Write Your Screenplay Podcast

[spb_column width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]   By, Jacob Krueger [/spb_text_block] [/spb_column] [fullwidth_text alt_background="none" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]  Spider-Man Homecoming: How To Write a Great Antagonist   Hello, I am Jacob Krueger and this is The Write Your Screenplay Podcast. On this podcast, rather than looking at movies in terms of “two thumbs up, two thumbs down, loved it or hated it,” we look at them in terms of what we can learn from them as screenwriters. We look at good movies and bad movies, movies that we loved and movies that we hated.   This week, we are going to be talking about Spider-Man: Homecoming which is a surprisingly successful film compared to the others in this franchise. And what is nice is that this film doesn’t just succeed based on its fabulous action sequences or the wonderful actors involved in the production. This movie also succeeds because of its script.   So, let’s talk about what makes this script so darn successful. And to do that we have to begin with a discussion about Antagonists. How do you write a great Antagonist?   If you’ve studied screenwriting with me, you know that I don’t actually like the word Antagonist. The reason I don’t like the word Antagonist is because it suggests something that isn't true in the universe: the idea that there is supposed to be a character in your screenplay that exists only to antagonize the main character.       Whenever I am thinking about film, I like to look at my life and think, “Okay, if it happens in my life, it can happen in a movie. And if it doesn’t happen in my life it can’t happen in a movie.”   And that doesn’t mean that my movies all have to be naturalistic films, Spider-Man: Homecoming certainly isn't a naturalistic film in any way and it is hugely successful.   What it means is that emotionally it needs to be true-- it means that what happens in the movie needs to grow out of an exaggeration of, or a reaction to, or a metaphor for, or an expression of something that is true about the universe.   Because, once we get into the world where we aren’t writing an expression of something that is true about our universe-- once we are in that kind of fiction, the fiction that doesn’t come out of our life experience-- it is only natural that our movies are going to ring false.   And if you’ve seen some of the other films in the Spider-Man franchise, and other big budget action movie franchise films, you can feel the effects of that untruth, when the events of the story and the reality—the emotional reality-- of life stop matching up.   Despite all of its wild, high-stakes action and magic, what really makes Spider-Man: Homecoming succeed is its more grounded elements. Even its title, Spider-Man: Homecoming, is a pun that recognizes this truth on many levels.   In part, it is about Peter Parker returning home after his foray with the Avengers and trying to go back to a real life.   In a nudge-nudge, wink-wink way, it’s about a Homecoming for Spider-Man, back to his Marvel universe roots after his lonely sojourn with Sony.   But it is also a movie about the homecoming dance which is really the most important thing in Spider-Man’s real world life at this time.   It takes a lot of courage as a writer to write an action movie that is really set around a homecoming dance. It takes a lot of courage as a writer to realize that the real source of the story isn't going to grow from the big, larger than life relationships, but from the mundane ones—the ones that look like our own lives. So, how does this relate to Antagonists?   I don’t like the word antagonist because antagonist makes us think that there is someone whose job is to antagonize you.   And if I look at my own life,

[spb_column width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]   By, Jacob Krueger [/spb_text_block] [/spb_column] [divider type="standard" text="Go to top" full_width="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [fullwidth_text alt_background="none" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] The Craft of Screenwriting: See, Hear and Feel Everything   In last week’s podcast, we discussed the many differences between playwriting and screenwriting. So this week we’re going to be getting deeper into the craft of screenwriting: what it takes to write a script that succeeds on the page.   As we discussed last week, writing a screenplay often takes more rewriting time than writing a play.   And a big reason is that while most of a play exists in dialogue and develops over rehearsals and workshops, successful screenplays must exist in a far more more finished form on the page.   Technically, so much of rewriting for playwrights takes place during production in the rehearsal process. Whereas most of rewriting a screenplay is going to take place before your movie is even sold or greenlit.   And unlike literary managers at theatres, who are often MFA or PhD graduates with a love of literature, degrees in theatre and a deep understanding of how plays funcion on the page, most screenplays are read by coverage readers, or interns, who not only often have no training at all in how to read a screenplay, but at best are probably skimming your work for $50 bucks a script.   Which means that to succeed as a screenwriter, you must do more than create a blueprint for success. You must in fact create a screenplay that fully demonstrates the experience of your movie for even the least trained reader-- that transports them from reading to seeing, and plays effortlessly in the little movie screen in their mind, so that they can see, feel and hear everything, just like if they were watching the film.   