This thing’ll probabaly win a bunch of Oscar nods, and...  Is the production design impressive?  Yes.  Was it well researched?  Seemingly.  Are there some thoughtful performances?  Certainly. But if the primary positive feeling one has while watching a film is respect for the dedication of the filmmakers, then something is probably missing. 

Unless, of course, the color mousy-brown really sends you.  Then you’ll be clinging to the edge of your seat for a full 137 minutes. 

The following is the agent's reply. It could be considered disheartening.  Daunting. Discouraging.   But it's also completely honest and very good information to have.   Typos and all.   Enjoy.

Its like, there are so many stories out there that could go a thousand different ways, mostly they turn into a boring bio pics. that lose money. So to invest the money studios do, they want someone who they know can deliver (aaron Sorkin and David Fincher) and even then they tend to want it to be about Steve Jobs, which is the hot assignment right now or in the prior case Facebook.

If you have a lights out script that blows people's mind, that isn't about a subject with a failing track record(IE the middle east wars.) you may have a shot there too, but people better totally flip.

127 hours btw only grossed $60mil world wide. Not a lot for a global release

Hurtlocker grossed $50 mil world wide. Even less.

Its fine and well people in LA and NY like to talk about these movies over cocktails but in a world where it costs a mint just to market these pictures, they financially are damn tough.

If they are getting into something like that, they want it to be Social network that did $225M WW.

I shit you not, baring guys like Cameron of which there are about 5-10 people with anywhere near that juice, almost every project is freaking existing IP driven stuff. Meaning Robocop remake, Fast and the furious 6, Transformers 4, Ouiji (based on the board game), Battleship (also based on the board game), Highlander remake, 2 snow white movies, Cinderella, a 300 sequel about Xerses, The Man from Uncle remake, Cannon ball run remake, The secret life of walter mitty remake. You would fucking laugh and then never try again in Hollywood if you saw the grid list of stuff out there, sometimes we just laugh.

We are along way from the 70's and Chinatown. A long long way.

“What do I want?”  “Who’s got the power?”

The fancy word for the first is “Intention”.  The second – “Status”.  

Status, mind you, is not lower in status than Intention.

Because without Status, Intention is dead in the water.  To make it interesting, there’s got to be someone you want something from.  That makes that person have power over you.  That makes them higher in Status. 

Or the other guy, he wants something so bad he'll do anything for it and you’ve got just the thing he needs.  That’s a whole lotta power. 

As an actor, it’s really kind of the most fun thing about bringing the material to life.  It’s juicy.  As a writer, it’s one of the most effective things you can create for your characters.  It’s real, human, and dynamic. 

Unfortunately, most screenplays nowadays pay very little attention to this truly powerful story-telling tool.  Status...playing with it, using it to mold your characters, mold a scene, a whole story, is so incredibly effective a device that it’s really kind of shocking that it’s nearly all but forgotten in most screenplays today except in the broadest of terms.  It's a great writing tool to understand. 

In life, most people gauge how they’re doing by how they compare to other people.  Unless you’re really enlightened, self-perception is mostly about how you perceive you are in relation to other people.  Which means that your self-worth is wrapped up in how you are in your relationships.

The primary way to tell how you’re doing?  Status.  “Who’s got the power?”

What makes it such a great story-telling device is that Status instantly means that one person wants something from the other person, and the other person is not inclined to give it, sometimes vociferously.  It’s really very elegantly simple.  And incredibly active.

The Lincoln Lawyer, a really solid screenplay adaptation by John Romano, is a well-made film in many respects, but its best quality is that it’s like a super-charged Study in Status. 

Every single scene is operating on one major axis:  “Who’s got the power?” 

And it flips on a dime. In nearly every scene, it switches at least once, usually more.  Often the script explores triangulation: Someone who has more power in one area will have less power in another, in the same scene.  This is drawn very distinctly and deliberately.

Characters will trade Status back and forth with each other, sometimes played out over an entire sequence. 

In one scene...Matthew McConaughey’s character, Mick, a self-inflated defense shyster who dreads ever defending a truly innocent man, gets thoroughly drunk.  He engages his smart, gorgeous ex-wife, Marisa Tomei, to drive him home, and gets all warm as Texas honey over her when she drops him off, to no effect.  She’s in charge.  (And damn – she is a beautiful woman.)

