Write Your Screenplay Podcast

[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 Second 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"]   Greetings from Thailand! You can probably hear the sounds of the jungle and of rushing water around me. It’s been raining here for the last 12 days, and pretty much every path has turned into a river. Nevertheless, it’s been a pretty magical experience. As many of you know in addition to my own little writing retreat, I’ve been here for the last couple of weeks studying yoga and meditation. And I recently participated in a life-changing meditation, created by AUM Humaniversity, that I wanted to share with you with this 2017 Screenwriting Challenge check-in. The meditation was nearly three hours long—12 stages of 12 minutes each. And each stage focused on experiencing an emotion that is normally feared or repressed. It occurred to me, of course, that this is a lot like writing. Writing takes courage. It takes a willingness to look inside that most people do not have. And even more courageous, it takes a willingness to look inside ourselves and put what we find there on the page—even the parts of us that we don’t very much like, the parts that make us feel exposed, or vulnerable, or weak, or unacceptable. There’s a myth about writers that we are in the fiction business. But actually the opposite is true. We are in the business of telling the truth through fiction: the emotional truth of our experience. As those of you who have taken my Write Your Screenplay class or Jess’s Meditative Writing class know, writing is like a dance between these two parts of your mind: the part that wants to create something that others will understand, and the part that has something it desperately needs to say. Something that may or may not be socially acceptable. Something that may or may not fit your career goals or your plans for your story. Something that may or may not be in a form that others will understand. This is where our characters come from. Not from an idea, not from a formula, not from what your conscious mind thinks is necessary for your story. But from somewhere deep inside. Somewhere we don’t normally access.   Your characters are simply a part of you that you don’t normally show to the world.   Jung called this idea the collective unconscious. His belief was that in our daily lives, we only experienced a very tiny bit of the universe—a very tiny bit of who we really are. But in our dreams, he believed, we could tap into the full universe that already existed within us. Not an individual experience, but a collective one—the metaphors we all share. The things that make our stories universal. In other words, he believed that the whole universe already existed inside of you. That every script you’ll ever write, every character you’ll ever create, every line of dialogue. Every possibility. It’s all there, in this part of your mind you don’t normally go to in your waking life.   I remember when I was first starting out as a writer, how much work it was to write.   I remember listening to famous writers talk about how they saw themselves not so much like a writer as like a scribe, that they weren’t actually “doing the writing,” but rather simply transcribing what their inner writer, their muse, their instincts—choose your word for it—simply transcribing what that force inside them was telling them. I remember thinking, what a bunch of horse shit. I didn’t have a muse like that. If I want to create something, I sat down and wrestled with it, and forced it into the shape I wanted it to take.

[spb_text_block title="PODCAST - First Challenge Check-In" pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] The First 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"] We’re now 5 days into the screenwriting challenge, and we’re so excited about the tremendous response that we’ve had, and how many people have been doing such amazing work. We’re going to use today's podcast just for a little check-in to answer some questions from people who might be struggling with the challenge and maybe to give a little bit of inspiration for people who are doing it. If you don't know what all this screenwriting challenge is about and you want to learn about it, go to writeyourscreenplay.com/challenge for all the details. Here’s the most common question we always get about the challenge: What if I want to participate and I missed the deadline? Should I wait till next year? Of course the answer is no, it’s never too late to start. Oftentimes as writers we end up pushing off those things that really matter to us. It always feels like it's not the right time, and we think maybe it’ll be a little quieter next year, it’ll be a little easier next year. My life will slow down, my kid will grow up, my family will be less crazy, my job will be less intense, and of course this is never true. It's like if you wanted to become a mighty river, but you keep telling yourself there's just not enough water. Really the creation of a great river begins with a tiny little stream. It all begins with a few droplets, and as that riverbed starts to get deeper and deeper, it starts to make room for the kind of