“Prison Break” Actress Options First Script
Actress Sarah Wayne Callies’ adapted screenplay, “Elena’s Serenade,” has been optioned by producer Cameron Lamb (”Daydream Nation”) and the Film Farm (”Adoration”), according to Hollywood Reporter.
Adapted from Campbell Geeslin’s award-winning children’s book, “Serenade” centers on a girl who crosses the Mexican desert to become a glass blower. Infused with music, magical realism and dreams, the story unfolds as a hero’s journey of innocence blooming into experience.
It is Callies’ first screenplay.
The Paradigm-repped Callies was a series regular on Fox’s “Prison Break” and stars on AMC’s upcoming series “The Walking Dead.” The actress recently wrapped filming the indie drama “Lullaby for Pi,” the indie horror thriller “Faces in the Crowd” and the indie drama “Black Gold.”
CS Weekly Interview with “Eat Pray Love” Screenwriter
Eat Pray Love’s Jennifer Salt by Jenelle Riley
Though Jennifer Salt is the daughter of two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter Waldo Salt, it was not a foregone conclusion she would become a writer herself. In fact, Salt started out as an actor, appearing on Broadway and in such films as Midnight Cowboy (written by her father) and as Eunice Tate on the TV comedy Soap. But when that show ended its run in 1981, Salt found herself dissatisfied with the roles she was receiving. When her father passed away in 1987, she enrolled in a writing class and spent two years crafting her first screenplay. It was good enough to get her an agent, and she soon found herself writing several unproduced screenplays. After meeting Ryan Murphy in a writer’s group, Salt was asked to join the writing staff of his envelope-pushing show Nip/Tuck. And when Murphy signed on to write and direct the big-screen version of Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestselling memoir, Eat Pray Love, he asked Salt along for the ride.
Starring Julia Roberts as Gilbert, Eat Pray Love tells the story of a woman who goes in search of herself across the globe. She leaves her husband (Billy Crudup) and lover (James Franco) behind in New York and first visits Italy for four months, where she falls in love with the language and the food. She then spends the next four months in an ashram in India, learning to still her mind. Finally, she ends up in Bali, where she is drawn to a relationship with a charming resident (Javier Bardem). Adapting the book couldn’t have been an easy task; aside from its picturesque locations, much of the book is comprised of Gilbert’s inner monologues. For example, a large part of the Pray section deals with her trying to meditate without distraction. Yet Murphy and Salt have crafted a funny, touching fable that still manages to stay true to Gilbert’s distinctive voice.
How did Ryan Murphy bring Eat Pray Love to you?
He was just reading it as a reader. He just picked it up in a bookstore. He’s a very big reader, Ryan. He reads a book a week. It wasn’t the big phenomenon yet. And he said to me, “Oh my God, I’m reading this book. You should read it. A lot of the time, she reminds me of you.” So I read it, and of course I fell in love with it. Then one night we were all in offices, getting gussied up at the end of a long day to walk across the lot to the premiere of that season of Nip/Tuck. He just walked into my office and said, “Somebody’s getting the rights to Eat Pray Love, and I want you to write it with me.”
And how did you react?
Oh, I was so excited, I was sort of jumping up and down and my heart was pounding. I’m sure I threw my arms around him — that’s what you do, right? He’s not the most physically effusive person, and it was really funny.
Where did you even begin? Because it really is three separate stories in a way — four, if you include the New York section.
We started by talking a lot. Talking and talking and trying to figure out an overall way of attacking it that kept a certain amount of story alive all the way through. Structurally, we really considered doing things that were much more radical than we ended up with in the movie.
How did the partnership work? Did you and Ryan sit down in the same room together and write or did you pass versions to each other?
We sat down and talked over outlines of things. Then we passed versions back and forth.
How many drafts do you think you went through?
I can’t even begin to answer that. So many. I mean, we did so many before we handed in even the first time to the producers, and then we did so many for them, and then we did some for the studio, and then we changed studios and they wanted their ideas and Julia had her thoughts. I can’t even tell you. It was very many.
Were you intimidated, knowing what a huge phenomenon this story had become? Did you worry fans were going to rebel if you changed anything?
Well, when we first started working on it, it hadn’t become the phenomenon it ultimately became. By the time it became that, I was so deeply immersed in the process of getting it right that I was a little less obsessed by that. I think at the point towards the end when we were moving into the greenlight phase, there was a lot of talk about, “This is an iconic scene, this is an iconic scene. Fans want this, fans think that.” We became aware of all of that and those things had to be considered, but I think when we were really building the structure we felt pretty free.
What was the hardest scene for you to write; was it something you had to adapt from the book or something you had to create from scratch?
I think the biggest concern was how to get it right that a woman who is married to a lovely guy and lives in a lovely house wants to toss it all out the window and run away for a year. How do you square that with audiences? How do you keep her from being sort of a willful, spoiled, privileged character that puts people off? How do you make his character more than someone you’re just glad to be rid of? How do you create the sorrow in leaving and the need to leave without infidelity or without demonizing him? That was so tricky. That took a lot.
That’s a tough one. So how did you do it?
We did it by doing it over and over and over. By getting it wrong a hundred times before we got it right.
Was it a matter of making her more sympathetic or just creating such a three-dimensional character that people could relate to her?
I think ultimately it was about finding that pitch where you understand what she needs without judging her. You understand how she feels without hating anyone. That’s a very tough thing to find. I don’t know how to explain to you what we did other than we wrote it a million times.
What is your writing process like? Do you only work specific hours? Do you find music helps? How disciplined are you?
Well, songs will definitely inspire work once I’m into it. I will get obsessed with a song. I wish I had a better work ethic. I wish I was more organized about the time I put in and when I do it and how I do it, and I’m constantly swearing that next week I’m going to get up at seven and work every morning until noon. I swear it every week of my life, but so far it’s never happened. But I do honestly have to say that the best work is early in the morning. Especially when you’re really at the beginning of something, and it’s hard. You’ve got to do it early in the morning. Once the ship has set sail and you’ve got some wind behind you, I can just keep going and work any time. But when you’re in those early phases, or when you’re in the stuck phases, the early morning is a great time. Then I will be very rigorous about getting up at like six and blasting through.
