Book review: "Shakespeare for Screenwriters"

Shakespeare for Screenwriters: Timeless Writing Tips from the Master of Drama was written by Jennie (J.M.) Evenson. It is part of the growing stable of books about filmmaking from Michael Wiese Productions.

Jennie Evenson received a Ph.D. in Renaissance literature from the University of Michigan and an M.F.A. from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. At UCLA, she was awarded top honors at the UCLA Showcase Screenwriting Contest.

As a writer in L.A., she has worked with a variety of studios and production houses, from DreamWorks to Focus Features. An award-winning teacher of Shakespeare, composition, and film, Evenson currently teaches at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California.

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Hollywood has long been fascinated by Shakespeare. Wikipedia mention well over 400 movies have been made from the famous plays, the earliest being Macbeth in 1898. The MIT Open Course, Shakespeare, Film and Media, says that:

Filmed Shakespeare began in 1899, with Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree performing the death scene from King John for the camera. Sarah Bernhardt, who had played Hamlet a number of times in her long career, filmed the duel scene for the Paris Exposition of 1900. In the era of silent film (1895-1929) several hundred Shakespeare films were made in England, France, Germany and the United States, Even without the spoken word, Shakespeare was popular in the new medium. The first half-century of sound included many of the most highly regarded Shakespeare films, among them -- Laurence Olivier's Hamlet and Henry V, Orson Welles' Othello and Chimes at Midnight, Kurosawa's Throne of Blood, Polanski's Macbeth and Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet.

IMDb list almost 1,000 films on which Shakespeare has been granted a writer credit. Such is the respect in which Shakespeare is held, Mel Gibson turned down a chance to play James Bond in order to play Hamlet (1990) for Franco Zeffirelli.

Quotes from, and references to, Shakespeare appear in endless movies:

Richard Dreyfus:  Now is the winter of our discontent...  The Goodbye Girl (1977)

Michael Caine:  ... made glorious summer by this son of York...  The Actors (2003)

Geoffrey Rush:  ... And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house...  The King's Speech (2010)

Rafe Spall:  ... In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.  Anonymous (2011)

Alan Rickman:  I played Richard the Third... There were five curtain calls.  Galaxy Quest (1999)

Rick Morannis:  The great Blunderman... 
Steve Martin:  I knew him... 
Victoria Tennant:  A fellow of infinite jest...   L.A. Story (1991)

Cary Elwes:  A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!  Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)

Joseph Gordon-Levitt:  I burn, I pine, I perish!  10 Things I Hate About You (1999)

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I first heard of Shakespeare for Screenwriters on Twitter and immediately thought, What a great title!

Other people must have had the same reaction, as it appears to have been rushed into print. I've never seen so many typos in such a small book. (A bit over 100 pages, after padding out with 'Exercises' and 'Key Points to Remember'). Or maybe that's the way the publishing industry is going these days.

The book doesn't have an index (which I consider an epic fail, given modern word processing capacities), just a list of the films referenced, and a summary of the "great" plays of Shakespeare.

The book consists of brief examinations of fourteen of Shakespeare's thirty-eight plays, each with a mention of three or four movies which contain some common element. So King Lear is linked to Ordinary People, Titanic, Life is Beautiful, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Much Ado About Nothing is linked to Annie Hall, There's Something About Mary, and Elf. And so on. 

There are curious absences from the book. For instance, A Midsummer's Night Dream is linked to Being There, When Harry Met Sally, and Wedding Crashers, but not to L.A. Story, which was based on A Midsummer's Night Dream.

[Digression: Screen Crush have a Now-and-then photo spread about the stars of L.A. Story, here.]

The book is about Shakespeare, but it ignores two thirds of Shakespeare's plays. The fourteen plays referenced are labelled 'The Great Plays.' Presumably Shakespeare had nothing to say to screenwriters in the other twenty-four.

There's no Save-The-Cat-style formula-ising, no structural theory. I found that strange, given Shakespeare's habit of writing plays with five-act structures, a pattern that is decidedly out-of-fashion amongst the modern screenwriting gurus.

It would be easy to write this book off as a lost opportunity, but... I just can't do that. I will be rereading it in the near future. The book is thin, but snappy. I can't get the following line out of my head:

• Want to make a classic drama? Destroy a family.

Wow! What a solid piece of advice. Ruthless. Very Hollywood. And all true.

