The All-Nighter
This weekend my goal was to finish a good chunk of my feature script. I wanted to pull an all-nighter (or two), just like in college. Back then, I wrote all my papers the night before they were due. Which is probably why I was a C-student. But toward the end I started making B’s and even A’s. I convinced myself that I’d learned a valuable skill: producing under pressure. (Self-inflicted pressure.)
There was another element to my plan though. I wanted to get out of the house. I imagined sitting in a corner booth at The House of Pies for twelve hours. Drinking endless coffee and pounding away on my laptop. Breaking the monotony with a patty melt. The drunks would come in, then the hipsters. Then the strippers. Imagine the conversations I’d overhear! The rhythms and the voices and the accents!
Ah, but The House of Pies was a no-go because they charge $2.50 an hour just to sit there. Bullshit. Starbucks? Barnes & Noble? Denny’s? IHOP? I agonized over it. Finally, I left the house, laptop over my shoulder, and drove to my favorite bar, McElroy’s, second-guessing myself the whole way.
It wasn’t crowded. I found a back booth where I could hide. And an electrical outlet. The coffee was free because the bartenders know my name. But it tasted like burnt popcorn. Worse, it made me sleepy.
I had written maybe two pages and I was stuck. I was at the beginning of Act Two. That wide Sargasso Sea that swallows the souls of so many screenwriters. I knew my midpoint, and the basic beats I needed to hit along the way, but I was fuckin’ stuck. Lesson learned: outline! Especially for Act Two. (I never really needed one for Act One.)
My eyelids got heavy and I gave up. I drank a beer, tipped, and went home where I watched Groundhog Day. Lesson learned: get some sleep the night before pulling an all-nighter.
The next day I slept in as much as the dog would let me. Once awake, I did anything to avoid writing. This mostly consisted of planning my next night of writing. Once again I obsessed over the venue. Evening came around, I dealt with a few distractions, and then headed to Brazil in the Montrose. The coffee was excellent, the sandwich was delicious, the overheard conversations were great, and writing felt fantastic. I could have stayed there all night. But alas, there wasn’t a damn electrical outlet to be found. None. My laptop can get maybe five hours of power on a good day. But somehow I’d neglected to fully charge it before heading out. So after two and half hours it was time to go.
It was a “teaching moment” though. Goals for the future: be decisive, pick a place and go, be prepared, charge your batteries, get some sleep, and write a damn outline.
Web Zeroes Premiere
My good friend Jeff James is writing for a web series created by his pals for Revision3 called Web Zeroes. It’s a mockumentary sitcom about three guys who try to become famous on the web. It’s pretty funny and I think it shows a lot of promise for future episodes. Here’s the trailer:
Watch the first episode now!
09.28.09It’s been a long summer…
Here’s an update: I’ve been writing and taking screenwriting classes with Tom Vaughan. And I’m into act two of a feature that I think has some good commercial appeal. It will hopefully be both funny and emotionally resonant (like Tootsie!).
Coming soon: I’m thinking of starting a feature called “First Pages.” It will be like ScriptShadow on a smaller scale. In fact, that’s where I plan on sourcing the scripts. The idea is to focus on the first page. It should be interesting. In the meantime, write, write, write…
08.3.09How to fix Funny People (SPOILERS, maybe)
I was really confused by the long trailer of this movie, which seemed to give away the whole story. It doesn’t. The TV trailers have been even more confusing; hiding the drama and marketing it as another Apatow bromance.
I really liked this movie. I thought it was smart and hilarious and heart-wrenching at times. But it has a few problems. Here’s a quick fix:
- Make it shorter. Seriously. 1hr 45 minutes. That’s how long movies are. Stick to it.
- Make the Dramatic Question clear.
What’s the dramatic question? You don’t find out until the end of the movie, really, but luckily it’s pretty simple: “Will terminal illness spur this miserable man to change his ways and find true love?”
