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Keep his
identity secret!(Ed. Note: There’s nothing good to report on the state of our contract—and by “good” I mean both “interesting” and “positive”—and as I’m pretty busy shooting the movie, I’m turning the blog over to a long-time friend and pro writer, Jacob Sager Weinstein, who most notably wrote for The Dennis Miller Show back when it aired on HBO, and is now an author. Sadly, unlike Dennis, Jacob’s a big lefty, but I still love him. Here’s his essay on his experiences working as a cross-platform writer.)

I know what you’re thinking.

You’re thinking, “I really don’t want to know about the serious labor unrest that could change the face of the entertainment industry. No, what I really want to know is, how does writing a radio script for the BBC compare to co-writing a series of tongue-in-cheek government manuals?”

Well, today is your lucky day, If you’re reading this, it means Craig has finally decided that paying attention to his stewardship of a gazillion-dollar movie franchise is maybe a little more important than posting updates on his blog, and he’s temporarily handed over the reigns of the Artful Writer to his buddies.

Unlike some of the other guest posters he’s lined up, I can’t tell you how to be phenomenally successful in any one kind of writing. But while I’ve never been a Ted-Elliott-level success in any single field, I’ve nonetheless managed to break into a lot of them. I’ve been a staff writer for a TV show, I’ve sold a film script, I’ve co-authored three published books, I’ve been on staff at a (non-fiction) magazine, and I’ve done some freelaance writing for various humor magazines as well. So if I can’t tell you a vast amount about any one of those fields, I can, at least, tell you a little about each.

Having tried my hand in all these fields, the one general rule I’ve been able to deduce is this:

The more money is at stake, the more nervous people get. And the more nervous people get, the less they trust the writer.

With that in mind, let’s move from most-money-at-stake to least.

Film: There’s no way I could come up with any broad insight about film that Craig and/or Ted haven’t already expressed with vastly more eloquence and authority. But speaking from a strictly personal point of view, the most significant thing about film is how slow a process it is, and how much of it is out of the writer’s hands. In 2004, I was hired to do three drafts of a screenplay adaptation. From the time I signed the contract to the time I handed in my third draft, the process took about two years—an average of eight months per draft. Yet it only takes me about one month to write a draft. So what was going on the other seven months? Well, I was off working on other projects while the producer got notes from the director, got notes from his financiers, thought about his own notes, and arranged a time when he, the director and I could all sit down and discuss everybody’s notes. Plus he was no doubt doing other producery stuff, like chasing down financing.

On the one hand, that two-year process gave us all a lot of time to think about how to best turn the novel into a workable screenplay. On the other hand,it could also have given everybody time for a lot of second-guessing and over-thinking. (Fortunately, from the very beginning, there’s been a respected and strong-willed director attached to the project, so I haven’t had to contend with a dozen competing artistic visions.)

TV: The good news is, TV is much faster than film.

The bad news is, TV is much faster than film.

It’s good news because you can write something on Wednesday and have it shot on Thursday. And it’s good news because the fast turnaround gives non-writers much less time to muck around with your work. Oh, you will get rewritten, but it will be by the showrunner—a fellow writer, and quite possibly the guy who created the show in the first place. And you’ll probably be in the room when it happens. All this makes you feel much more like a driving force, and much less like a tiny cog in a vast machine.

But the speed of TV is bad news because it gives you much less time for polishing. If you write something on Wednesday and shoot it on Thursday, and then on Friday think of a much funnier punchline… Well, it’s too damn late. You’re already on to the next episode.

Radio: This one takes some explanation. In America, radio is reserved for talk shows and for music. But the UK still makes sitcoms and dramas—what we in the US would call “old-time radio shows.”

As you can imagine, it’s much cheaper to make a radio show than a TV show. So the BBC often uses its radio stations as a lab to try out ideas that may or may not become TV shows. This video clip, for example, comes from a TV show called “That Mitchell & Webb Look,” which started off as a radio show called “That Mitchell & Webb Sound.”

I wish this path existed in the US—a radio show is much cheaper to produce than a TV show, which makes everybody less nervous about taking creative risks. The radio show I sold to the BBC, for example, was a Dickensian sitcom, which is not the kind of thing you regularly see on primetime. I originally pitched it as a TV series, but it was quirky enough that they wanted to try it as a radio show, first. That wasn’t what I had hoped for when I pitched to them—but it was far better than an outright pass.

The other advantage of radio is that all special effects cost the same amount, which means my pilot script could feature start with an instance of spontaneous human combustion and end with an avalanche, all without breaking the bank.

The disadvantage of radio? There’s just not much money in it. I had to work just as hard crafting the characters and storylines of my radio pilot as I would have for a TV pilot, but for much less money.

Books: We’re now at the very bottom of the cost spectrum. Publishers don’t have to hire actors or sound technicians, and they don’t have to pay sets. They also don’t have to pay writers too much; generally speaking, an advance of about $10,000 would be fairly typical for an unknown first-time book author. That’s a fraction of WGA minimum for a script sale.

And you’re writing for a smaller audience, too. There are currently more than 80,000 copies of my books in print, which is a decent number for a print author. Yet it’s about a tenth of the viewership figures of the lowest-rated primetime TV show.

So why write books?

Because with much less money at stake, people get much less nervous. And that makes them much more willing to trust the writer.

Which means that once you sell your book, you’ll have all the time you need to write and revise it, with very little interference. (In fact, some authors feel they don’t get enough interference; Maxwell Perkins-style hands-on editor are rare nowadays.) You don’t have to navigate notes from a half-dozen different sources. You have no fear of being replaced, no need to delete your best scenes because you couldn’t get a location. Your ideas and your words just ride a river of paper straight into your readers’ brains.

And there’s one other thing that must make writing books look especially attractive to my fellow Guild members nowadays:

You never have to go on strike.

Had a great first day, and a friend suggested that I briefly mention whether or not I’m taking a “film by” credit on the movie.

After all, I’m not just the director, but the writer too. So c’mon, written and directed by the same guy? I’m the auteur dammit! So I should take the possessory credit, right?

Wrong.

I’m taking a directing credit and a writing credit. But the film is by all of us. Me, the DP, the editor, the grips, the costume designers, hair, makeup, craft services……everyone. I’d be nowhere without the crew. I’m part of the crew. We’re a team. No us…no movie.

Of course, this opinion isn’t too popular among the DGA folks. And I just joined the DGA.

Meaning that I’m probably now pissing people off in two unions.

Eh.

All in a day’s work.

By and large, our big announcement yesterday was met with support from the writer community (or, at least, the writers who spoke up). Still, there were some criticisms.

The criticisms/questions from various commenters are as follows, with my responses following.

Does this deal make it more difficult for non-deal writers to make a deal with Fox, in the short term at least? Will other writers now feel they should form a similar group?

No to the first question. Remember, Fox is a major studio with multiple divisions (20th Century, Fox Atomic, Fox 2000, New Regency, Fox Searchlight), and they probably develop dozens of, scores of…maybe a hundred?…new projects every year.

We’re going to account for nine scripts over the course of four years. That’s barely a dent. Even if all nine got made and they all got made in 2010, Fox would still need many many more scripts just to fill their pipeline for that year.

I don’t think there’s a necessity to form co-ops simply because we did or the Wells group did. Obviously, I think there’s a tremendous advantage to them, but these things live and die on the market strength of the collectives that form them.

Best advice on that sort of thing comes to me from Michael Eisner, via David Zucker.

“You can get what you can get.”

Now that you A-listers have lowered your up-front price, should I be worried that the majors will no longer want to go out with me?

No. Again, it’s for 9 scripts. Since it’s over four years, and since most of us work on more than one project a year, feel free to assume that we will each be extorting our usual fees from various studios on assignments, production work, page one rewrites, etc. As such, we can’t possibly soak up a significant amount of work.

Furthermore, this is for our original screenplays. You couldn’t get that “job” anyway, because it’s not a job. It’s our script. It’s not like we just cut a deal to adapt every D.C. comic title or something. None of us had a chance at getting that plum “Write the movie Go” assignment, because John August generated it.

Have you really been yearning to write original material all these years but hesitated pending a really insanely lucrative deal?

This is strange. The commenter seems concerned that none of us are big on writing original stuff, i.e. screenplays not based on underlying material (e.g. remakes, book adaptations, rewrites, etc.)

Like how I worked in i.e., e.g. and etc. all in one sentence?

Anyway, this criticism is based on a faulty premise. My first two movies were from original screenplays. The movie I’m shooting this fall is an original screenplay. John broke into the business with “Go,” which is one of the more celebrated specs out there, and just directed “The Nines” from his original screenplay. Terry recently had a humongous spec sale with Deja Vu (along with Bill Marsilii). Stuart Beattie wrote Collateral…another original. Simon Kinberg wrote Mr. & Mrs. Smith…another very successful original.

Oh, and Michael Arndt is the reigning Oscar winner for original screenplay, for Little Miss Sunshine.

Tim Herlihy’s credits are almost entirely originals. Six, count ‘em, six original screenplays starring Adam Sandler.