Here are a few more quotable lines from the book.

• Audiences love to watch characters make unexpected choices.
• Sometimes it's better not to limit your characters to one motivation that remains stable through the course of the story.
• Give your characters an important decision and then make the arguments for and against it equally.
• Climaxes should be inevitable (but not predictable).
• Shakespeare weaves foreshadowing into every act of Romeo and Juliet.
• Obsessed characters must show that they are different from everyone around them.
• The perfect balance of... romance and loss is what makes us cry at the end.
• A good comedy requires at least one accident, coincidence, or ironic twist.
• A coincidence can do something remarkable—remind the audience that life is unpredictable—in both wonderful and terrible ways
• Every good comedy has an ironic twist.
• Nobody wants to watch a happy couple.
• Watching the characters play together is essential to building a romance.
• Flawed heroes are the only ones worth caring about.
• Every character has to want something.
• If the character is going to change, the audience needs to see exactly how and why it happens.
• In order to make character arcs work, the changes need to be big.
• It's the situation, not the dialogue, that generates the big laughs.
• The more your characters suffer, the better.
• The true secret to a good hero is a good villain.
• The villain we don't see coming is far more frightening than than the one we do.
• Watching the lovers enjoy pure bliss is a necessary part of building a compelling romance.
• The key to the love story in Romeo and Juliet is that it ends.
• Only two of Shakespeare's thirty-eight plays have no known source. The rest were stolen.
• Don't be afraid to cannabalize other people's work, but always make sure you offer your own spin on the story.

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Here's an interview with Connie Martinson. As usual, Martinson makes it more about herself than about the person she's interviewing, but you might get something from it.

Michael Wiese Productions    Twitter    

First posted: 11 October 2013

Book review: "Hello, He Lied"

Lynda Obst is a former editor of The New York Times Magazine. She moved to Hollywood in 1979, where she became a producer, author, and commentator on the film industry. She was involved in the development of Flashdance (1983), and produced The Fisher King (1991), Sleepless in Seattle (1994), Someone Like You (2001), The Invention of Lying (2009), and a stack of other movies and TV shows.

She recently published a book which is getting a lot of attention—Sleepless in Hollywood: Tales from the New Abnormal in the Movie Business. I haven't read it yet, but during my week by the seaside I caught up on an earlier work, Hello, He Lied, and Other Tales from the Hollywood Trenches.

It's an excellent title for a book, but not original to Lynda Obst.

People seemed to lie to each other as a matter of course. No big thing. "Hello, he lied" was a joke I heard about someone I knew during my first month at work.

But, as a great producer would, she recognized the potential of the phrase and put it to work.

In the book, Lynda shares what she learned during twenty years in the business, all that stuff we know producers do but don't know how they do it, such as how to pitch an idea, impress a suit, win a bidding war over a hot script, massage an ego, and how to dress on location, what to say to skittish directors, where to eat lunch, and how to produce a successful movie.

Although the book is written from a producer's POV, it contains some excellent material for writers. I will be talking about some of that in more detail in the near future. In the meantime, it's an excellent read for anyone who has ever wondered what is really going on in the movie business.

As usual, here are some quotes to give you a feel for the book.

