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IFH 721: The Million Dollar Mini-Movie Screenwriting Method with Chris Soth · Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast

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  You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting
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  Podcast, Episode number seven twenty one. Be ruthless about protecting your writing days,
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  Enjoy today's episode with guest host Jason Buff. Today we are talking with Chris
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  So, the author of Million Dollar Screenwriting and the Mini Movie Method, and
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  we're going to talk a little bit later about what the Mini Movie Method is
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  and how you can use it to help you with your screenplays. I'm not
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  going to go into that now, but you definitely want to stick around and
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  learn about that. It's a way of putting your screenplay together, the structure
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  and everything that I had never really heard of. And Chris pretty much he
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  is the inventor of this method of putting a movie together into these mini movies.
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  All right, let me get to the episode. Here is Chris.
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  So, So, what I wanted to focus on first of all, is
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  a little bit about your background in screenwriting. And you know how you got
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  into screenwriting from the beginning, sure, absolutely well. I guess I've been
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  sort of a nuts for story and structure. I was a kid. I
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  was an undergraduate major in drama, and I started studying their plays and play
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  structure there as well. Though I wanted to be an actor at the time,
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  and I just felt like, you know, there was something better and
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  we could know more about this than we had been given by Aristotle and was
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  kind of out there in the general knowledge pool. And I did find my
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  trade as an actor for about ten years also the comedian and the magician,
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  and started writing in my own material and started using some of this story structure
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  that I had studied to, you know, to make that material a little
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  better. I sort of found if I was doing a six minute comedy set.
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  If I told a little story or there was a story shaping the whole
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  thing, I didn't have to be as funny, so where that made it
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  funnier. And so I would do that, and I started reading up on
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  that and wrote a novel. I worked on cruise ships, actually, and
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  I was doing those comedy acts there, and I have play of free time.
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  So I wrote a novel with that free time, and then I wrote
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  the screenplay at that novel. And after that, you know, the bug
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  had bitten me and I had to know everything about screenwriting, started reading all
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  the books. At that time, there were about three of them, and
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  now of course there are three hundred. And I come sort of from an
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  academic family, and if you want to do something in my family, by
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  and largely get a school for it. My dad's a college professor. So
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  I went back to school University of Southern California Film School, and that's where
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  I found a far better structure method which they call sequencing there, which I
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  use and have you know, studied and gone in depth with ever since,
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  and sort of heightened and refined to the mini movie method. And I was
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  very lucky at USC that I wrote a screenplay there that was my thesis.
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  I am a graduate screenwriting for Rimp and that's sold for three quarters of million
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  dollars and that became a movie called Firestorm. So, you know, very
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  fortunate to you know, have one of those big splashy specks tales on the
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  front page of Variety in Hollywood Reporter the next day. Very fortunate to get
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  the movie made, and lucky enough to apply my trade in holly whatever since
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  and have kind of always taught as well. I mentioned I kind of come
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  from an academic background and started teaching at USC shortly after I left try to
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  use daylight extension. And what I found was outside of USC people were not
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  getting this method, this better way of breaking stories down to you know,
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  to sort of give you its the overyear of the method. Rather than three
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  acts, which is taken from playwriting, the mini movie method breaks a story
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  down or screensplay down into eight mini movies. So if we take Peter that
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  two hour time frame of you know, one hundred and twenty minutes, we
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  have eight fifteen minute chapters or eight mini movies that all add up to the
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  story of the movie. And maybe, as I say this, you're thinking
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  of movies you've scene, or you can remember some movies Vu Sine where you
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  felt like, you know, do a certain visual cue or music cue that
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  you've been given by the director of the filmmakers. Oh, something has ended,
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  everything's changed now and something new is beginning. Right, So at the
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  end of back two, you know the cops partner will be killed and you
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  know he'll look at this, you know, into the sky and holler no
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  right, and you know that law that way right, and the camera pans
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  up into that God shot because that's autos to God. You say, no,
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  God, dare you do this? Right? Well, that's generally around
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  the end of back two, or I would call him in the movie six
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  at its kind of said, you know, one chapter is ended and another
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  chapters beginning, and the music will smell too, but you know that they're
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  actually eight of those. And good stories have a structure that of eight different
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  tensions of breaking the main tension the story down to eight different tensions, each
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  based on a hope and fear on which they know the outcome of the main
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  story will rely. And once you've had that breakthrough, it becomes much simpler.
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  I mean, it's never easy to write a story, but let's say
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  this is about eight times easier. That that really helps you out. So
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  that's kind of as you were saying, you know, people specialize in different
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  areas. That was where I found the need and the niche where I said,
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  well, wait a minute, this isn't the industry standard. Everybody should
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  be doing this. It is so much simpler, so much easier. You
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  know, why aren't all the screenwriting books written about this method? Right?
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  I don't know how much you know, you get have a one screenwritting or
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  your listeners to I know you're talking to all kinds of film because year,
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  But if you want to tell a story, this is going to help you.
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  You know, if you've ever heard you know act two. If you
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  read your first screenwriting book and tokeny you write thirty pages, that's hard enough,
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  and you've got that landmark of the act one turning page right, And
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  now your reward for that is you get to write sixty more without any sort
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  of landmarks to guide you on your way. Uh. You know, that's
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  that's a nightmare. And I think everybody knows that Act two is where good
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  screenplays go to die, right, you know, I mean, how many
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  movies have a promising start and kind of falter in the second act. I
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  can tell you, you know, for every movie that does that, there
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  are a thousand screenplays and didn't make it to the screen right and and died
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  there in the second act. And this is the way. You know,
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  this is a great way to kind of keep you or your second act shopping
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  right and really have a tension and a build and you builds a really strong
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  climaction and have a little mini climactors and mini movies along the way as each
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  tension resolves and turns. So now do you do you chart that in some
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  sort of way where you, you know, say, okay, the first
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  mini movie needs this, needs to happen, the second mini movie this need
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  you know, do you give a general guideline of the things that need to
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  happen along the way? Oh? Yeah, absolutely. I mean we are
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  after you know, hundreds of years of stories and over one hundred years of
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  movies, really a thousands of years of stories and about one hundred pluck years
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  of movies. We can kind of figure this out and the method actually comes
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  from the fact, and we sort of it starts to emerge because I would
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  argue, good stories always did this, but kind of by accident. We'll
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  be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the
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  show. And I think that you know, what's making them good starts to
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  emerge when you know, by serendipity, film starts to be shot on reels
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  and a real hole, you know, pretty close to fifteen minutes the film,
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  and the early filmmakers, as they develop what becomes the modern day feature
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  film, you know, find it advantageous to plot out a chapter per reel.
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  Right, So I don't think you know, Sam the Goldenwan was ever
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  you know, chomping the cigars and we have problem in act too, he
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  wouldn't have known what the act was. I don't think ben Hecht in The
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  Golden Age of Holly was saying that either. I think he were saying,
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  we've got to fix the fifth reel. So there's absolutely attempts for the pattern
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  that you're between me and you know, Joseph Campbell and you know a lot
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  of other people who have studied stories in folklore. We can say many movie
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  on is very typically willing to do this. Many we choose in a typical
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  we do this, and you can identify it sort of a broad generic way
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  mainly because of you know, where it is on the timeline, right if
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  if that story is if a if a mini movie is the beginning of the
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  story, there are certain obligations and tasks it has to perform, introducing the
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  main character, setting the main tension, showing this world, things like that.
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  You can generate a checklist pretty easily likewise at the end, and then
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  it's sort of you know, filling in that that middle where you know things
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  are stretches, but there's a much more you know, detailed template than that
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  that I give in my book A million dollars screen running the mini movie to
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  methods that is actually available Amazon relatively recently to only be able to date from
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  my website that ten times side. So I advise everybody Amazon and and you
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  can identify those you know to kind of broadly and gerically, and then you
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  can separate them by genre too. You can say, okay, well are
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  they in a monster movie? This is kind of the thing that starts to
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  be happening. It starts we see in mini made. One can come up
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  with different patterns as well, like why is in a love story? Right?
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  Those those three those three famous Hollywood sentences, boy meets girl, Right,
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  that tends to be the end of anue we want boy loses girl.
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  We all kind of know that at the end of that too, you know
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  that's heartbreak occurs and then boyjets Girl will be somewhere there in the third act
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  mid the movie step in a race. So you know there's a plot point
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  they're talking about. What they say, point the girl boyle girl for jets
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  girl. Right. Uh so, so yeah, there there is is a
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  general pattern and it breaks down a genre and then you know in my mentorship
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  program that that springs by mentor dot com doe for you to check it out.
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  I will guide you there step by step, not through just you know,
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  the genre of story that you do, and they're not just what all
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  stories too, but what your specific story do. I feel like that that's
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  what we all have to master. We also master the story in general.
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  Then the dictates the genre, and then we have to find what our own
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  unique story is to tell and hows best told, because that's what's going to
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  differentiate it from all the other stories of the genre and all the other stories
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  in the world. Right right now, what I was wondering if you could
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  do just to give an example of the eight mini movies in action. Is
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  there a movie in particular that you use to demonstrate those eight mini movies just
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  so that people can have an idea of how it breaks down. Yeah,
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  I don't know that I have one absolutely by heart and by memory, but
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  I know, you know the notes I'll go to when I'm asked this question,
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  and I probably could put you one of these two movies entirely from memory
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  and give you all eight of the mini movies. But people aren't hearing this.
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  Well, now, that's that's interesting. I'd like to see that in
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  action. What movies I look at absolutely the movie seven. When I first
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  heard uh that conceive you know, I was uh in. It was in
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  my second year of grad school at the time, and I interviewed Arnold Koppelsen,
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  who had bought the script, and he said, Oh, it's about
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  a serial killer who is killing people, uh in, you know, in
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  the mode of the deadly sins, right, And I immediately knew, oh,
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  well, that's one deadly sin for any movies, that's right, and
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  it it almost is. It's it's a little more sophisticated that. But once
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  in a while, when I adhie, you know, an idea like that
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  where there's sort of a number, you know, right in the concept that
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  is, you know, very close to seven ord and and I say or
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  six, And I say, well, okay, now now if it's six,
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  I say, now my story is three quarters outlines, right, that
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  story is seven seven eights of the way to outlook. Uh, it's slightly
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  different than that in that I can I mean, I don't have my memory
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  so much that I can say, you know, many movies three is uh
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  lust right, so that's a pretty good jazz actually, uh, and so
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  it's seven. Really, six of the mini movies of seven are dictated by
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  are all sort of short film of leading up to a ghastly tableau where in
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  which someone has been killed that is staged to look look like a decline of
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  one of the deadly sins that happened six of the of the eight times.
