Write Your Screenplay Podcast

War for the Planet of The Apes: Interview with Writer Mark Bomback

By Jacob Krueger

JAKE: Today I’m really excited to be hosting my friend Mark Bomback as a special guest on this podcast.

As you probably know if you are a listener, Mark is the writer behind the latest two installments of the Planet of the Apes trilogy, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and War for the Planet of the Apes. As well as a host of other hugely successful blockbusters including Insurgent, Total Recall, The Wolverine and Live Free or Die Hard. First, I just want to say thank you for joining us.

MARK: Thank you Jacob.

JAKE: The first thing I am curious about is a lot of our writers work in collaboration with other writers, or are thinking about doing those kinds of collaborations.

And you’ve had a couple of different kinds of collaborations on the Planet of the Apes Franchise with Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver on Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and then with Matt Reeves the director on War. I am curious about what those processes were like for you.  What is the difference between working with a partner, coming in to help out with a project like you did on Dawn or working on a script alone?

MARK:  Well, you know the thing is, other than Planet of the Apes, I have actually never co-authored anything. And truthfully the only film of the two that I co-authored was the last one, War, which Matt and I truly wrote together from beginning to end.

So, how I came onto the Planet of the Apes actually when Rise was heading into production, Rick and Amanda, who were the creators of Rise of Planet of the Apes were getting a little bit---I don’t even know how best to put it-- a little “written out.”

It was a really, really intense pre-production, they were doing a lot of cutting edge things. There were just a lot of moving parts, and Rick and Amanda were also producers on the film.

So they, along with the other producers, decided it would be great to get an extra set of eyes on this. And so I came on and did some pre-production, inter-production rewriting, and got to work with Rick and Amanda as producers.

So, I would sort of vet what I was doing with them, but we didn’t actually write together. And, in fact, I don’t even get credit on Rise because the work was really surgical and had more to do with sort of finessing things.

When Dawn came around, Matt Reeves wound up replacing Rupert Wyatt, who was the initial director of Dawn, and when Matt came in, he really had a lot of work to do. So, the studio asked if I would come on and help Matt sort of realize his vision.

So, although Rick and Amanda had written a script for Rupert Wyatt that was the starting point of Dawn, when I came in again it was really me working as a writer alone-- actually that isn’t entirely true in that Matt and I were sort of collaborating-- but, Matt was really the director and I was the one doing the writing-- although as we sort of got deeper into production itself, because we had such a crazy timeframe on that movie, Matt and I really were almost functioning like co-writers as well.

So, when it came time to work on War, we both agreed “let’s just actually, now that we have the luxury of time a little bit, let’s write it together from beginning, from the very, very start.”

And so, it is really the only time I have ever truthfully co-written. And I wound up loving it. And since the screenplay work on War, I am back to writing by myself. And while I do enjoy having the freedom-- certainly in terms of my schedule and having a little more say as to where things are going, and not having to vet everything through my partner-- I really do miss having a partner.

Matt and I became super close friends as well as colleagues while working on it. And, I, to this day will vet things with Matt on other things I am working on, and vice versa.  

I really came to appreciate what it meant to have a writing partner. You know, it doesn’t make the process go any faster. If anything, it actually, at least in my case, makes it take longer.

But what you wind up doing-- again I can only speak for myself and Matt-- is I think you generate fewer drafts, because you wind up talking through everything, sometimes ad nauseum, but to the point where you’ve vetted a lot of things within the scenes before moving on.

Whereas, when I work alone, I tend to want to get to the last page and then see what I’ve got and go back and go through again and again and again.

So, it is a very different way of working. And it was also less lonely.

Most of my days are spent alone in my office. Certainly today is a good example. I have been in my office since about nine in the morning, just writing. And while I love doing that-- that is certainly why I chose being a screenwriter as a vocation-- it is lonely. And there is something great about having someone to shoot the breeze with while you are working.  

Also, I felt like Matt really helped me sort of dig deep and find the best ideas that were in my head, and vice versa. It was really fun to sort of dig into Matt’s head and say, “is this the best version of this or can we do any better?”

JAKE:  I actually started out writing on a team as well. I worked with a writer named John Wierick on several projects. And it was interesting for me how different that was from writing alone. John and I were an interesting team because we had very different things that we were into.

I loved to, like, blow out that first draft, and John loved to go back in and work through those pages tweaking things, making everything perfect.

So we had a kind of interesting balance that we kind of developed over the years as a process of writing together. I am curious, like, what was your approach when working with Matt?

MARK:  Everyone has their own version of how they work, but Matt and I, every morning-- or morning Matt’s time, noon my time-- our Skype would be up and we had a program called Screen Hero, which allows you to share a computer.

So we would use my Final Draft program, but Matt could literally type onto my computer across the country. Matt lives in LA, I live in New York. And so, we would truly write the script together.

In fact, we had a funny way of working. Everyone has their own crazy ways of working, but in this case, if I had a line of dialogue that I really wanted to sell Matt on, but I know I don’t act very well, rather than pitch him the line I would say, “what about this?” And then I would type the dialogue into the dialogue section. And then Matt would read it and he would say, ‘okay, yeah I get it but what about this?” And then he would change the word in it and remit it back.

So that is how we did it, but it was really on a word-by-word basis that we wrote the script together. Which in a weird way, I think, you could only do in cyberspace. If we sat in the same room, we would still need to hook up into one computer and have two keyboards, because you can’t sit and type on one keyboard.

So, we had two keyboards going at the same time in Final Draft, and would just write together. And if we got on a tear in terms of even something like stage directions, some person would just start writing the stage directions, and then the other person says, “Stop, stop I have an idea…” and then circle right back into the stage directions and add something or subtract something.

So that is how we worked. We literally never had a moment of a script page generated without both of us staring at the screen at the same time.

