Do pro writers try to sabotage aspiring writers?

Every now and then - usually in the darker corners of the internet - I see one belligerent jackass or another accusing pro screenwriters of trying to sabotage other aspirings.  Sometimes this is prompted by posts like one written by Geoff LaTulippe last week.  In it, Geoff lays out the long odds against one ever making it as a pro writer.  I guess that this provoked a few people into accusing Geoff of trying to discourage aspiring writers because he "doesn't want the competition."

Sigh.

This is one facet of an ugly attitude that I really, really despise, which is the "Fuck the pros!" retort.  I've met a lot of pro screenwriters in my time out here and I'm hard-pressed to think of any who weren't incredibly nice people.  I'm sure there are a few egotistical jackasses out there (they exist in every profession), but the vast majority of TV and film writers whom I've met have been very friendly, and often very encouraging to aspiring writers.  This is often tempered with some harsh realities, true.  But I've never met a writer who seemed driven to scare other writers away just to thin the herd of competition.

Putting aside that direct experience, there are other reasons to doubt a pro is trying to scare people away.  For one, being good enough to make it as a writer is HARD.  Let's say that maybe one percent of those who aspire to be writers are actually strong enough to be a threat to the working writer.  Is it really worth that working writer's time to set up some incredibly time-consuming resource like an advice blog, just so that a tiny fraction of those people who visit will be tripped up by disinformation?

Anyway, I bring all of this up because of a few blog comments from a recent post.  Brainman asked:


This relates a bit to the blog post by Geoff LaTulippe where he sort of offered aspiring writers some encouragement through discouragement. He was then accused of attempting to discourage writers so that he'd have less competition. Many came to his defense on twitter, and I recall F. Scott Frazier saying something like "a rising tide lifts us all".

I'm just a naive outsider, but I'm inclined to believe working screenwriters over aspiring ones. I do have trouble fully understanding how it can be true that more writers "breaking in" more often helps those writers that are already working. Could you shed some light on this for me so I can get it through my thick skull?

F. Scott Frazier gave a response that I found quite sensible.  Since I'd hate for that to be hidden and forgotten in the comments, I felt it merited being "promoted" to this post:

First off, let me say while I wish I could take credit for "a rising tide lifts all ships" unfortunately while my sentiment was the same, I said it in a much more awkward way. Someone else said the tide thing, and then I slapped myself in the forehead for not thinking of it first... 

The answer to your question / query about why working writers would ever want to help aspiring writers, and how any advice we give can be taken at face value is somewhat long, but I wanted to break it down piece by piece. In doing so, it's going to be a little over-generalized, but this is the basic idea behind why I believe what I believe. 

First off, let's say there are two ways writers build a career in the feature business: by selling specs and booking jobs. (Again, overly general, but let's start from there...) 

1) Selling specs is not a zero sum game, that is to say if I sell my spec today, you can still sell your spec tomorrow. In fact, if you look at the trends, you can see that spec sales usually come in waves. Studio A buys a hot spec, so Studio B doesn't want to be shown up and they buy one too. The more specs sell, the more other specs sell. Yes, of course, studios and buyers have budgets for each year as to what they can spend on buying scripts, but the chances of Studio C buying your script and running out money to buy my script are so infinitesimally small there's no reason in even worrying about it. 

2) On the other side of the equation, there are jobs, which unfortunately are zero sum games: if I get the job, you can't also get the job (but that doesn't account for rewrites and polishes which are a whole other can of worms). However, when jobs become available not every writer in town goes out for them. Lists are made, lists are cultivated -- winnowing down writers over everything from quote, genre, availability, desire, etc. So the idea that any professional writer would attempt to sabotage aspiring writers' careers because of the worry they might one day end up on the exact same on the exact same job is again, so infinitesimal as to worry about it... 

Anecdotally, I've never known any writer who got pissed or upset with another writer for getting a job. 

In all honesty, I personally think worrying about the veracity of advice from professional writers is akin to worrying about someone stealing your script. All it does it take time away from writing for something that, once again, is so unlikely to happen.

Webshow: Being "good enough" as a screenwriter

Most aspiring writers don't appreciate how hard it is to be "good enough" to break in to the entertainment industry. And then there are the writers who think "good enough" means being just barely better than the latest bad movie released by Hollywood. In this week's ep of the webshow, I explain why the writers who make it are never satisfied with just being better than the worst of their peers.

Interview with screenwriter F. Scott Frazier: Part 3 - "The Working Writer"

Part 1 - His stats and process
Part 2 - "How do you get an agent?"

Our chat with screenwriter F. Scott Frazier continues with a discussion of some of the realities of being a working writer, including going on meetings, dealing with notes, pitching for assignment work and dealing with rewrites.




As I said yesterday, feel free to submit follow up questions and I'll forward them on to Scott.

Part 4 - The Bitter Questions

Interview with screenwriter F. Scott Frazier: Part 2 - "How do you get an agent?"

Part 1 - His stats and process

In this segment of my interview with screenwriter F. Scott Frazier, I ask him the question every writer gets from aspiring writers: "How did you get your agent?"


I've talked to Scott and he's agreed to answer any follow-up questions you guys have.  Just leave them as comments or email them to me and I'll pass them on for Scott to answer in a post sometime next week.

Part 3 - The Working Writer.
Part 4 - The Bitter Questions

Screenwriter Eric Heisserer lifts the curtain on the studio film development process from a writer's perspective

Last week I pointed out a post on Geoff LaTulippe's new blog which peeled by the curtain on the studio development process, and it appears that I wasn't the only one impressed with it.  On Twitter, screenwriter Eric Heisserer made a passing comment that suggested he'd be interested in writing a similar piece.  Seeing an opportunity, I reached out to Eric and offered to host his essay here.  He responded with a piece that should be a must-read for anyone eager to understand what it's like to be a working writer on a studio film.

Eric Heisserer is the writer behind the 2010 reboot of A Nightmare on Elm Street, as well as Final Destination 5 and the 2011 prequel The Thing. Next year, he'll make his directorial debut on the Hurricane Katrina drama Hours.  Long-time readers of the blog might remember Eric from one of my earliest interviews, which can be found in two parts here and here.

Massive, massive thanks to Eric for this piece, by the way.

 -----------
My friend Geoff LaTulippe recently posted on his blog about the process of working on a studio project, in an effort to help people understand how a bad movie doesn’t equate to a bad writer at the heart of it. Geoff illustrated the evolution/devolution of a script as it went through the gauntlet from first draft to production rewrites. (Play Raymond Scott’s “Powerhouse” while you read it.) 

I want to chime in and echo some of what Geoff said, and provide a few specific examples of what it means to be a “professional writer” on a studio project and how one deals with elements beyond one’s control, while working to improve the things that are still within one’s influence. As in most parts of life, this is a hard lesson. 

You are brought in to pitch on a big studio project. It is most likely a remake, adaptation, or sequel. The studios have property and rights, and the way for them to hold onto those rights or to do something corporate-like and “leverage intellectual assets” is to dig into their own libraries. These are the jobs. 

Your agent tells you this is a great opportunity to get in good with a major studio. This is where the money is. This is how you will pay rent without taking a day job. In other words, don’t screw this up. 

The good news is: You’ve been brought in because someone already loves your writing. Maybe it’s the production company set to make the movie. Maybe it’s someone among the top brass at the studio. Whatever the case, you feel good—someone’s read and loved your script. Your voice is what they want. 

You pitch your take on their project, and it’s one you really want to write. You’re passionate and invested. Later you’ll realize that passion and excitement will often count more than story logic and in-depth character work. You get hired, and sent off to write your first draft with a few notes from the studio based on your pitch and/or outline. 

The first draft is where you prove yourself. This is one of the two drafts you will come to love most, because right now it has just your voice; your singular intended tone. 

That first notes meeting is illuminating. You learn right away who actually read your previous script and who didn’t. You also discover what the other people involved want the movie to be. NOTE: Rarely will everyone want to make the same movie. You’ll get notes like “Can we make it more like [popular movie]?” Or, “This feels like it should be more in the [obscure art film] neighborhood.” 

You are sent off to rewrite. You struggle keeping the movie together as a single organism versus a mixed-breed that may not work. (The phrase “fish with wings” is slang I learned about this problem; it’s a fish that can’t swim and a bird that can’t fly.) Hopefully you get it to a stage where it’s ready to be turned in again. 

Perhaps finally this is the stage where it goes to the top studio execs. You attend another notes session and are tasked with notes you feel you’ve already addressed. Things like, “I don’t know what the characters are feeling,” or “What is this person’s arc and why is it so hard to figure out?” Or occasionally, “This character isn’t likeable.” The notes can seem harsh if you take them as personal criticism. You must not. You must focus on the work. 

