Interview with Nora Ephron

Because of her movies and despite no other, more personal, contact, I have long felt affection for Nora Ephron. The news of her death came as a major shock. A heap of interviews with Nora appeared on YouTube after she died. Here's one from Author Magazine.



First posted: 27 October 2013

Interview with Chance McClain

Chance McClain is a busy guy. He is an author, radio program director, playwright, musician, songwriter, singer, and filmmaker, who lives in Houston, Texas.

He is probably best known as the writer of the Yao Ming song (more about that later), but he's done a lot of other things.

I met him on Twitter and was soon fascinated to read about his career. I figured others would be interested as well, so I asked him some questions.

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•  Where were you born, and where did you grow up?

I was born in Houston, Texas, and grew up here as well. I bounced around a few colleges in Texas before joining the Army and serving from 1994-1997 as a light infantry medic. During this time I lived near Seattle, Washington. After my military service I moved back to Houston where I have remained. My growing up is still a work in progress.

•  What kind of a family did you grow up with?

I grew up in a typical American family. You know, divorced parents, craziness. I married young and remain happily married with two kids. My son (Noah) is 16 and daughter (Abbey) is 12.

•  Where did you go to school?
 
I went to the University of Texas on an academic scholarship, full of hope and ready to take on the world. I barely made it two semesters. I bounced around a few different colleges before joining the Army at 20 years of age.
   When I graduated high school, I really enjoyed both playing football and stage performance. I initially started my major as RTF (radio-television-film), but prior to starting school was convinced to switch my major to general business. I was a horrible general business student and it took me over a decade to right the ship and get into the industry where my passion rested.

•  What was your first paying job?

My first traditional job was at a large waterpark in Houston, when I was 16. Splashtown, USA. I worked at the tube rental facility and it was fun. There were lots of students from my school that worked there in the summers, so it was basically a three-month party that paid minimum wage. 
   My first ‘career’ type job was soldiering in the Army. I had a lot of fun, but it wasn’t for me. During my twenties I hopped around several jobs doing everything from loan officer for a mortgage company, to industrial uniform sales, to working in the oil industry as a downhole drilling tools salesman. 
   During all of these ludicrous jobs, I filled my spare time recording music, mostly silly songs. I was still passionate about sports, so many of my songs were parodies, or originals, about local or national sports stars. 

   In 1999 my favorite basketball player was a 6’10” forward, a bench player for the Houston Rockets named Matt Bullard. I wrote a song glamorizing him and sent it in to a local sports radio station. They played it on the air. What a rush! 
   From there the Rockets heard it and asked permission to play it in the arena, when we made a shot or a good play. What a larger rush hearing 16,000 people sing along with a goofy song I recorded! 
   Flash forward four years and I had songs played in arena for all the professional teams in Houston, and I was working as the creative director of a sports radio station. From there, things just kept getting weirder and better.

•  You were a ‘Jock’ in high school, yet you wrote songs from an early age. What was the first song you ever wrote?

Wow. I think the first song I wrote was called ‘It’s Cold’. I had learned to play a boogie-woogie on the piano. Basically, it was the chord progression of Jerry Lee Lewis’ Great Balls of Fire. I would stand at the piano and bang that out, singing about how cold it was in the room where I was singing.
   Later, in the summer, I wrote a stellar follow-up called ‘It’s Hot’. I think there were ‘It’s Raining’ and ‘It’s Dark’ versions mixed in there as well. My young mind was apparently limited to observational songwriting. I just wanted attention and I got it, so it was effective. And super corny. The first songs I recorded were with a dear friend of mine, and called ‘Oh, My Little Girl’ and ‘Have Faith’. This was 1989 and they were synthy New Order/Erasure pop awesomeness. At least I thought they were, back then. I have mp3s of them, and now crack-up listening to our pretentiousness.

•  You had success writing and directing the internet musical Horrible Turn (2009), the unauthorized and unofficial prequel to Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog (2008), What did you learn from that exercise?

Oh my word. What did I learn? Horrible Turn was my equivalent of a college education in filmmaking. I knew nothing about the technical aspects of making a movie. I didn’t know what an over-the-shoulder shot was. I didn’t know what focal length was. I didn’t know what three-point lighting was. I didn’t know what a skateboard dolly was. And I had no concept of story. Three acts? Huh? Arc? Isn’t that the boat with the pairs of animals? And I did not know the first thing about organizing people, places, and things. 

