U THE GREAT IDEA™: DANIEL KNAUF’S CARNIVÁLE

U QUICK FIX — 11 MISTAKES WRITERS SHOULD NEVER MAKE

Serving Screenwriters Since 1989

Writers David Benioff

on Writing:
on
Just
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Justin
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i Hayt
Haythe
Hayt
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((The
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Bragi Schut Jr.

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Jeremy Leven Underground Management:

(The Notebook) Trevor Engelson’s Advice
to Up-and-Coming Writers

Using Voiceover
Narration

Women Writers
to Watch

Turn Your Great

Idea Into a
Great Script

VOL. 10, NO. 3

$6.95 U.S., $8.50 CANADA
 26th ANNUAL

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New York City
September 19–24, 2004

Filmmakers Submit Online at www.ifp.org

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 May/June 2004
PHOTO: Alex Bailey
DEVELOPMENT
16. Who You Know: Barri Evins
By John Scott Lewinski
Independent producer Barri Evins wants writers to know the truth about screen-
writing, even if they don’t want to hear it. Learn how to manage your career and
work in a “business driven by a marketplace.”
18. Spec Sale Spotlight: Sheldon Turner
By Rita Cook
Sheldon Turner’s first script sale didn’t result in a feature film. Instead, it opened
doors for him to become one of the most sought-after scribes in Hollywood.
32. The Great Idea: Carnivále
By Kate McCallum
Daniel Knauf shares his passion and the mystery of how he broke all the
traditional TV “rules” while creating, selling and making HBO’s wonderfully
eclectic series Carnivále, soon to enter its second season.
60. Turning a New Page: Women Writers in Hollywood
By Rachel Wimberly
Though the majority of screenwriters in Hollywood are men, over the years more
women have stepped into the field, writing and directing successful, compelling
and Oscar®-worthy films. scr(i)pt profiles just a few of those women who have
made it to find out how they broke in—and stayed in—the business.
68. Making Your Connections: A Manager’s Advice
to Up-and-Coming Writers
By Trevor Engelson
Guys like Trevor Engelson at Underground Management are out there looking for
you just as hard as you are looking for them. Learn how to make the connection
and start your career.
76. Meet The Reader: Conventional Clichés—Part Four
By Ray Morton
In his final installment of examining the conventions and clichés of major movie
genres, columnist Ray Morton details Western, War, Science Fiction and Horror
films. Discover what differences and parallels one might find among these genres.
WRITERS ON WRITING
28. Moral of the Story
By Bragi Schut Jr.
Every writer faces that rock-bottom moment when he starts to wonder whether he
chose the right path in life. Scribe Bragi Schut Jr. shares that moment with you, and
offers his inspirational success story as incentive to keep writing.
42. Writing the Reveal: The Notebook
By Jeremy Leven
Veteran screenwriter Jeremy Leven shows how to lay the groundwork for a reveal
without giving it away or making the audience feel they are being toyed with.
48. Letting the Twist Unfold: The Writing of The Clearing
By Justin Haythe
Debut screenwriter Justin Haythe discusses the challenge of managing two time-
lines in his drama The Clearing. He details his struggle to make both storylines
unfold as if they were played simultaneously—a risk essential to the working of
the entire film.
Ta b l e o f C o n t e n t s
F E AT U R E
36. Script to Screen: Troy
By David S. Cohen
Screenwriter and novelist David Benioff has forever been a fan of Homer’s The
Iliad and Trojan War myths. Last year, the success of his film 25th Hour opened
the door for him to pitch his long-percolating idea to Warner Bros. The studio
put its faith in Benioff, whose big-screen dream will come true with the much-
anticipated arrival of his epic adaptation Troy.
CRAFT
20. Independents: Flesh Out Your Script From That Great Idea
By William C. Martell
Columnist Bill Martell presents his simple guide on how to turn that great idea into
a screenplay.
24. Software Review Part Three: Which Screenwriting Program is Right
for You?
By John Scott Lewinski
In this final part of our series on screenwriting software programs, we look at unique,
existing products that provide very specific help to writers and a few newcomers that
recently hit the market.
52. Overheard Voices: Employing Voiceover Narration to Your Best
Advantage
By Bob Verini
Voiceover. Screenwriting gurus both respect and revile it. Masters of cinema have
both embraced and denounced it. Explore the nuances of this highly controversial
screenwriting technique.
56. The Small Screen: Writing the Spec TV Drama Script
By Rich Whiteside
Senior writer Rich Whiteside explores what he has learned from 10-plus years of
writing and interviewing prominent writer/producers about the TV drama script.
64. The Hill With It: A Screenwriting Team for All Seasons
By John Hill
Want to write great scenes? Terrific characters? Authentic dialogue? Special themes?
Genuine humanity? Study the brilliant body of work by Irving Ravetch and Harriet
Frank Jr.
72. Quick Fix: An Insider’s Tips
By Lesley Bracker
Industry insider Lesley Bracker points out the most common mistakes screenwriters
make, and gives you the step-by-step procedures you need to fix them. Hint: Writing
like a professional requires reading like one, too.
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4. Editor’s Note 14. Dr. Format 84. Classifieds
6. The Buzz 78. Sales Force
Cover art courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures PHOTO: Alex Bailey
scr (i) pt magazine’s
OPEN DOOR SCREENWRITING CONTEST

You Write the Script . . .

We Open the Door.
Win $3,000 cash and consideration for representation by
Underground Management.
Software and prizes supplied by Final Draft, InkTip.com, The Writers Store,
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The Epic Journey
Our feature interview this issue is with screenwriter David Benioff. The last
Benioff film to grace our cover was an independent film called 25th Hour. In his
article about the writing of that film (Vol. 9, No. 1), Benioff explained that he wrote EDITORIAL / CIRCULATION OFFICE
25th Hour after a novel he had slaved over for four years received rejection after 5638 Sweet Air Road
Baldwin, MD 21013-0007
rejection. At first he was angry with the editors for their negative responses to his Tel: (410) 592-3466 Fax: (410) 592-8062
manuscript. Then, after he cooled down for awhile, he went back and re-read the www.scriptmag.com
rejection letters with the intention of learning something about his writing. Subscriptions only call: (888) 245-2228 ext. 206
That decision to learn from his shortcomings as a writer prompted him to have
his next epiphany: “Walk away from your failures. Better yet, run.”
Because Benioff was able to leave behind a manuscript that was close to his
Executive Publisher David C. Geatty
heart but sadly flawed, he was able to move toward a different story which
brought him the success he enjoys today. After the critical acclaim of 25th Hour, Publisher James D. Kellett
Benioff was able to pitch a film that had been percolating in his mind for quite some time: the story of Troy.
If Benioff had not experienced the difficult journey of trying and failing to write a novel, of meeting with rejection Editor-in-Chief Shelly Mellott
and choosing to improve his writing, he would not have been able to move on to another project. He certainly would
not have found success in the film industry or had the opportunity to sit across from then Warner Bros. Pictures Managing Editor Andrew J. Schneider
Executive Vice President Jeff Robinov and pitch one of the greatest epics of the Western world as an adaptation. It was
East Coast Editor Sally B. Merlin
Benioff’s journey which defined him and his career.
Since the screenwriter is the hero of this magazine, I want to take a moment to compare the screenwriter’s journey West Coast Editor William C. Martell
with that of the epic hero’s. Any screenwriter who has been through the process of launching a career and watching
his first script go through sale, pre-production and production will tell you that seeing his film on the screen is to him Editor-at-Large James A. Kleman
as triumphant as Beowulf’s emerging from the cave with Grendel’s arm. The screenwriter—our hero—begins his
Associate Editor Ann Klarich
long journey with an invocation of the muse, a need to find the right story to tell. The fate of the hero’s career rests
entirely upon his own shoulders. He alone must write the story that can be sold and produced. There are extensive Event Correspondent Deborah Dyke
battle scenes, most notably the ones when the screenwriter tries every known tactic to secure representation or to sell
his script. There is the trip to the underworld where our hero learns that the noble storyteller must sacrifice his ideals Legal Editor Jay G. Grubb
about leaving his work unchanged for the greater good—the production of the script. Don’t forget the intervention of
supernatural figures who are interested in the outcome of the hero’s journey (the system of gods, demons, angels and Marketing Manager Lisa DiPaula
such, often called machinery). Every screenwriter has encountered these gods, demons and angels in the infrastructure
Design Parkton Art
of Hollywood. I would suggest, then, that the screenwriter’s journey can be called epic within the literary definitions of
such a story. Hopefully, both Joseph Campbell and Christopher Vogler would agree. Illustrator Lisa DiPaula
To further illustrate my point, I suggest that you read Bragi Schut’s story of his journey from what he called “mac’
and cheese” poor to his now burgeoning career as a screenwriter. There are equal doses of both realism and hope
in Schut’s account of his personal path to success in the business. He moved to Los Angeles and spent a long time
“wrestling with his muse.” He kept trying to write script after script to fit the commercial paradigm, all the while Senior Writers
becoming more convinced that he had failed in his attempt to become a screenwriter. Finally, he decided to write the David S. Cohen, Rita Cook,
script that had been in the back of his mind, the idea that he wanted to write. When he came to terms with his need Debra L. Eckerling, Jay G. Grubb, Esq.,
to write a story about which he was passionate, his career began to take shape. He secured representation, won the John Hill, John Woochong Kim,
Nicholl Fellowship and sold two screenplays. John Scott Lewinski, William C. Martell,
Living the drama of trying to succeed as a screenwriter is a very difficult, dramatic and sometimes painful journey. Sally B. Merlin, Ray Morton, Staton Rabin,
In our over 10 years of reporting on the industry, we have never found a story that didn’t have some elements of the Diana Saenger, David Trottier,
hero’s journey. No one slipped past the rites of initiation. Becoming a successful screenwriter is somewhat like living Bob Verini, Rich Whiteside,
an epic. If the journey is not fraught with peril, if the battle scenes and characters are not compelling, then the ending Rachel Wimberly
falls flat, and the story leaves us wanting.
Circulation Director
Shelly Mellott
William Wood

Comptroller
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4 scr(i)pt scriptmag.com

The Writers You’ll Wish
You Knew When ...
CHASE LIBBEY
Native Washing-
tonian and veteran
communications
attorney Chase
Libbey is enjoying
the buzz created by
his third screenplay,
Mr. Hit, a comedy
that earned a rare
“recommend” from
scr(i)pt magazine’s Script Services.
Libbey’s foray into screenwriting
was accidental. About 12 years ago
he gave vent to his ambition to prac-
tice entertainment law by represent-
ing a script written by his brother.
With uncharacteristic chutzpah,
Libbey opened doors at production
companies on his brother’s behalf
when direct queries were simply not
accepted. By listening to the profes-
sional critiques of that script, he not
only felt the pull of the muse him-
self, but he also gained insight on
filmmaking from some of the best
in the business.
Inspired to try his own hand,
Libbey wrote his first screenplay,
Noah’s Ark, a political thriller. A
Hollywood agency signed on to rep-
resent the script just as he completed
his second screenplay, Marlis, a fam-
ily drama set in 1961.
Because his former agent has left
the business, Libbey is again look-
ing for representation for Mr. Hit,
an engaging tale of an enterprising
FBI agent who goes AWOL from
Witness Protection to re-infiltrate
the mob, stage his own murder and
collect the mob’s $1 million bounty
on his head. While several compa-
nies have indicated solid interest,
that elusive “right fit” is still to be
found. Chase Libbey can be reached
at: Chasel@erols.com
6 scr(i)pt
NEW BOOKS FOR SCREENWRITERS
WRITE SCREENPLAYS THAT SELL—THE Among the aspects I appreciate
ACKERMAN WAY most about Write Screenplays That
by Hal Ackerman
Sell is that—although Ackerman
Tallfellow Press, $19.95, 296 pgs. ISBN 1-931290-52-0
doesn’t stray from common mod-
Reviewed by Dave Trueman
els and methods, such as the
Hal Ackerman’s new book is exceptional. He makes a famous/infamous three-act struc-
hefty promise up front—10 weeks from when you start ture and scene cards—he brings
reading the book, you’ll be a better writer. If you follow new ideas and paradigms to the
the suggestions contained within the book, his promise will table, novel ways of thinking and
likely be fulfilled. The book is loaded with insights, exercises writing that will enable you to
and non-academic paradigms. Unless you’ve won multiple better leverage your talents. For help with structure,
Oscars® in the original script category, you’ll benefit from Ackerman introduces a concept called the Scene-O-Gram,
Ackerman’s sagacious advice. a visual aid and analytical tool for a screenplay’s key
The author honed his techniques and insights over moments and turning points.
many years as a professor at UCLA’s eminent graduate Another technique with which the author acquaints us
screenwriting program. So, unlike the plethora of authors is dubbed Snowplowing, which, when integrated with the
regurgitating Syd Field, Ackerman brings his knowledge scene card process, is designed to navigate us through the
to you pretested, preapproved and ready to apply to your dense thicket of story development, from an embryonic
creative endeavors. Many of his former students have script idea to an outline containing several dozen scenes.
attributed their later successes—having been sold and pro- Other topics Ackerman covers include research, dialogue
duced—to “The Ackerman Way.” and a few pages of Web resources. Some of the content
The writing in this book is honest yet supportive, will be familiar to intermediate writers, including a cursory
Ackerman hits his mark where style is concerned. Of coverage of screenplay format. Yet Write Screenplays That
course, the content is what matters more, and he succeeds Sell, despite the weighty promise of its title, will neverthe-
no less in this respect. A liberal dose of analogies and film less be highly useful to most screenwriters. After reading
examples, both recent and classic, from The Godfather to the book, will you write a screenplay that sells? Maybe,
There’s Something About Mary, makes the concepts highly maybe not, but you will unquestionably be a better writer.
accessible and never obscure.
SCHMUCKS WITH COOL MILLION
UNDERWOODS by Sheldon Woodbury
by Max Wilk M. Evans and Company, Inc., $16.95,
Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 276 pgs. ISBN 1-59077-018-8
$22.95, 352 pgs. ISBN 1-55783-508-X Author Sheldon Woodbury gives a
In this insightful homage to the men and step-by-step analysis of all the basics of
women whose words created the foun- high-concept screenwriting, and pro-
dation for our best and most-loved films, Max Wilk provides a vides what beginning screenwriters need to know in order
fascinating inside look at the art and history of screenwriting to develop, write and sell their own blockbuster screenplays.
in American cinema. Schmucks with Underwoods: Conversa- Through in-depth interviews and revealing insights from
tions with Hollywood’s Classic Screenwriters is a collection of those who have written million-dollar screenplays, the book
face-to-face interviews with some of the historic giants of the is comprehensive in its scope, inspiring readers with advice,
industry, spanning the silent era to the 1970s. secrets and war stories from veterans of the industry.
Random Quote:
“You are telling your story visually, which is what you’re always supposed to be doing; but
sometimes in the middle of those dinner table scenes, you tend to forget. You get to give your
imagination full rein. You get to be a little kid playing with Hot Wheels®. ‘Brrmmm … CRASH ...
BOOM!’ and you get to be a storyteller in the same breath. This beats working for a living by a
long shot.”
Les Bohem, “Character in Action: The Writing of The Alamo” scr(i)pt, Vol. 10, No. 2
To be included in Hot Sheet, send your resumé and a color photo to: Hot Sheet, 5638 Sweet Air Road, Baldwin, MD 21013.
To contact someone featured in Hot Sheet, call (888) 245-2228 or e-mail: hotsheet@scriptmag.com
scriptmag.com
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$10 OF F
PROMO CODE: SCRIPTMAG

John Ridley
It is not business as usual for screenwriter
John Ridley, best known for his noir novels
(A Conversation with the Mann and Love Is
a Racket) and his action films (Three Kings, U
Turn and Cold Around the Heart). Ridley has
always been very popular for his gritty storytell-
ing, but recently he made a reported seven-
figure deal with DreamWorks to write his first animated feature called The
Unprofessionals. With this deal sealed, he can now add studio animation
scribe to his repertoire.
The Unprofessionals is the story of a trio of hapless monkeys who are sent
on a suicidal journey with the expectation of complete failure. As luck would
have it, the monkeys happen to succeed and are then hailed as great heroes.
Ridley has actually been involved in the world of cartoons and animation
in the past. His creation Undercover Brother was originally actualized for the
WH0
Internet, but was then made into a live-action film produced by Universal and
starring Eddie Griffin.
The Unprofessionals was developed at DreamWorks and then pitched to
Ridley for the role of screenwriter. Supervising producers at DreamWorks will
include Mike LaChance and Chris Cuzer; and DreamWorks animation leading
man, Jeffrey Katzenberg, will spearhead the project.
The Unprofessionals is still in the script phase. It is not known who will be
starring in the animated feature and there is no release date set for the film.
As for Ridley, he is currently finishing the thriller Let Me Take You Down
and adapting his novel Those Who Walk in Darkness, another Internet-
created cartoon.
He has also worked in television where his credits include Third Watch,
Platinum and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

Jake Cashill
New York-based writer-director Jake Cashill was named
the grand-prize winner in the First Annual American
Zoetrope Screenplay Contest (the 10 finalists of which
were read and judged by Francis Ford Coppola himself).
One of 2,186 entries to the contest, The Fergus Cycle is
Cashill’s story of a first-century Irish weakling whose pluck and guile help him
thwart the Roman conquest of Ireland. It’s a mythical, magical “answer” as to
why Rome was unable to conquer Ireland as it was the rest of the known world.
Visit http://www.zoetrope.com/contests/index.cgi for more details on this year’s
contest and American Zoetrope in general.

SCREENWRITING Conferences and Festivals Where screenwriters will be seen in May and June

2004 JACKSONVILLE FILM FESTIVAL
May 13 - 16
The 2004 Jacksonville Film Festival in Jacksonville, Florida,
will feature over 40 feature films, shorts and documenta-
ries at six historic theatres. Panels featuring the winners
of the festival’s screenwriting competition and an industry
insider’s panel are scheduled, along with a crash course
in screenwriting workshop. Screenwriting awards will
be presented to the competition’s winners at the open-
ing-night gala party, and there will be additional parties
throughout the festival. scr(i)pt magazine is one of the
prestigious sponsors of the 2004 Jacksonville Film Festival
Screenwriting Competition. Check out Jacksonvillefilmfes-
tival.com for details.
SANTA FE SCREENWRITING CONFERENCE
June 2 - 6
New Mexico enchantment and Santa Fe
magic add extra flavor to the inspira-
WHERE
Brian Helgeland, John Lee Hancock, John August and the
writing staff of Law & Order. Co-founded by producer Kar-
en Murphy, screenwriter Les Bohem and business manager
Gary Haber, the conference takes place in Nashville, Ten-
nessee on June 4 through 6. For further details and regis-
tration information, visit Nashscreen.com
NEW YORK CITY
PITCHXCHANGE
June 4 - 5
Finally, East Coast screenwriters
have access to industry decision
makers! The Inaugural New York City PitchXchange brings
one-on-one pitching opportunities to screenwriters east of
the Mississippi. This two-day event at New York University is
not to be missed by screenwriters seeking access to produc-
ers, agents and managers.
Prepare for your pitch with Robert Kosberg, The Pitch King,
on Friday, June 4, followed by live pitch practice sessions.
Nantucket Film
Festival
June 16 - 20
The Nantucket Film Festival has established itself as a pre-
mier U.S. film festival that provides an intimate forum for
screenwriters to interact, enjoy and form collaborations
with other notable filmmakers, producers and writers pres-
ent on the island. The festival screens both domestic and
international features, world premieres, shorts, docs and
video from every genre, all selected with an eye toward
great storytelling. Rounding out the festival program are
panel discussions, late-night storytelling, a gala tribute
to a noted screenwriter and staged readings. Past staged
reading participants include: Kenneth Lonergan, Will Fer-
rell, Olympia Dukakis, Mos Def, Natalie Portman, Winona
Ryder, Rosie Perez, Ben Stiller, Anne Heche, Rob Morrow,
Brooke Shields, Marisa Tomei, Natasha Lyonne and others.
For more information, visit Nantucketfilmfestival.org.

tion and instruction you’ll receive at The
Sixth Annual Screenwriting Conference
in Santa Fe. Beginning and experienced
screenwriters alike will learn from some of Hollywood’s
best and brightest with nine-hour classes, workshops and
panel discussions, as well as have numerous opportunities
to pitch to 16 Hollywood producers in private sessions. Visit
SCSFe.com, or call toll-free (866) 424-1501.
NASHVILLE SCREENWRITING CONFERENCE
June 4 - 6
Already in its sixth year, The Nashville
Screenwriting Conference has proved to
be an intimate and exhilarating interaction
among attendees and top-notch writers,
directors, producers, talent agents and film
industry executives. Some of this year’s participants include
On Saturday, June 5, meet one-on-one with your choice of
over 30 producers, agents and managers and pitch your
script or television idea. Personal pitch coaching is also
available throughout the day on both Friday and Saturday.
Additional classes on marketing and selling your script will
be available all day Saturday.
Companies confirmed to be hearing pitches include:
Miramax, Dimension, Blue Sky, Protazoa, Gotham Enter-
tainment Group, Court TV, The Hudson Agency, Andrew
Lauren Productions, Bigel/Mailer Films, 4th Row Films,
Deutsch/Open City and HDnet Films, Emerging Pictures,
Branded Entertainment, Eric Hanson Management, Artists
and Idea Management, The Howard Stern Production Com-
pany and Hallmark Entertainment. For more information,
visit Pitchxchange.com
KNIGHTSTAR ACADEMY OF
SCREENWRITING
June 24 - 27
Knightstar Entertainment presents its
Fourth Annual Screenwriting Conference
in Hollywood, California, a four-day intensive learning expe-
rience. We teach you how to develop and sell an idea. Expert
panels, in-depth classes, personal chat sessions, individual
scheduled pitch sessions, workbook, screenwriting contest,
over 30 A-list hollywood execs and consultants and a power
lunch! In the last three years at the Las Vegas Screenwrit-
ers Conference, we have had over 100 scripts requested for
further review. For a limited time: SPECIAL OFFER for scr(i)pt
magazine readers, save $100.00 and register for the return-
ing student price of $299.00. This unique event will be at the
Sheraton Universal in Universal City, California. For further
details, visit Knightstarisc.com or call (719) 687-2167.

8 scr(i)pt scriptmag.com

PASSAG ES
by Lisa DiPaula
Carole Eastman
Carole Eastman, co-writer of the
1970 film Five Easy Pieces, died in
Los Angeles on February 13 of a
long-term illness. She was 69 years
old. Eastman and co-
w
writer and director Bob
Rafelson were nominated
for an Academy Award®,
Golden Globe Award and
W
Writers Guild of America
Award for their Five Easy
A PRIZE: A read from top management and literary
P
Pieces screenplay, the
first major starring vehicle for Jack
Nicholson.
Eastman (sometimes credited
as Adrien Joyce) wrote four other
produced screenplays including the
Western The Shooting (1967), based
upon a Jack London story featuring
Will Hutchins and Nicholson; Puzzle
of a Downfall Child (1970); and The
Fortune (1975), starring Nicholson
and Warren Beatty. For her last film,
the romantic comedy Man Trouble
(1992), which also starred Nicholson
and was directed by Rafelson,
Eastman received both a writer and
producer credit.
A native of Southern California,
Eastman worked as a ballet dancer,
model and actress before taking up
screenwriting in the 1960s. At the
time of Eastman’s passing, two more
of her scripts were being developed
as films, and she was in the process
of writing another. Recognized for
her great vision and sense of humor,
Eastman will be sorely missed by her
peers. She is survived by her brother
and three nieces.
10 scr(i)pt
CONTESTS
SEPTEMBER DEADlight Horror Short Script Contest
PRIZE: Four winners will receive a financial
Ohio Independent Screenplay
Awards prize and their scripts will be filmed for video
PRIZE: Awards for each winning screenplay include distribution.
$500 cash, submission to feature film producers DEADLINE: July 31, 2004
in Hollywood and New York City and additional ENTRY FEE: $25 - $35
promotions for your script. For more information, please contact:
DEADLINE: June 1 - July 1, 2004 DEADlight Horror Short Script Contest
Nine Point c/o DEADlight
ENTRY FEE: $40 - $60
For more information, please contact: 1119 Terrace
Ohio Independent Film Festival Andrews, TX 79714
Web: www.ninepointproductions.com/
1392 West 65th Street
Cleveland, OH 44102 deadlight.htm
Web: www.ohiofilms.com E-mail: deadlight2@ninepointproductions.com
E-mail: ohioindiefilmfest@juno.com Phone: (432) 349-1510
Phone: (216) 651-7315
Fax: (216) 651-7317
OCTOBER
Century City Film Festival Screenplay
Competition Screamfest Horror Film Festival and
Screenplay Competition
companies, an all-access pass to the festival, PRIZE: First-place winner will receive a prize of
invitation to exclusive parties and much more. $1,000, Movie Magic software, complimentary
DEADLINE: July 1, 2004 registration to a Robert McKee Story Seminar
ENTRY FEE: $55 and more.
For more information, please contact: DEADLINE: July 15 - August 15, 2004
Century City Film Festival
Screenplay Competition ENTRY FEE: $30 - $60
For more information, please contact:
P. O. Box 67132
Century City, CA 90067 Screamfest Horror Film Festival and Screenplay
Web: www.centurycityfilmfestival.com Competition
13547 Ventura Blvd., #420
E-mail: david@thebroadcaster.com
Phone: (310) 551-1035 Sherman Oaks, CA 91423
Fax: (310) 388-1383 Web: www.screamfestla.com
E-mail: screamfestla@aol.com
Phone: (323) 656-4727
A.K.A Shriekfest Horror/Science
Fiction Screenwriting Contest Fax: (323) 650-9743
PRIZE: See web site for details.
DEADLINE: July 23, 2004
IP2004 Worldwide Screenwriting
ENTRY FEE: $55
Contest
PRIZE: See web site for details.
For more information, please contact:
DEADLINE: August 30, 2004
A.K.A Shriekfest Horror/Science Fiction
Screenwriting Contest ENTRY FEE: $50
P.O. Box 920444 For more information, please contact:
Sylmar, CA 91392 IP2004 Worldwide Screenwriting Contest
4335 Van Nuys Blvd., Suite 355
Web: www.shriekfest.com/index.html
E-mail: email@shriekfest.com Sherman Oaks, CA 91423
Web: www.indieproducer.net
E-mail: info@indieproducer.net
A Drawn Production Short Script
Contest Phone: (818) 783-7529
PRIZE: Top three winners will receive cash prizes up
Fax: (818) 783-7594
to $1,000.
DEADLINE: July 30, 2004
ENTRY FEE: $20
For more information, please contact:
A Drawn Production Short Script Contest
P.O. Box 5662
Cary, NC 27512-5662 For up-to-date contest information, visit
Web: www.drawnproductions.com Moviebytes.com, the most comprehensive list
E-mail: drawnp1@aol.com of screenplay competitions on the Internet. For
Phone: (919) 678-1000 inclusion in scr(i)pt magazine’s contest listings,
Fax: (919) 677-0097 e-mail your news and contact information to:
editor@scriptmag.com
scriptmag.com
 The
Inaugural
New York City
Pitch change
June 4-5, 2004
New York University

Make Your Connection

JUNE 4: Screenwriting Seminars

and Information Session For more

JUNE 5: One-on-One Pitch Sessions information visit

with 30+ A-List Agents, www.pitchXchange.com
Managers and Producers or e-mail
pitch@scriptmag.com

