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, here’s the truth: there is nobody in my life whose job is to antagonize me!   There are people who I might feel exist only to antagonize me; there are people who might drive me crazy. But the truth of the matter is, if I stepped in and saw the universe through their eyes, they don’t think of themselves as the antagonist. They think of themselves as the hero.”   One of the cool things about movies and one of the cool things about life is that pretty much everybody in the world thinks that they are the hero and that other people are the bad guys.   And that means that if we want to learn to write bad guys, we need to learn to step into their shoes, and see the world through their eyes-- to empathize with the people that we hate the most, the people that we don’t understand, the people that we think are horrible.     There is a wonderful moment in which Peter Parker talks about the Antagonist in Spider-Man: Homecoming, Adrian Toomes (which is so wonderfully played by Michael Keaton) as a psychopath in a Vulture costume.   But even Peter Parker is making the mistake of dismissing the real psychology of the antagonist. And when we do that, we, just like Peter Parker, lose track of what our own stories are really about.   We not only miss out on writing antagonists who are fully formed and real, we also end up losing out on the political side-- the socio-political side of our story-- we lose out on telling a story that actually says something about our society and our world.   If you compare Spider-Man: Homecoming to the Captain America: Civil War movie from which it’s spawned (here’s a link to my Captain America: Civil War Podcast), you can see the difference between rooting characters in real actions based on their real views of the world, and manipulating characters into fight sequences based on psychology that doesn’t really exist in the world.   So, it is important to examine how we think about antagonists. How we think about the people we might perceive as antagonists in our own lives, and how we think about the antagonists in our movies. It is important that we remember that every antagonist thinks that he is the good guy.   If you look at Star Wars through Darth Vader’s perspective, Star Wars isn’t the story of Luke Skywalker saving the galaxy.   Star Wars is the story of a good man who lost 90% of his body trying to fight the good fight and do his job, whose only desire is to peacefully rule the galaxy with his son.   For Darth Vader, the antagonist is Obi-Wan Kenobi, this terrorist outlaw who has kidnapped his kids, corrupted them with religious indoctrination, turned them against their own father and now recruited them to the same radical terrorist rebel movement that threatens to destroy everything Darth Vader and the Emperor have built.   Do you know how much money, and time and effort it costs to build a Death Star? Do you know how many people die when you blow up a Death Star? From Darth Vader’s perspective, he is the good guy and the rebels are the terrorists.   Just as from the rebel’s perspective they are the good guys and Darth Vader is the terrorist.   To write any character well, what we really need isn't judgment but empathy.   And this is important when we write our good guy characters too.   If you’ve ever adapted a true-life story, or if you’ve ever spent a lot of time with a character, one of the things that starts to happen is you start to fall out of love with them.   Just like in any relationship, you start to see the bad sides of their personality, their contradictions, their mundane qualities, the things that don’t fit your vision of them.   And one of the tricks that you need to develop as a writer is learn how to step back inside of their point of view. Because, as we talked about in last week’s podcast, really all we are trying to do as writers is to see, hear and feel everything.   We’re not just trying to see, hear and feel them in our own heads but to see, hear and feel everything through the point of view of our characters. And not just our main characters, but also our secondary characters, even our tiny little characters!   We want to understand the world through their point of view. We want to understand that in Spider-Man: Homecoming when Zendaya’s character, Michelle, is in a scene, she thinks that scene is about her!   When the nasty bully Flash is in a scene, he thinks that scene is about him. Just as Tony Stark thinks the scene is about him. Just as Happy Hogan thinks the scene is about him. Just as Marisa Tomei’s character May Parker thinks the story is about Aunt May.   Every character thinks that they are the hero!   And what that means is that every character enters the scene with a really strong desire.   So in this Spider-Man podcast, let’s start not breaking down the structure with Peter Parker. Let’s not start with the main character like we usually do when we’re building a movie. Let’s start with the Antagonist. Let’s start with Michael Keaton. Let’s start with Adrian Toome. Let’s start with the Vulture.   Like any great character, Adrian starts the film with a really simple desire. A really clear priority. Or to use acting terms, a really clear super-objective that governs all of his actions.   There is here is only one thing Adrian Toomes wants in the universe: he wants to provide for his family.   Michael Keaton is working to clean up the mess left from the end of the Avengers movie when all the alien weaponry was left in the wreckage of New York City. He is trying to do a good job. He is trying to build a good life for his family. He is trying to build a good life for the families of the people who work for him.   And yeah, he is a tough guy with a tough temper. But mostly, he is just a man trying to do the right thing.   Tony Stark, when he creates the Department of Damage Control,

[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 golden fountain pen.” Completely different versions of “Mary is Writing.” And each version reveals a completely different version of who Mary is, and what Mary wants, and what direction Mary’s journey will take.   So this is different for every writer. But the most important thing whenever you are writing is this:   As a screenwriter, you need to see, hear and feel everything.   And this is really the hardest part, because we have this urge to finish. And that urge to finish makes it really hard to actually see, hear and feel everything.   We want to put a band aid on it.   If you’ve ever had a fight with a loved one, you have probably had the same urge, “I want the fight to end.” And the desire for the fight to end doesn’t allow you to actually see, hear and feel what is actually going on. So you just keep glossing over it.   And what happens is our little A.D.D. minds want us to escape, “okay over here…no, no, look over here, no, no, no look over here.” Because the other thing about seeing, hearing and feeling everything is it is scary. It is hard and it is scary.   It is hard because it requires a tremendous amount of focus, and it isn't a tool that we are used to using, especially our A.D.D world, where we are used to stimuli coming from all over the place and constantly multitasking. It takes certain stillness in the mind, a certain kind of meditation practice to actually do this: to see, hear and feel everything.   But the other thing is that when you start to pay attention, emotional stuff comes up.   So there is a first part that is just the practice, building the practice of being able to maintain your attention. And then there is the other part which is, eventually your characters are going to show you everything you don’t like about yourself.     They will also show you everything that you love about yourself, everything that is beautiful about you; they will show you things that are beautiful about you that you don’t even know yet.   