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"] 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 not. And, most likely, neither does anybody else in your life.   Now if you’re lucky enough to have a really powerful agent or a really powerful manager, that person’s job is to be on the phone 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, finding out what is hip, what is popular, what is in style, what is in vogue right now.   But if you’re a normal human being who walks the earth, particularly if you’re a normal human being who probably has a full-time job, and on top of that is probably doing a second full-time job writing, the truth is you have no time to play the social networking game of finding out what’s coming in and out of fashion.   By the time you actually see a movie in the theatre, you’re already 2 years behind the trend.   So the next problem when you start thinking Can I sell it? Can I sell it? Can I sell it? is that not only are you most likely censoring your true voice, but you’re also probably full of doubt about the stuff that actually makes it on the page.   The truth is you probably have no idea what “commercial” is. Because the truth is the industry has no idea what “commercial” is. What “commercial” is changes every day.   Back when I was coming up in the 90s, what people were talking about was hook, and money. Hook and money, hook and money, hook and money. You had to talk pure business to the business people because they weren't even seeing film as art, they were seeing film as just an extension of the MBA training they’d had before they headed out to Los Angeles to make more money in a very lucrative profession.   But when we were speaking to managers and agents and producers at the iTVfest Retreat, we were hearing something very different. We were hearing managers say things like “yeah, we’re making art.” “Yeah, we’re looking for artists.”   That’s a really exciting change. And where did that change come from? Did managers suddenly become philanthropists? Absolutely not.   What happened was we’ve had a little renaissance happen in television. And that renaissance is trickling up from television to features. And what agents and managers and producers have finally realized is oh my god there is “money in them hills.” There is money in art.   So, this is a very exciting time to be a filmmaker. But if you’re thinking about “What can I sell?” If you’re thinking about “What is hot right now?” If you’re out there chasing the trends, not only are you once again cutting yourself off from your own vision, you’re also most likely chasing a trend that is already over.   The truth of the matter is to sell something you’ve got to get a little lucky.   Because even if I were to whisper into your ear exactly what is hot right now, by the time you write the darn script, you’re now a year behind. Especially if you put the time in to actually get that script to a place where it fully captures your voice, what you’re trying to do as a writer.   I started my career writing with professional screenwriters. I had a really unique job in the industry. Basically, my boss would knock on my door and he’d say “I want to make a movie about Sacajawea,” or whatever, name the topic of the day.   And I would go out and I would write the story. And oftentimes writing the story meant writing the script, because I was never a guy who could just arrive at a story without really getting to know my characters. I couldn’t arrive at the kind of story that was going to sell.   So, in the process of writing the treatment, or the story, or the outline, I would often have written about 70% of the script. Not in the final version, but in a rough version.   Then we would go out and sell it, and we would find a professional writer who had more credits than I did to finish the script. And what would usually happen would be that that writer would screw it up.   Don’t get me wrong. There are some really brilliant writers we worked with that were able to take these concepts and do extraordinary things with them. Sometimes things that I could never have even imagined.   But most of the writers that we hired screwed it up. And if you’re a development executive, you know that’s pretty much par for the course. Sometimes 7 or 8 or 9 different writers have to be hired before the project either goes into the turnaround graveyard or finally gets the green light.   So my job was then to sit down with those struggling writers and to somehow save the script. Because it was a hell of a lot cheaper for my production company to pay me to fix that script than it was for them to fire that writer and hire a new one.   And that’s actually how I learned to teach. I learned to teach working with professional writers. And I was a really young kid. I was 22 years old.   So you can imagine, you’re 22 years old, and you’re staring across the room from an Emmy Award winner or Academy Award winner. Somebody who is extraordinarily talented, but is lost in the script. And you learn really quickly if you try to impose your idea on that script, you’re going nowhere. Because you’re 22 years old and that person is not going to listen to you.   So, I learned very quickly that the way that you get a great script is not by trying to impose your own ideas, and it's not even by going back to what I originally wrote in the treatment, or what I originally wrote in my rough draft script.   The way I got great scripts out of these people was by identifying the little pieces of them that had somehow made their way into that bad draft.   And this is something interesting to think about. Why were these great writers writing bad scripts? Well, quite frankly, they were doing it for the same reason you’re likely to do it if you think about the pitch.   We were a smaller production company, so many of these writers were writers who’d had had tremendous careers but were kind of on the downside of their careers.

