Write Your Screenplay Podcast

Jake: I’m here with Linus Roache, a Golden Globe nominated actor that you probably recognize from Homeland, Vikings, Law and Order, Batman Begins, Chronicles of Riddick, Priest and a ton of other features and TV shows. Linus was just in Mandy with Nicolas Cage, so we’re going to be talking a little bit about that movie. And Linus is also a writer in his own right, so we’re going to be talking about his projects, what it is like to walk the line between being an actor and a writer, and how those processes are similar and different. Linus, after a whole career in acting, how did you come to writing? Linus: Yeah, well I think I’ve always had an idea or an ambition to write at some point. Even as a child, the idea of being able to write your own movie-- everybody wants to write deep down, I think. And I’ve always had a great appreciation for writers. I have a theatre background. I love playwrights. I did all the classical work of Shakespeare, so I’ve always had a great love of writers and what they do. I’m slightly in awe of them, and I never felt that I’d really be able to write. I could get a script and see what I didn’t like about it and try to change dialogue and things, but I could never really craft anything. But eventually, at a certain point as an actor you do realize that you're just a piece in a big, big puzzle, and you don’t really have that much power, ultimately (unless you're an A list actor who’s controlling everything like Tom Cruise or something like that).  And I’ve just reached that point where I’d like to be more creative. I’d like to bring more of the stories I want to tell to life. And, as you know my wife, Ros, who I co-write with, had a passion project that we wanted to turn into a screenplay. And I knew there’s no way you can just sit down and write a screenplay without some help. So, we looked around, and, you know, there’s all the usual suspects out there. And I think Ros came to see you doing a one-off little seminar and then we did Write Your Screenplay 1, 2 & 3 and then Pro-Track. You know just to say Jake it has been an invaluable two years that we spent doing that with you. Because, for me, for someone who has read-- I don’t know how many thousands of scripts I must have read! And I can immediately tell you what’s a good one and what’s a bad one. But I couldn't tell you how to make a bad one good or why something necessarily is that good. It is like taking the back of a Swiss watch and understanding how it all actually works. And it was the most humbling two years of work I think I’ve ever engaged in. In fact if I had known it was going to be that difficult I might not have done it! But I’m so grateful that we went on the journey and have learned something of the craft; it is a craft you never stop learning. Jake: Like acting. Linus: Just like acting, yeah. Jake: Movies get made when they’ve got great actors in them. And I think one of the thing that’s top of mind for all of our writers is, “What does a great actor look for in a script?" If you want a Linus Roache in your movie-- what do you look for when you're looking at a role? Linus: Well, it might be different things at different times but ultimately you're looking for a journey. You're actually looking for a journey of transformation that’s believable. You want to feel as you read like you're being carried through that journey. In a sense what happens I think when you read a good screenplay is you do see the movie. And for an actor it is almost like what I call "N.A.R.-- No Acting Required," because it is actually being, in a sense, almost done for you on the page. Of course you’ve got to show up and you’ll bring nuance to it, but when something is really well written, your job is to be a conduit and get out of the way and allow the story to guide you. I’ve often ended up in a situation where someone gives me something that’s "kindof good," its heart is in the right place,

This week we’re going to be talking about BlacKkKlansman by Spike Lee, Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz and Kevin Willmott. When I first went out to see BlacKkKlansman, my hope was that I was going to be able to do a podcast about how to write a movie for a political change— to talk about the confluence of race and politics and storytelling and history. But, my experience of BlacKkKlansman led me to an even more important topic: the role of the truth in adapting a true life story, and how running towards (or away from) that truth can impact the overall experience of your screenplay. Like always, in his script for BlacKkKlansman, Spike Lee has a lot of very interesting things to say about race and politics, particularly about how the white supremacy movement has taken off the hood and the robe, put on the suit, and made themselves frighteningly presentable to the American public. I think he has a scary message there that’s well told, and I think there are some really transcendent and wonderful moments in this film. But for all the power of its message, and the appeal of its true-life premise, the actual execution of BlacKkKlansman feels shockingly uneven, bouncing between moments of political insight and compelling storytelling that we expect from Spike Lee, and others that feel predictable, anticlimatic, heavyhanded, or downright false. What’s causing this unevenness in BlacKkKlansman is a simple problem that many writers fall into when adapting a true life story into a screenplay. So in this podcast, I’m going to be talking about how-- whether you're writing a political film or a non-political film-- you can avoid falling into some of the traps that get in the way of a really tremendous premise. So let’s talk about BlacKkKlansman. The premise of a black undercover police officer infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan is just about as good of a premise as you can get. And the fact that