But they are also going to show you all the stuff that you don’t like.   And when you see that stuff that you don’t like about yourself, it is tough. It is emotional and those emotions are going to come up in intense ways.   And then there is another thing that comes up when you try to do this, which is a feeling of frustration: “I can’t see it! I can’t see it clearly enough yet, I don’t know it yet...”   And another type of frustration which is: “I see it clearly but I can’t get it onto the page in the way that is the way I see it!”   And then there is another level of frustration: “I got it on the page the way I see it, but what if it isn't good? What if nobody else likes it? What if it isn't specific enough? What if it is cliché? What if it is boring?”   There are all these of roadblocks in our way around this practice. So, how do you approach it?   There are a couple of different ways, and like with anything in screenwriting, or in life, finding the path that you should take begins with your goal.   If you don’t know what your goal is, it is going to be very hard to know how to handle these obstacles. But these obstacles are only important in relation to your goal.   So, for example, if your goal is to finish, for most people this is the wrong goal. For most people it is the wrong goal in life, and the wrong goal in screenwriting. And I say for most people; it isn't for all people.   If your deadline is tomorrow, your goal should be to finish. If you are a person who never finishes anything, your goal should be to finish. It is more important to be finished than good if you have trouble finishing.   For most people the urge to finish is not because they never finish anything and it is not because they have a deadline; it is because they don’t want to do the hard work of seeing, feeling, hearing everything-the emotional work of actually dealing with the problems in their script.   If you went to see Yo-Yo Ma at Carnegie Hall and Yo-Yo was just like, “I just got to get to the end of this performance” as he played, it probably wouldn’t give you a very good experience. You’d probably feel a little ripped off.   And yet so many writers hope that they can rush to the end of their screenplay and somehow get that big financial payoff, that big Academy Award, that big boost in their career or change in their life. Somehow imagining that no one is going to notice their rushed performance because the idea is good or the talent is there.     When the truth is, we work in an incredibly competitive industry, and there are a lot of writers out there who are actually doing that Carnegie Hall level work. And the difference between reading their writing, and the writing of a writer who is rushing to finish is completely unmistakeable.   If you want to get to where you’re going, you’ve got to concentrate on being where you are.   If you rush your early stuff to get to the finish, here’s what is going to happen: No one is going to read to the finish.   You are going to have this great ending that nobody gets to, because your early stuff wasn’t really working.   If your beginning doesn’t grab the reader from the very first page and make them see, feel and hear the story in your head, for all intents and purposes, your ending doesn’t exist.   Because nobody is going to read it.   They’re going to stop reading in the first 10 pages, during all your boring setup.   So, if your goal is to finish, you want to ask yourself, why is my goal to finish? If you goal is to finish, you want to ask yourself, am I rushing or is this a real need?   One of the ways that I deal with this for myself is to set deadlines for everything.   I love deadlines. Because deadlines let me know when I have time and when I need to rush.

[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. The third thing about plays that is very different from screenplays is that playwriting audiences, theatre audiences, are much more comfortable with metaphor than filmmaking audiences.   And this is changing a little bit. For example, we saw magical realism in Narcos, we have real world human beings with surrealistic animal elements in Bojack Horseman, and even the new Wonder Woman, which most people certainly wouldn’t consider expressionistic in any way, has a character who exists for metaphorical, rather than plot driven reasons: a Native American character who randomly shows up at the German Front during World War 2.     He is there for a metaphorical reason. The metaphorical reason is, as we discussed fully in last week’s Wonder Woman Podcast, that the film is really an exploration of war, a look underneath the fundamental assumptions of most action movies: a movie that raises the question are people actually good?   Wonder Woman’s love interest in the film is an American spy, Steve. And, of course, as an American in a Hollywood movie, in relation to this theme, of course this character is the most fundamentally good among all the wacky good guy sidekicks.   And so they show up at the German front, and there’s a random Native American that joins the team. And one of the characters asks him the same damn thing that we’re asking-- “Why the hell are you here?”   And here’s his answer: “Well somebody took my land.” “Who took your land?” “That guy - the good guy? His people.” Which, is pretty impressive for a mainstream action movie-- and starts to deepen the theme, and deepen the question at the center of the movie-- that fundamental assumption of all action movies that we’re the good guys and they’re the bad guys-- and that all we have to do to make a better world is find a way for the good guys to win.   In a play you just have the Native American show up. You just let him serve his metaphorical purpose. You don’t have to explain “Well I am also here for the money…. you see... well, there is nothing left for me in the United States…,” you don’t have to explain him, he is just there.   So this is the other difference-- the different level of tolerance for metaphor versus pragmatic content in plays and screenplays.   And this is just because screenwriting is a newer art form; playwriting has been around forever, and when it started off, it wasn’t all that metaphorical.   When they started off it wasn’t Theatre of the Absurd, it wasn’t Expressionism, it was- “all right let’s tell a bunch of stories-- and it is always going to be the same formula; there is going to be a good person, they are going to commit an act of hubris, and eventually through that act of hubris they are going to try to escape their fate, and eventually that hubris is going to lead everyone to die or suffer horribly.”     No matter what, the fate is going to happen. Like a Three Act Structure or Save The Cat! it is just a formula. Back from when theatre was young.   And then what happened was, over time, people saw play after play after play... and they started to realize, “this is frickin’ boring!”   It isn't that the plays are boring, but the same thing again and again is boring. And over time, new movements came up and theatre evolved, just as we’re seeing film-- even big action movies-- start to evolve now.   And as a result, people who see theatre are much more comfortable with the idea that weird stuff is going to happen on stage. In filmmaking, in the middle of a giant fight scene, you can have like a really funny quip, or you can kill somebody’s father, and they are sad for two seconds, and then we are on to the next scene and it is a love scene. Or you can jump off a building and land by catching with your pinky and we are comfortable with that.   We are used to that kind of expressionistic stuff in action movies-- “this is what it feels like to be an awesome action hero” versus, “this is what it actually looks like to be an action hero.”   