Director Stuart Gordon on "Re-Animator"

Director/Writer Stuart Gordon came to an interesting realization a few years after the success of his first feature: He suddenly had a new middle name. Any time he was mentioned in print, his name now read “Stuart “Re-Animator Gordon." Be assured, there are worse fates in the film business.

 His new moniker came about simply because he (and his stellar team of actors and writers and creative folks) had taken the standard horror film and given it a much-needed jolt. 

Re-Animator, based on short stories by horror master H.P. Lovecraft, used all the standard elements of the horror film – mad scientist, pretty girl in distress, able lab assistant, lumbering monster/creature – and then gave the whole genre a surprising (and surprisingly funny) twist. 

What was going on in your career before Re-Animator came about?

 STUART GORDON: I was doing theater. I was the Artistic Director at the Organic Theater Company in Chicago. When I started working on Re-Animator, the original guy that I collaborated with was William Norris, who was an actor in our company and had written several of the plays that we had done.

Originally, we were going to do it as a limited series for television. That sounds kind of insane, but that was the plan. H.P. Lovecraft had serialized the Re-Animator stories, so there were six little stories. So our plan was to do six half-hour shows. Lovecraft's original stories are set in the past -- the first one takes place around the turn of the century, and then the episodes go through about a thirty-year period. So the first draft was set in period. 

We tried to sell that idea, based on the first episode, and had no luck. Then someone told us that half-hour shows were not really the way to go and that we should do an hour. So we went back and combined the first and the second story.

Around this point, Bill Norris was kind of losing faith in the process, so he dropped out and Dennis Paoli came in. When we wrote the second script, the hour-long version, someone again told us that setting it in period was making it a harder sell. It really should be set in the present day. So we shifted it into the present day, but were still unable to sell it.

At that point a friend introduced me to Brian Yuzna, who wanted to finance a feature. We showed him the hour version that we had developed and talked a little bit about how it could be expanded into a feature. We thought we could use the third story, and he said, "Why don't we use all six of them?" I said, "Well, what if we want to do a sequel?" And he said, "Let's just worry about doing as good a movie as we possibly can."

And that was the script that ended up becoming the film Re-Animator.

Why did you decide to work with the Lovecraft stories in the first place?

STUART GORDON: It began with a conversation I had with a friend. This was in the early 1980s and there were all these vampire and Dracula movies being made. I said, "I wish someone would make a Frankenstein movie," because I always liked Frankenstein better. This friend said, "Have you ever read Herbert West, Re-Animator by Lovecraft?" I had read a considerable amount of Lovecraft and I had never heard of this story. 

It piqued my curiosity so I started looking for it and found that it was out of print. I eventually ended up going to the Chicago Public Library and found that they had a copy of it in their special collection. I had to fill out a postcard requesting it. A few months later they sent me a note saying I could come to the library and read it there, but I would not be able to take it out of the library. When I got there, they handed me what was essentially a pulp magazine that contained the stories. The pages were literally crumbling as I was turning them, so I asked if I could photocopy it and they allowed me to do that. The stories had been out of print for many years.

Were the stories in the public domain?

STUART GORDON: They were. All of Lovecraft's work is now public domain. This was something we didn't know at the time. We believed that we had to get the rights through Arkham House, which was the publisher of the stories. 

What you usually do when you're working on something based on existing material, you do a copyright search, just to make sure that the people you're dealing with do indeed have the rights to it. We discovered that the material was public domain and that Arkham House did not have the rights. When we confronted them with this, this just sort of said, "Oh, well." They didn't argue about it at all. They knew that they had been trying to pull something. 

Was one of the attractions of the piece that it was in the public domain?

STUART GORDON: That made things a lot easier for us. We were prepared to pay something for the story. If they had asked for a lot of money, that would have been difficult, because our budget was small. Finding out that it was public domain was great, it was one less thing to worry about.

Once you decided to do it as a feature, what was the process for determining what elements you'd use from the six stories?

STUART GORDON: One of the things that emerged was that the whole story was being told by West's assistant, in the first person, describing what it was like working with West and so forth. We realized that this character was really key to telling the story, because all of the other people that you meet in the stories are these insane characters. This guy really is, in a sense, the audience who's witnessing all this stuff. 

We really got into the idea that we had to make this character very sympathetic and very normal. He would be like the audience, asking the questions that the audience wants to know and be someone that they could relate to. It also added a lot of contrast between this guy and all the eccentric types that populate the story.

In addition to reading through the stories, did you do any other research before you started writing?

STUART GORDON: I did. I went and visited some morgues, which was very helpful. I talked to several pathologists and even got thrown out of some places. I went to the University of Illinois pathology department and as soon as I told them I was working on a horror film, the professor started screaming at me to leave. They threw me out.

After this happened, I talked to a friend of mine who's a doctor, because I was kind of nervous about going to go to talk to more pathologists. I said, "Will they talk to me?" And he said, "Oh, yeah. They’re the loneliest people in the world. No one ever goes to the morgue." Not when they're conscious, anyway.

It turned out to be true -- the pathologists that I talked to were great. It started with a meeting with a guy named Dr. Stein who ran the Cook County morgue. He took me on a tour of the morgue that I'll never forget. At that point I had never really seen a dead body, other than someone at a funeral who had already been embalmed and made-up. The stench was just unbelievable. The bodies were just piled on top of each other on gurneys in these walk-in refrigerators. They didn't have those drawers like you see in movies; I've never seen that in any morgue. 

Stein had a very dark sense of humor, and I found out that this was pretty common with these pathologists. If you're going to do that job, you really have to maintain some kind of distance and keep a sense of humor about it all. That worked its way into the screenplay as well.

The attitude about the dead was really interesting. The idea is that a doctor, when you're alive, will do everything he can to keep you alive. But as soon as you're dead, you become toxic waste. You're garbage. You're not dealt with in a loving way at all. The corpses that we saw in the Cook County morgue were literally in garbage bags, black plastic garbage bags. The ones that had been in operations still had all the tubes and everything still in them. They didn't even bother to pull those things out. It was like, "Why bother?" 

It was an eye-opener and that also worked its way into the story. There's a sequence in Re-Animatorwhere he's trying to re-animate this corpse and it's not working. The assistant says, "We failed." And West says, "I didn't fail. He did." And then he smacks the corpse.

Why did you decide to do a horror film as your first film?

STUART GORDON: First of all, I like horror films. I've always liked them. But it was also because I was told by a friend that they were the easiest kinds of movies to find financing for. The wisdom, and I think it's still true, is that no matter how badly a horror film turns out, you can always sell it to somebody and the investors will get their money back. 

Did you bring any tricks from your theater background to help keep costs down?

STUART GORDON: I would say that 99% of the effects in the movie were done as live stage effects, what they call practical effects. They were the sorts of things that we could have done on-stage, to a large degree. I think there are only a couple of opticals in the whole movie. And this was before CGI or any of that.

I also rehearsed with the actors the same way I would when doing a play and that was very, very useful.

What’s the value of rehearsing?

STUART GORDON: The main reason you rehearse when you're doing a low-budget film is because you don't have a lot of time on the set to be talking about motivation while the whole crew is standing around waiting. So it's a way to work out a lot of stuff beforehand. 

But it was also good to hear the script read aloud. It amazes me that that is almost never done. We could see which lines sounded kind of clunky or other lines that weren't needed. In a couple of places we found dialogue that we really did need that was not in the script and we had to fill in some things. 

Can you think of any examples of dialogue you created in rehearsal to fill in a gap?

STUART GORDON: In the movie, West kills Dr. Hill who is trying to steal his secret of re-animation. He beheads him, and then he re-animates both the head and the headless body. They both come back to life and end up attacking West and stealing his serum. 

We had his assistant coming back and -- in the screenplay -- West didn't tell him any of the stuff that had gone on. The audience already knew this stuff, but the actor playing the assistant was asking, "How do I already know all this? Wouldn't I be asking him what happened?"

We didn't want to have a long scene where West tells us what we already know. And so it was one of those things where we had to find a way to explain it very quickly. So West says something like, "He wanted my serum. I had to kill him." And Cain, the assistant says, "He's dead?" And West says, "Not anymore." And that was it. That basically filled it in.

That's my favorite exchange in the film; it really encapsulates the tone of the movie.

STUART GORDON: There's always some key piece of information you always leave out in a script, too, I've noticed. Something you always take for granted and assume that it’s there, and then you realize that it isn't.

Did you screen other genre films before you started scripting?

STUART GORDON: I looked at a lot of films. Brian Yuzna sat me down and for weeks we screened every horror film that had been made in the 1980s, just to get an idea of what was out there and what had been done. 

One of the things that you have to do when you're making a horror film is that you have to somehow set it apart from the others. You have to go further or do something differently that really makes it unique. So it was important to see what else had been done and to get an idea where we could go, some uncharted territory that we could mine for the film.

With Re-Animator it really had to do with the sexual content. There were a lot of horror films out there, but most of them had the monster trying to devour the victim. That's a very typical thing. So the idea that the monster wants to have sex with the victim was something that was very seldom done. And if it was done, it was something that was very non-explicit. 

You found a way to make it explicit and at the same time different and amazing and something no one had ever seen before.

STUART GORDON: Yes, we set up that Dr. Hill was in lust with the Dean's daughter and he finally has her, but now he's a headless corpse. But he still wants to have his way with her, and the question was, how's he going to do this? 

I remember having discussions with Dennis about that. One night he called me up and said, "I've just written the world's first visual pun." It was the scene that everybody talked about in that movie, which was referred to as the "head gives head" scene.

How did you share the labor in the writing process?

STUART GORDON: Bill had written the piece as a period piece, but some of that language survived even into the modern versions of the script. It was almost Victorian language. West says things like, "That infernal beast," and things like that. No one uses a word like "infernal" anymore, but West does and it seemed right for him. Dennis modernized things a bit more. And the experiences that I had in the morgue worked their way into what became the final version of the script. 

How conscious were you of budget limitations as you were writing?

STUART GORDON: With low budget, it really has to be minimalist. You have to have as few sets and locations as possible and as few characters as possible. You really have to determine what's really essential and what do I really need to tell this story. If it isn't essential, it usually will get cut.

There are no night exteriors in the film, except for some establishing shots. Was that by design?

STUART GORDON: Shooting outside at night is a very expensive thing to do. If you're outside, you need to light it and that can become very pricey.

The establishing shots were done later, because after looking at the movie we realized that we needed to go outside some times. So we just added establishing shots of the buildings.

I remember you saying once that you never worried about what the critics would say about Re-Animator, because you always knew they would hate it.

STUART GORDON: That's true. I assumed that the critics would hate it and that the people I was really thinking about were the fans. I had seen all these other films and in my mind I knew that I had to outdo them -- somehow. But I just wrote off the critics. In a way, that was a very healthy thing, because if you're worrying about the critics it can paralyze you or you'll get too self-conscious about what you're doing. To just be able to ignore them completely was actually a very healthy thing.

Did you think about the special effects at all while you were writing?

STUART GORDON: One of the most difficult things was the idea that there's a character walking around carrying his head through half of the film. That was the major special effects problem. So I sat down pretty early on with the effects guys and we talked about different ways of creating that effect. I also ended up storyboarding those sequences, once I knew what the techniques would be and what approach we'd use for each shot. 

We used a variety of different gags. We resisted the idea of just having a guy with his shoulders built up, because what that does is make his arms look like he's a gorilla. So that was one technique we did not use.

The simplest technique we used was when we would shoot from the back. We would just have the guy who was playing the headless body lean his head forward and we had a fake neck stump on the back of his neck, and that was what you saw when it was shot from the back. You just had to make sure you didn't see his head at all. That way, we didn't have to do anything to his arms.

The one that was the most complicated was where we built an entire fake torso. That allowed the actor, David Gale, to stick his head through the torso and then the other actor could reach his hands around. That was the most complicated thing.

When it came time to cast the film, you didn't really follow Lovecraft's description of Herbert West.