volume of water that we really want. One of the things that is really interesting is a lot of people think that they’re going to quit their job and do nothing but write, but the facts are that actually that is one of the hardest things to do as a writer. For many writers, that first year, when they actually sell their first script and are able to quit their job is the hardest year, because they often don't have the infrastructure underneath them to sustain that kind of volume. So you can look at this time now, even if you're too busy, even if you're feeling behind, you can look at this time now as a time to start building that riverbed, a time to start allowing those few droplets that you have to carve a path that eventually the water will come to fill. This is truly an “if you build it, they will come” situation. If you're hesitating, if you haven't bought your journal yet, if you haven't started yet, go grab a piece of paper right now. Take 7 minutes right now. Because here's the thing -- you have 7 minutes. You can't bullshit yourself out of 7 minutes. You can bullshit yourself out of an hour. You can bullshit yourself out of time to finish your script. But you can’t bullshit yourself out of 7 minutes, and those 7 minutes are going to end up changing your life. Here's the other really common issue that comes up with the screenwriting challenge. A lot of people have been doing the challenge, but they really hate the things they are writing. Sometimes that feeling of judgment can cause us to lose steam. As writers we play a really strange game with ourselves. Instead of dwelling on our successes, we often focus on our failures as evidence that we’re not meant to be writers. Usually this has more to do with fear than anything -- fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear that we don't have what it takes. When your judgment of your writing is based on fear, it has very little connection to reality. You may dismiss really brilliant writing as terrible, simply because you're afraid that other people aren’t going to like it.

[spb_text_block title="PODCAST - The 2017 Screenwriting Challenge" pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] The 2017 Screenwriting Challenge! 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"] We’re going to do something special this podcast, because the holidays are a particularly challenging time for writers. And the New Year can come with its own added pressures. We all do our best as writers when we get into a rhythm, but during the holiday season that rhythm can be really hard to maintain. Your schedule gets jammed up, you’ve got parties, you’ve got gifts to buy, you’ve got family visits, you’ve got stress, and you’ve got a little too much vacation time. The next thing you know you haven’t written. Of course that's not even the real problem. The real problem is getting started up again. Ideally you want writing to be part of your daily routine. You want it to be as natural for you as brushing your teeth, getting dressed for work, drinking your morning coffee. But for most writers, this is rarely the case. Many of us write in fits and starts, waiting for those moments of inspiration and spending most of our time beating ourselves up when the inspiration doesn't come. Then just when we get started on a new rhythm, something happens to interrupt it. I’m always amused when I participate in writing panels, because invariably there’s a young writer who asks that all-important question: “How do you know when you’re really a writer?” What you get to do then is you get to watch famous writers lie their butts off. You get to watch one panelist after another insist, “What real writers do is write. You know you’re a writer when you write...” Having worked as a writer for most of my professional life, I can tell you that that's not the truth. It doesn't really matter if you're an Academy Award winner or a first-time writer. Most of what writers do is not writing. What writers really do is procrastinate. Writers are brilliant at finding really important tasks to interfere with their writing. You set aside a couple minutes to write, and suddenly those dirty dishes really start to call to you. The next thing you know, you've cleaned your whole kitchen, scrubbed your shower tiles to a sparkling sheen, reorganized your closet, updated your Facebook photos, and you’ve still not written a single word. You're upset with yourself. And, at the same time, a part of you feels like you didn’t have a choice, that time just got away from you. Then you start to punish yourself. You tell yourself, “I’ll write for twice as long tomorrow.” Maybe you wrote for 2 hours today, then you’ll write for 4 hours tomorrow. Then tomorrow comes, and 4 hours seems like an impossible amount of time. Even if you do manage to bang out a few pages, it's hard to find any joy when you're feeling like that. The next thing you know, you’ve gone a whole week, month, or maybe even a year without writing. Under these circumstances, it’s really easy to doubt if you're a writer at all. You may even be tempted to give up on writing entirely. You may feel so blocked that you don't see any way out. At the same time, you know that giving up on writing would be giving up on the best part of yourself. So what are you supposed to do? I'm going to tell you that the difference between successful and unsuccessful writers is not that one group never procrastinates, or that one group never gets blocked. The difference is that successful writers are better at managing their procrastination. Successful writers are better at maintaining their creative rhythm, even when the inspiration is not flowing.            Today's podcast is actually going to take place in 2 parts. First,