So, most audiences are comfortable with that level of expressionism, but most audiences aren’t that comfortable yet with metaphor.   What this means is that in theatre, you can translate your instincts in a different way from the way you translate them in film. In theatre, the line between dreams-- your interior world, your impulse, what it feels like to you, the random image that popped up into your mind-- and what makes it into the final draft is a much thinner line.   And that means, plain and simple, that screenplays often require more rewriting than plays do.   Part of the reason for that is, to some degree, theatre always looks fake, whereas most movies-- with the exception of art films like Where the Wild Things Are-- the adaptation of the children’s book that was actually purposely made to look fake-- that was made to look the way a child might imagine the place where the Wild Things are, as opposed to how a brilliant CGI artist would imagine it…     But with the exception of films like these, especially in the non-animated world, we haven't really seen a lot of movies that purposely try to look fake. Even our animation is moving more towards looking real.   In theatre, you can’t look real.   In theatre, people are very, very, very aware that there is a stage and there are actors up there. And if you do accomplish something that looks real, you will get applause, because people are so consciously aware of what it took! “Oh my god, how did they do that?”   A couple of years ago I took my niece Mia to see Mary Poppins on Broadway, which is one of the worst adaptation of a great film that has ever, ever, ever occurred. But it was one of my proudest moments as an Uncle. She was so young; this is her first play, she was maybe five years old. And halfway through the play she looks at me and she says, “This is boring to Mia.”   The reason it was boring to Mia-- well first off, structurally, they took the story out! So,

[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.   The woman can block bullets, jump buildings, lasso of truth bad guys, throw cars, and kick ass in a million different spectacular ways-- and still, she’s treated like a wide-eyed “little lady” who needs to be protected; no one will take her seriously.   And this is what allows us to connect with Wonder Woman.   Because while we may not be able to bend the physical rules of the universe-- we all know what it’s like to have a genuine talent to offer, and not be taken seriously, because of who we are or what we look like, because of race, economic standing, track record, experience, sexual orientation. We all know what it’s like to be mocked for our “naive ideas” even while the so smart guys in charge make nothing but a mess with their “realistic” ones.   We all know what it’s like to know we’ve got what it takes to go through the door and find that door shut to us. In our careers, in our families, and in our lives as artists.   Wonder Woman helps us see these problems in ourselves by turning many of the tropes of action movies upside down.   Just like Superman has his Lois Lane, and Spider Man has his Mary Jane Watson, Wonder Woman has her “damsel in distress” as well. Except he happens to be a bad-ass American Spy named Steve.       They meet in a classic “Damsel in Distress” sequence. Wonder Woman, Diana, is living happily (if a bit “artistically” frustrated -- by which I mean combat-frustrated) in a hidden world among her tribe of Amazonian Women.   And then one day, Steve literally crashes into her world from the outside-- crash landing his plane into the ocean of her perfect little world and inadvertently leading a bunch of nasty Nazis-- who are chasing him-- into her world as well.   And though this inciting incident may break the rules by happening later than we expect about 30 minutes into the film, and though we may spend a bit too long hanging in the well acted, but seen-it-before fantasy world of the Amazons, from this moment on, we are launched into a different kind of movie-- an exciting mash-up of superhero action and romantic comedy that starts to turn familiar tropes on their head.   While Steve flails around helplessly in the rapidly sinking plane in classic Damsel in Distress fashion, Diana quickly rushes to his rescue-- saving him just in time to see her beloved mentor killed by one of Nazis that have followed him into her world.     Despite growing up in a tribe of women warriors, it’s the first time Diana has actually seen war. The first time she’s actually seen evil. And having been raised in the simplistic action-movie mythology of her own people--she knows exactly who to blame. Not complicated political forces, not an imbalance of wealth and power, not politically enfranchised racism and xenophobia-- but Aries, the God of War, who corrupts good men and turns them against each other.   Like any good protagonist, Diana now knows her mission-- her purpose in life. Or what we call in screenwriting, her super objective-- the big thing she wants more than anything. And from this mission-- this super objective, this goal-- will grow the entire structure of Diana’s journey, of Wonder Woman’s change.   The obstacle, as we’ve discussed, is that she’s a woman, and Steve’s a man. And quite frankly, so is everybody else who has power in Steve’s world.   So despite the fact that she’s just saved his life, defied her mother, stolen the magical “G-d Killer” sword bestowed upon her people by Zeus, and left everything she knows to go with Steve and save the world, Steve immediately assumes he has to protect her-- from her naive ideas, from the German front, from the danger of war, from other people’s opinions of the way she dresses, from making a fool of herself in front of the powerful men he reports to, from carrying out her plan to go to the German front and defeat Aries--   Early on, we experience this in one of the most lovely and funny scenes in the film-- and the point where you realize you’re definitely going on this ride-- a scene that allows you to fall in love with the two of them as a couple. In a reversal of the classic romantic comedy awkward but chivalrous first date-- Steve tries to chivalrously protect Diana from the obvious chemistry between them by finding a separate place to sleep on the boat carrying them to London-- only to find that she’s way more comfortable with her sexuality than he is. Just as later he will find that she’s much more confident with her power than he is.   Just as she’s much more determined to follow her own voice, rather than the voices of those around her than he is. And what’s lovely about the film is that rather than judging Steve, the film develops him. Allows us to recognize him, not as a bad guy, not as a chauvinist, not as an antagonist, but as a product of his times-- a man with his heart in the right place, slowly waking up to the idea that the woman he loves might be even more capable than he is of taking care of herself.       And by refusing to judge Steve, the movie once again allows us to see ourselves in him. It allows us to recognize the same flawed judgment in ourselves-- not our malicious intent, but our unconscious biases. The way we unwittingly hold back those who could help us, and also the internal limits that hold us back from truly being ourselves.   And what’s best about Wonder Woman is that it does so without letting Diana off the hook in the structure of her own story.   The film doesn’t depict Diana as a victim of the patriarchy-- but as a woman who refuses to be a victim to it. The film resists the urge to set Diana and Steve against each other and instead develops a sweet, funny and mutually evolving love story between them. And most importantly, the film doesn’t turn Diana into Cassandra-- the perfect woman who can see the truth but who nobody will believe. It doesn’t turn her into the perfect savior.