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  And it is a full eight mini movie. Struck sure, Uh, they
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  just they knock went off right away in the free credit sequence because the first
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  scene is Brad Kitten Morgens even showing up at one of these. So now
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  now they're only six left. Maybe this that many movie ends another one?
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  Uh? And then when the manye four, that's all about chafing the killer.
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  They're they're on the track of the killer there and he shows up the
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  police station and uh his fingerprints cut off Kevin Safey and the killer they called
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  John Joe. Uh and then he escapes them. That's the movie four.
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  So uh so two of them are are knocked off by I bring to in
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  movie one, and one is one of the eliminated in the movie four,
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  and and the other six uh each stemens for a mini movie. So if
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  I was if I had that brilliant idea, uh, I would just say,
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  Okay, well, this is the the lust in the movie, and
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  that is the slow mini movie, and this is the golet me and I
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  would you have the tension to find that? And I would let that scene
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  in view. Uh the page I was writing and seven is very well written
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  and doesn't appear to us as episodic at all, because it's all sort of
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  all those pearls are hung on the string catching one serial killer who has perpetrated
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  all of these acts, right, and we learn a little more about them
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  each time. So there's a great example, a very good movie and a
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  very good screenplay that sold the effect using this method. And I feel like
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  you have sort of a little laugh of recognition where I've said that, Uh,
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  they like, oh, of course, and but we don't experienced you
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  know, the movie that way, and go, oh, well this is
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  just formulaic. Uh go oh my god, it's cool and target twisty right
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  like likewise, a winner of Best Picture and Best Screenplay. I'm probably a
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  little older than more op it from my childhood. It's original belief. Seven
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  Oscars swept the Oscars that year. A great period content may be called the
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  stink. So in the Sting, at least through the second act, title
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  cards come up that give a title to each minus. So so there in
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  that all important second act, I think it actually goes in the third act
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  to it. I know I could be wrong about that. So that second
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  act is chaptered very specifically with tensions that are almost exactly fifteen minutes laws,
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  so you'll really see it there, and you'll see it in the second act
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  where it's so important that things don't get static, that you haven't been trying
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  to resolve the same tension too long, that it has evolved a little bit,
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  or the stakes have risten that you're you know, your heroes are now
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  trying to do something different to solve the problem. The second act is where
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  you know, you, you know, as an audience or a reader,
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  which can kind of look at what saying looking kind of e static for a
• 19:14
  long time. Nothing's really changing here. Let's let's you know, quicken the
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  pace guy. So they're all chaptered quite quite specifically. Uh. And it's
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  a great one treat for you to see and study because hey, best screenplay,
• 19:26
  best picture, right, so I could go into more detail about that,
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  I could picture to you by memory. I don't know if it's you
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  know, our best, our best possible study here, but uh, it's
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  you know, it's uh, go take a look at yourself, you know,
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  the just quickly at the end of the day, we won the Robert
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  Redford character, once you're bange against the gangster, killed his comment partner.
• 19:51
  At the end of two, he enlists the Paul Newman character to help you.
• 19:55
  Now that's what you've probably been taught to call act you want when you
• 19:57
  just wanted to We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and
• 20:07
  now back to the show. Uh, they're gonna pull the big con on
• 20:12
  the on the gangster. Uh. And to do that, they I think
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  Paulmerton says it in the first act. We've got to set the hook so
• 20:22
  we can tell them the tail there we can pull the wire and f and
• 20:29
  that'll sting it, right. And those are the four title cards. They
• 20:32
  are the hook of the tail, the wire, and the sting, and
• 20:37
  they're all sort of mini cons they have to pull, uh along the way
• 20:42
  to pull off the big con, which is ultimately the sting in which the
• 20:47
  movie takes its title. So the con and and you know, getting the
• 20:52
  money from the mark is called the sting. And that's the tension the way
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  up there many the seven as you break up the third act, I'll make
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  I'll just I just said one and two or what you've heard called the first
• 21:03
  act thinly three, four, five and sixers what is called the second act
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  then maybe seven and are what we first called the third act. That's so
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  you'll see, you know, we divide this by fifteen, uh, you
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  know, one hundred and twenty pages or minutes by fifteen. You'll see that
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  two of my plots and are the ones you're familiar at the end of that
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  two at the end of that the end of actually one of the inter thatat
• 21:23
  two uh so, Uh. You know, the tension of the hook is
• 21:29
  they got to hook the mark into wants to be in you know, uh
• 21:33
  in this com that she will actually think he's a fun man. Uh So
• 21:37
  they've got to set the hook in you know the fish. Uh. There,
• 21:41
  and our it is we hope they can. We fear that it's all
• 21:45
  probably blown because it will be alongs what's going long? So does that make
• 21:49
  sense? And and you know, just and I did an exercise within seven
• 21:56
  to will actually recommend it to my clients and my students from anybody out here
• 22:00
  who you know, wants to use the mini movie weapons. It's a good
• 22:03
  exercise to title your mini movies. You're gonna title the movie. Uh,
• 22:07
  you know your movie will have a title. Why not give your mini movie
• 22:11
  a title? So I said, you know, I'd call that the the
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  Pride uh mini movie. Right, you know, we called Pride. And
• 22:21
  now they don't have title cards come up with the seven right? Uh?
• 22:25
  But they do. They literally do. Uh in the thing, you know,
• 22:27
  the the great great Scott chops on Marvin Hamdler's score will come up and
• 22:33
  the the title card which sort of Norman rockwellish uh Uh. Image from the
• 22:38
  coming many movie you will will come up and it will play the hook right,
• 22:44
  and it really, you know, creates in your mind when you were
• 22:48
  turning a page and came through chapter five and the title, uh, you
• 22:52
  know, it creates sort of a uh, preparation of the viewer's mind that
• 22:56
  oh, we'll come to something new, okay, so the thing has ended
• 23:00
  of a new beginning. Now, you know that's not going to work for
• 23:03
  every movie because of that's a stylistic wave of telling a story. In some
• 23:11
  movies, you know, you want to go by so fast and not have
• 23:14
  that quaint it's the new chapter sort of feel that we experience them seamlessly,
• 23:18
  and it's a little harder to see these clock points and the turns intentions,
• 23:23
  but they are there. They are none more often there, and they're working
• 23:27
  to support the Still. Now, what is your process when you're creating a
• 23:33
  screenplay? How far do you go with outlining and creating somewhat of a blueprint
• 23:41
  before you actually get into the you know, the writing phase. You know,
• 23:45
  it depends, and it is anywhere from absolutely outlined to you know,
• 23:52
  where writing the screenplay is an afterthought to jumping in and having one eight sentence
• 24:02
  out one. Uh, you know, and that's uh, you know,
• 24:04
  you notice I keep using that number eight, right, and there are eight
• 24:07
  mini movies. So I wrote Firestorm, the you know, the screenplay that
• 24:11
  sold for three quarters of million dollars that maybe over me and you know with
• 24:15
  a long haul. Uh, just with those eight sentences and what they were
• 24:21
  was just a turning point I would jot down to end each mini movie.
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  Right, So uh, Now do I outline in more detail than that I
• 24:33
  do? But I might do it in process. So if I so,
• 24:37
  it kind of depends up on the work situation I'm in and and sort of
• 24:41
  my mood. If I can't wait to get writing, I might you know,
• 24:45
  brainstorm those eight turning points and dive in. If I'm working with a
• 24:48
  studio or other producers or a collaborator, and it's a good idea that we
• 24:53
  all are on the same page. Uh and understand you know that what's the
• 24:59
  story going to be there? You know, in a modern detail, I
• 25:03
  might create a treatment that is quite detailed. The most I would ever create
• 25:08
  without being paid for it is again eight page treatment and it will shock you
• 25:14
  to win. That's one page for mini movie, right, So uh,
• 25:19
  and you know my collaborative who you know with my role points. You know,
• 25:25
  I'll points not anybody I like this with the mini new method. Uh.
• 25:27
  But when I'm working with a client, you know, it's sort of
• 25:30
  up to them. Uh. And I'll say, listen, you can bring
• 25:36
  in an outline or you know, uh, let's do let's do our brains.
• 25:40
  When we've come up with these eight turning points of the mini movie and
• 25:45
  what and I might say next week, blow e should those those sentences up
• 25:52
  into a paragraph? Uh? And then maybe blow each paragraph up into a
• 25:56
  page. Uh. And then we're gonna take you to those you know,
• 26:00
  pages of pros written in treatment style, and we're going to blow their weapont
• 26:06
  of the ten to fifteen pages of the screenplay. That's a very typical process
• 26:11
  for me. Now when I'm writing myself, as I said, I might
• 26:15
  just jot down the journey all the way so you know what and it it
• 26:18
  would be kind of like you just heard me do for this, do for
• 26:22
  this thing. At the end of adwy one, his partner is killed.
• 26:25
  At the end of ewy two, he gets a new partner. At the
• 26:27
  end of the New three, he accept the hook right now i'll know what
• 26:30
  that means. I'm all to scrawled on the back of the envelope somewhere.
• 26:34
  Uh, And then I might actually start writing the script, but I will
• 26:37
  do more outlining. It's just sort of in process, well in process,
• 26:42
  which means, you know, when I get to that mini movie that wasn't
• 26:48
  really very full in my mind, I guess very often that's movie five.
• 26:51
  I guess I a mid point I've only got, you know, which is
• 26:53
  the end of four through the map right, all the strong good pointing to
• 27:00
  me for sometimes the most amorphous. Then that could happen back to which is
• 27:06
  you know, like one of those places that stametay is got to die.
• 27:08
  And I I'll outline the mini movie in more detail, and that might start
• 27:17
  with you a brainstorming a list of highlights, which would become a list of
• 27:19
  scene. I might actually, if I'm really sort of up against it,
• 27:25
  I'll sort of break the mini movie down into microes, which means, you
• 27:30
  know, these eight steps of structure that I have are kind of the structure
• 27:34
  of everything. If you're going to work on attention in fifteen, the steps
• 27:38
  are going to be the same, if smaller then as if you work them
• 27:45
  out over one hundred and twenty, right, and the ratio will be of
• 27:48
  the thing so about you know, one quarter of the script will be you
• 27:52
  know, the beginning, and then we'll reach the end of the beginning of
• 27:56
  that part of the way true, et cetera. That's kind of the golden
• 27:59
  mean or ratio of the storytelling or drawn. So I might then outline further.