STUART GORDON: West in the story is a blonde; Lovecraft refers to him as a towhead. But when Jeffrey Combs came in, he had the right attitude: a brilliant guy who is completely focused on only one thing and everything else is really not important to him. He captured that kind of drive. It was pretty clear from the first audition that this was Herbert West.

Was there anything you learned while working on that script that you took to future writing projects?

STUART GORDON: One of the things was that when you're working on a horror film, every single scene should have some tension in it. That was one of the things we really worked on with Re-Animator.  You really can't have any scenes with people just sort of sitting around and relaxed. You have to find the tension in each scene. There needs to be something scary about every single scene in the film, otherwise you're letting the audience off the hook. What you really want to do is to keep people on the edge of their seats all the way through.

Is that something you brought to the process from your work as a theater director?

STUART GORDON: It's funny, one of the things that I always did when I was staging a play was, I would very seldom have characters sit down. People sitting down and talking is, I think, one of the most boring things you can do. I would try to avoid that, because I felt that if you have the character sitting down, then the whole story sits down.

When I was doing theater, one of our patrons was an older woman and she would always bring her husband, who didn't really like theater very much. But she dragged him along to see our plays. He was notorious for falling asleep in the middle of the plays, and sometimes snoring. His name was Lester. So I was always, in the back of my mind, thinking "We've got to keep Lester awake. We have to have something going on every moment to keep Lester from falling asleep." And I think I'm still trying to keep Lester awake.

What's the best advice you've ever received about writing?

STUART GORDON: The best advice I ever got was don't censor yourself. That applies to horror films, but I think it applies to anything. If the idea seems like a strong idea, don't worry about what the ramifications are. Just go for it.

You should always use yourself as the test, the guinea pig, rather than thinking in terms of, "Well, marketing people say if I want to appeal to an audience of teenagers I should do this." That's a really good way to destroy  anything that's interesting. If it's something that you would like to see on-screen, then that's enough of a reason to put it in.

Also, although it's a cliché, they say that scripts are not written -- they're re-written. And scripts are not finished, they're abandoned. I think that's really true. You're going to end up doing many drafts of that script and really boiling it down to what's essential. Movies are really minimalist, I think. Every single line of dialogue, every single stage direction is going to be questioned at some point -- "Do we really need this?" So it's really a question of getting a sense of what you absolutely have to have and getting rid of everything that you don't.

One of the great things that Lovecraft said was "Never explain anything." I always thought that was a really good note, especially in horror films. It's really interesting when you look at a movie like The Ring, and then you look at the Japanese version of it, Ringu. Ringu is really spare and simple and they never explain anything. Whereas in the American version there's this tendency to want to explain everything -- to the point where you kind of take away all the magic. Lovecraft's precept is a pretty good one to follow.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

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Tom DiCillo on writing/directing “Living In Oblivion”

You’re crossing a potentially deadly minefield when you attempt to take a short film and expand it into a feature. What was once sharp and clever can quickly turn repetitive and dull if you take a wrong step or make the wrong choices. 

Tom DiCillo successfully navigated that minefield when he turned his short, Living In Oblivion, into what is unquestionably one of the classic low-budget movies of all time. 

More importantly, he also took what at first appears to be a very narrow and “inside” story – about a director nearly losing his mind while shooting his movie – and turned it into a universal story about the creative process.

(Be aware that this interview contains spoilers about key plot points.)

What was going on in your career before you made Living In Oblivion?

TOM DICILLO: My first feature was film called Johnny Suede, starring Brad Pitt. I busted my ass on that one for at least four years to get it made. The film never quite found an audience and the distribution of it was, frankly, really disappointing. It made making my second film really, really difficult. 

I had written a screenplay called Box of Moonlight and could not get the money for it. Years and years went by, two, three, four, five, and I just reached a point of such maniacal desperation that I said, "I have to do something, no matter what." It was out of that intense frustration that Living in Oblivionwas born.

It wasn't born out of, "Hey, I want to make a funny movie." It really came out of one of the most intense periods of anger and frustration in my career. And, ironically, it turned out to be the funniest movie I've ever made. I think in some way that is part of what makes my humor my humor: It’s humor based upon real, human intensity, desperation, and foolishness.

To use a screenwriting term, what was the inciting incident that kicked off the creation of Living In Oblivion?

TOM DICILLO: I was invited to the wedding of my wife's cousin. It was a three-day event and on the first night -- you have to understand, I was carrying with me four and a half years of frustration -- I had a martini. 

I had never had a martini before in my life. And I said, "Wow, if that's how you feel after one martini, let's have another one." So I had two. And I said, "This is just unbelievable." And I had three. Later I realized that I should never, ever, ever do that again.

But it was after the third martini that this guy came up to me, who I vaguely recognized from an acting class I had taken maybe four or five years earlier. And he says, "Oh, Tom, it's great to see you, man. You're so lucky, you made Johnny Suede, you made a movie. Lights, camera, action." 

And I just erupted at him. I said, "Shut the fuck up. Making a movie is one of the most tedious, frustrating, intense experiences I've ever had in my life. And not even just getting the money. What about when you're getting ready to do a shot and suddenly something screws up and the actor's moment that they've been working on for hours just disappears and you never get it back again?"

Well, that's where I had the first idea. I swear, right there at that moment, I thought, "You know, that could make a little fifteen-minute film. Just confront an actor with an endless number of disruptions and see what happens." And that's where the idea was born.  

That first half hour just kind of jumped out of me. I went home and wrote the first half-hour as it exists, word for word, frame for frame in the final version. 

So Living in Oblivion was essentially based on a single idea that then later, completely by accident, turned into a feature film. You never quite know how something is going to turn out, and that one for some reason just all came together. I'm very proud of that movie.

What happened after you wrote the short script?

TOM DICILLO: Catherine Keener was visiting us at that time and I gave her the script -- it was about 25 pages -- and I just heard her laughing in this back room that we have. She was just howling. 

She came out and said, "We have to do this." And I said, "Okay, let's do it. Even if we have to shoot it on Super 8, let's make this movie."

The next thing I know, her husband, Dermot, said he would like to put in some money if he could be in it. He originally wanted to play Nick Reve, the director, but I said I had someone a little older in mind, and he immediately said, "What about Steve Buscemi?" I said, "That's a fantastic idea. You can play Wolf, the cameraman." He said, "That's great."

It was like a bunch of kids putting on a show in the garage. Anybody who wanted to be in the movie, who had a little money, got a part. That is how I cast it, I am not kidding you. Sometimes you agonize about casting, over and over for months trying to figure out which actor to choose. In this case, I never thought about it for a second. Never. And look how amazing those actors were.

So we started shooting. We had a five-day shoot in New York City and we had about $37,000 that my wife helped raise and that everybody put it. The cast and crew were amazed at how well it was turning out. On the fourth day we realized that it was going to end and there was a kind of depression that settled in on the set. People said, "Tom, you should make a feature out of this." And I went, "How? How? How would I ever do that?"

But it turned out so well that I thought, I have to somehow find a way to take this magical accident and develop it.

What steps did you take to do that?

TOM DICILLO: After it was finished, I submitted it to the Cannes short film festival, I tried a number of things, and I realized that as a short it wasn't going to go anywhere. First of all, it was too long. It was just under a half an hour. 

So I began to think about what was developed in the first section, the first third of the film? What ideas were kind of lurking in the background? And one of the ideas was that there was a relationship developing between the director and his leading actress. Another thing that seemed to be developing was a relationship between the cameraman and the First AD. 

And I began thinking about, "What's the one fantasy that I've always thought about?" And that is having the lead actor and the director get into a fist-fight on the set. And so that's how I came up with the idea of Chad Palomino and how he disrupts the shoot -- this Hollywood guy entering this little, dusty world of Nick Reve's independent film and totally screwing it up. So I had Part Two.

So then I said, "Where the hell is it going to go from here?" 

And my wife, very astutely, said, "Listen, Part One is a dream. Part Two is a dream. Why don't you have Part Three be them making a dream sequence?" And I went, "Oh my God, that is so fantastic." Instantly, in an instant, I thought of Tito, the dwarf, erupting on set, "You stupid morons! Is that the only way you can make a dream sequence, by putting a dwarf in it?"

The two new segments evolve perfectly out of Part One. The movie never feels like a short with stuff added to turn it into a feature.

TOM DICILLO: I put so much work into that screenplay. I wanted no one to think that it was just a short with two other segments tacked on to it. I wanted it to feel like it was seamless. And it took a lot of work to make that progression, to make that movement happen in the screenplay.

It sounds like you really drew from personal experience to write the script.

TOM DICILLO: I've had a lot of experience of being on a number of sets. Even when I was going to film school, when you're on the set of a student film, it's just the most insane chaos that you can imagine. Even then I noticed that the drama that was happening just off the side of the camera was a million times more interesting than the stale scene that everybody was so intensely focused on. I noticed that even then. 

And I swear to God, the very first time that I experienced room tone, everybody standing there like these living statues in this forced silence, I said, "I'm going to put that in a movie one day. It's just so bizarre, I'm going to put that in a movie."

I've always been fascinated with the stuff that happens on the set. Not that I'm trying to say that just because it's a film set it’s interesting. I don't feel that. But I do feel like there's a real crazy drama that happens when you get a group of people trying to do a task together.

I'm in love with filmmaking, but at the same time I also have moments where I absolutely despise it. The medium itself seems designed to thwart you whenever you really want to try to do something. Just when you're about to get a shot, a light goes off or a train goes by, a car alarm goes off, something. Everything is so fragile in the business. So I wanted to take my rage out on that, because it can be so frustrating at times. It was so liberating and freeing to do that.

It must have been bizarre, making a good movie about a movie where everything is going wrong.

TOM DICILLO: I swear the first time I had the actor intentionally drop the microphone into the shot, they didn't want to do it. They didn't want to do it because everything that we've been taught is to keep the microphone out of the frame. Don't put it in. 

I wanted to try to really peel back that curtain about what it's like to be on the set and the real struggle, because I think that struggle is what is interesting to me -- the struggle to somehow capture something on film. 

I also wanted to show the director in a way that I had never seen portrayed. I was really concerned about that. Most of the time the independent director, and directors in general, are shown wearing leather jackets and smoking cigarettes, brooding in a corner with sunglasses. Most directors that I've ever seen on a set of any movie look so desperate, so frustrated, so neurotic. So I wanted to address that and still let the director have some sort of dignity. 

I think Nick Reve is not a total fool, but the struggles that he faces are really, I think, rather archetypical: How do you get what you want in a business that is all about pretension and ego? The way he has to deal with Chad Palomino is a monumental struggle. Here's a guy where all you really want to do is beat the shit out of him, but you can't. You have to say, "Oh, yeah, man, you did a great take. Great take."

Part One ended up being the idea of the technical desperation and screw-ups. Then I wanted to see what would happen if you drop emotional complications in and that served to be the core of the movement for Part Two. It's all about how emotional entanglements happening off the set can affect what's being captured on film. 

For Part Three, I really wanted to bring the director to the point where he gave up. After all this frustration, I realized he would really get to that point. To me it was interesting to drive him to that point where he could not proceed -- he really felt like he was failing and that he was not a director -- and to see what would happen to him, to see how he would respond.

One of the things that makes the script so strong is that all the obstacles that you put in Nick's way are real obstacles that you've experienced in that position.

TOM DICILLO: Whatever you write, you have to tap into something personal for yourself. I used to have an acting teacher who said to me, "If it ain't personal, it ain't no good." There's something to be said for that. 

But at the same time, I don't want to ever make it seem like when I write that it's just about me. I'm not interested in that. Even with my first film, Johnny Suede -- sure, I put a lot of myself into that character -- but I also was very clearly trying to find a way to make it more objective, more universal, something that other people could relate to.

I absolutely believe that if you can find a way to tap into something that's very personal and then make a creative leap from there, that's the best way to do it. Anger by itself is not enough. You have to have the creative imagination coming into play as well.

How helpful was it to have Part One all shot when trying to get the money for Part Two and Part Three?

