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Sunday, February 22, 2009

Writing For Pictures Workshop - London, 7 March, 2009

For you who are in London - or England - or anywhere in the UK - anywhere in Europe, for that matter - I'm conducting a workshop for writers, the first week in March...

Writing For Pictures

honing skills for writers of film, tv, games, comics

a workshop by Neal Romanek



Date: Saturday, March 7, 2009


Time: 7:00pm - 9:00pm


Location:


Price: £30 in advance (£50 at the door if spaces are available)


Ealing Friends Meeting House
17 Woodville Road
Ealing, London
W5 2SE
United Kingdom



Register Now:


Phone: 0754 508 7629
Email: workshops@nealromanek.com



Description:


A 2 hour workshop designed to help writers of all skill levels practice and improve their skills for writing scripts for image-based media – film, tv, comics/graphic novels, games.

The workshop is open to anyone interested in writing for film, tv, games or comics – from veterans trying to perfect their skills to people who have never written fiction before.


The workshop will emphasize practice over theory, doing over observing. You will get out of it exactly what you put into it. It's like an intense session at the gym – for media writing.


Price: £30 (payable via cash or check - PayPal link will be available within the next few days)


We are offering this low introductory rate for this first workshop only. Those who attend for this first night will receive a discount on later courses, starting up at the end of March. Spaces are limited. Sign up early.



The facilitator Neal Romanek is a graduate of University of Southern California’s renowned Cinema-TV Production school. Neal has written for the screen, games, and motion picture industry magazines and websites. He has had intensive training from some of the world's best teachers in writing and creative process.



To reserve a place, or for further questions


email: workshops [at] nealromanek.com



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Thursday, May 22, 2008

How Now Low Crow


I've finished a first draft of the script and have handed it in to The Producers.

It's pretty good. But not great. It's a first draft. The fact that I can note that parts of it are downright crummy and other parts fat and lazy, and other parts some of the better work I've written, and not get too glum or too excited about any of it, is a sign that I'm actually growing up into an adult - an adult writer - which is something very few people ever get to do. It's a privilege, an honor, a blessing, to not be so narcissistically wrapped up in the outcome and quality of work as I used to be. The work is the work, and the quality is none of my business. I've said that to myself a lot over the years, but I've been unconvinced most of the time. It usually sounds like I'm whistling through the graveyard, trying not to be frightened, becoming increasingly frightened with the increasing effort applied to avoid being frightened.

To be great is no great thing. To be right-sized is very, very rare.

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Saturday, May 03, 2008

White Hunter, Black Heart 3

Clint Eastwood's "White Hunter, Black Heart" (1990) - in which director Eastwood plays director John Huston on the shoot of Huston's "The African Queen" - is one of the great unsung movies about filmmaking and filmmakers.

Before Eastwood/Huston shoots his movie, he feels compelled to hunt down and shoot an African elephant. This obsessive desire to bag the biggest of game animals endangers the life of the motion picture he's been hired to make.

In what I would call the film's key scene, screenwriter, Pete Verrill (a fictionalized Peter Viertel - who died last fall a few days shy of age 87), confronts director, John Wilson (Eastwood doing an unapologetic John Huston impression) on his reprehensible quest to hunt down and make a trophy of an African bull elephant. 

VERRILL: You're either crazy, or the most egocentric, irresponsible son-of-a-bitch that I have ever met. You're about to blow this whole picture out of your nose, John. And for what? To commit a crime. To kill one of the rarest, most noble creatures that roams the face of this crummy earth. And in order to commit this crime, you're willing to forget about all of us and let this whole god damn thing go down the drain.

WILSON: You're wrong, kid. It's not a crime to kill an elephant. It's bigger than all that. It's a sin to kill an elephant. Do you understand? It's a sin. The only sin that you can buy a license and go out to commit. That's why I want to do it before I do anything else in this world. Do you understand me? Of course you don't. How could you? I don't understand it myself.


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Saturday, April 26, 2008

White Hunter, Black Heart 2

Clint Eastwood's "White Hunter, Black Heart" (1990), based on the book by Peter Viertel, is the thinly fictionalized account of the production of John Huston's "The African Queen" (1951), with Eastwood playing John Huston in the character of "John Wilson" and Jeff Fahey as "Pete Verrill". Below is an exchange between Pete and a British Bush Pilot, Hodkins, played by Timothy Spall:

PETE: (looking at elephants through binoculars) Oh. I've never seen one before, outside the circus or the zoo. They're so majestic. So indestructible. They're part of the earth. They make us feel like perverse little creatures from another planet. Without any dignity. Makes one believe in God.  In the miracle of creation. Fantastic. They're part of a world that no longer exists, Hod. Feeling of unconquerable time.
HODKINS: You certainly have a way with words, Pete. No wonder you're a writer.

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Thursday, April 24, 2008

White Hunter, Black Heart 1

Clint Eastwood's "White Hunter, Black Heart" (1990), a fictionalized account of John Huston's making of "The African Queen" (1951) - with Eastwood playing Huston - is a superb and underrated film about moviemaking and moviemakers.

WILSON: You know something, Pete? You're never gonna be a good screenwriter, and you know why?
VERRILL: No, John. Why don't you tell me why?

