Write Your Screenplay Podcast

This week we are going to be talking about BoJack Horseman, but we aren't just going to be talking about the series, we are going to be talking about one very particular episode, and doing a really deep breakdown: Season 4, Episode 9 which is entitled Ruthie. A lot of the times when we talk about television, we talk about TV bibles, we talk about the idea that every show needs to have an engine, a structure that is replicable, that can be done again, and again, and again. Selling a series is like selling a franchise, like selling a McDonalds or Starbucks-- you are selling not just the brilliance of your writing, or the brilliance of your idea, you are selling the replicability of it. You are selling the ability to do it again, and again, and again, even if the writing team changes, even if the showrunner changes, even if the directors or in this case the animators change, that you have the same engine again, and again, and again. And so, what is really exciting about this episode is that it shows what starts to happen, once you really understand your engine, once you really understand the formula for your series.You can start to play within it, and then you can also start to play against it. You can start to open up new avenues of what your series can be, especially, once you’ve established what it is for both your audience and for yourself as a writer. What is really interesting about this episode is, we don’t start in the present, we start in the future, we start with Princess Carolyn’s great, great, great, great, great, great, great granddaughter, who is telling a story about her ancestor, Princess Carolyn. Now, if you don’t watch BoJack Horseman, let me catch you up a little bit about how this series works. BoJack Horseman is both the most ridiculous and the saddest series that you will ever watch on television. It is an animated send up of Hollywood, in a world in which some of the people are people and some of the people are part animal. And, the animal-people are basically just people except they have certain animal traits… Pretty wild concept already for a series! And generally in the series, what happens is we watch BoJack Horseman, who is the ultimate narcissistic movie star, and we watch the funniest possible trainwreck we could ever watch as BoJack consistently makes his own universe harder, and harder, and harder. Princess Carolyn is BoJack’s former lover and former agent, and Princess Carolyn is a cat who is dating a mouse, and her mouse is pretty much the perfect man. And all Princess Carolyn has wanted for the whole season is just to get pregnant, and it is just not happening. Usually we would watch Princess Carolyn’s story as a B story in an episode. But in this episode, Princess Carolyn’s story becomes the A story. Now how do you get away with this, you aren't supposed to just be able to reverse the whole structure of your series; you’re not supposed to just change up what you’ve been doing especially in a series as successful as BoJack, why did they get away with this? Well, what is interesting is they don’t just get away with changing the focus; they also get away with changing the structure, because we are actually going to the future. And we are going to start off watching Princess Carolyn’s great, great, great granddaughter tell the story of Princess Carolyn’s awful, awful, awful day. So the A story is going to be Princess Carolyn’s journey, the B story is going to be BoJack’s story, and the C story is going to be this unusual thread that starts in the future, and then flashes back to our present. And what is really cool is this is something that the series has never done before. There have been times where we flashback to the past into BoJack’s story, or even into BoJack’s mother’s story, but, there has never been a point where we have flashed from the future back to the present. So, what is happening is the engine of the series, the rules of the series,

This week we are going to be talking about The Florida Project, by Sean Baker and Chris Bergoch. I am so excited to be talking about this film, especially a week after the Oscars, because this is a film that probably should have been competing for Best Picture. Bria Vinaite probably should have been competing for Best Actress, and Sean Baker probably should have been competing for Best Writer and Best Director. If you haven't seen The Florida Project yet, I am going to try to avoid spoilers until we get to the end, and I’ll give you some warning first. What Sean Baker did in this film, like what he did in Tangerine, if you listened to my Tangerine podcast, is really quite inspirational for any writer and quite complex, in its structure and its form. Sean Baker shot Tangerine on about 600 grand. He shot it on an iPhone-- a feature film shot on an iPhone! And he shot this movie in a budget somewhere around 2 million dollars. So these are extremely low budget films. Beautiful, successful, powerful, low budget films. Which is very exciting if you are an emerging screenwriter. As an emerging screenwriter, you can take the success of The Florida Project as a sign that you can do this yourself. You can do this yourself at a very high level, and you don’t need a lot of money. Here is Willem Dafoe, who has obviously done some huge movies, who isn't doing this film for the money-- who is doing this because someone has written a beautiful role that he just needs to play. And seeing the performances that Sean Baker, second time in a row, has gotten out of these extremely inexperienced actors—Bria Vinaite along with little Brooklynn Prince, who gives one of the finest performances you could ever ask for, and she is seven years old-- shows you just how much you can do with very little if you have the right script and the right actors. I also want to talk about the form and the structure of The Florida