Then rewrite your script from page one—with your edits. Spend no more than one week on this rewrite—that means twenty pages a day.
Put the script away for a week; don’t even look at it.
Then edit it once again. Spend no more than four days on the edit this time.
Then rewrite it again from scratch with your edits—taking another week. This will be your third draft.
Now begin the process of trying to sell it—this, your official first draft.
At least write something every day.
John Lennon once said, “I haven’t picked up a guitar in six years. I forget how heavy they are.”
If you don’t feel like writing today …
Comedian Rita Rudner: “People don’t want to get up and drive a truck every day either, but they do—that’s their job and this is my job.”
Don’t watch TV if you’re writing.
Hunter S. Thompson: “No music and bad TV equals bad mood and no pages.”
Don’t watch any movies while you’re writing.
You don’t want to wind up “borrowing” from or paying “homage” to whatever it is you’re seeing. There is a tendency while you’re writing your script to feel lost and desperate, as in, Oh, Jesus God, I know this isn’t “working.” All you need is to watch some stupid movie that will give you a bad idea.
Keep your brain as inviolate and isolated as possible from everything while you’re writing.
Music can help you.
As I said, when I wrote Basic Instinct, I played the Stones all the time, especially “Sympathy for the Devil,” over and over again.
All the music in the film was supposed to be Stones music and “Sympathy for the Devil” was to play over the final credits.
The studio even bought the rights to “Sympathy” from the Stones for 750,000, but the director, Paul Verhoeven, changed his mind about using the song in the film, and the Stones were 750,000 richer.
Don’t smoke while you write; if you smoke, stop!
Screenwriter Albert Maltz about his friend, screenwriter Dalton Trumbo: “He’s a very feisty man, you know, a regular fighting cock. It’s that damned cigarette smoking of his that put him in the shape he’s in today. He just couldn’t stop. He used to smoke the things one after another.”
So did I. I smoked four packs a day and always chain-smoked when I was writing. I started smoking when I was twelve years old.
In 2001, when I was fifty-seven, I was diagnosed with cancer of the throat and 80 percent of my larynx was surgically removed.
I had a trache tube for months afterward and had difficulty breathing and swallowing.
I finally stopped smoking and have been smoke-free now for five years.
After I stopped smoking, I couldn’t write for a year and a half. I can write now, finally, without missing the cigarettes.
Don’t do what Dalton Trumbo and I did to ourselves; stop before it’s too late.
Pay attention to every word.
Comedian Joe Bolster: “The difference between a laugh and no laugh is often a single syllable. You remember the ‘Where’s the beef’ campaign? Initially, it was ‘Where’s all the beef?’ But the director took out ‘all’ and without [him doing] that, it probably wouldn’t have been as effective.”
Keep a night-light, pen, and paper on your nightstand.
You never know when you’ll wake up with a script thought in your head. That’s how I came up with the ending of Basic Instinct.
I literally dreamed the final scene, with the ice pick under the bed. I woke up and jotted it down and used it when I wrote the ending.
Treat yourself well after a good day.
The novelist H. G. Wells told interviewers that after a good day’s writing, he always celebrated by having sex.
Don’t think you’re better than your audience.
Ben Hecht did: “But among all my fantasies is none of writing and directing a movie that becomes the most famous movie of the week or even the month. I know why I don’t have this fantasy. It is because my mind balks at the partner in this daydream—the audience. I have never fancied the pleasures that come from its applause and approval.”
Write cinematically.
Raymond Chandler said to a friend, “I suppose you know the famous story of the writer who racked his brains [about] how to show, very shortly, that a middle-aged man and his wife were no longer in love with each other. Finally he licked it. The man and his wife got into an elevator and he kept his hat on. At the next stop a lady got into the elevator and he immediately removed his hat. That is proper film writing. Me, I’d have done a four-page scene about it.”
Don’t Mist the Orchids
Don’t lay on the sentimentality too thickly.
“What’s wrong with sentimentality?” a reporter once asked William Faulkner.
“People are afraid of it,” he said.
Don’t use voice-over unless you absolutely have to.
Most studio executives and directors view a voice-over as the kiss of death, to be used only if a movie’s structure doesn’t hang together.
If you hear a voice-over in a movie, it’s a possible sign that the movie was, and/or still is, in great creative trouble.
HOW TO DEAL WITH WRITER’S
BLOCK … THE HOTEL
ROOM SOLUTION.
Screenwriter Jordan Roberts (Around the Bend): “I can only write in hotel surroundings. I like isolation, I like loneliness, and there’s nothing lonelier than a hotel. When I’m lonely, I write more intimately. I need to be away from everything, including family and friends, so that I’m so desperate I will actually bother to write.”