WILSON: ‘Cause you let 85 million popcorn eaters pull you this way and that way. To write a movie, you must forget that anyone's ever gonna see it.



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Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Great Film Monologues 3 - "Network"

Paddy Chayefsky was one of the great writers of motion pictures. His masterpiece, "Network" (1976), lost the Best Picture Oscar to "Rocky". "Rocky" is an excellent movie. Really great. But "Network" is transcendent.

"Network" tells the story of the news anchor of a major network who, after a psychotic break, becomes a prophet condemning the very corporate media that employs him, and that exploits his anti-television ranting to further expand its influence and profit.

You can read Chayefsky's entire script online HERE.

Paddy Chayefsky spent most of his career in television, and he got to an intimate view of the electronic medium's move from a curiosity in the 1940's to the center of American life in the 1970's.

This scene, in the last half of the film, consists entirely and exclusively of a single monologue, masterfully performed by Peter Finch in the role of Howard Beale:

INT. THE STUDIO

A bare stage except for one stained glass window, suspended by wires upstage center. HOWARD BEALE, in an austere black suit with black tie shambles on from the wings. TUMULTUOUS APPLAUSE from the STUDIO AUDIENCE.

HOWARD
"Edward George Ruddy died today! Edward George Ruddy was the Chairman of the Board of the Union Broadcasting Systems - and he died at 11 o'clock this morning of a heart condition and woe is us! We're in a lot of trouble! So ... a rich little man with white hair died. What does that got to do with the price of rice, right? And why is that woe to us? Because you people, and sixty-two million other Americans are listening to me right now. Because less than three percent of you people read books! Because less than fifteen percent of you read newspapers! Because the only truth you know is whatever you get over this 'tube'. Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything that didn't come out of this tube! This tube is the gospel. The ultimate revelation. This tube can make or break Presidents, Popes, Prime Ministers. This tube is the most awesome goddamned force in the whole godless world! And woe to us if it ever falls into the hands of the wrong people! And that's why woe is us that Edward George Ruddy died! Because this company is now in the hands of CCA, the Communications Corporation of America. There's a new Chairman of the Board, a man called Frank Hackett, sitting in Mr. Ruddy's office on the twentieth floor. And when the twelfth largest company in the world controls the most awesome goddamned propaganda force in the whole godless world, who knows what shit will be peddled for truth on this network? So, you listen to me. Listen to me! Television is not the truth! Television is a goddamned amusement park! Television is a circus, a carnival, a travelling troupe of acrobats, story-tellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, side-show freaks, lion- tamers and football players. We're in the boredom-killing business! So if you want truth, go to God. Go to your gurus. Go to yourselves! Because that's the only place you're ever going to find any real truth!
(laughing)
But, man, you're never going to get any truth from us. We'll tell you anything you want to hear. We lie like hell. We'll tell you that Kojack always gets the killer, and nobody ever gets cancer in Archie Bunker's house. And no matter how much trouble the hero is in, don't worry, just look at your watch - at the end of the hour, he's going to win. We'll tell you any shit you want to hear. We deal in illusion, man! None of it's true! But you people sit there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds - we're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think the tube is reality and your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube. This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God's name, you people are the real thing! We are the illusion! So turn off your television sets! Turn them off now! Turn them off right now! Turn them off and leave them off! Turn them off right now, right in the middle of this sentence I'm speaking to you now! Turn them off!! - "

At which point, HOWARD BEALE, sweating and red-eyed with his prophetic rage, collapses to the floor in a prophetic swoon.
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Monday, January 14, 2008

Great Film Monologues 2 - "Doctor Zhivago"

Robert Bolt was a very lucky writer - terribly talented, yes - but lucky, lucky, lucky. He wrote only a very few screenplays, and most of those that he wrote were produced, and most of those he wrote won many awards, and most of those he wrote were made into superb movies. Compare him with the majority of screenwriters - many excellent screenwriters, first-rate screenwriters - who write a dozen, two dozen, screenplays and maybe get one produced - and probably with other writers' names on it as well.

This tremendous "luck" is one more reason us crazies in the basement consider Robert Bolt something of a screenwriter's saint. The fact that his work on the "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962) script was interrupted because he had been arrested at a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament protest also makes him kind of cool.

"Doctor Zhivago" (1965) features some of the best use of voice over in any English language film. The story is essentially told by the General Yevgraf Zhivago to a young woman who may - or may not - be his niece. Apart from the introductory and concluding bookends, Yevgraf, as a character, never speaks in his appearances in the story. The voice over of the older Yevgraf, remembering the events, covers any dialogue that would actually have been spoken by his younger, remembered self.

What makes the "Zhivago" voice overs - monologues, we will call them for the purposes of our article - worth careful study is how carefully and deliberately they complement or harmonize with the images and actions they are describing. One particularly nice example is Yevgraf's describing his dropping the bombshell on his poet-brother Yuri that his poems are "not liked" by the Bolsheviks.

Yuri, in the scene, asks, rather pathetically: "Do YOU think it's personal, petit-bourgeois, and self-indulgent?"

CUT TO 

CU, Yevgraf mouths a single word: "Yes."

