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] [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?

[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"] FIX YOUR PITCH! This is perhaps the most dangerous screenwriting lecture you will ever hear.   That’s because today I’m going to be talking about one of the most dangerous concepts for screenwriters: the concept of pitch.   The reason that pitch is so dangerous for screenwriters is that when all we’re thinking about is “can I sell it, can I sell it, can I sell it?”  it takes us away from the kind of writing that we can actually sell.   Similarly, when all we’re thinking about is “what do they want, what do they want, what do they want,” it cuts us off from our own voice.   If you’ve listened to this podcast you know that without your voice you don’t have a shot. That in fact, your voice is the only thing that a producer can buy.   The truth is if a producer wants to buy a well executed, well-crafted script with a good hook, there are thousands of working screenwriters from whom they can buy those scripts.   In order to take a chance on you, in order to take a chance on a new screenwriter, you need to be giving them something they can’t get from somebody else. That thing that you can give that they can’t get from somebody else is your voice.   The biggest danger of pitch is it’s potential to distract you from the questions that actually lead to great writing. What do you want the script to be? Who is the character that’s fascinating to you? What is the question that you don’t know the answer to, that you wish you did? What’s the event that moved you and changed your life? What’s the dream you had last night that kept you up? What’s the terror that haunts you? Or the dream that keeps tickling you?   Instead of starting there with the personal, we start outside of ourselves. We put our focus on what they want. And all kinds of problems emerge.   The first is that you don’t know who they are. And because you don’t know who they are, instead of dealing with the real they, usually they just become a projection of the most insecure part of yourself.   So, the first problem is that when we start to think about they, the they that we think about is not like some cool producer who’s going to dig our work.   The they that we think about is the part of us that thinks we’re not good enough.   It’s the part of us that thinks that our idea is never going to sell. The part of us that feels like we have nothing to offer. The part of us that feels like our craft isn’t good enough, or our voice isn’t good enough, or our art isn’t good enough. The part of us that wonders if we have enough talent.   As writers, we are all desperately insecure. We’re desperately insecure because, as writers, we’re introspective people. Our job is to look inside of ourselves, look at those little niches that most people don’t look at, those little doubts, those little questions.   And so, because of this, if you allow yourself to get into thinking of the they that is going to judge you, it’s going to cut you off from your real instincts. It’s going to cut you off from your freedom to improvise as an artist. It’s going to cut you off from your voice.   You may end up with a really clear, clean idea, but it’s likely that the execution is going to be lacking something. It’s going to be paper thin. It’s going to feel like there is something missing, like there is a glass ceiling that you can’t quite get through in your writing.   The second problem occurs when we start our process by thinking about Can I sell it? Can I sell it? Can I sell it? is that you probably don’t have a clue if you can sell it or no...

[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"] BEAUTY AND THE BEAST: Is Your Idea Commercial? This week, we’re going to be looking at Beauty and the Beast. It could be argued that a virtually shot-for-shot live action remake of an animated film that premiered in 1991 is an odd choice for a screenwriting podcast. Why not just talk about the original, brilliant script by Linda Woolverton that made this movie worth watching in the first place 26 years ago? But with a record breaking 170 million dollar opening weekend, make no mistake, Beauty and the Beast is going to shape the future of big budget Hollywood movies. And that means it has  a lot to teach us. On the one hand, there’s some cause for concern. The Hollywood trend over the last few years of remaking old movies, rather than investing in new ones, has been troubling, not only for studio writers, but also for many producers, who have watched a great migration of top Hollywood writers into Independent Film, Self Production, and of course TV, where they have more opportunities to be challenged artistically, work creatively and develop original material. But recently, we’re starting to see a shift with original movies like Get Out, La La Land, Manchester By The Sea, Moonlight and Arrival not only winning awards, but also hugely exceeding box office expectations. We’re also starting to see a trickle up effect, as companies like Amazon and Netflix have started entering the feature film market-- reinvigorating both writers and producers for the potential of a renaissance in feature films that can mirror the one in TV. Which is why Beauty and the Beast’s success scared the crap out of so many big budget writers and producers, especially on the cusp of what seemed like a potential tipping point in the