[spb_text_block title="PODCAST - ARRIVAL: The Writer's Journey" pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] Arrival: The Writer's Journey 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="Arrival" pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] This week we’re going to be talking about Eric Heisserer’s script Arrival. It's really a beautiful thing when you see a friend create something that is such a pure expression of who they are. I’m lucky to count Eric among my friends, and I'm really proud of him for this movie. Beyond just the superb quality of the film, one of the reasons that I'm proud of Eric, and one of the reasons that I think that Arrival is so valuable for emerging screenwriters to look at, is the process by which Eric wrote it. Now, Eric is a pretty big time writer. He writes a lot of horror movies, he’s written for the Nightmare on Elm Street & Final Destination franchises, and he just had a big hit with Lights Out earlier this year.  Eric is not a guy who needs to write scripts on spec; he is not a writer who needs to go out and write a movie that he's not getting paid for. But Eric made a really bold choice. Instead of taking one more well-paid ‘work for hire’ project, he instead dedicated years of his life to making a little movie that mattered to him. A movie that, quite frankly, is a pretty hard sell. Imagine walking into a producer and trying to explain this film. “Look, I want to make an expensive sci-fi movie, the main character is a linguist, it's mostly about language and the nature of time. It’s going to get really deep into very complex ideas that normal people don't understand. And most of the action is just the main character standing in a spaceship, trying to learn a language that neither she nor the audience can possibly understand. It’s going to cost a lot of money to make because we’re going to need some big special-effects. And, oh, did I mention it's also really sad and profound?”   This is not an easy pitch.  If it had been, Eric, at this phase of his career, probably would not have had to write the script for free.  But that’s what he did.  He did it because it moved something in him. He read this short story-- written in 1998, so it’s not like this was the hot new thing out on the market-- he read this “unadaptable” short story and he was moved by it. And he decided that he wanted to turn it into a screenplay, whether it was “adaptable” or not.   Before this movie was completed he had written over 100 drafts of this script. And, I think the thing that stands out here, that you should think about if you are an emerging screenwriter, is the humbleness. The desire not to get it done, but to get it right. Not to get it finished or get it sold, but to get it to a place where it was a pure expression of what he wanted to say.  So often, when I work with young screenwriters, they are rushing through the process of screenwriting. They're either going out looking for the hot idea that they “know” they can sell,  which as we all know rarely turns out to be the one that actually does. Or, they are rushing to complete the idea, just to get the script on the page, following some commercial formula, trying to sell out, or blow things up, or “save the cat,” or do whatever they've been taught by a screenwriting book in order to conform to the formula. They’re rushing through the process, looking for that quick payoff. If you are one of those writers, if you have made that mistake, I want to suggest to you that you take a page from Eric Heisserer. Rather than looking for the script that you think you can sell for a lot of money, look for the script that you would be willing to write for free.   Instead of looking for the formula that you've seen before in other movies,

[spb_text_block title="PODCAST - TRANSPARENT: The Series and the Craft" pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] Transparent: The Series and The Craft 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="Transparent" pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] This week we're going to be talking about the series, Transparent. This is a series I've been wanting to talk about for a very long time. And we're going to do so from a different perspective than we usually do when we talk about TV series. Oftentimes on this podcast, when we've spoken about series we've talked about big picture stuff. We've talked about theme and engine and structure. But today, what we're going to do is zoom in really close on one particular episode. We're going to look at Season 3 Episode 5, and we're going to break it down to its fundamental craft elements: the way that the scenes are actually constructed. If you've seen Transparent Season 3, you know that episode 5 is a kind of monumental moment in the season. A lot of threads that we’ve been following all end up coming together. So if you haven't watched the season, you should be aware that there are going to be some spoilers ahead.     