Collaboration: It’s Not All about Me

Here’s a real screenwriting bloggety-blog for those of you still committed to seeing your work played out by the great actors of our time on the big screen….

Writers have to be somewhat egotistical to pull off anything. We have to believe that our story has some importance, some meaning, in order to slog through the work it takes to produce it as a script, a poem or a story of any sort. Honestly, the merit of writing a tale that is meaningful to others is our craving. Defending our point of view becomes a major part of the work of writing, of each story, and yet it is only when we become as confident of our point of view, as a ballerina is confident of her pirouette, that the writing begins to shine on its own and attract an audience.

In screenwriting, and perhaps playwriting, the moment we are confident of our point of view, we begin to understand that our writing is part of a collaboration of points of view. Wait. What? Yes, I am saying that just when you think you’re done, the real work of a screenwriter begins. We’ve developed our writing skills necessarily, up to this point, to work independently, but that’s not all. There is more. Upon reaching a success plateau, say having your script optioned, or getting ready to make a short video with a group of like-minded souls, you are now volunteering to let others into your work circle and actually welcome their additional points of view, and if you're lucky you've been paid to let go of the reigns.  They’ve chosen your script because it struck them as “true” at some level, but now they have opinions about it as well. You go from being confident that your screenplay is perfect as it is, to being asked to consider the necessity of change (locations, for instance) or improvements (i.e.; stronger villains).  Screenwriters do sometimes whine about being left out of the process, once their work is in the development process.  Everyone wants to make a mark on the writer’s former territory, and it can be heart-wrenching to the unprepared.

Most of the working world works in collaboration with others, but writers often believe that they have sole ownership of their efforts. Most likely, they became writers because they have a tolerance for working alone that many do not share. I know that was true for me, but I also know from experience that screenwriting is different. Whether you start alone and then join a team of producers, actors and crew, or you start with a writing partner or even a team, when you type the words, “the end” on your script, a new level of work begins.

You may see this as an argument to be loosey-goosey with your point of view, to be a panderer to anyone who will give you money for your work, but let me be clear: NO! No that is not what I’m arguing for in the least. If anything, I will argue that you must carefully build up a confidence in your point of view before you will be ready to open up to other people’s perspectives with any grace at all. Additionally, only when you have begun writing your own take on a story will it have the cohesiveness it must have to attract others to want to collaborate and bring it to the screen. Why? Because a director or producer or agent will sense the weakness of a premise without a point of view, and will know that a writer submitting such mumbo-jumbo is not ready for the rough and tumble world of collaboration.

Collaboration is THE process of filmmaking. Imagine an architect with the hubris to believe that the grand temple he has designed will be built with his own hands. Um, it has to be a very little building, or maybe the ONLY building he will build in a lifetime then. If you are a writer who wants sole ownership, then consider that screenwriting may not be where you want to focus your storytelling gifts. If you can imagine how the dynamic of teamwork will enhance your work, then you are in the right place.

There are tried and true methods for building strong teams, and, unless you also want to become a director, you don’t really have to pay attention to all of them. In fact, a production team is most often an organic expansion of talented people who more or less share a point of view. Famous writer/directors like Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese have worked with a tight knit group of talent for decades. That said; there are things you can work on as a writer to ready yourself for the collaborative process:

