Gary Goldstein: You know, they are both very different.
It’s one of the few mediums that you actually get a possessory credit.
You’ve seen Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite.
I mean occasionally you’ll see a Lee Daniel’s movie and so forth, but by and large the words
are really so much more the focus and the writer is really respected so much more in
theater.
It’s a different kind of medium altogether.
In theater you get to write stories that are very personal and very intimate and very small
and really character driven where the words are just important and it’s all about dialogue
and all of that.
I had a funny experience when…well I taught screenwriting for many years for a group called
Writer’s Bootcamp.
I had a student who was a great woman.
She was an actress but she was always kind of bucking me about structure and like “Why
do I have to structure things this way?” and “Can’t you loosen up in terms of this
and that?”
and I just tried to explain to her that structure and storytelling worked a certain way.
So she came to see the play, my very first play (it was a long time ago) and she walked
out and said, hugging me “I loved the play but I loved the words.
I love that you who is teaching me structure, you wrote these amazing words that were just
words.
It was all words and character.”
And as an actress that was her priority.
And it was really very eye-opening to me that really how different words are when it comes
to theater because movies are about showing not telling very often because you have the
ability to show a lot of things without having to explain a lot of things.
Whereas in theater, it’s much more limited in terms of what you can show so you end up
telling more and that can be very interesting.
Writers enjoy telling stories (in which you can do on stage).
So I like that.
The live part of it…I write a lot of comedies and to be in a live audience where they are
laughing and responding or crying or whatever and to be around them live…even different
from being in the theater watching people watch your movie, it’s different.
There is something about the live experience that’s very moving and compelling.
So that part is great.
I think as a writer I always encourage screenwriters to write plays as well.
I wrote my first play at a time where I had a little time and I needed to get something
done that was mine.
I didn’t have to worry about selling.
I didn’t have to worry about it fitting any particular paradigms.
I could tell the story that I wanted to tell.
And it just happened to have worked out.
I was very proud of the play.
We actually had a stage reading of it and I was surprised at the response to it and
then I was encouraged to get the play produced.
And we did and it was a fantastic experience.
You also (as the writer) get to deal very directly with the actors and the director
in a very different way that you do in TV and film.
It’s really more of that team effort at that particular moment.
Particularly the new play, that you are still discovering the words, working on the words
as you’re in rehearsals.
Whether it’s a film I’ve written or a play, I’m very interested in hearing what
the actors have to say.
Just because you write a piece of dialogue a certain way doesn’t mean that somebody
who has to say it, can say it that way or a comfortable way.
In my head, I hear it a certain way and what comes out of somebody’s mouth, may be different.
It’s always fascinating to see which lines really don’t play or are too tongue-twistery
or really don’t make as much sense as they should.
You have that option when you’re in rehearsals live at that moment and it’s kind of an
evolutionary process.
Film Courage: We understand you have a stage play that you’re producing coming up in
Beverly Hills?
Gary Goldstein: Yes.
I have a play.
I’m not producing it.
It’s a theater call Theatre 40 in Beverly Hills.
They’re producing it and have been there a long time.
It’s a really good 99-seat theater.
And they have a subscription and they do a season.
This is the fifth out of the sixth plays of their 2016-2017 season.
It’s called April, May and June.
It will run March 16th through the middle of April (16th).
It’s the story of three adult sisters named April, May and June in their forties (they’re
a year apart).
And they convene at their late mother’s house, which is the house they grew up in
to go through the very last of her things.
And in doing so they discover something about the mother that blows their mind.
It’s a surprise but in a small way connected to them and their own past.
And it’s kind of how they come up coming to terms of the image of their mother and
the whole idea of we never quite know people as much as we think, particularly parents.
And the sisters who are very different and very connected close women, their relationship
is really improved by this afternoon they spend in their childhood house.
It’s just how they come to terms with each other and the image of the mother and they
can finally close up the house and move on.
Film Courage: When you sat down to write that [stage play], were you in the same mindset
of ‘I just want to do something that is my own’ or was there some other impetus?
Gary Goldstein: In this particular case, and this happens every so often with a film script
particularly, I’ll come up with a title.
And the title April, May and June just came into my head for some reason.
And I thought “That’s a good title, I should do something with that.”
And I don’t know?
I just started writing it and it ended up becoming a stage play.
I wasn’t exactly sure where it was going when I started.
At a certain point I realized it was going to be this revelation about the mother.
I realized the revelation I wanted it to be and it kind of evolved from there.
So it was kind of a unique process that way.
As opposed to having it completely structured and a full outline and knowing where it was
going.
I mean I wrote it and edited it and ultimately got it to the place where I felt comfortable
sending it out or showing it.
But it was a very different process from the screenwriting that I do.
Film Courage: Is that common where you will just come up with a title and work backwards?
Gary Goldstein: Once and awhile I do that.
Once and awhile.
You know it happens.
This play is comedy drama and I hope some good laughs in it, but there are also some
tears as well.
In a lot of the straight comedies that I do, you know just higher concept comedies, I’ve
come up with titles and then figured out the story to do with it.
If there was no story attached, I wouldn’t continue writing it.
There are movies that I’ve written where I’ve ended up changing the title many times
over things, so it just depends.
People say “How do you get the idea to write this?” or “Where did you come up with
this?
Who thought of something like that?”
Well you know, we are writers and we write.
We’re storytellers or creators but sometimes they come from strange places.
It can be from something you’ve observed.
It can be from people that you know.
It can be from just coming up with a phrase or in this case a title.
So it’s just one of those weird things.
Question for the viewers: Have you written a stage play?
What inspired it?