Film Courage: What did you learn from the writing process for USE ME movie? Julian Shaw, Actor/Writer/Director: Why I think
the first treatment wasn't that great and it was because there was a
fundamental problem which was we were trying to send the wrong character on an
arc right I was trying to send the Ceara character on a certain arc and it
didn't ring true to reality so I don't want to give spoilers away for when
people see the film but sometimes when you're hitting your head against a brick
wall when you're writing it's actually this fundamental problem of having the
wrong protagonist right the person who you're making change and transform its
feeling artificial because that's just it's just not right for the story so
that really changed from the first draft of the script where it was very much
about Ceara changing and it just didn't feel authentic then I sat down with
Ceara and I said all right listen who do you want to be in this movie do you want
to be Bruce Wayne or do you want to be the Joker
she said what what are we talking about I said well I'm trying to make this
story where you have this big epiphany and you change and stuff like that and
it kind of feels phony maybe your character doesn't necessarily change
fundamentally maybe how we perceive your character completely changes but maybe
you're just you kind of like the Joker right this anarchist who is kind of the
same from beginning to end and she was like okay I want to be the Joker and I
was like I bet you do so once we kind of shifted gears and actually made my
character more the protagonist meaning you know the conduit through which the
audience experiences this world everything changed and the scripts got
much better the whole thing made more sense and it all felt more authentic so
yeah the first draft just had a fundamental problem that was like the
wrong protagonist and is that are those notes to that your producer had given
you or you came up with that on your own for sure no I mean it sort of became
apparent to all of us ciara Jonathan green the producer and myself we just
felt this direction isn't working and it was it was it was obvious you know that
something wasn't right so we were very frank about that yeah and then we kind
of went in a new direction and it felt a lot more authentic
but I wouldn't have got there if I hadn't written out a conventional
screenplay so even though the film ended up going in unexpected directions it was
that foundation of the screenplay that allowed us to move and actually be
nimble like for instance we did a real Kickstarter campaign okay
and someone reached out and said I'd give you a lot of money if I could see a
video of you and Julie and making out they reached out to Ceara they were
like if I could see a video of you guys making outs and teasing me I'll give you
$7,500 Wow okay so that inspired a whole new storyline which you'll see when you
watch the film but uh yeah you know we were we were able to to be pretty
flexible with the story also because I was the lead in it so I had access to
myself all the time I mean I was still rewriting it in the
edit suite there were video diaries in the film that I actually shot in the
edit suite so the methodology we employed was really only possible
because Ceara and I were the leads and we had access to ourselves all the time
so that's really interesting so if you see that you're writing a character that
you really can't implement any kind of arc maybe that's not the protagonist
maybe they're not meant to change okay very interesting because you always do
want a character to go on some kind of transformation a lock that's why we love
storytelling that's the lessons that we get from movies and books but maybe
you've picked the wrong character maybe that character isn't meant to change and
maybe that's okay that that's a piece of advice I wish I could have given myself
at the start of the writing process but you knew that the character of Julianne
could change well it opened up a whole bunch of new possibilities for the
journey my character could go on just by shifting the focus a little bit yeah
yeah how long was the screenwriting process I mean you know honestly
probably six to twelve months of writing and really exploring the material yeah I
mean it's funny you know the film seems to just kind of like naturally unfold
like it's it all just really happened but um right from the first scene it's
actually pretty meticulous how it's all set up and I hope that's invisible I
hope the audience just feels like it's spontaneous and it's kind of like this
documentary that kind of got out of control but no we really we plotted it
pretty carefully and it's funny I've never felt so in control of a process
creatively even though it feels like total chaos while you're watching it it
was actually the most I've ever felt like I really had a strong grip on it
so yeah it's it's sort of an illusion the chaos of the movie a very calculated
illusion so do you want to be Bruce Wayne do you want to be the joke it's a
good question it depends on the movie I may be more the persuading in this movie
Ceara Lynch is a good Joker I'll let her be the Joker
you