So that is just something you need to accept; in order to bring your screenplay to that level you are going to need to do more rewrites.       The good news is that the same rigor that you must bring to your craft in order to have commercial success as a screenwriter will also build you creatively as an artist.   In order for your reader to see, hear and feel everything, you are going to have to see, hear and feel everything yourself!   That means developing both your art and your craft as a screenwriter. First learning to step into each character and fully visualize each scene as an artist, and then developing the craft you need to translate what you see, hear and feel into a form that others can easily understand.   There is a different balance that all writers need to strike, about how slowly you’re going to work through your script, or how quickly, how much time you’re going to spend writing and how much rewriting.   Last week we discussed the example of a line of screenplay action like “Mary is writing… ”   We discussed how that might seem like proper screenplay action, but in fact, is not. Because it reveals nothing about Mary’s character, or what we’re actually seeing on the screen.   Rather than forcing us to get creative as screenwriters, a line like “Mary is writing” lets us of the hook creatively, and instead asks our reader to do our job- the creative act of making it look cool in their own head-- a creative act that they are little prepared to do.   For screenplay action to function properly, you have to capture it in a way that allows the reader to visualize it instantly in the movie screen in their mind, and tell themselves the story of your movie, your character, your character’s journey.     As we discussed last week, you might see “Mary’s cracked fingernails click the keyboard.” Or you might see “Mary’s bejeweled hand signs a letter with a gol...

[spb_column width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]   By, Jacob Krueger [/spb_text_block] [/spb_column] [divider type="standard" text="Go to top" full_width="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [fullwidth_text alt_background="none" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] What makes writing a screenplay so much different from writing a play? Transcript From Podcast:   The process of writing a screenplay is different from writing a play in many essential ways. The first is the difference in the use of action.   For screenwriters, action is the primary tool of structure. But for playwrights, the primary tool is dialogue.   Don’t get me wrong. As a playwright, you need to visualize to some degree what is happening on the stage in order to really create your dialogue, in order to create the piece. But you don’t have to communicate that to anybody else. People don’t need to see your play in their mind like they do when reading a screenplay; they need to hear it, and they need to see the big elements.   You get to rely on the director, because plays have this thing called rehearsals.   It is crazy that rehearsals, for the most part, don’t exist in filmmaking. Even though some of the really great film directors do rehearse-- for example Francis Ford Coppola had a history of bringing the cast up to his estate to rehearse-- most film directors don’t rehearse at all.   That’s for a very simple reason: stars cost about $20 million bucks, and who has that kind of money to spend on rehearsal?   So you end up in this very weird process where not only you are going to have no rehearsal, but also you are going to shoot all your scenes out of order. So you aren’t even going to have a continuity of knowing “this, leads to this and then this leads to this and then this leads to this…” as you shoot your film. So it becomes much harder to track the structure from scene to scene as you shoot, as you could if you were rehearsing a play.   Writing a play can take place on a much more intuitive level, because you don’t have to communicate what you’re seeing to anybody else beyond just the very basics. But for a screenplay you need a much more substantial infrastructure.   The second element that makes playwriting so different from screenwriting is that plays have fewer moving pieces than screenplays.   Screenplays have way too many moving pieces! And this is actually part of what led me to create Seven Act Structure for myself.   When I was a playwright, I didn’t need any way of consciously dealing with structure, because intuitively I am pretty good at structure. So, when I was a playwright I didn’t think about things like “Okay what is going to be the big turn or the big structural choice here?” I just got to dig in.   As a playwright, I always thought of writing like peeling the layers of an onion. I want to meet some people who want some stuff, and as they try to get the stuff that they want, slowly I am going to get to know who they really are and what they really want. Slowly they are going to reveal themselves to me, and to themselves, and to each other over the course of the play. And that is a very intuitive process; it is like getting to know someone. It’s the same thing that you do every day when you connect with someone… You meet somebody you think, “Oh they are cool!” So, you hang out. You think you know who they are, then you start to learn things as you both pursue what you want in the relationship-- you start to learn who they really are, and who you really are with them, and who you both really are in relation to each other. And changes start to happen; sometimes they are beautiful changes, and sometimes they are catastrophic changes and usually they are both.   So that is a very intuitive process and it is one of the reasons we are able to channel it faster as playwrights.

