WEBVTT

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You are listening to the IFH podcast
Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting

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podcasts, just go to IFAH podcast
network dot com. Welcome to the Bulletproof

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Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number two ninety
six, except no one's definition of your

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life, Define it yourself. Harvey
Fierste broadcasting from a dark, windowless room

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in Hollywood when we really should be
working on that next draft. It's the

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Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the
craft and business of screenwriting while teaching you

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how to make your screenplay bulletproof.
And here's your host, Alex Ferrari.

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Welcome, Welcome to another episode of
the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I am your

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humble host Alex Ferrari. Now,
today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof script Coverage.

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Now. Unlike other script coverage services, Bulletproof Script Coverage actually focuses on

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my Screenplay dot Com. Enjoy today's episode

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with guest host Dave Bullis this concluding
academic year. July first is the new

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academic year. Of course, this
is the concluding thirty eighth year. So

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I've seen a lot, but I'm
recalling years and years ago, and one

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of those things I've seen is,
oh, about twenty five years ago,

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actually probably a little longer than that, the arts at UCLA all across the

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campus were reconfigured and the Film School, which was part of the Theater Arts

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Department, was turned into a long
I was turned into a separate two separate

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departments, the Film, TV,
Digital Media on one hand, that's my

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department and our sister department, the
Theater Department, and we aren't together in

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the School of Theater, Film and
Television. And years ago when we were

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still the Theater Department, there was
a retreat up to Lake Garrowhead. There's

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a very beautiful, upscale, gorgeous
conference center up in the mountains, just

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about an hour hour and a half
from the campus, And the whole subject

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that was discussed up there for the
weekend was the spelling of the word theater.

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There were some people who wanted to
change it from the ear to the

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r E. It's terribly unimportant,
but I am on the side of the

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er people. Well though, after
two days of robust and vigorous and eager

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discussion, it was decided without any
equivocation, without any hesitancy to discuss this

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further out another retreat, you know, I mean, you know, it's

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like it's been said of the universities
that university it's just like incorporation, except

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that there's no bottom line and there's
no calendar. Now both of those things

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are completely untrue today. You know, they're universities, especially here in California,

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but all across the country are very
much in touch with the notion of

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the bottom line, as you know, support for public education retreats, and

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not only at the university level,
but much more grieviously, I think at

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the KROE through twelve level and calendar
is very much attached to issues and so

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on, so fascinating any place to
spend a life. That said, there's

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no escaping the you know, these
bureaucratic issues, they're not you may unique

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to public universities or private universities,
but all institutions, corporations, nonprofits,

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governmental agencies. You know, nothing
ever runs real smoothly, and people should

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stop explaining it to, you know, and and kind of make do because

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what else can you do. So
in any event, there I am very

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sympathetic with what you're saying. The
organizing principle of my life has always been

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no meetings. I don't do lunch
as much as I can avoid it,

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for exily, and yesterday I was
at an awards lunch, and how to

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be there. I am also the
associate dean now of the School of Theater,

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Film and Television, and I have
to be there for the awards,

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the ceremony, you know, they
give out scholarships and stuff like that and

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celebrate the students. But I'm reminded
of a line in one of my favorite

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lines in all of movies. In
Oliver Stone's Wall Street, there's a line

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there's a moment where Gecko you know, Michael Douglas. I'm sure you've seen

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that. I expect you've seen the
movie. He's on the he's fielding like

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eleven phone calls at the same time. At a one point he says,

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lunch. You know, clearly somebody's
invited him to lunch and it's his lunch,

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and he scuses his lunches for whimps
and he hangs up, you know,

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and I say, lunches for whimps. I believe, you know.

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My first obligation to the university,
as professor in a research institution like the

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University of California, the first the
second obligation is teaching. The first obligation

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is what they call in the traditional
disciplines research, and in the arts they

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call it creative activity. But that's
the first obligation that I have and I

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can't do that, and that all
the faculty have. But we can't do

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that if we don't have the time
to do that. So one does need

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to be a warrior for one's writing
time, if you follow what I'm saying,

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and I'm just responding to get all
these meetings. Our previous chair she

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had a sign. I loved her
because because she had a sign on her

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desk, on a little table at
her in her office that said, this

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meeting is costing, and then there
was a blank you know, fill in

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the number, you know, next
to a dollar sign. So I'm always

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sympathetic with what you're talking about.
You know, there was a book I

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was just reading, Richard. It
was called The Power of No, and

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basically it's the one word you could
use to just sort of the crux of

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the book is if you say the
word yes, uh, you inherit all

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that person's problem. So like if
I thank you, Richard, would you

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like to go to lunch? And
you say yes, Well, well,

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you know it's it's funny because the
um There's a self help guru who died

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I think last years, very well
known, Stephen Covey, who wrote a

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book that is translated into like one
hundred and sixty seven languages, you know,

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several of which are not even identifiable. I mean, he sold millions

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of millions of copies of this book
and it's called something like those Seven Habits

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of Highly Effective People or something like
that. And in that book he says,

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at one point he has a he
has something he called six words for

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serenity, and he there are own
less, do less, say no,

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and that's what you're talking about.
I have had to learn how to say

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no. You know, it's a
necessary condition when I'm asked to do things

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that I just can't do, rather
than sort of play along, go along

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and so on. You know,
there's all kinds of ways to say.

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It's a student. I just got
a request, for example for the summer,

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a student and you know there.
I love. The greatest thing about

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UCLA and the greatest thing about teaching
is the students, and I love I

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love our students. But there is
among young people and maybe college students in

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particular, maybe especially prestige students in
glamour programs like UCLA. I mean it

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is the you know, those major
film schools like my own, Aluma,

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motor USC, like NYU, like
like certainly like UCLA. We are the

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glamour corner of higher learning. So
the people who do get in, it's

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very competitive. They maybe you know, they're very gifted and they used to

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get getting their own way, and
I think maybe they're uniquely entitled. Um,

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you know, they have a sense
of unique entitlement. So somebody just

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announced to me, and this is
somebody I really are a fond of and

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a very fine writer, or a
student in a program that he's decided to

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take an independent study with me this
summer. I don't get paid for that,

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by the way. He will,
and of course I have to consent

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to it. He can't just announce
it, although he felt that he could.

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That he's just entitled to it,
and he's going to, if he

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has his way, you know,
meet with me this summer and discuss his

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outline for a screenplay after I look
it over, and then we'll meet several

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times. I'll review the pages and
give him notes and so on. I

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do that, you know, for
eight writers every quarter. We're on the

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quarter system at UCLA routinely. But
I'm not going to do that this summer.

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You know, I'm working on my
own stuff. I have all kinds

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of things playing. But rather than
just saying no, what I told him

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was that I wished I could do
that, which is only partly true,

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and however, that I would not
be able to give him and his screenplay

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the time and the attention and the
consideration that they both merit. So that's

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a polite way to say no.
We'll be right back after a word from

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our sponsor and now back to the
show. But you do need to learn

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how to say no. And I've
also said in Hollywood dealing in the movie

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business, you're a hard no.
No. This is not for us.

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As painful as that is, it's
not as painful as what one usually here

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is when one submits a project,
either to potential representatives or to a production

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company, one usually here is is
this. You know what I mean.

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The silence is deafening. Yeah,
very shrill, very shrilled silence. So

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I'm sympathetically what you're you're talking about. You do need to I mean,

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I consider it actually part of my
my pedagog if I could call it that,

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my teaching philosophy, is to teach
students we are all right, you

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know, professional program, a graduate
program we offer the master Fine Arts.

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I trying to teach them, by
example how they need to be warriors for

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their own writing time. I once
had a definition I used to climb around

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about a definition of a writer.
A writer is somebody who's always available to

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pick up relatives at the airport.
And I've preached to writers that if they

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when they complain, oh you know, I can't get anything done, then

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but the family wants me to do. You know, they think I'm available

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to pick up people. I said, well you are available. I mean

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you did get pick them up.
I didn't you, So why you know,

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if you don't get it, they're
going to get it. You know.

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It's one of my principles, which
is if you want to be treated

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as a professional writer, you have
to treat yourself as a professional. And

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the fact is people who are going
to pick up relatives at the airport,

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but they don't realize is they're actually
glad to do that because it allows them

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to avoid doing what every writer wants
to avoid doing, and that is writing.

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And not only that they get to
do to feel virtuous about it and

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to get the gripe and catch and
cart to complain about everybody impinging on the

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time, when in fact they're terrified
to see a low front of the word

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processor, you know, and the
relatives coming in from out of town has

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given them the excuse not to do
that. If you follow me, yeah,

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I absolutely follow you. Because there's
a book that I read, The

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War of Art by Stephen Pressfield.
He's a genius. Press Field, He's

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just I love that book. Yeah, absolutely, And you know I was

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fortunate enough to be able to speak
with him briefly, and I told him,

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you know, reading that book was
an epiphany for me. Oh absolutely,

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I just love the book. In
fact, I was just quoting on

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somebody. I do a lot of
consulting off campus. I give notes to

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writers who have deals at studios.
You know, it's become more and more

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routine in Hollywood now, even when
you have a deal. Um, you

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know, typical writing assignment is what
they call and it's whatever is negotiable,

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you know, as long as the
guild minimums are being observed. Um.

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The typical assignment is what they call
a draft them a set. A draft

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is a draft of a screenplay,
and a set usually consists of what somebody

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will call a rewrite and somebody else, and then it'll be followed by what

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somebody calls a polish. But of
course the guy UH do in the polish

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and the guy doing the rewrite have
different views of you know, what what

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it should be, let should be
called. But um, often between such

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such stages, uh, smart writers
will go to somebody like me, a

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script doctor, a script consultant,
and say, listen, they owe me,

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you know, I owe I owe
them this draft beforehanded and ask me.

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You know, I want you to
ask me the hard questions before the

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studio asks them, and and and
so on. Um. So I was

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talking to But I also work with
writers who you know, who are independent

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and who can afford my very very
high fees to give those kinds of notes.

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You know, it's easier for a
writer who's getting a quarter a fee

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from Paramount Pictures to do that than
than somebody out of out of their own

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pocket. Um. But I do
work with writers off campus, as I

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say, who can have an If
I'm attracted to the script, I think

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it's something that I want to,
you know, if you feel merits encouragement.

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Um. And then of course it
costs a lot of money. So

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I was working with somebody. I'm
working with a particular writer. I was

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in the Midwest and she I just
sent her back a second raft of notes.

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Oh, it's about a fifteen page
document going through her script and talking

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about it in general, but also
going through the pages note you know,

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page for page, and and indicating
with are in certain issues that are around,

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some of them as trivial as typos, and some of them, uh,

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you know, fundamental issues about returned
story structure and whatever. And she

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complained to me that she was really
disappointed that there's more work to do,

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that she thought she had the whole
thing set up, and that she's kind

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of sorry that things aren't proceeding,
you know, according to schedule, you

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know, in the way that she
predicted. And I immediately thought of press

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Field, who I know what he
would say. Stephen would say that her

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only amateurs and dilettants think that it
goes, you know, in a steady,

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predictable, reliable way. That it's
not herkey, jerky and frustrating every

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inch of the way. You know. Pressfield would say, stop trying to

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feel good about it. You know, feel good about having done it,

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but don't feel good about doing it. Nobody does, No writer does it.

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One of my first principles is all
writers hate to write. We love

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having written, but actually sitting down
and addressing the pages. That's what press

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fielicle resistance. There's always resistance sitting
there. And I have a lot of

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experience as a writer over my years. I've been writing professionally for more than

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forty years, but my own experience
is leveraged by the experience I've had with

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other writers working very very closely,
very intimately with writers on campus and off

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campus, and so my, you
know, I have the experience also of

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all of those writers. And that's
the way it is for everybody, for

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everybody, including the highest handed,
you know, highest minded, most successful,

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richest petitioners. It's always that way, and people have to, you

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know, stop trying to feel good
about it. You know. It's like

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Steven said one time, he said, uh, you know, if you

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can beat resistance inch by inch and
you can actually get something made, and

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you can actually you know, you
sit there and there's a polished manuscript and

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he says, congratulations. Now move
on to the next one. Exactly.

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I quote a student mind. He
wrote two scripts in class that became gigantically

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successful films. They became franchise as. One as Highlander. Um maybe they

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they called it The Highlander. And
the other one is Backdraft. I mean

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Backdraft became an amusement park ride,
you know, I mean, it's gigantic

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success. And so here was this
twenty six year old writer, multi millionaire.

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Already I was reading an interview with
him in the press. This is

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some years ago, and he was
again just like writers complaining, and you

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think he'd be jumping for joy and
you know, whistling a happy tune.

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No, he was talking about how
they had betrayed him at Fox, how

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they had dissed him at NBC,
and burned him at Warner Brothers, and

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lied to him at Paramount, and
on and on, you know, all

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of these dramas and the you know, acts of these crimes that have been

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visited upon him. This poor,
poor guy, this poor multimillionaire, twenty

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six year old screenwriter. And then
he pauses in the interview, and I

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swear if you held the interview this
is a press, you know, a

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print piece, If you held the
news page close to your face, you

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could have felt the waft of his
sigh. If you know what I'm saying,

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He felt a breeze on his cheek. It was that palpable in the

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context of what he was saying.
Was quoting me. He was saying,

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Ah, but I can just hear. After he's griping and complaining, he

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says, ah, but I can
just hear my professor, Richard Walter of

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muc LA say mcgreg Don't you know
it's the privilege in Hollywood, even merely

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to be mistreated this way again?
What Hollywood will do to you. The

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worst thing Hollywood will do. He
is not mistreat you, but you ignore

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you. I have an experience I
met with, Rest his soul, Julius

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Epstein. He's He and his brother
and another writer wrote Casablanca and among many

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other things that Julius was involved in. He lived, he was working well

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into his eighties. He passed a
few years ago. Now, rest his

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soul. He Uh. When I
first time I met him, I said,

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Oh, mister Repstein, I'm so
excited to meet you. The only

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you know, all I hope all
of all I or any of my film

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phony balance. All we hope for
is his want in our lives. We

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should touch something as you did with
Casablanca. That's timeless, that's eternal,

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that is going to you know,
touch the hearts and minds of generations.

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Oh, something like that. Yeah, I wouldn't be nice. Iff I

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could report to you that, he
said, Oh, thanks very much,

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kind of you to say so.
I mean, that would be courtesy one

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oh one. You know. Uh, he's a writer. You gotta understand.

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He grew up in Brooklyn, but
he spent seventy years in la but

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he never lost the Brooklyn rawle that
he had. We'll be right back after

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a word from our sponsor, and
now back to the show. And his

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reply to me was casablancish Messiblanca.
They fucked that up. You know the

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part where Florde Raine says such and
such a day. But oh no,

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they want with my brother of Philip. I mean, we had a thing

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with it. And here he is
complaining, you know, more than a

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half century later, like sixty seventy
years later, about how they messed up

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his movie, what movie Casablanca?
And all I could think is, by

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god, I wish somebody would mess
up my movie like they messed up Casablanca.

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So you know, again, only
amateurs and dilettants think you just settled

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in eagerly in front of the word
processor, and you know, you take

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a deep breath and you kind of
just get into your creative zone and it

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just kind of flues out of your
magically. You know. Just ain't that

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way? Ain't that way? And
the other thing is people are never you

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can't get no satisfaction, if I
may quote, they're rolling stones. It's

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never as good as people think that
it should as the writer herself or himself

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thinks it ought to be it's always
better in the mind. You know,

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when it's not an actual, tangible
hold in your hand, it's always more

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perfect than when it's a real thing. You know. So there is a

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quality of frustration and disappointment that walks
hand in hand with creativity, and professionals

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know that they accept that, they
tolerant, that they endure it. They

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don't like it, and amateurs deny
it. You know, it's amazing that

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the screen wode of Casablanca actually,
you know, had of problems with it

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because you know, that's the movie
that's the go to movie that you know,

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almost every screenwriting professor I've ever had, or you know book I've ever

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you know read, that's one of
the two movies that they you as a

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paradigm for this is this is what
a great movie or I'm sorry, this

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is what an excellent movie is.
You know, yes, well, it's

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what a great screenplay is. And
it is a great moment, and it's

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beautifully active and beautifully directed. Um, I quite agree with you. And

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yet the actual writer of that,
you know, thinks it's as so.

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So. But then there is also
a trend kind of that I've detected among

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writers where if you talk to a
really successful writer and you ask, and

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what's the favorite thing that you wrote? They're going to pick their most obscure,

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least successful project, you know,
um, almost to make up for

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the disappointment that they experienced when it
was was released. As I say,

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one praise for disappointment when something because
you let them be disappointed if something isn't

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released, you know what I mean. So again I tell my writers,

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and I tell my colleagues around the
table from the timement UCLA on the faculty,

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that fantasy is for your screen play, for your life reality. So

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you know, as we we talked
about you know, just you know about

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writing and you know some disappointments you
know in your classes. What I wanted

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to ask, you know, it
was when whenever a student comes to you,

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you know, how do you know
what's a good concept and what's not?

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Well, you don't. You don't. You never know what's a good

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concept. You never I'm going to
tell you two concepts right now that are

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the stupidest um concepts for movies.
You will never hear a stupider comment concept

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for a movie than uh than either
of these. Ready, um, I

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mean, let me let me,
let me uh before I say that,

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let me let me mention Blake Snyder
and save the cat. He argues that,

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um, if you're a writer and
you have a concept, you should

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run that concept past some some other
people. He actually says you should stop

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people in the street, and especially
young people, and telling hey, can

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I talk to you for a minute. I'm a writer and I have a

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notion for a i'd you know,
for a screenplay of a concept, and

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I'm wondering I'd love to, you
know, talk you through it for a

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minute or two and see what you
think of it, whether you think I'm

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like you know, it'll be a
mistake to move forward or resist the worthy.

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And imagine you were walking down the
street and somebody comes up to you

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and wants to run a concept past
you, and you and you're generous enough,

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maybe most people probably would say,
well, oh all right, all

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right, you know, let's do
it. Because and you did that,

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and the guy gave you the following
concept to you ready, I'm ready.

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Um. A man stutters, but
he has to give a speech, so

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he hires a speech therapist and they
work on the speech, and then he

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gives the speech. What if somebody's
what if you said to like, well,

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I gotta tell you honestly, you
know, you seem like a really

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good guy. And but you know
that sounds just oh let's I mean,

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who could possibly care about way you
just described what if events? Said?

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He will, all, well,
you know, thanks, just the same.

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But respectfully, let me tell you
that I happen to think this this.

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When it's all done, it's going
to win the screenplay, you know,

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best screenplay, Oscar and best movie. You'd figure crank up the lithium

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on this guy's trip. It's madness, you know. And yet I don't

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have to tell you what movie that
is, I'm sure. Or how about

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this? Somebody comes up and says, I want to do I have an

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idea for a cable series. I
think it's going to be sixty two hours.

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It's going to run for you five
seasons or six seasons, going to

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be sixty two hours of programming.
And here's the idea, A here's the

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concept. A high school chemistry teacher
gets a cancer diagnosis, and he say

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he decides, in order to provide
for his family, to partner with a

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former incorrigible student and go into the
meth trade to manufacture and cell methodphetamine.

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One of these, well, I
had a day and that's that's certinly much

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of a concept that would one of
these all. I think it's going to

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turn into sixty two hours of unparalleled
genius. I don't mind telling you I

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am one of those people who regards
Breaking Bad as one of the greatest achievements

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in the history of civilization. In
fact, last Saturday I was at Just

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a week ago today, I was
at pitch Fest in Burbank, big screenwriting

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festival have every year, and I've
actually met Toms Now's and Peter Gould,

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who are the forces behind Better called
Saul, which of course grew out of

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Breaking Bad, and I just trembled
to meet them. You know, I

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have to shake the hand that wrote
those all of those uh beautiful Breaking Bad

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episodes. They were prominent writers,
producers and occasionally I think directed some of

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the Breaking Bad episodes. So it's
not about ideas, it's not about concepts.

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It's about story. The story is
all. It's about stories everything,

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and that's what we preach at UCLA. And you know, if the proof

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is into tasting, we've we've you
know, there's a lot of evidence that

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we're we're not wrong about that.
Yeah, I you know, I saw

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some of the accomplishments you know,
uh they some of your students have done,

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uh, and that that is just
phenomenal. And you know that's why,

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you know, you're the guy that
I wanted to talk to. You

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were, you know, when I
was in the early stage of this podcast,

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you were one of the of the
people that I actually marked down to

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talk to. And I'm so happy
that we actually got to talk. Now.

359
00:27:34.160 --> 00:27:37.599
Uh, well, you go too, and I'm flattered by what you're

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saying. I thank you kindly.
Oh, completely my pleasure. And you

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know, just you know, to
to to continue talking about your class.