Hollywood model. But though this may mean we’ll have to endure live action remakes of everything from Bambi to The Lion King over the next few years, I actually think the tremendous success of film musicals like Beauty and the Beast and La La Land suggests another step in the exciting disruption we’ve been seeing of the traditional Hollywood business model. And that’s exciting news if you’re a screenwriter. Back when I was coming up in the industry, selling a musical was darn near impossible. I developed one with Robbie Fox, writer of So I Married An Axe Murderer, but even the powerful production company I was working for couldn’t get any investment. I wrote another with Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg, writers of Broadway’s Les Miserables and Miss Saigon, which at one point had some even more famous directing and producing attachments. It seemed an inch from production before it all fell apart. I even wrote one with four-time Academy Award Winner Michel Legrand. Yup, same story. These projects didn’t fall apart because they weren’t great stories, or because they didn’t have great writers behind them. Everybody loved these projects. They fell apart because it was common knowledge in the industry that film musicals just “don’t make money.” Because “adult audiences just aren’t into film musicals anymore.” You see where I’m going with this. It starts with 170 million dollars over one weekend. Does that mean you should run out and write a film musical right now? Not necessarily. Film musicals like La La Land and Beauty and the Beast succeed because of the love these writers have for the material. Not because they’re out there chasing the next Hollywood trend. What it does mean is that if anyone ever tells you what’s commercial or not commercial, or if anyone ever tells you that your idea is commercial or not comme...

[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"] GET OUT This week we’ll be talking about Get Out, written and directed by Jordan Peele. Over the past couple of podcasts, we’ve been talking a lot about the idea of using Hollywood genre movies as a catalyst for change— not by fighting against the “popcorn” elements that mass audiences love, but by building those elements around socio-political themes, that affect the expectations and belief systems of our audiences.   You can see this principle at play from the very first scene of Get Out.  It’s a classic horror opening— an attractive young person alone in a scary place that’s just a little too quiet— and a creepy score that warns us from the very first chord that things are going to get real ugly, real fast. Except rather than using the traditional “horror movie” location— the kind of creepy place where we all feel a little scared: a secluded beach, a dark forest, a creaky old house— we’re in a perfectly manicured, upper class, liberal suburban neighborhood. And what makes the scene terrifying (aside from the terrific score and top notch directing) is the fact that the attractive young man we’re watching is an African American in a white neighborhood. Jordan Peele has spoken about the conception of this scene as a way to pull a mainstream American audience first hand into the experience of an African American man-- to put them in the shoes of anyone  who has ever been pulled over for “driving while black”, stopped and frisked, watched nervous eyes regarding them as a threat, or seen a young family cross to the other side of the street as they approached. It captures the feeling that this place that feels so safe for so many people, for a young black man can feel incredibly dangerous and unwelcoming. And then, as any good writer would do, Jordan Peele lets his character’s very worst internal fears manifest externally in the universe. A white sports car starts following him. He turns and walks the opposite direction, trying to get away from trouble… and the next thing you know, he’s being beaten by a white guy in a mask and stuffed into the trunk.   The safe place that suddenly becomes dangerous idea is nothing new. We’ve seen it in Jaws, Friday the 13th, Tucker and Dale vs Evil and countless other horror movies of every possible genre. The suburbs as an ironically terrifying location is nothing new-- we’ve seen it in movies ranging from Scream! to The Stepford Wives. And the idea of the “wrong guy” in the “wrong place” isn’t new-- we’ve seen the reverse version of it in a million movies--  every time a white guy or gal finds himself or herself on the crime-ridden “wrong side of the tracks” only to be instantly mugged, attacked or harassed by people who look different from them. But the idea of taking the everyday anxieties of an African American man about to meet his white girlfriend’s potentially racist parents for the first time-- and blowing those fears up into a horror movie that looks on the outside like that character feels on the inside-- that’s new. And that’s exciting. Horror movies are obviously about fear. But the best horror movies are not just about scaring the audience. They’re about scaring yourself. About scaring your characters.   They’re about reaching into those unexplored corners of yourself left over from childhood traumas, bad life experiences, emotional and physical wounds, paranoias and nightmares that you know you should be over emotionally-- but somehow just aren’t. They’re about taking the childlike fears -- the nonsensical monsters under the bed-- we “know” we should dis...

