Write Your Screenplay Podcast

This week we are going to be talking about BoJack Horseman, but we aren't just going to be talking about the series, we are going to be talking about one very particular episode, and doing a really deep breakdown: Season 4, Episode 9 which is entitled Ruthie. A lot of the times when we talk about television, we talk about TV bibles, we talk about the idea that every show needs to have an engine, a structure that is replicable, that can be done again, and again, and again. Selling a series is like selling a franchise, like selling a McDonalds or Starbucks-- you are selling not just the brilliance of your writing, or the brilliance of your idea, you are selling the replicability of it. You are selling the ability to do it again, and again, and again, even if the writing team changes, even if the showrunner changes, even if the directors or in this case the animators change, that you have the same engine again, and again, and again. And so, what is really exciting about this episode is that it shows what starts to happen, once you really understand your engine, once you really understand the formula for your series.You can start to play within it, and then you can also start to play against it. You can start to open up new avenues of what your series can be, especially, once you’ve established what it is for both your audience and for yourself as a writer. What is really interesting about this episode is, we don’t start in the present, we start in the future, we start with Princess Carolyn’s great, great, great, great, great, great, great granddaughter, who is telling a story about her ancestor, Princess Carolyn. Now, if you don’t watch BoJack Horseman, let me catch you up a little bit about how this series works. BoJack Horseman is both the most ridiculous and the saddest series that you will ever watch on television. It is an animated send up of Hollywood, in a world in which some of the people are people and some of the people are part animal. And, the animal-people are basically just people except they have certain animal traits… Pretty wild concept already for a series! And generally in the series, what happens is we watch BoJack Horseman, who is the ultimate narcissistic movie star, and we watch the funniest possible trainwreck we could ever watch as BoJack consistently makes his own universe harder, and harder, and harder. Princess Carolyn is BoJack’s former lover and former agent, and Princess Carolyn is a cat who is dating a mouse, and her mouse is pretty much the perfect man. And all Princess Carolyn has wanted for the whole season is just to get pregnant, and it is just not happening. Usually we would watch Princess Carolyn’s story as a B story in an episode. But in this episode, Princess Carolyn’s story becomes the A story. Now how do you get away with this, you aren't supposed to just be able to reverse the whole structure of your series; you’re not supposed to just change up what you’ve been doing especially in a series as successful as BoJack, why did they get away with this? Well, what is interesting is they don’t just get away with changing the focus; they also get away with changing the structure, because we are actually going to the future. And we are going to start off watching Princess Carolyn’s great, great, great granddaughter tell the story of Princess Carolyn’s awful, awful, awful day. So the A story is going to be Princess Carolyn’s journey, the B story is going to be BoJack’s story, and the C story is going to be this unusual thread that starts in the future, and then flashes back to our present. And what is really cool is this is something that the series has never done before. There have been times where we flashback to the past into BoJack’s story, or even into BoJack’s mother’s story, but, there has never been a point where we have flashed from the future back to the present. So, what is happening is the engine of the series, the rules of the series, are actually getting complicated. We are starting to riff on the basic structure which is that we are going to watch BoJack Horseman destroy his own life, but instead we are going to flip it and we are going to focus on Princess Carolyn and her terrible, terrible day as reported by her great, great, great granddaughter. Why does it work? The real purpose of a bible or of an engine, is to make sure that the audience comes back, and every time they get the same feeling but also something different. So, when an audience comes to watch a TV show, you want BoJack Horseman to feel like BoJack Horseman; you want it to feel like BoJack Horseman in every episode. You don’t want one episode to feel like BoJack Horseman and another to feel like Curb Your Enthusiasm, even though both pieces are about similarly narcissistic Hollywood characters. You want the show to maintain its integrity. So, here are the things that are consistent in the show, is every episode is going to be filled to the brim with pun, and of course this episode is no different: it is pun on top of pun on top of pun. In every episode, we are going to watch a character who is loved by the people around them, make all the wrong choices that end up destroying their own lives. And always, we are going to watch this happening in the funniest way possible; we are going to be surprised when those tears end up hitting us. And what this episode does so brilliantly is that even though it completely changes the structure focusing on Princess Carolyn and reducing BoJack to a B story. Even though it creates a random C story (usually the C story would be Todd and Mr. Peanutbutter and those characters make brief cameos in this episode). Even though all those things are happening differently, the end product does the same thing. And what is really amazing is how the end product does the same thing in a way that still feels funny. Jerry Perzigian, who teaches our TV Comedy Classes here at the studio, is an Emmy Award winner. He was the showrunner on Married with Children, The Golden Girls, The Jeffersons. He was a writer on Frasier. If it was a hit show in the 80’s or 90’s Jerry was on it, or he was running it. He has a really interesting way of teaching: he actually runs his classes just like real writer’s rooms, where basically on your day you pitch your project to the class and everyone collaborates together on structure, and engine, on characters, on jokes. And Jerry has a quote that I really love, which is this: “First you write it true, and then, you make it funny.” And I think this is such a powerful lesson for screenwriters and TV writers which is, the tone is something that you can control. And what is interesting about this episode: this episode is about Princess Carolyn’s terrible, awful, awful day. It is so freaking dark. this episode is about a woman whose only desire is to have a baby, and guess what, she is not going to have it. And, this is about as dark a topic as you can handle. And this is a comedy; you aren't supposed to be doing this. So, how do they keep the tone from getting so dark that we would lose the fun and the laughter that brings us to a series like this? How are we supposed to laugh at Princess Carolyn’s miscarriage? Well, the magic is actually in that structural game they are playing --by flashing into the future -- because the mere existence of this little girl from the future telling the story of her ancestor, lets us know as an audience that it is okay to laugh, that it is okay to have some fun, that as awful and dark as all this stuff gets, it is still going to be okay at the end. In other words that little opening sequence controls the tone of the piece, it allows the audience the permission that the audience needs to enjoy themselves. And this is the brilliance of BoJack Horseman, and we have seen BoJack Horseman play these kinds of games with us before, if you think about BoJack’s experience with his Deer Friend in earlier seasons, BoJack is constantly walking the line between tragedy and comedy, between laughter and pathos. And it is walking it in the most ridiculous way, because the writers of BoJack are geniuses with tone. And here is the important thing to remember about tone, and it goes back to Jerry Perzigian’s quote tone you can control, you can allow anything to have any tone you want as long as there is truth underneath it. Tone is like the plate on which you serve your screenwriting or your TV writing. And simply by changing the plate or changing the arrangement, you can actually completely change the tone of any scene. A wiser man than me once said, “Comedy is just tragedy without empathy.” But what BoJack actually does is somehow manage to create comedy that is both tragedy and empathy that actually lets us feel and also lets us laugh at the same time. So, first what happens is they break their own rules, but, they break their rules for a very specific reason, because they need that permission, because, otherwise, this thing is going to go off the rails into darkness. So, first they write it true and here is the story of Princess Carolyn’s very, very, very, very dark day, and guess what, it is too dark. And this happens to us all the time in our writing, we write something and we aren't controlling the tone, we are going off the rails, we are losing the genre of the piece. We’re not watching The Crown here, we are watching BoJack Horseman. It has to feel like BoJack Horseman. But, rather than just rejecting the idea, well I guess Princess Carolyn can’t have a miscarriage because that is too freaking dark, and too freaking sad, instead what happens is we run towards it. We write the truth and then play around to create the tone that we need in the execution. So, it is always okay to break the rules, it is okay to break the rules in your own writing, it is okay to break the rules in a series, it is okay to break the rules in a feature,

This week we are going to be talking about The Florida Project, by Sean Baker and Chris Bergoch. I am so excited to be talking about this film, especially a week after the Oscars, because this is a film that probably should have been competing for Best Picture. Bria Vinaite probably should have been competing for Best Actress, and Sean Baker probably should have been competing for Best Writer and Best Director. If you haven't seen The Florida Project yet, I am going to try to avoid spoilers until we get to the end, and I’ll give you some warning first. What Sean Baker did in this film, like what he did in Tangerine, if you listened to my Tangerine podcast, is really quite inspirational for any writer and quite complex, in its structure and its form. Sean Baker shot Tangerine on about 600 grand. He shot it on an iPhone-- a feature film shot on an iPhone! And he shot this movie in a budget somewhere around 2 million dollars. So these are extremely low budget films. Beautiful, successful, powerful, low budget films. Which is very exciting if you are an emerging screenwriter. As an emerging screenwriter, you can take the success of The Florida Project as a sign that you can do this yourself. You can do this yourself at a very high level, and you don’t need a lot of money. Here is Willem Dafoe, who has obviously done some huge movies, who isn't doing this film for the money-- who is doing this because someone has written a beautiful role that he just needs to play. And seeing the performances that Sean Baker, second time in a row, has gotten out of these extremely inexperienced actors—Bria Vinaite along with little Brooklynn Prince, who gives one of the finest performances you could ever ask for, and she is seven years old-- shows you just how much you can do with very little if you have the right script and the right actors. I also want to talk about the form and the structure of The Florida Project. Because The Florida Project is not put together like most movies we see at the theater. Rather than hurling us into the action, or into the plot of the film, it just kind of drops us into a world. And lets us wander with the characters through that world, watching their lives as if we were living them. Watching The Florida Project is like watching Beasts of the Southern Wild in pastels. You might feel like you’re just drifting through a world, but you’re actually being propelled on an extremely powerful journey, into the experience of some extraordinarily compelling characters whose lives are changing forever, and whose journey will change the way we see ourselves and our world. The Florida Project is an incredibly hopeful film that takes place in a world that should be filled with despair. It takes place in a rundown motel just outside of Disney World, where a bunch of low income families are attempting to raise their children in these tiny little one bedroom motel rooms. The movie is primarily seen through the eyes of children, and it centers around a really complicated and beautiful relationship between six year old Moonee, who is played by Brooklynn Prince, and her mother Halley played by Bria Vinaite. Moonee is not quite old enough to recognize her mother’s