But Yevgraf's voice over says: "I lied...But he believed me. And it struck me through to see that my opinion mattered."

Again, to fully appreciate the following monologue, it must be seen played against the images and music. But to sit back and enjoy the meaning and poetry of the language itself is still a treat.

The following is Yevgraf's first major monologue, and the first time we see him as a young man, joining the ranks of Russian soldiers heading off to fight the First World War. This monologue, and the montage accompanying it, manage to cover the entirety of WWI and its impact on each of the main characters in a few minutes - a beautiful, elegant feat of compression.

Soldiers march off to war flanked by flag-waving, adoring crowds. And Yevgraf speaks:

"In bourgeois terms it was a war between the Allies and Germany. In Bolshevik terms it was a war between the Allied and German upper classes - and which of them won was a matter of indifference. I was ordered by the Party to enlist. I gave my name as Petrov. They were shouting for victory all over Europe - praying for victory to the same God. My task - the Party's task - was to organize defeat. From defeat would spring the Revolution. And the Revolution would be victory for us. The party looked to the conscript peasants. Most of them were in their first good pair of boots. When the boots wore out, they'd be ready to listen. When the time came, I was able to take three battalions with me out of the front line - the best day's work I ever did. But, for the moment, there was nothing to be done. There were too many volunteers like me. Mostly, it was mere hysteria. But there were men with better motives, who saw the times were critical and wanted a man's part. Good men, wasted. Unhappy men, too. Unhappy in their jobs. Unhappy with their wives. Doubting themselves. Happy men don't volunteer. They wait their turn, and thank God if their age or work delays it. The ones who got back home at the price of an arm or an eye or a leg, these were the lucky ones. Even Comrade Lenin underestimated both the anguish of that nine hundred mile-long front, and our cursed capacity for suffering. By the second winter of the war the boots had worn out. But the line still held. Their great coats fell to pieces on their backs. Their rations were irregular. Half of them went into action without arms. Led by men they didn't trust ... And those they did trust? ... At last, they did what all the armies dreamed of doing - they began to go home. That was the beginning of the Revolution."
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Friday, November 02, 2007

New Job & New Strike

Just as the Writers Guild Of America prepares to strike, I have signed a contract to write a new movie.

I'm not a WGA member at present, and the production company isn't a guild signatory, and I live in London, and the company is in South Africa, etc. 

But still, I have called the WGA just to make sure I'm okay to work on the project, because the next time I'm in the Los Angeles I want to be able to use the Writers Guild's superb library without getting spat upon. I'm 99% sure I'm in the clear, but I want to nail down that last 1%.

The WGA advice department promised to get back to me as soon as possible on the matter - which, given the ruckus this week, might be some time. But there's plenty of research material to keep me busy before I will be putting pen to paper. And yes, I do sometimes use pen and paper. Quite often actually.

Even Sky News reported on the strike this evening, the anchorman and entertainment correspondent (live from, for some reason, New York) both grinning like MC's at a swimsuit competition, joking about how the usually meek, awkward, introverted writers seemed to be standing up for the themselves, for a change. I suppose you can't fault a big media company like Sky for belittling workers striking against the power of big media companies. It got my goat though is all I'm saying. 

Would they say the same kind of thing about steel workers: "Isn't it marvelous how these dumb, uneducated laborers can join together for a common cause, just like us normal  people?"

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Monday, May 14, 2007

What's It Like Being A Screenwriter?


Being a SCREENWRITER is like ...

  • being an architect who draws up blueprints for elaborate and complex buildings and then goes door-to-door trying to sell them.
  • training intensely week after week, year after year, for the Olympics with virtually zero possibility of ever even getting close to the Olympics.
  • endeavoring to be a professional writer of Shakespearean sonnets.
  • being an extreme obsessive-compulsive trying to organize a kids party - but less pleasurable.
  • being the one who tells a president that his policies are unworkable and even dangerous, and knowing in your heart that when your warnings are proved valid, you will get none of the credit.
  • being a mother in a society that says that swears that it treasures motherhood, but frowns on maternity leave.
  • being the smart kid in class who deliberately messes up his life so he won't be socially outcast.
  • a maker of elaborate and tremendously expensive Italian elbowpads that only 10 people in the world will ever buy.
  • trying to observe every law in the Old Testament and still maintain an exciting and enviable lifestyle.

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Monday, January 22, 2007

Gordy Hoffman & BlueCat Screenplay Competition

Last week, I talked with Gordy Hoffman, writer-director and founder of the BlueCat Screenwriting Competition. The deadline for this year's BlueCat is March 1, 2007. Grand Prize is $10,000, five finalists win $1500. BlueCat gives written feedback on every screenplay entered. Entry fee is $45.

Gordy Hoffman, teaches screenwriting at University of Southern Calfornia's School of Cinematic Arts. He oversees the BlueCat competition with film festival producer and publicist, Heather Schor.

And yes, Gordy is the older brother of Academy Award winning actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman. But writing is actually a lot harder than acting. I've done both, and it's totally harder being a writer. Trust me. It is.


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Neal Romanek: I see by BlueCat's MySpace page that you're a scorpio?

Gordy Hoffman: Actually I am a libra. Heather is a scorpio

Neal: Ah, I see. Yes, it actually also says that you're female too. So, yeah, that must be Heather.

