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Out of the Moment

I always tend to worry about this problem, which I’m sure I’ve complained about before: novice writers reading shooting drafts. Everybody knows the phrase “development hell,” but few seem to realize that, even if a script doesn’t spend a decade or more in development, all scripts go through a process of development between their selling and shooting drafts. Even ones with largely apocryphal “we told them to shoot it as-is, because it was perfect!” stories attached to them. I worry that certain writers don’t know this, and as evidenced by one of the comically ignorant comments I received for my Fuckbuddies analysis, I have a basis for my concern. (This is not to ignore the fact that many scripts even change between the shooting draft and he actual, finished film — but that issue has little to do with what I intend to talk about today.)

Think about the audience of a selling draft, versus a shooting draft. A shooting draft is sold, and it’s going to get shot. It exists as a blueprint for technicians to follow in pursuit of a good movie. You can clutter it with sarcasm, inside jokes, meta-commentary, whatever you want. I’m still of a school of thought that you shouldn’t, but that’s my choice. Other people can do other things, and it doesn’t make much of a difference to me. (Although, as someone who reads shooting drafts for a living, I can tell you that when a writer’s style drives me nuts, it colors my opinion of the overall work whether I want it to or not. Again, that’s sort of beside the point for the moment.)

On the other hand, a selling draft exists to get sold. This is where skill as a writer comes into play, big-time. Raymond Chandler famously said, “The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement.” He wasn’t wrong 60 years ago, and he’s even less wrong now. (Seriously, go look at one of Chandler’s scripts, or any other script from the ’40s and ’50s, and compare it to screenplays from today. He sounds like kind of a whiner, doesn’t he?) On top of that challenge, you have to give people a sense that your screenplay will make a great movie. In order to do that, you have to give your prospective audience the experience of your script as a movie.

You can’t rely on pithy William Goldman and Shane Black crap. Writing “this is the best swordfight in screen history” when you’ve won two Oscars for screenwriting is a lot different than doing it when nobody knows your name. You have to actually write the swordfight, and give it the sweaty, breathless excitement you imagine in your head.

Here’s what you don’t do: “He punches a wall or something.” That’s a line of action block from a shooting script. I get it — it’s a bit of sly meta-commentary, showing the writer really gets that the director controls everything. He or she might choose to have the character throw a tumbler of whiskey at a wall or something, or maybe the scene will be filmed in one of those rare but very much existent wall-free living rooms. It’s all about options, right? You don’t want to step on the director’s toes.

You also don’t want to step on the toes of your prospective selling-draft audience: one-rung-above-bottom assistants and readers, followed (once can only hope) by producers or agents. You want to keep them absorbed, and the easiest way to pull them right out of the moment is annoying meta-commentary. Tell a story — don’t constantly remind your readers they’re just reading a screenplay. It’s not clever, it doesn’t show your exstensive knowledge of the filmmaking process — it’s a combination of distracting and annoying, and it could singlehandedly result in a “pass” instead of a “recommend.”

Tags: assistants, audience, changes, development hell, Hollywood legends, pass, Raymond Chandler, readers, recommend, selling draft, Shane Black, shooting draft, spec draft, William Goldman

Posted by Stan on June 25, 2009 11:11 AM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | How Not to Write a Screenplay | Digg It