Several scenes later, Marisa Tomei (in the same bar) ties on one, and M.M. turns on the charm to get her reveal some important – and secret - information.  Now he’s working her.  That night they go home and have hot we’re-not-married-anymore sex.  But the next morning it flips again; she takes him down several pegs by cooly insulting his parenting skills and his profession as a defense lawyer all in one breath. 

It’s pretty well done.

The whole film is about the arc of M.M.’s status as a man, and how he compares to his own view of himself.  Ultimately the story is: in reality he is lower in Status than his own opinion of himself, and he has to win it back.

And let’s not forget the actors.  Everyone single actor gives a solid performance in this one, no little thanks to the fact that these were actually complex, specific characters.  It generally works like that.  Good Material = Good Performances. 

When you’re wondering how to really bring your character development to the next level, dig deep.  Look at each and every moment of a character, and ask yourself what the actor’s going to be asking:

“Who’s got the power?”

Then go write it.

One of the most talked about rules in screenwriting is what does – and doesn’t - go into the action lines. 

Some writers are never tempted to put such things into their action lines as “She feels sad.” “You can tell these two have a strong connection.” “What did he just say?” or “He has never met this person before, but he likes them immediately because they remind him of a friend he had as a kid.”

Then again, some writers are.

The general industry-held rule is simply this:  Nothing goes in the action lines that can’t be seen or heard onscreen.  Period.  

The action lines above, and their kin, are emotional states, interior monologue, and a serious case of TMI.

Now, this is a rule just like any other rule.  The people who are tempted to put this kind of thing into their script will find all kinds of exceptions to this rule and justifications for it. 

However, I happen to think this is a Very Good Rule for a few reasons I’ve found to be true over the years.  They are:

1) Going against the rules can be enough to turn a reader off your entire script.   Just like that.  Even if they never come out and say so in the coverage, or tell you directly.  Even if they’re not completely aware of what’s bugging them...this can be the thing that makes them decide that your script is unprofessional and poorly executed, even if it’s great in many other ways. 

Why give any reader, from intern to Executive Producer, a chance to dismiss your script out of hand for something that is totally within your control to change?    If you can make it “industry standard”, why wouldn’t you?  It’s a standard as  three-hole-punch paper with only two brass brads.   And really...it’s the polite thing to do.  It shows a certain lack of respect to not do it, or worse, a lack of knowledge.  Enough said.

2)  If there is no specific action attached to the interior information, there is no way for that to happen onscreen.  We have to either see it, or hear it.  If you want someone to express feelings of sadness but don’t create a direct way to do that, chances are you’ll get a performance out of an actress who’s thinking the hell out of “I’m sad”, but it could look just as much like “God, I want that man” or “I should really switch to cloth shopping bags”.   No one will know what she’s thinking just by her thinking it. 

3)  If it’s important enough to be part of the story, it’s important enough to have a specific action created for it.  There’s a high probability that without a direct visible, physical action to show the internal information, it’s just not going to make it into the picture.

Actors interpreting a script look for “playable” moments, and those moments will all be attached to some kind of action, even a movement or gesture.  “He places a hand over hers before turning his eyes to her” shows tenderness and concern.

And, hey, if you don’t feel like making an action to show that idea, just cut it altogether.  There, that was easy. 

4)  Give them what they need to see it when they read it.  Non-visual action lines leave up to the reader - be it actor or suit - carte blanche to interpret those action lines however it occurs to them.  They could be reading “These two have a connection” and imagining anything from a deep, soulful look...to a full-on, tongues and all, make-out session.  Or worse, absolutely nothing.   Make sure people are reading your vision of the story: 

.........................

The one exception to this rule...yes, I get to make one...is when first introducing a character.  It’s totally within reason to say a few choice words about a character that are background or emotional qualities, especially if knowing them right away will help the whole story make deeper sense to the reader.   For example, a “real survivor” or “a former Beauty Queen wannabe”, describe an impression more than a physicality, but are evocative of a meaningful character trait.  It’s still best to keep it simple here, but feel free. 