[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"] INCEPTION REDUX This week, we’re going to do a little blast from the past, by revisiting Christopher Nolan’s Inception.   Having just seen Get Out! which I’ll be discussing in next week’s podcast-- and which deals pretty brilliantly with the themes of race within a big genre movie, but pretty crappily with the concept of hypnosis-- I wanted to look at a movie that looks at hypnosis in a truly profound way. And in fact builds its structure around hypnotic concepts. All movies are hypnotic, and the best screenplays actually hypnotize their readers on the page, allowing them to forget that they’re reading (just like you do when you read a great book) and actually start to see, hear and feel every moment in the script on that little movie screen in their heads. This means that all screenwriters are actually hypnotists-- some are just a heck of a lot better at it than others. Which means that if you want to succeed as a writer, you’re really going to benefit from understanding some basic hypnotic concepts. Because your job is to help your readers-- many of whom are not naturally creative people, and who quite frankly are bored to tears reading scripts-- to slip into a creative state, and be able to effortlessly and viscerally experience your movie as if it were real, without having to supply any of that creativity themselves. If you’ve taken our Write Your Screenplay classes at Jacob Krueger Studio, you know this is the real purpose of formatting. Not laying out your script in a “grammatically correct” way, but laying it out in a way that induces that hypnotic trance for your reader, lowering the barrier between fantasy and reality, so that they can experience your story as if it were real. And if you’ve taken our Write Your Screenplay Level 2 classes or Protrack, you also know that structure is actually a hypnotic concept. A way of building fictional moments in a way that takes the character, and the audience, on a real, transformative journey. Though almost all successful writers apply these concepts subconsciously, you won’t find them in most screenwriting books or the average screenwriting school. I actually learned about them from my Mom, Audrey Sussman, who is a brilliant hypnotherapist, who specializes in Anxiety, Writer's Block and other creative issues, and who taught me everything I know about hypnosis, not as a way of changing my writing, but as a way of shaping my creative and psychological life, so I could become the person that I wanted to be. But as I moved into my professional career, I was able to apply many of these concepts to my writing, with really powerful results. So before I share this gift with you, I want to take a moment to give a shout out to my mom. And if you’re curious about working with her or learning more about how hypnosis can change your life, shoot her an email at askdraudrey@gmail.com. The Hypnotic Basis of Inception One of the truly interesting things about Inception is that its structure is actually based upon the principles of hypnosis.  In fact, the organizing principles of the dream within a dream within a dream structure of the film almost perfectly mirror the classical hypnosis training you’d receive during a basic hypnosis certification class. Why is this important to you as a writer?  Because as writers we all need organizing principles around which to structure our character’s journey.  Usually we think of such structures in terms of acts and themes, but as Inception demonstrates, the truth is that almost any source of inspiration can become the organizing principal of your story: a q...

[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"] ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY What's Your Structural Focus? This week we’ll be looking at Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.  Which is about as far as we can go from last installment’s Oscar Winner Manchester By The Sea.     Rogue One is a silly joyride of a script, built with half-drawn characters, nonsensical plot twists, and a hundred other flaws. And yet, while clearly feeling a bit trifling in scope compared to the other Star Wars films, it nevertheless delivers in a big way what its audience is seeking.   What’s also particularly interesting about Rogue One for screenwriters is the way it dives into a moment that is literally just a blip on the radar in Star Wars: Episode 4, and discovers there an entire backstory, worthy of a film itself.   The ability to dive deep into any moment and find drama is one of the most exciting things about screenwriting (and one of the most important skills you can develop as a screenwriter).  It means that truly anything-- even just a little question like “how did they find those Death Star plans anyway?” can become a movie, if you’re willing to look closely enough.   But it’s also a reminder of how easy it is to get waylaid by backstory and exposition as we write and rewrite our scripts. Because as successful as Rogue One might be as a stand alone film, just imagine the effect it would have had if George Lucas had tried to squeeze all that exciting backstory into Star Wars: Episode 4, rather than just allowing the rebels to already have the plans.   He would have been 100 pages into the script, and Darth Vader wouldn’t even have boarded that first starship.  We wouldn’t have met Luke Skywalker. We wouldn’t know the real story we were following.   