Pre-sold franchises

Well, I think that they're going to keep going with the super-hero movies because they are pre-sold franchises, known entities with built-in fan bases that will come out in support or out of curiosity.

It's so hard to introduce anything "new" these days -- which is why we see so many movies based on TV shows, comic books, video games, toys or other...

See More movies, ditto Broadway plays based on movies and now, more and more, pop music.

Apparently ticket sales are brisk for the Green Day musical opening in April. Of course, things like this have been going on for years.

Great as it is, "Singin' In The Rain" was conceived a venue to showcase the pre-existing music and that's what begat "Mamma Mia", "Tommy", "Movin' Out", "Jersey Boys" and so on. The concept is really being taken to the extreme with the "Spider-Man" play with music by U2 -- if that ever winds up happening.

My 2 Star Movie

Last week, one of my better students asked me if I would read his senior thesis screenplay, one of the biggest projects of his college career and it really got me thinking. Here is my response:

Did I like the screenplay? Basically on one level, yes. If this was a movie, I would enjoy it but I think I would enjoy it in the way that I enjoy a candy bar or pizza, it tastes really good going down but, in the end, I know that it is empty, pointless, worthless and, ultimately bad for me.

So, as a guy who likes trashy, junky B movies about hot girls and bad guys and stuff blowing up, I liked it.

As a screenwriting teacher, I feel that it is my job to inspire art, to get students to aim higher than writing screenplays for movies that appeal to the lowest common denominator audience.

Of course, there is something to be said for movies that appeal to that demographic because it encompasses the highest number of people and, of course, the biggest possible box office for your product.

So, honestly, your screenplay feels like a lot of other movies by people of my generation and the generation after mine, are movies that are based on stuff we know from having seen lots of other movies, not stuff that is based on our observations of the world around us.

When Scorsese made "Mean Streets" he was really drawing from the stuff he saw happening in his neighborhood. When Tarantino made "Reservoir Dogs" and Rob Weiss made "Amongst Friends" and Troy Duffy made "Boondock Saints" and all of those other people who made films about young tough guys they all had this detached from reality element that felt Scorsese inspired, like it came from watching films rather than from watching real life and I feel the same thing about "----."

Yes, it is entertaining and fun. I do feel that the cyborg element really comes out of the blue and all of sudden, 3/4 of the way through your tough, whimsical crime movie it becomes a science fiction film. What if, in "Goodfellas" when they go to whack Joe Pesci and shoot him, wires and sparks fly out and he turns into the Terminator?

The hardest that I can be on you is to say that I know that you can do better. "---" with its glorification of sex and violence feels rather juvenile to me, it's a fourteen year old boy's wet dream.

I think the story you told me about concerning the @#$^*** really demonstrated a hint at an ability to do something more original, to put a fresh spin on a familiar situation, entertaining while also commenting on an aspect of the human condition.

Look at your project and ask yourself if it is a 4 star movie, if it is a Grade A screenplay.

If produced, does your screenplay have the potential to be “Citizen Kane”, “The Godfather” or some other movie that historically gets 4 stars?

So, the point here is to be realistic about our work.

If you pick up the movie section of the newspaper, you will see that there are maybe 50 different movies playing in town

In the past three years, I have been hired to write or doctor nearly 20 screenplays and I have 3 new jobs coming up next year and, honestly, I do not know if there is a 4 star screenplay in there.

I know structure and I know formatting and character development and I write good dialogue, plot points, act breaks and all that but that’s only the beginning, lots of people know how to do that stuff and that is why there are so many 3 and 2 star movies, because there are a lot of B and C screenplays, in other words, “average.”

I simply don’t know if I am creative enough, smart enough or deep enough to write a 4 star movie and there is no shame in that. The point is you can teach the nuts and bolts but I don’t know if I can teach you to be creative, deep or smart --- that is called talent.

Avant-garde, moi?

Believe it or not, my background is in sort of avant-garde theater. My biggest influences are Ionesco, Pinter, Stoppard and Albee with significant contributions from Steve Martin and Richard Pryor.

