Maybe we should give him a cat?

One of the big words you’ll hear bandied about in LA when talking about main characters is “likeability.” “I don’t like him enough.” “I can’t track him.” “We need a ‘save the cat’ moment here.”

This problem was very well summed up on the delightful Story Notes From Hell:

I was doing an outline of a horror story where the main character was a deranged and mentally ill man who became an axe murderer. The story executive had this to add:

Exec: We have to make him likable.

Me: He’s an axe murderer.

Exec: He still needs to be likable.

Me: Maybe he shouldn’t be an axe murderer?

Exec: No, that’s fine, but he’s gotta have likable features.

Me: Well—

Exec: How about he has a cat that follows him around as he kills people? People love cats, and the cat can be his best friend or something?

Me: Maybe he saves someone’s life, or helps someone—

Exec: No, let’s give him a cat.

So what do we do if we want an introspective or difficult main character who isn’t relentlessly saving babies? What if we’re interested in protagonists from films like Faces, Naked or Julia, where the main character behaves in a less clear moral way?

Some people would say:

1. Find your own money for your movie.
2. Probably in Europe.

I’ve found rewriting difficult because I often started by going through page one and rewriting. This is not always the most effective strategy, and often leads to extensive rewriting of things you end up cutting anyway.

This is the approach I’m going to try this summer.

1. The first thing you should do is take a week off and come back to the material fresh if at all possible.
2. When you go back to the script the first time, step away from the computer. Print it out (a kindle or Ipad works well for this as well).
3. Read the whole script through and make a list of the things you like. You can literally take pages you like and set them in a separate pile. Do the same for pages that are just ok and pages you hate.
4. Your job is now to lift everything else in the script up to the level of the good stuff.
5. With the second and third piles; cut what you don’t need, combine what you do.
6. In the third pile, ask yourself “Is there something in here I need for my script? Plot, character, dialogue etc.?” If so, take it out and put it into another scene.
7. Overall questions to ask: Is there any willing suspension of disbelief in the script? Are there bumps in characters’ wants or behavior? Make a list of any of these areas.
8. Make a to do list by act: In act 1 I have to set up Tommy’s character, clarify this information, etc. In act 2 I have to x, y and z.
9. Go through this list and make all the cuts and revisions necessary.
10. Go through the script and do a language rewrite; look at every word, sentence, line of dialogue; is it clear enough? Is it concise? Is it conveying what I want it to convey? Do I need it?
11. For dialogue you can read it out loud in the patches where it feels rough.
12. After the polish, have some actor friends do a read of the script; pick someone good to do the narration.

Then you solicit feedback and repeat.

I’ve been reading Twyla Tharpe’s excellent book “The Creative Habit” as well. Writing is the part of filmmaking that seems to require the most discipline, and this book is a helpful reminder of how to keep that up.

In one early section of the book, called “Harness Your Memory,” she describes different rituals artists go through to prepare and practice their craft. One anecdote revolved around Stravinsky, who every morning would play a Bach fugue before he started working. She also has an interesting section on writers:

I know one novelist who taught himself the craft of fiction by retyping the stories of his favorite authors. The act of typing someone else’s words- rather than simply reading them – made him stop and think about how the author chose words, constructed sentences and paragraphs, arranged dialogue, and structured a narrative …

Raymond Chandler went through a similar process when honing his craft. Chandler believed Hemingway to be the greatest American novelist of his time, and he wrote imitations of Hemingway’s style to absorb what he loved about it…

It’s no different than a young person sitting with a drawing pad in a museum copying a great artist. Skill gets imprinted through the action.

After I read this I thought I would give it a go, so I began retyping Fargo (one of my major inspirations for one of the scripts I’m writing) word for word. It’s amazing how much more you see about a piece of writing from this perspective. Just as an example, I was amazed to see that the dialogue sequence at the beginning of the film runs close to 5 pages, which would feel long in another script.