TOM DICILLO: I took Part One all the way to the point of a finished print, with a mix, with titles, music, everything. I began screening that for people after I had written Part Two and Part Three, thinking that people wouldn't get a sense of what I was trying to do if they only read the screenplay. So therefore, having Part One all finished, I thought it would be perfect, because they can see exactly the characters, the actors, the humor, everything. 

Well, it didn't happen. I had several conversations with all of the independent companies, and they all passed on the movie at the script stage. Completely. I offered it to Miramax for nothing and they said no.

Did they give reasons why they were passing?

TOM DICILLO: They didn't get it. I'm not complaining, because I'm probably guilty of the same thing, but until something literally comes up and kicks you in the head and tells you what it is, no one knows anything. 

They looked at this movie and said, "Why? Why should we put money into this movie?" And it's just bizarre to me, because most of the most impressive films -- the ones that really have stuck in the minds and consciousness of audiences -- are the ones that are absolutely original and have never been made before. Even Star Wars, for God's sake. He couldn't make that movie for years.

So, what happened was, I had put my wife's cousin and her husband, Hillary and Michael, in Part One -- Hillary played the script supervisor and her husband Michael played Speedo, the sound man -- and at the last minute Hillary called me and said, "We'd like to put up the rest of the money and make the film as a feature." 

And so they put up almost $500,000 of their own money and we were able to go off on our own, once again, and make the film.

This may be an apocryphal story, but I have heard that at the same time they offered you the money, you were on the phone with someone who had the money but with whom you didn't want to work.

TOM DICILLO: Yes, exactly. He was being a real prick. He was this completely ego-driven guy. He was going to own everybody, he was going to tell everybody who to cast, all that stuff. Completely antithetical to the way the film had been created. 

I was just about to make my travel arrangements to go out to LA to sign the deal with him, when my Call Waiting clicked in and it was Hillary and Michael. They were so apologetic -- "Would you mind if we suggested putting up the money?" I said, "You've got to be kidding?!"

It was one of the most magical experiences, from beginning to end, really. 

In Part One, how did you work with Catherine on the different levels of her performance? How did you map out the range she had to go through, from being just okay to being really good?

TOM DICILLO: I was concerned about that. I actually numbered the takes; I think there's 12 takes. Number one, on the scale of one to ten, should be a seven. Number two should be a five. We did something like that, but eventually what it came down to the two of us deciding what the degree of distraction she was feeling at that time. That's basically how it came about. 

How much rehearsal did you have?

TOM DICILLO: None. Absolutely none. 

I don't like to rehearse, anyway. My style of working is to just talk to people, get the costumes correct, talk a little bit about the character, and then just find it as the camera is rolling. 

What was so fascinating to me was that none of these actors auditioned and they were almost instantaneously their parts. 

Many people think Living In Oblivion is completely improvised, but there's only one scene that was improvised. That's the scene where Steve erupts at the crew at the end of Part One. Everything else was completely scripted.

What's your favorite memory of working on Living In Oblivion?

TOM DICILLO: Oh, man, there are millions. I think I would have to say that it was the look on people's faces the first time Peter Dinklage, who plays Tito, erupted into his tirade against the director. 

Most of the crew that we hired had not read the script, because we weren't paying anybody. And so we were getting people working for free and they might work one or two days a week. And so this crew was just standing by the lights, doing whatever they were doing, and all of a sudden Peter Dinklage, during a take, says, "I'm sick of this crap." He just erupted and everybody just turned and looked with their jaws open. They thought he was really saying it.

Then the laughter that erupted when they realized that it was just part of the movie, it was a fantastic feeling. It made me really feel that I had stumbled upon something and it was working.

Were there any things you learned writing that script that you still use today?

TOM DICILLO: Yeah. I have a tendency, if I'm going to write a joke, I set it up with a one, two, three punch. But I realized that most of the time, when I get in the editing room, I usually only end up using the one or the two, never the one, two, three. That's kind of an interesting lesson to learn: if you're going to tell a joke, just tell the joke. Don't do three jokes.

I also learned the idea of setting in motion something that, once it's in motion it has a life of its own and people are really instantaneously eager to find out what's going to happen. That's a crucial thing. 

Many screenwriting teachers will say a screenplay is all about tension and conflict. And, in some ways, that absolutely true. But if that tension and conflict doesn't arouse enough interest to have people really want to know what's going to happen next, then you're screwed. I think Johnny Suedesuffered from that a bit. It was my first screenplay and there's very little real dramatic tension in it. 

I like the idea of setting something in motion -- like a cart rolling down a hill -- that once it's going, you can't stop it.

What's the best piece of advice about writing that you've ever received?

TOM DICILLO: The very first thing that comes to my mind is less about writing than it is about the creative process itself. 

It was an experience I had when I went to Sundance, to the Director's Lab with my first screenplay for Johnny Suede. I had worked very hard on it and had just come from a rather negative experience at NYU, when I was there getting my Master's degree in directing. It was a very destructive process at NYU in terms of how they would critique you. Even though I did very well there, I still was quite aware of just how destructive it was and I was gun shy of that stuff.

So when I went out to Sundance for the Director's Lab, some of the more traditional guys out there were Hollywood, conventional guys, and they started giving me notes about the script that really bothered me and which were, again, destructive.

And then I had a meeting with Buck Henry, who was one of the advisors. He'd read my script and he sat down and just looked at me -- this was the first time I'd met him -- and all he said was, "Hey man, you're on to something. Go for it."

Now that wasn't specific, but what it completely did was just open me up to the fact that whatever you're doing, if you're trying something, just try it. Just try it. Things don't have to be instantaneously perfect or whatever, but if you really are trying something, then trust it and just try it. 

And I would say that to any aspiring writer: It's a combination of confidence and innocence at the same time. You have to have both; you have to have absolute determination, but you have to be an innocent in the utmost sense of that word, where you are completely free and open to anything happening and that everything around you supports you and loves you, like the world of an infant.

Because if you don't have that, this world is so brutal to any sort of creative failure -- Arthur Miller wrote a beautiful essay about how American culture deals with failure -- and that's a struggle that we all face. Everybody faces it: giving yourself the creative and imaginative playground just to go ahead and try your idea for God's sake. Try it. 

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

Daniel Myrick on "The Blair Witch Project"

How did The Blair Witch Project come about?

DANIEL: Ed (Sanchez) and I were both fans of the In Search of … series, with the haunting Leonard Nimoy voice-over, and movies like Legend of Boggy Creek, which had a limited theatrical run for a while. 

There were all kinds of these UFO, Bigfoot faux documentaries television shows and features that kind of walked the line between fact and fiction. And we always found them very scary and haunting and they resonated with us. 

I think Blair Witch was born out of wanting to re-visit that and recreate that, on a more contemporary video language. So, we definitely used those films and television shows as our inspiration and tried to stick to what scared us as kids and put that into Blair Witch.

What was your guiding principle on the project?

DANIEL: Our logic was rooted in method acting. We took that theory and applied it to the whole filmmaking process. 

We hated a lot of traditional fake documentaries, because there was always some sign or red flag in them that would be a little telltale sign that it was scripted or faked in some way. The camera would happen to be in the right place at the right time too many times. A line of dialogue from a testimonial just sounded too scripted, too convenient.

So, our theory was: let's shoot this like a documentary as much as is humanly possible and set the stage for our actors to play in character their roles within this documentary, so hopefully when we come out the other end we have, effectively, a documentary. 

Without infusing our own subjectivity in the shooting process, I think we came away with what looked very natural and what looked like very unpredictable footage. 

Then we cut, from that footage, the story that ultimately became The Blair Witch Project. Not to say that this wasn't scripted and outlined; but the shooting process had to look like it was done like a documentary.

That was our theory, our logic behind it: not to become our own worst enemies and not become victim to our own narrative conceits by wanting to have the camera at the right place at the right time and stuff like that. 

Instead, allow that free flow and unpredictability and spontaneity to happen, and then you just get what you got. As a result, it came across as very authentic and very real, which we thought ultimately would lend to the horror.

But you did have to step in on a few occasions, in order to keep things on track, right?

DANIEL: We had to do that because we did have a narrative to follow. It was a balance that we were trying to strike, where you saw what you needed to see to propel the plot and the story, but where it didn't look contrived. 

And there certainly times when it did look contrived and that was part of the edit process, editing out all the moments and lines and camera angles that just didn't feel authentic. That was the first step of our process, cutting all that stuff out. 

But we had to re-set certain scenes just logistically. For example, when the kids were running out of the tent, we certainly didn't want them running into any low-hanging branches or anything like that. So, we had a whole path cut out. And so, logistically, that was set up in advance, so they knew where to run and exactly how to run out of the tent.

Same goes for the house at the end; that was a compilation of five or six takes, because the blocking that was required for them to go upstairs and back down was too complicated to just have it happen the first time. It's a credit to the actors, because they were seamless. We shot that house scene over two nights and it looks like it was done in just a few minutes.

Do you ever get tired talking about The Blair Witch Project?

DANIEL: No, I'm as fascinated by it as anybody else. 

Certainly, I'm very proud of Blair Witch and it's opened up a whole wealth of opportunities for us. But at the same time, it was like this science experiment that took on a life of its own. 

It's always interesting for me to hear other people's perspective on what happened and what their take was on it. It was this phenomenon that was greater than any of us had anticipated. For most of that ride, we were on the outside looking in like everybody else and were as fascinated by the evolution of the whole Blair phenomenon as anybody else was. 

We had an inside look at what was going on, but to this day I look back at the confluence of events and the timing and the Internet and the reality approach we took to this—how everything intersected—and what happens when that does. I find that fascinating to this day. 

I have people today still e-mailing me, convinced that Blair Witch is real and just refusing to accept the fact that it's not. They're the exception to the rule, but it is humbling to me to see how people can be convinced to believe certain things. Even when we were, all along the way, telling people exactly how we shot the movie. The intent of Blair Witch was not to be a hoax, but to feel real. But to this day people still think it was real.

It was a really polarizing film, from the moment it was released.

DANIEL: It definitely polarized audiences. There were people who were upset with the film for various reasons. One, they didn't understand what was going on. Why was Mike standing in the corner, or it was too shaky, or they were just unprepared for this kind of movie. 

The other extreme was people say it was the greatest thing ever made. 

My experience has been that movies that have a long-term effect on people have a tendency to polarize audiences. And it is a movie that disarms you. The minute you walk in and sit down and watch that opening title card go by and you know the people you're watching die in the end of the movie, it puts you ill at ease, because now you realize that anything can happen, that the hero is not going to live in the end, and all the traditional safety nets that you're accustomed to seeing in Hollywood filmmaking or television are gone. 

Some people are very comfortable and like that experience and like that challenge, and other people are very uncomfortable with that. We had people get really angry with us at the film; but I'll tell you one thing: the overwhelming majority were scared. And that's ultimately what we were going after.

What lessons did you take away from the experience?

DANIEL: There are lessons specific to the film industry and then there are overall life lessons that you learn. Things do change, dramatically. People all of a sudden want to do business with you and they want make movies with you, and you didn't know them from Adam the day before.

We had this three-picture deal, post-Blair Witch, with Artisan that we thought was our guarantee to making movies into the decades to come. And we found out that a lot of those so-called "three picture deals" are ways to just leverage you later down the road. You effectively sign off the rights to your next two movies, which are two of your pet projects, to the distributor and then they can, in turn, hold that as leverage to get you to do, or try to get you to do, Blair 2 for example.

That's a specific example of us learning a hard lesson where we signed off a couple of our best ideas because—in the heat of the moment—we thought our distributor was going to line them up and start making these movies with us. And then you come to find out that their primary interest was just making more Blair movies. And that wasn't where we wanted to go creatively at the time. 

With that kind of notoriety, it's very easy to lose your perspective on this business and on this industry because of the success and how big it became. And it was good for us to remind each other where we were just a few months prior to Blair Witch hitting it big and kind of keeping our feet on the ground. 

