The Art of Invisible Writing

Written by Elmore Leonard. Transcribed from an article in the Globe and Mail, Canada‘s National Newspaper, Tuesday, July 17, 2001 – posted by the New York Times Service

I thought the ideas here were helpful for all writers, and, in some instances, applicable to the challenging form of screenwriting. Good screenwriters need to embrace both the creative AND technical aspects of the screenplay format. I hope you find some value here:

photo credit: John Pozer | Venice, Italy | www.21centuryfilm.com

How do you keep words from getting in the way of what you want to say?

Elmore Leonard has a 10 step program.

There are rules I’ve picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I’m writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what’s taking place in the story. If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules. Still, you might look them over.

• 1.  Never open a book with weather.  If it’s only to create atmosphere and not a character’s reaction to the weather, you don’t want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want.
• 2. Avoid prologues. They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a forward. But these are ordinarily found in nonfiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want. There is a prologue in John Steinbeck‘s Sweet Thursday, but it’s okay because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says, “I like a lot of talk in a book and I don’t like to have nobody tell me what the guy that’s talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks…. Figure out what the guy’s thinking from what he says. I’d like some description but not too much of that…. Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. …Spin up some pretty words maybe or sing a little song with language. That’s nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don’t have to read it. I don’t want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story.”
• 3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character: the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with “she asseverated,” and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.
• 4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb said. …he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in ernest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances “full of rape and adverbs.”
• 5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.
• 6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.” This rule doesn’t require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use “suddenly” tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.
• 7.  Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. Once you start spelling words and dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won’t be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavour of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories Close Range.
• 8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters. Which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemmingway’s Hills Like White Elephants what do the “American and the girl with him” look like? “She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.” That’s the only reference to a physical description in the story, and yet we see the couple and know them by their tones of voice, with not one adverb in sight.
• 9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things. Unless you’re Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language or write landscapes in the style of Jim Harrison. But even if you’re good at it, you don’t want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill. And finally:
• 10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. A rule that came to mind in 1983. Think of what you skip reading in a novel called: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he’s writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character’s head, and the reader either knows what the guy’s thinking or doesn’t care. I’ll bet you don’t skip dialogue.
• My most important rule is one that sums up the 10. If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can’t allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. It’s my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing. (Joseph Conrad said something about words getting in the way of what you want to say.) If I write in scenes and always from the point of view of a particular character – the one whose view best brings the scene to life – I’m able to concentrate on the voices of the characters telling you who they are and how they feel about what they say and what’s going on, and I’m nowhere in sight. What Steinbeck did in Sweet Thursday was title his chapters as an indication, though obscure, of what they cover. “Whom the Gods Love They Drive Nuts” is one, “Lousy Wednesday” another. The third chapter is titled “Hooptedoodle 1” and the 38th chapter “Hooptedoodle 2” as warnings to the reader, as if Steinbeck is saying: “Here’s where you’ll see me taking flights of fancy with my writing, and it won’t get in the way of the story. Skip them if you want.” Sweet Thursday came out in 1954, when I was just beginning to be published, and I’ve never forgotten that prologue. Did I read the hooptedoodle chapters? Every word.

(Underlining is mine)

Everything You Need to Know and Do Before You Go to Film School

1000 FILM SCHOOL WORKSHOPS

THE OBJECTIVE (PART ONE)

The four pillars of storytelling are character, plot, setting, and theme. Understanding every character’s choices and interpreting how they weave and connect and lead an audience through a satisfying story is the director’s job. I call it ‘the director’s contract.’

For directors, understanding characters and shaping a performance is critical, and it’s one of the toughest things to teach effectively in film school.

If student directors are working with prepared, dedicated actors and being authentically challenged in directing workshops, there are genuine lessons to be learned, as opposed to working with filmmaking classmates playing the role of the actor. Play-acting can only take you so far in building the necessary skills for sustaining a professional directing career.

Characters in conflict and the actions they choose to take in order to overcome the obstacles in a scene are the starting points for the actor/director relationship. Someone wants something. They have a goal, a purpose, an agenda, and this is covered in the catch-all term: objective.

It’s important to keep in mind that an actor can never play the whole film but only individual scenes. A character’s objective is the character’s want for each individual scene. Objectives provide actors with a through-line for the actions they choose in any given scene.

Every strong objective should fulfill the following criteria: it has to be active, it has to be specific, it has to be achievable within the scene, it has to be able to drive a character’s actions from beginning to end, it has to affect another person and require a response from them.

After decades of directing, as well as leading over 1,000 directing workshops, I can tell you that coming up with objectives is not easy, because objectives are not necessarily on the page.

A strong objective dwells in the subtext, and this needs to be explored by going deep into the script. An in-depth script analysis precedes a directing workshop and strengthens the dynamic relationship between actor and director. Preparation for productive workshops and rehearsals is imperative for actors, directors, and teachers.

