rjwriter.com

I was looking at the site, and I realized that I didn’t make a mention that “SF Stories” won Best Narrative Feature at the Philadelphia Asian Am Film Festival last October. So guess what? We won! Thanks Philadelphia!

Occasionally, some interesting stuff pops into my head. So I’m going to do a ongoing series of posts entitled “Daily Realizations”.

Imagine this –

If you’re in the city or suburbs or even the countryside, go to a window with a good view of the landscape/cityscape/neighborhood. Look out at all those people. Thousands – hundreds of thousands – millions of people all out there in their little buildings and homes and offices working away through the years and the days. Now imagine that pretty much all of those people, all those millions of hours of human energy, are being used only for the sole purpose of gaining someone else a little more money.

People aren’t changing the world or advancing humanity. People are working so that, in the ultimate end, whoever own the company or business or corporation gets more cash at the end of the day. Basically, if you’re not calling the shots, you’re only doing what someone else wants you to do. And you’re doing this for the rest of your life.

Daily Realization #1: The vast majority of people spend their lives only gathering money for someone else.

I’ll just get right to the point. Christopher Nolan’s INCEPTION was the best movie I have seen in a long, long time. It is good. And I mean good. So good that it manages to be one of those rare movies that acts as both an inspiration and discouragement to filmmakers (at least for me). It’s just so very seemingly unapproachably good.

From whence springs this goodness?

INCEPTION does a number of cinematical things exceptionally well, and interestingly enough, many of those things are exactly what Hollywood conventions tell you not to do. Let’s make a list. I’ll pretend to be Hollywood.

Hollywood says:

1. Keep your movies under 100 minutes!
   INCEPTION runs 148 minutes. It was riveting from beginning to end. How is this possible? Don’t human brains stop absorbing information about one minute after exposure to opening credits? The truth is that some cinematic stories- especially thought provoking, emotionally involving stories- take a little more that two hours to tell completely. A sub-100 minute movie is like one-two knockout fight. Exciting and definitely not boring. But the 15 round championship slugfests are what are truly epic and stick in our minds. A well-crafted, intelligent, and emotionally inspired movie can definitely run over two hours. In fact, it sort of needs to.
2. Make sure to explain everything- twice! The audience hates ambiguity, so make sure your movies read like grade school primers.
   The word “ambiguity” reminds me of another word- “mystery”. In the real world, mystery is everywhere. We don’t know everything, and that’s good and cool, and it makes you think. You know where else mystery is cool? In movies. A lot of new terms and concepts are introduced at the start of INCEPTION, but not everything is explained exactly- just enough for things to make sense. How can this possibly be a good idea? Won’t the ambiguity throw the audience? Well, yes and no. But as long as the ambiguity isn’t overwhelming, having the unknown present creates mystery. It makes the movie world seem larger, more “unknowable”, and thus more real. Just remember, in the real world, we hear stuff that we don’t understand all the time, and we get along just fine. See, we have this thing called “imagination”, and it helps fill in the blanks. “Imagination” works pretty well with movies, too.
3. The Hero is the center of everything. If it isn’t about him, leave it out!
   There’s some Hollywood screenwriting dogma out there that says that if a scene or event doesn’t help the main protagonist along his “journey” then it’s best to be left out. As a theory, I supposed this is something to think about, but as dogma, it’s resulted in a whole generation of movies that has been streamlined to the point of narrative tundra. An appropriate metaphor would be Hollywood’s similar botoxed obsession with drum-tight, wrinkle-free faces. Sure they look “perfect”, but they are completely lacking in character. In contrast, INCEPTION gives many moments to its “supporting” characters, allowing them time to have their own minor narratives and emotional arcs. The result? A narrative with the feeling of a rich, immersive, and livable world where someone other than the main character actually feels real and – more importantly – likable. One could even argue that in INCEPTION the main character’s journey is a vehicle that allows us to glimpse a world of characters that we otherwise would not have seen.