[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 commercial, there’s one thing you know for sure. That person is lying to you. And they’re also lying to themselves. Hollywood is a lot like high school. Trends come in, and trends go out. But it’s actually the rule breakers who set these trends-- the scripts that blazed their own trail, and proved that they could be successful doing something new. Unless you’re literally on the phone every day finding out what’s fashionable today (which is what producers, agents and managers do professionally), you can be pretty sure you have no idea what’s actually commercial or not today. And even if you did, by the time you finished writing the script that chased the trend, that fashion would have already changed. Anyone remember Z Cavaricci pants? If you’re my age, you do. They were the hottest thing ever for about 2 weeks back in the early 80s. Ridiculous things with flaps and buttons that made no sense at all. But if you were an 8 year old, and could get your hands on a pair, it meant you were going to be the hottest thing in elementary school. I remember begging my mom for a pair of Z Cavaricci’s-- saving up my pennies for months until finally I had enough (with a little help from her) to buy a pair. And then I finally showed up at school, feeling like the hottest thing on the planet, and pretty much convinced that this was going to be the day those other kids finally realized that I was super cool and that they should accept me as a cool kid like them.   Yeah, you guessed it. By the time that happened, those stupid pants were already out of style. Unless you’re a huge agent or manager, by the time you get word of what’s happening in Hollywood, you’re usually already two years behind what’s actually happening today. Even producers who read the trades every day know they’re getting information that’s already many month’s old-- deals that have been in the works forever that are only just now being announced. Information is currency in Hollywood, just like it is in elementary school, and people tend to sit on the real stuff for as long as they can, to make sure nobody can get the scoop on them! So often as writers, we feel out of breath, chasing these trends, and always feeling like we’re just a few steps behind, a few moments too late to have the career we actually dream of. But the truth is, what kind of script are you going to write under that much pressure? Most likely a crappy one. And you’re not going to have much fun writing it either. Because instead of writing the thing you are desperate to write, you’re going to be writing the thing you think you should write. Instead of going on an unforgettable journey with yourself and your characters, you’re going to be retreading the same ground other writers have tread. And since that journey didn’t evolve naturally from you, it’s likely it’s going to be filled with cliches. So it’s time for a little tough love, that may scare you a bit, but also hopefully will set you free from this breathless trend chasing, and allow you to put your focus back on what really matters in your writing. Even if you spent every day at the studio lot, following famous producers around and listening in on exactly what everyone wants in Hollywood right now, by the time you came up with the idea, wrote the first draft, and revised it to a place where it was actually ready for professional eyes, those producers are already going to have moved on to the next hot idea. That may sound depressing, but I think it’s freeing. Because once you realize that you can’t time the market, it frees you up from all that pressure, all that feeling that you’re behind where you’re supposed to be, or not writing what you should be writing. It allows you to put your focus back on what really matters to you: not writing the script that “everybody wants” but rather, the one that only you can write. At a recent First Fridays event here at the studio, we had a wonderful guest speaker, Alex Fumero, the VP of Programming for HBO. Alex had something profound to say about what he’s looking for when a writer comes in for a pitch meeting. For him to be interested, he doesn’t just have to feel like it’s a great idea with great execution. As VP of Programming for one of the most sought after networks in the world, he sees great ideas and great scripts every day. For Alex to be interested, he needs more than a great script. He needs to know why you are the only writer in the world who could have written this project in exactly this way. In other words, Alex isn’t just looking for great scripts. He’s looking for something much more important-- great voices. And voice is not something you discover writing the thing you “should” be writing. It’s something you discover writing the thing that you want to write, even if it doesn’t yet make sense to anyone but you. (For an example of a hugely successful professional writer who did exactly that, listen to my Podcast on Arrival). The truth is, trends come and go, and then cycle back around again. Some scripts (remember Juno) get picked up overnight and propel their writers to instant stardom, and others (remember Dallas Buyers Club) kick around for 20 years until finally the astrological conditions change, and “impossible” becomes “in demand.” That means your success as a screenwriter is going to take some luck. So as much as you’d like to feel like you’re in control. And as much as a million different gurus would all like you to think they have the formula for success. The truth is that formula does not exist. The truth is, for success to happen, you’ve got to get a little lucky. You’ve got to have the right script, and get it to the right person at the right time. And though you can’t control the events that will make that happen, you can make that luck a lot more likely to happen, by developing yourself as a writer, and writing the scripts that only you can write,

[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 dismiss -- the fears just too bizarre, too unlikely to be real-- and asking ourselves “what if they were?” Allowing our worst nightmares to come to life on the page, and in that way to come to peace-- not with the reality which we depict these stories-- but with the real life experiences-- the metaphors-- that spawned them. You can see this is the journey of the main character, Chris, in Get Out. Chris is naturally a bit scared to meet his girlfriend, Rose’s, parents for the first time. After all, meeting the “perfect” parents of your “perfect” girlfriend would make anyone a little nervous.. Not to mention the fact that he’s a struggling photographer, while they’re filthy rich. Not to mention the fact that he’s got a secret little nicotine addiction that he feels a lot of shame about. And considering how unpleased his picture-perfect girlfriend is with his failure to quit smoking, it’s only natural that he fears her parents would judge him even more strongly if they found out. Then, there’s the fact that they’re white. And he’s black. Oh, and Rose hasn’t quite mentioned that to her parents in advance of their arrival. Sure, Rose assures him that her parents aren’t racist. Sure, Rose promises that they are going to love him. Sure, Rose insists that the worst thing he’s going to endure is her father, Dean, telling him “I’d have voted for Obama three times” (which Dean does, pretty much immediately, when Rose and Chris arrive…).     