Film Courage: What is the emotion manufacturing and distribution industry?
Andy Guerdat is an American television writer, producer, instructor, and podcaster: What is
that?That's the entertainment business. That's what we're doing. We're not chasing trends,
we're not making trends, we're not doing all those things that executives and critics and
people would like us to think we're doing. We are trying to make people feel something, whether it's
movies, television, anything that's the goal. You're not educating people, you may do those
things in addition to moving people but your job as a screenwriter (and the screenwriters are the
first filmmakers) your job is to make people feel something. So you're in the emotion manufacturing
business and just and the distribution of that emotion, that's what we do, that's our job.
Film Courage: When people think of Hollywood, we think of glamour and
and action but really it's almost about…it's like a puppet, we're having our strings pulled.
Andy: Absolutely, I mean that's the contract. The contract we make with the audience is they pay us
money in the form of a box office ticket or in the form of a paying their cable bill or their
streaming app bill and in return we make them feel something, that's our contract with them.
They don't even necessarily know it. If you ask them they probably wouldn't necessarily
describe it (the audience) that way but it is that. It could be laughter it could be tears,
it could be being scared, it could be having your pulse buzzing with excitement,
it could be getting turned on, but it's something that makes them feel something,
that's the relationship between the filmmaker the screenwriter and the audience.
Film Courage: What's the difference between expressing emotion and evoking emotion?
Andy: The difference between expressing and evoking emotion is radically different and
Incredibly important to for the screenwriter to identify any kind of writer we've all been told
and we have a in society now there's sort of sense of we're all supposed to be expressing ourselves
and that's great it's a wonderful thing to do but I don't want to see your therapy session and you
don't want to see mine and I certainly don't want to pay to see your therapy session so our
job is not to just express ourselves if you just want to if you if you write down your innermost
thoughts and feelings on a piece of paper that's therapy but if you do it in such a away so that
someone else can read it and feel what you feel that's art and that's what we're supposed to be
doing that part of the process gets forgotten a lot especially now when it seems like just
expressing emotion should be enough no it's not if the audience didn't feel it it doesn't matter
the audience is the completion of the arc in any art form but especially a popular art form like
movies until an audience feels it and responds to it you haven't completed your task and they
will leave the theater frustrated if they haven't had that that experience our job is to make them
feel something not for us to express what we feel in order to make them feel something yes
very often you do have to tap into something that you feel deeply and get it on the screen when I
write television I'm doing the same thing I just not necessarily I may be using someone
else's characters or someone else's scenario but I have to find something in that story that that
I can feel strongly about and then try to get that on the screen but my job is to communicate
it to the audience not just to feel it not just to express it is that why people often
say don't do narration o like an opening with a narration or that's totally different I don't
there is there is some relationship in the sense of any kind of voiceover narration instinctively
distances the audience audience from the story you're telling but sometimes that's good some
of the greatest movies ever made have voiceover narration as a part of them because it it does
distance the audience and tells the audience they're about to see something that's perhaps
more important than they would have realized I'm thinking about the opening of network for example
which has an omniscient narrator at the beginning at the end and occasionally throughout the story
and it works very effectively because we it's a satire and it was important that we occasionally
step back and hear in essence the voice of God telling us something important is happening here
but if it's a crutch if it's used as a crutch to just explain stuff that the screenwriters and the
directors weren't good enough to get on camera then it usually is something to be avoided but
almost every Billy Wilder movie has voiceover of some sort it's it's a it's a very useful tool and
it can be very effective so I don't know that it's that directly related why do you encourage
writers to feel it write it and then analyze it it's among the most crucial parts of my teaching
technique and my philosophy of screenwriting most screenwriting books and teachers are teaching
you backwards they're teaching you to analyze all these successful films they all have these
things in common now if you go back and plug in you do the exact same formula and just plug in
your characters you'll have a success too and it absolutely does not work that way because of what
I because of because the film is its purpose is to make the audience feel something it's important
that you start with your right brain I'm being very simplistic now psychologically but the right
brain is roughly responsible for the emotional intelligence of of our of our personalities the
left brain is the rational part they're telling you to start with the left brain which is say
analyze it then write it and maybe you'll feel it in there somewhere that's incorrect in my opinion
that you need to start with by feeling it feeling the passion of it try to get that onto the page
and then after you have then go back and analyze it and of course that last step of analyzing it is
critical to make sure that the audience is going to get what you intended it isn't just first blurt
you're not just putting something on the page you then you then analyze it and reanalyze it
and re reanalyze it to make sure it's doing what you want to do but first you have to feel it it's
it's what I call organic screenwriting as opposed to the more formulaic screenwriting theories which
most screenwriting books and teachers tend to tend to to promote that's there a difference
between something that's well structured and just something that's written to a formula I
do a lot of screenwriting consulting have for years with some success a lot of my clients
have gone on and had their films made and that's often what I find myself doing is trying to strip
away all that analysis that they've been taught that by by page so and so I have to be here but
page so and so I have to be here strip that away get back to what what is your what you passionate
about what did you why did you write this story to begin with what are you excited about and then
get that on the page or get that at least the process started and then go back and analyze
and see is there a better way we could do it should that be moved from here to there and
all the other decisions that go into properly structuring a screenplay but if you don't feel
it first you're pretty much doomed and so how can we reconcile in ourselves the the the right brain
but not letting us kind of become unhinged where we're kind of we've got a bottle of whatever and
we're just going to pour it all out but then we find out it's a big jumbled mess yeah somebody
once said and I thought it was a smart thing the rules of screenwriting are for when the script
doesn't work so that if if you go I mean you shouldn't have to give it to someone for them
to tell you this is completely meaningless to me I don't get it at all it's really our job to having
written to go back and then start shaping it in a more refined way and as one gets more practice at
it you instinctively start to avoid some of the potholes and you sense oh this is going on too
long or whatever but but first it's important to get it down it's also a test for younger writers
who are used to writing in in in a medium on a device that allows them to just blurt everything
out and it looks like script it's in final draft it looks like a script so that must be good well
it's not good you have to force yourself to go back and rewrite and rewrite rewrite and rewrite
and refine it put it away take pick it up look at it again this is all presupposing of course
that that the before you start writing dialogue and scenes first it has to be properly structured
so that first most of the projects that whether it's in movies or television most of our time is
spent in structuring the story properly not just learning out dialogue the dialogue is the easy
part so once it's properly structured then you're usually not going to go too far a field but but
even that that that that theory of writing from Passion applies to the structuring of the story as
well you want to you want to picture in your head and and get the things structured in a way that is
that in which the passion of your idea first and foremost comes through that's the that's the most
important thing without that you're just writing another screenplay that will disappear with all
the thousands and thousands of other mediocre screenplays.