So, we’re going to talk about what makes Rogue One work, and more importantly, we’re going to explore a concept called Structural Focus and how you can use it, both in writing and rewriting a script, to keep you focused on what really matters, whether that’s diving deep to find the drama in a specific moment, or keeping yourself above at a bird’s eye view, to keep your focus on the big picture of the story you’re telling.   So what makes Rogue One work?   If you’ve listened to my podcast on Star Wars: The Force Awakens then you know that these movies are being built more like a TV Series than like traditional Feature Films-- replicating the same Structural Engine over and over again to create a genre experience for the audience that feels the same as the one they got from previous episodes, but just different enough to make them feel like they got value for their money.   The elements that compose this Engine are always the same.   For the Star Wars franchise, it’s always some version of a Death Star, a McGuffin (usually plans) that everyone is trying to get their hands on, gorgeous space chase and fight sequences with super bad-ass technology, a juxtaposition of jaded “Hans Solo” and innocent “Luke Skywalker” characters working on the same team, a neurotic Droid, a complicated father/child relationship, and most importantly, a spiritual journey in relation to the Force.   As Episodes 1, 2 & 3 proved, Star Wars movies abandon these elements at their peril. Successful episodes can shake up these elements and approach them in different ways, but if they ignore them, the films stop feeling like Star Wars and start feeling like something else.   And of course if you’ve studied TV Drama  or TV Comedy writing with us you know this is the exact same thing that happens in TV Series Writing.

[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"] MANCHESTER BY THE SEA: Tests, Flashbacks & Characters That Don't Change We’re used to seeing character driven movies that are about characters going through great personal changes. We’re used to watching these kind of family stories, especially dysfunctional family stories. We’re used to watching stories about families coming together. That’s because most movies are built around a very simple principle, which is the principle of change-- the idea that characters are undergoing this journey so that they can change. Normally we think of this as a change for the better. One of the interesting things about Manchester By the Sea’s structure is that this character, Lee Chandler, played by Casey Affleck, is a character that wants to change but simply cannot. This is a movie about a character who wants to change but can’t, failing to overcome his demons. So this week, we’re going to talk about movies where the character does not change. There are a couple of different kinds of these movies, but Manchester By the Sea falls into a very specific category of them. This is a movie that I call a Test Movie. You can almost think of it as the other side of the coin from a Change Movie. For most movies, the structure exists for a very simple purpose; take a character who starts at point A and move them to Z. So, if you have a character who’s extraordinarily kind, we might move that character to a place of selfishness. If we have a character who is incredibly selfish we might move that character through a place of kindness. Now, some Change Movies work like a circle. For example, if you think of a movie like The Wrestler, it starts with a character whose life revolves around wrestling, and we move him the furthest we can move him from there, which is to a place of actually integrating with society. We get him a girlfriend and a relationship with his daughter. He gets a job at a deli that he loves, making him feel like he once did in the ring. Then what we do in the second half is take everything away. We take away his daughter, the job and the girlfriend and we ended back where we started. In these Circular Change Movies, a character doesn’t go back to where they started it in the same way; they go back in a different way. The Wrestler is not the same person he was at the beginning, even though he’s changed and then changed back. But most movies and TV shows based on a Change Structure take a more A-Z approach to change. For example: Breaking Bad: A mild-mannered professor turns into cold-blooded meth dealing killer and guess what—he loves it! Another example is American Beauty. The character starts off afraid to stand up to his wife and be himself, goes through a total nervous breakdown while he is lustfully pursuing his 16-year-old daughter’s best friend, and somehow transforms himself into a person who’s at peace with his universe. These are the standard change movies we’re used to seeing. Then we have test movies, and there are lots of them. Raiders of the Lost Ark is a test movie. It’s a story about a character who does not change. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones is the same at the beginning as he is in the end. Nothing changes, but he does get tested. He gets tested in his desire to pursue the Ark of the Covenant. Any normal, reasonable human being tested in the way that Indiana Jones is tested would simply decided “Screw this Ark. I’m going to go back to teaching where it’s nice and safe,” but Indiana Jones consistently makes the opposite decision. He doesn’t change but he does get tested: Is he ...