this actually happened in the 1970’s is even cooler. The problem with BlacKkKlansman isn't in any way its premise. The problem with BlacKkKlansman is that the writers make the most common mistake when adapting a true life story. Rather than running towards the truth, they instead end up running toward the same old Hollywood elements we’ve seen in a million films in this genre. They think this is going to create drama, but instead they end up creating cliché. If you’ve seen BlacKkKlansman, think about the moments that really stood out to you, the moments that really mattered, the moments that seemed too wild to believe but totally compelling… well, the truth is a lot of those moments were true. And if you think about the moments that felt a little cliché, a little “seen it before,” a little familiar… well, you probably won’t be too surprised to find out that a lot of those moments weren’t true. But there’s an even bigger consequence here. By running towards the Hollywood story, rather than running towards the truth, BlacKkKlansman misses out on the full potential of its premise, not only structurally, but also politically. And I’m not saying that BlacKkKlansman doesn’t have a powerful political premise at its center. I’m just saying that there’s an even more powerful way to deliver it. So, let’s start with the biggest most “Hollywood” moment in BlacKkKlansman. For those of you who haven’t seen the movie— Ron Stallworth is a black police officer in the 1970’s. His only dream is to become an undercover police officer. He’s the first black man to become a member of this police department, and of course he’s dealing with a lot of racism, and he’s dealing with the pressure of infiltrating both the Black Power movement and the Ku Klux Klan at the same time. So, there’s a lot of very interesting stuff happening here, and what makes it most interesting is that this stuff is actually true. There really was a guy named Ron Stallworth, he really was a black policeman in the 1970’s,

Succession Part 2: How To Write Subtext In Your Dialogue In the last podcast we looked at the engine of Succession. We looked at the way each episode was put together, and the way that all these characters come together in each episode to create the season. So today, rather than thinking globally, we’re going to think locally. Rather than looking at the big structure of the piece, we’re going to look at one little teeny-tiny scene from episode 7. And the scene starts, if you want to watch it, around 27:07 and ends at 28:20. So we’re talking about a scene that’s a total of one-minute thirteen seconds. What’s really cool about this scene is that it features all the secondary characters of Succession. These are secondary characters who are not only secondary characters for the audience but are also secondary characters within the social circles of their own family. These are the boyfriends and girlfriends, and wives and fiancées: Marcia, Willa and Tom. Marcia is the wife of Logan Roy, the Brian Cox character in this piece, the King Lear, the Rupert Murdoch, the great patriarch. And Marcia is a highly intelligent, complicated woman, and it’s pretty clear that she loves her husband. But it’s not entirely clear if she can be trusted or not. She seems to have her own agenda, and it isn't clear how much of that agenda is about protecting the husband, and how much of that agenda is about solidifying her own power. Willa is Connor Roy’s…well, let’s just call her a girlfriend. Actually she’s his paid escort with whom he’s madly in love, and who is putting up with his affection and his desperate desire for her to play the role of his wife and move in with him in order to further her career as an actress and playwright. Then you’ve got Tom, discussed in detail in last week’s podcast, who’s the trickster character, the fiancé and soon to be husband of Shiv Roy, the scheming and politically savvy daughter of Logan Roy. And Tom isn't the greatest person in the world. In fact, he’s the worst possible version of new money. He’s a person obsessed with the power and ridiculousness of being rich. He’s a guy who’s small in the family, so he throws around his power in places where he has it. But Tom is also deeply in love with Shiv, and deeply unaware that she might not be a person he can trust. And what’s happened in this episode is that the entire Roy family has convened for therapy. This meeting has been called by Logan, who has basically realized that if he doesn’t do something his share prices are going to fall. He needs to do something to create some kind of positive photo-op that suggests the family is coming back together after a big falling out between himself and Kendall that was way too public. So Logan has called for this reconciliation, and with the exception of Kendall, all the children have come willingly, a bit curious, surprised, and maybe even hopeful that dad actually wants therapy. And of course that isn't what’s really happening. What’s really happening is dad wants a photo op. Even Kendall Roy shows up, and that’s a big deal because Logan just placed an article through his media sources suggesting that Kendall, who in the previous episode failed a vote of no confidence on his dad, was back on drugs. This article has not only cost Kendall his faith in his father, it has also cost him any chance of reconnecting with the one woman he loves, his ex-wife, who now thinks he’s back on drugs even though he isn't. But Kendall Roy decides to show up, even though his plan to reconcile with his family doesn’t actually turn out well. He ends up at a bar instead, where he’s soon drinking and getting high with some locals. Regardless, everyone has descended on Connor Roy’s beautiful mansion in the desert for this big moment of reconciliation that isn't going to happen. And the secondary characters of Succession, Marcia, Willa and Tom, have all been kicked out.