You must also know you’re likely at a crossroads. You can work hard to address these notes for the chance to continue being the writer, or you can push against them and walk away from the project (or be fired). This second full pass is where you’re tested. The biggest problem is realizing that some readers on the studio level don’t understand subtext. Or rather, they get it when they’re seeing a finished film, but with all the scripts they read (or coverage thereof) they have no subtext radar. It all blows by them. (Not every exec is like this, but it’s a common problem, and can sometimes extend to producers and other people in the process.) 

About this time, your agent calls again and says: Don’t screw this up. For both of you. 

Your new job: Spell out all the things you so artfully seeded through innuendo and subtle suggestion. Now you’re writing things in ALL CAPS and talking about how this is THE TURNING POINT FOR YOUR CHARACTER because she realizes SHE MUST BETRAY HER FRIEND to SAVE HER FAMILY. If you learned how to write from a certain LOST writer, you’ll be doing this already, along with statements like HOLY SHIT, this is the MOST HEARTBREAKING MOMENT WE’VE EVER SEEN. 

Reading the draft back to yourself makes your teeth hurt. This isn’t representative of your writing, it’s more like a transcript of some frat boy describing your script to his buddies. And yet this draft goes over like gangbusters at the studio. You are called and thanked by the studio, and then the producer. Once a director/movie star/both get on board, it’s all systems go for this project. 

Maybe that work has already been done, in which case, you’re getting notes from those people as well. If an actor is involved, the draft the studio loves to death will rankle the movie star. Why? Because in this draft you’ve written out all the subtext and given the actor no room for them to do their job. Actors hate drafts like this. It’s like a photograph of a starving child in some third-world country holding up a flag that reads “FEEL SAD.” Actors don’t want to be told how to play the role any more than directors want you to tell them how to direct. Your job is to do so as quietly and subtly as possible. HINT at where the camera will be versus saying “WE DOLLY IN for a tight MCU on our hero…” And so on. 

You luck out and are triggered for an optional rewrite step in your contract, and now have notes from various branches. The director wants the movie to feel more like it was in the first draft. The studio sees potential of this movie being more like some blockbuster and pushes you to make it quite different from that first draft. The actor has all sorts of thoughts, some of which are absolutely crazy, one or two which are brilliant but completely different from what either the studio or director wants. 

Now you’re feeling burnout, you’ve gone through dozens of drafts no one has seen, all in an attempt to keep this movie together. And you can’t crack it. You can’t make everyone happy, it just won’t work out. So you hedge your bets and go with whatever makes the best movie in your mind. If you have a halfway decent relationship with your director, here is where you have a private dinner meeting with them and discuss the elephant in the room and why you made the choices you did. With luck, the director understands and will fight the good fight. 

All the while, you may see several studio execs come and go, and other people involved are likely fighting their own battles. During the life cycle of THE THING (2011), we had five different execs assigned to us, one of whom lasted for only a month. Each of them had a different opinion of what the movie should be. Science fiction. Horror. Creature feature. One of them pushed hard to make the movie 3D. Every part of the movie is at risk of being abandoned or altered; nothing is ever guaranteed. 

The studio may ultimately like your latest draft but you aren’t seen as a “closer” in the business or your name isn’t big enough to be seen as “story insurance,” so they bring in someone else to tackle a few elements in the script. That writer lasts for two weeks and is replaced with another, to appease some new notes from the new studio exec / the big-name supporting actor / the director’s latest idea during prep. 

The last time you see your script, a frightening amount of your dialogue has been rewritten, scene locations have been moved around, there may be one or two new characters or a couple fewer characters, which subtly imbalance something you’d kept in harmony for the last ten months and three studio drafts. Most heartbreaking may be the clever setups/callbacks you’d written in that are now orphaned or widowed. And of course, all over the place you still see the SUBTEXT HAMMER describing action BLUNTLY so the speed-reader will NOT MISS THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SCENE. 

There is some great new stuff in there, too, you have to admit. Another writer had a clever idea with a subplot. Or a better ear for comedic dialogue. But you’ll realize that sometimes changes happen because people are just too used to the story after reading the script over and over. There’s no mystery anymore. Changes don’t always happen to make things better. Sometimes it’s just to make them different; new. 

This is typically your least favorite draft. In your eyes, it’s a wreck. And you fear it will get worse during production or reshoots, trying to find its new form. The movie at this point needs to shed its wings or its fish scales and commit to being one thing. 

Invariably, this is the draft that is leaked to the Internet. With just your name on it. Your writing is excoriated online by fans. They point out everything you already know is problematic with this draft, plus a few other problems. One or two clever commenters will wonder aloud why you didn’t do this or that with the characters… choices you made in your first draft. Still others will discuss why the script isn’t more like the source material, or why it should be very different from it, or why any of a thousand decisions were made. 

You can’t tell them anything. You can’t point to the twelve hundred script pages and notes where you explored all of these ideas and discovered why using them was a Bad Plan. Your significant other tells you you shouldn’t be reading comments online in the first place, what are you, crazy? 

The movie is released. Maybe it gets a good Rotten Tomatoes score but a low audience CinemaScore. Maybe it’s the other way around. Your name is on the poster either way. 

Your agent calls and says, Congratulations. You’re a professional writer. Someone wants to meet with you to talk about your next movie. 

And you go. Because your agent is right.

Screenwriter: "I Just Don't Want to Answer Phones at a Place I used to pitch."

The Wrap has an excellent article focusing on a screenwriter who's been so hard up for work, he's had to turn to temp assignments to pay the bills.  It's a sad tale of how the industry has changed to make it difficult for even B-list writers to cultivate their careers the way they used to.  This particular writer saw his first film gross $80 million dollars and he sold a second script.  Yet that money runs out quickly in today's world.

"I was doing fine for a while, and then it seemed like after the writers strike, studios and production companies used that as an excuse to cut in-house deals and use that as an excuse not to pay writers for anything."

He suddenly found himself competing with A-list writers for B-list jobs. 

"A lot of the jobs I used to go up for, A-list, like super A-list writers are going for those jobs right now," he said. "In the past, they wouldn't have. There was enough of every level to go around." 

Now, he said, with studios cutting back on the number of movies they make, it's a tougher world. "They used to make films in the 5-to-10 million dollar range," he said. "Now everybody wants to do either the super micro-budget stuff, they want to make remakes or sequels, or they want to make tentpoles. A lot of those middle-ground movies that filled the marketplace, those assignments are gone now."

He goes on to say that studios used to develop projects more - but now it's expected that you'll have the project ready to go - developed and packaged - before they'll pick it up.

And he said studios have used the economy as a justifaction for their own greed. "The studios aren't hurting," he said. "They're just trying to keep as much money as possible." In addition, he said, "Studios used to buy and develop projects a lot more. Now, you almost have to have the project developed and packaged to get it picked up."

Though he's turned to temp work, he says he won't take an assignment in an entertainment company.

"You don't want to answer phones in an office you've pitched to in the past," he said. "It's a little humiliating."

Agreed.  You can read the whole article here.

Interview with SHREK FOREVER AFTER and DATE NIGHT writer Josh Klausner - Part II: Date Night

Part 1 - Breaking in and Shrek

We continue our talk with screenwriter Josh Klausner.

I understand that Date Night was a case where director Shawn Levy came up with the premise and then handpicked you to execute it. Did you have a working history with him?

Nope. We’d met a few times, and his company was trying to the script I mentioned before called (Saint) Peter. He loved the script and wanted to find something for us to work on together. There was another project we started throwing around that didn’t end up working out, then Shawn suggested this.

How did Date Night evolve? Did Shawn just have a one or two-line pitch and ask you to run wild in finding the story, or is he one of those directors who sat down and talked you through every major action beat that he’d like to see?

A little bit of both on that one. We discussed the premise, and then I went off and came up with some ideas for it that I pitched to him. We then sat down for a day and brainstormed off of that. I then took our brainstorming and transformed it a bunch as it turned into a script.

What do you find most rewarding about working on assignment like this?

Well, I’ll tell ya, it certainly doesn’t hurt to have Shawn Levy in your corner when you’re writing something for Fox. I really like Shawn and the people at 21 Laps, so working with them was a great experience. Also, just how quickly the project all came together was pretty fantastic. I handed in my revision off the first set of studio notes, and 24 hours later we were out to Tina and Steve.

I perceived a definite Hitchcock influence on the film – was that more your or Shawn’s vision there?

I’m obsessed with Hitchcock. If you see my film, The 4th Floor, there’s certainly a homage to Rear Window in it (although what I tried to do is make you realize halfway through the movie that we weren’t seeing the story unfold from Jimmy Stewart’s perspective – WE were the building where the murder was going to take place) What I love most about North by Northwest is how a large, expansive and dangerous adventure starts from a simple and innocent case of mistaken identity – it’s not like our heroes are drug dealers or have any nefarious connections… they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. As an audience member, I immediately connect more to the adventure because it really feels like it could happen to me.

What was the first thing you guys really cracked on this script? Was it the structure, the character arcs or the set-pieces?