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• 
  This is the flip side of ambition: debilitating exhaustion and the constant threat of defeat. Therefore every crisis can't be taken too seriously or you won't survive.
• It is just as important to move on in the wake of stunning success as in the wake of disaster.
• A writer should bring a producer to a pitch meeting for social savvy, political leverage, and simultaneous translation for the artistically challenged.
• Being quick on your feet isn't the same as being good on the page.
• Good writers pitch badly and bad writers pitch well.
• To me The Fisher King was a masterpiece about the healing power of grace. To Peter Guber (then chairman of Columbia TriStar) it was a summer buddy comedy. Fine. We were both right.
• Bulletin to all Cinderellas, female and male: There are no rescues here. No fairy godmothers. No princes. No white horses. You have to do it yourself.
• The corollary of never going to a meeting without a strategy is never getting off a jet without a strategy, never going to a screening without a strategy, never going to dinner without a strategy, never going to a breakfast without a strategy.
• Flashdance, like its progenitor, Rocky, is a paradigm bull's-eye movie in that any movie where the hero reaches for and achieves his or her dream, particularly one with dance numbers, is bound to connect with, at the very least, the American public.
• Never ask permission. It will not be granted.
• Getting what you want is dependent on knowing how things work.
• Learn to ride the horse in the direction it is going.
• You must never look threatened as the big players come on. The march of the big players is the drumroll that announces the movie will in fact be made.
• When a producer has information, he must never share it, except tactically. Ipso facto, gossips know nothing because they are not trading information for anything useful, unless they are gossip columnists.
• Power is a place as well as a verb; it is inside the information tent.
• If there are so many powerful people in Hollywood, why are there so many nervous people at Hollywood parties? Because they're all standing on shaky ground, and the calm ones stay home.
• If you are in a war where the damage is beginning to exceed any possible gains, surrender, Dorothy. You will be astonished to learn how little you have lost, because no one will even remember what the spoils of the original war were supposed to be.
• Beware of all people campaigning for your friendship. Especially if you're hot that week. Too much obvious effort is suspicious.
• Beware of obsequious human beings. Everyone here has a strong, healthy ego. The most dangerous wolves are in sheep's clothing.
• Beware of inappropriate personal revelations—these are often part of a campaign.
• The fact that I know little or less about the man's point of view in Hollywood doesn't stop me from theorizing about it endlessly with my girlfriends.
• The fuzzy model is always acceptable, of course, in writers. This is true also for men. Being kind of distracted, artistic, vague, sensitive—these are all excellent traits for writers. They bring out the maternal in the woman executive, the paternal in the male executive, and this is how talent gets embraced by its protectors: the agents who have to mediate between it and the exploitative buyers.
• Style for women is a vital component of success. If you can afford it, Armani is the rule for crisp girls on the move.

These are just a few of the gems. There are wonderful sections dealing with handling pitches, meetings, script auctions, how to dress, how to keep stars happy, and ten commandments for women working in film. This book is highly recommended.

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Hello, He Lied    IMDb    Twitter    Website    Sleepless in Hollywood

First posted: 17 August 2013

Book review: "Making Movies"

I first read Making Movies, by Sidney Lumet, when it came out in 1995, and was dazzled (and intimidated) by the complexity of big-time filmmaking. I reread it in 2013 and had the exact same reaction. This is a serious book about filmmaking.

Sidney Lumet (1924-2011) directed seventy-two movies and TV shows. He is best known for films such as 12 Angry Men (1957), The Pawnbroker (1964), Serpico (1973), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Network (1976), Prince of the City (1981), The Verdict (1982), and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007).

Lumet was an actor, appearing on stage in Broadway shows from the age of five. He spent three years with the US Army during World War II, then started directing off-Broadway stage shows after the war, before moving to TV in 1952.

His first movie, 12 Angry Men, was nominated for three Academy Awards. It was also a start of the trend whereby he never won, despite being personally nominated four times. Fourteen of the films he directed were nominated a total of 46 times for Oscars, winning six times. In 2005 the Academy gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award for his "services to screenwriters, performers, and the art of the motion picture."

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Here are some quotes from the book.

I once asked Akira Kurosawa why he had chosen to frame a shot in Ran in a particular way. His answer was that if he'd panned the camera one inch to the left, the Sony factory would be sitting there exposed, and if he'd panned an inch to the right, we would see the airport—neither of which belonged in a period movie.

Often the last to arrive [at rehearsal] is the writer. He is last because he knows that at this point he is the target. At this moment, anything wrong can only be his fault, since nothing else has happened yet. So he moves quietly to the coffee table, stuffs his mouth full of Danish so he won't have to answer any questions, and tries to become as small as possible.

There are many reasons for accepting a movie. I'm not a believer in waiting for "great" material that will produce a "masterpiece." What's important is that the material involve me personally on some level.

I've done two movies because I needed the money. I've done three because I love to work and couldn't wait any longer.

The truth is that no one knows what that magic combination is that produces a first-rate piece of work.

For anyone who wants to direct but hasn't made a first movie yet, there is no decision to make. Whatever the movie, whatever the auspices, whatever the problems, if there's a chance to direct, take it!

The theme (the what of the movie) is going to determine the style (the how of the movie).

What is the movie about? Work can't begin until its limits are defined, and this is the first step in that process. It becomes the riverbed into which all subsequent decisions will be channeled.