HERE BE SPOILERS! If you haven’t seen the movie, skip ahead like nothing happened. If you have seen the movie, highlight to read…

4. Make sure someone dies. That’s called drama!
   INCEPTION is a basically a heist movie which means it’s about a bunch of people working as a team to try to pull off something that should be pretty close to impossible or at least extremely dicey. That being, I spent the entire second half of the movie worried about which one of the extremely likable characters was going to be killed off in the name of movie pathos. THANKFULLY, flying in the face of Hollywood convention, they all made it. Ever since I’ve been watching movies, it’s been the fashion to inject drama into films by having major characters die. The main character gets to cry, the audience feels loss, and the overall stakes are raised. So why’s it so great that INCEPTION doesn’t do this? Because while the audience does not experience the dramatic feeling of loss, it instead experiences the feeling of accomplishment; i.e. we did it, we made it, and despite all odds everything is OK. I’d rather get accomplishment instead of loss any day.
5. You gotta have a bad guy.
   Believe it or not, INCEPTION doesn’t really have a “bad guy”. There are characters working against one another with motivations and goals in diametrical conflict. But I wouldn’t call any one of them exactly a “bad guy/girl”. Because the characters are all depicted in a fully sympathetic and fleshed-out manner, it’s easy to think of each person as a “good guy” in their own story, and no one crosses the audience-sympathy line into unjustifiable “evil”. So where does the dramatic tension come from if good isn’t fighting bad? It comes directly from character conflict without moralistic judgement. People want different things for different reasons, but that doesn’t mean someone has to be a bad guy. Overall, it’s a very sophisticated, if not fundamental, way of representing drama in a movie or any type narrative.

So INCEPTION was awesome, and Hollywood can suck it. But what can we learn from all this? Stories and, in particular, movies cannot and should not be defined by conventions. Guidelines help, but they’re just guidelines. In the end, the only things that really matter in creating a great, if not amazing, movie are the fundamentals- living characters, intriguing plot, and an emotionally involving story. If you have these three things, Hollywood conventions, whether you make them or break them, won’t matter in the least.

I thought I’d start out posting on the newly redesigned site with an article, appropriately enough, about beginnings. Specifically beginning as a screenwriter.

Everyone will tell you that in screenwriting there are just as many exceptions to success stories as there are rules, and that each individual success story is different. But the way I see it, there are actually certain definable things that you can do to increase your chances of 1) writing a good script and 2) getting it made. And as a screenwriter, that’s pretty much as good as you can hope for. So let’s get started with “The 5 Not-So-Easy Steps to Becoming a Screenwriter”!

Step 1 :
Ask yourself, “Do you really want to be a screenwriter?”

Really. Ask yourself this question, and ask it really hard. Is screenwriting *really* what you want to do? Or do you just want to get into movies because movies are cool and you get to hang out with famous people and make lots and lots of money doing it? If that’s more your game, then what you really want to do is become a producer or an agent (maybe I’ll cover those jobs in another post). Screenwriting on the other hand is mostly boring, tedious, mind and soul-wrenching work. Screenwriting, as the name gently implies, is actual writing.

Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead. ~Gene Fowler

See that above quote? It’s totally right. Screenwriting is not fun. It’s very rewarding once you actually finish a script, but while it’s happening? Not fun.

So how do you know if screenwriting is for you? A couple of ways. One, which is how I got started, is pure desperation. Seriously. When you have no other options, and you can’t stand the thought of doing any other conceivable “job” on this planet, well then, by process of elimination, “screenwriting” is your new profession. The other, and less theatrical, option is if you find your daily mind filled with thoughts along the lines of “wouldn’t it be cool if…” or “I wish someone made a movie about…” or “I could have made a better film than…” then there’s a strong probability that you just might want to be a screenwriter.

