Screenwriter's Manual: of How-To Advice, Tips, Tricks of The Trade, and Business Sense As Told by Hollywood Insiders

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C R E AT I V E S C R E E N W R I T I N G M AG AZ I N E
Screenwriters Manual
of how-to advice, tips, tricks of
the trade, and business sense
as told by Hollywood insiders
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contents
PHONES, COFFEE, SPEC SCRIPTS: THE
ASSISTANT TRACK IN HOLLYWOOD
SECTION ONE
HOW-TO ARTICLES
Starting as an assistant can lead to bigger things for aspiring

television writers with patience and people skills.
23
BY SHELLEY GABERT
KNOW YOUR SHOW

A two-part insiders guide to picking the best television
shows to spec for staffing season.
BY SHELLEY GABERT
BOOK SMART: ACQUIRING LITERARY RIGHTS
Part 1
This section brings you showrunners of popular shows
as they tell you what theyre looking for and which
5
samples theyve seen more than enough of.
Part 2
This section brings you the inside scoop on the
rules, plus format and character guides for both
Dexter and House, two of the smartest TV shows
you can spec right now.
PILOT LESSIONS: WRITING AN

ORIGINAL TV SCRIPT
FROM WRITER TO HYPHENATE

Creative Screenwriting took the opportunity to
experience some courses for writers who want to
make their own films. Here is a firsthand account of
what they have to offer.
BY NANCY HENDRICKSON
Tis the season for selling original series. Despite a

downtown in production, an original pilot is now an essential
part of a TV writers portfolio. Our roundtable weighs
in on what to write and where things are headed.
BY SHELLEY GABERT
28
SECTION TWO
OUR CRAFT COLUMNS

BY KARL IGLESIAS
Part 1
A comprehensive overview of five courses that will
set you on the path to helming your first feature.
11
Part 2
This time we focus on practical skills like camera,
lighting, editing and working with actors.
14
The Screenwriters 7 Deadly Sins
CHEMISTRY LAB: WRITING

THE ROMANTIC COMEDY
Avoid these perennial vices to achieve a

happier writing life.
31
The Seamless Theme

Five effective ways to avoid preaching
your message.
32
Your Concepts Extreme Makeover
The writers of Leatherheads, Smart People, Forgetting

Sarah Marshall, The Accidental Husband, and Run, Fat
Boy, Run tutor us in how to take an inspired pairing from
spark to screen.
BY ANDREA MEYER
17
Five tricks of the trade to energize any idea.
34
The Effective Voiceover

Five effective ways to overcome readers
prejudice.
35
Nuggets of Wisdom
The best advice Ive ever heard.
ROMANTIC COMEDY MARKETPLACE

Whats working and whats not working in todays
rom-com marketplace?
BY BILLY MERNIT
A novices guide to acquiring literary material to adapt.

With pluck and luck, even novices have a shot at
optioning a literary property sometimes for as
little as a few hundred dollars.
BY JACK EGAN
26
37
The Emotionally Satisfying Ending
21
A good ending can linger with an audience

long after leaving the theater.
38
Screenwriters Manual creativescreenwriting
|3
pContributors
JACK EGAN (jsegan@gmail.com) has been writing about
the entertainment industry and Hollywood for three
decades. His work has appeared in The Washington Post,
New York Magazine, Variety, Below the Line and Rolling
Stone. He recently returned to live in Hollywood, where
he grew up.
creativescreenwriting
PUBLISHER
Bill Donovan
Erik N. Bauer
Founder
Publisher 1993-2007
EDITOR
Amy Dawes
SENIOR EDITOR
Jeff Goldsmith
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Michelle Earnhart
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SHELLEY GABERT (shellg@mindspring.com) has

written articles on film and television for Variety, Emmy,
American Cinematographer, Written By and the DGA
Magazine. She writes a television column for
FilmStew.com, and she has also written several
television specs, including a drama pilot.
NANCY HENDRICKSON is a frequent contributor to Creative
Screenwriting and MovieMaker magazines and teaches
screenwriting at Los Angeles Film School. She took home
the Best Short Film award at the Moondance Film Festival in
2007 and is a past winner of the Austin Film Festival
screenwriting competition. She currently has two screenplays in pre-production.
KARL IGLESIAS (karl@creativescreenwriting.com) is a
screenwriter and a lecturer in the UCLA Extension Writers
Program. He is the best-selling author of The 101 Habits
of Highly Successful Screenwriters. His latest book is
Writing for Emotional Impact. Find out more at his
website, www.karliglesias.com.
BILLY MERNIT (www.billymernit.com), a WGA screenwriter,
novelist, studio story analyst and private script consultant,
is the author of the screenwriting textbook Writing the Romantic Comedy (Harper/Collins) and pens the popular
blog, Living the Romantic Comedy. His novel Imagine Me
and You will be published this spring by Random
House/Shaye Areheart.
ANDREA MEYERS novel Room for Love, based on an
article she wrote for the New York Post, is about a journalists adventures looking for love in the real estate ads. It
was published by St. Martins Press in September 2007.
Meyer also covers film and social trends for Variety,
Interview and Glamour magazines, and she is writing a
psychological thriller screenplay for MGM.
| creativescreenwriting Screenwriters Manual
ART DIRECTOR
Derek Wood
REGULAR COLUMNS
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KNOW
YOUR
SHOW
LEARN HOW TO PICK THE BEST SPEC TO WRITE
FOR THE SPRING STAFFING SEASON PART ONE
BY SHELLEY GABERT
Mirror, mirror on the wall, whats the show to spec this fall? If only it were that easy, but the
television landscape is less like a fairy tale these days and more like a minefield. Writing
jobs are fewer. Signature shows that were once sound spec choices are gone or aging, while
newer ones can quickly become obsolete, cancelled by fearful, trigger-happy executives.
Without a crystal ball or magic mirror,
its a high-stakes gamble, given the time
youll invest. Thats why weve picked the
brains of writers and showrunners past
and present to get their perspectives
along with key information that may
help increase your odds.
Whether aspiring to break in, or looking to get staffed again in the spring,
savvy writers know that nows the time
to start watching a few well-chosen shows
with a professional eye. Come January,
when its time to sit down and write that
new spec for staffing season, youll have
the edge if you know your show backward and forward.
Its a really tough time out there for

writing specs, says Angel Dean Lopez
(Sleeper Cell, Judging Amy) who teaches an
introductory television spec writing class
in the UCLA Extension Writers Program.
The Sopranos is over, The Shield is wrapping up its last season, and a lot of the
solid dramas are a bit long in the tooth.
Ive always told my students to look for
comedies or dramas with critical acclaim,
popularity, longevity and insider penetration, which means (shows that are)
watched by agents, showrunners and
executives. But finding shows that fit that
matrix is a bit harder now.
In a highly fragmented television-
viewing universe, its hard to know how

many people in the business watch that
hot new cable show or whether such a
narrowcast choice can be a viable spec
compared with a mainstream network
drama. But it is a sure bet that there are
stacks of 30 Rock and Entourage specs sitting on desks at CAA. And specs of Desperate Housewives, various versions of CSI
and other dramas that remain popular
with audiences have glutted the reading
market.
Ill shoot myself if I read another
Greys Anatomy spec, says Dee Johnson,
an executive producer on Lifetimes Army
Wives, who previously served as co-exec-
|5
utive producer on ER and executive producer on Commander in Chief. And if a

CSI, Law & Order or Without a Trace
comes across my desk, those scripts will
not be the first thing I read because a
procedural doesnt tell you much, other
than someone can handle structure and
get the voices down.
In Johnsons opinion, Specs of
shows that are a mix of comedy and
drama and handle a range of emotions
allow for greater depth in storytelling.
Rescue Me is a good show to spec
because it proves someone can write
comedy, pathos and drama, says Tim
Kring, creator and executive producer of
Heroes and Crossing Jordan. Big Love
(HBO) and Dexter (Showtime) are cult
hits that are popular with other writers,
and Mad Men on AMC is another interesting show, but Im not sure if it has a
huge following internally in Hollywood, he adds.
Kring still finds CSI and Law & Order
and their sister shows worthy, and he
says any show with strong central voices makes for a good spec. Theres always
been a wave where everyone will write
the same show. It used to be NYPD Blue,
The Sopranos or The Shield, and that was
smart because people were really watching those shows, Kring says, but thats
always changing. There will be new
shows that come along this year.
Among the newcomers, early money
is on Pushing Daisies, created by Bryan
Fuller (Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls), a former writer on Heroes. He wrote it as a
spec pilot and its terrific. It has tremendous heart and humor, and its quirky,
Kring says.
The cardinal rule, according to the
showrunners we surveyed, is to never
spec a show until it has at least one season under its belt. Even then, it can be
risky. Just ask people who wrote specs of
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip or John From
Cincinnati. Both lasted one season and
definitely didnt live up to their hype.
Some of the new shows seem promising,
but its too soon to know if theyll have
staying power. The NBC sci-fi dramedy
Chuck is another high-concept show like
Pushing Daisies that has lots of buzz.
Dirty Sexy Money and Cane are essentially soap operas in the vein of Dallas or
Dynasty but with contemporary spins.
The crime drama Life has received critical acclaim and is being described as a
much edgier version of Monk.

All new shows suffer from newshow-itus. It often takes six or eight
episodes to get them on their feet, so
you never know where the show is
going, says Tom Blomquist, an executive producer on Walker, Texas Ranger,
who got his start working on The A-Team
and Riptide. He also teaches spec workshops at AFI and a spec pilot class at
UCLA Extension.
Still, some of the new offerings that
rocket to rating highs may be spec-worthy and bear keeping an eye on. Back to
You, from the creative team behind Frasier, could well become the new comedy
spec. Theres not a lot of newcomer competition only six half-hour comedies
were included among the 28 new shows
premiering on network TV this fall.
For comedy writers trying to break
into drama, Johnson says the hybrids
(comedy and drama) are a safer bet. They
may even be the strongest choices on the
air because they allow a writer to showcase character and storytelling while
emphasizing the genre he or she would
ideally like to write one day.
House remains a very effective spec
because its a character-driven show with
a bit of mystery and procedural, says
Greer Shephard, a partner in Shephard/Robin Co., which produces TNTs
The Closer and FXs Nip/Tuck.
Both a ratings and critical hit, House
features a lead character whos an antihero with bite. The skills you might display in executing its procedural elements
would cross over to a crime drama, while
its medical milieu works for Greys Anatomy execs. Both The Closer and Saving
Grace, which is coming back for at least
15 episodes next season, provide an
opportunity to write for strong female
characters, played by Kyra Sedgwick and
Holly Hunter, respectively. Each of these
dramas mixes the personal with the procedural. Medium also offers a strong
female lead, but in a different genre.
If its a teen series that would show the
world what you can do, perhaps a Supernatural would work to demonstrate both
character and procedural skills. And for
those with an aptitude for racy material,
Nip/Tuck has been a very popular spec.
Dexter is my favorite show on the air
right now because it has an unconventional hero and (takes) a totally different
slant on the stories they tell, Blomquist
says. (And) while Weeds and Big Love

may not have worked a year ago, now
everyone is talking about them. Meanwhile, he adds, Once-hot shows like Desperate Housewives may have reached their
tipping point.
To make the game even more challenging, the truth is that gatekeepers
have very little time to watch television.
An agent may catch an episode or two of
one of his clients shows, while showrunners typically have time to watch only a
few shows for their own enjoyment.
Says Bill Grundfest, who wrote for five
seasons on Mad About You, You have to
be very inner-driven in this game, from
when youre breaking in to when they
throw you out. If you listen too much to
other people, you lose yourself, and thats
the only thing you have to sell.
If he were looking to make an impression right now, he says he might write a
Dexter or something that allowed him to
color outside the lines and alternate
that with a more mainstream choice.
Im a character-driven guy, so I want to
write about humans and their pain,
whether its for a drama or a comedy, he
says.
Success stories
When Sheldon Bull, a producer on
Sabrina, the Teenage Witch and Coach and
author of Elephant Bucks: An Insiders
Guide to Writing TV Sitcoms, was breaking
into the business, he tried to write a Laverne & Shirley, one of the hottest shows
on the air at the time. I just didnt hear
it in my head, so I decided to write a
M*A*S*H spec instead, and I ended up
writing two episodes of that show, he
says.
As David Chases assistant on Ill Fly
Away, Johnson was so into that show that
she decided to write a spec of it, violating a no-no in the business, which
holds that you never write a spec of the
show you want to write for. But Chase
read Johnsons spec and assigned her an
episode to write.
I do see a calculated effort by writers
to pick the show they think is hot, but I
think thats a mistake, Johnson says. Its
much more important to write a show
youre invested in, since that will come
through.
After landing a job on Fastlane from
their spec screenplay, former advertising
copywriters John Coveny and Hunt Bald-
win had to start over when the show was

cancelled after its first season. They chose
to write a Without a Trace because they
liked the actors on the show and the
character-based moments. They also
wrote a Six Feet Under.
Before we started writing, we went
back to school, Coveny says. We spent
months watching those shows and reading the scripts. Our goal was to replicate
the show, to demonstrate we knew its
rules and the voices of the characters. But
it was also to stand out and be noticed,
to put our own personal stamp on the
shows.
In both cases, they opened with a
major twist and introduced new characters into their specs. The results led to
them landing an agent and to jobs on The
Closer, on which theyve just finished
their third season as co-executive producers. A pilot they co-wrote, The Truth
in Advertising, began shooting in October.
The big gamble youre always taking
is that youll choose a show that someone has never seen or write the best script
of a show they dont know well, Coveny
says.
Coveny remembers when he and Baldwin were the low men on the totem poll
in the writers room. James (Duff) and
Greer made it clear that we were to speak
up. Theres no fear here, they said. And
thats what I repeat to myself and would
say to other writers because once you
start qualifying things you can talk yourself into a box. Just find what you like,
write that and try to find a new way in.
From the hiring desks

Kring, the Heroes showrunner, says he
often focuses more on execution in the
specs he reads. We have a big writers
room and we figure our stories out
together, he says, so he looks at whether
writers can construct a scene properly.
Can they start and stop it at the right
place? Do they have a button that drives
the story forward and draws a readers eye
down the page?
He prefers to read original material to
get a sense of the writers voice. But I
also want to see what kind of forgery a
person can do. Can they come onto an
existing show and copy what the show is
and blend in and be a good copy artist,
he says.
After going through the hiring process
to fill the writers room on Army Wives,
Johnson said shed rate most of the specs

read as competent but not memorable.
You run across a lot of young writers
who seem to want to take a shortcut, but
theres hardly any substitute for learning
the craft, she says. Thats the beauty of
the spec. It helps you learn the form, but
you also have some wiggle room to turn
it on its ear and stretch, and thats a good
thing.
Lopez spends half of his class time dissecting dramas charting the subplots
and scenes to help students understand
a shows template. (See sidebar on page
51 for more on this.)
Serialized dramas like Heroes, 24, Lost
and Prison Break can seem like intimidating specs to write, so Lopez encourages
his students to ignore ongoing plots and
focus more on character issues. In tackling shows like these, its best to write a
stand-alone episode, he advises, or take
a Shakespeare play or Greek tragedy and
recast it in your show.
No matter what the show is, its
important to tell something personally
resonant rather than filling in the numbers and writing a generic beat sheet,
he says. One of the biggest pitfalls I see
is no connection between writers and
their material. They forget that theyre
writers, first.
The old adage that writers write is
true. Bull says hes somewhat mystified
by writers who complete two specs, sit
back and wait, and then give up if nothing happens. Writers [should] always
[be] moving on and writing new material, he says.
Adds Grundfest: The more writing
samples you have, the more shots you
have. But no matter what show you spec,
make sure youre willing to dig deep.
Those who write cookie-cutter specs will
find that their scripts sit in a pile somewhere. I always say, Either go big or go
home.
AND WATCH
IT LIKE A PRO
They all say ,Write what you know.
While we cant help you to know
yourself, here are some tips on how
to know your show and watch it like
a pro.
Tape, TiVo or take good notes while
you watch several episodes of your
chosen show. Get scripts and read
them. Break an episode down into acts
and scenes. Beside each scene, write
down the beat, a brief description of
what happens. Generally, an hour-long
drama will have 13 to 15 beats.
Break the show down into the A, B
and C story lines. Then take note of
the plot and subplots. Eventually a
pattern will emerge. This will become
your template for the show.
Think about which characters stand
out for you. Consider the tone of the
show. Does it have a strong central
voice, and if so, what is it and how is it
expressed?
Are the story lines resolved in
each episode or is it serialized? If its
serialized, decide how you plan to
handle that.
Take note of the set pieces the show
might include in its format week after
week, as well as any other repeating
elements. Does the show usually open
with a teaser? How long is it? Dont
forget to include those elements.
Now that youve been watching for
a while, look at the big picture. Decide
for yourself what the show is about.
Whats the premise? What problem is
the show set up to solve or explore?
How can you interpret this on a level
that resonates for you personally and
excites you as a writer? Now youre
ready to come up with your springboard, the premise that will set your
spec episode apart.
|7
KNOW
YOUR
SHOW
and Write It Like a Pro

PART TWO of our exclusive guide to nailing a television
spec script that will stand out during staffing season
BY SHELLEY GABERT
We all believe the television business will
get back to some semblance of normal
after the WGA strike, but when? The new
year is here traditionally the time for
television writers to turn in pilot scripts
and select a show to spec for staffing season. But at press time, none of the agents
we polled could predict how the strike
(which has upset the predictable rhythms
of the television calendar for the first time
in 20 years) would affect the May/June
hiring season. Their off-the-record answer? Nobody knows yet. What is
known is that the strike will eventually
end and business will go on. In a positive
sign, NBC/Universal gave two freshman
series, Chuck and Life, full-season orders
(from 13 to 22 episodes), and just before
the strike bell rang, Pushing Daisies got its
back nine order from ABC.
Dexter show runner Clyde Phillips
would normally be reading spec pilots

and dramas before starting work in February on the third season of the Showtime hit. Thanks to the strike, hes had
more time to spend with family and
watch television. A big fan of House, he
also tunes in to Heroes, The Wire and
Brotherhood. When it comes to reading
specs written by possible new hires,
Phillips said he isnt concerned about
whether he knows or watches the shows
hes reading because a good spec guides
him through all its nuances. I want to
read a spec where the writers voice
screams loudly and appropriately enough
to be heard, Phillips says.
To help you channel more energy into
showcasing your unique voice, weve covered the basics in our exclusive guide to
format, tone, voice and characters for
two highly recommended shows. Both
are ensemble dramas that were repeatedly mentioned by show runners as

strong spec choices when we interviewed
them for part one of this article (if you
missed it, you can order the November/December 2007 issue at www.creativescreenwriting.com.) Each is a
popular, critically acclaimed show
watched by insiders. Better yet, each
combines medical and crime procedural
elements with character-driven storylines. Nail a strong episode of either and
you can showcase your dramatic range
with a sample you can send to other
medical or crime dramas perpetual staples of the television landscape.
So tune out the chaos and uncertainty, and focus on writing the strongest
spec you can of the show youve chosen,
or one of the following recommendations. Thats a move that will get you no-
ticed no matter what happens next,

and when.
DEXTER
Dexter finished its sophomore season in
December as Showtimes number one
show. The dramas dark anti-hero and
moral ambiguity continue to generate
buzz. Television veteran Phillips, who
was a consulting producer on Boomtown
and created Suddenly Susan and Parker
Lewis Cant Lose, oversees a show that
just keeps getting better and better.
PREMISE
Based on the novel Darkly Dreaming
Dexter by Jeff Lindsay, Dexter is a serialized drama about a blood-spatter analyst for the Miami Metro Forensic
Department who moonlights as a vigilante serial killer. The drama mines familiar crime show terrain, as Dexters
forensic co-workers and homicide detectives solve cases, but the action is seen
through the point of view of a deeply
disturbed individual who must keep his
secret from being discovered by his sister and his boss.
Dexter is an astute observer, with his
perceptive, witty and droll thoughts revealed through narration. Phillips has
said that in his own way, Dexter operates from a noble purpose hes essentially acting out whats already
sanctioned in our society, the prosecution and sometimes the execution of
killers. Dexter operates from a moral
code instilled in him by his foster father,
Harry (seen in flashbacks), by only
killing people whove eluded the justice
system. Constantly searching for answers about his father, a former cop, hes
also trying to figure out how he, himself, evolved into a serial killer.
PRIMARY LOCATIONS
Police station
Dexters lab
Dexters apartment
Ritas house
Dexters killing place
THE STORY THUS FAR

The second season began 38 days after
Dexter killed his long-lost brother, Rudy,
who was also the Ice Truck Killer, the
Miami Metro Homicides nemesis
throughout the first season. Debras nar-
row escape from death at Rudys hands

unnerves Dexter, pushing his personal
and professional life further out of control. Debra, on shaky ground emotionally, has moved in with Dexter.
Dexters secret life is threatened when
scuba divers find trash bags on the bottom of the ocean filled with his handiwork. Soon his squad is tracking another
serial killer they dub the Bay Harbor
Butcher. FBI Agent Frank Lundy, brought
in to find the killer, creates a task force
including Batista and Debra, who soon
discover that the Bay Harbor Butcher is
most likely one of them. This reveal
amps up the pressure for the squad and
for Dexter, who must stay one step ahead
of their investigation.
Meanwhile, Rita, mistaking Dexters
strange behavior for a drug addiction, demands that he seek help. He goes to AA
meetings and meets Lila, a beautiful,
mysterious woman who seems to be his
soulmate, only to later learn that shes
mentally unbalanced. Debra begins a sexual relationship with Lundy, and Lt. LaGuerta sleeps with her bosss finance.
Sgt. Doakes continues to tail Dexter
until he gets a break he finds Dexters
hidden box of his victims blood samples. But when Lundys team finds the
evidence in Doakes trunk, the sergeant
becomes the prime suspect.
CHEAT SHEET
This Showtime original series has no
commercials and therefore no obvious
act breaks. To break down the show,
identify the beats that move a given
episode forward. In the first season, the
scripts averaged 53 scenes and a length
of 57-60 pages. This season, according to
Phillips, Dexter scripts time out in the
low 50s. We think in terms of storytelling, and were more interested that
our scripts follow the rhythm of a small
movie rather than episodic television,
he says.
Dexter appears somewhere in almost
every scene. The question of whether he
will or wont be found out is always present. His problems and inner conflict,
which drive every episode, also reflect
the challenges and struggles of the other
characters. The phrase in the writing
room is that the show must be Dextercentric, where almost everything is seen
through his eyes. But there are other
characters and story lines addressed in
each episode, Phillips notes.

