Latest / Indie Film Hustle® - A Filmmaking Podcast / IFH 742: Writing a Screenplay from the Inside Out with Brian Herskowitz

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IFH 742: Writing a Screenplay from the Inside Out with Brian Herskowitz · 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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  podcasts, just go to ifhpodcastnetwork dot com. Welcome to the Indie Film Hussle
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  Podcast, Episode number seven forty two. If you're absent during my struggle,
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  don't expect to be present during my success. Will Smith broadcasting from the back
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  alley in Hollywood. It's the Indie Film Hustle Podcast, where we show you
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  how to survive and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles of the film
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  biz. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another
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  episode of the Indie Film Hustle Podcast. I am your humble host, Alex
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  Ferrari. Today's show is sponsored by Rise of the Film Entrepreneur How to turn
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  your independent film into a profitable business. It's harder today than ever before for
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  independent filmmakers to make money with their films from predatory film distributors ripping them off
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  indie filmmaker. The old distribution model of making money with your film is broken
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  entrepreneurial filmmaker or the film entrepreneur. In Rise of the Film Entrepreneur, I
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  course audiobook. If you want to order it, just head over to www.
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  Dot filmbiz book dot com. That's film bizbook dot com. Now today
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  on the show, we have Brian Herskowitz. Now. He is a screenwriter
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  and the author of Process to Product, From Concept to Script, a practical
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  guide for screenwriting. Now Brian is talking from experience. He has written on
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  dozens and dozens of shows in the course of his career, including classic sitcoms
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  like Blossom, HBO's dream On, as well as some great action shows like
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  CBS's Renegade, the Classic Hercules, the legendary Journeys Murder she wrote, and
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  even Fox's Young Hercules series, and he's also taught in the famous UCLA Extensions
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  program in screenwriting and at Boston University in Los Angeles. In today's episode,
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  we are going to go into a deep dive on really his method of how
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  he writes a screenplay from the inside out, what the process to the product
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  really is, and a lot of practical tips and tricks about not only how
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  to write a screenplay, but how to work in a writer's room for some
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  of these sitcoms, as well as how to avoid some of the pitfalls in
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  the business. So, without any further ado, please enjoy my conversation with
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  Brian Herskowitz. I like to work to the show. Brian Hrskowitz, how
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  you doing, brother so Fox? So good good man, thank you,
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  thank you for being on the show. I truly appreciate it. We are
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  going to talk some shop today, some screenwriting and craft shop today. But
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  before we get into it, how did you get into the business. Well,
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  I started off I was a quote unquote child actor in Houston, Texas
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  and did dinner theater and always had my mind that I was going to eventually
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  come out to LA and become an actor, and I did part of that
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  that did come out to LA and started trying to work as an actor and
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  found that Michael J. Fox had all the short parts rolled up. So
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  I was like, okay, now what do I do? And my father's
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  a writer, not a screenwriter, but he's written over sixty books and quite
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  a few best sellers with people like Gene Tiranny and Betty Davis. I don't
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  know George Bush. A lot of that people would have heard it, and
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  I guess the apple fell sort of next to the tree. And I started
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  looking at screenwriting. And I was actually in my youth and I still am
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  a martial artist and I tore my anti a cruciate ligament in the Olympic trials
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  in nineteen eighty and I spent about nine months in a cast and couldn't go
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  out on auditions, couldn't really do anything. And I sat down, I
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  said I have an idea for a screenplay. And I sat down. I
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  wrote it in five days and went, well, this is easy, and
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  got an agent and it was optioned a few times, and then I said
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  I'm going to do another screenplay, and then about seventy pages into that went
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  I have no clue what I'm doing, not even an inkling, and started
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  kind of studying the craft and then over years developed my own blobs and process.
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  Very cool. Yeah, it's easy, right, just five days you
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  knock one out every so that you can knock have four a month easily with
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  the and the weekends off. I still do that, and the weekends off,
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  and the weekends off on top of that. Exactly. You know how
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  many people I talked to think that that's the way it goes, you know,
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  I thought that you're looking at one who did I thought, oh,
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  this is you know, why haven't I been doing this? It's like going
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  to Vegas the first time you go to Vegas and you win. Oh oh,
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  why haven't I been gambling my entire life? I won't just get into
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  the box. I could do this every day. I'd be a millionaire,
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  you know. And then you find out that it doesn't quite go that way.
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  Yeah, that's exactly what happened to me when I first gambled, when
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  I was like in my teens in a cruise ship. I was like,
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  I plant it that way. I think I think actually there was some sort
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  of like you know algorithm, yeah, or you know there's smirsh or chaos
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  is sitting there going okay. I think if we get these guys set up
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  so that they think they're going to win, they'll come back and lose their
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  entire life. Saving it is because I put in a quarter. I never
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  forgot. I put in four quarters, and I was like sixteen. I
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  was working International, I was gambling international waters and I got the sixty bucks
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  off of a quarter slot machine and I'm like, this is amazing. I'll
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  just experience. I'll just stay right here until I make it's one thousand dollars.
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  And then when I was back down a five dollars, I said,
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  you know what, I think I should probably quit. I've made five times
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  my money. I'm good. At least you learned it in one in one
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  go. It took me. It took me a couple of hours ago.
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  Oh oh, wait a minute, you mean you don't win every time?
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  What is that about? Exactly exactly. Now, you've been in the business
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  for a while, and yes, you've been just you just just starting out.
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  You started a little bit. Yeah, and you worked on some really
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  fun shows back in the day, back in the eighties, specifically three that
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  I remember very well. Was Blossom, which was was a great was a
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  hit, a huge hit as a as a comedy, as a huge hit
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  for I don't know if I forgot what network it was on, it was
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  NBC. Se Yes, and then two of my favorite, two of my
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  favorite eighties action shows, Hercules and Renegade, Like that's so eighties, Yeah,
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  definitely Lorenzo Lamas like gods and it was great. So how was it
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  working on those kind of hit shows like the in the Writer's Room? Like,
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  how was it at those times? You know? They were all very
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  different. Renegade was kind of a one off, so I was a guest
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  writer on that. Freelance writer came in and that was a great experience,
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  but it was really just that show. And then out with Hercules they had
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  and Renegade also they were both syndicated shows. So one of the things about
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  the syndicated shows is they didn't have the kind of money that you have on
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  the network, so a lot of them really relied upon the freelance writer.
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  They have a very small staff or almost no staff, and they would do
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  most of the shows would be people out side of the office. So on.
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  On Hercules, I ended up doing four episodes for them, and then
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  kind of spun off to do one of the Young Hercules with Ryan Gosling.
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  People forget that he was young Hercules was young Hercules. I have to lose
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  Oh my god, I have to still look that up. Yeah, we
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  don't keep in touch. I don't know. I never called, never write
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  we were so close, and then nothing but the Hercules. I loved working
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  on the Hercules series for a myriad of reasons. One, you could do
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  virtually anything. They were open to just about you know. I mean,
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  I wrote some if I don't know if iconic is quite the word, but
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  I wrote some interesting emphisodes. I wrote one called, uh, the Miserral.
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  It wasn't Miseruel, but it was Le contemptible, That's what it was.
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  And it was. They came to me and they said, hey,
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  we want we want to do a wrap around show and I said, great,
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  said let's set it. We want to set it in revolutionary France.
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  And I went, Hercules in revolutionary France. You got to give me a
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  little more here. What they said, yeah, we just want to do
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  something where it's you know, revolutionary Frants. And I said, okay,
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  So I took, I took, I can't remember what the dangerous laisms.
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  I took the movie Dangerous Laisones, and I basically I took that concept and
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  married it to the Scarlet Pimpernel, and I took that and I said,
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  okay, so they had Salmonious, which was one of the kind of recurring
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  characters in the show, plays this scarlet pimpernel like a character I think they
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  called it. I called him the Chartruse Fox. And he is with this
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  beautiful woman and he's talking to her about how he can turn anybody into a
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  hero. And then of course he runs into Iolis and Hercules, who are
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  just these kind of bumbling thieves, and he kidnaps them and forces them to
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  listen to the lessons from other shows. We'll be right back after a word
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  from our sponsor, and now back to the show of Hercules to become heroes.
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  And that was kind of the concept of the piece. Pretty wacky,
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  pretty out there. The other one that was interesting for a lot of reasons
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  was I did a show an episode called a Star to Guide Them, which
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  was a retelling of the birth of Christ. Just in terms of history,
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  doesn't really make a lot of sense, And if you think about the Greek
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  mythology in God's probably not in the same time that Christ was being born,
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  but dinosaurs and humans were around the same time, so it doesn't matter,
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  you know, you have to go with it a little bit. So that
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  one was actually written by the executive producer and then he left the show and
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  they called and asked me on a Thursday when I come in and do a
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  rewrite and I said sure, They I said, when do you need it?