[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. The characters who have the highest intelligence, the greatest leadership abilities among the crew are these powerful female protagonists, who don’t actually end up escaping their fate, but end up putting up the best battle against it.   What’s so exciting about the beginning of Alien: Covenant is that woven in with these familiar themes, it also brings something thematically new to the table, something that is derived from its predecessor Prometheus, but nevertheless pushed to an even deeper place in the early pages of the script: an exploration of these themes in the world of the synthetics (Aliens’ name for the humanlike Androids who populate its world).   There are two synthetics at the center of this film: The first is Walter, played by Michael Fassbender, the synthetic who assists the crew of the spaceship on their journey.   As you know from the trailer, even if you haven’t yet seen the film, the crew is a group of couples all heading to a new utopian planet where they hope to repopulate. And they have a very long journey, which means they have to spend most of their journey asleep in claustophobic cylinders. So, Walter is a synthetic who is there to keep the ship going while they go through their forced sleep cycles in these strange cylinders.   And there is also another synthetic involved, also played by Michael Fassbender, who (to prevent spoilers) we’ll get to in a moment.   So, as we’ve discussed, as in every Alien movie, the structure, the engine of the piece, is always built the same way. We start off getting to know a bunch of really well drawn characters, as they deal with the challenges of space travel: no aliens involved, just the challenge of surviving in space.   And we have seen this from the very first Alien and we are seeing it again here in Alien: Covenant.   After a cool opening sequence, that takes place many years in the past and sets in motion the theme we’ll discuss later, we find ourselves aboard another, bad-ass spaceship, with it’s own visually stunning technology. Walter, alone on the ship, puts up these beautiful recharging sails.       And like all the movies, the special effects and the beautiful chiaroscuro of the shots is certainly there from the very beginning. We have these gorgeous shots, we have this very dark tone, we have the feeling of Alien.   We have the shot of this is incredibly beautiful golden sails that are used to recharge the ship. And then, BANG! They get hit by a neutrino burst and we’re catapulted into the movie--   Right there from the very start, no aliens at all, we are already in crisis. The humans on the ship need to be wakened from their forced slumber, and immediately into life and death action--   This is an important lesson to anybody writing action movies-- or any other kind of movie for that matter-- oftentimes we start to think about our opening pages as a time to “set things up”, as a time to “establish this” or “establish that.” But the truth is the opening 10 pages; the first 10 pages of your movie are the most important 10 pages, not only artistically but also commercially.   Artistically they are the most important pages because these pages are the beginning; this is the sequence that creates the window through which your audience views everything else in your movie. Artistically, this is the window through which you view the rest of the movie; this is the bar that you set for yourself of what your movie needs to be.   If you are writing an action movie, the bar on your action should be really high. You should start off with the most badass action scene you can possibly create, so that you can then outdo it, and outdo it, and outdo it- make it stronger and better and cooler, and more badass.   If you are writing an action movie, your first sequence to the degree that is possible should probably be an action sequence. If you are writing a romantic comedy, it should feel like a romantic comedy sequence. If you are writing a drama it should feel like a dramatic sequence.   But no matter what you are writing, it shouldn’t feel like you are setting stuff up.   The reason for this is twofold. First, setting stuff up is boring; it is boring for the audience, it is boring for the writer, and most importantly, it is boring for the producer. And the truth is, page one is the only page you can be guaranteed that most people are going to look at. And the truth is, if you haven't got them by page 10, they are never going to make it to page 100 for your awesome trick ending… or your not-so-awesome trick ending, as we will talk about later.   So, the first thing to understand is that if you waste your first ten pages setting stuff up, you are doing your story, your readers and your audience a disservice.   But, the second thing is that you are also doing yourself a disservice; you are robbing yourself of the opportunity to get the feel of the movie from the very first page.   Every decision you make about your screenplay creates a feeling. And the first sequence of your movie should create the feeling that you are seeking for your script.   Now look, there are exceptions to this. Sometimes you use opening scenes for misdirection, like setting somebody up for a punch. You lead them to believe they are in one kind of movie and then… BANG! on page 10 you hit them with another--you pull the rug out from under them.   You can hear an example of this if you listen to my podcast about Guardians of the Galaxy.   So this isn't a formula, but it is a way of thinking about films. If you are not leading with your best stuff, you are probably robbing both the audience and yourself.   You are robbing the audience of the best opportunity that they could have to get excited about your movie, and feel viscerally what your movie is really about.

