A friend and I went to see The Counterfeiters yesterday. The movie won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. It's the story of a Jewish counterfeiter forced to fake dollars and pounds for the Nazis in a death camp during World War II.
Have you ever walked into a film with the completely wrong idea about it? I only had the vaguest sense of the plot, and something about the title 'The Counterfeiters' just made me think of a 60's comedy caper or musical or something. In other words, I thought the Nazis would be of the Captain Klink variety, or at least know how to dance in a line.
Uh, no. These were some decidedly more authentic Nazis. But after I readjusted my entertainment perspectives in the most drastic of ways, I got swept up in the movie and its main character, Salomon Sorowitsch. He's a funny choice of a hero for a Holocaust movie. He's a career criminal. He's not remotely interested in the plight of his own Jewish people as the Third Reich decimates it. He's not much of a talker. He's completely out for himself. Most heroes in Holocaust movies are morally upright, steadfast and true. Not Salomon. He knows who he is. He's the first Holocaust anti-hero.
The main action of the film involves a plot by the Nazis to produce mass quantities of British pounds and American dollars to flood and destroy the Allied economies with. Salomon was a career counterfeiter with a huge reputation, and he's forced to manage a crew of printers and engravers and whatnot to fill the Nazis need for fake bills.
Salomon sees the deal: survival in return for counterfeiting. And he likes it. While some of the other prisoners grumble and struggle with the moral dilemma, Salomon knows exactly where he stands. In his words, he'd rather be gassed tomorrow than shot today. A day is still a day.
As you read this? Do you care about Salomon? Does he have character sympathy? Would you keep watching? Not necessarily. In most Holocaust movies, he'd be a side character. He'd get his just desserts about 2/3 or the way through.
But if you watch the film, he has a great deal of character sympathy. Why?
First and foremost, he's consistent. We can see how he thinks. How he thinks is constantly going to bring him into Faustian deals, both with the Nazis and with the prisoners who want to resist and undermine the whole operation rather than help the Nazis. For all the pages and pages written about character sympathy, I'm beginning to suspect that simple scene-to-scene consistency is the most important (and a tremendous tool for a writer).
The more satisfying reason is some very crafty writing. Writers have trouble with anti-heroes. They don't have all the neat bag of tricks that a regular hero has. And many writers simply keep hitting the same 'anti-hero' note over and over again.
Not writer Stefan Ruzowitsky. What happens to Salomon is remarkable. He is the only prisoner not crippled with moral qualms, so he rises to the top of the camp. He's got fewer qualms than the Nazi who runs the counterfeiting operation. And he overcomes him. And he manages to keep all the counterfeiters relatively healthy and safe right through to the end of the war.
His choices are fascinating, and in the end they reach a nice three-act climax. It's not a script I'd teach beginning screenwriting from, but it has something to teach all of us at some point.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Writing Other People's Scenes
We all know movie scenes that feel like magic. We've all been overpowered by scenes that somehow are more than the sum of their parts. We've all seen something ineffable on screen that stayed with us. And we all feel that somehow we'll never attain something like that ourselves.
But there's something about ineffably powerful scenes -- they're usually the product of some tremendous but fairly straightforward thinking by a writer who knew what tools he had on hand. There's something incredibly economical in the use of those elements, just like in any other great art. And a writer can learn from the masters by taking apart how the whole thing works.
Most great scenes have a powerful set up: say, two priests talking in a bar (as in the Exorcist), or a cop hitting on a cokehead (in Magnolia), or a police line up with five guilty men (as in The Usual Suspects). That set up is usually a direct and simple expression that springs from the conceit.
Most great scenes -- okay, ALL great scenes -- are based around conflict. That conflict is visual, so there's the setting coming into play. The writer knows the two main elements that make up her main character. She also knows that they need to be present throughout as a way of making a character's complexity accessible to the audience.
All these things are tools, and the greater the scene, the more likely that there's a seamless union of conflict and set up and conceit and character and plot structure. It's simpler in great scenes than it is in your average scene.