• 28:04
  But to me, those eight turning points are key. The analogy I've
• 28:10
  been using recently is it's kind of like having a map quest for the Jersey
• 28:15
  the years to go on your screenplay. You know, your your screenplay is
• 28:21
  going to have eight turning points. Maybe a map quest has eight turns.
• 28:26
  Hight I hapen to live in San Diego County. If I'm driving up to
• 28:29
  LA I'm probably gonna go on the five, and depending on where I'm going
• 28:33
  to go in La, I'm gonna have to get off the five at some
• 28:36
  point. I kind of don't care, at least at the beginning and even
• 28:41
  on most of the drive how long I'm on the five, if that's going
• 28:45
  to be you know, seventy miles or something like that, I care about
• 28:48
  that turn, you know, my offering because I know I'm going there,
• 28:55
  and I know that I can figure out the drive that's gonna be kind of
• 28:59
  a straight shot. Uh so, I you know, and when whenever we
• 29:04
  used to give directions, if you know, come from an age before map
• 29:07
  Quest, it was always you know, uh, you keep going on this
• 29:11
  road and take a right off. You know, we were very rarely mentioned
• 29:15
  how long it's going to be. You might say a long time right,
• 29:19
  uh, you know, or it's gonna be a quick left. But you
• 29:23
  know, the turn define the shape, and the turn defined the drink.
• 29:30
  And and when I have those, I really know the shape of my story.
• 29:36
  I can fill in the details along along the purple line of the blue
• 29:41
  line of map Quests or Google Maps as I don't. We'll be right back
• 29:47
  after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. Now,
• 29:55
  do you have any exercises once you have your outline and everything? Do
• 30:00
  you just rely upon the writing process for creativity to come out? Do you
• 30:04
  have any tricks for kind of like making putting yourself into a creative mode or
• 30:10
  is it just something that comes out as you're writing. Well, you know,
• 30:14
  one of my favorite quotes is from Stravinsky, and it uh, and
• 30:17
  it is the news will only visit when she sees you are hard at work,
• 30:23
  and you know I working hard and uh and uh uh and and and
• 30:32
  doing the work. If you expect that bolt from the blue to strike,
• 30:37
  I think it will come sort of when you're in the zone, or you'll
• 30:40
  cross over into the zone when you are doing the hard work. But you
• 30:45
  know, uh, the music is sickle, and sometimes that hard work does
• 30:49
  not you know, cause or descend from Adam And I think you know,
• 30:56
  having a craft and having a series of best practices and principles that you can
• 31:03
  reliably put into twenty is the color and the very base of what is called
• 31:10
  professional. You know the story is going to be very good or you know,
• 31:18
  quite good, because you know these principles and you have an aesthetic and
• 31:22
  you know what good is. And then you know the news only has to
• 31:26
  come and bleed into you a little bit to crossover to great maybe. And
• 31:33
  I think if you actually do study in the great movies, even if that
• 31:37
  writer did have that bolt from the blue, that that gave them that brilliant
• 31:42
  idea, and they weren't you know, assiduously practicing in craft and you know,
• 31:49
  doing the gut work that it takes to do that. After they have,
• 31:56
  you can dissess it and buy and large a lot more than people are
• 32:00
  willing to admit in the arts, uh, diffect it and see what makes
• 32:06
  it great and and duplicate it in your own work. And that's that's why
• 32:09
  I think movies and uh and uh and stories and television are getting better and
• 32:15
  better, uh, partially by the sheer volume that we have, partially by
• 32:22
  the technology that allows us to generate more multiple drafts, faster and easier.
• 32:29
  Uh and uh uh and just a better understanding of what makes it good.
• 32:36
  There is you know, working against that all the fact that you know,
• 32:39
  once once a great story has been told, you can't really tell it exactly
• 32:43
  that way again. Come up with a worthy you know, reinvention or that
• 32:46
  if your inspiration for something else that is also great or you're hoping great.
• 32:52
  Uh. But you know, as far as that goes, as far as
• 32:55
  you know, you know, katting the creativity and being being zone. Uh.
• 33:00
  I think of myself as a craftsman more than I do as an artist.
• 33:05
  And so to have the mine movie that mean and to really study this
• 33:10
  uh is I hate to say, that's almost a way to m guiver around
• 33:16
  not having to have a h the views strike. I don't want to say
• 33:22
  not even not having to have creativity, because these are the enough of and
• 33:27
  both of creativity that we study and the craft that we you know, dedicate
• 33:31
  ourselves to. Right, So it is it is creativity. I mean there's
• 33:38
  and and as far as that, you know, the the brainstorming that you
• 33:42
  know that you do and you know, just trying to get yourself, you
• 33:45
  know, in a creative mode. I find hard work is the best thing.
• 33:49
  But if I am not doing that and I want to like just get
• 33:52
  ideas, because that's you know, you've probably heard that, uh, that
• 33:57
  dictum of you know one one inspiration ninety nine percent perspiration, right, having
• 34:04
  the craft and having the authentic and having the you know, the best principles
• 34:07
  and a hard work ethic that all fits in the ninety nine percent. Uh,
• 34:13
  the one percent is that inspiration of the great idea? Right, I
• 34:17
  think? And I'm and for that. I watch a lot of movies,
• 34:27
  I read a lot of books. I do a lot of reading. I
• 34:30
  try to keep myself stimulating. You know, I have friends in a writing
• 34:35
  group, and I have you know, very intelligent people that I try to,
• 34:37
  you know, keep in my life that really and provides you know,
• 34:40
  stimulating conversation with and in my own mentorship program steamsaventure dot com. You know,
• 34:46
  I work with you know, dozens of clients who are great writers that
• 34:52
  I've always had a signating conversations within and last ter you have the one big
• 34:57
  idea like that one percent of the process, you have to have a million
• 35:01
  other little great ideas too, and so you have you know, other smaller
• 35:06
  one percent. You need the good idea for I do this scene, uh,
• 35:09
  you know, which is inspiration as well. And the good idea if
• 35:12
  I are the dividum, a good idea for this plot twist or ideally a
• 35:16
  great idea for that plot twist, but nobody you've ever seen before. So
• 35:21
  you're continually challenging yourself that way. And you know, I don't know in
• 35:25
  a way, I don't want to demystify it, but I well, I
• 35:30
  do want to do notify it the other I feel like that word, that
• 35:34
  word creativity, uh, you know, uh, and waiting for the news
• 35:37
  to strike is sort of an ego trip. A lot of writers and other
• 35:42
  people in the art take that and they sort of mystify it so that it
• 35:49
  can be a holy and religic experience for them. And uh and they can
• 35:54
  you know, maybe you put themselves a little above other people who don't have
• 35:59
  it or don't get it right. And you know I would much rather say,
• 36:05
  uh, let's imstify it. You can, you can do it.
• 36:07
  And you can find great idea with those screenplays if you just followed these steps.
• 36:13
  And you know, I you know who sold the screenplay, So it's
• 36:16
  your grade million dollars. It's not magic. I'm not better than you.
• 36:22
  You you can learn the same things I learned and uh and maybe not sell
• 36:27
  a screenplays it's worth a million dollars, but right one is that is as
• 36:30
  good or better as one that did. Uh and uh and I you know
• 36:39
  far prefer that uh to sort of be ah ah oh you know uh kind
• 36:49
  of uh you know elitism that comes with uh, you know, creativity and
• 36:53
  uh uh you know what people call brilliant and inspiration. Uh. You know,
• 36:59
  God shows the fader on me, which this brilliant idea. They're full
• 37:04
  you know, I'm I lord it all over all of you. He congratulations.
• 37:07
  Yet you know you have a good idea you're gonna atually have about you
• 37:10
  know, a million of those to have a screenlight career. So get back
• 37:15
  to work. Now. Do you feel like deals like that still exist?
• 37:19
  I mean it seems like that's kind of like, I mean, even even
• 37:22
  for the day it was very h kind of you know, bizarre and kind
• 37:29
  of unique in its own way. But it's like it seems like that kind
• 37:31
  of thing, you know, doesn't that that world of filmmaking is kind of
• 37:36
  a bygone era at this point. Unfortunately, you know, they do still
• 37:42
  exist, but they are you know, as you say, we're rare back
• 37:45
  then, and they are even more rare now. And this has happened,
• 37:49
  you know, I think in my lifetime, in my screenwriting career, if
• 37:52
  we you know, want to put our fingers on why, I would argue,
• 37:58
  you know that it's always uh, it's not even really that uh uh.
• 38:04
  You know, a lot of specs got bought for a lot of money
• 38:07
  and some of them turned out badly. Uh you know, that's that's part
• 38:13
  of it. But the truth is movie studio is, just as I've been
• 38:17
  working, uh in Hollywood, have become more corporate. So uh, you
• 38:23
  know, twentieth century Fox became part of News Corp. Right and uh,
• 38:30
  Paramount became part of the uh some urbibs and gigantic mudic and glomerates. They
• 38:36
  they all of the movies became used to be their own corporations and sell their
• 38:42
  own stock uh and uh and have their own shareholders. And they got bigger
• 38:47
  and bigger and became, you know, just a small part of some vast
• 38:52
  new yea conglomerates of which they're only you know, uh four to six out
• 38:57
  and uh and it is harder to justify to your shareholders that you bought a
• 39:04
  screenplay for a million dollars and then went and lost one hundred million dollars on
• 39:07
  the movie. Uh that that it is to say we thought it was gonna
• 39:13
  work. It was by the writer of Harry Potter or or you know or
• 39:16
  whatever or whatever else that you know, it's been successful in another media in
• 39:22
  uh you know publishing company that are that are that army ye conglomerate owns it's
• 39:28
  the best seller over here, right so uh you know, it's a video
• 39:32
  game that our company also owns. It's based on a song that the music
• 39:37
  branch of our of our back to the Vicky Lambered versus studios a small piece
• 39:42
  own so that synergy uh it is you know kind of what uh has has
• 39:50
  replaced you know, the oddspec sail and the journeyman screenwriter who kind of wins
• 39:54
  the lottery. We'll be right back after a word from ours and now back
• 40:04
  to the show they So what advice would you have for screenwriters to, you
• 40:10
  know, how to get their screenplays read and how to get you know,
• 40:15
  how to try to have a career as a screenwriter? Sure? Uh,
• 40:19
  I think that you you want to write those biby scripts screenplays and you want
• 40:24
  to play that lottery, while at the same time you have other works in
• 40:30
  your portfolio that are smaller budgets and you'll uh go to uh to smaller conglomerates
• 40:43
  or you know, outfits that aren't conglomerates but are still profitable. So what
• 40:46
  do I mean, Well, you know, I think it might be worth
• 40:51
  everybody too. Uh Uh. Take a look at a book called The long
• 40:54
  Tail, right, so, uh it's sort of a have a market is
• 41:00
  shifting and the long tail refers to the you know, the tale at the
• 41:04
  end of a bell curve on a graph about who's making the money in a
• 41:07
  business. Right, So as that graph, you know, swells up high
• 41:13
  and we see there's Paramounts and Disney and Universal making billions of dollars in the
• 41:20
  entertainment and as they have become more corporatized, and aren't you know one hundred
• 41:28
  million dollars used to be a blockbuster, right and a studio kind of only
• 41:31
  wants to make a movie these days that they think the upside is three hundred
• 41:36
  million dollars and that gellntically if you have a million parties. And as they've
• 41:42
  moved out of the movies that nearly make a hundred million dollars, that has
• 41:49
  left room for us on the long tail to make movies and go to entities
• 41:57
  with our screenplay that that might be making movies for ten to forty million dollars
• 42:02
  that that are only going to make a hundred million. And the opportunity there
• 42:09
  where hedge funds are stepping in and uh other you know, conglomerates are stepping
• 42:15
  in with you know, cash and liquidity. Where the studios have abandon it
• 42:21
  and smaller conglomerates can move in. That's where your opportunity is. Are they
• 42:25
  a little harder to find? Yes? They are? Are you have to
• 42:29
  do a little more work, be a little better connected. You probably are
• 42:32
  on the very far end of that same long tail. Is you know,
• 42:38
  your friends who all want to make a movie for ten thousand dollars and h
• 42:45
  and these are the contrascripts you can write and fund yourself and in between our
• 42:50
  you know, every every number of budshits from you know, ten thousand dollars,
• 42:54
  which I think have picked as the lowest you can make a movie.