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  Listen Monday? Of course I took yeah, of course, So I
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  took that show and rewrote it and on Thursday, delivered on Monday. And
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  that was an episode where Iolas is kind of again I married Close Encounters of
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  the Third Guide with with the Birth of Christ, where he gets hit by
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  a star and it suddenly you know, he has to follow this path to
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  this manger where Christ is being born. So so you're basically kind of like
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  the originator of Sharknado, like you threw two things together and just like well,
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  sharks and tornadoes, obviously, why wouldn't you do something? Of course,
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  who wouldn't who wouldn't think of these things exactly exactly mash up on all
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  about it. So but back, you know when during the syndication days,
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  because I remember watching a lot of those indicated shows. It was kind of
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  carbe blanche on a lot of these shows, like you could do almost anything
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  as long as the ratings stayed. You are kind of free to do whatever
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  you want. And I that there's a reason within reason, within reason,
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  as long as you stayed within the rules of the world, and even then
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  you can still break them a little bit. They didn't mind breaking the rules
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  the world there. Actually I worked on another show under a pseudonym which called
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  Akapolco Heat. I remember a so a Heat I did two episodes on and
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  when they first pitched this is this is apropoda what you're talking about in terms
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  of they can do anything. Acaple Heat was pitched to me as an international
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  spy thriller with a professional diving competition team. Okay, going to go all
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  over the world, have gadgets and do international spy stuff is cool a diving
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  James Bond got it, Yeah, exactly. Well. The first episode I
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  wrote had to do with an athletic event taking place in Israel and the Palestinians
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  are trying to infiltrate and they think that one of the people in the shooting
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  competition is actually going to end up being an assassin and all this stuff.
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  Right by the time we went into production, they said, okay, we
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  couldn't find enough people that can dive, so they're they're now swimsuit models.
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  I said, okay, that's fine, great sensimon and that was fine,
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  and we did that episode and then they came back and said, well,
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  want you to do another episode, but there are some budgetary constraints. I
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  said, okay, what are those. They said, well, you can
• 13:22
  only have one guest star with two other speaking roles, and you can only
• 13:30
  have one other outside location besides our standing sets. So it went from this
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  huge international spir ring to you can have one location and three actors. And
• 13:41
  I was like, okay, basically, I've got people on a beach saying
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  I will kill you. You can't kill me, I will kill you that.
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  But so a lot of it had to do with what what are the
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  you know, the monetary vegetary constraints Hercules was fun that they I never heard
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  them say, oh, we can't do that, we can't afford that.
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  Other shows sometimes particularly and you know, yeah, they got to go,
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  well, we can't really have you know, a Horde, how about two
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  Guys and a Dream. Two Guys in a Dream. Yeah, Hercules was
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  fairly popular and it spun off the Zena and spun off the Young Hercules,
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  sped off to a lot of things. So there was there was there was
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  actually also there was an animated series and we spent off. In fact,
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  the last time I went in to meet with him, they asked me to
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  come in and pitch, and almost everything I said they came back to me
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  and said, oh, we did that on Xena. Can't do that.
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  I said, okay, well, what about this? We did that on
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  the on Young Hercules. Can't do that? What about this? We did
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  that on the cartoon, We did that in the features of the cartoon,
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  we did that on the feet. It's like, okay, I give up.
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  So they had they had a universe, they had a complete universe.
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  Well, so now you you do a lot of teaching and you and you
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  do a lot of instructing of young screenwriters. What are the biggest mistakes you
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  see young writers make? You know, really coming right out of the box,
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  The biggest thing that I see is that they want to do something that
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  is not that is heartfelt, which is great, but not necessarily commercial.
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  And I think one of the things a lot of young filmmakers forget is that
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  films have to be producible, and that means several different things. It means
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  one, there has to be a commercial angle. That doesn't mean it has
• 15:26
  to be you know, X Men or the Marvel Universe. But what it
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  does mean is that it has to have a place in the industry. So,
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  for instance, if you're going to do something that's very interpersonal and very
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  kind of you know, small, you have to expect that you're going to
• 15:41
  have a budget and it contained enough that you can do it on a very
• 15:48
  low budget that allows it to be done on a small scale, and in
• 15:54
  you know, art houses are directed to the video. If you can't do
• 15:56
  that, then you've got to be able to get to the stars, and
• 16:02
  generally the writer right out of the box, they're not going to have that
• 16:04
  access. So my advice is, you know, look for something that is
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  absolutely personal and touches you, but find a way to counch it that is
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  uh that attracts a wide audience, because I think a lot of times you
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  know you're and it's it's one hundred percent understandable. You write what you know,
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  and when you're young, you know, you're you're full of this kind
• 16:27
  of anticipatory, anticipatory angst and you know, where is the world going to
• 16:33
  go? And and it tends to a lot of young writers tend to do
• 16:36
  things that are very dramatic and very small and they're not really you know,
• 16:41
  that's not really the proper popular genre right now exactly. I mean, unless
• 16:45
  you can make it for a budget that you can afford to do it yourself,
• 16:48
  if you can make it for twenty if you make a feature for twenty
• 16:51
  thirty thousand, which is very very doable in today's world. Yeah, I
• 16:52
  mean, right now, there's you know, unlike twenty thirty years ago.
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  You know, you you can take your eye, you can take your sam
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  sign, you can go out, you can shoot a movie with that you
• 17:03
  really can't And you know, there's all kinds of gimbals and gadgetary that you
• 17:07
  can use, and there's there's plenty of opportunity if you have the will and
• 17:11
  you have the courage to just jump into the deep end do it. But
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  you know, I work with a company right now called Horror Equity Fund,
• 17:18
  which is focused on the horror genre. And for a lot of different reasons.
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  One is, it is a fairly low bar in terms of the entry
• 17:26
  into the industry, and it's the highest return on investment for narrative films.
• 17:32
  And you know, there's there's still you know, we get a lot of
• 17:36
  stuff that's very it's not commercial, and you know that's kind of maybe it's
• 17:42
  horrific, but it's not commercial. That's actually quite surprising because you would think
• 17:47
  almost anything in the horror genre would be commercial, but apparently it's not.
• 17:52
  What's an example of a non commercial horror idea? Because I mean generally horror
• 17:56
  is like you got a ghost story, you have a slasher film, you've
• 17:59
  got a real killer. There's multiple different genre subgenres within that. But like,
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  what's it really It really has to do with the quality of the writing
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  when I talk about what is and isn't commercially viable, And I mean,
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  I'll give you an example. We had we had someone who came to us
• 18:15
  who who's kind of mantra was, I make really bad movies. Well,
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  there is that subgenre that I mean, Lloyd Lloyd Kaufman has kind of cornered
• 18:25
  the market on that without question. At Trauma, Yeah, so so those
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  kind of things. But but my feeling is, you know, yes,
• 18:33
  there's a place to aim for that, but the market has become so saturated
• 18:37
  in everything that you really have to do something that stands out. I watched
• 18:44
  a movie the other the other day, part of a movie the other day,
• 18:47
  which was I think it was either Killer. I think it was Killer
• 18:49
  Doughnuts, Attack of the Killer I had. I had the producer on the
• 18:53
  show. Okay, so I apologize that it's okay, it's not supposed to
• 19:00
  be gone through. Yeah, well they did, it succeeded and exactly what
• 19:04
  it was. But I want I really marveled at the fact that one people
• 19:08
  got it done. You know, they got an actor in it. They
• 19:11
  Goussie Thomas howl let it yeah, and and they and they got it into
• 19:15
  the theaters. It's it was because the thing but I got I don't know
• 19:19
  if I went to theaters. I'm not sure if it went theatrically, but
• 19:22
  it did go international and he did make money with it, a lot of
• 19:26
  it actually. But the thing was that the don't The poster was so brilliant.
• 19:32
  That's why I got him on the show. When I saw the poster,
• 19:33
  like I have to. I have to. It's just like you know,
• 19:36
  donuts with like teeth coming to teeth Box, and it's all dark.
• 19:38
  It's in very eighties style, and there is definitely an audience for that kind
• 19:42
  of movie. And when I saw that, when I saw the trailer,
• 19:45
  was like, oh so so, I mean the thing about that is and
• 19:48
  and we do look at this is that you know that film had a hook.
• 19:53
  We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back
• 20:00
  to the show very much. So, you know, you look at it
• 20:04
  and you go the poster. Oh, I got to see it. I
• 20:07
  got to see a movie where donuts are attacking and killing people just because it's
• 20:11
  and then don't they don't they become giant donuts too? Isn't that I've never
• 20:15
  personally seen the whole thing. So I think they do. I think they
• 20:18
  become donuts. I mean it's a little bit. You know, thirty forty
• 20:22
  years ago there was an attack of that killed tomatoes. Well, of course
• 20:23
  that's they started the same kind of It's in that same wheelhouse for sure.