You have to take it all with a grain of salt. You really have to be happy and excited that you've reached a level of success that you've always dreamt about; but at the same time, remembering why you got into this business and remembering the kind of movies you wanted to make is very important as well. Because it's really easy to go down that road of all of a sudden people are sending you scripts and they want to pay you a lot of money to go do bad movies, just because they want to throw your name up on something.

For me, it's about common sense. We were offered several different movies, like Exorcist 4, I've forgotten the names of most of them. For better or worse—myself in particular—there's just a great reward in doing something that not everyone else is out doing. I certainly don't have anything against the Hollywood system. I grew up on Hollywood movies, and if I subscribe to any kind of filmmaking model, I think Soderbergh is a really good example of a filmmaker that can go out and make a Hollywood film or a larger-budget film, and then turns around and does something like Traffic or Full Frontal. And that's the kind of thing I want to emulate. 

It's too hard of a business, it's too hard of a process to go through and put your family through and put your wife through, if it isn't something you really believe in. There's nothing worse, I think, then seeing a filmmakers who's just miserable, with a lot of money at stake, having to take on a job or take on a film that they're really not passionate about, just to pay their huge mortgage.

There's a certain level of freedom that keeping things in perspective can give you. You can go into a meeting and say 'No' if you don't believe in the project. And I like having that freedom, I like having that autonomy.

Looking back, what do you think were some of the best decisions you made on the film?

DANIEL: The best decision we made in pre-production was the idea of using GPS systems. Those little GPS systems—which our producer, turned us on to because hunters use them—made it possible for us to shoot the movie the way we did. It allowed us to set up wait points throughout the woods so the actors could get from Point A to Point B without having to be guided or corralled by a crew. So it allowed them to be more in character throughout the whole process as well. 

We initially shot two phases of Blair Witch: one was kind of a framing device, which was more like a traditional documentary, where you had interviews. The best decision we made in post-production was to jettison that and stick with footage of the students.

Initially when we went out to shoot, we were only hoping to get fifteen or twenty minutes of the footage in the woods, never anticipating that we'd have enough to cut an entire feature. It was always to get just a handful of really good moments within the construct of the storyline. And then, much like The Legend of Boggy Creek or an In Search of…, have it sprinkled throughout what would be more of a traditional documentary. 

And when we came back with so much great footage, and because we had scripted our time out in the woods with a complete narrative arc, we came back to the edit and said to ourselves, 'You know, we have a movie in just this footage. It's a very risky movie, but we do have a movie.' 

So, Ed and I each did two different cuts on the film and it was a very tough decision for us to jettison that original concept for the film. And I credit Gregg (Hale) and Ed lobbying to do that. I was more resistant to jettisoning that stuff. But once we did, I was really glad that we decided to do that, because ultimately, that became the movie. 

We used what we called the Phase One footage, that traditional documentary footage, in the Sci-Fi channel special, which preceded the movie and which was, at the time, their highest-rated special. And we used a lot of that material on the website. 

So, you had this complimentary experience between the special on television, the website material, and the actual film itself to round out this whole experience on Blair Witch. You could choose to see any part of this experience at any time. Some people liked the idea of just going to the movie by itself and then checking out the website and the special. Other people opted to really dig into the mythology beforehand, so they knew more about what they were looking at on screen.

I think that was one of the most interesting aspects about Blair Witch, that it was more than just a film on screen. It was a whole kind of mythology and experience.

What was the test screening process like?

DANIEL: We screened a very long cut of the student's footage and it was set up like a very traditional test screening, where we called in all of our friends and their friends and who ever would give up a couple hours of their afternoon and come check out this film. 

We handed out questionnaires, about what they liked and didn't like. And from those questionnaires you can draw a consensus about what people are turned on and turned off by. And we had more than a few comments telling us, 'You know, this really is your movie. We don't really want to break away from the narrative story of what's going on here.' 

We were always really concerned about how much shaky-cam there was, whether or not audiences would endure that for a feature-length film. So, based on that consensus, Ed and I went back and did another cut, and went to great pains to cut out as much of that shakiness as was humanly possible. We thought that Blair Witch was probably destined for television or the Sci-Fi channel anyway, so on the small screen it wouldn't be as big a factor as it would on the big screen. Little did we know at the time.

And what was the best decision you made after the movie was finished?

DANIEL: I think the best decision we made after the movie was finished was coming to an agreement among ourselves that we want to market Blair Witch as a narrative film; that we weren't going to try to fool people into thinking it was real. 

And I think that decision—effectively letting the press in on what we were doing—really made them embrace the movie. 

But there was always that layer there, that if you were an audience member and went onto the web site or watched the film, we didn't have any spoilers. We didn't have anything on the web site or in the movie that gave it away. But we weren't going to play it up like a hoax.

I remember coming to that decision, because we were grappling with that. Even when we got accepted to Sundance, we were like, 'Well, how do we submit this? Do we submit it as a documentary, or do we submit it as a narrative film?'  We had that swimming around our heads for about five minutes, and then went, 'No, it's a narrative film. We've got to submit it into competition and see what happens.' And ultimately, we got into the midnight showing. 

But even after Artisan picked it up, there were discussions about whether we should play it up as 100% real or not. I think we came to the decision that we're treating this like a movie, and let the audience believe what they want to believe.

We empowered the press to say what they wanted to say, and it ended up really becoming something that they embraced. And the same thing with audience members that were in on it, that knew the film was fiction. I've heard endless stories about boyfriends taking girlfriends to the movie theater, or husbands taking wives or vice versa, where the one taking the other was in on it, had seen it before with a friend or something. I don't know how many repeat screenings we probably got because of that, but it really made Blair Witch a sense of discovery, rather than it being that you felt like you had the wool pulled over your eyes. 

If would have marginalized the film, I think, if it had come off as a hoax. It was a fine line to walk, because we felt that the realism of the film played to the horror, and that's what it was intended for, but we never wanted to marginalize it as a hoax. Otherwise, we would have alienated more people than the movie ultimately did.

That was the biggest thing I learned on Blair Witch: Allow the actors to do their thing. I think Hitchcock once said that 90% of direction is casting, so if you find really good, talented people, and take great pains to do that, and then let them do their thing on set, you'll come away with material that you couldn't possibly script. 

And that's what we applied to Blair Witch.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

Steven Soderbergh on "sex, lies and videotape"

How did you approach the casting of this film?



STEVEN SODERBERGH: I think you have an idea, and you stick with that idea until you're confronted with the fact that there's something better than your idea. I think the smart play is to go with the better idea.



In the case of Andie, I was laboring under the illusion that she was not much more than a model and couldn't deliver what was required. Fortunately for me, she came in and proved me wrong. And I was happy to be proven wrong.



It happened to me the other day on a movie we're starting next month. It's a supporting role, and one of the people who came in was someone I know and who, on first blush, I would have said, 'No, I don't think he's really right for this.' Of all the people I was looking at, he was the one I would have potentially said, 'I know him and I think he's good, I just don't think he's right for this.' Sure enough, when I sat down and looked at what he did, I immediately said, 'Oh, that's the guy.'



What was it that made the difference?



STEVEN SODERBERGH: He did something that was different from what I'd seen him do, and different from what other people were choosing to do, and suddenly he seemed like the only guy who should be doing it. So you have to keep your prejudices in check.



I'm a big believer that you get the cast you're supposed to get. I've had people drop out, many, many, many times, and always, in retrospect, I felt they dropped out because I was supposed to get somebody better. That's just the way it works.



How do you rehearse?

STEVEN SODERBERGH: I used to really rehearse properly, until I realized that I was really using the rehearsal time to get a sense of them personally, and to see if I could in some efficient way unlock a method of communicating with them. And once I realized that, I started being much less formal about the time that we were spending together. And now it's become like a Fellini thing, where I just take them all out to dinner and get them juiced up and leave it at that.

On ["sex, lies and videotape"], I felt I had more time to do the work than I have had since on any movie. That was the only movie where I never once felt rushed and felt like I had all the time I needed to do the work on a given day. And every film since then, I've felt like I didn't have enough time.

You seem to love juggling a lot of projects at one time. Why is that?

STEVEN SODERBERGH: As my career has gone on, I've gotten more and more aggressive about keeping my plate full. I've got some things that I want to do, so many ideas that I'd like to pursue, that's it hard to find time to do all of them. I'm mystified by directors who say, 'I can't find anything I want to do.' I look around and I want to do everything. There are stories everywhere.

I guess it depends on what kind of film you want to make. I like all kinds of films, and so I'm casting a much wider net than some other directors. The algorithm, more often than not, is that a director has a certain aesthetic and he or she looks for material that will be well-served by that aesthetic. 

I'm just the opposite. I'm totally story-driven, and then I sit down and try to determine what aesthetic is going to work best for this story. So that gives me a lot more freedom.

Is there any downside to your job?

STEVEN SODERBERGH: It's the best job in the world, it really is. It's really difficult for me to find any downside to it. It's what I love to do. It's hard, but it's not like work to me. I jump out of bed, ready to go. It's pretty great.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

Lesli Linka Glatter on “Twin Peaks,” “The West Wing” and more …

You didn't start out with a strong desire to be a filmmaker, right?

LESLI: No. But I was always a storyteller, just in a different medium. I've always wanted to tell stories and communicate in some sort of deep way, but it wasn't in film. That came later.

How did you start out as a dancer and then become a director? 

LESLI: I'm always fascinated by everyone's story and how they got into film, because no one seems to have the same story.

I was a modern dance choreographer -- I was a dancer and then a choreographer. Back when the American government actually sponsored the arts -- which is so long ago that most people who remember it are rolling on their walkers or breathing on oxygen -- I was sent to Asia to teach and choreograph and perform throughout the Far East.

I had spent five years in Europe -- in Paris and in London -- and I based out of New York. The I got this grant and went to Asia, studying classical Japanese theater and dance and teaching modern dance.

By chance, in a coffee shop, I met an older man who was in his late seventies when I first met him, and he became like my mentor or my Japanese father. I met him completely by chance -- which is one of the themes I keep getting pulled to in terms of storytelling -- and he turned out to be head of cultural affairs for the country. He spoke twelve languages, had been a Buddhist monk, had been the top foreign war correspondent, just an amazing man.

Eventually he told me a series of six stories. What they had in common was that they all happened on different Christmas Eves (even though he was Buddhist and not Christian), all during different wars, and all about human connection. When he told me these stories, I knew I had to pass them on and I knew it wasn't dance.

If I hadn't have met this old, Japanese guy in a coffee shop in Tokyo, I would never have become a film director.

You weren't kidding when you used the phrase, "by chance."

LESLI: Of course, I didn't immediately go out and direct. I thought, "Well, maybe it's a theater piece," because I had directed theater. Then I ended up meeting a filmmaker in Japan, named George Miller, who directed Road Warrior. Other than Australia, Japan was one of the first places that released Road Warrior. So if you were living in Japan, at that time, if you were a Westerner, you kind of ran into most of the Westerners around at some point.

I told George about my story and he said, "I think you have a film here." And I though, "Hmm, that's interesting."

Eventually I moved back to America and I ended up in Los Angeles. I was on the faculty of the California Institute of the Arts and these stories kept haunting me. Then I met someone who told me about the directing workshop for women at the American Film Institute (AFI), so I applied to that program. I got the application and realized that I was totally unqualified. It was set up for women in the film business who hadn't directed.

Well, I wasn't in the film business, I didn't know anybody in the film business. But I thought, "You know what? I'm going to apply anyway. The worst-case scenario is that it makes me put my ideas down on paper and make it really clear for me." 

So I did that and I got in. That year they let in a couple of women who were not film makers -- one theater director and myself as a choreographer.

What was your next step after your AFI experience?

LESLI: I had a very fortuitous situation. You make these little films for no money. And I didn't have parents who have money. I had no connections to the film business, so it wasn't like I could look to family and say, "Look, I need to make a film, could you help me out here?" I've always had to work to make a living. And I say that only because there are people who definitely don't have to. I've been surprised at how many people there are.