If you’ve answered “no” to this question, and you don’t really want to be a screenwriter, then stop now. The rest of the steps don’t concern you. If you’ve answer “yes”, however, proceed to

Step 2:
Secure a Line of Financing

What? Budget talk now? But I haven’t even written a movie yet.

The money’s not for a film, dummy. It’s for *you*.

Screenwriting is an extremely specialized skill. And assuming that you’re pretty much a beginner at it, which I’m assuming you are, it’s going to take time for you to work up the skills you need to be good at it. And it’s going to take a lot of time. Somewhere around 10 years or 10,000 hours. That’s how much “experts” (haha) say it takes to become one of them. In my experience, it took me about 1 year of constant writing to become comfortable with writing a feature length screenplay, 2 years to actually start liking what I wrote, and about 3 or 4 years before I could confidently put out a screenplay that kind-of-sort-of-more-or-less matched what I was going for with my original idea.

Anyway, the point is, for a good long while you’re going to have to buckle down and write and write and write with no reasonable expectation of receiving any money in return. You can think of it like college where you basically blow $100k for the chance to read books for four years without anyone bothering you. And just like college, learning to screenwrite (is that a word?) is going to cost money. For years, you’ll need money for stuff like food and rent payments and pencils and MacBook computers. And the thing is, you won’t be able to get that money at a “real job”. Why? Because working 8 to 10 hours a day in an office is *not* writing 8 to 10 hours a day at your home. See how that works? If you’re “working”, you can’t be “writing”. And “writing” is what you need to be doing to get good at it.

Can you part-time it? Maybe. But I think the probability of success goes way down. And in that case, I think you end up relying more on luck and/or lucky connections for your success. Basically, if you really, really, really want to be a screenwriter, commit yourself and your time to it fully, and don’t look back.

My suggestions for possible lines of financing are 1) Parents and family 2) Loving significant others 3) Previous “normal” careers where you made bank. I’m totally serious.

Step 3:
Write Your First Feature Script

Well, duh. But actually, this is a very important step and shouldn’t be given short shrift. Completing your first feature is a rite of passage *and* trial by fire, all wrapped up into one! It proves to yourself that yes, it is possible — I can write a feature screenplay. No small feat. And the confidence that goes along with it is both indispensable and invaluable.

The process of writing a script, and especially your first one, can be quite tricky and involved. So I’ll have to cover those in future posts. Suffice it to say, starting the script will be relatively easy, but around page 20 or 30, as far as the story goes, you’ll probably start to feel bogged down or frustrated or generally lost. Whatever you do, *do not* stop. And *do not* go back and rethink your premise. Keep writing and writing and writing, whatever it takes, until you reach that magical page 90 or 100 or however long your story ends up being. The primary idea here is just to *finish the script*. If it sucks in the end, that’s fine. It sucks. Now go ahead and write another one. It’ll most probably be much better than the first. And that’s called progress.

Step 4:
Keep Writing

This step is boring, banal, and self-explanatory. Much like the lifestyle you will be experiencing while pounding out script after script as a screenwriter doing the screenwriting thing. I think I mentioned earlier that this is not fun. But hey, you wanted to be a screenwriter, right? (See Step 1) Right?

Repeat this step until you really start to love your work, and you stop telling others how “it still needs a rewrite” or “will look better on screen”.

Step 5:
Get Yourself Out There or What Do I Do With All These Frickin’ Scripts?

Congratulations. You’ve done it. You’ve put in the time. You’ve written those scripts. And now your writing is good enough that it’s kicking cinematic ass and taking names. Now you’re ready for the endgame. The ultimate goal is to become financially solvent (i.e. people pay you to write). You’ve got a few options at this point…