As an exercise, try watching your favorite scenes. Write down as much of the toolkit as you can surmise. Look at what's going on in the foreground and the background. Look at all the actual, physical acts and objects in front of you.
Now, write the scene. Take your time with it. Maybe watch several times. Try to get the visual beats down so that a fresh reader can understand them.
Can you pull it off? Test yourself. See if you can create the sum greater than the parts. And while you're at it, see what a great scene really looks like -- in all its humility and simplicity.
I like this exercise because it forces my students to really engage creativity, even as you're trying to simply re-create someone else's work. You need to think down into someone else's thinking. So many new writers slip straight into what seems quicker and faster -- thinking the scenes out through dialogue. Most great scenes aren't written that way, if only because that kind of writing doesn't allow you to think down into your OWN thinking.
When you're done, you can check your work against the actual script (or some version of it) by doing a search on scriptcrawler.com.
But there's something about ineffably powerful scenes -- they're usually the product of some tremendous but fairly straightforward thinking by a writer who knew what tools he had on hand. There's something incredibly economical in the use of those elements, just like in any other great art. And a writer can learn from the masters by taking apart how the whole thing works.
Most great scenes have a powerful set up: say, two priests talking in a bar (as in the Exorcist), or a cop hitting on a cokehead (in Magnolia), or a police line up with five guilty men (as in The Usual Suspects). That set up is usually a direct and simple expression that springs from the conceit.
Most great scenes -- okay, ALL great scenes -- are based around conflict. That conflict is visual, so there's the setting coming into play. The writer knows the two main elements that make up her main character. She also knows that they need to be present throughout as a way of making a character's complexity accessible to the audience.
All these things are tools, and the greater the scene, the more likely that there's a seamless union of conflict and set up and conceit and character and plot structure. It's simpler in great scenes than it is in your average scene.
As an exercise, try watching your favorite scenes. Write down as much of the toolkit as you can surmise. Look at what's going on in the foreground and the background. Look at all the actual, physical acts and objects in front of you.
Now, write the scene. Take your time with it. Maybe watch several times. Try to get the visual beats down so that a fresh reader can understand them.
Can you pull it off? Test yourself. See if you can create the sum greater than the parts. And while you're at it, see what a great scene really looks like -- in all its humility and simplicity.
I like this exercise because it forces my students to really engage creativity, even as you're trying to simply re-create someone else's work. You need to think down into someone else's thinking. So many new writers slip straight into what seems quicker and faster -- thinking the scenes out through dialogue. Most great scenes aren't written that way, if only because that kind of writing doesn't allow you to think down into your OWN thinking.
When you're done, you can check your work against the actual script (or some version of it) by doing a search on scriptcrawler.com.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Quote of the Day: Tax Time Edition
"Writing is the hardest way of earning a living with the possible exception of wrestling alligators."
– William Saroyan
– William Saroyan
New "Best of..." Sidebar
I've just added a "Best of Scriptwrangler" section to the sidebar on the right of your screen in celebration of my first year of blogging. Enjoy!
Monday, March 31, 2008
Listening and Learning
I was recently commissioned to write a short script. A director had roughed out a story idea. Her producer found me, gave me a few ground rules, then told me to run with it.
The story idea was interesting enough, but broke a number of rules of good storytelling, and seemed to require a few too many crowd scenes and hard-to-access locations. I wrote a lot of notes on the idea and came up with a list of the tools I had to work with. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you realize that 'tools' are really just problems viewed from a better angle. Often you can take two problems and find one good solution for both. For example, say you've got a character that drops somewhere before the midpoint. The script also bogs down and loses pacing somewhere after the midpoint. I look for the dropped character to jump in and kick the pacing back up. (or remove that character, and thus maybe the storytelling swamp it creates down the way).
I was pretty proud of myself. I managed to eliminate the prohibitively expensive locations. I made the piece feel more unified -- full of expectations that could be subverted, transcended, and otherwise played with. I shoehorned a story that covered weeks of real time into 15 minutes of narrative.