Every experience Chris has ever had as a black man in America tells him that this is a bad idea. But that’s not what he wants to believe. He wants to believe that Rose is right. That he’s the one being paranoid. As Jordan Peele has pointed out in interviews, the inception of Get Out actually came with the election of Barack Obama. It was a reaction to the hopeful, but unlikely belief it created in so many people that maybe this racism thing was finally over. Chris wants to believe, as so many people did at that time, that race no longer matters. That people -- at least wealthy white Obama voters-- no longer judge a person by the color of their skin. That if a black man can now be President, maybe one can date a rich white woman, and be accepted by her family… He wants to believe, if Rose is not racist, that maybe her parents really aren’t either. That maybe the problem exists in him-- that all these fears are just reverse racism-- a false assumption that all white people must be racist. He wants to believe-- as anyone who longs for a better world wants to believe-- that maybe today, the concept that the color of a person’s skin would dictate who they could be, might suddenly vanish back to into the dark imagination from which it came, like the unlikely monster under the bed it should be, like the absurd notion that it is-- rather than remain the lurking demon that it has become, defining the limits of so many people’s lives. So, Chris puts his fears aside. Just as so many people have had to put their fears aside, hoping for a better world. Hoping that his relationship can be the exception. But still there’s that lurking fear. Maybe these nice people aren’t really who they seem. Maybe everything isn’t really okay. Maybe there’s a hidden malice here, just waiting to come out… Maybe even his girlfriend isn’t who he believes her to be. Maybe all this hope is just a facade. Maybe there’s something he doesn’t know. Sounds like some pretty serious stuff. But what’s brilliant about Jordan Peele is that he doesn’t deal with it seriously. He deals with it playfully, exploring the serious notion of hate as the absurdity that it is, in a big, silly, popcorn movie horror format-- and in doing so harnesses its full power, not just for the African American audience who already “gets it”, but also for the wider audience who would like to think we understand, but probably don’t. Although every paranoid fear that Chris could ever have will turn out to be true by the end of the movie, at the beginning Jordan Peele doesn’t give those thoughts to the most  “serious” character-- he gives them to the most ridiculous one, Chris’s best friend, comic relief and TSA Agent extraordinaire, Rod-- a man whose paranoia and conspiracy theories get laughed off not only by audience, but also by every black character in the movie. While we’re laughing at Rod’s “ridiculous” theories about “what white people do,” the main character, Chris, is doing everything he can to think like we do. To open his mind. To get over his suspicions. To believe in a better kind of world. Sure, Rose’s parents’ African American gardener and housekeeper seem to have been ripped right out of the zombie version of Gone With The Wind… but it’s only natural for rich people to have servants, isn’t it? And would it really be better if they refused to hire black people for these jobs? Sure, Rose’s parents’ friends’ attempts to “connect” with Rose’s new black boyfriend are painfully awkward. But isn’t it a little wrong to judge people for trying to be “accepting.” What Jordan Peele is creating in this sequence is not just horror, and it’s not just social satire. It’s a stripping down, not of the overt racism that we normally see depicted in movies, but of the subtle, unintentional racial charge that can permeate the behavior even of well meaning people who truly consider themselves allies. And though these characters may represent an exaggerated version of this phenomenon, it’s pretty hard not to look at this sequence and wonder: “at some point, have I done this to somebody?” He’s giving us a chance to see ourselves from Chris’s point of view. And to understand, right or wrong, how he feels in this situation. What it’s like to feel the only way he can fit in is to become a version of himself that he doesn’t recognize-- like the “whitewashed” young African American man Chris tries to reach out to at the party, and who later,

[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 question, a character trait, a work of art or piece of music, or in this case a classical hypnosis certification class. As writers we are not only students of screenwriting, we are also students of the world.  And the good news is: you can utilize the hypnotic principles behind Inception not only to inspire the way you create the structure of your own movie, but also to open up new avenues toward building your life as a writer. So in this podcast, I’ll be discussing the hypnotic principles behind Inception, and ways of applying them to your own writing.  I’ll also be describing ways that you can draw upon your own experiences to create organizing principles for your own movies– and harness those ideas to create unity for your script and profound journeys for your main characters. Finally, we’ll be discussing ways that you can apply hypnotic principles in your life as a writer, in order to break through writer’s block, heal old wounds to your confidence, overcome procrastination, and create a better relationship between your writing and your editing brains. So first, let’s talk a little bit about hypnosis. Both what it is, and what it isn’t. As much as movies like Get Out! and stage hypnosis shows would like you to think that hypnosis is about mind control, the truth is exactly the opposite. Just like the techniques used on the dreamers in Inception, hypnosis can’t be used to make you do something you don’t want to do, or that doesn’t fit your belief systems. But it can be hugely effective in helping you do the things that you do want to do, but for some “inexplicable” reason, simply can’t. That’s because hypnosis is really just a way of connecting to your subconscious mind-- the part of your mind that controls your emotions, your nervous system, your instincts, your creativity, and yes, your writing. The Standard Three Step Hypnotic Technique Weekend certifications in hypnosis generally begin with a three step technique. The subject is brought “three steps down” into their subconscious mind, at which point a post hypnotic suggestion for the desired change is put into place. The subject is then brought 3 steps back up, and once they leave the trance, if it’s done right, the subconscious mind accepts the new suggestion as real, and their life starts to change around it. You’ve probably figured out by now that this  corresponds almost perfectly with the “three dreams down - three kicks up” technique the characters in Inception use to convince their subject, Robert Fischer, to break up his father’s company. Just as the architecture of Robert’s dream sequence in Inception is built around around the people, image systems, and beliefs Robert holds most dear, so too is a three step hypnotic technique built around the most resonant images for the person being hypnotized. Dream Research and Hypnotic Research As writers, we begin our process by getting to know our characters-- or better said, by connecting to the characters that already reside within our subconscious minds-- the metaphors for the many parts of our own personalities that we’re exploring on the page as we write. Similarly, a hypnotherapist begins their work by getting to know the metaphors, image and belief systems that resonate for their subject. For this reason, a classical hypnotic session using this approach begins with an interview, during which the hypnotist gathers images that have emotional power to the person being hypnotized. For example, if you were using this method to help a blocked writer pick up the pen after a long period of procrastination, you might begin with images that are not even related to writing, but which capture some of the emotions the person wishes they had when they were writing. The hypnotist would then induce a trance in the person, creating a dream like journey– a series of three images, three steps down into hypnosis, and three images, three steps back up–  in which each image leads them deeper into trance, and closer to the transformation they are searching for, just like a dream within a dream. With each step down, the value of the image is established, and with each step back up, the meaning of each image is deepened and adapted, associating that image with the change the person is seeking, and anchoring that change on a deep subconscious level– as if it had already happened. The Power of Images Movies are built around images, because movies are hypnotic.  