• 42:57
  Ford is probably not not fulls between uh, everything between ten thousand and uh
• 43:06
  forty million and and between forty million and what the studios make will do for
• 43:13
  uh you know there there's room as well. So there are other entities stepping
• 43:17
  stepping in the profitable areas that uh that the larger studios have a band.
• 43:27
  Now are you going to sell a screenplay four million dollars to any of those
• 43:31
  entities that will be rare at first? And I am thinking, you know,
• 43:39
  might come back again, and but you know, could you make you
• 43:45
  know many more million dollars of dollars if you are a producer on such a
• 43:49
  movie and you raise the funding for a movie, uh and are a profit
• 43:55
  participants a screenplay you also work but uh hyphenated you know, uh and became
• 44:01
  a writer producer on. Uh that's what I am attempting to do. Now
• 44:06
  that's where I think, you know, my next million dollars is, and
• 44:08
  I hope my next tens of millions of dollars are and a higher level of
• 44:13
  creative control and fulfilm as well. So and I'll say this, uh,
• 44:22
  I you know, spent many as the writer and of course had that first
• 44:27
  lesson success play early on that was very exciting and caused me to write you
• 44:30
  know, in that genre and at that budget range here for my next ten
• 44:34
  students. I now as excited by the creativity it takes to get the movie
• 44:40
  funded been made as I once was by the mere creative challenge is more traditionally
• 44:46
  called the created challenge of actually writing the scripts and de finding the events that
• 44:51
  will takes place in it. Finding the funding for a movie, uh,
• 44:57
  you know, building or following you know, as I have amongst writers and
• 45:00
  people who want to partners and making with me, has been you know a
• 45:05
  very uh one t have that breakthrough to realize these could be the same thing.
• 45:08
  These are just all just challenges uh that have that are begging creative solution
• 45:16
  once I realize that it is the same thing, I can get as excited
• 45:20
  about figging funding person as I can for the usual idea for the same uh,
• 45:27
  the you know, the former is just a little more how should I
• 45:30
  say, out of my hands uh than the other view. Of course,
• 45:35
  I just have millions of dollars at my own disposal. Yet, now,
• 45:40
  how do you how do you feel about places like ink tip and the Blacklist?
• 45:45
  And what do you have a resource that you use, for example,
• 45:50
  if you have a screenplay that you want to get out or is it just
• 45:53
  a question of trying to get it in the right producer's hands. I mean
• 45:57
  talking about strictly working as a writer. Strictly working as a writer. I
• 46:04
  I I recommend all of those sources. I UH. I have gotten a
• 46:07
  lot of work myself through and tip, including the movie that was made uh
• 46:13
  that I that I appeared in. And I my own experience with a TIP
• 46:19
  is I got a lot of work on it. I I don't know that
• 46:23
  I actually listed my own scripts on because I've always had agency managers UH since
• 46:28
  that, since that first Big Specs sale to get script to uh, to
• 46:32
  get my scripts read. I I do hear lots of great stuff about as
• 46:38
  a resources. I had a movie made that I wrote an assignment from the
• 46:42
  Anti news letter. Uh you know that my second produce credit after Firestorm and
• 46:47
  uh and I know a lot of people who have had their their script picked
• 46:52
  up in an aficial way. The Blacklist, you know you were on on
• 46:58
  the playing field. My guess is become something very good, certainly with that
• 47:02
  brand and being sort of recognized as quality, I think, uh, you
• 47:07
  know, it should do well. I I'm a little less uh familiar with
• 47:13
  their business model. I actually know people at any tips teacause I'm regular.
• 47:16
  That haven't been the case with the black List as yes, so, but
• 47:22
  I recommend all of those resources, you know, always saying your copy of
• 47:25
  copyac and tour. But you know I am one of those resources myself.
• 47:30
  I'm much more about the craft or the screenwriting than I am like marketing.
• 47:34
  But certainly if you uh you know minuscripted meets your screens, I mentor dot
• 47:37
  com. I'm going to advise you in the marketing and they help you graft
• 47:40
  a great query, uh and coach pitching as well as a guy who's you
• 47:45
  know, sold multiple pitches myself, so uh, I think these resources are
• 47:50
  a great idea. I'm you know, I'm a piece of that. Uh
• 47:54
  But like anything else that they're they're a good one and they're bad ones,
• 47:58
  and you know, the bad one for you may be the great one for
• 48:01
  me. And so at all I think, you know, kind of defense.
• 48:06
  And I regard all these people you know, as my colleagues and not
• 48:08
  my competition. We're all part of the same machine that is trying to get
• 48:14
  you know, movies made and write writers to hone their craft and to get
• 48:21
  their work seen and and make movies and television and novel than any other media
• 48:29
  better. H well, you know, as well as being a writer of
• 48:34
  fiction myself. You know, I'm creating you know, non fiction book about
• 48:37
  books about the craft of writing and other nonfiction materials about the craft of writing
• 48:42
  all the time, and you know, to make the art better. And
• 48:46
  I would even like the art of creating those books. And you know,
• 48:50
  I would like there'd be better books on screenwriting and sort of structure. And
• 48:52
  that's why I contribute those. I obviously think that there's a better method than
• 48:58
  they would sort of be a dominant paradigm out there, and that is my
• 49:02
  message in magi. Okay, well, what do you think about for example,
• 49:08
  like save the Cat and that kind of thing. Uh? You know,
• 49:12
  I I knew Blake and uh and he was a colleague and we sort
• 49:16
  of emerged on the market at the same time and kind of from the same
• 49:21
  needs, you know, which is to say, you know, the three
• 49:22
  act structure is not sufficient to our cast. You're gonna you're fall apart an
• 49:30
  act to there and uh Blake uh uh So I like save the Cat.
• 49:37
  I mean I really like anything that makes it easier. And you know,
• 49:42
  I I recommend kind of everybody at all of my colleagues. We'll be right
• 49:50
  back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show.
• 49:58
  As I say to uh, you know, to my students and say,
• 50:02
  you know, or to anybody who acted the writer, you know, you're
• 50:07
  gonna read all of these books eventually. The long cour is a writers just
• 50:10
  like you gonna have to have millions of ideas and you don't know what book
• 50:14
  is going to give you the idea for a new movie, or you don't
• 50:17
  know what book is going to which book is going to get solved the problem,
• 50:22
  uh that you're having the screen flight. So when I have a hot
• 50:28
  project. I'm working the screen flight, I usually have U fact, when
• 50:31
  we did research in books, I would always have, uh, you know,
• 50:35
  a stack of books that were my research for the project and the latest
• 50:38
  screenwriting book there. So I would be you know, uh, I might
• 50:45
  do my research in the morning and then my writing in during the day and
• 50:49
  then uh, you know, read a little bit about the craft. But
• 50:52
  I've just been practicing all day, uh, you know, before I get
• 50:55
  to bed that night. And you know, I could you know, point
• 51:00
  to, uh to most of the books that I wrote on screenwriting and say,
• 51:05
  oh, well, this thing that I always do that came from that
• 51:08
  book. And uh, this thing that I always say to my students or
• 51:14
  you know, one of my mentorship clients, uh, that came from that
• 51:17
  screenwriting book. And I always say it for my version of it. If
• 51:21
  I say their versions, I say, you should go look at Robert the
• 51:23
  Keys book Rock of the Keys Book. I actually did one thing that I
• 51:28
  could actually quotes the page number of which is the uh you know John Trudy
• 51:34
  I think has a lot of you know, great and very original stuff uh
• 51:38
  and saved the cat as well. Some of my students who you know,
• 51:44
  I said, I actually have Meade at the same time, and some of
• 51:46
  my students who read our books both around the same time. I feel like,
• 51:50
  as a student who sent me a spreadsheet that lays like Snyder structure over
• 51:54
  the month, you heard me say, of you know the three act structure.
• 52:00
  You know two of my platforms are the end of back one and that
• 52:01
  two. It's the same thing. I don't say, don't use the three
• 52:07
  app structure. I say use that and of it. And likewise I would
• 52:10
  say, you know, if you know Blake structure, use that and mine.
• 52:17
  If you know John Trudy's twenty two steps, uh, you know,
• 52:22
  figure out where those are going to go as well. And you know,
• 52:28
  if something from the key is helping you out lay that into your story as
• 52:32
  well. I sort of feel like, you know, you study all of
• 52:37
  this and you synthesize it, you know, maybe into your own method and
• 52:44
  and yeah, maybe you can write a book as well and contribute something to
• 52:47
  the dialogue about what makes good good screenwriting and what makes good movies. So
• 52:54
  I quite like like, if if there's one thing that I kind of ended
• 52:58
  the champ at least for the first couple of years, that I was teaching.