JAKE:  And how did that affect the nature of the product that you ended up with or the theme of the product that you ended up with compared to most of the scripts that you’ve done where you’ve really had the freedom to sit in the room alone and dream out whatever came to you?

MARK:  It is hard to say. I mean I do think it is one of the best, if not the best, scripts I have ever worked on. So, I am guessing part of that is simply a function of two people collaborating.

Oftentimes when I work on a script, at some point the director is with me in there again-- not necessarily writing but collaborating.

And any script I’ve written that has turned out well has always been the result of, at some point, a really useful month or two spent with the director in pre-production or even ahead of pre-production, getting the script to really fire on all cylinders.

Most of that has to do with digging deep in terms of the themes of the story and how the characters’ journeys service those themes-- things that are less plotty and more thematically oriented.

And I think because Matt and I work in such a unique way, in that we wind up constantly watching films while we work, we would sort of watch YouTube clips of certain movies we were referencing while we were Skyping.

So we could say, “Oh in the end of A Man Escaped there is this big silent break out sequence that I think would be a useful thing to look at for the end of War when the apes escaped the camp.” And we would have the script page open on one side of the screen and the video clip from YouTube open on the other side of the screen!

It isn't the kind of thing you are going to do as much if you are working by yourself, because you are more inclined to just think, “Let me just get through this, my kids are inside screaming, dinner's almost ready…” like you are going to find better excuses to just move faster.

When two people are working together, you tend to slow down and do deeper thinking. It doesn’t mean that at the end of the day the script is going to be any deeper or better or whatever, I just think you get there a little bit in a different rhythm, instead of just a couple of drafts that are just getting the story out before you see where else you can mine.

JAKE:  We see a lot of blockbuster movies that are mostly focused on the pyrotechnics. And one of the things I think is really beautiful

Annabelle: Creation &  The First 10 Pages of Your Script

By Jacob Krueger

This week we’re going to be discussing Annabelle: Creation, directed by David F. Sandberg and written by Gary Dauberman.

Normally, since this is a screenwriting podcast, I don’t talk a lot about directors. But this is a case of a good director taking a struggling script, and turning into something far better than what exists on the page.

I’m not saying Annabelle: Creation is a fully successful film. The truth is it’s a pretty cheesy horror movie, full of holes, gaps in logic, violations of its own rules, crappy dialogue…

But it’s also a movie whose director understands the demands of its genre, and capitalizes on that understanding to turn a script that could have been a total flop into a finished product that not only squeaked to a 68% approval ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, but also has generated over $280 million at the box office for a reported budget of $15 million.

Not a bad return on investment for the producers.

 

Now the truth is, Annabelle: Creation is a prequel to an extremely strong horror franchise, The Conjuring, with a dedicated fan base and a loyal following among critics and moviegoers alike. And the connection to that franchise, and the very strong script, The Conjuring, that launched it, certainly has a lot to do with its success.

So if you’re a new writer, please don’t take Annabelle: Creation’s success in spite of its problems as a suggestion that all you have to do is hit your marks with your genre elements to succeed as a writer.

For you to get noticed and get your script made and have that kind of success in this challenging business, the truth is you have to write better than the professionals. Because you neither have the connections in the industry, the track record on your resume, nor the fan base out there in your audience for producers to see the dollar signs unless your script knocks it out of the park.

Nevertheless, studying Annabelle: Creation is not a bad return on investment for you as a writer.

Because while you will certainly be frustrated by the way Annabelle: Creation fails to live up to what should be a very strong premise, you can also learn a ton about rewriting from the film.

That starts with understanding the tools David F. Sandberg used to transform a weak script into a genre success.

It means understanding the power of genre, and how to use it to your advantage, regardless of whether you’re writing a horror movie, action movie, romantic comedy, web series, or even a little indie drama.

And it also means understanding how the writer, Gary Dauberman, fell into the most common trap in screenwriting and lost track of his own premise. So that you’ll know what to do if the same problem starts to happen to you.

And it all comes back to one simple premise.

 

Screenwriting Rule #1: You’ve got to nail the  first 10 pages of your script!

The first 10 pages in your script are the most important 10 pages in your script. And the first page of your script is the most important page of your script. Not your brilliant trick ending. Not that fabulous turn halfway through the movie. Not that moment that makes you laugh or cry or hurl on page 72. The first page. The first 10 pages.

And why are these first pages the most important pages? For 3 very important reasons.

#1 - The first 10 pages of your script are the only pages everyone is going to read!

By the time your producer, coverage reader, A-list actor, director, manager, agent… hell even your great great great uncle who you’re begging to invest… reads the first page of your script, they are already making a decision about whether this script is actually worth reading. You either grab them, or you don’t.

And by the time they get to page 10, if they even get that far, they’ve already made a decision about whether this script is actually for them-- if they’re going to read it, or skim it, or if they’re simply going to pass.

That means that if you don’t hook them from the very first page, they’re never going to get to your fabulous trick ending, your tear jerking climax, your horror inducing end of act one.

So that’s the commercial reason for nailing the first 10 pages.

And you can see that, whatever the flaws that show up later in the script, the first 10 pages of Annabelle: Creation certainly don’t suffer from them.

 

What we’re watching from that very first image is really cool!  You start out on this creepy doll’s eye, this creepy eye, that’s being assembled into this creepy doll in this creepy workshop, and you are just seeing the eye-- you are just following the eye everywhere.

And the creepy doll into whom the eye is placed belongs to this father who makes these creepy dolls. And he has a daughter that he loves and a wife that he loves. And they have a cool little complicated family in a creepy little house.

And, slight spoiler ahead….

You are 10 minutes into the movie and that little girl gets hit by a car.

And at that moment, you are already fully drawn in. You are already pitching yourself a movie. And it’s a horror movie, but it’s a particularly classy version of that movie that you’re pitching yourself-- the story of parents whose desire to hold on to their lost child turns something beautiful into horror.