I could go on, but I think you get the point.

Given the current studio environment with its emphasis on “branded” material—comics, remakes, sequels, etc.—do you really think there’s going to be a serious payoff from untested original material?

Absolutely. Not all brands pre-exist the movies. Matrix, anyone?

There was an article in Variety recently that pointed out what a high percentage of hits actually came from original screenplays. They’re still making Indiana Jones films. They’re still making Rocky and Rambo films. I suspect we haven’t seen the last of The Matrix either. If you look at the top 25 grossing films of 2006, 16 of them are either from original screenplays or are sequels to movies from original screenplays.

What do you think this type of deal means for the (currently on-hold) WGA negotiations? It seems to me these deals have the potential to weaken the WGA by splintering the established A-list writers with all their clout from the rest of the rank and file.

I don’t think this deal will have any effect on WGA negotiations. I don’t see any potential to weaken the Guild at all. How are we splintered from the rest of the rank and file? If the WGA goes on strike, we’re bound by the union to strike with them. We can’t work for Fox during a strike. I don’t see how this deal is any different than any overscale deal I make in terms of its impact on union solidarity.

I have read your blog many times and enjoyed it. I always thought you believed in the solidarity of the WGAw. Now, I see you’re undercutting our collective bargaining position.

That’s obviously not true. “Undercutting” is the act of accepting working conditions lower than those set as a basic minimum for guild members. We’re doing the opposite.

As I said, I’ve read your blog and I know you can weave an intelligent argument to defend your position. But it will now fall on deaf ears for those other guild members who see this for what it is. Can you imagine union workers in other unions negotiating a separate deal for themselves? They would no longer be part of the union.

Well, I have news for ya, pal. I got a congratulatory email expressing appreciation for what we did for writers with this deal from Patric Verrone, the President of the WGAw. You know, the guy I’m always fighting with? As such, I can only assume that he’s not one of those “guild members who see this for what it is.”

Not only does making a “separate deal” not exclude me from my union, but just about every member of the union I know makes a “separate deal.” The MBA has a clause, thank God, that expressly states that any member of the bargaining unit is free to make a deal with “better terms” than those in the MINIMUM basic agreement.

So any time someone writes for more than scale? Separate deal. Oh, how about this one? CREDIT BONUSES? Separate deal. Not in the MBA.

If I’m to follow your logic, then pretty much every single working screenwriter in the WGAw is, um, “no longer part of the union.”

I just don’t think this makes any sense at all.

Do you worry that the “can’t be rewritten” aspect of the deal will hurt you guys in terms of landing top directors (assuming you don’t direct the scripts yourselves, of course)?

No. Part of the criteria for this group was a sense that the writers were viewed as war-tested by the studios. We’ve all been through it with directors and producers and actors. Furthermore, we have every incentive to do what we can to write a movie rather than a screenplay.

Once the movie is greenlit, it ceases to be our movie, and it now becomes the studio’s film. We’re realists. We’re not looking to stand between a director and the shoot. Rather, we’re putting ourselves forward as partners.

Of course, if it’s not going well during development, we hold the gun.

I accept that all members negotiate their own contracts. I was just hoping that these writers would have asked for these “new” benefits for everyone at the negotiating table. I am not against “some getting better terms than others.” But the idea of the guild is for all to get better terms. That the floor goes up from everyone. Creative partnering with the studio would be great for every WGAw writer.

Huh? That’s cloud cuckoo land stuff. Look, this is a really important distinction to make.

The WGA’s job is to raise the floor for writers.

We just raised the ceiling for writers.

Two very different things.

As for the reason we didn’t negotiate on behalf of all writers? That’s easy.

We have no authority to do so. We couldn’t even if we really really wanted to.

The only institution authorized by law to collectively bargain on behalf of screenwriters is the Guild. As such, this criticism holds no water.

Fox steps up…So the wait was pretty short, huh? Man, these stupid internets make news delivery nearly instantaneous.

We’ve gone and put words into action. For a few years, I’ve been preaching a philosophy, a religion. The tune is simple. Screenwriters should be filmmaking partners with their studios.

And what does that mean? Well, in a double nutshell….

• Creative authority to match our creative responsibility
• Rewards to match our investment in the film

I’m happy to announce that we’ve made some huge strides toward these ends today.

For the Variety coverage, go here, and for the L.A. Times you can go here, but I suggest that the best review of what we and Fox have done is right here at John August’s site.

John does an excellent job of running down the details, so I won’t get redundant. I will say that I’m thrilled and humbled to be part of this group of writers. The Writing Partners are:

• Michael Arndt
• Simon Kinberg
• Stuart Beattie
• Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio
• Me
• Cormac & Marianne Wibberley
• Derek Haas & Michael Brandt
• John August
• Tim Herlihy

Obviously, this group is exceptional, and none of us could have done this on our own. I do want to single out a few people for special recognition. Ted Elliott and I started talking about this idea a few years ago, so that was the genesis. John Wells broke serious ground at Warner Brothers, and in many ways we’re drafting in his wake.

Finally, John August was a fantastic organizational and pitching partner. That menschy vibe you get off his blog is the real deal.

All of the agents and lawyers did a great job, but our point people were David Kramer at UTA, Todd Feldman at CAA and Ken Richman (John’s attorney). On the Fox side, it was Emma Watts’, Alex Young’s and Tom Rothman’s enthusiasm that differentiated them from our other suitors.

Okay, Oscarish speech over. So…what does this mean?

The way this deal works, both we and Fox are betting on optimism. They’re betting that we’re going to deliver movies they want to make, and we’re betting…well…we’re betting on the same thing.

If our movies don’t get made there, our only guaranteed compensation is an amount much lower than our normal fees. If our movies do get made there, it’s quite likely that we will, as individuals, reap a greater reward as writers than pretty much any writers before us.

For that, I’m thankful to Fox and to the writers with whom I’m sharing this deal. Sure, Writopia may still be a dream, but we (and Fox) just got a little closer.

I was going to write another article about the state (or non-state) of WGA-AMPTP negotiations, but that’s going to be preempted.

We’ve got big news coming.

Not just me.

Someone else you know.

And another person you know.

And maybe some people you’ve heard of.

Watch this space.

I’ve got a few articles I’ve been planning to write, but sometimes a better idea comes along and you have to roll with it. Pro writer Derek Haas suggested that I write about how we get paid, what the various terms and methods mean, and how we can expect success or failure to impact it all.

Good idea. Frankly, I had no idea what anything meant when I started, so I hope that some of you find this of value.

There are a few basic ways to get paid as a screenwriter. You can option literary material, you can sell literary material, you can pitch an idea, or you can be hired on an assignment.

Options don’t do technically fall under the WGA’s jurisdiction. Options are just rental agreements. The optioner pays the optionee a fee that grants the option the exclusive right to “set up” the project at a studio (typically as a producer). The writer will then sell the literary material to the studio.

If you sell a script, the studio has to pay you scale. “Scale” is just a term for the basic minimum amount. Right now, if you sell an original screenplay for a “big budget” film (a film that costs more than $5,000,000), scale is roughly $77,000 (including one additional rewrite step). You can learn about all of the various minimums here.

Minimums aside, however, most writers work above scale.

A typical deal for a pitch or assignment works like this…you’re paid your “quote” (your going rate) for a draft and a set of revisions (aka a second draft, often shortened to “set”). In addition, the studio will typically detail optional steps they can trigger if they desire. So, if your deal is, say, $500,000 for an original, you’ll get paid $500,000 for two drafts, but the studio might hold an option for another set for $150,000 and a polish for $75,000. If they want it, that’s what they’ll pay (and you have to write it, pending your availability). If they don’t want those optional steps, they don’t have to pay that money out.

Then there’s the credit bonus. Most writing deals include a bonus for sole screenplay credit and a reduced bonus for shared screenplay credit (I’ve never heard of anyone getting a bonus for story credit).

That’s where all this “X against Y” stuff comes in.

If your quote is $500,000 against $1,000,000, that means you get paid $500,000 for those first two drafts. If you get sole screenplay credit on the movie, you’ll get an additional $500,000 to get you to the $1,000,000.

Shared credit bonuses are typically half the sole credit bonus.

When working on deals, it’s always important to know what’s applicable against the bonus and what isn’t. For instance, the optional steps are almost always considered applicable, meaning that if you’re $500,000 against $1,000,000 and the studio pays you an additional $225,000 for optional steps, that optional money cuts into the rest of the money they owe you if you get sole credit. In this case, instead of getting $500,000 to get to the million, you’d only get $275,000 in bonus money (because you’ve been paid $500 + $225 already, and 500+225+275=1M).

Therefore, once you work beyond the initial quote work and optional steps, it’s critical to ensure that new payments are not applicable against the bonus, because you never want to be in a situation where working more doesn’t get you more.

Many writers will do an “all services deal” once the film heads into production. The all services deal is a flat payment that covers all the writing the film requires until release. All services deals should always be non-applicable against the bonus, and they should be made with care. Some kind of time limit on them is usually advised, in case a film drags on and on.

