Your head is in the minutia, in the scenes, the characters, the dialogue, the setting, the visual charisma of the thing, and then someone asks you "So what's your movie about?"...
For a screenwriter (and just about anyone else hocking their Hollywood wares to People of Influence) the place where unbridled belief in one's self meets the wrecking ball is the pitch. Ask that ultra-confident filmmaker how he or she feels after that pitch. Either the listener was unfair and mean, or that filmmaker is at the onset of an existential crisis... maybe both.
"I know," you console them, "talent is what really matters."
Of course it does. But how does talent help when you're pitching to the most disinterested person in the world? (Who you will inevitably pitch to).
Me, and almost everyone seeking some fated place in the film industry will say talent trumps everything. It relieves the swelling, relieves the itching, and it relieves the pain. It brings a Cinderella element of fairness and order to the process. Here I toil and nobody sees that secretly, underneath it all, I am indeed a princess. The only problem is everyone who says this assumes they have that talent, so in spite of a limiting statement like "talent above everything," everyone must have talent.
We're not walking bags of haloed talent, we're storytellers. Screenwriters, producers, actors and directors alike. Regardless of the medium or the historic era, story-tellers tell stories to people, and fundamentally this takes guts and bravado; interrupting someone's attention and commanding their imagination with the power of your technique, your style and your personality, until hopefully they thank you for the experience. It's an illusion to think that you have the luxury of anonymity in the me-space of the darkened corner of your room behind your desk. You're a storyteller mate, act like one.
So your head is in the minutia, in the scenes, the dialogue, the setting, and then someone asks you "What is your movie about?"
Scenario #1:
Uhhhh... (You're using this time to remember some semblance of a pitch you've put together.). -- ok -- you've got something. And you begin sputtering, but their eyes are already dead. They no longer care. Most of all, you haven't lived up to your image. They see the truth of the thing, and they're wondering if she's such a story teller, why can't she tell a story? -- maybe that's what they're concentrating on while you're playing hopscotch with your plot.
Scenario #2:
You start reading some script you've developed in your head with pinpointed, monotonic accuracy. The listener senses an advertisement and they tune you out. They try to contort their face with half-hearted interest, busier thinking "Holy shit, this person is actually trying to pitch me right now... I can't believe this is happening. Are they embarrassed?" than they are actually hearing anything you say.
A storyteller is a leader, and leaders lead with confidence. If guts and bravado are the traits of a storyteller, confidence is his mark. A lack of confidence distracts attention away from the story. Confidence leads the listener into thinking whatever this guy says must be great.
What do I mean by confidence? Take Scenario #3:
You're prepared and you're not reading a script. Now your listener is the problem, because your listener doesn't give a damn about movies and they really don't give a damn about your story.
Why pitch someone who clearly isn't interested?
--How is it any different than hitting line drives and loading up the bases when you're already down two outs? Or any different than trying or even doing well in the face of a hard or unlikely situation? It's Tiger Woods playing his greatest first round at the Masters when everyone wants him to fail, and everyone expects him to do poorly because he really ought to be playing distracted. But he's not distracted. He's MORE focused. Imagine if that's how you pitched?
That's where impressions are made, where Cinderella stories are born. Embrace the disinterested listener. Lead them. Don't let them lead you to soft spoken timidity, embarrassment, or shamed apologies. Lead with your confidence! They won't do the work for you, nor should they.
Know what movie your movie is. Don't hesitate to be a storyteller. Act like you're in control and they will follow. Leave the talent for everyone else.
Charles Rhoads
Showing posts with label screenwriting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label screenwriting. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Screenwriting, Werner Herzog, and Embracing the Loneliness
Sitting in the cozy bosom of the Writers Guild Foundation/Writers Guild of America buiding in Los Angeles, it struck me just how important validation is for a writer. A validation that doesn't come once in a career, or the kind that strikes in a lucky bolt of triumph and recognition when your script or novel is sold; I mean weekly, even daily validation.
I was attending the latest installment of "Anatomy of a Script," hosted by Robin Schiff and Winnie Holzman, where successful screenwriters come and discuss their careers, answer questions and break down their work over a three hour session that goes by all too fast. (If you are a screenwriter in the Southern California area, this is a wonderful resource). Listening to Laeta Kalogridis discuss her screenplay "Shutter Island," I took great comfort hearing her describe her challenges fighting page count, spending too much time focusing on transitions, and turning her wheels on a few lines of dialogue for hours at a time.
Of course I should have known it wasn't just me that struggles with these things, but when you spend so much time alone in a room with a cursor blinking back at you, you're hypnotized into questioning what's right and what's wrong, what's good and what's bad.