Project. Because The Florida Project is not put together like most movies we see at the theater. Rather than hurling us into the action, or into the plot of the film, it just kind of drops us into a world. And lets us wander with the characters through that world, watching their lives as if we were living them. Watching The Florida Project is like watching Beasts of the Southern Wild in pastels. You might feel like you’re just drifting through a world, but you’re actually being propelled on an extremely powerful journey, into the experience of some extraordinarily compelling characters whose lives are changing forever, and whose journey will change the way we see ourselves and our world. The Florida Project is an incredibly hopeful film that takes place in a world that should be filled with despair. It takes place in a rundown motel just outside of Disney World, where a bunch of low income families are attempting to raise their children in these tiny little one bedroom motel rooms. The movie is primarily seen through the eyes of children, and it centers around a really complicated and beautiful relationship between six year old Moonee, who is played by Brooklynn Prince, and her mother Halley played by Bria Vinaite. Moonee is not quite old enough to recognize her mother’s problems, her destitution, her desperation, her drug addiction, her violence, her despair. Instead, she sees her mother through the eyes of any child-- through these beautifully idealistic, Disney World, pastel eyes. This child who is having the time of her life, in her own private Disney World with absolutely no supervision, and absolutely no awareness of the danger that is all around her. And what is gorgeous about this film, what makes us feel connected to these characters, is not that these characters are perfectly good. Because the characters in The Florida Project are not perfectly good-- not the kids, and not the parents. They’re not all doing all the right things all the time.

*Please note this interview was from 2018.   Jake: This week, I am so excited to be doing something we’ve actually never done before on the podcast: we have two different writers, Doug Jung and Emily Dell. Emily tends to come at things from more of the independent film side, and Doug has been involved in some very famous blockbusters and big name TV shows like Star Trek Beyond and Big Love.   And what’s really cool is that both of these writers have transcended a lot of the genre conventions in their writing-- doing everything from really beautiful, personal, character-driven stories, to big budget action movies and sci-fi. I want to start by asking you both-- when you first broke into the industry, what do you think it was that led to your success? And in the face of the commercial and genre demands of so many different kinds of projects, how do you hold onto who you are and continue to grow your voice as an artist? EMILY: I want to say this, I am still finding my way in, I think this is a long term process and in fact maybe  that one of the biggest “aha!” moments for me being early mid-career but not quite mid yet. I feel like my writing has grown and expanded through the help of friends who are also mentors who have given me feedback and Doug has been one of those. And on the content side, always trying to write what I believe in and write what is connected to me, but also to see how that fits into an organic brand that maybe was part of my identity-- never having a difference between who I am and what I write is a clear part of the way that I look at my art. And I think that is what makes people connect both to it and then to me, and then makes it easy for people to be like, “hey here is this Emily girl and she writes grounded emotional genre because that is also what she loves in life.” So that is one thing that I found to be really helpful lately. But also, as I have been in LA for a while more than a couple of years and I have developed friendships and working relationships, I really tried to listen as much as I spoke, learn as much as I can, ask questions from the people whose work I admire and whose work I seek to emulate, and use that to improve. But also if they someday become comfortable even me and want to form an organic working relationship, then that is something I am obviously very open and welcome to. Doug:  I ended up in a very fortuitous way getting some work in television which you know literally like these sort of freelance things for weird shows, and that enabled me to quit my day job. At that time I also had a very lucky stretch where I managed to bank a little bit of money. But I was able to take this time and I wrote a script that ultimately was picked up, then optioned, and then eventually made. And I suddenly had, in a very lucky way, both a foot in the door in the TV world and a foot in the door in the feature world. And I have just sort of managed to stay in that position this whole time, which is great. But as much as I can say it was hard work and I applied myself, there is an element of luck. And for my case it took a long time, but I do believe that luck is a byproduct of other things that you are doing to put yourself in there. Jake: I feel the same way with my career, almost everything that ever happened to me that was good was luck, but I worked so damn hard to get to that lucky moment. And I think one of the places where I was luckiest was that it happened at a time where I had enough craft to actually back it up. Doug: There is this element that I always see with people in these kinds of panel discussions, or this meet-and-greet kind of thing that I have been to-- you know the most often asked question seems to be: How do I get an agent? How do I get somebody to read this thing? Totally valid, totally get it. But, nobody has the same origin story. Nobody has that thing where it was a particular path that you took.