Payments are typically made for commencement and delivery, with a 2/3 - 1/3 split being ideal, i.e. you get 2/3rds of the money for a particular deal step when you’re told to commence writing, and the remaining 1/3 when you turn in the draft.

All services deals are typically tied to production milestones, e.g. you get 40% at the start of prep, 40% at start of principle photography and 20% upon completion of the film.

Unfortunately, studios are infamous for “late pay.” Writers will turn in drafts and be forced to wait weeks for payment. Or, as was the case on my first job, writers are hired and told to commence writing, but even the starting payment is held up for weeks.

My easy answer on late pay is that no writer need suffer it. My position has always been “I start when I’m paid” and “I turn in my draft when I’m paid.” Simple as that. The studio likes to say they can’t officially pay commencement until a longform contract is signed, but that’s baloney. A deal memo and certificate of authorship is all that’s required.

As far as quotes go, rewriting usually pays less on a quote basis than original work. The basic rule of thumb is that a rewrite gig should earn you about 75% of your quote for an original gig.

Of course, there’s the highly-desired weekly gig, which is a whole ‘nother thing. Weeklies are when studios hire writers on a week-to-week basis, almost always for production writing. Weekly rates tend to be quite high. The studio will always try and finagle the writer toward a polish if they think one week will turn into three or four.

That’s the tug of war that makes dealmaking so much, um….fun.

So, once you have a quote, how do you improve it (or get a “bump” in the industry parlance)?

There are three basic ways to get a bump. First, sell a pitch or spec in some kind of competitive situation (more than one interested buyer). Second, write a draft that gets a green light. Third, get screenplay credit on a film that performs at the box office or earns awards.

Some basic guidelines for what writers earn. Note that these groups exclude spec sales, which, at some point, no longer affect a quote in a specific way (for instance, Rossio & Marsilii’s $5M sale for Deja Vu doesn’t mean that their quote for an original is $5M, although I think they’re both doing just fine…)

Baby Writers: No, not my term, but commonly used around town to denote writers who are either very fresh to the business or who have little experience working. Typical quote is 100 against 250.

Typical Writers: They’ve sold scripts, maybe had a movie or two made, maybe it didn’t do so well, but they’re definitely in the game. Typical quote is 300 against 600.

Known Commodities: These are writers who have multiple credits, a number of fans at studios, a good track record and a hit to their name. Typical quote is 700 against a million.

A List: These writers have hits to their names, and are known to deliver the goods for the studio. They almost always have a few key relationships with top shelf actors, directors or producers. Typical quote is $1-1.5M against $2-2.5M.

Marquee Writers: Rarified air here. You’re talking about a pretty small number of writers who aren’t employees as much as investments. They earn more than most directors do. To be in this group, you’ll need a quote of two million against…well…more. Three million? Something like that.

I’m sure I’ve left out plenty. And it’s quite likely that people have different views on some of this stuff (particularly the last part). Lemme know what you think.

He’ll never get to use an iPhoneA lot of people in the business ask me how it is that I find time to run this blog and our forums, when I’ve got deadlines and family commitments and the rest of life bearing down on me.

Frankly, I don’t know. For instance, right now it’s just about 11:30 PM Pacific time, and I’ve got at least another two hours of writing ahead of me.

I’m bleary.

And so, I turn to this as respite.

By the way, if you don’t understand why a writer tired of writing would write in order to take a break from writing, then you may not be a writer.

Admittedly, part of my bleariness is because instead of writing what I needed to yesterday, I spent time getting and setting up my new iPhone.

Before I add to the infinite instareviews available to you on the internet, I’ve finally got my working theory about the ending of The Sopranos.

Yeah, I know. Old news. But I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and I’m not sure anyone else has forwarded this theory yet. I’m sure someone will dig up a link to something similar.

Like everyone, my first reaction to the final moment of the final episode was “Oh God, my TiVo…” Then I sort of reeled into a bit of shock. A bit of shock. It’s still a TV show, after all. Nonetheless, Chase managed to completely surprise everyone.

The quick theories were: it’s a meaningless surprise for surprise’s sake, Tony dies, it’s a cliffhanger for a movie…

I don’t think so.

I don’t think Chase invested so much time and energy and transparent deliberation into the final scene just to lead up to a “Ha ha, here’s something you never expected, it doesn’t mean anything but at least I didn’t do any of the dumb crap you predicted” moment. It just doesn’t seem within his creative character.

I don’t think Tony was killed. Yes, Chase wanted to ratchet up the tension to lead to what might be a whacking (and more on why when I get to my theory), but if the cut to black signifies Tony’s death, then why cut out on his face? Shouldn’t it cut to black off his POV?

Cliffhanger for a movie? That’s just dumb. An uncompromising master like Chase isn’t going to pimp his entire series out just to set up a first scene in some theoretical film that might or might not happen.

So why?

Why did Chase do that?

My theory.

Remember when Carmela saw her own therapist for a single session, back in the 3rd season? A blunt man, he basically told Carmela that her problems weren’t psychological as much as they were crassly circumstantial: she’s married to a ruthless killer, and all of the money Carmela spends is blood money. The only advice a reasonable person can give is to take the kids and get away from Tony.

That was the truth.

Still, season after season, we the audience found ourselves rooting for Tony, particularly when inter-mob stories were introduced.

In the final season, Chase begins to really hammer home just how pathetic and evil Tony is. Tony kills Christopher. Tony celebrates Christopher’s death. Tony turns a session about A.J. into a whine-fest about himself. Tony cheats on his wife for the millionth time. Tony thinks about killing Pauly because he’s getting old and mouthy.

And yet, the audience (and by audience, I mean me and apparently many others) were mostly interested in how he’d make his way out of the mess with New York.

Would Tony win?

Chase seemed to recognize this. The federal agent once assigned to Tony but now on a terrorism beat apparently shared our problem. He slips Tony info to use in Tony’s war with Phil. “We might win this one!”

We?

As awful as Chase made Tony, we kept loving him. When Chase would scold us for loving him, we would nod, then love him some more.

We’re Carmella.

And our marriage to the show was a bad one. It had to end, because Tony isn’t a good guy, he doesn’t deserve our respect, and frankly, we shouldn’t give a damn what happens to a sociopath like him.

I think Chase’s finale ending was a message to the audience, and a bit of a punishment as well.

“You want to know what’s going to happen? Will he die? Is this just another day in his miserable life? Will he run the whole mob? You know what? Screw you. I’m not telling you. In fact, I’m pulling the plug on this relationship in the most vicious, unsatisfying manner just to rub your nose in your own sick need to care about this jerk.”

That’s my theory about Chase’s intention.

Tony’s intention? That’s easy. He picked it on the jukebox. “Don’t stop believing.”

Those are his last words to us. “Don’t stop.”

But Chase hit “stop” anyway, because Tony is a bad man, and we should take our TiVos and get as far away from him as possible.

So…that’s the old.

Here’s the new.

The iPhone is AWESOME. It’s everything Apple promised, and then some. If you can afford it, buy it. If you appreciate elegance in technology, buy it. If people say, “I don’t get it, it’s just a phone, Apple’s a cult, blah blah blah” then make a note that those people are idiots, and then get the iPhone.

It’s wonderful.

I’d write more about it, but it’s a quarter to midnight now.

And there are pages to go before I sleep.

Lewis in harmonyHopefully we’ve all gotten enough arguing done on this site as of late. Let’s get back to the stuff that really matters.

Like writing.

I want to talk about the concept of harmony within a scene. Lots of people come up with good ideas. A number of them come up with good stories for those ideas. Writing good scenes, however, seems to be a much rarer skill.

I consider a good scene to be its own movie. There’s a beginning, middle and end. There is conflict, crisis, resolution and cliffhanging. But above all, there is a harmony between the building blocks of the scene itself.

Those are?

• The internal life of the character(s)
• The relationship between the characters
• The relationship of the character(s) to the external circumstances of the story

These are your three instruments that must be played in each scene (unless the scene only features one person, in which case you’re down to two instruments).

(Side note: I don’t know if screenwriting teachers agree with me or not or so forth. This is how I look at stuff. Don’t write and tell me that I’m clashing with McKee or Truby. I’ve never read them, and more importantly, I don’t care.)

A classic rookie mistake is to write a scene with two or more characters that doesn’t use all three building blocks. The main character is realizing something about himself in the scene, and there’s an interesting thing happening between the two characters, but the scene doesn’t advance the story in any significant way, and if cut out of the film, wouldn’t be missed.

Or perhaps two characters are having a fight while accomplishing a plot point, but the fight isn’t internally relevant to the main character.

Let’s say, however, that you’ve got a scene that has all three tools working.

Are they working in parallel, or in sequence? Are the working in isolation, or in integration?

Are they harmonizing or simply playing their own tunes?

Rather than intellectualize this concept, I’m going to ask you to read a scene by a real master of the craft. Scott Frank wrote this scene for his film The Lookout. After considering how to best present this scene in the context of this web page, I opted for maximum laziness and just embedded the PDF. This should work in Safari for Mac and Firefox and IE for PC. If you need the Adobe Reader plugin, go here.