Supported by
 NEW VOICES
Every month young screenwriters from around the country sell
their first scripts in Hollywood. scr(i)pt magazine will introduce you
to these hot, new writers in a brief format that lets you get inside
the heads of Hollywood’s next award winners.
Name: Valerie Horwitz
Lives in: West Hollywood
Script Title: Social Crimes
(adaptation)
How You Identify With
The Main Character: In
the book Social Crimes the
main character is not a terribly sympathetic
person, and one change that both Phoenix
Pictures and Joel [Schumaker] wanted was
a character with whom the audience could
relate. The book talks about a high-society
socialite. I made her into somebody who
actually earned her place at the top. I could
relate to that a bit because I came from
absolutely nothing and eventually worked at
a pretty high level in the Silicon Valley. I could
say okay, that is what it is like.
Writing Quirk: I stay pretty committed to a
schedule. Writing is a cruel master. What I
try to do is get started early. I get to my desk
around 8:00 a.m. and I clear out e-mail and
my desk and read whatever articles remain
from the day before. At 9:00 I try to start
writing, go until 1:00 p.m., then stop, have
lunch and walk the dog. When I return
sometimes I can get back into the writing,
but usually I can’t.
Secret to Success: Screenwriting has to be
about a career, and it can’t be about just
one script. It is 50 percent about the writing
and 50 percent about being the person with
whom they want to work.
First Big Break: My first big break was sign-
ing with Nick Osborne and Trevor Engelson at
Underground Management. My [spec] script
PR got into their hands, and they said we
want to meet this writer. They have been
amazing.
Advice: Many screenwriters don’t understand
about pitching because they are so afraid that
their great idea is going to get stolen, and they
are not going to get credit for it. If you are
going to pitch something, put every single thing
you’ve got into it.
Up Next: I got hired to adapt Getting and
Spending for Catherine Zeta-Jones to star and
produce.
12 scr(i)pt
by Rita Cook
Name: The Brothers
Hageman (Kevin &
Daniel Hageman)
Live in: We’re orig-
inally from Oregon.
We currently reside
in Los Angeles.
Script Title: The Nightmare of Hugo Bearing
How You Identify With The Main
Character: DH: I think everyone secretly
wants to be an orphan. Not so much the
parentless angle, but more the freedom of
not belonging to anybody.
KH: It’s all about rising up and overcoming
one’s fears of loneliness, the loss of love
and acceptance—three things with which I
believe everyone struggles.
Writing Quirk: DH: I tend to be the brains of
the story, and my brother is the heart. Because
we see things differently, we usually attack
from both sides until we find that right middle
ground, a place both smart and emotional.
Secret to Success: We only commit to stories
we love.
First Big Break: Creative Artists Agency got
ahold of Nightmare, and they responded to
it. The script became our calling card and
doors started opening.
Advice: Besides moving to L.A., we find a lot
of young writers write for an audience of one.
Just because you have a deep interest in some-
thing doesn’t mean the rest of the world will
go along with you.
YOU BE THE EDITOR
Fill in our reader survey and be entered
to win a scr(i)pt polo shirt. We
want to hear from you—
gripes, kudos, sugges-
tions and comments This issue’s
are all welcomed! winner is
Katherine Ploeger
VISIT US
ONLINE
Every month 10 new FREE
articles about screenwriting are posted.
You’ll also find up-to-date event listings,
links, software, books, a searchable article
archive and more: Scriptmag.com
IF THEY CAN
DO IT ...
by John W. Kim
First-time writers are the lifeblood of the film industry
and often the best hope for fresh, innovative stories
in any film year. Below is a brief listing of upcoming
films—some dramatic, others comedic, but all authored
by debut screenwriters. If these writers can break into
the industry ...
Kaena: The Prophecy
(Original title: Axis)
Release Date: June 4, 2004 (Los Angeles/New York)
Directed by Pascal Pinon and Chris Delaporte, from
a screenplay by first-timers Tarik Hamdine and
Delaporte, this 3-D, CGI project is described as an
adventure tale of Kaena. It is the story of a young
woman (voiced by Kirsten Dunst) who must leave
her village to find out why Axis, the giant tree
on which they live, is in danger of losing all of its
life-giving sap. Along the way she is helped by
the Queen of the Selenites (Anjelica Huston) who
is also trying to keep the tree from dying, but by
darker means. From an original idea by Patrick
Daher and Delaporte, the project claims to be the
first European CGI feature. A videogame for Sony
Playstation® 2 is set to be released in conjunction
with the film’s opening.
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Release Date: June 18, 2004 (wide)
Written and directed by Rawson Marshall Thurber
in his feature film debut, Dodgeball tells the story
of a group of friends (led by Ben Stiller) who band
together when their favorite gym is threatened
to be taken over by a national fitness franchise.
They decide to compete in the “winner takes
all” World Dodgeball Championship in Las Vegas
against a deep-pocketed corporate team (led by
Vince Vaughn) assigned to crush them. Thurber
originally gained attention for his Reebok com-
mercial, “Terry Tate: Office Linebacker,” in which a
large linebacker pummels slacking office workers.
Thurber was repped in the April 2003 sale by the
William Morris Agency.
White Chicks
Release Date: June 25, 2004 (wide)
Directed by Keenan Ivory Wayans and starring
Marlon and Shawn Wayans, this first feature from
Xavier Cook (Mad TV) and Andy McElfresh (Rocket
Power) tells the story of two African-American FBI
agents (Marlon and Shawn Wayans) who try to
foil a scheme to kidnap the Wilton Sisters (a thinly
veiled version of the Hilton sisters). The agents try
to protect the hotel empire heiresses Tiffany and
Brittany by dressing in drag and using themselves
as bait while the real sisters are hidden away.
Shared writing credits go to Michael Anthony
Snowden (Scary Movie 2) and Keenan, Marlon and
Shawn Wayans.
OTHER MAY AND JUNE FILMS WRITTEN
BY DEBUT WRITERS:
Eulogy Cellular
Written by: Michael Clancy Written by: Larry Cohen (The
Stuff, Q: The Winged Serpent,
Soul Plane
Written by: Chuck Wilson
It’s Alive!, Phone Booth);
rewrite by Chris Morgan
(feature film debut) and Bo (debut); polish by J. Mackeye
Gruber and Eric Bress (writing
Zenga (co-writer of Body
team of Final Destination 2
Waves)
and The Butterfly Effect)
New York Minute
Written by: Emily Fox
scriptmag.com
 Top agents or directors read dozens of screenplays a
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 " ^ l (  ` i l g [ n #
DR. FORMAT ™ ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS
CALL WAITING
QUESTION
Concerning phone conversations, I was once
told to use the following format for a person (in
this case, Mitch) who is talking on the phone to
another person (Janice) who we cannot see:
MITCH (ON PHONE)
What are you doing?
JANICE (O.S., ON
PHONE)
Oh ... just painting my
toenails.
ANSWER
You’ve been misinformed. The use of (O.S.)
is incorrect because (O.S.) stands for OFF
SCREEN, meaning that the character is in
the scene (at the scene location) but cannot be
seen on the silver screen. When a character is
not at the scene location, then use (V.O.) for
VOICEOVER.
In the case of your example, I assume that
we can see Mitch, but Janice is at some other
location; and we hear her voice but don’t see
her. In that case, this would be correct:
Mitch holds the phone with one
hand while the other hand clips
his toenails.
MITCH
What are you doing?
JANICE (V.O.)
Oh, just painting my
toenails.
Concerning the phrase “on phone,” it would
work if we knew for sure what it meant. To some
it means that the character is holding a phone to
her ear. To others it means that the character’s
speech is voiced over. Since there can be confu-
sion, I don’t recommend you use “on phone.”
MORNING HAS BROKEN
QUESTION
I am taking a screenwriting course at my local
junior college. I have the opening-scene heading
stating time of day as MORNING. My teacher
scratched this out and replaced it with DAY,
citing that the time of morning is assumed. She
said that attaching so many different times of
day to your scene headings will drive a producer
crazy. What is the correct way? If my scene starts
in the morning, should I put MORNING?
14 scr(i)pt
by David Trottier
ANSWER
Your teacher makes a good point. As a general
rule, type DAY or NIGHT at the end of your
master-scene headings. In story situations when
you need to emphasize the time of day (or
night) for clarity’s sake, go ahead and do so.
LOST IN SPACE
QUESTION
What should a writer indicate for the time of
day in the slug line (or scene heading) when
the time of day is not relevant? For example, if
a scene takes place in space, such as on a space-
ship, then the normal concepts of night and day
do not apply. Similarly, a scene might take place
in a subterranean cavern so deep that the time
of day isn’t relevant.
ANSWER
There are two schools of thought on this. One is
that the time of day is, as you say, irrelevant. Thus,
a scene heading might be written as follows:
EXT. SPACE
Certainly, that is all you need for that scene
heading. Another school of thought holds that
since people behave as if it is night or day (sleep-
ing or working, for example), those terms should
be used in INTERIOR scenes, such as inside the
spaceship or cave. Usually, that “assumed” time
of day would already be obvious to the reader, so
I lean towards the first opinion—further expla-
nation usually isn’t needed. However, I don’t see
a problem writing DAY or NIGHT where doing
so would clarify the situation.
MAY I INTRODUCE ... ?
QUESTION
I am unclear about how to introduce a charac-
ter’s name. I have read several books that state a
character’s name should not be revealed to the
reader until that character speaks. Yet there are
several other books that state you can introduce
a character’s name with the character’s descrip-
tion. Should main character names be intro-
duced when they appear and minor character
names introduced when they speak, or should
the format remain consistent in some way?
ANSWER
One of the hallmarks of effective spec writing
is the ability to be clear and to not confuse
the reader. The last thing you want is for an
executive or agent to stop reading your script
because he is confused. Thus, I usually favor
simplicity and consistency over complexity and
inconsistency. As a reader, I want to know the
character’s name at the moment that character
first appears. Naturally, there will be excep-
tions; but there should be good “story” reasons
for those exceptions.
THIS STUFFING MAKES
YOU A TURKEY
QUESTION
I have a question about the “script cardstock
cover” and “title page” when sending a script
to agents and producers. I have heard conflict-
ing opinions that the cardstock cover should
remain blank, followed by the one-page syn-
opsis, followed by the title page. What is the
correct format for professional presentation?
ANSWER
Blank coverstock, followed by the title page,
followed by the script, followed by blank cov-
erstock. That’s it, unless an agent or producer
specifically requests something else.
May I mention a pet peeve while we’re on the
subject? Please do not package your script with
a padded envelope filled with stuffing that flies
all over kingdom come when the envelope is
opened. Sending your script in one of those
will knock the stuffing out of that good first
impression you want to make. If you want to
use a padded envelope, use a bubble pack ...
and keep writing.
Now get all of the Dr. Format™ columns in
one book! See ad on page 81.
DAVE TROTTIER is a script consultant
and writer/producer who has sold sever-
al screenplays—all in correct format. He is
also the author of the highly acclaimed The
Screenwriter’s Bible (now in its third edition).
Visit his web site at Keepwriting.com or
request information about his books, software
and services at (800) 264-4900. Send your
questions about formatting in care of this
magazine or to drformat@scriptmag.com
scriptmag.com
 " [ ^ p _ l n c m _ g _ h n #
DR. FORMAT
SCREENWRITING SOFTWARE
QUESTION
Why are you coming out with your own program?
ANSWER
Four reasons. First, I wanted a program that is
truly affordable to all screenwriters. Dr. Format™
is just $79.95 for students and $99.95 for every-
one else.
I wanted a program that is easy to use and learn.
Dr. Format™ is based on Microsoft® Word. If you
already use Microsoft Word, you already know
how to use Dr. Format™.
Too many older programs no longer conform
to the current Hollywood formatting rules. Dr.
Format™ is based on the most current formatting
rules in The Screenwriter’s Bible.
Finally, I wanted a program that allows anyone in
the world to receive my script and be able to read
it. Since Dr. Format™ is based on Microsoft Word,
you can send your script anywhere in the world
as a Word document. As long as the other person
can open Microsoft Word documents, they don’t
need Dr. Format™ to read your script.
Dr. Format Presents
QUESTION
What’s the difference between Dr. Format™
Screenwriting Software and all the other
screenwriting programs?
ANSWER
Dr. Format™ is the only software based on my
book The Screenwriter’s Bible. The Bible defines
industry standard for formatting spec scripts.
Many other programs require you to read a
lengthy manual. Because Dr. Format™ Screen-
writing Software is based on Microsoft Word,
you will spend less time learning the program and
more time using it.
QUESTION
Do I need anything to write my screenplay with
Dr. Format™?
ANSWER
You must have Microsoft Word. Dr. Format™
works with all versions of Microsoft Word
for Windows going back to Word 97, and for
Microsoft Word for Macintosh going back to
Word 98.
™
QUESTION
Can I test out or demo the program? Do you offer
some type of guarantee?
ANSWER
Of course. You can take a complete walk-through
of the program at www.drformat.com and down-
load the manual. We also offer a 30-day money
back guarantee if you’re not completely satisfied.
QUESTION
Where can I buy the program?
ANSWER
Check out www.drformat.com or e-mail me at
dave@keepwriting.com. Go to www.drformat.com
for instructions on ordering online or through a
retail outlet near you.
DAVE TROTTIER is a script consultant and writer-
producer who has sold several screenplays—all in
correct format. He is also the author of the highly
acclaimed The Screenwriter’s Bible (now in its
third edition), and the new Dr. Format software.
Visit his web site at Keepwriting.com or request
information about his books, software and ser-
vices at (800) 264-4900. Send your questions
about formatting in care of this magazine or to
drformat@keepwriting.com
 " q b i  s i o  e h i q #
BARRI EVINS
The truth hurts ... but it can also save you a lot of time. When independent
producer Barri Evins speaks at screenwriting conferences or to individual
writers, she makes sure to tell them what they need to hear—even if it’s not
exactly what they want to hear.
“I
think I’d like young writers to get
the clearest possible understanding
and acceptance of the fact that the
movie business is about buying and sell-
ing,” Evins said. “It’s a business driven by
a marketplace.
“I would like them to keep that in mind
at every stage of the game—all the way
through their writing to how they approach
producers like me. From the beginning of
the idea to their first steps at getting some-
one to look at the script, they must keep the
marketplace in mind.”
Evins didn’t have business in mind when
she was a kid training to be a ballerina.
After growing up in Florida and attend-
ing Northwestern University, she moved to
Los Angeles—working in film editing, tal-
ent management and literary representation
before becoming a development executive.
Before moving into independent pro-
ducing, Evins spent six years as president
of Debra Hill Productions. Prior to that,
she worked as a development executive
for numerous producers. She got her start
with writer/producers Bruce Evans and Ray
Gideon, where she discovered and helped
launch the Wachowski Brothers’ first film.
Through her recently formed company, BE
MOVIES, Evins produces feature films and
cable movies. Beyond her professional work,
Evins taught film at the UCLA Graduate
Producer Program and at the American Film
Institute. She also lectures at writing and
producing seminars across the country and
runs a successful internship program.
Nine years ago, Evins founded “From the
Heart,” a literacy organization comprised of
women in the film industry. They have built
150 libraries for Head Start centers and placed
more than 40,000 books into the hands of
children living below the poverty line.
Somewhere along the way, she learned the
many vital, yet harsh truths of writing and
producing for the entertainment industry.
16 scr(i)pt
by John Scott Lewinski
“If we were in the business of making
widgets, and our widgets didn’t fit anything,
we’d be out of business fairly quickly,” she
explained. “I work in the studio system, and
I need to keep in mind what the studios are
looking for at all times.
“I work very hard to get stories told, but
I can’t do that if there isn’t an audience
for that story. It doesn’t mean that I don’t
want to tell meaningful stories—and I have
chosen projects I think are quite meaning-
ful—but it means I want to know that a lot
of people are going to hear that story.”
Evins started out in theatre, acting and
directing, but soon realized that she loved
choosing what story to tell and wanted to
tell stories that she believed people needed
to hear. Movies seemed to be the best
medium to insure that those stories reached
the largest possible audience.
She became an “independent producer;”
but she doesn’t believe that title limits her
to art house projects: “In my mind, an
independent producer is anyone who doesn’t
have a studio deal. I don’t consider myself an
independent producer who can only work
on what is traditionally called independent
film. I have worked on independent films,
and that’ll be enough for me for a lifetime.
I’m in post production on an indie film now
and loved the freedom and the challenges,
but my strengths lie in studio filmmaking.”
When it comes to screenwriters, Evins
always urges them to study the marketplace:
“See what’s making money because studios are
making movies with the intention of making
money. They’re looking to work with people
who make money in that marketplace.
“So, look at how studios market films,
either by trailers or ads in the Sunday paper.
Check with everyone you know who might
be remotely connected to the industry to
judge if what you’re writing is marketable.”
In her UCLA classes, Evins takes the
Sunday Los Angeles Times and cuts out the
Producer Barri Evins
large, one-page movie ads. She shows them
very quickly to the class then hides them
again. But, just with that brief glimpse,
everyone in the class knows what movie
they’re interested in seeing amongst the list.
“I do that because that’s how their movies
will eventually get sold,” Evins explained.
“Hollywood needs to see that ad in your
story. You better take that into account
because a studio will—as will agents, man-
agers and everybody else.”
While so many artistic souls in Hollywood
claim to want stories from outside the box,
Evins agreed that successful screenwriters
think inside the box.
“‘Think outside the box’ sounds great,
but I learned that Hollywood is looking for
something uniquely derivative—a fresh spin
on a familiar concept. If you look at film
through the years, you can see the same sto-
ries told repeatedly—only in different ways.
“If you want to write your very personal
story, it may not be right for the studios.
Maybe it’s a short story, a poem or a play.
All of those things take considerably less
money to produce and market.”
In the end, Evins stressed that a writer’s
own desires and choices will determine what
he wants to write, but the industry will
determine whether it’s wanted.
“Maybe you’re not the guy who wants to
go out and tell a crass, commercial story, but
you better tell a marketable one.”
JOHN SCOTT LEWINSKI’S next book, Alone in a
Room: The Secrets of Professional Screenwriters
(from Michael Wiese Productions: Mwp.com)
will hit shelves in late 2004. A featured screen-
writer at the 2003 Cinestory Script Sessions with
his award-winning script Slabtown, Lewinski
is represented by the management firm of
Benderspink in Hollywood, CA.
scriptmag.com
 "mj_] m[f_ mjinfcabn#
SHELDON TURNER: LIVING
THE WRITER’S DREAM
It’s hard to catch up with Sheldon Turner. Since selling his first script Inside
Man, he has been a busy man. In fact, Turner seems to be living every
screenwriter’s dream—he is staying employed and in demand.
W
hile Sheldon Turner’s first sale
did not result in a feature film,
he was paid for it. However, he
says he only got scale. Nevertheless, that
first script, Inside Man, did end up open-
ing doors for Turner that have stayed open
ever since.
Inside Man is the story about an ide-
alistic business school graduate. “After
getting out of school, he takes a job with
an unnamed company,” Turner explains.
“He sort of falls under the influence of
this subversive business guy who ends up
manipulating him.”
Turner says the script has “notions and
tones of Fight Club, but I really looked at it
as an opportunity to flex my dialogue.”
Indeed, while the script ended up on a
shelf in his home, he says the dialogue was
what really mattered. “I see dialogue as the
90-mile-per-hour fastball of screenwriters,
and it is one of those things that you have
or your don’t,” he concludes.
Inside Man and Turner were on a roll
when Michael Bay attached himself to the
script. But, from there it was downhill. As
the writer explains: “Disney was in negotia-
tions to buy it. At the time I had a different
agent. Candidly, he ended up messing up
the deal.”
As it happened, Disney passed, Bay unat-
tached himself and a company called Ignite
ended up with the script. However, Ignite
folded into Lions Gate, and the film was
returned to Turner unproduced. Despite the
disappointment, Turner was undaunted. “It
was more about putting me on the map,”
he says. “I just wanted to write and show I
had a voice and could write dialogue.”
Flash forward several years later and
Turner is now a working writer who says he
is quite disillusioned with the spec market
overall. “I have sold six specs [since my first
sale], and now I’m not really in the spec
18 scr(i)pt
by Rita Cook
business anymore, for better or worse. But
that is a whole other topic with the volatile
spec market now.”
Presently, Turner is working on several
scripts at various studios. Earlier this year
the writer signed a blind script deal with
Paramount worth seven figures to pen the
remake of The Longest Yard, set for produc-
tion this summer. He’s also writing Overtime
at Warner Bros. and Up in the Air with Ted
Griffin attached to direct. In August, Turner
is set to direct a spec he wrote called By
Virtue Fall.
Before his work as a screenwriter, Turner
graduated from Cornell and went on to
New York University for a law degree.
While doing a rather boring law internship,
he decided to write a screenplay during his
free time. “I started writing a screenplay
that was utterly horrible,” he explains. “I
enjoyed the process so much that I just
kept at it.”
One thing led to another, and he
explained to his parents that he would not
be practicing law but instead moving to Los
Angeles to be a screenwriter. “Fortunately,
I have supportive parents,” he says. He
moved to L.A. five years ago.
When asked whether screenwriters should
read scripts or watch movies, Turner answers
without hesitation, “Read scripts. I never
took any courses. I just read screenplays,
and what I responded to I tried to emulate.
I learned as much from the bad scripts as I
did from the good ones.”
He is not saying that a screenwriter
shouldn’t watch films; he just enjoyed the
ability to be able to translate and read a
scene, then watch the movie and see how
things had changed.
As for living in L.A., Turner does believe
it is important when a screenwriter is get-
ting started. “Not so much because you
are going to run into someone at a bar,”
Screenwriter Sheldon Turner
T
he says, “but because opportunities present
themselves. Geographically, by being in the
presence of the business, you are able to
interact with people more easily.”
Turner’s most important advice is that
young writers should find their voice. “Your
own voice,” he stresses. “I am not in the
habit of quoting Richard Nixon, but he
had a plaque on his desk that read ‘First
grab them by the balls, and the heart and
mind will follow.’ I think the same holds
true for screenwriting.”
When asked if he plots out his scripts
via a three-act, notecard sort of way, Turner
responds: “I do and I don’t. I set an outline
in a three-act structure so I will know
where the end of the first act should go,
where the midpoint should go, but very
rarely does it work out that way.”
In parting, Turner emphasizes, “Don’t let
the spec market define whether you are a
good writer or not because, unfortunately,
I think it is engineered to recognize flawed
writing and good ideas.”
RITA COOK is the editor-in-chief of Insider
magazine and also a producer and screen-
writer. In 2002, she co-produced three films:
Schizophrenic, Gabriella and Lost Soul. A short
film, Quest to Ref, on which she was pro-
ducer, was recently selected at Sundance. Cook
is the President of Cinewomen, Los Angeles,
and President Emeritus of Women in Film &
Television, Chicago.
scriptmag.com
 Your Next Act could
be your Best One Yet.

The UCLA Professional Program

in Screenwriting offers on-campus and
online graduate-level evening programs for busy individu-
als ready to take their writing to the next level.

Learn from the Best

UÊ Ê
œÕÀÃiÃʓœ`ii`Ê>vÌiÀÊ1

½ÃÊ«ÀiÃ̈}ˆœÕÃÊ
MFA Screenwriting Program For more information please contact:
UÊ Ê-“>ÊܜÀŽÃ…œ«ÃÊÌ>Õ}…ÌÊLÞÊ1

Êv>VՏÌÞÊ>˜`Ê
professional screenwriters, and UCLA Professional Programs
UÊ

Ê VViÃÃÊ̜Ê1

½ÃÊÀi˜œÜ˜i`ÊÃVÀii˜ÜÀˆÌˆ˜}Ê 102B East Melnitz Hall

community Los Angeles, CA 90095-1622

(310) 825-6827 phone
(310) 825-3383 fax
2004-2005 Academic Year begins Sept. 27, 2004.
Summer Quarter begins July 6, 2004. or visit our web site at
www.filmprograms.ucla.edu
 " c h ^ _ j _ h ^ _ h n m #
FLESH OUT YOUR SCRIPT FROM THAT GREAT IDEA
Your concept controls every single
aspect of your screenplay. Even
the wildest concept you can come
up with will hold the key to the
characters, theme, character arcs,
Act Two and the big, dramatic
moments of your screenplay. You
just have to dig a little.
R
ecently a producer asked me if I had
any horror scripts. I didn’t have any,
but I pitched a story about Survivor:
West Indies going really, really wrong. A
hurricane blows a raft containing a “tribe,”
a cameraman and the Jeff Probst-like host to
an island run by a Voodoo priestess. There’s
a sugar mill, a HUGE graveyard and a run-
down mansion. When one of the dopey
survivors removes the gris-gris charm that
keeps the Zombie Lord and his gang under-
ground, the contestants have to barricade
themselves inside the mansion to survive.
I’ll show you how I came up with the
middle (and everything else) based upon the
concept—maybe it will help you with your
scripts. You get to look over my shoulder as
I turn a concept off the top of my head into
a screenplay.
Isle of the Zombies (Say it aloud.)
I started with the concept that zombies
are the living dead. That’s an interesting
contradiction. How can something be living
and yet be dead?
Concept leads me to theme—what does
it mean to be alive? There’s an old comedy
routine (I think it’s by Hudson & Landry)
where the punchline is “I couldn’t live like
that!” That punchline became the corner-
stone of my script’s theme. How do you
define living, and what situation is so hor-
rible that you couldn’t live?
The concept is important, and you need
to find something both unique and interest-
ing. Find something that is both a cool idea
and “personal” because everything is going
to grow from that concept. You can start
20 scr(i)pt
by William C. Martell
The Cast of Survivor: All Stars
with character or you can start with concept.
In this case, I needed a story that would be
inexpensive to film, and that meant people
trapped in a house. I needed to find the
most original and interesting reason for them
to be trapped because everything in the
script—every scene, every character, every
line of dialogue—is going to grow from that
concept. Though we have seen zombie mov-
ies like Night of the Living Dead, when was
the last time you saw a movie about REAL
zombies? The voodoo kind?
I had to go back to the 1940s to find a
movie about real zombies (though the very
underrated The Serpent and the Rainbow
from 1988 is about a quest to find the pow-
der that can turn a man into a zombie). But
a story about real zombies is still kind of bor-
ing, which is why I’ve combined the Survivor
elements. That makes it topical and kind of
funny. I think we’d secretly like to see all of
the pretty, petty politicians of Survivor forced
to deal with a REAL problem. Zombies
weren’t enough. Survivor wasn’t enough.
Combine the two and you have enough for
a silly, little horror movie. You need to start
with an interesting concept to produce an
interesting screenplay.
ALL PHOTOS: Robert Voets/CBS ©2004 CBS Broadcasting Inc.
I had come up with some general ideas
about characters. I knew I had a tribe of
folks who thought they were going to be
playing a TV game ... and ended up fighting
for their lives. But who were these people?
What exactly did “lives” mean to them?
So I made a list of various reasons to be
alive and things that people would identify
with being alive. These folks want to live,
not merely be alive. (You can sing the lyrics
from Man of La Mancha now if you like.
Quality of life is a universal theme that
even pops up in Broadway musicals.) Once
I had my list of what being alive means, I
picked the best of the bunch and built a
character around the items on that list. That
way every character would be related to the
theme and would be exploring the theme
just by showing up.
CHARACTERS FROM
CONCEPT/THEME
My protagonist is Maxwell Rand, a
Survivor contestant who defines being alive
as being free. He’s a cool rebel and a bit of
a smart-alec, covered with tattoos (like Lex
from the TV show). Because freedom is
his definition of being alive, the opposite
scriptmag.com
 " c h ^ _ j _ h ^ _ h n m #
is what he most fears: being trapped or
confined. He’s about to be trapped in a
house surrounded by zombies. That should
bring out his fears. That fear also became
the springboard for scene ideas. How could
I trap Maxwell Rand? What tasks could I
send him on that would put him in con-
fined spaces?
Because this was like Survivor, I gave
each of my characters a “luxury item”—a
symbol of their definition of being alive
that might have other uses once they are
trapped in the house. I also created a
“catch phrase” and made a list of words or
phrases that connected to the character’s
definition of being alive.
My female lead, Liz Connell, thinks that
having friends and family makes you alive.
She fears being separated from her friends—
alone and isolated. This sentimental aspect
of her character made her a little like Colleen
(from the TV show). She’s a sweet girl who
is strong inside. Not only is she isolated from
the outside world, but she also may never see
her family again. Again, I used the character’s
fear as a way to generate scene ideas. Liz
needs a friend in her tribe that will be taken
away from her. Her luxury item is a photo
album of her family and friends back home.
This will give her comfort; but when she
drops it and has to go back, this will put her
in peril. Later in the story, she may be forced
to leave it behind. I want to make sure these
luxury items not only expose character, but
also can be used to create drama and con-
flict. Liz’s dialogue will be filled with words
and phrases about friendship and family.
My sidekick is the cameraman Paul
Holland, who is a very physical person and
defines being alive through his physical self.
His big fear is being paralyzed. When I was
making my “I couldn’t live like that” list,
being paralyzed was right there on top. His
luxury item is a portable workout gizmo
advertised on an infomercial. Later the
bungies will be used to make crossbows to
shoot at the zombies. I wanted these luxury
items to show character and end up being
useful in unusual ways. Paul’s dialogue
revolves around the physical self, and his
background is: As a kid he wanted to be a
Life magazine photographer but ended up a
director of photography on Martha Stewart
Living. He quit that to take this job on the
Survivor-like show. He and Maxwell are
both attracted to Liz which creates a love
triangle and lots of tension.
A contestant named Clement believes that

(2004) MAY/JUNE scr(i)pt 21

" c h ^ _ j _ h ^ _ h n m #
The Cast of Survivor: All Stars
you aren’t living unless you’re making love. He’s the sleazy Romeo of
the group, always hitting on the gals. The more afraid he becomes,
the more he wants to have sex; what he really fears is not being able
to have sex. What if all of the available women are the walking dead?
Hey, what do the French call orgasms? The little death? Concept and
theme and character are all tied together! His luxury item? A huge
box of condoms. Later, they’ll be filled with 151-proof rum and used
as napalm water balloons.
The show’s pretty boy, Jeff Probst-like host thinks that being alive
is being known and loved by others. He needs to be the center of
attention, and that will create conflicts with the rest of the survivors.
He fears being unknown, just one of the crowd. Hmm, think he’ll
turn into a zombie later in the story? He’s an ex-Live at Five weath-
erman, and this is his big break. His luxury item? A dozen cans of
hairspray that will be used as blowtorches later in the story.
There’s a bookworm character named Abrams who thinks that
being able to think, reason and fantasize is what defines being alive.
He fears being brain-dead like those zombies out there. His luxury
item? All seven books of Remembrances of Things Past. He never got
around to reading them in real life. Now they’ll be used as weapons
and fire-starting material. This character thinks and reasons; his
dialogue and his problem-solving techniques come directly from
his definition of being alive, which is part of the theme which came
from the concept itself.
There are other characters, but I think you get the idea—charac-
ters come from theme.
ALLIANCES AND ENEMIES
Because I wanted to make sure there was as much conflict and
drama inside the house as outside, each character was given allies
(alliance characters) and enemies. There were people they liked
whom they would risk their lives to rescue and people they disliked
that helped to create conflicts. Because conflict is story, I made
sure that each character would end up paired with his enemy and
forced to work with him. Maxwell and Paul don’t like each other at
all and are paired for the entire film. They are in a constant struggle
regarding leadership of the group and will learn that they have to
work together to survive. Make sure you have conflict between your
characters that will lead to drama.
22 scr(i)pt
The characters were fleshed out with jobs, backgrounds and
skills. I wanted to give them interesting jobs back home that added
something to their characters but also might come in handy when
they were trapped on the island. My theory was to come up with an
occupation or skills that were ALMOST helpful, using the model-
plane designer from Flight of the Phoenix as a “model.” In that film
their plane crashes in the desert, and the only way to survive is to
rebuild a working plane from the undamaged parts. One of the pas-
sengers says he designs planes. Only later do we find out he designs
model planes (that fly). If the character has the EXACT skill needed
to survive, it’s a major coincidence. If he has something close, it’s
more realistic and creates some suspense. In Flight of the Phoenix,
we are never really sure the plane will be able to fly.
ACT TWO FROM CONCEPT
I created little story goals for Act Two—things to make the middle
of the script exciting. These goals also grew from the basic concept.
1.) There’s a motorboat with a broken motor, but should they
send someone outside the house (into zombie-controlled territory)
to bring the motor back so they can fix it? On an island you’d
expect there would be a boat, so it fits within the concept of being
trapped on Zombie Island. Oh, and the “dead” motor they may
be able to bring back to life? Theme! One of the characters is an
auto mechanic who has never repaired a boat engine before ... but
is willing to try.
One element of these little goals is to figure out how things
can go wrong. What if they get the boat motor back to the house
only to discover that the mechanic has been killed (and switched
sides—now he’s a zombie)? You want to make sure the conflict
escalates so that the more they try to get off the island, the worse
things become.
2.) In the sugar mill, there are barrels of 151-proof rum that will
make a great firebomb; but you have to send someone out to get it.
The barrels are heavy and impossible for a lone man to carry. Again,
the sugar mill and rum are things that you’d find on a West Indies
island. They come directly from the concept.
3.) The characters realize zombies don’t like bright lights and use
the cameraman’s photofloods to keep the zombies back, but the
Zombie Lord cuts the power to the house. There’s a generator in
scriptmag.com

an outbuilding. Does anyone here know anything about electri-
cal stuff? Hey, you want to go out into the zombie world and
get the power working again? (The power dies. Who can bring
it back to life?)
Well, you get the idea: I came up with a handful of little goals
based upon the concept. Each created a dramatic scene where the
group had to decide if the goal was worth the risk and figure out
how each goal could go wrong in an exciting way. These challenges
created the material for Act Two—that middle part. Between zom-
bie attacks they have to deal with these goals and setbacks. Should
you send the guy you don’t like out to do the suicide mission? Or
should you send the person with the least skills? I thought of these
as a combination of Survivor’s “challenges” and “tribal councils”—
you’re being voted into a suicide mission!
I DIED BECAUSE OF THE CONCEPT!
In a story like this, people are going to die. The key to a great
death scene is redemption. You want your characters to have glorious
deaths. You want them to face their fears and sacrifice their lives so
that others can live. That’s dramatic stuff, and emotionally satisfy-
ing stuff. Again, because the characters are facing their fears—and
their fears come from the theme and the theme comes from the
concept—you need a great concept that can generate interesting dra-
matic material. The best way to think of the death scenes is to think
about the way Lt. Gorman died in Aliens. That scene made me cry!
Here’s this guy, a coward, who has always delegated the dangerous
jobs, yet he does this amazingly brave thing. He uses himself as bait
to kill as many aliens as possible to protect the others. At his side
is Vasquez—the character who dislikes him the most! Earlier I said
(2004) MAY/JUNE
" c h ^ _ j _ h ^ _ h n m #
you want to pair your characters with the person least like them in
order to create conflict, and here’s a good example of that in action.
Vasquez comes to like and RESPECT Gorman by this point in the
movie ... and they die together so that others can live. They die in
each other’s arms. Man, that’s a great death scene!
So, to recap:
1. Start with your concept.
2. Find the theme within the concept.
3. Create characters that illustrate different aspects of that
theme.
4. Give your characters dialogue that matches theme and
concept.
5. Create scenes based upon theme and concept that force your
characters to deal with their fears or emotional issues.
6. Create mini-goal scenes in Act Two that come from theme
and concept.
7. Make sure what happens to your characters reflects the theme
and concept.
In a strange way, your concept controls every single aspect of
your screenplay. Once you figure out what your script is about, you
can fill in the details. Even the strangest concept you can come up
with holds the key to the characters, theme, Act Two and the big,
dramatic moments of your screenplay. You just have to look.
WILLIAM C. MARTELL has written over a dozen produced films for
cable and video, including the HBO World Premiere Movie Crash Dive
and the family film Invisible Mom. He is the author of The Secrets of
Action Screenwriting. He may be reached at: Scriptsecrets.net
scr(i)pt 23
Which
Screenwriting
Program
Is Right
For You?