At the end of Season 3, Episode 4, Josh’s former babysitter and lover, Rita has killed herself. And as we enter Episode 5, Josh is dealing with that emotional fallout, trying to explain to his transgendered parent, Maura, that Rita is dead. It's a devastating scene for so many reasons. One of the beautiful things about Transparent is that all of these characters are always doing the best that they can, but they are also all incredibly selfish and self-centered. So, what we see between Josh and Maura is really a scene in which Josh shares the devastating news of Rita’s death, and Maura makes it all about her-- a scene in which  Maura fails to comfort, or even hug her son, and instead gets caught up in her own desire not to believe that Rita’s death was a suicide. And this builds to a culminating moment, when Josh asks Maura if she knew that he and Rita were having sex, way back when he was a kid and she was babysitting him. Maura insists that she didn't know, but reveals that, in fact, what she thought she was paying for Rita to be Josh’s best friend. Josh responds, appropriately, “that was really fucked up.” And Maura agrees that it was. So, we start with this really, really heavy scene and this presents a challenge for the writers of Transparent. One of the beautiful things if you watch Transparent is the dance that Transparent is always doing between light and dark, between comedy and drama, between sadness and beauty and selfishness and love. And we witness this juxtaposition in the way the piece is constructed. As so often happens in Transparent, this incredibly heavy scene is juxtaposed with a much lighter one. And it's that lighter one that I actually want to talk about, because this is a scene that has the potential to be a total flop, especially bouncing up against a scene where the stakes and the emotional drama are so high. To give you a little bit of background, Sarah Pfefferman, Josh’s sister, has been spending this whole season trying to become a more active part of her synagogue community. But she keeps getting rejected from the board. And, primarily, the reason she gets rejected is because of her unconventional relationship with her husband, with whom she's living and raising children, even though they're separated and he's dating other women. She’s also not well liked because of her desperate need to be accepted. Sarah has managed to wrangle the Rabbi, Raquel, who is Josh's former girlfriend, into allowing her to throw a big Havdalah ceremony in the school gymnasium.

[spb_text_block title="PODCAST - DR. STRANGE: Feeding The Genre Monster" pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] Dr. Strange: Feeding the Genre Monster 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="Dr. Strange" pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] This week we're going to be looking at Doctor Strange. And one thing that is inarguable, whether you loved Doctor Strange or hated Doctor Strange, is that this film is succeeding in a huge way not just at the box office but also critically. This is pretty amazing when you consider all the incredibly silly things about Doctor Strange! After all, this is a movie in which the country of Nepal seems to be populated almost entirely with American action heroes, and as far as we can tell only one Tibetan of consequence. This is a movie whose primary imagery is really just regurgitated Inception. This is a movie whose main character is essentially just a recycled version of Tony Stark. This is a movie whose antagonist’s spiritual fall was torn right out of the Obi-Wan Kenobe / Darth Vadar playbook, and whose Dark Dimension is just the dark side of the force all over again. This is a movie with an extraordinary amount of exposition, which, despite the the sheer volume of the information, still often fails to play by its own rules, or to clearly establish the rules of its universe. And, despite the film’s extensive very trippy sequences and spiritual components, this is a movie that seems to have very little actual spirituality woven into its structure. And this is also a movie that’s a hell of a lot of fun to watch. Which could make you wonder: What is making this movie so successful? What is making this movie so enjoyable for critics and audiences alike? There’s a thing that happens to us as screenwriters; oftentimes we feel like we have to do everything right. Whether we’re working on a big Hollywood action movie blockbuster like Doctor Strange, or the tiniest character driven film, we often feel like we have to do all these different things right. And every time we try to fix one thread of the very complex tapestry we’re working on, it’s like another thread changes. It feels like every time we make a choice, we screw up another choice. We make something more exciting and it becomes less believable. We make something more clear and it becomes less exciting. These are the constant choices we’re making as screenwriters, and although we all strive for that perfect place, the truth is that very few of us ever reach it. And even when we do reach it, there are many brilliant versions that we end up losing along the way. So the real question is: how you know when your movie is working? As writers, when you get really deep into the development of your screenplay-- as these writers certainly did; Doctor Strange was was in development for decades-- when you get really deep into the development of your screenplay, you often reach a point where you're only seeing the things that don't work and you stop seeing the things that do.   