The producer was thrilled with the story. The director, however, was not. I'd drifted too far from her original idea. It wasn't going to work. There was no reason to try to convince her that this script was a stronger project. If you've ever helped make a script into a movie, you know that the director has to be 100% engaged in it. There's no reason to make something you aren't deeply committed to. It's too much time, money and effort. It's too much stress.
So I sat down with the director, and we hashed out what works and what doesn't. And I learned a great deal. She had a strong sense of what she wanted. She knew how it looked in her head. She'd secured a few locations that I thought she wouldn't be able to get.
But as we spoke I realized something deeper. While I'd read and reread her story idea, I hadn't been able to read past my own assumptions about it. And as she spoke about the script idea, I realized I'd fallen in to the trap of writing for accessibility and entertainment.
The director wanted something more challenging. There wasn't to be a neat little plot escalation. She wanted the audience to make the jumps between scenes for themselves. She wanted the visuals to tell the story more than the conflict. The story was set immediately after the break up. So I'd decided it was a break up story. It's not. It's about people searching for themselves when their assumptions about themselves have been stripped away. Suddenly it all made sense.
She had an aesthetic worked out that supported the whole story idea. Once I understood it, I fell in love with the idea.
There's good news here for me. It looks like I'll get two short scripts made instead of one. I've made new contacts and moved my career forward. But beyond that -- I learned a little humility. It's easy to look to your training or your experience and think you can solve any problem by spiffing up the three-act structure or honing the character's misbehavior.
But the world is bigger than that. Storis are wilder than that. And thank god for that.
The story idea was interesting enough, but broke a number of rules of good storytelling, and seemed to require a few too many crowd scenes and hard-to-access locations. I wrote a lot of notes on the idea and came up with a list of the tools I had to work with. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you realize that 'tools' are really just problems viewed from a better angle. Often you can take two problems and find one good solution for both. For example, say you've got a character that drops somewhere before the midpoint. The script also bogs down and loses pacing somewhere after the midpoint. I look for the dropped character to jump in and kick the pacing back up. (or remove that character, and thus maybe the storytelling swamp it creates down the way).
I was pretty proud of myself. I managed to eliminate the prohibitively expensive locations. I made the piece feel more unified -- full of expectations that could be subverted, transcended, and otherwise played with. I shoehorned a story that covered weeks of real time into 15 minutes of narrative.
The producer was thrilled with the story. The director, however, was not. I'd drifted too far from her original idea. It wasn't going to work. There was no reason to try to convince her that this script was a stronger project. If you've ever helped make a script into a movie, you know that the director has to be 100% engaged in it. There's no reason to make something you aren't deeply committed to. It's too much time, money and effort. It's too much stress.
So I sat down with the director, and we hashed out what works and what doesn't. And I learned a great deal. She had a strong sense of what she wanted. She knew how it looked in her head. She'd secured a few locations that I thought she wouldn't be able to get.
But as we spoke I realized something deeper. While I'd read and reread her story idea, I hadn't been able to read past my own assumptions about it. And as she spoke about the script idea, I realized I'd fallen in to the trap of writing for accessibility and entertainment.
The director wanted something more challenging. There wasn't to be a neat little plot escalation. She wanted the audience to make the jumps between scenes for themselves. She wanted the visuals to tell the story more than the conflict. The story was set immediately after the break up. So I'd decided it was a break up story. It's not. It's about people searching for themselves when their assumptions about themselves have been stripped away. Suddenly it all made sense.
She had an aesthetic worked out that supported the whole story idea. Once I understood it, I fell in love with the idea.
There's good news here for me. It looks like I'll get two short scripts made instead of one. I've made new contacts and moved my career forward. But beyond that -- I learned a little humility. It's easy to look to your training or your experience and think you can solve any problem by spiffing up the three-act structure or honing the character's misbehavior.