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You know you mentioned before an outline. So do you have your students actually

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you know, sort of uh flesh
flush out their stories through an outline?

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And how and if so, how
detailed do they have to deal with that

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00:27:56.079 --> 00:27:59.119
outline? Well, the first answer
is yes, I do have them do

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an outline, but I also tell
them to throw away the outline once I

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get started writing. It's not terribly
detailed. When we have our each quarter,

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we have three ten week quarters at
UCLA, where most institutions have two

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semesters, you know, fifteen week
semesters, and at the beginning I work

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each quarter. I've taught the course
now over one hundred times with students,

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eight students around the table writing a
feature length screenplay, and each one has

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to we meet once a week for
three hours, the whole group of Oh.

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I do meet with them multiple times
during the quarter, independently, individually,

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you know, tutorially, one on
one where we review the pages together.

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You know, I read their pages. Having read the pages, I

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meet and give them my notes I
have. Everybody has to bring the second

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week of that class. They have
to bring in a maximum two page kind

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of a beat sheet, sort of
a scene list. It's not really an

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00:29:00.920 --> 00:29:07.960
outline, but it's a sort of
a document that helps the writer have a

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general direction that the script is going. But then I tell everybody to stay

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open to the surprises. The last
thing you want to do is drag something

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00:29:18.000 --> 00:29:23.720
back to, you know, an
earlier notion that you had if it's working

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better in a new fashion. You
know, I never knew a writer who

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00:29:29.000 --> 00:29:34.519
wasn't surprised by lines of dialogue that
our characters spoke. You don't seem to

385
00:29:34.519 --> 00:29:37.720
invent by themselves, you know,
by twists and turns, in the story

386
00:29:40.519 --> 00:29:42.759
that they didn't they weren't even aware
of even though they are creating the whole

387
00:29:42.799 --> 00:29:49.799
thing. There is a kind of
a magic to it. I had Neil

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00:29:49.880 --> 00:29:56.519
Simon come to class to talk about
comedy. We'll be right back after a

389
00:29:56.519 --> 00:30:06.359
word from our sponsor, and now
back to the show. Imagine being in

390
00:30:06.440 --> 00:30:11.839
a writing class and having you know, Neil Simon comedy. It's like being

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00:30:11.839 --> 00:30:15.119
in seminary and you know, it
was announcing at two o'clock in room nine,

392
00:30:15.440 --> 00:30:19.680
the Lord will be doing a Q
and A, you know. And

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00:30:19.799 --> 00:30:25.880
I asked mister Simon, I said, do you laugh at your own jokes?

394
00:30:26.039 --> 00:30:29.079
And he said, sure, I
do the first time I hear them.

395
00:30:30.240 --> 00:30:32.960
And I think that's a great line. It's as if his jokes are

396
00:30:33.079 --> 00:30:34.680
not made up by him, but
but told to him by the characters that

397
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he creates. I don't know any
writer who hasn't had that experience. So

398
00:30:40.720 --> 00:30:42.400
yes, I do think you have
to have an outline, but I think

399
00:30:42.440 --> 00:30:48.039
you have to then sort of throw
away the outline and expect the script to

400
00:30:48.160 --> 00:30:52.000
unfold in a way that will surprise
not only people who read it but the

401
00:30:52.000 --> 00:30:56.960
person who wrote it. Yeah,
you know, very true and there was

402
00:30:56.960 --> 00:30:59.119
a book and I can't remember the
name it off top of my head.

403
00:30:59.240 --> 00:31:02.880
I think it may be the Artists
Way. But the author of that book

404
00:31:03.200 --> 00:31:07.920
Julia Cameron, Yes, I yes. And one of the methods that she

405
00:31:07.079 --> 00:31:11.440
describes in that book was basically,
you know, just sort of starting and

406
00:31:11.559 --> 00:31:15.559
just going and don't worry about,
you know, having a plan, you

407
00:31:15.599 --> 00:31:18.880
know, meaning like you know what
a detailed outline means. Well, there's

408
00:31:18.920 --> 00:31:22.599
something there's something to be said for
that. El doctor Rao, who's not

409
00:31:22.640 --> 00:31:27.079
a screenwriter to my knowledge, but
a very very successful novelist who's some substantial

410
00:31:27.160 --> 00:31:30.279
number of his novels have been made
into movies. He's probably best known for

411
00:31:30.359 --> 00:31:37.799
Ragtime. Um. He says driving
he compares writing to driving at night.

412
00:31:40.039 --> 00:31:44.920
You can only see as far as
the headlights reveal. But that's long enough,

413
00:31:45.279 --> 00:31:49.759
that's far enough to drive, you
know, the whole journey. He

414
00:31:49.799 --> 00:31:56.680
also describes Ragtime. How he came
up with Ragtime, which is that he

415
00:31:56.759 --> 00:31:59.720
was in his He lived in New
Rochelle. I think he still does New

416
00:31:59.759 --> 00:32:01.799
roche which is in Westchester County.
It's a suburb of New York City,

417
00:32:04.400 --> 00:32:09.599
and he lives in a home kind
of a early twenty century home, and

418
00:32:13.279 --> 00:32:15.319
he was just stuck. He was
in his writing room and he just didn't

419
00:32:15.359 --> 00:32:19.599
know what to write about. And
he was in deep, deep dark depression

420
00:32:19.680 --> 00:32:27.119
and despair the way writers get.
And he finally just wandered around his study

421
00:32:27.480 --> 00:32:30.200
and could think of nothing to write
about. Say, he put his head

422
00:32:30.200 --> 00:32:34.680
against the wall. He started to
like bang his head literally bang his head

423
00:32:35.200 --> 00:32:37.640
against the wall, and finally he
decided, well, the hell of it,

424
00:32:37.640 --> 00:32:40.640
He's just going to write about the
wall. And he thought about the

425
00:32:40.680 --> 00:32:45.000
wall that he was, you know, pushing his forehead up against, and

426
00:32:45.160 --> 00:32:47.920
when it went up, and when
the house was built, and that happened

427
00:32:47.960 --> 00:32:51.039
to be around, you know,
in the period that Ragtime is built,

428
00:32:51.039 --> 00:32:52.119
and what was going on in New
Rochelle at that time, and there was

429
00:32:52.160 --> 00:32:58.279
a parade and this one fraternal order
of something or other. And suddenly,

430
00:32:58.319 --> 00:33:00.039
out of out of banging his head
against the wall and writing about the wall,

431
00:33:00.079 --> 00:33:06.400
comes Ragtime, which is a gigantic
number one you New York Times bestseller,

432
00:33:07.119 --> 00:33:10.799
uh and a sensationally successful film directed
by Millish Foreman. Uh. And

433
00:33:10.880 --> 00:33:14.160
all of this came about by,
you know, banging his head against the

434
00:33:14.160 --> 00:33:20.960
wall. Um so so uh.
Again, the you you were asking about

435
00:33:20.960 --> 00:33:22.519
oh, yes, about getting started. There's a writer. Do you know

436
00:33:22.559 --> 00:33:27.599
the name Anne LaMotte, Yeah,
an Annie Lamotch. He's best known.

437
00:33:27.720 --> 00:33:30.799
She's a wonderful novelist, but she's
probably best known for the books she's written

438
00:33:30.799 --> 00:33:37.880
about writing. The best known is
called Bird by Bird and she Annie preaches

439
00:33:37.920 --> 00:33:45.079
that every writer should allow themselves what
she calls a shitty first draft. You

440
00:33:45.240 --> 00:33:49.720
got to get it down on the
page and stop, you know, being

441
00:33:49.720 --> 00:33:54.319
disappointed that it's not genius yet.
Um. There's another book I think is

442
00:33:54.440 --> 00:34:00.839
very interesting. It wasn't written about
writing the about the thirty years ago there

443
00:34:00.960 --> 00:34:07.199
was a best seller by a writer
named Mark McCormick. Mark McCormick actually was

444
00:34:07.239 --> 00:34:14.199
a sports He invented modern day sports
management. He really started in golf and

445
00:34:14.280 --> 00:34:20.519
he's the guy who got multimillion dollar
contracts for ball players and really went along

446
00:34:20.559 --> 00:34:23.880
way towards getting rights for ball players
at they you know, used to not

447
00:34:24.000 --> 00:34:28.920
have. I remember, almost a
half a century ago, I was working

448
00:34:28.920 --> 00:34:31.480
on a Jerry Lewis picture. I
was the dialogue director on a Jerry Lewis

449
00:34:31.519 --> 00:34:36.440
picture of Warner Brothers, and on
the Jerry liked to slum with ball players,

450
00:34:36.440 --> 00:34:37.960
and so he had the star of
the Dodgers at that time, Willie

451
00:34:38.000 --> 00:34:44.480
Davis, on the movie. And
Willie was a hold out that winter.

452
00:34:45.159 --> 00:34:49.320
You know, it was pre free
agency. I don't know what he could

453
00:34:49.320 --> 00:34:52.280
do is refuse to play. So
he had held out for his contraent farmany.

454
00:34:52.599 --> 00:34:55.159
Driving over the studio one day we
was shooting in December. In January,

455
00:34:55.400 --> 00:34:59.840
you know, offseason for baseball,
I heard on the radio that Willie

456
00:34:59.840 --> 00:35:01.360
had signed his contract. Who I
asked him? When I got to the

457
00:35:01.360 --> 00:35:04.360
studio, I had no right to
ask whom I asked him? How much?

458
00:35:05.239 --> 00:35:08.440
What do you think he got for
the nineteen seventy season. He was

459
00:35:08.440 --> 00:35:13.719
twenty nine years old, he had
hit almost four hundred the previous season.

460
00:35:14.320 --> 00:35:15.800
He was in his prime. He's
one of the best players in baseball.

461
00:35:15.880 --> 00:35:21.800
What do you think was his salary
for the nineteen seventy season? Take a

462
00:35:21.840 --> 00:35:27.280
guess. I'm going to take a
guess at thirty thousand for the year.

463
00:35:27.719 --> 00:35:30.119
That's a really good guess. It
was not as bad as that. It

464
00:35:30.159 --> 00:35:34.199
was actually fifty thousand. People who
guess, oh, you know, quarter

465
00:35:34.199 --> 00:35:36.639
of a million, a half a
million, you know, million dollars and

466
00:35:36.719 --> 00:35:38.760
so on. Why don't I mention
this I had to do with Oh yeah,

467
00:35:38.760 --> 00:35:43.519
Mark McCormick writing about sports management.
He wrote a book called He went

468
00:35:43.519 --> 00:35:47.039
to the Harvard Business School and he
wrote a book called What they Don't teach

469
00:35:47.079 --> 00:35:51.559
You in the Harvard Business School.
And I was kind of a street savvy,

470
00:35:51.559 --> 00:35:58.079
you know, wisdom for MBA's and
CEOs you know, and CFOs and

471
00:35:58.119 --> 00:36:04.360
CEOs and see and whatever, um, you know, major executives. And

472
00:36:04.480 --> 00:36:09.199
we were saying, one of his
rules is, um, it's quite wonderful,

473
00:36:09.440 --> 00:36:14.679
uh, I believe, and it
works very well for people in the

474
00:36:14.800 --> 00:36:19.320
arts and including writers. And here
it is, don't let excellence stand in

475
00:36:19.320 --> 00:36:23.320
the way of good. You got
something that sort of works, go with

476
00:36:23.400 --> 00:36:27.599
it, you know, at least
for the time being, and then you'll

477
00:36:27.599 --> 00:36:32.239
come back and rewrite UM. But
I think that's what slows people down sometimes

478
00:36:32.320 --> 00:36:37.559
they and stops them cold, you
know, is it's not excellent every inch

479
00:36:37.599 --> 00:36:42.719
of the way as they go,
it's merely good. And I'm saying,

480
00:36:43.039 --> 00:36:47.760
if you can be merely good,
give thanks to God and move on.

481
00:36:50.519 --> 00:36:53.159
You know, you mentioned bird by
Bird that it's funny you mentioned that because

482
00:36:53.239 --> 00:36:57.920
I was actually talking to people about
you know, books on writing and you

483
00:36:58.119 --> 00:37:00.079
and I and you know, usually
the book we just talked about writing as

484
00:37:00.119 --> 00:37:02.639
a whole. The number one book
I always hear about is Stephen King's on

485
00:37:02.760 --> 00:37:07.000
writing. That is my favorite book
by Stephen. It's a brilliant book.

486
00:37:07.599 --> 00:37:10.840
And by the way, you'll recall
what he has to say about ideas.

487
00:37:10.880 --> 00:37:17.079
He launched his whole career with Carrie. That was his big success, his

488
00:37:17.239 --> 00:37:22.320
breakthrough. And by the way,
you may remember from the book that he'd

489
00:37:22.360 --> 00:37:25.679
gotten some distance into it and then
he'd despaired of it, and he threw

490
00:37:25.679 --> 00:37:30.920
it away and Tabitha, his wife, Tabitha King, found it in the

491
00:37:30.960 --> 00:37:35.960
garbage and took it out and read
it, said what's this? And she

492
00:37:36.000 --> 00:37:37.000
said, what's this? I found
on the bub and she said, ah,

493
00:37:37.000 --> 00:37:38.880
it's just now we're gonna have them
in the band name. She said,

494
00:37:38.880 --> 00:37:42.960
what do you mean? It's great, you should keeping. That's how

495
00:37:43.000 --> 00:37:49.760
Carrie came about. But do you
remember how it started. Stephen was living

496
00:37:49.760 --> 00:37:52.880
in Maine, where he still lives, and he was a high school teacher,

497
00:37:52.920 --> 00:37:57.639
and he always wondered what he knew
what the boys room and the boys

498
00:37:57.719 --> 00:38:02.800
lockers looked like. But he was
what the girls bathrooms and the girls lockers

499
00:38:02.840 --> 00:38:08.960
looked like so one day when the
uh after school hours, when when school

500
00:38:09.039 --> 00:38:13.559
was closed, but some of the
teachers were still there and the lockers in

501
00:38:13.599 --> 00:38:17.400
the bathrooms were deserted, he went
into the women's you know, the girls

502
00:38:17.480 --> 00:38:22.679
bathroom and the girls lockers, and
he discovered, guess what, that just

503
00:38:22.800 --> 00:38:25.920
exactly like the boys lockers, except
for two differences. One is that in

504
00:38:25.960 --> 00:38:31.880
the showers, the boys lockers had
um gang showers, you know, just

505
00:38:31.920 --> 00:38:36.960
a great big room with novels,
you know, on the wall, and

506
00:38:37.039 --> 00:38:40.199
the girls had curtains. They had, you know, modesty curtains. They

507
00:38:40.239 --> 00:38:46.880
were they were tracks on the on
the ceiling of the shower room and that

508
00:38:47.000 --> 00:38:52.039
provided for curtains so that they had, you know, a more modest experience

509
00:38:52.079 --> 00:38:59.239
when they showered. The other difference
was that in the girls um locker rooms

510
00:38:59.239 --> 00:39:02.199
and bathrooms there were these little vending
machines, if you know what I mean.

511
00:39:04.159 --> 00:39:09.880
And look at Carrie. It's all
about this girl who comes into menstruation

512
00:39:09.920 --> 00:39:15.719
and doesn't know what it is,
is mocked and ridiculed by the other girls

513
00:39:15.760 --> 00:39:17.960
who see her in the shower,
and they can see blood running under the

514
00:39:19.000 --> 00:39:20.760
curtain. If you still have a
movie for you remembered, or if you

515
00:39:20.840 --> 00:39:23.840
read the book, just looking in
the locker room leads to a thing which

516
00:39:23.840 --> 00:39:30.760
he sold back then, forty years
ago for four hundred thousand dollars, adjusted

517
00:39:30.760 --> 00:39:35.039
for inflation, would be about three
million dollars today. And it all came

518
00:39:35.079 --> 00:39:42.679
about from curtains and tampons. Amazing, amazing. Yeah, I remember the

519
00:39:42.679 --> 00:39:45.280
opening to that movie, and it
did heavily involve that. And you know,

520
00:39:45.519 --> 00:39:50.320
and you know, even the remake, which I remember pieces of I

521
00:39:50.320 --> 00:39:53.039
don't remember as much as the original, but you know that had I think

522
00:39:53.079 --> 00:40:00.320
that's a similar a similar beginning.
We'll be right back after a w from

523
00:40:00.320 --> 00:40:07.360
our sponsor, and now back to
the show, so open. Yeah,

524
00:40:07.360 --> 00:40:10.360
well, I don't see the remake, but I remember says he's basic in

525
00:40:10.400 --> 00:40:14.360
the beginning. She's in a very
being of the hour. She's you know

526
00:40:14.400 --> 00:40:19.079
the movie. She's in the shower
at school, and there are other girls

527
00:40:19.119 --> 00:40:22.599
in the showers, and suddenly blood
is running, and she clearly does not

528
00:40:22.400 --> 00:40:27.000
know what this is about. He's
never been taught by her parents or anybody

529
00:40:27.000 --> 00:40:30.559
else about menstruation, and she thinks
there's something horribly wrong with her that you

530
00:40:30.559 --> 00:40:36.000
know she's evil and and and then
the other girls see the blood and they

531
00:40:36.079 --> 00:40:39.480
see that she's upset about it,
and you know, there's this terrible bullying

532
00:40:39.719 --> 00:40:46.920
uh attitude that emerges among adolescents,
men and women, and they start to

533
00:40:46.960 --> 00:40:51.280
attack her. And so I mean, that's what drives the whole movie in

534
00:40:51.360 --> 00:40:54.320
this movie about revenge, isn't it? And she ultimately, you know,

535
00:40:54.360 --> 00:41:00.679
avenges them at the end of the
movie. But it all derives from that

536
00:41:00.960 --> 00:41:05.599
very very simple premise. And if
you describe that to somebody superficially, they

537
00:41:05.599 --> 00:41:07.920
would think it's pretty hopeless. So
again, I think that one of the

538
00:41:07.960 --> 00:41:15.239
biggest mistakes that writers make is to
assign too much value, too much credit

539
00:41:15.440 --> 00:41:21.199
to the idea. I like to
tell writers when you have a great idea,

540
00:41:21.239 --> 00:41:24.039
if you have a really great idea
for a movie, that's all you

541
00:41:24.199 --> 00:41:31.320
got. I mean, what remains
after that? You know, the incidents,

542
00:41:31.320 --> 00:41:36.599
the anecdotes, the events, the
characters, the dialogues that describe I

543
00:41:36.639 --> 00:41:40.760
mean, everything remains after that,
The idea is really rather useless. What

544
00:41:42.239 --> 00:41:45.840
has value is the story. And
think about it. You can tell the

545
00:41:45.920 --> 00:41:50.360
idea for a movie in a you
know, a minute is about forty seconds

546
00:41:50.400 --> 00:41:53.199
more than you need to tell an
idea, But to tell the story it

547
00:41:53.199 --> 00:41:57.000
takes you, you know, as
long as the movie. For example,

548
00:41:57.000 --> 00:41:59.079
I was talking. I was saying
to somebody the other day what I had

549
00:41:59.119 --> 00:42:00.960
just said to you a little while
ago about talking about the King's speech.

550
00:42:01.679 --> 00:42:07.079
I was describing, as I did
to you, man man stutters, he

551
00:42:07.119 --> 00:42:09.840
has to give a speech. He
how's a speech therapist and gives a speech.

552
00:42:10.639 --> 00:42:14.800
So somebody said, yeah, well
you left out that the man who

553
00:42:14.880 --> 00:42:19.360
stutters is the King of England.
And then it's the nineteen thirties and war

554
00:42:19.440 --> 00:42:22.639
clouds are gathering in, you know, on the continent, and that he's

555
00:42:22.639 --> 00:42:28.800
having a romance with Wallace Simpson,
a you know, an American commoner,

556
00:42:29.280 --> 00:42:34.039
and so on and so well,
that's the story. That isn't that the

557
00:42:34.119 --> 00:42:37.760
story. That's not the idea any
longer. It's the story, and that's

558
00:42:37.760 --> 00:42:42.480
where the value is. Yeah,
you know, somebody once told me that,

559
00:42:42.679 --> 00:42:45.280
uh, you know, ideas are
diame a dozen, but at that

560
00:42:45.519 --> 00:42:50.199
at that point, you're over paying
for the idea. It's yeah, well

561
00:42:50.239 --> 00:42:52.679
I'll tell you something. I have
a sideline I have, you know,

562
00:42:53.079 --> 00:42:58.119
I am. If you ask me
what I do, I would say I'm

563
00:42:58.159 --> 00:43:00.960
a writer, if I you know, if I were in the yellow time

564
00:43:00.039 --> 00:43:05.159
to respond, you know. But
the truth is, I also am an

565
00:43:05.320 --> 00:43:08.960
educator, pretty well known educator.
But that's not the end of it,

566
00:43:09.039 --> 00:43:13.679
that's just the beginning. But I'm
also a consultant, and I consult in

567
00:43:13.920 --> 00:43:17.840
um. You know, I'm a
public speaker and I'm a media commentator.