Dexter pursues a victim in almost
every episode. Sometimes its very personal, such as when he finds and kills his
mothers murderer. Other times, hes
stalking a stranger.
RULES
Every episode begins with Dexters
narration, which continues throughout
the story. Part confession, part observation and sometimes brief exposition, the
narration is always wry, smart and funny,
demonstrating Dexters skewed take on
his job, life and relationships.
Finding Dexters voice is one of the
hardest things weve been faced with on
this show, Phillips says. It needs truth
and humor, which is a delicate dance
and makes it a very tricky show to write.
There are plenty of shows out there
about catching bad guys, but here its
spending an hour with Dexter, so we
have to get behind his mask and make
him authentic and likeable.
Almost every episode of the show also
features flashbacks of a young Dexter
with his foster father. The rule on flashbacks is that they have to be motivated
by whatever is going on in the scene.
They tell a story unto themselves and
generally have two to three beats,
Phillips says. They also are always
through Dexters eyes either hes looking at something or were looking at him,
but he has to be in the frame.
Dexter begins each kill with a ritual:
He slices the victims cheek and collects
his blood on a slide, but the rest of violence is left to the audiences imagination.
TONE
Dark, but leavened with a wicked
sense of humor, originating from Dexters observations on the absurdity of life.
OPPORTUNITY
Theres freedom here to move beyond formulaic approaches and push
the envelope to explore the gray areas
of our justice system and human relationships. Among the provocative issues
raised: How well do we know the people
we love?
HOUSE
Not only is it Foxs number one
scripted show, House, now in its fourth
|9
season, is one of the most highly rated

shows on television, averaging 18.9 million viewers per episode. David Shore,
the shows creator, who wrote on NYPD
Blue and executive produced Hack, won
an Emmy in 2005 for outstanding writing on the series. And star Hugh Laurie
has won two Golden Globes for his performance.
PREMISE
Part medical procedural, part mystery,
House is a character-driven drama built
around Gregory House, a brilliant medical Sherlock Holmes who has a knack for
diagnosing rare diseases but is totally
lacking in bedside manner. House leads
the Department of Diagnostic Medicine
at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Each week he and his team of doctors
rush to solve a medical emergency using
the patients symptoms as clues. Houses
passion for solving puzzles drives him
much more than the psychological and
emotional needs of his patients.
Dr. House teaches his team using the
Socratic method, and like an experienced
and cynical homicide detective, he believes that people lie but symptoms
dont. He can be shockingly candid and
plays guinea pig if necessary to solve a
case, but his coldness or lack of empathy causes tension and conflicts among
his team of doctors as well as the hospital administrative staff, including his
boss, Dr. Lisa Cuddy. Hes not a great
team player, either, but despite his cantankerous nature hes a close friend of Dr.
James Wilson, head of the oncology department.
Shore says House is a big believer in
rationality and truth over emotion, a
rebel who tells it like it is, while executive producer Katie Jacobs describes him
as a rock star whos in your face and says
what we wish we could say.
PRIMARY LOCATIONS
Plainsboro Teaching Hospital
(Laboratory, OR, ICU)
Houses office
Cuddys office
Houses apartment
THE STORY THUS FAR

After a house cleaning, House is
alone at the beginning of season four.
Cuddy urges House to replace his team
and he agrees, but devises a competition
10
a la Survivor, where hell make his selection out of 40 doctors who apply as fellows. During this process, Dr. Cameron,
who quit, returns to work in the hospitals ER, and Dr. Chase, who House fired,
joins the surgery department. Dr. Cuddy
also rehires Dr. Foreman after hes fired
as head of diagnostic medicine at New
York Mercy for his House-like diagnostic
efforts. He supervises the new fellowship
applicants, whom House challenges with
silly, competitive games, such as who can
get Cuddys underwear. When Cuddy
asks House to make his final decision, he
chooses three: Dr. Lawrence, Dr. Hadley
and Dr. Taub.
CHEAT SHEET
Each episode begins with a three- or
four-page teaser, usually focused on the
person who will become Houses patient,
including the incident that leads them to
the hospital. In You Dont Want to
Know, a magician suffers a heart attack
onstage while one of the new fellowship
applicants is in the audience.
House appears in six to eight scenes of
each act in every script. Scripts are usually 60-61 pages with 53 scenes, broken
down as follows:
Teaser: 3-4 pages
Act One: Usually 8-10 scenes,
ending on page 18
Act Two: 12-13 scenes,
ending on page 32
Act Three: 12-13 scenes,
ending on page 45-47
Act Four: 12-13 scenes,
ending on page 60-61
RULES
Episodes revolve around a mysterious
and/or rare disease, often life-threatening, usually based on real-life case studies
culled from newspapers or medical journals and researched by members of the
House writing staff. Each episode usually
includes a scene in which House writes
the patients symptoms on a whiteboard.
In the past, cases have included a
woman who hasnt slept in 10 days, one
whos diagnosed with a plague transmitted by the fleas on her new dog and a patient with Von Hippel-Lindau disease. In
season three, Dr. Wilsons patient is a boy
with leukemia whos awaiting a bone
marrow transplant from his younger
brother. The sibling develops an infection, and House must cure him before his
bone marrow can no longer be used.

These diseases of the week are married
with the ongoing storylines of each character. Sometimes personal stories collide.
Foremans gut-wrenching decision about
whether to save the life of a mother or
her baby is interwoven with the crisis involving the ailing boy and his donor
brother. Foremans subsequent soul
searching is an arc that plays through
many episodes, ending in his decision to
resign when he concludes that hes becoming too much like House.
TONE
The show ambitiously mixes broad
comedy, gut-wrenching tragedy, philosophical musings and bizarre literary references all in the space of five seconds.
The speed with which it jumps from tone
to tone is amazing, Laurie says.
OPPORTUNITY
Theres still loads of room to explore
what makes House tick. Says Laurie: I still
dont know him that well, and he still
fascinates me.
From Writer to
HYPHENATE
PA R T I BY NANCY HENDRICKSON
What Every Writer Should Know About Directing

Got scripts? Why wait for someone
else to make them into movies
when you could do it yourself right
now? Creative Screenwritings
Nancy Hendrickson attended each
of the following classes to bring
you an exclusive, firsthand report.
Only about a decade ago, writers wrote,
directors directed and hyphenates were a
rare breed. But all that changed with the digital explosion that put filmmaking within
reach of whoever wanted to try it including those whose previous involvement in
the film business had been limited to buying
a ticket and a bag of popcorn. A major turning point came in 1998 when Thomas Vinterbergs film The Celebration (shot with a
pro-sumer camera he described as being
the size of a cup) won a host of awards,
including the Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize
and the New York Critics Award for Best Foreign Film.
Then, in 2000, Sundance became the first
major film festival to show films on digital
projectors. Other festivals soon followed
suit. Without the expense of blowing up
digital movies to 35mm format, the number of film submissions increased dramatically.
Of course, the number of filmmakers increased too. And screenwriters have more
reason than anyone to want to hop on the
bandwagon. The do-it-yourself route offers a
solution for writers frustrated by their dealings with agencies, studio readers and other
Hollywood gatekeepers. Becoming a filmmaker cuts out the middleman. Its also a
tempting alternative to spec sales for those
who want to retain control of their work.
But along with the increased opportunities comes increased competition. So whats
going to separate you from the rest of the
filmmaking herd? Knowing what youre
doing might be a good start. Last spring, Creative Screenwriting published an overview of
courses and programs available to writers
who want to produce and direct their own
films. One year later, weve had the opportunity to experience some of these classes
and give a firsthand account of whats in
store for you if you take one.
In this issue and the next, well report on
a sampling of courses that address a wide
range of areas from learning the language
of film to hands-on camera operation, from
raising the money to rehearsing with the actors. The following courses offer some good
places to start.
The Director as Storyteller:

A Practical Preparation
UCLA Extension Course
Instructor: Daniele J. Suissa
This veteran teachers method comes
with its own vocabulary (thrust, story action verb, director action verb) and is designed to focus and refine your thoughts
about a script; define and organize your
ideas for directing it; and help you successfully communicate your desires to actors
and other collaborators. Once you analyze
a script according to Daniele Suissas guidelines, any holes in the structure will become
readily apparent an added benefit to writers.
Born in Morocco, Suissa studied in Paris
and spent 30 years directing and producing
theater and film in that city, as well as in
Montreal and Los Angeles. During the
course of her long professional career, she
developed a unique approach to directing,

which she has since passed on to students
at UCLA Extension, USC, AFI and the Los
Angeles Film School, where she was dean in
2001 and 2002.
Her course spans nine meetings, including three evenings and six day-long Saturday sessions. Lectures focus on Suissas own
technique, as well as general directing principals (screen direction, shot size, how to
add dimension to the frame, how to avoid
jump cuts, where to place the camera, etc.)
Each lecture is accompanied by projected illustrations. The remaining sessions are devoted to working one-on-one with each
student while others observe.
Intensive practical work begins the first
night with an assignment to find a script,
read it (with specific instructions as to how)
and pick a scene to work on by class time
the following morning.
Student-directors cast the scenes theyve
chosen to work on from among their classmates. There is a lot of written preparation
to do and a preliminary meeting with the
actors to arrange outside of class. Youll need
to break down the script and make notes on
every line of dialogue according to Suissas
guidelines, then draw out your floor plan
and create overlays with blocking and camera moves.
You then have to commit what youve
done on paper to memory. When your turn
comes up to direct in front of the class, you
wont be allowed to have your nose in a
notebook. A camera will be set up and youll
direct your scene, from the first readthrough to blocking to camera setups, with
Suissa coaching you through it.
Suissa can be demanding. You dont
want to fall asleep in her class or show up
| 11
late. On the other hand, she rewards

progress and diligence with lavish praise,
and her approval seems worth trying to
earn. You get the feeling that Suissa is more
demanding of herself than of her students
and that she cares intensely about them.
You also come away with the comforting
feeling that artistry can be learned. Youll
never again have to wait for inspiration to
strike or worry if it doesnt because youll
have a technique you can rely on that will
always hold you in good stead. As Suissa
herself puts it, she wants her students the
next generation of filmmakers to free
themselves of all the doubts and anxieties
that do not belong to the legitimate anguish
of the artist.
The Director as Storyteller can be taken
by itself or as part of UCLA Extensions certificate program in directing (www.uclaextension.edu). Itll set you back $645 and its
worth every penny.
The Directors Studio

Instructor: Daniele J. Suissa
If you liked Suissas UCLA class and want
to continue studying with her, you may
want to join The Directors Studio, which is
not so much a class as what Suissa calls a
salon for professionals. Actors and directors
sometimes joined by producers or cinematographers meet on Saturdays from 2
p.m. to 5 p.m. Some bring in scenes from
screenplays theyre planning to direct. Others hone their craft on play or film scripts
they like. Still others let Suissa suggest something.
Everyone practices their craft except directors, Suissa says. Musicians practice, actors take classes, writers write. Directors
more than anyone, she feels, need a way to
practice their craft between jobs because
even the most successful among them probably only directs about once every 18
months.
The Studio setting is informal, and the
group (unlike the UCLA class) is composed
entirely of initiates who understand Suissas
working methods and expectations. The result is an atmosphere thats relaxed, safe and
mutually supportive. Directors take turns
working with actors while Suissa monitors.
Cut! shell say when she hears an actor
rush something or strike a false note. Then
shell turn to the director and ask, Why did
I call, Cut? and help him or her figure out
what went wrong and how to fix it.
Studio members pay $200 a month to
participate but may choose to come one
month and skip the next. Enrollment each
month is capped at 12 students. There is no
initial fee for anyone who has taken a class
12
with a Suissa previously. For all others there

is a $250 initiation fee that covers a one-day
seminar on the basics.
Jim Pasternak Directing

Seminars
The Screenwriting Expo
Instructor: Jim Pasternak
The annual Screenwriting Expo in Los
Angeles offers a rare opportunity to experience Jim Pasternaks directing seminars
without having to be a full-time student at
Los Angeles Film School or hiring him as
your personal directing coach.
Pasternak gives lecture classes accompanied by film clips and other visual aids, and
theyre jam-packed with practical information that will give you a well-rounded
overview of the directors work. Just make
sure to bring plenty of paper and pens to
take notes. Youll want to take down everything, and the popular instructor moves
through the material at lightning speed.
Pasternak, who is often hired by studios
and producers to prepare new directors,
wrote the final, uncredited draft for the 1989
film Cousins (directed by Joel Schumacher
and starring Ted Danson) and directed Certifiably Jonathan, which starred Jonathan
Winters and Robin Williams. Two of the directors hes mentored have won Oscars
Christine Lahti for Lieberman in Love and
Ray McKinnon for The Accountant.
Pasternaks two-day course is organized
into six hour-and-a-half seminars. Each addresses a specific area of the directors realm
and talks about how the director functions
in it. The first is Directing: Preparing the
Dramatic Workbook. Pasternak starts with
the vocabulary directors use to communicate with actors. Words like objective,
beat, adjustment, action and images are introduced and then put to use.
Pasternak uses the screenplay from Bonnie
and Clyde to show how he breaks down a
script in preparation for rehearsals. By the
end of the class, hes scribbling furiously,
going line by line through the script, filling
in the blanks on a large chart, while you
struggle to keep pace with him on your corresponding printed handout.
Next comes Directing: Visualization &
Staging the Deep Focus Master. This segment introduces a different vocabulary for
communicating with the director of photography. Pasternak starts by defining mise
en scene and then moves on to an explanation of aspect ratios, shot size, F stops,
depth of field, screen direction, the 180-degree line, jump cuts and more. In just 90
minutes, Pasternak manages to lay a fairly
solid foundation for shooting a scene. He
even squeezes in a quick lesson in drawing

storyboards.
Part three is Directing: Collaborating
with an Editor. In that, Pasternak explains
how to shoot footage that cuts together
(from master shots to coverage) and then
moves on to more complex ideas like why
reaction shots are important, why you dont
want to shoot at eye level and how to put
the audience inside the characters head.
Theres also a fairly involved discussion of
camera lenses.
On Day Two the lectures get more sophisticated. The morning begins with Directing: Lenses, Moving Camera &
Subjective Point of View. The focus is on
when to move the camera, how to move it,
how to motivate camera moves and how to
mask them so they seem invisible. Pasternak illustrates his points with clips from
classic films.
Directing: Collaboration & Rehearsal is
next up. Theres a bit of carryover from the
last class a discussion of German Expressionist style and its uses in modern American cinema, as well as the moving
subjective POV. Then, as promised, Pasternak addresses the rehearsal process. Among
the subjects covered are casting, rehearsal
techniques, including those used by famous
directors like Elia Kazan and Sydney Pollack,
as well as what to do with the actors once
the shooting starts.
The last session, Directing: Light &
Metaphor, is not about the mechanics of
lighting, but rather the aesthetics. Pasternak
talks about source, intensity and quality of
light, using great paintings and film clips to
exemplify different lighting effects and techniques.
A full weekends admission to Expo 7
cost only $75. Each of Jims 90-minute seminars is an additional $5. For information on
future seminars and private coaching, e-mail
Pasternak at jimpast@flash.net.
The Language of Filmmaking

UCLA Extension
Instructor: Alessandro Pirolini, PhD.
Where does a class in film theory fit into
an article about becoming a director? Well,
lets say youve taken a few beginning directing courses. You understand master
shots and coverage; you know how to find
the 180-degree line. But you still have unanswered questions like, What makes the
great directors great? This class is the next
best thing to taking lessons from the masters themselves.
Pirolini dissects the signature styles of directors like Kubrick, Welles, Hitchcock and
Bergman. And his lectures are full of juicy
tidbits you can steal and put to use in your

own films. Kubrick, we learn, often kept his
main characters centered on the screen and
moved the camera with them, creating the
feeling that they are always moving but getting nowhere. Who knew?
Pirolini is prepared, knowledgeable and
thorough. Hes not a terribly dynamic presence in the classroom in fact, you might
have a hard time even finding him. He
rarely stands, preferring to sit off to the side
in a darkened theater and letting his
keynote presentation take center stage. That
presentation, which Pirolini designed and is
constantly working to improve, is nothing
short of amazing and bears a closer resemblance to a Ken Burns documentary than to
the ordinary classroom audio-visual aid. Key
phrases and quotes flash on the screen and
dissolve away. Framed film clips and interviews begin, as if by magic, at exactly the
right moment.
Youll be supplied with a half-inch-thick
booklet, prepared by Pirolini, full of photocopied articles, photos and diagrams. In addition, he has created a website (current
students are given a username and password) with additional reading material pertaining to each lecture.
There is assigned reading between each
class. Sometimes Pirolini will ask you to
ponder a visual storytelling problem during
the week and then show you how one of the
great filmmakers chose to solve it.
Be forewarned: If youre thinking of taking this class for credit, the final exam is difficult, and Pirolini has strict rules about
tardiness.
The Language of Filmmaking, a fourcredit course for $535, meets for 12 threehour evening sessions. Out-of-towners take
note: An online version of the course is offered some quarters. It doesnt include quite
as many film clips as the classroom version
but is the next best thing. Get more information at www.uclaextension.edu.
Dov S-S Simens 2-Day Film

School
Instructor: Dov Simens
Although Dov Simens purports to teach
you everything you need to know about
filmmaking in two days, his strong suit is
clearly producing. If youre making your
own film, though, theres a good chance
youll be wearing a producers hat as well as
a directors, and no one can tell you more
about the producers job than Dov Simens.
Not in two days, anyway.
As one might expect of someone who
started out as a producer for Roger Corman,
Simens is most familiar with the low-budget
end of the feature industry, and his course is

full of strategies for making a small budget
look like a big one. Simens deadpan style
and the curmudgeon persona he cultivates
are also drawing cards of the seminar. He
rants and yells and keeps you awake and
laughing throughout what could be the
dullest of material in someone elses hands.
(When is the last time you were enthralled
by the details of a budget?) He tells you with
frankness that only a tiny percentage of you
will ever actually use the information hes
giving you. Yet, at the same time, he demystifies the process of producing movies
and makes it seem like something anyone
can do.
Seated on a stool beside an overhead projector, Simens lectures in high gear for two
days straight, covering topics such as which
unions you need to deal with and which
ones you dont, how to make an impressive
presentation to investors even if youve
never done a film before, how to get an affordable name actor to star in your low-budget production, which film festivals are
worth pursuing and how to approach a producers rep. There are tips about where to get
film and equipment at discount prices.
Theres a lesson on how to navigate the
American Film Market, as well as one on
how to sell foreign distribution rights. He
explains above- and below-the-line costs
and tells you what you can and cant accomplish with a variety of budgets.
As he speaks, he fills one transparency
after another while the class scribbles notes
trying to keep up. Fortunately, some of the
information is included in a booklet you can
take home. It also includes useful examples
of release forms, option agreements, camera
and sound reports, and budgets.
While most of Simens material can be
applied to both film and video, be aware
that when it comes to the practical aspects
of production, Simens talks mostly about
film.
Simens has taught at UCLA, NYU and
USC, and his alumni roster includes filmmakers Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie.
his 2-Day Film School is offered regularly in
Los Angeles and New York and often in
other major cities. Tuition is $395. Or, for
the same price, plus shipping and handling,
you may order the course on DVD from
www.dovsimensfilmschool.com.
No-Budget Film School

Instructor: Mark Stolaroff
If making your own film seems like so
much pie in the sky, Mark Stolaroffs NoBudget Film School may be just what you
need. Stolaroffs philosophy is simple: You
can make a film with whatever you have.