But the world is bigger than that. Storis are wilder than that. And thank god for that.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Acting is Ecstasy
I used to be a stage actor years ago. For some reason I was thinking of a particular performance today, and I thought I'd blog about it.
The play was Angels in America by Tony Kushner. It's a pretty magnificent ensemble play about AIDS and the mysteries that lie at the base of American culture. The central character is Prior Walter, a gay man whose descent into sickness leads him to ecstatic, terrible visions and an unwelcome kind of prophethood. I played his lover Louis, who runs away from him when the sickness becomes too much to deal with.
I didn't care for the actor playing Prior Walter at all. He seemed too young. He wouldn't take the role seriously. I remember him in the dressing room on the night of the last performance, yakking on about whatever would annoy the rest of the cast. At one point, as he put a fake Kaposi's Sarcoma (an AIDS-related skin cancer) on his arm with purple magic marker, I nearly told him to shut up and let me concentrate. He was just one of those guys, and it was hard to play his lover.
We went out for a scene that takes place after my grandmother's death. We're talking across each other, every comment a barb or play for dominance. And I used that energy -- that 'shut up' energy -- letting it seep into the sadness about my dead grandmother. Before I knew what was happening, I was more caught up in the role than ever before.
And that night when Prior Walter pulled up his sleeve, I didn't see purple magic marker at all. I saw a horrific cancerous lesion. I don't know how to describe it. It was real. I burst into tears, and while we screamed at each other, we also looked into each other's eyes and started to cry together. The closest thing I could compare it to is descriptions of possession in voodoo rituals. Something just came over and took control of me -- the spirit of this character. There's a lot written about this. There's a lot written drawing parallels between voodoo and Greek drama.
Why am I telling you this? Because it's been too long talking about conceit and character misbehavior and all these other manipulable terms that make screenwriting seem more accessible. What we need to remember is that there's magic here: in writing as in acting.
Conflict in a script allows the actor to channel conflict from his life into the art. He turns structure into dramatic energy. Character misbehavior and goal bring conflict inside a character. They set up a dynamic which allows an actress to enter in and explore. Conflict allows the muse to descend.
There's something easier and purer about acting than writing for me. You simply practice and practice until the character knows where to go. Then you let the character take over. I still wish I had time to devote to the craft.
It's ecstasy to find a few words that invoke a spirit in the minds and hearts of a reader. If you've ever seen a character become real, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't yet, take a moment to remember what all the screenwriting 101 terms are really about. Writing, especially screenwriting, isn't about what happens on the page. It's a magical process that brings art to life (and vice versa). It's an ecstatic process, and so you need to dare yourself to feel some ecstasy every now and again.
The play was Angels in America by Tony Kushner. It's a pretty magnificent ensemble play about AIDS and the mysteries that lie at the base of American culture. The central character is Prior Walter, a gay man whose descent into sickness leads him to ecstatic, terrible visions and an unwelcome kind of prophethood. I played his lover Louis, who runs away from him when the sickness becomes too much to deal with.
I didn't care for the actor playing Prior Walter at all. He seemed too young. He wouldn't take the role seriously. I remember him in the dressing room on the night of the last performance, yakking on about whatever would annoy the rest of the cast. At one point, as he put a fake Kaposi's Sarcoma (an AIDS-related skin cancer) on his arm with purple magic marker, I nearly told him to shut up and let me concentrate. He was just one of those guys, and it was hard to play his lover.
We went out for a scene that takes place after my grandmother's death. We're talking across each other, every comment a barb or play for dominance. And I used that energy -- that 'shut up' energy -- letting it seep into the sadness about my dead grandmother. Before I knew what was happening, I was more caught up in the role than ever before.
And that night when Prior Walter pulled up his sleeve, I didn't see purple magic marker at all. I saw a horrific cancerous lesion. I don't know how to describe it. It was real. I burst into tears, and while we screamed at each other, we also looked into each other's eyes and started to cry together. The closest thing I could compare it to is descriptions of possession in voodoo rituals. Something just came over and took control of me -- the spirit of this character. There's a lot written about this. There's a lot written drawing parallels between voodoo and Greek drama.