• 20:29
  But the big difference was that back then there was no competition, that there
• 20:33
  wasn't as much saturation media and the like. I have people that said,
• 20:37
  I've got a stupid idea, I'm going to road and play although yeah,
• 20:40
  you didn't have you didn't have the Shark and it was and it was it
• 20:42
  was, and it was also shot on film back then. Yeah, that's
• 20:45
  right, that's right. Yeah, And the expense of that has changed significantly
• 20:48
  now, would you. I mean, I always tell people this too,
• 20:52
  like there are certain time periods and certain windows of opportunity where certain things will
• 20:56
  fly, certain careers will flourish where in today's world world they wouldn't or in
• 21:00
  a different in a different time it wouldn't. So a Lloyd Kaufman and Trauma
• 21:07
  got was able to build their their foundation in the eighties and nineties during the
• 21:11
  DVD revolution, during the VHS resolution, where where you were renting like The
• 21:17
  Blockbusters and The Mama. But that doesn't exist anymore. So if someone like
• 21:21
  Trauma shows up today, it's a tough sell. It is. The difference
• 21:26
  is you know, where where it used to be directed DVD, now you've
• 21:30
  got the streaming conservances and there's too much. Yeah it is, but it's
• 21:34
  changing. And right now, you know you have there are a lot of
• 21:38
  entities that are getting into the game that are going to have to have a
• 21:42
  ton of content and they're going to all be competing against each other. Apple
• 21:47
  is getting in the game. You've got you know, got already got Netflix
• 21:51
  and Hulo. Disney is now in the game. I mean I'm already buying.
• 21:53
  I mean, Disney's aready. Did you hear what they're doing with Frozen
• 21:56
  two? So no, what's so ros In two will be the first Disney
• 22:02
  movie that will go theatrical and then will only live onto their their platform.
• 22:07
  It will not be available for rental, it will not be available for purchase.
• 22:10
  It will only live on Disney Plus. So how many prescribers will you
• 22:15
  think they're going to get off of that? Sure? And it's been that's
• 22:19
  been the formula. You know, when when Netflix uh came out with Arrested
• 22:25
  Development, Yeah, you know and rebooted that when they when they had House
• 22:29
  of Cards. You know, there are things that the streaming services are doing
• 22:33
  two and Disney has an incredible library and at some point they can say,
• 22:40
  you know, you want to watch a Marvel movie. You come to us,
• 22:42
  you want to watch you know, I mean, they've got start Pixar
• 22:45
  Star Wars uh, Pixar, Star Wars, Marvel, Fox, the entire
• 22:52
  Fox. And they bought lions Gate today. What do you mean they bought
• 22:55
  lions Skate today? They bought lions Gate. Disney bought lions Gate today.
• 22:59
  I didn't even know that the right, I think, double check me in
• 23:02
  there. Yeah, they bought lions Gate, I think. So. I
• 23:08
  really thought it was going to be Apple. I thought it was Apple was
• 23:11
  going to buy the lions Gate because someone was going to buy them. We
• 23:14
  all knew. We all knew it. I think it was. It's not
• 23:15
  on here, but but look it up. It will be determined anyone listening.
• 23:19
  This will be in the future, so you'll easily know if it's true
• 23:22
  or not. That's my funt. But yeah, you can fact check me
• 23:30
  it's okay. So you know, with that all of those different you know,
• 23:33
  studios, because they're going to have to have original and exclusive content,
• 23:40
  there's going to be for a while, there's going to be a huge boom
• 23:42
  in in acquisition. I don't know if they're going to go out and produce
• 23:47
  the you know the thing about Netflix, Netflix is I'll producing a ton,
• 23:51
  but they're acquiring just as much as they're they're producing, and they're very They
• 23:56
  have the pick of the litter right now, so they can go and they
• 24:00
  can get J. J. Abrams, so they can get you know,
• 24:03
  get on over the to or they can get you know, Spielberg or whoever
• 24:06
  they want. Although Spielberger, he's not a sad apples. Let me take
• 24:08
  that back. He's over an apple. He's an apple. So you know,
• 24:11
  there's there's going to be this fight for who's going to have the greater
• 24:17
  talent and the content that only can be seen there. HBO is another example
• 24:22
  where you know, if you want to see Game of Thrones, man you
• 24:25
  went to you went to HBO. And HBO's changed their model a little bit.
• 24:29
  You know, they used to be the network of really high quality and
• 24:33
  they are seeing the landscape and going that's not going to be enough. We
• 24:37
  have to have we have to have quantity as well as qualities. So they're
• 24:42
  shape. Yeah, it's it's funny because HBO could have, you know,
• 24:45
  they had they had the potential to own that space as well. Let's not
• 24:51
  even talk about Blockbuster. That's a whole other conversation. But but it's fascinating
• 24:56
  and at the end of the day, the eight hundred pound gorilla is actually
• 25:00
  the Apple. Yeah, yeah, Apple, Apple could buy Disney cash.
• 25:03
  Do you like saying it out loud? You know, it's it's it's really
• 25:08
  on inspowering to think about, the question is what are they going to do
• 25:11
  with it? You know, And they've they've started off with slow, just
• 25:17
  like like two billion. They're I think they're spending like two billion. I
• 25:18
  think this year. It's like they're slow slow. It's a slow burned for
• 25:22
  them, right, which is twice when I spent last year. So obviously
• 25:26
  obviously me too. But but like someone like Netflix is spending eight to ten
• 25:32
  billion a year, Disney, Disney can out I don't know if this Disney
• 25:36
  could definitely outspend Netflix. But they have the properties that everybody wants, and
• 25:40
  then they also have the libraries that everybody wants. Yeah, that's that's one
• 25:45
  of the things I'm wondering, you know, what's going to happen in terms
• 25:47
  of you know, I presume that the deals at Netflix and Hulu and Disney
• 25:52
  owns Hulu and you know, Disney owns No, No, they're the majority.
• 25:56
  When they bought Fox, they became the majority of stuff, and so
• 26:00
  so Hulu will probably have continue to have some Disney content, but you know,
• 26:04
  I think eventually Netflix, that deal's gone. Yeah, the whole Marvel,
• 26:10
  all the Marvel shows on there got canceled because they're like, well,
• 26:12
  we don't want to do anymore because Disney is opening up their rival studio.
• 26:17
  I mean, I'll look, I'll be the first one online for Disney plus
• 26:19
  because I have kids, and I love Marvel and I and I would love
• 26:22
  to just go to one place and just like I don't have to go hunting
• 26:25
  for a movie. I know it's there, and they have Fox and now
• 26:27
  you're saying they have Lion Skate as well, which is insane. They're huge,
• 26:33
  you know, so they're they're gonna be They're gonna be formidable. And
• 26:37
  Apple can absolutely be a player on that space. But it's gonna be what
• 26:41
  happens with their content, what kind of content? You know, I just
• 26:45
  not my digress, but you know, Direct TV and A T and T
• 26:48
  there are another huge entity. But I haven't seen the quality of the content.
• 26:53
  But they're but there, but their quality of work is not good.
• 26:57
  And they're also they're also in legacy technology. Cable. Cable is legacy technology,
• 27:03
  Dish is cable is legacy technology. It is not the future of where
• 27:07
  things will go. So they're just struggling to keep a foothold on things.
• 27:11
  Yeah, but that's a whole other space that you know, could have,
• 27:17
  should have and didn't. And if Apple doesn't, doesn't you know, rise
• 27:22
  the level of a Hulu, of an HBO of a Disney They're not going
• 27:26
  to have the audience. Netflix will just I mean, they'll just buy a
• 27:30
  Netflix. They'll just buy a Netflix straight up. I think I think that's
• 27:33
  probably the acquisition that everyone's commenting on that Apple is just to buy Netflix.
• 27:37
  I've heard that from multiple industry insiders. So, like, you know,
• 27:41
  Apple could easily just go in and buy Netflix. Yeah, well they can
• 27:45
  go and buy I mean they literally they have two hundred and what is it,
• 27:47
  two hundred and fifty or two hundred and seventy billion cash cash sitting in
• 27:53
  the bank cash. But it's not I mean double one interest on that's pretty
• 27:57
  good, right, double one I have at least I could live off the
• 28:02
  interest off of a percenta of that, sir. But but with all that
• 28:06
  said, with screenwriting though, that they're the potential and the opportunity for screenwriters
• 28:11
  now is just massive, so many writing, so many shows, so many
• 28:15
  good shows out there, you know, every there's and not a day goes
• 28:19
  by with friends like, oh, did you watch that show on X Network?
• 28:22
  I'm like, nah, man, I haven't all it. How I
• 28:26
  mean, there's like I was just second this to another guest the other day.
• 28:30
  I was like, look, you know, I would need multiple lifetimes
• 28:33
  to watch all the good shows on on TV right now. Where when I
• 28:38
  was coming up and growing up, when I was working in my video store
• 28:41
  in the late eighties early nineties, I literally watched everything that got released every
• 28:45
  week, which was five or six movies right and TV cable there was like
• 28:51
  you have thirty shows? Like that was it total? You know? Now
• 28:55
  there's how many shows are There's like two thousand shows a month a year.