More to come…

The 21st Century Film Student

INSPIRING FUTURE FILMMAKERS

THE TEACHER IS THE EDUCATION

The teacher is responsible for the content of the course and delivering it in an engaging manner. They are the student’s partner in learning. Film school can be a vital and memorable experience when the instructor has a depth of knowledge, a command of the material, and the skills to connect with a class of creative individuals: these are fundamental requirements.

The teacher sets the standard of professionalism for their discipline, their course and their school. Fulfilling the industry expectations of a creative position in film production requires a broad knowledge of filmmaking skills and tools, along with other important qualities: rapport, empathy, confidence, stamina, leadership, and a sense of humour (to name a few.) The student benefits when they see these qualities demonstrated by the teacher and can apply them to their own creative process.

The teacher shapes the tone, pace and dialogue of the learning environment. They create the classroom experience for the student. In The Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer writes, ‘To educate is to guide students on an inner journey toward more truthful ways of seeing and being in the world.’ This is powerfully relevant for the 21^st century film student, and a roadmap to great treasures for filmmakers and storytellers.

Like an actor, the teacher needs to be ‘in the moment.’ Workshops and screenings are a forum for the teacher to provide perspective and feedback to the student’s work — and this helps the student learn to filter criticism and develop their own critical point of view. A robust critique from a respected source, and the opportunity to then take it, test it, and potentially improve the work is what filmmaking, and film education, is all about: listening, communicating, and connecting ideas.

FILM IS ART

Film is a complex medium and needs to be broken down into bits and pieces. A good film seduces the audience. There can be many layers to its construction. So many, in fact, that a viewer is not even aware of how the tools of cinema are being used: lighting and lenses, music and silence, framing and editing. When everything comes together in an amazing scene, the filmmaker has achieved what the student must constantly search for: how to make the audience feel something.

The teacher provides evaluation. In that sense, they are the audience — but an audience of one requires constant vigilance. Grading creative work is an exercise in subjectivity, and it needs to be self-governed at the highest level. It also needs to be fair, consistent and transparent. When grading is thorough, straightforward and well-defined, it has greater substance and value to the student.

#MENTOR

The teacher must be a mentor. A good mentor holds up a mirror for the student, and helps them to trust their instincts and value their imagination. This is where powerful stories begin. It’s not about what’s easy or hard, or right or wrong — it’s about what is possible. To succeed as a filmmaker, you need to go deep: the deeper the better. This is fertile ground.

Mentoring differs from the classroom or workshop setting. The mentor/mentee relationship must be built on a foundation of mutual trust and respect. When the student values the mentor, the relationship thrives. A mentor listens, suggests, and motivates: they generate energy.

They also know that procrastination and daydreaming are part of the creative process. Yes, progress is important — but inspiration and genius can strike in a flash at the most unexpected times and suddenly turn into a marathon of all-nighters.

JUST. KEEP. GOING.

Creativity is a personal journey, and conformity has never been a badge for the pioneers of artistic expression. Audiences need new ideas, new stories and new ways of being told a story. They want unique characters in original situations. They want to see relatable emotions rendered with superior artistry: this is what drives the entertainment industry.

When the film student taps the wisdom of a teacher who has taken the risks and chances that they plan on taking, it creates the synergy to push the envelope, think outside the box, and break new ground. Mentoring in this territory requires an innate understanding of the potential of the imaginative world.

NO FEAR

Student filmmaking should be the front line for new voices. The innovators of tomorrow want to say, “Hey, look what I made!” today, and have it shine with the promise of what they can and will do in the future.

There’s not always a right way to do it or a correct answer in the creative fields; it is the searching and the willingness to explore and experiment that matters.

 

 

 

 

 

A Message from 1968

YOU MANIACS!

What was cool in the 60’s will always be cool.

This was a decade where global cinema, music and art exploded. You had to go the movies to keep up with the fast-changing world. There were no VHS tapes, home theatres or internet streams. If you weren’t actively engaged in the events of the times – when they were happening – you were a square. (someone “dull and out of touch with current trends” in case you didn’t hit the link.)

In my little corner of the world, the last thing anyone wanted to be was a square.

 

YOU BLEW IT UP!

I saw the original Planet of the Apes before I was a teenager. It was something you had to see. Everyone raved. If you didn’t show up early, you didn’t get in. There were lineups around the block.

It was unforgettable. I saw it several times. And now, some 50 years later, I’m excited to attend a preview screening ahead of the theatrical release of War for the Planet of the Apes.

That is cool.

 

Ah… Damn you!

This week, I screened the original Planet of the Apes for a film studies class of mostly international students, average age 21. Only a handful had seen it. Some, but not all, were familiar with the new series: Dawn and Rise with the incredible performance capture technology.