Do you ever get writer’s block and if so, how do you push through?
For me, my philosophy is that if you have writer’s block, you have to get up earlier in the morning to attack from kind of a different energy. And writer’s block usually means, for me, that I’m on the wrong track. That I have to go from sitting where I’m sitting to somewhere else and entertain the idea that it’s the wrong scene or the wrong something big.
What are you working on now?
As a screenplay, I have a book called While I’m Falling that I’m adapting on my own; I might try set it up somewhere, but at the moment I’m just working on it myself. It’s a novel about a mother and college-age daughter — I find the story very funny and sad, the story about their relationship. And then I’m working on an HBO project; we’re developing a pilot, myself and Rachel DeWoskin, the writer of a memoir called Foreign Babes in Beijing. It’s about her time living in Beijing and about the expatriate world there.
Because you started writing after the death of your father, do you ever wish he could have seen your success as a writer?
I do, all the time. Very much.
Screenwriting Expo Contest Extends Deadlines
Deadline Extended – Enter by September 7th
The 2010 Expo Screenplay Contest has been extended for just under two weeks due to the overwhelming number of entries we received yesterday. We want to make sure everyone has a chance to take part in what is our best contest yet.
We know there are dozens and dozens of contests available to you, the screenwriter. And since we run the most popular screenwriting magazine out there — Creative Screenwriting — we like to think we know what you are looking for out of a contest.
That’s why the Expo contest gets you three things most contests cannot offer: access, education, and promotion.
- Your Script Sent to Hollywood: The winning and Top 10 scripts are all sent to a collection of over 300 production companies, agencies, and management companies who are eager to read new material from us. We have great relationships with these companies and your chance of getting a meeting out of this prize is very high.
- Pitch Your Idea: Free tickets to the Golden Pitch Festival at the 2010 Screenwriting Expo. There are over 100 companies (60 of them A-List level) to choose from — and they will all know who you are since you will have won your award the night before the event!
- Get Management: 6-17 Management and Productions will pick one script and writer to mentor with the possibility of representation!
- Sell-A-Script: You get a “Total Script Express” package from our friends at Sell-A-Script where your logline is sent to 3,000 industry professionals and much more!
- Screenwriting U: Training in how to market yourself and your script!
- Much more!!
We also feature one of the largest grand prizes in any screenplay contest and the power of Creative Screenwriting to promote its winners better to a wider audience than anyone else.
When you win or place in the Expo Contest, here is is a partial list of what you get:
Their script, synopsis, and logline sent to over 300 production companies, agencies, and management companies.
CS Interviews “Valhalla Rising” writer Nicolas Winding Refn
Valhalla Rising’s Nicolas Winding Refn
by Adam Stovall
Valhalla Rising opens with a man, One-Eye (Mads Mikkelsen), beating another man to a bloody pulp. Then another, and another, and another. Once there is no one else to defeat, he is released and crosses the barren Nordic landscape, accompanied by a boy (Maarten Stevenson). Eventually, they find themselves on a ship with Vikings searching for a new land. More beatings ensue.Valhalla Rising is the latest film from director Nicolas Winding Refn, who co-wrote the film with Roy Jacobsen. CS Weekly sat down with Refn to discuss his tale of faith and violence, and how the two are often found in each other’s company.
What was the initial seed of the idea?
When I was five, I was at my parents’ friend’s house and they had a pulp sci-fi novel with a spaceship on the cover. I can’t remember why it was there or what happened, but the obsession with traveling into outer space has been very much a part of what I do. I became interested in making a Viking film that was a film about the discovery of America, because for the Vikings to go out and travel the oceans was the equivalent of us going to the moon.
Can you walk us through how that initial seed became this story?
When you sit down, you come up with all the obvious solutions, and you try them out and see that they don’t ring true, and you get kind of frustrated. It wasn’t until one night, I was having some kind of dream, maybe I was trying to meditate, but the idea of a mutant man who has no past or present and lives on top of a mountain came to me. That was the genesis, because what would happen if that was how the film opened? The idea of the child came about because he needed a companion to travel with. If he had a person his own age, it would be a friendship. If it were a woman, there would be a tension of love and sexuality. A child, however, makes it almost innocent in a way.
The man and child travel the wasteland and encounter a group of Vikings who are off to the Holy Land. Originally, they were pagans who were basically being outlawed by the Christians, who, in the 1100s, were spreading through the North either by violence and war or they would use money to buy influence and sell Jesus to the Vikings. People who didn’t believe were on the run, and America was an interesting concept.
Originally the film had a more conventional kind of approach, a more conventional kind of story structure. I called Roy Jacobsen, who is a very famous Norwegian novelist, and is also a historian on these matters. I felt like I knew nothing of this history, so it was essential that I find someone who could be part of this journey. Well, two weeks before we were supposed to shoot, I had a complete meltdown and was just lost. I shut down the movie, I said I wouldn’t make it, sorry, bye. Budget had been spent and people were panicking. Roy Jacobsen flew up and sat with me for a few hours in my apartment trying to talk some sense into me, but it wasn’t happening. Until, finally, he said to just make them Christian Vikings. I asked him if there were Christian Vikings, and he said absolutely. They were Vikings, but they were Christians as well. They would travel all around to fight wars. They were warriors and mercenaries in Russia. Suddenly, the whole film became about the future, not about the past. Christianity became an order that was about the future. Everything had always been about the past, and I couldn’t relate to that. I couldn’t get my mind around it. So, that changed everything, and I swapped what the characters wanted to achieve.
The movie is about faith and the rise of mythology. One-Eye goes through four stages. He is born out of mythology. Nobody knows who he is or where he comes from, you only know that he doesn’t belong to anyone for more than four or five years. Then he escapes slavery and becomes a warrior, then he becomes God. Then he becomes Man when he sacrifices himself. And then he’s a ghost, who returns to the mythology he rose from. Then there’s the relationship with the boy, who says he wants to find home — which is very existential because he doesn’t say where. The boy claims that One-Eye speaks through him. It’s like the boy becomes organized religion, because everyone becomes superstitious again, and the boy manipulates everyone else. Also, when the Christians travel for war and they take hallucinogenic drugs to become stronger, that’s true — they would actually do that.