Horrible Turn: ... make a blunder and you'll never see the wonder of... Australia!

I wrote Horrible Turn because I loved Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog but had so many questions about all of the wonderful characters Joss Whedon had invented. Why was Dr. Horrible bad? Why did people like Captain Hammer when he was so douchey?
    So I wrote it as a musical play. While sitting in a sake bar with a buddy, we decided to change it into a screenplay. Google and YouTube were my friends. I discovered Celtx, the collaborative screenplay software. I discovered the importance of a filmic look, which guided me to Letus lens adapters.
    I cashed in my 401k, bought a camera and a bunch of gear, found friends and neighbors willing to go on an adventure, and made a movie.
    At the time, I was on the board of directors of a community theater, so I had access to stage actors who could sing. I worked at a radio station, so I had access to a recording studio. Basically, I had all of the resources to make a musical within arm’s reach, and, together with my friends, we decided we could do it.

•  Why the choice of Australia for Horrible Turn?

There was a line in one of the songs in Dr. Horrible in which Neil Patrick Harris, while daydreaming about how "evil" he will be, offers the line: 'I'll hand her the keys to a shiny new Australia'. I'm not sure why the Brothers Whedon went with that line, but it was awesome and I fixated on it. I decided to open Horrible Turn with a little insight into why the character was such an Australiaphile.

•  What’s the story with Kristin Massa? Her 'Australian' accent wobbles a bit, but it’s not bad.

Kristin Massa is an amazing talent. She showed up at a casting call and blew us away. There was a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend situation where we had a girl from Sydney in town for a week of shooting, and she helped with the accent as well. She was actually in the film, as one of the students in the Math competition. Kristin is an impossibly talented young lady and she did all of the accent work on her own. We were nervous that actual Australians would laugh at us, but I think Kristin did great.  [She slips into posh English occasionally, but is spot on most of the time. Ed.]

•  Your most successful song has been The Yao Ming Song, in honor of the Chinese basketballer Yao Ming. It has been played on radio across America, in China on television (before Yao Ming's games), and at Houston Rockets’ home games. How did that one song change your life?

That is a very astute observation. It really did change my life. It is bizarre that a cheesy song would have such a massive impact on my life, but it did.

   I thought of the song while driving to work at an oil company one day. That night I was in the studio recording a jingle for a jewelry company. As an afterthought, I asked my recording partner, Kevin, if we could squeeze in a recording of The Yao Ming Song. We spent maybe an hour on it.
   The following day I dropped off a CD at the same radio station I mentioned before, and they played it. The NBA season had not even started yet, but Yao Ming mania had. The song was played on the radio station every time his name was mentioned. When the season started, the song was a part of the Rockets game operations arsenal. It was catchy and corny, and the Rockets fans got into it.
   One of my favorite memories was the first time Yao played against the Lakers and their Hall of Fame center, Shaquille O’Neal. The Rockets asked me to perform at halftime. Keep in mind that all of my musical escapades had been in the studio. This was the first time I would be performing live, and it was in front of 16,000 people. It was an ESPN and CTV (Chinese Television) game. Prior to my walking out to sing the song, the director of game operations told me that ESPN and CTV had elected to carry the in-arena feed of me, singing... meaning literally hundreds of millions of people would see my performance.
   After that, there was a USA Today article, ESPN stories, CNN... people all over the world were singing this goofy-ass song. This was in the heyday of file sharing, peer-to-peer sharing, and basically pirating music. I made the song available to a popular Rockets fan site, never thinking about monetizing it. Oops. The song was available to everyone and seemingly everyone grabbed it.

•  Your biggest songwriting venture has been the stage musical Kissless. It took you all the way to the New York Musical Theater Festival in 2011. Tell us how you came to write a stage show.

