your
• 1:22:46
  best friend is a fantastic actor, you know, go do you know,
• 1:22:54
  get on him, you know, call it every favor. You know,
• 1:22:57
  hey, I give the speech at your wedding, you know, show up
• 1:23:00
  for four an hour and a half and and help me. Help me in
• 1:23:03
  my movie. Robert Rodriguez will talk about that, like, don't anything that
• 1:23:08
  you know, I have a friend that has a bar. I have another
• 1:23:10
  friend that owns a bus. You know, great, there's going to be
• 1:23:14
  a bus chase and part of this is going to take place in my friend's
• 1:23:16
  bar. Awesome. Then you know, production value goes through the roof and
• 1:23:20
  you're on the map as a as a serious filmmaker. Yeah, and definitely,
• 1:23:26
  like all those processes helps. The idea is to kind of keep yourself
• 1:23:30
  in check, to keep humbled, so that, like you said, if
• 1:23:33
  you're to put yourself out there as a writer, as a filmmaker, as
• 1:23:38
  a storyteller, to utilize a brain trust kind of concept, you have to
• 1:23:44
  be willing to accept, like to to to let go of what you've created
• 1:23:48
  and know that it's not yours anymore. I think Laster talked about that.
• 1:23:53
  He said that when they created Buzzing Woody, there was a point where they
• 1:23:56
  realize it's no longer theirs. It's like now they have a responsibility to serve
• 1:24:00
  those characters honestly and and truthfully to the audience, you know. And I
• 1:24:09
  think that's a very very important because you have to you have to listen that
• 1:24:15
  people don't just give notes just for the sake of giving notes. Yeah,
• 1:24:17
  they're addressing, they're addressing a problem. Sometimes a problem took place pages before
• 1:24:26
  what they're addressing. You know, sometimes the wheels were off the wagon way
• 1:24:29
  before. You know, this particular scene that that drove everybody nuts. You
• 1:24:33
  know, it was a setup. It was the amp up to it.
• 1:24:35
  And uh, and you have to be open to that. I was giving
• 1:24:40
  notes to a writer. He sent me something and said, oh, I
• 1:24:42
  just want to hear your input. Okay, I'm gonna be tough. Oh
• 1:24:45
  yeah, that's okay. And I gave him the notes and it was and
• 1:24:50
  you know, me like I like to talk, but it was it was
• 1:24:55
  I would say, four fifths him defending the thing that he had done and
• 1:25:00
  only one fifth of me giving the note. And I was like, look,
• 1:25:04
  we're not going to get anywhere with this because I'm not just giving you
• 1:25:08
  notes because I want you to talk me out of it. You know,
• 1:25:11
  I know your intent is on the piece of paper. If it is not
• 1:25:15
  clear, you know, you've got to work with it. You know,
• 1:25:18
  it's not just you know, I will give this note, but probably you
• 1:25:24
  know, everyone that you give it to will probably give these same notes.
• 1:25:27
  And if they don't, they're not doing you any favors. But that but
• 1:25:31
  part of the process when you're a when you're an artist, it hurts to
• 1:25:35
  get notes. It physically hurts you. You know, it's like somebody is
• 1:25:41
  roughing up your baby and you just have to. I think it was David,
• 1:25:46
  the guy who created Family Ties. He said, you just write down
• 1:25:49
  the note. That's all you need to do. Understand it, write it
• 1:25:54
  down, then, you know, conclude the conversation, punched the pillows or
• 1:26:00
  whatever, you know, bry in the shower, and then and then go
• 1:26:05
  and look at the notes and say, Okay, what did I This will
• 1:26:11
  ultimately make it better something you'll just cross off and say, I don't care.
• 1:26:14
  I'll get this note nine times out of ten. Most of the time
• 1:26:17
  it's like, you know what, I didn't sell it. I just there's
• 1:26:20
  something you know, my intention was to do this. I didn't. That's
• 1:26:27
  what threw him off and this But of course you have to start off with
• 1:26:30
  the intention, right, You have to start off with a strong motivated character.