568
00:43:19.039 --> 00:43:24.239
I do a lot of appearances on
talk shows, television, radio, and

569
00:43:25.239 --> 00:43:30.119
as a consultant, I do two
kinds of consulting. One is I've already

570
00:43:30.119 --> 00:43:32.320
told you about where I work with
writers. I consult with writers as a

571
00:43:32.360 --> 00:43:39.000
script doctor. I give them support
in working out there their scripts. And

572
00:43:39.440 --> 00:43:45.320
the other kind of consulting that I
do is in the court. I am

573
00:43:45.400 --> 00:43:51.000
a court authorized expert in intellectual property
law, particularly copyright of fringement, in

574
00:43:51.039 --> 00:43:55.960
plagiarism, who wrote the movie?
And I have testified. I've been an

575
00:43:55.960 --> 00:44:02.480
expert witness in oh between thirty and
forty court cases over the years where there's

576
00:44:02.519 --> 00:44:06.840
litigation over you know, who wrote
the movie. Somebody thinks the movie was

577
00:44:06.840 --> 00:44:12.039
stolen from them, And over the
years I've on occasion been retained as a

578
00:44:12.079 --> 00:44:15.679
witness by plaintiffs but also by defendants. I was a witness, for example,

579
00:44:15.679 --> 00:44:23.039
in the very legendary case at Paramount
involving Art Buckwald, the famous humorist,

580
00:44:23.760 --> 00:44:29.559
and the Paramount the producer of the
movie Coming to America and Edy movie

581
00:44:29.679 --> 00:44:37.079
Eddie Murphy movie and Edny movie Murphy, where buck Walt suit claiming they'd stolen

582
00:44:37.159 --> 00:44:40.119
it from him and so on.
I testified that the you know, they

583
00:44:40.119 --> 00:44:45.119
didn't steal it from him, that
it was a different movie. But I

584
00:44:45.159 --> 00:44:52.760
only mentioned it because it is the
miss appropriation of value regarding ideas that has,

585
00:44:52.800 --> 00:44:54.840
if I could put it this way, put off a danch on my

586
00:44:54.920 --> 00:45:02.960
children's teeth and paid for their fancy
yess nose bleed costly private school education.

587
00:45:05.079 --> 00:45:07.920
My wife and I looked, my
kids have grown up now, God blessing.

588
00:45:07.000 --> 00:45:10.119
But we used to joke that we
saved up enough money to send the

589
00:45:10.239 --> 00:45:14.119
kids to college, but we spent
it all in high school. You know.

590
00:45:14.920 --> 00:45:17.960
Um. And what I mean by
all of that is people attach too

591
00:45:19.039 --> 00:45:24.400
much value to the idea They had
an idea for a movie, They see

592
00:45:24.440 --> 00:45:28.679
another movie that has a similar idea, and they think it must have been

593
00:45:28.679 --> 00:45:36.159
stolen from them, when they don't
get that it's just an idea. Ideas

594
00:45:36.159 --> 00:45:39.679
are unprotectable. It's the expression of
the idea over the length and breadth of

595
00:45:39.760 --> 00:45:44.119
a narrative, where the where the
value is. You know, you have

596
00:45:44.159 --> 00:45:52.760
to show what the courts call substantial
and ideally strikingly similar um examples from one

597
00:45:52.760 --> 00:45:54.840
to the other, you know,
not just that the boy and a girl

598
00:45:54.880 --> 00:45:58.239
fall in love, they break up, and then they get back together again.

599
00:45:58.719 --> 00:46:00.760
You know. So this the understanding
of ideas, has put a lot

600
00:46:00.760 --> 00:46:05.199
of money in my pocket. You
know. It's it's you know, funny

601
00:46:05.199 --> 00:46:09.639
you mentioned that because about May,
two summers ago, I actually met a

602
00:46:09.679 --> 00:46:16.000
professor who teaches at Yale and he
actually also does you know, uh does

603
00:46:16.039 --> 00:46:20.920
copyright and things like that. And
he was actually involved in the Avatar case

604
00:46:21.320 --> 00:46:24.199
because some some writers came and said
James Cameron stole their idea for Avatar,

605
00:46:24.599 --> 00:46:27.679
and they wanted to you know,
they wanted a you know, a couple

606
00:46:27.679 --> 00:46:30.039
of millions actually you know, one
of a couple of million dollars. But

607
00:46:30.519 --> 00:46:34.159
uh, and he was involved in
that whole litigation. Interesting, I don't

608
00:46:34.199 --> 00:46:38.320
mind bragging that. It's a student
of ours. And named Leita kinda gritas

609
00:46:39.599 --> 00:46:46.320
very successful writer. She wrote much
of Avatar, Jim gives her credit not

610
00:46:46.400 --> 00:46:51.559
as writer, but she does have
a producer credit and it's her own card.

611
00:46:51.679 --> 00:46:55.760
Her name stands all alone on the
screen. But the fact of the

612
00:46:55.800 --> 00:46:59.280
matter is she really wrote a lot
of that movie. She's not suing a

613
00:46:59.360 --> 00:47:02.440
complaining, you understand. She idolizes
Jim Cameron, and I think he's I

614
00:47:02.480 --> 00:47:06.239
know him too. He's been very
good to us and our students in our

615
00:47:06.280 --> 00:47:13.239
program um and uh, you know, Leda was paid millions of millions of

616
00:47:13.320 --> 00:47:17.320
dollars for her work on Avatar,
and she's she's not not complaining. But

617
00:47:17.440 --> 00:47:22.559
yeah, I believe that any any
big movie. You know, a lot

618
00:47:22.599 --> 00:47:28.159
of people know about the the buck
Wald case. It was covered, you

619
00:47:28.199 --> 00:47:31.079
know, the Coming to America case
that I mentioned earlier. It was covered

620
00:47:31.119 --> 00:47:36.719
Gavel to Gavel. It was held
live Gavel to Gavel on the trial on

621
00:47:36.719 --> 00:47:42.320
on CNN. I remember, And
a lot of people don't know that that

622
00:47:42.440 --> 00:47:46.840
particular litigation was one among seven or
eight cases where people had claimed, you

623
00:47:46.880 --> 00:47:51.639
know, other people had claimed they'd
written the movie, you know, independently.

624
00:47:52.320 --> 00:48:00.400
There's an expression that every hum success
has many parents, but there is

625
00:48:00.400 --> 00:48:04.159
an orphan. In other words,
if a movie makes no money. Nobody

626
00:48:04.199 --> 00:48:06.119
hears about it, no one will
sue. But if you have a great,

627
00:48:06.119 --> 00:48:08.880
big hit like Avatar, there's going
to be bunches of lawsuits. I

628
00:48:08.920 --> 00:48:15.079
know that my old classmate, George
Lucas from USC film school, we were

629
00:48:15.079 --> 00:48:17.920
film school students together all those years
ago. Um, you know, there

630
00:48:17.920 --> 00:48:22.639
have been multiple suits. Star Wars
was sold from him, you know,

631
00:48:22.679 --> 00:48:25.639
from them. I I remember that
he went up to Canada to um.

632
00:48:27.519 --> 00:48:30.880
It would have been easier for him
to just settle, which is what they

633
00:48:30.960 --> 00:48:35.239
usually do. But he's a very
funky, feisty guy, George, and

634
00:48:35.320 --> 00:48:37.800
nobody's going to say that. You
know, he's not going to going to

635
00:48:37.920 --> 00:48:43.360
consent to anybody. Uh, you
know, he's never going to agree that

636
00:48:43.400 --> 00:48:46.679
anything that he ever ripped anybody off. Um. And so he actually went

637
00:48:46.679 --> 00:48:53.719
to the trial and somebody had uh
claimed that he the plaintiff, had had

638
00:48:53.840 --> 00:48:59.400
invented the Wookie and George had stolen
that from him. You know. So

639
00:49:00.039 --> 00:49:01.519
you know it's like when my son
was little, if he couldn't find his

640
00:49:01.599 --> 00:49:05.119
baseball, maybe he'd say, who
stole my glove? You know, it

641
00:49:05.119 --> 00:49:07.440
couldn't be that he misplaced it,
you know. You know what I'm saying.

642
00:49:07.840 --> 00:49:10.719
So people always think that there's something
similar. It must have been stole

643
00:49:10.719 --> 00:49:16.119
one from from them. Uh.
Occasionally it happens, but it's most exceptional.

644
00:49:16.440 --> 00:49:19.800
And when you mistake the exception for
the rule, you fall on your

645
00:49:19.800 --> 00:49:23.360
face every time. Very true.
Uh, you know. And and the

646
00:49:23.360 --> 00:49:25.960
more I hear about, you know, cases like that, you know,

647
00:49:27.039 --> 00:49:29.519
Richard, And the more I hear
that it is either you know, a

648
00:49:30.079 --> 00:49:31.199
hey, you know what, two
people, you know, great minds think

649
00:49:31.199 --> 00:49:34.719
alike, as they say, so, you know, it is possible if

650
00:49:34.760 --> 00:49:37.800
you know two people that live in
you know, maybe the opposite ends of

651
00:49:37.800 --> 00:49:40.320
the earth came up with a similar
idea, you know, I mean,

652
00:49:42.199 --> 00:49:44.480
I mean, you know, you
and I could go to the video store.

653
00:49:44.519 --> 00:49:45.280
You know, well, if their
video stores are still around, you

654
00:49:45.280 --> 00:49:49.360
and I could go to Netflix and
we could see there are There's all there's

655
00:49:49.360 --> 00:49:53.519
a plenor of movies that maybe share
maybe the same scene, or maybe share

656
00:49:53.599 --> 00:49:57.639
like the same you know, plot
points, or maybe share the same you

657
00:49:57.679 --> 00:50:02.079
know, character character at your view
something. We'll be right back after a

658
00:50:02.119 --> 00:50:10.239
word from our sponsor, and now
back to the show. You know,

659
00:50:10.280 --> 00:50:15.719
it's similar on those lines again.
The only thing I totally I totally receive

660
00:50:16.079 --> 00:50:22.599
many movies of the same theme Jaws, I happen to know and now I'm

661
00:50:22.639 --> 00:50:27.400
blanket. Carl Botley who who wrote
Jaws. Um, of course he was

662
00:50:27.400 --> 00:50:34.079
adapting to Peter Benchley book. Um
was was telling me that the uh,

663
00:50:34.719 --> 00:50:38.360
you know, he had conversations with
Bentley. Um. Jaws is based on

664
00:50:39.400 --> 00:50:47.559
a play by the great Norwegian player
at Enrick Gibson Um. And the play

665
00:50:47.639 --> 00:50:51.159
is called an Enemy of the People. It's a very well known, you

666
00:50:51.199 --> 00:50:53.880
know, sort of a classic play. I guess it's a one hundred and

667
00:50:53.880 --> 00:51:00.360
fifty years old or something. Um. And it's said in a healthy sort

668
00:51:00.360 --> 00:51:06.039
health spa that's famous for its waters, that there are healing waters. People

669
00:51:06.039 --> 00:51:10.159
come from, you know, a
thousand miles you know, to have their

670
00:51:10.239 --> 00:51:16.639
their maladies healed in the waters,
the magical waters of this particular health spa.

671
00:51:17.639 --> 00:51:24.039
And the protagonist in the movie is
um doctor Stockman. He's the medical

672
00:51:24.079 --> 00:51:28.679
director of the baths. Now this
doesn't sound at all like Jaws, but

673
00:51:28.960 --> 00:51:31.239
consider this. At the beginning of
the movie, he discovers, the doctor

674
00:51:31.320 --> 00:51:37.079
does that the waters are actually polluted
and that they're making people ill. And

675
00:51:37.559 --> 00:51:43.639
this is a really important discovery when
he announces it, he thinks people will

676
00:51:43.679 --> 00:51:47.360
honor him because he's saving a lot
of people, a lot of illness and

677
00:51:47.400 --> 00:51:51.280
even death, you know, because
they'll they out of that bad water.

678
00:51:51.760 --> 00:51:54.400
And it will also get the resort
to do whatever needs to do, if

679
00:51:54.400 --> 00:51:59.000
it can be done to you know, repair that right. So that doesn't

680
00:51:59.000 --> 00:52:05.800
soundly like jos and yet it is
because the reaction of the health spat and

681
00:52:05.840 --> 00:52:09.280
the community around it that lives off
the income brought in from tourists coming into

682
00:52:10.440 --> 00:52:16.599
the guests at the spa, they
instead of honoring him, they they you

683
00:52:16.639 --> 00:52:20.639
know, degrade him. They deride
him, and they declare him an enemy

684
00:52:20.639 --> 00:52:25.079
of the people. And that's exactly
the deal with Richard dreyfus In as the

685
00:52:25.159 --> 00:52:30.880
sheriff in Jaws and John's if you
remember that day he realizes it's the start

686
00:52:30.920 --> 00:52:35.519
of the season, it's a beach
town, and suddenly there's a dangerous shock

687
00:52:36.840 --> 00:52:40.239
and if word gets out that there's
all of that danger and people aren't supposed

688
00:52:40.280 --> 00:52:44.079
to use the beach, well they're
not gonna do a beach vacation at least

689
00:52:44.119 --> 00:52:47.760
not there, you know. So
instead of honoring him for making this really

690
00:52:47.800 --> 00:52:53.480
important life saving discovery. They degrade
him, they humiliate him, they scorn

691
00:52:53.639 --> 00:52:58.719
him, they mock him, they
love him. And so the theme is

692
00:52:59.280 --> 00:53:04.280
history hates a truth teller, something
like that. And that's the same theme

693
00:53:04.440 --> 00:53:09.320
for Jaws and for the Enemy of
the People, even though they so,

694
00:53:09.360 --> 00:53:15.119
what's the difference between them. The
difference is the story totally different story,

695
00:53:15.199 --> 00:53:19.079
the setting, the dialogue, the
characters, everything is different, though they

696
00:53:19.119 --> 00:53:23.079
have the same theme. Quite quite
true. So you're going to see movies

697
00:53:23.079 --> 00:53:27.840
that have similar themes. But you
can't protect a theme. All you can

698
00:53:27.880 --> 00:53:30.840
protect as a story, and it
has to be substantive. This happens,

699
00:53:30.840 --> 00:53:36.519
that happens, this happens, that
happens, The same stuff happens in both.

700
00:53:36.559 --> 00:53:40.880
And then you're starting to get onto
a you know, an enterprise that

701
00:53:42.039 --> 00:53:52.480
is protectable. It's just a very, very crazy arena. The truth of

702
00:53:52.480 --> 00:53:58.360
the matter is studios, producers,
production companies, networks, cable companies,

703
00:53:58.400 --> 00:54:04.920
they have no elfish interest in stealing
material. They don't want to risk the

704
00:54:05.000 --> 00:54:08.199
tens of millions of dollars that it
takes to put together a series or a

705
00:54:08.639 --> 00:54:17.480
movie. Indeed, Avadar half a
billion dollars. Nobody's going to make that

706
00:54:17.559 --> 00:54:22.440
kind of an investment and try to
cut somebody out of one tenth of one

707
00:54:22.480 --> 00:54:24.559
percent of that, which would be
you know, hundreds and hundreds of thousands

708
00:54:24.559 --> 00:54:30.119
of dollars or even millions of dollars
for the script, and put the whole

709
00:54:30.199 --> 00:54:34.760
rest of the project into jeopardy just
trying to shave off a point or even

710
00:54:34.840 --> 00:54:37.840
two from the budget by stealing the
script. You follow what I'm saying,

711
00:54:38.119 --> 00:54:43.519
Oh, yeah, it just don't
you know, there's a not a lawyer,

712
00:54:43.960 --> 00:54:47.239
though I've spent a lot of time
around lawyers doing this kind of kind

713
00:54:47.239 --> 00:54:52.519
of working. There's a there's a
Latin phrase I forget what it is,

714
00:54:52.559 --> 00:54:57.440
or something like que bone. Oh
you know who benefits from this? If

715
00:54:57.079 --> 00:55:00.079
you look at a legal case and
you want to who's in, you know,

716
00:55:00.119 --> 00:55:04.960
you suddenly discover for somebody dies and
you suddenly discover that they had a

717
00:55:05.039 --> 00:55:08.920
huge insurance policy and it all goes
to this particular beneficiary. Well, that

718
00:55:08.960 --> 00:55:15.320
beneficiary had a substantial steak and a
great reward in this person dying. Maybe

719
00:55:15.880 --> 00:55:20.159
maybe she or he killed him,
right, Um, so, uh,

720
00:55:21.920 --> 00:55:28.239
movie companies have a steak in not
stealing material. Nobody benefits by that,

721
00:55:29.119 --> 00:55:32.480
and indeed they suffered greatly. So
I think it does happen, but I

722
00:55:32.840 --> 00:55:38.199
believe it's vastly, vastly exaggerated.
You know, you mentioned, you know,

723
00:55:38.400 --> 00:55:42.920
your classmate was George Lucas. Did
you have any other, you know,

724
00:55:43.519 --> 00:55:46.480
interesting stories or any other funny stories
about you and George? Well,

725
00:55:46.519 --> 00:55:51.039
you know, I am the uncredited
writer of the first two drafts of American

726
00:55:51.119 --> 00:55:55.159
Graffiti. Um, there's there's no
controversy about it. George doesn't tell it

727
00:55:55.199 --> 00:56:04.800
any differently. Um, there's nothing
unusual in Hollywood about a substantial number of

728
00:56:04.800 --> 00:56:08.400
writers being paid for their services on
a particular picture, not all of them

729
00:56:08.440 --> 00:56:15.119
getting credit. Credit as a a
judgment that is rendered by the writers Guild.

730
00:56:15.880 --> 00:56:19.880
So I, yeah, I worked. I knew George pretty well.

731
00:56:19.880 --> 00:56:23.519
We weren't very close friends in film
school, but we knew each other when

732
00:56:23.519 --> 00:56:27.159
we were at parties together, we
were in classes together. I was in

733
00:56:27.239 --> 00:56:30.199
awe of his achievements as a film
student, as we all are back then

734
00:56:30.239 --> 00:56:38.559
at USC. His legendary student film
THHX one eight four EB, which became

735
00:56:38.599 --> 00:56:44.639
a feature length film, ultimately not
as good as the shorter version, but

736
00:56:44.679 --> 00:56:46.679
it was his first movie. It
was done at Warner Brothers with Francis Ford

737
00:56:46.719 --> 00:56:55.840
Coppola producing. I was, you
know, in awe of his talent as

738
00:56:55.840 --> 00:57:00.519
a graphic artist as a filmmaker when
I was in school. When we worked

739
00:57:00.519 --> 00:57:07.119
together on Graffiti, I didn't really
work closely with him. He had he

740
00:57:07.159 --> 00:57:12.239
was out of the country, actually
had the long version of fex we called

741
00:57:12.239 --> 00:57:19.239
it sex THHXUM. He was bringing
that to Can the festival. I was

742
00:57:19.280 --> 00:57:22.079
traveling with his then wife Marcia.
They were backpacking around Europe and they were

743
00:57:22.079 --> 00:57:27.880
going to end up at can and
they needed a draft of Graffiti in a

744
00:57:28.000 --> 00:57:30.280
hurry, and I was asked to
write it in a couple of weeks,

745
00:57:31.039 --> 00:57:37.679
which I did on that first draft, and it did not He was not

746
00:57:37.320 --> 00:57:42.039
pleased with it. For he complimented
it for it and he has over the

747
00:57:42.159 --> 00:57:47.480
years complimented for its professionalism and all
of that. M but he was bothered

748
00:57:47.480 --> 00:57:51.400
by two aspects of it. One
was the sex in it. You know,

749
00:57:51.719 --> 00:57:55.000
I saw it as a tale of
um, you know, adolescence,

750
00:57:55.519 --> 00:57:59.320
kinding of age and all of that, and that's the time of sexual awakening.

751
00:57:59.360 --> 00:58:01.320
And you know, you look at
George's films that kind of like clinical

752
00:58:02.079 --> 00:58:06.840
uh surrand wrapped as far as sexuality
is concerned, the sort of isn't any

753
00:58:07.119 --> 00:58:14.199
you know, um the U and
I'm a sexual pervert, not really as

754
00:58:14.280 --> 00:58:16.599
kidding, but but I think that, you know, in my own I've

755
00:58:16.599 --> 00:58:22.480
written at length about adolescent My first
novel was a coming of age in New

756
00:58:22.559 --> 00:58:27.880
York City, and there's a lot
of you know, sexuality and its young

757
00:58:27.920 --> 00:58:31.360
people, um, flirting and and
and more. And George didn't like that.