For the WW2 script, I’ve been typing out “Saving Private Ryan” to learn how to write those damn action sequences. Also very informative.

It’s time consuming, but rewarding. Now I do ten minutes a day before I go into my normal writing. It gets the fingers and words moving before they have to become our own. Afterwards it’s much easier to write your own stuff, and you’ve learned a little bit about writing by sitting in the shoes of a master.

QUESTION:WHAT IS DRAMA? DRAMA, AGAIN, IS THE QUEST OF THE HERO TO OVERCOME THOSE THINGS WHICH PREVENT HIM FROM ACHIEVING A SPECIFIC, *ACUTE* GOAL.

SO: WE, THE WRITERS, MUST ASK OURSELVES *OF EVERY SCENE* THESE THREE QUESTIONS.

1) WHO WANTS WHAT?
2) WHAT HAPPENS IF HER DON’T GET IT?
3) WHY NOW?

These questions force you to establish the central tenets of your story:

1) The Goal

2) The Stakes

3) The Urgency

These are three essential components of drama:

The goal of the main character creates the beginning (establishing desire), middle (pursuing desire) and end (achieving or failing to achieve that desire) of your story.

The stakes show why it’s important to the protagonist (and by nature us the audience).

The urgency shows why it’s important that it happen NOW, i.e. in the course of your film and not 20 years from now.

I find these questions especially helpful when shaping the story initially. Art-house dramas can minimize aspects of this (you don’t need a bomb on a bus to have high stakes, but perhaps a relationship is at stake), but they are still essential. A film with a goalless character is interminable, like everyday life. Films like Tiny Furniture, while delightful, often have difficulty ending because there are no overarching goals for the protagonist. In Fargo on the other hand, after Marge catches the criminals the movie’s over, and we want it to be.

These questions are particularly important in writing the short film, which has an even more simple structure than a feature. A key aspect to the short film is finding a compelling goal that can reasonably be accomplished in the amount of time a short film allows.

You can read Mamet’s full post here.

See Also:

Is It A Story Or A Situation?

10 Problems With Student Scripts

The Magical Stranger narrative proceeds as follows:

We are introduced to a protagonist (hopefully) with a problem; be it their relationship, their work, or their addiction, their lives are full of struggle and conflict. The character then sets about on their day.

The narrative at this point can go a few ways: either the character hears of the magical stranger and goes looking for them, the character stumbles upon the magical stranger, or the magical stranger intervenes at a low point in the character’s life.

The magical stranger is invariably a member of some minority group; black, homosexual, transvestite etc. At the very least they are of the opposite gender of the protagonist. Being of a minority group somehow grants them magical powers of insight into the invariably white, straight protagonist’s life.

The magical stranger then utters some perfect bit of wisdom to the protagonist, who then marches off into a not so unfriendly world, ready and able to triumph over their difficulties in the third act.

Aside from its questionable exoticizing of “the other,” these films are generally unsatisfying for a number of reasons:

The first is, quite simply, it’s a deus ex machina. We watch movies to see how protagonists solve their problems, not to see how they are solved for them. It rings false in the audience’s ears: we’ve all been given great pieces of advice and ignored them because we had to learn the lessons for ourselves. Why now does the protagonist get to skip all of the difficulties implied in human growth?

The answer is often that the filmmaker doesn’t know how to solve or address the protagonists’ problems themselves. The Magical Stranger thus serves both as a story crutch and a psychological one.

We all yearn for the existence of a god who can grant us divine insight; a parental figure or mentor who will point us on the right path. The problem is these people don’t exist, and even if they do, we often resist their insights until they are proven to us by our own experience. This is what we resist when watching these short films, as well we should; it’s an adolescent fantasy. From a structural perspective, the mentor rarely appears at the climax of a film. There’s a saying that the end of act 2 is where good mentors go to die: they do so because the protagonist needs to face and overcome their problems alone. That’s what’s dramatically satisfying. Obi Wan can pop back at the end for a beer, but he’s not going to hold Luke’s lightsaber for him.