Everyone’s a critic. And this group was no different. Some of these hopeful young filmmakers of tomorrow didn’t like it: the effects weren’t very good, the avant garde score wasn’t to their taste, the ending could have been better.

I have to bite my tongue sometimes.

GOD DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!

My takeaway, and what’s important to realize, is that many seats in schools are filled with students who are not that interested in history. Neither the history of film, the history of art, nor the history of the world.

But they are aware of the history on their smart phones and the need to erase it when they’ve been watching edgy content. (Funny how that works.)

They didn’t get the references from the 60’s, like the ironic line, “Remember, never trust anybody over 30.” They didn’t notice the ‘hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil’ imagery.  And when Charlton Heston lights up a cigarette on the ship, it took them out of the story because that just doesn’t happen (not aware that people smoked on airplanes up till the 90’s.)

But they did marvel at the final image. It’s an amazing reveal that still stands as one of the great endings in modern cinema, even though it’s nearly 50 years old.

 

For me, the message from this 1968 classic still resonates. Now more than ever.

 

 

The Lost Tapes: Frank Daniel Q&A (pt 4)

This is my final section [for now] on Frank Daniel, the Stanislavski of Screenwriting. In this last part of his farewell talk with students at Columbia, circa 1986, he touches on dreams, genre, character, Amadeus, and common sense.

He inspired many filmmakers: Terrence Malick, Paul Schrader, Jon Avnet, Martin Brest,    David Lynch, Milos Forman, Jiri Menzel — and many more.

He was the first foreigner admitted to the Russian State Film School, and he became a sought-after educator: Dean of FAMU in Prague, instructor at Carleton College, Head of the American Film Institute, Screenwriting at Columbia, Artistic Director at the Sundance Institute, and Dean of USC School of Cinema-Television.

He manifested waves of creative film energy everywhere he went.

Speaking of the late Daniel in a 1996 interview, David Lynch said, “I am sorry to say he died not long ago, and I have to tell you that he was my only teacher. He gave much to other people, he helped many people. He was a noble-minded and non-egoistic man, and no one understood the art of film-making as he did. He understood it and truly loved it – his criticism was always constructive and never purposely offended anybody. He was open about saying what he didn’t like, but he did it in a way that would help you. And that cannot be said about most of the critics in USA. I am very sorry he is not here.”

{Kinorevue, July–August 1996}

Dreams and Nightmares

Q: What is the best way to deal with dreams and visions?

FD: Well it’s the same thing as dealing with emotions and thinking. You externalize it. For instance, dreams and visions can be used directly, as you have seen in many movies. You can demonstrate, you can perform the dreams, and if the intention and the main thrust of the story is based upon those dreams, and directly connected with them then there is no problem if they come true.

If you have a dreamer as the main character then obviously we must get into his dreams. How his dreams and his reality conflict with each other complete the story. It can be played on two levels; one is the dream, the internal stuff, and one is the reality around the character.

In 8 1/2, you have nightmares. It starts with one. Then you have a total daydream about Claudia Cardinale. The main character’s daydream is his belief that she will help him find a solution to all his problems. Then you have remembrances, of his childhood, Sarabina, school, etc. And then you have the realities, so there are four layers of story material. The state in which those different levels of dreaming are dealt with is distinct, and they are all distinguished from the reality. I don’t think Fellini was looking for some formula, he just relied upon himself and the characters and their own experience.

Real dreams and nightmares look different from our daydreams. So you just dig out the things that you know from your own experience. If they are your dreams, and if they are your demons, then they’ll look true, and everybody will understand them. How your mind operates is one of the areas that film should explore. Unfortunately there are so many clichés in the use of flashbacks and memories that it’s usually not an exploration but simple theft.

Thinking in Terms of Genre

Q: Do you classify thinking in terms of genre as part of critical thinking? That it’s not helpful, creative enough? That it’s not part of the analytical process?

FD: I don’t believe that ignorance is useful. Knowing about genres helps, one should know as much as possible, and to understand genre cannot hurt your writing. But if you start with a desire to write the genre story, you have eliminated part of your creativity, because you are actually giving up. You are putting yourself under a certain pressure.

Q: So at what point do you bring that into the process?

FD: If you get an idea for a western, because you know something that has not been told, then write it. Then, when you have written the story of yours, you can ask yourself all those questions like, did I steal it from somebody? You have to understand the basic techniques of humor if you want to write a comedy. But that doesn’t mean that you start repeating old stories, old patterns, old gags. I would like to write a screwball comedy. You ask: What do I need? A screwball character. Do I know any? When you get a screwball character, the story begins to emerge, and then the genre flows from that naturally.

Amadeus and Common Sense

Q: I’m confused about who the main character in Amadeus is. The story is about Mozart, but it’s more about Salieri.

FD: Amadeus is the main character. Salieri, the narrator in this case, helps to see the main character’s story with an additional irony, or additional insight, but you don’t identify with Salieri.