(Actually, since people were having issues with the plugin, it’s now just a direct link)

Here’s the backstory you need before reading the scene (and spoilers apply, of course). LEWIS, played by Jeff Daniels, lives with the main character, Chris Pratt. All we know about Lewis is that he’s blind and clearly more wise than the 20-something Chris, who suffers from accident-related brain damage. Lewis basically looks after Chris. He even cooks his meals for him.

LUVLEE, played by Isla Fisher, has been sleeping with Chris, but what we know is that she’s really the girlfriend of another guy who is using Chris to rob a bank. Chris has told Lewis that Luvlee is his girlfriend, but he hasn’t told Lewis anything about the plan to rob the bank.

Luvlee has just slept over at Chris and Lewis’ apartment for the first time. It’s the middle of the night…

Click here for the scene.

Okay.

So let’s talk about how these pages epitomize harmony in scenecraft.

On the first page, we learn that Luvlee is a stripper, or at least used to be one. But instead of coming out and telling us, we learn this fact by way of Lewis’ internal character. It’s his blindness…and the attendant qualities of being blind…that allow him to draw the conclusion we hadn’t yet made, and thus pull something out of Luvlee that neither she, nor any other character, nor the plot itself, had yet managed to do. Meanwhile, she’s immediately thrown off guard by Lewis from the very beginning of the scene. Here’s a blind man she didn’t see…and he’s immediately seeing right through her. So who’s blind?

All on page one. Note that we’re enjoying all three axes of scenecraft working in harmony. His character pulls out plot which sets the tone of the relationship…and there are no seams showing yet.

Now…page two.

Here, we watch as Lewis and Luvlee settle into a wrestling match. Page one was just the warning shot. Lewis has announced to Luvlee that he sees more than most people. And Luvlee, with her casual “Wow. You hear about that…”, has decided that playing the dumb stripper act is probably the best strategy here to avoid revealing too much. Of course, we’ve also learned something internal about Lewis, which is that he’s not yet willing to reveal anything about his blindness. Why? And why is Luvlee lying to him? These internal and interrelational elements are working together in service to unearth a nugget of external, or plot, information.

Lewis tries the head-on approach. She clams up. He shows his cards when he asks about Gary, confirming Luvlee’s suspicions (and note…the fact that Luvlee was suspicious before Gary asks is an intentional choice in and of itself!), and she not only keeps her silence, but goes on the attack.

She decides to figure out just whom she’s dealing with here. Is Lewis a brother? A father? Just how protective of Chris is he? Is this just curiosity, or is Lewis a danger? So she smartly turns the tables on him, revealing both to Lewis and the audience a heretofore unestablished caginess. As she interrogates Lewis, her character transforms from a dingy moll into a much smarter cookie. Hell, not just smart, but a bit dangerous.

“Maybe your only friend?”

Ouch. And she was so sweet just a moment ago…

Now Lewis realizes he’s not dealing with some airhead stripper he can push around. This is a real human being in front of him who’s smart enough to hear what he has to say.

He has a goal in this scene: protect Chris. That’s plot.

In order to achieve his plot goal, he has to reveal something about his internal character. His hope is that the truth of his internal character will change the relationship between him and Luvlee, and that in turn will help save Chris.

And so, Lewis reveals how he was blinded.

And folks, that’s all in two pages.

When people talk about “tight” writing, this is what they mean. Everything’s beautifully interlaced. The elements are affecting each other and looping back around. Oh, and take note…the quality of the dialogue itself is almost secondary. Dialogue doesn’t have to be sparkling in and of itself. It just has to be properly chosen in order to achieve the harmony you need in your purposeful scene.

Now, let’s go on to page three.

We already knew Lewis was a cook, but now we come to learn that Lewis was a cook. The implication between them now is that some people cook stuff up, and other people eat it. You know…there’s con artists and suckers…and that’s the world.

When Lewis asks “What are y’all cookin’, sweetheart?” he’s not just asking, “What are you and Gary up to?” He’s saying, “I was one of you, so come clean.” When you layer significances, the scene becomes more compelling. Harmony.

Trapped like a rat, Luvlee becomes petulant. See, once Lewis tells her he used to be a meth cook, she realizes that this blind glimp can probably read her mind. They’re of the same tribe. She briefly tries a new tactic…the “saint” who wants to help Chris, but even she knows that’s not going to hold up.

So she switches to a new strategy…which is denial and then anger. And with each new strategic switch, she reveals more and more that her internal voice is guilty, guilty, guilty of a crime. In this case, the interpersonal starts to reveal the personal, and once Lewis has her on the ropes, he attempt to actualize his goal.

“So tonight, in the dark, let me help you out and ask it again: what are you doing here?”

Lewis doesn’t ever say “You’re using Chris.” Nor does he say, “I’ll go to the police.” Nor does he say, “I’ll kill you if you hurt my friend.” Nor does he ever find out what Luvlee is even up to.

What he asks of Luvlee is simply this: “What are you doing here?”

His internal revelation has changed the interpersonal dynamic to reveal something about her internal state which leads him to the best strategy to achieve his external goal.

And that strategy is clearly guilt. He’s trying to guilt her into letting Chris off her perfumed hook for whatever it is she and her boyfriend Gary are trying to pull.

Three and a half pages.

The scene isn’t great because of the information revealed or the relationship between Luvlee and Lewis or the internal truths of their characters.

It’s great because of the way those elements all worked in harmony.

And it’s the harmony that makes good writing great.

The smoking thread is easily the most populated we’ve ever had, and the software’s getting rather pokey digesting each added comment (I’m sure you’ve noticed).

Use the comments for this entry to continue the debate. I’m closing comments in the other one so that the whole site doesn’t bog down.

Update: I just received the following email from my assistant.

“The smoking thread is easily the most populated we’ve ever had…”

Wow. That is so great Craig - the most poopulatd thread you EVER had - how ever did you come up with the idea?

If I’m not mistaken, you promised me a mention in the article…and yet, none exists.

Hmmmm. I see how you are.

THANK YOU, Jacq. Lesko, who definitely gave me the idea to write about this. You are my everything, in spite of the word “poopulatd.” It was an excellent topic to suggest, and I appreciate it.

Poopulatd?

Like the old song goes, “Smoke gets in your eyes.”

It seems the MPAA is taking that quite literally. Recently, they decided to include on-screen depictions of smoking as one of the criteria that can earn a film an “R” rating.

I’ll take a somewhat unpopular (among Hollywood types) view on this.

I think it’s a good idea.

Naturally, most smoking in movies occurs as a general reflection of the fact of smoking itself. Smoking, like driving, is a part of visible life. However, movies have made something of a fetish of smoking for a few additional reasons. Actors are often looking for “business,” that catch-all word to describe hands-on activities that take the burden of undue focus off their dialogue.

Smoking is a great bit of business. Watch Bogie roll his own cig, then light it up in The Maltese Falcon. Great business.

And the reward?

The smoke itself.

Cigarette smoke is Hollywood’s cheapest special effect. It curls around the actor’s face. It lights beautifully. The simple act of taking a drag can shorthand misery, suspicion, anger…

Smoking is a great window to the soul, as visually informative as a smile or a tear. The way the actor exhales, the way they stub the cigarette out, the ritual of the “light,” the snap of a Zippo, the flick of the butt…

It’s all wonderful.

I don’t care what anyone says. Smoking DOES make you look cool, and movies make the already cool act of smoking even cooler-looking.

The one-sheet for Chinatown, which you see above, was illustrated by a friend of my named Jim Pearsall. It’s my favorite movie poster of all time, and that’s in no small part because Jim nailed the noirish essence of smoke. Jake Gittes is a man’s man, a tough private dick whose oxygen is the very stuff of smoggy L.A. And Evelyn Mulwray is a vision, a bit of smoke curling in the air. Beautiful, seductive…and then gone. Disappearing into the Chinatown air.

It’s movies like these that made me want to smoke. Yes, I’m actually someone who can safely say with 100% surety that I started smoking because of the way movies made smoking look. So did Jim Pearsall. In fact, that’s how Jim and I met. We were two smokers working at an ad agency in 1992. I’d stand outside sucking down my Marlboro Menthols (I know, I know…), and he’d rip the filters off his Carltons and tell me stories about old Hollywood.

Two years later, he was dead. Cancer, naturally.

The week before I got married, I quit smoking. I quit cold turkey, and I haven’t had a cigarette since 1996.

Still, is this a moral crusade we need?

Here’s my basic view of the MPAA and their ratings system. I don’t always agree with it. I know that I’ve personally had my share of issues with the MPAA on every movie I’ve done, and I have no doubt I’m in for plenty more. However, the MPAA ratings system is not censorship. The MPAA ratings system is designed to help parents figure out whether or not a movie is appropriate for their children. Simple as that.