• Submit to screenplay contests. This is definitely a viable if not somewhat academic route. The idea is you submit your scripts to contests. Of which there are many. Your story wins or get some sort of notice for being better than the others. Agents or producer associated with the contest hear about this. They contact you. You smile and act polite. And BAM, you’ve got contracts or representation. The problems with contests is 1) They’re expensive. Around $40 to $50 a pop. If you’ve got the money to constantly be submitting, that’s great. If you don’t, not so great. 2) Screenplay contests are a bit “academic”. In other words, what contest judges look for doesn’t exactly correlate with what real producers/production companies/filmmakers look for when they’re planning the next movie to shoot. So you could end up in a situation where all the contests think you’re amazing and gifted and a genius, but nobody wants to put up money to make your film. My advice is to try the contests out and see how you do, but don’t hang on them like they’re the final word in screenwriting. *You* are the final word in screenwriting. After putting in those 10,000 hours how could you not be?
• Start making friends — the “right” kind of friends. What you’ve got to do to make this work is go out, meet, and befriend people who are right now making movies. The idea being that within this collections of friends, someone at sometime will eventual need a script and either use one that you’ve written or hire you to write a new one. This process is what everyone calls “networking”. But “networking” makes it sound so cold and calculated, and that’s not the point. The point really is to make friends. And that means stuff like actually having a good time together and helping each other out and respecting each other enough not to screw them over and leave them out in the cold once you get that six-figure development deal. So, you know, pros and cons. Where do you meet these friends, you ask? Los Angeles is a good place to start. It’s like everyone there is in the movie business for some reason. That’s partly why a lot of budding screenwriters move there when they first start out. If LA isn’t an option, then try getting out some film festivals and meet some real, live filmmakers. If you introduce yourself and act nice, I’m sure you’ll find some filmmakers who will return the favor. And finally, you can try the internet where apparently everyone hangs out nowadays. But if you’re reading this blog, then you probably knew that already.
• Put your money where your script is. The last option I’ll mention is to actually self-produce one of the scripts you’ve written. That means actually taking those all those words and pretty indents and somehow, someway turning them into moving, talking pictures all by yourself. The cool thing about this option is that you’ll be fulfilling the whole point of writing a screenplay in the first place, and it will automatically turn you into what you could call a “working” screenwriter. Although, please note, I do mean “working” and not necessarily “paid”. Self-producing can be tricky, however. If you make a great film, then you have a tangible, marketable product that could be the basis of your writing career. If you make a bad film though, you could be written of as a wannabe writer who just happened to have a bunch of rich and/or connected friends (see paragraph above).

As a final note, I’ll say that I’ve actually done all of these options at one point or another, and they’ve each had their usefulness and place in my writing career. So don’t hold back. Give it all you’ve got, and do whatever you can do to make it work. And when you’ve finally become that screenwriter that you’ve always wanted to be, I’m sure you’ll agree that it actually wasn’t so easy after all.

UPDATE (7-13-10): Ok, I’ve got this thing working decently well enough now. Here’s the new site!

I’m reworking the site, so it might look a little wonky for the time being. Should have something lookable in a week or so.

We’re back from the fest, and SF STORIES got the Special Jury Award for Best Screenplay! Awesome.

Good work everyone. We’re like halfway to getting an Oscar now.

Just found out that “SF Stories” has been nominated for the Grand Jury Award at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. This is really cool. We’re a contender baby!

See the list of all eight nominees at the festival’s Facebook page here:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=166067&id=7012581963&ref=mf

And buy tickets to our one and only premiere screening here:
http://asianfilmfestla.org/2010/program-guide/program-59/

Go buy your tickets now. Don’t miss it!

“SF Stories” is premiering at the LA Asian Pacific Film Fest on May 5, 2010. See our program page here:

http://asianfilmfestla.org/2010/program-59/

Oliver Wang from the festival gave us a nice review. I’m glad he “gets” the movie. Thanks Oliver!

See everyone at the fest!

I gotta work on the “official” SF Stories website, but for now here’s the trailer!

Get the large version here.

We got into our first film festival! It’s the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival held by Visual Communications. The fest runs from April 29th to May 8th, 2010, and it looks like it’ll be our big premiere.

I’ll update more as I get more information.

See everyone in LA!