• 1:26:34
  It has to be very clear what it is the story that you're telling.
• 1:26:39
  People get bored with plot. They are excited with story with you know,
• 1:26:45
  with the drive and the conflict. You know, even Aristotle talked about,
• 1:26:48
  you know, intention, obstacle anything was. I was watching Don't Nabby
• 1:26:55
  right because the last episode was on, and I'm oh, just in tear
• 1:27:00
  a kid from Black Kid from Detroit, you know, main demo. But
• 1:27:05
  but it made me go back to the first episode and watch that. So
• 1:27:11
  I'm watching that in the first three episode and and it's all there, you
• 1:27:17
  know. And and Julian Fellows in an interview, he says, well,
• 1:27:21
  I was watching West Wing and I saw that how Aaron Sorkin crafted the characters
• 1:27:30
  in the pilot of West Wing, and I took that as my template.
• 1:27:32
  And then that's what I did in Downtown Abbey. Interesting now you would think
• 1:27:35
  those two shows are completely completely different. But a structuralist, a writer who
• 1:27:42
  knows craft and loved crafts, it's the same thing. So the flirtation between
• 1:27:47
  the you know, Carson and you know this is that's that's there, and
• 1:27:55
  the little dynamics and just the sisters, all of that's there, and uh,
• 1:28:00
  you know, progress is coming. I mean the opening event is is
• 1:28:04
  the Titanic, you know, goes down and kills dozens who were set to
• 1:28:10
  inherit the estate. And now it's you know this this this other guy so
• 1:28:14
  like cheers, right, this person is coming in, you know, he's
• 1:28:17
  lost the waitress, this new person comes in. You know, it's it
• 1:28:23
  clocks along. But it's all story. You know, it's all story.
• 1:28:27
  You're you're driving towards this thing that the world is changing, and the you
• 1:28:31
  know, the the head butler and in the lord of the estate are saying,
• 1:28:34
  oh my god, I don't know what's you know, what are we
• 1:28:39
  going to do? And that's the tension in every episode. That's great.
• 1:28:43
  This is great storyteller, right, and and those are the tools that has
• 1:28:49
  nothing to do with the software. Yeah, yeah, exactly nothing. You
• 1:28:54
  know, I don't care what method. You know, what if he's a
• 1:28:57
  movie magic, if Julian Fellows is reading writing it with a quill, you
• 1:29:01
  know it is it is it is great storytelling, and and that's what's gonna
• 1:29:09
  that's what it's gonna save you. You could film that thing, you know,
• 1:29:13
  with a cardboard box, and it will be compelling television. Yeah.
• 1:29:16
  Yeah, you know you mentioned some things like clear is it is? You
• 1:29:21
  know, when you're giving notes or feedback or accepting that. I don't remember
• 1:29:26
  where I heard this before, but I wanted to implement because somebody had asked
• 1:29:29
  me, like just advice, like me to give advice like when you're giving
• 1:29:34
  like when somebody read your script. I said, well, one thing you
• 1:29:38
  can do to get constructive feedback. I don't I really don't know where I
• 1:29:42
  heard this before, but I thought it was great. Was simply, Uh
• 1:29:45
  was simply when you read the script, can you read my story? Can
• 1:29:49
  you tell me one? Is it clear? Two? If it is clear,
• 1:29:56
  is it interesting? We'll be right back after a from our sponsor and
• 1:30:03
  now back to the show. The exactly that way. That way, you're
• 1:30:10
  not there's no there's no like you can't be defensive about it. It's just
• 1:30:13
  like, well I read it, I wasn't sure about what happened here or
• 1:30:16
  why the character did this. He goes, well, it is clear,
• 1:30:19
  but it felt like stuff I've seen before. You know that way, it's
• 1:30:24
  not a personal attack on you. Like, okay, so that I can
• 1:30:27
  work on that note and that you can kind of police yourself on right,
• 1:30:30
  Yeah, that that you. I was working with Dan Fogelman, who who
• 1:30:34
  had written Cars and You Would Love, and we were working on a draft,
• 1:30:47
  yeah, a movie for Disney Live Action Animation Hybrid. And one of
• 1:30:55
  the things that he said to me, which was great, he says,
• 1:30:57
  on every page, assume that the person reading it might be on a treadmill,
• 1:31:01
  and and that that person, you know, you have to make the
• 1:31:05
  intention very clear, the obstacle very clear. Tell the story that you're going
• 1:31:10
  to tell. Clarity, clarity, clarity, because you don't want the note.