problems, her destitution, her desperation, her drug addiction, her violence, her despair. Instead, she sees her mother through the eyes of any child-- through these beautifully idealistic, Disney World, pastel eyes. This child who is having the time of her life, in her own private Disney World with absolutely no supervision, and absolutely no awareness of the danger that is all around her. And what is gorgeous about this film, what makes us feel connected to these characters, is not that these characters are perfectly good. Because the characters in The Florida Project are not perfectly good-- not the kids, and not the parents. They’re not all doing all the right things all the time. Sean Baker is not “saving the cat” here at all. Because what connects us to these characters is not that they’re doing the right thing, but that they’re coming at life with an open heart, from a place of love. And what is really beautiful about all these characters, no matter what their problems, no matter how misfit they are for being parents, all of these families, all of these people, are coming from a place of love. They all love their children. Some of them are terrible with their children, but they all love their children. They all want them to have better lives. And Halley, in particular, is as fun of a mom as you could ever want. Halley is open to anything, completely non-judgmental of any behavior that Moonee chooses to engage in. She loves and accepts her child exactly as she is, and all they do together is have fun. Of course, Halley is also stoned out of her mind all the time, struggling to make ends meet by mooching meals off of her one employed friend, ripping off tourists on fake perfume and worse, and running a lot of other scams that are incredibly unhealthy for both her and the people around her. But Moonee doesn’t really see any of that. We see it, from a distance, in the same way that Willem Dafoe’s character, Bobby, sees it. Bobby is the incredibly harried manager of this crappy motel, who is like the father to all these troubled children who live there and to all the parents who live there as well. We see these fractured family units where there is no one to watch the kid, where it is impossible to watch the kid, have a job, pay your rent. And we follow the kids as they run wild through a summer of fun, in a dilapidated world just a stone’s throw away from Disney World. And even though The Florida Project appears to have no structure, you are absolutely never bored. So how do you build structure that doesn’t feel like structure? Because in 80% of The Florida Project nothing is happening. 80% of the movie we are just watching a bunch of kids play together. And yet, we don’t feel like it is amorphous or structureless. In fact, we feel totally drawn in and compelled. So what are those techniques that these writers are using and that this director is using to pull us in? The first technique Sean Baker and Chris Bergoch use in The Florida Project is the power of visual storytelling. And I am not just talking about the incredibly beautiful shots, and the incredibly beautiful costumes, and the incredibly beautiful mise-en-scène of this piece in the way it is shot. Because that is compelling and powerful, but ultimately, if that is all you have, you end up feeling like you are in an art gallery. It is fine to look around for a little while, but people tend to browse for a few moments and then they tend to lose attention. What actually roots us in these characters also isn’t just the great performances. And, yes, the performances are fabulous. And, yes, these characters, even these kids, are fully alive on the screen. But guess what? That isn't what roots us into these characters either. What actually roots us into the characters in The Florida Project is a screenwriting and directorial concept called vignettes. As I’ve discussed in depth in earlier podcasts, a vignette is a moment of visual action that captures the essence of the character from the very first moment we meet them. What Sean Baker and Chris Bergoch do such a great job of in The Florida Project is using those vignettes to provide an underlying structure for the character’s journey. They root each of these characters in action, allowing us to immediately understand who they are and what they want. And then they attack those desires with obstacles, to force the characters to make new choices. No matter how small the choice may be, there is always a goal and there is always an obstacle that leads to it. As an example of this, we are going to look at the opening sequence of the film, which culminates in a spitting contest. We are watching a bunch of kids and they have a very clear goal, their super-objective is to have a good time and that is what they do for most of the movie.   They do it in a way that we wish we could. I wish my childhood was as much fun as these kids’ childhoods, although I would never trade my childhood for their childhood either. But, these kids are living in a magic kingdom, in a place where there are no rules and there is no responsibility, and there are no consequences. And, in that beautiful magic kingdom, they start the film. And they are practicing spitting from that balcony of a neighboring motel onto one of the resident’s cars. Oftentimes we think as we are writing, “if I am going to start my movie I need something really big,” but the truth is you don’t need something really big, you need something really small. You need something really small that the characters really want to do; in this case the characters really want to spit on that windshield. And it needs to connect to a super-objective, which is they want to have fun. Then you need an obstacle. In this case the obstacle is the neighbor, who comes out and screams at them and tells them to stop. And what happens? The kids don’t stop; in fact, the kids don’t care at all. The kids end up cursing her out and spitting all over her car and all over her and all over her kids. So, in this case we have a bunch of kids, and all they want to do is spit on the car of this resident of the neighboring motel. And they don’t even probably know the resident; they are just enjoying their little spitting game. They have a want and they are rooted in the action and it is visually fun to watch. And we watch them do a verb. Not sit around in a state of fun, but rather doing the verb, the little goal, the little task that is going to pull us through their story today. And what happens is, the obstacle of the chastising neighbor forces the kids to reveal their how: how they are different from any other children.

*Please note this interview was from 2018.   Jake: This week, I am so excited to be doing something we’ve actually never done before on the podcast: we have two different writers, Doug Jung and Emily Dell. Emily tends to come at things from more of the independent film side, and Doug has been involved in some very famous blockbusters and big name TV shows like Star Trek Beyond and Big Love.   And what’s really cool is that both of these writers have transcended a lot of the genre conventions in their writing-- doing everything from really beautiful, personal, character-driven stories, to big budget action movies and sci-fi. I want to start by asking you both-- when you first broke into the industry, what do you think it was that led to your success? And in the face of the commercial and genre demands of so many different kinds of projects, how do you hold onto who you are and continue to grow your voice as an artist? EMILY: I want to say this, I am still finding my way in, I think this is a long term process and in fact maybe  that one of the biggest “aha!” moments for me being early mid-career but not quite mid yet. I feel like my writing has grown and expanded through the help of friends who are also mentors who have given me feedback and Doug has been one of those. And on the content side, always trying to write what I believe in and write what is connected to me, but also to see how that fits into an organic brand that maybe was part of my identity-- never having a difference between who I am and what I write is a clear part of the way that I look at my art. And I think that is what makes people connect both to it and then to me, and then makes it easy for people to be like, “hey here is this Emily girl and she writes grounded emotional genre because that is also what she loves in life.” So that is one thing that I found to be really helpful lately. But also, as I have been in LA for a while more than a couple of years and I have developed friendships and working relationships, I really tried to listen as much as I spoke, learn as much as I can, ask questions from the people whose work I admire and whose work I seek to emulate, and use that to improve. But also if they someday become comfortable even me and want to form an organic working relationship, then that is something I am obviously very open and welcome to. Doug:  I ended up in a very fortuitous way getting some work in television which you know literally like these sort of freelance things for weird shows, and that enabled me to quit my day job. At that time I also had a very lucky stretch where I managed to bank a little bit of money. But I was able to take this time and I wrote a script that ultimately was picked up, then optioned, and then eventually made. And I suddenly had, in a very lucky way, both a foot in the door in the TV world and a foot in the door in the feature world. And I have just sort of managed to stay in that position this whole time, which is great. But as much as I can say it was hard work and I applied myself, there is an element of luck. And for my case it took a long time, but I do believe that luck is a byproduct of other things that you are doing to put yourself in there. Jake: I feel the same way with my career, almost everything that ever happened to me that was good was luck, but I worked so damn hard to get to that lucky moment. And I think one of the places where I was luckiest was that it happened at a time where I had enough craft to actually back it up. Doug: There is this element that I always see with people in these kinds of panel discussions, or this meet-and-greet kind of thing that I have been to-- you know the most often asked question seems to be: How do I get an agent? How do I get somebody to read this thing? Totally valid, totally get it. But, nobody has the same origin story. Nobody has that thing where it was a particular path that you took. And you kind of have no control over that stuff. You write something, you put it out into the world. Someone is going to love it, someone isn't going to love it-- certainly you can have some direction in how it goes, where it goes, all that sort of stuff. So a lot times I get that question in like panels or film festivals or something and I say, “I don’t know…” I mean in the nicest possible way I say, “I am not really quite sure if you must know somebody, more importantly, what are you doing now?” Because, if you are just going to sit there and say, “I wrote this little nugget of gold, a diamond in the rough, someone just needs to recover it…” a lot of times it isn't like, “Hey, this is this great thing and we love it,” they go, “We like the potential this thing shows, what else are you working on?” Emily: Yeah, it comes along with you doing the work, and you having three or four things ready, or you having the one thing ready that when they do ask for it, and they read it, it is really, really good. Doug: That is exactly right. I think the other thing that you know there is this kind of cliché about writers being on a certain level of the totem pole, but another way that I always try to look at it is that we actually are in the most democratic position in Hollywood. We’re not directors, we’re not production designers. We aren't beholden. We start with nothing other than your time, your imagination, a blank page and you are off. So, you don’t need 50 other people to accomplish the creative thing you are trying to do. There aren’t many places out there, or not many positions other than being a screenwriter, where you can do a whole movie just by yourself. And I have found that as I have been lucky enough to have a career, and do these things, that, more and more, time becomes the greatest commodity. And how you spend that time. Because if you are lucky enough and you are good enough, at some point you can kind of say, “Well I can get work, but now how am I going to spend this time in the best way?” And one of the things that I always find really interesting about talking about mentors and mentoring relationships, there is this idea of “beginner’s mind”, this sort of Zen Buddhist idea that there’s nothing but possibilities, there is nothing but opportunities, and you aren't loaded down by experience, or you haven't developed all these bad habits. And you connect very easily to this part of you that is so wide open. You have access to all these parts of you that I think you can kind of lose a little bit as you start to get a little bit further on in your career. You fall into the conventional world and you start taking on those other voices in your head constantly. And a lot of times, it becomes about beating those voices back and getting back to your authentic thing. Jake: One of my really great mentors was a guy name Joe Blaustein, and he actually—he wasn’t a writer he was a painter—and I used to study painting with him in Los Angeles when I lived out there. And Joe used to say, “Don’t paint on canvas, paint on paper. If you paint on canvas, you are going to start thinking you are making art and you will forget what it is to really be an artist.” He said, “You want to paint on paper. Feel like you could throw it away.” And for me that was one of the most valuable lessons I ever learned as an artist, was this idea that rather than like trying to create the one product that is going to get me where I need to go, losing myself in like the joy and the play and the creativity of childhood. “Hey I want to make something, and I’ve got these characters that want to say something or want to do something,” and the practice of navigating back to that, even as you emerge into your professional career, is challenging, especially as you get an agent and you get projects. I am curious, how do you navigate yourself back to that place? Doug:  I have a hard time connecting with a project if I don’t find that thing in it that feels like it is a part of me. So, if a project is presented to me, or if I have an idea, really taking a lot of time to figure out, “What is appealing about this to me, and what is the thing that I want to say, or how do I connect with it?”   