Write Your Screenplay Podcast

Now this is a really extraordinary true story, based on the life of Whitey Bulger, and featuring one of Johnny Depp’s all time best performances. And we’re going to be discussing some of its most compelling scenes and the elements that made them work in this podcast.

And yet, at the same time, despite the power of Johnny Depp’s and the supporting cast’s stellar performances, there is something about Black Mass that just leaves you (or at least left me) a little hollow– a little bit unsatisfied.

Find out more about Jacob Krueger Studio:

WRITER RESOURCES: www.writeyourscreenplay.com/blog

WORKSHOPS & SEMINARS: writeyourscreenplay.com/classes

[spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]

The Magic of Tone: Diary of a Teenage Girl

By Jacob Krueger

[/spb_text_block] [divider type="thin" text="Go to top" full_width="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [blank_spacer height="30px" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [spb_text_block title="TRANSCRIPT" pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]

Tone is one of those really challenging things for writers, particularly on a movie like Diary of a Teenage Girl, which touches on some extremely controversial, taboo and uncomfortable subjects. In lesser hands, rather than being the delightful (but disturbing) movie that we saw at the theatre, Diary of a Teenage Girl would be a Lifetime movie: yet another tear jerking melodrama about a child victimized by an unfair world.

So in this podcast, I’ll be talking about how to control tone in your writing, whether you’re writing an original script, adapting a book or novel to screenplay form, or writing from the experiences of your own life. (In fact Diary of a Teenage Girl was adapted from a novel inspired by author Phoebe's Gloeckner’s life experience as a child).

Jerry Perzigian who teaches our TV Comedy Writing class has a saying that I really adore. For those of you who know Jerry, he was the showrunner on The Jeffersons, The Golden Girls, Married With Children. If it was a hit show in the 80s or 90s he was probably on it. Jerry has this saying that I really love. He says: "First, write it true. Then make it funny."

And I think this is one of the greatest bits of wisdom that you can take when you're thinking about tone; it’s realizing that tone does not begin with trying to be funny or trying to be sad, or trying to be dramatic, or trying to be melodramatic, or trying to make the audience cry or trying to do anything.

Tone, in fact, is something that is layered on top of truth. So, our first step as writers is about getting our own personal truth on the page. In order to do that, sometimes we need to let go of our desire to control the tone. Sometimes we need to write the scene in our comedy that makes us cry, or makes us disturbed, or goes to that incredibly dark place that we don't want to go to. Sometimes we have to write the scene in our drama that gets experimental or playful, or oddly, inappropriately funny.

In acting there is actually a technique for this. If you've ever been in a play or in a film rehearsal there is often a period where the performance starts to get really tight. Usually at the first reading everything seems great: the actors haven't figured out the character yet and they're just playing. They're just having a good time. And everything is filled with energy and excitement and fun. They seem to be hitting all the right notes, flying free and using their instincts.

But there then comes a point where they've started to figure out the piece. They've started to figure out their character. They've started the figure out what's really going on, the structure of the character's arc, how things are changing, who the character really is and how to play them.

And at that time, a strange thing happens.

Oftentimes, the performance suddenly gets rigid or tight. Suddenly it feels less truthful, less compelling, less exciting than it did early on, before the actor had figured out anything intellectually. Usually the reason for that is, having figured out 90% of the character but not that full 100%, rather than focusing on their instincts, on their creative mind, on bringing themselves and their personal truth to the performance, the actor is now suddenly now focusing on getting it right, doing it correctly, making sure that everything they do fits with all their other choices and with their intellectual conception of who the character is.

This is a really normal thing in the rehearsal process, and if you've ever been in that phase of the reh...

Tone is one of those really challenging things for writers, particularly on a movie like Diary of a Teenage Girl, which touches on some extremely controversial, taboo and uncomfortable subjects. In lesser hands, rather than being the delightful (but disturbing) movie that we saw at the theatre, Diary of a Teenage Girl would be a Lifetime movie: yet another tear jerking melodrama about a child victimized by an unfair world.

Find out more about Jacob Krueger Studio:

WRITER RESOURCES: www.writeyourscreenplay.com/blog

WORKSHOPS & SEMINARS: writeyourscreenplay.com/classes

[spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]

Show Me A Hero: Do You Need An Active Main Character?

By Jacob Krueger

[/spb_text_block] [divider type="thin" text="Go to top" full_width="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [blank_spacer height="30px" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [spb_text_block title="TRANSCRIPT" pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]

Show Me A Hero: Do You Need An Active Main Character?