Part Three

BY JOHN SCOTT LEWINSKI

I
n recent issues, we’ve looked at software
programs that format your script and
products that help you develop your
script. There are others that defy a catego-
ry. In this final round-up of screenwriting
software, we look at unique products that
provide very specific help—as well as ones
that hit the market while we were still pre-
paring these reports.
THE WRITER’S
HOLLYWOOD TOOLKIT
This 45-minute
audio CD is a crash
course in the busi-
ness affairs of the
film industry. Its
lecture format is
similar to that of a
screenwriting conference seminar, without
the need for airfare or admission fees.
Jonathan Treisman, the lecturer and
founder of Flatiron Films, executive pro-
duced the feature film Pay It Forward for
Warner Bros. in 2000. The film starred
Academy-Award® winners Kevin Spacey
and Helen Hunt, as well as Oscar® nominee
Haley Joel Osment.
Treisman started Flatiron Films with
the goal of developing and producing
quality studio feature films. The com-
pany primarily options the film rights
to literary properties such as novels and
screenplays.
The Writer’s Hollywood Toolkit is a
recorded presentation of a Treisman con-
ference seminar. It describes the process
that took Pay It Forward from book to
film, including the option and develop-
ment rigors.
Along the way, Treisman explains option
agreements from the writer’s perspective,
and the development process a screenwrit-
er’s work will go through following such
an option.
Treisman also offers his opinions on what
Hollywood is really looking for in scripts—
despite what the insiders might say officially.
He also offers tips on gaining the interest of
a useful agent and writing query letters that
might get you noticed when so many letters
get tossed without a read.
He even spends a little time explaining
appropriate screenplay formatting (in case
you don’t use one of the formatting pro-
grams discussed earlier) and what software a
writer should own in addition to Final Draft
or the like.
While writers who have been at the
movie game for some time may already
know much of what Treisman has to
offer, The Writer’s Hollywood Toolkit can
serve as a useful tool for beginning writ-
ers or scribblers considering a go at the
screenwriting game.
Price: $15. For more information visit:
Flatironfilms.com To purchase a copy
visit: Writersstore.com
CHARACTER NAMING
SOFTWARE™
Character Naming Software from

24 scr(i)pt scriptmag.com

December Fifth
Creations offers a
comprehensive way
for writers to cata-
log, research and choose names for their
characters, regardless of the genre.
Available on CD-ROM or via download,
this simple software allows writers to search
a Name Base of more than 25,000 first and
16,000 last names. You can search for names
with a combination of possible criteria.
December Fifth also created software doc-
umenting Baby Shower Games/Gift Ideas,
Baby-Naming Software and other birth/
name-related packages. They combined
those naming resources into a basic, share-
ware-style program that allows users to find
names through such categories as “Starts
with,” “Contains” or “Ends with.”
Character Naming Software also lets
users construct names from 28 origins
(African, Arabic, Armenian, Chinese,
Danish, Dutch, Egyptian, French,
German, Greek, Hebrew, Hispanic, Irish,
Italian, Japanese, Jewish, Latin, Muslim,
Norwegian, Old English, Polish, Russian,
Scandinavian, Scottish, Slavic, Spanish,
Swedish and Welsh).
Also, if writers wish to choose a name
by rhythmic sound or cadence, names are
searchable by the number of syllables, first-
name gender or even first-name definition.
First-name themes come in 24 variet-
ies, such as Adventurous, All-American,
Appearance, Astronomy, Biblical, Cute
(young), Exotic, Feminine, Geographical,
Intellectual, Masculine, Meek, Merriment,
Mythical, Natural, Regal, Religious,
Reserved, Saint, Sexy, Sinister, Technology,
Traditional and Wealthy. Writers can search
several times with different criteria and cre-
ate a “favorites” list that can be automatically
saved and edited.
If a user is absolutely stuck, he can request
a list of names randomly. Whatever names
the user chooses to view with appear with
their meaning, origin, theme, number of
syllables, etc.
If the writer wants to play with the names
at hand to create character possibilities, he
can Mix/Scramble or Combine words. Both
features allow a user to create character
names. With the Combine feature, a writer
can enter up to three names or words.
The program rearranges the names or
words into new names to review. The Mix/
Scramble feature allows a writer to enter a
single name or word and mix its letters into
(2004) MAY/JUNE
possible combinations.
These playful features are Character
Naming Software’s most attractive ones.
Besides being able to compose character
names that might not occur to you other-
wise, these mix-and-match features tempt
the user to simply play for a while.
Otherwise, the software is simply a CD-
ROM similar to many character-name col-
lections available at your local bookstore.
Its features should prove easier and more
entertaining to use than any book.
Price for download: $19.95; multiplat-
form CD: $24.95. For more information
visit: Dfcreations.com
WORD MENU
Word Menu orga-
nizes words by subject
matter instead of the
traditional alphabeti-
cal order. Word Menu
works on the assump-
tion that we understand
and use words based upon their subject mat-
ter in speech. So, this computerized reference
tool categorizes words in such contexts for
intuitive location.
This program is intended for everyone
from screenwriters and novelists to students
and other breeds of professional scribes.
Word Menu’s interface is customizable.
Users adjust it to a number of different
viewing styles depending upon the writer’s
individual purpose. If you want to browse
the program for a while, it can fill the
screen. Alternatively, the window can shrink
down to a smaller, simpler interface if you
want the software up and running while
you work on a word processor.
Words are listed in a variety of catego-
ries within the onscreen menus. When you
navigate to the bottom level of a category,
the Results View splits to show you a list
of the category’s words on the top and a
collection of the words and their defini-
tions on the bottom. Thus, the program
serves as a dictionary and thesaurus simul-
taneously, telling you what a word means
and grouping it with other useful words in
the same category.
Topics and subtopics with Word Menu
continually flow into more specific topics
until you find the precise word you need,
or perhaps an even more effective word that
had not originally occurred to you. Every
topic leads you to more subtopics and even-
tually the appropriate word lists.
" ] l [ ` n #
If browsing is not your style, the Search
feature locates words, categories, topics,
definitions, related material, etc., based
upon your needs. If you know exactly what
you’re looking for, you can dig it up more
quickly here.
Many writers are visual thinkers, and
Word Menu takes advantage of that fact. The
program’s fractal browser uses flowing anima-
tion and scroll-down menus to guide you
through the topics and words you require.
PC users can put Word Menu to work
on their Windows 98, ME, NT 4.0, 2000
or XP systems. The complete install takes
up 20 megabytes of hard-disk space and
requires a complete 64 megabytes of free
hard-disk space for operation. A new ver-
sion is now available for Mac OS X. This
version requires Power Mac G3 or G4 with
128 megabytes of physical RAM, 20 mega-
bytes of hard-disk space, OS X 10.1 or
greater, 10.2 or greater is recommended.
Those interested in Word Menu can try it
through the developer’s “Try and Buy” audi-
tion program. You can download a free ver-
sion to experiment with for 14 days. After
those two weeks, it’s up to your writer’s
instincts as to whether or not Word Menu
and its word-expanding features are worth
your money.
Price: $34.95. For more information visit:
Wordmenu.com
HOLLYWORD
From screenwriter and
WGA member William
Simon, Ph.D., Hollyword
is an alternative to the
major screenwriting titles
such as Final Draft or
Movie Magic. The pro-
gram was originally designed for inexperi-
enced computer users and “wannabes,” but it
has been used by many professionals as well.
Hollyword is a streamlined, though fully
functional, program that allows your writing
to flow while you type, without having to
worry about formatting issues. Each time
you finish writing any element—slug line,
character name, dialogue, etc.—the program
automatically sets margins and capitalization
for the next thing you want to do.
Type a slug line, and Hollyword is set for
the correct margins, all caps. Hit return and
the program correctly switches to Action
margins and format. Hit return again, and
you move from Action to a centered, all-caps
position for your character name. Like Final
scr(i)pt 25
" ] l [ ` n #
Draft or Movie Magic, Hollyword allows
you to set shortcuts or macros to remember
your character names. So, when you enter
the first letter of your character’s name, the
entire name is automatically filled in by
the program. This function is adjustable,
depending upon your script’s needs.
According to its manufacturers,
Hollyword also automates MOREs,
CONTINUEs, scene numbers, parentheti-
cals and other functions.
Hollyword offers one benefit that other
bare-bones formatting programs do not.
Its User’s Guide and interactive Help func-
tions explain the formatting rules and offer
additional insights into studio and network
script standards.
Of special note, Hollyword has a
StoryCards feature that allows you—with
a single click—to view the scene-by-scene
structure of your entire screenplay. This com-
puter version of file-cards-pinned-to-the-wall
enables you to examine, organize and arrange
your storyline elements and structure while
you write your script. The developer refers to
this as “the greatest advance in screenwriting
since the computer.”
Hollyword works with all versions of
Word for Windows and Word for the
Mac.
Price: $84.95; a steep discount is avail-
able to students and teachers. For more
information visit: Hollyword.com or call
(888) 234-6789.
POWER STRUCTURE
Power Structure
distinguishes itself
from other electronic
teaching and organiz-
ing programs, opting
for a more intuitive
approach to story
creation.
Like its competitors, Power Structure
is of use to novelists, short story writers,
editors, screenwriters, playwrights and TV
writers. However, rather than running a
writer through a series of preset exercis-
es, Power Structure allows more freedom
through its easy to use interface.
The software’s designers at Write-Brain
and Script Perfection Enterprises enlisted
the help of published or produced writers
in its creation. So the product was designed
by pros for pros. The designers assumed that
writers would prefer to learn from human
beings than from a computer program.
26 scr(i)pt
Power Structure is “designed to help
you use existing skills as a writer,” rath-
er than direct energy into the predeter-
mined constraints of a computer outline
or development program. This approach
should allow any scribbler to figure out his
strengths and weaknesses, and overcome
any problems.
The program will not simply tell you
what to do or what not to do. Its tools
allow you to feel out for yourself what is
best for your script. While other programs
guide a writer through stringent rules
and predetermined relationships, Power
Structure assumes that your story won’t
fit into those models—and that you can
figure out how to make it work using your
own skills with a little help.
According to its manufacturers, Power
Structure wants “to inspire you to think
about story elements and character devel-
opment in ways that you might not have
thought about before.”
To that end, the program includes the
Playground of the Mind feature with its
visual methods of examining your story,
characters, conflicts and other key ele-
ments. Using that simple interface, flex-
ible comparisons and suggestions, the
software lets you answer key questions
without forcing you to choose any par-
ticular course.
The program’s flexibility is important
because every writer has his own person-
al writing quirks and procedures. Power
Structure lets you keep those quirks—allow-
ing you to work on whatever story element
you want to in your own time while inte-
grating that element into the more workable
story as a whole.
Requirements: Windows 95/98/ME/
NT/2000/XP or higher; 7 megabytes of
hard-disk space; Pentium® or better CPU;
mouse or other pointing device. For Mac,
minimum of Power PC; OS 8.6 or later; 17
megabytes of hard-disk space.
Price: $179.95. For more information
visit: Screenstyle.com or Writersstore.com
DR. FORMAT™ SCREEN-
WRITING SOFTWARE
Wow. What are the odds that scr(i)pt
magazine would include a software review on
a product developed by and named after one
of its columnists? Talk about a coincidence,
but new software from Dr. Format bears his
name and honors his reputation for handling
all of screenplay formatting’s bizarre rules
and quirks.
Okay. There might be a little bit of nep-
otism here, but this Dr. Format software is
useful, powerful and fully able to save your
script from the kind of formatting mistakes
that get it tossed on the scrap heap.
Dr. Format Screenwriting Software turns
your copy of Microsoft® Word into a com-
plete formatting software package. In fact, its
manufacturers offer a 100 percent guarantee
that your screenplay will be formatted cor-
rectly for your intended genre.
According to the man himself, Dave
Trottier, this software was developed for writ-
ers, not computer experts. If you know how
to use MS Word, you already know how to
use Dr. Format. With basic keystrokes and
the Tab and Enter keys (commonly used in
all screenplay format programs), you con-
trol the elements (Scene Headings, Character,
Dialogue, Action, etc.).
Since Word remains the primary word
processor in the world, both Mac and PC
users can use this formatting software. You
simply need any version of Word including
or later than Word 97 for PCs and Word 98
for Mac. You end up with a Word document
that can be easily exported via e-mail, which
is convenient since the odds are pretty good
that your recipient is going to have that word
processor on his hard drive somewhere.
Since Trottier’s reputation is on the line, his
software is designed to be up to date with the
most current script formats and trends. For
example, using MORE or CONTINUED
went out of fashion in many script forms
some time ago. Dr. Format is hip to that
change. One-hour TV drama scripts may
look similar to feature scripts on the page,
but there are subtle differences. Sitcoms have
unusual rules that can even vary from pro-
duction to production. No matter what your
particular genre needs are, Dr. Format seems
equipped to deal with them.
Dr. Format is new to the market, just
arriving in online stores now.
Price: $99.95. For more information visit:
Drformat.com
SOPHOCLES
Sophocles is a new screenplay software pro-
gram that emphasizes the writing process—a
scriptmag.com

recent edition to the story development cata-
log of products.
According to the manufacturers, while
other screenwriting software puts the focus
on margins and page breaks, Sophocles was
conceptualized from the start as a story
creation tool for screenwriters. By allow-
ing you to navigate and manipulate story
elements, Sophocles helps you construct a
tighter, smoother-flowing screenplay.
Sophocles does format your work along
the way, however. It provides professional
screenwriting format based upon a sam-
ple of 50 recent Hollywood screenplays.
Once you have your work formatted,
you can export and import from major
screenwriting programs and generic word
processors.
While formatting, the software’s inter-
face directs attention away from format-

!
ting issues to the creative writing process.
Sophocles includes tools to help you stay
test. If you decide to use them, you must
register them via the manufacturer’s regis-
tration page.
Price for Screenplay Outliner: $49;
Random Name Generator: $12.95. For
more information visit: Kitchona.com or
Screenstyle.com
That wraps up our look at 25 screenplay
format and story development software pack-
ages. Some are all-time classics, and others are
newcomers to the competitive business.
In the end, with all of these products
designed specifically for screenwriters, if you




%

" ] l [ ` n #
can’t find a tool best suited to help you in
creating your stories or scripts, you’re not
serious about writing.
JOHN SCOTT LEWINSKI’S next book, Alone in
a Room: The Secrets of Professional Screenwriters
(from Michael Wiese Productions: Mwp.com)
will hit shelves in late 2004. A featured screen-
writer at the 2003 Cinestory Script Sessions with
his award-winning script Slabtown, Lewinski
is represented by the management firm of
Benderspink in Hollywood, CA.
oriented within your story while navigat-
ing through scenes and plot points. The

$ 
software includes a complete but simple
interface.
There’s no CD-ROM to buy because
Sophocles is distributed through the Internet
using a code-based registration system.
Price: $120. For more information visit:
Sophocles.net
KITCHONA SOFTWARE



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Kitchona Software programs are free to

(2004) MAY/JUNE scr(i)pt 27

 NPSBM
TUPSZ
by Bragi Schut Jr.
PG UIF

I’ve never been much for morals. In a script, I mean. It’s

awkward and stifling to worry about morals when you’re writ-
ing a story. If they fit, use them. But there’s nothing worse
than a script that preaches.
Movies are about a ride, an adventure, a journey of discov-
ery. When you think back on your favorite scripts, I think
you’ll find it difficult to pinpoint the moral of each story.
What’s the moral of Die Hard? Crime doesn’t pay? Or
Predator? Hunting humans is bad? Trying to determine the
moral does a disservice to the story—boils it down to some-
thing so simple that you end up with almost nothing.
That said, there is a moral to this article. It’s really the only
advice that I feel qualified to pass along.
Producer/writer/director David O. Selznick said it best (for-
give if I paraphrase): “Tell the stories you want to tell and if
nobody likes ’em, then get out of the business.”

Screenwriter Bragi Schut Jr. MY STORY

David O. Selznick said it best:
“Tell the stories you want to
tell and if nobody likes ’em,
then get out of the business.”
I came out to Los Angeles to work in the film business. I
love movies. I love storytelling, and nothing would have made
me happier than to make movies for a living.
Problem was, it wasn’t much of a living. I was barely scrap-
ing by, working days as a production assistant, staying up late
into the night to do my writing, then waking up at the crack
of dawn, bleary-eyed, to start the whole cycle over again.
I think every writer faces that rock-bottom moment when
you start to wonder whether you chose the right path in life—
when you get sick and tired of mac’ and cheese and Country
Time® Lemonade.
For me, rock bottom came two years ago. I was down to my
last hundred bucks. My screenplay hadn’t sold, and I was on
my way back to New York with my tail between my legs.
The script was called The Last Voyage of the Demeter; it told
the story of the ill-fated cargo vessel Demeter, the ship that
carried a certain Count from Transylvania to London.
At the time I thought it was a clever idea. Tell the legend of
Dracula from the point of view of the doomed sailors who car-
ried him across the sea. It would have been great if the script

28 scr(i)pt scriptmag.com

sold. But it didn’t.
The script kicked around town, got me
the interest of a manager (J.C. and Brian
Spink of Benderspink), some meetings
and a few free lunches. Then the lunches
stopped. Nobody wanted to buy it.
Everyone had the same thing to say.
They liked the writing, but it was a dif-
ficult project—“a tough sell,” in industry
parlance. It was a period-piece horror film
set entirely at sea. I found out later that
most of the films shot at sea were notori-
ously difficult shoots and had gone over
budget and over schedule, movies like
Jaws, Waterworld and Titanic.
Even though Demeter was a much
smaller project than any of those, it still
scared producers.
So there I was, questioning the wisdom
of my choice in material. If only I had writ-
ten something more commercial, something
cheaper, more like the movies that were
doing well at the time, maybe a romantic
comedy, or a buddy-cop flick.
But I didn’t want to write those stories.
I wanted to write a spooky film on an old
boat, the gothic version of Alien.
My brother, on the other hand, was
an investment banker, two years younger
and doing great. He had an exciting job,
an expense account and a great future. I
barely had enough money to buy Christmas
presents that year. Mom and Dad were get-
ting light-up Lord of the Rings mugs from
a Burger King® drive-thru. “Not just to be
held ... but to behold!” said the ads.
To make matters worse, my best friend
was getting married; and I was the best
man. I should have been thrilled; but I
couldn’t figure out how to stretch a hun-
dred bucks into a limo ride, lap dances
and enough alcohol to get him drunk.
He’s Russian Jewish by extraction; and,
man, he can drink.
In the end, I charged as much as I
could to my credit card and borrowed some
money from my folks. (They didn’t know
they were financing lap dances.)
WHAT TO WRITE
I took the winter to reconsider things
and make a few tough decisions. I decided
that I would return to L.A. and start a
new script.
But this time I’d write something more
commercial! I’d write a dark thriller—the
story of a cop who begins investigating
a series of bizarre suicides and discovers
(2004) MAY/JUNE
" q l c n _ l m  i h  q l c n c h a #
that they’re all actually victims of a serial
killer—a killer who forces his victims to take
their own lives.
I started an outline, then a script, then
decided it was a miserable Seven rip-off. “Thanks to Pilar’s classes and
I began anew. her analysis of my script, I was
I would write a supernatural tale about a able to take a clever idea with
coma patient who awakens to find everyone some funny jokes and turn it
he once knew and loved has vanished from into a movie about real live
the face of the earth. human beings. My screenplay,
I decided it was a miserable Sixth Sense “Death Takes a Vacation” is
rip-off. now getting great coverage in
I began anew. the industry and doing well in
I would write a science-fiction story about contests. I’d recommend ‘On
a prisoner in a futuristic prison where the the Page’ to anybody who is
inmates begin inexplicably vanishing. In the serious about their craft.”
end, we find out that the prison was actually
a virtual-reality computer program, and the - Gil Christner, writer:
vanishing inmates were being “awakened”
Semifinalist, Chesterfield Fellowships
after having served out their time. Quarterfinalist, Austin Film Festival
But that seemed like a miserable Matrix Third Place, WriteMovies.com
rip-off. I gave up on that as well. Runner Up, Scriptapalooza.com
All the while I was running through more
“commercial” ideas, I kept returning to this
strange, little idea about a witch in the time
of the Black Plague.
I got the idea watching an old Ingmar
Bergman film, The Seventh Seal. There is a
scene in the movie where a peasant girl is
accused of witchcraft. In Bergman’s movie,
the girl is innocent; but an interesting twist
occurred to me. What if she weren’t? What
if she were truly a witch and, in fact, respon-
sible for the Black Plague?
Unfortunately, it was another period-piece
horror film (God help me) and I wasn’t
about to start down that road again.
I dug into my search with renewed vigor!
I’d write a broad comedy about an effi-
ciency expert who unknowingly gets hired
to streamline efficiency for the mob.
But down deep, I knew comedy wasn’t
my thing.
My mind kept drifting back to my Black Script Consultation &
Screenwriting Classes
Plague idea. I couldn’t get the notion out
of my head. It was such a spooky backdrop
for a story—such a horribly dark period in
the history of humanity—and yet such
a glorious canvas to tell a story of good Pilar Alessandra
Instructor / Consultant
and evil.
The set-up was simple: Six knights are (818)881-3193
chosen to transport an accused witch to a www.onthepage.tv
remote mountain abbey, where a group of pilar@onthepage.tv
monks will perform an ancient ritual to try
to destroy her powers and put an end to the
Black Plague.
Characters began to infiltrate my day-
dreams. Images and scenes popped into my
scr(i)pt 29
"qlcn_lmihqlcncha#
I knew so much of the story that
it was cluttering up my brain
and getting in the way of all
those “commercial” ideas I
was trying to work on.
mind. Lines of dialogue sprang unbidden
to my lips.
I pictured the opening scene so clearly:
EXT. COAST OF FRANCE - NIGHT
Dark, foreboding waves ... ris-
ing and falling ... THUNDERING
against rocks. Out to sea we
GLIMPSE something. The prow of a
boat cutting through the waves.
The boat reaches the shallows
and two men leap out. They
struggle through the surf, stum-
bling, exhausted and collapse
face first in the sand. Too
exhausted to move another inch.
They are crusaders, returning
from Palestine.
I pictured the scene in which the knights
first arrive at the dungeon to see the witch.
EXT. DUNGEON STAIRCASE - NIGHT
The Knights descend a long
flight of steps. Our hero, LaVey
is following the Jailor, and the
others are following LaVey.
Suddenly LaVey stops in his
tracks. He flinches at a SOUND
from below. The VOICE of the
WITCH booming out ... Filled
with animal-like rage.
WITCH (O.S.)
Lavveeeyyyyyyyyy!
The Knights share a moment of
stunned silence.
KNIGHT #1
She knows your name?
WITCH (O.S.)
(louder)
LAVVEEEYYYYYYYYY!
LaVey looks back at his compan-
ions, frozen on the steps.
30 scr(i)pt
LAVEY I couldn’t have been more surprised. It
Someone told her I was was a turning point—a revelation. Maybe
coming? my tastes weren’t uncommercial. Maybe it
wasn’t such a hard sell after all.
JAILOR I gave my managers the “go-ahead.”
No one told her.
As for me, I felt a wave of relief wash over
me. I sat down at my computer that night
LAVEY
after a long day of mindless PA work, and I
Then how -- ?
wrote the outline for my witch project.
JAILOR
It poured out of me as if a dam had bro-
She has been calling your ken—25 pages in two nights. The outline
name for three days. was rough, and I would end up reworking
it over the next several weeks, but the struc-
LaVey blanches. The Jailor con- ture was there.
tinues down the steps.
The knights begin their journey as skep-
I knew so much of the story that it was tics. They have just come back from the
cluttering up my brain and getting in the Crusades, a kind of medieval Vietnam;
way of all those “commercial” ideas I was and they don’t trust the church anymore.
trying to work on. Our hero, LaVey, believes that the woman
is innocent.
AND THEN SOMETHING He is persuaded to undertake the journey
STRANGE HAPPENED anyway; and somewhere in the middle of
One day, I received a call from my old Act Two, the witch begins to show her pow-
managers, Brian and J.C. Spink, the ones ers. Through deception and cunning, she
who were interested in the Dracula script. begins picking off the knights, one by one.
The dialogue went something like this: The new script finished, I took my man-
ager Brian’s advice and signed with an agent
J.C. SPINK as well. Brian, and my new agent, Brant
Did you ever sell that Rose, liked the witch script and were hope-
thing?
ful it would sell.
BRAGI Sitting there in Brant’s office, I couldn’t
Um ... No. resist asking the question:
J.C. SPINK BRAGI
Okay. Well, I think we So, you don’t think it’s
got somebody interested. a tough sell?
Wanna set it up?
I had to think for a second. BRANT ROSE
Sure it is. But every
BRAGI script’s a tough sell.
You mean, you’ve been
sending it out all this Every script’s a tough sell. The moral was
time? so simple, so clear. I remembered that old
quote by Selznick:
J.C. SPINK “Tell the stories you want to tell, and
Yeah. I told you, we
always liked that script. if nobody likes ’em, then get out of the
business.”
Out of the blue, almost two years later, Well, I’m not usually much for morals.
someone was interested in my script? I had But this one, I’ll take.
a brief moment of panic, where I thought
perhaps they had the wrong writer or the
BRAGI SCHUT JR. was a 2003 Nicholl Fellowship
wrong script.
recipient for his script, Season of the Witch,
BRAGI
You sure? Demeter. The which was purchased by MGM in November of
one I wrote last --
2003. His previous script, The Last Voyage of the
J.C. SPINK Demeter, is currently set-up at Phoenix Pictures
Yeah, yeah. The vampire
on a boat. with Robert Schwentke attached to direct.
scriptmag.com
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,
&
3
7² by Kate McCallum


This issue’s The Great Idea™ moves from the big screen to
the smallll screen. IIn th
th the world
ld off an ever-expanding
di ttelevi-
l i
sion marketplace, selling a one-hour drama is one of the
most competitive challenges in the business. Creator/execu-
tive producer/writer and now head writer, Daniel Knauf took
time out of his busy schedule to share some of the mystery
behind his wildly and wonderfully eccentric HBO prime time
series Carnivále. Bolstered by ingenuity, creativity and pas-
sion, Knauf launched this remarkable series last year, com-
pleted 13 episodes and is now readying for season two.
Knauf is a native son of Los Angeles. He attended a number of
Southern California colleges—studying fine art, and later, creative writ-
ing with an emphasis on poetry—graduating in 1982 with a bachelor’s
degree in English from California State University, Los Angeles. He then
entered the business world as an employee benefits consultant. After
establishing himself financially and assuring the support of his young
family, Knauf returned to creative writing as an avocation, eventually
directing his efforts toward screenwriting. In 1994, HBO produced his
screenplay, Canaan’s Way, starring Armand Assante as a blind gunfighter.
Knauf subsequently developed a number of feature projects at various
studios, most of which were eventually shelved as “too damn weird.”
32 scr(i)pt
TM
PHOTOS Doug Hyun/HBO
In 2001, Knauf turned his efforts to television, developing and writing
Carnivále, which was based upon one of
several series pilots includingg Carnivále
his earlier feature screenplays.
scr(i)pt: Carnivále is one of the most unique one-hour series airing on
television. From where did the idea come?
DANIEL KNAUF: Conceptually, the show is so complex. You don’t
have an idea like this just full-blown. You don’t wake up one morning
and say, “My God, we’re going to do this huge epic story that’s using
Milton’s Paradise Lost as a template set in the 30s about a carnival.”
There’s a word for people that have ideas like that—“lunatic.” It came
to me in little bits over many years ... maybe a decade. The first bit
was that I knew I wanted to do a big story. I had done many smaller
stories in 120-page screenplays. When I was growing up, I loved The
Lord of the Rings. I loved epic fantasy—and into college Dickens and
Huckleberry Finn, which is definitely a hero’s journey. I knew I wanted
to do something like that someday, but I didn’t know if I had a story. I
had to take something logical and figure out the topography and geog-
raphy, then build the whole world. That was an interesting challenge
to me as well as the world of the carnival.
The carnival is sort of an American experience, but it’s suspicious
because it is also European, foreign—a universal experience. What
race, color or creed you are doesn’t matter, everyone has been to a
carnival at one point in their lives. The weird thing is you have dif-
ferent experiences at the carnival depending upon your age. When
scriptmag.com

you’re five or six, it’s one kind of experience.
Then you go as a teen, and suddenly it’s
charged with sexuality; it’s exciting and any-
thing can happen. Then you go as an adult,
and the carnival a different experience. It’s a
world that just hasn’t been written about that
much in the way of literature or film—kind
of virgin territory. As a writer, when you find
something with universality about it that
hasn’t been exploited yet, it’s like finding a
hundred-dollar bill on the sidewalk.
I knew I wanted to do a carnival story
about good versus evil. In the series, the car-
nival is on the side of good. It’s the way the
world should be. But there’s a balance because
both good and evil people exist in the world.
The other thing that intrigued me was that
the carnival is a genuine subculture. The guy
who loads you into the Rocko Plane or the
Tilt-O-Whirl doesn’t
doesnt clock out at night to
go home ... he crawls under a truck and goes
to sleep. These people travel with the show,
so their world is an invisible world. The idea
of a group of people moving through towns
and setting this carnival up and taking it
down and moving on to the next town was
so romantic, strange and dangerous. The final
component of the concept was the 30s. When
the idea first came to me,
me I was thinking of a
post-apocalyptic carnival. The world’s been
devastated by plagues or nukes, and here’s this
little carnival. That may have been interesting,
but then I decided I didn’t want to do that
because it’s almost like a subgenre—the whole
post-apocalyptic thing. Yet I knew I didn’t
want to do it contemporary.
scr(i)pt: Why not contemporary?
DK: I wanted to do something with the
aspect of more long ago and far away. I think
[the show] would have lost a certain amount
of its mystique if it were [set in the present].
I wanted to give it that luster of romanticism
that looking back gives. [The script] was
either going to be a science-fiction piece or
a period piece. I chose the 30s because I’m
creating a new mythology, and that’s virgin
territory in a way.
There was a lot of great contemporary work
done in the 30s. You could argue that some
of the greatest American authors were at their
peak during that period, but there’s not much
(2004) MAY/JUNE
" n b _  a l _ [ n  c ^ _ [ #
in the way of looking back and writing fiction
set in the 30s. The West has been completely
exploited as a mythology; and since this is a
young country, we don’t have a lot of history
to exploit. Tolkien had Europe, so he had
thousands of years he could go back in which
to create story. The 30s were ripe to take true
historical events as our signposts but then run
between the raindrops. You think you know
why this country ended up joining the Allies
instead of the Axis powers, but you don’t
really know. You think you know why we had
a depression, the Dust Bowl, why these ter-
rible things happened; but you’ve been told a
rationalization.
The show’s conceit is Satan was here ... the
devil was here. The 30s were the critical peri-
od for the survival of America as we know
it. Nobody realizes just how dicey things
really were then. You had a vast percentage of
Americans out of work; and, politically, there
was a lot riding on ideology—a pivotal point:
good versus evil.
scr(i)pt: You touch on several mythic ele-
ments in this series. What do you draw upon
for your themes?
DK: A lot of things, but obviously the Bible
as a source of inspiration—certain aspects of
Paradise Lost, which is sort of the template
for what we’re doing—the duality of God
and Satan—the idea of good not being able
to exist without evil and vice versa. All those
things fall into [the show] thematically: the
idea that flawed people can be remarkably
heroic, the themes of being consumed—wak-
ing up one morning and finding out that
you have this destiny, like Harry Potter real-
izing he truly is to become a very power-
ful wizard—or, like finding out you were
adopted but then discovering that your birth
parents were really the King and Queen of
England. That fantasy of saying “I’m some-
thing other than what I am” is something we
explore with both, Brother Justin and Ben.
I’ve seen the reluctant messiah played out,
but I thought, “What about the reluctant
antichrist?” The guy that finds out he’s the
bringer of destruction; but if he’s half human,
he has freewill. He has a predilection toward
evil, but what if he doesn’t want to play ball?
Those things are totally fascinating to me.
PAGE 32 (Left): Adrienne Barbeau and Nick Stahl
star in HBO’s Carnivále (Middle): Clancy Brown and
Amy Madigan star in Carnivále (Right): Cynthia
Ettinger and John Fleck ABOVE: Carnivále cre-
ator/executive producer/head writer Daniel Knauf
[I also explored] the idea of being different
and of people who are regarded as freaks. I
loved Todd Browning’s movie Freaks. I grew
up in a household where my father was post-
polio and confined to a wheelchair, so it was
a very different situation in my house. People
would say “Your father is a saint,” but they
didn’t see my father. They would just see a
wheelchair. They didn’t know the man. You
can meet the most incredible-looking dif-
ferent people; and if you spend 10 minutes
with them, you won’t notice the differences
anymore. We did the story with the Lobster
Girl and flew her out from Florida to do a
cameo on one of our episodes. Five seconds
in she’s just this delightful person; and her
differences are not even relevant, and that’s
always fascinated me. All these things just go
into a big soup.
scr(i)pt: Is there something in particular that
you are trying to provoke from your audience?
DK: I don’t think that way. I just think
about what I respond to personally, what’s
going to interest me. I don’t think there’s
such a thing as “them” because “they” are us,
and nobody knows what “they’re” going to
think. The only person you know is yourself.
I don’t watch most network TV because how
beautiful all the people are throws me off.
If you go into a room of 100 people, there
might be one person out of that 100 that’s
as attractive as one of the network stars.
That’s putting them in the “freak” category.
scr(i)pt 33
" n b _  a l _ [ n  c ^ _ [ #
Someone who looks as good as Jennifer
Aniston is as rare as somebody who has two
heads, and yet we’re presented with that as if
it were the norm.
In British TV, they don’t do that. They
cast actors that look like people you know.
That’s one of the things I’m really happy
about with HBO: They let us cast the kinds
of faces you’d never see on network TV. You
look at somebody who’s as unusual looking
as Clea—she’s so striking—and then you
look at somebody like Tim DeKay, whom
we cast as Jones. I told our casting direc-
tor all I wanted was to see somebody who
looked as if he played baseball. Who would
think? We’re presenting this guy as a sexy
character, a very traditional leading man.
When we were casting the Cooch girls,
I said, “I don’t want to see any silicon, and
I don’t want to see any hard bodies.” We
need to see people who look period correct,
so we brought them in and cast them. We
have somebody like Amanda who plays Dora
Mae—she’s a big girl, yet you get her on that
stage, and she’s doing her thing. You’ll never
see that on network TV, and you won’t even
see that in movies. It’s ridiculous to me.
scr(i)pt: How important was Arthur Waite’s
Tarot in inspiring your stories/concepts since
it plays such a prominent part in the opening
credits and in Sophie’s role as a card reader?
DK: Not much, but as far as a structural
device, a framing device and a very filmic
visual thing that we could say, “Ah ... this is
moving into this story.” Here’s the “tower.”
Here are the “lovers.” It was a very, very good
device. Next season we’re introducing a new
card that doesn’t exist in any tarot. It’s called
the “Usher.” We’ll find out what that is.
scr(i)pt: What content and materials did you
prepare in order to sell the concept?
DK: What happened was very weird. I was
your typical screenwriter, but I also had my
own consulting business. I had a family, and
I liked to pay the mortgage; so even when I
had a script sale, I kept the business—thank
God! A writer has dry spells; and I had
gone through an extended period where I
was writing, but nobody was buying. I was
doing spec scripts, which are very difficult
to sell these days. Television was something I
hadn’t even thought about. I went to a WGA
retreat and talked to some TV writers. They
were telling me about writing for TV, and it
sounded very appealing because the writer
is the king in TV, versus the director. At the
34 scr(i)pt
time I was about 40. I thought, “What the
hell, maybe I’ll do a spec script.”
Originally, I tried to do Carnivále as a
screenplay, but it was too big. I got to page
180, and I wasn’t even done with Act Two
yet. It wasn’t even really that good because
I was trying to compress everything. So I
decided to take the first act and write it as
a TV pilot and make it a series. When I
finished, I didn’t know what to do with it
because I didn’t have any TV credits, I didn’t
know anyone in the TV business and I didn’t
have any awards as a screenwriter. I thought,
“How dumb am I? I shouldn’t have even
bothered with this,” so I put it away. I put
it in a drawer because there was nothing I
could do with it. I showed it to a TV writer,
and he thought it was beautifully structured
but told me that nobody was going to do it.
After a few more years, I fired my agent
because I wasn’t going anywhere; and I was
getting past 40. I decided I’d make one big,
last run at it, then call it quits and start writ-
ing prose—novels. I created a web site, and
this was back before anyone was doing that.
Now everyone’s doing it. I had programming
experience and was an art major in college,
so I put up a web site, which was basically an
online resumé; and then it became a sort of a
blog. I put all the first acts of my screenplays
on it. The site was up for a few years when I
got a call from my manager who had gotten a
call from a development executive with Scott
Winant. He had seen my pilot online and
wanted to read it. They had no idea who I
was because they had found me on the Net,
so they were a little scared. We got them the
script. They gave me notes, and I delivered
them two days later. I delivered it quickly
because I wanted to look good. They were
really excited, and they asked me if I had a
“bible.” Of course I had a Bible [laughs], and
would a Koran help, too?
The truth is—I didn’t even know what a
[show] bible was. They explained it to me,
and I started to write this document; but I
found it impossible to read and felt that it
didn’t really express what I was trying to do
with the show. Once again, since I had an art
background, I decided to approach this as if I
were a professor and I was doing research on
something that really happened —that these
people had really existed. The professor was
a very dry, persnickety and skeptical man;
and any time magic came in, he would say,
“Somebody says this is what happened, but
obviously it couldn’t happen that way ...” I
created faux newspaper articles—interviews. I
had an interview with Samson that was done
in 1975 where he’s this crotchety, 85-year-old
man with a 46-year-old girlfriend who’s sort
of trailer trash who says, “You can’t smoke!
No, you can’t have one of my cigarettes!” On
Brother Justin’s side, I had mock-up religious
tracts and pictures of his Temple of Canaan. I
included the more traditional character bios,
too; but I wrote them as the college professor,
“Allegedly he was this ... ,” “Very little was
known about him before this period ... ” It
became an entertaining and visually interest-
ing document to read—enough to keep me
interested while I was writing it.
scr(i)pt: You mentioned tone.
DK: You didn’t have to say, “Here’s the tone
of the show,” since you could get it by read-
ing and seeing the bible. Having the bizarre
religious tracts, newspaper articles, photo-
graphs, police reports and all these things,
helped you fall into the times and see what
I was playing with, as far as dancing around
historical facts. I would quote famous people
like Eleanor Roosevelt talking about how
appalling the architecture of Brother Justin’s
temple was: “It looked like a headless jackal.”
That’s what we turned in to HBO.
scr(i)pt: Who is “we?”
DK: Scott and Howard Klein, who by then
were very much involved. Howard is the
executive producer on the show and one of
the partners of 3 Arts. Scott introduced me to
Howard, and the three of us developed [the
series] with HBO in mind. We weren’t going
to do this show with anybody else. It just
wasn’t going to happen. There was only one
place we were going to go with it, and they
responded. Take into mind how challenging
the material is to begin with, how different
it is, that it’s an incredibly expensive show to
mount, that it’s a period piece with special
effects—I mean, all we need are dogs and
children [laughs]. We knew there was really
only one outlet for this.
scr(i)pt: To whom did you pitch at HBO?
DK: First, we submitted the bible without
the pilot script, and that spoke for itself.
Then we met with HBO executives Chris
Albrecht and Carolyn Strauss. They respond-
ed very positively to it although they didn’t
quite know what we were trying to do; but
they were interested enough to pony up for
a pilot. I basically gave them an outline.
They came back with notes on the outline,
and then I did a revision on the pilot script
scriptmag.com