And you see, that should be frickin awesome. And whether you’re a horror movie genre fan or not, there’s something real in there you can grab onto, something beautiful and terrifying from the very first page, that captures not only what is important and beautiful and scary about this movie, but also how the story is going to work, both structurally and thematically.

It’s a story about creation and horror. About the creation of a doll and creation of a child and creation of a family. And what happens when the creations that we love start to fall apart and twist us into darkness.

It’s the story of Annabelle: Creation. And they’ve fulfilled the promise of their title, and captured the physical and emotional attention of their reader-- and we’re only 10 minutes in!

So that’s the commercial reason. If you want your script to sell, your first 10 pages have got to grab us like the first 10 pages of Annabelle: Creation. They’ve got to be the ten best pages in your script.

But there is also an artistic reason.

 

#2 - The first 10 pages of your script create the window through which your audience experiences everything that follows.

Audiences come to movies for genre experiences. Which is really just a fancy way of saying that they come to a movie because they want to be given a very specific feeling.

If they’re coming to a romantic comedy, they want to feel like love is possible. If they’re coming to an indie drama, they want to experience catharsis through the twists and turns of your main character’s emotional journey. If they’re coming to a broad comedy, they want to laugh their asses off. If they’re coming to an action movie, they want to get their adrenaline pumping. If they’re coming to an experimental art film, they want to feel their minds bended.

And if they’re coming to a high class horror movie, like Annabelle: Creation, they want to be terrified. Not just at the jump scare level, but at the emotional and psychological level.

In other words, they’re coming to movies for the same reason you’re coming.

In fact, many filmmakers and screenwriters become famous and successful for their ability to create a certain genre experience in their writing-- think about Nora Ephron or Charlie Kaufman or Martin Scorsese, or Aaron Sorkin, or Christopher Nolan, or my guest on next week’s podcast, Mark Bomback (the writer of the Planet of the Apes franchise).

 

If you give your audience the feeling they are coming for in your first ten pages, you can get away with a lot. Because even if the stuff that comes later doesn’t fit perfectly with the genre, or even puts pressure on the genre (like the comic character of Bad Ape does in War For Planet of the Apes, or the comic grave diggers do in Hamlet) the audience will still see everything that follows through that original genre lens.

They will interpret what they see through the window of the genre. They will enjoy things that they otherwise would never enjoy. And they will know they are going to get back to the stuff they came for. That the movie is for them.

If you actually look at the structure of Annabelle: Creation, until all hell breaks loose and the requisite blood starts flowing, not a hell of a lot happens from a horror genre perspective. It’s really mostly just creaking doors and a creepy looking doll that keeps showing up and a really damn good director and score.

And it doesn’t even make any sense why this doll keeps showing up or even how this doll works or like what the hell does the doll really do? I still don’t even fricking know--

But because of the way the doll is introduced in those first 10 minutes-- because of the image of that eye, and the feeling of being watched, and the love that is built between father and daughter, the knowledge that death is coming, that in this horror movie, even a little girl can die a sudden and horrible death-- that experience inflicts everything that we’re watching with a feeling of horror.

David F. Sandberg uses the window of that first 10 pages to such great effect in his direction, mirroring the elements that he’s created early in such creepy and terrifying ways, that he doesn’t even need a jump scare or much blood at all to create the feeling of horror. All he needs is that fricking doll.

 

And even though you’re thinking to yourself “I shouldn’t be scared” and even you are kind of annoyed with yourself that you are, because you know this is cheesy. You have to admit. It’s scary.

And it’s not scary because of what’s happening. It’s scary because of the way the events of the first 10 pages inflect what yo

Annabelle: Creation is not a fully successful film. For all that’s great about it, it’s also full of holes, gaps in logic, violations of its own rules, crappy dialogue… but there’s also a ton you can learn from it as a screenwriter, particularly when it comes to how to write your first ten pages.

How To Write A Web Series

By Jacob Krueger

 

Jake: This week we are on with Karin Partin, and we are going to be talking about Web Series, which is something I haven't talked about yet on the podcast.

Karin teaches our Web Series Writing Classes here at Jacob Krueger Studio and has a lot to say about Web Series writing and producing.

We’re going to be looking at Web Series from a creative point of view, and also talking about how you can use a Web Series and very little money to actually launch your career and get noticed-- how a Web Series can become not only a calling card, but actually something that brings you money or something that builds your career.

So, Karin thank you so much for joining us.

Karin: Yeah, Hi! Thank you for having me. This is exciting to be sitting in on the podcast. I know so many of my students are just huge fans of the podcast and listening to the podcast, so it’s very exciting to be on the podcast.

Jake: When you think about Web Series writing, why do a Web Series? Why start with a Web Series?

Karin: You want to make a Web Series to break into the industry. If you write a script, you can pitch that script to managers and agents for six months or a year. And then, you get that one yes or five yeses and all five of those managers and producers and agents are putting that script on their desk, and may take six more months to read that script.

Once they love your script, let’s say of course you have the perfect script ever, it is the best script ever anyone has ever written and they love it, then it is going to take those people championing for you to get it made.

And it can take a very long time and the chances of its momentum falling off is high. That is why it takes a thousand no’s and one yes to break into this industry.

So if you make your own Web Series, you can send it to anyone you’ve ever met in the industry, and all of a sudden your chances just skyrocket of someone actually seeing your writing because it got made.

You can just send it out and say “hey, here is my five minutes”. And the chances are much higher that they are going to see your work.

And you can do it! You can make it affordable. You can make your Web Series affordable. That is the whole point: getting your work out there.

it is a very short form content that lets you highlight your skills. So, if you can pull off character development and an A to B of storytelling so your character goes from point A to point B, they change in a very, very short amount of time.

So, if you can change your characters in five minutes or less, people are going to be impressed.

So it is a way to impress managers and agents and producers that you can do short form of storytelling, and that translates to long form storytelling very easy.