Q: To some extent you do.

FD: You identify with every character in the movie if you have scenes in which the main character is not present. At that moment it is somebody else’s scene, so you are getting into the shoes of a subsidiary character. If you have an omniscient point of view you can change your allegiance accordingly. You can be in the shoes of different characters, and if you use a subsidiary character as a narrator, or “a raisonneur,” a type of narrator, who is part of the action, and at the same time tries to figure out what the meaning of the main story is, sometimes you get into his shoes. You pity the character. You can feel compassion for him. But the main story, the main identification, is with the main character. Otherwise there is no unity.

Q: There is no what?

FD: Unity. Unity of effect, which is the major objective that we are after. All these things are common sense. This is not something that people invented, or created to come up with a theory, or a prescription, or whatever. It’s just common sense. What do you want the audience to feel? What should they know at this moment? What should be hidden from them? When should you reveal? Those are very simple questions. It’s a part of the craft. That’s why it’s not really mysterious. You can always find out, if you look at a script carefully, why it doesn’t work, and what’s wrong. A film is just a presentation, in action, of a story to create an emotional impact on the audience. So the characters must be in action. You cannot have characters just talking, because then you change the audience into listeners instead of viewers, and motion pictures were created because of the motion. That’s how movies differ from still photography, why Lumiere and Edison invented it. Action is the only tool that you have for painting characters. And action doesn’t mean only physical action. Action is a purposeful drive of the character towards an objective. It includes thinking. It includes feeling. It includes planning, remembering, doubting, hesitating, talking, asking, lying, dancing, singing, crying, laughing, whatever. Okay?

Good Luck!

 Thank you, Frank Daniel, for sharing your knowledge, wisdom and experience. I wish I could have been your student, but you will forever be my teacher-in-absentia and an inspiration.

A quote from Frank Daniel’s obituary in the New York Times, 1996:

The Lost Tapes: Frank Daniel Q&A (pt 3)

Frank Daniel influenced world cinema. He was a film producer, director and screenwriter. He also made a tremendous impact as a teacher invigorating young, hopeful filmmakers. Researching his protégés, the students who sat in his classes and the films they went on to create reads like the guest list of a banquet for cinema greats.

Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver,Raging Bull), Milos Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus), David Lynch (Blue Velvet, Lost Highway) are just a few.

David Lynch said: Frank Daniel—who was the dean of the Czechoslovakian film school—was by far the best teacher I ever had. Just a great, great teacher. Unbelievable! I never really liked teachers, but I liked Frank because he wasn’t a teacher, in a way. He just talked. And he loved cinema, and he knew everything about it.

Here’s a transcript from an audio recording of Frank Daniel talking with students about cinema in 1986:

THE LOST TAPES: FRANK DANIEL (pt 3)

On Sequences and Dramaturgy

Q. Will you explain the first culmination of the second act?

FD. Okay. Well, it’s not really the proper word, but it’s used. So why not stick with it? The story starts at the moment when the character is in trouble. I didn’t go into this in detail with 8 1/2 because that would have brought in new and different stuff. Anyway, in open stories like 8 1/2, the conflict has started before the film begins, and that’s why it’s difficult to point out where the first act ends.

In this case you discover the problem of the character, the conflict doesn’t happen in front of your eyes. You discover what the nature of the conflict is. Is it the wife, the lover, the problems with the production, problems with the meaning of the story? All those things are presented, and the summary of those creates the first act, but he has been in that trouble already. So that’s a little different strategy or “dramaturgy.”

Usually the story begins at the moment when the character faces the difficulty that he or she has to solve, and it better be a clear difficulty, and he better realize that he must do something. Otherwise we don’t have the feel that something has started, and the tension cannot be installed. We are dealing with dramatic form which means with action, and action without tension is pure nonsense. It doesn’t exist. Action immediately brings tension. So the awareness of the tension, and the clarification of what the nature of your tension is, helps to build the whole script.

Now, the character aims towards the goal, the objective, and you have the first meeting of the obstacles and antagonists or circumstances, and you have the rising action. The first sequence usually presents the alternative solutions. What are the choices? What should be done? And the character selects one alternative and if it’s skillfully handled, it’s the worst one. Then he selects another one and in the meantime the rest of the alternatives are eliminated.

Then one of the ways to solve the predicament seems to work. The character finds some expedient that seems to work, and that’s usually the first culmination. But, and that’s the “but” and “therefore,” that we talked about, it’s just not that simple, because there are consequences of things that happened before that he didn’t take into consideration. He offended somebody, he didn’t do things that he was supposed to do, he forgot about things. You bring those things back in the second part of the act and at that time they can be entered almost without motivation, because anything that works against your character at that time is acceptable.