[spb_text_block title="PODCAST - La La Land: Form = Function" pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] La La Land: Form = Function By Jacob Krueger [/spb_text_block] [divider type="standard" text="Go to top" full_width="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [spb_text_block title="La La Land" pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] La La Land: Form Equals Function They say if you want to get along with your friends, there are two things you should avoid discussing: politics, and La La Land.   But if you want to have an interesting discussion about what the future of storytelling is going to look like, these are exactly the things you want to talk about. So, after breaking the first rule last week with a political podcast, I’m going to break the second one this week by talking about La La Land. It’s hard to remember a movie as polarizing as La La Land for both audiences and critics. And what’s interesting is that the split didn’t happen just along “I love Musicals” or “I hate Musicals” lines. La La Land is tied with All About Eve and Titanic for the most Oscar Nominations in history. More than Gone With The Wind. More than Casablanca. More than The Godfather. More than Citizen Kane. Compared to film musicals to which it pays homage, it has 2 more nominations than My Fair Lady, 6 more than An American in Paris, 9 more than The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, 11 more than Funny Face and Sweet Charity, and 12 more than Singin’ in the Rain, which the American Film Institute considers the greatest musical ever made. Yet despite its tremendous crossover appeal among audiences and critics on both sides of the “I Love Musicals” and “I hate Musicals” lines, La La Land seems to have an equal ability to inspire rage in its audiences. Critic Kyle Smith of the NY Post recently wrote an article entitled Academy Embarrasses Itself With 14 La La Land Nominations. Jazz artists have turned up their noses at Ryan Gosling’s character, Sebastian’s, conservative notions of what Jazz should be. Others have dismissed the idea of a jazz movie devoid of politics, and starring a white guy as the standard bearer of Jazz tradition, as anywhere from trifling to downright troubling, especially considering the involvement of many of Jazz’s most famous artists, such as John Coltrane and Charles Mingus, in the civil rights movement. Audiences have complained about everything from the arc the relationship of Emma Stone’s and Ryan Gosling’s characters, to the quality of the score and their ability to sing and dance it. And some people just downright hated it. Which all goes to show that if you want to do something great, you’re going to have to piss some people off. That’s not to say that I actually liked La La Land. Personally, though I was deeply moved by the ending, I didn’t really enjoy the journey that got me there. I found its homages to great musicals more derivative than nostalgic. I found Mia’s uncompromising tear down of Sebastian for “not pursuing his dreams” in the midst of his first step toward artistic success, petty, unnecessary, and downright un-true to her character (especially considering where she was in her own artistic career). It made me not care so much if they ended up together. I struggled with the unbalanced feeling the movie gave me, as it abandoned the musical structure it established in the first act in favor of a more traditional dramatic format later on. And, spoiler ahead… In our modern world of affordable travel and long distance relationships, I still can’t for the life of me figure out what made it necessary for these two to undergo their final break up at the point they did, other than an aversion to Skype and Expedia. As Sebastian watches a live jazz performance with Mia, he explains to her: “It’s conflict, it’s compromise, and it’s very, very exciting.”

NOT La La Land By Jacob Krueger [/spb_text_block] [divider type="standard" text="Go to top" full_width="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [spb_text_block title="NOT La La Land" pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] I had planned this week to talk about La La Land. But with the new executive order barring refugees, immigrants and green card holders from our country, I want to use this podcast for something much more important. As filmmakers, writers, actors, directors, producers, executives, we have a sacred responsibility to our audience. Our films and TV shows shape the narrative of this country, and the belief systems of the hundreds of millions of people who see them. Our movies and TV Shows can shape the world for the better. Shows like Will and Grace and Queer Eye For the Straight Guy, for example, completely changed the landscape for gay rights in America. By breaking the taboos of putting openly gay characters into leading roles, these shows introduced a mainstream audience to a kind of person they might otherwise have judged or feared, and allowing them to get to know them as human beings. They brought gay characters into mainstream living rooms, and allowed people to get to know them and love them. And by doing so, they changed the world. And what’s interesting is that these characters that changed the world were far from perfectly depicted. Far from the complex portraits that we’d see in later in the shows that followed like Transparent. In fact, these shows were rife with cliches and stereotypes, presenting the kinds of gay characters that mainstream audiences expected, embracing and normalizing and humanizing the cliches, rather than fighting them. In many ways, the flaws of these shows were part of their power. They allowed the shows to meet their audiences where they were, rather than where their writers wished their audiences would be. Although at that time, putting