758
00:58:31.400 --> 00:58:35.559
He's kind of uptight about those sorts
of things. And the other thing

759
00:58:35.559 --> 00:58:37.840
you didn't like was that it wasn't
close enough his own experience, you know,

760
00:58:37.920 --> 00:58:40.000
growing up in Modesto. Hey,
I'm you know, I'm a New

761
00:58:40.039 --> 00:58:44.000
York kid. I grew up in
the Queens and went to school with high

762
00:58:44.000 --> 00:58:45.480
school in Manhattan, you know,
and I didn't know anything about cars and

763
00:58:46.440 --> 00:58:51.480
stuff like that. Um. So
we never really worked together on and except

764
00:58:51.559 --> 00:58:54.679
after the first draft. There was
a two draft deal we did. We

765
00:58:54.719 --> 00:58:59.320
didn't meet at my house, and
then we met. I remember we had

766
00:58:59.320 --> 00:59:04.320
another meeting at a restaurant in Hollywood, and we spoke at length on the

767
00:59:04.360 --> 00:59:08.039
phone after the you know, during
the process of writing the second draft and

768
00:59:08.039 --> 00:59:12.679
and so on. I was well
paid for the work that I did,

769
00:59:12.679 --> 00:59:17.760
and I'm not complaining. Um,
you know again, the credit decision is

770
00:59:17.760 --> 00:59:25.679
something that is rendered by the writer's
guild and the so it's really their judgment,

771
00:59:25.719 --> 00:59:31.239
not the studio's judgment, not George's
judgment, and so on. He's

772
00:59:31.320 --> 00:59:37.400
a powerhouse. You know, he's
a kind of a rough, nerdy,

773
00:59:37.760 --> 00:59:42.239
scratchy voice little guy. But I
mean, he suggests the greatest genius I've

774
00:59:42.239 --> 00:59:46.559
ever known. I mean the impact
of that his work has had across I

775
00:59:46.559 --> 00:59:50.519
mean, who on the world,
you know, who around the world doesn't

776
00:59:50.519 --> 00:59:54.000
know some aspect of the of the
Star Wars franchise hasn't been touched by some

777
00:59:54.119 --> 00:59:57.480
aspect of it, right, I
mean, you know, don't you think

778
00:59:57.480 --> 01:00:00.000
it's realistic to suggest that billions of
people of heard of it? At least

779
01:00:01.440 --> 01:00:08.440
We'll be right back after a word
from our sponsor, and now back to

780
01:00:08.480 --> 01:00:15.440
the show. Who do you know
in all of human history who touched so

781
01:00:15.519 --> 01:00:19.880
many people, got into the consciousness
and the awareness of so many people all

782
01:00:19.920 --> 01:00:25.840
around across the globe in so little
time as George did. I also believe

783
01:00:25.880 --> 01:00:30.400
that the influence that he's had the
influence of Star Wars. I'm not really

784
01:00:30.400 --> 01:00:36.239
crazy about the movies John Neelius our
film school. Look alum, you know,

785
01:00:36.360 --> 01:00:44.800
a fellow alumnus, alumnus you know, calls them pap. I watch

786
01:00:44.880 --> 01:00:46.800
all of them. I've seen the
first one, which is I guess the

787
01:00:46.840 --> 01:00:50.840
fourth one by a certain measurement,
part of the second one, and so

788
01:00:50.960 --> 01:00:54.239
on. But the lesson that they
put out there, I think is a

789
01:00:54.400 --> 01:01:04.199
really really affirmative, healing, positive
message across the world, a very Judeo

790
01:01:04.320 --> 01:01:07.719
Christian message, which is that the
power of love is greater than the power

791
01:01:07.719 --> 01:01:13.159
of hate, the power of God
is stronger than the power of Satan,

792
01:01:13.239 --> 01:01:19.440
the power of construction is bigger than
the power of destruction. I mean,

793
01:01:19.480 --> 01:01:21.880
you know, you have a fairy
tale and said again again going back to

794
01:01:22.079 --> 01:01:24.199
the ideas we were talking before,
what's the idea behind Star Wars. I'll

795
01:01:24.199 --> 01:01:29.519
tell you what it is, and
you already know what it is. It's

796
01:01:30.239 --> 01:01:35.360
a fairy tale in space. The
bad guys abduct the princess, and you

797
01:01:35.400 --> 01:01:39.599
know, the good guys rescue her. That's Star Wars, isn't it.

798
01:01:39.800 --> 01:01:43.320
Yeah? You know? So what
makes Star Wars especial in the answer is

799
01:01:43.320 --> 01:01:49.440
the frame by frame, moment by
moment, seeing by seeing action in it

800
01:01:49.559 --> 01:01:54.519
and the dialogue that the characters speaking
and so on. So, you know,

801
01:01:54.559 --> 01:02:00.280
George is a very um uh,
you know, he's not a very

802
01:02:00.280 --> 01:02:02.559
available kind of a guy. I
don't think a lot of it. People

803
01:02:02.639 --> 01:02:12.280
would describe him as warm and cuddly. But when I worked with him,

804
01:02:13.519 --> 01:02:19.599
both on campus and off campus,
that was certainly a professional arrangement and agreement.

805
01:02:19.679 --> 01:02:22.840
And you know, whatever disagreements that
that we had were you know,

806
01:02:22.840 --> 01:02:30.679
we're experience were not unusual among artists
working on a movie together. Yeah,

807
01:02:31.159 --> 01:02:36.519
it's very understandable. And I was
actually his house guest. I remember my

808
01:02:36.519 --> 01:02:40.800
wife and I in the August of
nineteen sixty nine. He had already left

809
01:02:40.920 --> 01:02:46.840
LA he was living up in Marine
And I love to say that Mike class

810
01:02:46.840 --> 01:02:50.920
at USC we were the first to
move on. You know, when we

811
01:02:50.960 --> 01:02:52.960
came to film school, there was
no tradition of moving from film school into

812
01:02:53.000 --> 01:02:57.599
the professional community. In fact,
I have an article right and it's just

813
01:02:57.800 --> 01:03:02.239
come out like yesterday, the day
before, in the current issue, the

814
01:03:02.239 --> 01:03:07.079
most recent issue which has just come
out, excuse me, of written by

815
01:03:07.159 --> 01:03:13.719
which is the Writer's Guild monthly journal, and it's called Film School Haven or

816
01:03:13.760 --> 01:03:17.280
Hoax. And I'm arguing that you
know in it. I'm arguing, of

817
01:03:17.280 --> 01:03:21.239
of course I have a vested interest
in it, but I still believe it's

818
01:03:21.239 --> 01:03:25.440
observably, verifiably empirically true. The
film School's not a hoax, you know,

819
01:03:25.480 --> 01:03:30.760
but very very helpful in um in
getting you know, people into the

820
01:03:30.800 --> 01:03:38.239
movie business. I cite in the
article eleven eleven titles of movies written I'm

821
01:03:38.280 --> 01:03:44.480
sorry, directed or produced and or
produced by Steven Spielberg that were written by

822
01:03:44.760 --> 01:03:49.480
at least in part by UCLA trained
writers who have the on screen credits for

823
01:03:49.519 --> 01:03:53.000
those movies. Eleven of them Jurassic
Park one to three, Indiana Jones two

824
01:03:53.000 --> 01:04:01.519
and three. That's five right there, the terminal Munich, Lincoln, War

825
01:04:01.599 --> 01:04:08.440
of the World's Eagle Eye. Eagle
Eye was produced by Stephen Travis Wright was

826
01:04:08.480 --> 01:04:12.320
the writer our student a few years
ago when am I leaving out oh the

827
01:04:12.599 --> 01:04:18.159
TV series Amazing Stories, our students
in the last six or seven years of

828
01:04:18.280 --> 01:04:25.239
at five, just in the last
six or seven years, five Academy Award

829
01:04:25.920 --> 01:04:30.960
Best Screenplay nominations and have won three
Oscars for Best Screenplay in the last so

830
01:04:31.039 --> 01:04:36.960
script between now and then now being
today and then being the time now almost

831
01:04:38.000 --> 01:04:41.039
half century ago that I was going
to film school in classes with George Lucas.

832
01:04:41.519 --> 01:04:45.880
The big difference is that film school
has gone from being a dead end

833
01:04:45.920 --> 01:04:56.559
professionally to being the single most advantageous
way to enter the film industry. So

834
01:04:56.599 --> 01:05:00.239
I like to say that our class
at USC we were the first one to

835
01:05:00.239 --> 01:05:04.159
go on to own Hollywood, except
for George of Olsen Marine County. So

836
01:05:04.800 --> 01:05:09.719
in any event, my wife and
I in nineteen sixty nine, in August,

837
01:05:09.840 --> 01:05:13.840
we took a motor trip, just
a vacation, a holiday up the

838
01:05:13.840 --> 01:05:17.000
West coast, and we drove all
the way up ultimately to the Oregon border,

839
01:05:17.719 --> 01:05:25.320
the California Oregon border, the Umpquad
Dunes. There are some beautiful sand

840
01:05:25.440 --> 01:05:30.920
dunes along the northern California southern Oregon
coast, just EXCLUSI we camped along Barnson,

841
01:05:31.000 --> 01:05:33.800
But on the way we stopped at
San Francisco, and I remember I

842
01:05:33.840 --> 01:05:44.800
had we had brunch one Sunday morning
in Saucelito with some old film schools pals,

843
01:05:44.880 --> 01:05:48.920
including George and Marsha. Also John
Nellius, if you know that name,

844
01:05:48.920 --> 01:05:54.920
I referred to him earlier. John, you know, invented Schwarzenegger.

845
01:05:55.000 --> 01:05:58.440
You know he did Conan and bunches
of other movies. He wrote, John

846
01:05:58.519 --> 01:06:04.480
probably best known for his script of
Apocalypse. Apocalypse Now. So it was

847
01:06:04.760 --> 01:06:09.639
my wife and I and George and
Marshall Amelius. Also Caleb Deschanelle, who's

848
01:06:09.679 --> 01:06:15.119
probably famous now being the father of
very famous actress daughters. But the Caleb

849
01:06:15.239 --> 01:06:21.199
is of course himself a multi nominated
cinematography he's one of the most respected,

850
01:06:21.239 --> 01:06:28.639
the most successful cameraman in the history
of the industry. And there were some

851
01:06:28.800 --> 01:06:31.599
other people. There was Walter Murch
who's very famous. Walter actually won two

852
01:06:31.599 --> 01:06:39.199
Oscars for sound design and something else
in the same years Officer when he got

853
01:06:39.199 --> 01:06:43.159
to come up twice to the stage
to pick up his oscars, he was

854
01:06:43.199 --> 01:06:46.880
there with his wife, Aggie,
a British woman. And then was also

855
01:06:47.000 --> 01:06:51.280
Caleb, as I mentioned in a
producer now a well known producer, David

856
01:06:53.360 --> 01:06:58.440
Lester, who producer all Around Shelton's
film you know, Bull Durham, and

857
01:06:59.440 --> 01:07:04.679
on and on and on. And
I remember Marcia invited us to to be

858
01:07:04.800 --> 01:07:09.960
there their house guests, and we
said, well, we're we're moving on

859
01:07:10.039 --> 01:07:12.599
up the coast tonight, you know, I mean, right after this meal,

860
01:07:12.639 --> 01:07:15.960
we're driving north. She said but
on the way down, if you

861
01:07:15.000 --> 01:07:17.280
want to stay with us, feel
free. So we did. We were

862
01:07:17.280 --> 01:07:25.000
actual the house guests overnight when he
was living in Mill Valley in um Marin.

863
01:07:25.039 --> 01:07:29.320
It was before his gigantic success with
Live Graffiti. Graffiti wouldn't come out

864
01:07:29.400 --> 01:07:32.480
yet for about three years. I
think it was in seventy two seventy one

865
01:07:32.559 --> 01:07:38.480
or seventy two seventy three. It
came out. It was released in seventy

866
01:07:38.480 --> 01:07:43.199
three. Um, so we were
all, you know, film school pals.

867
01:07:43.199 --> 01:07:45.679
When I look back, you know, at the time, we weren't

868
01:07:45.719 --> 01:07:49.159
really aware of it. You got
to look back to see it to talk

869
01:07:49.159 --> 01:07:51.320
about right place, right time.
You know, I had come out.

870
01:07:51.360 --> 01:07:58.719
I thought to California for three weeks
from New York and at the last moment

871
01:07:58.800 --> 01:08:02.880
I just fell into film school that
I see kind of a whim and you

872
01:08:02.920 --> 01:08:05.960
know, somebody turned around. It
was ten years later, you know,

873
01:08:08.199 --> 01:08:15.440
I had never really planned to settle
in California, much less to become a

874
01:08:15.480 --> 01:08:19.079
screenwriter, A much much much less
to be a a your professor, you

875
01:08:19.159 --> 01:08:25.560
know, and legal expert and so
on. If there's a great example of

876
01:08:25.600 --> 01:08:29.399
staying open to the surprises in a
life narrative, I think you know.

877
01:08:29.399 --> 01:08:31.479
I'm always song writers, in your
dramatic narrative, in your life narrative,

878
01:08:32.319 --> 01:08:36.399
to stay open to the surprises that
all of the people I know who are

879
01:08:36.520 --> 01:08:42.159
enjoying what they're doing, are also
surprised by what they're doing. They're not

880
01:08:42.199 --> 01:08:46.159
doing what they planned to do.
People who do what they planned to do

881
01:08:47.359 --> 01:08:50.000
are people. I know a lot
of such people, and they offer the

882
01:08:50.039 --> 01:08:53.600
most what doctors. I grew up
in New York City and the big thing

883
01:08:53.640 --> 01:08:57.680
to be was a doctor. So
I know a lot of medical professionals,

884
01:08:58.479 --> 01:09:01.520
and they have very successful they're you
know, they're well paid and so one,

885
01:09:01.560 --> 01:09:03.760
but not all of Some of them
are very happy, but not all

886
01:09:03.800 --> 01:09:08.279
of them. Many of them are
unhappy. This one wishes he was an

887
01:09:08.319 --> 01:09:14.039
oceanographer. That one wishes he was
an anthropologist, and all of them seems

888
01:09:14.079 --> 01:09:18.000
to wish they were also screenwriters.
Sometimes it seems like um. And the

889
01:09:18.039 --> 01:09:24.600
point is that you know there's a
Chinese curse me or dreams come true curse.

890
01:09:27.199 --> 01:09:30.560
It's a little scary when when you
accomplish what you said out to accomplish

891
01:09:30.600 --> 01:09:32.439
and and it doesn't really feel right. I have a friend who's just retired

892
01:09:32.479 --> 01:09:38.439
from medicine. He's done very very
well. He's respected um, he's made

893
01:09:38.479 --> 01:09:43.720
a good living, but he's always
been lukewarm at best about about his career,

894
01:09:44.880 --> 01:09:47.720
never really enjoyed it. On the
other hand, I know another doctor,

895
01:09:47.720 --> 01:09:50.359
a friend of mine who went to
film who went to medical school.

896
01:09:53.000 --> 01:10:00.439
We'll be right back after a word
from our sponsor and now back the show,

897
01:10:01.439 --> 01:10:05.800
but just didn't like practicing medicine.
What he liked was computers, and

898
01:10:06.000 --> 01:10:14.439
very early in the computer revolution he
got into the uh, the writing of

899
01:10:14.520 --> 01:10:21.079
software for computerizing pathology laps. He
was a pathologist whose specialty was pathology,

900
01:10:21.720 --> 01:10:29.880
and that branched on out out to
general medical medical record keeping in general.

901
01:10:29.880 --> 01:10:31.680
They were computerizing all of that.
You know, previously a doctor would see

902
01:10:31.720 --> 01:10:34.600
a symptom and would sort of think
about it. Now you can, you

903
01:10:34.640 --> 01:10:39.840
know, really search the databases.
And this is a result of not just

904
01:10:39.880 --> 01:10:43.640
inconvenience, but in the savings of
countless lives if you think about it.

905
01:10:44.520 --> 01:10:49.840
UM. So, my friend is
um. We were visiting with him.

906
01:10:49.880 --> 01:10:56.319
He lives in Seattle. Uh.
We were visiting with him and his wife

907
01:10:56.359 --> 01:11:00.560
hold dear old pounds of laws some
months ago and his house is on Lake

908
01:11:00.600 --> 01:11:04.840
Washington. There's a duck behind it, and on one side is his power

909
01:11:04.880 --> 01:11:09.920
boat, and on the other side
of his sailboat across the lake, and

910
01:11:10.119 --> 01:11:15.000
a little to the south is the
Bill Gates Compound. I mean, this

911
01:11:15.039 --> 01:11:17.800
guy has done real well, my
friend, and he loves his work.

912
01:11:17.840 --> 01:11:24.279
And he didn't jettison his medical education. He very much exploited in and that's

913
01:11:24.279 --> 01:11:26.079
not a dirty word. It just
needs to make the most of it.

914
01:11:26.119 --> 01:11:30.279
He integrated into his career, his
very successful career, a career that he

915
01:11:30.840 --> 01:11:38.479
loves that he just enjoys enormously.
My point is he's not doing what he

916
01:11:38.600 --> 01:11:45.000
expected to do and he's loving it. And that's what I'm The point that

917
01:11:45.039 --> 01:11:50.079
I'm making is that it's possible to
overplan, kind of outsmart yourself in life

918
01:11:51.239 --> 01:11:55.640
and else. He mentioned Richard,
you know sometimes wants to be a screenwriter.

919
01:11:55.760 --> 01:11:59.359
You know, it's kind of like
everyone. I think it was Joe

920
01:11:59.479 --> 01:12:02.560
Esterhouse, the screenwriter of Basic Instinct. One said, uh, you know,

921
01:12:02.640 --> 01:12:05.239
it used to be everyone wants to
write the great American novel. Now

922
01:12:05.239 --> 01:12:11.039
it's the great American screenplay. M
Yeah, No, Joe is a friend

923
01:12:11.079 --> 01:12:15.159
of mine. I know him well
over a number of number of years,

924
01:12:15.159 --> 01:12:18.319
and I'm aware aware that he said
that. It seems to be true.

925
01:12:18.560 --> 01:12:25.039
Um, it seems to be true. People people want to uh, you

926
01:12:25.079 --> 01:12:28.399
know, there are more people who
years ago would have been writing novels than

927
01:12:28.359 --> 01:12:32.000
are running screenplays. I do both. I've just finished a novel, and

928
01:12:32.079 --> 01:12:39.680
I've had modest success in both areas. And it's interesting. The guy was

929
01:12:39.720 --> 01:12:42.760
just lecturing on this, this is
my subject. A week ago at the

930
01:12:42.840 --> 01:12:47.439
bitch Fest, we were talking about
how it's funny. Let me put it

931
01:12:47.479 --> 01:12:53.800
this way. There's a there's a
political figure you've heard of, Governor Christie

932
01:12:54.359 --> 01:13:00.319
from New Jersey. He's running for
president, and he was I saw him

933
01:13:00.359 --> 01:13:05.960
sometime last week. Earlier in the
week. He was bitterly denying that he

934
01:13:06.119 --> 01:13:10.239
was what somebody had accused him of. Somebody that accused him and called him

935
01:13:10.279 --> 01:13:14.399
and characterized him as a particular word, a very very evil word, the

936
01:13:14.399 --> 01:13:17.520
most evil word I think you can
uh, you know, used to characterize

937
01:13:17.520 --> 01:13:21.159
a political figure that these days in
this country. Can you guess what the

938
01:13:21.199 --> 01:13:27.760
word was, I'll tell you.
Somebody called him a moderate. They said

939
01:13:27.800 --> 01:13:33.239
that he was moderate. Imagine that
used to be like a compliment, you

940
01:13:33.279 --> 01:13:38.359
know, Um, he was denying
these are moderate. Now, why do

941
01:13:38.399 --> 01:13:42.479
I bother you about that? Because
there's a word in Hollywood that Hollywood seems

942
01:13:42.520 --> 01:13:47.560
to have come to hate. Are
you ready? Original? They don't want

943
01:13:47.560 --> 01:13:54.359
to do anything original. In fact, the disappointing release of tomorrow Land is

944
01:13:54.359 --> 01:13:59.159
that what it's called? Yeah tomorrow
Yeah with Clooney? What kind of disappointed?

945
01:14:00.520 --> 01:14:02.359
They say that they're not going to
do any more original movies, you

946
01:14:02.399 --> 01:14:04.800
know, because if Tomorrowland as a
original movie, they only want to do

947
01:14:04.840 --> 01:14:15.000
tenfowls remakes, reboots, prequels and
sequels, adaptations of material from other media.