[spb_column width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]   By, Jacob Krueger [/spb_text_block] [/spb_column] [divider type="standard" text="Go to top" full_width="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [fullwidth_text alt_background="none" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] Wonder Woman: The Structure and The Politics of The Action Blockbuster   Transcript From The Podcast:   If you’ve been following my podcast, you know that I’ve been talking for some time about the desperate need for some smart people to start writing superhero movies. Action movies and superhero movies are the mythologies of our time - millions of people see them, and as much as we might like to dismiss them as pure entertainment, the truth is, they irrevocably shape our view of the world, our children’s view of the world, the stories we tell ourselves about how to be our best selves, how to solve our problems, and what it means to be a hero. In this way, all action movies are political.   Which is why it’s so darn nice to see a movie like Wonder Woman kicking ass at the box office.   Wonder Woman isn’t a perfect movie. And it isn’t a perfect feminist manifesto.   But what it is is an action movie that actually cares about the message its audience takes away from it. It’s a film that tries to use an art form that historically, for the most part, has been exploitative of women, unquestioning of violence, reverential to hero   It’s a film that tries to use an art form that historically, for the most part, has been exploitative of women, unquestioning of violence, reverential to hero worship and a proponent of the simplest answers to the most complex questions-- and look underneath the surface in order to ask us some serious questions about our country, and our belief systems, and our desire for good guys, bad guys and magic bullets that can instantly solve our problems. In fact, to look at the very nature of war through a big silly action movie, which in itself is a pretty radical concept.     What’s interesting is that Wonder Woman does this not by rejecting the problematic elements of superhero movies (that mass audiences love and independent film minded audiences hate)-- wanton violence, cliched characters, death without consequence, stereotypical love stories, female exploitation, revisionist history, perfect good guy Americans and purely evil foreign bad guys, inexplicable plot twists, unlikely action sequences, unmotivated character choices and oversimplified endings.   It does it by embracing those elements, meeting the audience where they are, and then using the elements they love to turn their perceptions of these elements upside down as the story develops: to show the complications underneath. To make us question the things we so easily accept about our action movies, and about the heroes we worship, whether they’re superheroes, political heroes, celebrity heroes or even religious heros.   This begins by simply stepping into the problem of being Wonder Woman as opposed to Superman.   Nobody ever questioned the ability or the reasoning of The Man of Steel-- even when he was doing scientifically questionable things, like spinning the world backwards to turn back time.   But despite her totally bad-ass powers, Wonder Woman simply can’t get anyone to take her seriously. Not her mother, an Amazonian Queen, who for some culturally inexplicable reason among a tribe that spends most of their time preparing for battle, wants her daughter to be the one Amazon Warrior who doesn’t ever learn to fight.   Not her love interest. Not the British Government. Not her team of misfit spies. Not the soldiers at the German Front. Not even the clerks at a department store. They won’t let her dress like she wants, do what she wants, or use her incredible powers to end the war.