a gay character in the lead was obviously a political act, these were not written as political shows. They didn’t get up on a soap box and tell people what to think, or demonize their audiences for their view of the world. They simply invited their audiences into the lives of their characters, and by doing so, they allowed millions of people to actually change their views, without even realizing they were changing. In many ways, the most powerful political movies and TV shows are often the ones that are not overtly political. Because it’s these shows that shape our worldview from the inside, sneaking past our defenses of what we think we believe, and slowly changing the way we view the world. Which is why I want to implore you, as writers, as directors, as producers, as actors, as artists, as filmmakers, to recognize the power of mainstream Hollywood movies and TV shows. These movies are not just popcorn movies. These TV shows are not just mind numbing entertainment. These movies and shows are the mythologies that shape our world. Working on us, through subtle repetition, to shape our view of the world. Powerful because they don’t appear political, because they don’t trigger our intellectual defenses. For years, we’ve dismissed crappy reality programming like The Apprentice as mindless entertainment, not as the storytelling that shapes the worldview of America. But in the wake of this election, we can now see the political power of even the silliest reality show, to shape the worldview of millions of people. To take an erratic businessman, and shape him into such a powerful symbol of success, that even in the face of countless contradictory facts, for many people that belief cannot be shaken. People don’t attach to facts. People attach to characters. They learn from characters how to understand their world, how to make sense of their own questions and emotions, what it is to be a woman or be a man,

[spb_text_block title="PODCAST - Second Challenge Check-In" pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] The Final Challenge Check-In! By Jacob Krueger [/spb_text_block] [divider type="standard" text="Go to top" full_width="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [spb_text_block title="The 2017 Screenwriting Challenge!" pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] This article was taken from our vault.  If you want to know the latest classes that are offered at the studio you can see them here. For this final 2017 Screenwriting Challenge check-in, and before we get back to our regular program of breaking down movies, I want to talk about what to do with the many pages you’ve now generated, and how to keep your rhythm going once the screenwriting challenge is over. Last week, we talked about the Aum Humaniversity meditation I experienced during my retreat here in Thailand. As promised, this podcast will end with a new 12 step writing exercise, based on that meditation. As we discussed last week, great writing begins with getting your vulnerabilities out on the page-- the parts of you that you don’t normally express, the truths that you don’t normally look at, the characters that exist inside you: both the beautiful ones that you want to share with the world, and also the ones that scare or disgust you, who often represent parts of you that you don’t want to believe are possible, or that you’d never express in the outside world. That doesn’t mean that you are your characters. It means that you contain them. Some, in a form that is already integrated into your personality, and others in a form that is not integrated, or not expressed. Meditation experts talk about breath as a waveform, a symbol of the polarity of life-- the inhale and the exhale, the positive and the negative, the good and the bad, the yin and the yang, the dark and the light. And I’d like to suggest to you to think of writing as a waveform as well. In our Western society, we are taught to push out the negative, to judge it, to blame it, to feel guilty about it. But Eastern thought views it in a different way: as a natural part of that waveform, existing as a balance. To put it in a simple way: whatever you (or your characters) are expressing in the world, the opposite also exists in you (and them), in equal proportion, whether it is expressed or not. It is actually the existence of this polarity that makes structure possible. Because it is the existence of this polarity that makes change possible. Neither you nor your characters are fixed entities. You’re not just one way. We are constantly changing. Breathing in and breathing out.   Think about who you were in high school. Then think of who you are now. Think about the vast difference between those two characters. Yet we don’t think about ourselves as constantly changing. We think about ourselves as fixed entities. I am this. Or I am that. And we often think of our characters in the same way. In classic television-- if you think back to shows like Seinfeld or The Golden Girls, that was necessary. Back then, shows were distributed in a serialized form, where characters never changed. The distribution model meant that the real money was made in reruns which often came out of order. An audience needed to be able to see Episode 3 of Seinfeld and then episode 125 of Seinfeld and still feel like Jerry Seinfeld was Jerry Seinfeld. So structure had to grow from a different place-- from the situation in which you put these static characters. (That’s where the word sit-com comes from situation comedy). But if you think about most of the greatest feature films, you’ll see that the characters are not static. That they change in tremendous ways. Today, even in TV and Web Series, we’ve seen a shift to this kind of structure emerge, and with it a renaissance in television and web series writ...