We can argue about whether or not it does that well (although most parents apparently seem to think it does). I do know that every time I’ve gone in to recut a scene in order to avoid an R rating, I did so not under the threat of censorship, but out of a personal concern for my own bottom line. In other words…greed. I wanted a PG-13 so that the film would be seen by a wider audience, and I made the personal choice to sacrifice some moments in order to get that rating.

Even the dreaded NC-17 isn’t censorship. It’s just a rating. As an aside, however, I do believe that newspapers that refuse to run ads for NC-17 films and theaters that refuse to exhibit those movies are way out of line, and I think the MPAA should make a concerted effort to kill that practice…at least with the major newspaper and exhibitor chains.

Anyway…the operative question is simply this: do parents want their unaccompanied children to see a movie that glamorizes smoking? And yes, the ratings board seems pretty specific about the glamorization aspect. Context counts.

I’ll be honest. I don’t want my children to have that option. I was able to quit smoking, but I’m sure damage was done. It’s a risk I’d rather not leave to my children and the film industry to take together. I want to be a part of that decision. I’m not supporting the nanny state, nor am I attempting to legislate morality. An R rating doesn’t mean the film is evil, or it’s taboo, or it’s sinful or it’s shameful. It means that it includes certain content that parents should have the right to decide whether or not their children see.

I don’t agree with many of the criteria for R ratings (and I think there’s too much violence permitted in PG and PG-13 films), but I agree with the MPAA on this one. After all, I wasn’t just being an idiot when I decided to smoke.

I was being a 16 year-old idiot who had seen a lot of movies.

I accept responsibility for my choice as a child. As a parent, I’d like to accept responsiblity for the choice as well. The MPAA gave me one. I think that’s a good thing.

After last week’s wonkfest regarding the WGAw’s foreign levies program, I suspect of number of you passed out from boredom.

Forgiveness, please. Things will continue to get wonky around here as we get closer to negotiations and possible strikes, but that doesn’t mean it’s all doom and gloom.

For instance, this week I’m serving clams.

According to Jane Espenson, clams are one-liners or comic concepts that have gone stale from overuse. Now, that was a new one on me. I knew the term was used in music for a bum note, and for the ultimate usage in that context, one need only review a transcript of just one of Buddy Rich’s infamous rants at his band (in this excerpt, it’s the trombonist getting the brunt).

You’ve got your f—kin’ horn so far deep in the f—kin’ bell, we don’t need to have a band here tonight. You afraid you won’t be heard? Everybody can hear your f—kin’ clams out there. You don’t need a mike for that. You’re takin’ up too much f—kin’ time blowin’ what? Shit!! You stand out here all night tryin’ to blow your f—kin’ brains out… when it comes time to play, what do you play? Clams!! You got nowhere to f—kin’ go tonight the next set because if I hear one f—kin’ clam from anybody, you’ve had it! One clam and this whole f—kin’ band is through…tonight!!

Yeah, Buddy was a real sweetheart.

Anyway, anyone who writes comedy for a living has written a clam, but we all recognize that they’re awful, and so when we’re together in a room, we’re supposed to keep ourselves from using them. In my room, we usually call them “badump bumps,” but I think Jane’s got a better, clammier term.

Here’s a short list I came up with, as well as some additions from friends. Feel free to use the comments section to add your own. As for definitions, I’m pretty lenient. It could be a single line of dialogue, or it could be a setup and payoff.

Maybe if we shine enough light on these things, we can eliminate them from the world.

The Inside Voice: “I’m sorry…did I say that out loud?”

The Freudian Slip: “Hey, Carol, I see you’re wearing some new boobs…I mean boots!”

The “Mr.” Insult: “Oooh, check you out. Mr. Big Man! Mr. Crazy hat-wearing guy!”

The Nutty List: “All I know is I want to eat a steak, get laid, and play some golf…not necessarily in that order.”

Dante’s Clam: “This is the date from hell!”

Albert Hoffman’s Clam: “This is like Ice Capades on acid.”

The Apollo 13: “Houston, we have a problem.”

The Ignored: (as the character is being talked about) “I’m standing right here…”

The Fork-Dropper: “Check please!”

The Optimist: “Well, I thought that went pretty well…”

The Invisible Puke: “I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.”

The Dismissive Segue: “Anyway….” (typically after another character goes off on a long, complicated rant)

The Factory: This is a visual one. Someone gets hurt in a factory, and a worker flips the “Days Since An Accident” sign back to 0.

The Upward-Looking Rejoice: “Thank you, God!”

Okay, now it’s your turn, li’l clamsters. As they come in, I’ll cull and add your contributions here in the main article.

As promised, here are some new ones.

The Circulation: “I can’t feel my legs!”

The Contradiction: in response to a question like “Where were you last night?”, two guys say something like “At the office!”/”Playing golf!”

Someone Called: any form of “Patti LaBelle called. She wants her hairstyle back.”

The Stealthy Insultee: “He’s such a fat, stupid, idiotic—he’s right behind me, isn’t he?”

Excited Confusion: “Mom, Jared Leto is visiting my school tomorrow!” “Oh my God, honey, that is fantastic news!…….Who’s Jared Leto?”

The Translation: “Isn’t my dress great?” “Yes, if by ‘great’ you mean ‘nauseating’.”

The Countdown: “I’m leaving now, and I’m NEVER COMING BACK AGAIN!” The character exits, and a remaining character says “And 5, 4, 3, 2…” At which point the first character re-enters.

The Calculator: “You do the math.”

The Jerry Maguire: “You had me at Idiot” or “You had me at rectal thermometer” or some “comedic” version of “You had me at hello.”

The Thesaurus: “The meteor disintegrated!” “Yeah, and it blew up into a million pieces too!”

The Grocery Store: “Clean up on aisle 3!”

Like everyone else near a keyboard, I've grown accustomed to Wikipedia.

I should probably wean myself.

Every now and again I'll check the IMDB discussion boards on movies I'm working on. It's pretty fascinating, if only as a study in the global game of Telephone that is the internet. My favorite debates are the ones where someone insists loudly and arrogantly and with supreme confidence that "This movie will be Rated R! I know someone at the stuido!"…even though the movie was never going to be R.

And yes, spellings like "stuido" are part of the fun.

So today, when I skimmed the boards for Superhero!, I was excited to see that someone was trumping the debate by citing the ultimate internet authority. Off I went to see the movie's entry on Wikipedia.

Wowsers.

Let's go through it…

Superhero! is an action/comedy written by Craig Mazin and directed by David Zucker, and produced by Robert K. Weiss. The movie will spoof famous superhero films. It is distributed by The Weinstein Company. It is uncertain what the release date will be. Some sites confirmed that it will be released on March 21, 2008.

Boy, only thirteen words in, and they've already blown it. I'm directing, not David. I've always been directing. I've never not been directing. I'm also producing with Weiss and Zucker. We've shifted positions a little bit, but the same basic team behind SM3 and SM4 is still in place.

I do believe we are on the schedule for March 21, 2008, though, so good on them.

Now, here's the "purported plot."

Fabtopolis' greatest supervillain, a magician who goes by the pseudonym The Great Jim (Chris Elliot), has just kidnapped the city's mayor (Leslie Nielsen) and his wife (Anna Faris). Four of the world's most spectacular superheroes are called to the rescue: Beakman (Greg Giraldo) - the leader of the group, Squak (Eric Christian Olsen) - the wannabee, Cleara (Carla Gugino) - the see-through hero, and The Stoner (Ben Harr) - a loser who becomes a large stone monster when he gets high. The Great Jim is building a device that will allow him to sound like anybody in the world and this group of superheroes must stop him and save the mayor or the entire city will be destroyed.

As they race against time to defeat Jim, they team up with many other superheroes to try and take down Jim and his allies, including the dreaded Dock Cock (Kevin Mcdonald) and Mephistopheles (Adam Arkin).

Not bad. The only things they got wrong were everything. Every single thing. Insane.

Fabtopolis?

Anna Faris married to Leslie Nielsen?

Dock COCK?

Folks, I know I've disappointed some audiences in the past. Maybe myself too. But if I ever write anything that even remotely resembles the above, I'm eating a gun. Okay? Here's a hint…we never do "funny names." Ever.

Then they move on to a list of the movies we will be spoofing.

Superman film series
Batman film series
Fantastic Four film seriers
The Hulk (film)
Spider-Man film series
The Prestige
Daredevil (film)
Ghost Rider (film)

We're not really specifically spoofing anything. We're taking on the entire genre. However, I can assure you that the vast majority of the movies mentioned above aren't even getting casually referenced.

The Prestige???

Here's my favorite part. "History." This is the part that sounds like actual information!

It is currently unknown whether David Zucker or Craig Mazin will direct. According to some sites, the film was supposed to be originally released on February 7, 2007. However the film's real release date has been reported to be delayed to March 21, 2008.

It was confirmed on March 2, 2007, that Adam Campbell will reprise his Superman role from Epic Movie.

Many cast changes were announced on March 13, 2007. Big name actors such as Josh Lucas, Laura Kightlinger, and Joshua Jackson turned out to be actors "considered" for the roles, but not actually cast.