Definitely the character arcs. We knew the story we wanted to tell was all about this couple and their relationship. How they aren’t out of love – they still love each other very much – but life has gotten in the way. They’ve stopped communicating. And it’s only through the high stakes they get thrown into that all the small things that add up finally come out and they’re honest with each other. And in that honesty, they fall in love all over again. The worst night of their life is the best Date they’ve ever had.

Whose idea was the car chase gag?

That was a great example of collaborating with Shawn. We had reached a point in the story where Shawn really felt the urge for more action. He wanted there to be a car chase with the cops. I objected because a car chase just felt generic to me – what could force our relatable characters into an extended car chase that wouldn’t feel like every other “nervous normal people in a car chase” scene that we’d seen before. I didn’t want to do it unless we could find some way to make it different. It’s then that Shawn recounted how the day he got his driver’s license, he tried parking his car and smashed into the car in front of him and the bumpers got stuck together. I thought it was amazing and the conjoined car chase was born! I then got the idea that Phil and Claire could end up in the different cars during the chase, trying to work together to drive, so it became in many ways about their communication in their relationship (with, of course, a marriage counselor of a taxi driver along for the ride as well) It was really fun to write.

I really like how there was a strong effort at giving the couple a real arc rather than just putting them in these extreme situations and watching them react. It’s something that seems to be less common in today’s films unfortunately. Were you making a conscious effort to bring that back?

You hit it on the head. It’s what I’m proudest about with the film, I think. Unlike so many of these comedies coming out that feel like someone came up with a bunch of funny gags or concepts and situations and then had to think of character arcs to string them together and make them work, I really feel like the comedy comes out of the relationship journey that Phil and Claire go through. In our movie, their relationship was our “concept.”

I rail a lot at bad spec scripts that throw in gratuitous scenes in a strip club, or find really thin reasons to get their female characters mostly naked. Yet I like the way that even though Tina Fey has to get disguised as a stripper, you guys found a way to play that beat so that it really addressed something in their marriage. Did it take some effort to get that in there so seamlessly?

Well, one of the things we wanted to play with (and were also criticized for in many reviews) was what would happen if an everyday couple that we established with real, relatable problems was thrown into a crazy 80’s adventure movie, with car chases and gangsters and strip clubs. How would they react, and how would the journey affect the real issues in their relationship. We thought it was a fun idea to play with. Along those lines, another thing to play with as well is the roles that men and women play in these movies, and switch them up too. It’s Claire who goes to see Holbrooke, making Phil jealous. Claire who breaks into the real estate office. And Phil who in the end has to work the pole to woo the DA. I think when Phil is chosen by the DA and Claire turns with a smile and says the whole, “You’re the father of our children” line back at him, it’s a fun moment where we realize how deeply ingrained these gender roles have become… certainly in movies.

Were there any unique challenges to writing Date Night?

I would just say the juxtaposition of grounding the real and relatable world and relationship of the couple with the heightened and sometimes absurd movie reality of the adventure they get thrown into. And balancing a bunch of tones – feeling their real fear and jeopardy while remaining a comedy, and the finessing level of discord in their relationship so we feel they have serious problems, but not so seriously that we love with each other. It was a fine line to walk the threat to their relationship without ever having it seem like they’d break up.

In later rewrites, when you knew you were writing for two brilliant comedians and improvisers, did you have to watch yourself to make sure you don’t get lazy and figure, “Eh, Steve will have a funnier line on set?”

No. But he inevitably did think up funnier lines, as did she. Those two were amazing, and we were very lucky to get them. It’s hard now to believe the original script wasn’t written with them in mind. They just fell so naturally into the parts.

Is it easier to accept rewrite notes on assignment work like this because the script is less “your baby?” Or do you find yourself getting attached as the script evolves, just as you would with an original spec?

It’s definitely easier. This was always Shawn Levy’s baby, and while I was of course emotionally invested, I felt lucky to be asked to be a creative part of this project. The script that made Shawn want to work with me, (Saint) Peter, is a screenplay that I feel very precious about. And there have been others where the changes have upset me more. I actually think it’s good to have a balance of the two kinds of work as a screenwriter – projects that are your babies and the ones that you care about but don’t get too emotionally involved in. It’s an interesting process a lot of the time with studio notes, because I find I learn a lot and push myself as a writer by stepping outside of my comfort zone and finding ways to satisfy the problems their having without feeling like I’m compromising myself.

It’s interesting that your resume includes an animated comedy, action-comedy, and a slow-burn thriller, three genres that are somewhat different from each other. Is there a particular genre you prefer to write in or do you enjoy changing it up? Would you like to write another horror film?

And I was primarily a dramatic playwright in school. It’s essential to me that I keep doing different things. I try to mix it all up as much as I can – it keeps the stories interesting for me. I like many different genres of films for different reasons, so I don’t want to limit myself on the type of stories I want to tell. I just finished a live action version of Thomas the Tank engine set in England during World War 2, I’m working on a very emotional and sweet movie for Amy Adams and Shawn Levy’s 21 Laps called The 10 Best Days of My Life, and on a kind of action adventure film involving Houdini’s magic legacy for Mark Waters and Walden Media. Then, hopefully, I’m going to take some time to write for myself… something I haven’t had the chance to do in a few years.

Thanks again to Josh for all his time in doing this interview. You can follow him on Twitter at @jcklaus.

Interview with SHREK FOREVER AFTER and DATE NIGHT writer Josh Klausner - Part 1: Breaking in and SHREK

Once again I'm in the position of interviewing a screenwriter the week after his movie hit number one at the box office. For Josh Klausner, this is becoming something of a habit. Not only did his Shrek Forever After top the charts this weekend, but it was just over a month ago that his previous film, Date Night, reigned. Despite being a very busy man at the moment, Josh was nice enough to submit to an email interview.

IMDB gives a hint at your career path, but I was hoping you could fill in the blanks. You got your start as an assistant to the Farrelly Brothers on one of my favorite comedies, Dumb & Dumber. Any notable anecdotes from your time working with them?

Well, when I started working on it, Dumb and Dumber was supposed to be a small movie starring Jake Johansson, and then a week later Jim Carrey came on board and everything changed. Maybe because it was my first real job in the movie industry (and maybe because as their assistant there wasn’t a great deal of responsibility on my shoulders), it’s the most fun I’ve ever had working on a movie. It felt so epic… because it was a road movie we travelled to so many different climates and terrains over the course of shooting, and also had these extended holiday breaks in the middle (one for Jim Carrey to have Gall Bladder surgery, if I remember correctly) It was interesting too because, as it was the first Farrelly Brothers movie, it was very hard for us working on the film to gauge what the tone was going to turn out like and if it was going to work – it wasn’t like any of the comedies any of us had seen before.

Looking at your credits, I get the impression that they’re good to people who have proven themselves with them because you got to direct second unit on four of their subsequent pictures. Did it take much persuasion for them to give you that job?

I’m incredibly grateful to the Farrellys. They took a huge chance on me when they were making Kingpin by having me direct 2nd Unit. I had loved being their assistant, but knew the longer I stayed in that position, the more it would come to define me. So when they called about me working on their next movie Kingpin, I naively told them that I wanted to be their 2nd Unit Director. Pete Farrelly was stunned at first, I think, but then his take on it was, “Sure, why not? We can always fire you if you fuck up.” I worked hard not to fuck up on that job… the 2nd Unit on Kingpin was crazy. Everything from all these bowling ball rigs and special effects to car jumps to Amish Barn raisings with helicopter shots. I’m not unique – the Farrellys have been great to just about everyone who’s worked with them – they’re very good about letting people move up if they have the ability and initiative. They even went so far as to write and produce a movie for their original AD JB Rodgers to direct.

During all this time were you still working on specs, trying to break in as a writer?

I was writing, but at the time I thought that the way I was going to “break in” was as a small indie writer/director… not as someone selling big Hollywood scripts to studios. I thought my path would be through small movies in the independent world. Ironically, it’s ended up being quite the opposite.

How did working for the Farrellys put you in a better position to launch your writing and directing career?

In so many ways. In working for the Farrellys, I was essentially paid to go to film school. It gave me the firsthand experience of seeing how the page ends up translating to screen. I saw the way that they interacted not only with the actors but also with the financiers who were making their movie. As their 2nd Unit Director also I got to work closely with their editor. Often, there would be two different comic takes from one scene that the Farrellys wanted but didn’t cut together, so we’d figure out cutaways or insert I could shoot to connect the two. Moreover, during those years working as their 2nd Unit Director certainly allowed me to stay in film and make a decent living so that I had more time to write. It’s all about time in the end, isn’t it?

In 1999, your professional writing and directorial debut, The 4th Floor, was released. Can you talk a little bit about how that came together?

My 2nd Unit work on Kingpin actually got me some interest from agents, which was all the more reinforced by the fact that they discovered I was a writer. I ended up signing with Joanne Wiles, who is still my agent, right around the time I has written the script for The 4th Floor. We luckily were able to get William Hurt and Juliette Lewis interested as soon as we sent it to them, which led to the film getting financed rather quickly.

