Write Your Screenplay Podcast

Linus Roache, actor in Mandy, in conversation with Jacob Krueger on the 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, there’s a lot of good things about it, but the character isn't quite believable. And I’ve ended up joining in and trying to help shape things.  So when  you feel like you believe that journey, you go on that ride, and you know an audience is going to follow you, you're like, “Oh I don’t have to make stuff work! It works and I can deliver it.” Jake: Yes, and you can also deepen it too, right? It gives you the opportunity to play against the line or to find a moment of nuance that wasn’t there before, because you aren't building that primary structure. You're playing within it. Linus: That’s right. I think that word you just used, that’s been the big takeaway for me in terms of what I learned spending time with you learning to write: I learned more about structure. As an actor, I tended to be very subjective. You work on your scene, your moment, you make things real in the subjective point of view of your character, and you aren't really given the opportunity to stand back and look at the whole structural piece and get involved. It isn't your movie, not my duck, not my bottle. You know it isn't your movie and that isn't your job. But there are very few actors that actually think structurally. I’ve met one recently. I worked with one and it was fascinating. We were on a TV series together and he actually just inherently had the ability to see structure and he would take things we were doing in a season and say, “What if we did this? What if we did that? What if we did this?" And it would up the stakes for the journey of the characters. In long form TV right now, that’s a joyous ride to go on. But for most actors I think your role actually, your function, is to think subjectively, and actually sometimes come to the writer and the director and say, “No my character wouldn’t do that. That isn't true.” I was on a little indie-- I came back from Boston yesterday-- and in the end I spoke out and said, “This isn't true, what we’re doing isn't real.” We were getting this actress to do something and it just smelled of bad writing. And the irony was, the writer was there and he had actually written it first time round beautifully. But he couldn’t help himself. He just had to further mess with it. It was already good, and he just felt like he had to be doing something, and he actually destroyed his own scene. Jake: I should probably do a whole podcast on that!  How do you actually know when your script is done so you don't overbake it? It is just a big and challenging question. Linus: It is a really great question. I think a good example, I did Season 7 of Homeland and the writing on that show is superlative. My analogy is it is like getting on a Mercedes E class after driving an old Citroen Deux Chevaux. You know they’ve thought it out in the writers’ room. They’ve worked out what they need, what the wants are, what the points of view are. So when you actually hit it, it isn't restrictive to you as a performer. It actually helps you. You're very clear. So, I would occasionally think, “Maybe we should say ‘Da-da’ instead of ‘Da-da-da’” and they would normally come back with, “No, no there is a…” they had actually thought it through already. Because it is, in a sense, deeply personal-- that it is the story you want to tell, you need to tell. So they knew when that writing was done. Jake: Yes,  I think really that’s a really beautiful way of looking at it. And, in a way, the same when you're playing with a performance, right?  “I’m going to try this, I’m going to try that, I’m going to try this.” Linus: Right. Jake: Like an early draft, and then there’s this moment when you start to realize what it is. And you start to go, “No, I know intuitively it has to happen here.” Linus: And I think with great writing, when you’ve actually got it in place, it isn't rigid. When you come to it each time, it is actually fresh. If you truly find it, as an actor and performer and it is well written, you can do it 100 times. You don’t get bored of it. Because it is always alive, because it is true, it is real. It is accurate to that moment with those characters. Jake:  So many writers get sucked into is this idea that they've got to write the commercial thing or write the hooky thing. Linus: Right. Jake: And that works really well if you already have a career, right? Linus: Yeah. Jake: If you're a famous writer and you just made $100 million from your last movie, it is a lot easier to have a good idea and let that be attractive. But in early phases of a career, you have to distinguish yourself from all that stuff that’s "a great concept" but only okay execution. To get somebody to invest in you, you have to give them that thing that’s already complete. You want them to read your script and think, “Hey, this might be a hard project or this might be a new writer, or there might not be another famous person attached right now, but I see how this can work and this is so much better than anything else I’m reading.” Linus: Right, and I think that comes down to one of the things you spoke a lot about-- really, you know, it is true of any art form-- finding your voice and being willing to commit to your voice. Jake: Of course. Linus: And if you have the courage to pursue that-- I mean, you have to dig deep for that sometimes! Some people just have a voice and others of us have to actually fish around, and fight, and struggle and look, “What are these themes that are coming out of me, I don’t really understand them yet?” Then you have to curve them into something that translates and impacts people. When you tell that story that is deeply personal, that it is the story you want to tell, you need to tell, I think that does have impact. It finds its way through a lot of generic stuff, or a lot of  people trying to write formulaic stuff, or trying to fit into the existing structure of Hollywood. I mean, I think the films that I admire,

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, he really did infiltrate the Black Power movement, and he really did infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan. So, as soon as you find out that a black police officer is infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan, the first thing you're going to think is, “how the hell did he pull that off?” And in fact that’s exactly what draws you into BlacKkKlansman— that’s why you go see it. “Hold on, there’s a true story about a black cop who actually infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan? I want to see that movie. I want to know how he did it.” And as soon as you hear the premise, you start telling yourself a story. Maybe it’s an unlikely story about a guy who is wearing a hood all the time so nobody knows— but you’re trying to figure out how this happened. Unfortunately, this presents a challenge in the movie, because the way it happens, at least at first glance, isn't all that dramatic. What actually happened in the true story was Ron Stallworth sent a postcard to the Ku Klux Klan and they called him back at an unlisted number. And it’s true that he developed a phone relationship with David Duke, and it’s true that the Klan wanted him to join and wanted to meet him… So how is he going to pull this off? In the movie, what happens a “white” cop, Flip, played by Adam Driver, poses as Ron