Your films are known for having these very strong central characters. Do you tend to start scripts with a character in mind or a story?
The way I usually come up with an idea is I come up with what I would like to see. That’s usually based on character. Then I wrap a story around that character. Bronson, for example, there was no story, because Charlie Bronson’s life is not that interesting. Michael Peterson’s life is not that interesting. But the transformation from Michael Peterson to Charlie Bronson was interesting. That came about when I asked myself what this guy would want and realized that he would want to be famous. Then I knew, that’s what this movie is about. That’s usually how I approach everything I do, follow one person’s point of view and a story comes up around it.
What is your habit? Do you have a number of hours you like to work, or is there a page count you’re going for?
I consider writing very painful, and I don’t think I’m very good at it. I wish I was, because I certainly admire it a lot. I write longhand to begin with. If the story is complex, or if I need to be challenged not to repeat myself, I bring in other people — once with Hubert Selby, Jr. and once with Roy Jacobsen. When I sit down to write, though, it’s usually with a pack of index cards and a pen, just writing things down that I would like to see. Eventually that evolves into some kind of story. When it has to be shown to financiers, or people who don’t know me very well, I will sometimes bring a writer in to polish it verbally so it doesn’t just read as “Man walks, sees sign, crosses.” Things you would be sent back to school for. To make it a sellable document, it sometimes needs to be polished up. But it also comes from me being dyslexic. I am very dyslexic and I have trouble reading and writing.
How important is outlining to you?
Outlining doesn’t become important until I have the core structure. I believe everything is structure. In that way, oddly, art is a complete, organic element — and in that organism a mathematical evolution is apparent.
How particular are you about your workspace and how you work, both alone and when you’re working with someone else?
In that sense, I am completely collaborative. I like to work at night. I can’t go into an office every day, but I admire people who can just sit down and write. I have to go through a process where I try to do everything that can keep me from writing. Dishes, cleaning up, looking through old email, deleting junk mail, anything that takes me away from writing — and once I’ve done everything I can and there’s nothing left, then I start writing Because once I start, I cannot stop. I become unbearable to be around, and when you have kids and a wife, that’s difficult because you have to be theirs. So, that means I work at night, sometimes for a couple of hours, sometimes for a long time.
I have many different movies I want to make, so I’ve begun to enjoy the process of making films simultaneously. For example, while [my next film] Drive is in preproduction, I’ve also started preproduction on the film after it, which is called Only God Forgives. That’s a movie I’ve written myself, an original idea. It’s good because having Drive on one side, I can put things in that movie and other things into Only God Forgives, and know I will make both movies. I can sort of steal from both.
Do you listen to music while you write, or do you find that distracting?
I love all kinds of music. The way that I work is, I sometimes come up with a musical approach to the film before there’s an actual story. Each movie I’ve made so far has a musicality to it. Pusher 1, my first film, is The Ramones. Bleeder, my second film, was definitely glam rock. Fear X was basically Brian Eno, who became the third person I ever hired on the movie. He would send me sounds and music ideas as me and Mr. Selby worked on the script. Pusher 2 is Iron Maiden. Pusher 3 is Neil Diamond. Bronson is opera. Valhalla Rising is Einstürzende Neubauten. Drive is Depeche Mode. I definitely prefer to listen to music while I write, it’s certainly the closest thing to cocaine I can get while I write.
Creative Screenwriting Talks About Access over Cash Prizes
Dear Screenwriter,
Access to producers, studio executives, and your potential agent or manager can take many forms. The most obvious, and most direct, is a face-to-face sit-down with the production companies of your choice. Sell yourself and your screenplay to them, and the agents and managers beat a path to your door.
ACCESS is not merely “access.” Timing is critically important. A production company representative is much more likely to pay attention and want to hear your pitch if your script is the hot new contest winner than if that person thinks your script has been shopped around and rejected all over town.
The Most Access … Perfect Timing
That is why we changed the timing of winner announcements for the Expo Screenplay Competition. For years, this top contest announced winners at the end of the last day of the Screenwriting Expo — just as the Expo pitch fest, known as the Golden Pitch (and possibly the biggest pitch fest in existence) — was ending. That didn’t make sense. So now, winners of the Expo Screenplay Competition are announced the evening before the Golden Pitch begins. So if you become a semifinalist, finalist, or an award winner in the Expo Screenplay Competition, you and your script are the hot, newest winners in town.
Expo Screenplay Competiton winners (and AAA Screenplay Contest winners) receive free entry to the Screenwriting Expo, the biggest and most prestigious meeting on screenwriting in the world, and free tickets to pitch to the production companies, agents, and managemetn companies of their choice. And because we think this prize — face-to-face access — is so important, we have increased the numbers of free pitch tickets for winners.
Keeping Your Script In Their Minds
It takes time for the value of a script to percolate through the system at any production company, and through the entertainment industry generally. That is why the Expo Screenplay Competition and the spring AAA Screenplay Contest offer multiple forms of access after that initial flurry of pitching at the Screenwriting Expo. See below for the multiple ways in which winning and high-placing scripts receive wide attention in the months after our contests.
No, We’re Not #1 … But We Try Harder — And You’re Not Fighting Such Harsh Numbers
Yes, a couple of prestigious screenplay contests do receive more “automatic” attention from Hollywood than ours do. But here are three observations about that fact of life:
- We work harder at getting your screenplays noticed. Just peruse the list below and see what I mean.
- If your script is one of 6,000 entries, your chances are numerically one in 6,000. We receive fewer than half as many submissions, boosting your chances of being noticed.
- Smaller production companies know that when they express interest in a script from one of the most Hollywood-prestigious contests, they’re competing with bigger, more well-heeled producers. They know they’ll have to pay a premium for a script that wins at Nicholl or Sundance. So some don’t bother, or don’t pursue those scripts.