So, for example I recently adapted this graphic novel, a vertigo book called Scalped, which is a crime noir by this great writer named Jason Aaron and it is set on a contemporary Indian reservation. I really didn’t want to let it go, because I knew there was something really great in it and it took me a long time. So, I sort of came to this idea that it wasn’t that I had the direct experience, but what I saw in it was this idea that all of the people in the book are searching for some form of the American dream, like they are trying to get to that aspiration. To me that was an immigrant story, and I am Korean-American, my parents were immigrants. So, now I can say, “Well that is what I can always go back to.” I know that whatever the story and the plot becomes, underneath it all, in my mind I knew that what I am doing is a reverse immigrant story. Now I had a connection-- and when we got to the point of shooting the pilot, I could then talk to the Native American actors we had and say to them, “I am not trying to emulate something that I am not; this is my take on it.” And that is what enabled them to trust me. So, that was one example of finding yourself in some material that wasn’t originally yours, but it also maybe had a very on the surface disparate connection to how you had seen it on paper or whatever. Jake: You’ve done a lot of rewriting work, you’ve come onto a lot of projects where they didn’t originate with you.  I was thinking about your work on Star Trek Beyond where you really use that theme of unity versus independence. And I am curious when you are coming on to a project that already exists,

Jake: This week I am with Sebastian Stan. Many of you have probably seen I, Tonya and Sebastian’s performance in that piece. We are going to have an interesting conversation with Sebastian, looking at I, Tonya from the perspective of an actor and also from the perspective of a writer. And we’re going to be discussing something that is important to a lot of writers, which is understanding how an actor approaches a role, how a script develops beyond the point where you’ve sold it and then into the production side, and how a script evolves. And also understanding what an actor like Sebastian looks for in a script: how you know when that is the role I want to play. So, I wanted to just start off by asking you a little bit about when you first read Steven Roger’s script. What did you connect to about it that made you go, “I’ve got to play Jeff”?   Sebastian: It was kind of a hard one, to be honest, because it was so controversial. He was such a hated character; he was such a hated person in real life. And in that aspect, it was really difficult-- you start wondering whether that is something you could even do or you could even play. There was a lot of judgment there. But, looking at it just as a script, and then as an actor looking at it, it felt like a goldmine. It was always unpredictable. It was tragic at certain times and it was shocking and then it could be funny. And there seemed to be a very strong degree of honesty to it. You’re always looking for how authentic certain voices sound. And later I did find out a lot of the dialogue in the script came from the interviews that he had directly with them-- not to take away from his genius writing-- it just had a very authentic air to it, and I think you look for that. And then as an actor you’re challenged by that because you go, “I don’t know if I could do that… and I can’t stop thinking about it.” And I think, in that case, also them being real life characters had a lot to do with it. The whole thing was so sensationalized that you couldn’t really believe that these people existed or that they were capable of that. And it kind of led on a whole tangent of wanting to search for stuff. Jake: Yeah I think it is interesting because, in a way, all of our stories come from life; even the most fictional stories come from life. And there is an interesting theme in I, Tonya that there is no one truth. Sebastian: Right. Jake: And you know even like the breaking of the fourth wall, like, “Yeah, this didn’t happen like this.” Sebastian: Yeah, and it is interesting the fourth wall because that wasn’t in the script originally. That was the director coming in and suggesting that we break the fourth wall in the scenes. I could have seen Steven Rogers come up with that--but you know, the director just finished his sentence so to speak. So I feel like it is important to find that counterpart in your director. Jake: Yeah I think it is an interesting thing about process for writers in that we see a lot of bad movies come out of Hollywood. And so, a lot of people are under the impression, “Oh I will just give them the idea and then they will figure it out.” But you can see with a movie like I, Tonya when the writer has really done his job, and really built the movie around that theme. what it allows an actor to do with the role to make those kind of creative decisions about how you are going to perform it. Sebastian: I always think it starts with the writing. I think that is the most important and the hardest part. I’ve always thought that actors make better actors with good material, which is why the in plays that you go to at the theatre sometimes end up being such great characters-- like those Tennessee Williams’ plays-- and those writers who sort of fleshed out these characters that you don’t usually get to see so much of nowadays. Steven Rogers-- first of all, two funny things about him as a writer-- One of them is he wrote this part for Allison Janney. Every movie he’s written he has always written a part for her, but he could never hire her, he could never get her. She didn’t even know! Because the director or the studio-- somebody would want somebody else.   And he actually, finally, in writing at the negotiations of this thing told them, “I am not going to do this movie, I’m not giving you the script unless you have her attached to play that part.” And the other thing is, what fascinated me about him was that he wrote this Christmas movie and he apparently just woke up and was like, “Well okay like what is the furthest away I can do anything from a Christmas movie?” Then he saw this 30 for 30:  and he was like, “Oh I, Tonya,” and I am like, “Okay well great, I wish I could wake up tomorrow and go like, ‘well I don’t want to do that theme anymore, I am just going to go onto this theme and produce this.’” Jake: And he is a guy who is famous for rom coms. Sebastian: Yeah I mean, I guess he wanted to change it up and go somewhere else with it. It was a very interesting script in the sense that you had these documentary types to die for, it was very similar to that in the sense that you know they talked to the camera. Jake: So, I want to talk to you a little bit about research. I read some of your interviews about this, and you’ve talked a lot about how you felt, “I am not Jeff Gillooly.” And it was a little hard at the beginning to ask yourself, ‘How am I supposed to see myself in this role?’ And I think it’s interesting for writers because---I know for myself personally-- no matter how much I’m in love with a character, there is a point in the writing where you are like, “This is just the worst character ever.” You kind of fall out of love with them, and you have to find a way to fall back in love with them or to like recognize the piece of you that does live in them, or like the dream that you have that you share with them. And I’m curious about, how do you allow yourself to fall in love with a Jeff Gillooly in order to play him? Sebastian: Well first off let me start with when you approach material, usually you know if it isn't a real person you kind of have free reign---not free reign but you are sort of, you are building a life from what you see on the script. And you by talking to the writer you are kind of going, “Okay this is going to maybe-- it could go here, it could go there.” But here, I didn’t really have that opportunity. It was much more, “This is the guy, so you are going to have to mold more to something.” And in a way, maybe it is difficult because you are stuck in a box. And then in another way it is easier because at least you know where to target, so you are eliminating a lot of time researching stuff that won’t be necessary but you won’t know then unless you do it. And the thing about him was that he is very difficult to read as a person. And then virtually everything that I found on him online was just really sort of negative despicable kind of thoughts people had. There was nothing on him. “What was he like as a child? What was their relationship like when they started, was it always that chaotic? He denied everything, okay why? What does that mean? What is he like now at 50?” So it was kind of a big question mark, except for these videos where I would see him sort of make these terrible faces, uncomfortable, like walking through as he is getting arrested. But again, even when you have a real person, there is a tremendous responsibility for you with that. No matter what kind of person it is, you always have to go back to the script. Because, as an actor, that is your job, that is your map. And what is in the script is what you’ve got to follow. In terms of finding something about him, in a weird way I had to come around and try to blend-- and this was in the script also-- this idea that they were this Sid and Nancy kind of crazy couple. And then Margot and I together basically built on that and tried to piece it in terms of, “okay well was it always like this? Was there a good part of it at some point? Was there a time when they were okay or not? And how did it get to this? Was it because she got more famous? Did he get more scared?” Understanding it like a really unconventional, toxic, terrifying-love story, in a way kind of opened me up to sort of something with him that was a little bit more understandable. Jake: One of the things that I loved about your performance was that for me you really humanized a person that is hard to humanize. Sebastian: Thank you. Jake: And I think this is interesting as a writer as well because you know often times like in your first draft, your character feels like a little bit of a cartoon, or it feels like a little bit like “I got this one aspect of them but I am missing the full life that lives underneath there.” So I always think of an actor as doing a rewrite of my script. But in a good way, in the same way that I would do a rewrite of my script. “Okay what is this really about? What is the one God I’m really worshiping here?” And for me in I, Tonya like it is the God of “there is like no one truth.” Sebastian: Right. As a part of the backbone of what the thing is. Jake: So like at least from my perspective, everything in that script serves it. From the fact that I have a very specific idea of who Tonya Harding, is but it’s not true. But Tonya has a specific idea of who Tonya Harding is and that isn't true either. And Jeff has an idea of who Jeff is and that isn't true. But it also, it is true to him. Or even like Allison Janney’s character. She has a very strong story about how she is a good mom-- Sebastian: In her mind yeah. Jake: And we can see that that isn't true. And then you know the whole movie kind of builds to Tonya basically saying “all the truth is bullshit.” Sebastian: Yes, yeah, you mean like kind of like a button to that thing, so to speak?