that reflected their sensibilities. Carolyn was
incredibly passionate about the material.
Everybody thinks that if they do JAG with
boobs or Law & Order with prostitutes,
then it’s HBO; it just has to be edgy to be
an HBO show. That’s not true. HBO is all
about doing stories that nobody else would
do in a million years. If you’ve got a show
that is so different on a conceptual level that
no one else would touch it, then HBO’s a
great place to take it. Once we did the pilot
script, they decided to greenlight it. We did
this wonderful pilot that Rodrigo Garcia
directed. After that, and a lot of trepidation,
they greenlit us for a series.
scr(i)pt: Did they put you on as showrunner?
DK: No, and it was funny. They were kind of
dancing around telling me they weren’t going
to let me showrun, so I almost had to say,
“You’re not going to let me showrun because I
don’t know how to do that.” They proceeded
to look for showrunners, and they had some
pretty amazing candidates based upon this
material. They did want to keep me involved
because the concept was so unique.
scr(i)pt: Who was your showrunner?
DK: Ron Moore. We worked together. He
did a splendid job on an amazingly difficult
first year. Any show is hard the first year but
especially something like this. Outdoor days
will kill you. Costuming, cars, not a lot of
standing sets ...
scr(i)pt: You just got picked up for season two?
DK: Thirteen more, and it’s not an easy
pick up. Their courage is amazing over there
(2004) MAY/JUNE
" n b _  a l _ [ n  c ^ _ [ #
because it’s a very weird show. I’m not David
Milch, Alan Ball or someone who comes
from the feature world with an Oscar® tucked
under my arm. I was really untested talent.
I had a brief period where I did a TV series
for CBS but only while I was waiting for the
greenlight on the pilot for this. My agent said,
“Maybe you should be on staff to see what it
was like.” I agreed because I had virtually no
television experience.
scr(i)pt: And this season you’ll be taking Ron’s
place?
DK: Yes. Last season Ron had Battlestar
Galactica developing in the background; so
once he left, HBO decided I was ready to
move into the head writer’s slot. I’m work-
ing with Howard Klein as far as running the
show, and I’ve got a very capable production
staff there. If I make a mistake, they’ll catch
me. You learn a lot very quickly.
scr(i)pt: How do you staff your writers?
DK: HBO is very specific about with whom
they want to work. There are certain writers
who have their respect and confidence. Given
my experience coming in, they really wanted
to bring in some high-level staff. Normally on
staff you’ll have one or two old hands, a cou-
ple medium-level and story-editor types. On
our show, every single person was showrunner
level. I was new to TV; and I didn’t know a
lot of TV writers, so I would weigh in with
comments. HBO had a lot to do with staffing
of the show, but they never forced anybody
on me. I relied heavily on them for staffing.
scr(i)pt: One of my favorite conceptual ideas
from the show is from a line in Samson’s open-
ing monologue in the pilot where he says, “ ...
we’ve given up wonder for reason.” What does
that mean to you?
DK: It means that the more we explain, the
less mystery there is. As a species we want
to open everything up and figure out how
it works. We have natural curiosity. It’s who
we are. Once we figure it all out, we have a
sense of sadness and loss. A four-year-old is
going to ask, “Why is the sky blue, Dad?”
If you say, “Well, there is this gas in the
stratosphere that filters out the red and yel-
low so it’s basically not blue. It’s an illusion,”
versus, “Because that’s the color of an angel’s
eye,” that’s [giving up] wonder for reason.
scr(i)pt: And that’s what you work to reveal
in the series?
DK: What I tell people is that this is the
story of the end of the last great age of
magic. After that era we lost our inno-
cence once we harnessed the power of the
sun—the detonation of the atomic bomb—
because that was God-like power. That event
marked the end of man as a child. That’s
when man entered his adulthood. Once we
did that, God and Satan just gave us the car
keys and said, “You’re on your own now.”
KATE McCALLUM is a Los Angeles-based
independent writer/producer/consultant cur-
rently working with writer/producer Michael
Chernuchin in development at Universal. She has
recently completed her M.A. in Consciousness
Studies and is especially interested in media, the
arts and story and their effect on culture and
society. Contact her at Lifeonthedrawingboard.
scr(i)pt 35
From Script To Screen: An Interview with David Benioff
Every writer knows the feeling of finishing a classic
book and thinking, “This is great. Why hasn’t it been
made into a movie?” But many of the classics feature
sprawling storylines, demand big casts and sets and
include considerable violence, making them tough to adapt
and expensive to film.
Over the last 10 years, though, such films as Gladiator,
The Lord of the Rings, Saving Private Ryan and The Passion
of the Christ have shown how computer-generated effects can
make what was once unfilmable, filmable and proven that audiences
will embrace long, complex and violent movies. The question for a
screenwriter today isn’t whether a great classic story can be made, but
rather, what do you bring to the table?
That was the question facing writer David Benioff (25th Hour) when
he decided to pitch an adaptation of one of the seminal (and most
violent) stories in the history of literature: Homer’s The Iliad and the
myths of the Trojan War.
“I remember speaking to my agent and saying, ‘Why has there never
been an adaptation of The Iliad?’” Benioff told scr(i)pt. “She said it
would be such a tough adaptation; there are dozens of characters, and
it would be a 400-page script. How would you do it? I said I’d strip it
down, and I’d be really ruthless.”
Stripped-down it may be, but when Troy, from Warner Bros. and
director Wolfgang Petersen, opens in U.S. theaters on May 14, audi-
ences will see a big-budget, two-hour-and-45-minute “tentpole” with
36 scr(i)pt
B Y D AV I D S . C O H E N
Brad Pitt (Fight Club) as Achilles facing off
against Eric Bana (The Hulk) as Hector.
Of course, anybody could have pitched The Iliad.
Benioff had to sort through the vast mythology of the Trojan
War to come up with a pitch, and he knew his pitch would
sink or swim on the clarity of his own point of view, the
strength of his characterizations and his ability to mold a
Trojan War story that 2004 audiences would relate to—not to
mention his willingness to horrify classicists everywhere by tinkering
with a 2,500-year-old masterpiece.
BACK TO THE BRONZE AGE
Benioff has long been a fan of Homer and the Trojan War myths
and dreamed of seeing them on the screen. “There was Helen of Troy
back in the 50s, but there’s never been the grand version the story
deserves,” he says. For years, he and his friends had kicked around ideas
about what movie star should play the great Greek warrior Achilles,
his Trojan counterpart Hector or the tragically lovely Helen.
But, it was just idle talk until Gladiator opened the door to a return
of sword-and-sandal films. Not long after, Benioff’s novel The 25th
Hour became a movie, with Benioff himself writing the screenplay. He
was on the Hollywood map, and he began to think about trying an
Iliad adaptation himself.
In some ways, the challenge of sorting through the source material
was more complex than even Benioff’s agent had thought. The Iliad is
scriptmag.com
 " m ] l c j n  n i  m ] l _ _ h #
not the story of the entire Trojan War. Homer’s poem begins late in the

PHOTO D m tr os Kambour s/W re mage com

Greeks’ 10-year siege of Troy and ends after the death match between
Achilles and Hector, well before the end of the war. Much of the mythol-
ogy of the war, including the seduction of Helen, the Trojan Horse and
the destruction of Troy, and the generations-long fallout from the war,
is famous from other myths, poems and stories, including Homer’s The
Odyssey, Aeschylus’ The Oresteia, Virgil’s The Aeneid and others, but not
from The Iliad.
So as he prepared a pitch, Benioff had to pick what parts of this
vast mythos to leave in and which to leave out. It might have been
an overwhelming choice, but Benioff already had a take on the heart
of the story.
“For me, the core story was always the conflict between Achilles and
Hector,” says Benioff. “You had these two great heroes on either side
who are inevitably going to fight at the end, but you’re not rooting for
one or the other. It’s not a good guys and bad guys story. You know
one’s going to die; but, either way, it’s going to be tragic. That for me
was always the essence of it.”

POKER FACE
Benioff re-read Robert Fagles’ translation of The Iliad (he’s a big fan
of the introduction and notes by Bernard Knox) and worked up a pitch,
beginning before the seduction of Helen by Paris. He tried his pitch on
his agents, who were enthusiastic enough to set up a meeting for him
with Warner Bros. Executive Vice President Jeff Robinov, who has since
moved up to president of production.
It was Benioff’s first-ever pitch meeting, and he remembers being PAGE 36 (Top Left): Brad Pitt stars as Achilles in Warner Bros. Pictures’ Troy
very uncomfortable. “[Robinov] has this huge office, and he’s got a PAGE 36 (Top Right): Eric Bana and Orlando Bloom star as Hector and Paris
ABOVE: Screenwriter David Benioff
great poker face. So he’s just staring at me. I’m telling him the story as
I see it. I start off pretty enthusiastic, but I’m not feeling a whole lot of
excitement in there, and I’m just feeling more and more nervous. Then

ALL PRODUCT ON PHOTOS A ex Ba ey

I’m starting to feel like I’ve come into this room with the greatest epic
of all time, the mother of all Western epics, and I’ve somehow blown it.
I’m expecting to be thrown out of the office at any moment.”
Robinov told scr(i)pt that Benioff began by saying, “Well, it’s the greatest
love story, the greatest story about brothers and family, one of the greatest
war stories and I just think it’s a big, epic, great tale.” From that point on,
though Benioff didn’t know it, Robinov was hooked. “I think he thought
I was asleep, but I was really caught up in the story,” says Robinov.
At the end of the meeting, Robinov shocked him by asking, “Are you
ready to start writing?”
“I was like ‘yes, yes, I’m ready to start,’” says Benioff.
With support from his colleagues at the studio, Robinov soon gave
the go-ahead for Benioff to start a draft. Economics played a part in
the decision, Robinov told scr(i)pt; Benioff’s fee wouldn’t be prohibitive. ABOVE and PAGE 38: Benioff saw Achilles, played by Brad Pitt, as a man
“David was a fairly new screenwriter at the time; so if I was wrong, there obsessed with his own mortality
wasn’t a huge downside in it like there would be today.”
Once he gave the okay to start writing, Robinov gave Benioff
little in the way of further instructions. Robinov recalls telling him rarely stopping to wonder what would come next. All those years of
to “write the same story you pitched me.” Benioff remembers him thinking about the Trojan War had served him well; he knew what
saying, “Let’s shoot big.” story he wanted to tell.
“It was a long shot for all of us,” says Benioff. “It was a long shot His take was decidedly contemporary. Homer’s poems tell of a violent
that this movie would ever get made, clearly; but from his point of world defined by war. Benioff pitched Troy in October 2001, just weeks
view, it was like if it’s going to happen, let’s take a real shot at this. after the 9/11 attacks on America. War once again was in the air, and
Let’s gamble big.” he found a theme in Homer that spoke to today’s times.
“In Troy, we’re talking about this idea that all people are human. There’s
STRONG POINT OF VIEW a kind of respect for the enemy that I think is missing in [today’s] war.
Benioff remembers writing “maniacally” for the next two months, Without getting all political about it, there’s something almost nostalgic

( 2004) MAY/JUNE scr(i)pt 37

"m]lcjnnim]l__h#
SIDEWAYS
CONNECTIONS:
DAVID BENIOFF ON ODD JOBS,
IRISH LITERATURE, A TROJAN
HERO AND CREATIVITY:
Many writers have a colorful history
of day jobs. David Benioff’s resumé
includes time as a nightclub bouncer,
high school teacher and DJ in Moose,
Wyoming. We asked him whether any
of those jobs were especially important.
DAVID BENIOFF: All the different
odd jobs were probably a reaction to
my advisor in college, who was a nov-
elist. I remember reading his author
bio, and it said that he’d been a taxi
driver in New Orleans and an atten-
dant at an insane asylum and all these
other crazy jobs. Being an impression-
able 19, I remember thinking if you’re
going to be a novelist, you have to
go out and have these crazy experi-
ences. There was a self-consciousness
that this would be cool to have in an
author bio. But they were all great ex-
periences. One year that was really im-
portant for me as a writer was the year
I spent in Ireland, getting a master’s in
Irish literature. I’d always been really
obsessed with the Irish writers, and
that cult of the beautiful loser that
the Irish have perfected. Maybe the
reason I was so drawn to Hector is that
he is the beautiful loser. He’s not go-
ing to survive the story. He’s not going
to win. He’s going off there to fight
against Achilles, and he knows that he
won’t be walking home. The fact that
he still goes out there, that he still puts
one foot in front of the other, is one of
the great acts of courage in literature.
Maybe I’m making that up.
scr(i)pt: Well, a lot of creativ-
ity is making sideways con-
nections between things.
DAVID BENIOFF: I
think sometimes when people
ask you where you get your
ideas, you don’t have a really
good answer. I don’t think
that many writers say, “Ev-
ery day I sit down and read
the newspaper and come
up with three good story
ideas.” I think a lot of
times ideas percolate in
my mind for years and
years; it might be some-
thing I first heard as a child
and partly forgot, and then it
gets partly recalled by some other
thing I see or hear. Inspiration is a
really odd and elusive creature; it’s
hard to pin down where it comes
from, but, thank God, it does.
38 scr(i)pt
about this idea that you have people fighting
not with technology but man to man. There
seems to be a kind of nobility about it. No
one’s hiding behind anything. It’s skin to skin
and bronze against bronze.
“It’s not humans versus orcs; it’s not an epic
battle of good and evil. It’s two human sides,
and both sides have good and evil mixed
among them.”
Benioff wanted to keep the violence of
Homer’s story, which is full of gory battlefield
deaths, but also keep Homer’s respect and
compassion for the fighters and their suffer-
ing. “All the people who get killed, Homer
always takes a moment to be with them. He
tells you who the father was and exactly how
they die, what the spear does to their bodies.
You see the pain of that violent death and a
life being cut short.”
That point of view set the tone, but Benioff
needed to pick a starting point and an end-
point for his plot. In his conversations with
Robinov, they’d agreed that the story should
go through the Trojan Horse and the fall of
Troy. But where to start? Benioff chose to
begin by introducing his main heroes, Achilles
and Hector.
He introduced Achilles on the battlefield,
fighting not Trojans but another Greek
army. He is the champion of the army
of the Myceneans under the
command of their king,
Agamemnon.
T h e m o v i e ’s
Agamemnon, like
Ho m e r’s , i s a
fairly despicable
character, but Benioff sees him as more than a
tyrant. “Agamemnon will be slotted by most
people as the bad guy, but Agamemnon is the
nation-builder. It’s hard to admire the man
because he’s so ruthless and so power-hungry;
but, at the same time, he’s the one who’s
leading Greece out of being this conglomer-
ate of warring tribes and bringing them into
nationhood.”
Achilles, for his part, is far from the Hollywood
ideal of a hero, states Benioff. “He’s not likable.
You’re not going to have a pet-the-dog scene
with Achilles. It’s something I had to resist.
There were certainly notes coming after the
script was turned in saying, ‘We think Achilles
might be a little too arrogant.’ It’s like, ‘It’s
Achilles! Of course he’s too arrogant. He’s
defined by his arrogance.’
“The thing to me that’s interesting is not let’s
make him less arrogant. Let’s admit that this
man is arrogant. Achilles believes he’s the greatest
warrior on Earth, and he is the greatest warrior
on Earth. What’s interesting to me about the
character is: Is there a way into him? Is there a
way that we can understand why he is that way
without minimizing the fact that he can be a
real bastard?”
For Benioff, the key to Achilles is that this
is a man who lives every moment with the
knowledge of his own imminent death. It’s been
prophesied that he’ll die at Troy. He knows he’ll
leave no family, build no nation.
“He’s made this decision that he wants eternal
glory. He wants to be remembered as the great
warrior, the greatest warrior. So, everything he
does in his life is meant to ensure that his legacy
is preserved. So he’s marching forward with one
eye on eternity at all times.”
By contrast, Benioff finds Hector much easier
to warm up to. “I think Hector is the most lik-
able character in The Iliad,” says Benioff. “The
funny thing is I had this idealized memory of
Hector as the noble leader of Troy. He’s noble,
but in The Iliad he’s also shown killing people
and gloating over their bodies. That, for me,
wasn’t my conception of Hector. My adaptation
was closer to my faulty memory of it than what
was actually on the page.”
TRAGIC INEVITABILITY
Benioff chose to introduce Hector on a peace
mission to the court of Sparta, where unbe-
knownst to Hector, his younger brother Paris
is falling in love with King Menelaus’ wife and
queen, Helen. “Achilles is the great warrior, but
I envisioned Paris as the great seducer and the
great lover, this very, very handsome man who
women just swoon for, which makes Orlando
scriptmag.com
 " m ] l c j n  n i  m ] l _ _ h #
Bloom very appropriate casting.” Zeus” in Benioff’s movie. Instead, he wrote as this was how the characters were going to end
Hector’s peace mission ends in success, and if he were chronicling the real events that gave up,” says Benioff. “It was really about wanting
he’s shocked to find that Paris has spirited Helen rise to the myths. to tell the story onscreen and to see the fates
onboard their ship home. By then it’s too late He also took the license to alter the events of of the characters.”
to return her, for to do so would spell death for the myths in ways that some fans of the classics Troy follows the story through the end of
his brother. Hector will defend his brother to are sure to find disorienting. He points out that the siege, and we see Paris’ famous arrow strike
the death, so the die is cast. there are many variations of the Trojan War Achilles in the heel (though that shot alone
Perhaps the most problematic character in stories, some with radically different endings; does not fell him). We see the fate of Helen
the story is Helen, whose infidelity launches but several of the major characters meet different and Paris and even get a cameo by Aeneas. But
this disastrous war. Benioff simply worked to ends than they did in myth. for Achilles, the fall of Troy is an anticlimax.
give her the same humanity he gave the rest “The thing for me was I didn’t want to have a His moment of truth comes when he takes on
of the characters. “She’s trapped in a loveless rolling scroll, like American Graffiti-style, saying Hector in a man-to-man duel that proves to
marriage which was basically a marriage of
convenience to uphold the power of this king.
She’s met this man who for the first time
makes her feel truly loved. He’s an incredibly
charming, beautiful young man who’s come
and almost literally swept her off her feet. She
goes with him. For me, it’s beyond good or
evil; it’s just ... it is what it is. She went with
her instinct.
“The nature of great tragedy, and what’s
drawn me to this story, is that tragic inevita-
bility where Helen just has to leave, she has
to survive, she has to. She was dead in Sparta;
she was basically the walking dead. Paris is also
complicit in this. He knows, probably even
better than Helen, what her leaving means
for Troy and for his brother and for his father
and for all his countrymen. But he’s fallen
for this woman, and he’s not going to leave
her behind. Then that leads to Hector, who
makes the decision, knowing that defending
his brother means war. It’s the last thing he
wants; he wants to protect his people, he wants
peace, he came over to bring peace, but he’s
the kind of man who will never turn his back
on his brother.”
This set-up occupies most of the first hour or
so of Troy. The incident that kicks off The Iliad,
Agamemnon’s appropriating Achilles’ slave, a
young Trojan priestess named Briseis whom
Achilles counts as war spoils, is included in
Troy, some 80-odd pages into the script. Just as
in Homer, the action infuriates Achilles—the
first book of The Iliad is titled “The Rage of
Achilles”—so much that he sits out the fighting
for a while, with results that only bring more
death and tragedy.
While Benioff expanded the story to events
not found in mythology, he also compressed the
time frame of the events in the myth. Instead
of a 10-year siege, the war apparently lasts just
weeks. In part to speed things up, but also to
keep the focus on the human drama, he also
jettisoned the Greek gods and goddesses who
are so prominent in Homer and the myths.
There would be no “And Sean Connery as

( 2004) MAY/JUNE scr(i)pt 39

"m]lcjnnim]l__h#
be one of the script’s highlights.
“The way that it was shot, there were 100,000
people out there watching in this natural amphi-
theater; and Achilles slays the greatest other
living warrior out there, and that will never be
forgotten,” says Benioff.
TWO BEERS AND A DOG
Benioff was able to write his first draft very
quickly. “This is a story that had been in my
head for a long time. Once I started writing,
I felt like I really knew where I wanted to go.
There weren’t a lot of moments where I said
‘Okay, now what’s the next scene?’”
Benioff likes to drink a beer or two before he
writes (“I’ve never been able to write successfully
drunk, but one or two drinks relaxes me and gets
me into the mood”) and keeps some junk food
handy as he works. He prefers to write from
around midnight to 5:00 a.m., when it’s quiet
and the phone doesn’t ring.
“It’s just me and my dog farting beside me,” he
says. “I like having my dog around. Even though
he’s not very helpful in the writing of the script,
he’s never had any good suggestions, just his
presence there makes me feel good.”
On Troy Benioff didn’t bother with an
outline but was still able to deliver a first draft
40 scr(i)pt
remarkably quickly, less than three months
after the first meeting. His first draft was 173
pages and turned out to be considerably longer
when reformatted in Warner Bros.’ house style.
But Robinov was as impressed with the script
as he had been with the pitch. “It was great,”
he remembers. “It doesn’t happen very often.
You don’t often meet someone, hear a story and
it turns into a movie two months later.”
There were many rewrites, especially once
director Wolfgang Petersen came onboard.
“There were days when I felt like I was married
to Wolfgang, going to his office all the time,”
says Benioff, who counts some 30 drafts on his
computer. Some scenes, inevitably, had to go, in
order to get the script to a manageable length.
One was a sexy scene between Paris and Helen.
Another was an introductory blood-match
scene for the mighty Greek fighter Ajax. But
Achilles’ long absence from the story after the
early scenes was the real headache.
“There was a lot of back and forth with
Wolfgang and the studio about ways to see
[Achilles] earlier,” Benioff explains. At one
point he tried to write a gathering of the Greek
kings, just to bring Achilles back into the story;
but the scene didn’t work. “I think I was able
to persuade them that it wasn’t such a good
idea, but there is this long break. Having these
extended scenes with Ajax and all, while I think
it would have been fun for the movie, would
have just dragged out that opening.”
Even with the wrestling over structure,
Benioff remained the only writer on the proj-
ect throughout. “I think I would have had to
strangle someone else when they brought him
in. But you’re always prepared. You always know
the odds are that somebody else is going to
rewrite you; and, you know, I got lucky.
“It’s more fun than I’ve ever had writing a
script—being able to use the characters, being
able to walk around with Achilles and Hector
and having them speaking lines—it was just a
privilege.”
DAVID S. COHEN is a freelance writer, pho-
tographer and documentary filmmaker whose
byline has appeared in periodicals around the
world, including Premiere and Discover maga-
zines. He is a frequent contributor to Variety
and is co-producer of the award-winning
documentary Silver Dreamer.
scriptmag.com

f_l Q[lhcha
Mjic by Jeremy Leven
Mjicf_lQ[lhcha
here is an apocryphal story, which,
T considering those involved, is most
likely less apocryphal than assumed,
about Jack Warner’s hiring Billy Wilder and
I.A.L. Diamond to write a screenplay for
him. He sets them up in an office down
the hall from his, complete with two sofas,
two desks and two Royal typewriters, with
enough paper and carbons to retype Moby
Dick triple-spaced. But weeks go by, and
Warner can’t help but notice that each time
he passes their office, there is no clack-clack-
clack of the Royal portable coming from
within. Finally, unable to take it any longer,
Warner bursts into the office and finds
Wilder stretched out on one sofa, Diamond
across the room on the other, puffing on
cigars, conversing congenially. “What the
hell is going on here?” Warner asks, using
words somewhat more colorful one suspects.
“We’re writing a movie,” Wilder responds
calmly. “The rest is typing.”
As a screenwriter, this is the essential tale.
Figuring out a compelling story, developing
42 scr(i)pt
Writing the
engaging characters from which the story
emerges and determining the plot points
and act breaks, the right tone and where the
tension, humor and emotion is to be found
is the primary (and most difficult) work. It
is also, strangely, the work that most studios
expect a writer to have done on a script of
theirs needing revision prior to hiring the
writer to revise it. In other words, the stu-
dio would like the writer to, in the example
above, rewrite the screenplay prior to paying
him to write it.
I bring up this anomaly because all this
would lead one to believe that, when given
a book to adapt, the “writing” has already
been done. Often the book is a best-seller,
meaning it is already laden with elements
that an audience would find appealing and
entertaining. It has fully fleshed-out char-
acters, a story and a beginning, a middle
and an end. If it is not 700 pages, and not
primarily the internal lives and thought
processes of those in it, reason might suggest
that—after a reading and some outlining—a
few weeks of typing and all will be done. Of
course, such is never the case.
In Nicholas Sparks’ The Notebook, the
story broke down easily.
Act I: Allie, our heroine, falls in love with
Noah, our hero, during an intense summer
romance, broken up by Allie’s well-to-do
parents as summer comes to an end.
Act II: Allie, still longing for Noah but
not hearing a word from him and believing
he has moved on, meets Lon, the well-to-do
young attorney with whom she falls in love
and to whom she agrees to be married. But
Allie runs into Noah, falls back in love with
him and must decide between Noah or Lon,
knowing she will hurt one or the other. Will
she go with her head or her heart?
Act III: Allie goes with her heart.
Piece of cake for the writer. Were it not
that ...
There is another story going on, as the
tale above is being read from a notebook
to an elderly Alzheimer’s patient, a woman
also named Allie, by an elderly man named
scriptmag.com

Duke. The audience, they is smart son-
sabitches (see Commandment Three on the
next page) so they know that if we just
needed a narrator, we probably wouldn’t
have chosen a woman from the memory
unit of a nursing home with the same name
as our heroine. At some point there will be
a reveal. This is a problem.
The writer would like to lay in the ground-
work for the reveal without either giving it
away or making the audience feel they are
being toyed with. But, this is not the only
reveal because, as it turns out, Noah did not
forget about Allie. He wrote her letters twice
a week for a year after they parted that glori-
ous summer. Allie’s mother intercepted them,
a fact still unknown to Allie and Noah. There
will be a second reveal.
It turns out that neither the pilfered
letters nor the true identities of Allie and
Duke is the real reveal. The real reveal is the
notebook.
Under ideal conditions the reveal should
not only be a pivotal point in the storytell-
ing, but should launch the audience into
an emotional moment—if the stars line up
properly, the emotional moment. So, stogie
in hand and sofa at the ready, I reclined to
begin my writing.
What would be the moment that pro-
pels the characters into a new emotional
direction? I had never been entirely satis-
fied with what would make Allie, being an
essentially good person, have a sexual rela-
tionship with Noah less than a week before
her wedding to someone else, a very nice
guy, too. In the novel, this union came out
(2004) MAY/JUNE
of an extremely erotic moment in which
Noah sees the rain-drenched Allie, her dress
clinging to every curve and crevice, and
cannot resist her, as she cannot resist him.
With all due credit to Mr. Sparks, this
scene follows a highly charged and erotic
sequence. But, still better, it seemed to me,
would be to have this be the moment of a
reveal. Allie, erotically charged and longing
for Noah, fights her desires and asks him
why he never wrote to her after that sum-
mer, the implication being that, if he had,
they might be in each other’s arms right
then. When he tells her that he did write,
100 letters in a year, and she realizes that it
was not she, but her mother who has put
her in this situation, all bets are off. She
can go at it with Noah, and does she ever,
making up for lost time.
ALLIE
Why didn’t you write to me,
Noah? I was waiting for you
to write to me. Fin said it
was over. Was it over? Is
that why you didn’t write?
Noah looks at Allie, stunned. He
says nothing as they glide into
the shore.
EXT. NOAH’S DOCK. (DAY)
Noah is pulling the canoe up on to
the shore. He talks to Allie with-
out looking up.
NOAH
I wrote twice a week for over
a year. I mailed more than
a hundred letters. It wasn’t
over. It still isn’t over.
" ` _ [ n o l _ #
Noah looks up at Allie waiting for
him a short distance away in the
rain, and he nearly stops breath-
ing. She is incredibly beautiful
and unforgivably erotic with her
wet dress clinging to every curve
and crevice of her body. On Allie’s
face is the recognition of what
has happened, the deception, the
pain that it has caused her over so
many years, and a release of that
pain, as though, because of it, a
door has opened allowing her to
do whatever she now wants totally
without blame.
For a moment, they stand facing
each other, saying nothing, then
slowly Noah walks up to Allie and
stands in front of her. He fights
with himself not to be drawn to a
place where he knows only heart-
break lies -- but, instinctively,
he finds himself running his fin-
gers lightly down Allie’s cheeks.
ALLIE
You mailed me over a hundred
letters?
NOAH
(nods)
You never got a single one.
Allie shakes her head slowly, and
then she kisses Noah with a tremen-
dous release of passion.
As for the reveal of the true identity of
Duke, who reads to Old Allie every day
hoping for a “miracle,” there were many
discussions between the extremely astute
executive on the project, Lynn Harris, and
me regarding how much to hide that Duke
is in fact Noah, retelling the story of his
love of Allie each day. Difficult as it was,
the decision was made to hide the reveal as
long as possible.
But who else could Duke be, if he were
scr(i)pt 43
" ` _ [ n o l _ #
PAGE 42 and ABOVE (Left to Right): Rachel McAdams as Allie and Ryan Gosling as Noah in New Line
Cinema’s romantic drama, The Notebook PAGE 43 (Left to Right): James Garner as Duke recounts the
tale of two young lovers to Gena Rowlands (Old Allie) in The Notebook, novel by Nicholas Sparks, adap-
tation by Jan Sardi, screenplay by Jeremy Leven
not Noah? It was necessary to create a diver-
sion in order to keep the question open of
whether Duke was really Noah or Lon or
neither. In one version of the script in a
scene, sadly no longer with us, I had one
of the nurses turn to Duke and point out
an elderly man with an elderly woman.
“He’s loved her forever,” the nurse explains.
“He waited 50 years for her husband to
die, and then came here to court her.”
Duke responded, “I’m not courting Allie.
I’m reading to her.” This opens the question
of whether Allie could have married Lon
—and now Duke (Noah) is courting her,
sadly after she has lost her memory—or
Duke could, in fact, be the Noah who Allie
married. Or he could even be Lon, now that
Noah is gone.
Not an insignificant amount of fancy
footwork was required so that the very first
time the audience knew that Duke was, in
fact, Noah, was not until Duke had finished
the story he was reading to her. Then, for a
fleeting few moments, Allie recognizes Duke
as Noah the great love of her life, to whom
she returned and was married and with
whom she raised a family. It is this reveal
that must be the penultimate emotional
moment of the film, handled simply. It’s a
real tear-jerker and must be played for that.
INT. NEW BERN NURSING HOME / OLD
ALLIE’S ROOM. (NIGHT)
Old Allie, her moist eyes reflect-
ing the candlelight, smiles.
44 scr(i)pt
OLD ALLIE
And they lived happily ever
after.
DUKE
Yes, they did. It wasn’t
always easy, but they did.
Old Allie smiles, glowing with
life. There is something very dif-
ferent about her. The distant look
that has filled her eyes up to now
seems to be gone. Duke sees it and
his heart leaps with excitement. He
knows what has happened.
DUKE
You’re so beautiful tonight.
Old Allie reaches out and
Duke’s hand.
OLD ALLIE
You’re a wonderful man, Noah.
A truly inspiring man.
And there it is, with the single
word “Noah,” Allie is back. Duke’s
eyes fill with tears through his
smile.
DUKE
Oh, Allie -- I love you so
much. I hope you know that.
Duke puts Old Allie’s hand to his
mouth and kisses it.
OLD ALLIE
Noah ... My sweet, sweet Noah
...
The final reveal of the purpose of the
notebook must come, then, at the very
end of the film and be equally as poi-
gnant. It is Allie who has written the
notebook, telling Noah to read this story
of their love to her, and she “will come
ALL PRODUCT ON PHOTOS © 2004 Me ssa Mose ey
SMPSP/New L ne Product ons
Some time ago, I was asked by a
class I was teaching to assemble what
I felt to be The Screenwriter’s 10
Commandments. Having the problem
with editing I do, I of course ended
up with 13. I suspect they are differ-
ent for each writer; but, begging the
reader’s indulgence, I include them
here. I take them with me wherever
I write, post them in front of me and
refer to them every day. They were
the guiding principles for writing
The Notebook.
THE SCREENWRITER’S
13 COMMANDMENTS
(One screenwriter’s viewpoint)
1. Working with a studio or a
producer is an educational, not
a military, problem.
2. The only time you will be told by a
studio or producer to remember that
filmmaking is a collaborative process
is when they want you to do it their
way. Some hills are worth dying on,
most are not.
3. The audience is smart sonsabitches.
They can not be fooled. They know
what you’re doing and why, six
steps ahead of you. They want to be
entertained not educated, moved not
manipulated, to laugh and cry. Make
it resonate.
4. Plot comes from character. It really
does.
takes 5. Character comes from the heart, so
go for the heart.
6. All writing is rewriting.
7. You need to know the ending only
if you want to know where you’re
going.
8. Nothing beats a great story. Tell it
and try not to get in the way.
9. Great characters will compensate
for the lack of a great story. Almost
always.
10. All big third-act problems are big
first-act problems. All big second-act
problems come from having a first
and/or third act, but no movie.
11. It’s called show business, not
show art. Movies take money to
get made, more than you have.
The guys with the money want it
back, plus some.
12. None of the above matters, if you
write a heartfelt, elegant and beauti-
ful script. Eventually, it will get made.
13. Don’t give up.
scriptmag.com