- Perceptions differ from contest to contest about what makes a great, marketable script. No single contest can possibly consider the entire range of possible stories that will make it onto the big screen. So it is worthwhile to enter more than one contest, allowing different sets of judges to see your work.
So I invited you to read on and learn more about the Access Prizes and the entire prize list of the Expo Screenplay Competition, and I hope you will consider entering.
Best wishes and write on,
Bill Donovan, Publisher, Creative Screenwriting Magazine
We Boosted The Numbers of Free Pitch Tickets For Contest Prize Winners
The Golden Pitch Festival at the Screenwritng Expo is among the biggest pitch festivals held, with more than 60 production executives, agents, and managers receiving pitches face to face. And if you win, you get to pitch scripts free:
- The Grand Prize winner receives a free Gold Pass (worth $309.95 on site), five INCREASED TO TEN free pitch tickets (tickets are normally $25 each), and front-of-the-line status to choose available pitch tickets.
- Genre Prize winners receive free Expo Basic Passes ($109.95 value on site) plus two INCREASED TO FIVE $25 pitch tickets each.
- The Suzanne’s Prize winner receives a free Basic Pass plus two INCREASED TO FIVE $25 pitch tickets.
- Grand Prize runnersup receive free Basic Passes ($109.95 value) plus two INCREASED TO FIVE free $25 pitch tickets each.
And when you pitch, you will be the newest major contest winners in town — so you’ll be big news to the industry, the screenwriters whom producers and agents will want to look over. The contest winners are announced Oct. 7, 2010, the evening before the Golden Pitch begins.
(Note: of course, you won’t know whether you’re a winner until then. So register now for the Screenwriting Expo at http://screenwritingexpo.com/register.html. Then and then become a prize winner, we will refund your registration fee (Gold Pass refund or upgrade if you’re the Grand Prize winner, Basic Pass for the other prizes above) and pitch ticket purchases up to the numbers above. So enter the contest and register today!)
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Contest Submission Deadlines, Entry Fees, And Announcements
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| Entry By Midnight – |
Burning The Midnight Oil… |
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| First Feature | $60 | at least $65 |
| Each Additional Feature* | $60 | at least $60 |
| First Teleplay/Reality | $45 | at least $50 |
| Additional Teleplay/Reality | $40 | at least $45 |
| Short | $25 | at least $30 |
| Winner Announcements: Semifinalists will be announced on or about Sept. 15, 2010 Winners will be notified shortly before and announced at the Oct. 7, 2010 Awards Ceremony Screenwriting Expo sessions begin Oct. 8 at 9 a.m. –see http://screenwritingexpo.com/index.html but don’t miss the pre-Expo Pitch Boot Camp Oct. 7 (separate signup at http://screenwritingexpo.com/register.html |
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Hollywood Jobs on the Rise
The Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. is forecasting a solid improvement in Hollywood’s employment picture with an addition of 16,500 showbiz jobs this year and another 15,100 slots next year, according to Variety.
The mid-year forecast, released Wednesday, estimated that regional entertainment employment will hit 155,300 jobs this year — 137,400 people in the motion picture and sound industries and 17,900 in television and radio. Those numbers are forecast to reach 170,400 in 2011, with 152,400 in motion picture/sound and 18,000 in broadcast.
If the forecast pans out, the numbers would represent a turnaround from recent years. The number of regional showbiz jobs remained steady at 148,700 in 2007 and 149,400 in 2008, followed by a decline to 138,800 last year. The recent shifts in total showbiz jobs are relatively small compared with the four-year meltdown between 1999 and 2003, when runaway production led to jobs falling sharply.
The best two years prior to the current period were 2000, when entertainment employment totaled 158,900 workers, and 1999, when employment totaled 164,300 workers.
The forecast cited a trio of factors for the brightened outlook — the positive reception to the state’s film incentive program; more pilots ordered by broadcast and cable nets; and “strong” growth in the international box office.
Negative concerns cited include the rapid run-up in ticket prices for 3D films; underperformance by some major summer films; declining DVD sales; uncertainty over revenues from new digital platforms; and the upcoming round of master contract negotiations with SAG, AFTRA, DGA and WGA.
SAG and AFTRA are set to begin talks Sept. 27 on their feature-primetime contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers with the DGA following in mid-November. Those contracts expire on June 30, while the contract for the WGA — which hasn’t set a start date for talks — will expire May 1.
The report noted that SAG has more moderate leadership than during the last round of negotiations and noted that there may remain an impact from the 100-day WGA strike.
“Many members of the Writers Guild are still smarting from the fall-out of the 2007-08 strike,” the report noted.
Elmore Leonard Speaks Out
Always Writing
Written by Dylan Callaghan
Many people populate a one-on-one conversation with Elmore Leonard. Speaking to him from his home outside Detroit, it’s clear that as beguiling a conversationalist as he is, as keen and sincere a listener, he is always at least a little bit somewhere else, with the menagerie of characters he’s created over a boundlessly prolific, nearly six decade writing career.
Leonard is, essentially, always writing. Not in a distracted, disconnected way. He just kind of strolls, like some effortlessly smooth Jazz Age tap dancer, between the world that is real, where you are, and the dozens of other places he’s created over the years – first in longhand and then on an IBM Wheelwriter electric typewriter.
Hollywood has always liked “Dutch” – a nickname he’s had since childhood (he didn’t like Elmore and so stuck with Dutch). His first adaptation for the short story “3:10 to Yuma” (which he originally sold to Dime Western magazine for 90 bucks) hit theaters in 1957 and starred Glenn Ford. For his part, Leonard has mostly liked Hollywood back, but struggled at times with screenwriting, which he doesn’t feel he’s that great at, and directors and producers that have bungled his work.
Whatever hassles he’s had with moviedom, he’s had vastly more success – Get Shorty and Out of Sight (both from screenplays by Scott Frank) to name a couple. He’s easily one of the top five most adapted pulp authors in the history of film, and that’s counting the likes of Agatha Christie and James M. Cain.