Stallworth and goes and interacts with the Klan for him. So the in-person conversations happen with Flip, and the on-the-phone conversations happen with Ron Stallworth— which raises the question of believability. If he can pass for a Klansman, why doesn’t Flip just have these phone conversations and make it all a lot easier? Many critics (who have not done their research) have pointed out this question as one of the biggest problems in the script. It just doesn’t seem credible. But in fact it’s entirely true. So, the first problem is, the “way things really happened” doesn’t seem credible, even though it is. The second problem is that even if “the way things really happened” did seem credible, on first glance it isn't that exciting. The moment we hear the premise of BlacKkKlansman, we start imagining something really exciting: a black cop having to interact with the Ku Klux Klan. Instead, we’re getting a white cop interacting with the Ku Klux Klan and a black cop on the phone. Which, true or not, feels like a bait and switch based on what we imagined we were going to see when we bought our tickets. When writing a true life story, this is a danger that all writers face: sometimes the truth doesn’t seem inherently dramatic. And this leads to a panicked desire to forget about the truth and start making things up. That’s usually the wrong decision. Now don’t get me wrong. The writers of BlacKkKlansman are not bad writers. A really bad writer would make an even more problematic decision than these writers made. A really bad writer would send the black cop in to meet the Ku Klux Klan, get rid of the white cop entirely, and run towards the drama… But pretty soon that really bad writer would find themselves with a much bigger problem than the inconvenient truth of who actually met with the Ku Klux Klan. They’d soon start to realize, having built everything on fiction, that each following choice they make is going to open a Pandora’s box of new credibility issues— because eventually both the writer and the audience are going to realize the same thing the real Ron Stallworth had to realize: there’s no way this guy could pull this off! That the premise just doesn’t work If you run away from the truth when adapting a true life story, you will find your script is floating completely in a fictional world and not in the real world at all. And you’re going to lose your audience and you’re going to lose your character and you’re going to lose your instincts that guide you through the writing process. What a great writer would do is ask themselves a different question: “How do I make the fact that Ron Stallworth isn't meeting the Klan the coolest thing in the movie? How do I make the fact that what the audience expected isn't what the audience is going to get the coolest thing in the film?” And the way you find that answer is by running towards the truth, rather than away from it. Unfortunately, that’s not what these writers do either. What these writers try to do is to run a middle road-- “Let’s make the white cop Jewish, let’s create a lie detector test, let’s create a lot of suspicion among his new white supremacist “friends” that maybe he isn't really an aspiring Ku Klux Klan member, let’s try to build some danger.” But none of this is true, or at least none of this is confirmed. The identity of the actual white cop is unknown, it is still classified, so no one knows if he’s Jewish or not. But Ron Stallworth has been clear in interviews that no, none of these Ku Klux Klan members were especially smart and none of these Ku Klux Klan members had any suspicion whatsoever that this undercover white cop was anything but a wholehearted Ku Klux Klan member. Rather than running towards what’s really cool and what’s really true about this story, the writers have immediately gone to the easiest solution, the one you’d most expect. “Well since there’s no way a black cop could physically infiltrate the Klan, what if it were a Jewish cop… yeah, that’s a lot easier… and what if there was a member that was onto him… yeah, that would create some drama” Unfortunately, what’s easier for you as a writer is rarely better for the story. I think we can all agree, the premise of a Jewish cop who might get recognized as Jewish is fine… but it’s a lot less exciting than the premise we paid to see-- of a black guy doing the same thing. What we’re served is a lesser version of the same story. More importantly, we’re served it in a way that belies credibility; we don’t actually understand why this is necessary. And this breaks our suspension of disbelief,

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. Willa is used to this. Everybody plays status games with her. She’s used to getting kicked out of family pictures, kicked out of family meetings. But this time, it isn't just Willa that has been kicked out. This time Marcia and Tom have been kicked out as well, and the family bloodline is being clearly enforced because who’s in that room and who’s out of that room really matters. And so this is why we’re going to look not at what’s happening in the room where the big drama is happening, but at what’s happening outside of the room. We’re going to use this scene from Succession to talk about a concept that’s extremely important to all screenwriters: subtext. Part of what makes Succession such a powerful series, part of what makes the performances so incredible, is the use of subtext by the writers. There’s a tremendous amount of subtext to almost every line in Succession. Which raises the question, what the heck is subtext? What does it actually do? How do you actually create it? For a lot of writers, subtext is just a place of anxiety, wondering, “does my dialogue have enough subtext in it?” without actually having a clear understanding of what subtext is and what subtext does. So let’s define subtext for a moment. Subtext happens when there’s a slight difference between the primary objective and secondary objective of the character. Primary objective is what the character is doing on the surface, and the secondary objective of the character is what the character is doing under the surface. Sometimes this is a conscious disconnect, where the character is consciously talking about one thing in order to imply another. Sometimes this is a subconscious disconnect, where the character truly believes they’re coming for one thing, truly believes they’re acting on one intention, when they’re actually acting on another. We’ve all done this. If you’ve ever broken up with somebody and decided that you have to return to their apartment and get your favorite pair of socks back so that you can finally have closure, you're consciously telling yourself the primary objective: “I’m going to go get closure.” What you aren't telling yourself is the secondary objective: “I’m going to try to get back together with my ex,” or, “I’m going to try to sleep with my ex.” Sometimes the gap between primary and secondary objective is very conscious. Sometimes it’s under the surface and the character isn't even aware of the secondary objective. They’re only aware of the primary. But what happens— when you can feel that secondary objective bubbling up underneath the primary objective, when you can feel that extra layer of pressure pushing up against what the character is doing on the surface— that’s subtext. When you start to think about subtext in this way, you don’t have to think about subtext like a technique. Instead, you can use your intuition to guide your writing of subtext. You can simply connect to the primary and secondary objective of the character. You can connect to, “What are they doing on the surface?” or, “What are they talking about on the surface?” And then you can feel the pressure between that and what’s bubbling up for them underneath the surface. And there are lots of different things that can bubble up. We already talked about objectives. I want to get closure: primary. I want to get back together with my ex: secondary. But there are other kinds of secondary objectives as well. There are emotional needs.  