The producers have decided to go with actors that are more familiar to this type of film. They've gone with Anna Faris, Kevin McDonald, and Chris Elliot to replace the others.

It's currently known. I'm directing. It was "confirmed" about wha-huh now about Adam Campbell? I've never even met the guy. He's not in our movie, and he's not going to be in our movie. Nothing against him, but he belongs to a different brand of…well…whatever genre Epic Movie is. Yeah, I was totally considering "big name actors" like….Laura Kightlinger??? I actually think she's very funny…but "big name actress?"

No, none of the actors mentioned in the paragraph above have been considered for anything in this movie (YET…because we haven't really gotten into casting yet…that's coming up in just a few weeks). But why should that stop anyone? Here's the "cast of characters!"

Greg Giraldo - Theo Payne / Beakman
Carla Gugino - Cleara
Leslie Nielsen - Mayor Jogen
Anna Faris - Mrs. Jogen
Eric Christian Olsen - Mark Ockle / Squak
Ben Harr - The Stoner
Chris Elliot - The Great Jim
Fred Willard - Alfred
Adam Campbell - Superman
Kevin McDonald - Dock Cock
Lil' Kim - Betty Sue
Jonathon Martes - Spider-Man
Penny Ulrich - Lindsey
Lochlyn Munro - Daredevil
Shannon Elizabeth - Elektra
Adam Arkin - Mephistopheles
Xavier Reboir - Lex Lover

I'll go in order, giving you a "yes" or "no". Presume that a "no" is both to the actor and the character. A "yes" is a yes to both.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no and no.

Other than that, it's a really accurate entry.

Time for rebirth…Today is my 36th birthday. It’s also Jesus’ rebirthday. No, I’m not comparing myself to Jesus. And yes, I chose the picture because it’s so ridiculous.

I just love the idea of MEGAJESUS, looming over Earth like a hypoglycemic Galactus, pissed off at our stupidity and failure. He’s so angry, the back of his head has exploded outward, forming some awesome new nebula. The moon is this painting’s version of Jackie O., and it’s getting drenched in MegaJ’s cosmic brain splatter.

The tear rolling down The Boss’ cheek? That’s his burgeoning sense of retribution, the volume and pressure of which is so great it has begun leaking in liquid form from his improbably blue Jewish eye.

Just look at his brow. It’s telling you the entire story. That’s the brow of a man who is about to take a bite out of a planet.

But I digress…

I want to talk about endings and beginnings. Those of us who write are plagued and blessed at once by an overexposure to cycles. No, I don’t believe in reincarnation or the divinity of Jesus or some of the hippier notions about how we’re all one with Gaia, etc. I do, however, believe that all human experiences begin, then progress, and then end.

I’m a writer. I’m soaking in that. And because I write, I find myself constantly beginning stories, places, ideas, people, moments…then experiencing them progress…and then watching them end.

And when they end…they end as finally as anything can. I do not know what Keyser Soze did after he got into the car with his lawyer at the end of The Usual Suspects, and I’m pretty sure I never will.

Just like that….(poof)…he’s gone.

All this beginning and ending stuff can start playing with your head. Like mathematicians who started noticing small recursive fractals as compositional blocks of larger recursive fractals, you begin to see the cycles in your own life on multiple levels. There’s breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And then there are multiyear arcs, like movements of a symphony.

Maybe you don’t see this, but I do.

Curiously, my cycles seem to take on four year spans.

I won’t bore you with childhood, but high school was an interesting four years. College…four years. After college, I spent four years trying to make my way toward something I could do as a career…a search for permanency, perhaps.

And I found it.

I spent the next four years establishing myself as a working screenwriter as well as a husband.

I spent the next four years establishing myself as a solo working screenwriter, as well as a father.

And I’ve spent these last four years establishing myself as a…for lack of a better phrase…successful screenwriter.

Ding! Four years are up.

And now?

Last week, I had lunch with a friend. Another writer. I look up to him in a very pure way; there’s no creepy jealousy or competitiveness or resentment to infect my relationship with him. I’m not particularly prone to those things, but I’m not inhuman either—I’m lucky that circumstances are such that I can admire someone as cleanly as I admire this guy.

By the way, he doesn’t blog or comment in here, so don’t bother guessing.

Hint…it’s not Josh Olson.

So anyway, we sat at lunch and this guy lectured me. He actually said, “I want to lecture you about something.” And then he did.

Best

lecture

EVAR.

In fact, it was such a good lecture, it sent me hurtling toward my therapist, but in a good way. What this guy said to me was something I really needed to hear, and I really needed to hear it from him. It was the best compliment I’ve ever received, and almost certainly the scariest too. Good for him. His lecture may very well be the thing that sets the table and defines my next four year cycle.

What I’m saying is that I think I just typed FADE IN: on myself yet again.

“Okay,” you’re saying. “Enough preamble. What was the lecture??????”

Ummm…

…would you mind terribly if I didn’t tell you?

Cuz I’m not.

It’s not for you. It’s for me. It wouldn’t apply to you, and that’s true if you’re a hundred times more successful than I or a 15 year-old desperate for some guidance. This stuff was custom advice (although if you really want a hint…I’ll say this…I doubt I’ll use the language I used to describe the last few cycles when it’s time to describe the next one…)

What I can tell you is that you’re in a cycle right now, whether you like it or not.

Did you know? Do you understand it? Is there a rhythm to it?

Are you at the beginning?

Lost in the desert of your own 2nd act?

Nearing the end (that’s the scary one)?

Do you care?

You don’t have to. Honestly. Most characters are blissfully unaware that they’re in the stories we write, so why should we torture ourselves by getting recursive with the narrative of our own lives? I only dabble with the recursion myself. I’m sure Pirandello would think of me as a self-oblivious dolt.

Still, birthdays tend to do this to me.

And so, I’ll think I’ll give some of you a gift.

This gift is for the struggling. Particularly, it’s for the struggling young. This gift is for the people who have begun the “set out on my own” cycle. Maybe you’re in a new city. You’re trying to make it in a new business. You have no experience. You have no connections.

That was me…beginning of Cycle 3.

I don’t archive much of my life, but there’s one piece of paper I’ve saved all these years. I finally scanned it and laminated it, because it’s so important to me. When I arrived in Los Angeles in July of 1992, all I knew is that before anything good could happen to me, I needed to get a job.

I stood out on the corner of La Cienega and Pico, leafed through a payphone yellowpages (ahhhh, the pre-cell, pre-net days), and started cold-calling temp agencies.

I had a pen, which ran out of ink…and a pencil.

Today, I’m a rich guy with a hot wife and two great kids and a nice house and I do what I love for a living.

But fifteen years ago…

….I was this piece of paper.

Note the boxed note in the top middle. The one where I set a meeting with Louise at The Friedman Agency for 2:30 on Wednesday, July 29, 1992. That’s the meeting that gets me my first couple of temp jobs, one of which becomes a permanent job, which becomes a writing job, which gets me a marketing job at Disney, which leads to my career as a screenwriter.

I’m particularly fond of the question mark floating above it. I have no idea why it’s there, but I love that it’s there.

This paper is not some trophy or something. It’s my reverse Ozymandias. Know what I mean?

Look upon my Beginning, Ye Mighty, and smile!

I’m not saying you’re going to be rich and happy and famous. Honestly. I don’t know what you’re going to be. Drug-addicted hobo isn’t out of the question.

What I’m saying is…treasure your beginnings. That’s where all the fun is. That’s what I’m doing right now. Because I’m beginning a new cycle.

Let’s see where it goes.

Ah, Golden Years! So full of life!
We’ve never felt bett—arrghhh, my hip…!I’m not sure if it’s coincidence or cyclical, but every few months, I decide to piss people off. Mind you, it’s not because I care about pissing people off, but I know that if I just offer my unvarnished opinion, there’s gonna be some blowback. The most famous example of this is probably my essay entitled Passing On The Diversity Pass, which not only annoyed some of my own readers, but was sent around the internet by outraged readers. I occasionally track back to the incoming reference links.

As a result, I know that a good amount of people out there think I’m a racist douchemonger (although I did learn one interesting thing…a number of black people are apparently horrified that white people do not wash raw meat before cooking it…a cultural divide I didn’t know existed). So it goes.

Hey…old folks?

It’s your turn.

Last week, letters were mailed out to nearly seventy thousand Americans who have worked in one form or another as a professional television or screen writer. Those letters were a notice that, as a result of a class action lawsuit, lawyers were going to be getting their hands on the files kept by our health insurance fund.

We were given the option of requesting that our private data remain private.

I availed myself.

The class action lawsuit is an ageism lawsuit. The plaintiffs allege that the companies that comprise what we call “Hollywood” systematically and wrongfully discriminate against people over the age of 40, and they’re looking for payback.

One plaintiff, a man I know well and respect, has suggested that restitution take the form of financial compensation plus a new employment system in which all writing jobs be monitored and allotted across age groups.

I reject both the premise and the proposed solution with every ounce of my being.

First, let me get the obvious question out of the way.

I’m not over 40.