The only argument I occasionally entertain is if a writer is going to be directing their own piece, and therefore will have all the inside dope.  But please don’t fall into this.  Other people have to read your script and get it.  Actors have to read your script and play it. 

IN THE END...Film is a visual medium. “If it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage.” Yadda Yadda.  There’s just no good reason to break the action-line-rule, and some very good reasons to follow it, all of which will make your screenplay more effective...and hopefully get made.   

The power of a story, in any genre, is in its ability to connect to the core of the human experience.   To express that experience in narrative form is like that spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down.  A story well told about the things that make us the most human cut right to the core, sometimes in some sneakily beautiful ways.  

This is the essence of primal story-telling.  There are stories and settings that consistently connect with people throughout history.  Most of us relate to rites of passage: weddings, births, and funerals.  Most people know the pain of a broken heart, the loss of someone they’ve loved, the unique thrill of having a dream fulfilled, be it ever so humble.

But everyone alive on the planet absolutely knows 100 percent what it’s like to have a body.   Sometimes it’s awesome.  Sometimes it sucks.  Sometimes you turn into a bird and then die. 

The three films of Aronofsky's, Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler, and now the bloody, rapturous thriller, Black Swan, examine from very different points of view people trapped in the pain and glory of having a human body.  As we all are. 

Natalie Portman’s performance in Black Swan is astonishing not just in her obvious physical commitment to the demands of the role, but in her total emotional availability to the deliciousness and suffering of that physicality.  The sexual highs of drug-induced orgasm and the lows of self-induced regurgitation. The lack of food, a cigarette snuck in, her peeling finger, her shattered toenail.

This is not just the stuff of horror films, though those often are the greatest example of primal, physical story-telling.  What would any Harrison Ford movie be without him getting the living crap kicked out of him?  What would Die Hard be without Bruce’s bare feet getting sliced to ribbons on broken glass?   

While certainly Black Swan can be looked at from many different angles, the most powerful aspect of it is that amongst all the other seductive layers and levels, metaphors and myths, at the base of it is simply the fact that we can all relate to the exquisite pain of having a body. 

Why does a son kill both of his parents seemingly out of the blue?

Why does a man fall in love with the woman he’s dating?

Why does anyone do anything?

A screenplay is often an exploration of the reasons behind people’s actions.  It’s not about dry psychology or a generalized concept of motivation.  It’s about backing up action with meaning.  And making stories meaningful, emotionally connected and effective, is one of the very best reasons to tell stories. 

When writing a screenplay, it’s very tempting to load up on these Reasons Why.   Pack on two, three, or more reasons why someone does something.  More is better, right?  

For example, in some screenplays...

A woman breaks up with her man because he’s got a bad temper, and has too much baggage, and she really wants someone who can engage her more intellectually.

A boy kills his parents because he feels they don’t respect him, and they don’t let him have things he wants, and he wants their massive inheritance.

A man falls in love with a girl because she’s kind to animals, and he really likes her parents, and she’s really cute. 

As a rule...this just doesn’t work for screenwriting.  It makes it as easy as understanding exactly what started World War I.  There’s a saying:

Two reasons is the same as No reason.

Multiple reasons undermine each other.  Every additional reason weakens every other reason and itself.  If there’s more than one reason for something, than we really don’t know what The Reason is.

It’s always the strongest choice to pick one reason your character really takes action or holds a strong belief that guides their lives.   And not just any general reason – it’s should be a specific as humanly possible.

A woman may not like her husband’s bad temper and emotional baggage and the fact that she’s smarter than him...but she leaves him because that cold autumn day when they were traveling in Manhattan he absolutely refused to go to the Guggenheim museum with her which she has always wanted to do.   That’s a reason. 

A boy doesn’t just kill his parents because he feels like they don’t see him, or get him, or because he’d like to be rich.  He does it because he begged his cold, withholding father to let him buy this gorgeous, cherry-red, vintage Mustang and his father says, “Over my dead body”.   Is the boy also deeply mentally unstable?  Yes.  But that’s an existing condition, not a reason. 