back” to him if she possibly can.
The porch door opens and Old Allie
comes out, holding the notebook.
She sits beside Duke in silence for
a moment.
OLD ALLIE
I have something for you.
It’s a notebook in which I’ve
written the story of our love
-- how we met, and how we
parted, and how we found each
other again. In a few years,
I won’t remember any of it.
When that happens, I want
you to read it to me, Noah.
Wherever I am, whatever state
of mind I’m in, no matter how
far away or how lost I seem,
you must read it to me --
and I will come back to you
if I possibly can.
Old Allie hands Duke the notebook.
Duke looks up at her.
OLD ALLIE
Promise me that, Noah.
NOAH
I promise.
Old Allie reaches out and takes
Duke’s hand and their fingers
intertwine.
However, having three reveals created
(2004) MAY/JUNE
" ` _ [ n o l _ #
another problem. If these reveals were placed OLD ALLIE
And what if some day I can’t
well and had the effect intended, there would come back to you, not even
be nothing left for the end. Everything for a minute or two, what
will you do?
would now just kind of sag to a conclusion.
One final reveal, not in the book, would be DUKE
I’ll still be here with you.
needed to wrap everything up. But what
could top the reveal of a love so powerful Old Allie continues to run her hand
down Duke’s cheek.
that it could bring a woman back from the
depths of Alzheimer’s? OLD ALLIE
I don’t want to end up all
We knew from the book that Noah had alone, strapped to a bed,
a heart condition. What if he had a coro- being fed by strange people.
nary, abandoning Allie while he was in the DUKE
hospital, and when he returned, both he I know.
and she realized that there is only one thing Duke and Old Allie look at each
worse than being in the desperate void of other in silence for a moment.
Alzheimer’s, and that is being without each
other. What will happen to her if he suc- OLD ALLIE
I need to talk to you, Noah.
cumbs to his heart condition, to him if
she can’t come back to him, even for a few DUKE
What is it?
seconds. The answer to this would be the
final reveal. OLD ALLIE
Our love can create miracles.
OLD ALLIE DUKE
It’s okay, Noah. I understand. Yes, it can.
But I’m frightened. I kept
thinking, what if he never
OLD ALLIE
comes back? What will I do? It’s what brings me back each
time.
DUKE
I’ll always find a way.
scr(i)pt 45
" ` _ [ n o l _ #
DUKE
Yes, it is.
OLD ALLIE
Do you think our love can
take us away together?
Duke looks into Old Allie’s eyes
for a moment, and then he starts
to smile.
DUKE
I think our love can do any-
thing we want it to, Allie.
Old Allie smiles back and kisses
Duke on the lips. For a moment,
they trade kisses, and then Duke
lies down next to Old Allie and
slowly their fingers intertwine.
OLD ALLIE
Good night, Noah. I love you.
DUKE
And I love you, Allie. Good
night. I’ll be seeing you.
They press their bodies against
each other, fingers entwined.
DISSOLVE TO:
Old Allie and Duke’s eyes close and
they go to sleep, forever.
There are some “tricks” to working with
reveals. I would almost say rules, but, as we
all know, especially writers, rules are made to
be broken, including those listed on page 44.
However, these have worked for me.
46 scr(i)pt
In the same way that all third-act prob-
lems are first-act problems, all dialogue
problems regarding reveals (if he says this,
we’ll know who he is), seem to be scene
structure problems. The moment a char-
acter has to speak in a way that is awkward
in order to avoid revealing something, the
scene has to be re-thought in order to avoid
placing him in the situation where he has to
respond with the reveal.
I avoid, if at all possible, “leading up”
to the reveal. I attempt to establish the
circumstances to which the reveal will
apply as early as possible, and then for-
get it. There is no “foreshadowing.” In
the instance of this film, the notebook is
never questioned—it is just there, being
read. Once Duke gives his name, no more
questions about his name or who he is
are asked. Once Noah writes the letters
to Allie, they are never mentioned again
until Allie asks why he didn’t write. And
so on. I tend to lay it in early and simply,
and then forget it.
Finally, I never lead up to the reveal,
add to it or embellish it. The reveal never
has more importance attached to it than
what its importance is at the moment it
is revealed.
JEREMY LEVEN was
born in South Bend,
Indiana and grew up
in Rye, New York. He
has an undergraduate
degree from St. John’s
College in Annapolis,
Maryland, and a
graduate degree from
Harvard University. He has been a member
of the faculty of Harvard and a fellow at the
Yale University School of Medicine’s Child
Study Center. In 1968 Leven founded The
Proposition, a political-satirical revue which
ran in Cambridge for 10 years and Off-
Broadway in New York. After Harvard, he was
a psychologist, a mental health center direc-
tor and director of drug treatment programs
in Western Massachusetts, finally going into
the Neurosciences. He has written the novels
Creator (Putnam) and Satan: His Psychotherapy
and Cure by the Unfortunate Dr. Kassler, J.S.P.S.
(Knopf), and the screenplays for Creator, Playing
for Keeps, The Legend of Bagger Vance, Crazy
as Hell, Alex and Emma, The Notebook and
Don Juan DeMarco, which he also directed.
Leven lives in Paris and Connecticut with his
wife, Roberta Danza, a psychotherapist. They
have five children, all grown.
scriptmag.com
 The idea for The Clearing
came from my first meeting
with Pieter Jan Brugge, the
film’s director and a brilliant
collaborator in the develop-
ment of the script.

THE CLEARING H e described an event that took

place in his native Holland. An
average, white-collar man, kid-
napped another more successful man, a
man ththe kidnapper envied, for whom he
demanded and won a large amount of
ransom. What made the story unique was
that the kidnapper, being such an average
character (a man, I imagined, who had
never been stopped for speeding) was an
LETTING extremely unlikely candidate for such a
brutal crime.
THE The aspect that would make the film
unique (and here I add a SPOILER
WARNING!) was a twist in the way time
worked. The kidnapper and his victim
would spend only one day together, at the
end of which the kidnapper would murder
UNFOLD the man he held. Meanwhile, the kidnap-
per would negotiate with the family for a
period of weeks simply pretending that the
man was alive. As I imagined it, this choice
would be made out of the most brutal
practicality. The kidnapper is a simple, logi-
cal man who has fantasized and imagined
every aspect of his crime. In his obsessive
planning, he realized that the fact he was
acting alone would make it very difficult to
by Justin Haythe hold someone for the period of time neces-
sary without risking discovery. The practical
solution to this was to kill his victim and
bluff that he was still alive.
On a character level, this idea fascinated
me. In terms of structure, it also raised
a particular challenge. The solution was
to have two timelines run simultaneously.
The audience would watch the day as it
played itself out between kidnapper, Arnold
(Willem Dafoe), and kidnapped, Wayne
(Robert Redford), intercut with the longer
period of time when the family (wife Eileen
played by Helen Mirren, son Tim played by
Alessandro Nivola and daughter Jill played
by Melissa Sagemiller), with the help of FBI

48 scr(i)pt scriptmag.com

Agent Fuller (Matt Craven), negotiated for
the man’s release. The two timelines begin
together. The audience watches Arnold
begin his day in a humble neighborhood,
in a humble house, alienated from his wife
and father-in-law, from where he embarks
on what seems to be a mundane daily
commute. We also see Wayne and his wife
Eileen begin their day in an affluent home
in an affluent neighborhood. The marriage
seems to be pleasant, if not overtly happy.
On first look, these people are content, if
perhaps a little restless.
The timelines then move apart. After
Wayne leaves the house, we stay with Eileen
until she realizes that her husband is miss-
ing. We do not learn any more than she
does until she receives the first communica-
tion from the kidnapper in the form of an
envelope with a letter and her husband’s
car keys. We then move back in time to see
the kidnapping take place. The hope and
assumption was that an audience would
be so keen to know what had happened
to Wayne that they would not consciously
acknowledge the shift in time and watch
the two storylines unfold as if they were
played simultaneously. This point generated
much worry and debate until finally it was
recognized as a necessary risk essential to
the working of the entire film.
Perhaps the best example of what I’m
describing is the initial sequence starting
where Eileen Hayes and her son Tim first
get word that Wayne has been kidnapped,
along with the first transition back in time
and then the re-entry to the present, where
daughter Jill Hayes arrives at the airport.
INT. KITCHEN - MORNING.
Eileen walks into the room, pull-
ing open the envelope, and ...
Wayne’s TIFFANY KEY RING -- DROPS
to the floor.
Tim glances up from the paper.
Eileen scans the letter with a
look of incomprehension and then
slowly, she covers her mouth and
sinks into a chair. Tim takes the
letter and reads.
Graciela, the maid, bends down to
pick up the keys.
Tim glances at Eileen and moves
towards the phone.
TIM
I’m calling the police.
Eileen remains in the chair,
a look of utter disbelief.
DISSOLVE:
(2004) MAY/JUNE
" q l c n _ l m  i h  q l c n c h a #
EXT. FOX CHAPEL ROAD/HAYES
DRIVEWAY - MORNING.
The SOUND of a lawnmower. A square
of gravel driveway near the side
of the road ... THE WALL STREET
JOURNAL drops into frame.
Arnold checks his Casio watch: The
time is 8:17 a.m.
He looks up at the house and cross-
es the street towards the trees.
EXT. GARAGE - MORNING.
As the garage door rises, sunlight
creeps up the hood of the Lexus
onto the windscreen.
EXT. FOX CHAPEL ROAD - MORNING.
Arnold’s anxious face hidden with-
in a hedge. His brow is damp. He
checks his watch; it is now 8:53
a.m. ... The SOUND of a car moving
down the gravel driveway. Arnold
looks up -- the moment he has been
waiting for ...
Across the street, the Lexus
stops ...
Arnold’s tense face ...
Wayne steps out of the black Lexus,
leaving the door open. He walks
over and picks up the paper. He
gazes up and down the street before
turning back to his car ...
Arnold waits ... and then, with
an explosion of adrenaline, lunges
forward, BURSTING through the bush-
es into the road.
ARNOLD
Wayne!
Jogging with Arnold across the
street towards the silent Lexus,
Wayne already inside.
INT. LEXUS - MORNING.
Wayne sits behind the wheel watch-
ing this curious man (hat, tie, sun-
glasses, mustache) jog towards him.
ARNOLD
Wayne!
EXT. FOX CHAPEL ROAD/HAYES
DRIVEWAY - MORNING.
Suddenly, Arnold finds himself at
the passenger window, the envelope
tucked under his left arm. He leans
down to the tinted glass; his puff-
ing, red-faced reflection grins
back. With just the tip of his
right index finger, he taps ...
ARNOLD (cont’d)
(out of breath)
Wayne ... ?
INT. LEXUS - MORNING.
PRODUCTION PHOTOS: Lorey Sebastian
PAGE 48: Robert Redford and Willem Dafoe
in The Clearing, written by Justin Haythe ABOVE:
Robert Redford and Helen Mirren
Wayne studies Arnold through the
glass: He looks harmless, ordinary,
the odd leaf and twig stuck to his
jacket.
EXT. FOX CHAPEL ROAD/HAYES DRIVEWAY
- MORNING.
Arnold dabs his brow with his hand-
kerchief. The moment lasts ... And
then, finally, the window lowers,
slowly replacing Arnold’s reflec-
tion with Wayne’s smiling face.
WAYNE
Yes?
ARNOLD
(bright, nervous)
Hello, Wayne.
WAYNE
Hello ... ?
ARNOLD
I don’t know if you remember me?
Arnold extends his RIGHT HAND.
Wayne shakes automatically.
ARNOLD (cont’d)
Arnold, Arnold Mack from Penro.
WAYNE
That was a long time ago.
ARNOLD
Yes, it was.
Arnold lifts the envelope in his
right hand and smiles.
ARNOLD (cont’d)
I’m supposed to show this to
you.
Wayne hesitates, but good man-
ners prevail. He reaches for the
envelope.
WAYNE
What’ve you got there?
Wayne puts on his reading glasses
and opens the envelope. He removes
a handful of glossy 5x7 PHOTOGRAPHS.
He flips through them. They are
pictures of Eileen ... The SOUND
of the car door quickly opening and
closing.
scr(i)pt 49
 " q l c n _ l m  i h  q l c n c h a #
Wayne turns to find Arnold sitting Wayne’s Lexus lunges to a stop Wayne’s eyes go to his CELL PHONE
in the passenger seat, holding a to the right of the silver between the seats. He glances in
PISTOL in his left hand. His right Oldsmobile. The engine dies and the mirror for a look at Arnold.
hand is wrapped in the handkerchief quietly TICKS ...
with which he opened and closed
the door. EXT. ROOF TOP PARKING GARAGE -
INT. LEXUS - MORNING. MORNING.
WAYNE (cont’d)
What the hell do you think The men sit silently. Arnold reaches into the trunk for
you’re doing? his backpack. The echoing SQUEAL of
ARNOLD a tire on another floor whips him
ARNOLD Give me the keys. around, his heart pounding.
If you make a noise, I’ll
shoot. You might live. Wayne hands them over. Arnold
holds up a plastic strap. INT. LEXUS - MORNING.
Wayne studies him and for a moment, Wayne is startled as Arnold yanks
everything hangs in the balance ARNOLD (cont’d)
Hands. open his door. Arnold squats at the
for both of them. Despite Arnold’s open door.
slightly ridiculous appearance,
his trembling hand, he has a wild, Wayne holds his hands in front of
him. ARNOLD
deadly look in his eyes. Give me your shoes.
ARNOLD (cont’d)
WAYNE Behind your back. Wayne tentatively offers each of
What do you want? his feet. Arnold quickly removes
Wayne’s face pressed roughly Wayne’s shoes and places them on
against the window as Arnold tight- the ground beside him. He takes a
INT. PARKING GARAGE RAMP - ly cinches his hands behind him. tape recorder from his pocket.
MORNING.
ARNOLD
The empty circular ramp. The echo- EXT. ROOF TOP PARKING GARAGE - Now, tell your wife you’re all
ing SQUEAL of a tire followed by the MORNING. right.
Lexus coming around the corner.
From across the lot, we see Arnold Wayne looks at the recorder.
emerge from the car. He glances
INT. LEXUS - MORNING. nervously around and walks to the WAYNE
rear of the Oldsmobile. He unlocks (frightened)
Wayne and Arnold driving in a ver- the trunk. Am I?
tiginous spiral.
ARNOLD
INT. LEXUS - MORNING. Yes.
EXT. ROOF TOP PARKING GARAGE -
MORNING.

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WAYNE
... This is Wayne Hayes. Eileen
... I’m fine.
ARNOLD
Thank you.
Arnold slips the recorder into his
pocket.
CUT TO:
EXT. AIRPORT - DAY.
Jill, 22, stands at the curb with
a duffle bag at her side. She
is attractive, broader than her
mother, long, dark hair falls down
her back. Around her, people come
and go. Eileen’s Mercedes pulls
up. Tim is driving. Eileen gets
out. When she sees her mother,
Jill begins to cry. They embrace.
From there on, the two timelines appear
to play simultaneously, although they are
moving increasingly apart. The desired effect
is that the audience only slowly grasps that
the timelines are functioning differently and
what this means about the outcome of the
kidnapping. However, it seemed essential
to constantly offer the audience reasons to
suspect. Otherwise, when the twist comes at
the end, the audience will feel manipulated
and irritated.
The twist, or truth of the situation,
should slowly present itself in an inevitable
way, much the same way it might have felt
for the family, and specifically for Eileen
(more on her later). The clues would be in
the physical nature of the two stories. One
takes place all on the same, hot day while
the other encompasses many days, many
different weathers, perhaps leaves falling
from the trees. I came to think of other
clues as envoys that would travel from one
timeline to the other. There are numer-
ous examples. For instance, we have just
seen Wayne hand over his car keys to the
kidnapper, although we have also seen the
same keys arrive in Eileen’s kitchen. We see
Arnold change Wayne’s shoes, and we have
already seen the shoes in an earlier scene
when Eileen goes to the police station. The
tape recording Arnold asks Wayne to make
also appears in the family’s world. Wayne
uses reading glasses that are sent to his fam-
ily as a threat. Most importantly, perhaps,
later in the film, Arnold allows Wayne to
write a letter to his wife. The letter finally
appears in the last scene of the film.
With these irrefutable clues to keep me
honest, I was able to write these people as if
their fate were not decided, to make them
real and full of faith in the outcome of their
(2004) MAY/JUNE
" q l c n _ l m  i h  q l c n c h a #
lives which, of course, is the key to making
anything believable.
In a sense, the script plays with point of
view. The audience must empathize with
both the family and the two men who go
on to spend a day together in the forest; but,
at the same time, the audience knows more
about the story than either half. There is a
delicate balance to be achieved here. If the
audience is allowed to move too far ahead
of either side of the story, they stop empa-
thizing with either one of them. The out-
come in that case is the audience is allowed
to stand back and watch; a scenario that I
would call the train-wreck approach: We
see a train full of unsuspecting passengers,
and we also see the missing track up ahead.
We know there will be a crash and simply
watch it happen. The scene is interesting in
some essential, COPS way, but I was hoping
for something more. I was hoping that the
plot could be a tragedy where an audience
would feel heartbreak for everyone involved,
including the kidnapper (aided immeasur-
ably by Dafoe’s very fine and sympathetic
performance).
In truth, however, the point of view
is Eileen’s. Even though the film shows
the audience more than she could possibly
know, the audience wants to know what
happened to Wayne, not only because we
have grown to know and like him, but, spe-
cifically, because Eileen needs to know. We
want to believe that he will come home alive,
despite all clues to the contrary, because she
believes. I think, structural analysis aside,
that we accept that time-cheat I described
earlier because we are most closely aligned
with Eileen’s character. She is the secret that
makes it all work.
Helen Mirren is, of course, largely
responsible for bringing this woman to
life. In creating her character, I wanted to
make someone who does not neatly fit into
the prescribed female roles available. I have
always been interested by Mrs. Gruneman
at the beginning of Klute. She is only in
three very brief scenes of the film, but
she seemed like such a normal, well-to-
do woman; and I wondered how this
cataclysm visited upon her would change
her life. Everything she had planned on, I
imagined, was now over, or at least turned
upside down.
In general terms, I am interested by
the invisible restraints in America. The
Clearing is interested in class and notions
of success in a very overt way; but, in
Screenwriter Justin Haythe
terms of Eileen’s character, there is some-
thing more subtle at work. I wanted to
think about this woman’s life: a woman
who is very busy but has very little going
on. A woman who runs a well-appointed
home and looks after herself; but when her
husband leaves for the day, there is a long
stretch of emptiness to fill ahead of her.
Essentially, she is a woman who has bought
into the whole “suburban wife package.” It
is not that she has no inner life, but she
has few outlets. She is alone in that vast,
well-appointed house for long periods of
time. Now that she has stopped being
primarily a mother, a supportive wife, a
sexual object (women are stripped of their
sexual power at an alarmingly early age in
this country), she has been prescribed a
very passive role in life. She shops, arranges
dinner parties and awaits her children’s
return for holidays. The film then thrusts
introspection and action upon her. Ironic
perhaps to describe it as active, seeing that
her primary action in the film is waiting. I
think (and again, Helen Mirren is largely
responsible for this) when she leaves the
house to try and bring her husband home,
she is ready to meet this tragedy head-on,
rather than the slow fading and forgetting
that had already befallen her.
JUSTIN HAYTHE was born in London in 1973.
He now lives in New York City. Grove-Atlantic
published his first novel The Honeymoon, in
April 2004. He has also published short fiction
in Harper’s. Currently Haythe is working on an
original script for director Sam Mendes and
an adaptation of Richard Yates’ Revolutionary
Road for BBC Films.
scr(i)pt 51
 0 0WFSIFBSE
7PJDFT WPJDFT
Z


DEDE (V.O.)
If you’re one of those people
who don’t like movies where
some person you can’t see talks
the whole time, and covers up
all the holes in the plot, and
at the end says “I was never
the same again after that sum-
mer” or whatever, like it was
so deep they can’t stand it --
then you’re out of luck. Things
get very complicated here very
quick, and my guess is you’re
not gonna be up to it without
me talking.
-- The opening of The Opposite of Sex (1998)
Voiceover narration is a technique against which
writers are often warned. At the same time it’s often
the solution of choice to the woes of many a troubled
movie: “That scene is confusing. Let’s explain it with a
voiceover.” Screenwriting gurus both respect it (“a very
effective cinematic device” — Syd Field) and revile
it (an “indolent practice … turning the cinema into
classic comic books” — Robert McKee). The voiceover
has been embraced as central to their style by such
masters of cinema as Kubrick, Truffaut, Wilder and
Scorsese, and denounced by many more.
Voiceover comes out of the intertitles used to explain
whatever the images of silent films couldn’t, a device
so well established that it hung on well into the sound
era. The 1933 talkie The Private Life of Henry VIII
begins with this card:
Henry VIII had six wives. Catherine of
Aragon was the first, but her story is of
no particular interest—she was a respectable
woman. So Henry divorced her. He then
married Anne Boleyn. This marriage also was
a failure, but not for the same reason.
Today those words would be uttered V.O. in wry,
plummy English diction—Peter Ustinov’s, maybe? But
52 scr(i)pt
loying
ver
on to
your best
advantage
PHOTO: Lorey
Sebast
an
directors back then would
no more think to add a disembodied speaking
voice to a soundtrack than they would an indepen-
dent musical score. Even the epic Gone with the Wind
(1939) employed intertitles to link its episodes, using
V.O. only at the finale so that we could hear Scarlett’s
memories (“Tara!” “Tara!” “The red earth of Tara!”).
But by the 1940s, filmmakers decided that narration
should be heard and not seen.
Intertitles and V.O. narration share the benefit of a
quick, no-nonsense means of conveying exposition. No
writer has ever had to worry about whether the use of
a narrator would “serve the story.” Of course it would;
that’s its very point. With the possible exception of
1998’s The Thin Red Line, in which you can go nuts
trying to figure out which of over a dozen narrators is
speaking at any given time, no movie has ever become
more confusing when narration was employed. More
explicit and obvious, perhaps, like Deckard’s famously
heavy-handed film-noir narration in the first released
version of Blade Runner, but never more confusing.
In exploring the potential of voiceover, the real
issue isn’t whether the device serves the story (like the
intertitle, it must do so by definition), but whether
it serves the movie. When V.O. only serves the story,
is it justified? Is it cinematic? Neil Simon’s Lost in
Yonkers opens with an auto trip sequence during
which the older of two boys en route to live at their
scriptmag.com

grandmother’s tells us that it’s 1942, and
Mom died, and the U.S. was at war, etc.,
etc. As the car pulls up, we hear:
JAY (V.O.)
Even though it was 98
degrees outside, you
could feel a chill in the
air as we got near the
house where Grandma lived
... I’m sure glad Arty
and I never grew up here.
Straightforward enough. But narration
was hardly necessary to convey this little
passage. The screenplay might have gone
something like so:
ARTY
I’m cold. (PAUSE) I’m
cold.
EDDIE (the father)
It’s 98 degrees out,
Arty.
JAY
He’s right. You can
always feel a chill when
you get near Grandma’s
house.
ARTY
I’m glad we don’t live
here.
JAY and EDDIE exchange a look.
Why wasn’t dialogue used here? Maybe
it didn’t “play,” or maybe V.O. was added
as an afterthought to support a transition,
or maybe Simon simply went for the most
economical means available. (One of the
problems in assessing a movie’s voiceover is
that you can’t be sure when and why it was
added, and by whom: the writer or someone
else.) More to the point, if Arty’s musings
on the temperature were to be omitted com-
pletely, would that be such a loss? The point
is that a piece of narration that offers noth-
ing but information adds little and doesn’t
stand as the best argument for putting a
voice on the soundtrack.
That’s especially true if the narrator never,
or rarely, returns—a complaint of Syd Field’s.
Both The Emperor’s Club and Wonder Boys
get their exposition laid out in the first 10
minutes by a narrator who returns exactly
once, and then in a brief passage that easily
could have been handled visually or through
dialogue. Surely narration so haphazardly
or arbitrarily applied is a weakness of these
otherwise estimable scripts. Let’s grant to
(2004) MAY/JUNE
voiceover that it’s a straightforward means
of conveying information, if not necessarily
the most deft and most interesting means
available to the writer, and let’s move on to
consider what its effects can be beyond the
sheerly expositional.
THE OMNISCIENT
COMMENTATOR
An old radio hand first pointed the way
to the power of a voice on the soundtrack
when out of a black screen the audience
heard what one critic has called “the most
irresistible invitation to enter the past in
screen history:”
NARRATOR (V.O.)
The magnificence of the
Ambersons began in 1873.
Their splendor lasted
throughout all the years
that saw their Midland
town spread and dark-
en into a city ... In
those days they had time
for everything. Time
for sleigh rides, and
balls, and assemblies,
and cotillions. And open
house in New Year’s, and
all-day picnics in the
woods ...
Peter Bogdanovich points out in his book
This is Orson Welles that in only a few min-
utes of The Magnificent Ambersons, Orson
Welles “establishes all of the characters in
three or four situations and sets up the
period and the customs of the era.” Critic J.
Hoberman writes of “the insinuating invis-
ibility of [the] tender, omniscient narration.
The movie is haunted by Welles’ voice, by
his youth, by a sense of a lost America that
he would never again visit—and mainly by
its own lost possibilities.” One can keep
returning to this troubled masterpiece and
discover something new each time, partly
because its narration, evoking and under-
scoring the film’s themes rather than stating
them, lays the groundwork for our own
musings on life and time.
Despite Welles’ achievement, most omni-
scient narration that followed simply doled
out expository text until the directors of
the French New Wave, introducing a wide
variety of non-realistic but eminently “cin-
emagical” techniques, showed what could
be done unconventionally with voiceover.
Filmmakers have learned that narration can
be used as counterpoint, not just to explain
what’s going through a character’s mind
but actually to warn us what is about to
" ] l [ ` n #
PAGE 52: Mena Suvari as Angela Hayes and Kevin
Spacey as Lester Burnham in American Beauty,
written by Alan Ball ABOVE: Clark Gable as Rhett
Butler and Vivien Leigh as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone
with the Wind, written by Margaret Mitchell (novel)
and Sidney Howard (screenplay)
happen, in an “alienation effect” that strikes
one as very modern whenever it’s employed.
For instance, the implacable narration that
keeps returning to anticipate the reasons and
consequences of future events is in no small
part responsible for the sense of doom that
haunts Truffaut’s Jules and Jim.
Furthermore, the ways in which the nar-
rator is allowed selectively to reveal that
which he knows can instantly establish the
tone of a film, depending on whether it
offers the humorous counterpoint of George
of the Jungle or the quirky counterpoint
of Amélie; the knowing comic detachment
of Tom Jones or the serious detachment of
Barry Lyndon. Using an omniscient narra-
tor will inevitably pull an audience out of
appreciating a story on an objective level,
but it can increase their knowing apprecia-
tion of the characters’ behavior.
THE FIRST-PERSON
NARRATOR
Assigning first-person narration to a char-
acter generally determines whose story it
is (Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird, or the
unnamed second Mrs. de Winter in Rebecca).
One intriguing exception is Billy Wilder’s
Stalag 17, narrated not by the conniving G.I.
Sefton (William Holden) but by Cookie, his
second in command. This works because
Sefton’s true nature—is he a mere cynic, a
patriot or an outright traitor? —is kept from
Cookie and from us until the very end. It’s
a good object lesson if your story hinges on
scr(i)pt 53
" ] l [ ` n #
PHOTO: Bob Akester
Matthew Broderick as James T. ‘Jim’ McAllister in
Election, written by Tom Perrotta (novel), Alexander
Payne (screenplay) & Jim Taylor (screenplay)
your protagonist’s having a secret. Consider
having someone who is involved, but on the
periphery, narrate the action.
Most first-person narrators are written in
past tense as an adult voice looking back,
often in a self-consciously literary way, on
dramatic events: the adult Gordie narrat-
ing Stand by Me; Alvy Singer in Annie Hall;
and Huw in How Green Was My Valley.
Less often attempted, but potentially more
interesting, is a story narrated in the past
tense but spoken by the character at his
contemporary age—such as the 12-year-old
Linda in Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven,
or the nine-year-old Donny in John Eskew’s
unproduced Alamo screenplay Gone to Texas.
The juxtaposition of an adult character’s
sophisticated insights with the character’s
naïve, juvenile voice can create an extraor-
dinary sense of uneasy introspection in the
viewer, who may be moved to recall his own
past with the realization of how differently
he saw it then and now.
A more recent phenomenon is the pro-
tagonist who narrates in the present tense.
By expanding upon what we’re seeing as it
happens, this voiceover both distances us
from the action and makes us, in a very real
sense, co-conspirators. It’s mordantly witty
when a predeceased narrator (Joe Gillis in
Sunset Blvd.; Lester Burnham in American
Beauty) is given passages in present tense;
we’re hardly surprised to see spirits having
an unusual relationship with the here-and-
now. But it’s downright shocking when a
living protagonist “breaks the fourth wall”
to confront us in the present, and the effect
is usually wildly comic as in Ferris Bueller’s
Day Off, or deliriously so as in Fight Club.
From the opening speech of The Opposite
of Sex, printed at the beginning of this
article, the willful, desperate, misanthropic
54 scr(i)pt
Dede (Christina Ricci) makes it clear that
the real-time events we’re seeing are utterly
under her control and subject solely to her
interpretation. While she constantly invites
us to make up our own minds, she’s always
confident that we will come around to hers,
and the lack of contrast between her brazen
behavior (including blackmail, theft and
murder) and her brazen V.O. justifications
renders her a uniquely comic monster.
First person, whether past tense or present,
carries with it a built-in trap. Once narration
has been used to set up the plot, it’s easily
discarded until a sequence needs amplifica-
tion, at which point the voiceover may call
attention to itself as contrived and artificial.
Sure, you can find reasons to keep the narra-
tor talking on and on, but then you run the
risk that McKee talks about: making films
that become “little more than multimillion-
dollar books on tape, illustrated.”
The danger of occasional narration is
easily averted in a third type of first-person
device that might be called contextual nar-
ration, in which the reason for telling the
story aloud is justified by the plot. Writing
in a diary (Dunbar in Dances with Wolves;
Travis in Taxi Driver), or reading the text of
correspondence (Schmidt in About Schmidt;
Giles in Love and Death on Long Island),
or simply telling a life story to someone
else (Forrest Gump; George M. Cohan in
Yankee Doodle Dandy) provides a realistic
context for narration, a logical “hook” that
can solve all sorts of structural problems.
In a couple of famous films, contextual
first person is the very key to the plot: As
Walter Neff records an interoffice memo
to his boss in Double Indemnity, or Louis
Mazzini composes his boastful memoir of
serial murder in Kind Hearts and Coronets,
each inadvertently creates a confession that
ends up sealing his doom.
MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES
The writer who takes the gamble of shar-
ing the narration burden among several
characters has a lot of balls in the air. Why
are all these people talking, and how do their
monologues relate to each other? Whose
story is this? At any given point, who should
be thrown the ball? Will having so many
narrators blur the theme or point of view?
When is it best to have one of them, or all
of them, shut up?
It’s a tricky and complex endeavor that,
in the case of the really great screenplays
that employ multiple narrators, probably
shouldn’t work at all. In All About Eve, the
logic of who is narrating when is famously
inexplicable. There seems little benefit to
having Karen Hill occasionally take over
the narration otherwise carried by her hus-
band Henry in GoodFellas. But when the
talk is so incisive and witty in the former
case, or so morally complex in relation to
the depicted events in the latter case, the
filmmaker gets by.
The filmmaker didn’t get by in the case of
The Barefoot Contessa (1954), which offers
another useful object lesson. Stung by charg-
es that the Eve voiceovers were inconsistent,
Joseph L. Mankiewicz gave his two narrators
a logical context: At the rainy day funeral of
the short-lived cinema goddess of the title,
we hear the thoughts of her director and
press agent trying to make sense of her trag-
edy. Problem? As the film moves back and
forth between flashback and narration, and
from one narrator to the other, we’re forced
to return again and again to that damn
graveyard, in a tedious rhythm that merely
reveals how gabby the soundtrack is.
Alexander Payne’s 1999 Election, a dazzling
commentary on power and the American
Dream, is an equally dazzling demonstra-
tion of how an eclectic use of voiceover can
expand and deepen a film’s effect. While
the Tom Perrotta novel on which it’s based
is told entirely in monologue by almost a
dozen participants, screenwriters Payne and
Jim Taylor pare the number down to four,
give each speaker a distinctive voice and
purpose, and move back and forth between
them with effortless bravado. The shifts in
perspective are complemented by a dizzying
variety of filmic and editing techniques that
would make Jean-Luc Godard tip his hat.
All in all, it’s a high-wire act that takes one’s
breath away, voiceover making a major con-
tribution to the effect.
Election’s Tracy Flick, preternaturally ambi-
tious overachiever and student government
presidential candidate, tries too hard in her
narration as well as her life. She mouths
platitudes about the masses, assures us she’s
not at all bothered at a new candidate’s
entrance as we see her shake with fury and
trips over herself with malapropisms (mock-
ing those who have “everything handed to
them on a silver spoon” and referring to “an
unconscience-able tragedy”). Set against her
self-deluding screeds are the mellow, earnest
musings of Jim McAllister, the ethics teacher
who cannot stand by as Tracy steamrolls the
electorate. For a long while, his simple reason
scriptmag.com