Jake: This week I am with Sebastian Stan. Many of you have probably seen I, Tonya and Sebastian’s performance in that piece. We are going to have an interesting conversation with Sebastian, looking at I, Tonya from the perspective of an actor and also from the perspective of a writer. And we’re going to be discussing something that is important to a lot of writers, which is understanding how an actor approaches a role, how a script develops beyond the point where you’ve sold it and then into the production side, and how a script evolves. And also understanding what an actor like Sebastian looks for in a script: how you know when that is the role I want to play. So, I wanted to just start off by asking you a little bit about when you first read Steven Roger’s script. What did you connect to about it that made you go, “I’ve got to play Jeff”?   Sebastian: It was kind of a hard one, to be honest, because it was so controversial. He was such a hated character; he was such a hated person in real life. And in that aspect, it was really difficult-- you start wondering whether that is something you could even do or you could even play. There was a lot of judgment there. But, looking at it just as a script, and then as an actor looking at it, it felt like a goldmine. It was always unpredictable. It was tragic at certain times and it was shocking and then it could be funny. And there seemed to be a very strong degree of honesty to it. You’re always looking for how authentic certain voices sound. And later I did find out a lot of the dialogue in the script came from the interviews that he had directly with them-- not to take away from his genius writing-- it just had a very authentic air to it, and I think you look for that. And then as an actor you’re challenged by that because you go, “I don’t know if I could do that… and I can’t stop thinking about it.” And I think, in that case, also them being real life characters had a lot to do with it. The whole thing was so sensationalized that you couldn’t really believe that these people existed or that they were capable of that. And it kind of led on a whole tangent of wanting to search for stuff. Jake: Yeah I think it is interesting because, in a way, all of our stories come from life; even the most fictional stories come from life. And there is an interesting theme in I, Tonya that there is no one truth. Sebastian: Right. Jake: And you know even like the breaking of the fourth wall, like, “Yeah, this didn’t happen like this.” Sebastian: Yeah, and it is interesting the fourth wall because that wasn’t in the script originally. That was the director coming in and suggesting that we break the fourth wall in the scenes. I could have seen Steven Rogers come up with that--but you know, the director just finished his sentence so to speak. So I feel like it is important to find that counterpart in your director. Jake: Yeah I think it is an interesting thing about process for writers in that we see a lot of bad movies come out of Hollywood. And so, a lot of people are under the impression, “Oh I will just give them the idea and then they will figure it out.” But you can see with a movie like I, Tonya when the writer has really done his job, and really built the movie around that theme. what it allows an actor to do with the role to make those kind of creative decisions about how you are going to perform it. Sebastian: I always think it starts with the writing. I think that is the most important and the hardest part. I’ve always thought that actors make better actors with good material, which is why the in plays that you go to at the theatre sometimes end up being such great characters-- like those Tennessee Williams’ plays-- and those writers who sort of fleshed out these characters that you don’t usually get to see so much of nowadays. Steven Rogers-- first of all, two funny things about him as a writer--

If you listened to the previous episode of this podcast, you have probably developed a pretty valuable approach for how to revise your screenplay. And you know that approach focuses on these 5 simple tips for revision: #1 - Never Rewrite Without a Goal #2 - Follow Your North Star #3 - Concentrate on What’s Working #4 - Stay Away From Quick Fixes #5 - Beware Written Notes So this week, we’re going to work on taking your revision process to the next level, with five more helpful tips about revising your script. REVISION TIP #6 – Use Your Theme If you’ve ever been part of an unmoderated writing group, you already know what it’s like to lose control of your revision. Without a strong unifying voice to make order out of the chaos, it’s amazing how much turmoil even a small group of well-intentioned writers can bring to your screenplay, pushing and pulling your revision in so many different directions with their “brilliant ideas” that before long you don’t even know what you’re writing anymore! And as anyone who has ever worked professionally as a screenwriter can tell you, the more you grow in your career, the more challenging it becomes to maintain a point of creative focus for your revisions. Succeeding as a professional writer means learning to navigate the twists and turns in the development process, often balancing the demands of half a dozen different producers, all with their own (often conflicting) agendas for the project, without losing your own creative voice. Which means that, if you want to succeed in this industry and actually see your movies make it to the screen, you need to start building those skills in yourself now. That means not only developing the skills you need to navigate the often contradictory feedback you get from other people (friends, classmates, coverage readers, producers, teachers, agents, managers), but also learning how to steer the course through the shifting winds of your own feelings about your writing and the perilous waves of “brilliant ideas” that tend to crash across the bows of our own creative ships. The real terror of the blank page is that anything is possible; and the real terror of a rewrite is that everything becomes possible all over again. If you’re willing to put in the time and effort and just keep asking “what if?” you can develop Thelma and Louise until it turns into The Wrestler (think about it). But along the way, you’re going to drive yourself absolutely out of your mind. And if you’ve ever worked on a revision, you’ve probably found yourself going down that rabbit hole. So how do you make sense of all the thousands of ideas vying for your attention? How do you bring order to the chaos, wrangle all these crazy notes to the ground, hold your own in a development meeting, and feel confidence in each decision you make in your revision? That process always begins with theme.   