[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 and fresh within the genre.   And Chuck is an interesting example of this, because I know I asked myself when I was going to see Chuck, “do I really want to see this movie? After all, I have already seen Rocky?” And simply selling this movie as the true story of the guy who inspired Rocky doesn’t really make me want to go see it. Because my first thought is “Well, I have already seen this story. And okay maybe I saw the more Hollywood version of this story, but is this film actually going to take me someplace that I haven't already gone?”   Fortunately, once I sat down in the theatre, I learned that this movie was going to take me to a much more interesting place.   Part of the reason the film takes me there is because of the extraordinary performance by the cast.   Liev Schreiber is absolutely wonderful as Chuck Wepner. It is worth going to see the movie just for his performance. If you’ve seen Manchester by the Sea, and you’ve seen the performance that Casey Affleck won the Academy Award for, you should definitely go see Chuck. Because Liev Schreiber is doing in Chuck what Casey Affleck is trying to do in Manchester by the Sea-- playing this troubled, deeply internal character and bringing a layer to the movie that it would not have had without him.   Similarly, it has really great performances by Elizabeth Moss as Chuck’s wife, Phyliss, and by Naomi Watts as Linda, a local bartender who plays a really large role in his life.   So how do you make a movie about a guy that we have already seen a movie about? And at the same time how do you take that character and put him through essentially the same movements that the character in Requiem for a Heavyweight goes through, and make it feel like a new movie?     Well, the first step is to know what your movie is really about: to know why you are telling this story.   Why does this story matter in a world where some people have already seen Requiem for a Heavyweight? And in the world has seen Rocky.   And the writers and the director make a very strong choice: we are going to go into Chuck but we aren’t going to go into him with that wide-eyed enthusiasm with which we follow Rocky. We aren’t going to see Chuck primarily as an embodiment of the American dream.   We aren’t going to have epic battle sequences, we aren’t going to tune this guy up and turn him into this incredible fighter who just never got a chance. Instead, we are going to run directly at the truth.   We are going to run directly at the truth of a guy who was known as the bleeder because his greatest attribute was his ability simply to keep standing while people whaled on him.   We are going to tell a story of a guy who did go 15 rounds with Muhammad Ali. But we aren’t going to turn that fight into an epic battle; we are going to have one moment where he does knock Muhammad Ali down, as he did in round nine. But we are not going to shy away from the fact that he stepped on Muhammad Ali’s foot when that happened. Instead, we’re going to use that moment to get under the skin of the character.   And we are primarily not going to amplify the excitement of what is happening in the ring, but rather the sheer stick-to-it-iveness of this guy who just refused to go down. Who made it within 18 seconds of getting to the end of a fight with the greatest boxer of all time.   We aren’t going to turn this guy into a hero, we aren’t going to clean up his personal life, we are going to see the journey, and there are some spoilers ahead…   We are going to see the journey of his real relationship with his wife, Phyliss.   Sure, they may clean him up a little, in that they don’t tell you that she was his second wife. But we are still going to see his philandering. This isn't the story of Rocky and Adrian, these two people destined for each other, who love each other so much that she just can’t bear to watch him get hurt.   We are watching a story of the guy who has everything- the loving wife, the beautiful child, the chance to go toe to toe with Muhammad Ali-- but whose need for validation from other people is so strong, whose need for fame is so strong, whose need for women is so strong-- that most of the damage gets inflicted outside of the ring, and not upon him, but by him, upon the people he most loves - his brother, his wife, his daughter.   The writers make the decision not to clean up his drug problem, not to clean up his jail time. And in a really interesting structural move, the writers merge the structure of Chuck Wepner’s true life journey with the structure of the main character’s journey in Requiem for a Heavyweight, fusing these ideas together in the same way that Rocky and Rocky III took elements of Chuck Wepner’s life and then ran with them. Just as Sylvester Stallone allowed Rocky to at once grow from the inspiration of Chuck Wepner, and at the same time to be a separate character with his own wants, needs and structure, so too do these writers allow structure of The Mountain’s journey in Requiem For a Heavyweight and the real life structure of Chuck Wepner’s life story to merge into a unified character, and a unified journey, that is greater than the sum of its parts. This movie builds upon the structure of Rocky by rejecting that structure.   By taking the big fight and not putting it at the end but putting it in the middle. By turning the training sequence mostly into a story about how he has screwed up his relationship with his wife. B  y telling the Rocky-Adrian story not as a fable, but as a tragedy.   So, you can see that Chuck is turning the story of Rocky inside out. It is taking some of the same events and putting them in a different order, with a different polish, in order to tell a different story.   And it is doing it because the main character isn't a pull-himself-up-from-his-bootstraps hero.