Horrible Turn had an awesome premiere at a historical 500-seat movie theater in Houston. It was a packed house and everyone had a big time. At midnight that night, we made the film available for free online on YouTube and Vimeo (It’s still there at horribleturn.com).
   After that, at about 1AM we were back at the same sake bar. I looked at the people that were still standing and said, “That was fun. Let’s do it again.” They laughed at me. No way in hell they were going through that mess again.
   It turns out that the insanity of making a feature, with no training or professionals, wasn’t as enjoyable to them as it was to me. So I was on my own.
   This was November of 2009. Before I could get started on whatever was going to be next, the press decided they kind of liked Horrible Turn, despite its flaws. We were nominated for a Streamy Award and enjoyed going to L.A. for the Awards during the summer of 2010.
   This reinvigorated my urge to create things. I had a couple different ideas floating around in my head and my favorite was about a misfit girl and jock boy falling in love. In March of 2011 I wrote a draft of a screenplay called Goth Chick. In April I changed it to a stage play, because nobody wanted to make another movie with me.

    I was having trouble finishing it, so, to motivate myself, I submitted the script and about half of the songs to the New York Musical Theatre Festival. I had no expectation of being admitted. This was a prestigious festival and I was nobody. In the early portion of the summer, I had cobbled together a cast and mounted a staged reading of the show, now called Kissless. It was during a rehearsal that I got word that Kissless had been accepted.
   This set a lot of chaos into motion. We cast the show in Houston, raised $167,000 and in the fall a cast of 28 talented Houstonians travelled to the Big Apple to put on Kissless six times at the Off-Broadway Theatre at St. Clements. This was another ‘holy crap’ moment for me.

KISSLESS: An awkward misfit is forced to live with an uber-jock and his quirky family over summer break. An inconvenient love develops, threatening the rigid social structure of Forest Glen High School. 

•  You made a feature length film of Kissless. What’s happening with that?

Upon returning from New York, I set to work immediately on keeping Kissless alive. It wasn’t necessarily a Broadway-type show. It was teen-oriented, slightly immature, and raw. At the time I didn’t see it going on to a traditional path. I felt like schools and community theatres would like the show, but did not know how to let them know about it. 
   So I decided to take the best of both worlds, stage and screen, and film Kissless in a new way. Along with my business partner, Patrick, we posted a nebulous casting call in Backstage Magazine. It basically said we were looking for non-union musical theatre actors willing to move to an undisclosed small town location for 5 weeks to film a musical. Despite the cryptic nature of the casting call we received over 2,200 submissions. 

In March of 2012, we were back in New York auditioning 140 actors. By April we had identified our cast. A dozen New Yorkers, four people from a local Texas university, and a few people from Houston, including my son, Noah. He was to be an understudy to a Goth character, but the boy who had the role was cast in the national tour of Tom Sawyer, so my son was elevated to a principal role. He was money, by the way. 
   We elected to do the movie in the small town in the Texas Panhandle, where my partner has an engineering firm. We wanted to be sequestered to focus on the show and bring a splash of weird into Borger, Texas. A dozen New Yorkers showed up in July and we had a blast putting on the show. I indicated that we took the best from both worlds... we had cameras at the back of the house for master/establishing shots and then did alternate takes with close ups and mediums. We did some handheld shots. Some dolly shots. Some jib/crane work was done. The final product is a truly unique experience to watch. Presently we are marketing the material to schools and community theatres around the country to license and perform the show. It is an exciting project.

•  You were an extra in the movie Pearl Harbor (2001). How did that come about?

In June of 2000, there was a story in the Houston Chronicle about a feature length film looking for extras with military experience.
   Hey! I was in the Army once! 
   I went to the cattle call and was selected. 
   Filming was slated for July 19-21. My wife was pregnant; my daughter was due on the 22nd. We didn’t take any chances, we did what any normal parent would do. We induced early.
   Actually, my wife did the inducing. I was just kind-of there. Abbey was born on July 18, and I was an extra in a movie.
   In hindsight we should’ve waited. But it was fun being the first person in the crow’s nest of the Battleship Texas in three decades.

•  Who has had the most influence on you as a filmmaker and song-writer?

As a songwriter I am greatly influenced by the harmonies and song-structures of The Beatles. Abbey McClain was named after Abbey Road, the studio of The Beatles. I am also heavily influenced by 1970s and 1980s country music.

   As a filmmaker, I am a bit of a simpleton. It is not popular amongst the indie film scene to admire the people that I do, but without shame I love James Cameron. He is a genius. To do what he has done, after starting as a miniature-model maker at Roger Corman Studios, is nothing short of a miracle. I am also fascinated by, and enamored with, anything and everything Pixar.
   My dream dinner would be John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Joss Whedon and James Cameron. If I could include dead people then we would welcome Walt Disney and Steve Jobs. If you are curious, we would eat barbecue.