In 11 days, I’ll be 36.

On the other hand, if someone found out that DuPont had exposed all Americans to a chemical that makes your feet rot off the second you hit 40, I’d back a class action suit, giving that I only had four short years left to enjoy my toes.

I’ll be in the “protected class” of over-40 writers in four years, and I still say, “No.”

Why?

Because I think the problem isn’t about discrimination.

To me, discrimination in unemployment is the irrational deprivation of employment opportunities on the basis of sex, age, race, religion, creed or sexual orientation. That’s it.

An imbalance in the distribution of employment doesn’t necessarily signify discrimination. If it did, why is the Gray Brigade going after Hollywood first? When was the last time you saw a 50 year-old working at The Gap, or behind the concession stand at a movie theater, or at a video game store, or bouncing in front of a club?

There are two non-discriminatory reasons large groups can be underserved by employment opportunities.

First, those groups aren’t interested in taking the jobs.

Second, those groups don’t fit the requirements for the jobs.

It’s the second category that gets tricky, but it’s certainly a reality. Some jobs require heavy lifting. Some jobs require physical beauty. Such is life.

In the case of writing, it’s true that the large bulk of writing is done by people between the ages of 25 and 50. After 50, the numbers start to dwindle. After 60, they really start to shrink, and once you get into the 70’s and 80’s, you’re talking about a very select (and hardy) group.

Why?

Why would Hollywood discriminate against 50-somethings and senior citizens?

Is it because they just hate old people? No. They hire directors and actors over the age of 50 all the time. Is it because Hollywood is run by the young, and young people hate old people? No, Hollywood is run entirely by men and women in their 50’s and over. Is it because older people are “bad in a room”? Nah, we write scripts, and scripts don’t have faces.

Is it because there’s something intrinsic to the work done by older writers that has a discouraging effect on their ability to get hired?

Uh oh….

What if the answer to that question is (gasp) “yes”?

A few years ago, I spoke to a group of recent Princeton graduates who had just arrived in L.A., fresh-faced and ready to being their careers as writers. I looked out at the room full of 21 to 25 year-olds, and I said:

Here’s the bad news. No matter how talented you are right now, I’m better than you. I’m better than you, because I’ve been doing it for a while, and that experience is invaluable. Ah, but here’s the good news. You have more energy than I do. You don’t have a spouse, or children. You’re not bored. You’re not frustrated. You’re not tired of all the crap I’ve been dealing with for years. Use that. That’s how you’re going to take me down.

It’s true.

Writing novels can be a leisurely endeavor. Writing for television or movies can’t. At the end of the day, we’re employees on deadlines. Whether it’s the trenches of weekly television or the crucible of production rewrites on the movie set, professional screenwriting is a heartless taskmaster of a vocation.

Who succeeds?

Talent trumps everything, but here’s a short list of attributes that tend to help: humility, drive, energy, ambition, work-for-reasonable-pay, low expectations, hunger, fearlessness, no kids, no wife, no mortgage, no life, no need for self-examination, no depression, no bad hip, no doctor’s appointments, no self-respect, no pride, no arrogance, no reminiscing, no condescension, no sense of entitlement, no better days to compare the present to and no victimhood to get in the way of the work.

Not all of those things are what you’d call “good for you” (no life is a bad thing, but hey, if you’re working staff on a sitcom, it’s pretty much s.o.p.). Still, they’re things that tend to help one achieve success in a demanding business, and they’re also things that tend to be associated with life in one’s 20’s and 30’s.

Less so in one’s 40’s and beyond.

Look, I wish I lived in a world where a sense of personal dignity helped you get work in Hollywood, but the desperate and the shameless seem to be lapping those of us who maintain a sense of pride.

There’s another possible explanation (and one of Ted’s observations).

Hollywood isn’t a meritocracy, but that’s partly not Hollywood’s fault. Writing isn’t something one can do as qualitatively consistent as, say, plumbing. In other words, not every script is going to be great.

You may start your career with a couple of great scripts, maybe better than what your average script quality is over the course of your lifetime.

The longer you work, the more evident and predictive your batting average becomes.

Makes sense, right? Sure, Darin Erstad hit .355 in 2000, but he never even broke .300 before or since.

And so, as you make your way into your 40’s, if your overall average is lower than your early average, you’re going to get culled. It’s just a function of being around long enough for people to decide that they don’t really want you after all.

There’s another possible theory, and this is the one that really annoys people when I bring it up.

Maybe our skills start to diminish as we age.

It’s certainly not something that’s inevitable or absolute. There are screenwriters in their 70’s who are better right now than I’ll ever be.

But are they better than they were in their 40’s?

Losing heat off the fastball seems like it’s almost a must-happen. Maybe I think that because I do not and have never bought into the baby-boomer fantasy of “the golden years are the best years of our lives”. This notion that growing old somehow frees us to have fun and live life to its fullest and be the best we’ve ever been is mostly promoted by drug companies selling medicines to old people whose hearts, livers, pancreases, kidneys and penises have stopped working properly.

I believe this is a basic truth of life.

Getting old is NOT fun. It’s not the best years of your life. It’s not golden. As far as I can tell, it’s wrinkly, dry, painful and depressing (particularly when the rash of weddings and baby showers of your youth are replaced by the funerals of your departed friends). The only thing that can save you as you grow old, I suspect, is a fond willingness to embrace the downward spiral in which you find yourself.

To quote George Harrison, “As I’m sitting here doing nothing but aging…”

…well, that’s me and you. I’m growing older with every passing second. My life is finite. My best physical years are already behind me. My brain is likely starting to slide. The very existence of my children—my replacements—signals my inevitable obsolescence.

I believe I’m still getting better as a writer. Experience is the boon of age, counteracting the effects of time. At some point, though, the lines on the graph cross. The net gain begins to slide into deficit.

Why is this so awful to contemplate, much less admit?

One day, I just won’t have it the way I used to. I will write, and no one will want it. That will be a sad day. That day will no doubt be as sad as the day I need bifocals, or the day my knees start to ache permanently, or the day I fall and snap a wrist, or the day the doctor finally gives me the “I’m going to tell you that you’re going to die” look, and then tells me I’m going to die.

Lawsuits are just another way to scream at mortality and pretend we have control.

We do not.

When my time comes, when I’m knocked off my perch, when all the doors finally close in my face, I’m gonna pack up the laptop and retire. I will embrace the verdict of my fellow man, as brutal as it is, because it is as it must be.

The world is for the young…

…said the man who shall be old.

John WellsA while back, I wrote about a magical studio called Writopia, where writers were treated the way they ought to be, and their lives were better, the movies were better, and dogs and cats played happily together in the sun.

Leave it to the incomparable John Wells to try and actually make it happen.

Yesterday, the Writers Co-Op was announced, and it includes eighteen writers: Ron Bass (“Rain Man”), Henry Bean (“Internal Affairs”), David Benioff (“Troy”), Scott Frank (“Out of Sight”), Robert Nelson Jacobs (“Chocolat”), Kazan (“Reversal of Fortune”), Callie Khouri (“Thelma & Louise”), Richard LaGravanese (“The Fisher King”), Phil Alden Robinson (“Field of Dreams”), Bruce Joel Rubin (“Ghost”), Stephen Schiff (“The Deep End of the Ocean”), Schulman (“Dead Poets Society”), Ed Solomon (“Men in Black”), Dana Stevens (“For Love of the Game”), Robin Swicord (“Memoirs of a Geisha”), Michael Tolkin (“The Player”), Rafael Yglesias (“Fearless”), and the writing team of Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel (“City Slickers”).

When I read this, I thought, “Great. Ted Elliott and I had the same damn idea a year ago, and we never did anything about it.” Then I read that it took Wells and Co. took several years to figure this all out, so I guess I’m not that lazy.

The way it works seems pretty simple. Each of the 18 must write one original script for Warner Brothers within the next four years. The Co-Op will act as the producer of the script. The writer will not be rewritten without their approval, which is obviously a revolutionary idea, and the writer will be meaningfully included in the development and production processes from start to finish.

The enticement for the studio is this: if they want to buy the scripts, they will cost in the low mid-six figures. This is an enormously advantageous term for Warner Brothers, as most if not all of the participating writers typically sell specs for no less than a million dollars, and sometimes upwards of three million or more.

So are these writers trading creative rights for money they should be rightfully earning?

Quite the contrary.

I’ve spoken to someone on the business side of things who worked on this deal, and while I’m not going to be so gauche as to spell it all out, I can tell you that if any of these guys get movies made under this Co-Op, they will be rewarded under terms better than I think any writer has ever received.

If Warner Brothers agrees to produce the films, the first thing that happens is that the writer is “made whole” on his quote. In other words, if he or she normally writes an original for $1.5 million but sells a script under this program for $300K, when the script is greenlit, the writer gets the remaining $1.2 million and then additional money as their credit bonus allows.

Beyond that, the writer gets a significant first-dollar gross position.