His background is suited perfectly to what
he teaches. Stolaroff started as a production
assistant for Roger Corman and then moved
on to Next Wave Films, where his job was
to assess unfinished indie productions and
determine which ones merited an investment from the company. He then went on
to produce indie films of his own.
His two day-long lectures can be taken
separately or in the same weekend. The directing course comes first. The Art of NoBudget Filmmaking, discusses qualities that
are rewarded in an indie film and how they
differ from whats desirable in the commercial marketplace. Youll learn why consistency of visual style may be more important
than a big-budget look. Youll see examples
of how limitations can spark creativity. Then
there are the nuts and bolts ways to save
money on stock and lighting, the pros and
cons of editing on Avid vs. Final Cut Pro,
and the use of tape versus P2 cards, the latest digital storage system.
The second lecture, The Science of NoBudget Filmmaking, is a producing course
that focuses on getting around the most
common obstacle to making a film: lack of
money. Stolaroff talks about finding free locations, free help and free props; feeding a
crew on the cheap; and the perils and rewards of shooting without permits.
Day two bears some resemblance to the
Dov Simens course, but there are some crucial differences. Whereas Simens talks almost exclusively about film, Stolaroff talks
almost exclusively about digital technology.
Whereas Simens describes filmmaking in
the $100,000 to several-million-dollar range,
the budgets Stolaroff deals with tend to be
$5,000 to $50,000 sometimes less. Simens
focuses on commercial films; Stolaroff focuses on the artistic indie film that might
play at Sundance. Much of the information
can also be applied to low-budget genre
films intended for the direct-to-video market
Stolaroffs lectures are punctuated with
film clips and bullet points displayed on a
large screen. He also brings in guest speakers
post-production experts and no-budget
filmmakers who can testify to the plausibility of making a film for next to nothing.
In keeping with the no budget theme,
this seminar is one of the more reasonable
ones. The $225 price tag for both days includes lunch, coffee and snacks at morning
and afternoon breaks, as well as free Axium
Budgeting and Axium Scheduling software
packages. Upcoming class schedules are
posted on Stolaroffs website: www.nobudgetfilmschool.com.
| 13
From Writer to
HYPHENATE
PA R T I I BY NANCY HENDRICKSON
Learning the Practical Magic of Movie-Making

Becoming a filmmaker can only
make you a better screenwriter. If
nothing else, youll think twice
before writing another script that
demands unmitigated sunny
weather, hoards of costumed extras or trained animals. (Why do
they always perform perfectly in
rehearsal and never when the
cameras rolling?)
In the last issue, we recommended six
classes that prepare you with a theoretical
approach to directing and producing, but if
youre really serious about making a movie,
youll need practical skills as well.
Perhaps, like Robert Rodriquez when
he made El Mariachi, you plan to save
money by wearing all the production hats
yourself. In that case, it would be wise to
get some experience with a camera and
lighting equipment before you yell, Action! Even if youre in a position to turn
the more technical parts of the process
over to pros, youll need to know enough
about what your cinematographer and
editor do to communicate with them.
Then theres the little problem of how
to get performances from actors. You can
hire people to shoot and cut the film for
you, but you cant hire someone else to
talk to the actors. Thats strictly a do-ityourself kind of job and, unfortunately,
actors dont come with manuals or tech
support.
Help is at hand, though. Starting with
hands-on classes for first-time filmmakers, and moving on to those that focus on
14
a particular subset of skills, weve put together a list of classes that cover almost
all the bases. One of them is bound to be
right for you.
Hollywood Digital Film School

2-DAY SHORT MOVIE CLASS
Hollywood Digital Film School is the
brainchild of Josh Sands. Sands was disappointed with the education hed gotten
at a larger, better-known film school
where the tuition was high, the classes
crowded and equipment in short supply.
Sands thought he could do better and set
out to create a place where students could
learn what they need to know about filmmaking without having to spend the rest
of their lives paying off student loans. He
also wanted small classes. Consequently,
like TVs Cheers, HWDFS is a place where
everybody knows your name.
HWDFS is housed in a warehouseturned-movie-studio in downtown Los
Angeles. The facility is compact but has
everything it needs, including a screening
room, a sound stage, an editing room
with computers for each student and a
dubbing booth.
The two-day workshop goes from 9
a.m. Saturday to 5:45 p.m. Sunday and
includes hands-on lessons in digital filmmaking; lectures on the fundamentals of
directing, three-point lighting, producing
and digital cinematography; and a lesson
in Final Cut Pro. On Sunday, students actually make a short film together, rotating through crew positions so that each
gets a turn at lighting, shooting and directing the actors.
Although one cannot expect to learn

filmmaking in a weekend, the HWDFS
teachers (Aaron Pope [directing], Martin
Pitts [lighting and producing] and Randy
Redroad [editing]) do an admirable job of
packing a wealth of information into a
narrow time frame. One of the schools
unique features, and perhaps its most
valuable, is its philosophy that you dont
have to spend a lot of money to make a
film. Youll be shown how to use practical
lights (the kind you have at home) and
lights you can buy at Home Depot to replace costlier film lights with surprisingly
good results.
For students with more time to spend,
HWDFS has a four-week production program, in which students get to make their
own short films. Theres also a 12-week
feature-length movie program. Tuition
for the two-day workshop is $295. More
information on all the programs can be
found at www.hwdfs.com.
New York Film Academys 12-Week

Evening Filmmaking Program
Director of Education: John Sammon
Program Coordinator: John Nodillo
Although New York Film Academy is a
much larger operation than HWDFS, with
branches in Los Angeles, New York, London and numerous other cities, it was created for very similar reasons: Its founders
thought they could offer something better than the film education theyd received. Therefore class size is limited.
NYFAs four-week, eight-week, 12-week
and one-year programs are designed to
allow you to launch your career faster and
less expensively than with traditional

four-year film schools. Furthermore, unlike at AFI and most universities, students
are the sole owners of their films.
The 12-week evening course has the
same curriculum as the four-week course
but is designed to accommodate the
schedules of working adults. The basic
time commitment is three nights a week,
but your best bet is to just clear all your
evenings and weekends for the entire
three-month period. Weekends youll be
shooting group projects, your own individual projects or your classmates projects. Then youll need some extra
evenings for editing what youve shot.
The course offers two technological
options film and digital. Students of
both groups take all their classes together
except cinematography. The price of the
course is the same either way ($3500), but
what youll spend on materials is vastly
different. A roll of mini-DV tape is $3-$4,
and you can shoot for 60 minutes with it.
Two rolls of tape will see you through the
entire course. On the other hand, one
100-foot roll of film, processed and
telecined (converted to tape for editing)
is going to run $52, and thats only twoand-a-half minutes of screen time. You
can count on using at least 15 rolls before
completing the course.
Nevertheless, we chose the film option
for two reasons: 1) The look of film is still
the industry ideal. Commercial theaters
still project only on 35mm, and digital
cinematography is often judged on how
close it resembles film. 2) New York Film
Academy may well be the only place offering the opportunity to shoot on film
in a short-term program. In fact, its probably the closest you can get to the fouryear film-school experience without
going to film school for four years.
Its an extremely comprehensive program, with classes in directing, filmmaking, producing, cinematography, writing
and editing, taught by highly qualified
teachers. Two of them, Todd Walker (directing/filmmaking) and Mike Connors
(writing) hold MFAs from Columbia Universitys prestigious graduate film program. Mark Mockett (Final Cut Pro) is a
former editor for the BBC, and Harlan
Bosmajian (cinematography) has a long
and impressive list of feature credits.
The three-hour evening sessions are a
combination of lecture and lab, and there
are two all-day supervised Saturday
shoots on Universals back lot. Film or

tape stock, processing, costumes and even
actors are provided. Getting to film your
own mini version of High Noon on Universals Western set while tourists gawk in
wonder from passing trams is one of the
unique perks of being a NYFA student.
As a student, youll also have access to
a library of scripts and DVDs; editing facilities with Final Cut Pro at your disposal
day and night; rooms you can book free
of charge to use for casting, rehearsing or
shooting; and camera and lighting equipment you can check out for projects.
Youll get a 50 percent student discount
at Universal Studios expansive costume
and prop rental houses, and your student
status will also allow you to shoot most
places in the city of Los Angeles for a permit costing $25 or less (hundreds less
than you would have to pay on your
own).
At the end of 12 weeks, youll come
away with four black-and-white, nonsync-sound film projects that reflect your
increasing knowledge and skill. For more
info about all the NYFA programs and locations go to www.nyfa.com.
white, silent compositions to the use of

color, non-sync sound and editing.
Theyre designed to explore aspects of visual expression through the use of composition, rhythm and point of view.
Students need to supply their own
equipment for this class, but a one-chip
digital camera (the kind you use to take
home movies) is fine, and any kind of editing software will do, although Final Cut
Pro or Adobe Premiere is preferable to
iMovie. Students completed work is
screened and critiqued by Harrison and
the class. Harrisons comments are calculated to encourage students to develop
their own unique voice, while gently
steering them away from what is clichd
or overindulgent.
Harrisons own impressive list of directing credits include the feature Rhythm
Thief (winner of a Jury Prize at Sundance)
and two episodes of the hit TV show Sex
and the City. Directing Workshop I costs
$535 and can be taken alone or as part of
UCLA Extensions Certificate Program in
Entertainment Studies. See www.uclaextension.edu for details.
Travis-Bettman Directing Seminar

Directing Workshop I:
Composition and Movement
(formerly called Developing Your
Aesthetic Signature)
UCLA Extension
Instructor: Matthew Harrison
Its impossible not to like Matt Harrison.
Hes always upbeat, enthusiastic and grinning. You get an A-plus! hell holler to encourage your fledgling filmmaking efforts.
His classes seem to have a party atmosphere. So you may be lulled into thinking
there isnt serious learning taking place
until you realize, at the end of 12 weeks,
that youve made four short films, taken a
midterm and a final exam, and read a thick
tome on film theory in addition to the autobiography of Luis Bunuel.
Harrison lectures for part of each class,
writing on a chalkboard while he goes
over what he deems the basic building
blocks of narrative filmmaking the
shot, mise-en-scne, concept, the actor,
environment, sound and montage. Each
of his film assignments comes with a few
rigid guidelines, within which the student is free to get as creative as he or she
likes. Like NYFAs, Harrisons projects are
loosely formed around a traditional filmschool model, moving from black-and-
Instructors: Mark Travis, Gil Bettman

Mark Travis and Gil Bettman have
each directed TV episodes and feature
films. Each has taught the art of directing. Each has written a book on the subject, but there their similarity seems to
end.
Travis classes and books have varied
over the years, but almost always focus on
working with actors. In Bettmans book
and lectures, its camera work that takes
center stage. Together, Travis and
Bettman balance each other out and offer
students the best of both worlds.
Travis and Bettman teach their classes
separately on consecutive days. Bettman,
a professor at Chapman University and
author of First Time Director sets the
stage for the first day by putting modern
visual style in an historical perspective. In
the mid-70s, Bettman tells us, Steven
Spielbergs style became the gold standard
in film directing. If producers couldnt
have Spielberg, they at least wanted
someone who could direct like him, and
that meant being able to shoot a good
moving master and knowing how to force
perspective.
Bettman goes over some camera basics
such as the difference between a long
| 15
lens and a wide-angle lens just to bring

everyone up to speed, but quickly moves on
to more sophisticated topics, such as the
five tasks a moving master must accomplish, illustrating each point he makes with
film clips. Its heady stuff. And if you cant
actually direct like Spielberg by the end of
the day, youll at least have some grasp of
the work thats ahead of you.
On day two, Mark Travis, author of The
Directors Journey, brings his Yale Drama
School background to bear as he takes you
through the process of script analysis and
character creation and gives you tools you
can use for working with actors.
The highlight of the day comes after
lunch when Travis demonstrates his rehearsal process with two professional actors. For the next couple of hours you get
to watch the master at work guiding
his actors from the initial reading of a
scene through a variety of exercises and
improvisations, and finally, to an emotionally rich rendition of the script thats
close to performance level.
The price is $395 for both days. Upcoming seminars are posted at www.markwtravis.com. You can also contact Mark
Travis at mark@markwtravis.com and Gil
Bettman at gilbettman@aol.com.
One On One Film Training

Instructor: Jeff Seckendorf
Anyone who would opt for a personal
trainer instead of a basic gym membership
might also want to invest in personalized
director training, and, if cinematography is
your main concern, you might want to
think seriously about investing in a few sessions with Jeff Seckendorf.
Seckendorf admits hes not an expert
on working with actors (for that he directs his students to friend and former
colleague Judith Weston), but his credentials as a cinematographer are hard to
beat, and include an Independent Spirit
Award nomination for the feature film
Judy Berlin, starring Edie Falco.
Seckendorf is especially good at demystifying the technical aspects of directing. If you cant tell one lens from the
other, dont know an F-stop from a door
stop and have no clue how to go about
figuring out where to put the camera,
Seckendorf is ready and waiting for you
with photos, handouts and PowerPoint
presentations that will make it all seem
clear and simple.
Seckendorfs technical expertise is not
16
limited to the camera, however. Hes also

great at explaining post-production workflow once a simple process, now an
amazingly complex one, with the rapid
advances in digital technology creating a
variety of new options.
The two real advantages of one-on-one
film training are: 1) Its private. You dont
have to be embarrassed about asking a
dumb question or worry that youre the
only one in the group not catching on.
Seckendorf is there to answer your questions for as long as you need him. 2) Seckendorf will focus specifically on what you
want to work on. You can even bring in
the script you plan to direct and work on
the camera blocking with him, unbeknownst to your actors or crew who will
think youre the genius behind it all.
Seckendorf will do a free consultation
with you and then design a program
suited to your individual needs. His rate is
$195 per hour with a two-hour minimum
per session.
Although he prefers one-on-one work,
Seckendorf occasionally offers a class in
directing called The Art of Visual Storytelling. It takes place over two weekends, with one evening class in between.
The first week youll get still photography
homework, which will be viewed in class
and critiqued by Seckendorf. Youll learn
how to use a directors viewfinder so you
can tell your director of photography
how you want your shots framed and
what lens youd like to use. Youll also be
asked to bring in a few pages of the script
youd like to film, which youll use to
practice camera blocking, drawing overhead diagrams and making shot lists.
Go to www.oneononefilmtraining.com
to check for upcoming classes or to get
more information on private film training.
Acting for Directors

Judith Weston Acting Studio
Instructor: Judith Weston
Judith Weston has more than a rsum;
she has a pedigree. Though shes never directed a film herself, her former students include Oscar, Emmy and Sundance winners
and a raft of A-list producers and directors.
She has endorsements from the likes of
David Chase, Billy Ray and Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu, and her workshops for actors
and directors are so popular that Weston is
frequently booked in major cities around
the world in addition to her regular offerings in Los Angeles and New York.
Weston is the author of two books: Directing Actors: Creating Memorable Performances for Film and Television and
The Film Directors Intuition: Script Analysis and Rehearsal Techniques. Reading one
or the other is a prerequisite for taking her
Acting for Directors class, and that class is a
prerequisite for those in which you actually
get to direct actors. Westons theory is directors should walk in an actors shoes
should learn what it is they do before they
try to direct them. Its such sound reasoning
you might expect there to be many more
such courses, but Weston seems to have cornered the market.
Of course, directors can and often do
take classes intended primarily for actors,
but consider how much safer and less intimidating it is to try acting for the first
time in an environment where everyone
is a non-actor and is there for the same
reason: to get an idea of what life is like
on the other side of the camera.
Acting for Directors takes place over
three consecutive days, during which Weston takes you and the rest of the class
through a series of exercises the same
kind actors do. Youll be assigned a monologue and a two-person scene to memorize, but the words are really just a
jumping-off point. The real work is about
getting at whats underneath the words.
The exercises are varied. Sometimes the
whole class will sit on the stage forming a
circle around Judith. Other times shell
work with one pair of actors while the others watch. Weston draws from all the great
teachers who shaped modern acting technique Meisner, Clurman, Adler, Strasberg
taking the best each had to offer and
passing it on to her own students.
Students are asked to focus on the
process not to anticipate or force a certain result. In giving yourself over to the
work, youll soon discover you are losing
your initial self-consciousness, and as you
watch your fellow directors start to morph
into actors, you begin to understand the
difference between talent and craft and
develop a real appreciation for the latter.
Students who complete the Acting for
Directors class are eligible to take Westons session on script analysis and rehearsal techniques, as well as her
actor-director laboratory.
The tuition for Acting for Directors is
$675 ($750 in New York). See www.judithweston.com for a schedule of upcoming classes.
Chemistry
LAB
Writers of five current romantic comedies tutor us in how to

take an inspired pairing from spark to screen.
Spring seems to have become the season for studios to release romantic
comedies those smart or silly, clever or predictable pleasures in which
boy and girl meet, make out, break up, make up, dodge obstacles and
debate whether they should spend the rest of their lives together.
What keeps an audience guessing
and laughing are the myriad ways writers contrive to keep the genre unexpected, spicing up the formula with
imaginative settings, unfamiliar plot
twists or narrative tricks that subvert our
expectations. Films as diverse as Enchanted, Shrek, Shakespeare in Love, Theres
Something About Mary and Knocked Up are
keeping the genre fresh and generating
big box-office returns, while old-fashioned romantic comedies like 27 Dresses
never seem to go away. But hitting the
target with a spec script is tougher than
it may seem. The odds are long, about as
daunting as finding a real-life love match.
To feel out the climate of todays romantic-comedy market, we talked to writers
who are doing something right theyve

come up with five films hitting theaters
this spring. Herewith are Forgetting Sarah
Marshalls Jason Segel; Leatherheads Duncan Brantley and Rick Reilly; The Accidental Husbands Mimi Hare, Clare Naylor
and Bonnie Sikowitz; Run, Fat Boy, Runs
Michael Ian Black and Simon Pegg; and
Smart Peoples Mark Poirier.
What attracted you to writing this genre?