• Story confidence building. Being confident of your story, knowing it inside and out is the first step towards being ready to work collaboratively. You must be ready to answer any question and defend any story point throughout your script. This is not about bullshitting. This is about knowing your material inside and out.
• Prepare yourself to compromise. I have a screenwriting friend, who had set a scene in a grocery store, but the production company couldn’t get a grocery store to agree to be the location, and so she had to rewrite the scene for a hardware store. These kinds of things have happened everyday in filmmaking since the golden age. Flexibility is a great asset any screenwriter can bring to the table.
• Don’t take it personally. When you’ve worked on a script for a year or sometimes more, remembering that it isn’t just yours is difficult to say the least. Is it possible that you’ll be working with insensitive, egotistical people in Hollywood? Are you kidding? Make like a duck in a rainstorm and let it roll off your back, as my wise grandmother would say.
• Keep your eye on the prize of a whole career of writing screenplays rather than investing all of your creative self-belief in one project. At the beginning of your career, accept you are on a learning curve. As your films find an audience, you’ll know more and more how to handle “the development process.”
• Use your skills! You’re a writer! Keep notes of why those changes were made and when. Write out reasons for defending your preferences before exploding on the scene with demands and defenses, shooting from the hip of emotion. Use your skills to work out the best choices, and when you can’t find a meeting place realize that sometimes compromises are not win-win, but you can live and write another day if you can work with others and do your best.
• Combine survival and celebration. Enjoy each step of the experience of seeing your idea come to life with others help. Enjoy the additions that enhance your idea and the scramble to get it all done. Enjoy the changes you disagree with for what they are: a learning experience.

I will say that the learning experience is sometimes hard and not apparently enjoyable for many writers. I have seen some writers spin themselves into addictions and worse because they were asked to give up something they didn’t want to give up. Unfortunately, I have not seen these writers’ work back up on the silver screen since. That’s the truth. Collaboration is not about one person, and making movies is all about collaboration.

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. 

The Hippopotamus at the Table

In the past two decades our choices for entertainment have exponentially increased along with our population. That has caused, however, a reduced market share for the traditional venues of television and movies. The days when network TV was the only choice for an evening of entertainment have long past. Now, there is cable. Not only is there cable, though, there is TIVO, On-Demand, and Internet Streaming entertainment. There are games. There are hand-held games, on-line games, on-demand games, Nintendo, X-box, Wii games and Kinnect Games. There are games on your smart phone. 

Then there is social networking. The fifteen hours the average Facebook user spends on Facebook are fifteen hours away from television and film viewing. It’s isn’t going away. It’s getting bigger. When Facebook announced they would stream Warner Brother’s “The Dark Knight” and it looked pretty much like nothing happened, it made me wonder what the future of film and television really can be? I rarely am so enraptured by filmed entertainment that I willingly shut off my Facebook checking.

There are about 40,000 people getting film degrees in the world, and yet the market for film and television is suffering from attrition. So, as a screenwriting teacher, it is a daunting task to find some modicum of hope that I can share with my students. Sure Hollywood has successfully promoted the idea of the “overnight success” but in truth, it is a slog to get there no matter how you slice it. Moreover, getting “there” is perhaps a questionable goal. Blasphemy! I am supposed to be cheering you on to “make it big” in Hollywood, right? Wrong.

Hollywood has now entered the phase of its life in the Universal Marketplace where it is becoming “niche” entertainment. (shhhh! The Hippopotamus is eating!) It is not all of entertainment anymore, and it never will be again. There are just too many options for the consumer to ignore. Therefore, if you want to get into that niche, you’re really going to have to figure out how to write what they produce – The Hollywood Movie. It is what they do best, and they are not looking to break out of that mold, at least for now.  Rather it seems clear they intend to hang on for dear life against the winds of change.

If you bristle against that status quo, then I suggest you stop looking towards Hollywood as your answer to the age-old questions of the artist – How do I get seen? How do I make a living? How do I get discovered? Stop assuming that the only way to get your film made is the traditional way. You don’t have to do it their way anymore. That said, it is time to notice the Hippopotamus sitting at the table with us.

“The Hippopotamus” is always an assumption that everyone makes at certain times of our lives that we strive to avoid noticing. We would like to pretend that the Hippopotamus is a figment of our imagination. We are ripe for blissful ignorance, and hope that it is having no influence on the dinner at hand. Of course, a hippo at the table is a messy thing to pretend about. Have you ever smelled a pachyderm’s house? So, that’s the kind of stinky assumption we’re dealing with, and it needs to be acknowledged and put in its proper place.