puts us squarely on his side.
But Payne and Taylor masterfully shift
perspective gradually to reveal that “Mr. M.”
is every bit as self-deluded as Tracy, if not
more so, and more blameworthy to boot.
The efforts he describes for us, to “teach
lessons” and do right, lead him to execute
an elaborate adultery scheme and commit
fraud at the ballot box. As we’re becoming
aware of the cynicism and fecklessness of
McAllister’s selfish quest, we’re being gently
led to see the unhappiness and insecurity at
the heart of Tracy’s. Our sympathies change
again and again with each new revelation on
the soundtrack, especially once two more
narrators are layered in: the tomboyish
Tammy and her sunny, clueless quarterback
brother Paul, each of whom throws a hat in
the ring for very different reasons.
But then all four of these narrators are
clueless, and the triumph of Election is
that we’re so aware of their cluelessness but
never made to feel contemptuous of them.
Their self-serving justifications are hilari-
ous, but our laughter is tempered by the
sober truths we’re forced to consider along
the way. Who, Election asks, really wins and
loses, and who deserves to? The superficially
menacing Tracy actually serves the school
well as president; and when we last see her,
she has become a Congressional aide with
the promise of a fulfilling life. Mr. M, on
the other hand—disgraced, fired, reduced to
being a museum tour guide—never learns,
as we hear in his final monologue, delivered
as he sees Tracy enter a D.C. limousine:
JIM (V.O.)
I felt sorry for her ...
nursing her pathetic little
dreams, it just makes me
sad. I mean, where is she
really trying to get to,
anyway? What is she doing
in that limo? Who the f**k
does she think she is??!!
Then comes his heroic gesture—tossing a
Big Gulp at the limo and running for dear
life—as he leaves us with one last cheer-
ful thought: “That’s the great thing about
America. You can always start over.”
At its best, voiceover narration does add
so much more to a screenplay than mere
information. It can establish mood, envi-
ronment, texture. It can effect a transition
between locations or time spans. It can
foreshadow or state plot developments far in
advance (Lester announcing his own death
in the first moments of American Beauty) so
(2004) MAY/JUNE
Wil Wheaton as Gordie Lachance, Corey Feldman as Teddy Duchamp, River Phoenix as Chris Chambers
and Jerry O’Connell as Vern Tessio in Stand by Me, written by Stephen King (novella The Body), Raynold
Gideon (screenplay) & Bruce A. Evans (screenplay)
that we can focus on their effect rather than
their surprise, the how rather than the what.
Voiceover can cool down a scene’s emotion
and distance us from violence (Nicky’s calm-
ly describing the sequence of his own death
in Casino). As Robert McKee points out and
Election and The Opposite of Sex illustrate,
narration can add “wit, ironies and insights
that can’t be done any other way.”
McKee also goes on to warn—in his book
Story, and in italics yet—that “the trend
toward using telling narration throughout a
film threatens the future of our art.” But we
may share his passion for the expressive
image (“Show, don’t tell”) without losing
sight of the enormous potential of voiceover
when thoughtfully chosen and crafted. A
sequence in the unproduced Gone to Texas
gives one more hint of it.
Following Syd Field’s advice to conceive
of the visuals and the narration separately
before one weaves them together, picture the
scene as writer John Eskew would have you
see it on the screen: “On a cold, blue-grey
morning,” the people of the Alamo hammer
and nail to make fast the mission against the
expected siege. “The obsession: to seal up
every opening through which Death could
rush in. They slink around the walls, already
fearing bombardment ... clothes encrusted
with mud ... the men unshaven and gaunt.”
Now, as we watch their “silent and grey”
struggle, here is what we hear from the
young boy who has been narrating the tale:
DANNY (V.O.)
I know it sounds stupid --
a childish thing -- but I
" ] l [ ` n #
useta’ wonder how come when
people die, they’re buried
separate from each other?
Like the worst part of dyin’
isn’t so much the bein’
dead, but bein’ so lone-
some. One time I heard the
grownups talkin’ about some
rebels that got kilt and
was all buried in a “mass
grave.” They were sayin’ it
like how bad it was. But I
thought it sounded so much
better than bein’ alone in
a grave -- just one, and
one, and one, scattered all
about. See ... to be togeth-
er with Crockett and Bowie
and th’others -- for always
-- that sounded, like, all
right to me. But I was only
nine then, like I say.
With the Alamo bell ringing moments later
as a lookout screams, “THEY’RE HERE!
JESUS CHRIST! THEY’RE HERE!” this
sequence could be a genuine moment of
pity and terror, with chills up the spine. But
it wouldn’t work nearly as well without that
beautiful expression of human feeling—not
expositional in nature but simple, wise and
heartbreaking—that insinuates into our ears
in counterpoint to the action.
Sometimes, when you have something
to say, your best bet may be simply to let a
character say it flat-out: V.O.
BOB VERINI is a freelance writer, actor and stage
director. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild
and his plays have been performed at a variety
of theatres. He has also been a film and theatre
critic for daily newspapers and radio. Volume
I of The Music of 20th Century Fox, which he
co-authored, is now on sale, with Volume II
scheduled for May 2004.
scr(i)pt 55
 Writing the
CBS Worldwide Inc.
PHOTO: Robert Voets/CBS ©2003
Spec TV
Drama
Script by Rich Whiteside
PHOTO: CBS Worldwide Inc. ©2002

This article is a compilation of what I have learned through 10 years of

interviewing television writer/producers and through my own personal
experience with the one-hour form. The only area that is not adequately
discussed here is the writing of teleplay pages. I’m of the opinion that all the
heavy lifting is done prior to sitting down and turning out script pages. Keep in
mind that you are writing for a series that already has fully formed characters
and a world. Thus, if you have done your research and properly developed your
story through the outlining stage, the script pages should come fairly easily.

I have often been told that writing on a staff is the one form of writing where

©2003 CBS Broadcasting Inc.

PHOTO: Nigel Parry/CBS
you get to learn on the job. I used to think that meant you didn’t have to have killer
writing skills to land a staff job. What I’ve come to learn is that they are talking more
about the producing side of a staff gig than turning out scripts. Carol Mendelsohn
(executive producer/showrunner of CSI) [scr(i)pt Vol. 8, No. 5] told me, “I come from
the original Cannell and Spelling camps where things were done by teams, by staffs,
and you treated your writers well. I remember the first thing that Cannell said, ‘If
you’re a producer, you get paid a lot of money. You don’t put your name on writers’
scripts. We teach all our young writers: Throw them on a set, throw them into an
editing room—and they learn quickly.”
TOP: Gary Dourdan as Warrick Anthony LaPaglia
and William Petersen as
Today, you need solid writing skills and amazing writing samples to get noticed and as Jack and Enrique
Grissom star in CSI: Crime Scene staffed. What most baby staff writers have to learn writing-wise is how to deal with Murciano as Danny in
Investigation ABOVE: Amy extremely tight deadlines and how to address notes. You are no longer writing for Without a Trace
Brenneman as Judge Amy Gray yourself on your own schedule. You are essentially writing in place of the showrunner
in Judging Amy who in turn has to please a network and an audience. You’ll be getting notes from
multiple sources: the writer/producers above you, the studio and the network.
You may ask: I’ve got great feature-length spec scripts, why do I need to write a
spec TV script? The main reason is because many showrunners will only read one-
hour specs to see that you know the form. “When it comes to a first-time writer
trying to get a job, I equate writing a spec script to being a musician and playing a
cover song. People want to know that you know the words and can play along,” said
Erica Messer (Alias staff writer) [scr(i)pt Vol. 9, No. 2]. That means proving you can
write crafty dialogue and keep the story moving and compelling and do it within a
four-act structure.
In the end, you will need at least two, possibly three, TV spec scripts—one to
dazzle them and another one or two to prove that the first one was not a fluke.
56 scr(i)pt scriptmag.com
 Drama
" n b _  m g [ f f  m ] l _ _ h #
THE BASIC TV PARADIGM happen to tune in late, you know exact-
Carlton Eastlake, a guest lecturer in one of my UCLA ly what is going on.” I’ve paid greater
screenwriting classes, laid out a basic, four-act drama TV paradigm. attention to see if this is true and, if so,
Act One defines what’s at stake. In Act Two, all characters are work- how writers accomplish it.
ing toward the goal in conflict with each other. At the end of Act I haven’t found recapping to be evi-
Two, there is a complete reversal where all assumptions are upended. dent in every case, but it is done;
In Act Three, the characters think they know how to solve the prob- and when done deftly, it’s seamless.
lem and move to do so. At the end of Act Three, they realize they’re Television audiences are distracted. The
wrong and at the wrong end of town, in total jeopardy—this act small screen is not like a feature film
takes the characters to a precipice. In Act Four, the characters drive where you have a captive audience sit-
like hell to get to the problem then resolve it in a crafty, clever and ting in the dark, totally focused on the
witty way. Eastlake also said that the drama paradigm has been even story. The audience is doing laundry,
more simply described as being a love story: boy meets girl, boy gets fixing dinner, eating or talking; and I
girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. Obviously, the act breaks are have noticed that when I tune in late
where the commercials go. or get pulled away, I can fairly quickly
This paradigm has been modified over the years into a teaser and discern what the episode is about and
four acts. The teaser is three to five pages (basically part of the first act) follow it from there. So I pass this on
used to quickly hook audiences. to you as food for thought. Hopefully,
in some future article, I will be able to
BEYOND THE PARADIGM examine the topic in more detail.
While this basic paradigm is appealing, if you were to write a
script based solely upon that simple structure, you’d never get out of FORMATTING
Peoria. This paradigm is just the starting point for a story’s develop- While important, formatting is not
ment. Before delving into a story, first determine what the show is the most important element of a TV
about at its core. For example, I’ve noticed that shows like Without a spec script. Your story and how you
Trace and Cold Case seem to be more about exploring some unusual handle dialogue are far more critical.

Broadcasting Inc.
PHOTO: Michael Yarish/CBS ©2004 CBS
world than the procedure of solving the case. Both are law-enforce- However, lack of proper formatting is
ment procedural shows, but the stories they pick have that added typically the sign of an amateur and
sensational element of exploring some unusual or hidden world perceived by many as a harbinger of
within our normal world. More importantly, the stories express the bad things to come. Make sure your
theme that we really don’t know the people we know. formatting is on track and remember
On CBS’s Without a Trace web site they say, “The team reconstructs that one-hour and half-hour shows have
a ‘Day of Disappearance’ timeline that details every minute of the 24 distinctly different formatting.
hours prior to the disappearance, following one simple rule: Learn who In his book Television Writing from
the victim is in order to learn where the victim is.” The key words being the Inside Out, Larry Brody states that
“learn who the victim is.” I’m working on a Without a Trace spec, and one-hour formatting is more like that
knowing this helped me choose a story world to match the tenor of the of feature films, and half-hour format-
show. I chose to explore the world of a repossessor agent. After making ting more like writing for the stage.
that decision, I looked for dramatic situations within that world. Not to worry, nearly all screenwriting
As you explore the heart of the series, realize that shows dealing with software programs have the ability to
the same backdrop can have vastly different rhythms and focuses. Take quickly and easily be set up to tem-
CSI and the more recent Navy NCIS, both forensic shows. CSI is dedi- plate any of the current screenwriting
cated to getting the science right and showing the process. Anthony forms. I personally favor using Movie
William Petersen stars as
Zuiker (creator/executive producer of CSI) [scr(i)pt Vol. 8, No. 5] said, Magic Screenwriter, which comes with Grissom in CSI: Crime Scene
“I don’t know how anybody on the outside could really do a CSI [spec] over 75 TV templates, but prefer to Investigation
because so much of it is getting the science right.” He told me that the create my own custom TV templates.
writers come to the writers’ room, literally with a large three-ring note- I think it’s important to mimic the
book backing up the science in their story. On the other hand, Navy show’s formatting quirks. When I
NCIS deals with the science in a more cursory fashion. This show is decided to write a Without a Trace, I
more about the playful interaction between the main characters than got hold of six produced scripts—each
clever forensic-science investigative work. written by a writer on staff. From
Another critical structuring element is that each act should end with those, I came up with a handful of
a cliffhanger or at least something compelling to keep the audience formatting style conventions unique
from turning the channel. Then at the top of each act, consider recap- to the show. For example, at the end of
ping key information. This is a new thought process to me, one that every slug line, the writers indicate the
came up in my interviews with the Alias staff. Jeff Pinkner (supervising number of hours the victim has been
producer of Alias) [scr(i)pt Vol. 9, No. 2] said, “It’s something David E. missing. All flashbacks are in bold,
Kelly [is] a genius at doing: In every act you reset every story. If you and flashback slug lines indicate when

(2004) MAY/JUNE scr(i)pt 57

" n b _  m g [ f f  m ] l _ _ h #
in time the flashback occurred. They use
(DOD) to indicate that the scene takes place
on the Day of Disappearance, or (DBD) for
Day Before Disappearance and so on. I also
came up with a list of slug lines for com-
monly used locations: the FBI office, etc.
Howard Gordon (executive producer of
24) [scr(i)pt Vol. 9, No. 3] advises, “Do what-
ever you can to get your hands on scripts.
Every show has its own unique rhythms.
I am scientific about it. I deconstruct it. I
mean, I look at [the show] structurally [to
figure out] what the requirements are, scene
by scene. I’ll do it on a white board or a legal
pad just so I can look at it in one eyeful and
see the dramatic sweep of an episode.”
To get copies of TV scripts, you can
search online and find sites that offer them
but be warned that some are merely tran-
scripts and not actual copies of scripts.
Script City (Scriptcity.com) is one source
for hard copies of produced TV scripts.
In the six Without a Trace scripts that
I read, I noticed that each writer had
a slightly different habit with respect to
using the show’s formatting style elements.
So don’t get caught up trying to get the
formatting perfect. Get it close and focus
on the real writing.
The final formatting note is that most
drama scripts fall into a page length of 55
to 65 pages.
WHAT MAKES FOR A
GREAT PITCH?
I pose this question to showrunners
because elements of what make a great
pitch are also what make a great spec. I usu-
ally ask for their thoughts on what makes
for a good pitch as well as what makes for
a bad pitch—knowing what not to do is as
valuable, if not more valuable, than know-
ing what to do.
First and foremost, the story has to be
about and profoundly affect the main char-
acters. Andre Bormanis (story editor of
Enterprise) [scr(i)pt Vol. 8, No. 6] said, “The
most common mistake writers make is tell-
ing stories that are all science-fiction plot
and have little if anything to do with our
people—it could be any people. The key to
making stories work on this show is to make
them much more personal, really deeply
rooted in the lives of these characters, and
to give it a texture and feel of the Enterprise
crew as deep-space pioneers.” That advice
applies to all shows.
Ann Donahue (now executive producer/
58 scr(i)pt
showrunner of CSI: Miami, then an execu-
tive producer on the original CSI) [scr(i)pt
Vol. 8, No. 5] said, “You gotta go to the
emotion. What’s so personal that it’s uni-
versal? That’s what you pitch.” In that same
interview, Carol Mendelsohn said her first
pitch sale was a story for Fame, “I [pitched
that] they were going to condemn the school.
They were going to have to move, and the
kids didn’t want to go to a new school.” To
which Ann jumped in with, “Perfect. That’s
perfect because now everybody is up in arms
in trouble. It’s not about a new dance. It’s
not about a play opening.” Again, what’s
important is that the main characters are the
ones most involved and affected.
Ryan Murphy (executive producer/creator
of Nip/Tuck) [scr(i)pt Vol. 10, No. 1] told me,
“I have a rule that I need five moments of
shock and awe per script, at least. So, as we
are going through the pitch phase and our
staff comes up with stuff, they pitch me those
five moments of shock and awe. That doesn’t
have to be the surgeries or anything exploit-
ative. Usually, it’s an emotional moment that’s
unexpected. It could be a very quiet moment.
It can be something that’s moving.
“When I was a kid, I read this quote from
Rosalind Russell who said, ‘To me, if you
walk out of a movie and you remember five
scenes, that’s a great movie.’ That always
stuck with me, and I think it’s true about
film or TV. You don’t remember the whole
plot; but if you remember five visceral scenes
or moments, that’s what’s important.”
WHAT SHOW TO SPEC?
Robert Cochran (executive producer/co-
creator of 24) [scr(i)pt Vol. 9, No. 3] said,
“You’ve got to write what you’re passionate
about, not what you think will sell. If you
want to write a spec TV script, find a TV
show that you like to watch. Don’t pick one
just because it’s hot. Find one you like. The
hottest show that you like should be the
spec script you write.”
I also believe that you should spec a show
that has the tone of what you want to be
staffed to write.
RESEARCH
The best research is to be a fan of the
series. I’ve watched Without a Trace since the
pilot episode. Despite my knowledge of the
show, when I decided to write a spec, I did
further research using the Internet, beginning
with the network’s web site. Then I checked
out fan sites. This is the same research I do
before going in to interview writing staffs for
my articles. Online, I can get information
about the show’s characters and can often
find synopses of each episode aired (check out
Twiztv.com/scripts). I’ve found that episode
synopses are a quick and easy way to prime
the pump. I will print them out and read
through them, and this simple task always
bubbles up a ton of “what-if” thoughts.
I decided that the backdrop for my spec
would be the world of the repossessor agent.
It seemed to be a shadowy world, naturally
ripe with tension and conflict; but I had no
personal experience in this area. Online, I
found a wealth of repo web sites. Through
these sites I got a sense of this world. I also
watched several documentary shows on the
subject; and while I have not yet contacted
a professional repo agent, taking that step
could be very helpful. When you meet peo-
ple one-on-one, you will get sensory infor-
mation that doesn’t come any other way.
OUTLINING
Every successful writer I have interviewed
has been a firm believer in outlining before
tackling the teleplay or screenplay. They all
expressed the conviction that the outline
is the most difficult, but fundamentally
inseparable, part of crafting a story. Most
TV outlines run seven to 10 pages, single-
spaced. Hart Hanson (executive producer of
Judging Amy) [scr(i)pt Vol. 9, No. 1] requires
writers to outline in two steps. Since each
episode has multiple storylines running, the
first step is to come up with the beats of
each individual storyline. He calls this the
“unblended outlines where each storyline
comes separately—five or six beats for a legal
story, say eight for a personal story.” At this
point, each beat is little more than a simple
statement. In this first stage of outlining, the
individual beat outlines are worked on until
he’s satisfied with them.
Only after the individual story beat out-
lines are nailed down does he begin to
think about theme. “Theme never comes
first ... we start thinking, ‘Well, which of
these stories is the most powerful? Is it
Maxine’s case or Amy’s case? Is it something
that’s happening between the mother and
daughter or grandmother and granddaugh-
ter?’ Whichever one is the most compelling
story [is the one we focus on] and we start
asking, ‘What other stories resonate with
this if we slice them this way?’ We may then
yank cases and put in new ones and say, ‘You
know what? This girl should not be guilty.’
scriptmag.com

It becomes this lattice work that we drive
everyone crazy talking about.”
Once the unblended beat outlines
are approved, the writer weaves the sto-
ries together into one overall outline that
Hanson calls the blended outline. At this
point, the writer will flesh out the sim-
ple beats into broader description with a
sense of the action and potential dialogue.
The simple declarative statements of the
unblended outline become paragraphs.
This blended outline is then worked on
until Hanson is satisfied that the story is
fully fleshed out and the theme is properly
expressed throughout. Then, the writer can
sit down and write the teleplay.
In contrast to Hanson’s process of explor-
ing theme late in the outlining process,
Ryan Murphy of Nip/Tuck tends to start
with theme. “I think that asking ‘How can
all these stories relate to a theme?’ has always
worked well for me—theme being the link
that holds everything together.”
Again, every writing professional I have
interviewed has stressed that the outline is
an absolute, “gotta-do” step in the process
of crafting a story. If you jump to writing
the teleplay too soon, you are guaranteed
to be wasting time; and, invariably, you
will have to throw out a lot of work. It’s
all time and effort that could be saved by
first building the framework of your story
through the outline.
WRITING THE TELEPLAY
TV specs are where I will break my rule
about no camera angles or similar mini slug
lines in spec scripts. Just don’t go crazy writ-
ing in a lot of ANGLE ONs or overwriting
the action-description. It slows down the
reading and swells the pages. TV is more
about talking heads than features are, so
make sure your dialogue is crisp and clever.
FINDING AN ORIGINAL
VOICE
We’ve all heard the adage: You need to
have an original voice. Unfortunately, this
is another area where it’s impossible to
coach someone. The only advice I can offer
is that it comes only as a result of years of
writing consistently. There is no substitute.
“Do whatever you need to do to crank
out as many scripts [as you can] because
the training to be a dramatic writer is no
different from the training to be a lawyer
or a doctor or an accountant. It’s years.
It’s a four- or five-year apprenticeship, and
(2004) MAY/JUNE
" n b _  m g [ f f  m ] l _ _ h #
the only way those years are meaningful is
if you are writing all the time,” said Joel
Surnow (executive producer/co-creator of
24) [scr(i)pt Vol. 9, No. 3].
Since most shows are trying to tap into
the zeitgeist of today, I know that they are
looking for writers who have solid craftwork
and who are bold. So, within the bounds
of the basic structure rules, let your freak
flag fly. The Hollywood system more often
rewards those who display passion and guts.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Larry Brody’s book Television Writing from
the Inside Out, while excessively chatty, has
solid information at its core. For those who
know little about the theories of story struc-
ture and story development, it covers all the
basics in broad brush strokes. For those seek-
ing writing examples, this book has examples
of loglines, complete beat sheets, outlines
and script pages. If you are well-schooled
in these areas, it may be frustrating to wade
through; but I found it worthwhile.
Finally, the typical writing staff ranges in
size from four to 10 writer/producers with
only one entry-level staff writer. That means
a lot of competition for the one entry spot
that opens each year. Your script had better
be stellar because the marketplace is flooded
with solid writing samples that have made it
through the agent-filtering process and landed
on the desks of showrunners. Hanson said,
“At the beginning of every season we get like
300 scripts, and we have the writers [on staff
as well as] the assistants to the writers read
through them. [My policy is]: Do not bring
me something that isn’t fabulous. Do not
make me read something [that isn’t amazing].”
Barbara Hall (executive producer/showrunner
of Judging Amy) said, “You can’t have a good
script. That’s not enough. You have to have a
great script, [otherwise] it’s just not going to
get noticed. It’s not like our desks are littered
with lousy scripts. They aren’t. They’re littered
with pretty good scripts.”
This then is the competition you have
chosen to enter, so go out and kick some
screenwriting butt!
Author of The Screenwriting Life, RICH
WHITESIDE was the editor/publisher of the
UCLA Writers Block newsletter for six years and
a technical writer on government projects. A
graduate of the Naval Academy and a former
Navy SEAL, Rich currently works at Paramount
Pictures in network television business affairs as
he pursues a career in screenwriting.
scr(i)pt 59
Turning a Although the majority of screen-
writers in Hollywood are men,

New Page
over the years more and more
women have stepped into the field,
writing and directing successful,
compelling and Oscar®-worthy films.

For the first time this year an American

woman, Sofia Coppola, won an Oscar
for Best Original Screenplay for a film

Women Writers that she also directed, Lost in Translation.

in Hollywood Three other female writer-directors

received critical acclaim for their films as
well; Patty Jenkins for Monster, Nancy Meyers
for Something’s Gotta Give and Niki Caro for
Whale Rider.

These women represent just a few of those who have

by Rachel Wimberly made it, but there are plenty more reaching for the top
and well on their way.

ELISA BELL
In the early 90s,
Elisa Bell was working
at TriStar as an assis-
tant story editor when
one day she slipped a
script she had writ-
ten (with her name
changed) to one of her toughest readers, and
the script was marked for consideration.
It was a big action script, something
women weren’t particularly known for writ-
ing; so her agent suggested she put a man’s
name on it.
“I did and we sold it,” Bell says. “After it
was sold, I walked into the room; and the
people said, ‘You’re not a man.’ I said ‘No,
I’m not. Let’s take this meeting.’
“I never did that again,” she adds.
Next, Bell wrote a “sexy thriller” for
MGM; and for a long time, she says that’s
the only type of material she was offered.
In order to break the mold, she wrote a
comedy, Thirty Wishes, in which a man makes
a wish on his thirtieth birthday that his past
30 birthday wishes come true. “It changed
my career to a comedy writer,” she says. “After
that I did a lot of comedy writing.”
Bell has a knack for continually reinvent-
ing her career. First she wrote action, then
sexy thrillers and then comedy (including
Vegas Vacation starring Chevy Chase); and
she currently has two films coming out in
the female comedy genre. Sleepover, starring
Alexa Vega of Spy Kids fame, was a pitch Bell
sold to MGM and is set for release in July.
Little Black Book, starring Brittany Murphy,
Holly Hunter and Kathy Bates, is hitting
theaters in October.
“Those are the two movies I’m really
proud of,” she says.
Bell also recently sold a spec, Dirty Little
Secret, to Paramount. Plucking experiences
from her own life as the mother of a toddler
and some elements from Julie Tilsner’s book
Attack of the Toddlers, the story centers on
a hip couple who have their first child and
how their world is turned upside down.
Bell admits that sometimes she feels
“pigeonholed” into a certain type of material.
“Most people look at what you’ve done last,”
she says. “They completely forget what you
started out doing, like sexy thrillers.”
Now that she has two female comedies
coming out, Bell says that’s what she gets
pitched; but there’s no doubt if she wanted
to change that, she would simply write
another spec in a different genre.
Bell has worked steadily since she sold her
first script. “I don’t think being a woman
has helped or hurt me at all,” she says,
“It’s about the work and the writing”—and
those four little words she most likes to
hear? “We’ve got the greenlight,” Bell says.
“Those words are awesome.”
VICTORIA
LAKEMAN
Growing up in the
wilds of Canada in a
log cabin is a long
way from working
as a screenwriter in
Hollywood, but Victoria Lakeman has made
a successful transition.
“I always loved writing, and I knew I
wanted to be involved in movies,” she says.
As a child, Lakeman says she worked
around the house and made up stories to
pass the time. She eventually moved to Los
Angeles and went to work for director and
producer, Roger Corman, and sold him
the script Captain Justice. After the sale,
Lakeman decided to sit down and write an
original screenplay.
“I wanted to do a big budget, theatrically
produced film,” she says. “I worked on it for

60 scr(i)pt scriptmag.com
 
L M ^ M T W X U M V \ 
a year and a half.”
Lakeman’s spec, The Girl Who Could Fly,
is the story of a young girl who can fly and
is sent away to a special school to be repro-
grammed into a “normal” child. The girl sty-
mies the school’s efforts to “normalize” her
with the other “special” kids by her side.
Once Lakeman finished the spec, she
found an agent and The Girl Who Could
Fly was bought by Paramount in December
2003.
“It was such a dream come true,” AUTHORS & SCREENWRITERS
Lakeman says. “I was just thrilled.”
Her script attracted a lot of attention, and
CONFERENCE
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to producers. “Most of the time people do /++
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no one can give you permission to do any- Special Benefit Performance for Breast Cancer Survivors
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to do it.”
Laugh ’til You Heal:
Lakeman encourages other writers to take From Comedy to Tragedy and Back Again
risks and not be afraid to fail. “You never Featuring
know where your story is going to go,” she Devo Cutler Rubenstein & Wendy Cutler
says. “It’s like jumping off a cliff; and it’s
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sales later, LaBianco and Farley are looking
– Jonathan Treisman,
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Talk, hit the silver screen for the first time
this year.

(2004) MAY/JUNE scr(i)pt 61


L M ^ M T W X U M V \ 
“One of the bigger
rewards of writing in
Hollywood is the
impact we can have
on the audience,”
Farley says. “We’re
100 percent thinking
Tempest Farley of the audience and
what we want them
to learn from the movie and how we want
them to be entertained by the movie.”
The first spec they wrote, The Con, was
a heist movie; but Farley and LaBianco
were careful to avoid being typecast into
a specific genre as writers. They followed
up The Con with a romantic comedy with
action elements.
“First we were action girls, and now we
are romantic-comedy girls,” LaBianco says.
“The category we’re most proud of is to be
the ‘human condition’ girls,” Farley adds.
“We are 100 percent focused on the char-
acters and taking them through their ups
and downs.”
Farley and LaBianco are successful at
writing both female and male leads. “We’ve
never looked at it as ‘let’s write a movie
with a female lead,’” Farley says. “We focus
on the human condition, and that’s how we
approach going into the room.”
The writing pair have three films, Head
Case, Sex Talk and Homefront, set up at New
Line, as well as Facade and Nth Degree at
Paramount, Big Game Hunting at Universal,
Cut Out at Warner Bros. and The Mules at
Focus Features.
“There is no right or wrong way to work-
ing in the business,” Farley says. “You can
sell your first spec or build a career. The
whole idea is to keep writing.”
LaBianco adds, “We’ve sold everything
we’ve written. In the business you control
what you can, but a lot of things are not
about you. You have to let go of your babies
and be cool with it.”
LaBianco believes it’s important to be a
writer, but to be a businessperson is also
just as important. “For us it’s not about
having a movie made or not,” she says. “We
enjoy every step.”
Farley says with every script they work
on, they learn new lessons from their char-
acters. “It’s really an amazing experience to
go along for the ride with the characters,”
she says.
“It’s kind of like you’re an explorer and
you can carve out your destiny every time
you sit down,” LaBianco says. “If you can
62 scr(i)pt
embrace this as a person and you can enjoy
it, every day is an adventure.”
The duo have definitely carved out suc-
cessful careers for themselves as screenwrit-
ers, but LaBianco knows there will always
be setbacks along the way. “We never
sit there and say, ‘Wow, this industry’s
unfair,’” she says. “We take the knocks just
like anyone.”
Farley concludes, “We’re grateful to have
the opportunity to do what we’re doing.”
HEATHER HACH
Heather Hach
was featured in the
Vol. 9, No. 1 issue
of scr(i)pt magazine
in the “Top Ten
Writers to Watch”
article. More than a
year later, Hach now has a hit movie, Freaky
Friday, under her belt.
Hach says one thing that changed for
her was now she didn’t always have to
pitch her take before she was offered a
project. “It’s been ridiculous how much
easier it is, even though I’m the same
writer as before.”
Beyond not having to pitch all the time,
most of the changes for Hach have been
subtle.
“Most people want me for things that
have a Freaky Friday tone,” she says.
To not get stuck in the teenage girl
movie rut, Hach wrote a spec called I Used
to be an Honor Student that was much
more adult.
Now she is working on a page-one rewrite
of The Governor’s Wife, which is not a teen
movie, at Disney.
“I’m so excited by it,” Hach says. “I basi-
cally want to write movies I want to go see.
I can appreciate a thriller, but I don’t think
I’d be that great at writing one.”
Since her success with Freaky Friday,
Hach says she has learned to temper her
expectations. “There’s so much talk in this
town. You think something’s so easy and
it’s not.”
Hach realizes she was fortunate to have
her first movie made so quickly. “You have
to be somewhat laissez faire and not be emo-
tionally attached,” she says.
Hach admits she can’t imagine being any-
thing else but a screenwriter. “This is one
thing I feel like I can do,” she says. “I can
do this, and it suits my personality. I’m so
lucky to have this life, I can’t believe it.”
scriptmag.com

L M ^ M T W X U M V \ 
The freedom of being her own boss is a
major plus, and Hach says she enjoys the
writing process.
“It’s rewarding to have the joy of writing
a scene I love and finding something out
about my characters,” she says.
SARA GOODMAN
Sara Goodman
was working for
director Michael
Hoffman when
a writer on one of
their projects sud-
denly walked off.
“Michael said, ‘Come in and sit with
me in a hotel room because I don’t like to
work alone,’” Goodman says. “We worked
together on the script; and he said, ‘Why
are you working for me? You should be
screenwriting.’”
Goodman took his advice, wrote a spec
and got an agent.
“I had a bunch of meetings, but nothing
happened,” she says.
She went back to work for Hoffman,
switched agents and starting writing small
projects here and there. Her career seemed
to stall, and she decided to quit working
for a while.
Goodman jumped back into the industry
and wrote a spec that didn’t sell; but the
writing caught people’s attention, and she
started getting more jobs.
“Nothing paid very much, but I was
working all the time,” she says.
Four years ago Goodman sold a spec,
Nice, to Warner Bros. Then she did a proj-
ect for New Line called Neurotica, about a
woman who cheated on her husband; and
she worked on Buckle Bunnies, a female
rodeo movie, at Working Title Films.
She learned a lot of lessons along the way,
particularly about the development process.
“Sometimes you get to a point as a writer
when you have to stop writing for other
people or else you get lost in the develop-
ment process,” she says.
Goodman stepped out of the business
again, but she couldn’t stay away for long.
Now she is writing Dance Lessons for
Paramount based upon her real-life experi-
ence of teaching women how to strip. She
was also recently brought on to a project
at Revolution Studios, Slammer, about an
imprisoned female publicist who wants to

put a positive spin on life in prison.
“For whatever reason, it seems like
it’s time again for me to be writing,”
Goodman says.
Both of her latest projects are about
women. “I think I get women,” Goodman
says. “I have three sisters, and I teach this
crazy dance class.”
Goodman advises new writers to write
whatever they want in the beginning. “Once
you start getting paid, you won’t be able to
anymore,” she says.
Even though she’s been in and out of her
screenwriting career a few times, it seems
as if this time Goodman’s going to stick
around for a while. “It was never about this
is what I have to do,” she says. “[Writing] is
about heart.”
RACHEL WIMBERLY has a master’s degree in
journalism from New York University and has
written for CNN and a wide variety of maga-
zines and newspapers. In 1998, she changed
direction and went to work for producers Alan
Riche and Tony Ludwig as their director of devel-
opment. She worked on such films as Deep
Blue Sea and Family Man before she decided to
return to writing.