•  What are three things you wish someone had told you about filmmaking when you were starting out?

1. Story is all that matters. Everything else is secondary. A great story, shot poorly, can still be great, but a crap story, shot beautifully, is crap. And either way, your name is affixed to it forever.

2. Be exceptional. For years I would make a song or a commercial or a short film or a feature length musical or anything, and immediately post it on the internet because I wanted the immediate response. I would put out products that were not professional, but good enough to get a chuckle. I wish I had had the patience to wait and hone before releasing. Now I don’t want anybody to see anything, unless it is as exceptional as I am capable of making it. If the creation doesn’t exceed my threshold of acceptability, it stays on the shelf, perhaps forever. 

3. Yoda was right. “Do... or do not. There is no try.”
    If you have a task and your goal is to ‘try’ to do it, you are destined to fail. Trying implies incompletion.
    Set out to do things. We didn’t try to make Horrible Turn. We did it.
    If I had applied numbers 1 and 2, it would have been better, but at least we did it.

•  If you could recommend just one filmmaking advice book to a newcomer in Adelaide, what would that book be?

Without question nor hesitation, if I was to recommend one book it would be Invisible Ink, by Brian McDonald. I did not discover this gem until last year, but have since bought no less than ten copies as gifts. My copy is dog-eared, highlighted, circled, smeared and smudged. I have it with me at all times. When I write I refer to it constantly. Even when writing a 60 second TV commercial, I try to incorporate elements from the book. I have corresponded with Mr. McDonald. He is a gentleman and completely accessible.

•  Name ten of your all-time favorite movies.

The Abyss (1989)
Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-03)
Star Wars trilogy (1977-83)
Finding Nemo (2003)
Airplane! (1980)
The Matrix (1999)
Les Misérables (2012)
Anchorman (2004)
The Breakfast Club (1985)
Jaws (1975)

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Yao Ming is a retired Chinese professional basketball player who last played for the Houston Rockets in the National Basketball Association (NBA). At the time of his retirement, he was the tallest player in the NBA, at 2.29 m (7 ft 6 in).

Yao was selected by the Houston Rockets in the 2002 NBA Draft. He was named to the All-NBA Team five times. He reached the NBA Playoffs four times. He is one of China's best-known athletes. His rookie year in the NBA was the subject of a documentary film and a book titled YAO: A Life in Two Worlds. He represented China at the 2000 and 2004 Olympics, and was national flag-bearer in 2004.

Here is the Chance McClain song that greeted him whenever he scored for the Houston Rockets.

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First posted: 17 January 2013

Interview with Allison Burnett

Allison Burnett is an L.A.-based novelist and screenwriter. He is a prolific writer of novels and screenplays, most of which have become Hollywood movies involving people such as Richard Gere, Winona Ryder, Joan Chen, Heather Graham, Josh Hartnett, Diane Lane, Samuel L. Jackson, Lara Flynn Boyle, Morgan Freeman, Radha Mitchell, Kelsey Grammer, Kate Beckinsale, and Anthony LaPaglia, among many others.

He is currently in the midst of directing the film Undiscovered Gyrl. I took the opportunity of an enforced break to ask him some questions.

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•  Where were you born, and where did you grow up?

I was born in Ithaca, New York, when my father was getting his PhD in Marine Biology at Cornell University. We moved around a lot as he advanced in his career. I spent most of my childhood in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and Evanston, Illinois.

•  What kind of a family did you grow up with?

My father was a brilliant, disturbed alcoholic scientist and creative writer. My mother is a psychotherapist, with all the good and bad that that implies. I have one brother and one sister. I would describe our home life as loud, brainy, and intensely dysfunctional.

•  Where did you go to school?

A large public high school in Evanston, Illinois, and then I stayed at home and attended Northwestern University, where my father taught. I majored in the Oral Interpretation of Literature. I acted in plays and wrote them as well. Later, I did a one-year fellowship in playwriting at the Juilliard School.

•  When did you first decide you wanted to write?

I was always writing throughout high school and college, but I did not commit it to as a profession until a few months out of college. I was twenty, living in New York, and performing in a small production of a George Bernard Shaw one-act play. Often there were just a few people in the audience. I thought, "This is a dog's life. I'm going to commit to playwriting." Writing had always come easier to me than acting. 