948
01:14:15.159 --> 01:14:17.680
They don't want to do original screenplays. And I think that's a real

949
01:14:18.159 --> 01:14:24.880
pity, because you know, what
they're trying to do is play it safe,

950
01:14:25.479 --> 01:14:29.680
and playing it safe is the most
hazardous course you can follow in an

951
01:14:29.800 --> 01:14:33.560
art. You have to take the
risks, you have to embrace the risks,

952
01:14:33.560 --> 01:14:40.199
invites, elicit and courage the risks, it seems to me. And

953
01:14:43.079 --> 01:14:45.920
nevertheless, it as if you're a
writer and you have an original screenplay,

954
01:14:45.960 --> 01:14:47.720
what are you gonna do with that? Nobody's making original screenplays, or certainly

955
01:14:47.720 --> 01:14:53.079
these studios are not. They are
not buying spec scripts and turning em into

956
01:14:53.079 --> 01:14:57.159
movies. They're developing projects inside.
I had a writer who wants to he's

957
01:14:57.199 --> 01:15:00.239
a huge fan of Batman, and
he wanted the Batman franchise, and he

958
01:15:00.279 --> 01:15:04.800
wanted to pay me a substantial sum
to give them notes on a Batman script.

959
01:15:04.880 --> 01:15:09.279
Day right, I said, but
you can't do anything with a script

960
01:15:10.720 --> 01:15:15.880
Warner Brothers on the right to you
know, Batman, because he said,

961
01:15:15.880 --> 01:15:18.119
well, I'll show what the Warner
Brothers. But Warner Brothers isn't going to

962
01:15:18.199 --> 01:15:24.640
look at a Batman's script. They're
not going to buy a speculated uh Matman

963
01:15:24.720 --> 01:15:28.079
script. They're going to develop it
with writers they know who work with producers.

964
01:15:28.119 --> 01:15:30.920
They know. Those writers may very
well be former students of mind mind

965
01:15:30.920 --> 01:15:34.279
you, and I'm happy to brag
about that. But they are not going

966
01:15:34.319 --> 01:15:36.920
to do this guy's script. Not
only are they gonna make it, they're

967
01:15:36.880 --> 01:15:40.079
not even gonna read it. And
they're gonna make a point not to read

968
01:15:40.119 --> 01:15:43.479
it for reasons. To go back
to what we were talking about earlier,

969
01:15:43.520 --> 01:15:45.640
having to do with litigation. If
it's Batman, it's certainly going to be

970
01:15:45.880 --> 01:15:51.039
similar. It's going to have certain
similarities to the Matman franchise. Don't you

971
01:15:51.119 --> 01:15:55.880
think and then they'll be they'll be
their lawyers that Warner Brothers will be telling

972
01:15:55.920 --> 01:15:59.359
you you mustn't look at this and
you must notify you must send this back

973
01:15:59.399 --> 01:16:00.520
to him and tell And we haven't
looked at it. We don't accept that

974
01:16:00.600 --> 01:16:03.560
I'm still of material. And so
because he's gonna claim when the new Batman

975
01:16:03.600 --> 01:16:09.279
cames up that we that we really
used it and we didn't, um you

976
01:16:09.319 --> 01:16:15.159
know, uh, we just we
stole it from um so. Uh So

977
01:16:15.159 --> 01:16:18.039
we're talking about originality. So how
do you get around that as a writer?

978
01:16:19.159 --> 01:16:23.359
Uh? And the answer is,
and I've had modest success with this

979
01:16:23.520 --> 01:16:28.680
repeatedly in my career. I don't
consider myself to be any kind of superstar.

980
01:16:29.399 --> 01:16:34.000
But the the Wall Street journeal calls
me, they what did they say

981
01:16:34.000 --> 01:16:39.880
about me? They said, Oh, I am a writer of substantial professional

982
01:16:39.880 --> 01:16:44.680
experience. You know, there's no
literary laundry I haven't taken in. I've

983
01:16:44.680 --> 01:16:49.319
written feature assignments, feature length movie
assignments for all of the studios, almost

984
01:16:49.359 --> 01:16:57.439
every studio, and I've stolen material
to all three major broadcast networks. And

985
01:16:57.520 --> 01:17:00.039
I have had almost half a dozen
books published by by all of them,

986
01:17:00.039 --> 01:17:06.560
by major new York publishers. I've
had best sellers in mom fiction, my

987
01:17:06.600 --> 01:17:13.199
screenwriting books, in print, you
know, over thirty years. My last

988
01:17:13.279 --> 01:17:18.439
novel made the Times List best seller
lists only for a week and only at

989
01:17:18.520 --> 01:17:21.359
number thirteen. But think you know
the Times List. It's not a not

990
01:17:21.439 --> 01:17:28.199
a small thing. And the reason
I mentioned it to you is that my

991
01:17:28.319 --> 01:17:35.840
very first novel I had written as
a screenplay and I just couldn't. It's

992
01:17:35.880 --> 01:17:40.119
been said Hollywood is the one place
on earth where you could die of encouragement.

993
01:17:41.199 --> 01:17:44.960
I had so much encouragement over that
script when I never had was a

994
01:17:45.079 --> 01:17:49.399
nickel for it. And finally there
was a strike and you couldn't market to

995
01:17:49.439 --> 01:17:53.479
Hollywood anyway, And so naively I
turned it into I used it as an

996
01:17:53.520 --> 01:17:57.119
outline for a novel and wrote a
novel. I was naive about how cruel

997
01:17:57.960 --> 01:18:01.560
the fiction market is, especially the
first market, and that knife day served

998
01:18:01.560 --> 01:18:05.520
me very well because I sold this
thing right away. And you know,

999
01:18:05.520 --> 01:18:09.960
had I been more stavvy about the
business, maybe I wouldn't have, you

1000
01:18:10.000 --> 01:18:13.840
know, uh, invested the time
and effort it would take to turn them

1001
01:18:13.880 --> 01:18:15.920
into a novel, knowing how grimm
the chances were. So you understand how

1002
01:18:15.960 --> 01:18:24.319
ignorance is your friend, knife day
is your palm. Now, as soon

1003
01:18:24.359 --> 01:18:28.119
as it was sold as a novel, it was sold as a movie.

1004
01:18:29.119 --> 01:18:31.479
A Warner Brothers, a studio that
had turned it down when it was a

1005
01:18:31.520 --> 01:18:34.680
screenplay, bought the same screenplay as
soon as it had been published as a

1006
01:18:34.720 --> 01:18:39.199
novel because it was no longer original. It was now an adaptation. It

1007
01:18:39.279 --> 01:18:45.600
had been tested in another market.
The executives if every every day in Hollywood

1008
01:18:45.600 --> 01:18:48.840
that an executive doesn't have to make
a decision about anything, as a victory

1009
01:18:49.600 --> 01:18:54.560
for her. She hasn't put her
neck out, she hasn't risked. And

1010
01:18:54.600 --> 01:18:56.520
he said, you know, if
you don't do anything, you'll never do

1011
01:18:56.560 --> 01:19:00.680
anything wrong. Right. So,
and every movie that does get made starts

1012
01:19:01.520 --> 01:19:05.720
with the anticipation by the executives who
are responsible for spending the money to produce

1013
01:19:05.760 --> 01:19:13.359
it. It starts with their expectation
that it will fail. And they're trying

1014
01:19:13.359 --> 01:19:15.560
to figure out how to explain away
the anticipated failure of the movie. I

1015
01:19:15.560 --> 01:19:21.079
don't see how that can do anything
other than to suppress creativity and imagination and

1016
01:19:21.159 --> 01:19:26.720
so on. But you understand how
somebody could say, if the movie comes

1017
01:19:26.720 --> 01:19:32.680
out and it bombs, for example
Bonfire the Vanities, which was produced by

1018
01:19:32.720 --> 01:19:35.319
a friend of mine and a colleague
of mine. He's also a professor at

1019
01:19:35.399 --> 01:19:39.960
UCLA. Peter Goomer very successful producer. He was the head of Warner Brothers.

1020
01:19:39.960 --> 01:19:42.479
He was at a Columbia. He's
produced a lot of major, major

1021
01:19:42.560 --> 01:19:45.079
movies. Well, one of the
movies that he produced, it was a

1022
01:19:45.159 --> 01:19:51.800
terrible mom there's even a book written
about about it was Bonfire the Vanities.

1023
01:19:53.119 --> 01:19:58.319
And when people say to him,
Peter, how could you invest so much

1024
01:19:58.359 --> 01:20:02.840
money in this turkey. We'll be
right back after a word from our sponsor,

1025
01:20:06.439 --> 01:20:11.720
and now back to the show,
he can. I mean, you

1026
01:20:11.800 --> 01:20:14.800
must be some lousy executive. We
should get rid of you. He has

1027
01:20:14.800 --> 01:20:17.560
a defense. Then the defense is
wait a minute. This was a best

1028
01:20:17.640 --> 01:20:24.960
selling novel by Tom Wolfe. I
also had Bruce Willis and Tom Hanks in

1029
01:20:25.000 --> 01:20:31.760
the movie. The screenplay was adapted
by Michael Christopher, a very very distinguished,

1030
01:20:32.039 --> 01:20:35.640
respected writer. The director was Brian
the Pond. It's not mind fault.

1031
01:20:35.640 --> 01:20:39.840
It's not my fault. You understand
what I'm saying? So suddenly because

1032
01:20:40.680 --> 01:20:44.560
with my own novel when it was
sold as a movie, the producer who

1033
01:20:44.560 --> 01:20:46.600
bought it could say if anybody asked
him, how I think you'd buy this,

1034
01:20:47.239 --> 01:20:49.439
he could say, what don't mean? Mortar Books published this? You

1035
01:20:49.479 --> 01:20:54.159
know, major publisher New York published
this. So I'm not the only one

1036
01:20:54.199 --> 01:20:57.840
crazy enough to think that there's merit
in this. So I've been recommending to

1037
01:20:57.920 --> 01:21:03.920
writers that they contemplate they write a
screenplay, but instead of showing the screenplay,

1038
01:21:03.920 --> 01:21:11.840
write an original screenplay. Certainly you
don't want to do an adaptation of

1039
01:21:11.960 --> 01:21:17.000
material that you don't own. I
mean, they're like dragons. What are

1040
01:21:17.000 --> 01:21:23.920
you gonna do with something if you
don't have the underlying rights. So what

1041
01:21:23.960 --> 01:21:29.039
I'm recommending is they write an original
screenplay, but then instead of marketing the

1042
01:21:29.079 --> 01:21:32.600
screenplay at first, they use it
as an elaborate outline for their novel and

1043
01:21:32.680 --> 01:21:36.079
write it as a novel, and
then try to sell the work as a

1044
01:21:36.199 --> 01:21:43.000
novel, and once it's sold as
a novel, they can get action as

1045
01:21:43.039 --> 01:21:45.359
a screenplay. I've done that multiple
times now, and right now I'm working

1046
01:21:45.399 --> 01:21:48.920
on I've just finished a novel that's
based on a screenplay. I wrote the

1047
01:21:48.920 --> 01:21:54.560
screenlay last summer and now I'm finished
the draft as a novel. It's just

1048
01:21:54.640 --> 01:21:56.800
the draft, I still have to
do a bunch of work on it.

1049
01:21:57.439 --> 01:22:00.840
But once you've got the screenplay,
most of the heavy list lifting has been

1050
01:22:00.840 --> 01:22:04.560
done. I regard, just like
we were talking earlier about the most valuable

1051
01:22:04.800 --> 01:22:09.680
part of the equation is the story. Once you've got the story or worked

1052
01:22:09.680 --> 01:22:13.199
out, you've got the characters,
the dialogue. I mean, most of

1053
01:22:13.239 --> 01:22:15.119
that's there in the screenplay, isn't
it. To turn that into a novel

1054
01:22:15.840 --> 01:22:21.680
is relatively easy? Underscore relative there's
um, you know, relatively there's not

1055
01:22:21.760 --> 01:22:27.520
a you know, no writing is
easy. But for me, the hardest

1056
01:22:27.520 --> 01:22:31.640
part of writing is the heavy lifting
is in devising creating the plot, because

1057
01:22:31.640 --> 01:22:36.000
the plot, the story really involves
everybody else. The story is character,

1058
01:22:38.399 --> 01:22:41.960
The story is dialogue, story is
description, it's everything. I mean,

1059
01:22:41.960 --> 01:22:45.399
who's the richest character? I mean, imagine somebody said, well we're in

1060
01:22:45.439 --> 01:22:48.279
a minute, richie, what about
character? Isn't that important? But who's

1061
01:22:48.319 --> 01:22:54.359
the greatest character in all of English
language grammatic literature? Isn't it a Hamlet?

1062
01:22:55.800 --> 01:23:00.760
Certainly Hamlet would be a good candidate, don't you think? So?

1063
01:23:02.560 --> 01:23:08.119
What's the description? Have you ever
read Hamlet? Do you remember the playwrights

1064
01:23:08.159 --> 01:23:14.560
description of Hamlet here it is,
it's three words prints of Denmark. That's

1065
01:23:14.600 --> 01:23:19.199
it. There's nothing about melancholy.
So where does this Hamlet come from?

1066
01:23:19.199 --> 01:23:23.960
And the answer is from the story, the stuff he does and the stuff

1067
01:23:23.960 --> 01:23:28.920
he says inside the context of the
story. So it's really really all about

1068
01:23:29.720 --> 01:23:34.159
all about story. So once the
story has worked out, you have the

1069
01:23:34.239 --> 01:23:40.079
opportunity to retell that story as a
novel. And it's just easier to write

1070
01:23:40.079 --> 01:23:44.560
a novel. It's easier because you're
not stuck with discitan sound like you are

1071
01:23:44.560 --> 01:23:49.119
in a movie. You're not.
You know. We mentioned George Cluney a

1072
01:23:49.159 --> 01:23:54.359
moment ago. I read a screenplay
called The American. I didn't see the

1073
01:23:54.399 --> 01:23:59.800
movie. It's a dreadful screenplay.
Cluney was in it. I think the

1074
01:23:59.840 --> 01:24:01.960
only reason George was in it because
it was shot here where he lives in

1075
01:24:01.960 --> 01:24:06.600
northern Italy, and I lives Lake
Como at the edge of the Swiss border

1076
01:24:06.680 --> 01:24:10.079
up there, and they was shot
it up there. So I think that's

1077
01:24:10.119 --> 01:24:13.000
the only reason I can imagine to
George would have been, you know,

1078
01:24:13.800 --> 01:24:17.199
had anything to do with this movie, would be because it was convenient was

1079
01:24:17.239 --> 01:24:20.359
in the neighborhood, so so it's
begen any that there's a scene in the

1080
01:24:20.359 --> 01:24:29.199
movie where the main character is sitting
is at a cafe ordering a bottle of

1081
01:24:29.239 --> 01:24:31.720
wine. He's with a girl,
and the waiter comes up and offers him,

1082
01:24:31.760 --> 01:24:33.760
you know, taste of the wine, and he samples the wine.

1083
01:24:33.760 --> 01:24:36.680
And it actually says in the script
that he takes a sip of the wine.

1084
01:24:38.119 --> 01:24:45.000
It takes slightly flinty, with notes
of chestnuts and cinnamon. Wait a

1085
01:24:45.039 --> 01:24:48.359
minute, well, how does the
well, how does anybody knows sitting in

1086
01:24:48.399 --> 01:24:53.720
a movie theater watching them on screen
with what's something tastes like? You follow

1087
01:24:53.720 --> 01:24:57.079
what I'm saying? Yeah, I
knew exactly what you mean. This guy,

1088
01:24:57.159 --> 01:25:01.159
this writer doesn't understand the most fundamental
aspect of screen running, which is

1089
01:25:01.199 --> 01:25:06.760
you stuck with sitan sound. It's
just sitan sound. Um. And it's

1090
01:25:06.800 --> 01:25:10.800
easier to write a novel because you're
not stuck with You can say with somebody

1091
01:25:11.479 --> 01:25:15.760
remembers what they think, how they
feel. You know. The the greatest

1092
01:25:16.560 --> 01:25:21.920
um compliment that's ever been paid me
is that final draft. The software.

1093
01:25:23.000 --> 01:25:28.079
I'm sure you know of it,
the screenwriting software has actually created. I

1094
01:25:28.119 --> 01:25:32.920
don't know if it's available yet.
We are creating they are creating for me

1095
01:25:33.039 --> 01:25:36.880
in consultation with me, that Richard
Walter template. You know, like if

1096
01:25:36.920 --> 01:25:45.399
you want to write a H,
if you want to write a Simpson's script,

1097
01:25:45.439 --> 01:25:48.159
for example, you can you can
punch up Simpsons. You know,

1098
01:25:48.199 --> 01:25:53.920
there's a pull down window in Final
Draft and you can go to Simpsons and

1099
01:25:54.000 --> 01:25:57.760
you click that and it will immediately
give you the formatting for that H.

1100
01:25:59.239 --> 01:26:02.359
You know, the simpson likes,
but the Simpsons uses. And I don't

1101
01:26:02.399 --> 01:26:08.079
mind telling you that my colleague of
mine has won several Emmys for all the

1102
01:26:08.119 --> 01:26:12.000
Simpsons and a bunch of us students
have written for the Simpsons, and oh

1103
01:26:12.039 --> 01:26:15.760
one of them. This makes me
sad because he died young in his forties.

1104
01:26:15.840 --> 01:26:23.640
A wonderful writer and a wonderful got
very successful um in um, not

1105
01:26:23.720 --> 01:26:28.359
just in TV but also in features. He wrote four he wrote the super

1106
01:26:28.399 --> 01:26:36.319
Girl. Very very fine writer.
Um he uh. He was a the

1107
01:26:36.319 --> 01:26:42.319
the Oh producer what are they quotem
co exacutive producer of the Simpsons and a

1108
01:26:42.359 --> 01:26:46.640
writer for the Simpsons. So Final
Draft has a Simpsons template. They now

1109
01:26:46.720 --> 01:26:51.279
have a Richard Walter template. If
you if you punch up me, you'll

1110
01:26:51.319 --> 01:26:57.079
get um format that conforms to my
particular desires. For example, I don't

1111
01:26:57.479 --> 01:27:03.119
when if you write x E x
T for exterior, you know, it's

1112
01:27:03.119 --> 01:27:08.439
like extra ort. I was taught
that you don't put and I preach it,

1113
01:27:08.439 --> 01:27:13.000
you should not put a period after
that. And in final draft,

1114
01:27:13.439 --> 01:27:15.119
if you go to the Richard Walter
template, it'll get rid of the theeriod

1115
01:27:15.159 --> 01:27:17.760
that comes after ext that. Somebody
might say, Gee, that seems like

1116
01:27:17.760 --> 01:27:21.199
a pretty petty point, but actually
I think it's the most important, the

1117
01:27:21.199 --> 01:27:25.920
most profound point in all of creative
expressions. And the point is simply this.

1118
01:27:26.000 --> 01:27:30.199
There shouldn't be anything in the script
that doesn't serve the script. That

1119
01:27:30.399 --> 01:27:33.239
is to say, it doesn't move
the story forward. And if you learn,

1120
01:27:33.479 --> 01:27:36.239
if you get into the kind of
mindset that leaves out even the period

1121
01:27:36.279 --> 01:27:40.960
after exterior, then you'll leave out
lines of dialogue that you don't need.

1122
01:27:40.960 --> 01:27:44.720
You'll leave that whole characters you don't
lead, you leave that whole scenes that

1123
01:27:44.840 --> 01:27:48.960
you don't need, if you follow
what I'm what I'm saying so in anyway,

1124
01:27:48.960 --> 01:27:54.199
the only reason I'm telling about this
is that in the Richard Walter template

1125
01:27:54.199 --> 01:27:58.399
for final draft, they are now
having we're tweaking it and in the wide

1126
01:27:58.520 --> 01:28:04.560
margin description, if a word realizes, feels, remembers, thinks, appears,

1127
01:28:04.600 --> 01:28:10.039
it's going to get highlighted a little
zig zaggy line underneath if some attention

1128
01:28:10.079 --> 01:28:13.680
will be called to it, to
ask the writer, do you really want

1129
01:28:13.680 --> 01:28:16.439
to say this? Is this something
that the audience can see or hear?

1130
01:28:17.359 --> 01:28:21.439
Because if it's an internal, interior
mental thing, it has no place in

1131
01:28:21.439 --> 01:28:26.039
a movie. But in a novel, I mean everything in it that's interior.

1132
01:28:26.119 --> 01:28:29.359
A mental movie has to come out
of sight and sound. You know,

1133
01:28:29.439 --> 01:28:35.479
the Marilyn's eyes widen in what can
only be the realization that Harry left

1134
01:28:35.520 --> 01:28:39.279
the gun in the nightstand at the
motel. You understand what I'm saying.

