Film Courage: Let’s talk about some faulty rules of writing, some old adages on writing
that really don’t apply today.
Larry Wilson, Screenwriter: Yeah, let’s…you start.
Film Courage: Well okay, you talked about Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey and
it’s still…to hear him speak in these Youtube videos is a magical experience, it’s
not to knock him at all.
I’m just wondering as a teacher if there are classes that your students have taken
previously that drum into you [the student] a certain adages that really don’t apply.
I mean we know ‘Writing Is Rewriting,’ that seems pretty legit.
Larry: Yeah.
Film Courage: That seems like it’s true.
So something similar to that and I’m not sure what.
Larry: There is a huge business (maybe an overly-huge business) in teaching screenplay
structure, a three-act structure, a five-act structure.
And I know a fair share of screenwriting gurus who are at each other’s throats all the
time about which structure is the structure.
And I’m not saying there is not a structure.
I would be in big trouble if I said there wasn’t a structure and that a story didn’t
have a beginning, middle and an end but this reliance, this absolute need to follow any
structure map that is out there and if you don’t have a turning point on page 30, you
haven’t done it right.
Or if you are on step 5 of 22 steps and you’re on the the wrong step you haven’t done it
right or any of this stuff, it’s not true.
This structure business, it’s a business and you need a diagram to teach structure
and you sell a diagram and it’s very hard to say I have the best diagram unless you
have a diagram, right?
I mean you need a diagram to sell a diagram.
I’ve told you earlier about my diagram that ends on page 60 with someone mad at themselves.
It’s an emotional diagram.
It goes like this it’s page 1 “Oh Gosh, I can do this.
This is going to be great, this is going to be the best story ever.
Page 10 “Oh, my Gosh.
I can really do this.
Every one was wrong about me.
My parents can go “F” themselves!
I’m a writer!
On and on emotional and then like about page 20 you go “This is really getting hard.”
And then the graph starts going down and down and then again you get to page 60 and “I’ll
never finish this” and you hurt yourself.
It’s my structure okay, it’s an emotional structure, it’s an emotional diagram but…
Film Courage: Oh, wait…sorry to interrupt but what happens after the hanging man diagram?
Larry: Oh well, you go into despair for awhile.
You put yourself to bed and then you wake up and you start again and it has a happy
ending.
Film Courage: Oh good.
Larry: And at the ending there’s big bags of money, all the romance you’ve ever wanted,
power…you win!
But it’s obviously tongue-in-check and to make a point.
But the real point of it is have characters that you believe in and you believe that you
can write them and that they are in some sense writing you and coming out of a place of truth
for you.
Put them in the tightest most impossible situation you can imagine and get them out of it and
know that you have probably have need to do it if you’re writing a screenplay in a hundred
to one hundred and twenty minutes minutes.
And let the story flow and there will be natural points within you doing that where you will
feel that the story needs to go faster, needs to go slower, that there needs to be more
drama, that there needs to be a moment of rest, all of these things that structure teaches
you.
Again, I’m not saying there isn’t a structure.
But those structure diagrams they can assist you or they can be a cage, they can be an
absolute cage and they can trap you.
If you believe that you’re a writer, you have a natural storytelling gift that you
need to honor, that you need to respect or don’t be a writer.
I mean don’t think that you can tell a story, don’t feel that you have a natural storytelling
gift and you can’t tell when things are going too slowly or things are going too fast
and just let it flow and then go back and see if it’s structured right.
But this is another thing that will stop people dead in their tracks over and over again is
your first act is too long.
Who cares!
Who cares, you’ll figure that out that writing is rewriting in the rewriting and watch a
lot of movies, read a lot of books.
I’m now because of constraints of time sometimes, I’m a podcast junkie.
I hear the most brilliant stories in podcasts and stories that have a natural beginning,
a middle and an end because they’re true.
Just embrace all of that, embrace the movies that you love, take them to your heart and
if you’re a storyteller, the story will emerge and it will merge with a structure.
Hope that answered it?
Film Courage: It does and I’m wondering is there anything about the business that
is sort of a fallacy in the same vein.
So you talk about…I’m struggling with what one would be, but you have this [industry]
saying that is not really true.
So I want to say that again there are a lot of very terrific development executives out
there and there are a lot of great producers.
I’ve worked with some truly great producers I worked with Scott Rudin on The Addams Family
for a couple of years.
There’s never been a producer who I worked with who understands story more deeply than
Scott Rudin.
And when I wrote that and my partner Caroline Thompson, one of his greatest gifts was he
let us fail over and over, even finding an idea for what a movie was going to be.
So there are great development executives, they are people who understand story, who
will help you with your story.
But there are also people out there who are development executives who have never written
a script, never made a movie, what are they going to use to come in and talk to you about
it, they’re going to use a structure, they are going to use a structure diagram.
They are going to read the same book you’ve read and they need to have something to say
to you to justify their job.
They need to have something to say to bring you in and say “You know what?
As your development executive I’m telling you that your first act is too long.”
Well, where are they getting this information from?
They’re not getting it from Movie God, they are getting it from the same book that you
read.
And so like all self-reinforcing systems, structure guides and structure diagrams become
their own truths that everyone buys into and pays homage to until someone doesn’t, until
someone breaks it all apart and is innovative and doesn’t follow any of the rules and
then those become the rules.
Can I recommend a podcast since we’re talking about podcasts?
Film Courage: Sure.
Larry: There’s a podcast that is 6 parts, you can binge listen to it called Insight
Psycho and it’s about the making of PSYCHO, go to wherever you get your podcasts and listen
to the development of that movie (that classic movie) that is now considered one of the great
movies of all time and where it started and what the powers that be thought of it and
you will see how wrong people can be.
And anyone who is holding up your story that you’re telling to a graph and saying it
doesn’t fit the graph therefore it’s a bad story, watch out!
They may have a point.
You may need to cut to the chase and maybe the first act is too long.
But if they’re holding it up to a graph and that’s all they know how to do, you
need to look within yourself and say “Am I telling the story right?”
Not is the structure guide telling me if I’m telling the story right.
I hope that sort of answers the question?
Film Courage: It does.
It almost reminds me of Jimmy Page smashing a guitar.
I mean maybe he wasn’t the first one to do that?
Larry: Yeah, but it is and again it’s that allow yourself to fail the first time and
allow yourself to tell the story the way the story emerges from you.
And if you’re a storyteller, the story will emerge.
You have to believe you’re a storyteller.