The script must keep you off balance, keep you surprised, entertained, involved, and yet, when the denouement is reached, still give you the sense that the story had to turn out that way.

Dialogue is not uncinematic. So many of the movies of the thirties and forties that we adore are constant streams of dialogue.

The point is that here is no war between the visual and the aural. Why not the best of both?

A character should be clear from his present actions. And his behavior as the picture goes on should reveal the psychological motivations.

If the writer has to state the reasons, something's wrong in the way the character has been written.

I like the writer present at rehearsals. Words are critical. And most actors aren't writers, nor are most directors.

I use improvisation as an acting technique, not as a source of dialogue.

Most writers are so used to being slapped around that they're stunned that I want them at rehearsal.

There's a powerful magic about being a writer that I still marvel at.

I want the writer to see the first cut. First cuts of a picture always have to have some time taken out of them. Most writers are able to see repetitions in their own work.

In a sense, a movie is constantly being rewritten. The various contributions of the director and the actors, the music, sound, camera, decor, and editing, are so powerful that the movie is always changing.

Making a movie has always been about telling a story.

In Murder on the Orient Express, I wanted Ingrid Bergman to play the Russian princess. She wanted to play the retarded Swedish maid. I wanted Ingrid Bergman. I let her play the maid. She won an Academy Award.

Just as in life, really talking and listening to one another is very, very difficult. In acting, that's the basis on which everything is built.

Sanford Meisner was one of the best acting teachers of my time. With beginning students, he spent the first month or six weeks getting them to really talk and listen to one another. That's all. It's the great common denominator where different acting styles and techniques meet.

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Steven Spielberg said of this book:

"Film would be a better place if every director were required to share with other romancers of film his process. It is a gift to us all that it is Sidney Lumet, one of America's greatest filmmakers, who is sharing his point-of-view."

First posted: 8 April 2013

Book review: "Ink Spots"

Brian McDonald is the author of Invisible Ink, and The Golden Theme. He is an award winning screenwriter who has taught his craft at several major studios, including Pixar, Disney and Industrial Light & Magic. His award-winning short film White Face has been shown all over the USA.

I had the privilege of conducting an interview with Brian back in January, 2012. If you haven't read that, you should. 

Since 2005, Brian has been writing one of the best blogs in the business: The Invisible Ink Blog. He started that as a way of helping get his first book, Invisible Ink, published. The international success of Invisible Ink has now led to the publication of Ink Spots. 

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Ink Spots is a compilation of the best posts from Brian's blog. It's a small book, divided into three sections. The first deals with things he has learned over the years, the second with the craft of screenwriting, and the third is a collection of observations about classic films.  

I have provided a few sample quotes from each section, to give you a taste of the book.

Things I Have Learned

There are a dozen posts here, many of them regarding the How of learning or thinking generally, or of learning about screenwriting specifically. There are anecdotes, especially of mistakes made and lessons learned.

• If you have a Batman story and you can turn it into a Superman story, it isn't a very good Batman story.
• Understand that plot and character are linked.
• Don't be afraid to be bad at this for a while.
• I have never understood why people think it takes great craftsmanship to confuse and/or bore people.
• The truth is that it is very hard to make yourself understood.
• My friend Pat Hazell talks about talking to writers starting out who are obsessed with getting an agent. His response is always, "What do you have for them to sell?" It's amazing how often they have nothing.
• If you think this business is a way to get rich quick, you are in for a world of heartbreak.
• Some of the longest films I have ever seen are short films.
• I am constantly amazed when talking to younger film students that they have seen almost no classic cinema.
• People who study physics still study Newton and Einstein. Those who came before still have something to teach us.

Thoughts on Craft

There are another twenty-six posts in this section.

• It's amazing what happens when you rid yourself of the burden of being original.
• "Where do we get screenplays?" may sound like an innocent question, but what it really says is that the person is unwilling to put any effort into learning their craft—not even the effort it takes to type "screenplay" into a search engine.
• If you want to sell something for a million dollars, you have to do a million dollars worth of work.
• If you want to write screenplays, you have to read screenplays.
• The primary job of a storyteller is to tell the story clearly.
• Almost all stories have a lesson at their core—sometimes a small lesson, sometimes profound, but almost always a lesson.
• No first act equals no emotional involvement.
• This idea of being clear often frightens my students. They don't want to point out the obvious. But what is obvious to them may not be so obvious to the audience.
• A professional magician friend of mine confirmed my observation that scientists and skeptics are the easiest to fool.
• The so-called reluctant hero is a hero, while the fearless hero is a cartoon.
• A character who has fear but confronts it will feel more real to an audience, even if that character is actually a cartoon. Look at Finding Nemo.