Now, at the age of 84, he is enjoying a new small screen success with the FX series Justified. It’s sort of a new-era Rockford Files, with brainy, extremely Leonardian dialogue. The series is not a direct adaptation, but it centers Leonard’s character Raylen Givens, a U.S. Marshal reassigned from Miami to his poverty-stricken childhood home in Eastern Kentucky. He’s the main character in both the novella Fire in the Hole, upon which the Justified pilot was based, and the novel Riding the Rap, a sequel to his novel Pronto, in which Givens also appears.
During an expansive conversation with the Writers Guild of America, West Web site, Leonard spoke about everything from why all writers are in it for the money to why it’s hard for him to get “his sound” in screenplays to how all of those characters in his head, waiting impatiently for a next act, can be maddening.
You’ve had good and bad experiences with your work being adapted. What are your feelings about what’s being done with Justified?
I love it. I think they’ve got my sound down and they’re running with it. Did you hear about the little bracelets they wear?
No, I didn’t.
They’re rubber and on them – I think it’s kind of raised lettering – is written “W.W.E.D.?” – “What Would Elmore Do?” They’re trying to stay in my mind, you know, and write offbeat lines and hard lines and do what I do, and I think it’s great.
Apparently, the bracelets are working.
I think so.
They used Fire in the Hole as the pilot, and they’re using parts from a couple of other books that Raylen Givens is in. They’re not [direct adaptations] though, because they fool with it and set it up in a different way, but it works.
[Givens] was in Pronto and Riding the Rap… There’s a girl in Riding the Rap who’s in another book, the last book [Road Dogs], Dawn Navarro. I wanted to keep her out of it, at least for the time being because I might do another book with her.
You keep all these characters alive in a kind of constellation in your mind, don’t you?
Yeah, sure. I finish a book and wonder what they’re doing now, like they’re mannequins left in some position, waiting to be moved.
When you started writing Westerns, you discovered early the importance of the details of reality for cowboys and Indians, rather than the TV stereotypes out at the time. You really set to researching New Mexico, Arizona, American Indian history…
The kind of guns they used, the clothes, yeah. I researched Apaches primarily and cowboys; cowboys and cavalry for the most part in Arizona. There was a lot of stuff written about them at the time. There were serials in the Saturday Evening Post and Colliers about the cavalry fighting the Apaches. I liked the Apaches. I thought they were really bad. They didn’t wear feathers, they just had long hair and a band around their head. I liked that.
Not your typical TV Indian.
All the TV [Westerns], at least for the first year, ended with a gunfight in the street. I read in the research that that would rarely ever happen. If you wanted to shoot someone, you just walk into the saloon and shoot ‘em, you know?
So it’s a case of the truth being more interesting?
Yes, definitely.
You tend to start off a new book with a character and a basic situation and then just go from there without any outline or notion of the end. What do you think that approach has given your writing that a more pre-planned approach would not?
I found early on that when you think of a scene that you might subsequently use, when you finally get to the point of using it, you’re kind of stuck with it. Then you think about it again and you say, “Well, jeez, I’m not doing this right. It could be a lot more fun and interesting.”
When the ideas occur as you’re writing, as you’re going along, it just works better. You don’t have to belabor some idea that you had a couple months before.
But what do you do then when you’re stumped, when you’re cold in the moment? I don’t know, maybe you don’t get stumped.
No, I do. I’ll think of a way to do the scene that will lead me out of it and leave me a way to not have to explain what’s in the guy’s mind at this particular moment. That’s when I’m usually stopped, when I’m asking, “Okay, what’s his attitude right now?”
The best thing to do is get away from that. Maybe he imagines a conversation with somebody where he describes his problem.
[But usually] within the first 100 pages I know who my characters are. Then there’s always a new character who’ll slip in later on, and I’ll say, “Oh God, I’ve gotta give him a name. I like this guy, he’s important.”
Then something else happens in the story, a subplot maybe.
So they just come and prove to you what their voice is or what their thing is?
Yeah, they’re kind of auditioned in the first scenes that they appear in. [For example], a guy owns a casino hotel, and he’s got a lot of money, and I think he’s one of the main characters. Then he talks to a guy that he hired to run all the gambling action in the casino. The first time the two of them are together, I see that I like this guy Jackie Garbo [from 1985’s Glitz] better than the guy who owns the casino. So he’s kind of pushed off.
Point being, you cannot limit yourself by your plans?
That’s the idea, right.
Has writing gotten harder or easier over all these years?
It’s gotten a little harder. It takes me longer. It could be my age, too, but it took me a year to write my latest book, Djibouti [which centers on East African pirates and Al Qaeda]. I had more research and more studying to do, with the help of my researcher [Gregg Sutter]. I couldn’t see my desk for almost a year. But it was worth it because I like the book.
You’ve said that you’ve approached writing both with a desire to write and to make as much money doing it as you could. Do you think that kind of honest, unpretentious attitude toward writing has helped you be a better, more productive writer?
Oh, definitely. All writers are in it for the money. What other reason is there?
But what about the notion of the starving artist, not selling out?
Samuel Johnson once said that anyone who would not write for money is a fool. You know? From the horse’s mouth, that’s why we’re doing it, but still attempting to do it as well as we can and not sacrificing our voice. I’m not going to write like some guy who’s making a lot more money than I am just because he is.
Frankly, it’s not that important. The story is the important thing and then go for the money.
Are there any perils to writing with money in mind?
I’m not writing with money in mind. I’m making the writing as good as I can. I’m at my limit. I can’t do it any better. Every once and a while I’ll think I can and I’ll try a different thing, but I’m at my limit.
You’ve also said that screenwriting is work to you, because you feel like an employee. Is there any aspect of it that has taught you something about writing in general, or is it just a chore?
It was a chore [mostly] because you’ve got several bosses. You’re not just writing for yourself. I write for myself. I’m the only one I have to please. When I have to please a producer and a director and so on, then I’m just taking in writing, doing what they want me to do.