They carry us out of our own world, and transport us into the dream world of the writer.   Each sequence of images leads us deeper into trance, until we begin to respond to the movie as if it were real, feeling real emotions for characters we know don’t actually exist. We cry for losses that never happened, feel embarrassed for social gaffs that never actually occurred.  Our hearts race as if we were standing in the character’s shoes– as if their fear was our fear, or their love our love.  We root for them, we care about them. And we begin to care about their images system as if they were our own. When Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Cobb, sees his children but cannot see their faces, we begin to long for their reunion just as he does.  And when those children turn around and reveal their faces to him, it’s hard to fight the rush of emotion. Are You Getting The Most Out Of Your Images? As a writer, you can use the three step hypnotic process to craft a profound journey for your character.  Think about the images that most powerfully capture your character’s experience on the way down toward the heart of their journey, and how you can return to those images in new ways on the way back up in order to anchor and deepen the change your character is experiencing. And while you’re at it, think about the hypnotic images that play in your own head as a writer.  What images do you choose to focus on?  What images are holding you back?  And how can you revisit, deepen,

[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.   Rogue One is just another reconstitution of these same elements-- some, in a vague way, and some in a very specific way.   At the core of the film are the characters we care about most. We don’t care about them because we haven’t seen them before. We care about them because we haven’t seen them this way before.       The most compelling of the bunch is Chirrut Imwe, a blind warrior, who is the character in this film who will go on the biggest spiritual journey in relation to The Force. His journey is an interesting reshuffling of The Force element of the Engine, for two reasons.   The first is because we expect from previous films that the main character, Jyn Erso, is going to be the “Luke Skywalker” character who goes through this spiritual journey. As a child, she’s even given a special pendant by her mother to remind her of the Force. And it’s easy to start anticipating her spiritual awakening, especially given the many character traits she shares with Rey of The Force Awakens (She’s another bad-ass, scrappy “orphan” girl straight out of Central Casting).   So, even though we’ve seen the idea of “the Force awakening” in the least likely person in the The Force Awakens, we still feel like we’re seeing something new, since we’re served the same meal on a different plate.   The other reason Chirrut Imwe is so compelling is that his journey in relation to The Force is slightly different than the ones of the characters who preceded him. Though he seems to have some ability to tap into The Force (like “seeing” Jyn’s pendant under her clothes, even with his blind eyes, and communicating telepathically with her), he doesn’t seem to understand the Force in the way that we do, having seen the previous movies. For him, it’s more of a Mantra-- something he has faith in, than something he totally understands.   And spoilers ahead…   Even though his use of The Force does save the mission, it doesn’t save him, or any of his friends. We are not looking at the “Luke Skywalker” type awakening of a new Jedi like we saw in Episodes 4, 5, 6 and The Force Awakens.     Rather, we’re watching a character go on a journey in relation to his faith. And tapping into something that he will never fully be able to harness.   Chirrut Imwe’s journey gives Rogue One the spiritual thread the Star Wars engine demands, while still departing enough from the formula to take us to a place that feels at once surprising and inevitable.   More importantly, the clarity of Chirrut Imwe’s want, to become a Jedi Warrior, gives structure to his journey, and makes him a character we can care about and root for.   And the new take on his understanding of the Force, and the ironic end of his journey in relation to our expectations from the other movies, allows him to feel specific and new, even though on the surface he’s just another recycled “blind sage” stereotype we’ve seen in a thousand action movies-- all the way down to his magical fighting moves that seem to defy his blindness (or at least suggest that the blind in our galaxy are dramatically underperforming).   Similarly, the neurotic droid role (C-3PO in the original Star Wars movies) in Rogue One is inhabited by a reprogrammed Imperial Droid named K-2SO.   But unlike C-3PO’s neurotic anxiety, K-2SO’s dominant trait is his delightfully funny, passive-aggressive shade throwing. While all C-3PO wants is to stay safe, all K-2SO wants is to fight in the rebellion. Specifically, he desperately wants his own blaster. His shade, in this way, isn’t just a personality trait. It’s structural-- growing specifically out of his most desperate want, and his unique how of trying to get it.   For this reason, it’s easy to fall in love with K-2SO, to root for him, care about him, laugh with him. Even though he’s also just another permutation of the same ol’ formula, it’s his specific want, and his specific how that make him feel… well… human.   Contrast these characters with the ones that work much less successfully, starting most notably with Jyn Erso.   No matter how ridiculous the plot of their story and the familiarity of their character traits, you probably found yourself caring about K-2SO and Chirrut Imwe. But if your experience was anything like mine, you probably found it hard to really feel anything for Jyn.   This despite a gorgeous opening scene, in which Jyn, as a small child, is violently separated from her loving father--   This despite the complicated relationship with both her birth father and her adoptive “father” figure, and the structural similarity of her “hero’s journey” from “scrappy orphan who only cares about her own survival” to “rebel leader and savior of the galaxy”--   Unlike her structural twin Rey in The Force Awakens, and unlike K-2SO and Chirrut Imwe, the adult Jyn just doesn’t feel like a real character, despite a good performance from the actor. She feels only half drawn.   There are many reasons for this. The biggest challenge is that unlike these other characters, until the very end, Jyn’s want is not active. She’s not moving toward something--she’s moving away from it.   She doesn’t want to be in jail, she doesn’t want to be captured, she doesn’t want to join the rebels (she’s forced to do it), she doesn’t want to see her “adoptive” father, she doesn’t even really want to see her real father.   She’s forced to do all these things, reacting to others, rather than pursuing her own wants-- until after her father’s death, when she decides for unclear reasons that she desperately wants to join the rebels and carry out her father’s plan.   Because her want is not clear, the how that grows from it-- her dominant trait as a character, lacks the specificity of the other characters we’ve discussed. We know that she’s a Luke-Skywalker/Rey-Type. But we can’t feel the specific drive that makes her this way.