[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 need to ask when dealing with this kind of scene:   How is my opening action sequence different from all these other opening action sequences?   How does it grow directly from who these characters are and where we last left them?   As I let that action movie sequence play out, how am I going to make myself laugh? How am I going to entertain myself?   It’s moments like this that make Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2 succeed.   And yet, at the same time, if you watched Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2, you probably felt that there was something missing. You probably felt that there was something from the previous version that just didn’t translate into this one. Something about the emotional content. Something about the structure.   As many critics have noted, in many ways Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2 has a lot more plot than Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 1, and yet Volume 1 seemed to play out with a little more drive to it, a little bit more of a feeling of action.   Other critics have wondered if the problem with the Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2 was too many characters speaking their emotions to each other.   But if you go back and look at Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 1, you’ll see that characters are speaking their emotions all over that movie. And, in fact, in both of those movies it’s the places where the characters are speaking from the heart, juxtaposed up against this total comic silliness, that is actually the engine of the piece, that’s actually what makes the movie succeed.   Now just a warning, there will be some spoilers ahead… But if we want to understand why this script, for all its wonderful specificity, humor and pathos is not delivering in the way the earlier script does, we need to look at the way it was actually built.   So why is it that we’re not crying at Yondu’s funeral in the way we cried at the end of the first Guardians of the Galaxy?   Why is it that Yondu’s funeral seems to drag, doesn’t seem emotionally-relevant at all?   Why is it that Peter Quill’s sojourn on his father’s planet, and that complicated emotional relationship between him and his father, Ego, seems like it’s dragging, doesn’t feel like it’s driving the story forward, even though for Peter Quill, the question of his father is probably the highest-stakes issue in his universe?   Why is that even with the introduction of another fabulous character, Mantis, the low self-esteem empath, and hilarious relationship with Drax, and Gamora’s complicated sisterly relationship with Nebula, and Rocket’s emotionally powerful relationship with Yondu, and all this fabulous character work that’s happening -- why are we not feeling the emotional stakes of this movie in the way that we’ve felt the emotional stakes in the first one? Why are we laughing, but not crying? Why are we smiling, but not feeling the drive of the action? Why is it that even though we are enjoying the hell out of this movie, apart of us knows there’s just something missing? The answer goes back to theme.   There’s a great line towards the end of Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2 -- Yondu says about his magical Yaka Arrow: I don’t control it with my mind... I control it with my heart.   And while the second part of that line probably doesn’t actually need to be stated-- the audience is probably smart enough to pick that up-- the concept of that line is probably one of the most important things you can think about as a screenwriter, and one of the most important things you can learn by watching Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2 and comparing it to the structure of Guardians Volume 1.   In fact there’s a great story about Joss Whedon talking to James Gunn after an early of draft of Guardians, Volume 1, which was met with a lot of love from studio executives. But Joss Whedon was tough on James Gunn, telling him “I want more of you in this script.”   So James Gunn goes back and rewrites this totally satisfying script to put more of himself into it. And that was the script that was so successful in Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 1. In Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2 you can almost feel the war between the mind and the heart of James Gunn.   The mind of James Gunn wants this to be a movie about ego.   Having written a movie about loss in Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 1, he now wants to turn the powerful might of his theme towards ego, and particularly towards the question of How does the ego destroy family?   And here we are, starting off just right, with this wonderful first scene that establishes the world of this family, where even during this epic battle, everyone’s main concern is nurturing this adorable little baby plant.  Trying to raise it in the right way.   And down from the sky descends Kurt Russell in the form of a character named Ego -- Peter Quill’s long lost father. Ego whisks Peter Quill off to his special Ego planet, where, of course, Ego turns out not to be exactly who Peter Quill expects him to be.   So from the very beginning, James Gunn is consciously trying to build something very, very specific -- he’s trying to build a story about the the pressure between family and ego.   He’s trying to build up to a moment, when Peter Quill has to make a choice between ego and family -- when he has to make a choice between his father and the promise of immortality, and the terrifying other side of the coin: that he might just be just like everybody else.   In the movie, that choice is boiled down to one line, when Peter Quill retorts to Ego, “What’s so wrong about that?”   But, structurally, despite the plot of the film, that question barely exists in the movie. Because Peter Quill doesn’t actually go on a journey in relation to ego; Peter Quill goes on a journey in relation to loss.   Because there’s that theme again, that’s in James Gunn’s heart,

[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, because if you read a 1000 scripts, 999 of them are bad.   Which means that if you want to win them over, you have to win them over from the very first page.   You can think of this like a job interview.   If you’re going for a job interview, and you show up in a really great suit, versus if you go in a job interview and you show up, and you look rumpled or disheveled, or you fly is undone, or your skirt is on backwards.   Even though you might give the best interview of your life-- even though you might eventually  win them over to considering you-- you can never erase that first impression.   The first scene and the first page of your movie, are the first impression that anyone will ever have of your film. And once you give that impression it is impossible to erase it. If you’re writing a comedy, and you make them laugh on the first-- or even better, the first half-page, the first quarter-page-- they will be inclined to laugh or the rest of your script. They will already be feeling the humor. They will be seeing everything through that window.   If you write a horror movie and you make them cringe from the very first page, they will already be inclined to cringe, to see your movie through that horror window.   If you’re writing a movie about family, and you make them feel that family connection in the very first page, they’re going to see your movie through that window.   If you’re writing a big ol’ Sci-Fi Epic, and you make them feel that Sci-Fi Epic feeling from the very page, they’re going to see everything through that window.   