As a first time director, did you have many clashes with the production companies on the film, Millennium Films and Top Floor Productions?

To be honest, the whole experience of making The 4th Floor ranks up there as among my darkest days. The company behind the film was Nu Image, which has a very specific and financially successful model for making movies involving foreign presales with internationally known stars. Most of their movies are action adventures along the lines of Cyborg Cop 3 (which I haven’t seen, so it might be great).

At the time, Brad Weston, who I really liked, was starting up what was supposed to be their new boutique division called Millennium Films. The 4th Floor was supposed to be the 2nd film under his guidance, but the head of Nu Image got nervous about Brad’s first film being too “artsy,” (a great movie called Guinevere) and took Brad off of my film and put his Nu Image action B movie producers on it as we started shooting.

I had originally written a very atmospheric, slow moving story that was along the lines of Roman Polanski’s THE TENANT about living in apartment buildings with unknown others and getting into an altercation with a mysterious neighbor, where our protagonist slowly realizes she’s battling against someone who’s not playing with a full deck and that her life is in danger. It was all about how, when it comes to our home space, we become instinctual animals again, peeing in the corners and doing whatever it takes to protect our sanctuaries. Well, this wasn’t what those producers were interested in. The only thing they understood about my script was that Juliette Lewis and William Hurt had agreed to do it. They wanted action, terror, gore and nudity. There were producers’ girlfriends demanding scenes be added so they could have parts, producers’ assistants writing scenes behind my back that they tried to force me to shoot.

Being a first time director on an isolated film shoot (we shot this story, set in New York, in a paper mill town in Canada called St. Johns that you had to take a propeller plane to get to), I bent much more than I should have, agreeing to film an extended “chase” scene at the end that didn’t make much sense. But then it all finally came to a head and I reached my breaking point when they threatened to fire me if I didn’t film some cheesy “creepy possessed talking puppet” scene that some assistant had written. I told them they could do what they wanted, but I couldn’t shoot it, and walked off to tell Juliette Lewis that I was being fired. Juliette came to my aid and told them she wasn’t working on the film if it wasn’t with me – I was the reason she had signed up for it – and Nu Image backed off for the final few days of shooting. That didn’t stop them from doing reshoots without even telling me and recutting the movie.

All that being said, there’s a lot in the first hour of the film in terms of tone and look that I like and feels like what I was going for. And I was able to make a movie on someone else’s dime as a first time director, which is incredibly fortunate. I also certainly wouldn’t be the writer I am today without that whole experience. It taught me a lot about the stories I want to tell.

I read an interview with Austin Pendleton where he talks about how after the table read for The 4th Floor he suggested you drop a lot of little jokes and bits of humor from the script, and praises you for being so immediately receptive. Is his memory accurate, and if so, why was your instinct to listen to him so immediate?

Yes… I would say that was pretty accurate. Whether he knew it or not, we were always after the same thing... his character needed to feel charming and endearing when we meet him, then surprise us with what he turns out to be later on. Because Austin organically has that likability, we could tone down the comedy a lot and still get across what we needed for the character. Also, it was important that Austin owned the part and believed in it himself… if he felt silly, it wasn’t going to work. I’m a real believer in film as a collaborative art form, and that it’s more exciting for me to see how an actor adapts what I’ve written down in ways I could have never imagined as opposed to them simply hitting the marks and inflections I had in my head.

Is directing still something you’d like to pursue?

Definitely… but as is probably obvious from my previous answer, The 4th Floor was a good lesson that I don’t want to direct at all costs. It has to be the right material at the right time with the right people, who respond to not just the actors involved but also to the story. My script (Saint) Peter is something that I hope to direct, though it might take a little while… it’s an adult comedy about faith with a 10 year old protagonist whose brother everyone thinks might be the 2nd coming of Christ. Not exactly hitting those comfortable 4 quadrant buttons the financiers are looking for these days…

What were you doing between The 4th Floor and Shrek the Third?

Man, that’s a good question. All I can say is The 4th Floor was a real trial by fire learning experience for me, and was one of those situations where I had done that thing that I thought would change my life and answer all my problems – make my own movie – and it hadn’t. I kept writing, some things came close, but really I was just trying to find my voice as a writer. And you just keep the faith and do what you can to make ends meet financially until the next film job.

You are one of five writers credited with “additional screenplay material” on Shrek the Third, and the last one listed, so I assume that means you were the last rewriter on the script? What did you contribute to the final product?

I feel a little strange whenever someone refers to me in reviews or announcements as the writer of Shrek the Third. I came in really, really late on that project and had so very little to do with it. I had been hired to write the 4th Shrek, now called Shrek Forever After, while Shrek the Third was finishing up, so they asked me to come over and work on Shrek the Third as well for a little bit. The storyline and scenes for Shrek the Third had already been well established before I started, so I mostly punched up some of the dialogue where I could and helped with the emotional scenes.

How did the story for Shrek Forever After come about? Was the “It’s a Wonderful Life” riff always in place, or did the producers ask you for a pitch for the new Shrek movie?

No. Originally everyone thought it was going to be a story about taking the kids to meet Shrek’s Dad. We always knew we wanted Rumpelstiltskin to be our villain – the fairy tale “deal” thing just felt right, especially with Shrek and Fiona now having kids. We started going down that avenue, and everything just felt a bit stale, to be honest…. One more adventure with “the whole gang.” Which leads perfectly to your next question…

If the latter, was it hard finding a new premise for Shrek? It feels like the previous three films covered a lot of ground in the character’s development.

It was really hard coming up with a storyline. We went down a lot of roads before landing on this one. It just seemed to speak to so many things going on in Shrek’s life, as well as give us the opportunity to see the characters we love in a new way.

What do you do to avoid the frustration that can come with writing a character who’s already had so much ground covered?

Well, Shrek’s always evolving and changing – unlike James Bond who essentially stays the same but just goes out on different missions. Because of that, the issues facing him at this stage of his life are different from the issues in any of the other movies.

When writing a story like this, where do you start? Do you figure out the character’s journey and work outward, or did you try to find a new adventure to send him on and see what challenges arose from it?

I would say it was primarily the character’s inner journey that propelled us. Like I said before, we were really focused on where Shrek is now as a character. He’s gone from a feared and reviled hermit to a hero surrounded with family and friends. In this chapter, we wanted his perception of himself to mirror the way the audience has come to feel about him after 3 movies. If he’s no longer a “scary” Ogre to the world at large and a domesticated family man surrounded by friends, what happened to his identity? It’s a much different problem than he faced in the first movie, where he felt judged and ostracized by the world at large. That being said, we also had a feeling we wanted Rumpelstiltskin to be the villain, so by combining these two elements, the adventure seemed to evolve somewhat organically.

That's not all. Check out Part II for a look at Date Night's genesis.

Interview with TV writer/blogger Margaux Froley – Part III: Staffing season, getting representation and spec pilots

Part I - School, internships and assistant jobs
Part II - The Warner Brothers Television Fellowship and working on the staff of Privileged

Today we wrap up our interview with writer Margaux Froley with a discussion about the sorts of TV specs that are currently having the most success in the marketplace.

So you worked on the rest of the first season of Privileged, but didn’t have a writing credit on any later episodes.

No… We had an order for 18 episodes and had we had 22 [the standard full-season order] I would have been 19 or 20.

And since you have a shortened season, I imagine the attitude on staff as the season winds down is “Alright, time to polish the specs and start taking meetings.”

If I was smart, yeah. I don’t think I got that at that point. I think it was a little too new for me. We finished working in January of ’09. I think we finished airing in March, but in March the CW decided to repeat the whole season during the summer… so we thought that was a really positive sign for a second season. It’s why we wrote season one with a cliffhanger, “We will not close these stories out.”

But yeah, I should have been much smarter about what came, but I was so spoiled by experience that I think I was a bit in denial about [the possibility of cancellation.] And I think the CW really didn’t have a decision until upfronts, so we really were on the fence for a while there. [In the end,] we were told we were the victim of the CW’s good development season. But it was doubly brutal to be canceled for a show like The Beautiful Life which then got canceled after two episodes. “Really? We could have done better than that!”

Since it happened so late, I assume there was less chance to interview for the next staffing season. Do you have an agent at this point?

A manager. That’s my saving grace.

Did you get the manager before or after you went through the program?

I got him at the tail end of the program. He came scouting through the program and he and I hit it off. He gets what I’m going for on the page. He sent me one of those writers’ dream letters, an email from someone you don’t know, saying “Hi, I discovered your script in a pile and I just loved it!” And I’m like “Oh my god, who is this person?” He actually didn’t want to sign me until I had original material so that’s also why I wrote that one-act. The fact he really liked that play was a big reason he wanted to get behind me for staffing. I really like the one-acts. It’s my favorite little indulgence in writing, so I’m working on a series of one-acts starting with that one and a friend in London is getting them produced.