[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 willing to reconcile with his ex-girlfriend in order to get this Ark? Is he willing to stand up to this scary Nazi with the burn in his hand or confront his fear of snakes in order to get this Ark? Is he willing to confront the power of the Nazi Army to get this Ark? Is he willing to confront the face of G-d in order to get this Ark? Is he willing to confront the meaninglessness of his work, when that Ark ends up in the basement of the museum? Indiana Jones doesn’t change; he gets tested. The way we test him is we put him in situations where any other character would change, but that character refuses to change. Forrest Gump is an example of a test movie. Forrest Gump doesn’t change. Forrest Gump maintains his innocence in the face of the historical events of the 60’s that made all of America change. So, Forrest Gump living through the horror of the sixties, living through a world where people die and get shot for no reason, horrible things happen; your best friend dies, your Lieutenant Dan  that you look up to becomes a bitter, suicidal veteran, your mother dies, Jenny doesn’t love you and Jenny’s dying. In the face of political upheaval, Forrest Gump holds onto his innocence in the face of everything that would have changed us. To go to the darker side, a movie like Pan’s Labyrinth is a test movie; a story of a little girl who believes she is the inheritor of a fairy kingdom-- who’s been banished from that fairy kingdom and forced to live in the world of men. The world of men she lives in is an ugly world. Her beautiful mother has married a Fascist Captain, a high-up in the Spanish army during the Spanish Civil War, and she is now literally eating at the table of Fascism. Fascism is protecting her, feeding her, giving her clothes… And all she wants is to return to that fairy Kingdom. She meets a Faun in the woods that offers a way to rescue herself from this fate, and all she has to do for her dream to come true is three tests that the Faun has created for her. What happens is, she gets tested in pursuing the tests. In her refusal to blindly listen to the Faun, or to the temptations of her desire, and in doing so, she holds onto her pure heart. So, her mother gets sick and she chooses not to do the test. She’s asked finally for one drop of her brother’s blood and she chooses not to do the tests. There’s one little moment where she wavers a little bit. There’s a moment where she eats a grape from a table she’s been forbidden, but for the most part the character doesn’t change. What happens is even in the face of the opportunity to inherit her fairy kingdom, have everything she ever wants in the world, this character hold on to her purity. She holds on to her innocence-- and of course this is a story about Fascism, right? This is a story about what do you do in the face of fascism? Do you let it change you, or do you refuse to change? And what’s really beautiful about this movie, without ruining it for you, is that she is both rewarded and punished. She suffers both the ultimate horror of Fascism and also the ultimate beauty of holding on to who she really is. So these are all examples of test movies in really big budget commercial films. We don’t see these Test Movie structures as often in character driven movies, particularly in family driven movies. That's because, for one thing, this is not the story we normally want to see about our family. We want to feel like our family is going to change, like things are going to get better, like the dysfunctions are going to go away, like some day we will finally hear each other and listen to each other. And when we fall in love with characters, we want to believe that they’re going to become better people today than they were yesterday, because we want to believe that we’re going to be better people than we were yesterday. So, usually, in these kind of Sundance-y films-- in these independent films-- if you think of Me Earl and The Dying Girl, for example, if you think of a movie like The Celebration, if you think of a movie like Margot At The Wedding, if you think about a movie like Secrets and Lies, if you think of a movie like Junebug, if think of any of these little independent films-- character driven films-- usually what we’re used to watching is characters going through a huge changes in relation to their family: coming together with their family, breaking away from their family, somehow reconciling the problems of family. And so, let's set aside for a moment its strengths and weaknesses, because Manchester By The Sea has a lot of both. What is most interesting to me about Manchester By The Sea is the emergence of a less seen kind of family drama-- a movie about a character who doesn’t change. So if you think of the character of Lee Chandler, played by Casey Affleck, this is a character who has a very difficult past. There are some spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen the movie… Lee Chandler’s backstory is that a long time ago, he was in a beautiful and broken relationship with a woman he truly loved and who truly loved him. And he wasn’t a perfect husband and she wasn’t a perfect wife. She had a drug problem. He had a partying problem. He had an irresponsibility problem. He was a very difficult man for her to be with. He was not the best father to ever live, but you can see they loved each other, that there was a genuine love between them. And then one day, he’s having a big party with his friends, he’s high on cocaine, his wife comes down and kicks everyone out, he throws a couple of logs on the fire, goes to buy some more beer, and by the time he gets back, his house has burned to the ground and his children are dead. The only one to survive is his wife and, of course, they end up broken up. So this is the past, this is the backstory of the character. In this movie we find out about the backstory, but oftentimes the backstory isn’t even important.