So this is what you’re looking for. You’re looking to create a first scene that captures the feeling of the script. You’re looking to create a first scene that announces your voice as a writer. You’re looking for a first scene that locks in exactly who this character is. You’re looking for a first scene that sets the world of your movie.   To say in it in a simplest way, you’re looking for a scene that grabs your reader by their designer lapels and says Look! You’ve got to pay attention to me! This one’s actually good.   The problem is you don’t find that by trying to be good.   And that’s the challenge that we have as writers.  Often when we try to be good or when we try to be impressive, we end up being showy, or we end up being false.   The way you write a screenplay that can demand that kind of attention is by understanding what your movie really is about. And sometimes it takes time to understand what your movie really is about. It takes time to fully connect, to fully get in there, to understand what your themes are, and you who your characters are, and how your characters are.   In fact, in How To Be a Latin Lover, the real theme, the real thing holding this movie together, starts to emerge pretty late into the movie.   For those of you who haven’t seen the film, Maximo, played by Eugenio Derbez, is the ultimate gold digger. At the beginning of the movie, as a dashing young man, he marries a wealthy old woman for her money. And then, after 20 years of the pampered life he’s always wished for, she ends up dumping him for a younger man, leaving him with absolutely nothing.   Now he has not reconnect with his sister Sarah, played by Salma Hayak, who he’s basically ignored for 20 years, in order to cajole her into giving him a place to live, and hopefully buy enough time to seduce another rich woman so he can go back to his old lifestyle.   So this is the premise of the movie, but this isn’t what the movie is about.   The movie is really about his relationship with his sister, and his relationship with his sister’s son, Hugo.   And pretty late into the script there’s a scene between Maximo and Sarah, where the real theme emerges, and the real emotional underpinning of this very silly script, gets established.   Sarah’s husband has died a short time before the movie started. She’s just been asked out on a date by her next door neighbor, and she is afraid to go on the date.   Maximo advises her to do what he does when he gets scared: get drunk! So, Maximo and his estranged sister get really, really drunk together.   And there’s a moment where Sarah tells Maximo that her favorite thing to do is to take really sad songs and turn them into Salsa.   And this is a funny little scene, as she takes the saddest song she knows, and turns it into a Salsa.   But it’s also the real theme of the piece. It’s really what the movie is about.   It’s about taking the sad things in our lives and turning them into comedy.   And, in fact, as anyone who’s written comedy professionally can tell you that’s what comedy is really about. Comedy is not about making the audience laugh. Comedy is about looking inside of yourself and making yourself laugh. Looking inside of yourself and laughing at the things that have hurt you: turning sadness into laughter.   And what’s really cool is that this theme gets established from the very first scene. One of the saddest events possible, the loss of a father, gets played in this very first scene for ridiculous comedy.   We are watching Young Maximo, as his voiceover tells us the story of his father, who always worked very hard, and who told his children you don’t get what you wish for, you get what you work for.   He talks about how his father, a truck driver, was always away for long periods of time. But he would drive all night to come home.   And there’s this adorable little scene, in which the whole family runs out of the house to wave hello to the father, who falls asleep at the wheel of his tanker-truck just a few yards from home--   The family scatters as he crashes the truck all the way through the other side of the house, out the back and into the desert. And as the truck rolls to a stop,

[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 and alcoholism, a battle between two children and two adults, a battle between a giant robot controlled by Oscar, and a giant monster controlled by Gloria, a battle between past present, between childhood and adulthood, between the psychological programs and patterns that were built in the past, and the people that these main characters want to become.   So I think it’s safe to say that all these things are about as far as you can go from a traditional Romantic Comedy structure.   In fact, this might be just about as weird a premise that you could come up with for a movie. Which is why it is so beautiful to see how well it actually works.   So often, as screenwriters, we think our idea isn’t good enough, or commercial enough, or no one will understand it. We think that no one will find the real story that we want to tell. We think that the crazy flights of our imagination will not make it on the screen.   And I’m not saying that everybody has to be Charlie Kaufman or Nacho Vigilando, but learning that you can push on any premise and make it work is one of the most valuable lessons you can have as a screenwriter. Learning that your own instincts, even when they take you to totally crazy places, are actually the only thing you can depend on as a writer is one of the most valuable lessons you can learn in screenwriting.   Now, does this mean that all of a sudden every crazy idea you’ve ever had should make it into your movie? Absolutely not. If you’re writing a traditional Romantic Comedy and a monster shows up, you have to ask yourself: is this really the film, or is this the metaphor?   But in this case, Colossal is actually a movie about monsters.   It’s a movie about the monsters that live inside of us. It’s a movie about the monsters that we can become. It’s a movie about the monsters who appear like monsters, and the monsters that appear like friends. It’s a movie about the monsters from our childhood that we internalize. It’s a movie about the monster of addiction. And it’s a movie about the monster that is rampaging in Gloria’s soul. And wreaking havoc on every life that she touches.   Our job as screenwriters is actually very simple. Our job as screenwriters are to look inside of ourselves and find the emotions, the characters, the questions that live there. To look inside of ourselves, find the things that are true.   In other words, our job is to externalize the internal. To take the things that live under the surface for us, and put them up on the screen where everyone can see them.   Sometimes that means our job is to look at our own monsters. And sometimes that means our job is to claw past the monsters that we believe ourselves to be to find the beauty that lives under the surface. Sometimes our job is to dramatize the parts of ourselves that we are ashamed of. And sometimes our job is to dramatize the parts of ourselves that we find most beautiful.   In a similar way, our job as screenwriters is to dive into the psyches of our characters. To dive into the characters that exist within them.   The reason that Colossal works despite its crazy premise is not because it’s a perfect movie -- it isn’t, and there are certain moments, especially, towards the beginning and towards the end where you can feel a certain bumpiness, where the writer still is trying to figure out what the structure means to the real world.   The reason that Colossal works-- the reason that all these disparate elements that feel like they shouldn't go together still do-- the reason that this film works is because of the way that all of these characters grow from inside of Gloria.   Carl Jung wrote about the idea of the Collective Unconscious.  