How many stories really in the world are there?
I think there's only a handful of stories
as a general, global, universal idea.
There's only a handful
because it's based on experiences that are shared.
But then you get specific
because there's the mechanics
of how things play out that's different.
Hello, everyone! My name's Matthias Schweighöfer.
Hi, I'm Zack Snyder.
I am Nosipho Dumisa-Ngoasheng.
-I'm Peter Thorwarth. -My name's Adam Price.
-I'm Shinsuke Sato. -I'm Deborah Feldman.
-I'm Álex Pina. -Hi, I'm Harlan Coben.
The three act structures is great
because you have a start, you have a middle,
and you have an end.
Three act structure is very important.
Personally, for me, that's kind of what
I've gravitated towards
and always understood really well.
I think it also gives you great markers
for is this still interesting
or have we gotten boring
and bland and things seem the same.
I kind of think that I end up with
a slight three and a half-act,
or almost four-act basic structure.
I don't like any kind of structure,
at least consciously thinking about it.
We very much concentrate on the whole episode
and find our way
in a natural structure for the episodes.
Back in the day, my mindset
was that I had to have a three act structure.
So I was very intentional
on dividing it into three acts.
But the more I wrote,
the less I worried about the structure.
The key to any protagonist is they have to be real.
Has to be that character,
that when you’re sitting at a bar,
you kind of wanna overhear the conversation a little.
He must have a secret
and he has to have something that is really touching.
In the end,
writing is a lot like designing characters.
We are like psychologists.
My favourite stuff to work on
is always why this character is like a great hacker,
or why this character is a great get-away driver.
The perspective we have on a character
at the opening of a film,
and then who they are at the end of the film,
and the journey that they go on
to become, hopefully, a hero,
or, at least, a realised character
with hopes and dreams and aspirations
and ability to love or hate or whatever it is.
What you learn
in the first third of Unorthodox
is an internal process of questioning and doubting
that occurs in the mind of the protagonist.
You want a protagonist to have some problem.
I think if you have a really, like,
perfect protagonist who is perfect
and everyone likes and has no flaws,
then there's no real interesting story.
The best twists come really from the heart.
You can have the most expensive car in the world,
but if it doesn't have fuel, it's not going any place.
This is true of all fiction you've ever done,
is your hero travels down the road of life
and you've got to put speed bumps and pitfalls
and detours...
Being a writer
that works so much in the 100% realistic genre,
it was a joy for me, actually,
to go into the supernatural genre
and all of a sudden,
discussing can this character fly?
And it was amazing
to have all these possibilities
on your table.
As a director,
there are layers of myself that sometimes get added
to the character I create.
Sometimes, my own characteristics
are aspects I end up adding into the characters.
I think I went back into the past
and I plucked episodes from my life,
and I sorted them
chronologically next to each other
in order to build some kind of art.
I can't say
that the story isn't any way based on my life.
Blood & Water is not based on my life,
it is not based on any one specific person's life.
What I'm trying to write
is a story that will be universal.
And I've always found the more specific the local,
the more universal the appeal.
The themes are universal.
Love, redemption,
family, friendship, relationships, hope.
Those things are universal.
I never believed
that Blood Red Sky was just for, again, Germany,
so it should be a German movie
and I had the idea:
what can be more international
than a trans-Atlantic flight?
It's about being specific in your context,
but being global
in your universal idea and story.
The story, itself, is coming-of-age young girl
trying to find her missing sister.
The idea of coming-of-age and being in high school,
everyone can understand that.
That's the globe part of it.
How will I write so that people believe me?
And how will I write it so that they understand me?
I think it's a natural thing to feel
when you sit down to write any book,
but especially a memoir.
I think, as a writer, it's extremely important
to remind yourself, at all times,
that you cannot write for everyone,
you cannot write a story for 190 countries.
Because, I think,
if you try to write for everyone
you will end up writing for no one.
I remember talking to a Japanese reporter,
when the Japanese edition of Unorthodox
was released as a book,
and she was telling me, "Do you know that the story
of every Japanese women's life
is unorthodox?" She started to cry.
It's almost like instead of this just being
my weird, unusual life experience,
it's now part of a universal spectrum
of the experiences of women.
There is no reason
for a woman to experience shame
as a result of this very common
lived bodied experience.
And that, to me,
is what I think touched a nerve
for women all over the world.
On a business level,
Alice in Borderland was created
with the Japanese market in mind.
But on a personal and emotional level,
in became an opportunity to share Japan's atmosphere
and its domestic feeling and ambience.
I always hoped an international audience
who didn't know Japan,
would get excited or be deeply moved by it.
When we made the decision
that we do a whole film about different nations,
and different people from everywhere in Europe,
it became like a really colourful film
and I love that because language barriers,
fantastic for a great sense of humour.
Close your eyes.
In the end, I always say the writer is like a cook.
Each country has its own recipe,
but from the same universal ingredients.
It's okay for it to be bad. Just write something.
I become completely obsessed.
I think about it night and day,
all of the time. I wake up thinking about it,
I'm a distracted friend or guest, you know,
if you're talking to-- my kids are used to it.
Like, all of a sudden,
I'll start giving one of these
and the kids will go,
"Ah, Dad's gone off to la-la land again."
I would rewrite then throw it away
and rewrite and throw it away
over and over,
to get to a point of satisfaction.
Even the worst things, things people would be like,
"This is a terrible idea."
It's fine, 'cause from a terrible idea,
something great may come out.
When I have, like, a little bit of a block,
I just write notes to myself
about what I want to have happen in the scene,
and, like, what needs to happen.
It can get you jumpstarted a little bit.
I think work is a journey.
What you do and what you learn.
Hence, you learn from your mistakes.
You want to write something
you're passionate about, you know?
Like, your story, whatever it is,
whatever keeps you up at night.
Writing is pretty arduous, it requires discipline,
and I think that the passion for the thing,
is great fuel to allow you to do the work
of sitting and, you know, putting pen to paper
or fingers to keyboard.
-Any questions? -No.
Yes. Many. Hundreds.