• 53:00
  I always said it was a lot of the fact that I was a
• 53:02
  US be glad whenever I departed from what I had learned at USC and said
• 53:07
  somebody that was just my own theories. I would make a big point of
• 53:12
  saying, so like, maybe this is crazy, but I think and Blake
• 53:15
  just you know, went crazy and and gave all of his bloxiquens blacking factory
• 53:21
  names. Uh that people still use them, right, and they became part
• 53:28
  of the language. And it's always very flattering to me when someone says,
• 53:31
  oh yes and in the three, particularly when it's someone i'd never been right.
• 53:36
  I you know, I always felt like it leads the first couple of
• 53:38
  years. You know, if you if you use the term mini movie method,
• 53:42
  you've just had a conversation with me quite recently. Well, you've read
• 53:45
  my books, and now you know, I will I'm putting myself out there
• 53:50
  a little more. I'll get email from someone that could you know, picked
• 53:52
  up one of one of the folks at Amazon and say, uh, you,
• 53:55
  I've been using the mini read method two years and I've never met in
• 53:59
  the or uh and uh and and I've had some conversations because of it,
• 54:05
  said Oh yes, I always used this method. And you know they're in
• 54:07
  Australia or they're in Canada somewhere else to star reach into the English speaking world.
• 54:14
  And you know, and I've never heard of that, and we have
• 54:16
  never spoken sad work, and we've never spoken their mats and say no,
• 54:20
  we've never had uh. And you know, when you put yourself out there
• 54:23
  and and start to reach that far, uh, you know, it's very
• 54:27
  shattering. If you're like Tabe, I actually am changing the world a little
• 54:30
  bit for the better. Well, do you One thing I want to talk
• 54:37
  about a little more is uh going into the movie method, the mini movie
• 54:44
  method. One of the things that I wanted to talk to that we didn't
• 54:47
  talk about was the concept of creating tension. And I wanted to get your
• 54:52
  opinion on how you create tension in each of the many movies. Okay,
• 54:59
  absolutely, and this is this is my ANSWER's favorite talk. I probably should
• 55:01
  lad with it, right, I hope I will uh to the podcast.
• 55:07
  You know, I actually would say, you know, you've you've hit upon
• 55:12
  what I think is the most important thing I teach. What I what I
• 55:14
  get complimented on the most is oh this gets me through the second act like
• 55:19
  nothing else. Right now, now it's you know, four little fifteen page
• 55:22
  steps. I never made them fifteen pages away. I'm from the major turning
• 55:25
  from uh. And that's so much better than the sixty pages away right apartment.
• 55:32
  Uh So what is a tension? Okay? Uh? Attention is very
• 55:39
  defined by now I'll even back this up a little more, and I will
• 55:44
  I will say that I believe signing toward his right to the pleasure principle when
• 55:50
  he said that all pleasure is the least of tension. So pleasure comes from
• 55:58
  tension reduction. If you get a massage and they're loving your shoulders, someone
• 56:01
  to say, Trentce, that feels good. Why because the tension is being
• 56:07
  relieved. If you take a nap, you know you've got some intention because
• 56:12
  you're tired and cranky. That's relieving that satigue of exhaustion. These are Freud's
• 56:17
  examples coming up here. If you go to the bathroom, that releaves the
• 56:22
  tension of a full broader about. Of course, you know the physical acts
• 56:25
  of love. We got to build up and a build up and a build
• 56:28
  up in the release of sexual attention. Right, So if we like anything,
• 56:35
  it means it's reducing attention. If we like a story, that means
• 56:42
  it is releasing extension. So you've heard this phrase, dramatic tension, maybe
• 56:47
  even know how important it is. Right, it's the source of all pleasure
• 56:52
  we take in drama, that the tension, but the release of it.
• 56:57
  So story is going to build and build and build and build dramatic tension and
• 57:04
  then release it in a surprising and gratifying way. So how do we build
• 57:09
  up the tension in any Okay, here it is. Here's my magic formula
• 57:15
  for tension. If you ask me, this is the E equals mc squaredes
• 57:19
  story. This is the equation I wish all relies. Tension equals hope versus
• 57:27
  fear. In every movie, there's something we're hoping for. You probably heard
• 57:32
  us heard maybe you heard. It's called a rooting interest. We're rooting for
• 57:37
  the hero. And what does that mean. We're rooting for him to get
• 57:40
  what he wants, probably which might just be escaping them monster and trying to
• 57:45
  kill him, which might mean the heart of the fair maiden, which might
• 57:50
  mean, uh, you know, not to be sexist about it, the
• 57:53
  heart of that hunky man. Okay, So, uh, whatever, they
• 58:00
  want. We're generally rooting for them to get it, and we hope they
• 58:05
  will. We fear not just that they won't, but that they will suffer
• 58:10
  great consequence in the attempt of getting it. So it raiders the Lost Arc.
• 58:16
  We really hope that Indiana Jones gets the Lost Arc. We really fear
• 58:22
  that he shall die in his attempt to get it. And worse yet,
• 58:27
  the the Nazis will have it and they will become an unstoppable aren't it right,
• 58:31
  So notes the stakes that are attached that help him fear. Well,
• 58:37
  that's the hope and fear of the entire movie. That's that's what I would
• 58:39
  call the main attention of raided the Lost Arc. Right. Likewise, each
• 58:49
  miningly has attention on which that relies. So at the end of Manue,
• 58:52
  we won. When the CIA if the doss back then comes to Indian says,
• 58:58
  we need your help. We found this the word staff of Raw in
• 59:02
  the telegram. Indy says, the head piece of the staff of Raw.
• 59:07
  You take it into the matter of Tannis in Tanith at a certain time of
• 59:10
  the day. It shows you the location of the world of the souls.
• 59:15
  Well, he in that line of dialogue just the way Paul Newman does in
• 59:19
  The Sting lays out the tension of the next three new movies. The next
• 59:24
  mini movie is about him getting the head piece and the staff of raw.
• 59:28
  We hope that he can, We fear that he shall buy in the attempt,
• 59:31
  and the Nazis will get it, so he gets it successfully. The
• 59:36
  one after that is all about getting into the map room undetected and finding the
• 59:39
  will of the souls, and the one after that is about getting to the
• 59:43
  way of the Solder then getting the arc right. But if any of one
• 59:46
  of these goes wrong, we're hoping Indie triumph. And each morning, if
• 59:50
  any of them goes wrong, we the Nazis going to have the arc and
• 59:53
  rule the world. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.
• 1:00:01
  And now back to the show. So hope and fear is your technique and
• 1:00:12
  is your sure fire away to build tension in a movie, in a mini
• 1:00:16
  movie. I'll go further that in a scene, or in any interchange of
• 1:00:22
  dialogue or beat of action within a thing, every little beat of action or
• 1:00:28
  every line that somebody says must move the needle on the tension meter, and
• 1:00:36
  it's going to swing it from hope to fear, or fear to hope,
• 1:00:39
  or hope to fonder hope or fear to even worse fear. And if it's
• 1:00:45
  not doing that, then that scene, that mini movie, or worse yet,
• 1:00:52
  that movie is static and doesn't have attention and is going to be boring.
• 1:01:02
  And that is the worst client you can commit, as they story each
• 1:01:06
  other on a filmmaker of my right mm hm to be boring. So do
• 1:01:12
  you go back and like check out a scene and say, Okay, this
• 1:01:15
  scene is good, it's kind of like it's okay, but I want to
• 1:01:17
  add a little more conflict to it. I want to add just a little
• 1:01:21
  more spice. Absolutely, yes, I do that all the time. And
• 1:01:24
  what is that that's really writing and polishing? I mean, I think you
• 1:01:28
  know when you say you're rewriting, that may be kind of vague, but
• 1:01:32
  uh, this is by and large what you're doing, or at least you
• 1:01:36
  know in this phase and you write, So of course I'll go to the
• 1:01:38
  thing and say, okay, well what else here will will make will make
• 1:01:45
  this tension really top? Uh? You know, this line makes me gives
• 1:01:50
  me a little hope, you know, But the next line is going or
• 1:01:54
  or beat of beat of action is making me feel it, But how could
• 1:01:58
  it give me even more fear? What could make it look like the outcome
• 1:02:02
  is even worse? Because we watch the story or read a story, or
• 1:02:07
  go through our daily lives, we are constantly trying to predict the future,
• 1:02:10
  right, and we're constantly trying to get evidence. Uh we SEO copy in
• 1:02:15
  this book talks about this and talks about how that's an adaptive behavior. Right.
• 1:02:20
  How why would that evolve? Right? Because the people who condict the
• 1:02:22
  future the best are going to survive better, uh, and are going to
• 1:02:29
  you know, carry their genes so much generation and are you know, going
• 1:02:31
  to get all the food and they're they're going to do very well. Right,
• 1:02:36
  So so that adaptive behavior helps us out. And that's why stories are
• 1:02:40
  light up, because uh, they variously fool us and get us caught into
• 1:02:46
  that fatal family Axpapy next, Right, So if if I give you an
• 1:02:52
  event that seems to point towards a very dire outcome, a fear right,
• 1:02:58
  uh, and then I every one that makes it even more convincing that that
• 1:03:01
  is surely going to happen, And then I string a surprise because guess what
• 1:03:06
  it happened, but it was ten times worse than you thought. That I'm
• 1:03:09
  exceeding your worst fear is at denvery turn, right, So that's constantly what
• 1:03:15
  I'm asking myself, what would raise the takes on this, what would make
• 1:03:19
  this deed worst? That's a very good dance, I assume, or a
• 1:03:23
  fond for hope. But you know the way the way drama structure that's golden
• 1:03:28
  in the drama that you know, three quarters of the drama will be of
• 1:03:31
  the story will be convincing that very nad stuff that can happen, right,
• 1:03:37
  and then stepping into usually the happy ending, stepping into day to day about
• 1:03:40
  three quarters the way through, or maybe it's a very last part now talking
• 1:03:47
  about sorry creating conflict, I assume that this means what you're saying is once
• 1:03:54
  you at the very beginning, you need to establish what it is your protagonists
• 1:04:00
  wants, and therefore that's going to be something that drives you through the entire
• 1:04:08
  story. Is that absolutely? Yeah? Right? And that that's at tension
• 1:04:12
  as well, right, and their desire line, you know, creates that
• 1:04:15
  tension. You know, I said, we're rooting for them to get what
• 1:04:20
  they want. Right. So there's our hope that they will get for want,
• 1:04:25
  our fear that they will suffer great, great uh consequence in the attempts,
• 1:04:30
  right, they'll fail and be destroyed in some way by it. Uh.