We'd sent the film off to all these festivals and to be considered for an Academy Award, which was like a dream you couldn't even imagine. But it actually got nominated. Even now I don't know how that happened. But it was one of three films that got nominated in the short film category. So all of a sudden I'm getting calls from agents. 

How did that feel?

LESLI: It was wild! It felt very surrealistic.

Actually, the very first job I did after my short film, my first professional job, was for a TV series that Steven Spielberg had, called Amazing Stories. That was like my film school. It was an extraordinary opportunity and he was beyond generous. I apprenticed with him and with Clint Eastwood. I followed him around on a couple of projects and it really taught me a lot about the process. 

So you were learning on Steven Spielberg's set?

LESLI: Yes. At AFI I had worked on about ten of the other women's films before I directed my own short film, because I didn't come from a film background I felt that I needed to understand what the process was. I mean, I looked at credits when I first started directing and I didn't know what a Key Grip did. I didn't know anything about film. So I did any job I could on the other women's films before I directed my film. I was the last one to shoot. And I very purposefully did that. Again, I think it comes from being a dancer, where you just can't cheat. So I felt like I needed to understand what the process was, as much as I could being a beginner.

When your film is nominated, you're kind of out there for that brief little period. You're an asparagus and it's asparagus season, but you know pretty soon it's going to be carrot season and nobody will want to hear about asparaguses anymore. That's just the reality.

But during that time I got a call from Spielberg and I thought it was one of my friends playing a joke. So I hung up. Thank goodness he called me back. So I went in and met with him. He said he was starting this show, Amazing Stories, and he asked if I wanted to direct one. And I was like, "Oh my God, of course, yes. That would be incredible. But I would like to apprentice with you before I do it." So that's what I did. And it was the best film school I could have imagined.

I did my first episode (I ended up doing three of them), which was my first day of shooting on a professional set. 

What did you shoot the first day?

LESLI: It was two hundred guys, in World War II, storming a beach in Italy. I think I had nine cameras and three Eyemos. That was my first day on a professional set.

How did you feel?

LESLI: I was terrified. I had a dream a couple of nights before, a stress dream, that you can't even imagine. It was one of those horrible things: You walk on the set and it's a crew you don't know and they're shooting a film you've never read, and the set was floor to ceiling pea-green sofas. It had nothing to do with the story I'd prepped. I was totally panicked.

I told Steven about it and he said, "You know, I have a dream like that before I start everything." And I thought, "Wow. Here's one of the great filmmakers of our time who's saying he has that fear too." He was great at saying and doing things like that.

Anyway, it was terrifying. All I could do to make myself feel better was to be as prepared as I could be. That's how I felt comfortable, because I felt I could do it by knowing what I wanted -- by having seen the film in my head. In the beginning, that was my security blanket.

So you made it through Amazing Stories. What happened next?

LESLI: The next big step for me, in terms of creative process, was working on David Lynch's TV series, Twin Peaks. I directed four episodes and that was another huge turning point for me.

There was a scene in the pilot for the show in which Michael Ontkean is talking to Kyle Macachlan. It's in a bank, in a room where you look at your safety deposit box. In the middle of the scene, on this table, is this moose head. They play the whole scene in this room and no one ever refers to the moose head. The scene is incredible.

So, when I got to know David, I went up to him and said, "How did you ever get the idea to put the moose head on the table?" He looked at me like I was kind of crazy, and he said, "It was there." And I said, "What do you mean it was there?" He said, "The set decorator was going to hang it on the wall," and David said to the decorator, "Leave the moose head."

Something just cracked open in my brain: "Be sure you're open to the moment. Be sure you see the moose head on the table. Don't try to control things so much that you're not open to what's happening in the moment."

That was a great lesson and a huge turning point for me.

From Steven I learned, "Do your homework and never pretend you know what you don't, because someone is going to be there who knows and you're going to get caught." Which was all about planning and control.

And from David I learned, "Yes, do all of that, but be sure you're open to the moment."

I have definitely had difficult people to deal with, people that I wouldn't work with again. But more often than not I've had really good experiences.

I think in general the crew wants you to be good. I don't think that they want you to be bad. I think they want to know that you're someone who has done their homework. As a director, we can't do it without the whole crew. It's a team sport. We need everyone.

I think when you go on the set, I don't think a crew immediately respects a guy just because he's a guy or disrespects a woman because she's a woman. I think they want some to know what they're doing. If you do, they'll be great. And if you're nice, they'll even be better.

If you do simple things, like at night go to the truck and thank everybody. Just common, human traits. I think if you treat people with respect and challenge them to do great work and thank them for the work that they do, they're going to be really great.

Have I met people who are really difficult and undermining? Absolutely. Absolutely. But I think part of the job is figuring out how to deal with them.

I tried to narrow down just one of the shows you've worked on. And since I'm such an Aaron Sorkin fan --

LESLI: Oh my God, so am I.

Then I hope you'll indulge me and talk about your experiences on both The West Wing and Studio 60.

LESLI: I think the reason The West Wing was amazing to do, on a directorial level, was because the producing director on the show -- Tommy Schlamme, a fantastic director and a wonderful person -- encouraged directors to come in and make it their movie.

There are many people who work in TV who want it to look like everybody else's show. But I really think the best shows do what Tommy did. To say to filmmakers, "Come in and make it your movie." And that's what he did.

That's very evident on that show. They're all different.

LESLI: They're all different. As a director, you were encouraged to do what you wanted to do. If you wanted to put five scenes together and do it as one shot, you could. It was great.

It was very intimidating the first time I got Aaron's script and I looked at the first scene I was going to be directing on my first day. It was a seven-page scene, with about ten or eleven characters, and the only stage direction was "He enters."

I just thought, "Oh my God." I had to read it about ten times to figure out what the scene was about: What's the subtext, what's the text, what's really going on underneath here.

It was thrilling and terrifying and exhilarating and amazing.

What is your preparation process like in a case like that? You get the script and then what?

LESLI: The first thing I do in any prep process is I start breaking the script down in terms of what is the theme? What is this really about? Once I figure out the theme, I start to figure out how I'm going to deal with it visually. But until I really know what it's about in a deep way, I can't even begin to figure that out.

How long does that take?

LESLI: That's ongoing. The first couple of days I focus on the script as much as I can. You're going to have to deal with production stuff no matter what. You have to start the casting process and have a concept meeting about if there have to be huge sets built. A lot of The West Wing episodes I did were really big, so there were tons of locations, so there was a lot of scouting. Plus, half of the show shoots in Washington, DC, so there were all sorts of production issues and decisions.  

Usually what I would do in terms of actual shot lists is that I would come in on the weekend. And I still do that, even though I'd love to have my weekends to myself. I find that during the week, with a TV pre-production schedule, I don't have time to do that. So, the weekends are my creative time.

If it takes place on a set, I'll go to the set. I'll walk around, I'll imagine the scene, I'll figure out the angles, I'll see the scene.

In the case of The West Wing, how much rehearsal time did you get with the actors?

LESLI: You only get it on the set. That was a show where they would rehearse a lot. This is unusual in TV. You'd get probably an hour. That is considered a long rehearsal. It's not like doing a film.

But then, these actors know the characters. So, you have to direct them in the scene, but they're not figuring out who their characters are. They're figuring what their behavior is. So that is a different process.

During post, how involved were you in the editing?

LESLI: Very involved. You have a certain amount of time, per the contract with the Directors Guild, to go in and edit. I didn't have my cuts changed very much. Ultimately, the final cut is Aaron's and Tommy's. When the buck stopped, it stopped with them. But they were respectful. I think they want you to come in having done it well, so that they don't have to re-do it.

This may be an ignorant question, but how do you get the show to the exact length required by the network?

LESLI: It's a bloody drag. A lot of the times, the scripts are too long. And if you have a story that's really great, some things are just going to have to go. I think it's horrible, but that's how it is. They're not going to change the time because of you, so you have to conform to what it has to be. It's really unfortunate.

At what point can you tell that you're going to be in trouble, length-wise?

LESLI: I can tell now by reading the script. I can read it and go, "Ah, this is way too long. We're going to be ten minutes over." Also, you don't have that much time to shoot.

One of the good things about directing TV is that you learn very clearly what the dollar scene is and what the five-cent scene is. You have to know what your important scene of the day is; if you're going to divide the day up, that's where you're going to want to spend the bulk of your time. And the scenes that aren't important you need to move through quickly. So, you have to find a way to shoot them that's going to tell the story. But if you have a very emotional scene that's the turning point of your story, that's where you want to be spending your time. It's not all equal. Directing TV really teaches you how to do that. Because you have to.

Let me ask about Studio 60, where one of the episodes you did (Nevada Day: Part One) was the first half of a two-part episode, where you didn't do the second half. How does that work?

LESLI: That's an interesting one. I've done that quite a bit and I've usually done it with directors that I know pretty well. I did that before with Chris Misiano on The West Wing as well. Chris and I know each other well and we're really good friends and connected. We talked a lot about the story together.

That was not so much the case on Studio 60. Scripts were coming in late and the second half of the script hadn't been written altogether. So we didn't have the luxury of that.

I knew what the ending was going to be, I knew where the story was going, it just hadn't been written yet.

What advice would you give to someone who's thinking about pursuing a directing career?

LESLI: Be sure you really want to do this. Follow your dreams. And listen -- but don't listen -- to how difficult it is. I think you have to put blinders on just proceed.

I think what's exciting about the time we're in right now is that people can pick up a camera and do it. I would advise doing that.

I think the Internet is amazing. I think the fact that you can get a camera and shoot 24p and do it for pennies with your friends -- I would say, absolutely, go for it. Go make your movie. If you want to direct, go direct.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

Stefan Schaefer on writing & directing "Confess"

Confess is a political story about Terell, a young man who uses video confessions first to avenge wrongs in his own life … and then moves to gathering confessions for all of society’s sins. It is a movie about the power of both film and technology, an illustration of Marsahll McLuhan's famous assertion that the medium is the message.

For me, the most important lesson to take away from Confess is writer/director Stefan Schaefer’s willingness to use a variety of resources – the Fifth Night public reading series, a workshop at The Hamptons Screenwriting Conference, mentors and friends – to shape the strongest script possible for his low-budget directing debut.

What was your filmmaking experience before starting Confess?

In 1996 I started working in film and founded a company. Our primary focus has been short documentary work for non-profits. We’ve also done some commercial work and some music videos. That gave me a lot of production experience, but I'd also studied theater and writing prior to that. So I actually came to the company with more experience in writing than production.

I wrote my first screenplay in 1995, and of course like most first-timers I thought, "Oh, this won't be so hard." I'd read a bunch of screenplays and thought I had a decent understanding of structure and how to subvert structure.

I wrote three, maybe four screenplays before Confess, and none of them have been produced and they were basically an exercise on how to create a compelling story.

How did you come up with Confess?

In about 1999, I read this article in The New York Times about these young hackers who were being hired by security firms and the government to counter-hack and protect corporate and government assets. I thought it would be an interesting documentary to pursue. I started meeting with them, and they were all really reluctant to be interviewed and to go on tape. So I thought this was a great world, but it was hard to get access to it. 

At the same time I was reading about the revolutionary impulses happening in Southern Mexico and about Subcomandante Marcos, this charismatic revolutionary figure down there. He was using the media in an interesting way, writing these weekly treatises to the newspapers in Mexico City, and he became this underground media figure and revolutionary. And I got to thinking, what could an anti-corporate, anti-establishment quasi-revolutionary movement look like in the U.S.? 

These two influences led me to the idea that one of the few viable options for voicing political dissent and undermining government and corporate agendas is via the Internet.

So I began sketching out a story about an ex-hacker who begins a series of abductions and forced confessions which, when he broadcasts video clips of them via the Internet, gives him a mythic status among those who are disaffected, disillusioned, angry at the status quo. I talked to people about it and there seemed to be interest.

When you started, were you thinking you would direct it?

No, I didn't necessarily think I would direct it. Then the more I invested in it and thought about it, and felt strongly attached to it, the more I thought I could direct it. Then, when I thought of it in that way, I thought it would probably be relatively low-budget.