So the next time you’re writing a film and a Jamacian guy comes in to give your protagonist a bit of “jah,” or a a Buddhist monk shows up in a cafe just when your character’s about to kill herself, ask yourself; “Is the Magical Stranger really going to help my story? Is it going to engage my audience through a truthful statement about the world? Or is it going to get me out of this problem and come off vaguely unsatisfying at the same time?”

I say these things with love; I once wrote a short where the magical stranger was, you guessed it, an IKEA sign. After many furrowed brows and polite compliments I slowly learned my lesson. I should have gone for the Jamacian.

*These notes apply to melodramatic films interested in viewer identification with characters and a realistic treatment. I believe that the majority of short films strive for this effect, which turns an audience member from a passive viewer to an active participant in the film.

1. Unclear Point of View

Whose story is it? Short films generally follow one character’s journey and it’s important that we know who that person is as soon as possible. Lead with your protagonist and introduce their problem before moving around into secondary characters. The protagonist is our entry point into the world of the story, so lead with them unless you’re going for a specific effect.

2. Lack of Unity

This is about beginning, middle and end. Every piece of a short film should have significance for all the others. Each narrative thread should wind its way towards a surprising and inevitable climax and resolution. The source of conflict at the beginning of the film needs to be organically addressed through the actions of the protagonist and the events of the plot.

Student films often have too much exposition or too little. What do we need to know about your character, his world and the relationships in that world before the inciting incident occurs? Show only what’s necessary, which is most often what is about to change.

3. Lack of Conflict

Conflict creates interest in an audience, because conflict implies resolution. Through conflict we create expectations about how that conflict will resolve itself. We see that the story is driving towards a surprising and inevitable conclusion.

4. A Passive Protagonist

A passive protagonist has no goal, and takes no action to achieve it. If there is no goal, there is no expectation of an outcome to that goal, and a film becomes interminable. In a recent post on John August’s blog he posted his favorite definition of a protagonist: The protagonist is the character that suffers the most. To this I would add that the character suffers in order to achieve something he wants. If a character just suffers, the audience will often remain disengaged.

5. Too Many Characters/Locations

There is not a lot of time in short films to introduce characters. Often times a new set of characters is introduced for every scene in a film. A secondary character needs to have a specific and organic purpose in the film that makes sense for the entire film. A writer should not need to introduce multiple sets of characters multiple times in a short film; use the characters you have, and have a few as possible. All of these rules apply for locations as well. Aristotle’s unity of action, place and time are especially valuable for the short filmmaker. Rarely do great short films cover more than a day, a few locations and a single storyline. Most that do end up requiring narration.

6. Ambiguous/Vague

Many student writers are into open endings and ambiguity in their scripts. One teacher here gives a caveat; ambiguity is when there are two equally attractive or unattractive options for the protagonist. The opposite of this is vagueness, where the audience doesn’t understand what’s going on. Many open ended endings are not really open ended; the correct choice is obvious to the protagonist and the audience, though the filmmaker wants them to feel something else. Ambiguity is about making two possible options equally attractive for the protagonist and thus for the audience.

7. No Theme

Some stories are very clear, fun rides that don’t require deep resonating themes. Student films tend to stray toward dramas. Dramas generally have a point of view about the world, known as the theme. A theme is an assertive and arguable statement about the world that gives a larger richness and meaning to a story. Most films should have them.

8. Unnecessarily Long

Any scene that does not further the story needs to be cut. Long musical sequences, scenes without conflict, scenes with the same conflict over and over, can all be cut out. Every piece of action of the protagonist gives the audience new information about the story. Subplots that are not essential to the main conflict should be excised. A short film is not a feature, though many students end up trying to pack a feature into a short.

9. No Character Arc

Characters generally change as a consequence of their actions in a film. In short films the changes don’t have to be dramatic, but they should be there. If a character hasn’t changed, for the positive or negative, what’s the point of the story?