If you listened to the previous episode of this podcast, you have probably developed a pretty valuable approach for how to revise your screenplay. And you know that approach focuses on these 5 simple tips for revision: #1 - Never Rewrite Without a Goal #2 - Follow Your North Star #3 - Concentrate on What’s Working #4 - Stay Away From Quick Fixes #5 - Beware Written Notes So this week, we’re going to work on taking your revision process to the next level, with five more helpful tips about revising your script. REVISION TIP #6 – Use Your Theme If you’ve ever been part of an unmoderated writing group, you already know what it’s like to lose control of your revision. Without a strong unifying voice to make order out of the chaos, it’s amazing how much turmoil even a small group of well-intentioned writers can bring to your screenplay, pushing and pulling your revision in so many different directions with their “brilliant ideas” that before long you don’t even know what you’re writing anymore! And as anyone who has ever worked professionally as a screenwriter can tell you, the more you grow in your career, the more challenging it becomes to maintain a point of creative focus for your revisions. Succeeding as a professional writer means learning to navigate the twists and turns in the development process, often balancing the demands of half a dozen different producers, all with their own (often conflicting) agendas for the project, without losing your own creative voice. Which means that, if you want to succeed in this industry and actually see your movies make it to the screen, you need to start building those skills in yourself now. That means not only developing the skills you need to navigate the often contradictory feedback you get from other people (friends, classmates, coverage readers, producers, teachers, agents, managers), but also learning how to steer the course through the shifting winds of your own feelings about your writing and the perilous waves of “brilliant ideas” that tend to crash across the bows of our own creative ships. The real terror of the blank page is that anything is possible; and the real terror of a rewrite is that everything becomes possible all over again. If you’re willing to put in the time and effort and just keep asking “what if?” you can develop Thelma and Louise until it turns into The Wrestler (think about it). But along the way, you’re going to drive yourself absolutely out of your mind. And if you’ve ever worked on a revision, you’ve probably found yourself going down that rabbit hole. So how do you make sense of all the thousands of ideas vying for your attention? How do you bring order to the chaos, wrangle all these crazy notes to the ground, hold your own in a development meeting, and feel confidence in each decision you make in your revision? That process always begins with theme.   There are very few people in the world who are truly good at developing scripts, but those who are all have one thing in common. Before they start trying to come up with a single idea or solve a single problem, they always ask the same question about the script: what’s it about? And that doesn’t mean “what could it be about?” or “what was the conscious plan the writer had for the script when they first sat down to write” or even “what could I make it about?” That means seeking out what already has been built, whether consciously or unconsciously, in the pages that already exist, no matter how problematic they may be. What are the ideas that keep on coming up again and again, page after page? What are the questions that seem to tie together the most visceral and exciting scenes in your movie, or the turning points in your character’s journey? What makes this screenplay matter to you as a writer? What is really being built here? And how can you boil that all down to a single guiding theme so simple that you can remember it at every phase of your rewrite without even thinking about it. No matter how good your draft may be, there’s no doubt that huge changes are going to happen in your revision.  But until you know the one simple thing you’re building, you’ll never know which changes will serve your story, and which will simply distract from it. Any note (and any idea) is only valuable in the context of what you’re building. If you were an architect working on a new cathedral, an idea for a breathtaking stained glass window might be a great place to put your energy. But, if you’re building a bomb shelter, that same stained glass window becomes a total hazard of potentially falling glass! In the last installment of this podcast, we talked about following a North Star for your revision-- a goal to focus on as a writer. Well your theme is like a North Star for your whole script, and every scene and every character you create. No matter how lost you get, it will always guide you in the right direction. And the great thing is, you don’t even have to make it up! Once you learn how to look, you’ll be amazed to discover that your theme already exists in almost every page of your script, often buried under the surface, sometimes disguised or masked by undeveloped craft or hidden behind piles other unrelated themes and ideas. But present nonetheless.  Because the theme is that subconscious, broken and beautiful thing in you that’s driving you to do this crazy act of writing in the first place. That doesn’t mean that every idea that fits your theme is going to work. But it does mean that, by identifying your theme, you can cut through all the clutter and distractions. It means you can know what to say “yes” to, and what to say “no” to at each phase of your revision. It means you can focus your energy on the ideas that best serve the one unifying theme of your story, rather than getting distracted by the many red herrings that don’t. Most importantly, as you grow in your professional career, if you can learn to agree on a theme with your production team before you start revising, it will allow you not only to wrangle your own ideas, but also to focus the energy of all those crazy producers, directors, managers, agents, and movie stars on the ideas that best serve your main intentions for the project. REVISION TIP #7 – When in Doubt Cut It Out Many writers make the mistake of thinking that rewriting is primarily about finding that “something missing” in your scene, adding that perfect line of dialogue or discovering that perfect image to take your script to the next level. And it’s true that these are major parts of rewriting. But oftentimes the best (and easiest) rewrites begin not by adding anything at all, but simply by stripping away the stuff that’s obscuring the real heart of the scene. It’s natural that early drafts tend to be overwritten—after all, it’s in these early drafts that you’re supposed to be exploring the limits of what your scenes and your story can be. But once you’ve discovered the core of what the scene is really about, you’ve got to cut away all those extra layers, so other people can perceive that essence in its most pure and beautiful form. This always begins with theme. Ask yourself “what is this scene really about?” And then see what happens if you cut away anything that doesn’t doesn’t work to serve that primary intention. You might find yourself pleasantly surprised to discover that the more you cut, the stronger your scene becomes. That’s because the best scenes function like a collection of greatest hits, catapulting the audience and the character from one compelling moment to the next. When you cut down your screenplay to its most essential elements, it allows readers to get right to the meat of your scene, without having to sort through all that garnish. From a commercial perspective, it also allows your scene to be read and understood more quickly, which will pay off big time when it’s being skimmed by a time-crunched coverage reader. Making these kinds of cuts is quick, easy, and extraordinarily effective.  But it’s also emotionally challenging for two reasons. The first is that we tend to like what we’ve written, and cutting away good writing, even if it doesn’t serve our story, can be incredibly painful.   The second is that we don’t tend to trust ourselves. We imagine that if we just got right to the heart of the scene, keeping only our very best lines and our very best actions or images, the audience would never understand. Or even worse, we fear that if we cut that 5 page scene down to one brilliant half a page, we’d suddenly have to come up with so much more story to fill those extra pages! But the truth is, if you really want to take your script to the next level, you’re going to need those extra pages! Cutting out the wasted space in your script (getting to the best stuff faster and faster and faster) opens up room for you to take your story and your character’s journey beyond what even you imagined when you first sat down to write. And this is exactly what you really need to do if you want to break in as a writer. While professionals with impressive resumes and extensive relationships may be able to get away with phoning in scripts that play by the rules and simply meet the expectations of the audience, to get a producer to take a chance on you as a writer, you’ve got to deliver even more than they expect. You’ve got to blow them away. So next time, before you start adding to your scene, see what happens if you try to tell the whole story of the scene with the fewest lines possible. Cut it down to the very minimum. And then cut it even further. Cut everything boring, everything lackluster, everything redundant and everything that doesn’t serve your theme, until you’re left with only your most vibrant, vital and visceral writing. See how quickly you can make it happen. Then read it to yourself.  And notice not only how much better the scene becomes,

