Guido Segal, Screenwriter, Journalist, Film Critic, Instructor: Great ideas don't make
great movies they can help but great movies need events and conflict and characters.
Film Courage: What's your writing process?
Guido: My writing process it starts off with procrastination and I've got to say this because
every writer does it and it's terrible I don't recommend it but no let's be honest writing
starts off with an idea right and you get excited about this idea and you have to write it down
again I'm talking about writing on spec it's very different if you're coming in to write something
or you know if there's a pre-existing let's start off with writing on spec and I'll answer
the question separately if you know about writing based on someone else's material so
if it's my own script there's an idea and I'm very excited about it and I need
to write it down and I need to capture it as best as I can right so I usually might be on
my computer or might be just hand written right and I'll take a notebook and I'll start writing
and of course I'm very satisfied with that but then you realize okay this idea is not the story
right everyone has a great idea but then you have to break down break it down into characters and
beats and it's so much more complex and of course it will change because I’d great ideas don't make
great movies they can help but great movies need events right and conflict and characters and so on
so you start breaking at some point you start breaking down a story you get very frustrated
because now it's real right ideas are up there flying in the air but then you're
breaking it down and now it's got it's gotten real so you start breaking it down
and you explore characters separately and if some people do backstory I discover backstory as I go
along some people start off from theme I love theme by the way it's something I think about
I tend to I think of theme as a question you know some people some people will use words right like
love full potential right I don't know what to do with with those words and you know
in terms of practical writing like it's a story about love
sure I mean but what do I do with that so to me themes are more more of a question
more of a specific question you know it might be a movie about sports but then the theme is
how does it feel like to not be recognized by your father right for example so I mean it's something
I can relate to and then I can explore and the story is an answer to that question in a way
so once I have the idea I start breaking down separately character and backstory
the world right if it's period I have to do research and I love research I actually love
it so much that I would spend my entire life just doing research I love going reading books watching
movies going to library you know sometimes great the new york public library has an amazing archive
and you go there in the back with your little gloves and then you just spend hours going through
original letters and I had a blast doing that so research not too much because at some point
it can drive you mad so at some point you got to stop with research and start
making things up and once you have like the world the characters the beats and now you're
ready to start writing if it's you know if it's based on someone else's material then
well I guess instead of coming up with the beats you're trying to find those beats in the book or
the source material and the characters the beauty of adaptations is the characters are a given
you know still it doesn't mean that you're going to take everything in there you got to learn what
to take and what to discard of course a friend who's a producer the other day was telling me that
movies are not novels movies are short stories and and short films are like poems so you know there's
not a lot of beats in a movie even if you're doing a three-hour long movie there's not an infinite
amount of beats novels have so much material that you got to weed out what stays and what goes
so it might seem like you have a lot of you know real estate to to develop your story but you don't
an average 100 minute movie is i'd say about 36 to 40 beats
maybe maybe more if it's really fast-paced but you only have a certain amount of scenes
in a 90-minute script you know you have 33-minute scenes again it's not math
but you know what I'm saying is you really I've got to pick what you're gonna focus on
it doesn't matter if it's an adaptation or your own work for your script regarding Timothy Leary
since he had such a vast long life I'm not sure when he passed away he took his life correct he
died yeah in the late 90s he was already in his 80s okay sure how did you know what you what time
period or did you cover most of it well actually it took me several drafts to figure that out
I knew it had to start in the 60s the first draft I wrote the script started in 1963
which is when he gets kicked out of Harvard because he gave students psilocybin and LSD
but then I realized I had to go back I had to start it off in 1960 which is when he gets
hired at Harvard because it's he's 40 years old he's going through a middle age crisis his wife
first wife has just committed suicide recently no one knows about this so I figured you know
I got to start at the beginning and sometimes it's not easy to know where the beginning is
it's really up to you so I actually wrote I think like two drafts that took place in 63
then I went back to 1960 which is the current version and then the beauty of it is you can
have at least five or six seasons if you wanted because every stage of his life
is a different whole different thing Harvard California New York Afghanistan Switzerland yeah
but only I mean I wrote the first draft based on the book and then I went to the public
library in New York where there are approximately 463 I think boxes
of his belongings wow his personal archive and I you know I rifled through that and I didn't get to
all the boxes by the way because that's insanity I did go through a lot of them over several trips
and you know it was there's nothing I like better than spending time with
you know studying original sources right and then he had a subsequent relationship
with someone that he cared very deeply for didn't he but it's debatable whether she was hired
to spy on him oh there was a documentary that came out recently by Errol Morris I think it's
his fourth wife Joanna Harcourt Smith Larry had several wives well there was a whole debate I
had with the producer who was who's a friend of mine and who was convinced that leer was a saint
and I had to tell him no he was this man was incredibly flawed very responsible
we I think he's our way into the counter culture and telling that whole story
I don't think we should use this man as an example of anything
because he for for decades he talked about the death of ego and he had nothing but ego actually
he was married to I think five amazing women and he disrespected all of them and he could never
you know he could never love them the way they loved him and it's actually tragic I know I mean
I hope none of the fans Larry's fans are listening because they're going to kill me but I think he's
a very contradictory man very you know he had the he had the charm he could lure people in
very smart but I think the the the one in that relationship the one who actually transcended
all that was Richard Alpert who became Ram Dass so in the show we have Leary who's who's
a voice of this whole movement but in a way I feel like he's disingenuous and you have
Ram Dass who actually did go to India and transcend ego and became this beautiful being.
What do you think makes a good movie?