Screenwriting is not real writing. - PT Anderson

Last night I had the privilege to attend the Writers on Writing PT Anderson event at the WGA Foundation.  I almost didn’t go because I’ve been attending the AFI Fest for the past week and my dog has had it.  (Good thing I didn’t have kids or they would be whining to their shrink about how I wasn’t there for them because I was always watching movies.)  Also, it was raining and I was tired.  But my new thing is not to use being tired as a bullshit excuse not to do something because Woody Allen is right: "80 percent of success is just showing up."  So I hugged and kissed my dog, told her I’d make it up to her and off I went to learn from an American auteur.

F.X. Feeney moderated the discussion.  He’s that annoying guy at the movie line that goes on and on and on analyzing shit and doesn’t let the other person talk.  I think he did almost 50% of the talking and most of it was analyzing Barry from Punch Drunk Love.  PTA was a saint for actually listening to what Feeney was saying without letting his thoughts linger off into the repetitive mental chant “shut the fuck up shut the fuck up” like I did.

PTA said that he never takes into consideration story or plot. He gives everything he writes to his editor (Peter McNulty?) to read and he always throws back comments and notes that relate to classical screenwriting craft.  PTA goes off in a huff protesting, but when he thinks about it he realizes those elements fall into place to some extent out of instinct.  He hopes that the audience will come along in the journey because of the strength of the characters and not the plot or story.  He never considers theme.  He said that if he starts writing with a theme in mind that is the worst.  He feels himself writing and he doesn’t like that.  He said that because he doesn’t know how to construct a story, he simply dumps all his research and inspiration on a table and starts to play with it until the characters come alive.

He said that so much of writing is being humiliated by what you put on the page.  That made me laugh.  Sometimes I sit in front of my computer hesitant and ashamed before I open a particular document I know is shitty.  If he feels bored or stuck, he types someone else’s words, like a short story, to get him going and into that creative space.  He also writes short stories about each character.  Maybe someday I’ll try the first, but I already do the latter. He said when you’re starting out the pleasure comes from thinking you’ve written something great.  When you get older, the satisfaction comes from using your red pen to slash big chunks of text you realize you don’t need.  He gets high from it.

Feeney asked him to tell us how he got started in his career.  PTA said that the first thing that comes to mind was that at 17 he had made a mockumentary shot on cheap video called The Dirk Digler Story.  Then he thought he could develop it into a full feature.  He worked on it for nine years and it eventually became what we now know as Boogie Nights.  He said that’s how he taught himself to write.

He said that he learned very early on not to be precious about the writing.  He has had actor friends for a very long time and they told him actors only read he dialogue they have to memorize. He said, “If they don’t read it, why write it?”  Then he said something I’ve heard other top professional screenwriters say, “Screenwriting is not real writing.  Good writing belongs in books.”  When he gets on set, he fires the writer immediately so that the boss, the director, can take over.  And then if he needs to rewrite something the writer rejoices and is happy to write again.  He offered an example where the actor was right and the writer was wrong.  He wrote a full page of dialogue for a scene in The Master where Joaquin Phoenix’s character is on a walk and talk on his way to beat up a guy.  Phoenix kept asking him if he REALLY wanted him to say all that.  Phoenix hadn’t questioned anything about the screenplay until then and PTA took note.  He said they would do it with the dialogue and without.  And of course, Phoenix was right.

Someone asked him if he had ever considered writing for the theater.  PTA answered that he hadn’t because that seemed really hard.  Again, he said, “That’s real writing.  You have nowhere to hide.”  He was also asked to explain why his last three films were so difficult to understand.  Joking, PTA said he was getting confusing and obtuse?  He said with each film he was a different person and he was into different things.  He’s not the guy that made each of those films.  Feeney quoted Orson Welles: "One should make movies innocently — the way Adam and Eve named the animals, their first day in the garden…Learn from your own interior vision of things, as if there had never been a D.W.Griffith, or a [Sergei] Eisenstein, or a [John] Ford, or a [Jean] Renoir, or anybody." PTA agreed and he said, “I never want to go back. Fuck that. That would be horrible.”  At the present time he’s obsessed with Apichatpong Weerasethakul and wishes he could make a film like Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives.  The thought of that audience of Hollywood screenwriting wannabes trying to watch that film makes me laugh.  Someone told him that Diablo Cody said she wished she had written Boogie Nights and asked him what films he wished he would have written.  He got excited at that question and kept on naming screenplays.  He said it would be a good drinking game or something.  He named Sweet Smell of Success, North by Northwest, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Network and Dr. Strangelove.