The Hippopotamus we have at the entertainment industry dinner table is an assumption about what the future of entertainment looks like. It’s a multi-tiered assumption that, in my opinion, is dangerously avoided or ignored. Let me introduce you to the unspoken thoughts that fuel fear in my industry:

• We assume that movies are going to exist as marginalized entertainment, much as theater has over the last one hundred years. There I said it.
• We assume that games and social networking will dominate the entertainment industry eventually, and that barring a few break out, technologically inventive film events, like “Avatar”, most people will eventually view all movies on their iPads, or internet televisions. There, I said it.
• We assume that an “interactive movie” is more like a game than a point of view story created by a master storyteller. In fact, the story is so hackneyed by now, it hardly matters as long as you have a celebrity that has box-office attached. Yeppers.
• We assume that people will stop wanting to leave their homes to gather for entertainment’s sake except at astronomically high prices for “important” Academy-sanctioned films. We assume that film, like theater, is going to exist still but be less important to our collective conscience and more elitist in the future. So there.
• Like libraries and books, like big box stores, like heirloom seeds, the world of big movie theaters and even multi-plexes take up too much room, require too much electricity, and will become unnecessary. There, I said it.
• Even DVDs and BlueRay disks take up too much room in our lives to exist for very long in a world of apps the audience can download for free.
• Even Television will be a hand-held app on Facebook, Amazon or Google before the end of the decade and living rooms will look more like office cubicles. There, I said it.

This Hippopotamus belies our hope that somehow people will continue to want to go to the movies, and watch television when they have so many other options in life to live adventures. Because the truth is this: we’re married to our hope, and we’re having a wild and lustful affair with the Hippopotamus. 

Filter Characteristics for better Characters

One thing most writers struggle with is differentiating characters in a story, and "making them real" rather than stereotypical. Short of coming down with schizophrenia, what can we do to get inside the heads of so many different characters to understand why they do the things they do, say the things they say, see the world the way they see it? I hope that we know it is important to do this especially with the main characters: the hero, the manipulator/mentor and the villain. But, when there is so much competition for readers' attention, even the minor characters have to quickly take form in their mind as the story unfolds.

Observation is a time-tested tool for most writers, but unless you have a voice over narrative in your film then the observation of characters falls into the lap of the audience. Therefore, once again, the art of knowing and showing is the necessary evil of screenwriting. You must know what is behind your character's choices and then show the subtleties to the audience for them to observe. It's not enough to give a redneck character a southern accent to make his choices consistent with a "real" human being. You must understand his frame of reference, how he filters the world, in order to understand how to manipulate him. Where to start?

Back-story is sold to screenwriters as a sure-fire way to develop characters. Knowing what happened to a character BEFORE the film starts, and creating a believable history that a writer may or may not draw upon in dialogue and action in the film is a good thing. Right? Some writers create such intricate back-stories that they might fill up a completely different film. Some back-stories do become "prequel" films, in fact. It is dangerous territory for a writer, though to delve into the pre-film history too deeply, because I’ve seen it lead writers away from perfectly viable stories often.

Studying and understanding the way people communicate and perceive the world in general must be in a writer’s tool chest. I’ve written of the “point of view” of the screenwriter being important to a screenplay’s very hypothesis, and so taking this logic further into a story follows like this: the point of view of each character is important to the character’s very hypothesis. It may not be entirely necessary to construct a complete history for every character to do this well. (What did she say???)

Neuro-Linguistic Programming has been around since the 1970s. In the forty years since, there has been a boatload of research done on the behavior of human beings in the world. Focusing just on what we know through NLP can help writers understand how characters filter information differently. This can be a short cut to creating a plausible set of traits for any character in your screenplay. There are experts who can help you quickly understand why a person might respond to information presented one way, and ignore or be confused by the same information presented another way. Last night I went to a fun class about this field taught by expert, Tracy L. Brown, a Master Certified NLP Practitioner, to learn more. She was so entertaining as she showed us how people give their lies away, or how we might get out of speeding tickets by simply changing the way we communicate.