I want to get closure and get my socks back: primary objective. I want to feel love: secondary objective. I want justice: secondary objective. So sometimes it is a disconnect between a tangible goal and a primal core need driving under the surface, and in order to get in touch with that, all you have to do is get in touch with that primal core need in yourself. You want to feel those two things happening at the same time as you write the character, and just to look for the moment where—“Poof!”—that one thing bursts through the surface. The third kind of difference between primary and secondary objective that can create subtext is something called status games. And status games is something I would love to discuss a lot further in a future podcast. It’s also something that I cover in depth in my Write Your Screenplay classes. Status games are about the dynamics between people as they try to raise or lower their own and each other’s status in order to feel better about themselves. Status games happen all the time. They happen with every relationship, with every character. And I’m not going to go into all the different kinds of status game relationships because that’s a multiple hour lecture. But, if you think about your relationships with your friends, sometimes you raise your friend’s status in order to raise your own. And sometimes you raise your status in order to lower somebody else’s status: “Dude, you know that I know fashion, and that shirt…give me a break.”I’ll give you an example of this: “Hey, look man, you know that I know fashion, and, dude, that shirt looks awesome.” And sometimes you lower your status in order to raise somebody’s status: “Dude, I don’t know a damn thing about fashion, but that shirt is freaking awesome.” And sometimes you lower your status in order to lower somebody’s status: “Dude I don’t know anything about fashion, but that shirt… give me a break.” So there are lots of different kinds of subtext. There’s subtext where it is primary objective versus secondary objective, where you have a conscious goal and an unconscious goal, or a conscious goal and a second conscious goal that are in tension with each other. Sometimes it’s the tension between a primary objective— the conscious goal— and the emotional need underneath. And sometimes it’s the pressure between what’s happening on the surface, which in this example is a little bit of a fashion critique,

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 arrested. And what happens in Succession, just as happens in Arrested Development, is that in each episode Kendall has got to find another way of “saving” the family. Now, Kendall in Succession is a lot less likeable than Michael in Arrested Development. Kendall in Succession is a recovering drug addict—which we can all respect him for—but he’s also a narcissistic asshole who’s just not that bright, who blows every meeting, who has all the wrong instincts, and who’s always focused on himself rather than the people around him. But nevertheless, Kendall has been working his whole life to take over this company. He has a vision of what the company should be (even though he may not actually be equipped to accomplish it).  And he’s the only person in the family who’s really taking the company seriously. And in episode 1 of Succession, just like in episode 1 of Arrested Development, Kendall is poised to take over. It’s been the succession planning all along, just like Michael’s succession had been planned in Arrested Development. In the first episode of Succession, Logan decides that his son isn’t ready and instead tries to give over the power to his wife. Just like, in Arrested Development, at the end of episode 1, George gives the company that’s supposed to go to Michael to his wife, Lucille. And just like in Arrested Development, there are reasons for this that Kendall and Michael don’t completely understand—because both companies are involved in some pretty dark dealings of which their naïve inheritor sons aren't entirely aware. But in both situations, the son feels screwed over by the father and trust is broken. So the structure of each episode, the structure of the season—the way Succession works—is that in each episode Kendall comes up with some way of saving the business (sometimes at the expense of his family), and Logan and Marcia, who each have their own goals and their own intentions, will play and manipulate the children against each other until finally Kendall will compromise his own integrity trying to get what he wants. And this is exactly the same structure of Arrested Development.   In Arrested Development, in each episode, George and Lucille will play the children against each other, until finally Michael makes a decision that compromises his own integrity and gets punished horrifically for it. In Arrested Development, all of these machinations are played for comedy. And in Succession we’re laughing too, but also a part of us is crying. Because in Succession all of these experiences are played with great, dramatic integrity. What’s really interesting is that there are parallels for a lot of the other characters between Arrested Development and Succession as well.Succession we’re laughing too, but also a part of us is crying. Because in Succession all of these experiences are played with great, dramatic integrity.   We’ve already talked about the parallel between the Michael Bluth character and the Kendall Roy character, but there’s a “George Michael” character as well. In Arrested Development, the George Michael character is Michael’s naïve son, who’s desperately in love with Maeby, his kind of twisted cousin, and who’s going to follow her around and try to please her doing all kinds of things that compromise his own values in order to get her approval. In the structure of Succession, the George Michael character is Greg. Greg is a young, down-on-his-luck kid, who’s related to the family even though he barely knows anybody. He’s sent by his mother, after losing his job at a theme park that’s owned by Logan Roy, to go see Logan and get a job. And Greg ends up under the tutelage of Tom. Tom is the fiancé of Shiv Roy, who’s probably the smartest of the Roy children. She’s as close as we can get to the equivalent of the Portia de Rossi character, Lindsay, in Arrested Development. And Tom is kind of like a mix between Tobias and their child Maeby in Arrested Development. He’s this goofy, weird guy. (If you remember from Arrested Development Tobias is the "never-nude" and Maeby is the twisted cousin who always wants to push things a little bit, who always wants to corrupt George Michael a little bit). And Tom ends up playing both of those roles in Succession. Tom is both the odd mentor who is teaching Greg how to be rich, and he’s also the twisted guy who’s using and manipulating Greg in order to get his own desires met and advance his own career and feel more important in the world. So, you’ve got Tom, who’s a Tobias/Maeby mashup, and you’ve got Greg, who’s the George Michael character—the wide-eyed innocent.   