Today we're going to be talking about the new HBO miniseries Show Me a Hero.  I'm especially excited to be talking about this miniseries, because it stars Jacob Krueger Studio alum, Laura Gomez!  Laura, we're so proud of you!

But outside of our personal pride in Laura's accomplishments, it's worth talking about miniseries because of what writers of all genres can learn from them.

It's an incredibly exciting time for writers of miniseries. The genre was all but dead in the water a couple of years ago, but recently we've seen a resurgence in miniseries sparked by the success of True Detective.

In a way, the miniseries is the ideal form of storytelling for a screenwriter. In feature films, we are limited in many ways by page count, trying to squeeze a life-changing journey into an hour and a half.

But in the world of miniseries, we actually have the one thing that most screenplays don't have, the thing that novelists are blessed with and screenwriters long for: time.

And because we have time, we are able to explore structure in different ways, and fully capture things like world, complicated, intersecting storylines and multiple characters' points of view.

It’s not that these things can't be done in a screenplay. It's just that when we do them in a screenplay, we severely limit the number of pages we can dedicate to each character.

In a miniseries like Show Me A Hero, we can actually explore these multiple storylines without diminishing our ability to serve our main character.

But the reasons I want to talk about Show Me A Hero go beyond it's structure as miniseries, beyond its stellar cast, and beyond its extraordinary writers (David Simon of The Wire, and Paul Haggis of Crash who directed every episode).

I want to talk about Show Me A Hero because of the way it chose to break the rules. In fact, Show Me A Hero broke the most profound rule of screenwriting, the first commandment: Thou shalt have an active main character.

Well, Show Me A Hero simply does not.

If Show Me A Hero didn't work for you, there is a good chance that this is the reason. And if it did work for you, there is a good chance that this is the reason as well.

The choice to have an inactive protagonist is related directly to the theme and the ironic title of Show Me A Hero.

What is brilliant about the journey of Nick Wasicsko, its main character, played by Oscar Issac is precisely that he is not the hero we are longing for...

Now just a warning that there are spoilers ahead.

What's amazing about the character of Nick Wasicsko, is that Nick is not a hero.

Nick gets elected on a platform about keeping blacks out of a white neighborhood in Yonkers. And he doesn't get elected on that platform because he necessarily believes blacks should be kept out of white neighborhoods in Yonkers. In fact, he has voted similarly to the incumbent mayor on this issue, in all but one vote. The only difference between Nick and the current mayor is that Nick tried to appeal the decision to bring affordable housing into this white community, while the mayor recognized that it was an unwinnable battle, and chose the pragmatic course of actually governing in light of the decision.

In fact if there is a hero at all in Show Me A Hero, it's a very minor character of the Judge at the center of the trial.

This is the character that most people would have built a story like Show Me A Hero around. He is the obvious hero,

It’s an incredibly exciting time for writers of miniseries. The genre was all but dead in the water a couple of years ago, but recently we’ve seen a resurgence in miniseries sparked by the success of True Detective.

In a way, the miniseries is the ideal form of storytelling for a screenwriter. In feature films, we are limited in many ways by page count, trying to squeeze a life-changing journey into an hour and a half.

But in the world of miniseries, we actually have the one thing that most screenplays don’t have, the thing that novelists are blessed with and screenwriters long for: time.

Find out more about Jacob Krueger Studio:

WRITER RESOURCES: www.writeyourscreenplay.com/blog

WORKSHOPS & SEMINARS: writeyourscreenplay.com/classes

[spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]

The Tree of Life: Alternative Forms of Structure

By Jacob Krueger

[/spb_text_block] [divider type="thin" text="Go to top" full_width="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [blank_spacer height="30px" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [spb_text_block title="TRANSCRIPT" pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]

SPOILER ALERT: You may want to come back to this article after you have seen The Tree of Life. 

Often, as writers, we get so hung up on linear, narrative structure that we forget that there are completely different forms of screenplay structure that can be equally moving and powerful. So for today’s podcast we’re going to take a blast to the past, and look at a film that seems to diverge in almost every way from the traditional forms of structure we’ve been talking about on this podcast: Terence Malick’s, The Tree of Life.

What makes The Tree of Life so extraordinary is the effortless way it weaves traditional linear storytelling—the story of the family– with long meditative sequences of breathtaking images of the vast beauty and wanton destructiveness of the universe. But don’t let Malick fool you, underneath the melodic rambling of The Tree of Life is a rock solid structure, which provides the drum beat for the entire film.

In fact, if you compare The Tree of Life to Terence Malick’s more recent, and significantly less successful film, To The Wonder, you can see the difference between a film composed entirely of beautiful images without a sense of underlying structure, and one composed with a structure underneath them.