This is a time of year when many of us are thinking about rewrites, both on our scripts and on our lives. So what better time for a podcast about rewriting? Everyone knows that writing is rewriting. But for many writers, the rewriting process can feel so overwhelming that it’s hard to hold onto that creative spark that made the script worth writing in the first place. So over the next two podcasts, we’re going to be talking about 10 things you can do to help make your rewrite great! (They work pretty well for your life goals as well!) Screenplay Revision Tip #1 – Never Rewrite Without a Goal A character without a goal is like a car without an engine.  You can polish it up all you’d like, but it’s not going to go anywhere. And just like our characters, if we’re going to be successful in our revisions, we’ve got to make sure we’re effective in our goal setting, not only for our characters, but also for ourselves. That means setting a clear, objective goal for each draft of our screenplay, which allows no debate over whether or not it’s been achieved. For example, depending on what phase we’re in of a revision, we might set a goal like one of these: Make sure the main character is driving the action of every scene. Find lines of dialogue that feel a little familiar and either cut them or make them more specific to the character. Chart out the 7 Act Structure of the character’s change. Make sure the action on the page captures each image exactly the way you see it in your head. What’s great about goals like these is that you can know if you’ve achieved them. Instead of wasting your energy panicking about whether your script is good or not, you can watch it evolve in front of your eyes, knowing that each draft is that much better than the one that came before. Rather than feeling like you’re trying to juggle a million deadly chainsaws-- instead of feeling like you’ve got a million different problems that you simply have to fix in your script all at the same time-- you can devote all your focus to the one thing that is most important for the draft you’re working on right now. Rather than basing your feeling of success as a writer on things that are beyond your control, like having a good writing day, selling a script or winning an Academy Award, you’re basing it on a simple area of focus that will not only grow your script, but also vastly improve your craft as a writer, which will serve you on every script you write in the future. So if you’re working on a revision of a screenplay, revision of an act, or even just a revision of a scene, take a moment to clear your mind of all the things you’ve been told you have to do, all your fears about getting to the end, finishing, not finishing, selling your script, or having talent as a writer. Instead, think about what this screenplay is really about for you, and set a clear, objective goal for the one thing that’s most important for you to achieve to take the script to the next level. In early drafts, or early phases of your career, it may be hard to identify what the most important thing to focus on might be, or to separate the many conflicting things you’ve been told to do from the ones that really matter to you. Trust your instincts, and seek out the advice of mentors with enough real professional experience to point you in the right direction. What matters is that you choose one goal to focus on, and frame it in a way that you can know if you’ve achieved it, regardless of the shifting winds of your own (or anybody else’s) subjective opinions. That way you can know you are succeeding in each phase of your revision, whether this is your final draft, or just one of many along the way.   Screenplay Revision Tip #2 – Follow Your North Star Without a clear, recognizable goal that we know we can achieve, it’s easy to find ourselves rewriting from a place of fear: driven by a deep anxiety that our screenplay is just not good enough without the benefit of a tangible vision of what good enough would actually be! On the other extreme, it’s easy to overwhelm ourselves with too many tangible goals; compiling never-ending (and often conflicting) checklists of things to be fixed and improved in our screenplays as we try to heed the advice of every cook in the kitchen. Cooks including coverage readers, producers, friends, family, writers groups, screenwriting books, structural formulas – and even our own constantly shifting thoughts about our writing – without any sense of how these supposed “improvements” actually fit with our real goals for this particular screenplay, or how they’re all supposed to fit together into a unified whole. That’s why it’s so important to focus on one goal at a time. Let that goal become the North Star for your revision. The one ring to rule them all. The only action item on your checklist and the only thing your brain needs to focus on in this phase of the process. This allows you to calm the many anxieties that come with rewriting a script, the feeling that you’re wrestling with something so much bigger than you can keep in your head, where everything is so interconnected that you pull one string and the whole tapestry can fall apart. It reminds you that you’re not trying to build the whole tapestry all at the same time. You’re just trying to follow this one North Star and see where it takes you, until you understand it so fully that you can intuitively recognize how it fits with all the other stars around it. So, if you’re working on your dialogue and you suddenly realize that you’ve got problems with your action, your structure, or your formatting, that’s okay! You’re not trying to fix everything right now. You’re just following this one North Star. The wonderful and ironic thing about focusing on only one North Star at a time is that oftentimes changes in one little area of your screenplay end up leading to vast improvements in other areas of your story. Because every element of a screenplay is so deeply interconnected, a revision focused on the specificity of your main character’s dialogue may inspire all kinds of new insights into who your character is, the nature of their journey, the hook of your movie, or even the way you write the action lines. And if the screenwriting Gods gift you with such inspiration, by all means accept that gift!  Write the scene, rewrite the action, restructure the story, capture that turning point. But remember, these new flashes of inspiration are only the bi-products of your clear, objective goal. The icing on the cake, but not the cake itself. So, if you’re feeling inspired, chase that inspiration. But if you’re starting to feel overwhelmed or distracted by all the possibilities, look back at your North Star, and remember what your goal is for this draft of the revision. You’ll have plenty of time to look at all the other possibilities later and, oftentimes, be pleasantly surprised at how a tiny change to the dialogue in Act 1 has suddenly pulled that turning point you were so worried about at the end of Act 4 into perfect focus. But if you turn out to be not so lucky, at least you can set a new goal, a new North Star to guide you, for the next revision, knowing that the foundation of the previous goal has already been fully explored and established. You now know where that star leads, and can draw upon that knowledge as you follow the next one. Screenplay Revision Tip #3 - Concentrate on What’s Working   One of the most common mistakes screenwriters make when revising a screenplay is to concentrate on what’s not working rather than what is. This not only sucks all the fun out of your rewrite-- it also chips away at the confidence you need in order to get your best writing on the page. It takes very little skill to look at an early draft of a screenplay and tear it apart. Anyone who’s ever seen a movie knows how easy it is to rant and rave about every ridiculous plot twist or corny line of dialogue in the latest Hollywood blockbuster. And when it comes to our own work, we’re even more hyper-aware of our many flaws and shortcomings, both real and imagined. We’ve been trained since birth to think critically, censor our strongest ideas, and beat ourselves up over our writing. Thinking about your script in this way is not only unhelpful, it’s downright lazy! If you really want to push yourself in your revision, stop focusing on what’s not working in your screenplay, and start looking for what is already working, even in your most disastrous pages. Ask yourself what your story is really about (this may have changed since you first sat down to write) and make a list of everything in your script that seems to serve that thematic intention, no matter how problematic or flawed. Write down every moment that you like in your script, every line of dialogue that feels connected or real, every image that grabs your attention, every moment that makes you laugh or cry or care. Set aside your judgment, and think about the opportunities that still exist, even in the most troubling elements of your script. What can be built upon, expanded, explored, pushed further, looked at more closely or amplified in its specificity or intent? Seek out the powerful moments early in your script that might lead you to the structural twists and turns you need later in the story. And think about the big turning points later in your story that may point the way to what needs to be revised or clarified earlier in the script. Identify the compelling lines of dialogue that might help you understand how your character really talks in a rewrite of your dialogue?  And ask yourself how that understanding might help you add more specificity to your less compelling lines. Chart out memorable images and actions that capture who your character really is and what they really want.