There was a time when I had to do it, ‘cuz I needed the money. I wasn’t very proud of the pictures, but it was just something I had to do. There was no way to talk [executives] into anything. You’d have a story conference on a Friday afternoon, and they’d give all this stuff, all their ideas, [and] you’d go back to your hotel room, sit there looking at the wall and writing it, and then Monday you’d meet ‘em again, and they’d forgotten all the bullshit they’d told you Friday.
Your golden rule of writing has been to write in a way that does not feel like writing. Do you have any addendums to that philosophy, and do you feel it applies to screenwriting?
I don’t know. That’s something I did have trouble with when screenwriting because when I’m writing a scene, it’s always from a character’s point of view; it’s how he reacts to what’s happening. The other people in the scene will tell him all sorts of things, but it’s him and his mind that’s driving the scene…
That’s the way I write. I can switch viewpoints as well to characters I like or who have something to say, but I’m never in it. I don’t use any words that might be more appropriate if I were writing as a literary writer. I don’t use any words that my characters don’t know.
I want to keep that sound, their sound.
How much of your mental time and energy is consumed by thinking about these characters and these stories? It seems like it’s a pretty big chunk.
Well, yeah, sure. Once I know who my characters are, I see them all the time. I’m with them all the time. I quit work at six o’clock, and I take a shower and try to forget ‘em, but I don’t.
You can’t?
No, I can’t.
Does it ever get maddening?
Well, my wife will say, “God! Who are you now?” I never use their language, but she will see an attitude that isn’t mine.
Mother/Daughter Team Talk “Huge”
Another excellent interview from WGA regarding the mother/daughter producing and writing team of the hyped show “HUGE”… enjoy…
Secret Burdens, Huge Challenges
Written by Lainie Strouse
When asked how they balance work and family, writing and producing, Savannah Dooley and Winnie Holzman answer in unison, “We don’t. Work is family.” That is certainly the case with Huge, a new series on ABC Family adapted from the book of the same name by Sasha Paley. The mother and daughter team write and produce the show, Dooley’s father (and Holzman’s husband of 26 years) Emmy-nominated actor Paul Dooley is part of the cast and Holzman’s brother, Ernest, is the show’s director of photography.
The show is an exception to almost every Hollywood rule. “There are so few women in this business already,” Dooley notes. Holzman adds, “That is why, as we sit here, it is pretty amazing.” In addition to the mother-daughter writing team, Huge, which observes the psychological toll our culture’s obsession with being thin takes on the lives of seven teens at a weight-loss camp, features a mostly overweight cast headed by Nikki Blonsky and Hayley Hasselhoff.
A close friend of Holzman’s is credited with masterminding the pairing. “Robin Schiff (Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion) called me up my junior year of college and said ABC Family had this concept from a book they wanted to turn into an original movie,” says Dooley. The project was put on a back burner and Dooley resigned herself to the likelihood that it would never get made, until she heard that the head of the network wanted to make Huge into a series. With only one previous TV writing credit to her name, ABC Family wanted an experienced showrunner to work with her. Although they had always fantasized and discussed projects they would work on together “someday,” Holzman didn’t even think of stepping in. “I sort of felt like, ‘This isn’t my business. I shouldn’t get involved,” she recalls. “Robin woke me up and said, ‘Wait, are you sure you don’t want to do this with her?’ I suddenly went, ‘Wait, I do want to do this!’”
Ten episodes were promptly ordered and the rush to make the premiere date was on. “I got very excited,” says Holzman, “and then I got very nervous because I knew it was a short amount of time.” To their relief, they had just turned in the eighth episode when we met at Dooley’s home and spoke of their intense ride together on Huge.
Savannah, was writing something you knew you wanted to do at a young age?
Savannah Dooley: I definitely had this fantasy that I would be the world’s youngest screenwriter from age 11. My mom wrote a movie that had gotten into theaters, and I was like, “Wow! That would be amazing.” I discovered I had an aptitude for fiction writing and poetry so I went to camp for that. A lot of my writing for this has been based on that experience. So that is what I immersed myself in, and I went to college for screenwriting and video making. I’ve grown up reading a lot of screenplays.
Winnie Holzman: She was always writing a lot.
Savannah Dooley: If Winnie, being in this business, hadn’t been opening up doors for me in terms of screenwriting; I probably would have been a YA author or a writer of magical short stories. I got a job writing one episode of a teen show that paid. It was an amazing credit and got me into the Guild. At that point, it was something that paid the bills, but I never dreamed, because it happens so rarely, that I would be able to do something that means so much to me, creatively, as my job.
Winnie Holzman: What I can’t believe, seriously, it is hard to even describe, at her age that she is just a natural at this. It’s really incredible.
In L.A., with everyone trying to be as skinny as possible, how was the casting process for this show?
Winnie Holzman: For eight to 10 weeks I was saying in casting, “That person is not fat enough.”
Savannah Dooley: Casting this show was a big challenge. It was a terrifying process. I was horrified. I am a critical person. I obviously have strong feelings about how fatness is portrayed in the media. So when I hear about a show like this, in my mind I’m already thinking, how skinny are these “fat kids” going to be? We can’t half-ass this. We have to have someone who is big enough. We have to have people who look like real people.
Full-assed.
Winnie Holzman: Yes, exactly, full-assed (laughs). We did end up finding them in L.A.
Savannah Dooley: It means so much more being able to give actors this [chance] because of the limitations Hollywood is already going to be putting on them.
Winnie Holzman: We felt it. We felt right away this feeling of gratitude that we could be a part of something that would give opportunity to kids.
Savannah Dooley: Something that has frustrated us, for my whole time growing up, was the token fat character that was always a joke.
Winnie Holzman: That is a big, inspirational part of our show. We are busting through that. That is a lot of what the show is about. It is about these people who are outsiders who are finally finding a place for themselves in the world. They are feeling themselves for the first time as themselves and not just as the fat person.
Not as other people see them.
Winnie Holzman: Exactly.