I really took this year just to learn how to write pilots. The Fellowship didn’t really teach us about that. I think contractually it’s a sticky issue…

Then they’d own it, probably.

Yeah, there’s a very smart reason they can’t do that stuff. Writing a pilot is a very different beast than writing specs. I love to write specs – [but] they don’t help you. For staffing they will not be read.

That’s what I’m hearing and maybe I read this on your blog, so I apologize if I’m quoting you back to you.

I wanted to write a spec this year and my manager said – this is his quote – “It will not be worth the paper it’s printed on.”

Wow. So it’s all original material. If you want to break into TV, write pilots?

Yeah. Now, if you want to break into TV, the Fellowships are the best way to break in, and if you want to learn how to write TV you have to write a spec. I hope it does cycle back and specs become relevant again… What a spec is good for is so limited also, and part of that is that people are just writing original material and bottom line, you’d better blow people away.

You’ve gotta stand out in a stack of scripts. I was at a big agency last year for staffing and I know that I just got put in piles of scripts and my work didn’t stand out from those piles and I didn’t have the personal connections that would get my work to the top of those piles. Big agencies are in the volume business, so they have the clients they can slot in – but if you’re not writing some really stand-out material, I guarantee your stuff is useless.

And even with a pilot, you’ve got to have a damn good idea and execution because I’ve read some that have a threadbare idea that they spend 60 pages setting up and the story goes nowhere.

Well that speaks to the whole premise pilot thing. You can’t do the pilot about “Here’s how it all began.” Basically, [spec] pilots now are Episode 3s. The ball’s already rolling, where do you stand? Here’s a new adventure. But I still think you have to tip your hat to the origins of some sort so you’re not alienating your audience completely, but you can’t spend your time in set-up mode. Pilots can’t do that anymore. I spent a good six months having an issue with that like “How do you begin your story?” You kind of have to write the bullshit pilot and get it out of your system and then you write episode two and that’s your [spec] pilot [to send around.]

Because so much of finding a show is what you discover in building the premise and giving voice to those characters as they discover it.

And also in pilots you have to be more open to rewriting because you’re spending your first draft figuring out “Who are these people? How do they talk?” And then you can come back and obviously make them better. Writing a pilot is a different animal because you’ve got to create people as opposed to mimic people [in existing series] and that’s a different skill.

Which is different from features where you’re only telling one story with these people.

And you get to close it out. I used to only think in features and now I only think in TV. Just in terms of can you create big enough people to maintain a story, or a big enough world to maintain an ongoing thing as opposed to “This one thing happens and here’s how we solved it.” The spec [episode] is sadly a bygone thing.

So before we close this out, do you have any parting words for aspiring writers?

The reason, I started my blog was this year of writing pilots and pulling my hair out, and “wow, this is a whole different learning curve.” And I’m still on it… but I figured if I was going through the whole hair-pulling stage, somebody else probably was too. Then also in terms of my consulting stuff it’s been a very good way to keep the wheels turning and walking other people through their specs this year has kept me current on shows – and also with not being in a writers’ room this year it’s kept me speaking to writers. In consulting… I’m not nice about people’s work because that doesn’t help them.

No, I’m the same way.

That’s totally your job. There’s no growth from [polite feedback versus candid feedback]. And also there are so few people in this town who will be honest with you about your work. Agents don’t speak “Writer.” Same with managers. If you’re lucky they’ll spend time doing notes but it’s rare. A lot of people won’t bother to be that honest with you and that’s why I really like the consulting. It’s like, “Here’s the tough news that no one’s gonna tell you. Here’s how to make it better.” And for me it’s good brain teasers, so it’s been a fun process – blog/consulting.

Thanks to Margaux Froley for all her time, and if you haven't checked it out yet, go visit her blog at "This is Your Pilot Speaking."

Interview with TV writer/blogger Margaux Froley – Part II: The Warner Brothers Television Fellowship and working on the staff of Privileged

Today we continue our chat with Privileged writer and "This is Your Pilot Speaking" blogger Margaux Froley, starting with a look at the Warner Bros Television Workshop Fellowship.

Part I - School, internships and assistant jobs

So getting back to the WB TV Fellowship, could you take me through the process that happens once you’re accepted?

The Fellowship is like TV Grad School in six months, one night a week for about six months. They spend the first couple weeks, maybe two months, telling you here’s what you need to know, here’s how you break down a show, practice pitching, how many storylines you need to have, things like that. That was in ’07. The Fellowship has evolved – my year we could pick whatever spec we wanted to write and now you have to choose among selected shows.

Shows connected to the program?

I believe they’re Warner shows, and I don’t know if that’s the current model so be careful quoting me on that. I chose to spec Gossip Girl – literally at the third episode of Gossip Girl I said “I’ll spec that thing.” One of the Warners execs tried to talk me out of it [because it was so new and might not last] and I remember saying to him, “If this show is as big as I think it’s gonna be, there will be other [shows] like it that will follow.” And at the time, Gossip Girl’s commercials were Clearasil and cell phones. Trust me, that doesn’t go out of style. Those people will always be selling something on TV.

And the CW’s bread-and-butter is something like Gossip Girl.

Totally! And that wasn’t even a hit at the time to be the signature of the network that it became. But One Tree Hill just will not die.

As I have said on the blog recently. You can’t bury the thing.

It won’t die! I wrote on my blog that it’s like the Law & Order of the CW. That show’s amazing. I’ve never seen it, but god love it.

They’re survivors. It’s got passionate fans who watch it seriously and my hat’s off to the executive producers.

Those numbers don’t dip, man.

They have the last laugh. I can throw stones all I like but it’s still on. But to get back on track, you go through all of that and…

[After we] pick a show to spec, the Fellowship divides us into smaller groups. There were 12 of us – three comedy and nine drama – so we got broken into groups of four and we all really work with each other on the writing. We had Christmas break to write our first drafts. I remember being in Tahoe pulling out my hair, my family and friends are having a great holiday and I was at home trying to learn out to write.

“I need a Jenny story, dammit!”

I read all the books, I was really into it. Then the four of us helped each other on our scripts and we were judged on how well we critiqued others as well as our writing. They talked about [writers’] room stuff… but it doesn’t prepare you. Four people – it’s not simulating a room… and I think every room is different. My husband’s a poker player and I really think there’s like a poker skill that relates to writers’ rooms. You’ve gotta get good at sizing up the table, knowing people’s positions, knowing how to read people… When I got on Privileged the biggest lesson was just to “shut the fuck up.” It’s the smartest thing you could do.

Don’t talk just to hear your own voice.

And Privileged was an amazing supportive room where we really were not concerned about rank and title, but you don’t pitch your shit ideas just to get something out there. But learning when to shut up was one of the most important skills. I was happy I learned that one early.

So how do they place you on writing staffs at the end of the Fellowship?

A lot of it is behind the scenes, but at the end of the Fellowship they kind of see where you’re at, which shows your work is best for. At the time I was on the comedy track. I met on the Bernie Mac [pilot] that was looking positive that year. It was actually one of my first good meetings. It didn’t get picked up and then Bernie Mac died that summer. A good last pilot on his way out, that’s for sure. I met on Spaced, which I thought was gonna be a good little pilot, but sadly didn’t go either.

So I was not at all keyed up for any of the dramas, I was stuck in the comedy realm and the comedy showrunners really didn’t want Fellows because it was a new regime on the Fellowship so they had to do a lot of proving themselves. They weren’t exactly keen on nobodies in their rooms – even though you’re free.

And just so I’m clear, what’s the timeline of this? Spring of 08?

No, this April-May. It’s a pretty quick shuffle at that point. At the time I didn’t have any original material. Everyone else in the Fellowship had multiple scripts in their back pocket. I got in on my first spec, and then wrote one in the program so I was really just bullshitting my way through at that point. It’s why I wrote my first play actually – I was just desperate for original material and I wasn’t gonna have time to write a pilot. A one-act play seemed like the quickest way to generate 20 pages of original material. I wrote that in a week or two in late April, just a “Hail Mary.” The drama people in the Fellowship were ahead of me when Privileged was going and my mentor at the time was a great executive and he helped me get in that pile and another friend from the Fellowship knew Rina Mimoun somehow, so I managed to get in that pile. I think Rina passed on a couple other Fellowship people. She liked my Gossip Girl, so… it was just luck, man. I got to meet with Rina and she was brilliant and we hit it off.

And were you familiar with her earlier work?

No, not at all. I was familiar with her in a funny way because the year before I had done a pilot with Shana, Shana’s husband also had a pilot at Warner Brothers and Rina had cast a bunch of people that he wanted, so internally we spent a season being “Oh this Rina Mimoun! What is she doing taking our good actors?” She made a great pilot that year too and nobody’s pilot went. I can’t say enough good things about Rina. She really taught me how to write TV, but is just a lovely person.