Now, this kind of dramatic question is distinct from say “Will the 40yr-old virgin get laid?” The latter deals with tangible elements. We know he’s a 40yr-old virgin and we can assume the movie isn’t about a 40yr-old virgin who has to solve a crime or win the big game. He’s got to lose his virginity; and when he does we know the movie is over. But Funny People is going to have a much harder time conveying the main goal of it’s protagonist to the audience. Fortunately there’s a really neat trick that screenwriters can use when they have a dramatic question like this: EXPLICITLY STATE THE DRAMATIC QUESTION. Ta-da!
This film would be so easy to market, and so easy to digest if there was only a scene, right around the 30-minute mark, in which Sandler tells Rogen that he wants to change and find true love and happiness.
Of course, you’re imagining this scene right now and it’s not working, but that’s because you have a weak imagination. Trust me, Apatow could have made it work. And it would be the second clip in the trailer too. So instead of saying, “What’s that new Apatow movie about?” We’d say, “I want to go see that new Apatow movie starring Adam Sandler as a miserable movie star who tries to change his life after being diagnosed with a terminal illness!”
06.11.09Random stuff from The Guardian
The latest AFF emailer has a link to this Guardian article in which Shane Black gives a masterclass in action films, listing ten things your movie HAS TO HAVE. It’s decent advice from a guy who made millions selling spec scripts like Lethal Weapon, The Last Boy Scout, Last Action Hero, The Long Kiss Goodnight, etc. He has a–er, unique style that you either love or hate. Example description of a house from Lethal Weapon:
The kind of house that I’ll buy if this movie is a huge hit. Chrome. Glass. Carved wood. Plus an outdoor solarium: A glass structure, like a greenhouse only there’s a big swimming pool inside. This is a really great place to have sex.
(Hmm, the article implies that Black worked on the recent flop 12 Rounds, then there’s this at the bottom: “This article was amended on 26 May 2009 to correct the impression given in the original first paragraph that Shane Black worked on 12 Rounds.” Umm…no, it still implies that he worked on it.)
Funnily enough, the Guardian also has this much more interesting article which lambastes 12 Rounds for having yet another GENIUS PSYCHO KILLER. I liked this complaint a lot because I’ve been reading too many spec scripts full of super-badasses, AKA Mary Sues. I mean, we need one or two Hannibal Lecters and the occasional Liam Neeson’s-character-in-Taken, but does every damn script have to have a super-genius-super-kung-fu-killer in it? I’m looking at you, Kurt Wimmer.
06.2.09Doin’ Work
My credit card just got a $30 hit from the Austin Film Festival so that must mean they received my 30 Rock script. And now the waiting.
I worked hard on this script. I probably did ten outlines and a couple of treatments, though only the final treatment came close to coherent.
Sitting frustrated at my desk at work I decided to imagine that Tina Fey– whoa, you usually don’t want to finish reading sentences that start like that– called me up and asked me to pitch my episode in as much detail as possible. So with a cramping hand I scrawled four pages. There it was, a complete episode with A, B, and C stories.
The next day I made this:
Over the next week post-its gathered like moss while I banged out a couple of pages per day. Then one afternoon, without premeditation, I sat down and didn’t get up until I had written the last 20 pages or so. My ass was numb, it was completely dark, and my dog was annoyed.
For a while I thought it was my best work yet, but now I’m not so sure. I keep thinking that it could have been funnier. Jokes keep popping up that I could have used, but oh well. My work is over now.
I sent it out to three contests: Script PIMP, Scriptapalooza, and Austin Film Festival.
It’s going to be a long summer.
05.30.09More on script length
The first draft of my Office spec came in under 20 pages. It was one storyline with a few good jokes and the ending made sense. But there was no life to it. It felt like a webisode of The Office.
Beefing it up to 30 pages was a huge chore. A friend cautioned me, “It’s usually best to cut stuff out for your second draft…not add it in.”
I ran into a similar problem with an Earl spec, but I managed to stretch it out to 30 pages, even though, like my other first draft, it was one storyline. It sucked.
The point is, if the show you’re spec’ing has multiple storylines, then write multiple storylines. At least three of them if it’s an Office script. And if you’re still having trouble making it to 30 pages then throw in a fourth.