It was clear to me from the outset that each believable character in your screenplay will necessarily have a specific filter through which they either get or refuse information, and that knowledge will drive many entertaining moments in a film. For instance, I’m a visual leaning person. I respond to the way things appear in presentation. I used to call myself a marketer’s dream come true, but maybe only for those who paint me a pretty picture. A close second is my auditory perception, or how things sound, and I always question whether something resonates with me, or sounds true. Put me in a room of kinesthetic people who want to touch and feel can really creep me out. Present me with a stack of facts or credentials that give me no visual clues and I’m just slogging through it with pure pain. These traits get more pronounced when there are big decisions to be made. I’m skeptical if it doesn’t “look good,” and I become enthusiastic if I feel I have a reasonable perspective, and these visual words naturally fall into the way I speak and color my world.

Therefore, as you create your characters mull over mixing and matching types. Consider a hero and villain who perceive the world through different filters and how they must finally reinterpret each other. Think about how people build connection when they exhibit similar filters. Consider what choices are made seemingly out of an arbitrary disregard for the facts, but are actually made because of the filter of perception that character carries around with them. All character decisions have an emotional basis, of course, but the filter frames the emotion. As a screenwriter, you can begin to work with the language you use to define those filters, and you may even be able to learn an infallible way to hook agents and producers through use of NLP and garner the rare, “Green Light” for your project. 

Speculative is the Opposite of Definitive

As we begin to explore the rough world of screenwriting, we have to wonder at our objectives. The facts, the definite facts about screenwriting as a trade are a slippery slope that may send any writer, new or tried and true, down. Some say there are 55,000 things (treatments, premises, outlines, and scripts) registered with the WGA ever year, and only about 400 new writers joining the guild each year, but there are also many scripts that are bought and made into independent films before the writer ever registers the script. As filmmaking becomes a more and more accessible venture, the definite facts become less and less important. Therefore, I’m telling you that somewhere amongst a screenwriter’s objectives should be the desire to see a story up on the silver screen or at the very least posted on YouTube for a viral share of the market.

Yes, we’d all like to make a seven-figure screenplay sale. Selling a speculative, or “spec,” script is often what first inspires a writer to pursue the craft of screenwriting. It is a risky venture, but potentially highly profitable. What is most risky about it? I mean it is not as if it is very likely that a screenwriter’s laptop will blow up. Death by screenwriting is the theme of the classic movies, “Sunset Boulevard,” “Barton Fink,” and “Adaptation,” but it certainly isn’t the norm. The risk of screenwriting is far more the loss of heart and soul than of life and limb. As we learn the craft and accepted methods of screenwriting, we can begin to feel we’ve lost our voice, that our writing has become formulaic.  The risk of screenwriting can mean that we’ve distracted ourselves from other sure things in our lives. It is a battle each writer must decide to enter for him or herself for this reason.

Screenplays often have many facts in them, and so often, we’ll see in the credits, “based on true life,” or some such nonsense. However, I would pose to you that though a screenplay often presents facts, those facts are there only to support a deeper truth. As Aristotle famously wrote, “Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular,” and the best screenplays are often closer to poetry than history. We form a hypothesis with our screenplay premise with the intention of setting out a proof for our point of view. This is how a screenplay reveals the truth may not always rest solely with the facts.

Our journey as speculative screenwriters is fraught with the dangers of facing limitation, and the demands of endurance. It relies not only on creative vision, but also on willingness to bear the burdens of speculation on so many levels.  Building upon the shoulders of screenwriters who have gone before us, let’s commit to the finest within ourselves to deliver to that visual medium film stories that are worth considering and entertainment that has something to say about the world we live in and its truths beyond facts.