There are very few people in the world who are truly good at developing scripts, but those who are all have one thing in common. Before they start trying to come up with a single idea or solve a single problem, they always ask the same question about the script: what’s it about? And that doesn’t mean “what could it be about?” or “what was the conscious plan the writer had for the script when they first sat down to write” or even “what could I make it about?” That means seeking out what already has been built, whether consciously or unconsciously, in the pages that already exist, no matter how problematic they may be. What are the ideas that keep on coming up again and again, page after page? What are the questions that seem to tie together the most visceral and exciting scenes in your movie, or the turning points in your character’s journey? What makes this screenplay matter to you as a writer? What is really being built here? And how can you boil that all down to a single guiding theme so simple that you can remember it at every phase of your rewrite withou...

This is a time of year when many of us are thinking about rewrites, both on our scripts and on our lives. So what better time for a podcast about rewriting? Everyone knows that writing is rewriting. But for many writers, the rewriting process can feel so overwhelming that it’s hard to hold onto that creative spark that made the script worth writing in the first place. So over the next two podcasts, we’re going to be talking about 10 things you can do to help make your rewrite great! (They work pretty well for your life goals as well!) Screenplay Revision Tip #1 – Never Rewrite Without a Goal A character without a goal is like a car without an engine.  You can polish it up all you’d like, but it’s not going to go anywhere. And just like our characters, if we’re going to be successful in our revisions, we’ve got to make sure we’re effective in our goal setting, not only for our characters, but also for ourselves. That means setting a clear, objective goal for each draft of our screenplay, which allows no debate over whether or not it’s been achieved. For example, depending on what phase we’re in of a revision, we might set a goal like one of these: Make sure the main character is driving the action of every scene. Find lines of dialogue that feel a little familiar and either cut them or make them more specific to the character. Chart out the 7 Act Structure of the character’s change. Make sure the action on the page captures each image exactly the way you see it in your head. What’s great about goals like these is that you can know if you’ve achieved them. Instead of wasting your energy panicking about whether your script is good or not, you can watch it evolve in front of your eyes, knowing that each draft is that much better than the one that came before. Rather than feeling like you’re trying to juggle a million deadly chainsaws-- instead of feeling like you’ve got a million different problems that you simply have to fix in your script all at the same time-- you can devote all your focus to the one thing that is most important for the draft you’re working on right now. Rather than basing your feeling of success as a writer on things that are beyond your control, like having a good writing day, selling a script or winning an Academy Award, you’re basing it on a simple area of focus that will not only grow your script, but also vastly improve your craft as a writer, which will serve you on every script you write in the future. So if you’re working on a revision of a screenplay, revision of an act, or even just a revision of a scene, take a moment to clear your mind of all the things you’ve been told you have to do, all your fears about getting to the end, finishing, not finishing, selling your script, or having talent as a writer. Instead, think about what this screenplay is really about for you, and set a clear, objective goal for the one thing that’s most important for you to achieve to take the script to the next level. In early drafts, or early phases of your career, it may be hard to identify what the most important thing to focus on might be, or to separate the many conflicting things you’ve been told to do from the ones that really matter to you. Trust your instincts, and seek out the advice of mentors with enough real professional experience to point you in the right direction. What matters is that you choose one goal to focus on, and frame it in a way that you can know if you’ve achieved it, regardless of the shifting winds of your own (or anybody else’s) subjective opinions. That way you can know you are succeeding in each phase of your revision, whether this is your final draft, or just one of many along the way.   Screenplay Revision Tip #2 – Follow Your North Star Without a clear, recognizable goal that we know we can achieve, it’s easy to find ourselves rewriting from a place of fear: driven by a deep anxiety that our screenplay is just not good enough ...