A man may think intellectually that he’d like to be with a woman because she likes his dog, he likes her family, and she’s easy on the eyes.  But really it’s because one early morning he saw her wearing his favorite blue flannel shirt and his heart opened completely.  All the other things make is easier to be together, but that one moment is what makes him know she's the one.

Yes - individual psychology and personal history comes into play when making sense of these actions, making them plausible and logical, building them into the context of your story.  But when creating real meaning for the actions of your characters...

There is only one Reason Why. 

 - Frank Pierson

Feeling stuck on your screenplay? 

I'll be giving a free screenwriting workshop in Trouble Shooting this Saturday from 11 am to 12:30 pm at the lovely Showbiz Store and Cafe on Sepulveda.  

I'll be talking about some of the most common trouble areas in scripts, offering ideas how to fix them, and giving everyone a chance to work through an area of their script that's been causing them...well...trouble.  

The space is very comfortable, and a nice place to sit and kibbitz.   Come early, stay late!

Okay, there’s going to be some spoilers in this one, but seriously, is there any suspense about what happens?  It’s like going to see The Perfect Storm.  Um...they all die, folks.

Fincher and Sorkin’s The Social Network debuts to largely excellent reviews by many respected critics.  I respectfully disagree.  Dark both literally and in tone, it’s a lavishingly shot, brilliantly edited, inventively scored, well-acted cold fish of a movie.

With the exception of one energetic scene, which provides the stylish exit for a very good performance, it’s a film essentially devoid of emotion.  I would say that it almost it squats on emotion, pushing it down, but I’m not sure there’s really much there to begin with. 

There's just a lot about the story I couldn't buy. 

The film throws around some elaborate theories concerning Mark Zuckerberg’s internal motivation.  It posits that Zuckerberg was historically inspired to start his version of The Facebook by being so hurt by a pretty girl dumping him that he ran home to get on line and crucify her, blog-american style.  (Take that!)  A ridiculously petty story point made more riduculous by the injured female character taking it so damn seriously. 

It's suggested that Zuckerberg’s neediness of massive proportions was sparked because – in a baldly contrived myth (of Sorkin’s?) -  a couple of moneyed, Arian superman college boys will only let a smart Jewish geek as far as the “bicycle room” of their club.   Beyond the thinness of this tidbit, possible though it is, this blame-it-on-the-caste-system milieu is almost riduculously old-fashioned for a movie purpotedly to be intensely modern.  It feels far more of Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan, made some dozen years before the events of this film, than much about life today.    Armie Hammer, the progeny of American royalty himself, lends a terrific air of almost comedic entitlement and nobility in his dual role as the Winklevoss twins. 

We’re also given to think that Zuckerberg turned against his one and only friend because his friend was rushing some super schamncy frat house, the type of which Zuckerberg obsessively desired to be accepted by.   Jealousy sparked all his bad behavior?  

And the script tells us that Zuckerberg hoped that creating The Facebook would restore his reputation after posting a distasteful website rating girls' hotness.   He's knows he's a social pariah; he was handed a “U dick” note in computer class.  Now he wants nothing more than for people to like him and think he’s “kewl”.

It all reeks of forced casaulity.  I’d rather be left to wonder than be handed “reasons” so deeply suspect and frankly horseshitty.   Because Jesse Eisenberg’s Mark Zuckerberg is a catatonic misanthrope.   It doesn’t play that he could be wounded deeply by anything.  Or that anything purely emotional would be a motivator to him.  The dude has no conscience.   

In structure, this movie is sharply reminiscent of the movies about rock bands.  The Runaways recently and fashionably demonstrated the common theme:  The falling-in-love affair, the jagged yet meteoric rise to fame, the hubristic mis-apportionment of power, the fall from grace, the pain of separation, and finally some sort of poetic justice for all.  Amen.

But something’s missing here.   There is no love affair in this film.   Because of this, there is nearly no arc.  

In this movie, before the "band's" even played a chord, the lead singer hates everyone from the get go, is already planning to go solo after the first record goes platinum, and he's laying tracks for a plan to screw all his bandmates over on royalties.  What grace is there to fall from?  