Black: Run, Fat Boy, Run for me was an
exercise to see if I could write a mainstream
romantic comedy that I would find appealing myself. My writing [up] to that point
had been pretty left of center and continues to be. I was trying to marry my sensibility with a more traditional structure.
BY ANDREA MEYER
Reilly (Leatherheads): We both love

this era of movies Billy Wilder, Preston
Sturges, Frank Capra, Howard Hawks.
Plus, we just love to laugh and, I dont
know, we both like girls.
Sikowitz: I love romantic comedies.
Its my genre. I had worked with the producers, Suzanne and Jennifer Todd, on
another film. When they invited me to
come in and pitch for The Accidental Husband, I was just thrilled.
Segel (Forgetting Sarah Marshall): Judd
Apatow asked me if I had any ideas. I had
been mulling this around in my mind,
and I pitched it to him at a Lakers game.
On Friday I sent him an outline, and by
Monday contracts arrived from Universal.
I just tried to imagine the worst thing
that could happen after your girlfriend
dumps you. I liked the idea of not being
able to escape the misery, cause thats the
hardest part when all you can think about
is this person and how terrible the rest of
your life is going to be. So I wanted to set
it in an environment where there was literally no escape.
| 17
Poirier (Smart People): The story was in

my head as a novel for a few years. I knew
what Lawrences emotional state was at
the beginning of the story, and I thought,
how is the world gonna break through to
this guy? Romance was part of that breakthrough.
How did you go about learning how to

do it?
Naylor (Husband): I was a novelist,
and (co-writer) Mimi (Hare) was a director
of development, so we had very different
areas of expertise. I had never seen a
screenplay before. My first step was to
learn the craft, which I did by reading all
the screenplays Mimi could lay her hands
on, as well as studying the screenwriters
canon, from Syd Field to Christopher
Vogler. Mimi, being very well-versed in
the structure of screenplays, focused on
practicing writing developing a style
and finding a voice.
Black (Fat Boy): My first screenplay
was also a romantic comedy, but it very
deliberately tried to subvert conventions.
In this one I wanted to embrace conventions. The question wasnt really, Will he
get the girl? I knew the audience would
know that going in, so my challenge was
how do I make that journey as interesting as possible?
Sikowitz (Husband): I took a Writers
Boot Camp class and wrote a spec for Felicity and Sex and the City, both romantic
comedies, and got a job writing on Dawsons Creek, but I really learned on the job.
Segel: (Forgetting) During Freaks and
Geeks (in which he starred), Judd came to
me one day and said, Listen, Jason,
youre kind of a weird dude, and the only
way youre going to make it is if you start
writing your own material. He literally
took me to his house and sat me down
and taught me how to do an outline and
a beat sheet and then a script. Its one of
the nicest things anyones ever done for
me.
Poirier (Smart People): I got a Chesterfield Screenwriting Fellowship and was
paired up with Don Roos (The Opposite of
Sex, Boys on the Side) as my mentor. He
sort of held my hand through the
process. Before that, I lived with Larry
McMurtry and Diana Ossana in Texas. I
worked at Larrys bookstore. This was
after graduate school. I finished my first
two books out there. One of my jobs was
to look for things for them to adapt. I
18
found Brokeback Mountain for them

they thanked me at the Oscars. I got to
watch them write the script, and I learned
a lot from them.
Reilly (Leatherheads): We watched a lot
of movies; we read a lot of scripts. (Cowriter) Duncan (Brantley) really knew
how to write it. I had no clue. I would just
send him pages. Im sure they were just a
mess and he would put them in the right
format. He would do those shot suggestions: Dissolve to the watch, Pull out
on a training session clock. Steven
Soderbergh also really helped us.
Brantley (Leatherheads): Steven Soderbergh read the script and thought it was
terrific. We went and spent three days
with him at his house. Thats the answer
to the question: Steven Soderbergh
taught us how to write a script.
Was there an archetypal romantic comedy or a recent model that inspired you
in the writing of your film?
Sikowitz (Husband): I spent a lot of
time with (director) Griffin Dunne and
Uma Thurman during the outlining
stage. They both had a fast-talking
Katharine Hepburn in mind. I went back
and looked at some of those great movies
she did, like The Philadelphia Story and
Woman of the Year, and that gave me a lot
of inspiration for Umas character.
Black (Fat Boy): I really like Notting Hill
and, coincidentally, About a Boy. Ironically,
this became a British romantic comedy.
Poirier (Smart People): The romantic
comedies I like are character-driven stories like Punch Drunk Love, Terms of Endearment, As Good as It Gets, in which the
relationship or romance is an unlikely
one. I wanted the relationships to be as
realistically complicated as possible. I love
Sideways and the beautifully complicated
relationships in that movie. In order for
Paul Giamatti to get out of the funk hes
in, he has to meet up again with his old
roommate and go on this road trip; he
has to meet up with Virginia Madsen. All
the stuff [the writers]make happen to him
on that trip are little steps in bringing
him out of his stupor.
Segel (Forgetting): Broadcast News is by far
one of my favorite movies. I always admired
that love triangle. I wanted to have a little
bit of that in this, where the Sarah Marshall
character doesnt quite know who she
should be with. Two very different guys are
both fighting for her affection.
Can you tell me about your writing

process? Did you start with a premise,
a character, a scene?
Naylor (Husband): We started with our
characters, Emma and Patrick, and the
dynamic between them. Then we added
(the character of) Richard to the mix. We
always had a very strong sense of who
these people were. These characters
weathered many drafts and changes to
plot, always remaining themselves. Having characters that live and breathe for
you before youve even put pen to paper
is a godsend and a failsafe foundation for
any story.
Sikowitz (Husband): I was fortunate to
come into this project where Mimi Hare
and Clare Naylor had already written a
script. They conceived the love triangle,
the three characters and the fantastic
premise. I spent about a week with Griffin
and Uma and talked about what was
missing, what they needed more of, and
I brought in my bag of tricks. My family
comes from Queens and my best friends
growing up were Indian, so I brought that
whole element of Queens as this melting
pot. We had a really intense work week,
and then I came home and wrote the
[new draft] in four weeks.
Poirier (Smart People): I have to think
about the character before I can write a
single word. It makes it so much easier; if
theyre in a situation you know how
theyre going to react. I learned so much
from Don Roos. He wasnt afraid to ask
what if questions. What if Lawrence
wasnt mugged? What if something else
brings him to the hospital? Its better if
characters do stuff rather than have stuff
done to them, if theyre active rather
than passive. What can Lawrence do that
would bring him to the hospital?
Black (Fat Boy): I started with the
premise, which was literally, Fat guy
runs marathon. I generally sit down and
go from page one. Ive tried outlining and
doing treatments, which I know youre
supposed to do, but I get bored stupid
and I abandon screenplays. The only way
Ive been able to finish is if I write the
screenplay as Im thinking of the story.
Segel (Forgetting): It started with the
premise. I knew [the main character] was
going to go to Hawaii and run into [his
ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend].
From there, writing the first draft was
pretty easy. Then we did what we do with
all the Judd stuff we started working it
and reading it out loud. As we cast people, their parts get entirely rewritten. Basically, when someone gets onboard, we
bring them in and do a two- or threehour improv session. For example, what
we presented to Jonah (Hill) was, Listen,
we have a part for a waiter who keeps
popping up you can do whatever you
want with that character. So Jonah
comes in and brings it to life, and we
rewrite it and tailor it to him.
How did the script evolve from finished

first draft to the version that made it
to screen?
Black (Fat Boy): When it became a
British production, Simon (Pegg) did a
pass to make it feel more British and to
give the main character, Dennis, his
voice. I was really afraid, for obvious reasons, but I was delighted when I read it,
because I thought he improved things
that needed work, but he preserved the
best stuff. I was also happy because I
found myself laughing at jokes that I
thought he had written and then I went
back and read the previous draft and said,
Oh, I wrote that!
Naylor (Husband): I couldnt even hazard a guess as to how many drafts we
wrote. Then, as is all too common, other
writers were brought in to rewrite our
script. We tried to remain philosophical,
but its a demoralizing experience to have
a piece of work that youre so attached to
altered in a way that you dont consider
to be an improvement. When we read
one draft we nearly cried, as we thought
all the charm had gone. Thankfully, that
draft was scrapped, and Bonnie Sikowitz
was brought on board to carry out yet another rewrite. She did a wonderful job,
and we were proud to share the
scriptwriting credit with her.
Segel (Forgetting): All the characters
changed tremendously while we were
shooting. One thing I was acutely aware
of was I wanted to be really careful not to
vilify the Sarah Marshall character. It
would have been easy to make her the antagonist of the movie. I felt the only way
its interesting is if no one is the villain.
Its more complicated than that. One of
the things I like best in the movie is the
scene after the surfing accident, where we
have the first real heart-to-heart, and I say
to her, I wish you had tried, and she
says, Youve got to be kidding me, you
dont think I tried? I went to psychia-
trists, I talked to my mother. You were a

mess. I think thats the most important
scene in the movie. All of a sudden, shes
not a villain, shes just the girlfriend who
couldnt take it anymore.
The romantic comedy genre has certain

conventions. Which ones did you
incorporate and which ones did you
play off or subvert?
Sikowitz (Husband): One of the conventions we worked hard to subvert concerned Umas fianc, Richard (Colin
Firth). Sometimes when you see these
movies and theres a love triangle, you
know the womans going to wind up with
the other guy because the guy shes with
is such a jerk. I hope that you can see why
shes with Richard. Its more nuanced
when you see that she could be with either one of them.
Poirier (Smart People): One thing Don
Roos said to me is, After they fight, the
man always has to go back to the woman
its a rule in romantic comedies. In
Smart People, it happens twice.
Black (Fat Boy): I tried to apply my
own subversive sense of humor to it, but
I didnt really break the conventions.
Segel (Forgetting): I think the biggest
challenge is that you know how a romantic comedy is going to end: The main
character ends up with the girl he should
be with. Judd is very insistent on doing
that in a way that was at least somewhat
surprising. Hed be like, no, thats too
much like The Wedding Singer or too much
like The Cable Guy. It was pretty tough to
think of a new twist on the happy ending, but with the puppets and the final
nudity, I think we found a good way to
make it unique. The original script had a
different ending. Judd said, I think we
can beat this ending. Almost as a joke I
said, What if it ends with a lavish puppet
musical? Judd looked at me with this curious look and said, Really? That could
be pretty funny. This is really sad, but
five or six years ago when I wasnt working much, I was writing a puppet musical. Everyone around me thought I was
crazy, specifically because I didnt realize
it should be funny. It was very serious, so
this was me learning to make fun of myself.
Duncan (Leatherheads): So much of romantic comedy is tone, and all these terrific movies that we learned from that
have this fabulous tone, so we sort of
aped that. This story is all a bunch of

guys, and then Lexie, the female character, is sort of a tough, Rosalind Russell
character. Howard Hawks was famous for
writing his women like his male friends,
so the Lexie character is in a lot of ways
one of the guys. But you cant avoid the
triangle in a romantic comedy. With
Dodge Connelly, the (George) Clooney
character, as the older guy, it just seemed
natural to have the Carter Rutherford
character (John Krasinski) as this young
milk-drinking guy right out of college,
and then throw the girl in between them
and let them fight it out for her.
Was the finished script a quick sell, or

did it have a long journey to the
screen?
Naylor (Husband): We optioned the
script early on. We showed it to our
agent, who showed it to Uma Thurman,
who liked it. Thanks to the might of
Uma, it was optioned soon afterward.
What followed, though, was an epic of
different production companies, option
lapses, the collapse of financing, even the
collapse of a studio! So there was an
eight-year gap between the first option
and the movie making it to the screen.
Poirier (Smart People): Focus Features
bought it. Gary Winick was going to direct it, and then he went off to direct
Charlottes Web. Then Bruna Popandrea at
Groundswell picked it up and brought it
to Michael London, and he liked it, and
we got it rolling. I think it was 2002 when
I wrote it, and we made it last year. It was
five years.
Black (Fat Boy): It was a fairly long
journey four or five years. We put it
out there into the studio universe. Nobody bit, so then it made the indie
rounds. It was one of those in-between
movies it wasnt quite big enough to
be a studio film and it wasnt quite indie
enough to be an indie film. Eventually I
started working with Alexa Fogel and Joe
Infantolino, who are a great, passionate
producer team, and they took it to Gold
Circle, to a guy name Paul Brooks, who
brought (David) Schwimmer on board (as
director). They kind of diddled around for
two or three years, and Schwimmer was
increasingly frustrated and thought about
walking away from it. Eventually Gold
Circle lofted it onto Material Entertainment, a new British production company.
They took it and ran with it. David was
| 19
working with Simon at the time in London and showed it to him, and from
there things went pretty quickly.
Segel (Forgetting): We had kind of an
interesting situation because on my TV
show (How I Met Your Mother), I get basically a three- or four-month hiatus from
April to August, so if they were going to
make the movie, they had to decide very
quickly or wait a full year. So it came
down to the wire. Around December we
started to hear that if we could nail the
next draft, theyd probably greenlight the
movie. It was crunch time, man, I would
shoot the show from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.,
then come home and write into the
night, and go back to work the next day
exhausted. I actually got a talking-to at
the TV show: Youre clearly up writing
all night long, you need to get some rest.
When you initially presented the script

to your agent or producer, what were
you told was the climate for it in the
marketplace?
Naylor (Husband): Our agent was always optimistic that it would get made.
But it suffered at the hands of a fickle
marketplace on more than one occasion.
When we first wrote it, the traditional romantic comedy was out of vogue. Then
along came a renaissance of the genre,
with films like My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
What felt like a week later, the romantic
comedy per se seemed to be out of fashion again. What you quickly learn is that
it doesnt matter what any agent or executive or producer says. The moment a
film breaks through, that genre is perceived as fashionable again.
Poirier (Smart People): I got a manager
from the script, and she said I think I can
sell this. She shopped it around with
some producers, and luckily a lot of them
liked it. I went with Bridget Johnson and
Michael Costigan. They were all very
hopeful and optimistic. Because the script
doesnt fit into a neat cubbyhole of romantic comedy, it was a hard sell and Im
glad it worked out the way it did. Im glad
we did it with Groundswell as the financier and then sold it to Miramax. The studios would have tried to mainstream it
into a pure romantic comedy.
Reilly (Leatherheads): Duncan, being a
stalker of William Goldman, always repeated what Goldman said, which is that
nobody knows anything. There was no
point in canvassing Hollywood, in guess-
20
ing what works, or whats not going to

work, or whats hot right now because by
the time you gauge whats hot, its not
hot anymore. Goldman said write from
your heart, write what you think is going
to work, and thats what we did.
What helped it get a greenlight? How

much of it was dependent on casting?
Segel (Forgetting): Well, they let me be
the lead, so they werent too nervous
about the casting, but at that point Judd
had proven that he really knew what he
was doing. The studio was very hands off
in that regard.
Sikowitz (Husband): Umas an executive producer on the movie, and she was
personally invested in the movie, and she
was involved for many, many years. I
think her passion for it probably pushed
it over.
Poirier (Smart People): It took a long
time to find Lawrence (Dennis Quaid)
but once we did, people started hopping
onto the project.
Black: (Fat Boy) Having David
Schwimmer as the director accomplished
a couple of things. It gave it visibility in
the marketplace because I think people
were curious about what he would do. His
rolodex was pretty vast, so he got it to
Simon Pegg, and then overseas, Simon is
a bigger star than he is here.
Reilly: (Leatherheads) If George
Clooney finds a grocery list on the floor
of the supermarket and wants to make it
into a movie, you make the movie.
If you were to write this genre again,

based on your experience, what might
you bring to it to make it more likely
that youd make a sale?
Sikowitz: (Husband) Having so many
people invested in the project is what
made it go from script to screen. I was fortunate to get a wonderful talent like Uma
Thurman involved at an early stage and
a great director like Griffin Dunne and
producers like Jennifer and Suzanne
Todd, who were incredibly helpful in the
screenwriting process. I think the team effort is a great way to go.
Segel: (Forgetting) I think the important thing is to extend misery as long as
you can. The uncomfortable moments are
the most interesting ones, where you get
brutally honest with how difficult relationships are. How much you like someone really vacillates during a relationship,
and I think exploring that is the interesting thing. Im a single man, (director)
Nick (Stoller) just had his first baby, and
Judd is a master at the territory. Between
the three of us, weve come up with some
pretty painful ideas.
Brantley: (Leatherheads) Steven Soderbergh really hammered that its important to remember what your first reaction
to a joke is, because 16 years later, youve
read the script 200 times and its not
funny anymore. But that doesnt mean
its not funny for somebody else the first
time.
Reilly: (Leatherheads) When I first
started at Sports Illustrated, I would stay up
until 7 a.m. just changing good shit to
bad. After about three ulcers, I realized
youre killing yourself, just trust your first
instinct. Ten years later I was done by
midnight and it was much, much better.
Its a good point: Go with the first instinct.
Apart from the ones you modeled it on,

what are some of your favorites in the
genre?
Sikowitz: (Husband) Im a huge fan of
Heaven Can Wait, When Harry Met Sally
and, right now, Juno. I was out of my
mind when I saw Juno I thought, thats
some incredible writing, and every performance, and the direction and the
music its just something really to aspire to.
Segel: (Forgetting) I dont know if youd
call it a romantic comedy, but Id say
Harold and Maude. Id put Being There in
there also. Its not a romantic comedy,
but the scenes with Peter Sellers and
Shirley MacLaine are unbelievable. Im
also a sucker for that string of Tom Hanks
comedies, Sleepless in Seattle, Youve Got
Mail. Its kind of a guilty pleasure, but I
watch Youve Got Mail every time its on.
Naylor: (Husband) Annie Hall, Moonstruck, Somethings Gotta Give, As Good as It
Gets. These are great movies that prove
romantic comedy doesnt have to be predictable, safe or just for chicks.
Romantic
Comedy Today:
Discovering the Market
BY B I L LY M E R N I T
Ask a studio exec what he or she is
looking for in a romantic comedy these
days and you wont get a ready answer
beyond, perhaps, one with Will Smith
in it. But as a reader who fields specs for
such execs and writes notes on their projects in development, I do see a few recognizable trends in terms of whats
getting made and whats connecting
with contemporary audiences.
THE RISE OF THE MACHO CHICK FLICK

One currently successful brand of romantic comedy is told from the male
point of view, and its sensibility is a lot
more down and dirty than what weve
come to expect from traditional genre
fare. Its a raunchy sex farce that ultimately wants you to believe in the power
of true love. In other words, its essentially a chick flick for guys.
Just look to the Farrelly brothers
Theres Something About Mary (1998) and
the Nick Hornby-goes-American High Fidelity (2000). But the trend really stepped
up with 2006s The 40-Year-Old Virgin and
its kissing cousin, Wedding Crashers. In
2007, Judd Apatows Knocked Up hit a cultural home run on this turf. The macho
chick flick, or raunch-com, if you will,
generally features an anti-Cary Grant as
its hero. Far from being cool and in com-
mand, hes often a sex-hungry slacker

whos more boy-man than stud, and his
foray into fumbling romance tends to become a coming-of-age story.
These expletive-heavy, blue-humored
movies actually have a heart as pure as
driven mush. They wrap their warm and
fuzzy feelings in a cocky package of lewd
winks, thus giving their male audience
members permission to feel like men,
even when theyre forced to endure
happy endings that would seem blatantly feminine in sensibility. Because
such movies appeal to the demographic
that likes both teen comedies and romantic comedies, every studio now has
at least one in development. But if youre
writing one, bear these two points in
mind:
1. You cant go raunchy without
the sweet. For all its dirty bits and
gross-out moments, a macho chick flick
embraces the ethos that has been the
hallmark of chick-flick-ism for decades:
There is one great love available to the
worthy, won only via the highest sacrifice. In Wedding Crashers, two womanizing playboys have to give up their full
calendar of easy conquests to earn the
real thing. In Knocked Up, the hapless
hero (played by Seth Rogen) has to give
up being an overgrown kid and face real
adulthood. The successful raunch-com

has to have both elements in play
risque, over-the-top gags, as well as the
heartfelt values of an old-fashioned romantic comedy.
2. Dont forget the women. As a
defender of Knocked Up during the inevitable backlash that accompanied its
success, Id be the first to acknowledge its
gaping plot hole: We never get to see her
fall in love with him, nor fully understand why she would. Thus, lovely
Katherine Heigl is left to her own charismatic devices to make the most of a notreally-there character, and many women
I know have big issues with the movie.
So if you want to put your project ahead
of the currently Apatow-imitative pack,
create a fully realized, credible and compelling female lead one who can hold
her own with the slacker at the storys
center and even occasionally swipe the
reins from his hands. The macho chick
flick audience is ready for stronger
women, and there are many actresses
hungry for these roles. And speaking of
appetites
COMFORT FOOD: THE TRADITIONAL

CHICK FLICK REFUSES TO DIE
Maybe you always want haute cuisine.
Maybe only the latest, hippest eatery will
| 21
satisfy your rarified tastes. Me, I still like

my occasional burger, fries and shake.
Apparently, a good portion of Americas
movie-going public feels the same. How
else to explain the strong turnout for 27
Dresses, one of the most same-as-it-everwas, predictable romantic comedies
imaginable?
Dresses cannily capitalized on an already flourishing romantic-comedy subgenre (see Four Weddings and a Funeral,
My Best Friends Wedding, Runaway Bride,
et al). In the past two years, I read five
other projects entitled Always a Bridesmaid, so apparently a movie about the
hazards of being a bridesmaid in unrequited love was just waiting to be made.
But take away all those eyesore outfits
from 27 Dresses, and youre left with the
traditional female-driven romantic comedy: in effect, the little black dress that
never quite goes out of style.
Female-driven formulaic fare like Failure to Launch, Sweet Home Alabama and
How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, along with
male POV but largely traditional pics like
Hitch (which in 2005 had the biggest romantic comedy opening weekend in the
history of the genre) continue to do well.
These are movies designed to satisfy an
audience that pretty much knows how
the plot will unfold, complete with
quirky best friend, cutely dated pop tune
sung in comedic karaoke style and a dash
to the airport at the climax. This is not
to imply that a slavish devotion to formula is the path to success for the romantic-comedy screenwriter with a more
conservative bent. The vital caveat Ill
cite for those of you writing female-driven comfort fare is: Find a way to tweak
it.
Consider the shiny, eye-catching devices that dress up the predictable plots
in some of the most popular romantic
comedies of the past decade: In 50 First
Dates girl meets boy for the first time
every time they meet. How to Lose a Guy
in 10 Days telegraphs its device in its
title. In Somethings Gotta Give girl meets
boy when theyre both over 50 hows
that for a jaw-dropping high concept?
Given our familiarity with the form, traditional romantic comedy succeeds best
these days when its hung on an intriguing milieu (My Big Fat Greek Wedding), a
fantastical premise (13 Going on 30) or a
fresh character conceit (Hitchs ultimate
playa relationship advisor). In other
22
words, the cores the same, but the delivery is different.

