Willing to be Wrong

Often when writing a screenplay, I have reached a moment in the script where I really want my hero to be right, but if I follow that path then I'm sure to have a gazillion rewrites to work on down the line trying to figure out where I went wrong. Attachment to being right is a human frailty and kills a screenplay faster than anything else kills. This human frailty of righteousness does more to undo progress in the world than, I'd venture to say, anything else does. Think about it for a moment. If we are right, then there is no reason to change. If there is no reason to change, then we've reached that "happily ever after" moment. We might as well implode on the spot.

In order to grow an industry, then the industry has to assume it is wrong about something and start trying new things. Uhm. That is not happening very often these days in the movies I've seen. Case in point, just in the past few days I heard radio arts commentator, Bob Mandello (NPR) noting that in just the last eight months Hollywood put out four movies that are about the same theme - messing with our perception of reality. Okay, this is one of my favorite topics, but looking underneath the appeal, it makes me wonder why so many of the same stories are made year after year. Like remember when all the baseball films were made? Alternatively, how about the bunch of films about ants in a single year? Really? Ants? Not to mention the requisite kids at a haunted house or abducted by aliens stories. Hollywood has started making satirical films about these genres in a desperate attempt to find something new to say.

Now, I am going to go out on a limb and tell you my point of view, and I may be very wrong, but I think Hollywood is stuck in a righteous rut. There are reasons I think this is true. One of them is that some of the more interesting films I've seen over the past decade were not made in Hollywood. Another reason is that I know it is hard for Hollywood to make its way through the 50,000 plus ideas that land in its lap every year in any way that is objective. People in Hollywood want to have lives, really they do, and so like it or not, they go the easiest possible route to making a living -- tried and true. That means writers who have credits get looked at much more seriously than newcomers, and that the better revenue a writer's film makes for the producers and studios, the more likely it is that they'll get opportunities to do it again. Now, then when writers get the opportunity to repeat their own glory, what are they going to do but return to what they know and have done before? It would be crazy not to. There are very few successful screenwriters who push beyond their earliest successes in a substantial way, even if their first films did push the envelop of righteousness a bit. They tend to fall into "niche" writing, and we pretty much get what we expect. This works when a filmmaker is totally committed to their vision, and it doesn't work when a filmmaker or screenwriter is not sure why one script made it and another didn't. For a film to work, the filmmaker must know himself finally. See the movie "Nine" if this confuses you. In fact, see both movies called "Nine". They were released the same year, and they're actually very different. Grin. 

Who are the ones I think push at the envelope still...? I'm willing to be wrong on this but I do believe the people willing to flop, and to tell the story of their hearts have it. They are the ones who make the films from which I can't be distracted. Sometimes these are documentary filmmakers who have a passion about a subject. Sometimes these are comedians, who, loving the human condition of wrongness, make truly funny films. Sometimes the writers, who found something to grab onto in a comic book series when they were young, fight the urge to lighten it up and strive to tell the dark vigilante tales they remember and loved. Sometimes it comes down to a writer's willingness to state a point of view about touchy subjects like dying, or power, or sex, and going against the grain of the majority opinion they grab onto an evolved truth. Keep in mind that Hollywood doesn't generally feel comfortable going beyond where its audience is currently, and so the argument made in a script must be super compelling. Sometimes the distraction factor is destroyed by a filmmaker who creates indelible worlds that are unique and complete that the audience wants to discover. In all cases, all cases, the stories are about characters that do the wrong thing, who haven't figured everything out by the time the credits have rolled and who are in for a hell of a bumpy ride. These are films about discovery, about falling flat and getting back up. These are stories about failing before succeeding because this is the human story. 

It comes down to story always. Moreover, it doesn't have to cost $200 million to tell a great story. Furthermore, it requires your full investment.

The advice I got upon arrival in Hollywood was to write the biggest, epic film I could imagine. Then within a few years’ movies like "Sex, Lies & Videotape," and "Reservoir Dogs," both painfully intimate, small movies, came out. So, then it was write small personal films. Then it was write Sci-Fi, and then it was write family films. Whatever it was, it was already too late. Writers! We cannot write film scripts to match the trends of today. It is already too late for that. We must be the visionary writers who write film scripts that address tomorrow's audience even when Hollywood is afraid.

There are only a few ways to do this.

·        First is to write films that express your very personal vision and truth. Whether it is a small person-oriented drama, or an animation of fishes going through a human-like emotional adventure. It is the point of view that must be steady. If you write these kinds of films then you had better be prepared to find a way to get the film made yourself because these are the ones that sit in years of "development hell". ("Black Swan," "The Kids Are All Right," "Toy Story")

·        Second is to extrapolate and understand where we may be heading in the future. Seek what may be important in three, five or ten years and what stories will be ahead of that. If this is what makes your heart beat, as it did for the four or more writers who worked on the films Bob Mandello made notable last week, then you'll really need to understand what's changing in the world and extrapolate as any futurist does when predicting future trends. ("Inception," "The Adjustment Bureau," "Tron: Legacy")

·        Third is to adapt classic and historic stories that are relevant and truthful to today's audience. This requires either acquiring rights to adapt, or assuring yourself that the work you're adapting is in the public domain. Then you must be meticulous to the truth of that story while also connecting it to the audience's perception. ("Jane Eyre," "The King's Speech," "The Social Network")

In all cases, it requires good, hard work to make a good, hard screenplay. No gimmicks will help you at all without accepting that the hero is super wrong about something that is essential.

There is one last way to look at the rut, and I've touched upon it a little bit in previous posts. This is the hardest work, but the most rewarding path potentially. That is to reach beyond film itself, as we know it now. Look at the entertainment that folks have available to them on their smart phones and iPods. It's kind of thin and amateurish still. There is room, more room than I can say, for evolution there. Think about how you could use that medium to entertain and engage an audience. Think about whether you believe your story will pull millions out of the world in the palm of their hands or whether it would better fit there instead. Is it possible that new forms of entertainment, not just games, are just as rich and valid as film? Are you willing to be wrong about that? This is how we evolve people.