Film Courage: Wendy, we have a lot of screenwriters in their 20’s that watch our videos and
they're just starting out and they're in an early stages of their writing careers is there
any advice you can give to them?
LA4hire’s Wendy Kram: Oh sure, luck.
But one of the best tips was I heard a female showrunner say when she came out to LA, she
spent the first year reading every single pilot that had been picked up that she could
get her hands on.
And also maybe reading pilots of series from a couple years ago.
When I said Shakespeare for me was one of my best teachers.
Just understanding how well-defined his characters were, the dialogue and the conflicts and the
characters needs and wants and what gets in their way.
I mean it the stakes, you don't get bigger than Shakespeare with Macbeth or Hamlet.
And so there are great teachers and Matthew Weiner [creator of MAD MEN] you can watch
MAD MEN absolutely, you can watch a lot of series but there is something about seeing
the written word.
The other thing as an exercise (and I think this is a very powerful exercise) might not
seem like fun, but it can be fun is to watch (I did this actually when I was in my 20’s
starting out) an OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN and this is before you could download scripts
off the Internet I watched the whole movie and I wrote down as I was watching it what
each scene was so I had to pause a lot.
But what it does is it really helps you understand and get a feel for rhythm and structure almost
through osmosis through that process of doing it and the point of doing it isn't so you
can go and you're not plagiarizing or copying, it's to get you to just understand and rhythms
of scenes and how they flow from one to the next and you can see when you're doing...okay
what's the Act one, the Act one break usually it's supposed to be around Page 27 in the
feature so you see where that kind of flows when you're copying a script and if you don't
have to do every single line but okay Richard Gere's with his father they wake up right
after they've had an evening of debauchery and hookers and Richard Gere is now off to
to training camp in the military then the next scene and I don't remember exactly but
let's say the next scene is he's on a bus and we see exterior there the facility then
next scene maybe we see Debra Winger as a waitress I don't remember everything so forgive
me but it also gets you into the understanding and the that screenwriter is a wonderful screenwriter
the it gets you into seeing how when I was talking about not including the dull bits
you can see beautiful juxtapositions like he's off to the military and then maybe the
next thing he's in line and being asked to salute and it's just it's a wonderful exercise
that this woman who has became a successful writer in television she read pilot so if
you feel like you're want to be a half-hour person and if you want to do multicam and
you feel like NBC CBS ABC style sit comes or your thing which are multicam versus single
camera which is more like Aziz Ansari and the The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Master of None
then get those scripts read them see how they introduce the characters see how distinct
all the voices are they're so distinct and these will be some of your best teachers you.