• 1:04:34
  So uh and this this applies by the way, I mean, I'm
• 1:04:38
  using these broad terms that you are destroyed by it. Uh. And I
• 1:04:44
  write actually adventures. So people tend to think, oh, well, this
• 1:04:45
  is the only way to apply in that genre, but absolutely not. It's
• 1:04:50
  you know, Uh, if we say their heart is broken, then it
• 1:04:54
  applies to a love story. If that is, if we define their destruction
• 1:04:58
  is that their heart is broken, they shall never love it because the one
• 1:05:01
  person they could love that they would ever meet here on this entire planet has
• 1:05:05
  married another. Well, there's your love story. There's the stakes of you
• 1:05:10
  know, of many a romantic comedy. And you know, if you don't
• 1:05:15
  overliteralize me, if you sort of you know hear, either literally or symbolically,
• 1:05:21
  at the end of these things I'm saying, you will realize they apply
• 1:05:25
  to every single story you're ever going to write. And yes, you know,
• 1:05:30
  I talk about this structurally, and I kind of see everything as structure
• 1:05:38
  because that characters want is really our hope. If you want something, you
• 1:05:44
  hope you get it right. It's the same thing. Uh. You know,
• 1:05:48
  the sort of two verbs can be used almost interchanges. I think if
• 1:05:51
  you look in the dictionary under hope, you see want or desire as a
• 1:05:58
  synonym. And if I first set right, so, uh, they're they're
• 1:06:02
  used interchange winds. So far as we talk about character, I think we
• 1:06:05
  should be called human wantings rather than human beings. That defines a character in
• 1:06:12
  a person so much. If you say, you know, if you and
• 1:06:15
  I are talking about a third party friend of ours and I say, what's
• 1:06:18
  he about? I think you're usually gonna answer with you know, what he's
• 1:06:23
  trying to do in his life and what he wants? M hm. So
• 1:06:28
  that does define character for us, and that's where characters and the story are
• 1:06:31
  so inextrictedly bound off the point. Now, how does that relate to creating
• 1:06:39
  a log line? Okay? Uh? You know, generally, uh,
• 1:06:45
  I think a log line and this is not the temple that life specifically use,
• 1:06:50
  but I can give you my own template for log lines, you know,
• 1:06:54
  the defining aspect of of a movie. Maybe not the effective pitch,
• 1:06:59
  but uh, generally a you know, a love line will be one sentence.
• 1:07:04
  Uh, the subject will be the protagonist, and it will depict what
• 1:07:09
  he wants. Uh, and usually have a position. H my own uh
• 1:07:21
  template for long lines. Uh. You know, I I have a whole
• 1:07:26
  hour lecture that leads up to this phrase, of which this phrase is sort
• 1:07:30
  of the punchline. So I hope you're we don't have time for that.
• 1:07:32
  I hope you will stipulate that I that I support it well and make my
• 1:07:39
  point. But I think that defining aspects are a hero, a villain,
• 1:07:44
  and a world or a protagonist, an antagonist and a backdrop. So uh.
• 1:07:54
  If so if we said, a you know, uh, an archaeolo
• 1:08:00
  legiens battles the Nazis to control an ancient artifact, that's right of the lost
• 1:08:09
  arc. Right. We can get more specific, but so it would be,
• 1:08:15
  you know, an archaeologist battles the Nazis to retrieve the lost ark of
• 1:08:20
  the covet. Right, So that's right in order, a hero, a
• 1:08:25
  villain, a world, right, And that's the right of the lost art
• 1:08:30
  And the other thing I will say, and the reason I think long lines
• 1:08:33
  are important is only one movie. It's that description and I think that if
• 1:08:42
  you've got a good long line and you slap the question what's that movie where
• 1:08:50
  they'll put your long line after it and then put a question mark at the
• 1:08:55
  end, there is only one answer. So, what's that movie where the
• 1:09:01
  poor boy no, pardon me all your phrases, what's that movie where the
• 1:09:05
  rich girl falls in love looking poor boy on the doomed ocean liner? As
• 1:09:12
  everybody you know, we don't have to say Titanic. It popped everybody's head
• 1:09:16
  the moment I said that right now, I could say on the Titanic,
• 1:09:19
  and that'd be even bigger sheet, right, But I didn't because I wanted
• 1:09:26
  to pop that movie poster and maybe that horrible song into your head, right,
• 1:09:33
  And you cannot help but answer that. Now? How great a tool
• 1:09:38
  is that for you to have as a defining essence to do even more heady?
• 1:09:43
  Here the platonic form of what your story and movie is going to be?
• 1:09:46
  Right that which your movie is that no other movie ever has been or
• 1:09:51
  will be could be defined by that sentence. We'll be right back after a
• 1:09:57
  word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. And I think
• 1:10:05
  if you get specific about your hero, specific about your antagonist and specific about
• 1:10:10
  your world or a backdrop. You'll get it. I don't know if you
• 1:10:15
  remember the movie plot generator sort of maybe didn't see it. I know the
• 1:10:19
  writer's still was selling. You'd probably looked it up on Amazon, but it
• 1:10:23
  was. You know, it's sort of three books in want because it had
• 1:10:28
  three sets of pages that you could flip and so as you you know,
• 1:10:30
  flip the top one, it changes them. They're too below it, right,
• 1:10:35
  So, and so you could change an element of a movie. You
• 1:10:40
  could generate movie plots with it. And they were basically laid out like that.
• 1:10:45
  Although you know, I was talking about this long line tablet before it
• 1:10:48
  existed. Uh, you know, it was basically the top the top bunch
• 1:10:53
  of pages were a hero, in the middle were a villain, and the
• 1:10:59
  Third World War or something they were tempting to do or something like that.
• 1:11:03
  So I think that, you know, buy and large is the way to
• 1:11:09
  generate your log line. And you know, I will make no bones about
• 1:11:14
  it, but you know, for a while there in through the eighties and
• 1:11:16
  nineties, a lot of people they made a lot of money, myself included
• 1:11:21
  by kind of changing the world of Diehard, right, I firsted Over a
• 1:11:27
  Forest Fire, right, and die Hard in a Blank was a uh,
• 1:11:32
  you know, a great sort of uh you know, we saw a lot
• 1:11:36
  of those movies and more even more scripts sold, uh you know back in
• 1:11:42
  that day. Now I also changed the hero and I also changed the villain,
• 1:11:47
  right, But essentially it was a hostage situation, which is kind of
• 1:11:53
  uh you know what what die Hard is uh maybe one of the first two
• 1:11:57
  where to uh dramatized that to an entire movie. Uh though I think it
• 1:12:02
  goes back to you know, movies called Desperate Owners of the sub days that
• 1:12:05
  came up fifties and sixties. So you you know, so and this meets
• 1:12:13
  that, right, sort of pissed that here in Hollywood always they're always taking
• 1:12:17
  you know, one of those three elements from this and another one or two
• 1:12:23
  of them from that. So you know, you can also uh uh pitch
• 1:12:29
  die Hard fish fire Storm, you know, my my, my specs sale,
• 1:12:32
  uh you know, as die Hard in a Forest Fire, right,
• 1:12:35
  or you could this is die Hard meets back Draft, right, So we're
• 1:12:39
  taking that hostage situation and we're putting in the world of fire, taking protagonist
• 1:12:44
  to you know, battles fire uh and uh the hostage situation. That's really
• 1:12:50
  the situation. So you are the world uh and combining it with the world
• 1:12:55
  of backdraft, which is fire. Uh. You know, I would probably
• 1:13:00
  pitched it a couple of times. I was writing with these cliffhangers set on
• 1:13:04
  fire and uh, you know, so one of my things A lot of
• 1:13:11
  people are will this happens to be burning down right? Uh? This to
• 1:13:17
  me, you know, up the stakes even on clitic right click, I
• 1:13:21
  did very well. We done on fire. It is one better, even
• 1:13:25
  more of some So that that's you know, Uh, that's long line for
• 1:13:30
  me. Uh. A hero uh and a villain and the world. Now
• 1:13:35
  you can say a hero battles a villain and maybe the fourth element is a
• 1:13:39
  bird in flying conflict. So if you really want to get a more detailed
• 1:13:43
  tempt uh a protagonist, Uh, subject is a protagonist. The bird always
• 1:13:47
  implied con concept. The direct object of the sentence is the is the antagonist.
• 1:13:55
  And then there's a prepositional phrase uh indicating the world. So uh,
• 1:14:01
  you might own movie fire song a smoke jumper goes up against escape convicts.
• 1:14:06
  The biggest forest fire in the other National Parks history, Uh is exactly the
• 1:14:13
  thing in order. Now, when you're going through something, you know,
• 1:14:17
  when you're writing that screenplay, do you go check out die Hard and say,
• 1:14:21
  okay, let me get the screenplay for that and see what beats this
• 1:14:26
  is hitting, like what page and things like that. Absolutely? Uh.
• 1:14:30
  If you know, certainly, when I was at USC and I was lucky
• 1:14:33
  enough to have access to a screen screenplay library, as would get the strings
• 1:14:39
  play and I probably read the entire first year that you can see a screenplight
• 1:14:44
  every single day. Uh and uh and not uh. And you will not
• 1:14:50
  surprise you at all to know that I go through and I create a reverse
• 1:14:56
  engineers from what I would call a structural amplet anything will be outlined, right,
• 1:15:02
  I will check what's happening on page fifteen, on page thirty, on
• 1:15:05
  page forty five sixteks that I'm ninety one oh five, and and what's happening
• 1:15:12
  is you know, in the last pages, and what are those turns?
• 1:15:15
  I get the map quest structure of that story. So I'm I'll certainly you
• 1:15:24
  know, read the screenplay. But you know I I read so many screenplays,
• 1:15:29
  you know that that year that I was able, I would get them,
• 1:15:34
  you know, not just as they were great structural trumpet, but I
• 1:15:39
  would go get them if they just had a similar character to what I was
• 1:15:44
  considering, even a minor character, I would. You know, there have
• 1:15:49
  been you know, thousands, if not millions of movies, most of the
• 1:15:57
  problems that they've confronted and solved to barn degrees of ah of brilliance by something.
• 1:16:10
  You don't have to reinvent the wheel every time, now, can you?
• 1:16:13
  You know, if you're very specifically creating a minor character that you know
• 1:16:17
  was very similar to a well known minor character, can you do everything that
• 1:16:21
  those people do kind of feeling their lines, your words. No persecution,
• 1:16:25
  but they can be your inspiration and you can isolate principles about why that works.
