Storytellersunplugged

(RANDOM NOTES ON THE CONFLUENCE, FROM A BOY IN THE TRENCHES)

Dear kids –

Once again: this month’s essay isn’t much of an essay. It’s a hodgepodge of notes posted on the Shocklines message board (where, incidentally, you should buy ALL YOUR SCARY BOOKS!), plus an excerpt from my online column, THE HARD WAY, and a little extra babble besides.

The reason is this: in 13 days, I am directing a 15-minute sequence from my new feature film, JAKE’S WAKE.

And it is ABSOLUTELY CONSUMING EVERY SECOND OF MY WAKING LIFE. Not to mention messing with my dreams.

I’ve got to say that directing a film is even more demanding than writing a novel. Because not ONLY do you have to envision every single thing, and become every single character; but you also have to make it happen in physical space, and entrust actual physical people to bring it all to life.

I have NEVER been more all-consumed by one project. And in a lifetime of novels, rock bands, and socio-political involvements, that’s kind of saying a lot.

So here are some notes.

If you’ve ever entertained the notion of writing for film – because you love film, you love money, or both and beyond – these might come in handy for you.

They might also piss you off.

But that’s the chance I gotta take, to tell you the truth I’m learning now.

Ready? HERE GOES!

————-

DIRECTORS AND PRODUCERS VS. WRITERS

This is in response to some comments made by a couple of pals – respected and accomplished fiction writers – at Shocklines.

I can’t give you the names, or the actual quotes, because posting on a message board isn’t meant to have that kind of permanence.

But the gist of it was this: that directors (and producers) piss on original scripts – written by REAL WRITERS – the way dogs piss on trees. Just to mark territory.

These are statements that I used to agree with, far more than I do now.

Yes, writers are routinely fucked with in the film production process. They are low men on the creative totem pole, and are never allowed to forget it.

That said: it is the JOB OF THE DIRECTOR to take the words on the page and turn them into something shootable. That means shaping them to fit the available budget, schedule, talent, location, etc., in accordance with his own vision.

That’s why they call him the director.

And it is the JOB OF THE PRODUCER to bring all the people on board who are necessary for actualizing the project… and then to make sure that the fucker gets done, on time and on budget.

That’s why they call him the producer.

————–

As it turns out, I’m a guy who’s actually in the midst of producing/directing a 15-minute spec for my own new horror feature, JAKE’S WAKE. (That’s why I haven’t been around much, this past month.)

And I gotta tell ya:

I am having to rewrite the shit out of MY OWN SCRIPT — co-written with award-winning indie film genius Laura Bahr (THE LITTLE DEATH) — in order to shoot it properly.

Because words on paper — no matter how pretty — are not a fucking film. And there are considerations you CAN’T take into account until you’re actually engaged in the physicality of the process.

I’ll be sending updates, as the shoot proceeds (principal photography is 2 WEEKS AWAY!). But my experience tells me this:

ANYBODY WHO WANTS TO WRITE FOR FILM SHOULD HAVE TO PRODUCE AND DIRECT SOMETHING, TOO! Just so they know what is actually — as opposed to theoretically — involved.

All writers should have to direct, AT LEAST ONCE, so they know how logistically complex and truly difficult it is.

All directors should have to produce, AT LEAST ONCE, so that they know what everything costs before they demand more this and that.

That said: all producers should not — God help us — have to write. Although if they actually COULD, that would really come in handy.

As the great Larry McMurtry once said: “A producer with an idea is like an 80-year-old man with an erection. He has to run around and show EVERYBODY, whether it’s much of an erection or not.”

But I’ll tell ya: the most fulfilled writers in Hollywood are the ones that produce — and maybe even direct — their own stuff. They’re the ONLY writers in Hollywood who aren’t completely at the mercy of everybody else.

I know that’s why I’M doin’ it! CARPE DIEM, MOTHERFUCKERS!!!

With big hugs, all around.