•  Who has had the most influence on you as a writer? 

Nathanael West, Anton Chekhov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Charles Dickens.

•  Starting with the first film you wrote and directed, Red Meat (1997), you have developed a reputation as a creator of positive roles for women. How do you view a film such as Thelma and Louise?

Thelma and Louise (1991) opened right around the time that Silence of the Lambs (1991) came out. Everyone was hailing the former as a seminal feminist statement and condemning the latter as a movie that showed a woman being victimized. I thought it was just the opposite. In my eyes, Thelma and Louise are cowards running from the law and accountability. In fact, they would rather die than defend their actions in court. People kept comparing them to Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, which I thought was silly. Those guys went out fighting, guns blazing, against insurmountable odds. They knew if they were captured, they were dead anyway. They didn't jump off a cliff to certain death just to avoid a self-defense plea. 

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid jump off a cliff to escape the Superposse

Silence of the Lambs, on the other hand, was about a courageous female federal agent who bravely risks her life to save a woman in peril. If I had a daughter, I would rather she emulate Clarice Starling than either Thelma or Louise, both of whom strike me as terribly immature, almost stunted, both emotionally and intellectually.

•  We’ve talked about your experiences with Autumn in New York. What did you find most frustrating about seeing your screenplay mangled like that?

Somehow my script managed to stay pretty much intact until less than a week before shooting, when Richard Gere ordered a rewrite. I think everyone involved with the film, including Richard himself, now acknowledges that this was a mistake. The experience, although painful, was a gift, because it reminded me that I would never be able to experience the pride of authorship if all I did was write movies. It led me back to fiction. I have published four novels, with a fifth coming out next year. 

•  You’ve just finished the directing one of your novels, Undiscovered Gyrl, into a film. How did that go? Did you bring any lessons back from the shoot?

My movie shares its lead actress, the brilliant and beautiful Britt Robertson, with a Vince Vaughn movie that was hit by Hurricane Sandy. The disruption of their schedule disrupted ours. When Undiscovered Gyrl finishes shooting in mid- January, we will have shot in four different months! 
   What did I learn? Never give up!

•  What was the best advice you were given at the start of your career?

If you want to stay sane as a screenwriter, make sure you have some other creative outlet. 

• What are three things you wish someone had told you about writing when you were starting out? 

1. The worlds of indie script writing and studio screenwriting are entirely different. 
2. Don't use your writing as therapy. Write about your personal dramas only after they are over. 
3. Write every single day. Soon you will be addicted. It won't take discipline. It will be a compulsion. 

•  What one filmmaking advice book would you recommend to a young wannabe screenwriter in Adelaide? 

Even though it is thirty years old, Adventures in the Screen Trade, by William Goldman. 
   And here is the advice I would give that young writer: 
   Read great literature, watch great movies, lead a brave, rich life, and eventually move to Los Angeles. 

• What are your ten favorite movies of all time? 

The list of 10 films I think are the greatest bear no resemblance to my favorites, i.e., these are the ones I enjoy the most:

Harold and Maude (1971)
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
Annie Hall (1977)
Carnal Knowledge (1971)
Chinatown (1974)
Shane (1953)
Election (1999)
Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
Holiday Affair (1949)

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Here's the preview for Gone, the most recent of Allison Burnett's screenplays to be released as a movie.



First posted: 3 January 2013

Interview with Adam Levenberg

Adam Levenberg is a former Hollywood executive (Intuition Productions, One Race Films) who spent years inside the system.

Once outside, he promptly wrote a book called The Starter Screenplay, which gives an executives' view of the factors that influence studio decision-making about spec scripts.

I took the opportunity to ask him a few questions.

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•  Where were you born, and where did you grow up?

I was born and grew up in Cheltenham and Upper Dublin, which are both suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

•  Where did you go to school?

I attended USC School of Cinematic Arts and majored in Critical Studies. It’s a great place to study cinema, but I think the reason for the school’s success is that every single student has already made the commitment (most at age 18) to move away from home and live in Los Angeles. Most of my friends from USC are still living in L.A. and working in the entertainment industry.

•  When did you first take an interest in films/stories?

