Film Courage: What’s the most important part of the screenwriting process that if
it was taken away it would just totally make the whole thing not so fun, you know…it
would totally negate the process?
Shawn Christensen, Co-writer/director THE
VANISHING OF SIDNEY HALL: For me the most important part of the process I guess is…well,
I mean the most important part of any process of writing whether it’s a screenplay or
not is the dreaming. You know, the dreaming of making another world or telling a new,
fresh story, I don’t know if that is particular to screenwriting? But again I do like the
cinematic format of a screenplay. I’m not going to say that I prefer it to a novel or
a book, but there is an immediacy to it and I guess if screenplays didn’t have that immediacy,
maybe I wouldn’t be as attracted to writing. But I like that kind of you know Hunter S.
Thompson sort of like really rapid-fire way that you can write a script. Not everyone
writes screenplays like that.
Like some people, MANCHESTER BY THE SEA I’m
sure isn’t written that way, you know? It’s a slow, slow drive and it’s just the characters
are subtly and beautifully and there’s different gears you can use to write a screenplay. And
sometimes you want to write a slow one and sometimes you want a fast one and that’s
I think part of the fun.
Film Courage: Is there a specific book that
you’ve enjoyed reading that talks about the writing process or maybe indirectly talks
about it that’s not really intended for screenwriters?
Shawn: Well, I read a Syd Field book when
I started out. I read it and I liked some of what he had to say. And I read How to be
a whatever…for dummies or something. That didn’t do anything for me. Once in awhile
these books work when they tell you things to avoid.
When you go to the store you’re going to
see 75 books that say How To Be A Screenwriter. I would say the most valuable aspect of those
books are often the parts of the book where they tell you to avoid things they say stay
away from you know because there are clichés, there are a lot of them, and when people in
the film industry read those clichés over and over again, it has an effect on them.
I got my experience from reading my favorite
movies or my favorite screenplays. And I remember when I opened up the Syd Field book (I think
his first one) he was talking about CHINATOWN and how he thinks it might be one
of the best screenplays of the 1970’s. And I had just at that time gotten into CHINATOWN.
I’d watched it like eight times in a row I was…whatever…I was 18 years old. I had
just really discovered it and I loved it. That’s what made me want to be a screenwriter
and then to see him say that in his prologue it’s like Oh I want to be on this guy’s
and I read CHINATOWN. And I remember I read SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION and AMERICAN BEAUTY.
I wanted to read AMERICAN BEAUTY because (I mean people don’t know this) but it has
a whole different ending than the movie. You know, I wanted to read the shooting screenplays
and see how different they were from the actual movie.
I got a lot of information I felt from the screenplay for THE PEOPLE V. LARRY FLYNT,
reason being that was based on a true story obviously. Larry Flynt I think had eight wives
and in the movie there is just Courtney Love [Althea Leasure] and that was just a revelation
to me that in order to make a movie work in a certain time period, here’s how you can
cheat the numbers and still be mostly true. That was obviously a big cheat but THE PEOPLE
V. LARRY FLYNT and SHAWNSHANK were big ones for me (I learned a lot) about the formatting
of the script and you know how much action and how little action you need when you’re
at your heading and things like that, the formatting is very important, you know the
aesthetic is very important and I basically learned by reading screenplays.