[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.” That’s what I wanted from Mia and Sebastian’s relationship. And for me, it was exactly what was missing. That said, it was the same structural elements that made the film unsuccessful for me that made it so successful with those who loved it. And that’s what, loved it or hated it, makes it worth looking at as screenwriters. Because whether you consider the execution of screenplay exciting or not, there’s no doubt that that its structure is truly groundbreaking. When I was a young writer, still figuring out what I wanted to be, and how to pursue my own artistic dreams as a student at Dartmouth College, I had the opportunity to study American Poetry with a brilliant Professor named Bill Cook. Bill would always tell us that in great art, Form = Function. What he meant by that was that the shape of your structure should grow naturally out of the thematic intentions of the author. In many ways, movies are more like poems than they are like other kinds of writing. Like poems, screenplays are written in a highly focused format, where literally every word matters. Like poems, screenplays are not just about what happens, but about the rhythm and meter of how it happens. Like poems, screenplays invoke the visual and emotional senses, creating a kind of hypnotic state of hyper-awareness, in which words on the page start to take form and shape in your mind’s eye--playing out as if they were real on that little movie screen in your head. Like poems, screenplays exist within specific genres and forms with specific rules. And, to be successful, like poems, screenplays must both conform to and break with audience expectations in relation to those rules. And like poems, in the best screenplays, form = function. I remember Bill Cook contrasting two poems that most scholars consider among the greatest ever written: The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe, and Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas. Bill was a huge fan of Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night. But he savaged The Raven in that lecture. He savaged it not for its content, not for its story, not for what it accomplished, but for its structure, because he believed its form had no relation whatsoever to its function. Like the structure was something pasted on from the outside to this brilliant material, rather than naturally evolving from what the poet was trying to say. And whether you agree with him or disagree, his point was definitely interesting: Here was one of the darkest, scariest poems of all time. But its structure, its rhyme-scheme, was a sing-songy structure that felt, from Bill Cook’s perspective, more suited for a Christmas song than a poem of woe: “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary” “While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,” Bill Cook contrasted this with Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, a poem that was built with a kind of structure called a Villanelle, which until that time, had only been used for witty rhymes for children. People who had grown up in Dylan Thomas’ time would have been familiar with the Villanelle from their own childhoods. So, by choosing that structure, and turning it upside down for this heartwrenching poem about the death of his abusive father, he at once invoked those nostalgic memories of what it was like to be a child, and also turned those emotions inside out and upside down, by using the same form to deliver exactly the opposite emotional experience. “Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rage at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” In many ways, La La Land is doing the same thing with its structure. Setting its audiences up from the very first number for a happy, “jazz-hands” kind of musical. A love story for the ages. A wide-eyed romp through Los Angeles on the road to love and stardom. The musical structure mirrors the dreams of its protagonists-- the artistic hopes that brought them to Hollywood, the youthful aspirations for everything their lives would one day be. The structure is intended to sweep us up, whether we are the jaded Sebastian or the hopeful Mia, into the world of their expectations-- of everything that art, and love, and music and life can be. To sweep us into believing, like they do, that this is going to be a happy story. And then slowly, as a real relationship starts to develop between them, and the real pressures of love, and art, and compromise and stardom start to press on them and change them, that musical structure starts to strip away. As their romance fades, as their artistic dreams are compromised, so too is the technicolor sparkle of the structure. Big, chorus driven musical-dance numbers give way to naturalistic drama and smokey jazz. And an interesting thing happens for the audience. Because we’ve been promised a big, happy, romantic musical-- because we’ve given ourselves over to the magic of the musical romance-- because we’ve seen a million of these stories-- we think we know where we are. We think we’re just going through that rough patch in the middle. We know that everything is going to turn out alright at the end. That we’re going to end with a big happy number that lets us know that love and dreams are both possible-- that we can have both of them together. Which is what makes the ending so devastating. Because we’re moving one way, and the characters are moving another. Because we feel the loss, not just of the love story we’ve seen, but of the love story we’ve imagined, based on every other movie in this genre we’ve ever seen in our lives. Because the structure of the movie exists not to conform to our expectations, but to set us into the expectations of the characters, and make us experience the story in the same way that they experience it.

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, how to make sense of the confusions and challenges of life. They trust characters, or distrust characters, because they connect to them as people, not because of the sum of the facts about them. People’s political views are not about information. That’s why political campaigns are not about information. All of the information about Donald Trump did not make one bit of difference, and all of the information about Hillary Clinton did not make one bit of difference. It’s the emotional response that creates action. There is actually neurological research on this. If you tell people that there are thousands of children starving in Africa -- which there are -- and have been since our parents were children, nobody takes action. But you show people one picture of a boy in Aleppo, and suddenly people want to do something. If you want to move people you must have characters. Without characters, your information means nothing. And without characters that we care about, your information means nothing. Just like Will and Grace, and Queer Eye For The Straight Guy, The Apprentice was powerful precisely because it was not overtly political. Because its message was hidden under the colorful candy shell of mindless entertainment. But really what this show was doing was educating a vast number of Americans, who had very little experience with business, that this was what success looked like: power games and “you’re fired!” Nevermind that, at least in my experience, anyone who has actually started a company could easily tell you that if you tried to run a it like this, you’d be out of business in a month. Nevermind the overwhelming evidence proving the detrimental effects of these kinds of demoralizing behaviours. Nevermind the paradigm shift we’ve seen as the most successful companies in America, (Google, for example), have realized that real innovation and success stems from communication with and empowerment of employees, and not from intimidation and punishment. Nevermind the multiple bankruptcies, and the many allegations of fraud and lawsuits against Trump’s companies. Nevermind the Yahoo! Finance article showing that Donald Trump would have been 10 billion dollars richer if he ceased trying to run his business 30 years ago and instead simply invested his father’s money in an unmanaged index fund. Nevermind the fact that even the most ardent Trump supporter would most likely hate being treated this way by their own boss. The Apprentice offered its own, admittedly far more entertaining, version of reality. And inadvertently taught a vast segment of the population that this was how it worked. No wonder, then, that even as experts from all parties have looked on in horror at the carnage of firings, resignations, and slash and burn executive orders of Trump’s first weeks in office, so many of his supporters are feeling jubilation rather than terror. They’ve been taught that this is how you “drain the swamp” and “get things done.” And they believe what they’ve been