1135
01:28:39.640 --> 01:28:44.399
It's going to be told from a
visual standpoint. Answering the question, never

1136
01:28:44.439 --> 01:28:47.279
mind the reader of the ink on
the page. I want to know how

1137
01:28:47.359 --> 01:28:51.760
the viewer in the movie theater watching
it on the screen is going to know

1138
01:28:51.840 --> 01:28:57.359
this information. And but in a
novel you can just spill it out.

1139
01:28:57.760 --> 01:29:00.359
And you can also write in the
past tense or in the future tense.

1140
01:29:00.479 --> 01:29:03.680
I wrote a novel, and it's
said in the past, in the president

1141
01:29:03.680 --> 01:29:06.640
of the future, and in the
past. I tell it in the past,

1142
01:29:08.840 --> 01:29:11.199
and in the future. I tell
it in the future tense, and

1143
01:29:11.319 --> 01:29:14.840
in the present. I tell it
in the in the present tense. She

1144
01:29:15.039 --> 01:29:16.760
goes to the door, she opens
it, he stands there. You know

1145
01:29:16.760 --> 01:29:20.479
what I'm saying. So, um, you don't have to worry about that.

1146
01:29:20.560 --> 01:29:25.159
In a novel, you can you
can do anything you want. Also,

1147
01:29:25.239 --> 01:29:30.399
novels are longer, and it's easier
to write longer then shorter. Not

1148
01:29:30.520 --> 01:29:34.680
everybody gets that. There's a It's
like it's easier to ride a bike fast

1149
01:29:34.760 --> 01:29:40.439
and slow. You know what I'm
saying. It's very true. You're absolutely

1150
01:29:40.520 --> 01:29:45.880
right. The there's a letter from
Hemingway. There's a very famous letter from

1151
01:29:45.960 --> 01:29:50.560
Ernest Hemingway. He was in Cuba, I think he was working on The

1152
01:29:50.560 --> 01:29:56.319
Old Man in the Sea, and
he wrote a letter to his um legendary

1153
01:29:56.760 --> 01:30:01.079
editor, Maxwell Perkins. Will be
right back after a word from our sponsor,

1154
01:30:04.680 --> 01:30:10.439
and now back to the show.
It was nine pages long, on

1155
01:30:10.520 --> 01:30:12.520
and on and on and on and
on about this and that and the other

1156
01:30:12.520 --> 01:30:16.159
thing in aspects of the script of
the Manuscript of Thanks script for Old Man

1157
01:30:16.159 --> 01:30:18.479
of the Sea, and this and
that and the other thing. Finally,

1158
01:30:18.640 --> 01:30:23.199
halfway down the middle of page nine, he says, well, that's about

1159
01:30:23.199 --> 01:30:26.800
it for now. Max, He
says, please forgive me for writing such

1160
01:30:26.800 --> 01:30:30.399
a long letter. I didn't have
the time to write a short one.

1161
01:30:30.359 --> 01:30:35.279
It takes longer to be quick and
to the point and to call and select

1162
01:30:35.800 --> 01:30:40.239
and do the things that artists have
to do. So I think there's really

1163
01:30:40.239 --> 01:30:47.079
something to be said for writers taking
another tack, trying their script out as

1164
01:30:47.119 --> 01:30:50.560
a novel, trying to get some
traction there, and if they do,

1165
01:30:51.239 --> 01:30:58.319
suddenly it becomes viable as a movie
project because it's no longer original. They've

1166
01:30:58.359 --> 01:31:04.399
taken the quote curse quote off of
it, um by removing its originality and

1167
01:31:04.439 --> 01:31:10.560
making an aupdation. So you know, there's some thoughts. There's some thoughts.

1168
01:31:10.920 --> 01:31:15.000
You know. It's funny you mentioned
Richard, because I'm actually a Final

1169
01:31:15.079 --> 01:31:18.600
Draft not only affiliate, but I
also am part of their uh their program

1170
01:31:18.640 --> 01:31:23.039
where we like beta testing. I'm
sorry whose program I missed? Oh,

1171
01:31:23.079 --> 01:31:26.960
I'm sorry. I'm actually a part
of Final drafts uh Final Draft. Yeah,

1172
01:31:27.000 --> 01:31:30.560
not only their affiliate program, but
also they're beta testing, so like

1173
01:31:30.600 --> 01:31:32.760
I get the new stuff before anybody
else, you know, and get feedback.

1174
01:31:33.239 --> 01:31:36.239
Um, I haven't got a chance
to actually check that template out but

1175
01:31:36.279 --> 01:31:39.960
one, but I'm gonna keep my
eye out because yeah, you know,

1176
01:31:40.000 --> 01:31:44.239
I've been working with Alejandro Seri,
who's one of their guys, a great

1177
01:31:44.279 --> 01:31:46.680
guy, And I don't know if
it's available or not yet. I think

1178
01:31:46.680 --> 01:31:50.039
it's it's an you know, like, UM you can sort of upload it

1179
01:31:50.159 --> 01:31:55.800
if depending what you know, what
version you have and so on. Yeah,

1180
01:31:55.920 --> 01:31:58.920
and uh, because right now,
the latest thing that I've been beta

1181
01:31:59.000 --> 01:32:03.840
testing is, uh, they have
a new app out for the iPhone and

1182
01:32:04.479 --> 01:32:08.000
that's what I've been beta testing a
lot of just you know, giving them

1183
01:32:08.000 --> 01:32:10.680
feedback and you know, hey,
I like to see this feature, I

1184
01:32:10.720 --> 01:32:13.119
wouldn't like to see this feature,
you know, stuff like that. And

1185
01:32:13.439 --> 01:32:15.359
I'm going to keep an eye for
that template and I want to actually because

1186
01:32:15.359 --> 01:32:19.960
if it's it's available, I will
definitely upload that. Well, thank you,

1187
01:32:20.000 --> 01:32:24.760
I'm honored that you would. It's
it's not radically a different UM,

1188
01:32:25.520 --> 01:32:30.159
but I am a big believer in
the less is more, No continued,

1189
01:32:30.680 --> 01:32:36.720
absolutely nothing. I've argued for years
and years and years that if you UM

1190
01:32:39.079 --> 01:32:44.840
can embrace this very very fundamental precept, which is what we were just saying

1191
01:32:44.880 --> 01:32:48.760
earlier, then it's just site and
sound. And if you can add to

1192
01:32:48.840 --> 01:32:51.600
that just one thing, and that
is that every site and every sound must

1193
01:32:51.680 --> 01:32:58.039
move the story forward. I'm palpable
way, some identifiable way. That doesn't

1194
01:32:58.039 --> 01:33:01.399
matter what you're right, doesn't matter
what this so called genre is. It

1195
01:33:01.439 --> 01:33:04.760
doesn't matter what happens. People will
be drawn to it. You can even

1196
01:33:04.760 --> 01:33:12.800
have nothing happen. And if somehow
nothing happening can move the story forward,

1197
01:33:13.880 --> 01:33:16.720
people will pay very very rapt attention
to nothing happening. And I'll give you

1198
01:33:16.720 --> 01:33:21.880
an example of that in a student
of Mine. God blessing Me blurbs my

1199
01:33:23.159 --> 01:33:29.439
book very prominently. Alexander Payne in
one of his best movies, I think

1200
01:33:31.039 --> 01:33:36.039
about Schmidt, starring Jack Nicholson.
I think it's Nicholson's best work. The

1201
01:33:36.079 --> 01:33:40.159
movie opens with Jack just sitting alone. He's an insurance salesman. It's just

1202
01:33:40.279 --> 01:33:44.720
clearly his last moment, literally his
last minute on the job before he retires,

1203
01:33:45.319 --> 01:33:47.479
and he just sits at the desk
and absolutely nothing happens. But the

1204
01:33:48.159 --> 01:33:51.119
camera kind of wanders around the room
and you can see the only motion in

1205
01:33:51.159 --> 01:33:59.520
the room is the sweep second hand
of the wall clock and it's ticking off

1206
01:33:59.520 --> 01:34:01.720
the second. It's like forty seconds
before five o'clock, and when it hits

1207
01:34:01.760 --> 01:34:05.279
five, he gets up and he
leaves. You know, that's the scene.

1208
01:34:05.680 --> 01:34:11.000
But it tells you so much about
that man and how punctual he is,

1209
01:34:11.039 --> 01:34:13.560
and how afraid he is, and
how this he is, and how

1210
01:34:13.560 --> 01:34:15.319
that he is and so on,
that you get it. You get really

1211
01:34:15.560 --> 01:34:19.680
really drawn into that. So that's
why my template, if you can get

1212
01:34:19.720 --> 01:34:23.680
into it, if you can find
it, you'll see that it really preaches

1213
01:34:23.720 --> 01:34:28.399
minimalism, that you should keep everything
off the page that you can keep off

1214
01:34:28.399 --> 01:34:30.279
the page. You know, if
you look at my books, you see

1215
01:34:30.319 --> 01:34:34.079
the front page of a screenplay.
I have a model of a front play

1216
01:34:34.159 --> 01:34:38.279
of a screenline that I have a
model of what not to do. And

1217
01:34:38.359 --> 01:34:42.239
the model of the what you should
do is just the title of the script,

1218
01:34:42.880 --> 01:34:47.640
the name of the writer. It
shouldn't stay written by or even merely

1219
01:34:47.840 --> 01:34:53.159
by, much less an original screenplay
written by In case you think you're worried

1220
01:34:53.159 --> 01:34:57.239
somebody might think it's a chicken salmath
sand which you're a bowling ball or something.

1221
01:34:59.039 --> 01:35:01.800
Well, what if it just says
by, written written by? What

1222
01:35:01.840 --> 01:35:08.359
does that tell you it tells you
nothing. If it simply says bottom Dollar.

1223
01:35:09.359 --> 01:35:13.960
Um, you know Sam Smith,
people are gonna figure this script is

1224
01:35:13.960 --> 01:35:16.079
called bottom Dollar and this guy,
Sam Smith, probably wrote it, you

1225
01:35:16.119 --> 01:35:19.560
know. And then on the only
other thing you should have on that page

1226
01:35:19.800 --> 01:35:25.680
is a phone number and an email
address. Um, you know, contact

1227
01:35:25.720 --> 01:35:28.920
infoe. Now, if you have
an agent, she's going to be sending

1228
01:35:28.960 --> 01:35:33.359
out on her own. You know, she's not gonna want potential buyers to

1229
01:35:33.520 --> 01:35:36.239
contact the clients. She's going to
want them to contact her. And by

1230
01:35:36.239 --> 01:35:40.119
the way, the author should not
want to be contacted directly. Be suspicious

1231
01:35:40.119 --> 01:35:43.479
of anybody contacts it directly. If
you have a representative, if they are

1232
01:35:43.560 --> 01:35:47.199
legitimate, if the producer leg legitimate, they should be willing to and be

1233
01:35:47.199 --> 01:35:53.399
eager to call the producer, you
know what I'm saying. So so it's

1234
01:35:53.399 --> 01:35:58.279
different if the thing is sold.
But if it's a speculative Scriptum, if

1235
01:35:58.319 --> 01:36:01.119
you just have the name of the
script of title, the script in the

1236
01:36:01.199 --> 01:36:04.039
name of the writer, and as
I say, a phone number, one

1237
01:36:04.119 --> 01:36:09.000
phone number, only one phone number. I have a bunch of phone numbers.

1238
01:36:09.000 --> 01:36:12.439
I have my UCLA number, I
have my home number, I have

1239
01:36:12.520 --> 01:36:15.760
a cell number, I have his
best number in my home office. They

1240
01:36:15.800 --> 01:36:17.199
don't want all of that. They
don't want my mother's number, they don't

1241
01:36:17.199 --> 01:36:24.479
want my lawyers. I know,
just one number and one email. Is

1242
01:36:24.560 --> 01:36:28.479
this so that you can be found
if people are interested? And as I

1243
01:36:28.520 --> 01:36:32.159
say, if it even simply says
by somebody who puts that on the script

1244
01:36:32.239 --> 01:36:36.319
on the front page doesn't get it. That right on the cover of the

1245
01:36:36.359 --> 01:36:43.600
script is information that serves no purpose
at all. What is the likelihood that

1246
01:36:43.720 --> 01:36:47.720
somebody's going to miss that? But
get character and story and dialogue and all

1247
01:36:47.760 --> 01:36:57.479
of the sophisticated and heady and provocative
precepts and principles that apply to the autona

1248
01:36:57.520 --> 01:37:01.760
craft in the business of screenwriting.
You know, it's you know, not

1249
01:37:01.920 --> 01:37:09.000
encouraging. So again that's what you'll
see is very very minimal. Anything that

1250
01:37:09.760 --> 01:37:12.720
can be lost, you should lose. And if you're in doubt about something,

1251
01:37:12.720 --> 01:37:15.359
you sort of feel well, maybe
you need this. Maybe then you

1252
01:37:15.439 --> 01:37:18.920
lose it. If you're in doubt, throw it out. Just have stuff

1253
01:37:18.920 --> 01:37:24.439
that absolutely must be there. And
it's so easy to figure out what must

1254
01:37:24.439 --> 01:37:30.840
be there. You just ask yourself, what if it weren't there, does

1255
01:37:30.920 --> 01:37:35.159
it still make sense? If it
makes sense. Without it being that,

1256
01:37:35.239 --> 01:37:40.840
then it wasn't needed. If the
whole thing falls apart without you know,

1257
01:37:41.560 --> 01:37:44.640
when it's not that, then it
was needed. You follow what I'm saying.

1258
01:37:45.199 --> 01:37:48.359
It's like there's a there's a joke. A guy goes into a library

1259
01:37:50.479 --> 01:37:54.359
and he steps up to the desk
and he says, to the library and

1260
01:37:54.399 --> 01:38:00.359
I'll have a hot dog and a
coke and French frize please, And the

1261
01:38:00.399 --> 01:38:05.880
librarian syste him, sir, this
is a library. He says, Oh,

1262
01:38:06.159 --> 01:38:10.119
I'm sorry, I'll have a him. I'll have a hot dog.

1263
01:38:11.000 --> 01:38:13.720
Uncle. You know, whisper?
Is it? You get the joke?

1264
01:38:13.800 --> 01:38:16.520
It's like you're not supposed to talk
loud in the library. He thinks that

1265
01:38:16.840 --> 01:38:20.840
she's reprimanding him just talking through loudly, rather than for ordering food at a

1266
01:38:20.920 --> 01:38:26.760
library desk. You follow the joke, Yeah, absolutely so. The reason

1267
01:38:26.800 --> 01:38:29.319
I tell you that joke is you
can imagine if that were a screenplay,

1268
01:38:29.720 --> 01:38:33.439
a portion of a screenplay. You
absolutely have to have the parent edical direction

1269
01:38:33.479 --> 01:38:41.479
and whispers sir, this is a
library. Carry whispering, and then the

1270
01:38:41.520 --> 01:38:45.840
line again, you with me if
if if you don't have it, the

1271
01:38:46.720 --> 01:38:50.800
person's going isn't going to whisper and
the whole joke is lost. So you

1272
01:38:50.920 --> 01:38:57.359
needed the parents edicle. But that's
the exception. One of my great battles

1273
01:38:57.479 --> 01:39:02.640
is against parent edicles. Um,
it's a sure sign of amateurism where there

1274
01:39:02.640 --> 01:39:11.720
are a lot of parents edicals,
Riley Roley angrily smiling. You know,

1275
01:39:11.880 --> 01:39:18.079
sadly Shakespeare got through thirty six or
thirty seven plays not a single parents edical,

1276
01:39:18.119 --> 01:39:26.199
you know, Hamlet, Melancholleague never
So you want the least, and

1277
01:39:26.279 --> 01:39:29.760
you can figure out what the least
is by asking yourself, what if this

1278
01:39:29.840 --> 01:39:33.760
weren't here, does it still make
sense? Then we didn't need it.

1279
01:39:34.079 --> 01:39:38.479
So that answers the question that every
artist is confronted with, which is what

1280
01:39:38.600 --> 01:39:44.640
needs to be in the work and
what doesn't and why doesn't everybody do that?

1281
01:39:44.720 --> 01:39:47.680
And the answer is it takes time
to do that match what people won't

1282
01:39:47.680 --> 01:39:51.960
give it. They just won't give
it the time that it takes. You

1283
01:39:53.000 --> 01:39:57.840
know. One of my one of
my mentors, Bill Boyle, he actually

1284
01:39:57.840 --> 01:40:01.560
wrote a book called The Visual Mindscape
of the screen Play. We'll be right

1285
01:40:01.600 --> 01:40:11.439
back after a word from our sponsor
and now back to the show, and

1286
01:40:11.920 --> 01:40:15.520
he goes into that in depth that
you have to take out anything that is

1287
01:40:15.600 --> 01:40:20.399
not you know, it's always about
what's on the screen, all the good

1288
01:40:20.720 --> 01:40:26.560
and it always and he's that way, uh, because he says he always

1289
01:40:26.600 --> 01:40:29.960
would see people hanging in screenplays and
they would say things that like, you

1290
01:40:30.000 --> 01:40:32.359
know what someone is thinking in a
screenplay? And he's like, how can

1291
01:40:32.399 --> 01:40:41.520
we show that stuff exactly exactly?
You know, Evelyn remembers that the she

1292
01:40:41.680 --> 01:40:44.800
left the car idling, Well,
what does that look like on the screen?

1293
01:40:45.119 --> 01:40:47.439
Somebody remembering something? You know?
And how are you gonna know?

1294
01:40:48.680 --> 01:40:54.439
Uh, let's say the actor looks
up remembering and acting for dummies, if

1295
01:40:54.479 --> 01:40:57.920
there is such a thing, and
is able to put on the remembering face.

1296
01:40:57.960 --> 01:41:01.560
If there is a thing, do
we know what they remember it?

1297
01:41:01.760 --> 01:41:06.159
You know? Again, it's so
simple. It's it's really very simple,

1298
01:41:08.279 --> 01:41:11.600
very simple to know what to do
to succeed. Why doesn't everybody to see

1299
01:41:11.680 --> 01:41:15.319
because it's hard to do it.
It's easy to know what you do.

1300
01:41:15.720 --> 01:41:18.520
It's like I don't know exactly what
to do to hit a home run.

1301
01:41:19.920 --> 01:41:26.439
I'm sitting here about two months from
Dodger Stadium, and I know exactly what

1302
01:41:26.560 --> 01:41:28.199
you have to do. You have
to get to bat around in the right

1303
01:41:28.239 --> 01:41:31.840
place at the right time. The
difference between me and uh, you know,

1304
01:41:31.920 --> 01:41:35.239
Babe Ruth is that he could do
it. He didn't merely know how

1305
01:41:35.279 --> 01:41:39.119
to do it, but actually could
do it. I know how to do

1306
01:41:39.159 --> 01:41:41.119
but I can't do it. I
don't have an equipment to do it.

1307
01:41:42.319 --> 01:41:48.079
So it's really you know that,
that's really all there is to it.

1308
01:41:48.079 --> 01:41:54.239
And again the reason people don't do
it is they in too much of a

1309
01:41:54.359 --> 01:41:59.199
hurry, had to right to just
tell me it's already, this is already

1310
01:41:59.239 --> 01:42:02.199
a third draft. Well, come
on, David Kepp, I bet you

1311
01:42:02.199 --> 01:42:08.479
know the name. Koepp, a
former student of mine, a writer director.

1312
01:42:08.479 --> 01:42:15.840
He wrote you know, the Mission
Impossible, Jurassic Park one and two.

1313
01:42:15.880 --> 01:42:23.279
Right now he's writing the second chapter
of the Ron Howard of the Da

1314
01:42:23.359 --> 01:42:27.119
Vinci Code. I mean, he's
a gigantic successful writer, also a very

1315
01:42:27.239 --> 01:42:30.199
very sweet man. He says the
secret of his success is seventeen drafts.

1316
01:42:30.239 --> 01:42:34.680
He knows he can get through seventeen
drafts. He says that day seventeen drafts

1317
01:42:35.000 --> 01:42:40.680
to hear somebody complaining to me about
their third draft, you know, and

1318
01:42:40.720 --> 01:42:44.840
they don't like hearing me telling them
you're just getting started. You know,

1319
01:42:45.000 --> 01:42:46.720
you gotta if you could get one
more draft out of this, then you'll

1320
01:42:46.720 --> 01:42:50.199
only mean about thirteen more after that, you know, and that stops a

1321
01:42:50.239 --> 01:42:59.199
lot of people. They just don't
have the what some people call those zits

1322
01:42:59.239 --> 01:43:05.079
fleisch uh, you know, the
ability to sit there, um the flesh

1323
01:43:05.680 --> 01:43:11.800
tolering, just sitting there reworking it, reworking it, reworking it. You

1324
01:43:11.840 --> 01:43:14.960
know, in my own experience,
you know, Richard, I wrote a

1325
01:43:15.760 --> 01:43:17.720
It was a comedy horror movie and
it was about at a at a summer

1326
01:43:17.760 --> 01:43:23.520
camp. And summer camp, uh, it's a made up summer camp.