• 1:31:13
  That's one note that you can easily take off the table. It wasn't
• 1:31:15
  clear. I like one of one of the things that I love. I'm
• 1:31:27
  I'm a writer who likes a study writing. I like, I'll listen to
• 1:31:30
  anybody who's talking about how they're how they you know, every everybody's lecture is
• 1:31:34
  everybody's series. I love that stuff. And one thing was this guy,
• 1:31:39
  the guy who wrote four Weddings in a Funeral, whose name is Escape,
• 1:31:43
  but he had also written Love Actually, and before that he wrote this great
• 1:31:47
  series called Blackadder, and he was, you know, Royan Atkinson's like kind
• 1:31:53
  of main guy, and and one thing that he said is, you know,
• 1:31:57
  don't be afraid of writing on the note. And he says one of
• 1:32:01
  the most famous lines, and I think it's love actually, as he says
• 1:32:06
  he's sitting there, he's riding around it, around it, around it,
• 1:32:10
  and he says, I'm just gonna say what it is it's happening, and
• 1:32:12
  he wrote the line I'm just a woman talking to a man, just a
• 1:32:17
  girl talking to a boy. No, that's I think. I was actually
• 1:32:20
  nodding Hill right with Julie Robins exactly. Yes, oh guy, you're right.
• 1:32:25
  Don't be afraid to ride in the nose. That's such a great like
• 1:32:28
  simple a vice, like yeah, then if it's then if if people don't
• 1:32:31
  like it, then find then that's a that's a whole separate conversation. But
• 1:32:35
  they won't go what what's going on? You know this stage it was like
• 1:32:41
  they're kind of talking around something. I don't really get it whatever, and
• 1:32:44
  then it just lost me, like no, you know that that what is
• 1:32:48
  it? Like, you know, Darth Vader states his intentions pretty much that
• 1:32:54
  you know, yeah lines, you know, he's like, you know,
• 1:32:58
  I will you know he states isn't tentions. That's why that's one of those
• 1:33:01
  things that you know you can dance around, but you really have to hit
• 1:33:04
  at some point or another. Is you know what what Pixar would call the
• 1:33:08
  I want song. You know that that nobody does. Everybody sings and I
• 1:33:13
  want song in some way or another and go, I like that sing that
• 1:33:17
  one song. You know, I can't I talk to you for There's so
• 1:33:21
  much I would love to having. I would love to have another opportunity to
• 1:33:25
  have you come back on too. We could talk more. You know,
• 1:33:28
  you're working with Aaron's workin and just other writing. You have your master's classes
• 1:33:33
  coming up. I definitely make sure you have. Everybody has the links and
• 1:33:36
  promote. You know, Rob Edwards dot Net. I know you're you're starting.
• 1:33:40
  That's the community. Yeah, you can also find me a at I
• 1:33:45
  am Rob Edwards on Twitter. Okay, great, yeah that's that's new.