[spb_column width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]   By, Jacob Krueger [/spb_text_block] [/spb_column] [divider type="standard" text="Go to top" full_width="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [fullwidth_text alt_background="none" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] Alien Covenant: Setting Up A Trick Ending Podcast Transcript: This week, we are going to be looking at Alien: Covenant, by John Logan and Dante Harper.   One of the things that makes Alien: Covenant especially worth studying for screenwriters of all genres is that it’s a script that starts off really strong, but suffers as it reaches its conclusion from a really common malady of all screenwriters: the totally predictable trick ending that the writers are wedded to, that ends up undermining the real story that they’re trying to tell.   Now, sure, Alien: Covenant is a regurgitation of something that we have seen a million times before in every Alien movie: a simple structure where you take a bunch of really well drawn characters and slowly kill them off one by one.   This is the formula for Alien; this is the way it works. And this movie, like all the others in the Alien series, is built around the horror of being chased by a creature that is way more powerful than you.   So when I say it starts off strong, I’m not suggesting that they’re reinventing the wheel. I’m suggesting they’re taking that wheel, and rolling it in a slightly more complicated direction. Which is really the goal for any serialized screenplay-- to deliver the same thing in a slightly different way. But though the script may be built upon the same old formula, it is also built from something deeper.   Like the original 1979 Alien movie, Alien: Covenant grows not just out of the commercial question of “how do I-- as Blake Snyder would put it-- tell a ‘monster in the house’ horror movie in space?” It grows out of a theme. Something that was genuinely terrifying to the original writer, Dan O'Bannon, that he wanted to explore in a personal way. Something true that he wanted to explore through fiction. And this was what separated the original Alien from other movies of that genre.   As Dan O’Bannon has noted in interviews, the idea that actually spawned the original Alien, was the horror of rape and forced pregnancy-- a horror that so many women have gone through in their real world lives, but that few men could viscerally understand. So instead of going after women in an exploitative way, as so many horror movies have done, he wanted instead to go after the men-- to make that horror visceral to men, in a way that would make them, “Cross their legs” and feel what that is like.   And you can see that the entire structure of the Alien franchise, from the structure of each individual script, to the horrifying visuals, to the rules of the universe, down all the way to the production design, the way the alien creatures burst from the chests (and later, in Alien: Covenant from the backs) of impregnated males, every single decision grows from that one simple idea. The deeply personal why that the writer is actually writing it.   So, you have a theme, and that theme is the thing that gives your script unity. It isn't necessarily the thing that the audience leaves talking about. Nobody leaves Alien saying, “Wow what an interesting theme about male insemination, male pregnancy!” No, they leave going, “Holy shit, a fucking alien burst out of this guy’s back!”   But they feel the theme. The theme gives the screenplay a feeling of unity. And the theme guides the creative imagination of the writer.   It’s this same theme that leads to another element that ties all the Alien movies together: the strong female protagonist. And we can see that once again in Alien: Covenant, the characters we relate to most are the women.

[spb_column width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]   By, Jacob Krueger [/spb_text_block] [/spb_column] [divider type="standard" text="Go to top" full_width="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [fullwidth_text alt_background="none" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] Chuck, Rocky & The Art of Adaptation Podcast Transcript:   This week we are going to be looking at Chuck by Jeff Feuerzeig, Jerry Stahl, Michael Cristofer and Liev Schreiber.     What is really interesting about Chuck is that hidden underneath this little character driven drama is actually an adaptation of three different stories.   The first is the true life story of Chuck Wepner’s life; Chuck Wepner was a down and out fighter who went 15 rounds with Muhammad Ali. And many people believe, although Sylvester Stallone has denied it, that Chuck Wepner’s life was actually the inspiration for Rocky.   At the same time, it is also an adaptation of the Rocky film. It is a reimagining of Rocky-- what if you looked at Rocky not as a hero’s journey but as the story of an anti-hero? What if you stripped all of Sylvester Stallone’s American dream sugar coating off of Rocky and turned it into a story about a guy who keeps on turning lemonade back into lemons?   And at the same time, it’s also an adaptation of a third film: an old movie from 1962 called Requiem for a Heavyweight.       So here, we have this unassuming character driven, independent feeling little film, that looks like just a simple biopic, but under the surface, there is actually something very complicated going on. An interesting thing about adaptation and revision is that people think of them as different, but I think of them as actually in many ways the same. In an adaptation we take something that isn't yet a movie Whether it is a true life story like the true life story of Chuck Wepner, a novel, a poem, a short story, a dream that you had, an experience from your own life, the story of your grandmother-- it is taking this thing that isn't yet in the form of a movie and translating it into a form that is a movie.   Similarly, I believe revision does exactly the same thing. When you are revising a script what you are actually doing is taking an early draft that isn't yet a movie-- and the way we know it isn't yet a movie is that if it was already a movie, you would have stopped writing it-- So, you are taking a screenplay, a draft of a screenplay, something that is in early stage of development that isn't yet translated into movie terms and you are translating it into movie terms.   And there is also a third kind of adaptation, which we are seeing now more than ever in Hollywood, which is a remake of old movies. And a remake of old movies works along the same principle, which is basically to say, “Hey we are going to do this again because it was awesome the first time.”   But if we do it exactly like the first one, it is probably not going to play. At the very best, we are going to do a slightly worse version of a great movie.       So what is our take on it now? How do we translate this thing that isn't a movie today-- because it has already been made-- into something that feels relevant and new and fresh today?”   And, of course, this also happens to us often when we realize that something that we are writing already either has been made or is about to be made-- when you realize that your story isn't taking things far enough,  or when you finally get your script out into the industry and you start to get feedback like, "Oh I have read a lot of scripts like this...” that is also a time that we are doing an adaptation.   We are taking something that maybe once was viable as a script, but in the current market isn't and we are translating it into something that is viable-- something that is new an...