Each morning, reread what you wrote the day before.
Do this first thing in the morning, before you start writing for the day. Don’t edit any of what you wrote the day before; just read it a couple of times to put yourself back into it.
As you approach the ending, reread the entire script each morning before you start writing. I find that doing this inevitably leads me to my ending.
Don’t worry about writing too much in one day.
Ben Hecht sometimes wrote entire scripts in three or four days.
I am not advocating that, but I have found that on occasion I’ve had banner writing days, where I’ve written twenty to thirty pages in a single day, barely able to keep up with my characters’ voices.
Just go with it, keep going, and when you are finished—only then—see how much of it works.
But, whatever you do, keep to your minimum—six pages every day.
If you feel you’re roaring along …
Don’t take the weekends off. Just keep writing. Try to explain to your loved ones what is going on. But even if they don’t understand—even if they’re pissed off at you, ignore them: Keep writing.
If, on the other hand, you don’t feel like you’re roaring along, take the weekends off, spend time with your loved ones, and air your mind.
Don’t write on speed or cocaine.
It will affect the rhythm of your scenes. You’re too wired or too zippy on either drug to get your rhythms right. I know; I’ve been there.
Don’t write on booze and cigarettes, either. I’ve been there, too. I used to love writing on black coffee, cognac, and endless cigarettes.
Since I like writing and always wrote a lot, I smoked lots and lots of cigarettes and drank lot and lots of cognac.
That’s one big reason 80 percent of my larynx is gone and I hack for an hour each morning until I get the phlegm off of what’s left of my throat.
Don’t think about the budget.
In my experience, if you write something really good, they will somehow come up with the money to film it.
In other words, the budget shouldn’t shape your script; your script should shape the budget.
Let only your imagination limit you.
Don’t worry about how they will actually film something. With technical advances and computerization, anything can be filmed.
And don’t mention POV (point of view), either. Don’t do all of the director’s work for him. Let him earn his wage by doing something.
You don’t have to be rooting for anyone in your script.
As much as some studio executives feel that it is, a script is not a football, baseball, or basketball game.
If the story is fascinating enough, if the world it depicts is seductive enough, if your characters are interesting and complex enough, you don’t need someone to wave the pom-poms every time he or she speaks.
I point to Basic Instinct as my best example. Its two central characters were both flawed and gray. The movie was the number-one movie of its year and made nearly half a billion dollars.
If you tell me that the reason it made so much money was because of that split-second beaver, I will tell you that even Sharon, who puts a very high price indeed on her beaver, would argue with you.
Structure your individual scenes the way you structure your script.
Ascene should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. The end of the scene should have the same kind of impact that the end of the script must have. So build your scenes to a climax.
HOW TO DEAL WITH WRITER’S
BLOCK … THE ROBERT TOWNE
SOLUTION
If you can’t write it, and if nothing works, do what Robert Towne does. He goes out to lunch with agents and producers and tells them the details of the story that he is blocked on. They beg him to write the story instead of telling it, and Bob goes home and doesn’t write it; he abandons it. But at least he’s impressed agents and producers, sellers and buyers, about how creative he is.
Each page of your script is a minute on screen.
But don’t worry about this in your first draft. My first draft of F.I.S.T. was almost three hundred pages and I had a monologue that went on for seven pages—seven minutes.
Old rule: If it’s there, you can always trim it. But if it’s not there, you’re in trouble.
Don’t show the script to anyone as you write it.
Don’t even tell anyone what you write each day. It is between you and your muse. Don’t confuse your muse with anyone else at this point—your director, producer, agent, or significant other.
Only when you are finished with your script should you show it to anyone.
The easier your script reads, the better.
Most studio executives I’ve met think that if it takes them longer than forty-five minutes to read a script, then that script isn’t very good.
Considering that most studio executives I’ve met are, charitably, slow readers—they don’t all necessarily move their lips when they read—keep it simple, stupid … and readable.
A Good Set of Bones
A well-structured script with a strong “spine.”
Don’t lock yourself into your ending.
As you write, your ending will gradually become apparent to you … almost as though it were a ship coming out of the fog.
Keep it in mind, but don’t let it block you from considering other endings—the ship coming out of the fog may be the wrong ship.
William Wyler agrees with me.
The director said, “A lot of people come to me with great openings. I don’t want a great opening. I want a great ending, because with most stories you can’t find a good ending.”
Take George Foreman’s literary advice.
The former heavyweight champ said, “So many people, especially young people, think that everything now is about digital and television, but nothing will ever surpass the written word. Character has to be written about. Writers used to give us character but now too many writers have abandoned character.”
Take Mike Tyson’s literary advice, too.
