Film Courage: What does writing a marketable screenplay mean?
Wendy Kram, Consultant for screenwriters, directors, production companies: Great question,
probably one of my favorite questions.
I often say that you can have a great idea, super-high concept (I think I referenced previously)
I’ve heard story ideas and I go “Oh my gosh, that is great!
I want to option it before I even read it and then I read it and it’s not well-executed.
So if you have a great concept that’s not well-executed, chances are that it will not
sell.
If you have a high-concept that is well-executed, you have a much better chance of it getting
sold.
Conversely, you can have a project that is totally not high-concept but if it is beautifully
executed, it then becomes marketable.
So for example if we take a movie like JUNO (and I’ll define high-concept).
High-concept is THE HANGOVER, a bunch of guys…you know from the movie poster…I mean a lot
of your audience knows what high-concept is but there are those who don’t and it’s
terminology we use a lot and it’s basically where the concept is very big and immediately
recognizable from the movie poster.
So THE HANGOVER and it’s guys and we all know it’s THE HANGOVER, it’s in Vegas
(you can tell from the movie poster) and they look like they’re a wreck and it’s 48
hours before a bachelor is to walk down the isle.
At his bachelor party they go to Vegas and his friends lose him and they don’t have
any recollection of what happened the night before and have 48 hours to find him before
the wedding.
That’s one example of big concepts.
SPEED is a big concept, anything that is based on a brand like TRANSFORMERS it has an immediately
recognizable built-in audience, brand value.
So the opposite of that would be a movie like SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE.
In face, most of the movies that win the Oscars are not high-concept.
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, MILLION DOLLAR BABY, okay if you were to pitch this…I’m going
to do not justice to the movie but if you were going to think about it but trying to
get a studio, this is a story about a girl who comes from a trailer park and she wants
to be a boxer and she’s mentored by this older dude and she winds up injuring herself
to the point where she becomes paralyzed from the waist down and basically asks him to do
something drastic, so he does.
Okay, who would buy that?
SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, it’s a great story, great movie.
No known American actor but you did have an A-list director (Danny Boyle).
So that is definitely what helped get it made and it was also based on a book.
SLING BLADE another magnificently written script and some of these movies would definitely
be harder to get done today.
But you take JUNO, family drama, teenage girl…I mean really, that you used to be like an after
school special (no disrespect), more of a TV movie than a feature that would build such
a big following.
This year LADY BIRD, that’s not a high-concept right-of-passage with the young girl but it
was so well-written and it resonated so much with people, the mother-daughter relationship,
the notion of growing up in a small town.
So what makes a script marketable, the script like JUNO and with LADY BIRD, the quality
of the writing and the freshness of the characters, the truthfulness of the characters, that then
becomes marketable.
That comes down to me saying write your best work.
I don’t know any executives (other people may), I don’t know any executives who have
optioned a script if they didn’t care of the dialogue, the writing, I mean structure
maybe is the least offensive.
It can be a good idea and maybe the structure is not great but the characters are compelling,
the situation’s compelling and the dialogue is good.
And I just don’t know anyone who buys scripts if those elements aren’t there.
So therefore I think if you are going to make a profession as a screenwriter, it’s not
an easy profession at all.
You have to roll up your sleeves and really get in there and I’m working right now with
someone who just graduated from film school and his writing is really good.
There are some elements that I think needed to be much more pronounced, what the underlying
theme is and the purpose of the journey and some things that didn’t track with the characters
but there’s a lot of talent there but I didn’t think it was ready to quite take
out yet but he’s doing some work now and he’ll get there.
I mean there’s a lot of talent and there’s a lot of writing that really isn’t very
strong and I think the biggest death to a writer is to not be able to take notes well
and I don’t mean just any notes.
To be open to constructive feedback and to want to put in their dues.
So I think that’s the biggest killer as well as trying to please too many people and
not listening to your own inner voice and I just say it in terms of marketability.
What gets agent’s attention, producers, studio networks is that you’ll hear a strong
voice.
That there’s something really fresh about a person has a point of view, that the character
writing…Quentin Tarantino is such a strong voice and I would say Greta Gerwig has a strong
voice, we could go on but…
Film Courage: And even going back to LADY BIRD (just briefly) we went to see THE POST
and unfortunately the movie didn’t play so we all had to leave the theater [and while
waiting to leave] I spoke to a man who was maybe in his late 50’s and he said he loved
LADY BIRD.
So here is someone who you really wouldn’t think he would even be the audience for it
but he said [he loved it] and he was recommending it to the people he was with and we were talking
about it.
So you can see how he somehow resonated with that voice.
Wendy Kram: I mean the truthfulness of that mother-daughter relationship, which wasn’t
pretty…how they got in each other’s faces and talked to each other but it was truthful
and we know that they did love each other and it was so touching toward the latter part
of the movie when the mother who was really kind of tough with her daughter and the daughter
didn’t feel like she really loved her (or even liked her) and then we saw that she was
trying to write a letter to her and crumbled it up like 30 times.
That’s another form of love, versus this would be the boring way of doing it and not
so truthful to the human experience would be “Well, you know I love you.
Maybe I’m hard on you but maybe I’m doing it for your own good or maybe I have my own
issues so I’m not able to love that well.”
Versus the simple, beautiful act the she was crumpling up letters because she wanted to
find the write words and couldn’t.
That says so much more than anything that’s on-the-nose and obvious.
Film Courage: Right.
And the whole part of coming from a smaller town, even though it’s California’s capitol
but there is small-town feel to Sacramento for anyone who has driven through it and wanting
to like really re-invent herself.
She didn’t want to go by her given name, she wanted to be a writer on the East Coast…it
wasn’t okay to be a writer from California and wanting to re-invent herself and I think
everyone can identify with that.
Wendy Kram: Versus…that’s really wonderful writing versus I want to be a writer, I’m
tired of being in this small town, I want to reinvent myself.
That’s such a good example of why some people say when they get feedback about not to write
exposition “What do you mean?
People can talk about, what you don’t like people to be direct?”
Sure, there’s a time and place and sometimes people are direct but most of the time they’re
circling, trying to figure out their lives, who they are and so on and that was a very
beautiful example of that.
Film Courage: Yeah…I agree.