If you can pull off a Web Series they will believe that you can write anything, because it is the most difficult thing to do: to tell a well-crafted, beautiful, impeccable story in five minutes or less.

Jake: So, you feel it is a way of demonstrating a higher level of craft or a level of compression?

Karin: Yes, making a Web Series that costs very little money with minimal characters in very few locations is constraint. And so, you want to be able to let these constraints work for you as a writer.

And with all those constraints on your back as a writer, and you still pull off great storytelling, people are going to be excited about your writing.

It used to be it cost you $50,000 to make a television pilot. Now, you can get a camera, you can shoot it with your iPhone and spend $500 or $50 if you have actor friends and you know somebody willing to cook for you for the day or the weekend. Then you can make your own Web Series.

Jake: The other really beautiful thing about being a Web Series writer is that you are your own producer. So you don’t have the limitations of someone telling you, “hey I don’t really like this character,” or “I don’t like the way this character is going.” You can push the envelope and you can write whatever you want.

As everyone knows, when you are a writer, you have 50 people that give you notes. You have your producers, and you have the other producers and you have financial people and the actors come in and they give you notes.

If you are the Web Series writer, you are going to be able to just make it yourself. So you have a better chance that your vision is going to get down and out to the world exactly as you thought.

Jake: One of the other things that I think is exciting about Web Series Writing is that the way media is consumed is changing.

Web Series is so darn clickable, you can send them an email and have it clicked in a link and they can decide if they like it or not.

Would you say that is a benefit? And how are executives and agents and managers responding to Web Series now?

Karin: Oh they are excited about it; everyone I talk to says, “please send me your work, please send me the actual work you’ve made.”

It is really, getting much, much harder to get noticed as an unproduced writer because there are so many people making things already.

So, how do we break in as people who are unknown? Well, you make your own work and you send it out and you show who you are, you show that your voice is special by making it.

Clickable content. I mean, would you rather read a 30 page script to a 90 page script or would you rather watch just a five minute film? If you can send someone your story and it takes them five minutes to watch and you blow them away, you are going to get a phone call.

Jake: Do you think that there is a prime length that Web Series writers should be targeting? Is it three minutes, is it five minutes, is it ten minutes, is it half an hour? Where should they be focusing?

Karin: I would go shorter the better. The shorter it is the more likely someone is going to watch it. If you send a 60 minute digital pilot, if you can get them to watch it, amazing, great. But if you can send them a five minute one, they are going to click on it. And if you hook them in the first minute with characters, they are going to watch the other five minutes, which then you can continue and make episodes 2-8 or 2-12 and they are going to watch the additional episodes.

I don’t know if it really matters whether it is five minutes or twelve minutes. Web Series are all over the place. But it is really about how fast can you tell a story and still keep character development?

That is the real key in the craft of writing: can you tell a short story and keep character development?

So, if you think of something like True Detective, you know how much time they have to develop those characters. Can you do that in a short amount of time? That is what people are looking for.

So, if you look at one of the very first Web Series, The Guild and it is one episode now you can watch it-- Netflix took the entire first season and made it the first episode.

So, if you want to know how it was originally broken down you want to watch the episodes on YouTube, because those are actually broken down as the original five minute episodes.

And in The Guild, the very first episode is all about character; it is a vignette of who these people are. You’ve got the main character who is talking to her therapist on the phone about how she doesn’t play too much of this video game that she is addicted to.

And while she is talking to her therapist, she is on the phone playing the game, also crossing out on a posted note how many hours she has played that week and just it is getting higher and higher and higher in how many hours she played.

So her dominant trait is represented by the action of talking to her therapist about how she is going to quit playing while playing.

And the other people are also very quick vignettes, you’ve got one who is the dad, you’ve got one who is a teenage boy and he is totally in love with women and he is talking about boobs.

You’ve got a mom who plays so much she is ignoring her children, and then you’ve got another character who is missing and he has never not been online in this long.

You have a group of people who are kind of like a family who are always on this game and you have one who is missing and they are worried about him.

So, it is an online group of people who’ve never met and at the end of the episode the guy who is missing shows up at her house-- the main character’s house-- to tell her he loves her and so it goes from a group of people who’ve never met to real life.

And that is your A to B in a very short amount of time, while doing character. And that is the goal for any kind of storytelling, whether it is Web Series or TV or features or you know everything, podcast, everything storytelling.

So, if you can pull that off, you are gold. People will notice that you can write. That is the point of writing: can you show them you can write in something that is short enough that you can get them to watch?

Jake: So what if you are an emerging writer, and you’ve never done any production before? For a lot of writers that is scary-- the thought of, “Oh my god I am going to have to do this myself!”

So, how do you start? If one of my students says, “Okay today I want to write a Web Series. I’ve been writing feature films, or I’ve been writing TV Series, maybe I’ve been in one of The Writer’s Room Classes at the studio, I’ve learned how to work in a writer’s room.”

When you think about, “Now I am going to make something that I can create myself,” how is that different, or how is that attainable?

How do you boil that down for someone who has no production experience into something that they feel like they can do right now?

Karin: To create a Web Series that is attainable and that is affordable, you need minimal actors and one or two locations. And it is harder than it sounds to come up with a story that is very contained and affordable to wri

"... The Big Sick is a hugely successful film adaptation of Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon’s true life story. But the structure of the film actually differs in many ways from the true life events that inspired it. In this Podcast, Award Winning Screenwriter Jacob Krueger discusses how to adapt a true life story, and how to navigate the pressure between truth and fiction to get the real story on the page ..."

The Big Sick: How To Adapt a True Life Story

By Jacob Krueger

This week we are going to be talking about The Big Sick by Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani.

I am excited to talk about The Big Sick not just because it was a successful film, but also because it allows me to talk about a topic that I have wanted to discuss for some time:

How to adapt a story from your life.