• 29:00
  There's so many shows. So there's a lot of opportunity for for screenwriters,
• 29:03
  but there's also a lot of competition. Yeah, it's easy to get lost
• 29:07
  just for the reason you're you're talking about. And one of the things that
• 29:11
  you know, when I talk to students, I talk to a consult with
• 29:14
  writers, it's it's really about how do you find a voice that is going
• 29:18
  to attract attention. How do you find a voice that's unique to you and
• 29:23
  has a quality to the work that's undeniable, right, And those are the
• 29:27
  things that you have to really focus on when you're when you're starting in the
• 29:32
  craft. Now is the creative Is the creative process for you different when you're
• 29:36
  working in TV rather than in film. There are different pressures when you're in
• 29:41
  TV. You know, you you have you have a time crunch that you
• 29:45
  don't have as a feature writer unless you're hired to write. You know,
• 29:51
  a film for a studio will be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 29:59
  h and now back to the show. And even then there's flexibility with
• 30:06
  television, you know, particularly if you're writing sitcoms, it's you know,
• 30:10
  you write, you got a script to write, it's got to it's due.
• 30:14
  It's like the one you know on Hercules and Thursday, we get the
• 30:17
  Monday and then it's not that fast. But but they you know, you
• 30:19
  have to be able to perform under pressure and you have to be able to
• 30:22
  get the scripts out quickly. In television that's important. But ultimately, you
• 30:29
  know, and even now, it's more about quality. How good is it?
• 30:33
  You know, how much. How much do people want to see that
• 30:36
  episode? How much do people want to you know, what did you bring
• 30:37
  to the table in terms of the character voices, in terms of you know,
• 30:41
  uh, a kind of a new take on on what we've been doing.
• 30:45
  And particularly in television. You know, when I was coming up,
• 30:49
  you wrote a spec script of a of a show, right, and and
• 30:55
  then you didn't give that to the show that you wrote because they wouldn't look
• 30:59
  at it. You gave it to somebody else and they looked at it.
• 31:02
  Oh, this is great, and you've got to a gig off of that.
• 31:03
  Now, most shows are not really interested in looking at specs as much
• 31:07
  as pilots, and certainly the representation out there much more interested in seeing somebody
• 31:15
  with original work. The problem with that from a showrunner's perspective is if you
• 31:18
  write an original piece of material, and I'm looking at you as a staff
• 31:23
  writer on my show, is can you really capture the purview and the characters
• 31:29
  and the voices and you get the essence of my show? You can do
• 31:33
  your thing great, but can you do mine? And that's where the idea
• 31:38
  of having a spec sample is also a great idea. And I always recommend
• 31:44
  that if you're going to do that, have a pilot and have a spec
• 31:47
  you find a show that you love, do a spec episode. There's so
• 31:52
  much more I feel freedom in TV now, and I use the term TV
• 31:56
  very loosely because it's streaming its web ever, but episodic if you will.
• 32:02
  There is so much more freedom I feel there because that I feel as where
• 32:06
  all the a lot of the independent filmmakers and a lot of those kind of
• 32:08
  people that would have normally found a voice in the indie world have found a
• 32:14
  stable job in the streaming world. And it's also there's it's kind of I
• 32:19
  want to say, it's the wild wild West, but there is things that
• 32:22
  like Breaking Bad or better Call Saulve for those from that universe. Those shows
• 32:28
  are like you would have never in a million years had a show like that
• 32:31
  twenty years ago. It just wouldn't have never happened. It would have never
• 32:35
  happened. And there shows like that all the time coming out now, and
• 32:37
  there's and they're everywhere, and they're all good. And I feel like the
• 32:42
  quality of everything has to go up now because the audience is so much smarter.
• 32:45
  But now there's so much more competition that it's not about the flashy it's
• 32:51
  not. That's why the era of the movie star is kind of gone.
• 32:55
  Like, you know, just because you have Tom Cruise in a movie does
• 32:59
  not guarantee you opening like it used to. Like you mean you put Will
• 33:02
  you put Will Smith in a movie. It was twenty million minimum opening every
• 33:07
  time. Those days are like, really, who there are? There's a
• 33:10
  handful of them. There's a handful of guys or girls that if you put
• 33:15
  in helps, but by no stream guarantees. It's it's all now about the
• 33:20
  event. Yeah, and you know, in a way, you know,
• 33:23
  a similar thing happened on Broadway, and you know, thanks partly to Disney.
• 33:30
  But again, you know, the shows went from you know, small
• 33:34
  musicals to we have to do you know, Spider Man, turn on the
• 33:37
  lights, we have to do King Kong, we have to do you know
• 33:40
  really, and the film industry is kind of a microcosm of the world as
• 33:45
  well. And so you have the Marvel Universe, you have you know,
• 33:50
  the Star Wars. Yeah, the picks are all Disney, but you have
• 33:54
  those universes which people will still go to the theater because it's an event movie.
• 33:58
  You're going to go it's going to be as spectacular, you know,
• 34:00
  big screen event, you want to see it with an audience. But there
• 34:04
  shows like I watch a Handmaid's Tale so good, really really beautifully made right
• 34:12
  beautifully yeah, yeah, and you know, terrifically acted, very well written,
• 34:17
  gorgeously shot. They have a lot of talented people. Game of Thrones
• 34:22
  on HBO, you know, you have that was an epic, epic series.
• 34:27
  I could you could make the argument that had they done that as a
• 34:30
  feature series that it probably would have garnered an audience. And it might have
• 34:34
  because it was epic, but not every episode was epic, so you know,
• 34:39
  it had its own journey on television. The thing that's happening in terms
• 34:44
  of what what's available for the industry, in terms of what's available for the
• 34:47
  for the young writer, the new writer, it's democratize it in some ways,
• 34:52
  but you're right, it's also the level has been raised so much that
• 34:58
  it makes it very difficult for a young rie to break in on a higher
• 35:00
  level. So part of what writers need to do, in my opinion now
• 35:05
  is anything you need to do short content, you need to do web content,
• 35:09
  you need to do it, and also produce and produce your own stuff.
• 35:12
  If you can produce, you can afford to do it. Produce or
• 35:15
  team up with someone who can produce a series. I always tell I always
• 35:17
  tell screenwriters, you know, like write a web series or write a streaming
• 35:22
  series. Right, four or five episodes at ten minutes each, and join
• 35:25
  a filmmaker who has the means. They're looking for content, you're looking for
• 35:30
  production. And all of a sudden, on your IMDb you have a credit
• 35:32
  that states that you have an Amazon series. It's better than nothing. It's
• 35:37
  not a bad idea. It's you know, there's it's the where's that guy
• 35:43
  who said he would team up with me? You know? How do you
• 35:44
  find those people that we're in LA? Where we're in LA, so it's
• 35:47
  easier, it's easier here. But no, but you're right, you're right.
• 35:51
  It depends on where you are in the world. But it is.
• 35:52
  You know, I shot a film in Wisconsin and Appleton, Wisconsin, and
• 35:58
  we ran out of We ran a gaffers tape, and I ran over to
• 36:05
  every hardware store you know, in the city and couldn't find and people looked
• 36:08
  at me like I was at this huge box store and you know, they
• 36:13
  were looking at me like Gaffers tape. They had no clue and I went,
• 36:16
  well, that looks kind of like Gaffer's tape, and I brought stuff
• 36:20
  up. But you know, you a lot of it is what what what
• 36:22
  is available around you? That doesn't mean that you can't get stuff on.
• 36:29
  An acquaintance of mine who I've had come and speak to my classes a few
• 36:32
  times is Orang Paley, who did Paranormal Activity. Yes he's a director,
• 36:37
  writer, producer, editor on that, and you know, it was really
• 36:42
  a fascinating study on someone just going well I can do that. And he
• 36:46
  took fifteen K out of his own pocket. But what he did that others
• 36:52
  who do the same path head didn't do. He worked for a year and
• 36:55
  a half on just you know kind of conception. How are the shots going
• 37:00
  to work? You know? What am I going to do? How do
• 37:02
  I make this effect happen? What? How do I make the door close
• 37:07
  on its own way? His homework Actually, he actually did his homework beautifully.
• 37:10
  And the other thing he did that I thought was really sharp is he
• 37:14
  got terrific actors and he worked with them, improvised with them for a long
• 37:20
  time before they got before the cameras there was a five day shoot when they
• 37:22
  actually sat down to shoot it, and they basically slept at his house,
• 37:27
  and you know, he would come in and scare the crap out him in
• 37:29
  the middle of the night, and then he went, yeah, I probably
• 37:30
  don't have to do that about halfway through and yeah, I probably shouldn't.
