Film Courage: I saw this quote on someone's blog the other day and the title was "Are stories
made or found?" It's a fine line between made or found like what does that really
mean? Is it something that you see someone walking down the street
and you just envision what their life is like and you're like "I'm going to write
this." Or you read an article or hear something on NPR and you say "I want to
do a fictionalized version of that." Frank Dietz, Artist/Screenwriter: All of the above sometimes an idea will come
to me by seeing a guest on a TV show talking about something NPR's a great
source of that kind of stuff Liane [Frank's wife] is always saying to me "Oh I
heard this this great interview on NPR. You should make a script about that." You
know one really interesting one which is nowadays I just kind of like oh my gosh
so the of the two scripts that I that I originally can't show - William Asher
you know he's he's the one he didn't care for because it had a supernatural
magic element to it right that that was a sort of a modern version of an old
Chinese story that was a children's book that I remembered reading when I was a
kid it was called the five Chinese brothers and in it these these this one
brother gets in trouble with the Emperor and he's sentenced to death right but
the each one of these brothers has a power has an interesting power so
they're gonna so they and they all look alike
right so the so they're gonna say okay we're gonna throw you into the ocean so
you drown right but the the one brother has the ability to swallow the entire
ocean so he you know so he doesn't drown and another one they're gonna feed him
to an alligator or something like that and the brother has a like a neck that's
like unbreakable and so they keep switching him out and so that they can't
hurt him right and so in around 1990 oh maybe earlier than that eighty maybe
eighty eight eighty somewhere around there I'm watching him
home during the day and I'm watching The Oprah Winfrey Show and Donald was
the guest and at that time they were making him out to be like he was gonna
be this you know this amazing-like person and he
but he sounded legitimate like he sounded like he was a really really
smart guy and he was really good at things and I remember that Oprah asked
him if he was ever consider running for office right and he didn't...he gave
of a bit kind of a vague answer but I just remember him saying that like well
I've tell you this that if I do decide to run for office I'll do it I'll do it
full-on like I won't you know I won't hold back all right and I thought to
myself what if this guy knows something that we don't like what if this guy can
see into the future right and then I started thinking about that Chinese
brothers story right and I thought what if what if there was these these five
brothers who were had built up this huge corporation because no one else knew
that each of them had a power and one of them could if he held your hand he could
read your mind and one of them held your hand he could see a little bit into your
future another one could hold your hand and he could heal you of your whatever
your illness is and the other brother who was a twin if he held your hand he
could kill you just by touching you and then there was
a fifth brother and the fifth brother was the one they were grooming to be a
politician right so that was the basis of this story that that I that was the
other script that I had with return to gargoyle all right and it was big it was
this is like I said you know everybody's making a die hard movie back then
because this the spec script what it was through the roof where they were they
were buying a big high concept scripts all over the place
so it was a huge movie the whole thing like it Scott there's a whole skyscraper
on fire and all this kind of stuff right and but that came from me seeing Donald
on the Oberoi vision and stuff like that happens all the time
I once witnessed in a courtroom I saw a guy try to get out of a DUI having to
pay the fines or or you know do community service or anything like that
and he and he and he said he said to the judge well I'm a screenwriter
I could I could write a PSA about not drinking and driving to instead of you
know instead of doing that and and the judge was like no but I gave the guy
credit for trying you know but I came that inspired an idea of a script that
I'm working on now right just that little little moment that I happen to
witness so he never know where it's come comes from lately I'm now working on the
third adaption of an existing novel that I've been hired to write so I adapted
the first one was I adapted a novel that was written by James Franco's mom who's
an she's an author Yeah right and so I was hired to take her novel and make it
into a movie because you know you can't you have to make changes in adapting
sometimes change a lot of things and the one I'm working on now is a murder
mystery that is set in the world of magicians and that also was an existing
material that was a book that was so when I was hired or before I was hired
actually my my manager sent me the book I said read this tell me if you think
you can do something with it and I read it and I was like I could definitely do
something with it and so and so I was hired to do that so sometimes those
things are brought to me and sometimes also you know
there's been many times when I think I might have said before that I'll be
brought in to a company that has an existing material I mean so they call it
script doctoring sometimes and they really want to make this movie they love
the concept but the script they have is unfilmable so I'll have to come in and
basically usually start from scratch usually toss the existing material stay
with the concept but make it a movie that that can be made and make it up
make it a script that can be actually made into a movie write that that works
as a movie as opposed to you know I I never even look who you know who the
person is that wrote the earlier draft I had one oh my god this one this was the
best I was brought in for this to this one project and they said well we're
gonna send you the script and it's called beware of elevators right so no
title of the movie is is beware of elevators what kind of movie do you
think that would be oh well maybe some people will be stuck in a high-rise
elevator right so like a drama sure you know maybe a horror movie
right what I was thinking too right maybe what elevator has a mind of its
own yeah all right so that's what I'm
expecting I get the script and I start to read it and I realize about 10 pages
in that this is a movie about a guy who dies in an elevator and he comes back as
his fiancee's dog and the movie is the guy trapped in the dog's body and we're
hearing his thoughts and everything as he's now trying to basically protect his
his fiancee and help her get over the grief and everything like that right
well it was it was just terrible it was a terrible script right and I burped I
was gonna pass on it I was gonna say no I just
they're gonna do a talking dog movie sorry but then right before then I just
had a thought and I and I thought what what can i what could how could I