Gordy: Yes.
bluecat hoffman schor
Neal: So when and how did you start the BlueCat Screenwriting Competition?

Gordy: I started BlueCat back in 1998. I had the idea for awhile, having gone through experiences myself as a screenwriter submitting to various contests. So I went and ahead and set up a website and started this journey.

Neal: Obviously there are lots of screenwriting contests out there now. Do we need another one? Do we need BlueCat?

Gordy: There were a lot of contests when we started too, in 1998. But, yes, there are so many more now. BlueCat provides a service to screenwriters. It would be much easier for us to not provide written analysis to every person who enters. Most major competitions do not read past page 30. But we do. I also believe we strive to read and adjudicate our submissions fairly and honestly, and this has led us to great discoveries.

Neal: What was it like for you entering contests as a writer? And how has that affected how you've structured the BlueCat Competition?

Gordy: I hated that I never knew why I didn't win. This is why we give analysis to all the BlueCat entrants. I also hated that it seemed to cost so much to enter. Our fees have always been low, probably too low, and it's still fair. And I love that you can use the contest deadlines to force yourself to write. That's valuable.

Basically, I am a director and a writer. I am not a screenplay contest entrepreneur. This is not a good way to become rich. The heart of BlueCat has always been in the right place. We want to serve writers in their dream to become better. This is what satisfies us. "Us" meaning "me and Heather". So, as a writer, I am in there for the fight.

Neal: So you can't get rich doing a contest? Bummer.

Writers tend to be isolated. Have you been able to develop community among screenwriters via BlueCat?

Gordy: We have a great MySpace page, and this has been amazing, but no, we don't have the community that we would like. We will be opening a conventional forum shortly, but I would really like to take the idea of community and peer review beyond the Zoetropes and TriggerStreets. I would love to develop a way that the mechanism of the contest can happen within a large group of writers, where they discover themselves, and there's a carrot at the end. Something akin to the Sundance Lab, but beyond, where production of the screenplay is realistic. I would love to get any input from your audience on what they would want. Let's make this happen. There should be something beyond just reading each other's scripts.

Neal: Well, web media makes all that so much easier. It's really a change from the idea of the writer in the room who hopes to one day make it big and he'll be "discovered".

Gordy: Yes, exactly. And shooting on HD makes production change.

Neal: Do you ever have the sense, in doing a contest, of being a middle man between the writer and money people?

Gordy: BlueCat is a middle man, a very good one. We don't take money from the screenplays we set up. I think we might take an executive producer credit in the future, but no money. Writers want BlueCat to be that bridge.

Neal: Yes. There's always that hope that writers have: "If I win a contest, then I'm much more likely to be noticed by…fill-in-the-blank..."

Gordy: Well, it's true. Our 2005 winners were about to give up, and now they are repped by UTA and their movie will be out this year, GARY THE TENNIS COACH

Neal: Great. And the better your winners do..

Gordy: The better the winners do, the better everyone who enters does, as our ability to serve our mission grows. Every year, it gets easier to plug people into the industry.

Neal: So do you also have contact with producers, studios, agents? Ideally you would want them to be as interested in contest deadlines and announcements as the writers, right?

Gordy: BlueCat is on everyone's radar. Every one in town knows about Gary the Tennis Coach (Rick Stempson, Andy Stock, writers) Seann William Scott stars and Danny Leiner is directing. These are studio-approved professionals that have been directly involved with profitable product. So when they pick a screenplay from a competition, every one comes running. That's how it works. I personally handed the screenplay to a producer, Peter Morgan, that I had a professional relationship with. He took it from there. Yes, we have contacts. That's how they movie got made. BlueCat's contacts.

Neal: So is there The BlueCat Agency in the future? BlueCat Management? BlueCat Studio?

Gordy: No, we don't want to represent writers. We want to discover and nurture gifted artists, and then introduce them to a professional network. Would we like to award a greenlight every year? Yes. We're working on that.

Neal: An agent friend of mine said that he never looks at contests. That he thought contests were not worth entering. And were not worth an agent's time looking at.

Gordy: I don't think UTA thinks that anymore.

Neal: That is a very good answer.

Gordy: Most contests focus on driving up the number of entries and they don't focus on adjudication. If you look at our winners, they keep winning. They are real screenwriters. We pride ourselves on our eye for talent. Not every contest can find great scripts. This hit me like a ton of bricks this year. I saw this unimpressive screenplay I had read win a major contest. Suddenly I understood that there was a big difference in the judging. Listen everybody: Judges are not all the same!

Neal: There's always that paranoid suspicion that every writer - rightly or wrongly - has that they are much smarter than the people judging their writing.

Gordy: Writers always think they're smarter than people who don't like they're writing. I always do, initially - then I try and gain value from every comment.

Neal: How did you begin teaching at USC? My alma mater.

Gordy: One thing led to another and I found myself with an interview. I didn't want to go it, but I've learned to walk through open doors.

Neal: Helping other writers is vital for one's own writing though, don't you think?

Gordy: Yes, it is vital. Through BlueCat and USC, I have grown immensely. We don't graduate from the school of screenwriting, so I am always open to the mystery of this art.