• 37:32
  Shouldn't wake them up at three in the morning with you know, scary noise
• 37:36
  and stuff. So he he kind of learned on the job, like directing,
• 37:44
  yeah, exactly. So they you know, those kind of things absolutely
• 37:47
  can be done. But you know what people kind of universally make the mistake,
• 37:52
  particularly outside of the industry, is they think, well, if you
• 37:55
  can make a movie for fifteen thousand dollars, you can make any movie for
• 37:59
  fifteen thousands. And it's so not true. You know, movies cost what
• 38:02
  they cost, and and you know, it's fine to do it as kind
• 38:07
  of like I've got to get something done, and I want to make something
• 38:09
  and go out and just do it and you bite and you scratch and your
• 38:12
  claw, but as a business model, not a good idea to do everything
• 38:15
  for fifteen thousand dollars. Feature levely nobody gets paid. You know, the
• 38:21
  food's crap. Nobody sleeps, you know, and you end up nine times
• 38:24
  out of ten you end up with crap. You know, one out of
• 38:29
  a thousand you get paranormal activity. The rest are like, no more than
• 38:34
  one out of a million? Million? Yeah, how many? How many
• 38:37
  other films can you count in the last thirty years that were made for fifteen
• 38:42
  grand and Bolden three hundred million dollars? None? None, even Blair Witch
• 38:47
  didn't do that. Yeah, Blair Ros was sixty thousand, I think,
• 38:52
  No, No, it was it was the twenty seven thirty thousand, something
• 38:54
  like that. Yeah, and then it made just a one hundred figure inflation
• 39:00
  inflation you're looking at it doesn't matter. It's a lot of money. I
• 39:05
  had Eduardo on the show and his story, the story of the Blair which
• 39:07
  from their perspective is fascinating. It was fantastic. And I'd love to get
• 39:13
  Pailey on the on the show as well, because he's history is just different.
• 39:15
  It's just acum. Yeah, he's he's out. Oh yeah, he's
• 39:20
  gone. You know. One of the things he said, you know,
• 39:22
  I his journey was he was a he was a programmer with a video game
• 39:28
  company and hated it. And saw Blair Witch went I could do something like
• 39:32
  that. Came up with this idea, he says, And he said,
• 39:36
  I had I had the lottery. I hit the jackpot. He said,
• 39:38
  I don't have to do anything else ever, And he wasn't really all that
• 39:43
  interested in being a filmmaker as much as it was this was I think I
• 39:46
  can do this. And then, you know, he directed a few other
• 39:49
  things, he produced a few other things. He had that universe that went
• 39:52
  on, you know, and continues to go on, and he kind of
• 39:55
  went, yeah, I'm done, I'm good, I'm good. Yea,
• 39:59
  he did. Fine, we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 40:07
  and now back to the show. So when you're when you're going,
• 40:12
  when you're doing writing, when you're doing writing, listen to me, guess
• 40:14
  what I'm doing right. When you're doing writing, when you write, how
• 40:17
  do you approach structure? Because I think that's something that a lot of a
• 40:21
  lot of screenwriters and writers in general have problems with. Structure is the two
• 40:27
  things that are probably for me the most important in writing are structure and logic.
• 40:35
  Story logic. Okay, the idea that I create a world in a
• 40:38
  universe that makes sense. That doesn't mean that it's a real universe or a
• 40:43
  real world. It can be advanciful as you can imagine, but you want
• 40:47
  to be able to track the motivation of the characters and understand why they behave
• 40:52
  the way they behave. And that's one of the things that for me,
• 40:57
  structure and character are are really intimately tied together, because it is what the
• 41:04
  character does, the behavior that they have, that makes the choices for the
• 41:08
  story. In other words, you know, the example I use in my
• 41:12
  book, I think is, you know, you have one of the first
• 41:15
  films that Sylvester Stallone did was a Woody Allen movie on the train. It
• 41:22
  was called Bananas and He's a Magarona trade. And if you switch those parts
• 41:28
  and you put Sylvester's loan seated on the bench and you know, somebody like
• 41:34
  Biddy Allen coming in and messing with people, how does it change that Well,
• 41:37
  obviously those characters make very different choices. So every individual person their lives
• 41:44
  unfold a certain way. There's a movie with Diane Lane and oh gosh,
• 41:51
  unfaithful. Yeah, yeah, And you know there was a character that was
• 41:59
  played by Richard gear as this kind of devoted husband who's being betrayed, and
• 42:07
  throughout the film he's very sympathetic. And I'm going to do a spoiler.
• 42:12
  I apologize to anybody who hasn't seen. Yeah, it's been long enough.
• 42:16
  I think I think the pain is gone. So at the end of the
• 42:20
  film, he confronts his wife's lover and in a moment of passion, picks
• 42:24
  up a globe you know, uh snow globe and yeah, and smashes him
• 42:30
  in the head and kills him, completely out of character, and you believe
• 42:35
  it and understand it. Nobody walks out of the movie and he would not
• 42:39
  do that, you know. So that's what I mean by you know,
• 42:43
  understanding the motivation of the characters that that that becomes a pivotal moment of the
• 42:47
  story because then it becomes here is this good, decent guy, Now what's
• 42:52
  he going to do? And he ends up, of course, going and
• 42:53
  you see him outside the police station getting ready to turn himself in. So
• 42:58
  one of the things that look at is that kind of clarity in who the
• 43:02
  people are. So I to understand structure. I really have to understand one
• 43:07
  the world of the character. Where are they, what kind of universe they
• 43:12
  in? And then the other is that character. Who are they at their
• 43:16
  core? What are their values? You know, sometimes I get like these
• 43:22
  little flashes of uh, you know, gameplay where you know, you have
• 43:27
  to decide their stats. You know, how much intelligence and how much you
• 43:30
  know, how much power and how much uh you know, speed and all
• 43:34
  the different things that make up who they who they are, because that's going
• 43:37
  to determine the choices that they make. And it's it's it's about It's kind
• 43:42
  of like Captain America turns into Tony Stark all of a sudden, he starts
• 43:45
  being the doing the the wise cracks and and starts being that character, and
• 43:51
  like, well, that doesn't make a lot of logical sense in that world.
• 43:53
  You have to stay within the rules that you've created for this universe,
• 43:58
  and you yes, it's let you better. Example, if you saw Superman
• 44:04
  versus Batman, Okay, don't get me started. So and we have a
• 44:08
  moment where these two you know, superheroes are going at each other and Batman
• 44:15
  is ready to kill Superman and he's got him pinned down with a Kryptonite spirit
• 44:21
  that will kill him. And out of something, Superman says Martha the stupidest
• 44:30
  and says, why did you say Martha, And he says, well,
• 44:34
  that's my mother's name. He says, let's go. It is the stupidest
• 44:44
  moment of character logic. That that just completely destroyed that film for me.
• 44:49
  Not that that, not that I was before. That was that the moment
• 44:52
  that you got lost that was, but that was the one that was most
• 44:55
  glaring for me, because I went, here are these two guys that are
• 44:59
  killing each other, and the idea that that the guy who he who has
• 45:02
  in Batman's eyes, murdered half of Metropolis, you know, shouldn't shouldn't be
• 45:08
  destroyed because they have a mother. And the next step here we have a
• 45:15
  universe where Superman is one of the most powerful beings. Batman has almost killed
• 45:20
  him. He's lying on the floor and Batman says him and I'm paraphrasing here,
• 45:28
  Hey, I know you're probably the most powerful being in the world,
• 45:30
  but you know you've been through a lot. Right now, just rest.
• 45:34
  I know your mother's about to be murdered, but I'll go. I'll go
• 45:37
  gas up my bat jet. I'm sure it's already to take off. I'll
• 45:40
  go save her. Yes, you know, shooting through the window. I
• 45:45
  might hit her, but I'll try not to. I'm gonna rescue her and
• 45:47
  bring her back. You just hang out, don't worry about the flying thing.
• 45:52
  Do your thing. You know. It's like, what are you talking
• 45:53
  about? That's Superman? He jumps up, he go gets his mother.
• 45:58
  Why are you getting his mother in this plane where you're going to shoot machine
• 46:01
  gun fire? It's just insane. I just I love that that you're trying
• 46:06
  to create some logic of one of the worst films in Recess. No,
• 46:08
  no, I mean, like I don't, I know, I know,
• 46:13
  you know what I mean. You know what I mean, Like, of
• 46:15
  course there's no logic in it, and let's not even get it to justice.
• 46:17
  It's a whole other conversation. But that film suffered for that, you
• 46:22
  know. And you look at the DC versus the Marvel universe. Yeah,
• 46:25
  you know, Marvel tends to have within the world very logical, very well
• 46:30
  thought out structure, and that structure has to do you know the other thing
• 46:34
  about structure that people talk about, and it's changed over the years a little
• 46:38
  bit. It used to be that you could have a slow burn, you
• 46:40
  can have a story that kind of rolls out, and now you really need
• 46:45
  to hook the audience immediately. You've got to get into the story quickly.
• 46:47
  You've got to build the suspense or the comedy or the drama or whatever you're
• 46:52
  building, and get to the heart of the story. So what what becomes
• 46:58
  a little more difficult now is filling the story with with what is compelling to
• 47:01
  an audience, And that becomes really the bottom line. I mean, you
• 47:05
  can argue as well that I mean, the second that they made Superman brooding,
• 47:10
  who's not which is not his character. His character is not a brooding,
• 47:15
  pissed off, angry character. He's a very uplifting, very much like
• 47:19
  wonder Woman. I think with what made wonder Woman so wonderful is that it
• 47:22
  was so full of hope and so full of you know, just goodness empowerment.