Before I can remember. I have Dr. Seuss’s My Book About Me and for My Favorite Sport, I filled in “Watching.” As a kid, I was completely indiscriminate about what I watched—I just tried to see everything. I probably spent about 5-6 hours per day in front of the television. Weekends were spent watching movies at the theater or on video.
   By the time I hit film school, I was seeing about 200 movies per year. I have an encyclopedic knowledge of Hollywood Cinema from the late 1980s to the present. I don’t watch sports, so when my friends are watching a game, I’m knocking off another film title.

•  What was your first paying job?

At 16, I worked as a dishwasher at Friendly’s, which is a restaurant and ice-cream chain.

•  What was your first job in the movie business?

My first paying entertainment job was producing a show for Trojan Vision, which is the USC television station. It was called Organized Chaos and we tried to make it as wild as possible. I think on the second show the hosts were doing a flavored condom taste test. Nobody was watching, so we tried to be as outrageous as possible just to entertain ourselves.
    My first real industry job was reading scripts for USA Films, which at the time had deals with Alexander Payne and Spike Jonze, and was making films like Traffic (2000), Nurse Betty (2000), and Being John Malkovitch (1999).
    It was interesting to read the projects that great filmmakers would submit and evaluating if the script or book had any potential as a feature film. The first book I did coverage on was submitted by an amazing filmmaker, but I didn’t understand how it could be adapted into a movie. I called in and was told, “Evaluate the material honestly. Don’t be swayed by the name on the cover letter or the names attached. If the book is a pass, it’s his job to explain to how he plans on adapting it into a great screenplay.”

•  What did you learn from working with Vin Diesel?

Vin likes the idea of building worlds and I learned a lot about intellectual property development. That works for an established actor/producer. But for screenwriters, I tend to suggest sticking to the screenplays. There’s nothing wrong with creating some concept art as inspiration for yourself, but if you don’t have representation, just focus on the writing because there’s no artwork that will make someone reconsider a script that doesn’t work. 
   One piece of advice from my book is that you should never worry about sequels or franchise building while you’re writing a spec script. I say this not because it’s a bad idea in theory, but because these attempts (especially from new writers) tend to result in unreadable screenplays. Creating effective setup and payoff in one screenplay is hard enough.

•  Why did you write The Starter Screenplay?

I went from being a production company executive to an independent consultant. Basically, my intention was to do the work of a development executive for multiple companies, make the same amount of money with more freedom to pursue projects I was interested in advancing. 
   Then a friend pointed out that I could allow unrepresented screenwriters to hire me for feedback. I got creative and e-mailed the writers who had queried me in the past. A bunch of them decided to send me their scripts. At the time I didn’t know that there were other companies out there who just sold notes without discussion, which is so much easier to do, but worthless for the writer. When someone hired me, I would read their script, then talk to them for 2-3 hours. I still do that, except now I make notations on the pdf of their screenplay. I do notes after, and then the discussion takes place within 24 hours, so I’m fresh.
    Once I started working with unrepresented screenwriters, I went looking for screenwriting books to recommend. I couldn’t find a single book that shared the perspective on what an executive is looking for, or a book that nudged writers in the direction of simplicity and commercialism, while still getting the hang of the medium. 
   So I wrote it. 
   The book is broken down into two parts—the first is What to Write? The second half is about Interacting with the Industry—how to decode people’s reactions to your material, including what it means if you don’t hear back from queries, or when someone says “I liked your script, it’s a pass.” 

Even executives have to unwind. Here's Adam on Space Mountain at Disneyland.

•  You wrote on Twitter that Australian screenwriters are your favorite clients. Why is that?

Professional Hollywood writers are used to being asked tough questions. They know how to separate their ego from the process of getting script notes. This can be an intimidating experience for a new screenwriter. Some get overwhelmed. But Australian writers (or at least the many who have hired me) do great taking constructive criticism in stride and staying upbeat. That’s important because they’re at full creative capacity when the conversation turns to “How can we fix this?”
    After a consult, I usually suggest a specific book on screenwriting (depending on the writer’s current level), run down a bunch of movie titles to see, and pick out some scripts for them, as well as discuss their next step in terms of the script. I ask all clients to let me know how they’re progressing with the work, what they thought of the scripts/book/movies, but only a certain percentage follow through. Australian writers definitely do a better job staying in communication with that feedback. Or again, at least that’s true of the many I’ve worked with thus far.