Neal: I had thought that maybe BlueCat had started as a result of your teaching.

Gordy: No, i started BlueCat in 1998 and teaching at USC in 2006

Neal: What you teaching there, rather.

Gordy: Right now I'm teaching a rewriting class. It's exciting.

Neal: Rewriting. That's where you spellcheck, right?

Gordy: Yes, you just drag your Chewbacca cursor down through your Final Draft file and look for stuff that's lame.

Neal: Exactly.

Gordy: While YouTubing.

Neal: And you just keep going to the last page and checking ... Is 120 yet? … Is it 120 now? … Now is it 120? ...

Gordy: Right. You might want to pad out the dialogue to make it at least 100. Describe someone's shoes a little longer.

Neal: I tend to describe everyone's shoes. To my agent's horror.

Gordy: People describe too much! In an effort to avoid writing the uncomfortable.

Neal: What is the biggest negative you've noticed in the screenplays that have been submitted?

Gordy: They are not writing what is bothering their hearts.

Neal: I hear professionals say over and over and over how few good scripts there are out there. That everything they read is stale and lousy. Then I read scripts by people I know that seem to me to be beautifully written, and fresh, and thrilling, but they say that no one is interested.

Not me, of course. You know, just ... friends.

Gordy: If something is wonderful, the writer might not be persistent. If the world is saying no, I say rewrite.

Neal: If five people tell you that you have a tail, then it's time to check your ass?

Gordy: I refuse to believe there are hundreds of gems that will never be discovered. They're not gems yet.

Neal: So you do believe that eventually the cream WILL rise to the top?

Gordy: Yes. It's the responsibility of the writer to keep showing up as an artist through the process of revision and as a business person by exposing the work. Art and commerce.

Neal: What would you say to the screenwriter about business? I think people tend to believe the business ends with a high concept and proper formatting. I know I have.

Gordy: Compelling story equals hit. But compelling story comes from personally invested, vulnerable work.

Neal: And how do you treat that compelling story you're really invested in like a product?

Gordy: You write what you care about, and bring your craft and diligence, and it works out.

Well, let me respond to your question about product:

If a man who has never made love to a woman comes to a wall, and in the process, finds the love of his life, and the audience wants this happiness for both of them - as we have for ourselves - that makes for a beautiful, compelling story that we would encourage our friends to see. Yes?

Neal: Sure.

Gordy: And with everyone going to see it, the thing makes about 150 million dollars, after everyone tells their friends about this story, this sweet story. And what do we call this movie?

Neal: Shrek? No, um …

Gordy: The 40 Year Old Virgin.

Neal: Ah, right!

Gordy: I think Shrek was about beauty, inner and out. But that was also why it made money, the sweetness.

Neal: But if you're not personally invested in a sweet story, if your taste and voice happens to fall more along the lines of Stanley Kubrick? Then I guess you better be doubly good and work twice as hard in order to pull it off. Like Charlie Kaufman.

Gordy: It's not sweetness all the time, of course. Again, Kubrick was able to rivet us with compelling people in struggle. It's the identification that makes for compelling material. And comedy functions for the audience differently than drama.

Neal: Charlie Kaufman is very sweet too actually, now that I think about it. His films are really all warm & fuzzy at their core.

Gordy: Yes

Neal: So what's the best thing you've seen in scripts submitted to BlueCat? In terms of trend, approach, skill, etc?

Gordy: Just audaciously original choices. People need that. They need to be bold and look within.

Neal: And when they hear a voice say, "This is crazy", maybe just do go ahead and do it anyway.

Gordy: YES! YES!

Neal: I think that's a great note to end on.

Gordy: Thanks, Neal.

Neal: Thank you, Gordy, very, very much.


(end)


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Sunday, November 12, 2006

American Werewriter In London

And they rejoiced. Throughout the Universe they rejoiced. And not because it was Neal R's birthday. No, not because of that. Although that is cause for rejoicing.
It really is.
Yes, it is.
No, the reason they did rejoice, you know, is because for Neal R. did resume unto his podcasts. That is the reason why.

In this brand new and very gloomy "fog-cast", direct from London, where "customer service" means always having to say you're sorry, Neal gives it straight on a screenwriter's life in The Britain:

CLICK

HERE

TO LISTEN (right-click to download)


or HERE:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/rabbitandcrow/American_Werewriter_In_London.m4a

but not

HERE
(highly suspect British 'link')

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Saturday, May 06, 2006

Inside Pitch Pitch

If you are a screenwriter and you aren't reading the Q&A blog for screenwriters called "The Inside Pitch" (http://twoadverbs.blogspot.com) by ICM's executive story editor, Christopher Lockhart, well, then...you just aren't reading it then are you?

I think that's a fact we can all be in agreeance on.

However, you are also depriving yourself of some essential information on your malaria-ridden, leech-infested, lost-without-a-machete slog through the quagmire of the screenwriter's life.

Recently, he addressed the following question from a Hollywood writer:


What is the proper etiquette for switching managers/agents, assuming you already have representation that doesn't seem to be working for you?


Read Chris's sensible and straightforward response.