• 47:28
  Yeah, and that goes back to earlier Superman movies in this universe.
• 47:32
  I mean, it wasn't just here the Man of Steel City, like he
• 47:36
  killed, he kills Zod like Superman doesn't kill. He just doesn't kill,
• 47:42
  you know, Like you don't do that in this you know. Then you
• 47:45
  go back to Christopher Reeves Superman and you're like, that's the Superman that is
• 47:49
  in the books. That's the Superman, that's the source of And but that's
• 47:53
  the one thing that Marvel does have many things. One of the many things
• 47:57
  that Marvel has over is they're really true to the material. They know,
• 48:00
  they have writers that are you know, just their their sharpest tacks. I
• 48:07
  mean, they made ant Man the movie, ant Man the movie, and
• 48:12
  it was fun, and it was fun. It was a heist movie.
• 48:15
  It was fun. They made Guardians of the Galaxy. I'm a comic book
• 48:19
  guy. I barely knew who they were. Right, they could do whatever
• 48:22
  they want, basically whatever I think At this point they're drunk on their power
• 48:25
  and watch the downfall of Marvel Universe moving forward next it's gonna be can you
• 48:31
  know this is a hard, honest guy. You know, keeping that kind
• 48:35
  of level of quality up is not easy, and they had done it over
• 48:40
  a large number of films for a long time. And finding the talent that
• 48:45
  can continue to bring out that kind of level of quality it's hard. And
• 48:51
  you know, it doesn't take a whole lot for a rabid fan base to
• 48:54
  turn on you, you know it does you know, if you look at
• 48:58
  look at Star Wars and look at you know, jo Jar Binks you know,
• 49:01
  and and oh yeah, so howe yeah, oh yeah, they'll t'll
• 49:07
  they'll they're turned quick. But kay. But the difference between that is Marvel.
• 49:12
  The Marvel universe is full of comic book gigs, and Marvel's been dealing
• 49:15
  with comic book fans for decade, so they're very comfortable with the who their
• 49:22
  audience exactly. Now, can you give us some Well, I want to
• 49:27
  ask you, is there a film that you can recommend that has impeccable structure,
• 49:30
  Like when you see it, you're just like wow. You know,
• 49:36
  I can think of quite a few examples, and it really kind of kind
• 49:38
  of has to do with what kind of story do you want to tell?
• 49:44
  You know, I'm a big believer in kind of like you're you're a real
• 49:46
  estate developer. You look at the comps, you look at what's out there,
• 49:51
  you look at you know, what kind of movies do you love that
• 49:52
  you want to write? We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
• 50:01
  and now back to the show. You know, I do it And
• 50:07
  I've always thought it was one of the really truly brilliantly structured movies was Shrek.
• 50:13
  Oh it is, it's It's it's I break down, and I break
• 50:15
  it down in my book, you know, kind of beat by beat,
• 50:20
  and you know, it has everything that you want in terms of a story,
• 50:24
  in terms of the structure. It starts with this hook that gets you
• 50:30
  in immediately into the story and tells you exactly what universe were in, what
• 50:35
  what is the world we're about to experience? You know. It starts out
• 50:37
  with him in a crapper, you know, with this fairy tale, very
• 50:39
  lilting story, and then he says, yeah, right and wipes his ass
• 50:43
  with the book and we go, okay, I get it. It's going
• 50:45
  to be irreverent, it's going to be funny, it's going to be you
• 50:47
  know, unusual. Then it goes into this kind of montage of him and
• 50:52
  the people who are getting ready to try and throw him out of the swamp,
• 50:54
  and you know, he's taking wax out of his ears that you know,
• 50:59
  that kind of completely described in a nutshell the universe that we were in,
• 51:05
  and it just goes from there and every beat is meticulous in terms of
• 51:08
  what happens structurally where it goes from there. So that was one I loved.
• 51:13
  I thought on kind of a comedy drama sign I thought Silver Linings Playbook
• 51:19
  was very well structured, beautiful movie, and again, you know, really
• 51:22
  well structured. We you know, we meet our kind of reluctant hero who
• 51:27
  you know, is pining for the girl in his past that he wants to
• 51:30
  get back and has to put together this plan to try and win her and
• 51:35
  meet Jenner for Lawrence. I mean, it's all again, all there and
• 51:38
  we get you know, it's a very you know, way different story from
• 51:46
  from Shrek in terms of, you know, how it's structured, where it
• 51:49
  goes flows out because of different genres. I was mentioning. I went to
• 51:54
  China in January to be a part of the first National China Chinese Screenwriting Competition.
• 52:00
  Is one of the mentors. And one of the things that I did
• 52:05
  is they they wanted to publish my book there, and they asked if I
• 52:07
  would look at some of the Chinese films, and one of the films I
• 52:12
  looked at was a film called The Mermaid. Yeah. So Mermaid was the
• 52:17
  highest grossing film in China history at the time, made over five hundred million
• 52:22
  dollars worldwide, and they barely made a splash here. And I started to
• 52:30
  look at it in terms of not just structure, but why why didn't it
• 52:34
  work? It's from Stephen Chow, who I loved Kung Fu Hustle and and
• 52:39
  Soccer. It's great, wonderful and imaginative and fun and inventive. And I
• 52:47
  thought, you know, in terms of structure, I thought Kung Fu Hustle
• 52:52
  was wonderful. Not it's not typical to the American sensibility in terms of structure.
• 53:00
  And in this film, again he went into fantasy comedy. But there
• 53:05
  were two things that I thought stopped it from being successful. Here. One
• 53:07
  was there there's a tone shift in the film where it's an extremely wacky comedy,
• 53:15
  you know, with this mermaid walking on our fins, you know,
• 53:20
  and seducing this guy. But then there are moments where we see dolphins in
• 53:25
  Taiji being slaughtered and you know, the mermaids being killed by sound waves and
• 53:31
  slaughtered by people shooting them, and it's it's just, you know, the
• 53:36
  there was a mismatch in terms of the tone. And the other thing was
• 53:38
  the logic, the story and character logic, where it was a little bit
• 53:44
  about we have to set up this this big, you know, overriding enemy
• 53:51
  for them to be for a heroin to be fighting against and therefore it doesn't
• 53:54
  really matter. It's more mcguffin than anything else. But the mcguffins in the
• 53:59
  world will still have to come out of something, and they still have to
• 54:01
  be able to come out because otherwise what happens As an audience member, and
• 54:05
  I always try to put myself in, you know, in the seat of
• 54:07
  the audience. I think as an audience member, when we see something that
• 54:12
  we just even if we don't know clock it consciously, unconsciously, we'd sit
• 54:16
  there and go that doesn't quite refeel true to me, that doesn't work,
• 54:22
  and it just takes us out of the film a little bit. So we
• 54:24
  distanced ourselves from the emotional impact of the movie. And that's I think what
• 54:29
  happened with this film. Though even though ultimately it's a fun ride, it's
• 54:32
  a it's a wonderful ride, but there just are these moments where you just
• 54:37
  go, Wow, what what? What? What happened to the world I
• 54:40
  was in. So the consistency of the character, of the consistent of the
• 54:45
  story logic, the world logic, and that tonal shift is what I think
• 54:49
  kept it from being a hit. Here doesn't mean that and I don't know
• 54:52
  enough about Europe and the rest of the world to say, well, you
• 54:53
  know, they accept that that's fine, and you know, I do you
• 54:59
  know the movie the Yeah, of course a lot of people. A lot
• 55:02
  of people love the Lobster personally, not a fan. And for the same
• 55:07
  reason about this idea of story logic, European films often will take a story
• 55:13
  and they'll go They'll do two things. One is they'll say, it's not
• 55:16
  really important, why we're just going to show you what. And the other
• 55:21
  thing is that you get to a point where in that movie, for me,
• 55:24
  where where I kind of you know, clinched on it. Besides it
• 55:29
  just being an odd film, and I like odd films. I love being
• 55:32
  John Malcomage. But you know what was odd about it was kind of fun,
• 55:37
  but it was also very dark. And what ultimately kind of you know,
• 55:43
  it made me go it didn't work for me, was we have a
• 55:45
  moment. I'm going to spoil it again, we have a moment where in
• 55:50
  this world every everybody has to have a mate, and every mate has to
• 55:52
  have something in common. And at the end, this young world that he's
• 56:00
  in love with cal him Farrell. She's been blinded and he's asking her what's
• 56:05
  your favorite color? And she says blue, and he says, oh,
• 56:07
  darn you know that's red. Do you speak German? No, I don't
• 56:10
  speak German, darn it. And they have this moment where they're going back
• 56:14
  and forth about what you know? What do you? What do we have
• 56:16
  in common? And the last shot of the film is him with needles poised
• 56:22
  to poke his eyes out. And I wanted to say to the film writer,
• 56:27
  have you ever laughed at a joke? Do you have two legs?