Any accident, any coincidence, is fine, because it makes his predicament worse, and therefore we enjoy it. Also, it helps to explore the validity of the desire, of the dream. So it’s testing the character until you close the story, and at a certain point before the final culmination he has tried everything he could, and there is only one way left, because the alternatives were presented and eliminated. You see that, for some reason, he cannot use any of them any more, and therefore you have the final culmination, the confrontation with the inevitable.

After that you have the descending part of the story where we see what happened after the evil won, lost, or whatever. You see how they live afterwards. And the function of the twist in the middle of the third act is the last test. You wouldn’t believe the solution, very often, if it came directly from the resolution. So you come with something that once more offers the character a possibility to try for the last time, in a different manner.

Q. It’s supposed to be a truism that you have to write a lot of bad pages before you begin writing well. Is that right? Do you have to write some bad scripts before you start?

FD. It’s not necessary. There are people who come with a first script that’s excellent. It’s necessary to write a lot, and it’s necessary to rewrite even more. But don’t try to be perfect in the first draft. In the first draft don’t worry if you don’t have the right expression, the right words, just put anything there, underline it, and go full speed forward, because you’ll find it later.

There will be times that you drag your mind for weeks to find that really perfect sentence, but that’s after the first draft. If you start doing it during the process of putting the story on paper, then you will never finish, and script writing is mainly rewriting. That’s a real truism. If the scene doesn’t work, you start asking why doesn’t it work? It’s too flat, no obstacles. It’s because it was not prepared properly. Is it in the right place? What if I shift it?

Cards are also a very good help, but only after the script is written. You put each scene on a card and play with the continuity by shuffling them around. Before that they don’t help too much. The main thing is to feel the flow of the story. That fever that you find yourself into, as the characters are going somewhere and you must follow them. That’s what you need to pour the story out. And then the build-up begins.

Some people say scripts are first written, and then they are built. And I think this is close to the truth — that the building comes afterwards.

How You Start Doesn’t Matter

Q. In some cases we see the problem first before we introduce the main character, and sometimes we see the antagonist first and then the main character.

FD. It can be any way. You can have an idea of a nice location, a deserted house for instance. That’s how the story starts, with the atmosphere. The order they are introduced doesn’t matter, but you have to do the whole job, and be clear about it: the main characters and the exposition of their world, of their desires and dreams, of their predicament, and of the circumstances. How you start doesn’t matter.

Sometimes you can map out the world of the story for yourself. You can make all kinds of shopping lists to help yourself. You just take a sheet of paper and start putting down all the people that should be in the story. Then you start a list of the most exciting and important locations, and then all possible events that can happen or usually happen in that environment. It’s not necessary that you use them later, but if you ask what happens in a small town during the year, you can find events that help you to feel at home in that environment. And then list the relationships.

If you look at Star Wars, you can guess George Lucas had a shopping list — on paper or in his mind — of everything he remembered from the movies he saw as a teenager, and then put all those teasers in  the movie. He used elements of thrillers, and westerns, and fairy tales, and everything else that attracted him as a boy. And, from that shopping list, the stew was made.

The Way Things are Told

Q. Can you have a story that’s a story but it’s not a film? Can you waste time fooling yourself into thinking that it is a film? How do you apply and acid test?

FD. There are stories that are totally introverted, and yet they are stories, and you cannot turn them inside out. Externalization is very essential to film, so in a case like that you find out after a while that you don’t have a chance to succeed.

Q. There’s no chance to externalize what’s going on?

FD. If you can, then it’s wonderful. Then the story lends itself to cinematic treatment. I had an experience with adapting a short story which was totally an internal story, and there were no scenes to use in the movie. I took a year and gave up. It was a paradox that everybody liked, but not a real situation. So sometimes it is infeasible.

It’s not understanding what the attraction is that makes it so difficult to adapt. Sometimes it’s the style. That can be the case with a humoristic story, for instance, where the whole beauty is in the way  things are told, and, when you start putting the scenes on paper, they are not funny at all. It’s the way they are seen when they are described, and that, in the end is impossible to develop into a movie because you lose something that was the beauty of the narrative form.

***

My First Cannes Film Festival

My first trip to Cannes was 25 years ago. I arrived a week before the festival was scheduled to open. I strolled around the quiet town, lazed on the beach and took the train to nearby cities — Nice, Antibes, and Monaco — all beautiful places.

Around Cannes, things changed dramatically as the global film circus rolled into town. It got crowded. The locals fled. Giant billboards advertising Hollywood’s latest offerings cluttered the boardwalk. Fences went up. Security arrived. You can imagine what it’s like this year.

I was there because my first feature was selected to open the Critic’s Week, one of the 7 films chosen from first and second features around the world. This is the icing on the cake for a low-budget independent filmmaker. It was amazing, and you can’t compare it to anything else.

I have lots of memories, but two important things were that my Mom was able to go, and I got a great review in Variety:

When the festival finished, I stayed on for another week. I watched the signage come down, the crowds go home, and the locals return to the little town they enjoy for 50 weeks a year.