More and more people at that point were beginning to do DV features. And I'd shot so much documentary stuff in digital formats that I felt very comfortable doing that.

What process did you go through writing the script?

This was a script that helped me come up with the way I write now. I gave myself deadlines that I wanted to meet; I wanted to get a first draft done in X amount of weeks. So I would try to write every morning, five days a week at least.

It doesn't have to be that way. Things have evolved; I have a kid now. Now I go to a writing space, the Brooklyn Writing Space, that's the most productive place for me to be. It's a 24-hour access carrel situation, with no Internet access. I just find that without the distraction of a phone or checking e-mails or going on-line to do research and ending up deep in some Internet tangent, it helps me focus. 

I also used an outline/step sheet structure with Confess as we did revisions. I did a lot of drafts of this script. And I would go back to the Step Sheet and try to re-organize things. 

Did you start with an outline?

Yeah, in a basic way. Now I would have made it much more detailed than I did at that point. I think this was the first project where I actually did use an outline.

How did you get into the Fifth Night reading series?

I submitted it, randomly. They had an on-line submission and I sent it in, and like most of these things you submit to, after months you think it's just fallen into an abyss. But then I got a call from Alex, who runs it, and she was enthusiastic about it. So I was lucky enough to do it.

What were some of the benefits of having that reading?

I think it was a mile marker along the way toward production. There were two or three hundred people there, so I got a lot of feedback just in terms of the script, but also working with actors even just for an afternoon and hearing their feedback helped me decide that I definitely wanted to direct it.

And it also made the relationship with the producers more concrete. They saw real potential, they saw that people were interested in it. 

It was painful; there were moments where I remember standing up in the balcony watching and I just thought, "Oh my god, some of these scenes are just deadly." I wanted to hurl myself from the balcony.

So you saw some immediate changes you wanted to make while watching the reading?

Oh, yeah. And also having people react to it, laughing where you didn't think there should be a laugh, or just noticing people not being so engaged or really being engaged. I saw a lot of potential to make cuts, where scenes dragged on too long, the point was made, or ways that I could just jump right into a scene as opposed dragging it out as I had.

You also had a workshop for the script at the Hamptons Screenwriting Conference. How did that come about?

Going to The Hamptons came out of the Fifth Night reading. They were interested in projects that involved technology and so they asked me to submit it and I guess it fit into that category. 

They gave the script to two mentors, and I spent a full afternoon with Larry Lasker (War Games, Sneakers), talking about it. He'd read it in advance and gave me feedback. He helped me a lot with the structure of it, but he also said, "Up the stakes. Have him target higher-profile people."

What was interesting was that I saw parallels in the feedback I was getting, and they came from people from different backgrounds. I figured if these people who are much more experienced are seeing similar possibilities and problems, then I have to suck it up and realize that I need to look at it again. 

This was also true when we had a rough cut put together and started showing it to people. My feeling is that if three-quarters of the people are having a problem with a scene, then you've got to look at it.

At what point did you decide to use narration in the movie?

I had it in the earlier drafts, and then when we went into production we weren't totally committed to it. And then as we saw the cut coming together, we decided that we should bring it back in. So it was something that was there early on, and then pulled out in some of the middle drafts, and now it's back in there. I'm not in love with narration as a device, but people seemed to like it in this project.

Did you do any re-writing once your cast was in place?

Minor re-writing. More of the re-writing took place in post-production than on set. 

There was one scene that I'd rehearsed a couple of times, and in the rehearsals it just didn't seem to be working so well. It was the first scene where Terell and Greg re-meet each other. The actor who played Greg, in particular, wasn't happy with the climax of the scene. So I listened to that and wrote another version and we all felt that it worked a little better. 

So that was something that we rehearsed and then the day before we shot it I gave them the changes. It wasn't in the moment of actually shooting. There is some ad libbing in the movie, but by and large it was shot the way it was written.

At what point in the process did you decide to open the movie with the flash forward of the senator's kidnapping?

That was in post. That was driven by the whole idea of editing and re-editing, and the idea that it's kind of an edited universe and that Terell is editing what people are saying to make a point. We thought that would be an underlying idea while people are watching this movie.

That was one of the first structural changes that we made in post. We screened it for a few other filmmakers and that was an idea we had after hearing their comments, and we decided we'd try it. And we liked it.

What other structural changes did you make in post?

There were some second and third act scenes that we cut, sub-plots. They worked, the actors were good and the production value was good, but for the sake of moving the story forward and wanting to move toward the climax and resolution, they just seemed extraneous. It was hard for me, but in hindsight where I have a little better perspective, I feel like we made the right choices in terms of those scenes.

We had always scheduled in a couple days to do some pick-ups and re-shoots, and so that scene with Eugene Byrd and Melissa Leo on the pier, that was something that I wrote during post-production and had them come back. 

Jonathan Stern is a pretty experienced producer and he budgeted that we would have two extra days to do some pick-ups around the city but then also maybe do some re-shoots. So we were fortunate enough to have Eugene and Melissa come back and shoot that. I think it helps the emotional arc of the story.

How did you blow up the Hummer?

Digitally. We rented a Hummer and did it just with on-set camera movement and special effects -- and not holding on it too long! One of the investors said, "Couldn't we just see a little bit more of that?" And I said, "Yeah, if you want to pony up another fifty grand."

Were there any movies that inspired Confess?

For this movie we were thinking about, in terms of the building sense of paranoia and the camera angles and the surveillance motif, The Conversation.  That's one that we returned to the most in our discussions. 

But I also looked at a lot of tech movies, to see what I wanted to do and what not to do. Movies like pI thought were interesting. Then there were movies where I didn't want to go in that direction, like Hackers.

I wanted to have the technology be central to the story, but also not date it too immediately. In writing it, and then in shooting it, I tried to be aware of that.

One movie I talked about a fair amount with my DP, even though I'm not sure anybody would talk about these two movies in the same breath, was Amores Perros, just in terms of the chaos in the city and stuff always crossing the frame. That was something I was trying to build in a little bit.

What did you learn from writing Confess that you'll take to future projects?

I find that the more I write, and the more I write in a collaborative way -- working with producers -- the less angry I get when I hear criticism. That's just the evolution of it all. You get so attached to something, and it's great to be able to step back and hear comments and not see it as an attack. 

I don't know if it came specifically out of doing this project, but I feel like the more scripts I write, the better I am at hearing people and assessing whether I'm holding onto something for emotional reasons or whether it serves the story.

I learned the value in having mentors look at it or having a staged reading of it. It's interesting, this script has opened up a lot of things for me. People like this script and I got several jobs out of it, just the screenplay.

What's the best advice you've ever received about writing?

Keep doing it, very consistently, over and over. I think I've written fourteen screenplays, and most of them will never be produced. But I learned something from every one of them. 

Confess was interesting because it was a nod in the direction of a thriller, but it also had character evolution and arcs as a central part of the story; it wasn't so plot-driven. So trying to find that balance was a challenge. And it was also fun and exciting to see what I could take from a genre film but also have it be a political movie. 

Another part of the writing process was trying not to hit people over the head with the idea, and having it be something that people could have an emotional connection to and care about the character and want to go on a journey with this person.

In the earlier drafts, Terell had a political agenda from the first moment we met him. And now in the movie he's, in some ways, apolitical at the beginning of the movie. He's acting out of anger and spite, and the Ali Larter character helps shape and harness his anger into a political agenda that he then doesn't want to be part of at a certain point.  

That's very different from what it was originally, where he was this political guy who wanted to make a statement. I'm interested in political movies, but it's always a dance not to be too on the nose.

About how many drafts to you think you went through to create that balance?

Probably about fifteen, at least.

Do you have any advice for someone starting a low-budget script?

In hindsight, I'd say that I should have done a story about four people in a farmhouse. One location. But I think it's pretty dependent on where people are and what they're familiar with. The digital formats are enabling people to do so much now. 

We shot Confess in sixteen days and we had about thirty locations and a huge cast. And that was a lot to manage as a first-time director. I guess I'd recommend scaling it back a little bit. On the other hand, I think there are plenty of cases of really inventive ways of using the technology and shooting something cheap. 

I would encourage people not to worry so much about the budget. Write the script, get your ideas down, and then you can always tweak it. You can always change the location of a scene, you can always tone down the more expensive aspects of the script. I think it's pretty common that someone imagines it will be a five million dollar movie, and then all of a sudden two years later they get $500,000 or $300,000 and they're shooting it HD or in DV. 

It works differently, but it still works.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

Roger Nygard on “Suckers"

Suckers provides an inside look at just how much car salesman take advantage of their customers. Written by director Roger Nygard and stand-up comic (and former car salesman) Joe Yanetty, the story takes us inside four consecutive Saturdays at a Los Angeles car dealership, as Bobby Deluca (Louis Mandylor) learns the ropes from Sales Manager Reggie (Daniel Benzali).

Nygard and Yanetty based their screenplay on Yanetty's actual experiences as a car salesman, proving yet again that truth is, indeed, stranger (and often funnier) than fiction.

(Be aware that this interview contains spoilers about key plot points.)

What was going on with you before Suckers?

ROGER: I'd been jumping back and forth between narratives and documentaries. I had just finished my first documentary, Trekkies, and was looking for another narrative. I find that they both inform each other, and I've learned and brought techniques from one genre into the other. So Suckers has a very real feel, like you're right there -- almost a pseudo-documentary style in the way it was shot.

That’s true, although it doesn’t look like one of those shakey-cam, fake documentaries that have become so popular lately.

ROGER: I really can't stand that "shakey camera on purpose" style in shows like ER, because a documentary cameraman tries to hold the camera steady and he doesn't shake it on purpose. A good handheld camera provides a little movement and a little energy to the shot without being obnoxious about it.

At that time I had made three movies. My first film was a one-man show, High Strung, a one-room comedy, written by and starring Steve Odenkirk. We made that film for about $350,000. Then my second film was a two million dollar action picture, Back To Back, for a company called Overseas Film Group. Their films are primarily foreign-sales driven.

I remember seeing Back To Back. There was, to put it mildly, a lot of action.

ROGER: You've got to have five action set pieces, that's the rule for those sorts of movies. That's what's expected from the foreign buyers to make their foreign sales. We had at least five; we might have had six. But five is the minimum requirement.

The third movie was Trekkies, my first documentary, about Star Trek fans.

In doing Suckers, I was coming off of those three films, which were all very different and driving my agents crazy, because they didn't know what I was. Am I the documentary guy, am I the action guy, am I the comedy guy? So Suckers was a new thing, a sort of grisly dramatic comedy, I guess, with some action.

Where did the idea for Suckers come from?

ROGER: My friend, Joe Yannetty, had written a one-man show about his experiences selling cars. I read portions of that and he told me some of the stories, and I said, "You've got to make a movie about this. These stories are incredible." So that's where it started.

Joe and I worked together writing the script, based on his experiences, which is a process for me as a screenwriter that works best. I almost always work with a writing partner. The reason is that I grew up in Minnesota with a pretty average background. I went to college, then moved to California to seek my fortune in the film business. I never got a job as a CIA agent, never went into the Marines, never became a fireman or a cop, didn't go on the road and get arrested or sell cars. You can't write about life experiences that you haven't personally lived, unless you research them extensively or partner up with someone who has lived those experiences.

My writing style is that I tend to write with people who have had interesting life experiences, but don't necessarily have the desire or the fortitude or the persistence to bring it to the screen.

Most screenwriters hate it when someone comes up to them and says, "My life would make a great movie," but it sounds like, depending on the person, you might sit down and talk to them.

ROGER: That's how I operate. I think everybody has one good screenplay in them, based on their own life. 

Your own life is often the first and best place to start for a screenwriter, because that's what you know -- as long as you're willing to rip open your soul. You have to bare yourself to the world in order to write something that other people will be interested in reading and possibly make into a movie.

It's not easy. It's hard. You've got to write things that you wouldn't even tell your shrink. Those are the screenplays that really stand out.