[spb_column width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]   By, Jacob Krueger [/spb_text_block] [/spb_column] [divider type="standard" text="Go to top" full_width="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [fullwidth_text alt_background="none" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2: A Dance Between The Head and the Heart Podcast Transcript: This week we’re going to be looking at Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2, written and directed by James Gunn.   If you listened to my podcast on Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 1, you know that I’m a huge fan of James Gunn’s writing. Not just for the brilliant execution of pretty much every moment of his scripts, but also for his overarching use of Theme to give real emotional resonance to these goofy action sci-fi comedies.   So, it’s interesting to watch Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2 to see James Gunn both succeeding and struggling in the places he’s most strong.   Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2 starts off with a scene that’s classic James Gunn -- a scene that takes a very typical action sequence, and turns it on its head in order to breathe new life and new fun into it. The Guardians have been charged with protecting some very precious batteries from the giant creature that keeps on draining them. This setup, of course, is a very typical action-movie-big knock-out action sequence beginning. We’ve seen this a million times in everything from The Avengers to Batman.   Except this time, rather than focusing on the epic battle sequence-- you know, the thing that’s supposed to get the adrenaline of the audience pumping, the thing that action movies like Guardians of the Galaxy are supposed to be delivering-- rather than focusing on that sequence, and those supposedly life-or-death stakes, James Gunn instead points the camera at Groot.   Which is to say, James Gunn points the camera at what actually matters to him, the thing that the scene is actually about: not the battle sequences which we’ve seen a million times before-- but a scene about a bunch of Guardians who’ve come together as a family, to protect and raise this little baby Groot, the reincarnated version of their old friend.   And by not allowing himself to get distracted by the baloney of what the scene is supposed to be, he not only creates a hilarious sequence for the audience-- where we get to watch little baby Groot jamming it out to some good old 70s rock music while the epic battle plays out barely visibly behind him-- but also sets up a potentially powerful theme for the movie: a theme about family, a theme about connection, a theme about caring for others.   He takes a scene that we’ve seen a million times, and says, That’s not what’s interesting about this scene to me, what’s interesting about this scene to me is right here.   And this is the first tool that you should take from James Gunn.   Writing a movie is not about serving them it’s about serving you.   It’s about focusing in on the things that really matter to you. When you learn to do this, you not only discover the key to specificity, you also find the cure for cliché.   The truth is, these scenes are archetypal. Big action movies do start with big action movie sequences, at least most of them do. But your big action movie sequence does not have to play by the rules as other big action movie sequences.   In Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 1, James Gunn proved this point with the death of Peter Quill’s mom, by playing an emotionally-dramatic scene at the very beginning of a goofy ol’ action movie.   And here in Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2, James Gunn again controls that tone by keeping the camera strictly focused -- not where it’s supposed to be -- but where he wants it to be. By asking himself some important questions all writers ...