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Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Scribosphere 1 Page Challenge

In reponse to Michael Patrick Sullivan's invitation to the scribosphere to post a single screenplay page for public consumption, I offer a link to the writing samples page of my site.

There you will find gigantic pdf's of 1-page samples for you to enjoy and/or deride.

script page jpg

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Tuesday, November 29, 2005

James Goldman on Screenwriting

I joked about mistaking William Goldman for his brother James in a post about the Screenwriting Expo, but I do adore James Goldman's two medieval movies, "The Lion In Winter" (1968) and "Robin and Marian" (1976) and, although it is harder to fail when you don't work as much, I think elements of both are superior to Brother William's screenwriting work.

I like period movies too, particularly those that execute medieval settings well. I've studied "The Lion In Winter" (1968) for years, but I went back to it, and to "Robin and Marian" (1976) also, when I was writing "Fortune and the Devil". Both scripts are breathtaking - "The Lion In Winter" for its staggering dialog, "Robin and Marian" for its romance and heroism.

Because his more famous brother has shone more brightly, we don't often hear James Goldman's take on the screenwriting life. So I thought I'd offer up an excerpt from his introduction to the published version of "Robin and Marian":

"The screenwriter is anonymous and why this is so is worth talking about. There are, it seems to me, two basic reasons why, one of them historical and the other dumb-headed.

Historically, movies don't seem to have had writers at all. I'm speaking, of course, of the silents. Someone, obviously, had to write the captions, just as someone has to pen the instructions that come with your dishwasher. But it's as difficult to give some writer praise or credit for "Intolerance" as it is to think of the creator of a Christmas pantomime as a playwright. Writing, we are prone to think, is words.

Not so. Aristotle, who is a permanent hero of mine, took the position that the elements of a play, in order of importance, were: plot, character, thought and then - and only then - diction. Now, movies are a branch of drama and a screenplay is a kind of play and on the screen you don't need words to tell a meaningful story about fully realized people. "City Lights" works without its captions. Though wordless, someone wrote it. But the point is, watching it, we feel that no one did. Movie writing came in through the back door. And it stayed there.

Why it stayed there also has to do with words. I've got to confess that I was in my early teens before it occurred to me that Someon actually wrote a movie. Tom Mix was a real man and he rode up on a real hore to a real corral. And when Tom spoke, it seemed like he was speaking for himself too. Nobody wrote that 'Howdy'. He just up and said it.

If he sang it, we'd know different. For while singing is a natural thing, the invention of melody is not something most of us can do. But inventing sentences?? We're all like Moliere's 'Gentilhomme': we've made the staggering discovery that everybody speaks in dialogue.

Or, put it this way. Improvising at the piano seems slightly miraculous. How does the fellow do it? But improvising dialogue occurs every time one opens one's trap. The inevitable result is that most of the conversation we hear in movies sounds to everyone - except the writer - as if nobody wrote it...

We also know the words aren't improvised when the dialogue sounds, in one way or another, composed. I have in mind not only Bible epics - no one ever talked like that - but writing that is noticeably witty, stylish or complicated. 'Notorious' seems 'written', 'Bullitt' does not: Steve McQueen seems to say whatever comes into his head, but Cary Grant is working from a script.

So by and large, the film writer is unknown because his work seems unwritten..."

Or should seem unwritten, if he is doing his job.


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Thursday, November 17, 2005

Warren Hsu Leonard - The Times

Check out the article in today's Times of London about Screenwriting Expo 4 - "How I Ended Up In Big Pitches" - based on an interview with Screenwriting Life's Warren Hsu Leonard.

Also features mention of Warren's new spec script "The Dream Factory".

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Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Screenwriting Expo Pt. 4

Philippa Burgess began with:

"Who here has the goal of selling a script this weekend?...Who has the goal of getting representation? ... Who has the goal of ... the goal of ... goal ... goal ... goal ..."

With each utterance of the hideous word, a voice from the back of the room sounded: "Ouch! ... Shit! ... Ow! ... Quit it! ... Ouch! ... Ow! ... Stop it! ... Yeow!..."

My voice, that would be.

Goal???

Creative Convergence's Philippa Burgess, in her Friday seminar, Million Dollar Screenwriting Career, gave my own screenwriting career an overdue bitch-slapping. I've told my hench-people that I'll have a draft of the new horror spec by Valentine's Day - maybe, probably. There's no reason why it couldn't be done by Valentine's Day. No reason at all. But, you know, we'll see. Or not.

Goal???

I have been taught - but have not thoroughly retained - the knowledge that goals must be measurable, must be time sensitive, must be actions that can be executed, and other stuff like that - all of which make my skin crawl - all of which are very helpful, vital even, in getting my crap done, but things which make my skin crawl nonetheneverless. I don't like my skin crawling. Makes me feel like a snake.

But on the other hand, have you seen a snake after it's crawled out of its skin? Shiny.

Anyway ...

I suppose I attended Expo 4 with a vague notion that I wanted to meet other writers. That's a goal, isn't it? Yes, I'm counting that as a goal. I also went with a determination to take Philippa's marketing class, of which I'd heard much praise.