So when I say that everybody has one good screenplay in them, it's if they're willing to bare their soul and write about those skeletons in the closet, those experiences.

How did you and Joe work together?

ROGER: Joe and I sat in a room and would brainstorm. The brainstorming sessions would generally follow the format of me asking Joe questions and getting him to tell stories. I would write them down or tape them until we had all these anecdotes. 

I took all the anecdotes and boiled each one down to one sentence, and put them on note cards and laid them all out on the floor. We'd look at them on the floor and start moving them around until we had an order that we liked. 

You could do the same thing in a computer -- just type slug lines and create what's known as a "beat sheet," which is a list of story beats. And you can move them around, up and down, until you have a sequence of plot points. 

How did you come up with the idea of setting the story on four consecutive Saturdays?

ROGER: That was because that's how the car business runs. Every Saturday there's a sales meeting. It's an inspirational meeting, a motivational meeting. It's a time for everybody to gauge where they are against everyone else, because there's always that competitive aspect. 

So we broke it down that way because the industry we were writing about breaks itself down monthly and weekly. Every month they start over and the cycle begins again. The framework suggested itself to us because the arena we were writing about was based on a monthly structure.

How nervous were you about setting your whole first act at that first sales meeting?

ROGER: You know, we broke a lot of structural rules with Suckers. And in hindsight, there is a lot I would do differently, having learned what I've learned since then and having seen how that experiment worked, where it worked and where it failed.

Part of the excitement of filmmaking is taking chances. Sometimes you're going to fail spectacularly. And we took a big chance structuring the first act that way. But I don't think it was the biggest chance we took.

What was the biggest chance?

ROGER: The biggest chance in the script was doing a genre shift from the second to the third act, which many people found disconcerting. Audiences are not used to -- and don't like it -- when you shift from one genre to another in a movie. 

Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez did it in From Dusk 'Til Dawn. It starts out as kind of a crime caper/road chase movie and then shifts into a monster movie, which threw a lot of people. I think that film was less successful than it might have been because people just don't like genre shifts. They want to know what the genre is from the beginning of the movie, what's the level of reality of the story, and then you have to stick to it.

If you don't stick to one genre, then you're either taking a chance or doing an art film. 

Did you consider other possible climaxes and endings?

ROGER: I wish we had considered more, but as soon as we unearthed that story, it felt right to us. Again, looking back, yeah, I think we could have finished the movie just as engagingly and kept it in the car sales realm, without having to go into the crime and drug-trafficking realm.

But then you would have lost the opportunity to have virtually all of the film's characters shoot each other simultaneously in a very small room.

ROGER: Yes, and we would have lost my favorite line of the movie: "You're so beyond fucked, you couldn't catch a bus back to fucked." 

You kind of fall in love with some things, but in the editing room you spend time killing your babies. That's the term for it. Sometimes you have to cut out the things you're in love with for the good of the whole.

What did you do at the writing stage to keep the shooting budget down?

ROGER: There are a lot of things you have to consider when writing a low-budget script, because these are key considerations when the film is made. First of all, fewer locations, and secondly, fewer characters.

Every time you have a new location, it's a company move, which is very costly. And every new character is somebody who gets a residual check when the movie is released and airing in ancillary markets.

We had a pretty large cast in Suckers. I think we had 30-odd characters, which is a lot. The majority of our budget went to pay their SAG minimum wages. That's why you see a lot of movies with three or four characters in contained locations.

A first-time or novice screenwriter will write scripts that take place all over the world with hundreds of characters and it's just not realistic unless it's a $100 million-dollar blockbuster.

The more you keep budget in mind when you're writing a script, the more likely it is that that script can be made. You don't want your creativity to be restrained, but then as you're refining and re-writing you need to consider options like combining characters. Sometimes there's no reason to have this other character -- give all those lines to one of your leads, because the more lines your lead character has, the more castable it will be.

In hindsight, what other things would you have done differently?

ROGER: Besides being more wary of doing a genre shift, I think I would have stuck to a more traditional structure for the beginning. It's really tempting to try to invent a new genre and to write something that's never been written and break all the rules, but the problem is that audiences don't want that. They have either become accustomed to -- or it's just innate in storytelling and human enjoyment of storytelling -- to like a three act structure and what you might call the conventions of screenwriting.

That's why Syd Field's book, Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting and Robert McKee's book, Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting, are valuable, because they explore and lay out for you the conventions of screenwriting. 

And I think they're right, because if you're going to build a house, you can't invent a whole new framework and foundation. You really have to follow the fundamentals of building the foundation and framework, and then you can get creative with the cosmetic look of the house. That's where you get creative, but you have to learn the fundamentals and follow them if you want to be a successful screenwriter. 

There are art films and part of the job of an art film is to teach us about the rules by violating the rules. But don't expect to make a living being an artist. There are a lot of starving artists out there.

Have you bought a car since you made Suckers?

ROGER: Yeah, and Joe came with me. It was fun. Everything was exactly as expected. They never stop negotiating until you get up to leave. You have to get up to leave and go out the door and then they'll say, "Wait, wait!" Or they'll let you leave and then they'll call on the phone. Until they are certain you're done, they will keep negotiating with you.

What was the biggest lesson you took away from Suckers?

ROGER: The biggest one we already discussed, which is not to violate the rules so dramatically, which we did with the genre shift. That was my biggest lesson.

The corollary was to keep writing, always be writing. Like ABC from Glengarry Glen Ross -- ABC, Always Be Closing. ABW -- Always Be Writing.

The script I'm working on right now is something where I hatched the idea for it about three or four years ago, but I didn't know what to do with it. And it took three or four years of gestating within my brain before it started to form into a shape. It was an idea I told to one of my writing partners and he really sparked to it and so it moved itself to the top of the pile.

That's why you need to have a lot of ideas and a lot of projects and a lot of things going, because I think your subconscious is working on these projects at different paces. The more you've got going, the more likely one of them is going to sprout.

Were you still writing while editing?

ROGER: Editing is the final re-write of the script. You're always re-writing and moving sentences around, sometimes words and sometimes just syllables within words. You pluck and replace. You can get actors to pronounce things differently by moving their syllables around, and it's all toward getting the most expedient way to say something. Good writing is saying something as concisely as possible.

I worked for two years writing and editing promos for TNT and that was a great exercise, because it taught me to be as concise as possible. When you have a thirty-second or fifteen-second spot and you've got to tell a whole story, you're forced to think economically. 

A writer should think economically while writing a screenplay. Even though you have ninety minutes, you should treat every second of those ninety minutes just as judiciously as if you were doing a thirty-second commercial. 

Show it, don't say it, whenever you can.

Start every scene as late as possible. 

Cut out the walks. Nobody wants to watch somebody walk from one door to the other in a movie. You cut that stuff out, because there's no information there. 

If there's no information that informs the story in a shot or a line of dialogue, it has to go. Unless it's hilariously funny. That's my exception. If something's really engaging or funny, it can stay, even if it doesn't move the story forward.

What movies have inspired you?

ROGER: There are so many. Terms of Endearment I think is one of the greatest movies of all time, because it is a gut-wrenching drama and a hilarious comedy, all at once. It's so successful in both realms. It's a movie that amazes me. Real life is funny, real life involves drama and funny moments, and so I think those two coexist well when done well.

Evil Dead, Part II, which I think is the Citizen Kane of its decade because Sam Raimi invented a style of filmmaking that no one had done before. Now you see it all the time. Orson Welles invented a lot of shots and filmmaking styles that you didn't see before Citizen Kane, and so did Sam Raimi with Evil Dead, Part II.

The Hunger, similarly, introduced a new form of editing to movies. It was Tony Scott's first film and he was coming from commercials, so he was bringing that sensibility to moviemaking. He used flash forwards and flashbacks and fractured time structures, and that's where my introduction to fractured time structure in editing came from.

Dawn of the Dead was a very influential movie. George Romero is my hero; he influenced me greatly with that movie. It's so funny and such great social commentary as well as being brilliantly gory.

Any advice to screenwriters who are starting a low-budget project?

ROGER: The most important thing in any movie is that you make the audience feel something. They have to laugh or cry. Or both, preferably, like in Terms of Endearment. If the movie doesn't do that at some point, it's not going to succeed to nearly the same degree that a movie can succeed with an audience when it's done well. 

That's the most important thing: your work has to touch people in some way. And how do you know it does that? Because it has to touch you, first, when you're creating it and writing it. 

That's why if you bare your soul and write about those things in your life that make you cry when you think about them, because they're so painful or so funny or both, then you know that if you feel that way, an audience will feel that way.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

Writer/Director Whit Stillman on “Metropolitan”

Whit Stillman's Metropolitan exists in a timeless New York past brimming with debutant balls and ultra-classy cocktail parties. His clever examination of this universe is set primarily at after-parties, allowing him to comment on the upper class without going to the expense of recreating their soirées.

This true comedy of manners, based on Stillman's own experience of skirting the upper crust, put him on the map as a filmmaker to watch and resulted in a well-deserved Academy Award nomination for his literate and witty screenplay.

What was going on in your life and your career before Metropolitan?

WHIT: I was in transition. I had a journalism job; it was for a publication where they overpaid us a bit and they went out of business. So I was left in 1980 with some savings and I wanted to get into the film business. 

On a trip to Spain, I read a Variety special issue on the Spanish film industry, which showed that there were opportunities to sell Spanish films in the United States. I met a few Spanish filmmakers on my trip, talked to them about the opportunities to sell their films in the United States, and I ended up within a year being a sales agent for a lot of really good Spanish films.

So I did that from 1980 until 1983 and that was when it really starting paying off, in the sense that one of the filmmakers, Fernando Colomo, came to New York to make his own film, Skyline, and I helped him on it. It was made for nothing, with a four-person crew and one comic actor brought over from Spain. 

We re-enacted Fernando Colomo's real experiences in New York, so I was in the film in an analogous role to my real role with Fernando. The film turned out really well, it was in the New Directors series at the Museum of Modern Art and got a release and good reviews and did really well in Spain.

That same summer, another filmmaker I was representing, Fernando Trueba, who did the film Belle Epoque that later won the Oscar, made his second film, and I was hired to play the Stupid American, an annoying character. I was in Madrid quite a bit that summer -- since I was an unimportant guy they could schedule around me -- so I had long weeks of waiting. With the per diems, I made more money than I think I ever did as a foreign sales agent for Spanish films. It was right before that shoot that I started to write the script for Barcelona. And I realized, as time went on, it was too big and ambitious a project to do first. 

In the summer of 1984 I had an idea of a film I could do cheaply, which was Metropolitan. So I put aside the work I'd done on Barcelona and started working on that. Also, I had to take over a family business -- an uncle's illustration agency, representing artists and illustrators in New York -- and that became my day job. That anchored me to Manhattan and I started thinking of this Manhattan idea for a cheap film that would look good.

From childhood I remembered a production of Shaw's Don Juan in Hell, which all took place in one room and I thought that this was, theoretically, a film that could be shot in a room. You'd just have people all dressed up in some fancy room and there it is.

Of course, in writing the script it went different places, but that was the premise.

Were you drawing on your own experience to create those characters and those situations?

WHIT: I was, but it was long enough ago that it was shrouded in the mists of time. But the idea of the group was sort of based on a group, the rat pack was based on the rat pack, there was a funny, snobbish character who was like the Chris Eigeman character, Nick Smith. But really it was fictional, it was all made up. There were some people who were sort of like someone or other, but it had to be created anew and that's what always takes me a long time.

You've coined the phrase "social pornography" to describe the movie. Can you define what you mean by that?

WHIT: What I mean by that is that it's a taboo to talk about this kind of society in the United States; it's not supposed to exist. And there's a feeling of disgust and excitement in talking about the idea of Americans who camouflage themselves as upper middle class but really think of themselves as upper class.

On the surface, the idea doesn’t really lend itself to a low-budget treatment: a lot of characters, a lot of short scenes, a lot of locations -- some of them high-end -- and plus it's a quasi-period piece. Did you consider any of those issues while you were writing?