In the past, I was striving to approach film in non-traditional ways but, the more gigs I got as a screenwriter and a screenwriting teacher, the more I had to play the game and utilize conventional three-act structure so my tolerance for films and screenplays that don't use it is now diminished and, unfortunately, I find myself less open-minded about unconventional films.

Part of that is practical as well, I know how hard it is to make a film, how much time, energy and money goes into any film and, at this point, to make a film that, inherently, limits its audience and cuts into its potential return on investment, sort of frustrates me --- as much as I am frustrated by the culture in which we live, where audiences have been conditioned to expect one thing from movies and any film that does something different goes largely ignored by the masses.

Of course, all of that said, I am proud to have sold a screenplay, "Aftermath", that does not employ three-act structure in the conventional sense and still succeeds as entertainment. I was not trying to break the rules but I knew that, given the nature of my production, three-act structure was not going to work for this film.

Something Like That

I have been networking with writer-director who has one well-regarded indie feature to his credit. He has a new story that he is trying to develop into a screenplay and I have been trying to help. Today he sent me a new take on the story and I responded with an alternative approach, which he questioned, wondered if I was really suggesting what it sounded like I was suggesting and this is how I responded, see if it sounds familiar to you:

"Something like that -- maybe not from opposite sides but maybe from different perspectives.

There has to be enough of an initial connection between them that would make it believable for them to "socialize" but maybe they come from different classes, backgrounds etc. so that both their differences and their similarities can be explored, much like, to tell the truth, a romance: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy and girl get back together in the end, following the classic buddy movie formula as well: opposites attract, then repel and then find some other way --- greater understanding of each other, themselves and the situation they're in.

They initially connect on a professional level, then a personal level, discover differences between them and their perspectives on what is happening but, by that time, they're deep in it, sort of need each other to survive, ultimately overcome their differences and discover their core similarities ----

or something like that."

Beyond that, I have been busy teaching the screenwriters of tomorrow -- or, at least a handful of people who might wind up being screenwriters tomorrow or the next day.

After a bit of a drought this year (sold and got hired to re-write "Aftermath", wrote "Bait & Tackle" and "Used To Love Her"), it looks like, after about six months of no new gigs, I have some new projects brewing for 2010, at least 2 and possibly as many as 5 screenplays to write, some good stuff. Here's hoping or something like that.

Experienced vs.Newbie: Infancy?

Next, regarding a recent discussion of "experienced" vs. "newbie", I don't
come down definitively on either side.

My own two cents, for whatever two cents coming from me is worth is, all due respect to a guy who actually knows me and has graciously mentioned me as an experienced screenwriter, that, to tell the truth, I don't feel that experienced.

Yes, in the past three years, I have been hired to write or doctor nearly 20 screenplays, sold an original, saw one feature written-for-hire get produced, am expecting 2-3 others to be shot within the next year and I have been teaching college screenwriting classes for the past five years.

My point is that I feel like an infant, okay, maybe a toddler, and that I still feel like I have so,so,so much to learn about the art and science of screenwriting, I feel like I have just begun to crack the surface of what it means to be able to write a screenplay. I have seen movies where I just have to throw my hands in the air and say "You know, I could not have written this screenplay. I am not smart enough, deep enough or creative enough to have written this screenplay."

So, I keep going, learning, everytime I sit down to write, hoping to one day get it "right."

I was there and I saw what you did...

In an early episode of the seminal TV series “Miami Vice”, ultra cool and extremely fashionable cops Sonny Crocket and Rico Tubbs cruise through the city -serious, determined, somber - as Phil Collins’ classic “In The Air Tonight” simmers and builds to it’s famous thundering crescendo. It was 1983, MTV was exploding and Michael Mann’s TV series was one of the first to incorporate music video techniques and, in turn, probably influenced more than a few videos itself. In any event, I think it inspired a lot of kids to drive around in the middle of the night approximating some degree of their own fashionable gravitas with Collins’ song blasting through the sound system.