And that’s a valuable lesson, whether you’re writing an art film, like The Tree of Life, or are simply in an early draft of a more linear story, when you’re still trying to find the thread to tie together all your moments of visual inspiration.

The Fundamental Question

Despite all its jumping back and forth in time, its shifting perspectives, its God’s eye view of the universe, its whispering voiceovers, its dinosaur sequences and its meditative imagery washing over us like ocean waves, at the fundamental structural level, The Tree of Life follows the story of Sean Penn’s character, Jack, as he searches both past and present for the answer an unanswerable question:

“Why should I be good, if you’re not?”

On the spiritual level, Jack is asking this question of God, as he tries to reconcile the vastness, wonder, and beauty of the universe with the senseless death of his brother: the problem of a world where death is always present, even in the most idyllic memories of his early childhood.

On the physical level, Jack is asking the same question of his loving but abusive father, played by Brad Pitt, whose often misguided love both protects Jack and is slowly destroying him.

As young Jack’s adoration for his father and desire to “be good” devolves into disappointment and hatred, he is forced to reconcile not only the dual sides of his father’s nature, but also the dual sides of his own– wrestling with a profound and unanswerable question of how to be good in a world where the love of both God and father seem to shift inexplicably from beauty to violence.

Great Movies Are Built Around Big Questions

It’s easy, as writers, to think it’s our job to tell the audience what to think or feel.  But usually our best work comes not from answers but from questions. And these are often questions that are too big to answer. What’s wonderful about building a movie around a question to which you truly don’t know the answer is that it forces you, as a writer, to take a journey as profound as that of your characters.

Searching for a deeper understanding of the world is what writing is all about. And that’s not limited to experimental films like The Tree of Life. Woody Allen’s comedy Midnight in Paris is built around a profound question “Wo...

Often, as writers, we get so hung up on linear, narrative structure that we forget that there are completely different forms of screenplay structure that can be equally moving and powerful. So for today’s podcast we’re going to take a blast to the past, and look at a film that seems to diverge in almost every way from the traditional forms of structure we’ve been talking about on this podcast: Terence Malick’s, The Tree of Life.

What makes The Tree of Life so extraordinary is the effortless way it weaves traditional linear storytelling—the story of the family– with long meditative sequences of breathtaking images of the vast beauty and wanton destructiveness of the universe. But don’t let Malick fool you, underneath the melodic rambling of The Tree of Life is a rock solid structure, which provides the drum beat for the entire film.

Find out more about Jacob Krueger Studio:

WRITER RESOURCES: www.writeyourscreenplay.com/blog

WORKSHOPS & SEMINARS: writeyourscreenplay.com/classes

[spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]

The Craft of Writing: Externalizing the Internal, Part 1

By Jacob Krueger

[/spb_text_block] [divider type="thin" text="Go to top" full_width="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [blank_spacer height="30px" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [spb_text_block title="TRANSCRIPT" pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]

The lesson we take from it is actually going to be a different lesson than what we usually take from this podcast. Rather than looking at the structure of There Will Be Blood we're actually going to be looking at There Will Be Blood in terms of a concept called externalizing the internal.

So, what the heck does that mean?

We work in this really exciting medium called film. What’s the exciting thing about working in film? We tell stories with images. And the challenging thing about working in film is that half of the things that exist in the world, we can't see. We can't see thoughts and we can't see feelings.

And that means, as screenwriters, our job is to externalize these internal things. To take them outside of the mind and put them into the body and the action of our screenplay. To translate the emotional language of our writing into action.

You Can’t Rely On Great Actors

The way I like to know if I've externalized the internal, in my screenplay, is I like to think of my least favorite actor. If I’ve written a line of action and my least favorite actor can't act it, I have not externalized the internal. In other words, if my writing requires my least favorite actor to show disappointment, surprise, shock, sadness, or just to be able to act in general, then I have not externalized the internal.

If I am lucky enough to have great actors such as Meryl Streep and Daniel Day Lewis, I don't need to externalize the internal because they will do it for me. A great actor will deliver what you have failed to deliver. A great actor will look at the line and find the action underneath. They will look at the emotion and translate that emotion into action.

If I happen to be lucky enough to get a great director, that director will look underneath my crappy explanation and find the beautiful image or the brilliant action. If I'm lucky enough to get a great actor or director, they will make me look good.

But the fact of the matter is: I can't depend on that.