taught, because The Apprentice didn’t come at them with an overt political agenda. Rather, it showed them a version of reality, and allowed them to come to their conclusions on their own. Now maybe I’m wrong. Maybe my own experience building a company, and the research of countless experts, and the business model of many of the most successful companies in America is built on a flawed premise. Maybe bankruptcies are (as Trump claimed) “smart” for business, and power games and the fear of “you’re fired” will someday be proven to be the best form of inspiration for employees. Maybe you believe that everything I believe is wrong. I welcome your disagreement with me on the issues. Because I believe that the purpose of art is to create a dialogue. Not to preach to the choir, or to moralize, but to reach out to those who believe differently. To stop trying to win the argument, or villainize the opposing side, and instead try to hear where they are coming from. I believe the job of the artist is to attack your own beliefs, and see if the truth you believe in can withstand the strongest argument of the other side. That said, I believe that the “you’re fired” philosophy is inherently destructive for companies and inherently destructive for America. I believe that it’s a positive vision of building something beautiful, rather than the guarded fear of those who might destroy it, that leads to success, whether you’re a businessman, a politician, or a filmmaker. I believe that’s what our founding fathers had in mind when they build our democracy, and I believe that’s what the best leaders have in mind as they lead. I believe that in order to build something great, you must trust and empower others (even those who think differently from you), and open yourself to the potential of being terribly hurt. I’ve built my own company, Jacob Krueger Studio around that vision. And at times I’ve suffered those hurts. But if I was going to build a screenplay about that experience, or around that belief, I wouldn’t just look for the strengths in my argument. I’d also look for the weaknesses, the flaws in my belief. I’d look for the greatest fears of a person who disagreed with me, or my own greatest fears of what might happen if I was wrong, and allow them to come true. I’d put my character in a situation where he empowered the wrong person, and lost control of his own company. I’d explore a time when his or her refusal to fire someone destructive caused him to suffer the worst possible consequences. I’d bombard him with the challenge of competing with other companies that didn’t share his moral beliefs. I’d let everything that could go wrong, go wrong. I’d let him do the wrong thing and be rewarded, and do the right thing and be punished. And I’d see if that truth could withstand that onslaught, or if my belief or the character’s belief changed. And hopefully, by testing my own ideas in that way, rather than ending up in the same place I’d started,

[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 writing. This shift was fueled not only by the bold choices of showrunners on great shows like The Wire, or Breaking Bad or Arrested Development but also by a change in the business model of television, as studios and networks switched from a serialized distribution model, where reruns were watched in random order, to a Video on Demand model, where shows were binge watched from start to finish. Because of the episodic quality of TV series and the different structural demands that come with it, the way that a character changes structurally in TV and Web Series will likely always be different from feature films. But nevertheless, the concept is the same. The most powerful form of the structure comes from a character, who just like us, believes themselves to be a static, very specific kind of person, who then through a huge change in which an unexpressed part of their own polarity comes to light and is integrated into their being. This could be a beautiful expression of a repressed capacity for love like we see in Jack Nicholson’s character in As Good As It Gets.  Or it could be an expression of repressed darkness, like a good man’s capacity for selfishness and violence that we see in Walter White’s character in Breaking Bad. It doesn’t matter whether the change is positive, or negative. It is the capacity for change (or even refusal to change in the light of that capacity) that draws us into these characters’ journeys. Because it is that capacity that sheds light on our own capacity to change. This is the one thing we all have in common. We all want to change. And that desire is a natural expression of the polarity in all of us. The desire to be fully ourselves. To integrate both the inhale and the exhale. The dark and the light sides of our nature. Or, as Jung might put it, to tap into the Collective Unconscious in order to become more fully ourselves. To tap into the entirety of the universe that exists somewhere within us, in order to experience the parts of us that we didn’t know, or didn’t want to know existed. When we see Walter White on our TV screens, there’s a part of us that identifies with him: that says “that’s me up there.” That doesn’t mean that we agree with Walter White’s actions or would ever purposely emulate him. It means that by stripping off his mask, and allowing the unexpressed parts of Walter White to show themselves (or maybe better said, through the bravery of the writer, Vince Gilligan, to expose those parts of himself through Walter White), we also allow the audience to experience and make sense of that repressed part of themselves. The Greeks called this Catharsis. The feeling of relief that we experience when identifying with another’s tragedy (or comedy) and going through it with them. When we stop seeing others as so different from us and start realizing that we are all the same. To acknowledge, as Walt Whitman wrote “I am large. I contain multitudes.” The goal of meditation, in many traditions, is to transcend that polarity. To open the 7th chakra. To connect to the spiritual plane. But that transcendence doesn’t come through repressing the polarity, it comes from integrating it. From focusing on both sides of the breath. By allowing all the different kinds of thoughts in our minds to pass by us, without judgment or repression, and also without identifying with them. Without saying “that’s me.” By keeping focused on the breath and the breath alone, both the inhale and the exhale, until those warring thoughts within us become integrated, and we find a transcendent place of peace. And the goal of writing in many ways is the same. To enter a Meditative State, in which we can strip off our masks, and connect to both sides of our own polarity-- the many different and conflicting and downright contradictory characters and emotions that exist inside of us. To blow life into them and put them onto the page, without judgment or repression. But also without identifying with them. Allowing them to make the choices that they would make, not the ones that we would make. Allowing them to change, and suffer, and change, and flourish, in ways that we dare not to do ourselves. To keep digging and digging until the unexpressed parts of those characters also come into view on the page. To keep putting them in situations where they have to make big choices, until they have no choice but integrate those repressed parts of themselves. Until they have no choice but change. In meditation, the point of focus that carries us through the swirl of painful and contradictory thoughts is the breath. The inhale and the exhale. In writing, the point of focus is the want: the one thing the character wants more than anything in the world. It is the choices the character makes in pursuit of that want that will become, organically, the structure of our movie. And it is the focus on that want that will help us navigate through the maelstrom of our own thoughts, and the well-meaning advice of so many other people, that threaten to disrupt us as we navigate our character’s journeys. At the studio, we teach this concept by breaking down writing into three different approaches. Most of our students begin in my Write Your Screenplay class, where we learn to find our structure organically, by connecting to the character’s wants, and using them to guide our structure. Building a dance between the conscious and subconscious parts of the writing process. Once those core skills of voice and structure are developed, in our Write Your Screenplay - Level 2 classes, we focus on building the technical, craft skills necessary to shape that raw material into a form as powerful for the audience and producer as it is for the writer. And finally, in our Screenwriting and Meditative Master Classes and our ProTrack mentorship program, we focus on integrating all three approaches: the art, craft, and structure of writing.