Movies I Like

This section contains a dozen posts about classic films. Paper Moon (1973), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Sunset Boulevard (1950), It's A Wonderful Life (1946), The Apartment (1960), Tootsie (1982), 12 Angry Men (1957), Norma Rae (1979), Jaws (1975), and Planet of the Apes (1968). Brian McDonald discusses those things that separate classics from the rest.

• Films today don't make you feel as much as they make you think. We seem to have made a collective decision that thinking is better than feeling. But sometimes the emotion of a situation is the truth of a situation.
• As a rule, films that make us think are respected while those that make us feel are beloved.
• Selflessness has been the mark of a hero as long as human beings have told stories.
• What makes (Billy Wilder) so good? No fat. Everything matters. He is always advancing plot, character, or theme—sometimes all three.
• Many modern-day filmmakers are trying hard to be noticed. The shots are there to be noticed. The characters are there to be noticed. The editing is there to be noticed.
• You are not the master of your story but a slave to it. You must do what it needs, not what you want.
• The audience could see that Yoda was a puppet, but they were so interested in this unusual character that they allowed themselves to be "fooled" into believing he was a living, breathing being.
• In recent years, we have spent a lot of effort trying to make creatures look more real. Maybe they do, but they don't feel more real. No one cries when they die.
• No matter how much better technology gets, it will not improve on good story-craft. Make your characters live on the page and they will live on the screen.
• If you call yourself a student of film and don't make yourself familiar with Charlie Chaplin's work, you are doing yourself a disservice.

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Ink Spots is a thinking book. It's all about what makes for great screenwriting and great films. If you're looking for sensational anecdotes and explosive Hollywood gossip, you'll be disappointed.

If you haven't read any of Brian McDonald's previous writings, I'd suggest you start with Invisible Ink. If you know that book, and have been writing for a while, Ink Spots is the kind of refresher that will return you to your own writing reinvigorated and with a sharper focus.
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     IMDb    Twitter    Website    Wikipedia   

First posted: 24 December 2012

Book review: "The Cheeky Monkey"

Tim Ferguson is a comedian, writer and producer. He has written and produced sitcoms, live stage comedy shows and light entertainment programmes, and is Australia's foremost teacher of screen comedy. He toured the world performing stand-up and musical comedy as a member of the Doug Anthony Allstars (DAAS). Tim is the author of The Cheeky Monkey and Carry a Big Stick.
     In this post we're only concerned with The Cheeky Monkey. I got my copy from Booktopia, after Amazon.com kept me hanging around waiting for six months. When I discovered that several pages were blank and others printed out of alignment, I rang Booktopia and a nice young man sent me a replacement copy; no fuss, no bother. 

There are a number of things to take into account when assessing something like a comedy instruction textbook. One of them is language. In her autobiography, Bossypants, Tina Fey gets the difficult stuff out of the way upfront. She offers a list of possible reasons why people might hate her, including the fact that she uses:

... all kinds of elitist words like "impervious" and "torpor."

That's on page 5. In contrast, Tim waits until page 74 to work in a solitary torpor. To be fair, he was talking about the TV show The Office at the time and Ricky Gervais can have that affect on people.
    So, only one torpor and no impervious; that can be construed as a mark in its favour. (I'm currently reading What Happens Next: A History of American Screenwriting by Marc Norman—that's the guy who wrote Shakespeare in Love—and I'm batting away words like zaftig and hegira and ritardando and priapic and crepuscular, so I'm a bit sensitive.)
 