Succession vs Arrested Development: The Series Engine This week we’re going to be talking about Succession. If you haven't already seen the whole season, don’t worry. We aren't going to give away any major spoilers. What we’re going to be looking at this week is the structure of Succession: the way that this piece is actually put together and the way the season is created so that every single episode can feel completely different but also deliver the same emotional experience to its audience. If you haven't seen Succession, basically here’s the premise: What if Rupert Murdoch were King Lear?   That’s the structure of the piece. It’s looking at a modern day tycoon, a modern day king (in fact his last name is Roy, which means king). And this patriarch, Logan Roy, is sick and needs someone to take over the “throne”—to take over control of his company. Like King Lear, he has some children. Lear has three daughters; Logan Roy has four children. And he needs one of these children, or all of these children, to step up and take over the kingdom of his giant media empire. And of course, the problem is that all of his children are spoiled and also hurt and broken. There’s nobody who’s actually ready to succeed him. In many ways Succession is really a show about trust. It’s a show about what happens when trust—between father and son, father and daughter, husband and wife—gets violated. It’s about the kinds of choices people make in a world where they can’t trust each other—when the trust between corporations and people, between rich and poor, breaks down. It’s about what happens to our families, and what happens to our society. And the painful thing about watching Succession is that, because nobody trusts anybody, no one can feel the love that actually exists. All of these people are the product of a deeply dysfunctional family, run by a deeply dysfunctional patriarch, who of course has demons of his own and his own past that he’s wrestling with. And what they do so beautifully in Succession is to fully dramatize these characters. Everybody in the show is awful. Everybody in this show is selfish, greedy. They’re the awful, entitled 1%—the worst possible version of those people. Everybody has some inner awfulness that they wreak upon the people around them. And at the same time, every single character in Succession is totally human. Every time you think that you're going to finally write somebody off, the show exposes some humanness in them, some little bit of love, some little flicker of what they could have been, some attempt to do the right thing... and suddenly your heart breaks for them again. Sure it’s loosely inspired by Lear and loosely inspired by Rupert Murdoch, and as the show creator Jesse Armstrong has noted, loosely inspired by every succession story through the ages from Shakespeare all the way to the royal succession in England. Even though it’s inspired by all these very serious stories, as a series, the engine of Succession is actually nearly the same as a series that you probably would never equate with it. In fact, Succession, the series, actually has the same basic structure and the same basic engine as Arrested Development! You could even pitch Succession as the black-comic-real-world version of Arrested Development. Like Arrested Development, the engine of Succession is a bunch of maladjusted 1% kids, who are victims of their totally narcissistic father and mother, who are struggling to do their best but don’t have the emotional means to do so even though they have all the money in the world. The main “kid” in Arrested Development is Michael Bluth, and in Succession it’s Kendall Roy. He’s the one kid who, in each episode, is trying his best to save the family business now that the “king” (that is, the dad) is deposed. In Succession, Logan Roy is deposed in episode 1 by a stroke. And in Arrested Development, George Bluth is deposed in episode 1 by being arres...