This brings us to the hybrid romantic
comedy and explains why some of the
recent hits in the genre have scarcely
looked like romantic comedies at all.
FUNNY VAMPIRES IN LOVE AND

OTHER HYBRID TRIUMPHS
Heres another kind of romantic comedy spec script I see a lot these days: boy
meets vampire. Or girl meets wolfman.
Or its zombies in love. Or you get the
picture. The hybrid of romantic comedy
with horror is clearly another one of
those movies that wants to be made. Yes,
its been done before (see Shaun of the
Dead or the old Love at First Bite), but
were evidently ready to do it again. One
of the savviest routes to a romantic-comedy spec sale today is to combine your
romantic-comedy plot with the world
and sensibility of another genre.
One combo platter that worked like
gangbusters is the recent holiday hit Enchanted. This genre hybrid was so cannily
promoted that many audience members
didnt even realize they were watching a
romantic comedy until they were well
into it. They bought the high-concept
animated fairy-tale princess is catapulted into the real world then found
themselves deep in the heart of a girl
lands an unlikely Mr. Right story. Blending romantic-comedy elements with an
unlikely genre plot (remember Mr. & Mrs.
Smith, the Brangelina romantic comedy/spy thriller?) is a more radical version of what smart screenwriters have
also done with more organically intertwined materials. Diablo Codys breakout
movie, Juno, wasnt pitched to the public
as a romantic comedy. But this comingof-age movie about a teen pregnancy is
one, undeniably, with its happy ending
predicated on girl getting boy in the end.
The studios are on the lookout for another Romancing the Stone, i.e., a romantic comedy that fills the big screen with
the kind of visuals and excitement that
elements of another genre can provide.
Similarly, the indie production companies you might target for a more left-ofcenter high-concept movie will be more
likely to embrace it when it also provides
an accessible love story, e.g., Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. My advice to romantic-comedy screenwriters with an
imaginative bent is to think beyond your
genre. You never know what kind of a

bigger movie you might find yourself
writing.
These three approaches represent ongoing trends, as seen from the belly of
the industry beast. But obviously, what
you write has to be the thing you most
passionately care about, especially in this
genre. If the canon of romantic-comedy
greats tells us anything, its that stories
written from the heart of personal experience written to fulfill the need of a
writer to know something about love and
the human condition will always find
an audience, whatever the vagaries of
current cultural taste may be.
BILLY MERNIT (www.billymernit.com), a
WGA screenwriter, novelist, studio story analyst and private script consultant, is the
author of the screenwriting textbook
Writing the Romantic Comedy
(Harper/Collins) and pens the popular blog,
Living the Romantic Comedy (http://www.livingromcom.typepad.com). His novel Imagine Me and You will be published this
spring by Random House/Shaye Areheart.
Phones, Coffee,
Spec Scripts?
Assistant jobs can offer an alternate way into
the competitive world of television writing
BY SHELLEY GABERT
Suppose youve written those killer
spec scripts, but youre no closer to the
writers room of a television show than
when you hightailed it to Los Angeles in
search of the dream. What if you could
land a job that let you immerse yourself
in the world of television, learn from the
pros and meet people who might help
you? Joining a TV staff at the assistant
level could well be the move. Its long
hours for little pay and may require
reining in your ambition and attitude for
a while but the assistant track has led
to bigger things for many an aspiring
writer.
And while some showrunners are
solely in the market for a good assistant,
others say they actually prefer candidates
who intend to become writers. One such
potential boss is Shawn Ryan, creator and
showrunner of CBSs The Unit and The
Shield.
Ryan says hes given freelance writing
opportunities to six or seven assistants,
some of whom went on to staff jobs. He
usually asks to read the writing samples
of potential assistants before hiring
them.
I want to see if they have some talent because ultimately Im looking for
someone who doesnt want to be an assistant, someone who is willing to bust
their butt for a couple of years in ex-
change for a front-row seat to the inner

workings of a television show, he says.
A personality compatible with the
bosss is important, but Ryan says he also
seeks an assistant with good instincts
about when to give me a suggestion and
when to just remain quiet.
Its the difference between a regular
hospital and a teaching hospital, says
Ryan of the environment he creates. On
The Shield, he says, I was blessed because
we only did 13 episodes a year, and that
afforded me time to mentor some people.
I had people who went out of their way
to help me, and I felt an obligation to return the favor.
Another showrunner who leans toward assistants with writing talent is
Michael Pavone, whos run shows such
as Jack and Jill, Prison Break and, most recently, Lifetimes Side Order of Life.
Pavone says he makes his own phone
calls but does need some help keeping
track of his schedule. He suggests that assistants focus on their jobs for the first
season and then in the second year,
maybe when the show is going on hiatus,
ask the showrunner to read their material. But he cautions: Do so understanding that the person isnt always going to
hire someone green when theres so
much at stake, or if hes battling all the
time with the network.
Being a writers assistant definitely

puts you in the loop, but that doesnt
mean youll go all the way, Pavone says.
Many of my former writing assistants
had incredible credentials and were definitely smarter than me and deserved a
staff writer job, but that doesnt mean its
going to happen.
James Duff, creator of TNTs The
Closer, seconds that. Its a bit nave to
take an assistant job only as a way to end
up as staff writer, he says.
Whats more possible and probable,
Duff says, is that youll learn how the
process works, how an idea moves from
thought to page to stage to film, and
youll be surrounded by talented people
willing to listen to your ideas.
Still, after two years, he promoted one
of his former assistants to script coordinator, which on The Closer is synonymous with a writers assistant the job
involves sitting in the writers room, taking notes on discussions of each episode
and proposed storyline, organizing and
typing them, and creating production
drafts of scripts.
It can be a tedious job, but its important, because often well have a problem working a story out and well
reference notes from months ago to find
the solution, Duff says.
The promoted script coordinator took
| 23
Duffs advice to contribute in the writers

room and was rewarded with a staff writer
job. That scenario is ideal for an aspiring
television writer, but not every showrunner has time to mentor new writers
some just need a great assistant.
Ryan says he usually advertises on the
UTA Job Board, an underground job list
thats circulated among agency assistants
and other insiders in the business. He
also puts his assistant in charge of finding his or her replacement.
Wed put the ad up for writers assistant on Monday, and by Tuesday morning we had 100 applicants, he says.
Pavone says that when he needed an
assistant, he would request that the studio, network or production company
send him 10 resumes out of their system,
which he weeded through for interviews.
Often, though, candidates took the initiative to approach him. Although they
may be entry-level, assistant jobs can be
highly competitive even some established writers are now trying to get these
positions. As with any industry job, the
key is to get your foot in the door and be
in a position to network with people in
the business, to find out about the openings even before theyre advertised.
When I moved to Los Angeles from
Pittsburgh to go to grad school I had zero
connections, says Duppy Demetrius,
now an executive story editor on The
Closer. I got a job on a friend of mines
girlfriends brother-in-laws independent
film, and one of the producers knew that
The Pretender (an NBC drama) needed a
set P.A. I worked there for four years
(1996-2000) until it was cancelled.
While assisting a line producer on a
forgettable Fox show, Demetrius learned
that 24 was going into production on the
same soundstage. He met Howard Gordon, one of the creators. Gordon said his
partner, Joel Surnow, needed an assistant.
Joel and I clicked, and during the
second season, when one of his meetings was cancelled, he read one of my
specs, Demetrius recalls. He liked it
and offered me a co-writing opportunity
on an episode.
The following year, Demetrius became
a staff writer a coup, but a position in
which he still took notes in the writers
room and had to angle to land at least one
script assignment a year. Since then, however, hes made steady progress he be-
24
came a story editor on 24 and then left to

become an executive story editor on Kidnapped before landing his present job. He
now has his sights on continuing up the
hierarchy to become a co-producer, producer, co-exec and executive producer.
While being a producers assistant
worked for him, Demetrius opines that
working as a writers assistant might be a
better way to go because youre engulfed in the script, the story and problem solving, and youre around the right
people, which could lead to a script or a
staff job.
Ive been blessed to work for generous people who want to help, but Ive
(also) seen executives who find a good assistant and dont want to promote them.
Those people need to move on because
you dont want to get caught up in a
dead-end position, he says. The key is
to figure out if youve done what you
came to do on a show and keep your mobility so you continue to get closer and
closer to your goal.
Demetrius route is almost textbook,
but it took him six or seven years to become a staff writer. Some say thats a
fairly realistic timeframe just ask
Patrick Wiegers, who put in nine long
years as an assistant before getting his
break. His original pilot was recently put
into development at USA Network.
I was the George Clooney of assistants, Wiegers says, referring to the
actors history of working on one cancelled show after another before breaking
through on E.R. I watched so many
other assistants move up, always wondering if it would ever be my time.
He started out in Los Angeles temping. I visited temp agencies that specialize in the entertainment business on
a regular basis, just to become more visible and get the better jobs, he says.
Early assignments included file clerking at Warner Bros., where he joined the
studios temp pool. All along, he kept
pestering human resources, and after a
year of interviews he landed a job as an
assistant to a producer, who he then followed to Spelling Entertainment.
After working as a producers assistant
on various pilots, he landed a freelance
assignment from Jorge Zamacona, exec
producer of TNTs Wanted, who promoted him to staff writer. But the show
wasnt picked up for season two.
Even though I finally had a writing

credit, I really thought about doing
something different with my life. I joked
that Id be a suburban father who chucks
it all and decides to become an LAPD
beat police officer, he says.
That idea, born from desperation, became his original pilot. Through Kim
Clements, a writer on Wanted, he got a
manager, and eventually his script
landed at USA. If the pilot is a go,
Wiegers will have bypassed years in the
writing room to be at the helm or cohelm of his own show.
He trusted in the process and it seems
to have rewarded him, but Scott Lipsey,
who also worked at Spelling Entertainment for many years, has a different story
to tell. Already 30 when he moved to Los
Angeles, Lipsey started as a P.A. on Beverly
Hills, 90210 and was promoted to writers
assistant, where he did research on whatever social issue they were dealing with in
that weeks episode. He then moved up to
script coordinator and was hired again for
that position by Brad Kern, executive producer of Charmed, whose office was down
the hall. Kern ultimately gave Lipsey two
freelance assignments. He also was a staff
writer on Spider-Man: The New Animated
Series on MTV.
Even after that, he returned to working as a script coordinator for the next
two years on Showtimes Dexter. Being
in the writing room allows you a chance
to pitch stories, impress and network
with the other writers, but even with
writing credits, I still found it very hard
to get a job as staff writer, Lipsey says.
When youre a good assistant, you
have a lot more value to a showrunner
because they are hearing about other
writers from the studio, network and
agents, who all have their own favorites.
After years of dealing with the struggle
and lack of stability, Lipsey recently
moved his family to Las Vegas. For him,
the lifestyle of working in television no
longer made sense. He says the changing
nature of the business also influenced his
decision.
With all the reality and game shows
taking over, and the half-hour people
moving into drama, there are more favors owed than there are favors to give,
Lipsey says.
He notes that intangible, subjective elements also come into play. I probably
should have spent more time networking, but I didnt have time to sit in the
writers room for hours and crack jokes.
And I wish I could say that actual talent
had more to do with it, but luck and timing are a big part of it and nepotism.
Another recent migr from the busi-
nator on shows like NBCs Las Vegas before

CNN in Atlanta, Strong moved to Los Anbecoming a staff writer on the NBC medgeles, temped and assisted on shows like
ical drama Medical Investigation.
the WB sitcom For Your Love. She also
I worked for Laurence Andries (Six
earned her masters degree in Professional
Feet Under, Alias, Supernatural) as a
Writing from USC and landed a Cosby
writers assistant and script coordinator
Writing Fellowship. A producer promised
and he had read some of my specs and
her a freelance assignment on ABC Famseen my writing evolve, Franklin says,
ilys Lincoln Heights and though
so he asked me to come in for a staff
he lost his job, his replacement
Typical salary ranges
writer interview. My head was pounding
did give her an episode, and it
after being in the writers room all day,
became her first credit.
Writing assistants: $600-$900 a week
but I got the job and it was one of most
I busted my ass for two
Script coordinators: $1000-$1200 a week
exciting times in my career.
years on that show as an assis Staff writers: About $2800 a week
Since then, shes been interviewing for
tant and thought Id finally
Story editors: About $5000 a week
other staff writing jobs, but for the past
gotten there and [that] my
three seasons shes worked as a script cofreelance episode would move
Freelance-episode script minimums
ordinator on Prison Break.
me into the writers room as a
(as of February 2008)
Ive grown pretty realistic about this
staff writer, but it didnt hap 30-minute cable: $12,000
business, and Im constantly taking stock
pen, Strong says. Theres so
60-minute cable: $22,000
and trying to decide whether the payoff is
much politics involved, and
worth it, she says. Being a writers assisthe
producers
arent
making
30-minute network: $21,500
tant definitely helps you develop your
the
hiring
decisions;
its
the
60-minute network: $31,700
craft, and it helped me land a staff writing
network, too.
job, but I really want to be a writer, so I
She adds, My parents are
ness is Sharon Eldridge, who departed at
dont want to be doing it long term. Ulboth educators and they dont understand
the level of script coordinator to move to
timately, for all of us in this business, its a
how a masters degree doesnt get you a job,
Portland. Early on, however, she was enmatter of trying to find where you fit into
but I tell them, It just does not in Hollythusiastic. After graduating with a degree
the scheme of things because there are only
wood.
in Film Studies from Yale, where she para certain amount of jobs available and not
Sylvia Franklin, another Cosby Writing
ticipated in an internship with David
everybody is meant to do this.
Program Fellow, worked as a script coordiMilch, creator of NYPD Blue and Deadwood, she knew television was where she
wanted to work. She got a job as a P.A. on
Felicity and was promoted to script coordinator, a job she repeated on various
Network and do whatever you can to meet people in the business beshort-lived shows before working for sevcause assistant jobs are insider positions. Temping is a good way to get
eral seasons on Everwood, the closest
inside and make contacts. Apple One in Glendale (325 W. Broadway,
thing to a 9-to-5 job she ever had in tel818-247-2991, www.appleone.com) has contracts with several studios
evision.
and television networks.
I was happy on that show, but by
then I just knew it was time to bow out,
Check out the studio temp pools that keep resumes on file for posishe says. I always had the connections
tions. Ultimate Staffing runs them for 20th Century Fox Studios (310to go from one job to the next, but there
369-0295) and MGM (310-449-3563).
was no security, and I had gotten
Read the trades to see which shows are in production. Send resumes to
nowhere with my specs.
all the television networks, studio HR departments and showrunners of
It was a fun ride, she reflects. I
these shows. Find someone who will pass along the UTA job list.
received bonuses and other perks, and I
enjoyed meeting the guest stars and
Always be looking, and the earlier the better. Note that cable shows
going to the set. But eventually the
start pre-production at different times. On The Closer, hiring can begin
in October or November, whereas network shows usually start after the
tradeoffs just werent worth it anymore.
upfronts in the third week of May.
Now, while she happily visits her
friends in Los Angeles and can empathize
Be realistic. Some assistants expect to land a freelance episode quickly,
with their horror stories about staffing
but it can take years. Wait for the right moment to ask a showrunner to
season, shes relieved shes no longer in
read your specs.
the game
If youre a drama writer, its probably better to pursue an assistant job
For Elyce Strong, its the ups and
on a drama than a comedy, and vice versa.
downs that can take their toll. A former
associate producer and news writer at
6 strategies for landing an assistant job
| 25
BOOK
SMART
A Novices Guide to
Acquiring Literary
Material to Adapt
BY JACK EGAN
FROM ITS EARLIEST days, Hollywood has
mined books as prime source material for
movies. By some estimates, approximately
half the films in annual release are based
on literary properties, including not just
novels, but also nonfiction narratives, biographies, autobiographies, memoirs, historical accounts and even treatises.
The attraction is obvious. Books are
complete stories, says Bonnie Nadell, a
publishing industry veteran whos now a
principal at the Frederick Hill/Bonnie Nadell
Literary Agency. She represents approximately 75 authors. Its much easier to buy
a book than anything else, she says.
Theres a beginning, middle and an end
already set up for you.
The usual route is for producers or studios to acquire the rights to books, attracted by their bestseller status, or by works
involving topical themes. These buyers
tend to have the financial resources need-
26
ed to compete and pay for such pricey fare.