I've been stuffed like a Siberian pepper with education on the screenwriting craft - much of it completely useless when the time comes to put words on the page, but necessary in order to get to the page in the first place - but, for years, I've avoided - evaded, more like - acquiring good skills in marketing myself, selling my work, negotiating the whip-lashing rope-ladder of success. In fact, I - as have too many writers before me - even taken the position that as a writer I am not allowed to attempt to manage and navigate my own career path. "You are not qualified, son." It's part that destructive infantilization of writers that David Milch has bemoaned, and I have bought into it hook, line, and other fishing tackle items. For my career thus far, I have taken what I like to call - or will like to call in the future, having just thought of it now - the "Bastard Astronaut" approach. That is: "Put me in a silver suit. Strap me in. Wake me when we blast off. I'll be available for autographs later."

I seemed to gush in my Friday post when I said that Philippa's marketing seminars were a "revelation", but that is an accurate assessment. The first seminar was anyway, then her second one, in the evening, which was virtually the same, was just confirmation of the revelation (you have to be careful about these things - there's nothing worse than a nut running around shouting about a half-baked revelation).

My representation has always been mui laissez faire - often frustratingly mui. Laissez faire can be wonderful when you're an agressive little self-promoting pit bull. But I'm usually more of a passive little self-deprecating alley cat, which does not always insure the jobs keep rolling in. When baffled as to why I haven't been lining up job after job after job, I have blamed my agent, because...well, that's what we do. We blame our agents. Laymen suppose that an agent's most important function is to secure work and negotiate deals. No, no. It is to absorb blame.

If I took action along Philippa's helpful guidelines, I'm thinking it would be very difficult, might be impossible to blame my representation again. And if you don't need representation to blame, then...well, do you need representation at all? I wouldn't know. I'll keep you posted.

At the Expo, I bought Philippa's book("Secrets Of A Million Dollar Screenwriting Career"), which delves into her seminar material in greater depth. It's available at The Writer's Store. Check it out. Most of the information is - like all good teaching - simple with the effect of reminding you what you already know but have forgotten to apply.

Still, it's hard not to feel like the Australopithecus in "2001", utterly baffled by something too, too simple.

For example: Networking is apparently the continued maintenance of friendly contact with the people in your community.

Cue the Monolith.

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Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Screenwriting Expo Pt. 3

So I got up to the mike and I said to William Goldman, I said:

"Bill, I just wanted to let you know first of all how much 'The Lion In Winter' means to me. It's one of my favorite movies. In terms of dialog, I think it's probably one of the greatest movies ever written. My question is this: Did you find that it was helpful that you wrote it as a play first and were able to work the bugs out before you adapted it to the screen?"

Mr. Goldman took a breath, smiling his kindly, wisely smile, then:

"You're thinking of my brother."

"No, I'm not. I'm thinking about how sweaty my upper lip is! You may be a great writer but you don't have UNCANNY PSYCHIC POWERS!!" I cackled (those present later told me it sounded like I coughed, but I want to set the record straight now - I cackled).

"I didn't write 'The Lion In Winter', he continued, "My brother James wrote 'The Lion in Winter'."

Such a great talent. And humble too. Was there anything this guy couldn't do? But I would not be swayed:

"Ha! That's great!" I shouted merrily.

"Now you're going to ask me about 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest', right?"

"No. Actually, my next question was about 'Lord Of The Flies'. Why did you make it twice?"...


Some other stuff William Goldman said at the panel discussion (also featuring David Koepp, moderated by Den Shewman):
"You've got to protect your writing time when you're starting out. Find out when you can write and protect that time. You have to protect it. If you don't protect it, nobody will. You can accomplish a lot in two hours."
And of his differences of opinion with studio executives:
"I believe the movie is the star. And they don't."

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Monday, November 14, 2005

Screenwriting Expo Pt. 2

I've avoided the Screenwriting Expo for the past three years because I've naturally assumed I already know everyone and everything re the movie industry in general and screenwriting in particular. This kind of stinky arrogance repeatedly causes me nothing but suffering. But that doesn't stop me. No sir. Suffering, sir? Bring it on, sir! Self-inflicted suffering, sir? Bring it on on, sir! Unnecessary self-inflicted suffering, sir? Bring it on on on...and so forth.

And true, being a writer and all, the last thing I want to do is interact at length with the real world. Not that writing is any great pleasure either. But it is much more comforting to be able to sit down at a page and write "They lived happily ever after - and that's the truth", than to have to negotiate the disorienting network of currents and tides that is our everyday second to second existence. Add people to those tides and it's "Beaches Closed" as far as I'm concerned.

So no one is more surprised than me am when I say that I really enjoyed the networking and flesh-pressing and how-ya-doing-ing of this weekend's Screenwriting Expo IV. In fact I found myself taking to it - like a cat takes to water, in some cases, but with after a couple hours of practice I think I started seeming quite un-hysterical.

The Scribosphere Party, hosted by Joel Haber and Warren Hsu Leonard at the Figueroa Hotel, was a great success. It was nice to meet the whole mob in the flesh (see the Blogroll for their sites).

I ran into gangs of people I knew throughout the Expo, some from as far back as film school and some whom I'd met only a month ago under very un-screenwriterly circumstances. It's always amazing to me how you can drop in at an event of thousands and keep seeing your homies. It's a small world after, all.