Hereditary: The Power of the First & Last Image This week we’ll be talking about Hereditary written and directed by Ari Aster. I want to start by talking about the first image of this film. So, if you're worried about spoilers, we will get to some spoilers later, but you can listen to the beginning of this podcast without concern. The first image of Hereditary is the most important image of Hereditary. That's because the first image of any screenplay is the most important image of the film. It’s the most important image of your film creatively. It’s the most important image of your film structurally and it’s the most important image of your film commercially. So, it’s actually the most important image on three different levels. I want to talk about how the first image functions on each of these levels. We’re going to start on the most external and then we’re going to work down to the most connected. Externally, as a commercial device, the first image is the most important image of your film because the first image is the only image that everybody is actually going to read. When your producer or agent or manager flips the script of the first page and takes a look, it’s actually that line that makes them decide, “You know what, I’m going to send this one out for coverage,” or, “Maybe I’ll read this myself.” Similarly, if you think about the math of being a coverage reader, you as a consumer are likely going to pay about $150 for coverage, but they’re actually getting paid $50 a script. And, if you think of what it would take you to write a logline, a commentary, and a summary of a film, you’ll realize that if they were actually carefully reading each film, and carefully writing summaries, log lines and commentaries, that they would be working for about 32 cents an hour. So that’s not possible. You can’t eat from that. Which means that coverage readers need to choose which scripts they’re going to fully read and which scripts they’re going to skim. And that’s true for festival readers and readers who read for production companies. They actually can’t afford to read every single script carefully. And even if the economic reason for skimming didn’t exist, there’s an emotional reason that’s even more powerful, which is that almost everything they read is bad. If you’re a coverage reader and you read a thousand screenplays and one of them is producible, you had a pretty good year. Most of the scripts they’re reading—and I’m not talking about scripts by student writers or beginning writers or amateur writers, I’m talking about scripts by professional writers with agents—most of what they read isn't just bad, it’s actually un-producible. Many of these professional writers are just slamming out ideas, playing within a formula, trying to get something to throw against the wall to see if it sticks, rather than doing the real work of carefully mining their subconscious for the real story they want to tell. The downside of that is that there’s a lot of bad stuff that you’ve got to cut through in order to get your script noticed. The good thing about that is that if you start to learn some of the things we talk about here, and you start to do this real work, your script really will stand out from the pack. And that starts with the very first image. If you’ve got a great first image in your screenplay, it will actually change the whole perspective of the person reading. It will stop them from saying, “Oh... another bad script, okay let’s see if I can get through this,” and it will start them saying, “Oh wow! This is actually kind of cool!” Because the secret of every coverage reader is that even though they dread reading another bad script, they’re desperately hoping to find that diamond in the rough. So that first image is your place commercially to say, “You know what, pay attention. This one is going to be cool.” I actually learned this lesson doing Off-Off Broadway theatre.

DEADPOOL 2: Where Tone Meets Genre in Screenwriting This week, we are going to be looking at Deadpool 2 by Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick, and a new addition to the writing team, Ryan Reynolds. If you missed my podcast on the original Deadpool, you might want to check that out as well, because one of the things that is exciting about Deadpool 2 is the way it manages to maintain a consistent tone, even over the course of a very different film. If you’ve studied TV writing in our  TV Drama Classes, TV Comedy Classes or Web Series Classes, you know that every episode of a TV show should feel the same, and also feel different. that it should deliver the same genre experience to the audience, the same tone, the same feeling, the same experience while taking them through a story that also feels very new, and very fresh, and very different. But now, we’re seeing the same phenomenon in big action movie franchises, like Deadpool or Guardians of the Galaxy or The Avengers, where each installment needs deliver on those expectations of the audience. So, setting aside the questions all over the internet about “which is better, Deadpool 1 or Deadpool 2?” -- rather than comparing these films in terms of which is a more successful movie, instead, what I want to do is I want to look at this question, which will be valuable for any writer, whether you’re working in features or TV. How do you maintain that consistent tone? How do you create one screenplay after another that has the same feeling that feels entirely fresh and also entirely consistent?” Learning how to control tone in your screenplay will be valuable for you in many different ways. If you are writing a TV Drama or a TV Comedy, or a Web Series, understanding how tone is handled in a script, how different elements can be brought together to replicate the same feeling for the audience, will be extraordinarily valuable for you, whether working on your own pilot, or replicating the voice of a showrunner as a staff writer on a series. If you are writing for feature films this will help you in a couple of different ways. First, a lot of the writing work out there right now is work-for-hire writing or rewriting, and to be a great work-for-hire writer, or to be a great rewriter or a great polisher of scripts, we need to do more than just create great stories and great characters-- that is just a given of the basics of what we need to be able to do. We also need to be able to write characters that didn’t originate from us, we need to be able to create characters that fit effortlessly into a universe or a world created by other people, We need to be able to emulate the voices of other characters. So learning to control tone will help you in your career if you are interested in rewriting, if you are interested in being able to take notes from a producer and adapt your work, if you are interested in having control over your gift rather than just letting anything that comes out onto the page be what you end up with. And it will also be valuable for you even if you’re just working on your own script. Oftentimes, there is a big gap between what we imagine our screenplay is going to be and what actually comes out on the page. Many years ago, one of my very talented students was working on his first foray into comedy. He pulled me aside at one point and he said, “Jake, what do I do if I do all this work, and it comes out, and it isn't funny?” And I said, “Well Bill, then you will have a really great drama.” And ultimately that is still the answer I believe in. As screenwriters, we really should worry a hell of a lot less about tone. We should really worry a whole lot less about where we are going to end up, and we should really focus on what it is that we are writing, what the script wants to be. At the same time, as writers, we often freak ourselves out, because we will write something that feels like it isn't coming out right.

