Film Courage: The opening pages of a screenplay, important or cliché?
Jim Agnew, Screenwriter: Well clichés work for a reason but if you do it well then it works.
What do you mean? What's the context of the opening? Film Courage: How important are they?
Are people really tossing something in a pile in a slush pile based on? Jim: Yeah they do but
it's if you can grab you have it has to play professional, it has to read professional and
it also has to have something happening in the beginning. It can't be just exposition people,
sitting around talking yeah it is and I’ve even seen…here's another thing people don't know is
that producers will look at what the genre is and see the page count at the end and it's if you've
written a script that's 150 pages they're this person doesn't know what they're doing because
no one should write a script over 115 pages unless you're Quentin Tarantino or Paul Thomas Anderson
and if it's a horror movie it's 140 pages are going to be what that… is going on? Because
how many pages they're all I mean if you look at most professional scripts they're always
studio scripts or anything they're 105 to 112 pages clockwork horror movies a little
bit less they're 98 to 104 but so they see so many scripts and they know they can and you've got to
keep in mind your time you're competing for their time against professional scripts they're getting
so it's got to be really awesome and it's got to be bombastic in the beginning not not you're
blowing stuff up but you have to grab them somehow do something somehow that really shows
oh wow I haven't seen that before wow that's interesting have somebody have adrenaline needles
jammed in their heart on the first first line wakes up where am I you do something
and that doesn't necessarily have to be how the story starts but you have to figure out
a way to make it work and have the beginning be something that's really really interesting
how much time do you spend on the first page of a screenplay not much maybe 10 minutes maybe five
it just depends on the on the flow but a lot of times when I first start something I'll just be
this and I kind of know because I've thought about the beats of what I want to happen and
then I'll go back and rework it so it's I'm more concerned not necessarily with all the dialogue
line for line but more what the scene is saying what's the beginning middle and end of the scene
and what's trying to get across and then go back and finesse all that stuff and two now I
do a new system now where I don't write any description while I'm writing I'll just say
describe office and then go back and do that at the end because it doesn't have anything to
do really with the story it slows you down yeah yeah would paneling file yeah exactly and go back
and do all that one time at the end interesting so you put in a little space holder yeah explain city
explain the car describe here now if it's really important the story maybe I'll put it in but
if it's just if the spy movie it's and you got to describe Paris as the sunrise comes up
I'll do that later just put established pairs they just keep going because that's not
that's easy to do how do you write a screenplay in two weeks I think a bigger question how do
you write screenplay in two days because I've done that it's actually the time
writing is differs but it's how much have you thought about it because there's times I think
I said earlier I'll think about something for two three weeks before I even touch the keyboard about
the story and run a lot of it in my head and if I get a big chunk of it's I could just write 20-30
pages in a day but I've thought about it it's not just I'm looking at the blank page I'm not one of
those people stares at the computer I'll go for walks I'll get coffee do whatever ride a bike
that's where I get all my ideas and for some reason driving but it's you almost get in this
zone of thinking about things and sometimes when I'm stuck I'll go for a walk I can come back and
write five or six scenes because I just saw it on my head so yeah that's that's the process I mean
there's one screenplay I wrote in two two days because I forgot when I was supposed to deliver it
and this is when I was first writing and then it became it was supposed to be a half million
dollar little action movie that became a 10 million dollar film and I wrote in two days so
but there were a lot of parameters set on that job it had to be one location don't want to change
wardrobe the actor can't talk too much because he's an MMA fighter there are all these things and
I just was what I kept putting it off because I really didn't want to do it I got paid and I was I
wrote in a weekend and then it became a 10 million dollar film they didn't really use the script
it kept changing and changing but it so it you never know strange things happen in this business
what's an example of lingering too long on a film project that's a good question it's you mean if
you write a script and you keep trying to get it made and getting it made and it's not working
yeah I don't know it depends on who you're talking to if you you don't have any contacts and you're
slowly building up who and getting people to read it it could take a process of years but
if you had a project that you gave to your agent your manager and you had some producers read and
everybody was kind of not really jiving with it I would say put it away and write something out
so it kind of depends on where you're at it's if you've got a great script but you don't have
access to get the proper people to read it for a couple years it's going to take a couple years
so your instinct should tell you everything though people are really responding the right people if
you can get some right people to really read it if you do one of those coverage things or something
and they give you 50 pages of coverage maybe you're in trouble but so so that's I don't really
know the answer to that but I think you just have to use your instinct on what's working what's not
sometimes you write a script and it's not good enough how do again just instinct it's I've worked
on things where it feels great but it doesn't feel amazing it's it feels it's almost there
or maybe the first 60 pages are seem really amazing but the the third act doesn't work
so you just have to know I wrote a high script recently I was working on I got inspired and
quickly wrote this high school I think the first 60 pages are great but the the third
act is horrible which usually not something that happens it's not horrible but it doesn't keep up
with the rest of the film and I'm not getting any inspiration to to come up with the third act so
I just put it away for now maybe I'll revisit in six months or three months or two years from now
but you just kind of have to know when things are working and when they're not
are you banging your head against the wall that's not good if there's something that you feel is
you can't crack the nut all the way through or figure it out you should maybe think about
something or put it down for a while sometimes you can put something down and come back to it there's
a lot of people I know a lot of directors I know who worked on things for years they put things
away and they come back to them and they'll be hey wow this is pretty cool but they have a fresh
perspective on it all was there a project that taught you how important your instinct was maybe
you didn't pay attention to it before when it came to writing yeah I think it happened I think the
movie Rage that we did the screenplay was called Tokarev originally I love this movie this British
film called The Long Good Friday which has Bob Hoskins in it it's from the early 80s and I was I
want to do something that and I kept thinking and then I mentioned to a few people and they didn't
know the movie or they just were yeah whatever and I was no this could make a really cool
thing tonally it was that kind of movie the story's completely different but it kind
of had the same tone and that was when we were writing a lot of horror things just doing horror
Sean [writing partner Sean Keller] and I were just doing horror that's all I was working on
and I was no this thriller is a cool thriller and it's got a lot of things that are going for it and
I wrote half the script in one day I just kept thinking about it then I sent over Sean he did
some work on and we finished it and it got amazing response and it was one of those times where I was
I think I need to move from horror into thriller stuff and this is a really cool idea
and it worked and everybody loved the script and it got made and did really well for us so because
of that you realized okay I can trust myself yeah yeah same thing happened with writing a pilot too
for that we sold the ABC it's we never worked in tv and then one day I was we should write a pilot
we decided to write a pilot and how to find copies of pilots to even know the structure and I think
we call our manager it's hey can you send us some pilots and wrote a pilot without ever knowing
anything about pilots and there was a bidding war between ABC and NBC for when we sold it didn't get
made but it was another one of those times where it's I don't know never worked on tv but it feels
maybe we should do some tv so yeah just follow a lot of instinct stuff works don't know why.
Question
For The Viewers:
How do a screenplay isn't good enough?