COCO (Part 2) - The Power of Vignettes As we discussed in Part 1 of this podcast, sometimes it only takes one moment to find the structure of your script— the moment where everything comes into clarity and you understand where your movie is really going to live. For the writers of Coco, that place was the real meaning of Dia de Muertos. The real theme of the story. It was that theme that drove every creative decision they made, every structural turn in their character’s journey. But that structure didn’t grow from a big idea about Dia de Muertos, even though that big idea helped to guide the writers. The structure of Coco grew out of a single moment, and a single song: Remember Me. In fact, it’s from the execution of the very first performance of that song that the whole structure of Coco, and the whole structure, not only of Miguel’s journey, but also of Ernesto’s and Imelda’s and Abuelita’s and Hector’s and every other character’s is formed. You can think of writing as a process of excavation. It begins by searching for the right place to dig, (which often requires, as we discussed in last week’s podcast, digging in many wrong or seemingly unrelated places). And once we find that right place to dig, the place where the story really lives, it’s about digging as deeply as possible, right in that same place, so we can fully excavate every bit of beauty that lives there.   There’s a great anxiety that often overcomes us as we seek the place where the story really lives— a fear that the script isn’t good enough or the idea isn’t good enough or that our craft isn’t good enough, or our structure isn’t good enough or that we aren’t good enough. And that anxiety causes us to look outside of ourselves for the answers— trying to find the right plot or the right characters or the right trick ending or the right idea for what the heck is supposed to happen! And as a result, rather than finding inspiration, we end up finding cliches. Rather than finding the story that only we could tell, we end up finding the story that everybody else is already telling, rather than finding the characters that already live inside of us, we end up finding the ones we’ve already met in other movies. Because ultimately, the real answers don’t lie outside of our scripts. They don’t lie in formulas or outlines or plans or plots. The real answers reside inside. Inside the scenes you’ve already written. Inside the scenes that resonate most truthfully for you. If you ever feel like you don’t know what needs to happen in your script, the problem is not “out there” it’s “in here.” If you don’t know where to go, it means you don’t know where you are. It means something is not fully executed, fully true, fully resonant, fully excavated in the pages you’ve already written. Because once you’ve got that one element of truth, that one thing that you know is right, it will not only show you everything else you need to do, it will also show you exactly how you need to do it. Which is why it’s so important to be fully present with your characters and yourself as you write each scene of your movie. Not to be serious with it or forceful with it, or heavens forbid to manipulate it toward the plot point you’ve planned for the future. Not to get it right in the first draft, but rather to look at the first draft as research— a place to find that crazy little detail (like the fact that a Xolo dog’s tongue tends to loll out the side of his mouth) that eventually is going to bring your scene totally to life. The goal is not to control the scene, but rather to explore it. To hold it lightly in your hand and simply observe it. To see, feel and hear everything, searching not for the things you planned but the things that surprise you, the things you didn’t expect to happen, or that cause an unexpected, strong emotional reaction in you— a laugh, a tear, or even a feeling of shame or failure.