There is a wonderful scene in The Big Sick, one of the scenes that actually doesn’t get talked a lot. Kumail (for those of you who haven't seen the film) is a Pakistani-American Uber driver who has fallen in love with a white American girl.

And in one of the really lovely scenes in their romance, he invites her to this terrible play that he has created about Pakistan. It is meant to be a one man show but it comes out more like an extremely detailed and dry history of Pakistan.

The scene has a lot of wonderful little jokes for the audience. But the joke for the character is that Emily shows up for her boyfriend’s show and it is the worst thing ever, and everybody knows it is the worst thing ever, and now she has to pretend that it is good.

If you are an artist and you have artist friends, you know what that experience is like. You know that there is often a desire, when that happens, to protect the person whose work we have gone to see: to tell them things are good that aren’t good, to protect their ego rather than their art.

Emily, in the film, does actually a much more loving thing, actually a much more brave thing. She doesn’t trash the play, but she does tells Kumail the truth.

She says, “I learned a lot about Pakistan, but I didn’t learn a lot about you.”

And this sets up a beautiful structure in the The Big Sick, which is really a story about Kumail learning what it is to tell the truth.

 

In fact, in a way, it is a story about all these characters learning to tell the truth.

Emily’s father, Terry, played by Ray Romano also has to learn how to tell the truth, how to not be a coward.

What makes Emily’s mother, Beth, played by Holly Hunter, so wonderful is that she always tells the truth-- even if it means that she is going to attack a racist heckler in the middle of a performance.

So all these characters are eventually going to go on a journey about telling the truth. And the biggest journey about telling the truth is Kumail’s journey.

Kumail is a character who is afraid to tell the truth.

Kumail is a person who is trying to please everybody in his life. And because he needs so badly to please, he isn't saying what is real.

He has convinced his parents that he is going to accept an arranged marriage with a Pakistani woman, even though he isn't taking any of his potential dates seriously.

He has convinced Emily that they are in a relationship, even though he doesn’t believe he is ever going to marry her because he is afraid of being disowned by his parents.

And as an artist he isn't yet able to tell the truth with his writing.

Ultimately, he is going to go on a journey in relation to his one man show, in which he learns to tell the truth about himself.

And in that way earns his happy ending; he earns his happy ending by telling the truth.

When we are adapting a true life story, our job, like Kumail’s job, is to tell the truth.

And oftentimes we have a lot of different urges pulling against us.

What is interesting is that Kumail and Emily’s story is based on a true story-- is based on their true story-- the true story of how they fell in love, how she fell into a coma and how, during the time that she was in that coma, he realized that he wanted to marry her no matter what his parents thought.

So this is a movie based on a really beautiful true story.

And like most true stories, at first glance we might think that it isn't enough to be a movie-- which is how a lot of us feel when we first write a true story.

I remember the first class that I was hired to teach-- before I created the Studio. The dean of the school (which will go unnamed), who is a very lovely man, during our orientation sat me down and said, “Okay, look Jake, you do whatever you want. We don’t really have a curriculum. The only thing is: don’t let them tell true life stories, because you know it is just going to suck.”

And I remember asking him, “What makes you think it is going to suck?” And he said, “Well there won’t be enough for a movie there.”

And a few weeks later he came into my class and he saw the work that was happening, and he said, “How did you teach these people to do that?”

And I said, “I didn’t teach them to do that, I allowed them to do that. I allowed them to tell the truth, I allowed them to tell the stories of their lives.”

 

Because the truth is that every movie you write, whether it is fiction or non-fiction, whether it really happened in the real world or whether it only happened at the world of your mind, every movie you write is an adaptation of a true story.

It is an adaptation of your true story.

There is a common piece of wisdom that you are supposed to “write what you know.” And I think this is actually a very confusing piece of wisdom, even though it is quite wise.

The reason that it is a confusing piece of wisdom is that, oftentimes, we feel like “writing what you know” is very limiting.

We start to get nervous: “What if I didn’t live a really interesting life? What if I grew up in the suburbs with a nice family? What if my story isn't valid enough?”

“And what if I want to write a fantasy or a Sci-Fi or a horror movie? What if I want to write a movie that isn't based on real life things? How am I supposed to write what I know if I want to write in one of these genres?”

“Or a Western! I have never lived in a Western, how am I supposed to tell that story?”

But the truth is that every story is an adaptation of a true life story; it is an adaptation of your true life story.

If we look at a movie like The Lord of the Rings, which was based in a book by J.R.R. Tolkien (which is actually even stronger than the movies)--

I think we can all agree that J.R. R. Tolkien never saw a hobbit, never fought a dragon, never saw an ogre, never confronted The Dark Lord Sauron or had to throw a ring into a magical burning river.

I think we can all agree that the world of Middle-earth wasn’t a world that he knew. But the world of Middle-earth and the war between good and evil in Middle-earth isn't really what The Lord of the Rings is about.

The Lord of the Rings is about a guy who is addicted to a ring. You lose this in the movie, but it is very clear in the book. Frodo, as he gets closer to destroying the ring, wants to put the ring on his finger.

There is an incredible draw to put the ring on his finger. He wants to put the ring on his finger even though he knows it draws the Dark Lord closer, even though he knows the ring makes him invisible.

 

And ultimately it takes an even bigger addict-- Gollum, has to bite the ring off of Frodo’s finger for him to let go of it.

And then, it is really interesting when you read the series of three books, and you get to the middle of the third book and they have destroyed the ring and you are like, what is going to happen in the rest of this book? Isn't it over?

But it isn't over, because it isn't a book about destroying the ring of Power; it is a book about letting go of an addiction and then having to go home to the real world.

And what ends up happening when Frodo goes home is he has to confront the fact that his neighbors suck, that people will hurt you, that mundane life is hard to take. In fact, Bilbo can’t take it. Bilbo ends up leaving Middle-earth, because the other thing that is happening is that all of the magical creatures are leaving Middle-earth.