And just like in the structure of Arrested Development, those two usually form a B story in each episode. While the main story is happening, they’re off on their own doing a related story. So, you’ve got a parallel structure there as well. And then you’ve got Connor Roy, played by Alan Ruck (who you may recognize as Cameron from Ferris Bueller's Day Off). And Connor Roy is a little bit “off.” His closest parallel in Arrested Development is the Buster character. He’s a slightly more real version of the Buster character. Like Buster, he isn't totally tied to reality, and like Buster, all he wants is to please. Buster in Arrested Development wants to please his mother and is totally under the thumb of his mother. And Connor in Succession wants to please his dad and is totally under the thumb of his dad. Connor has tried to reinvent himself as a relaxed hippie who kind of goes with the flow, but the truth is, like Buster, he’s so insecure that he just doesn’t know how to behave in any situation. Connor, like Buster, is in a relationship that a lot of people would frown upon. In Buster’s case he’s dating his mother’s best friend, Lucile 2, and in Connor’s case, he’s dating a prostitute with whom he’s desperately in love—and who doesn’t love him back. And then you’ve got Roman,

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. If you’ve ever been to an Off-Off Broadway theatre piece, you probably went there supporting a friend. You didn’t go thinking, “Hmm, Off-Off Broadway theatre. I bet I’m going to have a great entertaining experience.” You probably went going, “Oh God, Jimmy is in another play. I hope it isn't terrible so I don’t have to confront him afterwards, but I’m going to show up and I’m going to support him.” And so, as a producer of Off-Off Broadway and Off-Broadway Theater, I knew that my audience was going to come in often feeling like they were doing charity. And that isn't where you want someone coming in, just like if you’re working with a coverage reader you don’t want them coming in expecting to slog through another bad script by an amateur writer. So, what I used to do—most Off-Off Broadway black box theatres don’t have a curtain—so what I used to do was invest real money in the set. I had a wonderful set designer, Niluka Hotaling, and we knew that as the audience filed in, their expectation was that they were going to see a bunch of tables and chairs and maybe some black boxes. And instead they would walk in and see a set that looked like it could be on a Broadway show. Even though it cost me—Niluka was amazing and it cost me a few extra thousand dollars to do that that other Off-Off Broadway plays weren’t spending—the effect on the audience was huge. Because as they sat there waiting for the play to start, they realized, “Oh, maybe I’m going to see something entertaining, maybe I’m going to see something actually good.” Their entire expectation changed, and by changing their expectations, I actually could change their experience of the play, just like when you’re really excited to go see a film it changes your experience. So, from a commercial perspective your first image is the most important image, the first line of action is the most important line. But, it’s also the most important image and the most important line from an artistic perspective. Artistically, what the first image of your screenplay does is set the rules of the world for both you and your audience. It sets the tone of the world, it sets the feeling of the script, it creates a window through which your audience can experience the story of your film—through which they can interpret it. And it also creates a window through which you can interpret it. It creates a feeling in you you can return to which can guide you as you write things—as you wonder, “Should I put this in or take things out?” It creates a feeling, a mise-en-scène, an atmosphere that shows you what this movie wants to be. You can think of it like this, if you’ve ever had one of those terrible dreams where you are off to a job interview and you realize, “Oh my God, I’m not wearing pants!” If you’ve ever had that dream, you know why that dream is so terrifying. That dream is so terrifying because you know that once they see you like that, there’s going to be no recovery. You know that that first image, the way you come in, whether you're wearing a beautiful suit or whether you’re wearing a worn out pair of track pants, is going to change the way they experience you and the way they interpret everything. And it’s going to change also the way you feel about yourself in that meeting. So artistically, the first image of your film gives you a window into the world of your movie, and reminds you what your movie is supposed to be, and how it’s supposed to work. It points towards the themes of your movie and the things that really matter. And what’s cool is that, oftentimes, when you first start writing, you aren't fully aware of your themes. But, simply by pushing on that first image until you find something you haven't seen in a movie before—until you find something unexpected, and fresh, and new—you’ll start to learn, just through the action of closing your eyes and looking or pushing on that image, what your movie is really about. So, the first image of your screenplay is incredibly important commercially, and the first image is incredibly important artistically. But the first image is also incredibly important structurally. In fact, everything structurally in your film is going to build from that very first image. In a well-structured film, if you take the first image and the last image of the film and you put them together, it should tell you the journey of the characters, at least metaphorically. You should feel the journey of the character just by looking at that first image and that last image. So, let’s talk for a moment about the first image of Hereditary. The first image of Hereditary could very well have been a cliché one. In fact, we start out and we’re in a scene that’s very familiar if we’re used to horror movies: we’re in a creepy room and a kind of creepy house, and that creepy room is filled with dioramas, and there’s creepy music playing, and we’re kind of drifting with the camera among these dioramas. And, if we watch a lot of horror movies we already recognize this image. We’ve seen this image in other films. In fact, if you listen to my podcast on Annabelle: Creation you know this is essentially the first image of Annabelle: Creation: we’re in a creepy doll show filled with creepy dolls and a creepy doll’s eye. And that isn't the only film that has done this; there are many horror movies that have done this. So the good thing is that this familiar image is dropping us into a genre that we understand. We immediately know, “I get it. I’m in a horror movie. I get it. Dioramas are creepy.” And, what a lot of us might do when we realize, “Oh my God, I’ve written a cliché image,” is freak out. We might think, “Oh my God, cut it, cut it, I’m wrong, I’m wrong, it’s a mistake!” What great writers do, instead of throwing out that image, is look closer and keep looking closer, until they find something that they didn’t expect.