• 1:33:50
  Oh that's brand new. Perfect. I was terrified of what I would do
• 1:33:54
  on Twitter and finally I said, okay, just put it away at three
• 1:34:00
  am. Yeah, don't don't. I try not to twitter too much,
• 1:34:03
  but but I most uh, anything that happens that of interest will be on
• 1:34:10
  there. Oh fantastic, Okay, yeah, all the blog posts, all
• 1:34:13
  that stuff will be well, you know as we wrap you know, wrap
• 1:34:16
  all this stuff up. I can't thank you enough for taking a time,
• 1:34:20
  your generosity to share with me your knowledge, your experience, and this aspect
• 1:34:27
  of the brain Trust, or of any sort of communal like writing group that
• 1:34:32
  has affected this. Like that was really important to me because I'm trying to
• 1:34:36
  show to my audience like I want to apply this stuff. So like literally,
• 1:34:42
  I think the next episode I'll be doing for my podcast is a video
• 1:34:45
  hang out with some people I bring together to illustrate like here it is,
• 1:34:53
  you know, a brain trust, my own version of a brain trust group
• 1:34:56
  put together on on the on the script that I'm then we're I don't know,
• 1:35:01
  yeah exactly with those improvms. You know, yeah, the rules established,
• 1:35:05
  the rules. You're clearly you know, hit the bigger problems. First.
• 1:35:10
  It's a yes and you know what if and and yes and yeah and
• 1:35:15
  and piling on and you know, best idea, you know, no bad
• 1:35:19
  ideas. Just build build build, right, Yeah, that's that's awesome.
• 1:35:25
  I think it's something so the people to see it, like, oh,
• 1:35:28
  I see how that's working, and maybe they can stop before they settle on
• 1:35:31
  their story, like they can push themselves. And it's really just it's a
• 1:35:35
  call. It's a cry out, a call to the rest of the independent
• 1:35:40
  filmmakers out there, like just because you can make it, just don't make
• 1:35:44
  it just yet, you know, like use use the right tools, you
• 1:35:46
  know, don't you like I always say, I want to say, you're
• 1:35:50
  using the wrong tools. You know. Just stay stay, stay with you
• 1:35:56
  know three about you know, index cards and post it notes and and stuff,
• 1:36:00
  and work the story. Don't lock it down so so early. It's
• 1:36:04
  like you don't lack a painting after the first jroke and and use use other
• 1:36:10
  people. It's a told we tell stories, you know. A big part
• 1:36:15
  of a Princess in the Frog we were we were pitching that thing all the
• 1:36:18
  time. You know. I love him to pitch. I will pitch people
• 1:36:23
  say hey, what are you working on? I will you know, I'll
• 1:36:26
  just take over the party. Oh, let me tell you this. It's
• 1:36:31
  upon a time because I want to see if people are gonna if people's eyes
• 1:36:35
  are gonna glaze over. Yeah, if people's eyes are gonna glaze over,
• 1:36:41
  I want to see him glaze over. If people are if people are leaning
• 1:36:46
  in, if people laugh at something. Then the next time I tell that
• 1:36:49
  thing, I'm gonna tell it's gonna be twice long, you know, till
• 1:36:54
  that thing, you know, through a colosseum. Uh, and I'm gonna
• 1:36:58
  avoid you know, just like the plague, the part where people's eyes glazed
• 1:37:01
  over, and I could probably tell why their eyes eyes glazed over. Yeah,
• 1:37:06
  it's that second question. It's yeah, it was clear but not interesting.
• 1:37:12
  Okay, Yeah, this is amazing. That's something. Yeah, so
• 1:37:16
  so awesome. So yeah, no, no, yeah, please let me
• 1:37:19
  know when that happens. I can't wait to Yeah, I I put it
• 1:37:23
  together. Actually, it's funny because I wrote a book as an experiment.
• 1:37:26
  I was telling my audience and the podcasts like, hey, if you know,
• 1:37:30
  filmmakers are just we're making digital products. And a lot of authors for
• 1:37:34
  the longest time have been writing digital products for Amazon. You know, you're
• 1:37:39
  just selling a digital product. So what are the mechanisms of like writing,
• 1:37:43
  creating something digitally and then selling it. What are the marketing mechanisms of selling?