10. The Director Gets in the Way of the Story

This is a directorial problem, but you can always see in short films where the director fell in love with the camera because the story wasn’t working. Film is about storytelling, and the style of the film is ideally in service of the story. Don’t dolly because it’s pretty; dolly because it reveals information to the audience in a manner appropriate to your story. This problem is also related to why films are unnecessarily long; a director fell in love with a style that is not in service of the story, or spent a lot of money on equipment that doesn’t serve the story. They keep scenes in the film because they remember how expensive or difficult they were to get. A good director is concerned with communing with her audience, not with a dolly shot or crane move. On DUMPS they call this the “Look at me, I’m a director!” shot.

On the whole these problems deal with the three patron saints of good writing: Clarity, Specificity and Unity. Every writer should strive for these three at all times, god knows I do.

There is another excellent sample of problems in student shorts on filmmaker.com’s “Directing Unsuccessful Motion Picture Shorts.” It’s a highly entertaining read.

A pitch is somewhere between a joke and a campfire story.

We recently had two pitching experts come in to speak to our class. They gave sage and candid advice about pitching screenplays. I also had the opportunity to get a pitch critiqued by them for my upcoming screenplay.

I bombed and it was an invaluable experience. One thing that I have come to realize is that many people make a good living on what don’t seem like real jobs to an outsider. Pitching and writing coverage of screenplays are the two I have been investigating recently.

Pitching is a craft and a profession that some people make a lot of money doing. For many of them it took years of practice and hard work. The two people who came in to speak to us spent their twenties writing; they didn’t go out, they didn’t party, they wrote. It took them seven years to sell their first feature. Here are some loglines of recently sold pitches (via Done Deal Pro):

Untitled Sascha Baren Cohen Project – 04/25/10 – Paramount Pictures – Revolves around a goat herder and a deposed foreign dictator who gets lost in the United States.

Untitled Parkour Project – 04/26/10 – New Line Cinema – Centers on the extreme sport of Parkour, the free-jumping sport in which people run and jump from rooftops.

My Ex Boyfriend Wrote a Book About Me – Paramount Pictures – A girl finds out that her ex-boyfriend has written a book about her. (pretty straightforward).

Most of the pitches that sold recently are pitched by very established writers, actors and directors. This doesn’t mean that we fledgling writers and directors don’t have to know how to pitch. It’s vitally important for us to know how to tell our stories in a brief, engaging, and compelling way.

First we were given some basic philosophy on life as a writer/pitcher:

• Building a career is a marathon, not a sprint. It takes time, effort and failure to learn how to do these things well.
• You need very thick skin and very low expectations to keep yourself motivated.
• Never take anything personally, you really never know what’s going on with the person at the other end of the table.
• Be careful who you’re nice to on the way up, you never know who you’re going to meet on your way down.
• The people who skyrocket to success often burn out just as quickly. The writer of My Girl, who went from unknown writer with a spec to a completed film in six months, was cited as an example of this.
• You have to be idea machines, constantly coming up with new material. Don’t be the guy who’s shopping around the same script for 20 years.
• If you don’t do the work, someone else always will. There are always 100,000 other people writing that spec that you’re not.

Preparation

1. Have multiple ideas. Don’t walk into a room with just one idea. If it’s shot down, you have nothing and its awkward.
2. Have ideas in the same genre. People in Hollywood want to put you in a box; she’s the one who writes romantic comedies. It’s ok to stray a little, say into straight comedy or even dramedy, but if you come in with two comedies and a sci-fi movie eyebrows will be raised.
3. Know what’s out there, what’s being sold, and who’s buying. Do your homework. Sites like Deadline, Variety, Screen Daily, Hitfix, Vulture, and Done Deal Pro are excellent resources for seeing who’s buying what ideas for how much money at any given moment.
4. Do your homework about who you’re meeting with, what they like, what they’ve bought etc.