The Hero Writes Itself: Interview with Katie Torpey Jake: I am here today with Katie Torpey, our newest teacher. She is teaching our TV Drama Classes, Write Your Screenplay I, Write Your Screenplay II, Write Your Screenplay III, and The Writing Lab. Welcome, nice to have you.  Katie: Thanks for having me, I am very excited. Jake: I would love to start off by talking a little bit about your background as a screenwriter. Katie: Perfect, so the first job I got out of college was at America’s Most Wanted TV Show. I was doing stories for them, and that is when I fell for storytelling in that genre. And then I left for LA, I lived on the East Coast; I went to LA and started working as a PA and stuff like that. But, I started taking some classes at UCLA Extension and I won some awards. I won The Diane Thomas award, I was a finalist in the Chesterfield. That got me going, and then I got into UCLA Film School and got my Masters in Screenwriting. And then from there, I sold a script out of film school, and I went started working with Power Rangers and wrote for them. Then I sold another script that got made called The Perfect Man with Hilary Duff and Heather Locklear and Chris Noth. I wrote and directed a movie that I shot in Ireland, starring Stana Katic who was on Castle, and that was awesome because I got to direct. From there I sold a TV show that got made on Hulu. It was one of Hulu’s first TV shows. It was interesting because we were like, “Online? We’re going to do a TV show online?” And now it is so huge online TV. And I teach obviously, I love teaching. My first teacher as a screenwriter was Valerie West and she was so inspiring. She helped me learn about storytelling, and I swore if I ever got to a place that I could teach and help someone and have them feel that way I would do it. And that is what got me into teaching. Jake: I had a mentor like that too. I had Peter Parnell, who at the time was a playwright, and Peter taught me what it meant to be an artist, which is something that often I think gets left out of screenwriting training. Katie: Absolutely, it tends to get so formulaic that it is like a math equation,  and that isn't what it is supposed to be. Jake: When you’re approaching a script, how do you help a student, or how do you help yourself find that balance between the art and the craft? Katie: Well, I spent so much time learning the craft in many different ways. I throw it out now, because it is really kind of ingrained in me. So I don’t even really think about it. For me when you know the character so well like you really make them rich, they write themselves, it is almost like you’re channeling. Jake: So if you’re a new writer, and maybe you’ve been taught a lot of like formula, you’ve been taught Save The Cat, or The Hero’s Journey, or three act structure, and now you’re looking to kind of get underneath and get to your authentic voice as a writer, like how do you do that? Katie: I would start with journaling. Just start to write, just vomit it out and see what comes out. And then you’ll see like some beautiful stuff. Jake: You have a really cool installment of The Writing Lab that you’re going to do with us called The Hero Writes Itself, and you were talking about how you actually use archetypes in that class to connect through a series of writing exercises, is that right? Katie: Yeah, I have people go into their life and the people who they’ve met in their life, and things they like, they dislike, who they are, moments from their life, to really pull out experiences and stories, and a story they might want to tell. It is just a wild experience because it is all psychological. Because, if you know all the elements of a human being, why they do what they want and the motivation behind everything… for example, if you understand someone has a hard time in relationships because the parents got divorced and the mom cheated on the dad...