So learning how to write a successful screenplay is not actually just about learning how to write a good screenplay, it's learning how to know what compromises you can make and what compromises you cannot. Which imperfections your audience will accept, which imperfections are going to pull them out of the story. In many ways, the success or failure of your movie all boils down to one really simple concept: Feeding The Genre Monster. There’s a little monster that exists in your audience. And that monster is hungry. It comes to the movies, to the television, or to digital media because it craves a certain feeling. If you deliver that feeling, and deliver it consistently,

[spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] Hell or High Water: More Than Just a Heist Movie 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="Hell or High Water: More Than Just a Heist Movie" pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] This week we're going to be talking about Hell or High Water. One of the things that's really cool about Hell or High Water, and one of the things that's really cool about this script by Taylor Sheridan is the way it uses a twist on an old genre to deliver a movie that far exceeds our expectations of the genre. Hell or High Water isn't just a cops-and-robbers-heist-movie, even though it falls into that genre. Hell or High Water is actually a pretty powerful political film. I want to take a moment to talk about how you write a political film. Because, oftentimes, when we sit down to write a political film, we end up standing up on a soap box and screaming our opinions. We end up making the movie about the opinions, rather than about the story. When we do this, although we will get a lot of approbation from people who feel the way we do, it's very hard to move the needle on people who feel differently. It's just like the experience you have on Facebook when your friends de-friend you and you de-friend your friends once you find out their horrific political beliefs. Although this feels good at first, what it really ends up doing is limiting our discourse; it ends up taking away the discussion that actually allows people to change their opinions. Of course, this is part of why we write movies, right? We write movies because we want to help people change. We want to help people see the world in a different way. Part of doing that means bringing them along for the ride, structuring our films in a way that our political message isn't on the surface, but underneath. If you've listened to my podcast on Captain America or many of these other action movies, you know how I feel about those movies. The potential that they have (which they all too often shy away from) to change the way people see things. It’s funny, because when I was a young writer, I was way too snobby to write action movies. I wanted to do the “important” socio-political stuff. And I think now, if I were to return to Hollywood, I would probably be very interested in writing action movies. As I've gotten older, I've realized that action movies may actually be the most powerful political weapon we have, because everybody sees them. When you hide your message inside those two spoonfuls of sugar, you end up with a really powerful product that can sway the beliefs of millions or even hundreds of millions of people. What we're seeing today in Hell or High Water is really cool, because we're seeing an example of a political film, made on a small budget, that uses the genre engine of a traditional cops and robbers structure, to bury that political message inside the product that they already know they want. I like to think of this as "feeding the genre monster” of the audience-- understanding the need that is driving them to buy the ticket, and then delivering even more than they expected. You can think of the political part, what the movie’s really about, as the ingredients. And the experience of the movie, the part the audience is shopping for, as the container. Just like you don’t need to understand every ingredient that goes into making your favorite product, your audience doesn’t need to understand every ingredient that went into creating your film. They just need to understand what the container is promising, and feel, after sampling the product, that you delivered what you promised. Do that, and you can get away with anything. So, this is the first question to ask yourself if you're writing a politic...

[spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] A TRIP TO CAMBODIA, 7 ACT STRUCTURE & THE ART OF THE OUTLINE 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="A Trip To Cambodia" pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] This week, we’re going to take a break from analyzing other people’s movies, to talk about 7 Act Structure and Screenplay outlining in a different way, by adapting a trip I took to Cambodia many years ago into the structure of a not yet written film, in order to demonstrate an organic approach to structure. What we're trying to do, when we’re thinking about structure, is not trying to "solve the script." Because whatever we come up with anytime we start thinking about structure is always wrong. Every path that we think we’re going to take through the forest is always wrong. If we were planning a trip to Cambodia, Probably we've never been to Cambodia before. And that means we are probably going to do some planning. There are different people who are going to travel in different ways. If it's me, I might just show up, because I love just showing up, and that’s the way I move through the world. I am going to show up in Cambodia; I am going to book my first night in a hotel; I'm going to go to a bar. I am going to talk to somebody at the bar. I am going to find out what's cool to do in whatever city I happen to be in, and the next day that's what I'm going to do, and if I like the people from the bar, I'm going to hang out with them, and if I don't, I'm going to do it alone and then I'm going to go to a bus stop, because that's where you meet people, and I'm going to meet somebody at the bus stop. You want to meet people in a foreign country? Go to the bus stop, look for someone with a map; that person's a tourist.   Structure begins with our goal. Without a goal you can't have structure. Your goal might be wrong. But that’s okay. I still need that goal. I might think I am going to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat. It turns out I am going to meet the love of my life. Had no idea, right? So now I think I am going to Cambodia to meet the love of my life. We spend one day together, hate each other; it turns out I am going to Cambodia to escape. So oftentimes our goal is wrong, but if we don't know what our goal is, it's impossible to know if we are on the right trip. It's impossible to know if we're making a decision about our trip. And without those decisions, it's impossible to track our structure. So what we're really looking for is simply goals and decisions. The first goal that we care about is what is our goal for the script? What are we trying to do? What are we trying to say? What do we want it to be? We're probably wrong. It doesn't matter. We're probably wrong but it's nice to know where we are and what we think we want, so that if we deviate from it, we're deviating consciously and we're finding structure in our own lives. We're saying “you know what, I thought I wanted to write a movie about this; instead I want to write a movie about that.” At the same time, without a goal for ourselves, it is impossible to know how to focus our writing. So we need a goal, even if it’s wrong, for both ourselves and for our characters. When I'm working with beginners, or when I am working with struggling professionals, I always set the goal the same way to help them find their voice and connect to their character. Because the only reason the professionals are struggling is because their writing is disconnected, and the only reason that the beginners are struggling is because their writing is disconnected If you're not connected to your voice, nothing else matters. That's why I always set the goal for beginners: to connect to your voice.

[spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] SULLY - Does Your Movie Need An Antagonist? 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="Sully - Does Your Movie Need An Antagonist?" pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] PLEASE NOTE: I recently had a very interesting conversation with Todd Komarnicki, who turns out to be as lovely a person as he is a writer. We talked about the true story behind Sully, and I want to take a moment to clarify that more was at work behind the scenes than the public knows, and that pressure was brought to bear by forces more interested in corporate financial interests than in human heroics. So in the spirit of running toward the truth, I wanted to make it clear that many of the events depicted in the movie may be more true than has been reported in articles used to research this podcast. Please take both sides into account as you listen, and as you learn from Sully. And thanks to Todd for reaching out to me so graciously and clarifying. This week we are going to be talking about Sully, the new Tom Hanks movie with a script by Todd Komarnicki. An interesting story about Todd Komarnicki: he doesn’t know this, but, it was actually Todd Komarnicki who introduced me to screenwriting, because it was Todd Komarnicki’s script, My Achilles Heart, that was the very first script that I ever read. I read the script when I was an intern at a pretty major production company, back when I was still in college. It was the first script I ever read, and it was never made, but I was so deeply moved by the script that I did the one thing that no coverage reader should ever do. I wrote “recommend” on my coverage for the very first script that I ever read. And I will never forget, because I was called into the office of the Executive, and mind you, it was my first day of my internship. I had never read a screenplay. I didn’t know what I was doing. Somebody had given me a piece of coverage and said, “Hey, read the script and do this.” And I read the script, and was deeply moved by it, and wrote “Recommend”. So this guy calls me into his office, this Executive, and he says, “This is your name. You are Jacob Krueger.” I said, “Yes.” He said, “You read the script. You wrote the coverage.”  