possibly make this work and what I ended up doing was turning it into a mystery
because in the original script you you you you find out how the guy dies right
away right then some that's he died in an elevator right so what I did was have
the the I comes back as a dog doesn't doesn't remember why how he died and so
over the course of the the script he started he little by little he starts
getting flashes of what happened that night and the further along the more
flashes he gets he more he starts to put it together as to what happened and so
it became more than just a comedy about a guy trapped in a dog's body it also
became sort of a mystery because we're finding out it's unfolding you know it's
like peeling an onion you're finding out little by little what led to that and
how and why did he end up here in this dog's body and then it worked
and III into I am too loving that script it's like what I really loved you'll
probably never get made but you know that's that's how it goes I mean I still
got paid now you know that's so funny that's a that's a big misconception also
about screenwriters okay people a lot of people think that working screenwriters
what we do we write a script and then it gets made and then we go in the next
script and it gets made and we're in the next River you get made I would say 5%
of the scripts that I get hired to write get made 5% but I'm still a working
screen right you get hired you write a script you know yeah you get paid a
certain amount for that for that script right
and then that script may never get made I wrote a script for JLo for Jennifer
Lopez that I would like all the Scotsman's has to get made it's for
Jennifer Lopez right no I did like 12 drafts on it
no got paid but that that movie will never get made it's when you get a movie
made that's great that's a big deal but yet the rest of the time you're you're
still working you're still creating you're still you
know if you're lucky and you're getting hired and and also you know then there's
the matter of coverage coverage is a big deal and this in this business so
coverage is when the print you write a script and the producer sends it to a
script reading company all right there are several of them here in LA
and what they do is they have somebody break read the script break it down and
then in the end there there's three possibilities that they assign to it one
is pass this means no we're not interested one is consider right which
is maybe if you know you work on it it might might have potential and then the
Holy Grail recommend right now something like 90% of the scripts that these
companies get get pass maybe you know eight eight percent or so nine percent
get consider and there's variations of considered as I consider with you know
considerations and so forth right but it's still in the consider this is this
is pass this will consider one percent of the scripts that that that go through
these companies get recommend so that's what you're up against you know and you
know it when you get that if you if you get that recommend that's a big deal
that's a huge deal yeah what's the name of the check that
you get if if it actually principal yeah because that's that's normally that's
when you'd get the money the rest of the the big money or pet you would get for
for writing the screenplay yeah so a big majority of what you do is writing
something doing many drafts getting paid that initial chunk but most the time
something's not going to be it's not going to go to production and yeah we'll
get through you know but keeping working is you stay focused on it um luckily you
know sometimes those scripts are great just because they don't get made it
doesn't mean they aren't good and you can use them as as writing samples just
show that your yeah you know you're not your snot you're not counting on it like
I I don't show anybody return The Gargoyle anymore because it's dated and
it's from you know from early 90s or whatever and and so I I can show them
something that I've written in the last couple of years that is maybe it didn't
get made but it's still it's still too real I think it's a terrific script or
someone else thinks it's a terrific script and that will sometimes the the
person who's looking for a screenwriter might read that and go oh I like I like
the attitude you had with this so yeah we're gonna hire you you know and and
and in the invest case scenario is of course your movie gets made but but yeah
I mean working screenwriters are not putting out a movie you know every year
we might write three scripts Andy here because it's really hard to get a movie
made it's really hard anybody will tell you that in this
business it's tough and with the movie I Hate ids there was already financing attached
right because Todd [Traina] had his production company uh well Todd found an investor
oh he okay a couple of them really but we needed you need one to get you
started you need one you know that's going to put in a good
chunk of that budget so that other investors will go oh all right well
somebody else has put money into it what happens all the time is you know a movie
starts to go into production and you've got you've got a budget and you're but
you need some other investors and you get somebody some people interested but
then your first investor drops out and then that's that's a house of cards
that's just gonna gonna fall Todd and I had a movie was a while back now another
comedy we had written that we were in we were in pre-production we had to we had
the office open we were scouting locations we were casting everything
like that everything was going swimmingly and the investors had a
clause in their contract that said that they could approve or disapprove the
three leads that killed us because they wanted Reese Witherspoon and we tried to
explain to them you know Reese Witherspoon gets you know we our budget
was like three and a half million dollars right our recent this one gets
more than that for a comedy right alone that's that's the whole budget right
there right I mean she might do like a little art house kind of you know Oscar
potential role for for less money but for a comedy no she's good that's our
whole budget right there so they oh they want Anna Faris well Anna Faris is the
same deal you know and we struggled and struggled and struggled to find
something they would approve if I remember correctly Todd could tell me if
I'm remembering this right or not but I so I recall read the script and liked it
it was ready to say yes and they they said no to her oh really yes Wow so go
figure right so that room we ran out of time to make that movie basically we had
to shut down and it's too bad because that was a very very funny script I
still love to see that movie get made yeah right I know
she's done a lot of great she's done a lot of great stuff yeah yeah yeah I got
it so excited I was like oh that would be awesome I would be super cool and
then a couple days later is like I called it I call
the office the production office and the guy was like now we're shutting down I
was like yeah so and I actually I actually quit a job because because we
were in pre-production which goes to show ya nothing nothing's in stone until
it is ya know
you