• 56:31
  How about hair? Do you do you breathe? There are other things that
• 56:37
  they could have in common, and I just for me, it was blind
• 56:39
  himself over this and then they ended there, so we don't know if he
• 56:44
  blinds himself or not, which is very European, very very the movie The
• 56:49
  Skin I'm him Do you know that? No? No, that's a Thumbo
• 56:52
  vandetis and it's a Spanish The guy, the surgeon who takes the guy who
• 56:58
  rips his daughter and a tax about the Nachela River, taxes daughter and and
• 57:02
  forces them to have a sex change operation and then falls in love with her.
• 57:07
  Oh yeah, that's that's very mainstream. It's very mainstream that constant and
• 57:12
  that's that film really well done, but had an ending where you went,
• 57:19
  really this is where you okay, all right, yeah, what was like?
• 57:22
  That was like the you know, I'm a huge fan of Tarantino's work,
• 57:27
  and one of his films that he wrote has this tonal shift. That
• 57:32
  is one of the one of the reasons why the movie I felt I enjoyed
• 57:36
  because it was fun but full from Dussell dun which half the movie is a
• 57:43
  wonderful kind of caper, not caper film, but like a heist, you
• 57:47
  know, on the run kind of film with a psychotic, you know,
• 57:52
  sex driven you know, pedophile which is played by Tarantino and George Clooney,
• 57:58
  who's awesome. Then all of a sudden and it turns into this bloody vampire
• 58:00
  movie, like out of nowhere, like there's just not even a mention of
• 58:06
  a vampire anywhere before. And I mean it has gone on to spawn TV
• 58:09
  shows and a huge cult following. But everybody says it and every even to
• 58:15
  Tarantino and Rodriguez, who directed it is they both said too, like,
• 58:19
  well, everyone says it's two movies like it is. Yeah, And here's
• 58:22
  the thing. You know, it's interesting because you know, you have two
• 58:25
  master filmmakers there and you know, nothing wrong with what they did. But
• 58:32
  what happens, in my opinion is, you know, because people always talk
• 58:37
  to me about, well, you know, don't you want to just break
• 58:38
  free from the structure and don't you want to do something different? Don't?
• 58:42
  And it apps. But the difference is that you have a wide kind of
• 58:47
  you know, v shaped audience when you're in the structure zone. And as
• 58:52
  you change structure and you change character logic, you can still have an audience,
• 58:57
  but it starts to shrink when you have masters like Tarantino and Rodriguez.
• 59:01
  You know, even though they they brought that in, they still had an
• 59:05
  audience. You know, you look at their their death proof mm hmmm,
• 59:08
  same kind of idea where you know, no tonal shift, but it was
• 59:13
  it was made to be kind of an homage to It was very it's a
• 59:20
  very it's a very kind of targeted. This is who we're going to go
• 59:22
  after. This is and you know, you can hit a home run with
• 59:25
  that, but you know, uh, they did, Jim, you know,
• 59:30
  but but you can't. Who is it here, Jim Jarmouche. I
• 59:32
  think is the film. Yeah, he he you know, he makes films,
• 59:37
  their their art house films. He gets his friends to do it,
• 59:40
  you know, small budgets though he's got small budgets and he's got a lot,
• 59:45
  but he's got a formula. You know, he knows how to do
• 59:46
  that and he knows how to get it to where people want to see that.
• 59:51
  Well, it's like Woody Island Films back before what he was, you
• 59:53
  know, did what he did. But we'll be right back after a word
• 59:58
  from our sponsor and now back to the show. But Woody Films, I
• 1:00:07
  mean to to that point. He was making a film a year for what
• 1:00:10
  thirty years, and he had a formula. He had a wonderful formula.
• 1:00:15
  And I was a fan of his, you know, as a director,
• 1:00:17
  I'm a fan of his work, you know, from Annie Hall and in
• 1:00:21
  Crimes and Misdemeanors, Bullet over bro I mean, there's so many did you
• 1:00:27
  know that must have been fun but but but it was. But the point
• 1:00:32
  was that he was able to do small budgets, huge movie stars that would
• 1:00:37
  come on board for scale. It was a filmmaker's dream basically, and he
• 1:00:43
  had complete control and you know, often his films didn't make money, and
• 1:00:46
  studios would do a Woody Allen film because there was prestige to having a Woody
• 1:00:52
  Allen film. And now you go back, you know, to take the
• 1:00:53
  money and run, or you know, go back to What's Up Tiger Lily
• 1:00:59
  or you know some of his earlier movies that was not the formula at that
• 1:01:02
  time. You know, he wasn't getting the big stars. He was just
• 1:01:06
  he was just making his films. And you know, I think and started
• 1:01:10
  was his start as memories that he did. The kind of the aliens come
• 1:01:15
  down and talked to him about, you know, why don't you do more
• 1:01:16
  like your early films, the funny things? You know, it's like and
• 1:01:21
  he has this kind of existential conversation with these aliens about you know, artistic
• 1:01:25
  growth. He's you know, he's got in mind that just doesn't stop.
• 1:01:30
  And he's great on that loan, on that level. Absolutely. So I'm
• 1:01:35
  gonna ask you a few questions ask all of my guests, So what advice
• 1:01:37
  would you give a screenwriter wanting to break into the business today. Don't say
• 1:01:43
  no, keep writing, write as much and as varied and as often as
• 1:01:52
  you can, and create things for yourself if you can go out and shoot
• 1:01:58
  stuff. Shoot stuff. Also, don't stop learning, No, don't stop
• 1:02:02
  start taking classes, don't stop getting into network groups, don't stop you know,
• 1:02:07
  trying to learn what's out there now and be aware that this is you
• 1:02:13
  know, as much as we all want to be artists and and I do
• 1:02:17
  believe we are, you also have a business to take care of if you
• 1:02:21
  want to have that as a career. Can you tell me what book had
• 1:02:24
  the biggest impact in your life or career? You know, I might as
• 1:02:32
  a as a writer, I might actually have to go back to Sidfield's screenplay.
• 1:02:37
  Yeah, that was my first book too. Yeah, I mean the
• 1:02:42
  thing about that, that was the first book that really kind of laid out
• 1:02:45
  structure for me. And and one of the things that that you know,
• 1:02:50
  I started it took me a while to come to the understanding of is that
• 1:02:53
  sid feel kind of reversed engineered film. So you look at a film and
• 1:02:58
  say about, you know, a third way through, there's this happens,
• 1:03:00
  and then you know this happens, and then and then that's formula, and
• 1:03:07
  formula can be dangerous. So you have to you have to take all of
• 1:03:10
  that with a little bit of a grain of salt. You know, every
• 1:03:16
  ten or fifteen years there's some kind of seismic shift in the way that that
• 1:03:21
  people the other. The other was, for me was a hero of the
• 1:03:25
  Thousand Faces, sure, Joseph Campbell. And you know, when I first
• 1:03:30
  started out and I would go to meetings, people would say, hey,
• 1:03:32
  you know, so what's the three acts structure? You know what happens on
• 1:03:37
  page twenty nine, you know what happens on page thirty. And then people
• 1:03:39
  were saying, what's the hero's journey, and you know, and who's your
• 1:03:44
  wisened old man? And what Boon is bringing back? And then you know,
• 1:03:47
  eventually, more recently, it was Blake Snyder in my mind, Yeah,
• 1:03:53
  and honestly I have I had negative reaction to Say the Cat for the
• 1:03:59
  reason that I felt like it micromanaged, you know, something on five,
• 1:04:02
  page five, page seven, page nine, and but there were some nice
• 1:04:05
  things about it. The one thing about Save the Cat that you know they
• 1:04:10
  talk about in terms of pitching is the idea of what's the same as but
• 1:04:13
  different from and for me that there's a real risk and danger of being derivative.
• 1:04:18
  And I look at films like the feature version of Hannah with Scia Arno.
• 1:04:27
  I love the movie, yeah, but but what that movie was was
• 1:04:30
  the born identity with a little girl, you know, and I could just
• 1:04:33
  see the pitch, you know. It was like, here's so there,
• 1:04:39
  and you know who Tony Bill is the name the same. The director was
• 1:04:45
  a director producer my bodyguardt He did on Tamed Heart. I think it was
• 1:04:49
  another one with Christian Christmas Later and Mars tom maybe yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:58
  He came and spoke to my class and it wasn't is because he was
• 1:05:00
  the polar opposite. He said, I don't want to see anything that anybody's
• 1:05:02
  ever done before. And as much as I admired that and a producer,
• 1:05:06
  I also thought, well, good luck. There's only so much in the
• 1:05:11
  world, in the universe that people haven't seen. And you know, you
• 1:05:15
  you just like there is a an audience that has a certain girth. You
• 1:05:21
  know, when you start to say I'm going to show you something that no
• 1:05:24
  one's ever seen, you may hit that home run because you're aiming, you
• 1:05:28
  know, for those those corners. You may be foul. So you know,
• 1:05:31
  use a baseball ob so that you know to me that that was one
• 1:05:38
  of the risks in doing the Blake Snyder idea of you know, same as
• 1:05:42
  but different from but but for a while when you went into bitch, that's
• 1:05:45
  the very thing, Well how is it? How is what is it the
• 1:05:47
  same as? In different? How is it different? You know, that's
• 1:05:50
  how you lien. So you want to know what the trends are. You
• 1:05:54
  want to know how to be current for me. Like I said, here
• 1:05:57
  are one thousands. Also Bird by Bird. I enjoy it very much.