PTA’s thoughts and words really helped me at this point in my creative life.  I’ve been struggling with two screenplays, one of which will become my first feature film.  Certain scenes and parts of the stories are very clear to me, but there are gaping holes I haven’t been able to figure out yet.  PTA said that there are lots of places in his script where he just writes place holder action because he doesn’t know what he’s going to do.  He likes to leave things open so that he can do more with it.  He needs to leave room for the contributions from the actors and the camera.  For instance, in The Master, and I was happy he talked about this because I intended to ask him where the idea came from, he wrote “sailors at the beach,” and that was it.  He figured he’d think of something once they were shooting.  His production designer, Jack Fisk, brought with him vintage books with pictures of “sandies,” sculptures of women made of sand.  So the brilliant scene I wish I had thought of myself was actually a result of on-location collaboration. He said that “good writing is stealing.”

Perhaps the one thing that got me the deepest was in response to a question about his writing habits. He said that he was so busy that day, he hadn’t written at all and that he didn’t feel right.  It had been a good day but somehow he didn’t feel like himself.  He said even 15 minutes would have been enough to feel like himself.  For me, if I don’t write, I feel down and like a failure.  If I write, I feel like I’m a good person.  A better person. Not a total loser.

So, to misquote that very famous philosopher from a galaxy far far away, this was the inspiration I was looking for.  Now I feel okay with the fact that I may have to show up on a shooting day with no fucking idea of what I will do and the world is not going to end.  I can continue developing my stories and live with the fact that I may not be able to have it all on the page by the time production rolls in.  My collaborators will have my back and maybe they’ll come up with brilliant ideas I will steal and make my own.  It’s okay and it will be okay. That's part of the thrill of making a film.

“I made the statement years ago which is often quoted that 80 percent of life is showing up. People used to always say to me that they wanted to write a play, they wanted to write a movie, they wanted to write a novel, and the couple of people that did it were 80 percent of the way to having something happen. All the other people struck out without ever getting that pack. They couldn’t do it, that’s why they don’t accomplish a thing, they don’t do the thing, so once you do it, if you actually write your film script, or write your novel, you are more than half way towards something good happening. So that I was say my biggest life lesson that has worked. All others have failed me.” –Woody Allen

You can watch the interview here: https://www.wgfoundation.org/writing-resources/ I was told the price will come down, so wait.  I wasn't supposed to tell but you read this far so you earned it.

Beyond the Shitty First Draft

There is no such thing as a first draft, or an OK first draft, or a pretty good first draft. There are only Shitty First Drafts and Super Shitty First Drafts and the only way to graduate from Super Shitty to just Shitty is to write several Super Shitty First Drafts.

Every screenwriter, at least the ones that live in the reality of this planet (believe me, there are many who don’t and most reside in Los Angeles) knows that the first draft is not even good enough to show your mother. This is particularly hard to stomach if you are a beginner screenwriter and you think everything you write is super clever and compelling. Write a few scripts, show them to some people, and watch that six figure spec deal delusion crumble.

I’ve completed many Shitty First Drafts and the road to the rewrite is always excruciatingly painful because, after all that work, the thought of taking it apart and risk making it worse, is horrific to me. Last night I attended the Notes on Craft: Rewriting session at the WGA in an effort to come to terms with that fear. The impressive panel was moderated by Daniel Petrie, Jr. and was composed of John August, Jack Epps, Jr. and Scott Frank.