Yer pal,
Skipp

————–

TRADING CLICHES, THE MORE-THAN-HOLLYWOOD WAY
(THE WRITER/PRODUCER AS ARTIST/ENTREPRENEUR PT. I)
Posted: 9/10/2004

If there’s one thing I never thought I’d want to be, it’s a movie producer.

Coming into the biz — as a novelist, with aspirations to film — I guess I’d been raised by other writers to believe that producers were THE ENEMY. Certainly, that was the portrait painted.

Producers were predatory pinheads with payrolls, slavering greedheads with nothing on their minds but how they could fuck you, and take your story, and ruin it forever. Short-sighted, trend-obsessed vampires who sought young blood for one reason, and one reason only.

To suck them dry, and drain their ideas.

It’s a comforting cliche, for the aspiring screenwriter. And like all comforting cliches, it has a basis in fact.

To hear most filmmaking horror stories, from the writer’s point of view — and we’re not just talking Hollywood studios, here — is to hear one example after another of ruthless cutting, pasting, shredding, poly-unsaturating, and otherwise mutilating what would have been unsurpassingly brilliant work.

That’s to hear the writers tell it.

But — as in most cases that involve a difference of opinion — there’s another side to this story.

The producer’s side.

If you wanted to hear some writer cliches, from the producerial standpoint, I could toss you a handful.

Like:

1) WRITERS HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT TAKES TO MAKE A FILM. They don’t understand the logistics. They don’t understand how and why money gets raised. They don’t understand what anything costs. They don’t understand team-building. They don’t understand the collaborative nature of the form. They don’t listen to input, or they fight it all the way. And they fight it from a position of holier-than-thou ignorance
SO ANNOYING that, if they were not necessary, we would never ever talk to them again. Cuz life is more than hard enough.

2) MANY SCREENPLAYS HAVE EXACTLY ONE GOOD IDEA. And the bitch is that we have to buy the whole screenplay if we want that good idea. So we can get some REAL writers
to make it any fucking good.

3) WRITERS THINK THEIR WORK IS MADE OF GOLD. Like the fact that they wrote it makes it undeniably great. Like every word was handed the fuck down from Moses.

I could go on. But I’ll move forward, instead.

Bottom line: after reading lots and lots of screenplays, I am forced to agree that the producer’s cliches are every bit as valid as the writer’s cliches.

Which is to say: there’s some truth in ‘em.

Some truth worth lookin’ at.

The fact is that the writer’s cliches emanate mostly from DISGRUNTLED WRITERS. Just as the producer’s cliches mostly emanate from DISGRUNTLED PRODUCERS.

The thing ignored — in all this passing back and forth of horror stories — is the successful conjunction of writing and producing.

When a movie is ACTUALLY GREAT, do we dismiss the producer as an incidental aspect of the movie being great?

Wouldn’t that just be dumb?

Might there not be a reason why producers get the BEST PICTURE awards? Not the directors? Not the writers? Not the stars?

Do we even know what producers do?

They do a lot.

They are interesting characters.

And without them, no movies would ever get made.

No good ones.

No bad ones.

No movies at all.

So the next couple of HARD WAYS are gonna concern themselves with producers, and what they do. How and why they make so much of the difference. The many kinds of differences they make.

And why I have just become one.

And don’t feel like a traitor, at all.

————

A LITTLE NOTE ON DIRECTING

A thing to remember, when considering film, is that FILM IS BROKEN DOWN INTO SHOTS, in much the same way that prose is broken down into sentences.

A director has to consider EVERY BEAT — be it dialogue, action, atmosphere, or transition — and make sure that they cut together into a moving, engaging experience.

The screenplay is the skeleton around which everything wraps. Which is why you want your screenplay to be structurally sound.

But the director needs to turn that into hundreds and/or thousands of shots.

He’s gotta know what the scene looks like, and MAKE SURE IT LOOKS THAT WAY.

He’s gotta assemble a great cast, capable of delivering the goods IN EVERY SHOT.

He’s gotta make sure the camera’s in the right fucking place, for maximum visual effectiveness.

