Writers Are Doing It For Themselves

The UK's Screen Daily reports that more screenwriters are being forced into writer/producer roles as development funding dries up. Sure it represents a great entrepreneurial spirit but it's not hard to imagine the trend when the alternative is unemployment.

It is a rough time to be looking for financing. Coupled with the economic downturn is the failure of the old financing model which depended on pre-sales from theatrical distributors to come up with a significant slice of the pie. But distributors are naturally tightening purse strings as well which doesn't necessarily augur well for Third World Girl's mid-budget crazy Bollywood movie...unless we can find a way to make it for a lot less.

Nevertheless, filmmakers and journalists keep trying to strike an upbeat tone, despite worrying signs that our longshot odds are longer than ever. David Pearson, director of the Screenwriter's Festival writes, "The UK industry has to find a way to make more films that make more money, but that doesn’t have to mean empty popcorn fare." That's what we all wish for: make more films that make more money-- but as a directive it rings hollow.

Fade Out.

No matter how many times you write it, whether it's at the end of your first script or your fifteenth...God it feels good to reach "Fade Out", especially to someone like me who loathes a first draft.
"Little Low Budget Movie I Want To Direct" is now on the page, and officially on the back burner, which is good cause it'll give me the perspective I need for when I take that first crack at a rewrite.

What's the Story About? Let the Characters Say It in a Few Words.

So I know a consultant who advises writers to use the title of the movie somewhere within the script. On one hand I think that sort of approach is too on the nose but on the other, I think she's on to something which made me think about how theme is expressed.

I've already admitted to being a big fan of The Title since it's the first marketing tool you have. Your title is the 70 point newspaper headline that draws people to your story. After that, comes another crucial element that, if absent, can make a script unsatisfying. Let's get all Freshman English and call it the lack of a "thesis sentence". In good scripts what the whole movie's about is often condensed in a few lines of character dialogue. It's where the writer says, "Hey guys, this is the idea I want to explore or have explored. Do you see how my story tests this idea?"

Why is this important? I think a good number of writers can execute plot, character, dialogue effectively, but nailing story to a theme represents a level of sophistication that sometimes eludes even the more experienced writer. I used to read several entertaining scripts for a couple production companies but at the end of the day, the scripts didn't stick with you because they didn't have a thematic point. The writer didn't hand you the lens you needed to view the story events through. I think when execs or producers talk about a story staying with them, they're really talking about how the theme resonates and the best way to achieve that resonance is through title and "thesis sentence."

There are no rules about where the dialogue that explains the heart of the movie has to fall. In the three examples below, one comes at the beginning, one at the climax and one at the end as a sort of "moral of the story."

One of the simplest execution of "thesis sentence" ever must be Richard Curtis' "Love Actually". It's probably so bare because Curtis knows he has to give the reader of the multi-stranded narrative something to hold on to before he delves into the eight story lines(!) we'll be weaving in and out of. The prologue says: this writer has a plan. It is all, at the end of the day, going to mean something.

Here's the opening voice over....

[scrippet]
PRIME MINISTER
Whenever I get gloomy about the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow airport. General opinion has started to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed but I don't see that(... )If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love is actually all around.
[/scrippet]

And we're into the movie and able to enjoy it and take meaning from it because of the "thesis sentence." (I prefer thesis sentence to theme because it's more specific. Theme makes me think of generalities like "love is everywhere" but the thesis sentence gives you a more precise road map...Curtis tells you, this is a modern, Britain in post 9/11 story and these are the specific types of love I'll be dealing with in my argument.) The opening helps a reader relax, know what to look for and settle in for the read.

The thesis sentence doesn't always have to be so obvious but it should somehow tie in to the title. Here's an example from 2008's The Visitor, a personal favorite of mine...not much of a surprise given its subject matter. In this scene, the mother of an undocumented immigrant is confessing her culpability in his detention.



[scrippet]
MOUNA
It's my fault. What happened to Tarek. I did receive the letter telling us to leave. I threw it away. I never told him. We were here for three years by the time the letter arrived. I had found a job. Tarek was in school. Everyone told me not to worry. That the government did not care. And it appeared to be true. And then, after a time, you forget. You think that you really belong.
[/scrippet]

Again here's the thesis sentence that screenwriter Tom McCarthy's been holding back until the climax of the movie. He wants to explore the question of belonging and of course ties it into the movie's title: The Visitor. (I think McCarthy wants us to question who "the visitor" is...Is it Tarek, the undocumented immigrant or is it Walter Vale, the shut-down professor who's coming alive by being introduced to a world he didn't know existed.) That's the movie boiled down to a couple sentences.

But my all time favorite thesis sentence comes from another movie about outsiders "Dirty Pretty Things." At the climax where protagonist Okwe has duped his employer and is delivering contraband to a white buyer, the buyer asks... "How come I've never seen you before?"

And here's Okwe's response which puts an exclamation mark on the idea of invisibility that writer Steven Knight has been touching on throughout.

[scrippet]
OKWE
We are the people you do not see. We are the ones who drive your cabs. We clean your rooms and suck your cocks.
[/scrippet]

...to which Juliette, his hooker pal, (beautifully played by Sophie Okonedo in the movie) raises her hand to say yeah, I'm present.

It is a powerful iteration of theme and it comes at the climax of the movie. It also ties into the title "Dirty Pretty Things": we get our hands dirty to make your life pretty. (Some day I will get into how Miramax's marketing of this movie and its giving the title an intentionally misleading spin still galls me.)

So does your script have a thesis sentence? Doesn't have to... but a couple lines of dialogue can give the reader an unmistakable lens through which to view your story.

