Film Courage: Where does the creation of a great story begin?
Scott Myers, Screenwriter/Creator of Gointothestory.blcklst.com/Professor at DePaul University: I think it varies from
story to story, from writer to writer.
You know I’ve interviewed so many of them.
Some of them start with a theme.
I don’t do that.
A central theme of a story will emerge over time.
But some people start off with a thematic point of view.
A lot of people start (that I’ve interviewed) and this is more where I’m at start off
with a character or characters and I think that works because if the character is interesting
and you can mine that then that’s where people can find those points of connection.
Some start off with a story concept.
I do this thing on my blog [Gointothestory.blcklst.com].
I’ve done it now ten straight years called The Story Idea Each Day For A Month.
So every April (for 30 days) I collect stories along the way in my computer and then I just
run one each day and I say “Okay, so here’s the basis of this news article.
What would we do with this if this were a movie?”
And get people to think about this.
I’d say “What would we do if this were a drama?
What if we did this as a thriller?”
Like I just heard this on the way over.
This is amazing.
So a guy is at Dallas Love Field today (a passenger, waiting to take off) when there’s
this hubbub there and as it turns out, they’re bring back the body of the remains of a guy
who fought for the United States in Vietnam and they’ve recently discovered his remains.
His son was 5 when he last saw his father at that base leaving to go to Vietnam.
The pilot of the plane flying his father’s remains to Dallas is his son.
Isn’t that amazing?
So they had all those people who do the luggage and they created this line and they had a
water tribute.
They were shooting with a fire hose and stuff.
They had military guys there.
Everybody was pressed up against the windows because this word had spread that this was
happening and he said it was the eeriest thing.
Nobody’s phone, nobody talking, no “click-click-click” of the luggage and everybody is just standing
still watching this reverent moment happen.
So I’d say things like the news articles...you know I don’t know if that’s a great story
or not but it’s a wonderful moment.
Maybe that’s an opportunity to be a story.
So I think it can happen from anywhere, be open to it.
The magic words “What If?”
Right?
Mark Norman’s son calls him up and says “What if Shakespeare had writer’s block?”
And that was the inspiration for SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE.
Capt. Hook written by James V. Hart came about in a breakfast conversation where his son
said “What if Peter Pan grew up?”
So I think concepts are big.
I think they are really important now maybe.
Maybe as important as they were...the ‘High Concept’ thing that we talked about in the
80’s and 90’s so much...because of this whole idea that unless you’ve got some sort
of pre-existing IP [intellectual property], Hollywood is scared to green-light that.
So it takes a really, really strong concept, a strong story concept.
So I’d say theme, characters, story concept.
I love the Coen Brothers.
The way that MILLER’S CROSSING started was an image of a hat being tossed across a creek
in the woods.
That is literally where that started.
So whatever it is, find if you are passionate about it, and if you’re passionate about
it then write the heck out of it.
Film Courage: I’m sorry, why have screenplays changed in terms of reading one from 20 years
ago, from one 2 years ago?
Are thing written in a briefer manner?
Scott: Yes.
Now this is where one area I feel pretty confident that I understand pretty well.
I used to teach a class called The History of American Screenwriting, which was created
by my colleague down at the University of North Carolina (Dana Cohen) and I taught that
class I think 4 times.
It was really a brilliant class because it would go decade by decade starting with like
the 1890’s, every week was like a different decade.
And so you are starting the evolution of screenwriting and filmmaking (particularly in the United
States) and the role of the screenwriter in the process (particularly in Hollywood).
One of the things that we did in that class was we looked at screenplay structure and
format and style as it evolved over time.
In fact the term screenplay, didn’t really come into existence until the 30’s and 40’s.
Before then it was basically just a shot list.
And then it became known as a continuity during the silent film era.
But then one talkies came along then Hollywood started to bring in all of these playwrights
to do the dialogue right?
So then it became a screen play (two words).
