Over the past few weeks I've been trudging through a swamp of truths about myself and my abilities. It's been a taxing, though rewarding journey. I've given up some old ideas about myself and have therefore made room for some new approaches. As I've blogged, I've had to be careful not to fill in the blanks too quickly. While I can't say I have the patience of a saint, I have kept my eyes open as much as possible. I certainly haven't needed to completely reinvent myself. I have done a tremendous amount of work over the years and I have talent to be sure. Letting go of expectations and of waiting for others to legitimize my talent has actually helped me see my strengths more clearly. In fact the weaknesses that were so glaring to me a few weeks ago feel more like exciting challenges than sources of shame at this point.
I was listening to James Mangold speak about the beginnings of his career recently. He asserted that you can't wait for someone to tell you you're ready or that it's time. That call won't come, he says from experience. You have to write the film you want to make. If you write a film that is too expensive for an inexperienced director to obtain financing for, write another film. He was talking about genre pictures heavy on special effects primarily, however this is the trap in which I've been falling for years regarding Original Glory. I've actually complained many times as I've had the script accepted to prestigous markets and optioned by a production company that it's too bad I wrote this one first.
Boo hoo. Poor me that I wrote a story that I believed in and in turn inpired others to believe in enough to take a self-taught writer and help him develop the script, teach him about dramatic stroytelling and the business of making movies in the process and pay me for it. What a goddamn bummer. Bet you feel really sorry for me.
In realizing and admitting that I may not currently have the necessary experience to direct Original Glory, did I make it clear that Original Glory is the first complete screenplay that I've written, I have become willing and ready to write my second completed screenplay. Back when I finshed the first final draft of OG, I optioned a book to adapt, I signed a contract with a producer to adapt a novel he'd optioned, et cetera. I was ready! Then I learned what is meant by the koan that screenwriting is rewriting. That's when the producers at Ghost Robot, namely Zach Mortensen, took me to (re)writing school. All those other writing plans were put on hold. Thankfully, because I re-invented the wheel with Original Glory. To my credit, I wrote about what I knew and some amazing characters emerged. But I didn't know a thing about structure. Initially I took those notes with scornful scoffs. But when you hear the same thing from people making a living in the industry over and over again, it tends to break down the denial that you're a dyed in the wool genius. Gradually, over the span of years, I became teachable.
I've written over fifty drafts of Original Glory, not including somewhere around a hundred revised drafts. All the while I started a dozen screenplays. Do you think I started those screenplays any differently than I started OG back in '98? Hell no. I'm sure one of the reasons that not a one has written itself is a subsconscious fear that it will require the same amount of work as Original Glory. If I grafted ideas about events and people onto an arbitrary armature as I did with OG, it's likely that I would have to write fifty drafts again. If I were lucky.
There's a better way. There is more than one better way. Start earlier with the structure. From the beginning. Baby steps. Check the box as you complete each one. Follow directions. Ugh.
Don't you know who I am?
Here's what I'm doing differently:
Week 1
Day 1 - Write the title. That's it. Stop. Done for the day.
Day 2 - Write the theme. Do my best. Write a few. Be wrong. Trust the process.
Day 3 - Write the logline. Starting to get harder. I have it my head what I want to write about. Why can't I just start writing? Hard to stay with this part. But I wrote something that I could get me through to the next day.
Day 4 - Write the treatment. I wrote the beginning and the end as instructed. The logline was bothering me. Maybe because I didn't know whose story it was. I wanted it to be about the dad, because he is the one transformed in the end. I went back to the logline and reworked it. The process forced me to understand whose story it is.
Day 5 - Still working on the logline. Something is not quite right. I talk it out with a trusted colleague. Got it.
Day 6 - Rest and reflect.
Day 7 - Outline the middle of the treatment. Go back and read the plan of action. Something about five pairs of uh oh's and oh shits and two oh my gods in every good movie. Resistance to this was strong. Fucking formulaic bullshit ... So I tried it. It was hard. I mapped it out. I deleted, cut and pasted, rewrote for a long while. I labored. Guess what? It helped me develop the tension, the rhythm and the structure. The story is not more formulaic as a result -- it's stronger. I better understand where we (the characters and I) need to go.
All the while during Week 1, I was telling the story to myself and others. Trying out the logline. Suffering blank looks. Fighting the urge to type FADE IN:
I took a class a long time ago that asserted typing FADE IN: was the first thing to do when starting a screenplay. I wholeheartedly disagree.
Week 2
Day 1 - Finish the treatment. Several prose pages amassed under my flying fingers in a very short time last night. Maybe this following directions crap works.
Day 2 - Write an outline. I'll get to it at lunch.
I tell actor-students to get off the fence about whether they're an actor or not. Check the box, I tell them.
I'm checking the box today.
Screenwriter - check.
Director - check.
Hyphenate - check.
Purist - it's hard, but I'm going to leave this box unchecked for now.
A River Dertch,
Signore Direttore
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