COCO (Part 2) - The Power of Vignettes As we discussed in Part 1 of this podcast, sometimes it only takes one moment to find the structure of your script— the moment where everything comes into clarity and you understand where your movie is really going to live. For the writers of Coco, that place was the real meaning of Dia de Muertos. The real theme of the story. It was that theme that drove every creative decision they made, every structural turn in their character’s journey. But that structure didn’t grow from a big idea about Dia de Muertos, even though that big idea helped to guide the writers. The structure of Coco grew out of a single moment, and a single song: Remember Me. In fact, it’s from the execution of the very first performance of that song that the whole structure of Coco, and the whole structure, not only of Miguel’s journey, but also of Ernesto’s and Imelda’s and Abuelita’s and Hector’s and every other character’s is formed. You can think of writing as a process of excavation. It begins by searching for the right place to dig, (which often requires, as we discussed in last week’s podcast, digging in many wrong or seemingly unrelated places). And once we find that right place to dig, the place where the story really lives, it’s about digging as deeply as possible, right in that same place, so we can fully excavate every bit of beauty that lives there.   There’s a great anxiety that often overcomes us as we seek the place where the story really lives— a fear that the script isn’t good enough or the idea isn’t good enough or that our craft isn’t good enough, or our structure isn’t good enough or that we aren’t good enough. And that anxiety causes us to look outside of ourselves for the answers— trying to find the right plot or the right characters or the right trick ending or the right idea for what the heck is supposed to happen! And as a result, rather than finding inspiration, we end up finding cliches. Rather than finding the story that only we could tell, we end up finding the story that everybody else is already telling, rather than finding the characters that already live inside of us, we end up finding the ones we’ve already met in other movies. Because ultimately, the real answers don’t lie outside of our scripts. They don’t lie in formulas or outlines or plans or plots. The real answers reside inside. Inside the scenes you’ve already written. Inside the scenes that resonate most truthfully for you. If you ever feel like you don’t know what needs to happen in your script, the problem is not “out there” it’s “in here.” If you don’t know where to go, it means you don’t know where you are. It means something is not fully executed, fully true, fully resonant, fully excavated in the pages you’ve already written. Because once you’ve got that one element of truth, that one thing that you know is right, it will not only show you everything else you need to do, it will also show you exactly how you need to do it. Which is why it’s so important to be fully present with your characters and yourself as you write each scene of your movie. Not to be serious with it or forceful with it, or heavens forbid to manipulate it toward the plot point you’ve planned for the future. Not to get it right in the first draft, but rather to look at the first draft as research— a place to find that crazy little detail (like the fact that a Xolo dog’s tongue tends to loll out the side of his mouth) that eventually is going to bring your scene totally to life. The goal is not to control the scene, but rather to explore it. To hold it lightly in your hand and simply observe it. To see, feel and hear everything, searching not for the things you planned but the things that surprise you, the things you didn’t expect to happen, or that cause an unexpected, strong emotional reaction in you— a laugh, a tear, or even a feeling of shame or failure. It’s in those moments that your script really lives. Those are the areas you truly need to excavate. Those are the areas from which all the answers will eventually spring, if only you give yourself the time and space to truly look at them, to see hear and feel everything. To explore them. To get curious about them. And most importantly to capture them in the most specific, unique way possible, by seeing, feeling, and hearing everything, and then capturing it exactly the way you see it on the page. This is a technique that Francis Ford Coppola calls a Vignette. And for you as a writer, a Vignette is the most powerful building block of structure. Your first, and most important Vignette is the one you use to introduce each character. Rather than using descriptions (Joe has brown hair, a great smile, and a glimmer in his eye) or costume design (Joe wears a brown jacket, cashmere sweater and ferragamo shoes) or character traits (Joe’s a no nonsense businessman with a heart of gold), a Vignette introduces the character with action. More specifically, a Vignette introduces a character with a specific, visually compelling action that they are doing in a way that only they could do it. An action that reveals character. It could be a specific line of dialogue, that only they can say. A specific action that only they could do. A specific image, that only they could experience. Or even, as in the case of Coco, a specific lyric, that only they could sing. What’s great about Vignettes for readers and audiences and producers and directors and actors is that Vignettes take them out of the position of “thinking about” the character “hmm… what does that cashmere sweater look like on Joe” and into the position of experiencing them. “Joe picks a piece of lint from his cashmere sweater” “Joe sticks his finger through a hole in his cashmere sweater” “Joe shovels spaghetti into his mouth, splattering sauce on his giant belly which peeks out from his cashmere sweater” Notice how each Vignette gave you a completely different Joe-- how much of a story about Joe you started to tell yourself without even thinking about it. Notice how much work the Vignette did for you.   That’s why audiences and actors and coverage readers and directors and producers love Vignettes. Because Vignettes allow them to get your characters in an instant, without any need for creativity. To play your story on the little movie screen in their minds. To director-proof and actor-proof and production-proof your script-- to guarantee you’re going to get the shots you need to tell your story and not end up trying to piece something together in the editing room. But for writers, the Vignettes serves an even more important purpose. Vignettes show you where to dig for your character’s journey. Vignettes are a magical place where the creative power of the subconscious mind, and the process of the conscious mind meet. Because once you have that first Vignette, all you have to do is keep digging in the same place, and you will effortlessly discover not only who your character is, but where your character has to go. You will discover the metaphors and the theme from which your movie will grow. Even if you haven’t done a single bit of planning or outlining or thinking about your script. Even if you have no idea what happens in your plot, Vignettes will show you the way. Let’s take Joe the lint picker for example. If the first time we meet Joe, he’s picking lint off his Cashmere sweater, we can already tell ourselves a certain story about who he is. We can tell he’s a bit fastidious, maybe even a bit obsessive compulsive. Maybe he’s a man of a certain income bracket, who can afford a Cashmere sweater. Or maybe this is the only piece of clothing of any value in his closet. We don’t know yet. We don’t have to know. All we have to do is start digging around that first image, until we discover the truth about Joe. And the way we start digging is to ask ourselves a simple question: If this is true, what else is true? What’s another Vignette we can create, inspired by that first Vignette, that would help us feel the trajectory of Joe’s journey? If it’s true that the first time we see Joe, he’s picking lint off his Cashmere sweater, maybe there’s another scene where Joe carefully mends a hole in that sweater, sewing it by hand. And just in those two images, you told yourself a story about Joe. A story about what that sweater means to Joe. A story about how Joe might change. And if it’s true that there’s a scene in which Joe picks that lint off that sweater, and a scene in which Joe carefully mends that sweater, maybe there’s also a scene where a lover tears that sweater off of Joe. And now you’re starting to see a journey. Arrange those scenes in this order. Joe picks lint off his cashmere sweater Joe carefully mends a hole in that sweater, sewing it by hand. A lover tears the sweater off of Joe. And it’s a story of a pent up man surrendering to passion. Arrange those scenes in another order. Joe picks lint off his cashmere sweater A lover tears the sweater off of Joe Joe carefully mends a hole in that sweater, sewing it by hand. And it’s a story of a man who can’t let himself surrender to passion. A man trying to hold an old life in the face of a new one. Or a man repeating the same pattern again and again. Those three images tell a story. And depending on how you arrange them, you get an entirely different structure. Enough to build a film around.   And we could keep on going. Maybe there’s also a scene where Joe gives that sweater to his lover. Maybe there’s a scene where his lover throws that sweater into the fire. And now we’ve got a tumultuous love story-- all from that one little Vignette. All from that one little sweater. Maybe there’s also a scene where Joe runs butt naked through the office. And you know why-- don’t you?

COCO (Part 1): The Script & The Research By Jacob Krueger This week, we’re going to be discussing Coco, the new Pixar movie by Adrian Molina & Matthew Aldrich. If you haven’t seen this beautiful film yet, then you should run to the theatre immediately, because not only is it perhaps the most visually stunning Pixar film yet, but also one of the most structurally interesting for us to learn from as screenwriters and as filmmakers. Often, when you see a film that’s as perfect as Coco, you imagine that these writers must know something that you don’t. That maybe they worked backwards from their perfect ending, or started with the perfect idea. But the truth is, Molina and Aldrich’s approach to this film was a journey in itself-- a journey they took with director Lee Unkrich of 7 years into research of Mexican culture, and the traditions of Dia De Muertos, into wrong ways and missteps. In other words, it was a process of rewriting. In fact, the first draft of the story was about an American kid with a Mexican mother, traveling to Mexico for Dia de Muertos and learning to let go of someone he loved and lost. As an early draft, the idea made perfect sense. They wanted to teach an American audience about Dia de Muertos, so what better technique to do so than to bring us in through the eyes of the main character who didn’t know his own culture. Because it was built around Dia de Muertos, they knew it had to wrestle with the theme of death, so what better idea than to tell a story about letting go of someone you’ve lost. They wrote the whole script, and even got as far as developing art for the project, before they finally realized they were telling a story that, as Unkich put it, “thematically was antithetical to what Dia de Muertos is all about. We were telling a story about letting go. And Dia de Muertos is about never letting go. It’s about this obligation to remember our loved ones and pass their stories along.” Writing is a search for the truth. A mining of our subconscious to find the real characters that live there, the real themes we’re wrestling with, the real structure that can take us where we need to go, the real meaning that makes our movies matter. In this way, it’s a process by which we find out who we are-- just like the main character of Coco, Miguel, finds out who he is and what he believes in, by exploring his art and his voice as a musician. And sometimes that means realizing, just like Miguel does, that we are staring at half a picture, that our assumptions about our story or our character or our plot don’t match the truth, that we’re not telling the story we think that we’re telling. Sometimes we find the truth through researching the world of our screenplay-- and sometimes that means digging in lots of places to find where the truth lies. It might seem obvious by the final draft that the theme of the movie and the structure of the character’s journey needed to tie together with the meaning of Dia De Muertos. But sometimes it takes writing that early draft, or even several drafts that go totally in the wrong direction, before you uncover the source of the feeling that “something is off” and start to discover what the story really needs to be. It may seem obvious by the final draft that an adorable animal character could generate some laughs for the audience. But who could have imagined that the fabulous dog in Coco, Dante, would spring from research about the Aztec traditions from which Dia de Muertos grew? The Aztecs believed that a Xoloitzcuintli hairless dog was necessary to bring a spirit from the land of the living to the land of the dead. And this research led the writers into even more esoteric research about that breed of dog, and the discovery that Xolo dogs teeth tend to fall out, causing their tongues to loll out the side. And who could have predicted that it was from that research, barely even connected to the idea of Dia de Muertos, from which a laugh out loud visual gag in almost every scene would be born?   