05.29.09Script length question
Hi Beau, I’m a writer here in San Fran. My new book just came out: www.indierock101.com. I’m entering some contests with some “Office” spec scripts of my own and I was curious how long your winning SP was. Mine seem to be coming in between 23-27 pages but I keep reading 45 pages is “standard” for 1/2 comedies. That just seems really long to me on paper. Does 23-27 pages sound about right to you? Thanks for any info and congrats on your win. - Rich
I think mine came in around 30 pages, but it doesn’t matter. As long as it feels like an episode of the show you’re spec’ing then you’ve done well. No reader for a contest is going to have a chart listing the average pages of each show. They’ll probably only look at your page count once; right before they read it just so they’ll know how much of their life they’re going to waste on it. They’ll probably be relieved to see that you’re only asking them to read 25 pages. Of course that’s just my guess, I could be entirely wrong.
The figure of “45 pages” probably refers to multi-camera sitcoms which are usually double-spaced and have all kinds of annoying crap in the scene heading (see How I Met Your Mother, Two and A Half Men, etc.).
Good luck!
04.28.09Whurps.
Now for the usual blogger mea culpa:
- I haven’t been posting very often.
- I haven’t updated my short story reading/reviewing.
- I haven’t written 100pgs of scripted material for ScriptFrenzy.
And now for the excuses, well, just one excuse really, I have been learning. For real:
- I discovered two new blogs: GoIntoTheStory and ScriptShadow. I’ve been feeding on the juices from these bloggers’ mindgrapes, and it is good.
- I’ve been reading spec scripts! Lots of them.
- I’ve been developing story ideas, which is easy to do once you’re immersed in the loglines of selling scripts. You get an idea of the concepts that turn studios into vomitting ATM machines. Hint-hint: most of these concepts suck ballz (from a quasi-pretentious-over-educated perspective), i.e. “A widower becomes a poonhound at a retirement community” or “A successful, but lonely lawyer finds true love in a crazy ice cream truck driver.”
- A phone call from a friend prompted me to re-examine my cynical, gold-digging, lowest-common-denomenator story ideas and give them real emotional meatiness.
- And finally, I’ve been lost. Completely and utterly unsure of myself in every regard as a writer. But that’s okay because (refer to No. 4) I have breathed new life into my two big stories and they are starting to come together.
So what’s next:
- I’ll post more often.
- I’m going to do a bi-weekly post of everything I’ve read recently.
- I’ll just have my own ScriptFrenzy in the next couple of months.
People are getting dumber
I disagree with that statement, but I’ve been hearing it (and probably saying it) for as long as I can remember. Most recently the blogospheric screenwriting community (BSC) has lamented the demise of the adult drama, which supposedly died a few days before STATE OF PLAY opened.
I’ve seen the trailer for SoP probably twenty times and I have no idea what it’s about. All I know is that Crowe looks like Eddie Vedder. But of course, Hollywood is saying that smart movies are failing because people want dumb movies. Um, no. No one wants a dumb movie (unless it’s dumb in an ironic way).
I read a script called FUCKBUDDIES the other day. It’s about two people that try to remain friends with benefits, but– you guessed it– they fall in love. The story was formulaic: Guy meets Girl, Guy and Girl get it on, stakes are raised at the midpoint, Guy loses Girl, Girl loses Guy, Guy and Girl get back together. There’s even some cutesy Diablo-esque dialog. Lots to hate right? Wrong! FUCKBUDDIES is probably the best spec script I’ve ever read. And it’s because it gives me a tried and true formula, but with a real, believable, likeable, flawed, and complex main character.
If they make this movie right, then it will be THE romantic comedy of the 2010s. And hopefully Liz Meriwether will become the female Woody Allen.
Oh yeah, my point is, smart movies can exist in any genre, even the gimmicky romantic comedy.
And STATE OF PLAY’s incomprehensible trailer sure doesn’t make me think “smart movie,” it makes me think, “dumb marketing; the studio obviously doesn’t care about this movie enough to put out a convincing ad, so why should I care about the movie?” FAIL.