Last month, I raged about how Independent Film could stand to be less independent. (Read this article here.) No kidding. Writer/Producer/Directors desperately need a studio executive to yell at them. Someone must be able to bend the WPD’s ear.
Having whined last month, I will now help. Here’s how to make your work stand out in the sea of garbage against which producers and distributors must doggedly swim.
Wow, how hard is this one? Really tough, apparently. Most peoples’ ideas for movies, like, totally suck, man. For a pitch to get bought or a movie to be made, it better be a fanfuckin’tastic idea. Period. If a writer on a TV series works all day, every day, for six months, to find one idea that goes to script, why are you writing a screenplay based on the first notion you came up with?
Do you think this stuff is easy? No, it’s backbreaking work, like coal mining. You wouldn’t go down the #3 Peabody Shaft without doing some major prep work. Why would you dash blindly down the grim path of Screenwriting without a STUPENDOUS idea?
It has to be good enough to be a “movie.” It has to be big enough for the big screen. It must blow people’s minds.
I agree with Blake Snyder’s Save The Cat... tell your idea to EVERYbody and see what they think. Don’t worry about it getting stolen. Paranoia is for amateurs. Instead, worry that your idea stinks. If they say, “That’s... interesting,” get another idea. If they say, “WOW, whoa, that’s fantastic! What happens next!?” you may have an idea worth writing.
While you’re at it, please make it cast-able. No old people. No children. Write something an actor who MEANS SOMETHING TO A FINANCIER will be able to play. Someone in their twenties or thirties. Or maybe late teens. Forget older. Forget younger. This is a business and it’s brutal. Duuhh. There’s no room for sentimentality or stupidity. Don’t say, “But I just love Jessica Tandy.” First of all, she’s dead. Second of all, no one is going to finance a movie with a little old lady as the star. Well, maybe out of the 548 financial entities out there that can pay for a movie, there is one solitary guy who can’t wait to make a movie about a little old lady. Did you go to college with him? Unlikely. So why waste your time betting on a miracle?
Just because you think it’s a great idea, doesn’t mean it actually is a great idea.
Which brings me to...
Again, duuhh.
And I mean REALLY GREAT parts. Write a role that actors who never audition for anything will be cutting other actors’ throats just to get a chance to read for.
Again, this is not easy.
Read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. Lisbeth Salander is an amazing character. Stanley Kowalksi works nicely. The Joker is good. The head Nazi in INGLOURIUS BASTERDS, what a part! For that matter, in the same movie, so is the Bear Jew, even though he has only a few lines. Write a part that, when an actor reads it, he or she will think they may win an Oscar or get laid. Either one. This is a bit more difficult if you’re going after a movie star, ‘cause they can already get laid.
Bad movies have lousy dialogue. Like projectile vomiting, it leaps off the page, or, worse, off a film festival Screening Committee TV, or, far worse, a distributor’s movie screen.
Your first draft dialogue, which you think is swellsville, may not do the trick.
Separate your dialogue. Make sure nobody talks like anybody else, or, yukko, like you. This is simple, crucial, and people forget to do it. Here’s a way...