A QUIET PLACE Part 2: Dialogue, Action & The Theme of Your Screenplay In the first installment of this podcast, we looked at A Quiet Place in relation to writing action and discussed how all of screenplay formatting really exists for one purpose: to isolate visual moments of action. By isolating visual moments of action we can hypnotize the reader into seeing, hearing, and feeling the story in their mind’s eye, rather than simply reading it on the page. We can invite them to tell themselves the story of the movie, rather than having it spoonfed to them. We explored the idea that each image in your screenplay, just like each image in your movie---every line, every comma, every period---is really a cut. An isolated moment that, when bumped up against another isolated moment, draws the reader into your script and allows them to make connections to tell themselves the story of what is really going on. So by now, we understand what the word “Isolate” means. But what about the other three elements of formatting: Visual Moments of Action? And how does all of this relate to theme and character and dialogue and all those other elements of A Quiet Place and screenwriting in general? Well, that’s what we’re going to cover in this podcast. So since we now understand the idea of Isolated in Isolated Visual Moments of Action, now let’s get into the concept of Visual. The next idea is Visual. Visual formatting in your screenplay means that there is something visually exciting about each image. Another way to think of that is that there is nothing normal in your script, and the reason there is nothing normal in your script is because there is nothing normal in the world. Everything in the world is really freaking weird. Your most normal friend is really freaking weird. You are really freaking weird. Your desk doesn’t actually look like a desk. Your desk has something weird about it.  Maybe it’s a scratch, maybe it’s a toothbrush sitting in a pen holder, maybe it’s the way that your papers are stacked up with a little crystal on top of them. Your desk has something weird about it and you have something weird about you, and every moment in life has something weird about it, and if you don’t see it, you are just not looking closely enough. And if you aren't looking closely enough, that means that your reader, or your viewer, has to do the work of seeing, rather than you doing the work of seeing. Visual means that you are going to do the work of seeing each moment. You are going to do the work of finding that little hooky thing, that little special element, that little thing that makes it just slightly cooler than normal. That every single thing you write is going to be something that is worthy of shooting. And here is why that is important: every single thing you write is freaking expensive. A Quiet Place had one of the craziest production schedules ever. It was released about 5 months after they finished production, and think about that. Think about how short that is. Post-production was the biggest part of this movie. You had to cut this whole film together and actually use sound almost like it was a character in the film. This movie was all about post, and its rush to release date was insane. In fact, they even had to reinvent the creature during the post-production process because John Krasinski wasn’t happy with the creature that ILIM had created; they actually went back to the drawing board and reimagined all that visual work. So that timetable is intense. Why were they able to pull it off?   Well, actually Krasinski has talked about this. They were able to pull this off, and they were able to pull it off on such a low budget, because he wrote it (as did Bryan Woods and Scott Beck) to cut together in exactly the way they had written it. Unlike most scripts, which basically throw the ball to the director and go, “Hey dude, you figure it out,

Please note, this podcast was recorded prior to the recent scandals surrounding Roseanne Barr. We have chosen to leave the podcast on our site because we feel it may have information that is valuable to writers. But the analysis was based upon what the show appeared to be after the airing of the pilot. As recent events have shown, rather than taking advantage of her unique opportunity to use her artistic platform to begin a healing for a torn apart America, as I had hoped when recording this podcast, Roseanne has instead used her platform to further fracture us through hate, reminding us of a darker side of what art can do when used in the wrong way. On my podcast I have always tried to separate the art from the artist. But this episode certainly reflects a mistake on my part in failing to note the difference between the real Roseanne and the character she plays on her show. This week we are going to be talking about two scripts that seem to have nothing in common.  The first is Isle of Dogs by Wes Anderson. And the second is the pilot of the new Roseanne. Wait, what? Well keep listening, because as different as they are in every aspect of their execution, their style, their politics, their genre and their format, Isle of Dogs and Roseanne do have one incredibly important thing in common: They’re both a lesson in the power of movies and TV shows to grapple with real socio-political issues, and make real change in our society. And what’s so fabulous about both of these scripts is that they do so without sacrificing their political beliefs, without dumbing anything down for their audience, and without compromising their artistic integrity or their commercial or critical success. Isle of Dogs is a ridiculous movie about a ridiculous concept. And when I say Isle of Dogs is a ridiculous movie about a ridiculous concept, I’m not referring to the ridiculous concept of a Japan of the near future in which dogs are banished to a mysterious island by a cat