And this is woven into the movie, but it is kind of lost and confusing we don’t really understand why. But in the book, the magical creatures are leaving Middle-earth because the age of magic is ending and the age of man is beginning.

Because the age of addiction is ending, the age of escape is ending, and the age of being a real human being with real human problems is beginning.

So this gets lost a little bit in the movie because they change the ring.

They change the ring because they have a technical problem: they have a problem that the ring makes you invisible, and invisible is really hard to shoot without it looking cheesy.

And so rather than turning Frodo into Casper The Friendly Ghost, they decide, “all right, well he can’t want to put the ring on because if he wants to put the ring on, then we are going to have to shoot him invisible, because there is no way to see him want to put the ring on if he doesn’t do it, not in a movie.”

So what ends up happening is, instead of having him want to put the ring on, they make the ring heavy. And Frodo is whining to Samwise-- you probably remember this scene, “It so heavy...”

But you aren’t crying with them, you don’t really feel it, because that isn't really what the movie is about. And by reversing it, they end up actually losing the theme-- that theme of addiction that tied the novel together.

I don’t know that much about J.R. R. Tolkien’s life, but I would guess that either he had an addiction or there was someone profound in his life who struggled with an addiction. (Some have argued that he was writing about human-kind’s addiction to the commercial-industrial process).

But whatever the experience, you can see that The Lord of the Rings is actually an adaptation of that experience. Not what actually happened literally, but what happened emotionally—what it felt like.

Our job as screenwriters is actually quite simple; we use fiction in order to tell the truth.

Sometimes using fiction in order to tell the truth means creating a metaphor like “the ring,” creating a fantasy world like Middle-earth that can represent the internal world, the internal experience,...

"There’s no doubt that some of the most successful movies ever, from Dead Poets Society to Little Miss Sunshine, have more than one main character. And at the same time, there are genuine risks when we start telling a story from the point-of-view of more than one main character. In this podcast, Award Winning Screenwriter Jacob Krueger shows you how to write a script with more than one main character and how to avoid the pitfalls when building this kind of complicated screenplay structure."

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From Little Miss Sunshine to Dead Poets Society: Writing a script with more than one main character.

by Jacob Krueger

 

This week, we’re going to be talking about a whole bunch of movies, but they all have one thing in common. They all have more than one main character.

 

There’s a lot of debate about the question of whether new screenwriters should write scripts with only one main character, or whether it’s okay for them to write scripts with multiple main characters.

 

There are even some famous gurus who say that “multiplot” structures are just plain bad and that nobody should ever write them.

 

It’s a good thing nobody ever gave Robert Altman that advice, (or at least if they did that he never took it) or we would have missed out on a whole chapter of film history!

 

We’d also have missed out on a lot of other hugely successful movies, The Squid & The Whale, Little Miss Sunshine, Crash, The Shawshank Redemption, The Usual Suspects, The Godfather, Dead Poets Society, American Beauty, True Detective and the entire library of Quentin Tarantino.

 

And at the same time, there are genuine risks when we break point-of-view and start telling a story from the point-of-view of multiple main characters.

 

So what do you need to know about writing a script with more than one main character?

 

In general, if you stay with your main character, very little bad can happen to you.

 

If you stay with one character, very little bad can happen to you because you just have to focus on creating the journey of that character. Which is a far more intuitive process for most writers-- it feels more like our lives.

 

In my life, for example, I don’t know what my wonderful TV Writing teacher, Merridith, does when she goes home. I only know what she does here in front of me at the Studio. Unless I literally follow Merridith home, that part of her life will always be hidden from my view.

 

In my life, my experience of my relationship with Merridith happens only through my eyes. Only in what I get to see.

 

And so, when we follow only one character, what happens is it allows us to feel like we are watching the movie through their eyes. And this is natural for us structurally, in that we’re used to experiencing the story of our own lives in this way.

 

The other thing is that we end up with 95-105 pages that we get to dedicate only to one really specific journey. And that just allows us to dig deeper in one place, rather than digging shallowly in many places.

 

When we start following multiple main characters, our point-of-view starts to shift.

 

In narrative, they call it “omniscient point-of-view,” when suddenly we are sitting in the place of G-d, rather than sitting in the place of any single human being.

 

And this is not the way we’re used to experiencing our lives.

 

That doesn’t mean it can’t be a compelling experience. It can, especially if it connects to the theme of what you’re trying to write.

 

But if it’s happening for superficial reasons, rather than organic ones, there’s a good chance you’re going to run into trouble.

 

So, the real question is not if you should pull your audience, and yourself, out of the point-of-view of the main character, it’s why you are choosing to do so.

 

In less successful screenplays, we often get pulled out of the main storyline to follow another character so that the audience can learn a little bit of exposition.

 

In these cases, it’s often a manipulative technique by a writer who has not yet developed the craft to weave that exposition into the structure of her story.

 

If you’ve watched crappy action movies, you’ve seen this all the time. You’re following the main character, and then you suddenly pop out and follow the bad guy.

And the bad guy isn’t doing anything interesting, he’s just sitting there twirling his mustache, laying out his plan for the audience.

 

The writer’s goal when this happens is usually just to create a little more tension for the audience. But this approach usually does the opposite of creating more tension, because rather than allowing us to experience the twists and turns as the character experiences them, instead it lays all the writer’s cards on the table, and it reminds you that you are in a movie and not experiencing things like you do in your real world life.

 

In fact, this kind of sloppy exposition was famously skewered by Mel Brook’s in SpaceBalls. Rick Moranis has just made his dramatic entrance as Dark Helmet (“how can anybody breathe in this thing”) and then he and Captain Asshole lay out their whole plan to steal oxygen from planet Spaceball. And finally, Rick Moranis turns directly to the camera and asks the audience “Did you get all that?”

 

So if you are bumping around different points of view just to serve your audience, you are probably in danger.