Cannes is a nice place to visit, but for two weeks every year, it’s a crowded madhouse.

I loved it.

You’ve been warned!

 

 

The Lost Tapes: Frank Daniel Q&A (pt 2)

I’m surprised by how many students take so few notes in class or screenings. It’s almost like pens, pencils and paper notebooks have been deemed too antiquated for the high-tech age. But trust me, they are essential tools for creativity and collaboration.

I was invited to a recent screening of a feature in the editing stage and I took copious notes — as usual. (One of the great tricks I learned in film school was how to write in a darkened theatre. Movie critics had to do it all the time.) Sitting down later to discuss the cut with the filmmakers, I took the opportunity to exercise my brain. First, I spoke about my reactions to the cut as thoroughly as I could until I had exhausted my memory. Then I pulled out my notepad and, to no surprise, had many more comments on the work that would have gone into thin air without the prompt of a hastily scribbled note.

The flip side is something that I’m sharing here: a transcribed recording of a question and answer meeting with the esteemed film and screenwriting instructor, Frank Daniel (circa 1986.) It’s unpublished – as far as I know – so this too would have disappeared. I’m so glad it didn’t.

If it’s helpful – in any way – please think about sending me a note. Thanks.

Audience Expectation

Q. Once in a while, I’ll see a movie, and I’ll like it very much in the beginning and even in the middle, and then when it gets to the end I sort of feel let down, like it didn’t really live up to what it set out to do.

Frank Daniel: There can be different reasons for that. For example, we had a problem with Desert Bloom. In the first edition, the end wasn’t there at all, and the problems of developing each scene in full length, and slow pacing were making it almost impossible to wrap up the story properly. So it was necessary to shoot some pick up shots, and then, by condensing the final sequence, the film got an ending. It still is not completely satisfying as it could have been, but the end of the picture is there, because the story always has an ending.

So the reason for the unsatisfying feeling might be the execution, as it was in this case, or it might be the three endings that we talked about that make you feel quite impatient, if not angry. Sometimes it is a problem with the final effect of the story itself. The reason why the story has been told is not clear. Every writer is obliged to ask himself: what will the audience leave the movie theatre with? What do I want them to feel? Not: what do I want them to think? They’ll think what they want, but feeling is something that is in your hands. If you don’t know how they should feel, the end cannot be there. You just end the story, but you don’t end the film.

Did you ever see a Fellini film? When you are leaving the theatre after Nights of Cabiria, or after 8 1/2, or La Strada, you know why he made the film, what he wanted your to feel. For real masters, stories are vehicles. They don’t tell stories to tell stories. They tell stories to create emotions, and in our medium there is no other way to communicate emotion except by evoking it, i.e. by using the story material, human conflicts and human relationships, and situations that created sympathy, empathy, hope and fear. If you start dealing just with the story, you are only doing half of your job.

Desire and Obstacles

Q. Is there a time when what you want to leave the audience with starts emerging? Is it as you’re developing the character?

FD: It’s actually just very simple mathematics. You have a main character that brings with him or with her a desire. That desire creates the obstacles. We identify with the character. Now, when the story ends, what happens to that desire is the key to the emotional impact. Are we glad that he reached what he was after, or do we hate him at the end because he reached it? Are we sad he didn’t make it, or are we glad that he couldn’t.

There are millions  of possibilities, but you must look at each conflict. Scientifically. That’s when you determine what the tension is – what we hope for and what we are afraid of. Because the basic theme is carried by the passionate action of the main character, the result comes in the resolution and our response depends on what happens to that passionate desire at the end. It’s simple… and it’s very difficult each time.

Adaptation

Q. What do you have to say about the script for Dr. Zhivago? Is it a different process to adapt a novel?

FD: As you know we don’t recommend adaptations in this program for several reasons. It’s not that any of us has anything against it. It’s a totally legitimate form, and film is entitled to use any material that lends itself to be made into a good film. But adaptations are really more difficult for a beginning writer than original stories, and paradoxically, you don’t learn as much from an adaptation as you do from an original story.

Then there is the danger, when a beginning writer starts adapting a narrative piece, that he starts indiscriminately transplanting things that are proper in one form, in the other form without the due transformation. Look at any of Hemingway’s novels. Look at the dialogue, and imagine actors saying the dialogue as it is in the novel. It would almost inevitably sound stupid. But it’s so brilliant on the page! To understand what each form requires takes some experience, trade skills.

Usually when you adapt, it is best to read the novel as many times as you can without any effort to start writing. Then you put the book aside and begin to imagine the film until you see it so clearly that you can start an outline – but a film outline. When you are able to tell the story in a film outline form, you still don’t go back to the novel. You work on the treatment – just scene, scene, scene, scene. Only then do you open the novel and start seeing how its material can be plugged in, and what can be used for the film.