•  What was the best advice you were given at the start of your career?

At some point in the process, I had a long conversation with Anne Lower, who was working with Save the Cat. She explained how, by Snyder’s third book, he gave up on trying to defend his positions because, ultimately, people will either accept what you write, because they get it, or they won’t. That’s exactly what I needed to hear. I ended up cutting tons of unnecessary material as a result, once I wasn’t concerned with defending my suggestions from the exceptions to the rules. 

•  If you had to suggest just one screenwriting book (not your own) to a newbie writer back in Adelaide, which one would it be?

Blake Snyder’s Save The Cat! is the essential foundation of screenwriting for any newbie. My book covers what types of movies you should write and how to navigate the industry; I intended it as a companion piece to Save The Cat! 
   I think once you know Snyder’s structure backwards and forwards, you’ll need to move on to more complex stuff, such as John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story.
    It's important to note that most screenwriting books contain great points, but bury the important stuff under hundreds of pages. That’s why The Starter Screenplay is sparse and to the point—I talk about what to write and what not to write, from an executive’s perspective. An agent has to sell your script to a producer, and a producer has to sell your script to a studio. If there’s no chance of that happening, why would an agent agree to represent you in the first place?

• What are your ten favorite movies of all time?

I don’t think I could limit it to ten... but off the top of my head:

The Stunt Man (1980)
L.A. Story (1991)
Ruthless People (1986)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
The Goonies (1985)
The Big Lebowski (1998)
Vertigo (1958)
JFK (1991)
The Wizard of Oz (1939)
Ravenous (1999)

Last year my favorite movie was The Help. This year, as of November, I've been blown away by Cabin in the Woods, Prometheus, Cloud Atlas, End of Watch, Wreck-It Ralph, Argo, and especially 21 Jump Street, for delivering humor and action alongside profound insight into today’s teen culture.

• What's next for Adam Levenberg?

At the moment, I’m working on some fun projects as a producer, but I’m also launching a podcast, and teaching a screenwriting course on Saturdays at The Director’s Playhouse in Los Angeles. I developed the curriculum myself and it’s going well. We start with beginner and advanced classes in January 2013.

Hire A Hollywood Exec.

First posted:7 December 2012

Interview

Here's a link to an interview with me, just published by Pete Richmond at Zealot Script.

Interview with Alan Watt

Alan Watt is a novelist, a playwright, a teacher, a publisher, the founder/creative director of LA Writers Lab, founder of the 90-Day Novel Press and Writers Tribe Books publishing companies, and is currently executive producer of a film being made from his novel Diamond Dogs.

Alan first taught a summer creative writing workshop at UCLA in 1998, and has been teaching and lecturing on the creative process in Los Angeles and at colleges around the country ever since. He has taught everyone from award-winning authors to A-list screenwriters, journalists, poets, actors, professional athletes, war veterans, housewives, doctors, lawyers, television showrunners, Emmy-winning directors, first-time writers, and anyone else with a story to tell.
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•  Where were you born, and where did you grow up?

I was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, and moved to a small town in Ontario, Canada, called Guelph when I was five-years old. I grew up in Guelph.

•  What kind of a family did you grow up with?

My father is a doctor, a psychiatrist more specifically. And my mother was a Phys Ed teacher, until she had four kids in four years. I have two brothers and a sister. All of them are very smart, very ambitious. Two of them went to medical school and became doctors, while my other brother went to Business school and is now into real estate and manufacturing and all sorts of other things.

I, on the other hand, was the one who spent his days staring at clouds and living in his imagination. I had the brilliant idea of marching into my high school principal’s office three months prior to graduation and announcing that I was quitting school to go on the road and be a stand-up comic. (I had a weekend gig two hours away—in retrospect I’m not sure I needed to quit school for it.)

•  What was your first paying job?

We moved to a farm when I was ten. My two brothers and I spent that first summer picking rocks. We picked rocks for six to eight hours a day, clearing the fields by hand. My father paid us a dollar an hour. I made four hundred dollars that summer.

•  When did you first decide you wanted to write?

When I was three, my mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas, and I told her “a pencil.” I didn’t know how to spell yet, but for some reason I desperately wanted to write. There was something deeply satisfying about the idea of putting my thoughts down on paper. To this day I prefer to write by hand because I find the simple act of moving my hand across the page rather therapeutic.

