Write What You Have
Now, look, I know I’m pretty hard on Stupid Blogger, because, well…I think it’s pretty clear. Maybe I’ve only devoted one officially sanctioned Stan Has Issues™ post to her, but I still read her blog daily and mock her to pretty much anyone who will listen. I won’t start some kind of blog jihad because that’d make me look publicly crazy. I’m really only prepared to look crazy in private, where my friends can assemble behind my book and discuss how worried they are about me and my obsession with people I find intellectually inferior.
But she wrote something recently that, while comically moronic, gives me a good subject to broach from a screenwriting standpoint.
It goes like this: she’s written a short film she intends to shoot herself. She intended this all along, but suddenly she finds herself going haywire because one particular shot — difficult to just go off and get, because she lives in Los Angeles and this involves snow and evergreen-covered mountains — seems impossible to achieve, yet for reasons unknown but apparently very important to her, the shot cannot be changed or altered in any significant way.
So, you know, I’m not really a qualified expert on anything, but I did cut my professional teeth writing short scripts with the intention of shooting them. I don’t know where I picked up this advice, so I can’t attribute it to anyone (for the sake of argument, let’s say I just figured it out on my own — therefore, I get all the credit), but I started thinking of it like this: “write what you have.” A little play on the old “write what you know” philosophy; I have complicated feelings about that particular sentiment, but now is not the time.
“Write what you have” is pretty simple: what or who do you have access to and/or what can you find easily and inexpensively? If, for instance, you need a sleepy, snow-covered village in the Pacific Northwest, planning to shoot it in L.A. in July is not writing what you have. Maybe it works for that particular story, but the point of writing what you have is to take stock of everything you have and conceive a story utilizing everything to its fullest.
Every short script I’ve ever written, if it has a scene that takes place in a house, I picture the layout as my house. The decor changes, the people living in it change, but the physical floor-plan is always identical. Because I know I can get it. If somebody wants to donate a cooler looking space — or a different looking space, just for the sake of variety — it’s easy enough to revise, but if you look at all my old short scripts, I guarantee every single house will have the same layout details.
If you’re working in film and don’t know any actors whatsoever, you’re doing something wrong. So I’m taking it for granted that you, budding filmmaker, know some actors. How many? What can they do? Play to their strengths or play to their desires — if, for instance, he’s been cast as Biff Loman in 30 different productions of Death of a Salesman and he’s sick of the role, no matter how well he plays it, you don’t want to cast him as a seething cauldron of filial angst. If he loves embodying that type of role, go for it. He’ll give it his all.
Try to accommodate yourself so you aren’t wasting shitloads of money on things that aren’t feasible. Although I didn’t write it with the intention of ever shooting it, I developed a pretty strong desire to shoot “Bessie,” but I’m not made of money. How am I going to afford to rent a soundstage to build a barn replica with a retractable floor that hides a Saturday Night Fever-style light-up floor? The Vietnam sequences are almost plausible with the aid of a good Army surplus store, but how am I supposed to direct the actions of a cow? Even if animal trainers worked cows (I’m not sure if they do or not), again, it’s more money shit.
So it gives you two easy options: either rewrite the script or don’t shoot it. It’s easy as that. A third, less-easy option is to find a way. A friend suggested going down to Southern Indiana, which has many haunted forests that have an eerily similar feel to Southeast Asian canopy jungle (I’m not even joking — it’s more like Vietnam than it is like Colorado). I could contact a few open-minded farmers who might help wrangle the cow. I mean, half the joke is the cow just stands there like a lump. I’m pretty sure you don’t need a trainer to coach a cow to act inert. Bottom line: I could try to make it happen. I didn’t have the ambition for all that, though, but it is possible.
At the time I shot my masterpiece “The Love Switch,” I had fairly limited resources. Most everyone I knew was out of town for the summer, so I relied on an actor/friend, a classmate, and my dad. I was the one-man crew, and that was that. It turned out much better than I expected considering it cost a grand total of $50 (for the two blow-up dolls). I originally had a much more ambitious idea for the story — primarily revolving around the protagonist attempting to “get off” with a blow-up doll before a big date, but getting his dick stuck in the doll for some reason — but I didn’t have the time, money, or resources to pull off my original ideas, so I abandoned them in favor of what I could accomplish, and I think it’s a better film for it. Maybe you’ll disagree, but fuck off.
That’s all there is to it — take stock of what you have, what you can get (either with ease or difficulty), and figure out what you’re willing to do and spend to make the dream happen. Maybe Stupid Blogger will get her snow-covered shot. Maybe she’ll wait until February to truly finish the film, if it’s that important to her. For my money, that’s the most plausible action; the comments left on that post from industry folk were fucking retarded, ridiculous and convoluted and more expensive than simply waiting.
Take my advice, young filmmakers: write what you have, then what you know, then what you really wish you could do if a million dollars and professional crew dropped in your lap for your 30-minute short.
Posted by Stan on June 11, 2008 1:13 PM | Permalink | Career-Based Rambling | Digg It
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