The reading you do in the beginning is, let’s say, to analyze the novel for yourself. Why does he start where he starts? Why does he give some of the sequences in the form of a report and other sequences in scenes? Why does he use a certain point of view; first person narration, third person narration, omniscient narrator? That helps you understand what the stylistic decisions are based on – how the novelist came up with this accomplished narrative. Then you have to find equivalents for these elements.

For example, to transcribe a novel in the “I” form into a film is not that simple. Even worse is when you have a subsidiary character telling the story about the protagonist and antagonist, because the subsidiary character is there to tell the story, but as a rule he doesn’t have anything, or very little, to do in the story itself. You saw Sophie’s Choice, so you know what happens when the narrator, subsidiary character, stays in the story and the problem of the point of view has not been satisfactorily resolved.

Character vs. Plot

Q. You talked about characters being more important than plot in the beginning, that you have to think about your characters and know your characters before you tell them what to do. Then at the end you said that you need to write parts, not characters. I’m confused.

FD: There’s no controversy in it, I mean you first have to know the characters, but what you write are parts. In a novel you can write characters, because you have time to go into their thinking, and into their memories, their dreams, and their self evaluation and examination, in other persons’ views of them, even in the narrators analysis and commentary, and therefore, you really write characters. In our medium they must do it all. We portray people in actions. And the actor must have ways of showing who the character is, externalizing emotions and thoughts, and this is what leads to the parts. When you have a scene in which two people can sit down and talk as long as they wish, you haven’t got a scene.

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I don’t want to belong to any cult that would have me as a member.

I tell every student I meet to “Please Google me.”

Following up with my due diligence on that comment, I googled myself and found this…

…and I love it.

Yes, I stumbled into a fabulous film event, once upon a time. It was 1985 or 86, I think. I was living in a basement apartment in Kitsilano and attending the UBC film program. The tenants living above me were architects. A nice couple, and they told me about a screening of The Fountainhead that was being organized by their classmates. I went.

I read Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead just after high school. I loved Howard Roark. He was the outsider. The rebel. I was so interested to see this movie. Gary Cooper? He’s always Gary Cooper. Ayn Rand wrote the screenplay? I thought this was going to be great, but I had no idea just how great it was going to be.

It was like a sacred ritual.

The Fountainhead was a “Movie that Changed My Life.” I recall it like yesterday.

It was like being on the wrong side of town at a Rocky Horror Picture Show midnight screening in the early 80’s. There was a sense of danger. You could feel the energy build as the audience grew. It was exciting. Something was going to happen.

The lights dimmed. It was quiet for a moment, but people were clearly agitated. When Gary Cooper (playing Howard Roark, the uncompromising architect) started talking about blueprints, they became visibly angry. They stood and shouted loudly at the screen as he showed his drawings: “UNACCEPTABLE!” “FAIL HIM!” “HANG HIM!”

“HE MUST BE STOPPED!” “HE MUST BE PUNISHED!”

Things only got louder. I believe alcohol was involved.

This should be an annual university event. The architecture students should invite the film students over for a screening of The Fountainhead. Yes, it should be wild. And YES, it will be fabulous!

You’ve Been Warned!

I’m fascinated by cults. I grew up with Charles Manson, Jim Jones and David Koresh in the news. But have you seen this new freaky cult documentary? The Australian woman with the children* and the LSD? Bizarre.

*these are the real kids. NOT the Children of the Corn

The Lost Tapes: Frank Daniel Q&A (pt 1)

Sorting through one of my time-capsules of collectables, I’ve found personal recordings, micro-cassettes and VHS tapes with some truly priceless content. I hadn’t forgotten that I had dictated my observations about the first film sets I was on, or my university days in theatre and film – I just stored them in the basement. Until now.

I started collecting info on film education, film schools and film teachers in the 80’s. Everything from newspaper and magazine articles to out-of-print books and esoteric recordings. I’m unpacking those goodies and leaving some of them here for posterity. WordPress – my new time-capsule.

Frank Daniel is American cinema’s direct link to the original curriculum developed at the All-Union State  Institute of Cinematography in Moscow – the birthplace of film education. He left Europe in 1969. He headed up various film schools in the United States and was a major influence on filmmakers from the 70’s to the 90’s. Screenwriting students had a chance to Q&A with Frank Daniel when he was at Columbia University (circa 1986.)

THE LOST TAPES (pt 1)

Sound, Color, Props, Costumes

Q. You were talking about sound, color, props and costumes, and that’s the place where I feel a little weak. Can you tell me some directors that you think are really good at doing that?