You Can’t Rely On Great Directors

A lot of working directors are not that good and many Hollywood stars are completely untrained as actors. You go to a theater and you've got trained actors. But many of these Hollywood stars -- as compelling as they are -- are not trained in acting; they're trained in being celebrities. And sometimes you need one of those celebrities because you won’t get your movie made without one.

So, on a practical level, we need to externalize the internal so that our moderately talented director can look at our work and say, "You know, I know exactly how to shoot this.” But even if you have a hugely talented director, you would like your movie to somewhat resemble the thing you imagined when you sat down to write it.

As one of my great mentors, Georgi Alexi-Meskhishvili, who is a world-renowned set designer, used to say, “If you want a director to do what you want, you must make him think it is his idea." And one of the ways we allow directors to do what we want (by thinking it's their idea) is by externalizing the internal. We must capture our story in images the way that we are seeing it in our heads, so that we can director-proof our films without ever calling a single shot.

We must able to actor-proof our films so that even if you had Keanu Reeves instead of Daniel Day Lewis trying to play Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood, the director knows to say “Ok, Keanu, grab for that shovel,” as opposed to "look angry.

[spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]

Tangerine: All You Need is a Want and an iPhone!

By Jacob Krueger

[/spb_text_block] [divider type="thin" text="Go to top" full_width="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [blank_spacer height="30px" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [spb_text_block title="TRANSCRIPT" pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/1" el_position="first last"]

Tangerine is a brilliant illustration of just how little you need to actually succeed as a screenwriter or a filmmaker. To make a successful film you do not need millions of dollars. To make a successful film you do not need years and years and years of experience. To make a successful film you do not need to follow the rules or follow a formula. To make a successful film there are really only two things you need: You need a Want, and you need an iPhone.

Tangerine was shot entirely on an iPhone 5s. And not only does it look beautiful, but it also tells a compelling story, taking two characters on a profound journey of change. And, though it doesn't have the most complicated plot in the world, the simplicity and the drive of its main characters' wants provide it with a rock solid structure.

In a way (and this is a funny thing to say) Tangerine is the Indie film version of Mad Max: Fury Road. For those of you who've listened to my Mad Max: Fury Road Podcast, you understand that the plot of Fury Road is essentially “they drive East, and then they drive West.”

But the structure of Mad Max: Fury Road is about a character who is trying to find an escape, who finally learns that she has to go back and confront where she came from. In a similar way, Tangerine is built on that simple, primal want of its main character Sin-Dee.

Essentially Sin-Dee's journey in the movie is to head East and then to go back West. She starts out at Donut Time and she ends back at Donut Time. And her journey is also compelled by a very simple want: to find her boyfriend's mistress, and to beat the crap out of her.

That simple want provides the foundation of the entire structure of this beautiful little film.

Sin-Dee, like many of the characters in this movie, is a transgendered prostitute working the streets of Hollywood. Sin-Dee has just spent the last couple of months in prison, and now that she is out, she has learned that her pimp boyfriend is shacking up with another girl. And even worse, the girl isn’t even transgendered!

The structure of Sin-Dee’s journey grows from the hunt to go find this girl and, like the Charlize Theron character, Furiosa, in Fury Road, at each step, Sin-Dee is assaulted by obstacles, events and characters that stand in the way of her quest to find that girl.

And much like Furiosa, in situations where any other human being would have given up, Sin-Dee keeps on going, driven by the strength of her want. This makes it easy to root for Sin-Dee even though she lives in a world on the Hollywood streets that many of us have never experienced, and even though she’s taking actions as she pursues her want (drugs, prostitution, violence) that many of us would not take in our own lives.

Don’t Judge Your Characters

One of the beautiful things about Tangerine, and one of the daring and brilliant things this script by Sean Baker and Chris Burgoch, is that it looks at the world and the lives of these characters without judgment.

This is a movie with transgendered characters, but it's not an issue movie. It's not a political movie. It's not an anti-hate-crimes movie. It is not an anti-prostitution movie.

This movie tells the story of two characters who happen to be prostitutes. But rather than defining them as victims of an oppressive society, rather than judging their drug addictions and their prostitution and their choices or manipulating the audience into taking a stand against these obvious social issues the film portrays,

'Tangerine' is a brilliant illustration of just how little you need to actually succeed as a screenwriter or a filmmaker. To make a successful film you do not need millions of dollars. To make a successful film you do not need years and years and years of experience. To make a successful film you do not need to follow the rules or follow a formula. To make a successful film there are really only two things you need: You need a Want, and you need an iPhone.

Find out more about Jacob Krueger Studio:

WRITING RESOURCES: www.writeyourscreenplay.com/blog

WORKSHOPS & SEMINARS: writeyourscreenplay.com/classes