COCO (Part 1): The Script & The Research By Jacob Krueger This week, we’re going to be discussing Coco, the new Pixar movie by Adrian Molina & Matthew Aldrich. If you haven’t seen this beautiful film yet, then you should run to the theatre immediately, because not only is it perhaps the most visually stunning Pixar film yet, but also one of the most structurally interesting for us to learn from as screenwriters and as filmmakers. Often, when you see a film that’s as perfect as Coco, you imagine that these writers must know something that you don’t. That maybe they worked backwards from their perfect ending, or started with the perfect idea. But the truth is, Molina and Aldrich’s approach to this film was a journey in itself-- a journey they took with director Lee Unkrich of 7 years into research of Mexican culture, and the traditions of Dia De Muertos, into wrong ways and missteps. In other words, it was a process of rewriting. In fact, the first draft of the story was about an American kid with a Mexican mother, traveling to Mexico for Dia de Muertos and learning to let go of someone he loved and lost. As an early draft, the idea made perfect sense. They wanted to teach an American audience about Dia de Muertos, so what better technique to do so than to bring us in through the eyes of the main character who didn’t know his own culture. Because it was built around Dia de Muertos, they knew it had to wrestle with the theme of death, so what better idea than to tell a story about letting go of someone you’ve lost. They wrote the whole script, and even got as far as developing art for the project, before they finally realized they were telling a story that, as Unkich put it, “thematically was antithetical to what Dia de Muertos is all about. We were telling a story about letting go. And Dia de Muertos is about never letting go. It’s about this obligation to remember our loved ones and pass their stories along.” Writing is a search for the truth. A mining of our subconscious to find the real characters that live there, the real themes we’re wrestling with, the real structure that can take us where we need to go, the real meaning that makes our movies matter. In this way, it’s a process by which we find out who we are-- just like the main character of Coco, Miguel, finds out who he is and what he believes in, by exploring his art and his voice as a musician. And sometimes that means realizing, just like Miguel does, that we are staring at half a picture, that our assumptions about our story or our character or our plot don’t match the truth, that we’re not telling the story we think that we’re telling. Sometimes we find the truth through researching the world of our screenplay-- and sometimes that means digging in lots of places to find where the truth lies. It might seem obvious by the final draft that the theme of the movie and the structure of the character’s journey needed to tie together with the meaning of Dia De Muertos. But sometimes it takes writing that early draft, or even several drafts that go totally in the wrong direction, before you uncover the source of the feeling that “something is off” and start to discover what the story really needs to be. It may seem obvious by the final draft that an adorable animal character could generate some laughs for the audience. But who could have imagined that the fabulous dog in Coco, Dante, would spring from research about the Aztec traditions from which Dia de Muertos grew? The Aztecs believed that a Xoloitzcuintli hairless dog was necessary to bring a spirit from the land of the living to the land of the dead. And this research led the writers into even more esoteric research about that breed of dog, and the discovery that Xolo dogs teeth tend to fall out, causing their tongues to loll out the side. And who could have predicted that it was from that research, barely even connected to the idea of Dia de Muertos,

Stranger Things 2 Part 2: The Structure of Two Seasons By Jacob Krueger In last week’s Stranger Things 2 Podcast, we talked about the way a TV pilot starts up the engine of a series, and the challenges, especially in a TV Drama series like Stranger Things where everything changes at the end of the first season, of getting that engine started again in Season 2. Because the main structural elements that drive the engine of the show have mostly been resolved by the end of Season 1, the first episode of Stranger Things, Season 2 ends up functioning like a new pilot, trying to get the engine started again to launch us into the second season. But while the pilot of Stranger Things, Season 1 dropped us right into the heart of the action, and rocketed the characters into the story from the very first page, the first episode of Season 2 gets that engine started in a far less effective way. And that’s because the pilot of Stranger Things, Season 1 is built around a rock solid Primary Structure-- the way the things the characters want and the choices that they make and the obstacles they must navigate, shape characters’ journeys and push them out of their normal world from the very first page. While the first episode of Stranger Things, Season 2 is focused mainly on the Secondary Structure-- the way the audience experiences the episode. As a result, Stranger Things, Season 1 launches us into the engine of the series from the very first page, just as you must if you want to sell a pilot for your own series, or use your pilot to get staffed on an existing show. Whereas the first episode of Stranger Things, Season 2, for its many good qualities, starts us off with more of a whimper than a bang.   It’s a problem that the Duffer Brothers manage to correct in a big way by Season 2, Episode 2, when they finally get that engine started. But it’s one which you, as an emerging writer, are unlikely to survive at this point of your career. Because until you’ve got a hit series on the air that everyone loves, the chances are that if your first episode doesn’t launch us into your series with the force of a rocket, no one’s ever going to read Episode 2. For that matter, if your first few pages don’t launch us into your series with the force of a rocket, no one is going to even finish the pilot. So what’s the structural difference between the Stranger Things, Season 1 pilot and the first episode of Stranger Things, Season 2? At every moment of Stranger Things, Season 1 the characters are facing obstacles and making choices that change their lives forever. And at most moments of the first episode of Stranger Things, Season 2, they quite simply are not. In the pilot of Season 1, the characters are living their lives for themselves. And in the first episode of Season 2, they are establishing their lives for the audience. So let’s break it down together. The pilot of Stranger Things, Season 1 starts with a bad ass chase sequence. We start by panning down from the stars, and find ourselves at the lab, a location that is going to end up mattering a lot for us. We’ve got the flashing lights, we’ve got the scientist running in the wrong direction, we’ve got that horrifying scene where the scientist finally makes his way to the elevator, only to be be snatched up and out of sight just as the doors close. And even though we’re dropped from there into the quiet, mundane world of the kids playing Dungeons & Dragons, even in that scene, The Duffer Brothers are not simply “establishing” that the kids play Dungeons & Dragons. Already the characters are facing huge obstacles and making huge choices that affect their lives and their relationships forever. And for that reason, in Stranger Things, Season 1, we can feel the story start right away. We meet Mike, the Dungeon Master, who wants all his friends to work as a team in the game, and introduces the obstacle of the Demogorgon to test them.