How does Rina run the room? Is it one of those things where she’s clearly the boss, or is it a more democratic way?

Rina had a very clear idea of what she wanted. It’s a serialized show, so [it would be] “here’s the arc we’re going to cover” or “I want the romance to blossom by this time.” At that point she was on-set and had a lot going on so we really had a lot of time in the room without her and I think in that sense it was really democratic because we’re all just trying to make a good show.

[After we’d break an episode] Rina would ultimately put everything up on the board and be the final voice on fleshing the episode out. As a group, I remember feeling everyone contributed to an episode and I don’t remember who gave what idea because it all really came together as a group. Every piece of the group was relevant to the final ideas, and again, Rina was a dream captain for all of that.

I meant to ask, does the program make an effort to put you on first season shows?

I think it’s just whatever’s available. With first season shows I think you have a bigger chance because there are so many positions. On already established shows, those assistants are getting to write, so you’re competing against that.

I guess the advantage of coming in first season is that you’re not “the new guy.”

Everyone’s the new guy, yeah. I don’t know what it would be like to go on a show that’s already been around because it seems intense in a different kind of way. It sounds scary.

Your episode was the 11th episode that season, so you had the chance to see everyone go before you. How does that work when it’s your turn?

I think I was literally the last [writer] to get an episode assigned. Everyone had gone once and then it was my turn because I was totally the bottom guy on the totem pole. We knew that my episode would be that one, but we didn’t know what the story would be until we got there. So my episode, as luck would have it, turned out to be a very sweet episode about all these blooming romances.

We all broke it as a group. I wrote the outline and a first draft and then some of the mid-to-high level writers did a first look at my first draft before I bothered Rina with it. My episode was a weird one where in outline form things worked and then on the page we were like “oooo… some story stuff got weird.” Then Rina and I split up some storylines in terms of tackling some bigger changes. I was just there to learn, shut up and be rewritten. Ultimately I think a fair amount of my stuff stayed in there but it was a very interesting experience.

And this late in the season are you cutting it closer with the deadlines?

We always did a really good job being on time. We never had any 3am nights. It was always kind of a 10-5 workday and very rarely did we need anything more.

You are so spoiled for your next job!

It ruined me. And to double it, I live in Larchmont and we shot at Paramount so I’d walk to work… We’d break at 5:30, 6:00 maybe if we were crazy, and I’m home at 5:35. It was awesome. I got to go home during lunch sometimes… stuff like that. I’m totally ruined [for the next show I work on.]

So since so much of your stuff survived into the episode, does it feel like something you wrote when you watch it?

Yes and no, because… it’s not my voice. I know the storylines I contributed over the season. I know some arcs I came up with. I have a hard time pointing to it and going “that’s my line” because it all becomes part of the process… I have no ego about it. It was neat to have my credit and see my name on screen. That was kind of a highlight.

My episode had the big Christmas tree thing, it was like this romantic gesture and I remember coming up with that. I feel like you’d have to have a pilot of your own to really feel that ownership completely.

You mentioned that some stuff worked better in the outline than in the script. What caused it?

I think it was because we had this sensitive storyline with Anne Archer and Michael Nouri, so we had this older generation storyline compared to the young girls and it was more about balancing out a big secret versus revealing and then where the characters were at that point, and my episode was the second half of a “To Be Continued…” episode so part of it was “Have we serviced finishing the storylines in the right way?” In outline it seemed good, on the page it might not have been as big a reveal as we thought… stuff like that.

Part III - Staffing season, getting representation and spec pilots

Interview with TV writer/blogger Margaux Froley – Part I: School, internships and assistant jobs

One of the more coveted ways to break into television writing is the Warner Brothers Writers’ Workshop – a fellowship program whose alumni include Desperate Housewives creator Marc Cherry and My Name is Earl creator Greg Garcia, as well as fellow blogger Margaux Froley of the TV writing blog “This is Your Pilot Speaking.” A 2008 Fellow, Margaux went on to be staffed on the first season of the CW’s Privileged. Last week, Margaux was generous enough to sit down with the Bitter Script Reader for a chat about her writing history, the experience of being in the program, and her time on staff.

I saw in your bio that you were at USC. Is that where you decided you wanted to be in writing?

I wanted to be a writer since I saw Pulp Fiction, so since my freshman year in high school. Pulp Fiction was the movie that I went “Oh! Somebody wrote that!” So I was on the feature track since I was 13. When I was at USC, I did the film theory/critical studies track over there, which I think made me a better writer because it was like “How do you tell stories? How do you move your audience?”

Yeah, you need to have that basic foundation.

And I never would have studied that stuff on my own… and I really feel like that was the best thing I could have done. Knowing inside and out how Hitchcock scares you is way more helpful than making bad student films.

I did both. I had a professor who had a major Hitchcock fetish and the second half of one of our film courses was entirely made up of Hitchcock films.

That sounds like a summer school class I took that was all of Scorsese and Spielberg in six weeks too. It was awesome…. I had a real reckoning because in film school you study it and I was real snob at the time and only loved indies and auteurs and all that. Then USA Films was my first job out of college and I was in development and acquisitions. I got burnt out on reading scripts really quickly and I don’t have a good solution for how to fight the burnout.

There isn’t one.

And then Acquisitions I was watching really bad independent film all the time. At 21, 22, I was so jaded and over it that I went the completely opposite direction and went on a big action movie binge and went “I just need bullshit entertainment because I don’t want to think about it anymore.”

I had kind of the same thing when I was reading for someone at one company – which made mostly mainstream stuff – and she liked a lot of this indie bullshit. And she would get this scripts that had recognizable actors attached to play modern day men who dressed up as courtesans. [Basically, men dressed up as female Renaissance prostitutes.] And two pages in you know “Even if this is great, everyone above you in development is not going to want to make this film.” So why am I reading this?

USA Films was an interesting voice at the time. It was right after Traffic, and we made Eternal Sunshine while I was there, so there was a real different take on movies so it wasn’t all schlocky and indie, but all of it attracted there so you’ve still gotta weed through everyone who thinks that their garage band is a good story. And that was pre-internet. I don’t envy development execs now having to scour YouTube for it. That sounds like the same amount of drivel.

Well, it sounds like more drivel. They just have greater access to you. I had done a TV show in college a couple years before YouTube hit and before everyone was shooting digitally, and I’ve always said, “Wouldn’t it have been great to have this then? We’d have had distribution on campus!” But I’m sure everyone is doing that now so… bigger pond.

Even SC was funny. I was desperate to get into the film school and I got accepted undeclared. I spent that summer working on my first independent film and then I heard that the film school didn’t actually want people with film experience… and ten years ago that shit was a lot harder to come by and find rather than everyone just picking up a camera and making their own admissions video.

It seems like we were probably in college during a weird shift as digital technology and prosumer cameras made filmmaking more accessible. Because I got most of my education on editing with 16mm.

I was the last class at SC to use Super 8 and I love it. I wouldn’t change that for anything. Literally cutting my film and having it glued to my table to slice my film.

I did that for about two years and the last two years we were using a little more digital editing for things we were shooting on video, obviously. Of course all that film editing experience is almost useless now.

Well it’s still how you tell stories. Avid changes how you do it [but] the art is still there.

So was USA Films an internship that you got through USC?

SC didn’t help with any of that. I interned during college at Working Title Films. I finished high school in England, so I sort of spent college trying to figure out how to get back there, so Working Title was the perfect place to be. Then during my senior year I interned at USA and then a friend who got a job had to go back and finish his senior year just as I was graduating so I got his assistant job. And we’re still friends. He was like my intern buddy and still my best industry contact and he’s the only one I trust with my shitty writing and his taste has always been impeccable. Those first friendships, man.

I’ve said many times on the blog that a guy I met on my first internship has gotten me at least two jobs over the years.

I haven’t used a resume for a job for a good five years. UTA list? Pfft! Doesn’t matter.

So I assume that alumni connections haven’t played a big part in your career?

No, I didn’t make that many friends at SC… what’s funny is that I’ve made more SC friends, post-SC. We seem to have that in common [but] I don’t know that it’s gotten me jobs. I’m a bad alum. I don’t give money, I don’t go to events, so I’m sure it works both ways.

Just curious, because you always hear that the great benefit of USC is that you’re surrounded by all these people…

I don’t discount that. I haven’t personally experienced that but I will say that my friends [from USC] that I’ve met since are all really impressive people. We don’t all do the same things in the business… we’re not in positions to help each other out but I know if that ever came up they’d have my back.

There was an interview with you on the Warner Brothers Television Workshop website that said you got interested in TV writing after working as a show-runner’s assistant. What show was that on?