The title of the book, The Cheeky Monkey, is a clever Australian choice, drawing as it does on long usage of the phrase to describe someone who is disrespectful, but in a cunning way. The weakness of the title is that it gives no clear indication that this book is almost entirely a description of how one goes about creating your very own TV sitcom.
    There are seven chapters; two deal with writing jokes and five deal with designing, creating and selling a sitcom.
    I've read a few comedy instruction books in my time. This one shocked me. Truthfully. If, like myself, you knew Tim Ferguson from a few brief appearances on television, you could be forgiven for thinking he was another Australian smartarse, with a big mouth, rapid delivery, and a capacity for holding a tune. It was the depth of his erudition that shocked me. Sure, he could only manage one torpor, but his grasp of comedy history around the world, on the one hand, and his tight, systematic delineation of the principles and categories of humour, on the other, surprised me. 
    Then I remembered that he was already teaching a course on comedy writing at RMIT University when he succumbed to demands that he write a textbook on the subject. He also teaches short courses at RMIT, UTS, VCA, AFTRS and in conjunction with a variety of screenwriting bodies. The dude might sound like a smartarse, but he's seriously bright and absolutely dedicated to what he does.

Who should read this book?
    Anybody working as a writer. Not just bespoke comedy writers. Every writer. If for no other reason than the application of the principles outlined will help you punch up your dialogue.

Tim says in his Introduction:

The aim is to offer comedy writers some broad principles and practical methods for devising and assessing their work.

The central purpose is to aid screenwriters in developing (a) sitcom.

And, yes, the book is riddled with jokes-by-way-of-example, the secret reason most of us have for reading comedy instruction books; a bit like reading Playboy for the photos articles.

The Cheeky Monkey: highly recommended.

Book Review: Easy Riders, Raging Bulls

Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock 'N' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood is an amazing book. It deals with the late 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s: heady days, when a youthful, energetic, free-thinking generation of film directors rose up, seized the reins of Hollywood, and attempted a revolution. Arthur Penn, Dennis Hopper, John Schlesinger, Robert Altman, Bob Rafelson, Peter Bogdanovich, William Friedkin, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Robert Towne, Martin Scorsese, Warren Beatty, Robert Benton, George Lucas, Hal Ashby, Roman Polanski, Brian De Palma, Jonathan Demme, John Milius and Paul Schrader are just a few of the characters who stalk the pages of this book.

We know them by the films they made: Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Easy Rider (1969), Midnight Cowboy (1969), MASH (1970), Five Easy Pieces (1970), The Last Picture Show (1971), The French Connection (1971), The Godfather (1972), The Last Detail (1973), Dillinger (1973), Chinatown (1974), Jaws (1975), Crazy Mama (1975), Taxi Driver (1976), Carrie (1976), Star Wars (1977), Heaven Can Wait (1978), Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), American Gigolo (1980), and Personal Best (1982).

For those of us a distance away from Hollywood, who watched the films and enjoyed them, it was easy to assume these people had been gifted a charmed life; their obvious talent had opened doors and enabled them to make the movies they wanted, to enjoy the process and reap the rewards. The truth was not that simple. For the most part they were driven, tortured souls, who plotted, schemed and bluffed their way to their opportunities. Most of those who enjoyed blockbuster success were crushed by that success. All of them paid a high price.

"We had the notion that it was the equipment which would give us the means of production," said Coppola. "Of course, we learned much later that it wasn't the equipment, it was the money." Because the fact of the matter is that although individual revolutionaries succeeded, the revolution failed. The New Hollywood directors were like free-range chickens; they were let out of the coop to run around the barnyard and imagined they were free. But when they ceased laying those eggs, they were slaughtered. p.434

With success came money, and the money brought in cocaine... by the truckloads. The drugs and money fueled jealousy, paranoia, arrogance and greed. Friendships splintered. AIDS, madness, suicide and murder thinned the ranks. It's a remarkable cautionary tale. I wasn't there; I can't testify to the truth of every detail, but I can tell you that it is a riveting read. Highly recommended.

Book review: Writing & Selling Thriller Screenplays

Lucy V. Hay is a qualified teacher, novelist, script editor, screenwriter, a blogger who helps writers, and one of the organisers of the London Screenwriters' Festival (LSF), where she currently holds the position of Director of Education. She is the associate producer of the British thriller Deviation, and author of Bauchentscheidung ("Gut Decision").
    She also wrote Writing & Selling Thriller Screenplays. I've been on the verge of writing a review of that since late last year, but health issues and the release of a novel of my own crowded the schedule. Anyway, here we are. ________________________________________________________________________

Writing & Selling Thriller Screenplays is a 223 page paperback, with index (thank you), arranged in three parts. 