I said, “Yes.” Then he said, “And you wrote ‘Recommend’ on this.” I said, “Yes. Wasn’t it great?” He said, “Yeah... I just read this script. Because when you write “Recommend” it means I have to read it. If you ever do this again, you are fired.” And I remember my shock, because I thought that I had discovered the diamond in the rough and apparently this Executive did not agree. But I actually still have a copy of My Achilles Heart. When I left my internship, I actually took the script with me. Even when I moved to New York, I carried that script with me. I don’t know if Todd Komarnicki will ever hear this Podcast, but I want you to know that your script deeply moved me, and in a way introduced me to screenwriting. I also want to tell the story because I want to talk a little bit about the experience that we, as screenwriters, have with coverage readers. Now it turns out that I actually do have pretty good taste in scripts, and I actually did have pretty good instincts with scripts, and probably somebody should make My Achilles Heart. If you are a producer and you are listening to this podcast, call Todd Komarnicki’s agent and try to get a copy of My Achilles Heart. Or maybe you shouldn’t. Because last time I read that script, I was a 19 year old wide-eyed intern! I had no business writing coverage on script at that point in my career! I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t even understand the needs of the producer I was reading for. I was working for a big budget production company,

[spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] STRANGER THINGS - Part 2 - Writing A Pilot That Sells 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="Stranger Things - Part 2 - Writing A Pilot That Sells" pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] This podcast was taken from our vault, if you are interested in finding out more please check out our upcoming TV Comedy Class with Jerry Perzigian or our TV Drama Class with Steve Molton. In the Part 1 of this podcast we discussed Stranger Things, the concept of the Series Engine, and how it relates to the pilot episode and the Show Bible of your series. This week, we’re going to dive deeper into the Stranger Things pilot, to see exactly how it was constructed, and how it contains the blueprint not only of the Series Engine, but also of the Show Bible that could have been used to sell it. And then we’re going to talk about how you can apply these ideas to writing and structuring your own Series Pilot. If you haven’t yet seen all of Stranger Things, don’t worry. We’re primarily going to be talking about the pilot episode in this podcast.  However, if you haven’t yet seen the pilot, you should be aware that there will be spoilers ahead. Also, as you may know, October 5th through 9th we’re going to be holding our first TV Writing Retreat up in Dover, Vermont as part of the iTVFest Television Festival. It’s going to be an incredible event. We’re bringing our entire TV Writing faculty, including Jerry Perzigian (former show runner of Married with Children, The Jeffersons & The Golden Girls), Steve Molton, Karin Partin, and of course me. So if you’re interested in learning more about TV and Web Series writing & pitching in a real TV Writers Room environment, make sure to take advantage and sign up at our website.  Because the retreat happens as part of iTVFest, it also includes a special VIP Creator Pass only for our students, to get you into all the iTVFest parties, networking events and screenings.  As we discussed in Part 1, when you write a series pilot, you have to do a lot more than just tell a great story. That’s because TV and Web series work in an almost completely different way than feature films. When you’re writing a feature film, you’re really just thinking about one story. Sure, you may have a sequel in mind, especially if you’re working on a super big-budget action movie franchise. But for the most part, you’re writing a self-contained unit, whereas a series needs to have the ability to replicate itself; it cannot exist in a vacuum. So, when you write a pilot, you’re not just showing that you can tell a great story, you’re showing that you can tell a great story that can be replicated. You’re showing that you can tell a great story that can run for five seasons, maybe ten seasons. You’re showing a blueprint: not just for what this episode will be, but for what the entire franchise will be. This is what we mean when we say engine. And of course, engines are an incredibly complicated concept. The engine is the foundation of series writing. When a series is working, it’s because you’ve got a great engine. And when a series is not working, it’s because you don’t. And if you don’t have a great engine, or if you have a great engine but it’s not in your pilot in a way that your producer can see it, the truth of the matter is you’re not going to sell your series. And the reason you’re not going to sell your series is that your producer’s going to be afraid that it is going to run out of steam. So, when you create your pilot, what you’re really doing is demonstrating your engine. We’re living in a Golden Age of Television writing, and this is one of the reasons that it is such an exciting time to be a TV or Web Series writer.