1327
01:43:23.640 --> 01:43:30.439
I had h and um the the
I'm about seven or eight drafts in now,

1328
01:43:31.079 --> 01:43:34.520
and some people feel that these drafts. Some people have said, who

1329
01:43:34.560 --> 01:43:38.239
write it? They said, listen, these drafts are better. Sum are

1330
01:43:38.239 --> 01:43:42.960
saying you're starting to get maybe a
little too far away from the original concept.

1331
01:43:43.359 --> 01:43:45.600
And you know, and now,
you know, I sort of judge

1332
01:43:45.640 --> 01:43:47.560
for myself. I sort of have
to say, you know what, who's

1333
01:43:47.600 --> 01:43:50.520
writing a situation? Well? You
know, and I sort of go back

1334
01:43:50.520 --> 01:43:54.760
and and there was at one point, I'm gonna be honest, Richard,

1335
01:43:54.800 --> 01:43:58.000
I was so burned out from rewriting
this thing. I was like, I

1336
01:43:58.680 --> 01:44:01.960
was fearing opening up final draft and
looking at this thing again. M well,

1337
01:44:02.039 --> 01:44:06.000
that's every writer has that experience.
It's actually a good time, but

1338
01:44:06.039 --> 01:44:12.039
do go on. And at that
point I actually h you know, I

1339
01:44:12.119 --> 01:44:15.079
printed it out. And one of
my favorite thing to do is actually just

1340
01:44:15.079 --> 01:44:16.319
print it out and I make marks
with just a pen, you know,

1341
01:44:16.479 --> 01:44:20.800
sort of I cut myself off from
all technology, just me and a you

1342
01:44:20.840 --> 01:44:27.359
know, a ninety year excellent,
excellent thing to do. I also think

1343
01:44:29.039 --> 01:44:31.079
it really makes a lot of sense
to write something else, put it aside,

1344
01:44:31.800 --> 01:44:34.319
work on something else, and then
you'll be able to come back to

1345
01:44:35.319 --> 01:44:40.960
it with fresh eyes. You know. Over the last number of years,

1346
01:44:41.079 --> 01:44:45.520
I've become a fanatic crossword puzzle guy. I do the New York Times Sunday

1347
01:44:45.560 --> 01:44:50.359
Crossword Puzzle every Sunday. And one
thing that I learned doing crossword puzzles is

1348
01:44:50.399 --> 01:44:54.479
you you know, you go through, you get what you can get,

1349
01:44:54.479 --> 01:44:57.720
and then there's stuff you just can't
get. And funne you're just reading all

1350
01:44:57.760 --> 01:45:00.800
the clues and you fill them maybe
a little less than half the thing,

1351
01:45:00.800 --> 01:45:05.079
and you just you can't get another
freaking thing. You just can't and you

1352
01:45:05.159 --> 01:45:09.880
feel defeated and stupid, and so
you put it aside, just go up

1353
01:45:09.880 --> 01:45:11.920
and do something else. Come back
to it later. You sit down and

1354
01:45:11.960 --> 01:45:14.279
suddenly wham wham wam, wham wam. This thing, gap thing, this

1355
01:45:14.359 --> 01:45:18.560
thing, it all leaps, you
know, into relief that you can right

1356
01:45:18.640 --> 01:45:23.000
in and almost run your hand over
and feel it like a freeze on a

1357
01:45:23.039 --> 01:45:29.960
temple, you know, a carved
marble freeze. And it teaches me that

1358
01:45:30.039 --> 01:45:33.840
just like the body gets tired,
the muscles get tired, the mind gets

1359
01:45:33.840 --> 01:45:38.439
tired. And when you rest as
the muscles and they recover, so also

1360
01:45:38.479 --> 01:45:42.039
can you rest the mind and it
recovers. And you look away from something,

1361
01:45:42.960 --> 01:45:45.399
you look at something too careful,
you really can't see it. You

1362
01:45:45.960 --> 01:45:47.199
kind of look away, and then
you look back and there it suddenly is.

1363
01:45:47.239 --> 01:45:50.720
I'm reminded of when I was an
undergraduate student in Binghamton, New York,

1364
01:45:51.279 --> 01:45:59.279
as a you know, history major
in college. Binghamton is in Broom

1365
01:45:59.439 --> 01:46:03.840
County, New York, and I
remember going through some original letters that had

1366
01:46:03.840 --> 01:46:08.239
to do with Broom County history,
and they've been written in like the early

1367
01:46:08.319 --> 01:46:12.640
eighteen hundreds, and there was a
you know, they were concluded in some

1368
01:46:12.680 --> 01:46:15.119
state archives from kind of the archive
or something like that. They were contained

1369
01:46:15.159 --> 01:46:18.920
there, they were housed there,
and they're written in this ancient kind of

1370
01:46:21.079 --> 01:46:26.159
script, you know, handwriting,
and sometimes I just can't read what it

1371
01:46:26.199 --> 01:46:30.800
says. I remember my teacher telling
me, you're looking at it too hard,

1372
01:46:30.840 --> 01:46:32.359
look away from it, and then
kind of sneak up on it and

1373
01:46:33.039 --> 01:46:36.960
suddenly, how suddenly in context it
all leaps out. You know. So

1374
01:46:38.239 --> 01:46:41.399
if you take time away from you, you really stuck in your script.

1375
01:46:41.920 --> 01:46:44.159
You don't let your eighth draft.
And when I say you, I mean

1376
01:46:44.239 --> 01:46:48.000
any writer. What about put it
aside for a while and work on something

1377
01:46:48.039 --> 01:46:51.039
else and then come back to it. And as far as you're getting too

1378
01:46:51.079 --> 01:46:56.159
far away from your original concept,
maybe there's something better than your original concept.

1379
01:46:56.199 --> 01:46:59.840
Maybe you've taken it through a place
that's even better for it to be.

1380
01:47:00.000 --> 01:47:03.079
One more thing on this subject.
And it goes back to David Tepp

1381
01:47:03.079 --> 01:47:09.680
in the seventeen draft. He says, very often the latest drafts mimical the

1382
01:47:09.760 --> 01:47:13.319
earliest draft. You sort of get
back to the beginning of it, and

1383
01:47:13.439 --> 01:47:19.159
you get back to that context,
that original concept that you had, and

1384
01:47:19.239 --> 01:47:24.159
that might seem like a ferocious waste
of time, But it wasn't you needed

1385
01:47:24.239 --> 01:47:27.439
to go through all of that to
see that this is the way it really

1386
01:47:27.479 --> 01:47:30.520
ought to be. I was talking
to writer only the other week, a

1387
01:47:30.600 --> 01:47:32.880
few weeks ago. Who was I
ran it. I haven't seen him in

1388
01:47:32.880 --> 01:47:34.600
a long time, A guy I
know pretty well, but I don't seem

1389
01:47:34.640 --> 01:47:36.920
a long time an now he says, well, much better now, I

1390
01:47:36.960 --> 01:47:39.600
said, what do you mean?
He said, Well, I was stuck

1391
01:47:40.119 --> 01:47:45.640
for ten months this year. I
was struggling with this script, and I

1392
01:47:45.800 --> 01:47:50.920
just pumpfort and hesitated and stumbled and
just couldn't make any pregrets with it at

1393
01:47:50.920 --> 01:47:56.039
all, and it haunted me and
it tortured me. And then finally two

1394
01:47:56.079 --> 01:48:00.680
weeks ago, I just settled in
and said, screw this, I'm going

1395
01:48:00.760 --> 01:48:02.319
to do this. And I remember
right through it and I got it then,

1396
01:48:02.439 --> 01:48:08.680
you know, and nailed it and
it's just great, um, you

1397
01:48:08.720 --> 01:48:11.279
know. And and that's why I'm
upset. I said, I don't understand.

1398
01:48:11.319 --> 01:48:15.600
Why, Why why is that a
setting? It sounds like like a

1399
01:48:15.680 --> 01:48:17.640
nice thing. He said, Well, I struggled with this thing, but

1400
01:48:17.800 --> 01:48:21.720
the nine or ten months, why
don't I just do this ten months ago?

1401
01:48:21.760 --> 01:48:25.119
You know? And I wouldn't have
had all of the darkness and all

1402
01:48:25.159 --> 01:48:28.720
of the pain that I had.
And I said to him, you couldn't

1403
01:48:28.720 --> 01:48:31.680
have done this ten months ago.
You needed to struggle and suffer and have

1404
01:48:31.800 --> 01:48:35.439
all of this pain and live all
of this life of the last nine or

1405
01:48:35.520 --> 01:48:39.560
ten months to become the person that
you are that could have you know,

1406
01:48:39.560 --> 01:48:42.039
who's also the person that could finish
this script? You know, write this

1407
01:48:42.159 --> 01:48:46.119
script. So that's where it goes. You know, nothing new about writers

1408
01:48:47.079 --> 01:48:51.960
beating up on themselves. So I
mean what I ended up doing was I

1409
01:48:53.079 --> 01:48:57.159
ended up Actually I did work on
something else. I just at that point

1410
01:48:57.239 --> 01:48:59.279
I said, you know what,
I think I should just take a break

1411
01:48:59.279 --> 01:49:02.680
from this. And I'm thinking about
coming back to it very soon. And

1412
01:49:02.880 --> 01:49:06.279
because it's been about probably a month
or may month, ahm, and I

1413
01:49:06.319 --> 01:49:11.479
think now it's probably better you can
come around full circle now and uh and

1414
01:49:11.680 --> 01:49:15.520
just again start draft nine and see
where that takes me. Look, my

1415
01:49:15.640 --> 01:49:21.359
first novel was I told you about
it earlier. I had written it as

1416
01:49:21.399 --> 01:49:25.439
a screenplay and couldn't get any action. I wrote as a novel and this

1417
01:49:25.600 --> 01:49:33.319
order as a screenplay. Um years
later, I um, and by the

1418
01:49:33.359 --> 01:49:35.720
way, it got me a lot
of work. You know. It was

1419
01:49:35.760 --> 01:49:43.119
an adolescent coming of age story.
Um, and uh, given that in

1420
01:49:43.239 --> 01:49:45.239
my draft of Merdan Graffiti, which
is, uh, you know, an

1421
01:49:45.960 --> 01:49:50.960
adolestent loss of innocence rite of passage. We'll be right back after a word

1422
01:49:50.960 --> 01:50:00.279
from our sponsor, and now back
to the show. Coming to a story.

1423
01:50:00.319 --> 01:50:00.640
I was able to get a lot
of work. I was kind of

1424
01:50:00.600 --> 01:50:05.279
a go to guy for adolescent kinding
of age stories, lots of innocence stories

1425
01:50:05.279 --> 01:50:12.800
in Hollywood. Um that novel.
After I saw and It's a kind of

1426
01:50:12.840 --> 01:50:16.199
a I grew up in New York
City and I sang duop in the streets

1427
01:50:16.199 --> 01:50:18.920
with friends of mine and so and
so. It's about this duop group that

1428
01:50:19.039 --> 01:50:23.880
never really succeeds, but they learned
that if you sing in harmony, you'll

1429
01:50:23.880 --> 01:50:28.159
live in harmony, you know.
And after I saw it, I started

1430
01:50:28.199 --> 01:50:31.399
thinking about it as a stage play. Um, you know, as a

1431
01:50:31.520 --> 01:50:38.319
musical, but I needed a songwriter. And then after I saw Jersey Boys,

1432
01:50:38.520 --> 01:50:42.800
I was seeing it several times on
Broadway, I realized, no,

1433
01:50:42.880 --> 01:50:47.159
it could be a jukebox musical and
so uh, I rewrote it as I

1434
01:50:47.199 --> 01:50:51.279
adapted it for the musical theater using
existing tunes, you know, just like

1435
01:50:51.319 --> 01:50:59.239
the Carold King Show and the Motown
musical Um you know, and Jersey Boys,

1436
01:50:59.279 --> 01:51:00.880
you know, are just examples.
There are a lot of them now

1437
01:51:01.800 --> 01:51:05.880
that I'm not using original music,
but that's why they called jukebox musicals,

1438
01:51:05.880 --> 01:51:10.199
because they use existing tunes. I
suddenly realized I could do it as a

1439
01:51:10.279 --> 01:51:14.560
jukebox musical, so I rewrote it
as a jukebox musical. Two years ago,

1440
01:51:14.720 --> 01:51:21.720
it was workshop that UCLA. There
was a humble read through sing through

1441
01:51:24.640 --> 01:51:29.680
directed by one of the professors in
the musical theater program in our sister department

1442
01:51:29.800 --> 01:51:35.399
theater, and it was the most
satisfying, fulfilling creative experience I've ever had

1443
01:51:35.439 --> 01:51:41.720
in my career, This humble little
read through. Now there's a somebody eagerly

1444
01:51:41.760 --> 01:51:47.600
showing the play around, trying to
get a production for it. Probably nothing

1445
01:51:47.600 --> 01:51:50.399
will come of it, but but
my you know, the craziest things have

1446
01:51:50.399 --> 01:51:53.640
happened. But the point is,
and the reason I bother you with it

1447
01:51:54.039 --> 01:51:56.880
telling you about it, is,
Look how long I've there even business with

1448
01:51:56.920 --> 01:52:01.079
this thing. It goes back over
forty years, you know, between the

1449
01:52:01.119 --> 01:52:08.920
time that I first started outlining what
became the screenplay which ultimately became the novel.

1450
01:52:08.960 --> 01:52:12.720
And so on. My most recent
novel, which which I bragged to

1451
01:52:12.800 --> 01:52:16.840
you, made the Times List.
I also wrote originally as a screenplay,

1452
01:52:17.880 --> 01:52:25.840
and I'm talking about over thirty years
ago, probably thirty one of thirty two

1453
01:52:25.920 --> 01:52:30.560
years ago. I wrote it as
a screenplay. It was optioned and dropped,

1454
01:52:30.560 --> 01:52:31.720
an optioned and dropped. I made
some money on it. It was

1455
01:52:31.760 --> 01:52:39.399
optioned by, you know, an
Oscar winning multi Oscar winning independent company of

1456
01:52:39.399 --> 01:52:41.920
air prestigious companies. I made some
money on it, but I never got

1457
01:52:41.960 --> 01:52:48.520
anywhere with it. It never got
produced. So eventually a student of mine

1458
01:52:48.960 --> 01:52:54.359
at UCLA I was talking about the
project. He said he'd love to read

1459
01:52:54.399 --> 01:52:56.439
it. So it convinced me to
let him read it. And he came

1460
01:52:56.439 --> 01:52:59.000
to me and he said, you
should use this as an outline for a

1461
01:52:59.039 --> 01:53:06.239
novel, a comic novel. So
I did, and when that was done,

1462
01:53:08.000 --> 01:53:11.279
I showed it around to the publishing
business and I couldn't get any interest

1463
01:53:11.319 --> 01:53:15.159
in it at all. All I
had with it was frustration and heartache and

1464
01:53:15.920 --> 01:53:20.960
as I say disappointment then, I
mean I'd made some money on it,

1465
01:53:21.000 --> 01:53:24.159
you know, in the early days
when it was a film script and I

1466
01:53:24.159 --> 01:53:28.039
got those options, but generally it
had been a pretty big disappointment. Then

1467
01:53:28.079 --> 01:53:30.920
I met an editor, and I'm
sorry, I met a very powerful agent.

1468
01:53:30.079 --> 01:53:34.880
I have been so privileged in my
life to do the things that I've

1469
01:53:34.920 --> 01:53:39.199
done. One of them is for
five summers, I would take the whole

1470
01:53:39.239 --> 01:53:43.079
family to Maui for the writer's conference
late in the summer. And if it

1471
01:53:43.079 --> 01:53:45.119
had been in a Motel six,
that'd be okay, it's Maui. But

1472
01:53:45.159 --> 01:53:47.439
it wasn't in the motel six.
It was in the ground while I lay

1473
01:53:47.479 --> 01:53:54.399
a five diamond luxury spa hotel resort, you know, just an incredible place.

1474
01:53:54.399 --> 01:54:00.239
And there I would meet all of
these heavyweights from both literature and film.

1475
01:54:00.680 --> 01:54:03.399
We mentioned Stephen King earlier. Stephen
was there, you know. I

1476
01:54:03.439 --> 01:54:11.479
mean they had world class writers,
both in the movie business and in the

1477
01:54:11.640 --> 01:54:15.760
literature business. And I remember I
met an agent there and she said to

1478
01:54:15.840 --> 01:54:21.239
me, a very powerful New York
agent, and she agreed to I pitched

1479
01:54:21.239 --> 01:54:25.720
the project to her and she agreed
to read it on the mainland when she

1480
01:54:25.760 --> 01:54:27.960
got back to the mainland. So
I sent it to her in New York

1481
01:54:28.920 --> 01:54:31.039
and she called me up and she
said, and this is like twenty This

1482
01:54:31.159 --> 01:54:38.880
is twenty years after I had first
written, and about fifteen years ago.

1483
01:54:39.319 --> 01:54:45.840
If you're with me, she said, I have to tell you. I

1484
01:54:45.840 --> 01:54:48.720
read your Tepe script and I think
it's great, and I want to represent

1485
01:54:48.760 --> 01:54:51.640
it, and i'll represent it exactly
as it is if you want me to,

1486
01:54:53.159 --> 01:54:56.840
I'll send it out exactly as you've
written it. However, I have

1487
01:54:56.920 --> 01:55:00.319
an editor here in the office that
I work with, and I think you

1488
01:55:00.359 --> 01:55:08.560
should get notes from Miriam. And
if you don't like the notes, you

1489
01:55:08.640 --> 01:55:11.479
know, then the hell of it
offen. You know, from away,

1490
01:55:11.720 --> 01:55:13.760
I'll show the book as this.
But I have to tell you, Richard,

1491
01:55:13.960 --> 01:55:18.239
she said to me that when my
office worked with Miriam, I show

1492
01:55:18.279 --> 01:55:23.039
this stuff right away. Now I
charge thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars

1493
01:55:23.079 --> 01:55:26.079
for notes, and they're not charging
me a nickel for this. You understand

1494
01:55:27.199 --> 01:55:30.199
now. I wanted to say to
them, please, I'm not interested in

1495
01:55:30.279 --> 01:55:35.359
rewrite. I had nothing but grief
from this project, and I'm depressed and

1496
01:55:35.640 --> 01:55:40.520
lost at the moment, this moment
in my life, and I hardly feel

1497
01:55:40.560 --> 01:55:43.640
like going into some old, you
know thing that's been nothing but discipline all

1498
01:55:43.640 --> 01:55:45.760
the way. And you've already said
you show it as so just show it

1499
01:55:45.800 --> 01:55:48.640
as it is. I didn't say
this, mind you, David, I

1500
01:55:48.680 --> 01:55:55.319
just was This was my thinking,
you understand. So I said to myself,

1501
01:55:55.640 --> 01:55:58.439
don't tell her how much you hate
the notes until you see the notes.

1502
01:55:58.840 --> 01:56:01.399
In other words, wait for the
note and then tell them that,

1503
01:56:01.560 --> 01:56:05.600
yeah, you know, you really
appreciate Miriam doing what she did, but

1504
01:56:05.800 --> 01:56:08.520
no, you want to stick with
what you had. In the hell with

1505
01:56:08.640 --> 01:56:13.000
us, you don't have to do
any more work, right And by the

1506
01:56:13.000 --> 01:56:17.279
way, who the fuck is this
Miriam? Some twenty three year old who

1507
01:56:17.399 --> 01:56:20.479
just got out of you know,
creative writing major from Suave Moore or Bryn

1508
01:56:20.640 --> 01:56:25.760
Moore or one of them. More's
you know, don't they know who I

1509
01:56:25.800 --> 01:56:30.560
am? And you know that kind
of insulated view of self that a writer

1510
01:56:30.720 --> 01:56:33.319
can get and become his own worst
enemy. Of course, I said,

1511
01:56:33.359 --> 01:56:36.439
none of that. Well, that
was my thinking. So finally the notes

1512
01:56:36.520 --> 01:56:43.159
come from Miriam. By the way, it's Miriam Godrich. She's now a

1513
01:56:43.159 --> 01:56:48.199
partner in the agency. It's this
god its now U. And I read

1514
01:56:48.239 --> 01:56:51.319
Miriam's notes and you know what,
David, the notes My heart sinks like

1515
01:56:51.359 --> 01:56:57.199
a stoneman. I Reading's notes because
they have such good notes, and I

1516
01:56:57.279 --> 01:56:59.840
know I'm looking at my worst enemy. And when I brush my teeth,

1517
01:57:00.039 --> 01:57:03.520
when I shave, if you follow
me, if I don't get my button,

1518
01:57:03.520 --> 01:57:06.039
a chair, my hands on the
keys, and find the old files

1519
01:57:06.039 --> 01:57:11.680
and get get back into it right. So I certainly didn't want to do

1520
01:57:11.720 --> 01:57:14.680
that, but I did. And
by the way, the moment I started,

1521
01:57:15.399 --> 01:57:19.479
I've written two three sentences. I
suddenly was born again. The fog

1522
01:57:19.560 --> 01:57:27.279
lifted, the depression was gone.
I was sealed by the wonderful nurturing choices

1523
01:57:27.720 --> 01:57:31.199
that flow through the system when you
when you you know, get involved in

1524
01:57:31.199 --> 01:57:35.479
creative expression. And it took me
a couple of months, uh you know,

1525
01:57:35.520 --> 01:57:41.000
to get the they script attended to
in the way that had been recommended.