When Jung’s spoke about the collective unconscious, he was not speaking as a screenwriter; he was one of the fathers of modern psychology. When he talked about the collective unconscious, what he talked about was the idea that there is a fabric that weaves us all together-- A fabric that he believed that we could tap into in our dreams.   And when we tapped into the Collective Unconscious, that fabric that unites all of us, we could tap into the metaphors that meant the same thing to every person, the metaphors that we all shared.   So if you imagine the world-- if you imagine every character in the world, and every situation in the world, and every metaphor, and every emotion, as a giant, giant, giant circle, you could imagine that your known world, the little bit of you that you know, is like the tiniest little dot in that circle. It’s tinier than a pin.   And the process of writing is about looking inside to find the parts of ourselves that we don’t actually know.   Looking inside to expand the amount of the Collective Unconscious that we can tap into as screenwriters. In other words, looking inside to find the outside.   Similarly, when they begin their journeys, our characters are like a little dot in a giant circle of the universe -- a little tiny dot that’s only aware of a tiny piece of who they can actually be.   And our job as screenwriters is to take the journey with them.   That journey isn’t always a logical journey. Sometimes it’s a metaphorical journey or an emotional journey. But to take a journey with them, looking inside of them in order to look inside of ourselves. Tapping into the Collective Unconscious in them to unmask and reveal the pieces of them that they’re not even aware of.   When we begin Colossal, there’s a part of Gloria that thinks she is the monster. Just like there is the part of every alcoholic that thinks of themselves as the monster.   And, similarly, there’s a part of Gloria that thinks of others as the monster. Who thinks of alcohol as the monster. Who thinks of her boyfriend Tim as the monster. A part of her that feels victimized and a part of her that truly hates herself.   And,

[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?” And question number 2 is “Is it finished?”   These questions are very different because one is about your personal experience as the writer of this project, and the other is about the audience’s experience of your script.   So, before we get to finished let's start with done.   Let’s talk about what it means to be done.   Because here’s the weird thing about screenwriting. You are going to write some really good scripts, and you’re going to write some really bad scripts. And oftentimes you’re going to have absolutely no control over whether they come out beautiful, or whether they come out terrible.   The truth is that any script can become good if you’re willing to push on it hard enough. But sometimes as writers, we do take wrong turns. We do get seduced by scripts that are actually not really serving our voice as writers, or are not serving the questions that are burning for us right now.   Similarly, sometimes an idea that feels like it’s going to be terrible, or external, or “off” in some way, actually turns out really brilliant when you start to write.   No matter how great your idea, or how terrible your idea, you’re pretty much guaranteed to have the same experience: about halfway through the script you’re going to think your idea sucks.   No matter how brilliant your idea was in the beginning, no matter how wonderful it was, somewhere along the line you’re gonna think it sucks. So, what a lot of writers end up doing is, they get about halfway through script, after script, after script-- or maybe not even halfway through, maybe 30 pages in, or 10 pages in-- script, after script, after script, after script, and then they abandon the idea. They tell themselves, “you know what, this is bad, this is never gonna come out.”   Other writers get stuck in a different cycle where they finish draft, after draft, after draft, after draft. And each draft seems to make no improvement over the one before! The script becomes different, but actually no closer to finished. It simply becomes a different kind of screenplay.   If we're gonna succeed, if we're gonna ever be finished, or done, we need to avoid both of these traps.   The avoidance of these traps actually begins at the goal-setting process. So the first thing you need to know is what are you going for right now as a writer: what is your goal? If you don’t know your goal you will never know if you’re done. And if you don’t know when you’re done, you will never feel successful. To go back to the examples that I just gave you. If your goal is to finish a script, you might feel really terrible after starting 10 scripts and abandoning all of them. On the other hand, if your goal is to explore for a while, and see what the next thing that grabs you is, starting 10 scripts and abandoning them might be a really brilliant thing to do. It might be a great step in the right direction.   If your goal is to experiment and broaden a skill in yourself, playing around with a bunch of scenes that don’t go anywhere might be wonderful, whereas if your goal is to finish this draft by May 23rd, then that kind of process would be very bad. You wouldn’t be done.   Done depends on the goal. And that means you need to become an expert at goal-setting for yourself so that you could know when you actually achieved done.   Which means, at the beginning of your writing process, when you start a new project, the very first thing you should do is set a goal.   Set a goal, not based on anybody else’s desire, not based on anything anybody else told you to do, not based on what you should do-- in the history of time no one has ever actually done what they should do. Don’t base it on anything except what you want right now for yourself as a writer.   Remember that this goal does not have to be about the project, because everything you write is actually serving two different parts of you. It’s serving the growing writer-- it’s serving your skills, your craft, your art, your voice, the tools that you want to develop as a writer, your writer muscles. And it’s also serving the project.   You’re always serving these two things at the same time.   So the first question you want to ask yourself is: what is my project goal?   Then you may want to ask yourself: what is my artistic goal?   You don’t want to set 12 goals. You want to set one. And this is one of the mistakes people make as they write, and especially the mistake they make as they rewrite.   Oftentimes our rewrites turn into endless checklists of endless things that we have to do endlessly.   We go in and do all the things in our checklist, and our script doesn’t actually get any better. And we don’t feel any closer to finished. Oftentimes we go into a rewrite and don’t even know what we’re improving! We don’t even know what we’re taking to the next level. We don’t even know what our goal is. We just know vaguely that we want to make it better.   If you’re going to be done you need a specific goal. And a specific goal can be something like this:   I want to play around and just explore different characters who speak differently.   I want to start a bunch of different stuff and see if there’s one that grabs my attention.   I want to play around with theme.   I want to write something about the theme of love.   I want to explore a question that haunts me.   I want to get stronger at using images. I want to write a script or a scene where 80% is image and only 20% is dialogue.   I want to become more comfortable with dialogue; I want to really learn how to let my characters’ voices sing, and I’m going to just write scenes where characters talk to each other a lot.   These are all really specific goals. They allow us to focus on one thing instead of 20 things. We’re going to set an end date for that goal so we know when we’re done.