Savannah Dooley: That is a huge part of what draws people to these camps. The idea that it is a safe space where no one is going to give you a bunch of shit for being overweight because everyone has been through that.
Winnie Holzman: Where you don’t have to be constantly ashamed.
Savannah Dooley: It is so much about the sense of community. For me, having been to a regular camp, a lot of the series is just about stuff that could happen at any camp. You form these intense intimacies and rivalries because you are so close to each other. You become a little family.
It is like being on set for a long time.
Savannah Dooley: It’s exactly like being on set. We are all getting so close to each other.
Winnie Holzman: It’s a world within a world. There is the world we are creating. It becomes a little mini world that becomes more real to you than the outside world.
Is there a type of project that you seek out, excites you or a certain story you want to tell?
Savannah Dooley: We like really complicated stories, protagonists that are outsiders and people finding unexpected connections; things that feel very real with characters that are flawed.
I love working with her. I could never ask for a better partner. This sounds lame, but she is another me, but better at this. We want to write about the same things and like the same kind of subtle moments. We are really on the same page.
Winnie Holzman: We are frighteningly alike.
Savannah Dooley: We ARE frighteningly alike.
One of the themes of the show seems to be everyone carries their own weight and insecurity…
Savannah Dooley: Their own insecurity or secret feeling that I don’t belong. Something about me isn’t right. No one escapes that, especially when you are a teenager.
Winnie Holzman: That is the focus of our writing. There is a Jewish prayer that I was told about a year ago that has stuck with me. I don’t remember the exact wording of it, but it is a prayer for when you are in public places when you are surrounded by others – “I remember, God, that every single one of these people carries a secret burden.”
Savannah Dooley: We should use that in an episode.
Winnie Holzman: That is my credo for writing. I don’t want to write a character that doesn’t have a secret burden because every single human has that. God forbid that we should forget when we look upon someone no matter what they weigh or what their life is like. Something we see in movies and TV that annoys us is when a person is portrayed as if they don’t have any [burdens]. Everyone has something. That is so important. That is what I think the show is about.
Winnie Holzman: Our focus is on inner transformation and self-acceptance.
Savannah Dooley: There is all this talk in the media about how to combat the obesity crisis. Physical health begins with mental health. The way to get people to really eat healthy and exercise is not in this culture of fear of being fat. People are trying desperately to lose weight, not to pursue health. I find myself saying to my friends I want to lose 10 pounds, and I feel pressure to say that it is just to be healthy, but for me that is bullshit. Our culture values looks 10 times more than health. That is something I want to explore. How different people feel.
Winnie Holzman: What we are really doing is raising the questions. We don’t have answers. What is interesting about this project is that these are questions not put into dramas very often.
Savannah Dooley: I overate in my childhood at a time when I was feeling most desperate about being trapped in this chubby body. The saddest thing is that I look back at pictures of myself then and I looked so normal. Why was I so hard on myself?
Winnie Holzman: That is the most heartbreaking thing – when it is us doing that to ourselves. We can’t change the world doing it, but we can be an instrument of change about doing it to ourselves.
It is so ingrained in us that we don’t really even realize we are doing it.
Winnie Holzman: Let’s face it. It is the voice within. It is the punitive, punishing voice that really breaks our own heart. It seems like it’s what other people think or say, but the truth is that we lash out and hate ourselves. It’s hard, but it is all about becoming conscious of it, of this harsh, brutal way of speaking to ourselves. You can change it if you become aware of it. Would you say that to your best friend? Would you say to your best friend, “You look so fat”?
Savannah Dooley: This totally became a therapy session, this is awesome.
What is the best writing advice you have been given?
Savannah Dooley: Write the bad version to get it out so you don’t have that mental hurdle to jump over. We have to remind ourselves about that because we are both perfectionists. Forget about it being perfect, especially when you are working at this schedule. You have to work on the next episodes. Advice that we tend to give each other is to not hold ourselves to too high of a standard. You will make yourself creatively miserable. What I have picked up from her scripts is how to make a subtle moment happen, how to feather in a theme that works through the story.
How do you do that?
Savannah Dooley: Do less, be more spare. I like how [Winnie] doesn’t spell things out. I like how she has characters talking about something, but really talking about something else. She doesn’t often have people say exactly what they mean. Those are the best moments.
WGA Interviews Twilight Screenwriter Rosenberg
An excellent interview with the screenwriter who adapted the Twilight books for the big screen, thanks to WGA. Enjoy…
In her tenure as sole scripter on the entire Twilight franchise, Melissa Rosenberg has experienced the screenwriting equivalent of the heady, harrowing arc of Bella Swan, the beloved human heroine at the center of the spectacularly popular teen vampire bestsellers-turned-blockbusters. Even as the franchise’s third installment, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, hits megaplexes everywhere and Rosenberg slogs through a marathon junket promoting the film, she’s already neck-deep in adapting the fourth and final book, the 900-page bone-rattler Breaking Dawn, into two separate films simultaneously. The twin closer has already set Twihards across the globe into a frenzy of speculation as to how the film will depict Bella’s visceral, nearly fatal half-human-half-vampire birth and her (SPOILER ALERT!) transformation to immortality.
Rosenberg has maintained her breakneck pace since late 2007, two months before the writers strike, when she was tapped to adapt Stephenie Meyer’s maiden book in the series, Twilight. Not only did she turn that first script around in a little more than two months to beat the strike deadline, but she’s written the franchise while juggling her co-EP-ship of the hit Showtime series Dexter. Time and the enormity of writing two scripts at once for Breaking Dawn drove her to leave Dexter behind, a show she counts as the best of her television career.
In a junket day chat with the Writers Guild of America, West Web site, Rosenberg discussed this new penultimate book and film, Eclipse, which grapples with Bella’s choice between her vampire love Edward and her werewolf friend Jacob, the challenges its action-heavy third act presented, and how she feels about life after Dexter and Twilight.
You’ve said you thought this current film, Eclipse, would be easy at first. Was that partially because you knew Breaking Dawn, your two-part adaptation of the final films of the Twilight series, was coming?