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. We are writing a wonderful comedy and everything is really funny, and then here is this incredibly dark scene. Or we are writing something that is incredibly dark, and then, suddenly, here is this goofy thing that dropped in. Or, we are writing something that is set in a totally natural world, and then, suddenly, we see some expressionistic, or magical, or fantasy element comes in-- something that feels like it is from a different genre. And oftentimes what we want to do when that happens is just shut it down! “Oh my God what is wrong with me,? Why am I going off on this crazy tangent, or at this crazy angle?” When really what we need to do is bring ourselves back to where we are, and say, “Okay let’s start by noticing what comes up, and then let’s start to adapt it to turn it into what it needs to be.” Jerry Perzigian, who teaches our TV Comedy Classes here has a quote that I really love. Jerry says, “first write it true, and then write it funny.” But if you are studying TV Drama with Stephen Molton he would say the same thing, “first write it true, and then find the drama.” If you are writing an action movie, I would say the same thing, “first write it true, and then find the action and the spectacle to build around it.” As writers, our ultimate job is to tell the truth. But in our final drafts, we need that truth to take a form that fits with all the stuff around it. If we are working on a film like Deadpool 2, where we are working with a character who is supposed to feel, and look, and be, and act a certain way, we need to fulfill the expectations that our audience had set up for them in the first episode, just like we need to fulfill the expectations that we set up for our audience on the first page, or the first act, or the first half of our script. We have to give them what we promised, and then we have to outdo it. If you look at Deadpool 2, it is an exciting film because, just like the original Deadpool, it deals with a lot of stuff that you aren't supposed to deal with in a comedy: suicide, death of a lover, child obesity and anger, child abuse, sexual abuse, murder. And one of the fabulous things about Deadpool and Deadpool 2 is that even though the films are both chock full of violence, Deadpool the character shows a lot of awareness that those bullets hurt, that the actions he is taking aren't necessarily right, that the violence that we see in these films isn't really the society that we want to create for ourselves. So you have this completely immoral character (or mostly immoral) character in a film that actually has a relatively moral message. You have a completely irreverent action comedy that is actually dealing with some very, very, real issues. And although you have a wise-cracking character who never seems to break a sweat, or never seems at loss for a joke, you also have a couple of moments of truly moving character-driven drama between him and his wife. What’s really beautiful about Deadpool 2 that it is able to wrestle with very real, truthful, dark issues without losing that constant comic fun tone that categorizes who Deadpool is and how the series works.   In the original Deadpool this was already hard to do, but in Episode 2 this was actually harder. In the original Deadpool what we have is a creation myth. We have the journey of Wade Wilson to becoming Deadpool, and in that story, we have the story of a guy learning what really matters in life. And even though, as I commented in my first podcast on Deadpool, it doesn’t draw to the traditional moralistic conclusion that you would expect in a superhero movie, Wade Wilson does go on a character-driven journey where he learns that it really isn't all about materialism, it really isn't all about looking good-- that he can actually believe in love. A really beautiful love story grows between Deadpool and Vanessa--his stripper prostitute girlfriend--where these two very flawed people actually find real love together. What that means is that by the beginning of Deadpool 2, we need a completely different kind of journey for the Deadpool character. The first Deadpool is a journey about discovering that love can be real. But, you can’t just go do that again in Deadpool 2, because the character has already gone on that journey! At the same time, if you have studied any TV writing-- and these big-budget action movies do work like TV in that each installment needs to feel the same but also be different-- you know that for the formula of Deadpool, for the engine to work, Deadpool has to go on another morality versus lack of morality kind of journey! It can’t be the same as the first one because he has already learned what love it, it has to be something new. So, Deadpool 2 hones in on a different theme. If the first Deadpool was about appearance versus reality, about a character dealing with the ugliness of his face and learning that he can still be loved for who he is rather than what he looks like, Deadpool 2 is about something different. Deadpool 2 is about family. And Deadpool 2 starts, just like the first Deadpool, with a really beautifully shot, fun, funny action sequence. Deadpool 1 begins with a visually spectacular sequence, but while in Deadpool 1 this was a fun action-fight sequence, in Deadpool 2 it is a suicide sequence. What we watch is a guy who can’t die, doing his best to blow himself up. We meet a Deadpool who is starting the film at a place of total despair. And though he is still wisecracking and fun, we can feel the despair underneath his actions and we can feel the lengths he is going to, to try to end his life. We then flashback to find out why. And what we flashback to is a sequence between Deadpool and Vanessa that is a little bit surprising emotionally and tonally, if you are used to the Vanessa from the previous movie and the Deadpool from the previous movie, because,

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... If you know these kind of details, you will understand why this main character has a hard time at love, and it is almost like a river that starts and it just goes. And the character becomes fabulous, because you’re creating something so original and it is just talking for you, it is like you aren't even writing it anymore. Jake: You’ve worked in so many different worlds, and I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how you approach feature films versus how you approach TV writing, how are they similar and how are they different? Katie: Well, in features there’s an end to the story. So I really think about “where’s this character going?”and “who are supporting characters in the world with them?” and “how do they all connect?”I am like a little more like, “hmm, what’s going on here?” and “how am I going to end it at some point?” And then with a TV show, it is endless, so I think, “what could happen at 100th episode?” “where can these characters go?” “where can the stories go?” It’s almost more freeing to write TV and it’s a lot of fun. Because in TV you can let these characters run and play. Look at Breaking Bad, it is a great example. It was almost like a long movie, six seasons, because he changed and the characters changed, and the stories changed. Jake: You know we have so many students who are working to break into television, and some who’ve successfully done it, which is really exciting. When you were working as a Head Writer, what would you look for in a new writer? Katie: It is all about, “Can they tell a story?  