A non-writer might assume that researching dog breeds for a Day of the Dead movie was a waste of time-- or even worse, a willful act of procrastination. A non-writer might assume that writing a whole draft, or many drafts, of a structure that you may not even end up using would be a total failure. But an artist follows the instinct, not even knowing where it’s going to take them. An artist allows themselves the freedom to follow the feeling that “this feels right” until the real truth starts to emerge. That doesn’t mean that we should confuse historical research with the writing process. That doesn’t mean that we should try to squeeze in every detail of our research into the script. And that certainly doesn’t mean that we should confuse what we want our audience to learn with the real product we are delivering-- the structure of our character’s journey. But it does mean that we can use our research to find that point of entry. To find that one true thing, that helps us understand the character, or the world, or the entire structure of the film. From our research we’ll start to find our theme, our characters, the look of our film, the world, our style, our rhythm, our tone.   Many writers think that research is something you have to do before you can start writing-- something you have to get perfect, so that you can know everything and find your perfect plan, and not waste any time. But research is actually something you do as you write. In fact, the writing itself is research. Every word you write is research. A quest, guided partly by intellect, and partly by instinct, for the seeds out of which your real story will grow. It’s a quest by which you’ll connect to that real voice in yourself, and transform your movie from something that “makes sense” to something that moves-- that takes both you and your characters and your audience on a life changing emotional journey. At the beginning often that means digging in many places, and playing and practicing and exploring and sketching. And as you do so, some words you write will start to resonate with you. A single line of dialogue on the page. An image you can’t get out of your head. A moment that you don’t quite understand. A structural beat that makes you laugh or cry. And other moments that should resonate, that intellectually make a ton of sense-- ideas that seemed great in your head, or in an outline or in a pitch-- will often surprise you by falling flat on the page. Plot points that should make you cry will instead ring hollow or false. Until one day, something clicks. Sometimes it’s a moment, or a line, or a movement of your story, or something you learn in your research. Sometimes it’s something as minor as a single moment. And sometimes it’s as profound as a whole structure for your character’s journey. And sometimes it’s as simple as a song. Like the Remember Me song in Coco. Which ends up being not only the song we’re all going to leave singing, but also the thematic link between Dia de Muertos and the journey of the character. The structure from which everything else will arise.   But what it really is, is your theme. The song inside you that’s been trying to get out. That little bit of truth trying to find its way onto the page. And suddenly you’re not digging in many places any more. You’re digging in one place. And you’re digging as deeply as you can, because you’ve found that vein of gold, and you want to get as much of it out of the ground and onto the page as you possibly can. That’s the place that we’re all searching for as writers. And sometimes our desire to find that place cuts us off from the process by which we can actually arrive there. Sometimes we imagine we can get to there more quickly by thinking really hard or planning really hard or making sure we know everything before we start. Sometimes we imagine we can get there more quickly by rushing through those early scenes, trying to get the “bones” on the page, rather than doing the real work-- the real research-- of writing. Sometimes we imagine we can get there more quickly by getting “serious” about our scripts, rather than playing around and exploring. Or following some pre-programmed formula that some other writer made, or some coverage reader jotted down in their “notes” about your script. But the truth is, none of these techniques will get you there faster. Rather they will cut you off from the real opportunity of arriving. Keep you digging on the surface, chasing the fool’s gold, when there’s acres and acres of real gold under your feet, gold that you, and only you, have the capacity to access. To do that, like Miguel, you have to cross over into a land where you don’t normally go. To do that, like Miguel, you have to remember what is really important to you. To do that, like Miguel, you have to look the truth in the face, and take it back with you to the other side. That means taking the time to do the research into your own truth, seeing, feeling and hearing every word you write. Applying both art and craft to every page as if it was the only page that mattered. That means refusing to rush to the end, and instead keeping focused on where you are right now, so you can connect to each moment and each character and those little details in which the real theme lies. That means allowing yourself to take wrong turns, so you can find the true path of your intuition. That means surrounding yourself with great artists who push you past your own blind spots, just like Lee Unkrich pushed his writers. That don’t allow you to accept half truths when there’s still a whole truth underneath. That don’t allow you to stop digging until the full power of your voice is excavated. And the only way to do that is to commit fully to keep on digging with everything you’ve got,

Stranger Things 2 Part 2: The Structure of Two Seasons By Jacob Krueger In last week’s Stranger Things 2 Podcast, we talked about the way a TV pilot starts up the engine of a series, and the challenges, especially in a TV Drama series like Stranger Things where everything changes at the end of the first season, of getting that engine started again in Season 2. Because the main structural elements that drive the engine of the show have mostly been resolved by the end of Season 1, the first episode of Stranger Things, Season 2 ends up functioning like a new pilot, trying to get the engine started again to launch us into the second season. But while the pilot of Stranger Things, Season 1 dropped us right into the heart of the action, and rocketed the characters into the story from the very first page, the first episode of Season 2 gets that engine started in a far less effective way. And that’s because the pilot of Stranger Things, Season 1 is built around a rock solid Primary Structure-- the way the things the characters want and the choices that they make and the obstacles they must navigate, shape characters’ journeys and push them out of their normal world from the very first page. While the first episode of Stranger Things, Season 2 is focused mainly on the Secondary Structure-- the way the audience experiences the episode. As a result, Stranger Things, Season 1 launches us into the engine of the series from the very first page, just as you must if you want to sell a pilot for your own series, or use your pilot to get staffed on an existing show. Whereas the first episode of Stranger Things, Season 2, for its many good qualities, starts us off with more of a whimper than a bang.   It’s a problem that the Duffer Brothers manage to correct in a big way by Season 2, Episode 2, when they finally get that engine started. But it’s one which you, as an emerging writer, are unlikely to survive at this point of your career. Because until you’ve got a hit series on the air that everyone loves, the chances are that if your first episode doesn’t launch us into your series with the force of a rocket, no one’s ever going to read Episode 2. For that matter, if your first few pages don’t launch us into your series with the force of a rocket, no one is going to even finish the pilot. So what’s the structural difference between the Stranger Things, Season 1 pilot and the first episode of Stranger Things, Season 2? At every moment of Stranger Things, Season 1 the characters are facing obstacles and making choices that change their lives forever. And at most moments of the first episode of Stranger Things, Season 2, they quite simply are not. In the pilot of Season 1, the characters are living their lives for themselves. And in the first episode of Season 2, they are establishing their lives for the audience. So let’s break it down together. The pilot of Stranger Things, Season 1 starts with a bad ass chase sequence. We start by panning down from the stars, and find ourselves at the lab, a location that is going to end up mattering a lot for us. We’ve got the flashing lights, we’ve got the scientist running in the wrong direction, we’ve got that horrifying scene where the scientist finally makes his way to the elevator, only to be be snatched up and out of sight just as the doors close. And even though we’re dropped from there into the quiet, mundane world of the kids playing Dungeons & Dragons, even in that scene, The Duffer Brothers are not simply “establishing” that the kids play Dungeons & Dragons. Already the characters are facing huge obstacles and making huge choices that affect their lives and their relationships forever. And for that reason, in Stranger Things, Season 1, we can feel the story start right away. We meet Mike, the Dungeon Master, who wants all his friends to work as a team in the game, and introduces the obstacle of the Demogorgon to test them. We meet Dustin, the cautious one of the group, who wants to cast a spell of protection. We meet Lucas, the impulsive one, who wants to cast a fireball. And we meet Will, who’s afraid to make a choice, but who ultimately risks his own life to protect his friends. The scene isn’t about a Dungeons & Dragons game. It’s about a bunch of kids making big choices that affect each other, in relation to something they care about deeply. And because these are great writers, they keep raising the stakes, by making sure nothing turns out the way the characters are hoping, so they have to keep making big choices that change their lives forever. Instead of rolling a high roll that would allow him to defeat the Demorgorgon, Will rolls a measly seven... and Mike, the Dungeon Master, doesn’t see it. Wanting their friend to survive the adventure, the other boys tell Will it doesn’t count if Mike doesn’t see it. But at the end of the scene, Will makes a different choice. Will admits to Mike it was a seven, “The Demogorgon, it got me,” he says.   And no sooner has Will left the Dungeons & Dragons game than the real Demogorgon indeed does get him-- in a terrifying sequence that we can only see in glimpses of Will’s horror. We aren't even at the credits yet! And we not only locked into these huge choices and changes and never-before experience for the characters, we are also locked in to the hook, the engine of the piece—the engine of a creature that you can barely see; and the disappearance of a young boy that is going to drive the entire season. It’s not that the Duffer Brothers aren’t setting things up. In fact if you’ve listened to my two part Podcast on Stranger Things, Season 1, you know that this first Dungeon’s & Dragons sequence actually thematically sets up every aspect of these character’s journeys. But it’s not the Secondary Structure that’s driving the story. It’s the Primary Structure. It’s Will’s choice to tell the truth, and the terrible consequences he suffers for that choice. I want to contrast that with the opening of the first episode of Season 2, to show you how, even though they’re using many of the same elements that worked so well in Season 1, even though they’re trying to replicate the engine, the Duffer Brothers are missing the Primary Structure that started that engine so brilliantly. In Season 2, once again, we start with the stars, and this time we pull down to a city, an unexpected Secondary Structure surprise for the audience. And this is fun. It is nice to find ourselves in a new place, and wondering how this new piece of the puzzle is going to fit. The Duffer Brothers have a real challenge as they start this episode, which is the creature is particularly scary when it is in the shadows through the beginning of Season 1. But, once it is out of the shadows, the creature becomes a lot less scary; it becomes a lot more typical, a lot more like something we’ve seen before in other “Monster in the House” movies. So, it is important in Season 2 to re-open the door to the danger and the mystery. And while the season could certainly have started equally brilliantly with what ends up being the first image of Episode 2, it’s nevertheless a smart and reasonable move to open to a place that we aren't expecting, and a character that we aren't expecting; the character of Eight, Kali, who is in her own chase sequence-- mimicking the structure of the first episode. But despite the cool chase sequence and Kali’s display of a magical power that reminds us of Eleven’s powers in Season 1-- what is missing is the impact on the main characters, and what’s missing is the horror for the characters that we actually care about.   