(2004) MAY/JUNE scr(i)pt 63

 " n b _  b c f f  q c n b  c n #
IRVING RAVETCH AND HARRIET FRANK JR.
A SCREENWRITING TEAM FOR ALL SEASONS
They wrote The Long, Hot Summer, Hud, Hombre, Norma Rae,
Murphy’s Romance and more. School is now in session.
Let us pause and pay tribute.
Let us take a thoughtful break from our
frantic scan of the trades, chasing of trends,
hustling of deals and rapid-fire pitching
of high-concept, CGI-based or “wire-fu”
action screenplays.
Let us take a moment of reflection and
honor quality screenwriting that genuinely
explores the human condition.
Let us simply acknowledge, then learn
from, two masters of our profession: Irving
Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr.
You’ve probably heard of William
Goldman, Shane Black, Gerald DiPego,
Norah Ephron, Robert King, Akiva
Goldsman, David Koepp, William Broyles
Jr., Terry Rossio & Ted Elliott and other
deservedly respected, impressive screenwriters
in recent years.
You may be so on top of things that
you know the contemporary flavor-of-the-
monthers in screenwriting and their recent
one-time spec script sales.
But do you know who Irving Ravetch
and Harriet Frank Jr. even are? Or what
they’ve written? If not, it’s a sad commen-
tary on what our craft has come to as well
as our values.
The Ravetchs are a screenwriting team
64 scr(i)pt
by John Hill
from another era (given that Hollywood
moves at hip-hop speed and measures
time in dog years), but there is much we
can and should learn from their excellent
body of work.
After marrying in 1946, the Ravetchs
wrote The Long, Hot Summer (1958)
with Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward
and Orson Welles. Based upon William
Faulkner’s stories, the Ravetchs wrote rich,
vivid characters and how they collide and
collude over money and power, love and
life. It features one of the sexiest, steamiest
undercurrent man-woman dances on film
between Paul Newman’s Ben Quick and
Joanne Woodward’s Clara Varner. There’s
also a wonderful, tough, muted father-
son-type loving relationship between the
roaring bull of a rich patriarch played
by Orson Welles and the Paul Newman
character, who is poor. When the Paul
Newman character starts to leave late in the
story, the Orson Welles character threatens
him, bellows accusations and, finally, red-
faced, furious, yells, “You know what I’ll
do if you go?” And the Ravetchs have Paul
Newman look him right in the eye and say,
“You’ll miss me.”
Now this is a movie set in the South that
LEFT: Paul Newman as Ben Quick and Joanne
Woodward as Clara Varner in The Long, Hot
Summer, based upon William Faulkner’s stories
“Barn Burning,” “The Spotted Horses” and
his novel The Hamlet MIDDLE: Sally Field
stars as Norma Rae RIGHT: Paul Newman as
Hud Bannon and Melvyn Douglas as Homer
Bannon in Hud, based upon Larry McMurtry’s
novel Horseman, Pass By
came out in 1958, and the Ravetchs have
one man look at another and have him say,
“You’ll miss me.” To me, that line is right
up there with Casablanca’s “We’ll always
have Paris” as a great line of dialogue where
the subtext is really about love.
Their other credits include The Dark
at the Top of the Stairs (1960), Home From
the Hill (1960), The Reivers (1969), The
Cowboys (1972), Conrack (1974), Stanley &
Iris (1990) and more.
Their script for Hud (1963), starring Paul
Newman, based upon Larry McMurtry’s
novel Horseman, Pass By is particularly
worth a close and careful look if you want
to learn about real screenwriting. It is a
character study of a heel, Hud Bannon, and
how his selfish, mean-spirited nature quietly
and systematically destroys everyone around
him. When the story begins, he is part of a
family on a Texas cattle ranch. But Hud’s
selfishness drives everyone away. The last
shot is of Hud leaning in the ranch doorway
scriptmag.com
 "nb_bcffqcnbcn#
opening a beer, alone. Everyone is gone. humanity: how humans are wise and foolish, Bridges character, Sonny, ask an important
Nothing redeemed him at the end. Imagine brave and scared, poignant and funny. And, question to Norma Rae later in the movie.
trying that today with a lead character. boy, can they write! Even in the description, It comes unannounced:
If you want to study character etched as where the audience can never appreciate it,
hard as a diamond into every line of dia- they concisely define character in words that SONNY
logue, watch Hud. (Or buy a book of three are poetic, lean and masterful. Here’s how, I don’t owe a nickel in
this town. I’ll eat any-
of the Ravetchs’ published screenplays, Hud, in Norma Rae, they introduce the Reuben thing that’s put down in
Norma Rae, and The Long, Hot Summer Warshawky character (Ron Liebman) as he front of me. I can fix any-
by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr. walks up to the front door of Norma Rae’s thing electrical. I’m all
right after I’ve had my
New American Library, $9.95, ISBN #0- (Sally Field) father’s home. first cup of coffee -- I
452-26084-1 and study their actual words.) want that bad, though. I
Even the rare but naturalistic “small talk” REUBEN WARSHAWKY stands on the got me a new job at the gas
station. I’d turn over my
delineates character. When Hud and his stoop. He is dressed in tennis
paycheck the minute I got
idealistic 17-year-old nephew Lon, played shoes, blue jeans and a T-shirt.
it -- that’s Friday noon.
by Brandon de Wilde, are driving along the Reuben is lean, sharp, full of And I come straight home
nervous and intellectual energy; from work and stay there.
rural Texas night and hear a train whistle,
his view of life wavers between (finally turns to look at her)
the boy wistfully remarks that it’s a lonely I got me Alice and I’m
his jaundice and the merry. He is
sound. Hud snarls that it scares the hell a master of finagle and accom-
alone. You got two kids
out of the cattle. One is sensitive; the other, and you’re alone. If you
modation; he is purposeful and could help me, maybe I
negative. So it goes throughout the entire principled. He is fully mobilized could help you.
absolutely excellent script: Each thing every always, however calm and easy his
character says or does comes directly from manner may be. NORMA
who they are. It’s been a long time
between offers.
Hombre (1967) is a Western that also stars Have you ever described a main character (she pauses)
Paul Newman. The Ravetchs bring their that well? I haven’t. Well, kiss me. And, if
simple, revealing sense of humanity to what The Ravetchs have an excellent ear and that’s all right, the
rest’ll be.
would otherwise be stock Western charac- a fondness for writing about working-class
ters. Again, their dialogue is wonderful. A people. This is how they have the Beau He takes her in his arms.
tired, middle-aged woman hears a young
man, recently-married, sounding confused
about why his young wife complains so
much and how he can’t make her happy.
The world-weary woman Jessie, played
by Diane Cilento, sums up marriage totally,
then or now, in one line of her dialogue:
“Well, that’s the price you pay if you want it
where you can nudge it in the night.” (You
try describing marriage in one sentence any
better. I can’t.)
Later, in Hombre, bandits led by Grimes,
played by Richard Boone, have stagecoach
passengers with a bag of money trapped
in a cabin at the top of a steep hill. It is
a standoff. Bad guy Richard Boone car-
ries a small white flag on a stick and
climbs up the hill, unarmed, to talk with
Paul Newman who stands there with a
rifle. After Richard Boone finishes trying
to make a deal, the Paul Newman character
quietly says: “I just have one question. How
are you going to get back down that hill?”
It dawns on the bad guy that he’s now up
against a realist. Richard Boone tries to
run down the hill but is shot twice in the
back by the Paul Newman character. The
Ravetchs have their character respond with
realism and common sense.
The Ravetchs’ screenplays show us real

(2004) MAY/JUNE scr(i)pt 65

" n b _  b c f f  q c n b  c n #
Yet another thing the Ravetchs do is novel, and in a movie era prior to the

IT’S ALL
explore important themes. Hud’s father need for huge instant box-office numbers
says flatly at one point, “Hud, you are or high concept. Roughly three decades
an unprincipled man.” In Norma Rae, later, Jon Voight’s daughter, Angelina Jolie,

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Reuben is described as being a principled
man. There’s often an undercurrent of
sexuality and passion; but, unlike the mes-
sage of today’s MTV culture, the Ravetchs
don’t present the world as if it’s every-
thing, either.
The difference between being a boy or
a man is explored within John Wayne’s
group of teen cattle wranglers in The
Cowboys and also in Murphy’s Romance,
which sharply contrasts the aging, solid
James Garner character with a flashy,
younger guy. The importance of educa-
tion is underscored in both Conrack and
Stanley & Iris (1990), with Robert DeNiro
and Jane Fonda. And, of course, their
movies explore right and wrong.
Don’t take my word for how good their
scripts have been. Look at the stars who
chose their scripts to best showcase their
own acting gifts—John Wayne, Robert
Mitchum, Steve McQueen, Paul Newman,
Joanne Woodward, Orson Welles, Jon
Voight, Sally Field, James Garner, Robert
DeNiro, Jane Fonda and more. That’s a
hell of a list.
To ask that we pause and reflect on
what the Ravetchs have given us, and
what we, as screenwriters, can learn, is
also to raise some sad questions if one
wishes to emulate their talent in writing
character-driven stories.
Would some of those scripts, if they
were specs by unknown writers, survive or
thrive in today’s Hollywood? Possibly not.
But, quality writing and human emotions
are still part of 21st century screenwriting.
We shouldn’t just praise their work, but
we should learn from it and try to apply it
to our writing.
I, personally, usually lead the charge
toward urging novice screenwriters to be
more businesslike and write good stories.
But those good stories must fit the high-
concept, commercial needs of today’s
tough, competitive business. I will con-
tinue to do that; we have to be reality-
based in our writing efforts.
Yet, symbolically, Jon Voight starred
in Conrack in 1974, a small movie about
a white schoolteacher struggling to help
island-bound black children learn to read.
It was a good movie, one that came into
starred in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, based
upon a videogame.
The contrast between the two movies,
their origins and audiences, depth and sub-
stance, says it all.
How would any of us in this day and age
attempt to write and sell screenplays with
the simple love of great dialogue that peels
back the layers of our humanity? Could
we do that even if we had anything close
to the talent of the Ravetchs?
There’s no easy answer, just the chal-
lenge. I do know that a very commer-
cial, high-concept hook, quality writing
and important themes are not mutually
exclusive. (Witness, Tootsie, A Beautiful
Mind, etc.)
Physicist Sir Isaac Newton once said his
accomplishments were possible only because
he had stood on the shoulders of giants who
had gone before. With screenwriting today,
our slick plots, special effects and orange
fireballs, I sometimes think we screenwrit-
ers have accomplished what we have while
standing beside the ankles of giants who
have gone before.
Two of these giant talents are Irving
Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr.
Thank you both for showing us how it’s
done. Let us learn from your scripts and
movies which will live forever.
We now return you to your previously
fast-paced, gotta-have-a-gimmick, special
effects screenwriting industry already in
progress.
If you call this progress.
JOHN HILL began writing as a professional
screenwriter over 25 years ago. His cred-
its include Griffin and Phoenix (1976) and
Heartbeeps (1981). He was also a co-writer on
Little Nikita (1989) and Quigley Down Under
(1990) with Tom Selleck. He has worked on
staff as a writer/producer for Quantum Leap
and L.A. Law. He won an Emmy® for his
work on L.A. Law. From 1989 through 1996,
he sold three spec feature scripts in three
different genres. One-on-one mentoring in
screenwriting is available. He may be reached

©2004 Ashley Software existence based upon Pat Conroy’s heartfelt at: (702) 433-6772 or Hillwithit@aol.com

66 scr(i)pt scriptmag.com
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MAKING YOUR CONNECTIONS:
A Manager’s Advice to Up-and-Coming Writers

BY TREVOR ENGELSON
AT U N D E R G R O U N D
MANAGEMENT

Keep this in mind — and take this

very seriously— guys like us at
Underground Management are out
there looking for you just as hard
as you are looking for us. Once
you understand that, everything
becomes a lot easier.

My job is to find the “nobody” writ-

ers. I hand out business cards to waiters
and busboys, cops and criminals, bar-
tenders and interns. Everybody in Los
Angeles has a story they want to tell.
My job is to find the good stories and
sell them.
Once I have found such stories, my
whole day revolves around making
sure those writers keep writing. I also
concentrate on getting them as much
money as possible so they can keep
doing what they love to do throughout
their careers.
But long before these writers get to
enjoy the luxurious burden of taking If you’re out here, you’re much more likely too valuable to waste his time answering
care of their parents’ Lexus payments, to run into guys like us who are looking phones. Any good assistant knows that if
they have to worry about getting their for people like you. By living in L.A., you he can bring in a great, young unknown
feet in the door. That process of getting won’t necessarily bump into the decision writer, or a phenomenal, unfound project,
in the door is what I have chosen to makers, but you will bump into a guy who he won’t be answering phones much longer.
write about. I have some advice for you answers the phone for the decision mak- More than half of our client list consists of
up-and-coming “baby writers,” and it’s ers. There is one thing you have to keep in writers we have found from the suggestion
quite simple: Get out there and hustle mind about someone who answers phones of an assistant.
your asses off! for a living—that guy sure as hell doesn’t You won’t get in touch with these people
First and foremost, it helps if you want to be answering phones forever. The by sitting in your apartment, watching tele-
live in L.A. It’s not a prerequisite, but best way for an assistant to get off a desk vision in your underwear. You have to go
a lot of this town revolves around luck. is for him to prove to his bosses that he is out and find them. My friends and I in the

68 scr(i)pt scriptmag.com

business go out drinking ... a lot. Our assis-
tants, our interns, our delivery people, they
all go out drinking ... a lot. All I’m saying
is that you should ask around and find out
where someone like myself hangs out and
make it your business to hang out there as
well. The situation will arrive eventually
when you should bring up your screenplay
in conversation. It may be a short conversa-
tion; but if you can get a business card out
of it, you are on your way. It’s simple: “You
guys are shooting a teen comedy? I just
finished writing a comedy. It’s about ‘place
logline here.’ You gotta check it out. Can
I send it to you?” You’d be surprised how
many people will say yes. They might give
your script a 30-page read then throw it
against the wall in disappointment, but at
least you’re taking that first step.
I realize this approach may be unrealis-
tic for many of you. A lot of people don’t
feel comfortable going out and being that
aggressive. Every writer who comes at me
like that gets my attention, but I can’t speak
for my colleagues. You may get completely
shut down with that approach. But hey,
nobody said this job was going to be easy.
For those of you who don’t want to go
out in this aggressive manner, don’t worry.
(2004) MAY/JUNE
There are plenty of other ways to get your
foot in the door. Here are a few:
CONNECTIONS
A lot of people know one of these: “My
mother’s friend’s daughter is an exec in
casting at that studio.” Whatever your con-
nection is, use it. Don’t be shy. What is the
sense of having a connection if you’re not
going to use it? The worst thing your con-
nection can say is, “No, can’t help.” If that
is the case, ask if she can point you in the
right direction. With every phone call you
make, you should be able to get off that call
with at least one other suggestion of another
person to contact.
INTERNSHIPS
Who in their right mind will turn down
free labor? You want to get your script to
a particular agency. Wouldn’t it be much
easier if you were already working there?
Hand your script to one of the hard-work-
ing assistants during a smoke break. I’m a
huge believer in interning. I worked at The
Tonight Show as an intern when I was first
getting started. That lead me to another
internship which lead me to my first job.
When you’re interning, the amount of
" ^ _ p _ f i j g _ h n #
You should ask around and find
out where someone like myself
hangs out and make it your busi-
ness to hang out there as well. The
situation will arrive eventually
when you should bring up your
screenplay in conversation.
people you get to meet that make decisions
just increased tenfold.
While you are working for free, use these
people just as much as they are using you.
Read every fax they ask you to deliver.
Open every letter they ask you to shred.
Read every script they sell, which brings me
to one of the most important points:
READ EVERYTHING!!!
Start off with the trades. Every
day you should read Variety.com,
Hollywoodreporter.com, Imdbpro.com,
Scriptsales.com, etc. Keep up to date as
to what’s going on in this business. Keep
your eye on what is selling, who is selling
it, who is writing it and who is buying it.
scr(i)pt 69
"^_p_fijg_hn#

UNDERGROUND MANAGEMENT

YEAR ESTABLISHED: 2000

PRINCIPAL PLAYERS: Nick Osborne & Trevor Engelson

CREDITS: Urban Legends: Final Cut, Black Autumn, Zoom’s

Academy, Range Rats, Flower Girl, Venus Kincaid, etc.

MAIN ADVICE TO WRITERS: If you’re not willing to give this five

years, don’t bother giving it five minutes. Success is not going to
happen overnight; but, if you hustle your ass off and you fail, at
least you’ll know you went out swinging. Underground Management’s
Trevor Engelson

Then look at what is getting made, who
the up-and-coming producers are and the
new agents and managers that just got
promoted. See if you can get a copy of the
spec that just sold and read it immediately.
The more time you spend around good
writing—good, commercial writing—the
better your writing will become.
Both buyers and sellers, specifically in
a spec situation (when the manager sends
your script to studios), are looking for com-
mercial material. In a perfect world, I could
send studios a screenplay that is ready to cast
and shoot. After all, that is what studios are
built to do: make movies. But, more often
than not, there is work to be done on scripts
that get “spec’d out.” Even if there isn’t,
most studio executives will find something
to change. So, if you want to get a big spec
sale on your first time out:
WRITE SOMETHING
COMMERCIAL
Take a look at the last couple specs that
sold to studios. “A man goes to sleep and
wakes up 1,000 years later;” “A girl goes to
a superhero academy for kids;” “An African-
American version of American Graffiti.” How
simple are those? One sentence and you
understand what the whole movie is about.
Let me be very clear, though. Don’t write
something you think is a commercial idea
just for the sake of trying to sell it. Usually
that decision ends up being a sure-fire route
towards disaster. The second you start writ-
ing from your gut, that’s when your best
work is going to come across.
The bottom line is, people in my position
are looking for quality writing. Whether
your screenplay is about “an overgrown elf
who leaves the south pole to find his real
father” or it’s about “an aging American
actor who starts a romance with a married
woman in a Japanese hotel,” we pay atten-
tion to the writing first and worry about
selling it second. There is nothing like great
writing. No matter how non-commercial,
great writing will always float to the top.
Studios and producers are looking for
people who can write and people to whom
they can feed high-concept ideas. There is a
shortage of truly original ideas in this town.
In the case of a studio hiring a writer, it
will be looking for the writer with the best
execution, not the writer who has real high
concepts and mediocre execution.
We signed a young writer who had an
exceptionally good screenplay. We worked
on it, sent it out to the studios and got pass-
es from everyone. “Not a sellable concept” is
what we heard a lot. But the writing was so
good, we ended up getting this writer two
open writing assignments at studios. One
was a book adaptation for an A-list director;
the other was an adaptation of a British play
for an A-list star. From the hype we got this
writer off those two jobs, we got another
big director attached to the script everyone
originally passed on. The point is, if the
writing is there, smart executives and intelli-
gent producers will recognize it. Sometimes
it takes a little longer to get their attention,
but they will recognize it.
WRITE, WRITE, WRITE
A lot of writers take forever to write a
screenplay because of other things going on
in their lives. I understand you are a busy
person. My advice to you is to treat your
writing like a job. You should be writing on
a schedule. You gotta have discipline! If you
don’t have a day job, then set your alarm for
7:00 a.m. and start writing at home. If you
find your home has too many distractions,
treat the library or the local Starbucks®
as your office. Write ’til 1:00 p.m, have
lunch and then write some more until it’s
time for dinner. Do that four days a week.
The other days you should lock yourself
in Barnes & Noble. Those stores seem like
they are particularly designed for out-of-
work writers. Use all their free resources;
search through magazine articles, newspa-
per articles, old books and true stories. Go
to used bookstores and find a classic that
nobody ever paid any attention to. I read
I Know What You Did Last Summer when I
was in elementary school. Neal Moritz takes
it a decade later and turns it into a huge
franchise hit. You gotta love that!
If you have a day job, write around your
work schedule. If you have to leave the
house to go to work at 8:00 a.m., wake up
and start writing at 5:30 a.m. and write
until you get into the shower. Go to work,
and the second you come home write until
you have to go to sleep. Edit it all later; just
get that first draft out of the way.
TEAM UP
Everybody in this town is trying to make
their dreams come true. It doesn’t hurt to
team up. Join a writers group. If you can’t
find one, start one. It helps to throw around

70 scr(i)pt scriptmag.com

your ideas to other people. Get their advice
on your script. Get the creative juices flow-
ing. Share contacts and experience. Worst
comes to worst, you have a new shoulder to
cry on when you get rejected for the hun-
dredth time this month.
PUT IT OUT THERE
Send query letters and e-mails. Put your
logline at the top of the e-mail and just send
it to the lowest person on the totem pole at
the companies you think share your similar
taste. Most people don’t read them. Most
people can’t legally accept them. But, you
never know where your first big fan is going
to discover you, so I say cover all your bases.
SUCK IT UP
Finally, the day will come when a man-
ager or agent reads your material, flips
out over it and wants to represent you.
Congrats! But the hard work has only just
begun. You need to understand that you
will most likely need to do work on your
script—for free. There, I said it ... FREE.
As a manager, I’m not going to pay you to
rewrite; and I’m not going to submit your
screenplay until I think it’s in good enough
(2004) MAY/JUNE
shape to sell. My advice to you at this stage
is: Suck it up, take our notes seriously, work
fast to turn it around and stay committed to
making your script the best it can be.
Keep in mind, as managers getting into
a new relationship with a writer, we don’t
make any money unless you do. So, we are
working for free as well.
When I was about to graduate college,
I went to get some advice from one of my
best friends’ father. He is a very well-respect-
ed executive around town, and he scared the
crap out of me. He asked me, “What do
you want to be doing five years from now?”
I said, “I want to be very successful in this
business for a very long time, make a lot of
fun movies and make a lot of money.” He
said, “When I was your age, I wanted to
play third base for the Brooklyn Dodgers;
and, in all seriousness, what you want to do
is going to be a lot harder.”
He was right. For every kid out there who
wants to play professional sports, there is
another kid out there who wants to be just
as successful in the movie business. For every
kid out there who pretends he just won the
World Series, there is a kid out there practic-
ing his Academy Award® speech.
" ^ _ p _ f i j g _ h n #
This is not an easy business. You don’t
always know whom to trust. You won’t win
every battle. The best advice I ever got was,
“If you’re not willing to give this five years,
don’t bother giving it five minutes.” Success
is not going to happen overnight; but, if
you hustle your ass off and you fail, at least
you’ll know you went out swinging. The
way you gotta look at it is: Somebody has
to make it big in this business; why the hell
shouldn’t it be you?
TREVOR ENGELSON is a partner at
Underground Films and Management, along
with his business partner, Nick Osborne. They
have a first-look deal through Phoenix Pictures
(Holes, The Thin Red Line, Urban Legends: Final
Cut) based out of the Sony Pictures lot in Culver
City, CA. Through the production side, they
are producing movies such as Range Rats at
Dimension, Destination Unknown at Phoenix,
Flower Girl at Warner Bros., Black Autumn at
Fox 2000, Zoom’s Academy at Revolution, The
Section at Phoenix and many more around
town. Engelson graduated USC in 1998. He
grew up in Great Neck, NY. You can learn more
about Trevor, Nick and Underground by visiting
their web site: Mission-underground.com
scr(i)pt 71
QUICK
FIX AN
INSIDER’S
TIPS
Read your script like the pros do — and
ensure that you get the response that
you deserve.
BY LESLEY
BRACKER
Y
ou may think this article doesn’t
pertain to you, but I promise it does.
Do you wonder why your query
letter or pitch went over so well but nothing
happened after you sent in the script? Do you
wonder why you never heard from the pro-
ducer, agent or executive after you rushed to
send in the requested material, even after you
followed up with several e-mails or calls?
A script based upon a good idea but riddled
with problems will not sell. Pitch festivals and
screenwriting conferences are a great way into
Hollywood. They can open the door for budding screenwriters who
otherwise might not get their script submitted and read. The con-
sensus around town is, while some of these pitches are GREAT and
some of the scripts have a really good idea for a movie, the scripts
contain real problems—the kinds of obstacles that prevent agents,
producers and executives from taking the script to the next level (i.e.
representing the writer, buying or optioning the script or shopping
the script to the studios). Do you want your script to make it to the
next level? Then take the time to clean up your submission by reread-
ing and rewriting with the following 11 common mistakes in mind.
I read lots of screenplays. Over the course of my career in
Hollywood, I’ve probably read close to 5,000 screenplays. About 30
percent of those scripts were written by first-time writers. When I
was the story editor at International Creative Management, I oversaw
14 readers who read and covered all screenplays that were submitted
to the agency, whether for representation or for casting. This job
meant seeing every single screenplay that was making its rounds in
Hollywood. Then, as a creative executive, I read every spec script
looking for a production company over the course of many years.
72 scr(i)pt
My producing partner and I established our company a few years ago,
and newer production companies tend to look for newer writers. We
read everything from screenplays submitted by top agents, to passion
projects that deserve to be realized onscreen, to sample scripts from
managers that introduce us to a new writer’s
work, to screenplays pitched to us at pitch festi-
vals and screenwriting conferences.
The scripts that we receive from the fes-
tivals and conferences, as well as conversa-
tions that I’ve had with agents and produc-
ers, prompt me to write this article. These
screenplays tend to be riddled with problems
that are easily solved but that newer writers
might not know to look for and fix—and
they are problems I see again and again.
These are things that you might not learn in
a screenwriting class, yet they are just as likely
to elicit a negative response as a script without
structure or one written in the wrong format.
These problems scream out “Amateur!” when
we read them. You can take a zillion screenwriting classes, and still
might not know to correct these errors.
On page 74 you’ll find a checklist of the most common, recurring
problems in screenplays submitted by new writers. To ensure that
your screenplay that has been requested at a pitch festival or confer-
ence is read in a positive light and taken seriously, I highly recom-
mend that you read your script 11 times, each time with only one
item on the checklist in mind. Read your script with only number 1
in mind and correct those mistakes. Then, read your script with only
number 2 in mind and make the necessary adjustments, and so on.
1. Typos. Yes, this is the age of spell check; and yes, it’s rare that
we see a screenplay with words misspelled. But, the NUMBER ONE
mistake I see in a non-professional writer’s screenplay is words spelled
correctly (so spell check missed it) but used incorrectly. Example:
Your characters are playing poker, and the dealer deals the “carts.” If
you haven’t fixed these kinds of mistakes, please don’t go any further.
Reread your screenplay with an eye on this problem and ONLY this
problem to make sure that you “due” not have any typos. They are a
true mark of sloppy writing.
scriptmag.com

2. Secondary Characters. Keep tabs on
your secondary characters AT ALL TIMES.
The second most common mistake I see in
a new writer’s script is characters drifting in
and out of the action. Sometimes Joe is in
the scene. Sometimes he’s not in the scene.
Example: The gang leaves the office for a
drink and then goes to play poker. Joe is in
the office scene where they decide to go for
that drink but not at the bar (or not men-
tioned and doesn’t speak), then suddenly
speaks up at the poker game. If your second-
ary characters are part of a group dynamic,
include them whenever your group is on the
move. If the group gets into a car, Joe gets in
the car. If the group goes to Topeka, Joe is in
the diner at lunch when they stop for a bite
so that we’re not surprised when he’s suddenly
in Topeka later. It’s extremely important that
you reread your screenplay to make sure your
characters are on the move and in the proper
scenes and don’t just pop up here and there. I
can’t stress to you how common this error is
and how important it is that you fix it before
submitting to agents and buyers.
3. Time and Circumstance. Does time
lapse realistically? Another common error
in a new writer’s script is that time doesn’t
pass in a realistic frame, nor are the cir-
cumstances truthful. Example: It’s impor-
tant that the company build a new build-
ing. Miraculously, all the top experts are
on the project; and the building is built,
project completed(!) within a matter of
weeks. Not only has the writer ignored
the process by which such a project occurs
(community involvement, personal-life
changes, legalities, finances), but every-
thing happens by tomorrow. Another com-
mon error is when characters move from
city to city—or even across country—and
just suddenly arrive, seemingly employing
witchcraft. To fix this problem, reread your
script paying particular attention to proj-
ects and/or journeys and measure if they
occur in a reasonable amount of time—an
amount of time that matches our reality.
4. Intent. Does your screenplay success-
fully tell the story you intended to tell? All
too often the story you pitched does not
match up to the script you wrote. You may
have INTENDED to tell the story about
Joe and his friends on a road trip to Topeka,
and you pitched this great road-trip movie
" ] l [ ` n #
Ask yourself the question
“What is the story about?” and
answer that question in one
or two sentences. Then, reread
your script, comparing every
single scene to your logline.
… but the script focuses most of its atten-
tion on lunch in the diner. Or, you meant
to write a thriller (and think you wrote
a thriller); but what we read is a script
about Sarah’s obsession with her childhood,
complete with intricate details where you
explore all of the various relationships in
her life, which leaves us wondering where
that thriller that you pitched us is. Know
the rules that govern your screenplay’s genre
and be sure to write what the genre dictates.
If you’ve written a thriller, include a tick-
ing clock. If it’s a romantic comedy, find a
realistic way to keep your lovers apart, and

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(2004) MAY/JUNE scr(i)pt 73

" ] l [ ` n #
screenwriters spend 20 to 40 pages introduc-
ing us to the main character, how he lives
and who is in his life. But movies can’t afford
Top 10 list of recurring problems in amateur that kind of time—remember that 20 pages
of your script equals 20 minutes of screen
screenplays (but this one goes to 11) time. So, here’s your opportunity to do the
most creative writing: Visually describe your
CHECKLIST main character’s room or office (wherever he
is when we first meet him) and use objects
to tell us about him. Is the room a mess?
Is he just waking up, and the clock shows
COMMON PROBLEMS:
us it’s 11:15 a.m.? Is the room spotless? If
1. DUE YOU HAVE THIS PROBLEM? Typos — words that are correct but in the office, is the inbox overflowing with
used incorrectly. papers? Does the phone ring incessantly?
2. NOTHING HAPPENS IN A VOID: Does time lapse realistically? Think of what those visuals communicate
Are the circumstances realistic? to us. Use real-life visual cues, the same cues
3. WHERE’S JOE? Keep tabs of your characters from scene to scene. we use when we first meet someone in our
4. INTENT: Is your story told as you intend it to be told? lives which help us ascertain traits about a
5. CHANNELING ANOTHER VOICE: Consistent dialogue, unique voice. stranger. Spell it out in visual terms. Be brief
and be creative.
7. Don’t Direct. Screenplays should
NEVER include camera angles. It’s tempt-
AND AFTER CHECKING THE FIRST FIVE, LISTEN TO THE TEACHERS: ing for new writers to include camera
angles, specifics of the shot and how
6. SWIFT SET-UP: Set up and establish story in just a few pages.
the scene should be shot, but don’t.
7. DON’T DIRECT: Don’t use camera angles and specific music cues .
Professionals view this as disposable fill-
8. LET ME GET OUT MY RED PEN: Exposition— get rid of all of it.
er, otherwise known as script padding.
9. OOOH, GROSS! Be very aware of how something plays visually. However, if you have a quick cut, it’s
Once is enough.
important to let the reader know that the
10. I, II, III: Act Structure. Further conflict in each scene. action changes quickly; but, do not place
the camera into your scene. Also, resist the
temptation to include specific music that
you think should play over a montage or
AND FINALLY:
in a scene. Again, this is the director’s job.
11. THE PEN IS MIGHTY, BUT NOT THAT MIGHTY: Reality Check. Just Remember that step one is getting past
because you write it doesn’t make it so. a few readers. You don’t want to distract
from the reading process, which is what
camera and music cues do—they distract
from the story you’re telling.
so on. The best way to fix this particular the dialogue itself. Characters in unprofes- 8. Exposition. A dead giveaway of an
problem is to write a logline (if you haven’t sional scripts tend to sound alike while no inexperienced screenwriter is one who
already). Ask yourself the question “What is one character has a unique voice. The best writes expositional dialogue. Many readers
the story about?” and answer that question fix for this is to listen to people around you. (professional readers on up to top execu-
in one or two sentences. Then, reread your Listen to strangers talking. Listen to the tives and agents) won’t give the rest of the
script, comparing every single scene to your ways in which people express themselves. script a chance when they see exposition.
logline. If your logline isn’t being explored Really pay attention to everyone’s unique In fact, readers will make a snap (nega-
or conflict isn’t moving forward in each and voice and bring that insight to your char- tive) judgment about the rest of the mate-
every scene, then your script is not fulfilling acters. Reread your script one character at rial (no matter how intriguing a story)
or meeting your intent. a time to see if your characters sound like when they come upon dialogue where
5. Voice. Many new screenwriters can’t real people who have unique, distinct and characters explain themselves, explain
write dialogue. It’s a cold, hard fact. Either distinguishable voices. Another solution: their past, explain what their plans are in
the dialogue is filled with exposition (char- Pull a group of your friends together and the future and explain their movements
acters explaining what they are doing or have them read your script out loud. What’s within the scene. The number-one rule
what they are about to do) or every charac- tone deaf on the page will become very clear of screenwriting is: Show, don’t tell. If
ter sounds like every other character. Worse, when you hear it spoken. your character is up for a new job, we
the dialogue isn’t consistent. Most of the 6. Set Up. Note that movies set a foun- don’t need to see the interview process or
time, the only differentiation between char- dation within the first few minutes and his first day at work (unless part of the
acters is the typed name at the beginning of that they do this visually. Many budding story involves how the character chokes