That was actually from the outset, separate from Breaking Dawn. Looking at the first three books, it seemed like it would be easier just because it had all this action. Of course, that was wrong. Thinking anything in writing is going to be easy is always…
A mistake?
Always a mistake. It is never easy. Writing is hard. If it wasn’t, everyone would do it, right?
True. So Eclipse has a lot of action, but it’s mainly in the third act.
Exactly.
Tell me what you had to do with those first two acts to lead up to that big conflict.
It was about taking that threat and building on it to the third act conflict. The entire book is from Bella’s point of view, so anything that happens in the book, she hears about after the fact, [when] she’s not actually present. With the script, I don’t have that restriction. I could actually go away from her point of view occasionally, so I was able to build a few of those scenes that she hears about after the fact and invent a few to help build to this conflict, which, hopefully, helps to keep that sense of threat impending and growing throughout [the first two acts].
This Twilight phenomenon has happened really fast, but it’s also been, what, three and half years now that you’ve been ensconced in this?
Yeah. It was about two months before the strike.
In all that time, has your process for breaking down these books remained the same?
I’ve used the same system that I’ve had from the beginning. The only thing that’s changed a little is that I’ve involved Stephenie Meyer a little more in my process. I’ve used her as a resource more and more as I’ve gone along… and our relationship has developed over that time.
You must start to feel some sense of ownership as an author, too…
I’ve certainly become very invested, but I give all props to Stephenie. I would not have the career I now have without her, so I take nothing from that, certainly.
Of course. And going back for a minute, can you encapsulate what your process has been for these breaking these books?
The first thing I do is read the book and sit back and let what comes to mind pop. What I’m looking for there is structure; what emerges as the mid-point, what the arcs of the characters are and how best to structure them. I let the scenes wash over me to decide what the big moments are.
Then I start building from there. The way I do that is to put into a very abbreviated few pages what the key scenes in the book are, chapter by chapter. Once I have my structure of what the basic acts are, I start filling in the muscle and sinew.
Did Eclipse take comparatively less or more time than the others?
Well, to some extent, it’s [been a matter of] how much time I have. I did have a little bit more time with Eclipse. With Twilight, we were fighting the strike deadline, so I slammed that one out. With New Moon I had more time, but I was juggling Dexter at the same time.
How fast did you do Twilight?
I think I outlined for about a month, while simultaneously working on Dexter, and then it was five weeks to write the script.
Geez.
Yeah.
And then with New Moon you had…?
New Moon was over the course of about six months, but you gotta understand, that was two days a week.
Right, because you were doing Dexter…
So it was two days a week times six months.
No one’s sayin’ you’re a slacker here, believe me.
And then Eclipse was done when Dexter was on hiatus… I did rewrites when it came back.
So for this one you were luxuriating in time, relatively speaking?
Yeah, although I had to take a few months off to just regenerate a little.
Did it actually make it harder, having the luxury of a little time and being able to focus on just the one script, not being completely under the gun?
Well, I was still under the gun with Eclipse because I knew Dexter was coming back, and I had to get it done. But with Breaking Dawn now, I have that for the first time. I left Dexter. I had to knowing that Breaking Dawn was probably going to be two movies. I can do one Twilight and Dexter, but I couldn’t do two.
So I very sadly left Dexter, because that show was my favorite television experience to date, and I’ve had many.
But it’s true that, when I don’t have time pressures, I don’t use my time as wisely. It’s a so much nicer way to write, and it allows me time for creative contemplation, which is great, but sometimes I find myself just kind of surfing the Web, and I’m like, “Wow, three hours just passed.”
On the one hand, perhaps I’m coming up with more ideas because I have time. Maybe the work is better. Then again, maybe it’s not because I’m not as disciplined.
And looking ahead to Breaking Dawn, where are you with it now?
Deep in the center [laughs].
Now that you’re in the midst of this final couplet of films and the end is in sight, what are your feelings contemplating this being done?
Well, it’s interesting. For the past four years I’ve been writing Dexter and one Twilight or another. Both projects have been amazing experiences, the best of my career. I know both of these worlds really well, I know the characters’ voices, [and] I’m comfortable living in their worlds. That has been hard-won. I’ve spent many, many years trying to find a home, and then I found two.
So that’s hard to leave. It’s a nice feeling; confidence is a nice feeling. And yet I’m excited to see what’s next – nervous about it, but very excited to see what I can do next.
WGA Announces Final Board Candidates
No additional candidates have joined the 18 already battling for eight board slots for the Writers Guild of America West, according to Variety.
The guild announced the final list Friday, a month after the 18 candidates approved by its nominating committee were disclosed. Other candidates could have emerged via petition but none did so.
Showrunners Matthew Weiner of “Mad Men,” David Shore of “House” and Christopher Keyser of “Lonestar” are among the nominees along with incumbents David A. Goodman (”Family Guy”), Mark Gunn, Katherine Fugate (”Valentine’s Day”), Karen Harris, Kathy Kiernan and Aaron Mendelson.
Other candidates are Robin Schiff, Cheryl Heuton, Timothy J. Lea, Mick Betancourt (”Law and Order: SVU”), Erich Hoeber (”Battleship”), Erica Montolfo (”The Game”), Matt Pyken (”NCIS: Los Angeles”), Naomi Foner (”Bee Season”) and Steve Skrovan (”Everybody Loves Raymond”).
The guild will host a candidates night town hall forum at its headquarters Sept. 7, and announce election results Sept. 17. The elections usually draw roughly 20% participation from the 9,000 members.
With the WGA’s contract expiring May 1, results of the voting will be closely scrutinized. WGA West voters narrowly elected John Wells last fall over Elias Davis in what was seen as a turn toward moderation following the four-year tenure of WGA West president Patric Verrone — highlighted by the bitter 100-day strike of 2007-08.
Verrone was termed out of the presidency last year, but received the most votes of any board candidate. He and his allies have retained control of that panel, including VP Tom Schulman, secretary-treasurer and current board members Goodman, Howard A. Rodman and Dan Wilcox.
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