Not much of this was new to me. The song was actually released in 1981 and, during that summer, the summer that I was 16, and hanging out on Philly’s legendary South Street, on at least one occasion, it was on the radio, playing in the wee, small hours of the evening as I rode in a car, cruising through the city while most of it’s residents were asleep on a hot summer night.

In the ‘60’s, South Street was Philly’s answer to Greenwich Village, the center of all things Hippie. By the late ‘70’s, many of the hippies had sold out, grown up, died off or otherwise moved on but the street remained a cultural center, albeit with an increasingly mainstream commercial vibe.

1981 was a strange time to be growing up I say, fully realizing that it is probably the growing up part that is strange, rather than the era during which one grows up. I have little doubt that, 30 years from now, there will be 45 years olds thinking about how strange it was to be growing up in the early 21rst Century. In 1981 there were still some hippies around but there was also the emerging punk-new wave sub-culture and the gradual cooling off of Disco Fever. I found myself in the middle of it all, still listening to classic rock but eagerly embracing punk and new wave and mixing it up with some beloved 70’s funk and bubblegum – you know, “K-Billy’s Super Sounds of the ‘70’s”.

A typical night usually began with a terrible movie at a grungy theater on Chestnut Street, an hour or so of video games at Spaceport or Zounds before heading to South Street for a series of long, leisurely strolls up and down the street, taking in the sights and sounds, bumping into friends, hanging out and, well, let’s face it, checking out girls.

Of course, I was not the only one experiencing this activity. In certain circles throughout Philly, this hanging out on South Street period is a time honored tradition, a rite of passage, if you will, even though there was not much in the way of rites or passage. It’s not like I had never stayed out really late or engaged in a bit of underage drinking but doing it on South Street felt so much better, and probably appealed to the budding filmmaker in me. I probably soaked it all in, assuming that it would make for some good reminiscing later on, in the future, when I might be prone to reflect to on my youth.

As in many rites of passage stories of this type (think “American Graffiti”) there was a girl, doing the same thing, being young, sort of free, hanging out on South Street with her friends around the same time. I saw her almost every night that summer, her auburn blunt cut, pouty bee-stung lips and a style that captured the times, not exactly a hippie, not totally punk but an original mix of both that she pulled off effortlessly.

She parked herself beside me, on the car I was leaning on, watching a bassist and drummer rock out. She slipped a Marlboro between her lips and smoked like she’d learned to by studying old movies; her way of saying “You know, you look like a really sweet guy but you have to know, somewhere deep down, that I am way out of your league.”

I, with my cascading Jew-fro and glasses that could have doubled as storm windows dominating my face, looked straight ahead, innocently ignorant to basic boy-girl 101 moves like making eye-contact, much less small talk. I must have been out that day.

Still, she stood next to me, I saw her frequently that summer, never exchanged a word and, writing about it almost 30 years later, I guess it made an impression. I heard later, after asking around, that, if we were all talking about the same girl, her name was Lisa and, within a few years, she had become a model.

I did a play at theater off South in the spring of ‘82 but, that summer, I was sent off to my dad’s place on Long Island where, instead of staying out ‘til 2 or 3 every night, I was getting up at 4 or 5 to work on a farm every day.

Nobody ever said anything to me and while my parents, ex-hippies themselves, were not especially restrictive, I suspect that they might have worried that I was up to no good during those late nights on South Street. Granted, the guy I was spending all of this time with was 19 and had a bit of a reputation ---no names here, he is a successful businessman now— nothing beyond flagrant curfew violations and the occasional public consumption of alcohol by a minor ever took place. Still, this improbable Fonzie-Richie Cunningham-“American Graffiti” dynamic was suddenly put on hold.

As mentioned, for many kids in Philly, hanging out on South Street during summer nights, is a time-honored tradition but, within that tradition, seems to be a built in period of disillusionment: the next summer is never as good as the first and, is often bad, lending itself to another time-honored tradition: talking about how the street had changed from one year to the next, how it used to be so much cooler. Okay, I grant this to the kids who came before me and the kids who came after me but, in my experience, the change from ‘81 to ’82 was like day and night. When I got back to town from my hard labor experience on Long Island, I was eager to hit the street once again even though I’d heard that things were different.