74 scr(i)pt scriptmag.com

in interviews or at work). More effec-
tive: Show the character in her new work
uniform or wearing her work badge. This
communicates to us, very quickly, visually
and effectively, that she had the interview,
worked her first day and now has a new
job. Remember, the answer to the ques-
tion “What time is it?” is the time—not
how to build a watch.
9. Visuals. Movies are a powerful, visual
medium. Make use of the fact that you
can communicate a great deal visually (as
discussed in number 6 and number 8), but
be careful not to go overboard. A little goes
a long way. Writers have a great time with
sight gags, which is a good thing. But when
it verges on grotesque, like vomiting or
nose-picking, once is enough. Where there’s
blood and gore, use restraint. If your charac-
ters are gushing blood every fifth scene, edit
it down to only one or two blood-gushing
scenes for the entire movie. The same goes
for alien goo and gore.
10. Act Structure. Simply put, your script
has a clear beginning, middle and end. You
set up your story and introduce conflict (that
moment when your main character’s life will
never be the same again, the moment that
makes him a changed person by the movie’s
end). Build the conflict and heighten it to
the point where your main character is fur-
thest from his goal. Then, resolve it.
11. Reality Check. Even if you’re writing
a science-fiction script, your story must be
based in the reality and rules of the world
in which we live. Scenarios have to ring
true to us. You can make up a world, but
the dynamics and ethics of the world need
to feel familiar to us. Let’s say you want
your characters to stumble upon a strip
club while they’re out shopping in the mall.
Remember that it doesn’t make sense that
a strip club would be in a mall, so don’t
make it up to fit what you want to have
happen. Let’s say your character needs a
wealthy man, á la Donald Trump, to fund
his project. It’s unlikely that he would be
able to just stroll into Trump’s office. Don’t
write that at one particular, very unusual
and lucky moment, he just happens to be
able to walk in and talk to Trump AND
get him interested in the project with
ease—the world simply doesn’t work that
way. Another scenario: Your main charac-
ter becomes famous impersonating Elvis
Presley. It’s highly unlikely that he will
become so famous within one week that
he is on Oprah by Friday. The reality is
(2004) MAY/JUNE
that there are thousands of Elvis imperson-
ators out there, and I can’t imagine a world
where one becomes incredibly famous out
of nowhere, overnight, and then is a guest
on Oprah by week’s end.
Remember that those who read scripts for
a living believe that the next great, unpro-
duced writer is out there somewhere; and
they want you to succeed. They are looking
for good material, and they do not want to
see you fail. They want you to create the
great new story; they want to find a script
with an original idea. They want to find
you and your great script. It’s important that
your story is told in the best, most profes-
sional manner so that you can get (and keep)
their attention. If your script has any of the
gaffes mentioned above, you give the reader
a reason to stop reading and move on to
the next one in the pile. Never forget that a
screenplay is reading material, so make it a
smooth, easy and enjoyable read. Don’t dis-
tract your reader with things like exposition
or camera angles. Don’t annoy your reader
with sloppy oversights like typos.
Time is money. There is a huge prolifera-
tion of material submitted daily; and every
script takes up to 90 minutes to read. Many
agents, executives and readers will give you
master of fine arts in creative writing
intensive residency program
M.F.A. in Creative Writing
Paul Selig, Program Director
1-800-468-4888
" ] l [ ` n #
the benefit of the doubt for 20 pages;
but—if they see any of the mistakes listed
above—you have lost their interest. They
simply don’t have the time to work their
way through to find the story, and they cer-
tainly wouldn’t trust that you can fix these
mistakes yourself if you didn’t catch them
before submitting the script. Executives,
producers, agents and readers have anywhere
from six to 10 scripts to read in a weekend.
(That’s one or two scripts on Friday night
after dinner, part of Saturday and a full
Sunday reading.) You don’t want to give
them a reason to put your script down, so
take the time to clean up the mistakes.
LESLEY BRACKER is the founder of The
Writers Channel (Writerschannel.net), an online
screenwriting community that connects, teaches and
offers opportunities to screenwriters. She has been
an executive at ICM and various production compa-
nies in Hollywood, mostly based at Warner Bros. She
and her producing partner formed Bracker/Varady
in 2002 to produce independent films and have two
features currently in production.
MFAW/SC
goddard.edu
scr(i)pt 75
 " g _ _ n  n b _  l _ [ ^ _ l #
CONVE NTIONAL C LIC HÉS—PART FOU R
For the past three issues, we’ve been examining the conventions and clichés of the major screenwriting genres. We’ve
defined a convention as being an element essential to a specific genre and a cliché as a way of implementing a con-
vention that has gone stale. We have previously examined Drama, Comedy, Mystery, Thrillers, Adventure and Action.
In this issue, we’ll conclude with ...
WESTERNS
The Western is a lot like the Romantic
Comedy and the Fish-Out-of-Water story.
The genre’s conventions are so specific and
necessary that they have to be used all the
time (because if you don’t, then what you’re
writing wouldn’t be a Western) and, thus,
have become its clichés as well.
There really are only three basic Western
plots: the (good) Homesteaders versus the
(evil) Cattlemen (She Wore a Yellow Ribbon,
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral); the retired
Gunman who is forced to pick up his
guns one last time (Shane, Unforgiven);
the (civilized) Americans versus the (sav-
age) Indians (The Searchers)—a plotline
that, in more recent and enlightened times,
has been reversed to become the (noble)
Native Americans versus the (invading)
U.S. Oppressors (Dances With Wolves), a
necessary change that has become so stan-
dard it is now something of a cliché itself.
Conventions and clichés include:
Pious settlers; evil cattlemen; heroic caval-
rymen (who have given way to the culturally
insensitive Colonizer); savage, monosyllabic
Injuns (who have given way to the mysti-
cal, holistic Native Americans); dance hall
girls; cattle drives; saloon fights; horse chases;
shootouts on dusty Western streets; the last-
minute cavalry ride to the rescue.
WAR FILMS
The classic War film (as opposed to
Comedies, Dramas and Action films set
in a military environment) is usually either
a Coming-of-Age story about innocent or
inexperienced young men whose characters
are forged on the field of battle (All Quiet
on the Western Front, Saving Private Ryan)
or a Clash of the Titans epic in which the
fate of civilization hangs on the outcome of
a momentous battle between the forces of
good and evil (Pork Chop Hill, A Bridge Too
Far, Gettysburg).
Clichés include:
The portentous opening crawl that provides
76 scr(i)pt
by Ray Morton
us with the historical and philosophical con-
text of the battles to come.
The tough-as-nails sergeant or drill
instructor who is brutally hard on his men
but, in the end, proves to be a kindly father
figure with a heart of gold.
The multiethnic platoon made up of a ste-
reotypical member of each major demograph-
ic group (the clean-cut White-Bread from
the Midwest, the brainy Asian-American
from San Francisco, the streetwise African-
American from Detroit, the good ol’ Boy
from Down South and the Jewish Intellectual
from Brooklyn, U.S.A.).
The cowardly young soldier who turns
tail and runs in his first fight but who even-
tually turns around and proves himself in
the film’s final conflict.
The green-but-arrogant young lieutenant
from a privileged background whom the men
initially scorn because of his elitist attitudes
and his inexperienced judgment but who
eventually earns their respect when he drops
the pretense, falls into the trenches and fights
alongside them, usually dying in the process.
The sensitive, poetic, young recruit who
yearns to be a writer and keeps a diary of
his unit’s adventures, intending to someday
turn it into a book; but who, after seeing the
horrors of war, eventually throws the book
away, realizing that mere words can never do
justice to the things he has witnessed.
The refined, cultured enemy commander
(who has usually been educated in the best
universities of the opposition’s home coun-
try) who longs for the civilized refinements
of home and is repulsed by the barbaric
nature of his own men but who is perfectly
capable of becoming as savage as he needs to
when the time comes (although he is really,
really conflicted by it).
The “once more unto the breach” speech
the commander gives his men just as they
are about to launch into the final battle.
SCIENCE FICTION
In filmmaking terms, there really is no
Clint Eastwood as William ‘Bill’ Munny in
Unforgiven, written by David Webb Peoples
such genre as Science Fiction, at least in
the traditional, literary meaning of that
term. With rare exceptions, films classified
as Science Fiction are actually Quest films,
Coming-of-Age films, Action movies, War
films, Thrillers or Horror movies adorned
with futuristic or outer-space trappings.
Thus, the scripts of such films adhere to the
conventions and fall victim to the clichés of
those root genres. Those trappings, however,
also come with their own set of pretty deadly
(“Danger, danger, Will Robinson”) clichés.
Clichés include:
Awkward attempts to give common, every-
day objects “futuristic” or “otherworldly”
names (i.e. calling a washing machine an
“oscillating, H2O-based, garment de-dirty-
fier”). The companion to this is the equally
awkward attempt to come up with interga-
lactic replacements for earth time (i.e. “I’ll see
you in a few sectons,” or “I am 12 yarno old,
which is equal to 436 of your earth years”).
Any premise involving Roswell, alien inva-
sions, time travel or a prophecy of “The
One.” All have been done to death and
deserve to be given a rest for many yarnos.
The idea that, although our own planet is
divided into many nations with myriad cli-
mates, languages, ethnic groups and forms
of governments, all alien worlds have but
a single climate, language, race and style of
scriptmag.com

leadership. Alternately, the notion that all
alien races have a terrific command of the
English language (and can speak it with a
terrifically clipped British accent).
The physically impossible idea that a two-
story tall, 12-armed, three-headed alien can
camouflage itself as a normally proportioned
human being.
The attempt to place futuristic characters
into an understandable historical context by
tacking their names onto a list of well-known
historical figures (i.e. “He will take his place
beside such villains as Attila the Hun, Adolph
Hitler and Glorbon the Annihilator”).
The premise that war-like alien races—
that eat raw meat, have no grasp of simple
hygiene and slay their own subordinates
for speaking out of turn—are capable of
mastering all of the scientific disciplines
necessary to build and maintain futuristic,
faster-than-light spacecraft.
The notions that spaceships can be driven
like cars (i.e. they can slow down, speed
up, stop dead, turn on a dime or even back
up), that you can zip around impenetrably
vast universes in a matter of hours as long
as you use “light” or “warp” speed to make
the jump to something called “hyperspace”
(all scientifically impossible concepts, by the
way), and that, in the future, you will be
able to set any and all weapons on “stun.”
HORROR FILMS
Horror films generally concern themselves
with regular humans (often doctors, scien-
tists or nubile, young teenage campers) who
encounter either supernatural or scientifically
anomalous forces; deranged, psychopathic
madmen; or nasty, horrible monsters, often
in extremely desolate or remote locations.
The protagonists are terrorized by the evil
antagonist, usually losing all of their resources
and loved ones in the process until the last
moment of the story when they are finally
able to turn the tables and defeat him (or
them or it) just in time for the credits to roll.
Clichés include:
The Ten Little Indians plotline, in which
a large cast of characters is killed off one by
one until just a single one (often a plucky,
resourceful female) remains. The cliché is
compounded if the victims are horny teenag-
ers who are killed off just after getting it on.
Plots involving Satan—temptation by
Satan, possession by Satan, sacrifices to
Satan, Satan incarnated as a human, Satan’s
child, impregnating young women with
Satan’s child, Satan’s fulfilling his community
(2004) MAY/JUNE
" g _ _ n  n b _  l _ [ ^ _ l #
service requirement by coaching a ragtag
young hockey team made up of lovable It’s about the dream...
moffets ... I mean, The Exorcist and The It’s about your potential...
Omen were pretty good movies; but, after a I t ’s a b o u t t h e P R O C E S S !
while, you just have to say “to hell with it.”
Stories involving monsters that hide
themselves inside humans, leading to the
inevitable scene in which everyone in the
The
cast suspects everyone else of being the Complete
monster until we find out that it is actually Screenplay
hiding inside the character no one suspects
(usually a child, an old person or a cat).
The following characters: priests who have Sally B. Merlin,
lost their faith but regain it after confront- Script Doctor
ing evil or rampaging, homicidal maniacs
who wear masks (hockey, leather-faced or “She is known as a person who
otherwise) and kill their victims with some finds emerging talent, nurtures it,
manner of garden tool.
and finds it a home. She has been
Weird, raving, one-eyed old men who
warn the main characters of the horrors that instrumental in the careers of some
are about to befall them but is dismissed as of Hollywood’s most exceptional
crazy until the carnage begins (and prompt- talent.” Kathleen Kennedy, President,
ing the inevitable line “We should have
Amblin’ Entertainment (1979-1994)
listened to the old man”).
The impossible-to-kill monster/villain
that, no matter how many times he/it is CALL FOR DETAILS 410-674-4544
sliced, diced, shot, stabbed, burned, blown www.completescreenplay.com
up or blended, just keeps on a-coming.
Finally, the “surprise” ending in which the
monster who has been completely and thor-
oughly killed in the one certain way that the
film has assured us it can be killed, magically
pops back up and begins killing again for no
logical reason other than the producers have
figured out how much they’ll be able to make
from producing a series of direct-to-video
sequels as quickly and as cheaply as possible.
Well, after eight months and four issues,
we’ve come to the end of our survey. I hope
the conventions I’ve cited will help you con-
ceptualize your stories and focus your plots.
Also, I hope the compendium of clichés will
help you avoid the hackneyed notions and
stale ideas that could rob your script of the
freshness and originality it needs to become
the success it deserves to be. Good luck!
Special thanks to Bill Morton, Andrew
Morton and Raymond Morton Sr. for their
invaluable input and assistance with this
column.
RAY MORTON is a writer, script consultant and
script reader. He has worked for a variety of
producers, production companies and screen-
writers. He is the author of several teleplays
and screenplays as well as this column and can
be reached at Mzort79@aol.com or on the
Done Deal “scr(i)pt magazine” message board
(Scriptsales.com).
scr(i)pt 77
 " n b _  \ o m c h _ m m #
by Andrew Schneider

SALES FORCE lord to get revenge. Mike Karz will produce the project, with
Russell Hollander and Chris Smith serving as the film’s executive
Who Sold What producers. New Line President of Production Toby Emmerich
will oversee Inferno along with executives Kent Alterman, Keith
to Whom and for Goldberg and Michelle Weiss. Jung and Dandois are also writ-
ing the action adventure Solomon Kane for Samuel Hadida’s
How Much? Metropolitan Films.

SPECS
Double Feature Films and Universal Pictures have picked
up Casey McCabe’s spec script The Good Life in a preemp-
tive deal for mid- against high-six figures. The project is being
described as a female romantic comedy in the vein of 9 to 5 and
Working Girl. McCabe’s other credits include a rewrite on New
Line Cinema’s Leisureworld, a story about a young, burnt-out
corporate executive who moves into a Florida retirement home.
Ivan Reitman and Tom Pollock’s Montecito Picture Co. bought
McCabe’s original script Raised on Robbery about an accountant
tempted to return to a life of crime. McCabe was repped by
Jordan Bayer and Original Artists.
New Line Cinema has purchased David Jung and Steve
Dandois’ action thriller Inferno for an undisclosed amount,
with Karz Entertainment set to produce. The story focuses on
a betrayed narcotics officer who resurrects himself as a gang
MGM has bought the spec script Unleashing the Mules for mid-
six figures from writer Christopher Parker. The screenplay is an
inspiring drama based upon Deke Edwards, a blind wrestler who
became a two-time state wrestling champ in Missouri despite his
disability. The film revolves around the bond between the athlete
and his coach, who helped the young man wrestle with adversity
when he lost his sight at 13 years of age. Despite the hardship,
Edwards became dominant in the 112-pound division, finishing
with a record of 57 wins and only two losses in high school. Alex
Gartner will produce the project, and executives Pete Chiarelli
and Eric Paquette will oversee development.
Revolution Studios has purchased the spec Will from first-
time screenwriter Josh A. Cagan for partner Elaine Goldsmith-
Thomas to produce. The project’s story centers on an outcast and
how he finds his way among a high school’s cliques and bullies.
Revolution East’s Marisa Yeres brought the script into the studio.

Announcing Hollywood’s Newest Triple Threat

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78 scr(i)pt scriptmag.com
 " n b _  \ o m c h _ m m #

Goldsmith-Thomas most recently produced
the Julia Roberts drama Mona Lisa Smile
Paramount Pictures has paid mid-six
figures for an untitled comedy spec from
scribe Phil Beauman (Scary Mov e) for
Carsey-Werner-Mandebach Films to pro-
duce. The project, which spoofs dance mov-
ies, will focu on young performers seeking
stardom and draw upon the studios library
of similar da c film , uch as Flashdance,
Grease and aturd y Night Fever. The studio
is al o known for such parodies as both
Airplane! films and The Naked Gun series.
CWM partners Ma cy Carsey, Tom Werner
and Caryn Mandebach will produce with
Carr D’Angelo and Beauman executive
producing. Beauman’s other writing cred-
its include Not Another Teen Movie and
Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While
Drinking Your Juice in the Hood. He’s also
developing Skip Day, a comedy in the vein
of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, with MTV and
Original Films producing for Paramount.
Beauman was repped in the deal by attor-
ney Jared Levine, Nicole Clemens and
International Creative Management.
Working Title Films has acquired David
Logan’s action spec The Rip for low- against
high-six figures. The project is said to be
loosely based upon the failed 2000 attempt
by six thieves to steal $500 million in De
Beers diamonds, including the Millennium
Star—the third largest diamond in the
world—from London’s Millennium Dome.
Police were informed of the heist before-
hand and arrested the thieves on location.
The Rip centers around a thief hired to steal
the diamonds from the Dome who uses the
initial theft as a diversion for a score twice
the size. James Gibb will produce the film
with Working Title’s Tim Bevan and Eric
Fellner. Executives Chris Clark and Justin
Trefgarne are overseeing the project out
of the company’s London offices. Logan
most recently wrote versions of The Last
Word, with John Woo attached to direct at
Columbia, and the science-fiction actioner
Echo at Fox 2000.
New Line Cinema has purchased the
William Tepper script Men Don’t Quit with
plans of pairing Ray Romano (Everybody
Loves Raymond) with Kevin James (King of
Queens) to star. Romano and James, who
are buddies from the stand-up comedy
circuit, would play friends who team as
door-to-door salesmen of mass quanti-
ties of frozen meat. They’re in a slump;
and if they don’t move some beef in a
hurry, they’re dead meat. Jon Klane, Brad
Jenkel and Tepper are producing the proj-
ect. Tepper is an actor-turned-writer best
known for his starring role in the Jack
Nicholson-directed Drive, He Said.
DreamWorks has paid low- against
mid-six figures for the script Red Eye
by television scribe Carl Ellsworth.
The story centers around a woman
held captive on an airplane, whose cap-
tor threatens to kill her father unless
she helps arrange the assassination of
a wealthy businessman. The project is
being described as Phone Booth on an air-
plane. Mason Novick will produce, and
DreamWorks’ executives Mark Sourian
and Marc Haimes will oversee devel-
opment. The script is Ellsworth’s first
feature project. His broad TV credits
include episodes of Buffy the Vampire
Slayer and Cleopatra 2525. Ellsworth is
repped by Robert Lazar and ICM.

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" n b _  \ o m c h _ m m #
Seth MacFarlane (Family Guy) will oversee the project, which will be produced
co-write and make his debut as director on by Melanie Johansson, Alexandra Milchan

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the comedy Family Reunion for Spyglass and Gilles Arondeau.
Entertainment. The project, also being
co-written by Mike Barker and Matthew Paramount Pictures has acquired the

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Working Together
to Protect Your
Independence
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10 minutes of your time.
10 years protection.
Weitzman, focuses on a dysfunctional fami-
ly who comes together every fives years for a
reunion. Spyglass partners Roger Birnbaum,
Gary Barber and Jonathan Glickman are
producing the film with producer John
Jacobs. At the age of 24, MacFarlane created
and wrote Family Guy for Fox and voiced
some of the main characters. He is cur-
rently working on a new animated comedy
pilot for Fox, American Dad. MacFarlane is
repped by Endeavor, First Entertainment
and William Morris Agency.
Universal Pictures has purchased the
romantic comedy spec 32 and Single from
writer Ken Rance for an undisclosed
amount. The script is a fish-out-of-water
tale about a New York businesswoman who
must oversee the closing of a small-town
factory while she re-evaluates her big-city
values. Darryl Taja and Tracey Edmonds are
producing, with Scott Stuber and Donna
Langley overseeing for the studio. Rance
also co-wrote the urban horror Homecoming:
The Revenge, which is set up at Fox.
PITCHES
First-time scribes Paul Benson and Matt
Sullivan have sold an untitled martial arts
spoof to Dream Entertainment for an
undisclosed amount. The duo’s original
pitch parodies such films as Kill Bill Vol. 1
and Rush Hour. Dream principals Yitzhak
Ginsberg and Ehud Bleiberg will produce
the film. The writing duo are penning
another spoof script for the Dream clay-
mation project Disaster, with Roy Wood
set to direct.
pitch The User from the writing team
of Eric Abrams and Matthew Berry for
Guy Walks Into a Bar and Penn Station to
produce. The story focuses on a soon-to-
be groom who unknowingly becomes the
subject of an angry female rock anthem.
Guy Walks Into a Bar principals Todd
Komarnicki and Jon Berg will produce
along with Penn Station’s Michael Aguilar
and Dean Georgaris. Warner Bros. Pictures
hired Abrams and Berry last fall to write
the live-action feature adaptation of
Cartoon Network’s Johnny Bravo. The writ-
ers were repped in the deal by Andy Elkin,
Creative Artists Agency and firmIndustry
Entertainment.
Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher’s Red
Wagon Entertainment has purchased a pitch
from Leigh Dunlap for Columbia Pictures.
The story is based upon an article in Sunday
Telegraph magazine called “Girls Allowed,”
by Alexandra Jacobs. Dunlap will pen the
script, titled Camp Rockaway, about two
girls on opposite ends of the music spec-
trum who meet at a rock ‘n’ roll summer
camp. At “parents’ weekend” the girls realize
their single parents have been secretly dating
and seek to break them up. Rachel Shane
will oversee the project for Red Wagon.
At Sony, Co-President of Production Matt
Tolmach and Executive Vice President of
Production Amy Baer will oversee the film.
Dunlap wrote the Hilary Duff romantic
comedy A Cinderella Story currently in post-
production at Warner Bros. Pictures. The
writer is repped by Genesis and managed by
Anonymous Content.

Lions Gate Films has purchased Napoleon
and Betsy, a pitch for a drama about the
friendship between Napoleon Bonaparte
and a young British girl, for an undisclosed
amount. Actress Scarlett Johansson (Lost in
Translation) pitched the idea with Rebecca
B. Kennedy, the screenwriter who is pen-
ning the script. The project tells the story
of the emperor’s final years as seen through
the girl’s eyes. Initially defiant and wanting
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to escape, Bonaparte tries to enlist her in
his fantasy to regain power but eventually
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becomes resigned to his fate. Lions Gate’s
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Michael Burns and Mike Paseornek will
Paramount Pictures has paid a sizable six
figures to acquire Tina Chism’s pitch Lights
Out for Lynda Obst Prods. to produce.
The project, a romantic comedy, is set in
New York and focuses on a woman who is
preparing for what could be the best blind
date of her life. However, the city suffers a
blackout, and she and her date are forced
to search for each other under impos-
sible conditions. Lynda Obst will produce,
with Donald De Line and Karen Rosenfelt
overseeing. Chism previously wrote the
successful film Drumline for Fox 2000. Her
other projects include upcoming Jelly Beans

80 scr(i)pt scriptmag.com

for Warner Bros. Pictures and Nappily
Ever After for Universal Pictures. Chism
is repped by William Morris Agency and
attorney Matthew Johnson at Ziffren,
Brittenham, Branca, Fischer, Gilbert-Lurie
& Stiffelman.
BOOKS
Best-selling author Judy Blume, film-
maker Lawrence Blume and producer Jane
Startz have signed a multipicture pact at
the Walt Disney Studios to develop and
produce films based upon Blume’s books.
Tashmoo Prods. and Jane Startz Prods.
will adapt several of Blume’s books start-
ing with Deenie, Blume’s best-seller about
a young woman’s struggles to define her-
self independently from the expectations
her parents have for her. Startz, Blume
and Tashmoo President Lawrence Blume
(son of author Judy) will produce the
project, with Startz Prods. Vice President
Gillian MacKenzie serving as co-produc-
er. Judy Blume’s books have sold more
than 75 million copies worldwide, and
six of her works are among the top 10 all-
time best-selling children’s books. Blume
is repped by Owen Laster and William
Morris Agency.
Universal Pictures has gained rights
to Scottish comics writer Mark Millar’s
Wanted series for Marc Platt to produce.
Millar has written for Marvel’s top comics,
including Ultimate X-Men and Ultimate
Fantastic Four, and has also penned
Superman: Red Son for DC Comics. Wanted
is a title that Millar wrote and independent-
ly published through his own Millarworld
imprint and Top Cow distributor. The
comic is a dark tale with a shortage of good
guys, featuring a white-collar worker who
hates his job, girlfriend and life and discov-
ers he’s the son of the most evil supervillain
on Earth. When his father is murdered,
the angry young man inherits his father’s
superpowers and begins life among the
other supervillains who secretly control the
planet. Platt is currently seeking a writer to
bring on to the project. Millar is repped by
Ken Levin and attorney Karl Austen.
Producer Rudy Langlais (The Hurricane)
has purchased feature rights to the book
and screenplay Miles and Me by Miles
Davis biographer and former California
poet laureate Quincy Troupe. Miles and Me
tells the story of the relationship between
(2004) MAY/JUNE
" n b _  \ o m c h _ m m #
Troupe and Davis while exploring the life of
the legendary jazz musician. When Langlais
was executive editor of Spin magazine 15
years ago, he assigned Troupe to interview
Davis. That interview led Troupe to col-
laborate with Davis on his autobiography
and, later, to Miles and Me, which the
University of California Press published in
2002. Troupe is the author of 14 books,
including seven volumes of poetry, and has
also won two American Book Awards as
well as the Peabody Award for co-producing
and writing the radio series The Miles Davis
Radio Project.
Screenwriter Steve Conrad has signed
a high-six-figure deal to pen the adapta-
tion of Chang-Rae Lee’s novel Aloft for
Warner Bros. Pictures to produce. The
studio bought the rights to the book last
December with producer Scott Rudin.
Aloft is the tale of an aging baby boomer
who must hold together his broken family.
The book, being published by Riverhead
Books, was excerpted in the New Yorker.
Vice President of Production Jeff Clifford is
overseeing the project for Warner Bros. with
Rudin Prods.’ Los Angeles President Scott
Aversano. Conrad recently scripted The
Weather Man for director Gore Verbinski
and The Untitled Chris Gardner Project for
Escape Artists.
Filmmaker John Walter is uniting with
John Malkovich’s production company
Mr. Mudd for an adaptation of Lawrence
Joseph’s novel Lawyerland, which Walter
will write and direct. Mr. Mudd partners
Malkovich, Lianne Halfon and Russell
Smith are producing the project which
is being developed with United Artists
through Mr. Mudd’s first-look deal with
the studio. The novel, published in 1997,
chronicles Manhattan lawyers and lawyer-
speak in the late 90s. Lawrence, a law
professor and published poet, re-enacts
conversations he’s had with attorneys,
revealing the gritty and greedy cynicism
of the profession while mixing fact and
fiction to humorous effect. Walter and
Mr. Mudd also joined on How to Draw
a Bunny, the documentary which took
home the Special Jury Prize at the 2002
Sundance Film Festival and the Prix de
Public at the Recontre Film Fest in Paris.
Walter just completed production on In
Search of Ted Demme, a tribute to the late
filmmaker, with the Independent Film
scr(i)pt 81
" n b _  \ o m c h _ m m #
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82 scr(i)pt
Channel and Apostle Pictures. Walter is
repped by Gersh Agency.
OTHER DEALS
Paramount Pictures has signed Sheldon
Turner, one of Hollywood’s most sought-
after scribes, to write the script Hot Dog
Vendor. The comedy will focus initially
on the rivalry between two hot dog ven-
dors in downtown L.A., with actor Johnny
Knoxville portraying an ex-con forced into
the business by his parole officer. The
pair eventually come together to take on
a common enemy, their mutual hot dog-
vending enemy. Knoxville is also produc-
ing, along with MTV Films, Art Linson
and John Linson. Turner recently signed a
blind script deal at Paramount Pictures and
wrote the first draft of Paramount/Sony’s
The Longest Yard. He’s also written a pair
of thrillers for MGM, Scrawl and Pursuit.
Turner is repped by Endeavor, Benderspink
and United Talent Agency.
Writer/producer Curt Johnson has
optioned life rights to develop a feature
from the story of 90s boxing star Tommy
Morrison, one of the few high-profile sports
figures forced into retirement after testing
positive for HIV. Morrison was scheduled to
box Mike Tyson upon Tyson’s release from
prison. He was diagnosed with the disease
during pre-fight screening in 1996, caus-
ing the cancellation of the scheduled bout
and shocking the boxing world. Morrison
wanted to continue fighting, but no U.S.
boxing organization would sanction his
fights. In addition to life rights, Johnson
secured rights to two ESPN magazine arti-
cles by Tom Friend about Morrison in 1998
and 2003. Those profiles examine not only
the heavyweight champion’s professional
career and his controversial choice to avoid
protease inhibitor treatment, but also the
boxer’s tough origins. Johnson will write the
script and will produce it through his Indie
Genius Prods. banner with Gigi Gaston.
Face/Off screenwriters Mike Werb and
Michael Colleary have been tapped by
Paramount Pictures to script a remake of
the horror thriller Pet Sematary. The proj-
ect is based upon Stephen King’s story of
a family moving to a small town in Maine
with a pet cemetery and an Indian burial
ground. Paramount-based Alphaville will
produce the film. The writers, who joined
together after Werb wrote The Mask, most
recently penned the pilot for the small-
screen version of S.W.A.T. for Sony Pictures
Television, and the science-fiction drama
Alien Prison for Columbia Pictures with
Red Wagon.
Paramount Pictures has inked Oscar®-
winning writer Christopher McQuarrie
(The Usual Suspects) to script an untitled
military action-adventure for Paramount-
based Alphaville. The project will be pro-
duced by Alphaville’s Sean Daniel and
Jim Jacks along with Michelle Manning.
McQuarrie will serve as an executive pro-
ducer. The producers have slated Mark
Stefanich, a former Navy SEAL and a
member of the organization’s Team 6, to
co-produce the film. The story will focus
on the fate of a special forces team assigned
to test the security of the most sensitive
government and military installations. Due
to an overzealous execution of orders, the
team becomes disbanded and the members
are expelled from the military. A year later,
the members are asked to reunite and
stop the terrorist activities of a group that
has adopted their tactics and techniques.
McQuarrie, who previously wrote and
directed The Way of the Gun, is repped by
manager Ken Kamins.
Miramax has hired feature and televi-
sion writer Scott Fifer to pen two upcom-
ing projects, a remake of the Belgian
comedy Everybody Famous! and Project
Bigfoot, a family adventure set in the
world of monster trucks. Nominated for
the best foreign-language film Oscar in
2001, Everybody Famous! focuses on a
middle-aged factory worker who, after
trying to pin his own failed aspirations
as a songwriter on his teenage daughter,
kidnaps a pop star in order to realize his
music dreams. Fifer has signed to rewrite
the project based upon Belgian director
Dominique Deruddere’s original screen-
play. Radar Pictures is producing the
remake. Miramax Senior Vice President
of Production and Development Michelle
Raimo and Director of Production and
Development Eric Robinson are oversee-
ing the project for the studio, reporting to
Co-President of Production Meryl Poster.
Shawn Gorman will oversee the film
for Radar. For Project Bigfoot, Miramax
executive Laura Rister and Production
Co-President Bob Osher will oversee the
project for the studio.
scriptmag.com