Am I engaged?” And engagement doesn’t mean you open up with a murder or something. Engagement is all about, “Do I want to read the next page, because the character is just insanely brilliant?” Or, there is a story element makes you say, “wow!” and you just want to keep on reading and reading. That is my goal when I am telling a story; I want to be real and authentic with it. You can feel it when it is manufactured, when it is trying to be something it isn't. So, I love being authentic with it. I want you to keep on watching the TV, or not walk out of the movie theatre. Jake: So, one of the things that I always talk about with my students is that there are different phases of writing. You have your Me Draft first , “hey, I am just going to look at what it might be, I am going to let it write itself.” Then you have your Audience Draft where you are like, “Okay now I have to find a way to serve this up in a way that the audience can go on as cool of a journey as I have, so I am going to have some structure.” You have the Producer Draft where you are going to turn up the volume on the hook, so that a producer can realize, “Oh I can sell this!” or an actor can realize, “Oh I want to be in this!” And then you have the Reader Draft where you really clean up formatting. I am curious, when you are working on a TV show, it is such a collaborative environment, and like you were saying, there is like this element of, “I want to just allow the story to tell itself”, and then there is this other element of, “I want the audience to keep turning these pages...” Katie: Absolutely. So, when you are in a writers room, it is a lot of fun because you do the season arc, so you need to know where the journeys are, where the characters are going, what are the story lines. It is a lot of fun to play with that and bounce ideas. We always had a big board and we would just lay it out like, “Where are the stories going?” But they would change sometimes. We needed the structure so we knew where we were going, but sometimes the episode would change, so we would be like, “Oh wait we have got to change this because the character authentically didn’t want to go there.” So, we played that way, and people would balance and it was a lot of fun. Jake: I think that that is such an exciting thing to think about, because a lot of newer writers get really hung up on their outlines. Or there is this idea that when you get to a TV show, you must do an outline and then everyone must play by those rules. What we have really seen with our students who have gone on to TV shows, and having wonderful teachers like you and Jerry teaching how to write for TV, what we have seen is there is an outline but that outline is constantly in flux. And just when you think you know what your story is, someone changes episode 42 and your story changes. How do you develop those skills with an emerging writer so that when they have worked so darn hard to craft that piece, and suddenly the showrunner changes everything, or the network changes everything, or the showrunner and network both want to change something, they have enough plasticity in their writing to adapt? Katie: I think for any writer, you need to be able to be flexible, because it is an art. It is a storytelling art. It isn't finance! And so you have to go with the characters and the story. And you never know why a story is going to change. There could be an actor that gets fired and all of a sudden it is like, “Okay this story is going over here.” Or there is no chemistry between a couple on a TV show and they are like, “Okay we’ve got to break them up”. So, you are always moving and shifting. But it is fun! It is actually fun to move and shift. It is like you are hanging out in the writers room and somebody is like “hey we’ve got a new plan, what are we going to do, let’s figure it out?” Then everyone bounces ideas together, and then we land in the story. Jake: So you actually enjoy rewriting? Katie: I do, I absolutely do. I find usually then it usually gets to the best level at that point. Jake: How do you make rewriting fun for yourself, because I know so many of my students they dread rewriting. “Oh no God please let me be finished!” Katie: Many people get hung up on rewriting and feel like they could rewrite for the rest of their lives.

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,” this script was written exactly the way it needed to be shot. If you are an independent filmmaker, this is the most important lesson that you can take. Usually, if you are an independent filmmaker, it means that your line producer isn't experienced enough to really do their job. And that isn't because your line producer isn't good. That’s because your line producer isn't experienced because you can’t afford an experienced line producer. And usually, you are trying to squeeze in more shots in a day than the professionals are squeezing in, which is crazy because they have more budget and more pre-production than you do. And what ends up happening is all of your days are going to run late, and your line producer is going to start making cuts because you don’t have time, and your director, who is likely as inexperienced as you are, is going to start figuring out on the fly “what do I need?” But if you do this work on the page, like John Krasinski did, starting with a great script and then rewriting and rewriting until it’s written exactly the way you imagine your editor will cut it, then you can control your budget and the ultimate success of your film, regardless of how little money you have or how compressed your production or post-production schedule may be. And on A Quiet Place that’s exactly what they did! Although they did a little bit of rearrangement in the editing room, they actually cut it on the page exactly the way they wanted to get it shot and edited---each image written on the page in exactly the way they were going to shoot it. What Krasinski did was he took a great script, the early draft we referenced in the last podcast, and revised it until he had isolated each of those visual moments of action, and that allowed him to know exactly what he needed as a director. But that also allows you flexibility and huge budget savings when something goes wrong. When you don’t get your location, or it starts to rain, or you’re running behind and you don’t have the budget to pay overtime---you can actually make the cut on the page and see how it is going to affect the rhythm and the tone of your script. And your inexperienced line producer isn’t going to be able to predict this. And trust me, if you’re doing a low budget movie, your line producer is almost certainly inexperienced, since you’re not going to have the money to hire an experienced one.   The chances are, your inexperienced line producer has already under-budgeted your production. And if you write non-specific action, like “Jake is recording his podcast” it’s just going to exacerbate the problem. Your inexperienced line producer isn't going to think, “Jake records his podcast, what are the shots I’m going to need to convey that in a captivating way?” He’s going to think, “Jake sitting at a desk, one shot, bang, bang, done!” But if you write those isolated visual moments of action like we discussed last week: “Jake’s hands tip the microphone towards his mouth. His lips move within a bushy grey beard.” Instead, he is going to realize, “Oh, I need to get in a shot of that hand. I have got to get the close shot of that mouth. I have got to get hair and makeup to make sure that beard looks right for that close shot.” When you learn to do this work in your screenplay, you are actually going to be writing better than the professional screenwriters. Most professionals don’t have time to do this, and because of their reputation they don’t have to do it. They can throw it back to the director and go, “Hey, here is the story, get the gist.” They can think of it like it is a blueprint. But, you as a young writer, an emerging writer---or if you are planning to self-direct, if you are working on a low budget, or if you are trying to break through to Hollywood, or if, as they did in A Quiet Place, you are actually doing both---you are thinking you are going to make this yourself, and meanwhile your agent is out there shopping in Hollywood… and everyone says “no.” But, finally, Michael Bay says yes, because he sees it and feels it and experiences it, and he knows it is going to work. If you actually do that kind of writing, you are going to save yourself so much money, or you are going to make yourself so much money, and you are going to give your film so much better of an opportunity to actually get made. And that’s all we want. At the end of the day we want our movies to get made and we want our movies to be great.   