It was a pleasure to see USC CNTV classmate Will Plyler, whose Done Deal is one of the most important resources for screenwriters on - I think it's safe to say - the entire planet Earth. Yes, it's always a pleasure to see him. But whenever I run into Will, even if it's been a long time between meetings, I always come away with a feeling of "Why was he being so nice to me?" To date I have been unable to detect the sinister motive behind his niceness - other than innate cheerfulness and genuine good will no pun intended. Naturally this is very unsettling, because I usually have to be promised substantial rewards before I even crack a smile. The fact that Will may like me is not something I'm yet able to consider. I'll talk to my therapist and get back to you.

It had also been a long time since I'd chatted with William Goldman. Quite a long time. Years. Or more even. I don't know. Could be...Okay, never ever met him ever. But after his panel discussion with David Koepp, moderated by Creative Screenwriting's Den Shewman, I did jostle my way through the armpit-stained mob to say thanks to him and David and Den.

You know how it is when you're toward the back of a handshaking line and the line is so long that by the time you reach the person, you really feel very horrible about the whole situation, like you're complicit in some atrocity, like you may be the person who is responsible for sucking away the last of this person's vital energy? It was like that with William Goldman. Yesterday I shook hands with one of the greatest living movie writers. All I can think about today is how guilty I feel for shaving another week off his life.


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Saturday, November 12, 2005

Screenwriting Expo Pt. 1

Attended Day 1 of Screenwriting Expo IV yesterday with comrade/bro-in-law Warren Hsu Leonard.

Ran into many old friends. Philippa Burgess's marketing seminars were a revelation.

I'll go back tomorrow.

But today is my Birthday.

NO work on my birthday.

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Saturday, October 15, 2005

New Script Ideas

I'm brainstorming ideas for the next feature film screenplay. I think I've narrowed it down to the five best ones.

Here are the loglines:


Idea #1: "A Second Chance" - A screenwriter goes back to his home town to take care of his aging father. There he meets an old high school flame, now a single mother, who works at a local supermarket. The two fall in love and the screenwriter forms a close bond with the woman's asthmatic son by helping him enter the local kite-making competition. But their possibilities for happiness are cut tragically short when it is learned that the aging father is roasting the flesh of little girls in his basement and selling it to the local high school cafeteria.

Idea #2: "The Pirate's Thumb" - A young boy goes on a mystical adventure to return "The Pirate's Thumb" to its rightful owners in a hidden kingdom at the bottom of the world. The Pirate's Thumb is a solid gold suppository that confers magical powers.

Idea #3: "The Most Dangerous Predator, Man" - The robots are always fighting each other, but they must put aside their differences to fight a common enemy...Man. Using their superior technology and tremendous computing power, the robots exterminate every man, woman and child on earth ushering in a golden age of peace and prosperity for robot-kind.

Idea #4: "Her Ladyship's Shankstore" - Plucky noblewoman Daria Planagan must save her Mereford estate from vicious middle-class merchants who want to give her servants good jobs and affordable housing. Determined to beat the merchants at their own game, she opens her own shankstore and makes millions of pounds by employing child labor sent down from London in wooden crates.

Idea #5: "The Creep" - A serial killer with a large vocabulary tortures women in hideous ways, then dies a hideous death himself (women = one blonde, one brunette, one cripple?) (also maybe he has a special killing method that gives him away - the "ROY G BIV" Killer??)


What do you think?

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Monday, July 25, 2005

"Fortune and the Devil" - The End?

I am in the last hours of "Fortune and the Devil". I've been working on this screenplay for a long time now. A long , long time. Much too long to work on any one feature film script. But it has been a real labor of love and at one or two stages in the writing I could honestly say to myself that the script was almost everything I hoped it might be--which is a rare thing to be able to say.

The original length of "Fortune and the Devil" was tremendous - literally tremendous, a word which at its original Latin roots means "to cause to tremble". Not satisfied with my first long, long, long draft (if you beg me, I may post the page count for you), I made it even longer and coaxed a mini-series out of it - or alternatively the introductory episodes of a cable romantic adventure series for adults and big kids.

My job in this last week is plain and straightforward and practical and far away from the misty visions I had early on of Sergio Leone-meets David Lean-meets "Excalibur". It's the other side of the coin, turning my dream into something that can survive in the real world of Hollywood. I had hacked and slashed the script to less than 120pp - a miracle for me on any project - and turned my massive adventure tale / doomed-love story with a dozen fascinating and complex characters into a lean, mean medieval action movie. I, of course, prefer my "Epic x 3" romantic adventure. But now that I've finished it and had time to reflect, this Hollywood draft is nothing to sneeze at. Quite damn good, even if I say so myself. And I don't often say so myself.

Today and tomorrow, I finish final tweaks for my manager. We had a story conference a couple weeks back and he, to my chagrin, had some good ideas that I - yes, even I - hadn't had. And I'm incorporating a few of them. Okay, probably most of them.

So on Wednesday then, the manager gets the final version of "Fortune and the Devil", and then...sigh...I will be ALL FINISHED.

Oh, wait...no, that's not right. Almost forgot that this is screenwriting, so on Wednesday then, the manager gets the final version of "Fortune and the Devil", and then...I'll be getting started.

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