But while it happens less frequently,
screenwriters can also initiate negotiations
to acquire screen rights to books they feel
strongly about and that they believe can be
turned into saleable screenplays. With
pluck and luck, even novices have a shot at
optioning a literary property sometimes
for as little as a few hundred dollars.
If theyre a novice, it depends on what
the book is, Nadell says. If its a highly
commercial property, were not going with
someone who has no track record or doesnt have particularly good contacts. But if
somebody is really passionate about a property thats less in demand, and they have
good reasons to take it on, we will listen.
Options can be granted at a reasonable
price, but not for free. In some cases, weve
given options to people who are just out of
film school or who may be working for a
bigger filmmaker or producer. Well give
them a year or two to see what they can

do.
Michael Seitzman was a little-known
screenwriter when he optioned the rights
to the book that inspired the 2005 film
North Country. He had two produced credits (Farmer & Chase and Here on Earth), but
the movies made little impact, and he was
in a self-described career slump when
authors Clara Bingham and Laura Leedy
Gansler caught his attention during their
appearance on NBCs The Today Show to discuss their nonfiction book Class Action: The
Story of Lois Jenson and the Landmark Case
That Changed Sexual Harassment Law.
Seitzman asked his agency to help him
find a way to contact them. Coincidentally, his agency also represented Bingham
through its literary department. Seitzman
was eventually able to arrange a meeting.
He dove into preparing his pitch for how
the true-life story could effectively become
a movie and was able to convince the

authors that he was the writer to go with.
With North Country, I was looking for a
one-year option, with an option to renew
for another year for an additional payment, Seitzman says.
Finding common ground was what
cinched the option agreement, according
to Seitzman. The pitch cant be about the
money, since you dont have any, he says.
But if somebody has spent years and years
writing a book, they want to hear that it
touched you as deeply as it touched them.
You explain what you and the author
have in common, which is a passion for the
material. At the end of the day, youre both
writers. If you dont have much of a record
of movies youve written, how else are you
supposed to rise above the 30 other people
who have probably contacted that author?
Indeed, Bingham had been approached by
some 30 production companies.
After Warner Bros. acquired the rights
based on Seitzmans script and produced
the movie, the finished project put the
writer on the map. Hes currently writing
The Chancellor Manuscript, adapted from
Robert Ludlums bestseller.
Still, his approach was a little unconventional. Heres how it usually works.
Step 1: Find a story you feel

passionate about.
A good strategy is to find a book on a
publishers backlist where theres little or no
competition for the rights. Here, you get an
advantage. Many authors entertain the
thought that their book will become the
material for a screen adaptation. If youre
the only one who comes calling, you may
be able to obtain an option for a fairly reasonable sum.
Of course, if you want to avoid the hassles of optioning a book, you can go further
back in time to find a book that is no longer
under copyright. One reason for the frequency with which Jane Austens novels are
adapted is that theres no need to pay for
book rights because shes deceased.
In 1998 Congress passed a new and
more restrictive copyright law, known as
the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension
Act. It lengthened United States copyrights
by 20 years. Before the extension, copyrights expired 50 years after the death of an
author. Now, its the life of the author plus
70 years.
Even when a book is under copyright, if
you have the key to turning it into a great
screenplay, it may be worth the effort to

obtain an option, even if at the outset it
seems like a long shot.
Advises Nadell, Go for it, but be realistic about whats possible.
Step 2: Find out who controls the

rights and if theyre available.
To get started, call the books publisher
and ask how to contact the firms subsidiary
rights department. (Most publishers have
such a division.) E-mail or fax your inquiry
to the department. It can take three to six
weeks to get a response, which should
include the name of the authors agent.
Contact the agent to determine the books
status. Even if the rights are available, it
may have already attracted numerous parties interested in adapting it for a film. That
doesnt mean you should give up, of course
(see above example).
The most unlikely books can attract an
unusual number of interested parties. Take
the case of Passion & Power: The Technology
of Orgasm, a documentary about the history of vibrators. It recently premiered at Lincoln Center in New York. The project
originated when filmmakers Wendy Slick
and Emiko Omori came upon a technical
article that was later turned into a book
called The Technology of Orgasm: Hysteria,
the Vibrator and Womens Sexual Satisfaction.
When they tried to option the book, they
were surprised to find out they were competing with 11 other suitors. Nonetheless,
they eventually wound up with the rights.
Step 3: Talk to the authors

agent.
Once youve located the authors agent,
talk to him or her to find out whats possible. A writer with few or no credits would
most likely need to demonstrate some credibility or have someone in the industry
vouch for them. The likelihood of an
unknown screenwriter being able to secure
the rights to a book are pretty slim, says
B.J. Robbins, who runs an independent literary agency in Los Angeles bearing her
name, but if youre able to convince me
and the author that you can do a good
screenplay from the material, you can be
successful.
gle page. Still, if you dont have your own

agent to negotiate on your behalf, its best
to find an entertainment lawyer to vet the
agreement for you. Upon signing, you normally have 10 days to come up with the
money youve agreed to pay.
Sunstone Press, based in Santa Fe, N.M.,
openly states on its website that its interested in optioning its book titles for television and movies. Dubbing itself the story
store for movies, the imprint has given a
break to some up-and-coming scribes. We
had mercy on one novice who was an interesting individual, says James Smith, president of the publishing company. We gave
him an option for a few months for a nominal sum to see if he could get his feet wet.
Normally, he says, the charge for a book
option is several thousand dollars for a 12month period.
We have one simple option agreement
that fits all and is good for people starting
from scratch, Smith says, but we want to
believe they are going to follow through.
He adds: Novices could use some help. We
often find we have to do the educating for
the current crop of young screenwriters. We
ask them if they have an adviser or someone who could speak on their behalf.
A deal to purchase the rights comes
later, if and when you decide to exercise
the option. Think of it like renting a
house before you buy it. The option period usually runs from six months to a
year and is renewable. Once you pay for
an option, the clock is always ticking,
however. And if youre going it alone, its
your own dime youre spending, though
all or part of your outlay can sometimes
be recouped from a producer once you
sell your screenplay.
If a screenwriter cant finish a script
within two years or cant do something
with what hes got, then thats usually the
end of the option, Nadell says. There can
be exceptions, however. If somebody is
getting to the end of the second-year option
and says, Im about to sell this, we can
occasionally renew for an additional three
months. Well only do this if we think
theyre serious.
Step 4: Start negotiating.

If you get the go-ahead, the next step is
to negotiate an option agreement spelling
out the terms and conditions. This can be
straightforward and simple, limited to a sin-
| 27
PILOT LESSONS
Expert advice on pitching original
material for television BY SHELLEY GABERT
N THE OLD DAYS actually, just a
year ago producers and writers
could set their creative watches by
pilot development season. Typically, beginning in July, ideas for new television
shows would be pitched, purchased and
developed into full-length scripts in a
flurry of activity stretching between now
and Thanksgiving. In the wake of the
writers strike, however, and the dismal

season suffered by the networks in both
revenue and ratings, the budgets for buying and developing new pilots has been
reduced dramatically.
In one example, NBC has announced
it will go directly from script to series in
most cases, eliminating all but a few pilots a year. Other broadcasters may follow
PA R T I C I PA N T S :
A journalist at the The Baltimore Sun for 20 years, RAFAEL ALVAREZ got his first
freelance TV-writing assignment on Homicide: Life on the Street. A staff writer on
HBOs The Wire, he worked on FXs Thief and NBCs The Black Donnellys and Life.
As senior vice president of programming at Fox Television Studio, NANCY COTTON oversees USAs Burn Notice and TNTs Saving Grace. A longtime programming
executive, she also ran the television department at Mel Gibsons Icon Productions
and worked at Peter Gubers Mandalay Television and ABC.
PAUL GUYOTs first staff writing job was on David Kelleys Snoops. He went on to
write for Felicity and Judging Amy and in recent years has written numerous pilots
for cable networks and studios.
Early in her career NANCY MILLER wrote four pilots that went to series: The Round
Table (1992), Against the Grain (1993), The Monroes (1995) and Leaving L.A. (1997).
She then created the Lifetime hit Any Day Now (1998 - 2002) and served as executive producer on CSI Miami and TNTs The Closer before creating Saving Grace,
which begins its second season this month.
CHRIS MILLS has been a literary manager with Magnet Management for three
years. Prior to that, he spent five years with Imparato-Fay Management.
CHARLES MURRAY worked as an assistant to Marti Noxon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
and apprenticed for David Milch, but it was Steven Bochco who gave him his first
freelance episode on City of Angels. Murray wrote for Third Watch and Criminal
Minds. His pilot, Under, was made at A&E.
BRANT ROSE is the founder of Brant Rose Agency, which represents directors,
writers and producers for film, TV, games and new media. The agency has shaped
the careers of Academy Award, Golden Globe, WGA, DGA and Independent Spirit
Award winners and nominees.
28
NBCs lead. At the annual dog-and-pony

show in New York known as the upfronts, held in May, the networks had
fewer shows to promote to advertisers for
the 2008 fall season, and parties and
other expenses were scaled way back from
the norm.
Going forward, network executives are
eyeing the year-round development
model employed by the cable networks,
which are enjoying a number of notable
successes with their original series. USA,
FX and TNT, which represent an encouraging new market for scribes, produce
fewer shows but take more time to nurture them.
While the sales climate may be less
than robust, an original pilot script has
become an essential part of a television
writers portfolio as a means of demonstrating range and an original voice. And
the TV landscape is peppered with examples of successful series from CSI to
Army Wives to The O.C. that actually
did spring from pitches or pilots by
novice writers.
To get a sense of where were headed
this pilot season and how television writers should approach writing pilots of their
own, we asked an array of insiders to
weigh in.
CS: How has the strike affected the

pilot season, which would traditionally be starting now?
ROSE: Development at the script stage
has been cut by 25 percent and networks
are picking up half the pilots they normally would. But this has allowed studio
execs to focus on fewer projects and put
more resources behind them to make
them into hit shows. This model is more

like the cable channels, which have a
much smaller ratio of shows in development. Broadcasters have enjoyed this
change. Theres always been a lot of talk
about buying scripts and ordering pilots
all year long, as opposed to developing in
a three- or four-month window, but it
may now become a reality.
GUYOT: The strike has made the
major networks look at their way of doing
television and realize theyre still working
with an antiquated formula. The only
reason networks put new shows on in
September was because when television
first began, new cars were released in September, and the car companies sponsored
the shows.
COTTON: We already hear pitches
and develop year round, so were operating under a different mandate, and were
not as interested in the (traditional) network pilot system. Our new president
wanted to focus more on cable because he
felt that it was a world rich for development. This strategy is a good business
model for us and the writers because with
less programming being developed on
cable networks, theres a much better
chance of getting a show on the air.
MILLS: The strike has been a blessing
and a curse. Instead of holding onto projects in deals with showrunners, the networks passed or dumped them. The
number of pilots was reduced to a bare
minimum broadcasters may have three
or four drama pilots in the works, as opposed to seven to 12 in past years. Some
networks pay for the script, but not a producers fee. [Because] studios havent
been paying as much for pilots, there
might be more opportunities for less-established writers.
CS: What are the odds of a new writer

getting a pilot commitment?
MILLS: One of my clients (Patrick
Wiegers), who only had one freelance
writing credit, sold his pilot script to USA.
USA made it known they wanted to read
new voices, and they liked his script (The
Oldest Rookie, about a 40-year-old suburban dad who decides to become an LAPD
cop). They asked him to lighten it up as
they felt it read more like an FX show.
They also paired him with an experienced
showrunner who gave him notes. My
client developed it into a 90-minute
script, and were waiting to hear if a pilot
will be made. It happens, but it helps if

your manager or agent helps you get to a
network or a producer who has a deal.
MILLER: What makes it harder for
baby writers, if theyre not represented, is
they dont have inside info from their
agent or manager about what ABC is
looking for. Thats why they need to just
write first and think of the business part
afterward. When I was starting out, it
never occurred to me that my pilot
wouldnt be picked up. Im so passionate
and blind, really, but looking back I realize how lucky I was to have my first pilots picked up to series, even though
some of them only lasted six episodes.
CS: Many showrunners prefer to read

original material when staffing.
Should new writers invest the time to
write a pilot or stick to specs of existing shows?
GUYOT: You need to have both. Original material shows youre not simply a
mimic. I always had original pilots for
writing samples. I find the process of
staffing is cyclical one season everyone
wants to read original material, the next
they all want specs, then it cycles back.
MILLS: We recommend our clients
write original material because its what
we use to get them out there. Its tougher
to demonstrate an original voice, while a
spec of a show like House is more of a
complementary sales tool. In the past
three years, every client weve staffed on
a show for the first time had an original
pilot as [his or her] writing sample.
MURRAY: Its not just for new writers.
I was coming off a cancelled show and
was tired of being a slave to the kinds of
shows on the air, so I decided to write a
spec pilot. My agent suggested I do it, too.
I wanted to push in a different direction
so I wrote a dark piece. I gave it to my
agent and manager. The agents were a little hesitant as to how people were going
to respond to it, but I told them to send
it out anyway. It was a sample, but my
manager thought we could sell it.
ROSE: In an environment where there
havent been a lot of new hits in the halfhour genre and many of the dramas are
long in the tooth, the showrunners eyes
are bleeding if they have to read another
Law & Order spec. Original material is
something new, and its easier for the
writers voice to stand out. The added
benefit of writing the original pilot is that
you may sell it. It may turn into a show,

and youll have leapfrogged the staffing
process and become a senior-level producer on your own show.
ALVAREZ: All writing serves as a good
sample. Its the equivalent of bumping
into you at a cocktail party for 30 seconds. Im going to know if youre boring
by then. Its always about what have you
done lately? NBC commissioned me to
write a pilot and then passed on the
script, but (now) Ive got another writing
sample, and it led to a writing job on
Lifes first season.
CS: What makes a good pilot? What

are some pilot concepts that have
sold, and what are some things that
seem tired and best to avoid?
MURRAY: Under is a dark piece about a
kid who goes into the witness protection
program, and under his new identity he
moves to Chicago and becomes a cop.
Writing pilots is really about bringing a
fresh spin to something because if you
can tell a great story you could make almost anything work. HBO bought the
pilot Hung, a half hour about a regular
guy who is very well-endowed. (Editors
note: The show was written by Dmitry
Lipkin, a playwright and creator of The
Riches, with his wife and writing partner
Colette Burson. Alexander Payne [Sideways] will direct the pilot.)
MILLER: Its all about the idea
doing something fresh that hasnt been
done. A pilot has to be an idea with legs,
enough material to do 22 episodes. I like
to tackle taboo subject matter. Leaving
L.A. was about the coroners office and
death, and Any Day Now examined race.
Saving Grace is a dark show about God,
faith, religion and sin. Two co-executive
producers on The Closer (John Coveny
and Hunt Baldwin) have a pilot going to
series on TNT. (Editors note: Called Truth
in Advertising, its about two advertising
execs and the effect on their relationship
when one gets promoted.)
GUYOT: There are always pilot sales
based on nothing but what I call the big
shiny. Every year studios and networks
spend huge money on concepts that are
big and shiny and almost always these are
the first to fail. For every Heroes, there are
many Viva Laughlins. The majority of pilots that become successful series are incredibly simple at their core good
characters. Whether its a franchise
| 29
cops or doctors or a family show, action show or teen show, it all comes
down to character, in my opinion. Even
Law & Order you listen to loyal fans talk
about that show, and they dont talk
about the cases, they talk about the characters.
MILLS: A showrunner can have the
worst idea and their pilot doesnt go and
a new writer can write something great.
Its all about what people are watching
and responding to and finding a twist on
the genre and an interesting entry point
into the world. House, for example is not
your typical medical show.
ALVAREZ: I find a strong sense of
place lends itself to good narrative, and I
build out from the geography. The pilot I
wrote for NBC, Panic in Detroit, started out
as a very simple assignment of a cop
going undercover, and then I erected
some fairly large scaffolding around it. A
TV pilot is like a can of condensed orange
juice and you add cans of water. Whereas
features are more self-contained, a pilot
has to grow exponentially. It has to bait
the reader, whet their appetite and promise the world.
COTTON: A pilot is a jumping-off
point, a work in progress, but its also
about the marriage of a writer to their
idea. Nancy (Miller) really understands
what Grace is about, and she wanted to
explore major issues that shes thought
about for years, ask the big life questions
that are specific to her own experience
but also universal, all under the guise of a
cop show. Charles (Murray) had an interesting character we hadnt seen before
and his pilot (Under) had mystery, suspense and was beautifully written.
ROSE: You have to be smart about
what the networks want to buy, get a vibe
for what their audiences are watching.
Our clients may come up with four or five
ideas and we help them decide which
ones are strongest to pitch. Cable outlets
like FX, TNT and USA have really calcified their brand. They attract star power
due in part to creative latitude and their
schedule, in that they pick up 10 to 13
episodes rather than 22. To compete with
cable, we saw some broadcast networks
taking more risks before the strike by
going outside their brand, but post-strike
theyre being more cautious and sticking
to their brand because its easier to sell to
media buyers. There are many more for-
30
eign dramas and comedies being adapted

here on all the networks, which may be
unrelated to the strike, but its an easier
and safer way to go to series because you
can visualize the path to success. (Editors
note: As an example, Jerry Bruckheimers
new show for CBS is based on a British
thriller about a scientific advisor to the
government who has a female bodyguard, while ABC has the BBCs Life in
Mars being adapted by David E. Kelley).
Its also safer to go with existing talents
like Bruckheimer or J.J. Abrams or Joss
Whedon.
CS: What does the going into the

meeting package look like?
GUYOT: It looks like whatever the
writer wants it to look like. I know some
writers who always leave paperwork behind. I leave them nothing. Execs are always looking for reasons to say no. They
have to say no. If they say yes too much,
the studios would go broke. And when
you leave something behind, they can
look at it again and again and start to pick
it apart and decide that maybe they dont
love it as much as they did in the pitch. I
go in, tell them a good story and leave. I
want them to want a document or something, because then their desire stays
strong.
MILLER: With Saving Grace, I originally pitched the idea to FX, but they
passed. I pitched it to TNT and they
bought it in the room. They really got it.
They had a really high bar as to who they
wanted to play Grace and Holly Hunters
name was on the short list.
MURRAY: Nancy (Cotton) read my
pilot while she was at Icon. Then I met
with her and talked about the arc of the
show. A&E was looking for a new series
that would go with The Sopranos and CSI:
Miami in syndication on the channel.
Nancy sent them my script, but A&E had
already spent of all their development
money. They asked if they could revisit it
in six months. A&E eventually optioned
the script and it went to pilot starring
Henry Thomas, but it wasnt picked up
for series. Instead they went with Cleaner
starring Benjamin Bratt (a drama about
an interventionist and former addict,
which became A&Es first new original series in six years).
ROSE: Pitching is important. Its important to sit in the room with the exec-
utives and convince them why the show

is ripe for exploration, what all could be
wrung out of the series. Sometimes youre
not even married to the pilot, in the sense
that you have to be willing to roll with it
and make it work for the network.
CS: What do you take away from

your experience writing a pilot?
MURRAY: The luck of the draw is
against you until you get something
made. But now that Ive made a pilot, Im
more confident. I just sold a new idea to
A&E and am writing the pilot. Anyone
wanting to work in television should read
Hello, Lied the Agent, (by Ian Gurvitz
who wrote on Frasier and The Wonder
Years). [Its] about a sitcom writers twoyear journey to get his pilot made. When
my pilot didnt get picked up, I had to
console the people trying to console me,
but the reality is that out of 15 scripts,
A&E chose four to go to pilot, including
mine. Ive been fortunate and done something that millions of people havent
been able to do.
MILLER: If you keep getting no you
may have to rethink your idea, but its
important to have faith in your ideas
and in yourself and to push past the no
and bang on another door. I had an idea
that my agent told me not to write. I
wrote it anyway. I dont write to please
the network; I write to please me. Even
when it may seem too outrageous or too
costly or hard to produce in a TV world,
those issues can be worked out.
ALVAREZ: Working on The Wire has
been a life-long winning lottery ticket.
I trace everything good in my life back
to Baltimore, to being fated to sit next
to David Simon (Homicide, creator of
The Wire) at The Sun. I also attribute my
success to being a good storyteller from
having life experience. A lot of writers
never leave their apartment, and I have
worked on ships, covered murder
scenes, and thats why I was brought on
to write my pilot and hired on Life. If
someone pays me to write another pilot,
Ill do it again.
SECTION TWO
Our craft columns

BY KARL IGLESIAS
The Screenwriters 7 Deadly Sins

Avoid these perennial vices to achieve a happier writing life.
READING ANDREW KEVIN Walkers
acclaimed script Se7en the other day got
me thinking about whether writers exhibit human natures classic vices of envy,
greed, lust, sloth, gluttony, pride and
anger. Let me just say, were lucky Kevin
Spaceys character is fictional.
Allow me to present the seven deadly
sins from a writers point of view and
explain how you can overcome them for a
happier writing life.
ENVY (Writing for the market)

It probably all starts when we read
about the latest spec sales in the trades.
The first- time writer goes from waiter to
hot writer success stories inevitably lead
us to one obsessive thought: Why
them? We cant help but be envious. But
a more dangerous follow-up thought is
If they just sold a horror spec for six figures, Ill write a horror script.
What you may not realize is that the
sale in question was the writers 10th
script in her favorite genre, and shes been
at it for years, honing her craft.
To avoid feeling envious, stop reading
the trades. Two things will happen. First,
youll stop feeling like everyone is working but you. Second, itll prevent you
from worrying about whats hot right
now, forcing you to write what you love,
not what just sold.
Trust your instincts. Write what excites
you and what you can do a good job delivering. Nobody really knows what the market wants. If its well-written, its more
likely to sell than stuff written by writers
who think they know what will sell. This

means the best market is always you.
GREED (Writing to get rich)