And writing in this way protects you. It protects you from producers. It protects you from coverage readers. It protects you from inexperienced line producers. It protects you from inexperienced directors. And let’s say that film was made not by John Krasinski. Let’s say that the director hadn’t been such a brilliant filmmaker who could come to that original script and do his own revision and make it even stronger. When you write this way, if you get stuck with an average producer or an average director, you’ve given them something that they can actually shoot. You haven't given them a blueprint that they have to figure out---that they need special expertise like an architect does to read. You’ve given them something that translates directly to that little movie screen in their mind. So, the first element Isolated, the second element Visual. The third element is called Moments. Moments mean we are going to see the greatest hits. We’re not going to see all the stuff in between. If you were writing a play, you would watch the character enter, walk across the rooftop, say “hi” to the other character and then leave. They would have to actually track all that little detail, and that is why a play is actually very little action, because we go, “Ah, we will figure that out on the stage.” But when you are writing a film, we have the power of the cuts---these isolated visual moments of action---and that means we only need the greatest hits moments, the moments that create the impression,

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. These aren't dogs that act like dogs. This isn't a political landscape that looks like a real political landscape. This is a satire of the most ridiculous part of our human nature. This is a movie that looks at the ridiculousness of racism, that looks at the ridiculousness of deporting people based on what they are rather than who they are-- in this case, the fact that they are dogs-- which is just as ridiculous as banishing someone from the United States because they happen to have been born in Mexico, or some other country. This is a movie about totalitarian law and corruption. This is a movie about playing the media. This is a movie about the way that actual science gets dismissed in favor of politics. This is a movie about the fact that our leaders tend to be puppets that are manipulated by much darker forces behind them. This is a movie about the idea of equal debate in a world where total falsehoods and totally true statements are given equal weight. This is a movie about a black dog and a white dog who don’t realize that they are brothers because they seemed to have come from such different backgrounds. This is not a movie about a bunch of stupid dogs, and it’s not a movie about Japan—it is a movie about us. What is wonderful about Wes Anderson--and this is such an important thing if you are writing a political movie-- What’s so wonderful about him is that he managed to make a political movie without making us feel political. Without getting up on a soapbox. Without isolating the people on the other side but rather, holding up a ridiculous, magical mirror in which we could examine ourselves and maybe change what we believe. A lot of us are mad about politics right now. A lot of writers are mad about politics. And a lot of writers who don’t agree with my politics (and I am somewhere far, far, far, to the left), are equally angry about politics right now. If you watched the reboot of Roseanne what is incredibly powerful and what made that reboot so darn effective and successful is that, like Isle of Dogs, rather than getting up on a soapbox and preaching to the choir, it trusted its audience to form their own opinion. Which is interesting, because we’re talking about two writers on completely different sides of the political spectrum: One, Roseanne Barr, an unabashed Trump supporter, and the other, Wes Anderson, making an allegory about racism and xenophobia in a magical dog hating Japan. But both writers take the same approach, which is basically to say, “Hey, we trust our audiences to form their own opinions. Rather than getting up on a soapbox and moralizing, what we are going to do is we are going to give our audiences a chance to look at themselves.” Both Isle of Dogs and Roseanne make their political points by transcending politics-- and focusing instead on the heart of all screenwriting-- by focusing on characters, and relationships and the things that really matter to us. If Isle of Dogs is  a poetic masterpiece set against a ridiculous world, Roseanne is a couch, a studio audience, and a bunch of laugh lines, set against a very real world. In Roseanne what happens is we get to look at a family that we love and that loves each other, Roseanne has always been the symbol for white trash dysfunction, a family that is so messed up, but underneath it really loves each other. That’s why Roseanne was welcomed into so many houses and so many homes for such a long time with so much success. Because Roseanne gave us an opportunity to laugh at ourselves, but also to see ourselves clearly, not as the perfect people that we are supposed to be, but as the totally messed up but well intentioned people that we actually are. It allowed us to see our families that way. And our friends that way. And even the people we don’t agree with that way. Who would have thought that a reboot of Roseanne, might be the thing that actually begins the healing of America in the wake of the horrific political crisis we have been through. That a show like Roseanne would be able to take these two extreme points of view and somehow bring them back together. That a show like Roseanne would help us remember -- you know what?-- at the end of all this, at the end the day we still love each other. Roseanne is going, “Okay look, I believe this, and my sister believes this, and we are estranged over the rift between us so badly that we have forgotten the fact that we love each other. And somehow through humor, comedy and love we are going to agree to disagree, and remember that at the end of the day we are sisters, or we are brothers, or we are family.” That we are actually all the same, and that we are actually all going through the same stuff together. Even the people who support the party and the politicians that you don’t believe in... So, as a screenwriter this is why you are here. You are here to change the social fabric of your world. But that doesn’t mean getting up on a soapbox. In fact if you do get up on a soapbox, if you make one of these moralistic movies about the way things are supposed to be, here is the only thing that you can be guaranteed: the only people who will listen to you are the people who already believe what you are saying. You are going to be preaching to the choir and you aren't going to convince anybody. But, create a show like Roseanne and you give people a chance to actually look at themselves, to actually look at how ridiculous, and how beautiful, and how loving, and how messed up we all actually are. You give them a chance to actually come out the other side and remember who we can actually be. So, Roseanne takes one model, “Hey let’s look at this honestly, let’s look at the real intentions and the real misconceptions, and the real extremes on both sides, and let’s show America a model for how those two sides can actually come together, not in perfect harmony but in beautiful dysfunction.”