Stranger Things 2 Podcast: Part 1: Primary & Secondary Structure By Jacob Krueger This week we are going to be looking at Stranger Things, Season 2. And don’t worry if you haven’t seen the whole season, because for this podcast to be valuable, all you need to watch is the first episode. And I’ll save the big spoilers for the end and give you a little warning before we get there. We’re going to be looking at that first episode of Stranger Things, Season 2 in an interesting way-- by comparing it structurally to that unforgettable pilot episode of Season 1, which launched the whole franchise. As I discussed in my two part podcast about Stranger Things, Season 1 the pilot episode of any series does more than just introduce great characters or tell a great story. It creates an engine powerful enough to launch every character in the series into a huge journey-- and a replicable structure for the series powerful enough to last many seasons. But Stranger Things 1 has a particularly challenging structure to replicate in Stranger Things 2. That’s because the whole structure of the first season is built around a simple problem that’s completely resolved by the time we get to the second season! In Stranger Things 1, a little boy named Will is missing, and his merry band of friends friends need to come together in a real-world Dungeons & Dragons quest to find him. Wrapped around this very simple structure are a bunch of wonderfully horrifying elements-- a creature that can only be seen in the shadows, a magical world called The Upside Down that’s only gradually revealing itself, a bunch of creepy-creepy operatives that are ready to kill to protect a secret that even they don’t understand, a mother communicating with her lost son through Christmas lights, and of course, Eleven, a little girl with magical powers who everyone seems to be hunting. But by the time we get to Episode 1 of Season 2, Will is back (at least mostly) in the real world, so there’s no missing boy to build a structure around. By the time we get to Season 2, the terrifying Demogorgon, which once was scary like the shark in Jaws, not for what we could see, but for what we couldn’t-- has not only been flushed from the shadows, but vanquished from them (at least mostly). So we need a new fin in the water to build the terror around.   By the time we get to Season 2, the world of The Upside Down, which we only barely understood, has now been entered and explored. So we need a new mystery in The Upside Down to build the world around. By the time we get to Season 2, the mother, Joyce, can communicate with Will while driving carpool, so we need a new spiritual component that no one else understands to build the relationship around. And by the time we get to Season 2, (at least as far as we know), Eleven is gone. So we need a new magical little girl to build the threat around. In fact, by the time we get to Season 2, the only major structural element we still have going for us from the engine of Season 1 is the creepy operatives. But even they are a whole lot less interesting, now that we have some sense of who they are and what they do… Which means the first episode of Season 2 has to do a lot more than replicate the engine of Season 1. It actually has to re-launch it. In this way, the first episode of Stranger Things, Season 2 becomes a whole new pilot for the series. Which is a big challenge for the writers. But is fortunate for us. Because it gives us the chance to compare a great pilot episode to a good one. It gives us a chance to compare the kind of pilot that can launch us into a new series to one that only works if we’re already in love with that series. And that’s a valuable lesson for any TV writer-- or any film writer for that matter. Because the difference between the Stranger Things, Season 1 pilot and the first episode of Season 2 is the same difference between the original pilot script that’s likely to se...