• 1:06:01
  And and I also really really admire and liked Stephen King's book on writing.
• 1:06:08
  Yeah, that's a great book, great, great, great book. He
• 1:06:10
  had one of my favorite quotes of all, which was, you know,
• 1:06:13
  as a writer, I create an image here and I projected into the future,
• 1:06:17
  and in the future someone receives it as I wrote it. And I
• 1:06:20
  went, wow, that's right, because you know, the clearer the image
• 1:06:24
  is that that person down the road is going to get it as you intended
• 1:06:28
  it. Then it's well written. Very cool. Now, what is the
• 1:06:31
  lesson that took you the longest to learn, whether in the film business or
• 1:06:34
  in life. Wow, we're probably still learning it. First of all,
• 1:06:42
  you know, Yeah, one of the probably the hardest lesson is to to
• 1:06:46
  listen to criticism, and you know, I think that sometimes, uh you
• 1:06:55
  know, hearing from people that they don't just adore and love your work and
• 1:07:00
  that there are things that can be improved is difficult. And I think what
• 1:07:02
  the other thing about that is that you have to you have to eventually learn
• 1:07:08
  to have a certain kind of core peace and center to say that that note
• 1:07:14
  is correct and I need to change it, or that note isn't right and
• 1:07:17
  I'm not going to change it, and know when you know, it's kind
• 1:07:20
  of a God grant me the serenity, you know, to know what the
• 1:07:25
  difference is. And that's a hard lesson to learn. What is the What
• 1:07:30
  did you learn from your biggest failure? For my biggest failure? Uh well,
• 1:07:35
  first of all, let me think what was my biggest failure? You
• 1:07:39
  know what? Actually it goes back to this idea of notes, and one
• 1:07:43
  of them. I was a writer for a TV movie for Universal and it
• 1:07:48
  was for Angel Lionsbury and I was at the time kind of sitting on top
• 1:07:56
  of the world. I was represented by William Morris. They had picked my
• 1:07:59
  script out of about two thousand submissions to be the one that they wanted to
• 1:08:02
  write the script. And I wrote the script and everybody was thrilled, and
• 1:08:06
  we missed her hiatus from murder. She wrote and they had a little extra
• 1:08:13
  time to think about it, and they asked me rewrite it. I ended
• 1:08:16
  up doing about thirty thirty drafts of the script without being paid for it.
• 1:08:24
  And part of what happened was, and this is going a little bit to
• 1:08:28
  what's going on with the agents right now. The agency represented Korymore, the
• 1:08:32
  production company, and they were packaging for Quorymore. And I was a writer,
• 1:08:36
  so I was very young and very stupid, and nobody said to me,
• 1:08:40
  hey, you know, every time you write, you're supposed to be
• 1:08:42
  paid for it. And one of the things that happened is I got notes
• 1:08:46
  from Universal, from the producer at Universal, from the executives at the Universal,
• 1:08:51
  from CBS, from Korymore, from jud to the Christ of the New
• 1:08:57
  Yorker. Everybody and their cousin was giving you notes, was trying to do
• 1:09:00
  them all. I can't do that. That was the lesson that I that
• 1:09:05
  I really had to take in and go okay. That failure taught me that
• 1:09:12
  I can't listen to everybody. I have to I have to I have to
• 1:09:15
  hear everybody, but I have to then follow what I think is the best
• 1:09:18
  course of action for the project. What makes it a better story, what
• 1:09:23
  makes it better character, what makes it more entertaining. Those are the things
• 1:09:27
  that are important. People don't always have the answer. They may have a
• 1:09:31
  question, and you have to look at why did you ask me that?
• 1:09:33
  What is it I can do to address that without blowing up my concept and
• 1:09:38
  my idea and giving away my heart and soul along project. What is the
• 1:09:42
  biggest fear you had to overcome to write your first screenplay? Ah, my
• 1:09:47
  biggest fear, you know, on my first screenplay, I was pretty fearless.
• 1:09:53
  So so on your second screenplay? Then, okay, let's go with
• 1:09:57
  the second. Lack of knowledge, the idea that I didn't know what I
• 1:10:01
  was doing. And it was really the the real It was more a realization
• 1:10:08
  than a fear in that I wasn't afraid that I didn't know what I was
• 1:10:11
  doing. I discovered that I didn't know what I was doing, and I
• 1:10:14
  went, ah, okay, do I want? And then and then the
• 1:10:16
  question is you know, I I had intended to be an actor, That's
• 1:10:20
  what I wanted. I didn't want to be a writer. I want to
• 1:10:23
  be an active So I was like, do I want to give up that
• 1:10:27
  and pursue this? And if I do, how do I do that?
• 1:10:30
  That was a big step, and that I did three of your favorite films
• 1:10:33
  of all time. Well, gosh, let me think about that. I
• 1:10:41
  got to tell you, I'm a big fan of Deadpool. I thought it
• 1:10:44
  was a terrific movie. I really loved this wonderful film. It was.
• 1:10:47
  It was again very well structured, very inventive, you know, took risks,
• 1:10:54
  broke the rules, but within that universe, consistent as it could be.
• 1:10:58
  I love that film, you know, I loved I think, uh
• 1:11:04
  Field of Dreams so good. It's a wonderful film. You know. Going
• 1:11:10
  way back, I think Lawrence of Arabia was probably, you know, one
• 1:11:14
  of my all time favorites. Just superbly directed, beautifully shot, uh excellent
• 1:11:21
  written everything. It's and as far as you know, kind of an epic
• 1:11:27
  that we don't see a lot of today anymore. You know, young,
• 1:11:30
  every young filmmaker should study that film, you know, forward and backwards to
• 1:11:34
  sideways. I'd say those are three. I mean, you know, there
• 1:11:41
  are tons. I mean, you know, if a comedy is something about
• 1:11:43
  Mary I think was brilliant. I thought Bridesmaids, and then I loved the
• 1:11:46
  Woody Allens as, now, can you tell me a little bit about your
• 1:11:48
  book process to product? Unfortunately now that I started that because I partly out
• 1:12:00
  out of the concept of you know, Sidfield, I felt was a fantastic
• 1:12:06
  book, But I thought that a lot I saw a lot of writers getting
• 1:12:11
  kind of straight jacketed by the concept of you have the structure and you have
• 1:12:15
  to fit into it. And then with here with a thousand Faces, I
• 1:12:19
  thought almost the opposite. It's a great concept in terms of how do you
• 1:12:23
  evolve character and a journey, but there's no real kind of you know,
• 1:12:28
  pinpoints to say how do I get there? So I wanted to give writers
• 1:12:31
  two things. I wanted to give writers the freedom to explore within a structure
• 1:12:36
  without being straight jacketed, and yet allow them a structure that if they got
• 1:12:44
  lost, they could come back to. So that was the impetus and it
• 1:12:47
  came out of For ten years I taught at UCLA Extensions and all of my
• 1:12:53
  classes were online and I'd written all of my course work, so it was
• 1:12:58
  taking that all of that information and kind of you know, molding it over
• 1:13:02
  the course of a decade or two to come up with with the book.
• 1:13:06
  And you know, I wanted it to be easy to read, clearer to
• 1:13:12
  understand, and specific and I think I succeeded that. And where can people
• 1:13:16
  find you in your work? They can find me on my website at Brian
• 1:13:23
  hurschootz dot com or at Horror Equity Fund dot com. And then the book
• 1:13:29
  you can get an Amazon It's readily available there and there's also a link from
• 1:13:33
  my website if you want to go there, and I'll put it in the
• 1:13:36
  show notes as well. Brian, Thank you. It's been an enlightening conversation.
• 1:13:41
  Yeah, a lot of fun. So thanks for having back anytime,
• 1:13:44
  Thanks for coming on. Thank you Brian so much for coming on the show
• 1:13:48
  and sharing your knowledge with the tribe. If you want to get links to
• 1:13:53
  his book or anything we've spoke about in this episode, please head over to
• 1:13:57
  the show notes at any film also dot com forward slash seven two and if
• 1:14:00
  you have it already, please head over to Filmmaking podcast dot com. Subscribe
• 1:14:05
  and leave a good review for the show. It really helps us out a
• 1:14:10
  lot, guys. Thank you again, so much for listening to guys.
• 1:14:12
  As always, keep that hustle going, keep that dream alive, Stay safe
• 1:14:15
  out there, and I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the
• 1:14:17
  Indie Film Hustle podcast at indiefilm hustle dot com. That's I N D I
• 1:14:23
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