So if you look at movies in the 30’s and even the 40’s you’ll often time see that
credit being screen play (a screen version of a play).
Then eventually screenplays kind of became more of their own thing and we joined them
together as screenplay.
I’ve studied this quite comprehensively and I know for a fact that it’s always evolving
so that always cracked me up when people say “Well you can’t do this.”
Or “You have to do that.”
It’s always evolving, it’s constantly evolving.
So for example if you look at scripts from…there were no such thing as selling scripts or spec
scripts back in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s, it was all for hire (well 30’s, 40’s and
50’s).
So all of these things were filled with shots (close-up, zoom in, all of that stuff).
What happened once the spec script market evolved was the director said “We don’t
want you to tell us how to direct the movie.
We’re directors.
We’re going to do that.”
So we pulled out that camera jargon and directing lingo.
And so that led to the whole We See, We Hear, We Move.
Then that started to get a bit tiresome and so what we decided to so is just describe
what’s happening.
So then when I first broke in it was like well every paragraph you should have no more
than five lines as opposed to like these big blocks of 15, 20, 30 lines because it’s
much easier to read.
Script readers are in effect the threshold guardians of Hollywood and we try to make
it as easy for them to read as possible.
Nowadays I think the general feeling (and this is not a rule) but the general feeling
is a paragraph should not be longer than three lines.
But a better way to think about it is not like that regimented thing, the better way
to think about it is each line of scene description, each paragraph of scene description, that’s
a way of indicating a camera shot.
You are not saying it’s a camera shot but if you think about the scene as you’re writing
it and you say “Okay that’s a close-up.
I see this as a wide shot and I see this as a medium shot.”
Now you’re not saying this in the script but you’re breaking up each paragraph to
suggest that that’s a camera shot.
That’s great way to not only direct the action on the page but also ensure that your
paragraphs aren’t that long.
You’re breaking them up into one, two or three lines.
So scripts today, that why it’s important to read the older scripts but it’s really
important to read the scripts that come out nowadays because the styles are constantly
changing.
We’re seeing something happen right now and I don’t know if we’re going to continue
to see it go this way but including images in scripts.
Like if you read the script that Brian Woods and Scott Beck did for A QUIET PLACE, it has
an image of the monopoly board.
It’s got an image comparing the Stature of Liberty and then The Eiffel Tower and then
this big tower that’s out in the field there just so you get a sense of it.
They change font sizes.
One page is like a word on it or even a letter.
So it’s much more visually graphic and I guess it makes sense because movies are primarily
a visual medium.
Some people may resist that as being kind of a cheat but we’re starting to see some
of that now and I don’t think that this is necessarily wrong.
It could be that this is what screenplays become, they do include images.
And you could certainly make an argument that “Why not?”
Because again it’s a visual medium.
So it’s constantly in a state of change which is why if anybody tells you “You can’t
do this.”
Or “You have to do that.”
Then you know you’re not talking to the right people.
You need to read script by professional screenwriters and see what they do and realize that you
have a lot of latitude to tell the story the best way it needs to be told.
Film Courage: And maybe that’s why emojis and things like that have seeped into writing?
I don’t know if you’ve received papers with an emoji here or there?
But it’s become part of communication.
Scott: You see them in scripts because of texting now.
We didn’t have texting until 15 years ago or what not right?
So some people (my university students) will try to do that as dialogue.
Well it’s not really dialogue, it is its own thing.
So the typical thing now is to do left margin just like you’re doing action right?
And you’re doing the name of the character and colon and the little texting thing and
it can have an emoji in it.
And then you do a shift - enter [on the keyboard].
You don’t two lines space, you do shift - enter (so it’s right under there), shift
- enter - the next text.
And that’s how most people that I know handling texting.
But yes emojis would be there.
Who knows?
In ten years we will be doing something different and that’s going to be reflect in screenplays.
Film Courage: Some kind of Matrix thing.
Scott: Yes.