I don't really care how much the latest superhero film took at the box office, although I'd probably know if you asked me. When I watch a film the main thing I am looking for is a good story. I like it when I look up at the big screen and can see a part of me staring back at me. More than anything, I am still looking for Jimmy Stewart and Jack Lemmon and Billy Wilder in every film I see.
I am your inner-critic. Your idea isn't good enough.
I am a good idea. I'm funny & interesting, I'm a great story.
Hmm, NO. There's no way to make it work.
I am on the page now, look. Page 1, the beginning of me.
This isn't going anywhere. It's leading nowhere. No-one will like it.
Hold on - why do you get a bigger say than me? Why are you taking it so seriously? It's just a screenplay, it's not terminal.
Um, what-- because, it is serious!
You seem to be getting smaller. Why are you taking me so seriously? I'm just a good idea.
Because, uh-- what? No, listen to me - you are not a good idea! I am protecting you from failure! I am protecting you from making a fool of yourself!
I am more likely to be less of a failure if I actually get heard. All my brothers and sisters are laying there dead, most of them are only 9 pages. If they were 120 pages, maybe they wouldn't be such failures.
Okay, just write, but be careful. I'm worried about you.
I'm just an idea, I'm just a screenplay. I'll be fine. You need to stop treating things like they are as important and as terrifying as genocide.
I get really obsessive about certain songs, at certain times. I love music as much as I love films really - but I have no talent for music. Sometimes, I'm going to talk a bit more about music round here. I find music and film very similar; films are about rhythm, good dialogue is liking dancing to great music, and of course - the use of music in film is half of the secret to great films. Likewise, the music I like is very cinematic, I mean -- listening to a Springsteen or Dylan song is like watching a short movie - it's impossible to listen to 'Simple Twist Of Fate' or 'Thunder Road' without beautiful imagery forming in your head.
Anyways, here are three songs I'm listening to right now.
U2 - Stuck In A Moment
I only vaguely recognized this song, like I do most U2 songs - I don't really love them, just the obvious songs that everyone loves like 'With Or Without You' and 'Where The Streets Have No Name.'
But I was lucky enough to see them live at Wembley Stadium last year, two nights in a row, and it was this song that really got me. And I think it's better live, in big stadiums, because it's really uplifting, it's really a communal thing. And I think this version gives some indication of how great it can be to see and hear it at a concert.
"I'm not afraid
Of anything in this world
There's nothing you can throw at me
That I haven't already heard
I'm just trying to find
A decent melody
A song that I can sing
In my own company"
Tracey Chapman - Fast Car
I feel like this should always have been my favourite song - but it wasn't. In fact, it's been a song I only kind of vaguely recognized for years and years. And then a few months ago I was in my Dad's car and it came on the radio, and I was like 'wow, who is this? what is this?' My Dad mentioned it was Tracey Chapman. I went home and listened to it again and again and again. There is something about Tracey Chapman, and specifically this song - something that can't be just put down to her voice, or the lyrics - it's that mysterious thing, somewhere between God and genius and luck and something spiritual--- it's just, ugh-- I can't even explain. But why would I want to explain when instead we could all just listen to it? Perfection. This is the best song I know about living.
"Any place is better
Starting from zero got nothing to lose
Maybe we'll make something,
Me myself I got nothing to prove"
Fort Minor - Where'd You Go?
Just amazing, really.
"I want you to know it's a little fucked up,
That I'm stuck here waitin', no longer debatin', Tired of sittin' and hatin' and makin' these excuses, For why you're not around, and feeling so useless."
There's this weird thing that screenwriters have to go through - a battle between their natural instincts and pandering to what a studio/producer will want. And pretty soon, that wonderfully original idea about a piece of cabbage that invents a spaceship becomes... A standard rom-com about a 22 year old fashion designer. And the script never gets bought anyway, and the sad thing is that the idea about the cabbage never gets written.
I wonder, how much of this is based on the reality of the industry, and how much of it is based on this myth that's been built up? You feel it every time you watch an awful film - like at the end of 'Hancock' when Will Smith puts the heart thing on the moon, it just leaves you wanting to scream at how predictable and pathetic Hollywood can be. And you feel even worse about that idea you had, about the pensioner who who turns his bingo club into a terrorist training camp-- you tell yourself 'nobody will want this,' 'this won't sell.' and you're right.. But it's not because no-one likes the idea but because you never wrote the script.. Instead you wrote a film about an FBI man who tells the NYPD man "this isn't your jurisdiction." And the producer says "I don't like your FBI script, it has no imagination," and he's right.. Because instead of writing your passion piece, you anchored it to suit a bunch of producers and executives you've never met, who've never told you what they do and don't want. You're going on the basis of the big thing you just saw at the cinema where robots threw each other around, or based on what some script-reading-girl-turned-blogger told you to do.
For some people - this is fine. I've met many writers who just enjoy writing and then having meetings and going to lunch and redrafting. They're happy to do the FBI script with no imagination whilst they start a draft of a World War 2 screenplay even though World War 2 means nothing too them. And for these people, they can write happily like this and it's not soul destroying at all.
But the more artistic writers, who struggle and fight with themselves over one piece of work, they also battle with the worry of who will buy/produce/fund it - and it affects the work.
It's commonplace for writers and film lovers to bemoan the lack of original scripts. The writers often feel the industry is polarizing them and their ideas, but actually - us writers do it to ourselves. We end up conforming more and more to this idea in our head of what a commercial screenplay is meant to be.
There are legitimate reasons why we think like this -- but I just want to stand up for that artistic part of you (and me) that needs supporting. That part that says write what you want. Fuck, write it backwards, one word per page, if that's really what you want to do.
Film is only a hundred and twenty years old - no-one can say, definitively, what works and what doesn't--- and it's a long time since something truly unique and wonderful has come along - and I'm hoping it's going to be you who's reading this.
"you can't start a fire -- can't start a fire without a spark"