loving corrupt leader… or the unlikely story of his adopted child’s flying a stolen airplane to the land of garbage save his beloved pet, Spots. When I say ridiculous story about a ridiculous concept, I am talking about the concept underneath: the real theme of this movie. Because this isn't a movie about dogs. This isn't a movie about the war between cats and dogs. This isn't a movie about a closeted cat lover who wants to banish dogs from his corrupt future Japan. And this is not just a movie the power of the visual image-- though Wes Anderson’s approach to Isolating Visual Moments of Action is at once a master class in how to write action in a screenplay, and a complete violation of every rule you thought you knew. And yes, I can’t help but wax poetic about how Wes Anderson somehow manages to fuse the rules of theatre and film, creating set pieces like a giant stage, and then populating them with oddly poetic images… or how he uses that poetry at once as an homage and a satire of a world that he loves, treating the ridiculous with piety, and the serious with ridiculousness... But that’s not what the movie is about either. Isle of Dogs is a movie about racism and politics. In other words, Isle of Dogs is a movie about America. And it is interesting because Wes Anderson has taken a lot of crap actually for this movie. Some critics feel that Isle of Dogs is guilty of cultural appropriation in its depiction of this future Japan; other critics have argued that having a white exchange student as a savior is degrading to the Japanese characters at the center of the movie, a recreation of the old white savior trope. And maybe these things are true. Maybe these things would be true if this was a movie about Japan. But, really this is an homage to Japanese film making by a filmmaker who loves Japan, and who loves Japanese filmmakers. And more importantly, this is a movie about America. This isn't a Japan that looks like Japan.

Jake: Hi, I’m Jacob Krueger, and thank you for tuning into a very special episode of The Write Your Screenplay Podcast. This is our 100th episode. I’m so incredibly excited, proud and grateful to all of the listeners that have made this possible for 100 episodes. So, I was thinking, “What am I going to do for my 100th episode?” I wanted to do something special? So, I decided to go back to the source. And for that reason, today I’m going to be interviewing my mom, Audrey Sussman. I’m excited to talk to my mom on this podcast for a couple of reasons. First my mom taught me everything that I know as an artist. I have the only Jewish mother in America who found out that her daughter was going to be a doctor and responded, “Oh, my God, but you could have been an Opera singer!”   So, I’m incredibly lucky to have had a mother who supports my artistic life, and that is something that a lot of people don’t get. in addition to that, my mom taught me everything I know about writing, and not because my mom is a writer, but because my mom is a hypnotherapist. Her work is about the stories that we tell ourselves, not on the conscious level but on the subconscious level, and how those stories take us on journeys of change-- how we can actually change who we are by changing the stories. In this way my mom taught me how to induce a trance in a reader: how to allow a reader to experience a fictional story as if it was real. She taught me how to use image and sound and feeling, and the other modalities that allow writing to feel real and stories to feel real. She showed me how to build structure-- how the human mind puts structure together. And she taught me how to do rewriting-- not how to rewrite a script but by how to rewrite your life! How to change the way you tell yourself the story of your life—not by making it fake, but by finding different layers, and different values to the truth. Another reason I’m very excited to have my mom here is she teaches classes at the studio. She teaches two classes: The Inner Game which is our class about how to take care of the inner challenges to your writing—the subconscious challenges, the fears, the confidence, the procrastination, and also how to connect to your characters on a more profound level. And she teaches our Writing Lab, which is our experimental laboratory where we really push the edges of how writing works.   So, thank you, Audrey, so much. It’s weird to call you Audrey-- but thank you, Mom, for joining us here today. Audrey: I’m really delighted to be here. As I was listening you tell the story of how you learned from me, it is interesting because all I was doing was being a mom who knew how to listen. That just was natural––it was such a natural way of interacting where you are always looking for the good in the person. You are always figuring if a person is feeling a certain way, especially my child, there must be a reason for it. Looking for those stories that you might have been telling yourself-- that was just how I parented and I was always looking for the good. And it sounds like you do the same with your students. I hear you when you teach. Jake: That is probably the most valuable thing that you can learn as a writer. It is so easy to find the bad, and a lot of us, as parents to our inner creative children-- if we ever said to another child what we say to our little inner artist child, someone would be calling child services immediately. And part of being a writer is learning how to be a good parent to that creative child. Because we do need to be a parent to that child; we can’t just neglect that child and leave that child out in the wilderness, or that child will experience a lot of the negative things that happen to artists. We have to be a parent to that child, we have to help guide that child towards the places that they need to go creatively, to learning the skills that they need to learn to succeed. But,