FRANK DANIEL: Wilder is the best. If you look at Lost Weekend or Sunset Boulevard you’ll see. Lost Weekend starts with a pan over the New York skyline, and the camera stops and sees a bottle hanging from a window. In the room there is a guy packing, and his brother is talking about their forthcoming long weekend, and convincing him how, after all those things he has been through he’ll have fresh air, water, and milk, and the guy is suddenly upset. He doesn’t want to hear about those dull liquids. Immediately you make a connection between the bottle outside, and then, when he tries to smuggle the bottle into his suitcase you are hooked. From that moment, the bottles, glasses, jiggers and snifters are props that go through the whole picture.

There is one scene in the movie when the main character first meets his girlfriend at the opera. He watches the drinking scene in La Traviata. People are standing with champagne in their hands, sipping it and singing. That part of the movie you should especially look at. It has some brilliant staging. In the center of the image there is always some drink. Bottles, glasses, more bottles, and more glasses, and people with glasses. Finally the poor guy can’t take it anymore and he just leaves and goes to the cloakroom for his coat, because he has a bottle of whisky in the pocket, but he cannot get his coat. Because of a mistake with the tickets, he is given a ladies fur coat. He has to wait until the whole opera is over to get his coat back, and that’s how he meets the girl.

They exchange coats and the coats begin to play a part in the movie. At the end of the picture he takes her coat and goes to the pawn shop. You believe that he is going there to get money for it, but he is going there to get his gun, to kill himself. She comes to get her fur coat back, and she is in his raincoat!

If you look at the way alcohol is presented in that movie you’ll see that it became a character. It goes through the whole story and the glasses and bottles and the circles they leave on tables express things that otherwise would have to be stated in dialogue, in words.

In Lubitsch’s Ninotchka, the hat that Ninotchka buys elucidates her whole character. It expresses the change of Ninotchka from a dogmatic Russian commissar into a loving woman completely. That’s the use of props, not for the purpose of more interesting acting business, but for dramatic emphasis, for creating poetic images, and metaphors.

Subplot

Q. Would you talk a little bit about subplot and how to know if your subplot is actually moving the story towards a culmination?

FD: It’s not that difficult. You check each scene as you write, or better when you finish the first draft against the main tension of the story. See if it helps, or if it leads somewhere else, or if it’s actually diluting the tension. Then you can decide if it’s used properly. That’s what needs to be done, and you always try to find out what the thematic connection of the subplot with the main theme of the story is. Is it a variation? Is it the opposite of the main character’s? Is it preparing new obstacles eventually? How does it relate thematically and plotwise to the main theme and the main action? Does it heighten the tension?

By the way, another thing, I might have mentioned, that happens often in the first draft, is that the third act scenes are, as a rule, too long. They are actually dealt with in a manner that is proper for the first part of the picture, but not when the story is reaching its resolution. The scenes in the third act have to be much shorter, much more condensed, and much more energetic because of the passions that collide into one another after you have reached the culmination. Usually the beginning writer tries to say too much there, and we, the audience, have no patience at that time.

Q. So when you’re doing a first draft or a treatment, you really have to know what the subplots are?

FD: If you don’t then you have to go back and give them the proper function and meaning. In the first treatment ever written, the first script, you are not ready to deal with all the people at the same time. It is enough to be able to jump from one character’s shoes in a scene, and if you have to take care of five story lines, it’s a little too much. You have seen Fellini’s 8 1/2 where he doesn’t have any problems with it, but if you look at La Strada or White Sheik you’ll see that he was learning too! He could, at that time, develop only two main characters, because he was just gaining the muscles. Milos Forman, you know, started with small scale stories, with one character in the center. And then he develops and directs Amadeus, and takes care of the whole world. One needs to learn to be able to do that.

Features vs. Shorts

Q. Do you think there’s a difference between setting out to write a feature length or say a half hour script? Is it more difficult or easier to write a short script? Do you apply all the same logic to it?

FD: Well, to write a good short is not that simple, but it is easier because in a short you deal with just one event, one situation that the story turns around. And usually you need a very small number of characters, because otherwise you couldn’t afford to shoot it. It takes less time and less energy to write a short than a feature, and that’s why at our school it’s obligatory to write shorts before you go on to treatments, and then to a feature script. It’s also a question of those dramatic explosives that you need for a two hour story. The conflict in a feature film must be strong enough to keep people watching it for two hours. And then there is the whole question of strategy. How do you open the conflict? How do you force the characters to come with the passions and the fights and where do place the up and downs? That comes from experience, from repeated exploring, and trying. There’s a generic difference, I would say, between a short and a feature. For a beginning director it’s quite different. A director can show his directorial capabilities in a short almost completely. You can see that he knows how to work with actors, that he knows where to put the camera, that he knows how to edit, that he knows how to use music, and so on. As a director you can have a calling card that’s ten minutes long and people will know that this guy is a potential director. But a short film doesn’t do too much for a writer. It can’t show that he knows how to divide those two hours into moments of full involvement, relaxation, surprise, build up. That is something that comes only by constant studies of films and scripts, and then by writing, writing, writing.

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