I worked for Shana Goldberg-Meehan. She’s a Friends alum. I worked with her on one and a half pilots. The writers’ strike was in there so that was a strange year. I was there for her development season. I was there for a pilot called The Hill. That was my first job in TV. I was excited because I thought “She’s in development. She works from home a lot. I’ll just sit in the office and work on my feature.” And then I was filing her old scripts and her Friends scripts and figured, “Well, since I’m here I might as well attempt a TV script.” So I just pulled a 30 Rock out of my butt and was like, “Throw it against the wall and see what happens,” and that was what got me into the Fellowship.

How many feature scripts had you written before that?

Three or four. Something like that. I think it takes at least three features to hit some intelligence and think about what you’re bringing to the page.

You need that many to figure out what you’re really doing.

Yeah, and I think everyone clings to that Diablo Cody thing of “Well she did it on her first one.” But she was a copy writer for a while.

And she wrote books.

She was already somebody who was already a very adept writer in her own right before she even bothered with a screenplay.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about the experience of being in the Fellowship.

Part II - The Warner Brothers Television Fellowship and working on the staff of Privileged.
Part III - Staffing season, getting representation and spec pilots

Interview with JERICHO and HUMAN TARGET's Robert Levine: Part IV - Writing the Jericho comic book and getting an agent

Part I - Climbing the ladder as a writer's assistant
Part II - Working on Jericho's first season
Part III - Writing Season Two of Jericho

Jericho was canceled again due to low ratings after the second season, but true to its reputation as a show that refuses to die, the storyline was recently continued in a Jericho comic published by Devil’s Due. Rob was given the task of co-writing a few issues in that storyline.

With the death of Bonnie in your last episode, you knew you had something that was going to make everyone on the internet go “Holy shit!” Do you track internet reaction after one of your episodes airs?

Especially on that show because [there was such a passionate following.] I know those people now. They’re still vocal. They read the comic book.

Which is a great segue way into talking about your work on the comic. So in comics, you’re freed from any production concerns.

Yeah!

You can do anything, but is there a point where you feel yourself putting limits on yourself so that it “feels” like Jericho?

No. Not really. Only in terms of wanting to stay with the characters [from the show.] If anything you’re tempted to do too much, and the only limitation in comics realistically is that you only have 22 pages. But at the same time, you’re completely free from limitations in terms of locations, the actors that you’re using. You can use a character in just one scene [and not feel it’s] a waste of money to pay them that much and only use them [so briefly.] It came at a good time for the story, because the story by the end of Season Two wants to explode.

So you can actually show this civil war instead of just being locked into everyone back in their bunker in Jericho?

Now I think the challenge is keeping a story in Jericho going, keeping that interesting now that the scale is so big. It’s been fun.

I’ve got a few readers who want to me to ask if there’s any news about a Jericho movie, and if there’s any bearing that the comic would have on the storyline for that movie.

I don’t know. I don’t know any plans. Jon Turteltaub’s guys would be able to answer that better.

Is there any direction you’ve gotten from them in terms of “You can’t do this in the comic because these characters need to be available for the film?”

Hopefully I’m not talking out of school, but a lot of what we’re using in the comic, I think, is what they had initially talked about for the movie, telling these kinds of stories – Jake and Hawkins on the run with Smith, Jericho becoming an active place of resistance. It’s all that stuff. I’d like to think that if they made the movie they’d either pick up where the comics are leaving off, or basically adapt the story we’re telling on the big screen so you can actually see the stuff with the actors.

But I don’t know. I don’t know where [the movie] stands.

Any desire to keep writing comics after this?

I had to learn from scratch how to do it, and now that I have I want to keep doing it. You know, it has that benefit of minimal production costs. You can do what you want for very little.

Scripting comics is strange because unlike TV or movie writing, there is no set format for comic scripts. I’ve seen some that look like screenplays and some that are just written in paragraphs. Did that take some getting used to?

Yeah, someone said it’s like directing a movie because it’s not just dialogue, it’s what in the frame, what you’re showing, how you’re showing it. I haven’t gotten that adventurous in terms of the pages I’ve written whereas there are other writers for the show who have. Issue four is by a different writer, Matt Federman, and it’s the entire story of John Smith [the character in the show who masterminded the nuclear attacks that begin the story], which is something you could only do in the comics [because he’s not a regular character on the series].

You could never do that on the show. You could never take an entire episode and just devote it to that character. But in this format you can, and it reveals the entire backstory mythology of the show. It spans years. Every question you have gets answered. As a fan, you can move forward. You know the origins of this guy, you know how he did what he did, why he did what he did. It’s an emotional story. It’s great, it’s really great. [And] Federman did much more radical things [than myself] in terms of how the page is arranged, the things you see and how information’s coming out. It’s awesome.

At what point in your career did you obtain representation, and do you have any advice for unrepped writers currently seeking representation?

I obtained representation around the time I was staffed on Jericho, then I changed agencies before the beginning of the second season. From my story, you can see representation didn't make much of a difference in terms of landing my first job. It was the inverse: the fact that I already had a deal made me attractive to agencies, because the hard work was done.

Still, having an agent is important because they'll negotiate your deal for you and even after you're staffed, they're working to get your name out to all the studios, networks and production houses that might hire you in the future.

My advice for unrepped writers is to start approaching agencies as soon as you have a couple pieces of material you feel confident in. Use personal connections if you can. But I would also say you need to manage your expectations in terms of what difference an agent will make at that stage in your career. Obviously, the strength of your writing is a huge factor. But the more relationships you're able to develop on your own, either through your day job or otherwise, the better your chances will be.

Let's talk writing samples. As someone on the inside, what would you tell a writer who was looking to start his TV specs. I hear original pilots are the way to go these days, is that so? What are the essential qualities of a good TV spec?

I think original material is always a good bet, but I wouldn't feel limited to pilots. A short story or a play can suffice just as well.

Remember what your objective is with a writing sample: it's not to sell a specific piece of material. It's to sell you as a writer. Your voice. Your vision. Pilots can do that, but they also come with an added expectation, because a good pilot needs to have more than just a good story, characters and dialogue. It needs to work as a launch for a show that could run several seasons, and if it doesn't suggest that kind of longevity, it will judged on that. Short stories and plays don't carry that expectation. Plus, frankly, they can be shorter, which means someone will be that much more likely to start and finish reading them.

Now, writing plays and prose carry their own challenges, but I think it's worth considering the advantages. Features can work as original samples as well, but again, they tend to be longer.

Those guidelines aside, I think what it boils down to you is fairly simple. Write what you like, what excites you as an audience.

Part V - Writing for Human Target

Interview with JERICHO and HUMAN TARGET's Robert Levine: Part III - Writing Season Two of Jericho

Part I - Climbing the ladder as a writer's assistant
Part II - Working on Jericho's first season

Unsatisfied with the ratings, CBS canceled Jericho after it’s first season, but passionate fans refused to let the show die. Organizing via fan sites and fan message boards, they began a campaign to revive the show. Playing off of a line in the finale where Skeet Ulrich’s character quotes General McAuliffe’s defiant “Nuts!” in the face of superior German forces demanding his surrender, they sent over 20 tons of nuts to the CBS offices as a show of support. The effort paid off, and CBS, intrigued by the passionate response, began arranging Jericho’s return.

What was it like in the offices when you’re hearing about this massive fan response, by the way?

Well, we weren’t in the office. I was sitting at home. It was crazy.

Are you surfing the internet, seeing the reactions and all of that?

You’re mourning the show, you’re mourning this thing that you worked your ass off on and you love everyone involved. You’re hoping so much that it would come back – and then all of a sudden you’re hearing these rumblings of what’s happening at CBS with the peanuts, and they’re reconsidering. And especially for me, it was my first show, my first staff job. It was very hard to get. It was a long journey. It’s like, “Am I gonna have to start all over again or what?”

Then three weeks later I’m back at work. It’s insane.

So they told you straight out “It’s seven episodes and we’ll see…”

Yeah, which was great because we could just conceive it as a movie. Three acts. We knew where we wanted to go. We knew the milestones. We broke that thing very quickly.

And that was an effort in the room? It wasn’t like [executive producer] Carol [Barbee] comes in and says “Here’s the master plan. You guys conform to it.” How is a master plan for a season developed?

For season two Carol’s first question was “how do we resolve this cliffhanger and then where do we want to go from there?” And I think by then we all had a pretty good idea what our mythology for the show was. Jon Steinberg was a big source for a lot of vision for that story in particular. Jon was one of the original creators of the show. I think it was always in his mind that the show was a show about civil war. That it would eventually get there once it got through that stage of being a mystery show. For Jon I think it was almost as interesting a story once you knew what was happening [outside of Jericho]. What happens next? The government is gone, the country is split in half. Jericho is deep within one half of the country and they are not the good guys. And [dealing with] what happens.

I think we knew that we were telling a French Resistance story. We were telling a story about an occupied city and we knew that at a certain point, our people would rise up. [The question was] at the beginning of the season, they’re given everything back, so why rebel?

They get everything they were missing in season one, so what do they have to complain about?