Everyone has notes and opinions when it comes to someone else's writing, and they sure don't have any problem sharing those steadfast views with others, but when it comes to one's OWN writing, suddenly the labels fall off the compass. There is no right answer, THERE ARE A THOUSAND ANSWERS, and all you have is your soppy gut to guide you across the bright white empty wasteland. When the words do finally come we see just how fragile our theories about what's good and what's bad truly are. Who really hands over their work for the first time and doesn't question everything they know and believe about everything?
It's a need for validation that manifests itself in an entire industry of magazines, how-to-books about the process of writing, #scriptchat on twitter, writers groups, writers blogs, writers tips of the day, and movies, of course the movies about writers who struggle with their art...
"Stand by Me," "Stranger than Fiction," "Misery," 2 out of 5 workshop samples, "Adaptation," "Wonder Boys," "Barton Fink," "Barfly," "Shakespeare in Love," "Sideways," Bukowski: Born Into This" -- Born Into This -- Could anything sound more pretentious?
What is this uncanny, insatiable need for writers to write about writing, if it's not a passive aggressive plea for validation? -- To show everyone, just how noble and important writing is to the world? "I am a writer. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
"Theeis eeis masturbation," I can imagine Werner Herzog say with his soft inflection that contrasts his Arnold-Schwarzenegger-like accent.
On Saturday I got to see a double feature including his two films "Nosferatu the Vampyre" and "Cobra Verde," between which he spoke to the audience.
Werner Herzog. This a soldier of film. A man who declares that he sees the films in his head, in their entirety before he sits down to write them in the course of 3 to 5 days.
It shows.
These films, namely "Cobra Verde," were hard to follow, sometimes hard to sit through, but they were also beautiful and most impressively, teeming with confidence. They give you the sense that this man doesn't give a damn if you like or dislike his movie.
He spoke of being a soldier of film, about "Holding an artistic outpost that others have abandoned. It means discipline. It means perseverance. It means courage."
While you're wondering what's the hell is going on, questioning the plot, continuity, Herzog presses on, unwavering. If the plot or the character won't pull you through the film, it's Herzog's utter confidence that will pull you to the credits.
Herzog says of the iconic image of steamship hauled over a mountaintop in his film "Fitzcarraldo," "The image of a steamboat going over a mountain is very unusual and it drew a lot of attention. It's like a big metaphor, but don't ask me what the metaphor means, because I wouldn't know."
Watching Herzog's films, you get the sense he's not questioning himself when he's sitting there alone in front of the computer. He embraces the loneliness! He sees virtue in that abandoned artistic outpost. He just writes.
This is the impression he gives his audience of film aficionados, filmmakers, directors, and writers looking for a little validation on a Saturday night...
Charles Rhoads
I was attending the latest installment of "Anatomy of a Script," hosted by Robin Schiff and Winnie Holzman, where successful screenwriters come and discuss their careers, answer questions and break down their work over a three hour session that goes by all too fast. (If you are a screenwriter in the Southern California area, this is a wonderful resource). Listening to Laeta Kalogridis discuss her screenplay "Shutter Island," I took great comfort hearing her describe her challenges fighting page count, spending too much time focusing on transitions, and turning her wheels on a few lines of dialogue for hours at a time.
Of course I should have known it wasn't just me that struggles with these things, but when you spend so much time alone in a room with a cursor blinking back at you, you're hypnotized into questioning what's right and what's wrong, what's good and what's bad.
Everyone has notes and opinions when it comes to someone else's writing, and they sure don't have any problem sharing those steadfast views with others, but when it comes to one's OWN writing, suddenly the labels fall off the compass. There is no right answer, THERE ARE A THOUSAND ANSWERS, and all you have is your soppy gut to guide you across the bright white empty wasteland. When the words do finally come we see just how fragile our theories about what's good and what's bad truly are. Who really hands over their work for the first time and doesn't question everything they know and believe about everything?
It's a need for validation that manifests itself in an entire industry of magazines, how-to-books about the process of writing, #scriptchat on twitter, writers groups, writers blogs, writers tips of the day, and movies, of course the movies about writers who struggle with their art...
"Stand by Me," "Stranger than Fiction," "Misery," 2 out of 5 workshop samples, "Adaptation," "Wonder Boys," "Barton Fink," "Barfly," "Shakespeare in Love," "Sideways," Bukowski: Born Into This" -- Born Into This -- Could anything sound more pretentious?
What is this uncanny, insatiable need for writers to write about writing, if it's not a passive aggressive plea for validation? -- To show everyone, just how noble and important writing is to the world? "I am a writer. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
"Theeis eeis masturbation," I can imagine Werner Herzog say with his soft inflection that contrasts his Arnold-Schwarzenegger-like accent.