As the audience, we know that there is another “Eleven” on the loose, and that she may not be playing for the right team. But unlike in Season 1, the story of Kali isn’t going to weave through the first episode of Season 2. Instead, it is going to be left to drop there, hopefully to make us wonder what is coming next. But it’s not going to affect the characters at all. This cool sequence really has only existed at this point for the audience. It hasn’t existed yet for the characters. Whereas in the Season 1 pilot, we very quickly catch up to that lab again, to Eleven again, and the journey of Eleven and the baddies from the lab very quickly get woven into the lives of our story, the lives of our main characters. And so, this is what we really want if our pilot’s Primary Structure is to come into focus: Every element that possibly can needs to affect not just the general world of the story, but the specific world of our main characters. Our characters have to make choices around those elements, and suffer consequences by them. Otherwise the story isn’t really started. It’s just setting up stuff for later. From there, the Duffer Brothers once again attempt to replicate the engine of Season One by catching us up to the boys again-- this time not in a game of Dungeons & Dragons, but an arcade game of Dig Dug. And just like in the pilot, there’s an obstacle that must be navigated in relationship to something the boys care about: Dustin’s high score has just been beaten by someone named Madmax. But the difference is-- unlike in Season 1, where the boys can make structural decisions that matter to their relationships, based on the challenge of the Demogorgon, in this scene, there’s nothing they can do-- not until Madmax actually appears several scenes later. Once again, the Duffer Brothers are setting up the Secondary Structure for the future, rather than launching the Primary Structure of the now. And that’s why the stakes feel super low. And even when Will finds himself magically transported back to The Upside Down from the middle of the arcade, the stakes still never feel like they used to feel. Last season,

Stranger Things 2 Podcast: Part 1: Primary & Secondary Structure By Jacob Krueger This week we are going to be looking at Stranger Things, Season 2. And don’t worry if you haven’t seen the whole season, because for this podcast to be valuable, all you need to watch is the first episode. And I’ll save the big spoilers for the end and give you a little warning before we get there. We’re going to be looking at that first episode of Stranger Things, Season 2 in an interesting way-- by comparing it structurally to that unforgettable pilot episode of Season 1, which launched the whole franchise. As I discussed in my two part podcast about Stranger Things, Season 1 the pilot episode of any series does more than just introduce great characters or tell a great story. It creates an engine powerful enough to launch every character in the series into a huge journey-- and a replicable structure for the series powerful enough to last many seasons. But Stranger Things 1 has a particularly challenging structure to replicate in Stranger Things 2. That’s because the whole structure of the first season is built around a simple problem that’s completely resolved by the time we get to the second season! In Stranger Things 1, a little boy named Will is missing, and his merry band of friends friends need to come together in a real-world Dungeons & Dragons quest to find him. Wrapped around this very simple structure are a bunch of wonderfully horrifying elements-- a creature that can only be seen in the shadows, a magical world called The Upside Down that’s only gradually revealing itself, a bunch of creepy-creepy operatives that are ready to kill to protect a secret that even they don’t understand, a mother communicating with her lost son through Christmas lights, and of course, Eleven, a little girl with magical powers who everyone seems to be hunting. But by the time we get to Episode 1 of Season 2, Will is back (at least mostly) in the real world, so there’s no missing boy to build a structure around. By the time we get to Season 2, the terrifying Demogorgon, which once was scary like the shark in Jaws, not for what we could see, but for what we couldn’t-- has not only been flushed from the shadows, but vanquished from them (at least mostly). So we need a new fin in the water to build the terror around.   By the time we get to Season 2, the world of The Upside Down, which we only barely understood, has now been entered and explored. So we need a new mystery in The Upside Down to build the world around. By the time we get to Season 2, the mother, Joyce, can communicate with Will while driving carpool, so we need a new spiritual component that no one else understands to build the relationship around. And by the time we get to Season 2, (at least as far as we know), Eleven is gone. So we need a new magical little girl to build the threat around. In fact, by the time we get to Season 2, the only major structural element we still have going for us from the engine of Season 1 is the creepy operatives. But even they are a whole lot less interesting, now that we have some sense of who they are and what they do… Which means the first episode of Season 2 has to do a lot more than replicate the engine of Season 1. It actually has to re-launch it. In this way, the first episode of Stranger Things, Season 2 becomes a whole new pilot for the series. Which is a big challenge for the writers. But is fortunate for us. Because it gives us the chance to compare a great pilot episode to a good one. It gives us a chance to compare the kind of pilot that can launch us into a new series to one that only works if we’re already in love with that series. And that’s a valuable lesson for any TV writer-- or any film writer for that matter. Because the difference between the Stranger Things, Season 1 pilot and the first episode of Season 2 is the same difference between the original pilot script that’s likely to sell your series, and the one that’s certain to get lost in the shuffle. And that difference is not any of the technical things we usually worry about. It’s not bad dialogue or lousy characters or weak ideas or meandering plotlines. Because the Stranger Things, Season 2 opener doesn’t suffer from any of those issues. It’s a beautifully written episode and quite enjoyable, and I think we can all rest assured, when it comes to the plot of Season 2, the Duffer Brothers have plenty up their sleeves. But the episode does suffer from a huge problem, that so many of my students wrestle with in their own TV writing. And that you are likely wrestling with in yours.   And that problem is setting stuff up for later. When you could be getting it started right now. As screenwriters, and TV Writers, we all have a tendency to save the best for last. We come up with a great idea, and we hold it tightly in our pocket, saving it for later, setting it up, so we can pay it off. But the best pilots, and the best scripts, don’t save the best for last. They save the best for first. That’s the difference between a pilot that’s going to sell your new series. And one that’s going to sit on the shelf. And that’s the difference between the pilot episode of Stranger Things, Season 1, and the first episode of Stranger Things, Season 2. The truth is, if you are like me, you probably enjoyed the first episode of Stranger Things, Season 2 very much. After all, you are getting reacquainted with some characters you love.  You’ve got some fabulous genre elements that can connect to, more 80’s throwback nostalgia than you can shake a stick at, and a kind of door to reentry into a world that you really enjoyed the first time around. But at the same time, you can’t help but feel like everything’s a little slower, a little more static, a little less high stakes than what you remembered from Season 1. The volume seems turned to an 11 on the 80’s nostalgia, but about a 3 for the actual story. We can feel the Duffer Brothers pulling on the cord as hard as they can, trying to get the engine started on that old trusty lawn mower, but not quite getting it to actually turn over. In fact, if you’ve seen Season 2, Episode 2, when suddenly that trusty engine finally starts to run again, you probably felt, like I did, that with a few tweaks, the whole season could have just started there-- and launched us into everything in a far more dramatic way. If you’re the Duffer Brothers, and it takes a few pulls on the old cord to get the engine started, you’re probably going to get away with it. Because we already trust that old lawnmower you’ve created. We’ve known it and loved it, and we know the great work it’s going to do. That it always starts up eventually. But if you’re a normal human being who walks the earth, who wants to sell a new series pilot, get hired for a staff writing gig, get signed by an agent or manager, you’ve gotta get your series engine started from the very first page. Just like the Duffer Brothers did in the pilot of Stranger Things, Season 1. And as anyone who has ever sold a TV pilot knows, sometimes that means writing not only the pilot, but the 2nd Episode, the 20th Episode, and even the Show Bible-- so that we can truly know what we’re building, before we return the the pilot and make sure it’s doing everything we need it to do. Not only launching the characters from page 1 into a story that will change their lives forever, but also creating a blueprint for every episode to come.   A lot of people think that the purpose of your pilot, (or for you feature writers, the first act of your screenplay), is to set things up for the audience, to lay in the foundations of all the stuff that is going to pay off later and establish the world. But the truth is, you don’t have any time to set up at all. You can’t waste pages establishing the world or establishing the character. You’ve got to jump right into the heart of the action.  Otherwise your reader is never going to make it to that great stuff you’re paying off later, because they’ll have already set down the script, or changed the channel on the TV, or switched to a new show on Netflix. At the same time, if you’ve seen the first episode of Stranger Things, Season 2, you might be wondering what’s keeping it from feeling like we’re jumping right into the heart of the action. What’s actually making it feel different from the experience we had watching the pilot of Stranger Things, Season 1? What’s getting in the way of getting the engine started? After all, isn’t it all building to a huge reveal at the end-- where we discover something we might never have imagined? It’s important to understand that jumping right into the heart of the action isn’t something you do to get the story started for the audience. It is something you do to get the story started for the characters. Every screenplay, and every teleplay, has two different levels of structure. The first, I call Primary Structure, the story of the character’s journey, as experienced by the characters. The huge choices the characters make at each moment in relation to the things they want and the obstacles in their path. The choices that open the door to change and ultimately that change their lives forever. Secondary Structure is the way you serve that Primary Structure to the audience-- the way the audience experiences the story of the movie at each moment-- the story they are telling themselves... now, and now, and now… The Secondary Structure is the delivery mechanism for the Primary Structure within it. The bun around the delicious meat of your character’s journey. If your Primary Structure is working, you can serve it up to your audience in pretty much any way you want to enhance their experience of the show. You can slice and dice it, flash it back, flash it forward, hide it away, chop it up, or toss it like a salad.