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artificial, character's reality, cliche, devil in the details, familiar, small choices, THE HUDSUCKER PROXY -

SHAKE YOUR HEAD YES

SHAKE YOUR HEAD YES

I have never in my entire life gotten into a cab and had the driver ask me, “Where to, Mack?” In 2022, thanks to the magic of rideshare apps, it’s unlikely there would even be a taxi involved in the first place. Has anyone, anywhere, in the year 2022 a) gotten into a taxi and; b) had the driver ask, “Where to, Mack?” Not impossible. But highly unlikely. Where does that kind of thing happen? In old black-and-white movies, right? So what does it tell us if a character in a contemporary screenplay jumps into a cab and the driver...

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assumptions, complex characters, inner life, stereotypes, surprises -

HUMANS ARE ALWAYS WEIRDER

HUMANS ARE ALWAYS WEIRDER

 I was in semi-rural Ohio, getting ready to cast a horror movie I had written and was about to direct. While setting up, I had a moment to speak to the caretaker of the building. He was an older guy with a big white beard, dressed for manual work: denim coveralls, muddy boots, trucker cap.    I explained what we were doing. The caretaker asked me for the title of the movie, and I told him it’s called DEATH METAL. “Death metal?” he asked. “Do you mean something like Belphegor?”   Belphegor is an Austrian blackened-death metal band I happen...

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high-concept, pitch, writer's block -

THE FREEDOM TO SUCK

THE FREEDOM TO SUCK

Hanging out with friends, one of my favorite things to do is to just pitch around ideas. If you’re just drinking and relaxing, the ideas don’t have to be good; a lot of the fun comes from making everyone laugh with a really dumb-sounding idea. But at the same time, a lot of inspiration comes from those conversations. It’s like jamming with a garage band; there is no audience, so there is no pressure to be “good,” and thus there’s freedom to just noodle around, play, riff, try things out, and perhaps maybe kinda sorta trip over something good. When...

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ambiguity, confusion, mystery, THE FLORIDA PROJECT, TOTAL RECALL -

ON AMBIGUITY

ON AMBIGUITY

Ambiguity in storytelling is rewarding but tricky. It’s rewarding because, when handled well, we can draw the audience into the narrative. If engaged, they wonder what’s going on and why. Like the characters, the audience actively thinks about the story, examining “clues” (literal or figurative) and making guesses. Mystery as either a storytelling device or a genre is driven completely by ambiguity. Without ambiguity, there is no mystery; we know “whodunnit.” However, ambiguity can also be tricky, because it involves some work to correctly pull off. I have read a lot of spec scripts that engage in only a single...

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GAME OF THRONES, HARRY POTTER, Isaac Asimov, LOTR, MAD MAX, mythology, STAR WARS, THE EXPANSE, THE MATRIX, world-building -

ON WORLD-BUILDING

ON WORLD-BUILDING

“World-building” is the term used for crafting the details of a fantasy world, whatever that might be. It’s the expression of the project’s internal mythology as reflected by the “reality” of the characters inhabiting this world. The most obvious example of world-building is something based on, for example, thoroughly detailed fantasy IP: LORD OF THE RINGS, HARRY POTTER, GAME OF THRONES, and so on. That is: What our mythical countries are, where they reside in the larger fantasy world, who are the main players in this space, if magic exists and how it works, the backstory of how this world...

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