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, a lot of us get way too aggressive with that child, and I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that. Audrey: I was thinking of a story. A parent plants some seeds in the ground, and they are supposed to be flowers. And three days go by, and the parent is like, “Well why aren't these flowers yet?” And they dig them up and they’re still seeds! Covers them up, waters them. Next day, waters them. A week goes by and the parent is like, “What is going on here, where are the flowers?” and he starts stamping on the dirt. That’s sometimes what we do to ourselves. “Why don’t I have this done? Why didn’t I write the pages I said I would?” And instead of just watering the seed and saying, “Hey let me just spend five minutes doing something, fifteen minutes, let me look for the good,” we are stamping on it, because we are angry that the flower hasn’t bloomed. It doesn’t work like that. Jake: I think that metaphor that you just gave of digging it up is such a powerful metaphor. Because we do this to our scripts all the time. You start something and it is something you believe in, but it is in an early form. It is still a seed. It isn't a plant yet. Or, you expect it to be a flower, but it turns out it is a beautiful tomato plant. And instead of trusting that the material is going to take the shape that it needs to take, sometimes we end up just digging it up, or reinventing it, or throwing it out, or giving up on it, or trying to shape it into something that it doesn’t want to be. Audrey: You know, it’s funny, when I was a kid I used to write poetry. And I never thought much about it; I never thought it was good or bad, I just wrote. And that is the freedom of a child-- who knew that this was poetry! It is beautiful poetry. Some of it was a little deep and sad, but I look back on it as an adult and I think, “Oh my, if I sat down to write with all that stuff we do to ourselves as adults, I wouldn’t have had that beautiful poetry.” Which makes me think about-- I call them filters through which we see life. You know, if you write something and then you think it is great, and then you look at it the next day and you are like, “Oh this is a piece of trash!” Don’t throw it away. Because three weeks or a year from now you might look at that and you are like, “Oh my God, did I write this?” Even daily our own filters change. Jake: Yeah, it is interesting because that happens with feedback as well. Most scripts that go out aren't really ready to go. Most people rush it. They still have the seed, and they are trying to pretend it is a plant-- it is very easy not to put enough time in as a gardener, or to kind of see the beginning and go, “Let me duct tape and chewing gum some leaves on there and we will just pretend it is full grown.” But, every once in a while you have a script that really is ready to go. You have really done the work and you have created something that is beautiful to you,  that is surprising to you in some way-- that maybe goes even beyond what you expected it to do. And sometimes that happens and you have to recognize that other people have filters too. You are going to get a lot of very negative feedback sometimes. And it is important to recognize what happens as an artist that if you let all that feedback bounce you around, if you react at every bit of advice and every bit of feedback. Don’t get me wrong , I believe in mentorship. I would be nowhere without my mentors. And that is what we try to provide here at the studio, that kind of mentorship so that you have people to bounce ideas off of. But, there is a big difference between bouncing ideas and being told what to do. And there is a big difference between the kind of feedback that opens a door for you, and the kind of feedback that tries to force you to do something that serves somebody else’s filters but not necessarily your own. Audrey: And that is one of the things in The Inner Game that we are doing. If any artist knows the core is safe, the core of who they are is safe, it is so much easier to hear feedback, because it’s not about you. And so in The Inner Game what we are looking at is: how do we change the voice in the back of your head, so that you know you are safe no matter what? And then you can hear what we call criticism or whatever, take in the parts that work and still stay true to your voice and what you believe. Jake: I always think of it like going to the ocean. It is wonderful to get wet, but you can’t take the whole ocean home with you. So when I’m getting feedback, I want to let the waves wash over me.   It is a process. Like all writing, it is a process of trust. You need to trust that the part of you-- the parts that you hold on to, the parts that actually seep into your clothes, or that actually gets you wet when that water washes over you-- those are the parts you need right now. And sometimes that means letting other parts wash back out to sea. That doesn’t mean that they won’t be really valuable things to learn later. But there is a trust process that happens-- that the sea is going to bring those ideas back to you. If you just keep on pursuing your art that those waves will keep coming in. Audrey: Oh my goodness I must have been in my late 20s, I was taking a class, every week I would just argue with the instructor and I was like, “But this doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t make sense.” At week number six she said probably the same thing and I said, “Why didn’t you say that five weeks ago?” And she said, “But I did!” Either she changed the wording slightly or finally I was ready to hear it. Jake: I had a teacher like that too, Joe Blaustein, who was a wonderful painter that I was lucky enough to study with in Los Angeles. And I learned a lot about feedback from Joe because Joe would never tell you what to do. Joe would come around, he would look at your painting and he would be like, “Just take a look at this area right here,