Zuckerberg never likes anyone, never does one nice thing in this movie,  no “please”, no “thank you”.   How does he even have one friend?   That’s the real story I would have liked to have known.   Why was Eduardo Saverin, Zuckerberg’s partner in crime, so loyal to him to begin with?  He bends over again and again, letting Zuckerberg take him for a ride, and he still trusts him enough to sign a contract without consulting a lawyer??  With Zuckerberg so cold, what explains Eduardo's affection?   

Eisenberg does do a terrific job at playing this dissociative, sharp-tongued genius.  He goes to places in his performance that are chilling in their sociopathy.  So we do like him, per se, but it just doesn’t feel good. 

The film offer some other excellent performances, particularly that of the very human Eduardo, played by Andrew Garfield, who also delivers a confidant performance in Gilliam’s uber surreal The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus.  He’s got all the emotional heavy lifting in this piece, and it’s his character that really comes through, holding the story on his slender shoulders, not Zuckerberg.   

Justin Timberlake delivers the goods as the soft-voiced but snazzy Sean Parker, the wunderkind of Napster infamy.  God bless him, the man has to deliver some of the clunkiest dialogue in the film.  In a (VERY LOUD) club scene, he spouts some of the most ham-fistedly wrought exposition known to man about Victoria's Secret, echoed later in another (SLIGHTLY LESS LOUD) party scene where he spouts Facebook deets while revelers do coke off a co-ed, who's barely-in-bra.   Talk about a “Pope in the Pool” moment, a la Save the Cat. 

But to be fair, it’s not all tweed, ham, and drudgery.  For those of you who like a little entertainment for your $9.75, there is a six foot bong in this movie, zip wire rides into a pool, nubile nearly naked college women making out with each other and gyrating in artfully mismatched lingerie, a sloshy martini and sushi scene, and a seemingly endless supply of wildly hot Asian women some of whom are willing to hand out blowjobs in bathroom stalls just to get close to Facebook fame and fuckery.    You know, if you're into that kind of thing.    

The way I have found over the years to be the most useful is to put each scene to a simple test:  Does this scene support the hero’s goal or oppose it? 

If in some way the hero gets closer to his goal, the scene supports it, and it can stay.

If someone or something pushes back against the hero, and the "bad guys" win the scene, then it’s opposing the hero’s goal, and the scene can stay.

If, however the scene does neither, then it seriously needs to be considered for cutting.

This also ensures that the scene will contain another very necessary element: change.  If the hero is getting closer or getting knocked down there is an energetic shift necesssary for the story to feel like it’s moving.  Forward or backwards, it’s all movement.  This ain’t no slideshow we’re making.     

If necessary, the “important” things from these scenes, if any, can be transported piece by piece into another scene or scenes, spread around in places that are more useful to the story.

If this seems like a hugely utilitarian view of screenwriting, that’s because it is.  But faced with hard choices in something as subjective as story-telling, it’s good to have an objective system in place. 

There are some ways that this rule can be to be excepted.  If a scene is profoundly character-deepening in some way, then that supports the whole purpose of the film, so even if it’s not overtly goal-related, it can have a solid place in a script, particularly in the first act.  There are also sub-plots, of course, but these should always have something to say about the main plot.  Or, if a scene is especially hilarious, wildly inventive, or show-stoppingly jaw-droppingly awesome to behold, then go ahead, that's entertainment.  But there still should be built into these scenes a direct link to the progression of the story.

While this simple test can be used at any point in the screenwriting process, there’s nothing quite like starting at the beginning, when you’re beating out the story, making cards, graphing charts, using whatever program you like.  It gets harder to “kill the babies” later, and for some strange reason those free-floating scenes are often the ones we fall in love with the hardest.   Letting them go early on is the easiest way to keep your story tight, focused, and on the path of progress.   

Every Monday, from 10-2, I'm seeing script consulting and coaching clients in either half hour or hour long segments.

I'm very excited about this, as doing the work in person is my single favorite way to approach the work.   There's nothing quite like really getting into the meat of the work in a real live conversation.  

If you're in the Los Angeles area and would like to book times with me during my new office hours, please check out the website, or give the store a call 310.471.9330.

The space is really lovely, gorgeous light, a full service cafe, and a terrific comfortable area to work in.  

Hope to see you here!