•  Why did you set up the L.A. Writers Lab?

I was always helping my friends with their screenplays, and when I started selling my work I began getting deluged with calls to read and help them with their work. I decided it was easier to set up a formal workshop where I could help them.

I am also fascinated with the creative process – far more interested in that than the result. I love working with writers who have been blocked and helping them write the story that they’ve been struggling with for years. This is why I created the 90-Day Novel and 90-Day Screenplay workshops.

The subconscious is where the truth lies. It’s where all of the complexity and paradox of our experiences are disseminated and it’s where patterns are explored. Logic is immaterial to our subconscious, which is why it is so difficult for writers to begin, and so thrilling once they’ve begun. It’s not so much a matter of ‘can I rely on my subconscious?’ It’s really that we have no other choice. I don’t believe it’s possible to write anything more than a grocery list from our pre-frontal cortex. We don’t have the bandwidth.

Now, though we must rely on our subconscious, I don’t believe that’s a guarantee that we’ll get to the end of our story. The 90-Day process involves marrying the wildness of our subconscious to the rigor of story structure. There are key universal experiences in the hero’s journey. By exploring these experiences in the world of our story, images appear and it actually becomes possible to move beyond our limited idea of our story to a more vivid and dynamic version. The truth is that our idea of our story is never the whole story. Writers tend to get stuck when they either rely solely on their subconscious, or solely on “plotting.”

I teach story structure as an experiential model rather than a conceptual model, which is a fancy way of saying that we can reduce any transformation in our life to a series of experiences. There is nothing formulaic about this approach. I tell writers that everything we can imagine belongs in our story if we’re willing to distill our ideas to their nature. I teach writers how to ask better questions of their subconscious in order to understand their story in a new way.

•  What are your upcoming writing projects?

I’m currently writing a thriller for a film producer, and just completing a new novel called Days Are Gone, about a woman who leaves her upwardly mobile marriage and ends up in a small town, where she begins a relationship with a guy who is on parole for committing a terrible crime. It’s about how we forgive ourselves for our pasts in order to move on. I’m publishing it through my new literary press, Writers Tribe Books. I recently sold my movie adaptation of my first novel, Diamond Dogs, to Quad Productions, who just did a movie called The Intouchables. Diamond Dogs will be shot in the States and will be their first English-speaking movie.

Here's the trailer for The Intouchables.

•  You have established not one, but two, separate publishing houses. Tell us a little about them.

It happened by accident. The 90-Day Novel Press publishes books on writing. I wrote The 90-Day Novel just as this whole self-publishing craze was heating up and the traditional publishing industry was dying. I had been procrastinating for a year in sending my agent a book proposal, and then one day I just decided that I was going to publish it myself. I knew the book was not a traditional writing book—it was much more of a right-brain book that explored the mechanics of the story process from an intuitive place. Quite frankly, I wrote the book that I wish existed when I started writing, and it’s become a bestseller here in the U.S.

Writers Tribe Books publishes literary fiction and was another accident. With the traditional publishers dying on the vine, I started getting calls from friends of mine—some really great novelists, but because their last book didn’t land on the bestseller list they were getting dropped by their publishers. The traditional publishing model cannot support the work of mid-list authors. Publishing has become like Hollywood—they need huge hits to survive. But since I don’t have Fifth Avenue rent to pay I can afford to publish authors who I just love, and rather than giving them a huge advance, we split the profits, and it becomes more of a partnership model.

•  What are three things you wish someone had told you about screenwriting when you were starting out?

1) Build a body of work. Don’t spend three years on one project.
2) Be willing to fail. Keep putting your work out.
3) Write the story that you want to tell. Don’t concern yourself with what you think the “marketplace” is looking for.

Peter Finch is mad as hell, and he's not gonna take this any more.

•  Name ten of your all-time favorite movies.

Here are ten in no particular order. I could give you ten more tomorrow that could supplant these ten.

• Network (1976)
• One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
• Chinatown (1974)
• The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
• Casablanca (1942)
• It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
• Goodfellas (1990)
• Apocalypse Now (1979)
• Annie Hall (1977)
• On The Waterfront (1954)

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Here's a five minute clip of Alan Watt talking about how story works.

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First posted: 23 November 2012