[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. Then I was lucky enough to study with a brilliant writer named Peter Parnell. At the time, Peter was a starving playwright, though he went on to become one of the biggest writers in Television. And what Peter taught me was that writing didn’t have to be so much work. That the answers I was looking for were not in some formulaic book, or even in my own conscious mind. That they already existed in my subconscious mind.   And the work of a great teacher was not to teach me “how to write,” but to teach me how to access what was already there.   Many people would say that Peter taught me how to find my voice. But actually he did so much more. He taught me how to find not only my voice, but also the entire structure of the story I wanted to tell. How to stop wrestling with my characters and start listening to them. How to stop puppeteering them through the twists and turns of some predetermined plot, and instead start letting them lead. And most importantly, how to stop manipulating the feelings of my audience, and turn writing into a process where I actually experienced the emotions myself. When I made the move from playwriting to screenwriting, I took Peter’s teachings with me. But I also ran into a problem.  Screenplays were so much bigger than plays. They had so many moving parts. Plays have something called unity of place. They all take place on one stage, and usually in one or just a handful of locations. And the scenes go very long. Most of the action happens through dialogue, so it’s really easy to dive deep within a very simple structure. Movies, on the other hand, have much shorter scenes. And they have a lot of them.  In just a couple of pages, you can jump to 10 different locations and many different storylines. And most of the action happens in action, which means you don’t get to linger in any scene for very long. Everything is always moving, moving, moving! You end up with so many moving parts, that you can’t hold them all in your head at one time. It’s easy to lose track, not only of where you’re going, but also where you’ve been.  It’s easy for all those parts to get jumbled together. To answer this problem, I did the same thing everybody does. I started reading screenwriting books. Screenplay by Syd Field. The Hero With a Thousand Faces, by Campbell… and many others, all suggesting a different answer to this fundamental problem of structure. But, no matter what approach I took, I found myself returning to the same bad habits-- once again manipulating my characters through the structural architecture I’d built for them rather than allowing them to exist as real people in the universe.  Thinking with the conscious part of my mind-- what I wanted my audience to experience-- rather than the subconscious part—what my characters were experiencing, what I was actually seeing, feeling or hearing when I went inside and watched them.   I was writing with the conscious brain rather than the subconscious one. The editing brain rather than the writing brain.   And what I found was that while my writing did become clearer it also became totally boring. People were no longer quibbling with my structure. But they also weren’t moved.   I had turned myself into the worst kind of bad writer. The kind of writer who wants an emotional reaction from his audience, but is shut off from the emotions in himself. The kind of writer whose obsession with craft becomes so all encompassing that he loses track of his art. This not only took away the magic of the final product. It also took away the magic of the journey by which I reached that product. It took away the magic of writing. So I thought back to what Peter Parnell had taught me, and I realized that all these “principles” that seemed so important in all these screenwriting books had never even been a part of the conversation. Then I started researching the people whose books I was reading. And what I found was that unlike Peter, most of them weren’t actually screenwriters at all.   Most of them had never even sold a screenplay.   Later, I’d come to understand that there’s a very simple reason for this. Unlike playwrights, who are all starving, successful screenwriters make money. Want so study with your favorite playwright? Guaranteed they’re teaching somewhere. But successful screenwriters don’t have to teach. And even those who love teaching, or who have reached a point in their career where they are ready to give back, are rarely writing screenwriting books, and rarely teaching at Universities, where Phd’s (which very few screenwriters have), are often so much more valued than experience.  It’s simply a matter of numbers—to write a screenwriting book, you’ve got to desperately want to do it. Because you could spend a third of the time writing a screenplay, and end up with ten times as much money. I realized at that point why I was having trouble. I knew I was a talented young writer .  But I wasn’t learning screenwriting from writers. I was learning from critics and academics, people who had been trained to analyze and deconstruct a finished product. Not how to create one from the blank page. And suddenly things made sense. This kind of outside-in approach could teach me how to look at a great screenplay academically once I’d finished it.  But they couldn’t teach me how to put it on the page.   I knew I needed to get back to the approach Peter had taught me. And at the same time, I knew I couldn’t simply write a screenplay as if it were a play.   I needed an approach that would help me make sense of all these disparate visual pieces—that would help me organize and shape the creations of my subconscious mind into a structure that I and others could understand—to dip subconsciously into the collective unconscious, and then find a way to come back outside and create structural value for what I found there. That’s how I created the 7 Act Structure that I now teach in my Write Your Screenplay classes.