Why am I telling you this? Because it's been too long talking about conceit and character misbehavior and all these other manipulable terms that make screenwriting seem more accessible. What we need to remember is that there's magic here: in writing as in acting.
Conflict in a script allows the actor to channel conflict from his life into the art. He turns structure into dramatic energy. Character misbehavior and goal bring conflict inside a character. They set up a dynamic which allows an actress to enter in and explore. Conflict allows the muse to descend.
There's something easier and purer about acting than writing for me. You simply practice and practice until the character knows where to go. Then you let the character take over. I still wish I had time to devote to the craft.
It's ecstasy to find a few words that invoke a spirit in the minds and hearts of a reader. If you've ever seen a character become real, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't yet, take a moment to remember what all the screenwriting 101 terms are really about. Writing, especially screenwriting, isn't about what happens on the page. It's a magical process that brings art to life (and vice versa). It's an ecstatic process, and so you need to dare yourself to feel some ecstasy every now and again.
Mr. Gary Screening at SFWFF!
My San Francisco Bay Area readers might want to know that Mr. Gary on the Feedback Show, an experimental short I made with director Lise Swenson, will be screening as part of the SF Women's Film Festival!
It's screening in a program of experimental shorts along with a live video perfomance by Kerry Laitala at Oddball Film and Video, which is a pretty unique and wonderful space for film. It should be a tremendous evening. I'll be doing the Q&A, and I'd love to meet any scriptwrangler readers.
Here's the info:
Experimental Shorts Program
Saturday, April 12 at 7:30 PM
275 Capp St, between 17th and 18th streets
You need to email events@sfwff.com to reserve a ticket at the door. More info here.
Mr. Gary is one of the quirkiest, most visually arresting and challenging pieces I've ever worked on. Here's the basic storyline.
Flora, an elderly shut in, maintains careful control over the universe of her apartment, a glorious and phantasmagoric manifestation of her inner world. Flora shares this claustrophobic environment with her closest friends, the television and the radios, which seem to feed her most intimate thoughts and fears back to her -- sometimes affectionately, sometimes mischievously.
On this night, Flora repeats her bathing ritual and dons her best dress. Little does she know the center of her universe, the radio personality Mr. Gary of Mr. Gary on the Feedback Show, will be hosting a special call in edition which is to be broadcast live on TV. As forces from inside and outside her environment conspire to stop her from joining Mr. Gary, she finds the courage to pick up the telephone and re-establish order by creating her own transcendent feedback loop.
It's screening in a program of experimental shorts along with a live video perfomance by Kerry Laitala at Oddball Film and Video, which is a pretty unique and wonderful space for film. It should be a tremendous evening. I'll be doing the Q&A, and I'd love to meet any scriptwrangler readers.
Here's the info:
Experimental Shorts Program
Saturday, April 12 at 7:30 PM
275 Capp St, between 17th and 18th streets
You need to email events@sfwff.com to reserve a ticket at the door. More info here.
Mr. Gary is one of the quirkiest, most visually arresting and challenging pieces I've ever worked on. Here's the basic storyline.
Flora, an elderly shut in, maintains careful control over the universe of her apartment, a glorious and phantasmagoric manifestation of her inner world. Flora shares this claustrophobic environment with her closest friends, the television and the radios, which seem to feed her most intimate thoughts and fears back to her -- sometimes affectionately, sometimes mischievously.
On this night, Flora repeats her bathing ritual and dons her best dress. Little does she know the center of her universe, the radio personality Mr. Gary of Mr. Gary on the Feedback Show, will be hosting a special call in edition which is to be broadcast live on TV. As forces from inside and outside her environment conspire to stop her from joining Mr. Gary, she finds the courage to pick up the telephone and re-establish order by creating her own transcendent feedback loop.
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