• 1:16:30
  Did the study, So if it was going to be similar in tones
• 1:16:35
  h to what I was like, I would go lead it. And that
• 1:16:41
  that was another part of my you know, uh, I only mentioned the
• 1:16:45
  leading part of my my creative thoughts. I'll watch you know at uh,
• 1:16:49
  you know, after the day's work is done, deep into the screen play,
• 1:16:53
  I'll watch a similar movie too. So you know, there are certain
• 1:16:58
  templates that I find myself bringing up all the time to people like, oh,
• 1:17:01
  you're gonna have you you should go make a mini of the outlook of
• 1:17:04
  this one, and I do when I can, and people write these downs
• 1:17:09
  and collect these outlines from starting to archives. But as a resource for myst
• 1:17:15
  dot com. Uh, basic instinct, I think is a great great for
• 1:17:19
  your detectives to wait and there are some some unique structural things it does,
• 1:17:24
  uh that I have been stolen a lost and continue to inspire three Days of
• 1:17:31
  the condor is you know, great for for a thriller as well in that
• 1:17:38
  spying feed and uh oh yim uh men in black is sort of uh something
• 1:17:47
  I mentioned a lot to people for people to study, uh for their own
• 1:17:51
  quirky uh, especially a secret organization. Uh maybe so you use you know,
• 1:18:00
  bots of things have been done before. You're very lucky when you know
• 1:18:03
  when you have a really unique idea, but you're also very challenged if you
• 1:18:10
  know, if no one has gone before you then ass so and uh,
• 1:18:15
  some movies sort of you know fail by on on that and being sort of
• 1:18:20
  a wonner as they used to say, one of the kind. Uh,
• 1:18:25
  but uh, I think that they're the movies that we're seeing these by and
• 1:18:30
  large fault it do fall into it the very gratifying. I don't want to
• 1:18:35
  use the word for me because there's formulaic is a is a negative. I
• 1:18:42
  don't thinking about that. You know, as the polio vaccine is a formula
• 1:18:46
  and it's great for us. You know, I need to solve a problem
• 1:18:51
  of not getting polio. Please give me something formulaic. So you know,
• 1:18:57
  I think, uh, you know, m if you make what people mean
• 1:19:01
  when they say it's formulaic and and the implication of it was bad, it's
• 1:19:05
  not original. Well, just to make originality part of your formula, right,
• 1:19:14
  So I say, you know Cliffhanger said on Fire, well, if
• 1:19:16
  it was just Cliffhanger, that would be original. Binding those two elements is
• 1:19:23
  what brings the originality. And I would say, uh, you know,
• 1:19:27
  if you read my script, you would say raising, raising the ball at
• 1:19:30
  action and paste is what made that. You know that scripts worth buying,
• 1:19:34
  that movie worth making, you know, whatever the results may again, but
• 1:19:38
  it finally was made. So I think, you know, making sure that
• 1:19:45
  it's a fresh take and it's original. I don't know that you're necessarily going
• 1:19:50
  to reinvent structure. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor m
• 1:19:59
  hm. And now back to the show. Well, I did an interview
• 1:20:03
  with Brian Yedovitch a couple of weeks ago, and one of the things that
• 1:20:08
  he said that I think is very similar to what you're saying, is when
• 1:20:12
  they make a movie, and he's he's a producer, he says, basically,
• 1:20:15
  what they try to do is have eighty percent of the movie be familiar
• 1:20:20
  and then twenty percent be kind of new with new ideas. So people don't
• 1:20:25
  want to watch movies there are one hundred percent you know, original, because
• 1:20:29
  they don't even know where to go with it. They want to have something
• 1:20:30
  that's familiar, and then they help want to have something that kind of surprises
• 1:20:34
  them within a template that's already kind of familiar to them. I think that's
• 1:20:41
  that's absolutely correct. Uh, you know, And and there are you know,
• 1:20:46
  very you know, very original movies that are one hundred percent original,
• 1:20:50
  and I generally can't stand them because you know, they've also often arrity about
• 1:20:55
  the doors. So I mean, you know, lots lots of people you
• 1:20:59
  know, like uh, you know, Kleana Scotty, which is you know,
• 1:21:01
  basically you know, Philip Last music with and just images from around the
• 1:21:05
  world. There's not a character, there's not a story to follow. You
• 1:21:10
  know, it's I don't even call it a movie, right, but it's
• 1:21:16
  also filmed, so I guess we have to you know, and a moving
• 1:21:19
  picture, so we have to call it a movie. But that's not for
• 1:21:21
  me. Uh. And there's a very small thing that the populace, who
• 1:21:27
  are uh you know, going to watch and love that, and I think
• 1:21:32
  they're getting a different thing from it then they're getting from from what we call
• 1:21:38
  a movie. I would almost argue that Boyhood that that I was. I
• 1:21:45
  actually thought it was good this year, but not for all the reasons why
• 1:21:48
  I normally think the movie is good. I did think it was slow,
• 1:21:50
  which I think is, you know, the greatest crime you can commit.
• 1:21:55
  And yet it did add up to something, and it was such a worthy
• 1:21:59
  project undertaking and exploration is to you know, a combination of movies and living
• 1:22:06
  life that I would have been happy if he won the ouse, uh you
• 1:22:13
  know, ah, just to reward the dedication of those filmmakers and those people
• 1:22:16
  who shaved up those twelve years. And it does kind of add up to
• 1:22:20
  something, and you know that you can kind of feel like, particularly the
• 1:22:26
  next challenge for a boy. Uh, it has a little something to say
• 1:22:30
  about life as it's being, you know, lived a merely part of this
• 1:22:35
  millennium by party people who grew up that way. And so but I almost
• 1:22:44
  want to say not a movie almost its own art form. So there's an
• 1:22:48
  example of, you know, two things that are not really movies that one
• 1:22:53
  I don't like in one I kind of did. I don't know, you
• 1:22:56
  know, mister Lynchletter would be a step here and say it is very fine.
• 1:22:59
  Work is not a but I think I read somewhere that he he like
• 1:23:03
  made a comment about hating plot, you know, and I thought that was
• 1:23:09
  interesting that if you watch his movies, he just can't stand plot and likes
• 1:23:13
  to, you know, have more organic kind of scenes that don't necessarily hit
• 1:23:17
  beats, you know. So it's just a different you know, some people
• 1:23:20
  can get away with that. I so so few do. And and listen,
• 1:23:28
  I'm not gonna see both it again. I'm glad. I'm glad I
• 1:23:30
  did, and I'm glad it was done. Uh, you know, I
• 1:23:33
  think it's never going to make the money the Transformers it does, or you
• 1:23:41
  know a lot of other things. So what's like, what was a Tree
• 1:23:45
  of Life too, is kind of like that. You know, to this
• 1:23:48
  day this will be telling. I have not seen a Tree of Life to
• 1:23:51
  this day because I just fear that I'm going to go pretty pretty and fallise
• 1:23:59
  me. I don't know that. I mean some people do like it.
• 1:24:03
  Uh, you know, as far as Malex's work goes. I love bad
• 1:24:08
  Lands, which was pretty, you know, story driven, and I feel
• 1:24:11
  sort of defind a genre, you know, between it and Bonnie and Clyde
• 1:24:15
  that you know, uh that you know, young Couple on the Run,
• 1:24:19
  pull in height, uh was defined by that, and and you know the
• 1:24:27
  seminal as a certain kind of story and there's no natural born killers about it,
• 1:24:30
  and you have certain certain other and fone will weaved about it, certain
• 1:24:33
  other stories that we've seen. But uh I and I understand, you know,
• 1:24:42
  you have a certain then the philosophy that uh that you know, uh
• 1:24:47
  God laughs or doesn't even notice the tiny small things that then try to do
• 1:24:54
  and care about. Uh. I get that. You know, mister Malick
• 1:24:58
  has that viewpoint, and you're probably right, you know, probably it's true.
• 1:25:05
  Uh to me, it doesn't make for the best entertainments once once you've
• 1:25:11
  graduate one of these days laws probably Uh, you know, I I I
• 1:25:16
  think that you know it's better, Uh, that's better left to a philosophical
• 1:25:21
  discussion for me to really gratifate and not not demonstrated uh dramatically through story and
• 1:25:30
  your certain ideas you know, uh have a better treatment uh in other media,
• 1:25:36
  I guess. So, Uh let me let me change gears for a
• 1:25:41
  second, if I can. I wanted to. Since we're we're coming up
• 1:25:45
  on an hour and a half, I want to make sure I hit a
• 1:25:49
  few things now. Uh. You know a lot of people that listen to
• 1:25:54
  this are you know, starting out as screenwriters and first time screenwriters. Are
• 1:25:58
  people that are struggling to to you know, write there first. Can you
• 1:26:02
  talk a little bit about some of the biggest mistakes that you see when you
• 1:26:08
  have new students come in that are that are creating their first screenplay. Are
• 1:26:12
  there any common kind of pitballs that people run into that you see a lot?
• 1:26:16
  Well, you know, I sort of feel like this, you know,
• 1:26:21
  the first step is sot off from the misstep, which is sort of
• 1:26:28
  bad idea selection for what you're going to you know, write a movie on.
• 1:26:34
  And I sort of feel like there's your mistakes people make there one is
• 1:26:39
  not sufficiently differentiated from other movies they don't even really recognize. And it's so
• 1:26:46
  similar. It's you know, it doesn't have the twenty percent in that age
• 1:26:50
  twenty ratio that that you were talking about, but you're pretty ser Brian was
• 1:26:57
  mentioning and and I I will speak to someone and I will say, well,
• 1:27:01
  how is that different from this wim on film? And I won't get
• 1:27:06
  it good enough. Uh. And there's this desire to cling to it because
• 1:27:12
  you you know, you love this idea and maybe it even got you to
• 1:27:15
  be a writer. And if it did that, it was worth it.
• 1:27:18
  Is it everything you've made? Maybe not the other. The other is taking
• 1:27:24
  something that doesn't that attention to it, and is it going to be,
• 1:27:27
  you know, a good story when you're done an idea? This is not
• 1:27:30
  a good idea and having that aesthetic study, having studying that movie to know
• 1:27:39
  what, you know, what a good idea is, because it's going to
• 1:27:41
  provide a great tension to conflict and ideally yield a seed. I think it's
• 1:27:48
  key. I think that's that's a very common misstep. Then it gets the
• 1:27:51
  actual writing, uh, you know, over directing and putting things in in
• 1:27:56
  the narration that uh you know and possibly be acted or dramatized or scene.