On Saturday I got to see a double feature including his two films "Nosferatu the Vampyre" and "Cobra Verde," between which he spoke to the audience.
Werner Herzog. This a soldier of film. A man who declares that he sees the films in his head, in their entirety before he sits down to write them in the course of 3 to 5 days.
It shows.
These films, namely "Cobra Verde," were hard to follow, sometimes hard to sit through, but they were also beautiful and most impressively, teeming with confidence. They give you the sense that this man doesn't give a damn if you like or dislike his movie.
He spoke of being a soldier of film, about "Holding an artistic outpost that others have abandoned. It means discipline. It means perseverance. It means courage."
While you're wondering what's the hell is going on, questioning the plot, continuity, Herzog presses on, unwavering. If the plot or the character won't pull you through the film, it's Herzog's utter confidence that will pull you to the credits.
Herzog says of the iconic image of steamship hauled over a mountaintop in his film "Fitzcarraldo," "The image of a steamboat going over a mountain is very unusual and it drew a lot of attention. It's like a big metaphor, but don't ask me what the metaphor means, because I wouldn't know."
Watching Herzog's films, you get the sense he's not questioning himself when he's sitting there alone in front of the computer. He embraces the loneliness! He sees virtue in that abandoned artistic outpost. He just writes.
This is the impression he gives his audience of film aficionados, filmmakers, directors, and writers looking for a little validation on a Saturday night...
Charles Rhoads
Monday, March 15, 2010
Wrestling an Invisible Bear or Letting a Scene "Unravel"
Clint Eastwood has often said that rather than instructing his actors precisely how they should move and react in a scene, he likes to allow them the opportunity to enter the scene and do what they feel most comfortable doing. Allowing the scene to "unravel" he'll follow the actor, and let the camera go where it will go.
From the screenwriting side of the canvass I found myself in a similar situation. It's act 2, everything's coming together, a torrent of material ballooning in my head, waiting to get out, accumulating, building pressure while it waits behind process. Process tells me to stop. Calm down. Review the notes and the structure, make sure you don't miss anything, and for that matter, run through all the notes all the way through the end just to make sure you don't burn past some important details you'll have to kludge back in later. I go through the notes, and I'm quickly overwhelmed. There's too much! How will this detail even fit with that one? How do I change course in the script so I can fit this in later?
I get up, pace around, use the bathroom, run down stairs, shuffle through the pantry, come back up. I put on the Charlie Rose Clint Eastwood interview included on the Mystic River blu-ray. I watch 2 and a half minutes and turn it off. I am wrestling an invisible bear.
Finally I click on the Final Draft file and start typing and a leak springs. It gushes out. 1 page, 2 pages, 4 pages -- the details take care of themselves systematically, because when you're on the ground, in the moment, in the scene -- this ought to follow this, and you ought to try that out here because there's an opportunity there and you should take it. The structure goes up and the extraneous wood doesn't get used.
Now this doesn't mean it's all right or perfect, or that notes and proper structuring doesn't have it's place. After all, the ideas aren't all just waiting on the edge of the plank waiting to jump in the script. You have to remember them to get them out. But sometimes when there's so much inside, waiting to get out, the best solution is to find the frayed end of that massive ball of string, and simply start unraveling.
Charles Rhoads
From the screenwriting side of the canvass I found myself in a similar situation. It's act 2, everything's coming together, a torrent of material ballooning in my head, waiting to get out, accumulating, building pressure while it waits behind process. Process tells me to stop. Calm down. Review the notes and the structure, make sure you don't miss anything, and for that matter, run through all the notes all the way through the end just to make sure you don't burn past some important details you'll have to kludge back in later. I go through the notes, and I'm quickly overwhelmed. There's too much! How will this detail even fit with that one? How do I change course in the script so I can fit this in later?
I get up, pace around, use the bathroom, run down stairs, shuffle through the pantry, come back up. I put on the Charlie Rose Clint Eastwood interview included on the Mystic River blu-ray. I watch 2 and a half minutes and turn it off. I am wrestling an invisible bear.
Finally I click on the Final Draft file and start typing and a leak springs. It gushes out. 1 page, 2 pages, 4 pages -- the details take care of themselves systematically, because when you're on the ground, in the moment, in the scene -- this ought to follow this, and you ought to try that out here because there's an opportunity there and you should take it. The structure goes up and the extraneous wood doesn't get used.
Now this doesn't mean it's all right or perfect, or that notes and proper structuring doesn't have it's place. After all, the ideas aren't all just waiting on the edge of the plank waiting to jump in the script. You have to remember them to get them out. But sometimes when there's so much inside, waiting to get out, the best solution is to find the frayed end of that massive ball of string, and simply start unraveling.
Charles Rhoads
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