 

At the same time some of the greatest movies of all time follow multiple points of view.

 

The Usual Suspects follows multiple points of view, not only in its 3 layers of storytelling, but also within each layer.

 

The Godfather is built primarily around Michael Corleone, but it also follows multiple points of view of Vito, Sonny, Fredo… even Luca Brazi!

 

Little Miss Sunshine is primarily built around Dad’s point-of-view, but also follows the multiple points of view of Olive, Grandpa, Mom, and Uncle Frank.

 

True Detective follows multiple points of view as it cuts between the Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey characters.

 

Dead Poets Society follows multiple points of view, following each of the boys, the Robin Williams character, and the group as a whole.

 

So there is a long history of great movies and TV Series that follow multiple points-of-view.

 

Generally, when great movies follow multiple points-of-view, they are doing it for a couple of reasons.

 

Sometimes you are more interested in exploring a world than exploring a character. You want to drop into that world and you want to see that world from multiple characters’ points of view.

 

Sometimes you want to understand a conflict from multiple people’s point-of-view.

 

This is something I got obsessed with for years. I wanted to write two main characters on opposite sides of the same war.

 

For an example from a recent movie, in Dunkirk (you can listen to my Dunkirk podcast here) we change point-of-view a lot. Because Christopher Nolan is telling a story of a world— the world of Dunkirk-- and he is telling a story about how different kinds of people relate to the same problem.

 

Sometimes you change point-of-view to explore a theme.

 

This is what Dead Poets Society does. Dead Poets Society bounces around with different characters, and each character is going through a journey in relation to the idea of “sucking the marrow out of life” versus “choking on the bone.”

 

And while some characters are sucking the marrow out of life, other characters are choking on the bone. And while some characters are choking on the bone, other characters are sucking the marrow out of life.

 

And the whole movie is just constructed as an exploration of different characters wrestling with that same problem. And in that case it is telling the story of The Dead Poets Society, not just of one dude.

 

Little Miss Sunshine is a movie in which every character is going to go on a journey in relation to winning. They are all losers, and they are all going to try to win, and they are all going to win but first they have to lose, they have to recognize that they are losers.

 

For an example of a movie in which changing point-of-view doesn’t work, let’s go back to the subject of last week’s podcast: Atomic Blonde.

 

As we discussed last week, Atomic Blonde is essentially a mash-up of… every movie we’ve ever seen.

 

It’s Quentin Tarantino meets The Usual Suspects, meets True Detective--Charlize Theron’s character is supposed to be doing the Keyser Söze thing-- she is telling a story and there are all these other stories that are happening that may or may not be true, but you don’t really even understand what those stories are.

 

And then you have these weird shifts in point-of-view where suddenly the secondary character just starts talking to you as the audience.

 

And, at first, it seems kind of cool. “Oh what cool style--they are breaking the fourth wall and that is really cool.”

 

But then when you try to get to the big payoff it doesn’t pay off. Because you’re wondering, “Well what did she make up and what did she actually see?” It can’t all be a fabrication, because this guy was literally just talking to you. It wasn’t all from the main character’s point of view, even though she’s the one narrating the story.

 

So, one of the problems that you have when you start changing point-of-view is that you have to decide-- if the story is being recounted by somebody else-- how true do you want to be to their point-of-view?

 

Do you want to show things that they haven't actually seen? Or are you willing to show things the way that they told themselves the story of it?

 

For example, in Forrest Gump we are 99% with Forrest, but for 1% of the movie we are following Jenny alone. And we are following Jenny alone because of the tug in Forrest’s heart around Jenny.

 

So what does all this mean?

 

 

When in doubt, tell the story of one character. If a piece of you tugs you towards another character, then write that character.

 

But don’t write that character to explain something to the audience. Write that character because, as you were writing your main character, something tugged at you and made you feel like you needed to go on a journey with this other character.

 

...

For all its many structural problems, Atomic Blonde succeeds in its fight sequences in the same way that Iron Man succeeds. Atomic Blonde and Iron Man both succeed because they realize that guns are no fun...

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ATOMIC BLONDE Script Analysis: Guns are No Fun

by Jacob Krueger

This week we are going to be talking about Atomic Blonde by Kurt Johnstad.

I would like to start this script analysis by talking about the way that I saw Atomic Blonde, because this was actually my first experience with 4DX.

I went to a 9:15 screening and I am wondering, “Why am I spending $28 on this screening?” But it was the only screening that I could make.

I show up, and I have no idea what to expect, and it’s not until I sit down that I realize the seats are on a platform that moves.

 

There are fans and lightning effects, and when it rains in the movie, it sprays water on you. There are little air bursts that hit you every time a gun goes off, and the seat will shake you or kick you in the back when a fight scene is happening.

And basically, this is the worst and most distracting way that I have ever seen a film.

 

 

 

Rather than sucking you into the film, it actually shakes you out of the film. It reminds you that you are seeing a movie-- that you aren’t experiencing something real.

And I am not telling you this to complain about 4DX, even though I think 4DX is a total nightmare…

I am telling you this because oftentimes, as screenwriters, we make the mistake of inadvertently doing 4DX in our own screenplays.

Rather than simply telling the story that we want to tell, simply pulling our audiences into our story in an organic way, we get so obsessed with all the bells and whistles that we end up distracting our audience from what makes our screenplay powerful.

We get so obsessed with all the things that that are supposed to make it a “commercial” experience that instead of pulling our audience into the movie, instead of augmenting their experience, all those bells and whistles end up distracting from their experience, taking them out of the movie, shaking them out of the reality of the film.

 

If you’ve taken my screenwriting classes you have heard me talk at length about the idea of screenplay formatting as a way of hypnotizing the reader.

 

Ultimately what we are trying to do is to use formatting to capture the visual eye of the reader-- whether they are creative or not-- to allow our movies to play in the little movie screen of their mind.