An obsession with wealth leads many
aspiring writers to a screenwriting career,
rather than to fiction or playwriting. Reading about the millions of dollars A-listers
get for assignment work has motivated
more than one scribe to buy a screenwriters start-up kit. But most pros didnt
get to where they are today without having a driving and passionate desire to write
great movies.
I meet aspiring writers whose only wish
is to write one screenplay that will sell for
a million dollars so they can have the freedom to do what they really love to do,
whatever it may be.
You need to love writing and you need
to love movies. Consider the possibility of
a big payday, if it happens, to be frosting
on the cake. As William Wharton once
said, Dont write with sales or money in
mind it poisons the well at its source.
If writing isnt a joy, dont do it. Life is
short. Death is long.
LUST (Craving things other than writing)

Defined as an intense desire or craving
for something, and most often associated
with sexual desire, it can also be a lust for
life or for power. Here, I intend it as a lust
for other things other than actual writing.
Procrastination, anyone? Well do anything to avoid writing. Its a good thing
deadlines were invented.
As E.L. Doctorow says, A writer is
someone who writes. Planning to write is

not writing. Outlining is not writing.
Researching is not writing. Talking to people about what youre doing is not writing. Writing is writing.
The reality is if the desire to write is not
followed by actual writing, then the desire
was really for something else.
Despite procrastinating, the pros are
hugely disciplined and write every day.
Sure, there are times when they stare out
the window waiting for the muse to whisper, but its controlled.
If youre serious about a screenwriting
career, nothing keeps you from it. Schedule writing time every day, the way you
schedule to meet your friends or go to the
gym. Many compare writing with a muscle: the more you use it, the easier it gets
to use. This is the best habit you could ever
develop. The difference between successful
screenwriters and dreamers is that at the
end of the day, the successful ones have
more pages written than the day before.
SLOTH (Avoiding the hard work)

Writers are generally a lazy bunch, but
the sloth Im referring to involves avoiding
the hard work necessary to craft a great
script. A common belief among beginners
is that writing a movie is no harder than
watching one. The reality is that its probably one of the hardest things youll ever
do, despite what you may think after reading a screenplay. It takes a lot of time, concentration and discipline to sit at a
keyboard and write.
How do you overcome that sloth? You
| 31
understand that its a lot harder than it

looks, and you commit to developing the
habit of writing every day. The key is to not
only write well, but also write well enough
that someone will want to pay you money.
Because you dont break in by being bad,
the question you should always ask is, How
do I become really good? One answer is
that you work hard. You dont push your
first work too early. You take as long as it
takes to develop your craft.
GLUTTONY (Over-indulging in
the how-to market)
Defined herein as over consuming the
knowledge of others, especially so-called
gurus. Its definitely wise to educate
yourself on the basics of storytelling, but
I see a lot of writers become lifelong students as a crutch to avoid writing.
Ask aspiring writers why they have yet
to finish that first script and theyre likely
to answer, I just dont have the time.
And yet, they have the time to go to all
the seminars and spend hours at the bookstore. Taking too many classes or buying
too many books is often a means of avoiding the fear and self-doubt that were not
good enough to make it.
All writers, including those commanding a million dollars per script, have
doubts. Embrace your fears and write anyway. The more writing you do, the better
youll get, and the more self-confidence

youll gain. If you write five screenplays, I
guarantee you the fifth one will be better
than the first.
In addition to watching movies and reading screenplays, learn about life, people and
emotions. Just as a musician learns by practicing, working with and observing other
musicians, you can learn by writing, observing other writers and reading their work.
PRIDE (Avoiding or ignoring feedback)

Considered by Dante to be the worst
sin, I believe its equally the deadliest
amongst writers. As artists, were all vulnerable when our ego and self-image are
at stake. Our sensitive self doesnt want to
be told whats wrong with the draft. We
often feel hurt and cant help being defensive and getting into arguments.
But getting good, unbiased, realistic
feedback is so important. And no, getting
it from a family member, especially your
mom, wont be as helpful.
Im not saying you shouldnt be proud
of your work. Just dont let that pride get
in the way of improving it. Its better to
have a trusted source tells you your script
sucks than Steven Spielberg.
Most pros have a circle of trusted readers. You can get your own by belonging to
writers groups or even hiring a reputable
script consultant.
ANGER (Responding to the

frustrations of the business)
If youve been at it for a long time and
still havent sold your first script, anger can
gradually seep into your bones. I see a lot
of angry writers out there, even those who
are working.
There are two types of angry writers:
those whove been trying to break in for
years and are angry at the system, and
those who are in the system and angry that
their artistic souls keep clashing with the
commercial entities that write the checks.
They want to do more than just entertain.
They want to enrich, inspire and say something about the world and the human condition. But then they get studio notes
about their target demographics. As S.J.
Perelman once said, You pour your heart
out into this, you take all this abuse, you
take all this crap in grief, all for what? For
a measly fortune.
There is a lot to be angry about. The
feelings are natural. The key is to channel
these feelings onto the page and
metaphorically weave these feelings into
your story. Thats how we do it. Do you
really think Paddy Chayefsky was mad as
hell at the television industry when he
got the idea for Network? No. Rumor has
it he had just returned from a studio story
meeting.
The Seamless Theme

Five effective ways to avoid preaching your message
AS WRITERS, WE all have issues we feel
strongly about justice, freedom, violence, literacy, love, poverty, etc. What are
you passionate about? What are you
obsessed with? What intrigues you? Fascinates you? What do you love, hate or fear
the most? If you could change peoples
minds about something, what would it be?
The answers to these questions are the
seeds for potential themes to explore
through your stories.
As you probably know, theme is what
your story is really about the message,
the moral, what gives it meaning and a
purpose for being, besides making millions of dollars for stars and movie studios. Albert Camus once said, Fiction is
32
the lie through which we tell the truth.

All great writing is about something true
to you. Until you know the truth youre
trying to convey to an audience, your
work isnt finished.
In The 101 Habits of Highly Successful
Screenwriters, Gerald DiPego (Phenomenon,
Angel Eyes, The Forgotten) says, If you
want to do more than just entertain, if
you want to entertain and enrich, inspire
or say something about the world and the
human condition, then you have to think
about what you want to say in order to
subtly weave it through the story.
Although its generally accepted that
theme becomes clear after writing several
drafts, the reality is that knowing your
theme up front is a huge timesaver in the

rewriting process. As Paddy Chayefsky
(Network, Marty, Altered States) once said,
The best thing that can happen to a
writer is for the theme to be nice and clear
from the beginning.
This is why many writers start solidifying their theme before writing the script.
Once theyre clear about what they want
to say, they know what belongs in the
story and what doesnt.
The challenge most novice writers face
is how to reveal their themes without
sounding preachy or on-the-nose. Preaching is frowned upon in dramatic writing because its telling. You all know that you
should show, not tell. You dont want to
be heavy-handed and have your characters

scream, Hey, this is my message! It should
be more like sweetening a glass of iced tea.
Regular sugar will sink to the bottom, making the drink bitter, except at the bottom,
which will be too sweet. But try it with
Sweet N Low and the tea will be sweet
throughout. Sweetness is your message, and
it must be completely diluted to disappear
into the beverage of storytelling.
So how do you dilute your theme so
that it becomes invisible in your story?
The most common technique is to
mention the theme through dialogue. Be
careful not to state it too directly, but its
acceptable if it arises naturally out of a situation, or even better, if its implied
through subtext.
As long as your dialogue is fresh and
off the nose, you can reveal your theme
through it.
Here are five different ways to help you
reveal theme other than direct dialogue,
using Pixars latest film, Ratatouille, as an
example:
1. Turn theme into a question,

not a premise.
The easiest way to reveal theme is to
put it in the form of a question rather
than a statement or premise, as most have
done since reading Lajos Egris classic
book, The Art of Dramatic Writing. For instance, rather than state the premise for
Romeo and Juliet as Great love defies even
death, you could ask, What does great
love defy? or Can love survive death?
By asking a question, you let the story
reach a natural conclusion, thus making
it less predictable. Ask a question, and let
us experience the answer emotionally
through your story. In Ratatouille, the
theme could be stated as Whats more
important, family ties or the pursuit of
your passion? That question is actually
uttered by Emile, Remys brother, midway
through the film, when they reunite.
Emile wants to let their father know that
Remy is alive and well. But when Remy
hesitates, preferring to stay put, Emile
asks, Whats more important than family? which Remy doesnt answer. We, of
course, know that to him, his passion for
cooking great food will always win out.
2. Make it about the protagonists inner

need and journey to change.
What is the major emotional decision
your protagonist must make in order to
resolve the story problem? Thats where

youll find your theme. Because stories try
to convey a truth about the human condition, and stories are about people, its a
common technique for the protagonists
inner change to represent the theme. If
the theme is redemption, the hero will
achieve it at the end or not, depending
on what story youre telling. If its about
the triumph of the human spirit, the protagonists inner journey will go from failure to triumph. The character arc
indirectly reveals your theme. There are
actually two themes and two stories in
Ratatouille: The first is the conflict between family ties and following your passion, with the imaginary chef, Gusteau,
exhorting Remy to go for the greatness,
while Remys brother and father keep
pushing him to go for the garbage. The
second is the conflict between Remy and
the humans around him who hate rats
and try to exterminate them: the evil chef
(Skinner), the kitchen staff, the general
public and the health inspector. The question here is, Will humans ever accept a
rat who can cook as their equal? Note
that since Remy is following his passion,
the journey to change is not his, its the
journey of everyone around him until the
films final sequence shows their acceptance of Remy as a chef.
3. Convey the positive side of your

theme though the protagonist
and the negative side through
the antagonist.
Another useful technique is to shape
the antagonist to illustrate the dark side
of whatever theme the protagonists journey reveals. In other words, contrast the
hero and villain thematically. Show the
positive aspect of your theme through the
protagonists journey, while you reveal the
negative side through the antagonist. This
is clear in Ratatouille, with Remys beliefs
about good food and following your bliss
contrasting with the beliefs of his family
or Skinner in almost every scene.
4. Present the opposite argument

as powerfully as your truth.
Sometimes novice writers are so passionate about their message that they mistakenly present a one-sided, biased
argument that turns their story into a sermon. To remedy this, you should present
the opposite argument just as powerfully
and passionately. This makes the story
more impartial. To do this, create scenes

that illustrate the positive, negative and
different points of view of your theme, all
in an equally compelling way. Anytime
you can convey a theme where both sides
are right, you have drama. In Ratatouille,
this is shown in the scene between Remy
and his father after their reunion. When
Remy admits that hes been getting close
to humans, observing them and deciding
theyre not that bad, his father shows him
the negative side of his argument by taking him to a store that sells rat extermination products. In the window is a row
of rat traps with their deadly catch hanging by their necks. This makes a powerful
impression on Remy, as his father says,
This is what happens when a rat gets too
comfortable around humans. He reminds him that humans are the enemy
and only by sticking together as family
can they survive. This powerful argument
is quickly rebutted by Remys equally
powerful argument that change is the natural order and that rats can rise above
their nature by choosing to accept humans as their equal.
5. Communicate it through images

and colors.
Because film is a visual medium,
screenwriters are fond of using symbolism
to subtly reveal their theme. If communicating through dialogue becomes too obvious, try expressing your theme through
images and colors. In Ratatouille, note
how Remys passion for food is shown
through vibrant colors and fireworks on a
black screen whenever he tastes food or
tries to describe the feeling to his brother.
Contrast this with the underground darkness, shadows, garbage and grays of the
rat world.
Everything you see in this animated
film has a purpose from the storys
events, to the purpose of each characters
personality, beliefs and values, to the locations and color schemes. Each element
showcases the thematic intent of the writers, eventually creating a unified whole
that deeply resonates with audiences
around the world. Its no accident Pixar is
batting an unprecedented 100 percent at
the box office. The team truly believes in
thematically rich storytelling and knows
how to deliver stories in an entertaining
package. Now that you know how to reveal theme in subtle and powerful ways,
hopefully, you can do the same.
| 33
Your Concepts Extreme Makeover

Five tricks of the trade to energize any idea
IN A TOWN where tens of thousands of
scripts compete for the attention of busy
agents, stressed producers and overworked
executives, its tough for the aspiring
writer to get a spec read. Its understandable, though. This is a business where supply exceeds demand. Its impossible for a
producer to read every script making the
rounds. They have to be picky. As movie
viewers, were the same. Think how many
choices we have every day at the theaters, on TV, on DVD, online. How do you
pick a particular movie to see? The one
with the most appeal, right? This is how
an executive decides which script to read.
The one with the concept that excites him
most. Its not necessarily a high concept
but the higher the concept, the more
excited the executive will be.
This may shock you, but most beginners fail at concept. They have no idea
how to pick a solid idea for a spec script.
They go with gut feeling (nothing wrong
with that), but then they dont understand why their coming-of-age drama set
on an Iowa farm in 1965 is overlooked,
despite query letters sent to every producer in the Hollywood Creative Directory. To me, theres nothing sadder than
spending years on a project that will never
go anywhere. If the writer wrote it as a
labor of love, fine. But the writers Im talking about are spending lots of energy and
money trying to sell a low-concept, nonmarketable project.
Its simple economics. If you want to
sell your script, it must be something that
someone wants to buy. The motion picture industry is a business that sells packaged emotional responses, like laughter,
fear, tension, thrills, romance. Concept is
the packaging the cover. Its what sells
the viewer on the product, and its what
sells the executive on your script. You can
create great characters, write edgy dialogue and weave in a resonant theme, but
if you start with an unmarketable concept, youll end up with an unmarketable
script. No one will want to read it. Producers know a great idea attracts viewers
to a dark room where theyll sit immobilized for two hours to experience a range
of emotions they wouldnt have experi-
34
enced otherwise if the films concept was

unappealing. The reality is that no one
knows your script may have the greatest
dialogue, brilliant scenes and most fascinating characters ever until after a reader
has read and covered the script. And what
convinces them to read that script is its
appealing idea.
So lets talk about that. What makes an
idea appealing? In a previous column, I
spoke about two key requirements: your
idea must be uniquely familiar and it must
promise conflict. Something unique is by
default fascinating. Were curious by nature: If we get to explore the unknown, go
behind the scenes of a particular culture
(Witness, The Godfather) or institution
(Network, All About Eve, Top Gun). And I
dont need to remind you about the impact of conflict. But even with these criteria, an idea may not be appealing enough
and may need an energy boost. Here are
five ways to energize your idea:
1. Go to extremes.
Novelist Stanley Elkin once said, I
would never write about someone who
was not at the end of his rope. If youre
still developing your idea, pick any job or
activity and ask yourself, Whats the
worst thing that could happen to a character? For a lawyer, it could be telling the
truth (Liar, Liar); for a firefighter, it could
be facing a backdraft (Backdraft); for an
adulterer, it could be having an affair with
a psychopath who wont be ignored (Fatal
Attraction). If your character goes through
hell and back, mention it in your logline.
2. Make sure the inciting event

is interesting.
The inciting event is the key story
point that ultimately creates the main
conflict, changes the protagonists world
forever and forces him to solve a problem.
Often, it is the answer to the question
most writers ask to start things off: What
if? What if a man met the woman of his
dreams and she turned out to be a mermaid (Splash)? What if the president were
kidnapped on Air Force One (Air Force
One)? Or what if a smooth-talking lawyer
had to tell the truth for 24 hours (Liar,
Liar)? The inciting event is the cause of

the problem. Its the reason action has to
be taken immediately, and its essential in
all stories. Not only is thinking about the
inciting event a way to come to terms
with the problem of your story, but if its
interesting enough, itll make your concept that much more appealing.
3. Find the unique hook in your story.

If the uniqueness of your idea is not
readily apparent, try searching for it
within your story. What is it about your
story that makes it unique and fascinating? What has never been seen before?
Whats the most interesting part in the
story? Whatever the answer and you
should have something unusual or compelling see if it can be included in the
logline. As I said earlier, maybe it unfolds
within a unique setting, like Top Gun, Titanic or Broadcast News. Maybe your story
is about a unique character, like Forrest
Gump or Psycho. Maybe it has an interesting twist. Even if the most unique situation happens in the third act, and its the
only fascinating hook in the entire story,
try to include it in the logline.
4. Reverse predictable plots.

The reason most ideas dont excite producers is that their plot elements are predictable. A great way to fix this is to reverse
the first thought that comes to mind. For
instance, take the familiar idea of kidnappers nabbing the wife of a rich man and
threatening to kill her if he doesnt pay a
ransom. Expected response: in despair, he
calls the FBI or tries to find the kidnappers
himself. But what if hes delighted and urges
them to go ahead? This, of course, is the
concept for Ruthless People. Here the writer
reversed the predictability of the husbands
response and created a unique and exciting comedy. Reversing predictability is
what irony is all about, which is a huge attractor in a premise.
5. Focus on an interesting dilemma.

If you have a complex or impossible
dilemma in your story, you should highlight it in your concept for extra appeal.
We look forward to exploring a characters
emotional tug-of-war between two equal

choices such as in Sophies Choice, in
which a mother must choose which of her
two children to save from the Nazis. Many
great films are based on dilemmas. In
Casablanca, its a choice between love and
duty; in The Godfather, its between morality and family. The more difficult the decision your character has to make, the
more youll compel the producer to read
on to find out how the script turns out.
These techniques demonstrate how to
take any idea and energize its impact
enough to attract readers. You should always write the story that burns within you,
regardless of tone, genre or target audience.
But if you want an executive to read your
script, the idea should sizzle. This doesnt
necessarily mean catering to the lowest
common denominator and creating an

empty, soulless, special-effects-laden summer extravaganza, but it does mean understanding the psychology of the buyer
youre trying to sell to. Producers live and
die by the appeal of the concept in a cutthroat market. They know they need a
great idea if theyre going to sell it to
higher-ups in the studios or raise independent financing. Because the decision to
buy a script and greenlight a movie depends on its marketability, a highly marketable concept becomes very attractive to
a producer. Therefore, energizing your concept to compel a producer to read your spec
is a must for the first-time scribe.
You may be rolling your eyes, thinking
youve heard this a hundred times. But in
coming across the ideas of thousands of
novice writers as a former reader, development executive, and now teacher and
consultant, its been clear to me that
many are still not getting it. Before attempting to write yet another spec, your
idea should have high-emotional impact
and universal appeal. It should be so exciting that it would make an executive
cancel her lunch and hold all calls to read
your script. Bottom line, your idea should
excite, energize and electrify anyone who
hears it. You want faces lighting up, not
eyes glazing over. Anything less is a waste
of time.
Keep in mind, this advice goes only for
those of you who want to sell their specs,
not those who want to use their spec as a
writing sample to showcase their writing
skills for assignment work.
The Effective Voice-Over