Suddenly you’re back within the warm embrace of Uncle Sam, or in this case the ASA, so why would you rise up? Why would you fight that? We knew it would have to be big and would have to be something that would be really terrible and sad. That’s where the conversation started. We talked a lot about the character of Stanley (Brad Beyer). He owns a farm and at the beginning of the first season he was going to lose the farm to the IRS and in the second season he gets the farm back. His debt is wiped clean. And by then he’s got this woman Mimi he’s in love with, he’s got his sister Bonnie with him and everything’s working out for him. That was where the gravity started circling that “this might be where…”

Might be where “The Bad Thing” has to happen.

I think it was Jon Steinberg who said “What if we killed Bonnie [Stanley’s younger sister?]” It was one of those ideas where – these ideas happen a lot in a writers room. An idea is spoken outloud and there’s a very visceral reaction to them. And a lot of times that reaction is “No! That’s horrible! That’s awful!” Then you realize the strength of the reaction you’re having is in many ways advocating for that story point.

Because you’re not playing it safe…

And it’s doing everything that you’re demanding of the story, where you need something horrible. Very quickly I was like “Well she’s gotta go down fighting. She has to go down defending her home” and then we start talking about that family. We have this character Mimi (Alicia Coppola) who Bonnie (Shoshannah Stern) hated at first, who was the outsider, and now they’ve come together. So it would be wonderful if Bonnie died defending Mimi, who she had essentially welcomed into their family. So it all started to make a lot of sense very quickly. Then the whole season mapped out from there.

And Bonnie’s death is your episode! So everything in that conversation is everything you have to service in your episode.

Once I knew I was writing episode four I knew that I was killing Bonnie.

So you’re probably like “Well, at least I’ve got a great ending.” Is it harder or easier to write an episode when you have so much predetermined for you by where it falls in the through-line?

Easier.

It doesn’t kill spontaneity or anything?

I think it’s better. There’s still plenty to figure out. There always is. The challenge of that episode was the other story.

Because this is where Jake (Skeet Ulrich) and Hawkins (Lennie James) bring Heather (Sprague Grayden) into their alliance. You’ve got Heather betraying Beck (Esai Morales), and a lot of other plot threads… Was there a point where you looked at your To-Do list and thought “How am I gonna fit all of this in?”

The first hurdle of that episode was talking about the town – what was the rest of the town doing, knowing that the Bonnie thing was going to sneak up on the story and the audience… what is happening at the beginning of the episode that’s keeping people interested? That took a lot of conversation… and we always go back to “What comes into town that like a stone thrown into a pond, starts all the ripples?” And it became – money. They reintroduce money to Jericho. We were always trying to do this – taking something that’s very familiar and tweaking it a little so that it’s weird. [For example] we take a flag that looks like the American flag, but we flip the stars and stripes. So if you looked at it from a distance it would look normal but then the closer you get to it the more disturbing it is. In this case we did it with the dollar bills. They look like our dollar bills but they’re a different color and they say “Allied States of America” instead of “United States of America” and so that got everyone very excited.

[Then] we came up with this thing where [the government] would loan you a lot of money and then turn around and want to collect on it and suddenly you’re in debt to them. That turned into… a scene where [our characters] are arguing about if this was the right way to go or not and Stanley could be a big voice in that scene saying “Guys, everything’s fine. What’s the big deal?”

Because you knew in the next episode that would flip.

Yeah, “Why are we talking about rebellion? It’s over.” On the other side of that we have Dale being the black market engineer saying “This is bad. They’re cutting us off. They’re making us dependant on them.”

And then there’s the Jake story where Jake has to bring Heather into the secret and she has to steal some information from a binder in Beck’s office that would lead Beck to finding that Hawkins has been hiding a nuke. Meanwhile, Hawkins has sent Beck on a wild goose chase, and I do want to talk a little about Beck. He turns into an antagonist, but he’s a sympathetic antagonist. You’re with his point of view the whole time. How did you guys land on developing Beck in that way?

We had a character at the end of season one played by Titus Welliver, who we were all fans of. He was a leader in the ASA and we had plans for him. He was gonna become the steward of the town…. It became a question of “How will Jericho remain an important town once the story gets bigger and bigger and bigger?” It’s important at the beginning of the show merely because it exists. It’s a place where people survived, where they’re far enough away from the chaos that they can continue to live. That’s a central question in any story: Why this character? Why this place?

As we got into talking about the second season [and why Jericho was important] it became a conversation about Beck. Beck was someone that we created to replace Titus’ character because we couldn’t get Titus back. And the idea was that he’d be in charge of Jericho. He would be someone that was principled, who thinks he’s doing the right thing, who is a tough character who initially presents as an adversary and then over the course of the seven episodes, has his eyes opened by Robert Hawkins to the reality of what’s happening in his own backyard, and ultimately turns.

And the idea was that he’d turn at the end of the show and if we every came back, Jericho becomes important because it is the one island among all the ASA where even the military commanders are in active revolt. It would become the epicenter of the resistance in a very real way – not just the townspeople but the military people.

I think that whole story was really well-built, by the way. You didn’t have anyone have to step out of character. There was never a moment where it felt like something was being done specifically to service the plot.

Yeah, because he’s a man of principle. and as soon as you can reveal to someone like that that he’s not working for the right people, he will make the right decision.

And Hawkins accomplishes that through a set-up where he sends Beck on a wild goose chase after a dead terrorist and lets him “find” evidence that Hawkins has had in his possession all along.

Yeah, the kabuki theatre, as we called it. That wasn’t in the story for a long time. I have a very specific memory of that too because we were deep into outlining the episode, I was being told to go to script, and I knew I did not have a Hawkins story yet. I knew enough, I’d been doing it long enough that I could tell [we were missing something.]

When you’re the writer of the episode – a lot of people will write words that end up in the episode, a lot of people will contribute – but there is always one person whose responsibility it is to shepherd the episode. And in that case that’s what I was doing and my sense was that we didn’t have a story there. We knew that Hawkins would get a mysterious phone call, that he’d be talking to this character who’d be telling him he was in danger, but the thing that we were neglecting to service was at the end of the previous episode, Hawkins had said to Beck, “I’m going to help you find this terrorist.” The audience knows that he has no intention of doing that because he is the person that Beck is looking for and that the person Beck’s been tricked into looking for is dead.

We didn’t consider it [when we wrote the previous episode] but the reality of the situation is that Beck is going to come in the next morning and expect Hawkins to provide things. There’s a lie that has to be serviced. And actually I was on the train down to Comic-Con that year for Jericho, with Steve Scaia and Matt Federman, some of my fellow writers, and I was saying “Hawkins has to follow up or he’s a fraud.” So that created a conversation of, “What if he walks into Beck’s office and says, “I saw Sarah Mason [the terrorist.]” He’s doing what he promised he would do, which is help Beck find his terrorist. Why would he do that? What is his ultimate goal with Beck? And we had to remind ourselves that the larger story is about Beck’s turning, Beck’s awareness.

So how do we get this evidence that Hawkins has into Beck’s hands?

Right. The trick is how does Hawkins put the evidence into Beck’s hands that he wants him to see, but do it in a way that Beck doesn’t suspect Hawkins of any foul play. So that’s the tension of the story, and then it all rolled out very quickly. The idea was “well, Beck’s not stupid so at a certain point we want to make it seem like he’s seen through the ruse that Hawkins has played out. And confront him about it, and play that scene out.” What does Hawkins do if Beck says “You’re lying to me?” Does he run for his life? [And] what the scene ended up being was that Hawkins calls Beck’s bluff and it turns out Beck was bluffing, that he didn’t know what to believe and he was hoping that Hawkins would give him an out. And the ironic thing is that everything Hawkins was telling him was true – except for his role in it, which was very cool I thought, the way it worked out.

The other thing I thought was cool was that everything Hawkins shows Beck about Sarah Mason, Valente, etc. was all stuff that we had played in the show. We’d seen that evidence be collected, and we were able to pay off something that maybe we didn’t originally plan to, but the story organically creates a place for that stuff to come back into play. So that was cool.

If anything, I would have guessed that story was part of the master plan because it seemed so pivotal so it’s funny to hear it came in so late in the process.

I think when I left the writer’s room, the story was that [Hawkins’ source] calls and says that they’re going to find the bomb [that Hawkins has been hiding], [Jake and Hawkins] recruit Heather, she tears the page out of the binder [that would lead to the bomb] and almost gets caught, and that’s the end of it. And I’m was looking at it [and realized] “Robert Hawkins is doing nothing in this story. He’s sending Heather in to do the difficult thing. This will never work.” I knew enough that you don’t sideline Robert Hawkins in an episode of Jericho. That’s probably the thing I’m most proud of in that episode is that we figured that thing out. Then the easy part was the Bonnie stuff.

Because that dictated so much of the rest of the season.

We always knew we had that, and that by the end of the episode no one was going to care about the rest of it.


Part IV - Writing the Jericho comic book and getting an agent
Part V - Writing for Human Target