Your Idea

Start with a two-sentence version of your screenplay. Then for the longer version be very aware of your beats:

1. Introduction of Protagonist and Problem, Desire, Flaw and Obstacles
2. Midpoint of Act 1
3. End of Act 1
4. Keeping the story alive 1/4 of the way through Act 2
5. Mid Point of Act 2 (Big Twist)
6. Keeping the story alive in the second half of act 2
7. End of Act 2 (New Twist)
8. Cliffhanger (all is lost, darkest moment)
9. Climax and resolution.

These beats must be crystal clear in your story and in your pitch. Practice, practice, practice. In front of a mirror, with friends. Get their honest feedback and adjust for the notes they give you. If it’s a comedy, it should be really funny, if it’s a thriller, it should be thrilling. Bring a lot of emotion to the pitch and keep eye contact with the person you’re pitching to. If people aren’t reacting the way you want them to, something needs to change.

The Pitch

When you walk in the room, make small talk until you know when the time has come to give your pitch. Make the material personal to you; explain (or fabricate) your personal involvement with the story. It makes it more compelling and also makes a strong case for why you should write it.

Then ask them what they’re looking for,

Give them a logline, then ask if they’re interested. If they’re not, give them something else. If they are, make sure you include the following information in your pitch:

• How long the pitch is going to be. A standard length for a “Stanford” pitch is 15-20 Minutes
• What the Genre is.
• What successful films it’s comparable to.
• Open with a visual.
• When you describe a main character, give an age, an actor you can picture playing them, and a pithy bit of description (i.e. “he’s the kind of guy who…”
• Go through your nine beats.
• Let your listener know where you are; “this is the end of the first act” etc.

Other important suggestions:

• Plot does not sell scripts, character does.
• Maintain a balance between summary and dramatization.
• Be energetic, have coffee before the meeting if you need to.
• Be clear about character arcs. One anecdote was related about pitching for Scooby Doo; one of the first questions the executive asked was “What’s Scooby’s arc?”
• Give them “trailer moments,” moments that are juicy enough to put in the trailer.
• Give them “sound bytes,” concise encapsulating phrases that can be easily repeated to other people. (i.e. it’s a coming of age story for women in their 40s)
• Have a backup list of actors if the people in the room don’t like your first choice. Picture Clint Eastwood, ok, picture George Clooney etc.
• Have a cheat sheet with 10 loglines for ideas you can use if you need to.
• Tell them what you’re going to do, do it, and then tell them what you’ve done. “I’m going to give you a logline.” “I’m going to give you a ten-minute pitch.”
• Tell the character’s ages.
• Be prepared for the worst interruptions (Blackberrys are just the beginning), don’t let them throw you.
• Introduce only the characters who move the plot forward.
• If you have a lot of characters, bring in a bulletin board with photos of actors you would temp cast for the roles. Then the person you’re pitching to can see who you’re talking about, and you have a means of indicating to them who’s doing what.
• What is your character’s Achilles heel?

This seems more complicated than it is. It’s important to be confident and relaxed and show your enthusiasm for your project. This is a job though; some people, though few, can make a living at it.

Pitching is an important skill even if you write small art-house character dramas. You still have to transfer your enthusiasm to the person listening to you, who may finance you, act in your film, be your director of photography or even your costume designer. Conveying passion to other people is a very important skill to have.

A situation is not a story.  A story is a beginning middle and end about someone who wants something and goes after getting it.  They can’t just want anything, though, they have to want something in the long term, something that will require them to adopt a series of short term goals that, if attained, will get them their long term goal.  The character can have a series of long term goals over the course of the story, as in The Wrestler (first he wants to become successful again at wrestling; then, after his heart goes bad and he can’t wrestle anymore, he wants to try to live the normal life he’s always been avoiding by reconciling with his daughter and trying to get a girlfriend; then when he fails at that he wants to die, so he goes back to the ring), but the character needs long term goals that will engender short term goals.