For those who don’t know what first-dollar gross is, it works like this. If you have, say, 2.5% of first dollar gross, then once the studio meets certain agreed-upon conditions, the studio then gives you two and half cents out of every dollar it earns on the film via theatrical, broadcast, pay-per-view, home video, etc.

What are those conditions? They vary, and I don’t know what they are here, but generally speaking, they’re better than “first we have to recoup our entire investment.” If you have first dollar gross, you’re very likely going to see some real profit out of the back end of the film.

However, most first dollar gross deals state that the upfront money is “against” the back end money. In other words, if you earn $1.5M up front and you have 2.5% fdg on the back end, the studio doesn’t have to pay out profits to you until the amount you’ve earned through your 2.5% exceeds the $1.5M they’ve already paid you.

That’s why first dollar deals sometimes seem better than they actually are. If you make a lot up front, the movie has to do very, very well for you to make significantly more on top of that.

Not so in this case. In this case, I’m hearing that the upfront money for the Co-Op writers is not applicable against the back end, which is a fantastic term for the writers, even considering that part of the profits are kicked back to the Co-Op to help offset operation expenses.

Of course, balanced against all of that reward is a substantial risk: they’re agreeing to sell their scripts at a steep discount of anywhere from 70-90%.

What’s fascinating about this particular group is that it bucks a number of trends. I don’t think any of the writers (save Benioff) is under 40. Quite a few are in their 50’s. Most write challenging fare. If we’re to believe the conventional wisdom, studios are frightened to death of older, high-priced intellectual scribes.

Turns out they’re not, and that’s good news for any of us in the business who plan on aging or being serious (I’m one for two on that account).

In addition, many of these writers are pretty well-known as WGA guild activists. Through one sort of Guild thing or another, I’ve come to know John, Scott, Robin, Phil, Tom, Ron and Stephen. I don’t know if long-time Guild activists (including some people a lot of us think as “militant”) getting in bed with Warner Brothers is a good thing or a bad thing, but since I believe in labor detente, I’m going to say it’s a good thing.

It’s possible that nothing will come of this, the way the much-heralded Sony program fizzled out years ago (that was a deal where writers who met certain criteria could access back end profits on their movies, but the definitions weren’t that spectacular and Sony didn’t really seem to want to make any of those writers’ movies at the time).

Personally, I think this will matter. The business is changing. Whether writers take the reigns through partnerships with financiers or by creating mini-unions like the Writers Co-Op, one thing is clear. The old ways are starting to fade. I fully expect other A-listers to attempt to follow suit. As for me, all I can say is that Ted and I were on the phone for a long time yesterday…

Naturally, a lot of non A-list writers want to know how this affects them.

There’s good news and there’s bad news.

I think if this kind of idea spreads, it puts a downward economic pressure on spec prices, and an upward economic pressure on production prices. In other words, it’s a lot harder to get a million bucks for a spec when studios are suddenly accustomed to paying much less than that to world-class writers.

On the other hand, the barn doors that hid the real prize from us—true back end participation—have finally been flung open. The floor has been lowered a bit, but the ceiling has been raised a lot. Furthermore, studios will become more accustomed to partnering with writers, rather than marginalizing them.

To sum up: if you think the best years of your career are ahead of you, this is great news.

If you think you peaked a while ago, this ain’t gonna make things any easier.

I tend to be an optimist. I don’t know if what Wells and Co. did here is necessarily a good thing for writers per se, but it’s a great thing for the profession of writing, and for that, I applaud them.

Everyone has their idiosyncracies when writing. I’m not too fussy, but I know what I like. I like a room with no windows. I like a split keyboard. I like a big monitor, I like a bulletin board with my index cards up with clear thumbtacks, I like a baseball within arm’s reach (a nice soft training one because I toss it up and down and if it gets away from me, it’s nice to limit the damage).

What I have never liked is listening to music while writing.

I’ve always been a quiet worker. I find music distracting when I work, to the point where I feel frustrated…like a neurological patient who suddenly can’t find words he knows but can’t quite get out.

This isn’t because I hate music. It’s because I love music. I love it so much, it tends to grab my attention completely, and suddenly I’m adrift.

I’ve been playing music pretty much my whole life. My first instrument was the piano, of course, because I grew up in a middle-class Jewish home, and that’s what middle-class Jewish kids played. I wish I could say I enjoyed the piano. I didn’t really. I had some aptitude for it, and I remember doing pretty well at a recital, but I didn’t love it. For me, piano sounded great but felt forced. It never flowed for me.

My next instrument was the clarinet. Why? See Jewish home, middle-class.

I was actually quite good at the clarinet, and as a 10 year-old, I played in the Staten Island Borough-Wide Intermediate orchestra (which drew from the best of the orchestral players in the middle schools on Staten Island). The only problem with the clarinet was that it was a freakin’ clarinet. Don’t get me wrong. I loved being part of an orchestra. I really did. It’s just that…I mean…is it too much to ask for an instrument that doesn’t remind everyone of fellatio?

By the time I entered high school, I had left the piano and woodcock…sorry, clarinet…behind. I started concentrating on my singing, which I enjoyed far more, and which also got me girls. This was a far better pursuit, and I still love to sing.

But singin’ ain’t playing an instrument. You can’t lose yourself while singing, because you’re singing.

And then, one day………I met the drums.

Hallelujah. For the first time in my life, I felt like I had found my instrument. I had a natural feel and improvisational ability with the drums that I never had with the piano or the penisflute, and I threw myself happily into lessons.

I became obsessed with drums, drum gear, drummers…all of it. I bought myself a sweet kit made by Spaun Drums, a custom maker here in Southern California who does terrific work on par with DW and the other high-end bigshots. I bought Zildjians, Sabians, DW double-brace hardware, Pearl Eliminator double kick pedals, Remo heads for my snares and toms, an Evans EMAD for my kick…

…I could go on for hours about all this. But I won’t.

Because five and half years ago, I had my first child, and the drumming sort of stopped there.

It’s not my kid’s fault. I just have this thing about not drumming and waking up a sleeping baby. And then we had another kid. And the last five years have also been the busiest of my career.

Drumming had to take a back seat. So, what filled the gap?

What else?

Guitar, like the drums, is one of those instruments I just have a feel for, although without the benefit of lessons, I’m just a happy strummer. If you’re going to buy an electric guitar, and you’re going to buy one electric guitar, you’ll be buying the American Fender Stratocaster (Deluxe, if you can), and that’s that.

Unless you buy the Telecaster. That’s acceptable.

Nothing wrong with buying other guitars. Some great ones out there. But you have to have a Strat or a Tele before you go any further. Pair it up with a nice amp (tube amp only, please…we must be civilized, no?), find a fun multieffects pedal, and you can rock the brains out yer skull…and yes, quietly enough that the kids don’t wake up.

Still, electric guitars are for fun. Acoustic guitars are what make me happy. I’m self-taught. I can’t solo really, my technique is probably quite dodgy, and I have an annoying habit of playing without a pick, because I like the feel better than way. Still, I know a goodly sum of chords, and my fingers have gotten pretty strong over the years.

So yesterday, I treated myself to a reeeeeeally nice acoustic guitar. The latest addition to the Mazin instrument family is this bad boy.

It’s a Martin HD-28VE. Just a gorgeous guitar. I played some Taylors and a Takamine and a few other Martins, but this one just sounded so great to me. Such a joy to play.

But this article isn’t just about me and my love of music and my latest gear obsessions.

It’s about a major shift that’s occurred in my writing routine.

For the last few weeks, and for the first time ever in my career, I’m writing to music. I’m working on Superhero!, and even though spoof requires plenty of joke construction, this genre just feels so part-and-parcel with music. I can’t hum many film scores, but I know the score to Superman, I know the score to Burton’s Batman, and I can even hum parts of Spiderman.

So I decided to give it a shot. I downloaded Elfman’s Batman, Zimmer & Howard’s Batman Begins and Elfman’s Spiderman. I found pieces that fit the tone of the scenes I was writing (because in spoof, we never ever ever do “funny” music…I hate “funny” music…the music works as a serious counterpoint to the comedy, perhaps never better than with Elmer Bernstein’s original score for Airplane!), and then I just put them on repeat play.

I loved it.

It’s a pretty big breakthrough for me, because after ten years of a routine, any change seems like a breakthrough. The music doesn’t necessarily make the dialogue sharper or the jokes funnier. What it does is help me shape the feeling and purpose and pace of the scene as I write.

It also motivates me to think about which scenes require music and which don’t. The scenes that seem to work best without score are the snappy patter dialogue scenes, and this is really a “duh” sort of observation, because when it’s time to score our movies, those are the scenes we don’t score.

And yet, when you’re writing everything for the first time, all these cues help.

I don’t know if I’ll think of every movie this way, but something tells me I should. I know enough about my own creative process to know that I know very little about my creative process. Anything that helps me stumble to a scene that feels right is worth using.

Funny…I’ve always visualized the scenes. Saw the costumes, saw the faces, imagined the space, determined the angles, heard the sound effects…

…but never the music. Until now. For a guy who loves music so much, it seems like a strange bias to have had.

I blame the dickhorn!