Five effective ways to overcome readers prejudice
MOVIES ARE ABOUT what people do.
Novels are about what people think. And
yet in movies, getting an inside look at a
characters thoughts via voice-over can be
an effective way to reveal personality and
back story, add depth and give a story an
intimate feel.
The voice-over is a storytelling device
in many fine scripts, especially those
adapted from novels, and yet it is
frowned upon by readers and script gurus
who consider it lazy writing. Im reminded of Charlie Kaufmans experiences
in Adaptation, a script laden with voiceovers. Stuck on the project, he reluctantly
attends Robert McKees story seminar and
hears the following: God help you if you
use voice-over in your work, my friends.
God help you! Its flaccid, sloppy writing.
Any idiot can write voice-over narration
to explain the thoughts of a character.
You must present the internal conflicts of
your character in action.
So how do you navigate this paradox?
On one end youre told to avoid it at all
costs. You hear things like, Its a literary
device, not a cinematic one. It insults
the audiences intelligence. Its telling,
not showing. And on the other, you
keep seeing movie after movie many
of which get nominated for Best Screen-
play with voice-overs. You wonder,

should I or shouldnt I? When you hear
voice-overs are the kiss of death, you
reply, But what about Sunset Boulevard,
The Shawshank Redemption, Apocalypse
Now, Memento, Million Dollar Baby, Raising
Arizona, Goodfellas, Fight Club, Trainspotting, Reversal of Fortune, Double Indemnity
(and most film noir, for that matter)? To
which the usual answer is, But it works
in those films, or Yes, but those were
written by masters of the craft.
True. In order to write good voiceovers, you have to know what youre
doing. There are tricks of the trade, and
even before that, professionals have a
solid understanding of when and how
voice-over should be used.
The first question to ask is: Is it really
necessary? If the story becomes clearer or
more satisfying with a voice-over, then
add one. Warner Bros. felt it necessary to
add a voice-over to Blade Runner to make
it less confusing for audiences in its initial theatrical release. Another question:
Is a voice-over crucial to the telling of the
story? In Memento, Leonards voice-over
thoughts are vital to his sanity because he
cant trust anyone around him. Without
them, the story wouldnt be as satisfying.
Would a voice-over add a different per-
spective to the story? How about to a

character? Getting inside someones head
is a bonus characterization tool when
speech or actions arent enough.
Bottom line, add voice-over only
when you have a great reason.
And if you plan to use it, keep in mind
that its still considered dialogue. Just because its addressed to an audience doesnt mean you dont have to think about
crafting it. All dialogue skills are in order,
from emotional impact on the reader to
subtext to revealing exposition in a subtle
manner. I believe the biggest reason
voice-over is frowned upon in amateur
scripts, other than when its considered a
lazy expositional technique, is that its as
mediocre as the regular dialogue.
Now that you have the freedom to use
voice-over if you feel its necessary to your
story, let me share five ways to do it well.
Voice-over as Contrast
One of the best ways to use voice-over
is as contrast or counterpoint to what we
see on the screen. Most amateur voiceover tends to be redundant, describing
what we already see. But by countering
what we see on screen with voice-over,
you create irony, as in this example from
Charlie Kaufmans Adaptation:
| 35
KAUFMAN (V.O.)
She looked at my hairline.
She thinks Im old. She
thinks Im fat. She
VALERIE
We think youre great.
KAUFMAN
Oh, thanks, wow. Thats nice
to hear.
Voice-over as Characterization
(Insight, Humor, Wit)
Voice-over can be a great tool to reveal
character in addition to actions and dialogue. By hearing their thoughts, we get
to know characters attitudes, beliefs and
values. If their thoughts are witty and
funny, you show us that the character is
clever and has a sense of humor. This is
especially ironic when the narrator is already dead, as in Billy Wilders Sunset
Boulevard:
GILLIS VOICE
Well, this is where you came
in. Back at that pool again,
the one I always wanted.
Its dawn now and they must
have photographed me a thousand times. Then they got a
couple of pruning hooks from
the garden and fished me out
ever so gently. Funny how
gentle people get with you
once
youre
dead.
They
beached me, like a harpooned
baby whale, and started to
check the damage, just for
the record...
And note how the sleazy tabloid reporters character is revealed from his
opening voice-over in Brian Helgelands
L.A. Confidential:
HUDGEONS (V.O.)
But who you may not know
is bodyguard Johnny Stompanato. Johnnys handsome,
ladies, but the real attraction is below the belt. Second only to Steve Cochran,
hes sometimes known as
Oscar because of his Academy Award-size appendage.
36
Remember, dear readers, you

heard it here first, off the
record, on the Q.T. and very
Hush-Hush.
Voice-over as Setup and Epilogue

One of the most organic storytelling
devices is the frame, or bookend, where a
voice-over at the beginning and end
frames the story and unifies it, as in Alan
Balls American Beauty:
In the beginning:
LESTER (V.O.)
My name is Lester Burnham.
This is my neighborhood.
This is my street. This ...
is my life. Im forty-two
years old. In less than a
year, Ill be dead. Of
course, I dont know that
yet. And in a way, Im dead
already.
And at the end:

LESTER (V.O.)
I guess I could be pretty
pissed off about what happened to me... but its hard
to stay mad, when theres so
much beauty in the world.
Sometimes I feel like Im
seeing it all at once, and
its too much, my heart
fills up like a balloon
thats about to burst... and
then I remember to relax,
and stop trying to hold on
to it, and then it flows
through me like rain and I
cant feel anything but
gratitude for every single
moment of my stupid little
life... You have no idea
what Im talking about, Im
sure. But dont worry... You
will someday.
Voice-over as Foreshadowing
Foreshadowing is a literary device
where you hint that something, usually
something unpleasant, is going to happen
in the near future. This automatically creates tension in the reader, so doing it
through voice-over can create even more
tension, since the information is for our

benefit, not the characters in the story.
This technique is predominant through
many film noir narrations, as in Billy
Wilders Double Indemnity:
NEFFS VOICE
She liked me. I could feel
that. The way you feel when
the cards are ... falling
right for you, with a nice
little pile of blue and yellow chips in the middle of
the table. Only what I didnt know then was that I
wasnt playing her. She was
playing me with a deck of
marked cards and the
stakes werent any blue and
yellow chips. They were dynamite.
Voice-over as Theme Reinforcement

Sometimes, when a story doesnt
readily offer a theme, or you wish to add
another perspective, you let us in on it
through the narrator. This should be
handled with caution, since the whole
point of crafting a story is to reveal its
theme. If the audience is still unclear
about it, you didnt do your job. But
sometimes a story can benefit from a
concluding thematic voice-over, as in
James Camerons Terminator 2:
SARAH (V.O.)
The luxury of hope was given
to me by the Terminator. Because if a machine can learn
the value of human life...
maybe we can too.
Using voice-over in any of these five

ways can add another layer to your story.
But remember to handle these techniques
with care because prejudice against voiceovers is still out there. Only when its crucial to the story, when it adds another
perspective, when it reveals character and
when it can be as good as the best dialogue in your script should you consider
adding voice-over. When readers are mesmerized by it, they wont think of it as
lazy writing. Unless Robert McKee reads it.
Then youre on your own.
Nuggets of Wisdom
The Best Advice Ive Ever Received
AS WRITERS CONSTANTLY looking
for inspiration, we tend to connect with
words of advice that electrify and inspire
us. I call them nuggets of wisdom, and
they can come from anywhere books,
magazine articles, interviews, classes, cocktail parties, conferences, etc. When one
impacts me, I collect it; print it in bolded,
oversized fonts ;and pin it on my bulletin
board where I can see it daily and feel
motivated to follow that particular piece
of advice.
I thought it would be cool to share
them with you, in the hope youll find
them as inspiring as I have. Ive ordered
them by category and commented when
appropriate.
On Passion
I guess I can thank the late George
Burns for motivating me to be a full-time
screenwriter when he said, Id rather be a
failure at something I love than a success
at something I hate. This is all about passion, about following your bliss and
choosing to do what you love, rather than
working at something you couldnt care
less about for the wrong reasons, which
are mostly financial.
To be successful at something this hard
(and dont be fooled by just words on the
page, screenwriting is damn hard), you
have to devote yourself to it 24/7. You
have to have that fire in the belly. Every
successful person I know has a passion for
life, for their work and for excellence.
On Being Original
One of the reasons screenwriting is so
difficult is that with all the content out
there, past and present, it becomes harder
to be original. This is why I love the following two quotes. From Marcel Proust,
The real voyage of discovery consists not
in seeking new landscapes, but in having
new eyes. And from Henry Beard, Imagination is being able to think of things
that havent appeared on TV yet.
Too many beginning writers dont understand how important it is to be original. Most of their projects are derivative
of other movies, with familiar characters,
uninteresting ideas, and clichd plot
twists. They tend to develop the easiest

idea that comes to mind, rather than challenging themselves to generate original
ones. To succeed, you need a determination to be original and an unwillingness
to accept clichs.
brain surgeon.
Always remember that nobody will
read your pages until you want them to.
And you can always correct whats on the
page and make it better.
On Being Disciplined
Those of you who are familiar with my

teachings know that this is the key to
everything that pertains to screenwriting:
Its all about the readers emotional response to the page. Thats what craft is all
about your technical ability to consistently wow the reader with your words, as
opposed to boring them. Gordon Lish said
it best: It isnt what happens to people
on a page its what happens to a reader
in his heart and mind.
I also find David Ogilvys advice effective: No one ever sold anybody anything
by boring them to death. It reminds me
daily of every great storytellers ability to
entertain, move, inspire and keep readers
turning the page.
Because writing is so difficult, the daily

act is mostly painful, and thus we try to
avoid it as often as we can while still managing to meet our deadlines.
If, like me, youre a master procrastinator, here are some quotes that may
stimulate you to get your butt on the
chair. From Will Rogers: Even if you are
on the right track, youll get run over if
you just sit there.
From William Faulkner: I only write
when Im inspired, so I make sure Im inspired every day at 9 a.m.
And lastly, a classic from Mary Heaton
Vorse: The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of
the chair.
If youre still unconvinced, know that
discipline is probably the most important
habit you can cultivate as a writer. Its all
about consistently producing pages because, as Henry Ford once said: You cant
build a reputation on what youre going
to do.
On Writers Block
Sometimes writing is so torturous we
justify our procrastination with an immediate diagnosis of writers block. But most
professional screenwriters share Steve
Martins attitude that writers block is a
fancy term made up by whiners so they
can have an excuse to drink alcohol.
Writers with deadlines dont have
writers block. I believe its just another
name for fear of failure, of criticism, of not
being good enough, original enough. All
this evaporates when you follow the following two thoughts:
From Sol Sacks, The worst thing you
write is better than the best thing you didnt write.
And Robert Cormier, The beautiful
part of writing is that you dont have to
get it right the first time, unlike, say, a
On Craft
On Characters
Of course, knowing what the craft is all
about doesnt solve everything. You still
need to know how. And when it comes to
storytelling, its all about characters. Not
just revealing their traits and emotions on
the page but also creating an emotional
connection between the reader and your
main character. Frank Capra reminds us,
The whole thing is, youve got to make
them care about somebody.
This goes beyond making your protagonist likeable. This is about caring, even
if the character is immoral: caring about
their personality, their attitudes, their
goals, their flaws and rooting for them
to succeed.
Most beginners create a good character
and have them fight an evil one. But if
you want to write a great story, follow Leo
Tolstoys advice, The best stories dont
come from good vs. bad but from good
vs. good. Thats right. What if you made
the reader care about the antagonist as
well? Think about the tension there.
On Story and Scenes

This is the simplest definition of story
| 37
Ive come across and the one I keep reminding students about: Someone wants
something badly and is having difficulty
getting it.
Coined by Frank Daniel, it encapsulates the four pillars of dramatic conflict:
character, stakes, goal and obstacle. If your
story doesnt match this statement, you
dont have a story. This also applies to dramatic scenes, as Leslie Dixon suggests,
Conflict is simply having characters not
get what they want.
Goal vs. obstacle. Such a simple concept,
and yet surprisingly absent in most amateur
scripts. If you can pin only one quote on
your bulletin board, make it Daniels.
On Description and Dialogue

William Strunk Jr.s writing advice in
The Elements of Style is especially valid
for all screenwriters: A sentence should
contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph
no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary
parts. If you think of a screenplay as visual
poetry, youll try to avoid unnecessary
words. Less is more. Save your flowery descriptions of setting, body parts, clothes, eye
and hair color for the novel.
As for dialogue, Garrison Keillor offers
some advice: If you read your work out
loud, it helps to know whats bad. It
works. Dialogue always sounds better in
your head. Better to be embarrassed in
your room than on the set. And if you
want to write great dialogue, youll want
to master subtext, as Robert Towne reminds us: Good dialogue illuminates
what people are not saying.
On Accepting Feedback
Heres an old Chinese saying that has
helped me deal with studio notes and
other script feedback: Dont mind criticism. If its untrue, disregard it; if its unfair, keep from irritation; if its ignorant,
smile; if its justified, learn from it. Since
internalizing this advice, Ive been more
at peace and smiling more, while learning
to make my scripts more effective.
On Persevering
Thomas Edison once said, Sticking to
it is the genius.
If youre passionate about seeing your
screenplays produced, nothing should
stand in your way no naysayers, no statistics, no experts. If someone tells you
youll never make it, if they try talking
you out of it by listing all the logical reasons you should quit, you should keep
going, more determined than ever, because you love it and it has meaning to
you.
As Marianne Williamson said, If you
want to give up, then perhaps you should
give up. The real writer doesnt consider
that an option. Courage matters as much
as talent.
Final Thoughts
So what to make of all these nuggets of
wisdom? I hope theyll inspire you to take
your writing to the next level. But if they
dont, you may follow G. K. Chestertons
advice: I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice,
and then going away and doing the exact
opposite.
Happy writing!
The Emotionally Satisfying Ending

WHATS THE MOST important element
in a script? Concept? Theme? Characters?
For this article, Id like to suggest the ending. Why? Because its the most memorable. A good ending is what an audience
takes home with them, and at best it can
linger with them long after theyve left the
theater.
Its the same with industry readers. A
good ending is your last chance to leave a
lasting impression before they start writing the coverage. If they dont like the
ending, chances are theyll say they didnt like the work.
No problem, you may think. All I have
to do is write a happy ending. This is what
audiences want, after all, right? Not quite.
What they want is a perfect ending to the
story theyve just experienced. In other
words, an emotionally satisfying ending.
The most important thing with any element of the craft is how do you want the
reader to feel? So how do you want them
to feel at the end of your story?
38
Three Types of Endings

Technically, there are three ways you
can end your story:
The happy ending, where the hero
wins, the antagonist is defeated and everything ends up wonderfully. This is the
most popular ending in Hollywood, and
therefore the most used. Examples include
Star Wars, Die Hard, When Harry Met Sally,
The Shawshank Redemption and WALLE.
Then theres the tragic ending, where
the antagonist wins and the hero loses.
Think of Sunset Boulevard, Chinatown,
Se7en, Arlington Road, Mystic River and
Scarface.
And theres also the bittersweet ending, also known as ironic, in which the hero
or antagonist loses but wins, or wins but
loses. This is when the hero sacrifices himself for the greater good; he may lose the
world but gain his soul; they may not get
what theyve wanted, but they get something better. This is highly satisfying for an
audience. Examples include Casablanca,
E.T., One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, Rain

Man, Titanic, Roman Holiday, Thelma &
Louise and American Beauty.
Of these three ways, how do you pick
the perfect one for your story, the one that
will be most emotionally satisfying? Remember, an ending has to fit your story.
While many writers would prefer a Hollywood ending, where the hero finds the
treasure, gets the girl and lives happily
ever after, if this ending is not true to the
theme, the point of your story, the emotional journey of your characters, it wont
feel satisfying. And we all want the audience to walk out with a satisfied feeling.
Have you ever met a writer who said, Id
like to write a disappointing ending?
Three Requirements for a Great Ending

A great ending has to accomplish three
things:
It must complete the story weve
just experienced. This is important because as an audience, we have a need for
closure. We need to see things completed,

so much so, in fact, that if you want to
hook a TV audience week after week, all
you have to do is use those three magical
words: to be continued. (Dont confuse
this with the open ending, where the
story concludes on a note that leaves it up
to the reader to decide some of the outcome, like in Charlie Chaplins City Lights,
The Graduate or Tootsie. These are endings
that tell us, Its not over yet, folks, but
they still satisfy because they resolve the
main tension of the story the separation between the characters.)
It must showcase an important
theme. A great ending is usually the culmination of what youre trying to say, the
reason you wrote the story in the first
place, your premise, perhaps your point of
view of how to be truly human. For instance, in Casablanca, when Rick gives up
Ilsa at the airport and walks off with Captain Renault, the premise that duty to
mankind is more important than individual love becomes clear as a resonating
theme, even if its been subconscious until
that moment. When the ending spotlights a universal, meaningful theme, it
has greater emotional impact.
It must be emotionally satisfying. This is probably the most crucial to
the success of your story, but it doesnt
necessarily mean a happy Hollywood
ending. There are plenty of great endings
that are technically sad endings, but the
reason theyre great is that they satisfy the
audience. They are the perfect ending for
the type of story theyve just experienced.
An Emotionally Satisfying Ending

So what satisfies an audience when it
comes to endings?
Surprising inevitability: A surprising, yet inevitable ending may seem
like an oxymoron, but its not. Inevitable simply means that its the most
logical resolution for the story youve
told, while surprising comes from the
unexpected way you have resolved the
conflict. In other words, unpredictable.
Anyone can write a great opening. The
possibilities are endless. We still dont
know what the storys about. But after 110

pages of a characters external and inner
struggles, there can only be one logical
ending that is true to your point of view,
which is usually connected to the inner
journey, the characters arc. In other
words, its how the character changes at
the end that illustrates the theme. More
on this in a moment.
Since surprise is an essential visceral emotion, I believe all endings should be surprising, even when we know the hero will
defeat the villain, or the boy will get the girl.
As William Goldman once said, The key to
all story endings is to give the audience what
it wants, but not the way it expects.
Because we love surprises, perhaps a
twist ending might do the trick, where the
surprise is a revelation that changes your
perception of what the story was about. If
you can pull it off, the twist ending is
probably the most recommended because
it will generate a lot of buzz among executives. It may even sell a script on the
spot. Think of The Sixth Sense, The Usual
Suspects, Planet of the Apes, Primal Fear,
Fight Club.
The other factor that makes for a satisfying ending relates to theme and how
the character changes from his or her beginning point in the story.
Character need: Like the Rolling
Stones sing, You cant always get what
you want, but if you try, sometimes you
get what you need. A good ending satisfies a need on two levels: the audiences
need for completion and satisfaction and
the heros emotional need. This is why in
Casablanca, although Rick doesnt get the
girl, were still satisfied emotionally because he gets what he needs: to reconnect
with humanity by sticking his neck out
and helping the resistance, a clear change
from his I stick my neck out for nobody
attitude throughout the movie.
In the Oscar-winning Million Dollar
Baby, we have a surprising, albeit controversial, ending due to Frankies last action,
and an inevitable one (how else could it
have ended satisfactorily?). But does it fulfill the heros need? Once you realize that
Frankie (Clint Eastwood), not Maggie, is
the protagonist, youll recall that in the

beginning, he needed to protect his
fighters. This caused him pain in the past
with other boxers because it prevented
them from reaching the title fight. But
what about Maggie? She does reach the
championship but becomes paralyzed and
now wants to die. All Frankie can do is
protect her by ending her suffering, thus
fulfilling his need in a good way (for those
who believe that it was a compassionate
act, not an immoral one).
What about tragic endings where the
hero dies? It may be an antihero who
stubbornly refuses to change and thus
pays the ultimate price, as in Othello, Scarface or Memento. You could argue that the
character gets what he needs (deserves).
Tragic endings are symbolic of an important truth in the universe: What doesnt
change decays. Everything in nature
changes, including us. If you remember
your biology class, our bodies are constantly changing, every cell dying and regenerating. Its the same with stories.
When a character doesnt change his or
her flaw, he or she is doomed to suffer a
physical death (Scarface) or an emotional
one (Godfather, The Remains of the Day).
Because a good story is the culmination of a character arc, the protagonist can
either grow or perish. So your perfect ending, regardless of the three types (happy,
tragic, bittersweet), should present the
character either changing for the better or
stubbornly refusing to change.
Focusing on characters needs over
their tangible, external desires is crucial.
You can never go wrong by ending with
the triumph of the human spirit, rather
than on the fulfillment of human desire.
In other words, make sure characters always regain their soul (or lose it if its a
tragedy), even if they dont get what they
want over the course of the story. To have
need and desire both fulfilled will always
give you a happy ending (Star Wars, Finding Nemo), but if you must choose between the two, always choose need over
desire for an emotionally satisfying ending, even if the character must die (Gladiator, Thelma & Louise).
| 39
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Its a really tough time out there for

viewing universe, its hard to know how

Screenwriters Manual creativescreenwriting

utive producer on ER and executive producer on Commander in Chief. And if a

| creativescreenwriting Screenwriters Manual

much edgier version of Monk.

says. (And) while Weeds and Big Love

win had to start over when the show was

From the hiring desks

Johnson said shed rate most of the specs

Screenwriters Manual creativescreenwriting

and Write It Like a Pro

| creativescreenwriting Screenwriters Manual

would normally be reading spec pilots

are ensemble dramas that were repeatedly mentioned by show runners as

ticed no matter what happens next,

THE STORY THUS FAR

row escape from death at Rudys hands

each episode, Phillips notes.

Screenwriters Manual creativescreenwriting

season, is one of the most highly rated

THE STORY THUS FAR

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bone marrow can no longer be used.

What Every Writer Should Know About Directing

The Director as Storyteller:

developed a unique approach to directing,

Screenwriters Manual creativescreenwriting