The first settles the question of "What is a thriller?"
    I used to be quick to say I wasn't a huge fan of thrillers, but it turns out I've watched a lot more of them than I'd realised.
    Lucy breaks the thriller genre into 22 sub-genres, and explains and illustrates each with examples. That's twenty-two sub-genres.
   Then she analyses thrillers from the point-of-view of the protagonist, and comes up with eight common male protagonists in thrillers, and ten female equivalents. That's another eighteen ways to slice up the thriller pie. If you decide you want to write a thriller, you have some homework to do first.

How much conflict is enough?

Part two addresses the business of writing your thriller screenplay. Please note: this has nothing to do with outlining formulas or beat sheets or any of those aids other people have written about so ably.
   The "writing of" section covers tools which are frequently underrated by newbie writers: premise, logline and story outline. What elements will you find in the logline of a marketable screenplay? Lucy will tell you, with real life illustrations. Everyone knows that the first ten pages are vital in grabbing a reader's attention, but what are the traps to avoid? They're listed here. 
    We know that screenplays are about conflict, but how much conflict is enough? When does your protagonist move from flight to fight? How do you bring your story to a resolution?

How do you bring your story to a resolution?

Part three is all about selling your screenplay. It opens with a short pep talk, which is pure Lucy. I used part of the pep talk in this post back in February. 
    As someone who has been asked for feedback on screenplays in the past (I don't do that any more), I know that many newbie writers have no idea of how to handle it. Lucy provides five questions the writer should ask about feedback that will put a boundary in place and help them maintain their equilibrium. 
    Probably the biggest single question to ask about a screenplay, before you thrust it before the eyes of a startled world, would be, Is this screenplay ready? Most I've seen were so far from ready that a few honest comments generated despair. Good work was thrown aside, interesting projects abandoned, and writers with potential were left tottering on the edge of true failure, which is to quit writing altogether.
    Assuming the screenplay is ready, the next step is to pitch it to people with the power to get it made into a film. What are the basics of a pitch? Do you know how to handle an emergency pitch, a one-page pitch, an advanced pitch? Can you write an appealing treatment? What are the common mistakes that turn readers off a pitch?

No one has ever said after hearing a pitch, 'I wish they had talked longer.' ~Stephanie Palmer

Is this screenplay ready?

At this point you'll be dreaming of a simple sale, a large cheque and an Academy Award. Keep dreaming! Better yet, stay awake and read Lucy's observations on the myriad tracks that can open up before you as you wend your way through the undergrowth of Potential-Filmmaker Forest. Careful. There's bears in there!  
    Have you considered transmedia? How can your sample screenplay open a door into the industry? How should you respond to an offer of an option? How do you find a producer, or a director?

There's a lot to consider and Lucy lays much of it out before you. If you've sold several screenplays, you don't need this book. If you're a newbie—somebody standing on the edge, looking in—this might be the book you've been searching for. And if you're even thinking about writing a thriller, you'd be nuts not to buy and read Writing & Selling Thriller Screenplays by Lucy V. Hay.

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Here are a few of Lucy's more quotable lines from the book.

• Knowing what has gone before in produced movie content is absolutely key in writing your low-budget thriller spec or your blockbuster script sample.
• Agents and filmmakers don't care what a great writer you are; they care whether your screenplay is an easy sale.
• There are two things everyone in the industry wants from a screenplay, regardless of genre: a great story, with great characters.
• Hollywood mantra: Write me a low-budget picture that creates a $200m sequel.
• It's not the execution that counts; it's the concepts that sell.
• The uncomfortable truth is that execs, agents and filmmakers know a good idea when they hear it.
• First impressions count in the industry. It's rare that agents and producers consider redrafts.
• Too many writers in meetings simply look like rabbits in the headlights when asked about their premise.
• There are so many spec scripts out there, why should people pick yours?
• Learn to recognise feedback with an agenda attached; don't let others impose their own vision on your work.
• Actors' skills and experience are frequently underestimated by spec screenwriters.
• There is no 'right' way to write a one-pager (only multiple 'wrong' ways).
• Treatments are frequently left out of screenwriters' arsenals and this is always a mistake in my opinion.
• The more people who know you and what you do, the more likely you will hook up with someone who will be able to take your work somewhere.
• There is always money available for the 'right' project.
• Forget about art and think on this: your thriller screenplay is a business opportunity.
• I see no point in writing without an 'end point' in sight, whether it's a production or a contest deadline.

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