Gone was the sole beat cop who walked up and down the street; replaced by teams of officers who seemed to be on every other corner. The mix of hippies and punks were still around but there was a new element emerging: guys in muscle shirts, shorts and white socks pulled up to their knees who just seemed to be waiting for someone to look at them or one of their short-shorted-high heeled girlfriends the “wrong way.”

My hanging out on South Street officially went into the history book.


I never really spent that much more time on South St. after the summer of 1981. In ’83, hanging out on the street after a David Bowie concert, my friends and I were stopped for violating curfew --- remember that, at 16, I sat on the steps of the TLA dinking a beer at 2 A.M. --- but we were not cited for anything because three of us were in the company of a responsible 18 year old: me.

In ’86, after a semester of college in London, I got together with some of my flat-mates for a proper “glad to be back” cheesesteak at Jim’s. The “malling” of the street was in full swing.

By the late ‘80’s songs like “In Air Tonight” and Steve Winwood’s Madison Avenue bait “Don’t You Know What The Night Can Do?” were the stuff of ubiquitous rain slicked, neon lit, city at night, “Miami Vice”-esque gag-worthy beer commercials. Ever the media savvy lad, I once even caught myself running through the city at night with friends, thinking to myself “Wow, Miller time, I feel like I’m in a beer commercial, cool.”

In 1991, I worked at the TLA Video on 3rd street. In ’92, my fiancée and I went to the Eyes Gallery and bought tons of 1920’s Mexican postcards of happy couples to use as our wedding invitations. Within the past 15 years or so, there have been increasingly ugly incidents on South Street and, yet, I firmly believe that the tradition of hanging out continues.

I never saw Lisa again. In a best case scenario, she went on to have a decent life and got older, like me. I teach college students now and sometimes get paid to write screenplays. For the past 17 years, I have been married to a girl I fell in love with when I was 14 – and, okay, if she is, in fact, in my league, she is a starter while I am, as always, a bench-warmer. We have two daughters who, if I have anything to do with it, will probably never hang out on South Street.

About ten years ago I heard a demographic statistic that said that people, especially men, tend to return to the music they listened to between the ages of 16 and 20. My family doesn’t share my passion for popular music to quite the illogical level that I do, so we rarely listen to it in the car (okay, I’ll admit it, mini-van) but, every now and then, I’ll be driving around alone, “In The Air Tonight” will come on the radio and I’ll turn it up, just slightly, and glance back in time for awhile.

How I Got Into Film

A guy I went to high school with messaged me on Facebook and asked if his girlfriend’s brother could get in touch with me for some advice on getting into the movie business. How did I get into film? That’s easy. Who doesn’t like movies? Sure, I got hooked early but even that’s not unheard of. When I was a kid, my parents had this huge collage of classic movie stills that I would stare at. This was before vcr’s and video stores so, if my father wanted to show a film in a class, he had to order an actual print from this a catalogue. I spent hours with that big book, pouring over synopsis after synopsis of old movies. That was it for me, the beginning and the end, after that, there was very little else that would captivate my interest, stir my passion and spark my creativity.

How did I get into the film business? Now that's a hard question because I hardly feel like I am in the film business. Yes, I did it, I have now done what thousands upon thousands of people are trying to do, I have sold a screenplay (did not get paid especially well), I have been hired to write or work on screenplays for other people -- again, not very well paying, actually minimum wage or less and that is not an exaggeration.

So, to backtrack, I made my first (animated) films when I was 9, bought a super 8 camera when I was 10 and made films with friends. Around that time, I saw “Jaws” and “North By Northwest” on the big screen, something clicked and I just said something like “this is what I want to do” to myself.

Also, around this time, I saw “Rocky.” Now, “Rocky” means a lot of different things to a lot of people around the world. For a film geek growing up in Philly, the thought that this virtual nobody could write a screenplay set in Philadelphia, shoot it in Philadelphia (huh, not all movies are produced in L.A.?), see it become a big hit and win the Oscar for Best Picture was mind-blowing, exhilarating and inspiring.