• 1:28:02
  You know, the things that development executives and are whether how do I know,
• 1:28:09
  uh you know in the margins about so you know the main character things
• 1:28:14
  at the time when he was three years old and went to the old fishing
• 1:28:15
  hole, right you put that in iteration. You know, I've been an
• 1:28:19
  actor. I cannot put an expression on my face even in the post that
• 1:28:26
  shows you that I am thinking of that, right so, and the overdirection
• 1:28:31
  and really having such a strong visual in your mind rat and it goes on,
• 1:28:36
  but it'sn't a lot of things that jun't matter story. Can you put
• 1:28:42
  in any sort of I mean, I know that people who are writers and
• 1:28:45
  directors, you know, like pt Anderson will put camera moves and things into
• 1:28:49
  his shooting script. Is there is that just completely taboo to put any sort
• 1:28:55
  of like camera movement or I mean, can you do like angle on something
• 1:28:59
  or focus on uh there. I think it's it's becoming less and less taboo,
• 1:29:08
  and uh as you will see more more screenplays with it. I'm i
• 1:29:14
  am none, I know, I'm nonetheless a type of uh partially because I'm
• 1:29:18
  just an old binosaur and I grew up saying never do it U being a
• 1:29:24
  book that say that they never do it uh and and doing over direct.
• 1:29:29
  My my opinion on why you shouldn't do it a little different than everybody else
• 1:29:35
  is, which is, you know, don't tell the director. I have
• 1:29:38
  a director is gonna cross all stuff out and he's gonna kissed off at you.
• 1:29:43
  My attitude is much more at least in the specscript that you wanted to
• 1:29:46
  be read. Let's put the word camera in it, okay or angle Uh
• 1:29:54
  is to jar the leader out of what your hope out of the flow stage.
• 1:30:00
  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back
• 1:30:08
  to the show. They should get into such a state leading the script that
• 1:30:13
  they forget that they're even leading. It should flow through them and uh and
• 1:30:20
  to put uh and they should so they should feel like they're a fly on
• 1:30:25
  the wall watching Ah. These people have these experiences, and then they should
• 1:30:31
  so forget themselves and uh lose their their self consciousness so much so there's even
• 1:30:35
  for you know, not even a flying and there should be no wall.
• 1:30:40
  And that's what you're trying to do you're trying to achieve that then state of
• 1:30:45
  flow with your reader and so they so they should only realize and they get
• 1:30:50
  to the script that they were even reading. Uh. A director of Daniel
• 1:30:55
  calls the Doreen state. And to say camera, I should say angle is
• 1:31:01
  to remind them they're watching you, They're they're reading the shooting script for a
• 1:31:04
  movie that will ultimately film, that actors are going to be playing these roles,
• 1:31:09
  and to take them out of their reality. The same reason I am
• 1:31:14
  against. We see and we hear in the script there's no lead, there
• 1:31:20
  are there is only the flow of this story. Uh, you're not you
• 1:31:25
  know, forget that you are watching it and healing it. Ah uh uh,
• 1:31:31
  let it flow through. That's what I want to see in the specscript.
• 1:31:33
  Now when that is changing for shooting script, I avow the the next
• 1:31:38
  one I will I'll probably thin cabra direction's gonna because it seemed perfectly obvious to
• 1:31:45
  me that this had to be a close up. And I said, you
• 1:31:47
  see a tear on its faith, But then it wasn't. Ah, I
• 1:31:51
  wouldn't say you see as I would say tears on the space. You know.
• 1:31:57
  So I go to coded stuff like that. I described somebody's face.
• 1:32:01
  It means the closest I'm trying to get you into the visual of the movie
• 1:32:10
  I had in my head, but I don't actually feel that we seem to
• 1:32:14
  be here? Does that so you would just say instead of like we hear
• 1:32:18
  a car honk outside, you would just say a car honks outside or anything
• 1:32:24
  like that. Yeah, okay, yeah, all right, let me you
• 1:32:30
  know, wasn't that an improvement? What did you did you hear a car
• 1:32:34
  honking? Or when you heard that back in your mind? What's going to
• 1:32:39
  be different on the screen in the movie. They're gonna be the safer.
• 1:32:41
  Yeah. Now, when you were at USC, were there any screenplays that
• 1:32:47
  were kind of do well? Did you have any like I hate to say
• 1:32:50
  this phrase, but any like aha moments when you just like kind of got
• 1:32:56
  it for the first time, or when you when you realized, like,
• 1:32:59
  okay, this is this is really someone who has talent and this is a
• 1:33:02
  screenplay that you know is going to inspire me. You know. I read
• 1:33:09
  all of William Goldman's works, and it was particularly The Princess Bride, and
• 1:33:15
  I actually never read the novel of Princess Bride, but I quite liked the
• 1:33:17
  movie where I said, well this, you know, this is an incredible
• 1:33:23
  piece of work, and you just your eyes are just pulled down the page.
• 1:33:28
  Uh. Shane Black, who you know was sort of everybody's idol,
• 1:33:31
  coming up in the in the screen I won had you happened to him?
• 1:33:34
  What we all want to have happened to him? Uh? Is on recorded
• 1:33:38
  thing? I read all William Goldman, I read all of Walter Hill,
• 1:33:42
  and so I took my writing style from them, and so I made the
• 1:33:47
  point of reading all the Golden scripts, any point of reading all Walter Hill
• 1:33:51
  script and I did have one thing coming up that Shane Black did not have.
• 1:33:56
  This was I also had Shane Black. So I read uh, both
• 1:34:00
  produced and unproduced, and a lot of others. As I say, you
• 1:34:04
  have a slight attentment. The two that really stand out I heard reading screenplays
• 1:34:09
  go that I would say that the Princess Briane screenplay was so beautiful made me
• 1:34:15
  cry more than seeing the movie ever had. I'm not quite the cult fan
• 1:34:19
  since this problem that everybody else love it, just not you know, like
• 1:34:25
  I'm done with you again. And also the movie Field of Dreams, the
• 1:34:31
  screen cycle Field the dreams. I had seen that movie was very emotionally affected,
• 1:34:36
  affecting on me, and I let the redditack had at least the same
• 1:34:42
  emotion, probably more so. I guess it's you know, I'm giving you
• 1:34:46
  the ones that maybe cry. I also read a lot of a lot of
• 1:34:53
  the ones that give you this emotion, and those probably influencement writing, so
• 1:34:59
  I exactly sure what that emotion is. Uh uh, So I'll just sort
• 1:35:02
  of give the reaction, which is whoa cool I read a lot of those,
• 1:35:10
  and in fact, my my producer said, you're going to carve yourself
• 1:35:13
  a niche and Hollywood cool stuff got and that that is what I tried to
• 1:35:19
  do, and that's that's kind of what I learned to write quickly. Now
• 1:35:26
  I've written, I have written screenplay since that don't make you cry at the
• 1:35:30
  comedies and uh family movie and things like that, and that that came over
• 1:35:34
  the way that my AHAs uh and the members when we stick with me,
• 1:35:39
  or you know what, like you remember being on an extracite exercise like reading
• 1:35:44
  to your streaming down in my face, or feel the dream the printose bud
• 1:35:50
  all right now, my final question is always the same. I call it
• 1:35:54
  the time machine. Oka, if you could go back in time and talk
• 1:35:57
  to yourself when you were, let's say, eighteen twenty years old, what
• 1:36:01
  advice would you have for yourself about filmmaking or screenwriting or life in general whatever?
• 1:36:12
  Okay, filmmakers say, way, I think I would say, start
• 1:36:20
  writing now, because I came to writing late, and I'm always very jealous
• 1:36:28
  of the people who are at that age and know they want to be writers,
• 1:36:31
  because I went through two careers before I really started writing. And then
• 1:36:36
  I would say, because it is all writing, all filmmaking is writing,
• 1:36:45
  or all of writing and filmmaking and art in general are the same thing from
• 1:36:55
  other things. And as best as I can determine there's a relatively recent revelation
• 1:36:59
  from it, I certainly don't have a diction. He is they are leveraging
• 1:37:05
  the most meaning that you can into the smallest possible piece of information, So
• 1:37:15
  into the most meaning you can and into a visual the most meaning you can
• 1:37:21
  into a word for words, if you have a line in spy work long
• 1:37:27
  and quite meaningful, if you can cut one word and lose no meaning,
• 1:37:33
  you just increase the ratio of words meaning of a syllables meaning bout twenty percent
• 1:37:41
  and so fill everything with meaning. If I only had four words to say
• 1:37:50
  that eighteen year old, I would say that about about writing. I would
• 1:37:57
  say that about filmmaking. I would say that about art. Since you asked,
• 1:38:01
  yes, I would say that about life. Well, Chris, I
• 1:38:08
  really really appreciate you coming on today, and thanks for spending the time with
• 1:38:14
  us. Jason, it's been a real treat. Please send me a link
• 1:38:17
  and let me know when it's top and all. That's all right, just
• 1:38:19
  so people know, can you do you want to put your links up and
• 1:38:24
  you're how to get in touch with you and find your books and things?
• 1:38:27
  Sure? Absolutely. If you've searched my name christ in the Kindle store,
• 1:38:33
  you'd see I think at that at this point five books there, and I
• 1:38:35
  intend to kind of be publishing it like a Kindle single sized book, several
• 1:38:41
  times a year, maybe as much once a week. Shortly, I do
• 1:38:45
  several regular streams by Mastermind groups, and I sort of started to transcribe those
• 1:38:48
  and publish them with people saying to me, I want that information, Please
• 1:38:53
  get that to me so you can find that Amazon I have. I guess
• 1:38:57
  my flagship was now screenplaymintor dot com. And uh there's another one million dollars
• 1:39:04
  screen lighting dot com. And if you want to reach me personally, that
• 1:39:09
  first name and the last name chrisso D H R I S S O T
• 1:39:14
  H atoll dot com or gmail dot com. You can get some either way.
• 1:39:20
  Chris does al All right, Chris, thanks a lot. I appreciate
• 1:39:27
  it. Thank you, Jason. It's been fun. I want to thank
• 1:39:30
  Jason so much for doing such an amazing job with this episode. If you
• 1:39:32
  want to get links to anything we spoke about in this episode, head over
• 1:39:35
  to the show notes at any film muscle dot com Forward Slash seven twenty one
• 1:39:40
  and if you have it already, please head over to filmmaking podcast dot com.
• 1:39:45
  Subscribe and leave a good review for the show. It really helps us
• 1:39:48
  out a lot, guys. Thank you again so much for listening. Guys,
• 1:39:50
  as always, keep that hustle going, keep that dream alive, Stay
• 1:39:55
  safe out there, and I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to
• 1:39:58
  the Indie Film Hustle podcast at Indie film Hustle dot com. That's I N
• 1:40:02
  D I E F I L M H U S T L E dot com.