The people want to be lied to on a grand scale,” said former heavyweight champ Tyson. “They want heroic characters. The people don’t want to believe their idol is a freak; that he likes to get fellatio. They don’t want to believe that he might want somebody to stick their finger up his butt.”
Begin with your characters, not the plot.
Novelist Flannery O’Connor: “In most good stories, it is the character’s personality that creates the action of the story. If you start with a real personality, a real character, then something is bound to happen.”
The Core of the Character
What is it that makes your character tick?
You can’t, of course, put it that simply when you are asked this question—What is the core of the character—by the producer, director, studio execs, and actors.
Be prepared to make up a whole bunch of fancy-sounding Freudian, Jungian, Shakespearean, Homeric bullshit about what makes your character tick.
If you have problems with your plot, you’re not alone.
Oscar winner Alvin Sargent (The Way We Were): “When I die, I’m going to have written on my tombstone, ‘Finally, a plot.’ ”
HOW TO DEAL WITH WRITER’S BLOCK … THE PAIN IN THE ASS SOLUTION.
This has always worked for me: Let’s say I’m on page fifty-seven when I’m blocked. I go back to page one and retype the whole thing.
Through the process of retyping all the scenes, I have always found where I went wrong—and why, feeling that I went wrong, I shut down.
I have found that actual scene or sequence and, by rewriting it as I retype it, I have unblocked myself.
I know it’s a terrific pain in the ass to go back to page one and retype the whole damn thing, but it’s always worth it.
Character is everything.
Novelist/screenwriter Larry McMurtry: “Movies have largely lost interest in character. It is not without significance that two of the most publicized characters in the cinema have been a shark and a mechanical ape.”
Listen to the voices of your characters.
Screenwriter William Faulkner: “I listen to the voices, and when I put down what the voices say, it’s right. Sometimes I don’t like what they say, but I don’t change it.”
Let your characters live.
Have a rough idea of where you’re going with your story but not too clear an idea. Let your characters talk to you and determine their own way—within boundaries that are not clearly marked.
You’ll know you’re doing well when your characters start taking over and are nearly giving you dictation, which sometimes comes so quickly that it’s tough to keep up with; when your characters are literally talking to you; when words and images are coursing through your brain (without drugs) at a meth-fueled pace.
Deliver the Moment
Realize your story; empower your characters to live up there on-screen.
Write human beings, not scenes.
Novelist Eudora Welty: “The frame through which I viewed the world changed, too, with time. Greater than scene, I came to see, is situation. Greater than situation is implication. Greater than all of these is a single, entire human being, who will never be confined in any frame.”
Don’t “nice” your script up.
Don’t purposely set out to make your characters more likable and sympathetic so your box office will be bigger. Audiences aren’t stupid and will smell the bullshit as it’s being heaped on them from the screen.
Let your characters be themselves; don’t make them share your opinions and convictions.
Screenwriter William Faulkner kept using the phrase “A character of mine once said” throughout his life.
Don’t burden your lead character with too much back story.
The only time you need any back story at all is if the back story is relevant to the plot. This usually happens only in a thriller.
Otherwise, the personae of your lead actors is, in a sense, all the back story you’ll need. It is part of what actors are paid for: They superimpose the public’s perception of their personalities onto that of your characters.
The word perception is key here. For example, it doesn’t matter if your male romantic lead is gay in real life and
favors rough sex … as long as the public perception of him is that of a nice-guy heterosexual Romeo. It is also true that in Hollywood some of the gay romantic leading men who like rough sex are married and have kids (to make sure that the public perception of their images is a positive one).
Take your time revealing your main character.
Mystery goes a long way—don’t tell me everything I need to know about him/her in the first ten minutes unless you’re writing some real simpleminded television script.
Keep surprising me with little character twists all the way to the third act; unless you’re going for a great big cathartic twist at the end of the movie, your main character should be completely defined by the beginning of the third act.
A Built-in Sphincter
A character who brings comic relief to a drama. My character Sam Ransom (Robert Loggia) in Jagged Edge was a built-in sphincter; he played it well.
A Black Shirt
A major character that you know will die.
Don’t write a “leggy” script.
Even though character-driven scenes will be the first ones to be edited for time and budget reasons, these are the scenes that will give depth to your script. Give it some heart; otherwise, as they say, your script will be “all legs”—all plot, racing from one point to another.
The Meat of the Thing
The climactic moments that lead up to the moment of catharsis.
Don’t show your characters smoking in your script.
For many years, because I smoked four packs of cigarettes a day, because I thought smoking was cool, and because I resented what I deemed to be politically correct assaults on my smoking, I showed my characters smoking in my scripts.
The Devil’s Guide To Hollywood Page 16