Film Courage: When a screenwriter finishes a screenplay, is there a mental or physical
checklist that they should check of items?
Kathie Fong Yoneda: I think it’s a good idea to have a checklist or a chart.
Certainly sending it out to a consultant or somebody (a professional in the industry)
is always very helpful because it gives you an idea from somebody who has been in the
industry a long time what is it that might, what are the little things and some of the
bigger things that might keep it from moving ahead .
I think one of the things that bothers me is
when people really haven’t taken the time to proof (I’m not kidding), that’s a major
thing.
When I was an executive I also had cohorts in my office who also execs and if they found
more than three mistakes in the first 20 pages they would stop reading and throw it in the
trash.
I hate to say that but it happens.
That really honest-to-God that does happen.
On the other hand, give me a reason to say yes.
So make sure that the structure of your screenplay is such that right off the bat it catches
your attention, that you’ve got characters that are so relatable that you’re going
to want to see them and see them either want to succeed or to see the antagonist fail.
That’s one of the things I see is that a lot of times people will pay more attention
to the hero and the unfortunate thing is they don’t set up the antagonist well enough
that it gives the hero enough contrast and interest.
That’s the big thing that I see a lot in the things that I’ve read is that whoever
he is up against.
It doesn’t have to be a person, it could be the elements like a storm or something
or it could just be himself.
You don’t see enough contrast in what’s going on.
And so I think that’s another big mistake that people make and that they should take
a look at it and have somebody read it and ask that question.
Film Courage: Is my antagonist strong enough?
Kathie: Yes.
Do you understand what’s at stake and do you feel that the hero has worked hard enough
to achieve that success?
Film Courage: What’s the difference between getting coverage and consultation?
Kathie: A lot of people say “I’m going to get coverage on this.”
So they will send it out.
Coverage is something that we use in the studio just so the executive will know what is the
story about because they sometimes don’t have time to read the whole story.
It takes about an hour and a half to read a script and with a 1,000 scripts coming in
every month it’s a lot of reading.
So that’s why they have story departments who do the reading.
So coverage is just like a book report.
It has a little longline in the front which is one or two sentences which tells you the
general idea of what the story is about.
Then it’s basically just telling you the story just like a regular book report, this
is what happens and it’s usually done in chronological order and then it usually tells
you a little but (there will be box scores or something which will tell you okay is this
a big budget?
Where does this fall on the budget?
How would you grade it in terms of do you think the dialogue was well-written?
Do you think the characters have a story worth telling?
It will have those kind of little boxes and you mark them off.
It usually says “Excellent, Good, Bad.
Fair, Poor.”
And they just check those off and they just write this little thing “I feel that the
character (the hero) is too weak and there’s just not enough interest in here for us.
There’s not enough at stake for us to really root for him.
So they might give a few things.
What a consultation does they not only read, they go through and they usually tell you
what they feel does not work.
They get into details - your dialogue is too on the nose or you mentioned this character
in the beginning but why do you include this character if there’s no payoff at the end
for the character.
Or they’ll say “Gosh, I like your hero but for some reason I don’t quite understand
why your dialogue doesn’t match the personality you’ve given him.”
That happens a lot too.
Where people put their own words into the character rather than the character’s words
into the dialogue.
And that happens a lot too.
Those are just some of the things that consultants will find.
I think the good thing too about having a consultant is that they will you like for
right now if you send in something that has to do with zombies or it has to do with dystopian
ideas a consultant will say “They don’t mind but it has to have this, this and this.
Zombies…we’ve had too many submissions on that, the chances kind of go down if it’s
about zombies."
They will give you hopefully some up-to-date information on what they’ve gleaned from
reading the trade papers and all that so that’s what I do when I do a consultation.
I will be very upfront about what works and doesn’t work not just about the writing
but about the script in general and how the marketplace is now.
Because I don’t want to ever lead them in the wrong direction and I will be very upfront.
I will not be brutal, I try not to be brutal because nobody deserves that.
But I recently had someone send me a script about zombies and I had to be very honest
about it.
And I said “You know, this would have been a good script for people to consider three
years ago.
Unfortunately I know for a fact that recently we had such and such at the script fest and
I know that several agents have said that they do not want to see any more zombie scripts
because they feel that there are just too many of them.
I mean you have to be honest about it.
I don’t want to build up their hopes on that.
I’ve done things also where I have said “Do you think you can make a transition
here where instead of zombies maybe it has to do with something like that there are people
here who are actually aliens who have come to earth or I try to come to a way where they
can maybe change it to where the heart of the story remains but the situation itself
(like zombies) can be changed.
Consultations differ a lot.
I try to do that if I can with mine and I think a lot of my colleagues do to where we
try to find out what is the best way with what they are doing and letting them know
what that is “This is what we liked about it” And then letting them know “This is
what can be a problem.”
And also along with it whatever new information we can give them such as “We think that
zombies have had their run.
We’ve been on panels and we’ve talked to agents and producers and this is what seems.”
And I’ll even put this is some of the areas that they’re looking at if they happen to
mention anything.
Like they are looking for more action pieces or whatever they are looking for.
I just try to give them additional information about where they could take this project or
where they could themselves start another project, what area they might want to start
in.