True Confessions: It Took Me Three Years to Read One Novel

Not too long ago the excellent screenwriting blog ("Rouge Wave") was hammering the importance of reading widely, not just scripts and newspaper/magazine articles, and non-fiction books but (sigh) novels.

Fifty three percent of America does no literary reading. Am I surprised? Surprised that the number isn't higher. Right around the time the Chicklet was born, books--fiction anyway-- got evicted from my life. If you want to be technical about it, I did read the last Harry Potter because I just had to know if Harry died or not before someone spoiled it for me...but I gulped it down in seven days, and it felt more like an assignment than a leisure choice.

My readingless life, J.K. Rowling apart, wasn't for lack of trying. Several times I reopened the book that I'd been reading when Chicklet was born, only to close it after a few paragraphs. (I have a hang up about "giving up" so I couldn't give myself permission to start reading something else.) This is how it came about that since 2006, okay late 2005, I've been reading "The Fortress of Solitude" by Jonathan Lethem.

On reflection, this is not the book you want to read when you're pregnant or a new mom. It has a shifting point of view and then, just for good measure, in the final section, a shift in narrative voice altogether. It's beautifully written overall, Lethem sure can turn a phrase, but as a story it lacks narrative punch and cohesion.

I was drawn to "Fortress" because it's a Brooklyn book and as a relatively recent transplant I was curious to peel back the curtain and glimpse a Brooklyn/Boerum Heights on the cusp of gentrification in the early '90s.

Lethem also examines race and the "other" which is a favorite, thematically for me. Plus, unexpectedly, his book contains, in its final segment, a gem of a scene that has his protagonist pitching to a Dreamwork exec: a hilarious must-read for screenwriters.

I finally got through it on April 17, 2009 and though I was relieved at the milestone I was more moved by the general experience of what it meant to read again. It was like a part of my life came back. Novelists used to be rockstars for me. Colson Whitehead, Jonathan Frantzen, Caryl Phillips, Jonathan Safran Foer, J.M. Coetzee, Zadie Smith...oh how I wanted to be her, living in my Williamsburg apartment writing transcendent things. My first job interview in the "big city" was for a position with PEN America but reading a novel became such a luxury in terms of parceling out my time that in due course it fell away.

But it shouldn't have. Because as a screenwriter nothing builds your chops for appreciating character and the world of the story like a novel. I can't remember which novelist said it, but a screenplay is like a bouillon cube while a novel is the whole stew.

The big question is what I read next. Having not read anything for three years it's wide open. Maybe I'll check out Junot Diaz's "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" ( I was so tempted to cheat with it during those can't read Lethem days) or maybe I'll just pick up Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Namesake" which has been in the corner of the office since hubby stopped reading it. (I've heard mixed things about the novel but, hey, in these economic times you can't beat "free" as a price point or "already in your house" as a location.)

And apparently I'm not alone in rediscovering reading. According to a new NEA report, for the first time since 1982, there's been a rise in the number of people who picked up a book or downloaded some prose — almost 16.6 million more since its 2002 census.

Do Something About It.

I am in love with this Orangebeautiful print. I need to have it above my desk.

Cause there is nothing worse than succumbing to the powerlessness and inertia you can sometimes experience on the journey of trying to get a movie made.

I got a set of notes that threw me a couple days ago, especially after the high of meeting with the music talent in LA and linking up with a couple of cool folks at the Indian Film Fest there.

Needless to say, the less than loving response to the current draft of crazy Bollywood movie filled me with buckets of self doubt. I took the big, general notes with a smile while privately stewing because they were so darn vague.

But you know what? I started thinking it through and trying to hammer down what the reader's issue was and just the act of starting to wrestle with the script again, having something to do, a problem to fix...it made me feel so much better than just staring at the note thinking about what a hack I am.

So that's my advice. Whatever it is...do something about it.

Happy writing.

Honesty as a Selling Tool?

David Marlett has been blogging over at Moviemaker.com with some great articles on film financing. This week he touches on something that's the opposite of what you'd think would be a selling point in a pitch meeting: honesty.

Marlett actually considers honesty to be a key ingredient of the sales pitch. (Doesn't honesty in sales sound like a kind of oxymoron itself?)

His attitude in terms of laying out the possible return on investment scenarios for investors reminds me that "people don't want to be sold to...they want to buy." Investors don't want to be hustled or fast-talked. They know if it sounds too good to be true it is. If I had a dollar for every producer I met who said that the movie they were developing was going to snag an A-list actor, an Oscar winning director and make a boatload of cash, well I'd have nearly enough money to start shooting the crazy Bollywood movie.

We're so hardwired to sell, sell, sell it's useful to reflect on how much we stand out by acknowledging that we don't have all the answers. We lift ourselves out of the pack by simply confessing that the final fade out of a movie's run might not be all of its investors sipping champagne on private islands from the movie's theatrical and DVD sales earnings.

But hey, not too much reality. We're in the dream business... We have to pull off the balancing act that requires us exciting a prospective investor at the same time as we (ironically) build his or her confidence by acknowledging we could come up short.

Check out the post here if you're producerly inclined.

Festival Bound...And Missing Tribeca

So while everyone else is descending on New York for the Tribeca Film Festival, the hubby and I are in LA for the Indian Film Festival of LA.

I find it amazing that I have always for one reason or another missed out on Tribeca...(Okay, maybe not all that amazing...I was out of New York for the first three years of the festival.)

The New York Times' preview of the festival makes me determined to catch at least some of it when I get back. "Still Walking", "Departures" and "In the Loop" are top of my list...if I can score tickets.

We'll see.