[spb_column width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]   By, Jacob Krueger [/spb_text_block] [/spb_column] [divider type="standard" text="Go to top" full_width="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [fullwidth_text alt_background="none" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] How To Be a Latin Lover: Turning Sadness Into Salsa Podcast Transcript: This week we’re going to be talking about How To Be a Latin Lover, by, Chris Spain and Jon Zack.  And, while this wonderfully silly screenplay may not teach you how to be a Latin lover, it will teach you a hell of a lot about screenwriting.   If you’ve seen How To Be a Latin Lover, or if you’ve read the script, you know that from page one, from the very first scene of the film, it’s easy to know if you’re going to love this movie or hate it--  if you want to go on the ride with these characters or if you don’t.   If you want to succeed as a screenwriter, the most important page you will ever write is your very first page.   And the most important page you will ever rewrite, and rewrite, and rewrite, is also your very first page.   Your first page is the most important page in your screenplay, because the first page is the only page anyone is actually going to read.   Your manager, your agent, your coverage reader, your producer, your star-- everybody in the entertainment industry is overwhelmed with all the reading they have to do. They’re absolutely swamped, receiving screenplay, after screenplay, after screenplay. All these screenplays they have to read, stacking up on their desks or on their ipads.   And the truth is, everybody wants to read all those scripts, but no one actually does. Because reading every script that you receive is physically impossible.   Most of the scripts get sent out for coverage, and even the coverage readers can’t really, fully, read all of the scripts that are descending upon them.   A coverage reader makes about $50 a script. So, when you think about what it would take for you to read a whole script, write a good logline, a good summary, and a good commentary, you realize there is no way that a coverage reader can afford to actually read every script they're given. They’d be working for less than minimum wage!   Instead, what most coverage readers are doing is that they’re making a decision about whether to read or skim, and they’re making a decision on the very first page. Because what most of coverage readers read is bad.   Most of what coverage readers read is not exciting, not marketable, not producible.   And that means coverage readers are jaded.   They have a really rough job. They have to read bad material again and again and again. And that means that when they open your script, especially a script from an unrepresented writer or a writer they don’t already know, they’re already making an assumption it’s probably not going to be very good.   Because even the scripts they get from famous writers, from produced writers, from writers with big managers, and big agents-- oftentimes those scripts aren’t good.   So you’ve got someone who’s already feeling down before they even open your script, They’re already feeling jaded before they open your script.   And at the same time, every single one of those people desperately wants to find a diamond in the rough.   Because nobody wants to stay a coverage reader. Coverage readers want to become writers, or agents, or assistants, or development executives. And the way that you get there is by knocking the socks off of your boss with your incredible ability to find that diamond in the rough.   So there’s this interesting thing going on for coverage readers. On the one hand, they want to find a diamond in the rough, and on the other hand they all feel like they’re never going to see it,

[spb_column width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]   By, Jacob Krueger [/spb_text_block] [/spb_column] [divider type="standard" text="Go to top" full_width="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [fullwidth_text alt_background="none" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] Colossal: Externalizing the Internal Podcast Transcript: If you haven’t seen Colossal yet, this is definitely a movie that you need to check out. Because whether you love genre-bending monster movies or not, Colossal is a film that shows you just how much you can get away with if you are willing to trust yourself.   This is an example of a movie that simply should not work, so let me give you the premise really quickly. And for those of you who haven’t seen it yet, it’s important to understand that this is not some experimental art film. This is a mostly naturalistic character-driven drama about alcoholism.   Except instead of exploring alcoholism in a traditional dramatic format, it explores it by mashing up B-Movie, sci-fi elements, with a mostly naturalistic script that seems like it’s going in a romantic-comedy-with-some-dramatic-elements, direction.   In the simplest terms. it’s the story of Gloria, who is a raging alcoholic, total mess of a character, who seems to have some strange connection to a Godzilla monster that keeps on attacking Seoul, Korea every time she gets drunk.   As if that weren’t hard enough, this movie seems to break pretty much every other rule as well.   For example, the common wisdom is that you’re supposed to have a likeable main character in your movie, but this main character is far from likeable. Her alcoholism is so out of control that we find ourselves actually sympathizing with her nasty ex-boyfriend.   This is a character who uses people, who is irresponsible, who is out of control. At the beginning of the movie, gets kicked out of her boyfriend’s apartment and is forced to return home to the abandoned house of her parents.   