And bad screenplay formatting happens when we fail to do that-- when we either require the reader to supply their own creativity to make our screenplay cool or when we start shaking them with improper rhythm or with overly technical scene headings or with things that they can’t see or with dense action or with images that aren’t specific, that don’t play out exactly the way that we see them in the movie screen in our mind.

Sometimes our action, the way we put it on the screen, the way we write our dialogue can be like those annoying jets of water and those annoying sprays of air and the shaking of the seats: they can shake us out of this world that we want to experience.

 

 

So we have spoken at length about the idea of how sometimes our formatting can become our 4DX, can become that thing that is supposed to augment but instead shakes us out of the experience of the movie.

What we haven't talked about as much is the way that sometimes our ambition -- our impulse to complicate what could be a beautiful and simple experience-- can shake our audience out of what should be a really great story. And for me this is very much the experience of Atomic Blonde.

 

Atomic Blonde wants to be a Quentin Tarantino movie. And there is no doubt that to the extent Atomic Blonde succeeds, it succeeds because of its extraordinary fight sequences.

 

Whatever the flaws of the film-- and there are many-- those fight sequences are really impressive on a number of different levels.

The first is that this writer is deeply aware that guns are no fun.

Often what happens in action movies is the bad guys can’t shoot and the good guys can. Often what happens in action movies is that the good guys are total badass characters and the best fighters and have the best skills and are total superheros and the bad guys are a bunch of idiots who can’t really do anything well.

 

 

Atomic Blonde succeeds in the same way that Iron Man succeeds. Atomic Blonde and Iron Man both succeed because they realize that guns are no fun just like Iron Man suits are no fun.

If Iron Man is going to work, you’ve got to get him out of the suit. And if Atomic Blonde is going to work, you’ve got to get the guns out of the hands of both the good guys and the bad guys. Because the guns are just too darn easy to use-- too darn easy to kill with-- if they’re used properly.

Exciting action sequences don’t come from having the all-powerful weapon-- but from having the challenging weapon; having the knife, having the high heel, having the hand to hand combat, having the object that isn't meant to be fought with.

 

So if you want to write a great action sequence, just like Atomic Blonde, you’ve got to make the most of every location and every object inside that location.

 

Look at the location of your scene and ask yourself; what are all the objects that are available to you? What are all the objects that have never before been used in a fight sequence? And how can you use those objects in the wrong way? How can you surprise the expectations of the characters?

How can you force the character to show who they are, to show their own ingenuity, to show their own badass-ness?

You almost need to think of each of these challenging locations like a video game set--where each location comes with its own unique challenges, own unique pitfalls, many, many exciting ways to die-- and where everything is either an aid or an obstacle to the character getting what they want. Where every object gets used in the wrong way in order to create the most exciting action sequences possible.

 

 

So, despite its many flaws, there is a lot that we can learn from Atomic Blonde when it comes to writing action, when it comes to the specificity of our action, and when it comes to this very important concept:

Don’t let your action be about good guys kicking bad guy ass, get the guns out of their hands, get them out of the all-powerful suits. Don’t make your action about good guys who can shoot and bad guys who can’t, make it about good guys and bad guys who are both really good at their jobs, who are equally matched and who are both fighting with everything they’ve got. Make it about using the wrong weapons in the wrong way, not the right weapons in the right one.

 

The other thing that Atomic Blonde does really well in its action sequences is that Atomic Blonde allows the fighting to hurt.

 

We realize this is going to happen from the first time that we see Charlize Theron’s character, Lorraine Broughton. The first time we meet her, she is literally covered from head to toe in black and blue marks.

We have a beautiful image of Charlize Theron naked, bruise covered, in her bathtub.

And like all the images in Atomic Blonde, this image is gorgeous; the direction by David Leitch from a visual perspective is absolutely gorgeous.

(The direction from a character perspective I have some concerns about. But the direction from making every shot beautiful-- just the way you want to make every shot beautiful in your script-- is quite impressive).

 

 

So we have this first image of Charlize Theron naked in a bathtub. She is literally black and blue from head to toe. She looks like she has just been in the fight of a lifetime.

And this is not the way we usually get to see our action heroes. We don’t usually get to see the aftermath.

And that’s how this first image establishes a rule for how these fight sequences are going to work. It establishes a rule that the punches are going to hurt, the battles are going to hurt. This isn't going to be The A Team; this isn't going to be a battle or a fight sequence without consequence.

We are going to allow the punches to land.

One of the best fight sequences in Atomic Blonde happens between Charlize Theron and baddy bad looking bad guy German Stasi agent that she squares off with. There is a point during the fight where both of them are so tired from beating each other that they can barely stand-- when they are basically stumbling towards each other, trying desperately to find the will to walk much less to actually fight.

And this is something we haven't seen a lot of in action movies, those fight sequences that actually hurt. Those fight sequences with consequence.

So, on this level, Atomic Blonde is unusually successful.

 

 

And yet, the experience of watching Atomic Blonde is emotionally kind of soulless. The experience of watching Atomic Blonde leaves you feeling really flat.

 

And you can feel this isn't what the writer is trying to do.

What it feels like the writer and what it feels like the director is trying to do and (if you’ve seen the trailer which is spectacular) what the trailer is trying to do, is to try to create that kind of Quentin Tarantino action movie feeling-- that kind of tongue in cheek super badass turn up the volume almost expressionistic take on action where it is a total joyride and a total romp watching the extreme violence.

But that isn't the experience that we have watching this film.

We don’t have the Quentin Tarantino fun. In fact, at least from my perspective, this movie wasn’t much fun at all.

And part of that is because, despite the wonderful staging and the beautiful imagery of these action sequences, Atomic Blonde is taking itself very, very seriously.

The film is taking itself so seriously-- it is so overly beautiful, and it is so overly complicated-- that it is hard to just enjoy the romp.

 

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