He’s gotta be on top of the music, the sound, the color coding, the absolutely EVERYTHING that goes on in his film.

And, yeah, it IS his film. (Or hers.) He’s the captain of the ship that pulls all that stuff together.

If he isn’t, he’s a shitty director.

Think of the great directors — you’ve got your list, I’ve got mine – who manage to consistently (or even OCCASIONALLY) deliver brilliance.

You know how much work went into that?

An INCREDIBLE amount of work.

And the bottom line on all of this is: assembling a great team. Great script. Great director. Great director of photography. Great cast. Great crew. Great composer. Great editor.

Great everything.

And you know who’s in charge of all that?

A great producer, with a vision.

Teaming with a great director, who can pull it off.

Based on a great screenplay.

And yatta yatta yatta.

So it really IS more complicated than “I wrote a great script, and they fucked it up.”

Although, yes, that happens all the time.

An amazing case in point is JACOB’S LADDER: widely considered one of the best unmade scripts in Hollywood for, like, 10 YEARS.

Before — of all people — Adrian Lyne pulled it out of the fire, and transformed it into genius.

If you read the book surrounding that film — and which includes the original screenplay, plus a staggeringly honest essay by the screenwriter, Bruce Joel Rubin, himself — you get a real glimpse into how mere words on paper, however astonishing, get transformed into an actually brilliant motion picture.

So YES, I think great screenwriting should get its proper due.

But a movie really is MADE BY THE DIRECTOR, with the support of the producer, in conjunction with a whole sprawling shitload of people, only one (or two or twelve) of whom actually wrote the thing.

That’s what I’m learning.

Yer pal,
Skipp

—————-

FINAL P.S. – BECAUSE ACTING IS DEEPLY BECOMING

Over the last two days, I spent in-depth casting sessions in a rented L.A. theater, reading and DV-taping dozens of talented actors.

In the end, my decisions were very simple.

And I’ll tell ya: it’s a revelation to watch a dozen actors read the same piece of dialogue. You realize all the nuance that defines an actor’s idiosyncratic interpretation. And it also says a lot about how different readers interpret your prose, as they read ‘em.

They ALL read it differently.

Many of the readings play within a basic bandwidth: the obvious interpretation. There are cues in the script, and the actor runs with them, often in the first way that leaps to mind.

But then you find someone who crawls up whole from deep inside the material, because they have internalized it deeply themselves.

And when they read those lines, THEY ARE NOT ACTING.

They have BECOME that character.

They know how that character thinks, and feels, and behaves. They have the rhythm of the voice dialed completely. You can see the intelligence (or, if they’re playing idiots, the absence thereof) in their eyes.

At which point – if you’re a smart writer/director/producer – you let them show YOU who this person has become.

Which is very much what happens when you’re writing a novel, and a character suddenly comes to life. Telling YOU who they are, and not the other way around.

Which means that a smart writer in film CANNOT BE FUCKING PRECIOUS ABOUT THEIR LINES. Cannot say, “Don’t you DARE change my timeless prose!”

That’s egocentric suicide.

And in film, that’s not a victimless crime.

That said: when I pointed out to my new excellent cast how great their choices were, their consistent response was, “Well, that’s because the WRITING’S SO GOOD!”

And to wrap this up on a humble note: more than half the dialogue in this 15-minute spec was written by my co-writer, Laura Bahr. A fine actress, herself. Who really knows what she’s doing.

Even when the writing’s good, you know what it’s like? It’s like that great scene in David Lynch’s MULHOLLAND DRIVE, where Naomi Watts takes a piece of pedestrian TV soap opera blather and turns it into breathtaking art, blowing Chad Everett’s mind in the process.

Did I mention that I got some REALLY GREAT ACTORS? Stage actors who know how to work a camera, and deliver this fucked-up horror story as if it were legitimate drama?

I am, at this moment, insanely happy. And humble. And proud as proud can be.

In 13 days, I shoot this shit.

Wish me luck, as I wish back at you, in all your endeavors.

Yer pal (and I MEAN IT THIS TIME!),
Skipp