• 1:37:47
  So I said, I'll write a book and put myself as a guinea
• 1:37:49
  pick. So I did that last year and put it on Amazon, and
• 1:37:53
  I've been selling it and I'm seeing what works and what doesn't work. But
• 1:37:57
  part part of that process of writing a book, I I also record an
• 1:38:00
  audio recording version of an audiobook of it. And I was like, wait
• 1:38:03
  a minute, this is I've seen this happen because I know The Blacklist has
• 1:38:06
  a podcast, and so I did an early version of my script by recording
• 1:38:12
  it as an audio basically play. I was reading, like it's like an
• 1:38:16
  audio table read, but it's you know, you can listen to it.
• 1:38:18
  So the next I'm rewriting, doing the rewrites, and I'm going to I'll
• 1:38:23
  record it. And that's sort of my way of like inviting my guests on
• 1:38:27
  who will be part of this makeshift mass I'm sorry. Brain Trust group is
• 1:38:31
  like you can either read the script or you can listen to it all the
• 1:38:35
  bells and whistles with the actors I put in place, and the audio cues
• 1:38:40
  and the music, so you can have like an audio experience of it.
• 1:38:44
  And then that way it's easier for them. Like you said, they're on
• 1:38:45
  a treadmill, they're in traffic, and they can listen to the story.
• 1:38:49
  And then that way, when they come to the table, they can tell
• 1:38:51
  me like what worked or what wasn't clear or what was it and then we
• 1:38:56
  can take the brain trust meeting to the next level, because hopefully I have
• 1:39:00
  to do something to create that visual experience or an emotional experience that's just not
• 1:39:06
  just the written word. At least that's my intentions, right exactly. And
• 1:39:11
  starting yeah, starting with yourself. What I love about that is that you
• 1:39:15
  started with yourself as an audience. You know, what is the book I
• 1:39:17
  most want to read? And then you know and then and you started there
• 1:39:21
  so so you know what it what it needs to be. You also did
• 1:39:25
  that, you know, kind of what I love that Tim Ferriss thing of,
• 1:39:28
  like I'm a I'm a guinea pig. Yes, I'm just going to
• 1:39:30
  throw myself into this and see what happens, which I think is a good
• 1:39:35
  life experience. Like get used to getting bruised. You know, I say
• 1:39:41
  it all the time. Embrace the suck. You know it all sucks.
• 1:39:45
  You're always going to hear somebody going like, oh, that's stupid, and
• 1:39:48
  you have to just say I know it's stupid now, but you know in
• 1:39:53
  a couple of months it won't be. Yeah, we'll be right back after
• 1:40:00
  a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. If you
• 1:40:08
  tell if if I get the right you know, if I get the right
• 1:40:11
  stuff, so so yeah, so so put yourself. You know, putting
• 1:40:14
  yourself in the in the mouth of the lion is a great idea. Yeah,
• 1:40:16
  that's that's that's gonna be a lot of fun. And you will you
• 1:40:19
  will probably learn volumes from it because you'll have that that delicious like you says
• 1:40:25
  flop set kind of thing. Yeah, like oh no, this is embarrassing,
• 1:40:29
  and then you know, you always pull yourself out of the ashes.
• 1:40:31
  Everybody does. Very very cool. Thank Rob, Thank you, thank you
• 1:40:34
  so much. I can't thank you enough. Really, thank you for having
• 1:40:38
  me. I want to thank Scott so much for doing such a great job
• 1:40:43
  with this episode. If you want to get links to anything we spoke about
• 1:40:45
  in this episode, head over to the show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot TV
• 1:40:48
  Ford Slash three thirty. Thank you so much for listening, guys. As
• 1:40:53
  always, keep on writing no matter what. I'll talk to you soon.
• 1:40:57
  Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcasted Bulletproove Screenwriting dot tv. H