Arriving there, she meets Oscar, played by Jason Sudeikis, a guy who has always been in love with her since they grew up as kids, who keeps showering her with gifts, who gives her a job at his bar, who tries to do anything he can to be nice to her… (Even if there is something that feels just a little bit stalkery about him, just maybe a little bit too nice, maybe just a little bit controlling).   We feel like we’re going in a Romantic Comedy direction-- like the film is making a promise to us. And again, the common wisdom is that once you start to to set the rules of a Romantic Comedy genre, that’s what where we’re supposed to go! We’re supposed to watch the story of two troubled souls coming together. We’re supposed to watch this story of the guy who always loved the girl, finally finding a way to connect. Of two broken souls healing each other. We’re supposed to have a happy ending, right?   Mild spoilers ahead...   Instead Gloria responds mostly by playing mind games with Oscar. By taking advantage of what at least at the time seems like is generosity.   She does this by attempting to seduce his best friend Joel, even knowing how Oscar feels about her. And she does it again much later in the film when she shows up at his bar with her ex-boyfriend, Tim, even knowing what that’s likely to mean for Oscar.   But of course, Oscar’s not really such a nice guy either. He’s not gonna play the likeable, romantic, comedy role that we expect him to play. Instead, he turns out to be the real villain of the piece. Whereas Gloria turns out to be the real hero.   And though we start off on a Romantic Comedy trajectory, we soon find ourselves going in a much darker direction.   On the playground of their childhoods a battle is playing out, a battle not for love, but for control-- a battle between sobriety an...

[spb_column width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]   By, Jacob Krueger [/spb_text_block] [/spb_column] [divider type="standard" text="Go to top" full_width="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [fullwidth_text alt_background="none" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] How do you know when your screenplay is done? Podcast Transcript: Recently we’ve been getting a lot of questions from our listeners, so I’m going to use today’s podcast to answer one of the most frequently asked questions. If you have a question for me that you would like answered, feel free to reach out to me on Facebook or Twitter and I’ll try to answer as many of them as I can on this podcast.   The question that we’re going to be discussing today is one that comes up all the time, “How do you know when your screenplay is done?”   I felt this is a particularly interesting question to look at, especially in light of the concepts we discussed last week about pitching.   Obviously you don’t want to be going out trying to sell your script, trying to pitch your script, if it’s not done. And at the same time, as screenwriters we find ourselves in this endless cycle of not done, not done, not done, not done, not done, not done. Rewriting, rewriting, rewriting. Starting over, starting over, starting over.   So how do you know when that cycle needs to end? How do you know when your script is actually done?   One of the things you have to understand if you’re going to answer this question is that there's a big difference between two words that we often use interchangeably. There’s a big difference between finished and done.   I believe it was Oscar Wilde who first said, great scripts “aren’t finished, they’re merely abandoned.”   As much as we would like to believe that someday this darn thing is truly going to be done, the truth is there is almost always more that we can do to a script. There’s almost always something we could ask, something that we could deepen, something that we could layer or nuance.   That means our criteria for actually completing our goals when it comes to screenwriting are actually different from almost any non-artistic field that we could be working in. I think this is true for any art, whether it’s painting, novels, poetry, or music. In the arts, we don’t get the same feeling of completion that an accountant gets. Or that a salesperson gets. Or that a burger flipper gets. There’s no clear place where it is truly done where all the criteria have been met.   So if we’re going to feel successful, if we’re going to be successful, and if we’re even going to know we're successful, we need a different way of evaluating ourselves. We need a different type of criteria.   We can’t just use a checklist because there’s always going to be something else added to that checklist. We can’t just use a bunch of coverage notes because no matter how brilliant your coverage reader may be-- and the truth is, a lot of them are not brilliant -- they’re going to be full of conflicting feedback. And as soon as you start making changes, half of those written notes are going to change and are no longer going to be valid.   We can’t merely rely on the advice of others, because our work is subjective and some people are going to love it, and some people are going to hate it.   So what are we supposed to rely on?   What we actually need to rely on are two separate things that end up working together. We need to first rely on our feelings as the writer. Then we need to rely on the feedback that we’re receiving from the outside. And this is where that distinction between finished and done becomes so important. Every time you reach the end of a draft, there are two very important questions you need to ask yourself. Question number 1 is “Am I done?