I can’t begin to tell you how helpful and inspiring the experience was. It wasn’t that I heard earth-shattering information although the advice and tips from the writers were great. No, what I discovered was that even established and wildly successful screenwriters have the same fears and tackle the same problems as hopefuls.

The three writers had three different processes and approaches to writing. Epps is organized, uses note cards and has to have a clear vision and outline before he begins. August needs to know the beginning and the end and then works towards the middle. Frank just writes and writes until he discovers the story and finds its heartbeat. He confessed this was an extremely arduous, agonizing and long, long, long method.

They agreed that the greatest rewrite fear comes from having to risk everything that works to fix what doesn’t. It’s tricky to navigate around what’s working. So how do you figure out what doesn’t work? You need to trust yourself and your instinct and remember why you wanted to write this story in the first place. You should also have a few trusted friends and colleagues that will read your script and give you helpful notes. Some trusted readers should be people who’d love the kind of movie you are writing and others who wouldn’t consider it their thing.

The Shitty First Draft exists to be torn apart, and almost always, the second draft process will be more difficult. A writer must find the inspiration to tackle the second draft with fresh eyes and the courage to be brutal and savage. You should perceive the task as a challenge and not a mechanical chore and you need to continue to locate yourself in the material so that it’s a living, breathing story.

These writers were telling me exactly what I instinctively knew and they confirmed why it was so difficult to tear that first draft apart.

Interestingly, Frank commented that the reason you start a script hardly ever winds up in the final draft.

The screenwriters spoke about their rewriting assignments and they agreed that the common denominator of bad scripts is the lack of good characters. They get called in to “fix the girl, make her sound human.” Too often, writers concentrate on plot and populate the story with “attitudes.” These “people” do not act like humans, the plot and where it’s going dictates what the characters do and say. Frank said that the only way you can have an artful script is to have great characters. Story is easy, great characters are not.

Because it’s so tough to discern what works or doesn’t, Epps urged us to formulate a plan of attack and concentrate on only one thing with each pass. He added that most of his rewriting consisted of figuring out character motivation and deepening relationships and subplots. He offered Tootsie as an example. Michael Dorsey’s story and arc are pretty clear, but each of his relationships is what drives the story and makes it compelling.

The single most valuable tip involved audience consideration. The writers pointed out the importance of the audience’s point of view: what do they want to see? August mentioned the evolution of Iron Man. The filmmakers were smart enough to realize that the audience wanted to see Robert Downey, Jr. creating his inventions, so they cut a lot of the action and plot from the final film and gave them more of what they wanted to see.

Other helpful tips/exercises:

• Give yourself the freedom to write off the page and get your characters talking.

• Imagine the story from each character’s point of view, change the dynamics of the scene, i.e. which character drives it and have fun writing it.

• Pay close attention to scene transitions and focus on them to improve pace. Frequently, if scene transitions are not effective, that means one of the scenes is unnecessary.

• Change up obligatory genre scenes, i.e. the “meet cute” in a romcom. Think of ways to change the formula and write it differently.

• Ask yourself: if the inciting incident didn’t happen, would I watch these characters anyway? If the answer is no, you have to go back to characterization.

• Burn down the house. Be horrible to your main character. Things can always get worse for her.

• Always be on the lookout for lack of conflict. It doesn’t matter how small a scene is, it should always have conflict.

• When it comes to polishing, be mindful of rhythm, flow and tone. Vary sentence structure or else the read will be very boring. Say a lot with the least amount of words possible and make every word count. They recommended Dashiell Hammett’s “Red Harvest” as the quintessential example of saying a lot with little.

• If you can tell what your script is about without getting long winded or digressing, then the draft is ready for other eyes.

Finally, Frank expressed that the best reason to write was to amuse yourself. But because writing is such agony, it must be an obsession. And yes, successful writers also move commas around and mess with the settings of their screenwriting program to cheat page count and call it rewriting.

I’m still afraid, but it’s comforting to know that there are others out there who are with me in my suffering. I think I’m ready to face the imaginary paper shredder. And anyway, what choice do I have? This is an obsession.