1526
01:57:41.520 --> 01:57:44.520
And then I got back to the
agency and bingo, they sold it

1527
01:57:44.640 --> 01:57:48.680
right away. As I've told you, it made the Times List best seller.

1528
01:57:48.920 --> 01:57:54.560
You know, it's a Times best
seller, and there was a lot

1529
01:57:54.560 --> 01:57:59.720
of movie action around it, but
nothing ever came of it as a movie.

1530
01:57:59.720 --> 01:58:00.960
Now all that ever comes of it
as it was a best selling novel.

1531
01:58:01.000 --> 01:58:05.039
That's not a bad thing, isn't. But guess what, I'm going

1532
01:58:05.079 --> 01:58:11.439
to London. I'm going to be
at the London Screenwriters Festival in October and

1533
01:58:12.479 --> 01:58:16.640
a British producer called me. He
said that he's actually American producer, but

1534
01:58:16.680 --> 01:58:24.239
he's British base, he's London base, and he said he has This was

1535
01:58:24.239 --> 01:58:27.359
a few years ago. This is
three or four years ago. He'd come

1536
01:58:27.399 --> 01:58:30.680
upon the novel and he thought it'd
make a great movie, and he wanted

1537
01:58:30.720 --> 01:58:33.560
to option the rights to it.
Well, nothing ever came of that,

1538
01:58:33.800 --> 01:58:39.640
more frustration and disappointment. Now suddenly
he calls me, just coincidentally, I'm

1539
01:58:39.680 --> 01:58:42.880
going to be in London in the
fall, and he says, guess when

1540
01:58:42.920 --> 01:58:48.520
he made a movie with a He
produced a movie that was directed by a

1541
01:58:48.640 --> 01:58:55.359
new director, a short film,
and on the strength of that short film,

1542
01:58:55.399 --> 01:58:59.760
that director has been signed by a
very very prominent agency and they have

1543
01:58:59.800 --> 01:59:04.119
asked him to bring projects to them
that he would like to do. So

1544
01:59:04.159 --> 01:59:09.199
he asked this producer, and producer
called me and said, is your novel

1545
01:59:09.239 --> 01:59:13.039
still available? And it is so
right now as we're talking. It's being

1546
01:59:13.079 --> 01:59:18.520
shown not by me, but by
an artist who's been signed by a major

1547
01:59:18.600 --> 01:59:24.079
agency who have asked him to show
them stuff that he wants to do.

1548
01:59:24.079 --> 01:59:27.439
Do you understand how much better that
is for the material to be exposed to

1549
01:59:27.479 --> 01:59:30.199
them that way than for me,
the author to call their attention to it.

1550
01:59:30.239 --> 01:59:33.199
You follow what I'm saying, Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. And

1551
01:59:33.279 --> 01:59:41.479
on top of that, it's conceivable
that they will be showing it the producers

1552
01:59:41.520 --> 01:59:46.119
and production companies. I who would
rather be represented, if anything comes with

1553
01:59:46.159 --> 01:59:49.560
it, by a lawyer rather than
an agent. But if they want to

1554
01:59:49.760 --> 01:59:53.239
go out with this thing, and
they approached me and they want to want

1555
01:59:53.279 --> 01:59:56.600
me to let them represent them on
it, I'll do that in a heartbeat.

1556
01:59:58.119 --> 02:00:04.000
We'll be right back after a word
from our sponsor, and now back

1557
02:00:04.039 --> 02:00:10.039
to the show. It's better for
me to have them motivated, you know,

1558
02:00:10.079 --> 02:00:15.560
extra motivated. Follow my reasoning there, If they can represent me as

1559
02:00:15.560 --> 02:00:18.800
well as the director, they're going
to be that much more motivated to sell

1560
02:00:18.880 --> 02:00:23.319
the thing. So but likely there's
nothing that will come of it. But

1561
02:00:23.399 --> 02:00:26.960
here we are. We're talking in
two thousand and fifteen, midway through the

1562
02:00:27.039 --> 02:00:30.000
year just about, and I'm still
in business on this thing that I started

1563
02:00:30.000 --> 02:00:35.119
writing in like nineteen eighty. So
you see what a mistake it is for

1564
02:00:35.159 --> 02:00:39.920
writers to do what they often do, which is a writer script that doesn't

1565
02:00:39.920 --> 02:00:43.079
sell, that's the end of that. They think it was a fature mistake.

1566
02:00:43.119 --> 02:00:46.680
Mistake, mistake, mistake, mistake. Yeah, and you know that

1567
02:00:46.680 --> 02:00:49.560
that's you know, very true.
I have a friend of mine also who

1568
02:00:51.279 --> 02:00:56.000
he's you know, in his forties
or fifties, but he wrote a screenplay,

1569
02:00:56.039 --> 02:00:58.800
you know, in his twenties and
then suddenly you know, that's becoming

1570
02:00:58.840 --> 02:01:01.960
a light again and you know,
you know again, like you were saying,

1571
02:01:01.960 --> 02:01:05.399
you know, it's it's amazing how
these things getting new life. You

1572
02:01:05.439 --> 02:01:09.880
know, years they God Webb people's
you know, he won the Oscar for

1573
02:01:10.039 --> 02:01:15.039
Unforgiven. It was also best Best
Movie that year. Clint hung onto that

1574
02:01:15.119 --> 02:01:18.760
script for twenty years. And Clint
made another movie that was very successful,

1575
02:01:18.800 --> 02:01:24.079
didn't win the Oscar, but it
was very successful about the the Secret Service

1576
02:01:24.159 --> 02:01:28.119
guy takes the bullet for the President
in the Line of Fire. And that's

1577
02:01:28.119 --> 02:01:30.039
another script that was hanging around for
fifteen sixty years. The writer and that

1578
02:01:30.079 --> 02:01:34.359
script was packing his trunk of his
car and getting ready to you know,

1579
02:01:34.479 --> 02:01:40.119
go back and defeat with his tail
between his legs back to New Hampshire.

1580
02:01:40.159 --> 02:01:45.039
When the film rings a small pass
so Clint's company and you know, they

1581
02:01:45.039 --> 02:01:46.319
want to know that, they want
him to know that they wanted to come

1582
02:01:46.319 --> 02:01:50.600
in for some meetings about brushing up
the script. They now have a schedule.

1583
02:01:50.640 --> 02:01:54.640
They're going to go ahead and you
know, produce it for eighty eight

1584
02:01:54.640 --> 02:01:59.479
million dollars something like that. You
just never know. People don't understand that

1585
02:01:59.520 --> 02:02:00.960
when a screw it doesn't sell,
it's not the end. If it's the

1586
02:02:01.000 --> 02:02:06.960
beginning, that script might sell eventually. But even if it doesn't, it's

1587
02:02:08.000 --> 02:02:13.199
a sample of your craft. It
could lead to representation, It could lead

1588
02:02:13.319 --> 02:02:17.800
to a development deal on another notion
that you have in mind. It could

1589
02:02:17.960 --> 02:02:25.760
lead to a rewrite assignment. I've
seen all of these things happen. They've

1590
02:02:25.800 --> 02:02:30.720
happened to me, they've happened to
writers that I know, And that is

1591
02:02:30.720 --> 02:02:39.199
why it is a terrible self defeating
mistake to imagine that a script that doesn't

1592
02:02:39.199 --> 02:02:42.239
sell that's the end of it.
It's a failure. The very first script

1593
02:02:42.279 --> 02:02:45.199
I ever wrote, I wrote in
a class at USC It was in the

1594
02:02:45.279 --> 02:02:53.439
legendary The instructor was the legendary Irwin
ar Blacker, who was George's teacher and

1595
02:02:53.600 --> 02:03:01.119
John Melius's teacher, and on and
on. That script never sold, but

1596
02:03:01.359 --> 02:03:06.239
I got top flight representation as a
result of it. I got a UM

1597
02:03:08.840 --> 02:03:12.560
onto staff at Universal. And here
I was a young kid. I wasn't

1598
02:03:12.560 --> 02:03:15.159
you know. I was in my
twenties, and I had an office at

1599
02:03:15.239 --> 02:03:17.680
Universal with my name on the door, a parking place next to Paul Newman's

1600
02:03:17.680 --> 02:03:25.680
parking place. I noticed, UM
a ridiculously generous salary, at least it

1601
02:03:25.720 --> 02:03:29.520
seemed that way at the time.
Actually, adjusted for inflation, was pretty

1602
02:03:29.600 --> 02:03:32.119
generous. UM. And it all
came to that from a script that hasn't

1603
02:03:32.159 --> 02:03:35.319
sold, you know, to this
day. So to consider that script to

1604
02:03:35.359 --> 02:03:43.800
be a failure is lacy, Yeah, and very various business. The business

1605
02:03:43.920 --> 02:03:45.960
is hard enough on writers. Writers
don't need to be hard on themselves,

1606
02:03:46.439 --> 02:03:49.920
is the point that I'm making.
Yeah, And that that's an excellent point,

1607
02:03:49.920 --> 02:03:53.119
and that that sort of leads me
into, you know, my one

1608
02:03:53.119 --> 02:03:56.479
of my last questions. I know
we've been talking about two hours. I

1609
02:03:56.520 --> 02:03:58.560
know I've been taken up a lot
of you delighted, is that we don't

1610
02:03:58.560 --> 02:04:00.560
want to make sure we do cover
I do talk a little bit about the

1611
02:04:00.840 --> 02:04:04.000
uh the summer session, that class
that I offer. So go ahead and

1612
02:04:04.039 --> 02:04:06.319
ask me a question and then I'll
talk a little bit about that. That's

1613
02:04:06.359 --> 02:04:09.840
actually the question I was going to
ask you was, you know, I

1614
02:04:09.920 --> 02:04:12.840
know you have a you know,
upcoming summer session, and this is the

1615
02:04:12.880 --> 02:04:15.560
only time of the year where non
UCLA students can sign up, and I

1616
02:04:16.439 --> 02:04:18.840
wondered if you could just you know, talk a little bit about the class

1617
02:04:18.920 --> 02:04:21.920
and you know, for anyone listening
who's you know, interested in signing up.

1618
02:04:23.840 --> 02:04:26.560
Well, the first thing I'll say
is just that the housekeeping. If

1619
02:04:26.560 --> 02:04:30.680
you want to find out official information
about it, you can do that by

1620
02:04:30.720 --> 02:04:34.159
simply going to my website Richard Walter
dot com. There is no asse at

1621
02:04:34.239 --> 02:04:38.439
the end of my name Richard Walter
dot com. And I think the very

1622
02:04:38.439 --> 02:04:42.199
first thing on the site is a
link that will take you to the UCLA

1623
02:04:42.319 --> 02:04:45.439
site that describes enrollment procedures and tells
me a little bit of class. It

1624
02:04:45.439 --> 02:04:50.039
also tells me something wrong about this
class, which is that there are certain

1625
02:04:50.079 --> 02:04:58.520
prerequisites for the summer session. All
prerequisites are waived and the class is open

1626
02:04:58.560 --> 02:05:00.840
to the classes is actually designed for
the summer session. I've put it for

1627
02:05:00.840 --> 02:05:06.359
thirty over thirty years now. It
meets starting on June twenty second, Monday,

1628
02:05:06.439 --> 02:05:12.439
June twenty second, Monday afternoon and
for the next five that is a

1629
02:05:12.479 --> 02:05:16.319
total of six Monday afternoon sessions.
It's not a electric course, it's hands

1630
02:05:16.319 --> 02:05:23.920
on writing course where you get the
main activity of the class is the in

1631
02:05:24.119 --> 02:05:28.439
class examination of in progress scripts being
written by students in the class, So

1632
02:05:28.520 --> 02:05:33.760
you get not only the support of
the teacher and the teaching assistants, but

1633
02:05:33.920 --> 02:05:38.840
also your fellow writers around the table. I'm one thing that has touched me

1634
02:05:39.000 --> 02:05:43.199
very deeply all these years US is
how generous everyone is, All the writers

1635
02:05:43.199 --> 02:05:46.479
are with everybody else, how much
support that the writers give each other.

1636
02:05:46.520 --> 02:05:50.479
I feel like I've learned much more
than I've ever taught, you know,

1637
02:05:50.560 --> 02:05:55.800
being at UCLA, and my students
are my teachers. So you get all

1638
02:05:55.840 --> 02:05:59.800
of that alive. It's not online, it's alive in a classroom, and

1639
02:06:00.640 --> 02:06:05.399
it is a rare course in that
Uh, it's very difficult to get into

1640
02:06:05.439 --> 02:06:10.159
it, even if you're registered matriculated
UCLA student. It's very hard to get

1641
02:06:10.199 --> 02:06:16.000
into an advanced film class with senior
faculty like me. So this is an

1642
02:06:16.000 --> 02:06:19.000
opportunity to do that, not only
for UCLA students, but even for students

1643
02:06:19.000 --> 02:06:24.199
who are not enrolled at UCLA,
and by the way, everybody gets eight

1644
02:06:24.359 --> 02:06:29.760
credits for it. Those credits are
useful at anybody you know, for anybody

1645
02:06:29.800 --> 02:06:34.399
at any University California campus. But
also they're transferable, depending upon the attitude

1646
02:06:34.399 --> 02:06:41.399
of the institution, they're transferable to
other institutions. Though I would say most

1647
02:06:41.399 --> 02:06:44.520
people taking the class really aren't interested
in the credits. They're interested in getting

1648
02:06:44.520 --> 02:06:48.199
the attention and consideration that you know, our regular students get when they write

1649
02:06:48.239 --> 02:06:58.159
their their screenplays. So it's a
really upbeat six weeks together. And uh,

1650
02:06:59.560 --> 02:07:03.520
it's limited enrollment. It's almost sold
out, but there is still some

1651
02:07:03.600 --> 02:07:06.119
room for some people. I want
you to know that I don't get paid

1652
02:07:06.680 --> 02:07:11.359
per student. I don't get paid
on a per student fee. Rather I

1653
02:07:11.399 --> 02:07:13.479
get a flat fee. And the
only thason I tell you that is that

1654
02:07:13.520 --> 02:07:16.000
I'm not trying to self at grand
bys here. I'm not against self promotion

1655
02:07:16.039 --> 02:07:20.399
and I'm not against making money,
but I'm not I don't get any extra

1656
02:07:20.479 --> 02:07:26.079
money if you know, extra students
enroll or anything like. I just want

1657
02:07:26.600 --> 02:07:32.199
anything like that. I just want
your readers and listeners, the people that

1658
02:07:32.239 --> 02:07:34.880
you reach, I want them to
know that this is a rare opportunity.

1659
02:07:35.800 --> 02:07:42.199
It's not that widely known. It
is available to them, and we crank

1660
02:07:42.279 --> 02:07:47.119
up two weeks from Monday. It's
not too late to register. People commute.

1661
02:07:47.159 --> 02:07:51.399
By the way, It's obviously most
convenient for people in the southern California

1662
02:07:51.399 --> 02:07:55.680
region, but there are people who
commute from all across the country. I

1663
02:07:55.800 --> 02:08:01.680
had somebody last summer commuting from Illinois. The previous summer, I had a

1664
02:08:01.680 --> 02:08:07.880
couple I were, a doctor and
his wife coming commuting every Monday. They

1665
02:08:07.920 --> 02:08:13.039
would fly in to La from El
Paso and take the class and then fly

1666
02:08:13.119 --> 02:08:16.359
back, you know, either late
that night or the following morning. Um,

1667
02:08:16.520 --> 02:08:20.000
that's how motivated people out to take
the class. And I would commend

1668
02:08:20.039 --> 02:08:26.039
it to you know, a lot
of the people that you reach and uh,

1669
02:08:26.079 --> 02:08:28.000
you know, I've actually I've known
people who've actually taken the course.

1670
02:08:28.520 --> 02:08:31.760
Uh. And you know, I'll
probably I'll mention their names when we get

1671
02:08:31.800 --> 02:08:35.319
off Richard, because you probably know
you probably remember a few of them.

1672
02:08:35.600 --> 02:08:39.720
And they spoke very very highly of
the course. Oh thank you, and

1673
02:08:39.920 --> 02:08:43.119
uh, you know, uh,
and again, I mean to work with

1674
02:08:43.159 --> 02:08:45.800
someone who's actually been in the fields, been in the trenches. It's just

1675
02:08:46.000 --> 02:08:50.680
you know it's unbelievable. Um and
you know I again, I will link

1676
02:08:50.760 --> 02:08:54.039
to your your upcoming class in the
show notes. You know and everyone.

1677
02:08:54.079 --> 02:08:58.840
I also recommended to check out Richard's
book Essentials of Screenwriting. I have a

1678
02:08:58.880 --> 02:09:01.199
copy behind me where che you can't
say it, but it's on the massive

1679
02:09:01.239 --> 02:09:07.640
bookshelf behind me. But Richard,
you know I've taken up so much of

1680
02:09:07.640 --> 02:09:09.680
your time today, I want to
say thank you very much. Like Flick,

1681
02:09:09.840 --> 02:09:13.359
I enjoy channing. I really truly
did, David. Oh, and

1682
02:09:13.399 --> 02:09:16.119
I would love to have you back
on if you ever wanted to. Absolutely

1683
02:09:16.479 --> 02:09:20.319
you know how to reach carefully.
She kind of handles my calendar and I'd

1684
02:09:20.399 --> 02:09:24.479
love to come back. Be a
pleasure to do that. Excellent because there's

1685
02:09:24.479 --> 02:09:26.159
a ton of questions that we've never
got a chance that I never got a

1686
02:09:26.239 --> 02:09:30.000
chance to ask you because I mean
there's so many and there's so many things

1687
02:09:30.039 --> 02:09:33.680
we could talk about. Well,
one thing I've learned about the questions and

1688
02:09:33.720 --> 02:09:35.960
answers, and that is really good. Answers just lead lead to more questions,

1689
02:09:37.000 --> 02:09:39.640
you know, so, and there's
nothing wrong with that. That is

1690
02:09:39.640 --> 02:09:43.640
the nature of learning. Absolutely,
you know, everyone, you could check

1691
02:09:43.119 --> 02:09:48.640
Richard at Richard Walter dot com and
yes it's rich exactly right. And Richard,

1692
02:09:48.640 --> 02:09:50.680
I want to say one more time, thank you again for coming on

1693
02:09:50.840 --> 02:09:54.319
and I will thanks for having me. David, thank you. Oh it's

1694
02:09:54.319 --> 02:09:56.399
my pleasure. I'm so afford to
chatting with you again. We will do

1695
02:09:56.439 --> 02:10:01.199
it for sure. Amazing Again everyone, thanks again for listening, and Richard,

1696
02:10:01.239 --> 02:10:03.880
I wish you would have a great
day and you know, best of

1697
02:10:03.920 --> 02:10:07.640
luck with all your projects. Back
to you, and thank you so kindly.

1698
02:10:07.800 --> 02:10:11.800
Thank you here now bye bye,
bye bye. I want to thank

1699
02:10:11.880 --> 02:10:15.439
Dave so much for doing such a
great job on this episode. If you

1700
02:10:15.439 --> 02:10:18.000
want to get links to anything we
spoke about in this episode, head over

1701
02:10:18.039 --> 02:10:22.239
to the show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting
dot tv forward slash two ninety six,

1702
02:10:22.439 --> 02:10:26.720
and if you haven't already, please
please please head over to Screenwriting podcast dot

1703
02:10:26.720 --> 02:10:31.119
com, subscribe and leave a good
review for the show, or subscribe and

1704
02:10:31.199 --> 02:10:35.840
leave a review for the show.
Wherever you are listening to this podcast,

1705
02:10:37.079 --> 02:10:41.119
It truly truly helps us out a
lot in getting this information out to more

1706
02:10:41.159 --> 02:10:45.560
and more screenwriters, creatives and filmmakers. Thank you again so much for listening.

1707
02:10:45.560 --> 02:10:48.119
As always, keep on writing,
no matter what I'll talk to you

1708
02:10:48.199 --> 02:10:54.000
soon. Thanks for listening to the
Bulletproof Screenwriting podcasts at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.