So, when you have an idea for a film, short or feature, ask yourself;

Is it a story or a situation?

Some examples:

A man gets hit by a bus – Situation

A man wants to kill the driver of the bus who hit him – Story

A college student gets a new, obnoxious roommate. – Situation

A college student desperately wants to drive his new, obnoxious roommate out of their dorm. – Story

A story has a goal, which implies conflict, i.e. obstacles, antagonists etc. A story with a goal also implies a beginning, middle and end. A situation can continue on indefinitely. Life is composed of many situations, most of which are inadequate (without goals) for depiction in film.  Interestingly, some short films, including Oscar nominee Manon Sur Le Bitume succeed despite their basis in situations.

As John August once wrote: life is characters without a plot.

As David Mamet said at the Arrow last night; it is the role of the screenwriter to provide the plot.

• Monday: 7-10 PM Editing The directors and cinematographers in the first year are broken up into three separate editing sections. This is to create variety, but also for the simple fact that it takes much longer to watch cuts of 6-10 minute films and critique them than it did for our two minute films in the fall. I am staying with three people from my winter production group and two new people that I haven’t worked with will be joining me.
• Tuesday: 10AM – 1PM Sound Editing. I believe we will be learning to use Protools in this class, as well as editing the sound for our six-minute films. UCLA has rooms available for ADR work, which some of us will no doubt be doing. I shot on location, and heard more than a few airplanes during production, hopefully I won’t have to do too much of this.
• 2:30 – 4:30 PM Symposium. This is our ongoing class with all 21 410 students. It is much shorter this quarter, and I imagine it will answer any questions we have that may arise.
• 6 – 9 PM Final Cut This is a class to teach us about Final Cut Pro, which we will be editing our films on. The flatbeds
• Wednesday: 10AM – 12:50 PM Television Directing

And those are our assigned classes. Aside from editing our films, We can choose to take electives (one is recommended).

The big class I am going for is the 434. 434 is the bread and butter class of the very successful UCLA Screenwriting program. In a 434 class you write a feature length screenplay over the course of a quarter. I have been excited to take one since arriving at UCLA last fall. The process involves pitching a number of different professors of different sections. I will have to remember my own advice on pitching while preparing my two pitches tonight. The teachers are looking for anywhere from one pitchable idea, to two extended loglines, to two three minute pitches. This is my first pitch session since our one in the fall, so I’m excited. Wish me luck!

Miller discusses two conflicting impulses in early colonial America, represented by the cities of Jamestown and Salem. He describes this difference in one of his brilliant asides in the play:

They (Salem) believed, in short, that they held in their steady hands the candle that would light the world. We have inherited this belief, and it has helped and hurt us. It helped them with the discipline it gave them. They were a dedicated folk, by and large, and they had to be to survive the life they had chosen or been born into in this country.

The proof of their belief’s calue to them may be taken from the opposite character of the first Jamestown settlement, farther south, in Virginia. The Englishmen who landed there were motivated mainly by a hunt for profit. They had to pick off the wealth of the new country and then return rich to England. They were a band of individualists, and a much more ingratiating group than the Massachusets men.

From Miller’s account of the colonial world we can trace two impulses throughout American history: the capitalistic, individualistic, at times rapacious Jamestown and the disciplined, religious, and stringent Salem.

Much of American history can be seen as the ebb and flow of one of these two impulses. Miller was writing in the time of McCarthyism, but consider Tammany Hall or the Bush Administration as times where the Jamestown ethic surged to the fore.

P.T. Anderson’s There Will Be Blood dramatizes this struggle. His main characters are a preacher and an oil man. In the end the oil man kills the preacher.

With the apparent omnipotence of corporate culture and politics in America, it would seem that the Jamestown mentality has triumphed. But in this economy, where people have to turn to something else than wealth, the face of Salem is always ready to resurface.