I think I always thought I would grow up and out of this silly dream of making films for a living but it never happened.

When I was 16 I found out about film school. You mean, you can go to college and study movies? I did go to film school and I guess I am pretty glad that I did though I am not exactly sure what I got out of it. For someone who loves film, it was total immersion, I learned theory/aesthetics, history, production etc. and I loved it.

A year after I graduated, I heard that an indie film was being shot in the small Maine town where my dad lives. I got the number of the production office and started calling, asking for a job, having nice conversations with the production manager but no job offer. I decided to take a leap of faith and go up to Maine. I walked into the production office and said "I'm here."

I then proceeded to tell the guy about all the classes I took in film school and the guy said, "Okay, can you go put up that tent with those guys?" I put up the tent, came back, he asked the other guys how I did, they said "well" and he said "Okay, you're hired. We don't pay."

I worked on the film for the next three months, pretty grueling, back-breaking work, doing everything from picking up the producer's dry cleaning to hauling equipment to directing traffic to assistant camera to body double and so on. I worked in every department. At one point, I worked 45 hours straight, not going home, not changing, not bathing, not really sleeping, not getting paid and I loved it!!! I was working in the movies.

I finished that job on a Saturday and two days later, started work on a big budget studio film, a wild study in contrasts. I had one job in the set building department that I did six days a week for three months, got pretty bored but made buckets of money.

So, after that, I never worked on another feature film set. I focused on writing screenplays and studying the ins and outs of the industry. I wrote low budget indie type stuff that everyone was doing in the early ‘90’s, stuff that I could produce myself if I could raise the $30-50,000 (which I could not) and I eventually made a short film that won an award from the American Film Institute. Pretty impressive, AFI, right? No, not really, it was a runner up award from a rinky dink contest BUT it was still the AFI, I can call myself an AFI award-winning filmmaker and that opens doors, attracts attention.

Through a contact at a record company, I got a couple of low-rent screenwriting jobs, adapting some non-fiction books into ideas for films that could feature soundtracks by the record company's artists.

I didn't get another job for 10 years and then it was after a couple of years of scoping out production companies and screenwriting classified ads online. I estimate that, since 2003, I have probably sent out 7000 e-mails to various people, most of whom never got back to me. Of those 7000 e-mails, maybe 2% ever responded back to me, of that 2%.....Well, you get the idea. I have had 10, give or take, paying screenwriting jobs in the past 3 years, one feature film was produced (though the director totally re-wrote my screenplay), I sold an original screenplay and a short film was just shot in NYC. Two other features (that I have not been paid for) are tentatively set to shoot later this year.

So, how to get into film? On that indie film in Maine, it was my bosses second film. Prior to getting into film, he had managed a restaurant in Manhattan and, I guess, if you can do that, you can do anything. This guy has gone on to be a huge producer in Hollywood, nominated for a Best Picture Oscar for producing "There Will Be Blood."

A girl who I went to grade school with, who was in my class from kindergarten to sixth grade, is now Quentin Tarantino's executive producer and, while it's been 20 years since I have seen her, I was not aware of her having any film experience. A guy at the same school but two years ahead of me was nominated for a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for writing "A History Of Violence" and he dropped out of film school mid-way through, moved to L.A. and worked his way into the business.

So, my suggestion to people who want to get into film, is to make films, either put your own stuff together -shorts or features -- make them good enough to attract attention. So that means that you need to know how to write a proper screenplay and how to do all of the nuts and bolts technical production stuff OR you can become a specialist. I am a screenwriter now but at one point, I could take apart a camera and put it back together with my eyes closed. Not anymore. If I wasn’t a writer, I’d be a gaffer.

Do it for love, because you love film, love working on films. You can work on making your own films or you can work on films for other people, just sniff around the local filmmaking scene if there is one where you live. You might (probably) work for free BUT you never know who the next big filmmaker will be, maybe you, maybe someone you meet.

Work hard, have fun.