WHIT: Well, I remembered how cheap it was for me to go to those parties. It didn't cost me a dime, it was the least expensive part of my life. And so I thought, in a way, the film could be done the same way. If people donated tuxedos and a location, it would look rich but it's not. 

I knew that for a very minimal amount of money you could get permits to shoot on the streets of New York, so you had a beautiful set for free. And moving around doesn't really cost that much. In a way, it's more expensive to stay in one place, because you really need to lock down the location and not have a chance of losing it.

One of our rules was that we wouldn't shoot in any apartment where we couldn't finish the scene in that day, because we assumed we'd be kicked out of the place. The lengthier apartment sequences were actually done in townhouses faked to look like apartment buildings.

One of the eureka moments for deciding to do the project, if I can use that term, was the director of one of the Spanish films I sold was talking about the actual cash budget for the film he had done was $50,000. And at that time I knew that -- if we bought our rental apartment at an insider price, held it for a year and later resold it -- theoretically we could make $50,000 on our apartment. That number encouraged me, because I knew I could write a script for that money. To finish it, I'd need other people's money, but I could start it with my own.

What was your writing process like on Metropolitan?

WHIT: I actually dreaded the thought of writing alone. I had written short stories and gotten some good reaction; I'd been commissioned by Harpers to write a story and people like them. Tom Wolfe was quoted as liking one of the stories. But I hated the solitary writing process. 

So I actually started writing Metropolitan with a college friend -- not exactly a college friend, a fellow who hung around college without actually going there. We sat around, talking about ideas, for about three hours and I realized that wasn't going to work. And so I went and wrote the script.

It was good because I had this interesting job that was sort of challenging, representing artists, and I liked the vicarious work of being an agent for people whose work I liked. It was a social job, where you had lunch with people and saw a lot of people and it was a good day job while I was writing the script. It meant that I could take two weeks without writing anything and then I'd get in an intense mode, then I'd have vacation where I'd expect to write all the time but instead I'd get excited about another topic and write a stupid article for a newspaper. It allowed time to pass and let me reconsider what I was doing. 

At a certain point I decided that the Tom Townsend character really wasn't sympathetic, because he was in love with the girl he shouldn't have been in love with and he ignored the girl he should have liked, and that really the sympathetic character was the Audrey Rouget character and the film should be about her. I tried to make the film about her, but I realized that too much is involved in the Tom Townsend character, I'd done too much of that and was too attached to it. So I gave up making it explicitly Audrey's film, but a lot of what remains having tried to make it Audrey's film is still in the movie.

And then I thought the important thing in film is how you end it. So the challenging thing was where was all of this going to go? And so I started writing the end of the movie. I had a process where I had the first three-fifths of the movie and the last fifth of the movie and I had to attach them at some point. For me, it was like the transcontinental railway and finding where would the golden spike be to attach these two ends of the narrative.

How did you do that?

WHIT: I can't remember exactly, but there was a year where the tracks would never quite sync up. It ended up working.

How was that process different from how you work now on studio projects?

WHIT: I think it was good writing a film that wasn't in the development process, because I'm not sure it's very helpful having a lot of voices in on the creation of a script. I think they try to smooth things and homogenize things and explain things. It's better making it a kind of goofy voyage and ride, when you have to just be honest with yourself about what you're doing and where your mistakes are and what isn't working.

On Metropolitan, I found the least helpful comments were from people who thought they were in the film business. Unsuccessful screenwriter friends, who were very, very critical of certain things, while my sociology professor/godfather was very, very supportive and loved the things that the screenwriter friends said were breaking the rules.

Do you remember what their criticisms were?

WHIT: I remember I had this long monologue that the Chris Eigeman character recites about this girl, Polly Perkins. It went on for pages and pages. My screenwriter friend was indignant about how terrible that was and my sociology professor/godfather thought it was a wonderful story. 

What I found when we shot the film was that there were long speeches that didn't work, but they were the sociological speeches by the Charlie character, played by Taylor Nichols. If it was a very long sociological speech, we really had to fight hard to whittle those down and make them pertinent, while the long narrative about Polly Perkins, although it's just one guy talking, actually works perfectly fine. It's a story. People are interested in hearing a story. And film is so wonderful in the sense that you can have people's reaction.

How long was the whole writing process and how long were the gaps where you just let it gestate?

WHIT: I would say the gaps would be a month or two. It was slightly more than a four-year process. I started in the middle of the summer of 1984. I finished four years later in August of 1988 and went out to try to find people to produce or invest in the film. I think I did another draft where I cut things, to try to make it more production friendly. But the actors had already seen the older script, so often we'd restore stuff.

How long was the script?

WHIT: It was very, very long. 

Also, I didn’t really get into film formatting too much; I didn't really see the point of centering the dialogue, because my computer skills in those days weren't so good as to have to re-tab all that. I remember a woman at the Tisch School refusing to help us with casting because it wasn't in proper screenplay format, therefore we weren't serious.

That's why I don't take people very seriously when they criticize a script for being too long. I don't think we cut any scenes but one -- it's a very brief phone conversation between Tom Townsend and his father, and it came off as mawkish. The line producer, Brian Breenbaum, made a very funny, cutting remark about it: He said, "Put it in an envelope and mail it to your father." 

The other cutting we did was cutting within scenes, to try to whittle things down and pick up the pace. And of course we cut out all the improv stuff. We came up with some jokes that we thought were funny on set and we ended up cutting them out.

Did the actors have any problems with the long speeches and the heightened language?

WHIT: Nope. It's good for them, I think. I think it's good for actors to have a lot of words to say, they seem to like it.

Did you do any readings of the script before you finished it?

WHIT: There was a casting reading of it -- after we had done most of the casting we had a read-through.

It was odd, because I had had the Charlie character have something of a stutter in the script. And then I thought, "This is too hard. We've got so many hard things to do, let's not have another hard thing with a guy stuttering through all this dialogue." And I thought it might sound fake, someone acting a stutter.

And then, in the read through, Taylor stuttered a couple of times, and there was one moment when it was a little bit too much. And I stopped the reading and said, "Actually, the idea of this character is he should stutter, so if you can do that, it's great." Taylor completely dominates his stammer, he can do a flawless performance. But he did have a stammer in childhood, and he brought it out for that part. I found it fantastic; somehow a stammer is like when an actor eats. Eating and food and business of that kind in a film is usually wonderful, people are relaxed. And the stammer was kind of the same, it made things really real and unrehearsed.

One of the great things about the script was that these characters are very likeable, even at those times when they may not be behaving in a likeable manner. Was that planned?

WHIT: That was the intention. I think we give them their problems. They do have that reality in their sad sack qualities and a lot of it is the success of the performance by the actor. It's a thing I've noticed: Some actors can do a technically perfect performance of scripted lines, but there can be a warmth that's lacking, a human quality, that takes away from what's intended. In this case, our cast delivered the warmth. 

Did you write with any actors in mind?

WHIT: Yeah. I wrote with Audrey Hepburn in mind. The Audrey character is Audrey Hepburn. I did not write with known actors in mind. I knew that known actors wouldn't do it. It didn't occur to me which known actors would do it; only actors from the past -- like Audrey Hepburn -- who is the aunt of the actual Sally Fowler.

Although it's a talky film, you also made good use of just showing us things, without commenting on them. For example, when Tom Townsend finds his childhood toys have been thrown out by his father. We never see him come back for the toys, but they simply show up in his room in later scenes. Those scenes could have been painful to watch …

WHIT: It was painful to watch; we actually cut some stuff out there. We had a mawkish scene, going back to the box. We shot it and cut it out.

Why did you choose to set the movie in a sort of timeless past?

Well, in my head it was in the past and I couldn't afford to set it in a specific past. So I had to just try to do the best we could for a past identity to the film by trying to exclude what we could exclude and include what we could include, without stating anything too explicitly.

Did that choice help during production?

WHIT: It didn't hurt us. It was helpful for production because we weren't specifically doing period, so that freed people up not to go crazy with things. It was the guiding principal to make it seem past.

How would you define the theme of Metropolitan?

WHIT: I can't nail down themes. It gets me in trouble now when people ask me about my new script. Unfortunately, I answer when I should say, "Well, I don't know. Draw your own conclusions."

How did you know when you were done with the script?

WHIT: That's odd. It happened faster than I thought -- that sounds funny for a four-year project! I thought it was interminable, I thought it would never end. And suddenly it seemed like, whoa, we're ending. This is it. This is the film. And so it was a bit of a surprise.

I find that generally happens in an interminable scriptwriting process suddenly you're close to the end or at the end before you even thought it was possible.

What's your writing schedule?

WHIT: Well, it changed completely from the Metropolitan period to subsequently, because at the time of Metropolitan I had a day job, and so I would have dinner and I'd go back to writing after dinner. So I was drinking coffee late at night and often I would be at the computer at 1:00 am, really dreamy and half-awake and my mind wandering into dreams and I'd usually keep at it until 2:00. So it was a very strange process writing from 11:00 pm until 2:00.

Was there anything you learned writing Metropolitan that you still use today?

WHIT: Pretty much everything. I changed the time of day, but everything else is pretty much the same as that process. I still don't use the screenwriting programs and cheat a little bit on the formatting, so it doesn't look as long. 

What was it like to get an Academy Award nomination for Metropolitan?

WHIT: I have to confess that I was always terribly, terribly anti-Academy Awards -- until I got nominated for one. But as a want-to-be or not-yet-successful filmmaker, there's something terribly disheartening about that spectacle. But then you're nominated and -- it's great, even losing. 

Virtually the entire cast came and, with Line Producer Brian Greenbaum as ring-leader, we had a blast. But after I quickly reverted to anti-Oscars mode (the exception being 1995, when Mira Sorvino won hers and a lot of films I loved were nominated).

So many interesting, likable and sometimes great films are getting no -- or next to no -- coverage on their theatrical release, while madly-expensive campaigns and over-the-top coverage is devoted to a handful of films (and not normally the ones I'd most like). It just seems to get more and more extreme and disconnected from the honest pleasure of going to the movies and discovering ones you like.  

I now get a sort of early winter depression from the screeners Academy members are sent. You feel obliged to watch a lot of them, but very often they are not the films you'd ever go to see on your own and you end up seeing so many images you wish you never knew about.  I can't believe that so many intelligent film journalists get caught up in covering this horse race -- which must lead to an abdication of coverage for many untrumpeted releases.

The modern age's motto in the arts seems to be: "More recognition, less achievement." So many of the great cinema milestones date from the thirty years before there were film festivals or highly-touted awards (such as the Oscars at their start). It'd be fascinating to see what a three-year awards and festivals hiatus might be like. Or at least to stop, or sharply tone down, the campaigning for awards.

Did you use any tools to get yourself up to speed as a screenwriter?

WHIT: It was terribly helpful that I found a version of The Big Chill screenplay, in screenplay format. One publisher had the wise idea of issuing a screenplay-size edition of various screenplays, including The Big Chill. I used that to crib format from, to try to get close to film format. And it was actually a good script to have around, because it's an ensemble piece. And the She's Gotta Have It production book that Spike Lee did was very helpful.

And there's a book called The Craft of the Screenwriter by John Brady which has interviews with people like Ernest Lehman and Paul Shrader. I found that a very helpful book. I thought it was terrific. 

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

The Making of "Patti Rocks" (An Oral History)

In 1987, the film “Patti Rocks” was produced in Minnesota. In 2004, I chatted with three of the people who instrumental in getting it made: Director and co-writer David Burton Morris; producer, DP and editor Greg Cummins, and actor and co-writer John Jenkins.

Patti Rocks is a sequel of sorts to your earlier film, Loose Ends. How did that first film come about?

DAVID BURTON MORRIS (Director, Co-Writer): I saw Memories of Underdevelopment, a Cuban Film, at the Walker Art Center, and I rushed home to my wife, Victoria, and I said, 'You know, we can make a movie really cheap. I just saw this great movie, it was black and white. If we can scrape together $20,000, we can make a movie.' 

And so we did. She wrote it. And it shot for two weeks. Loose Ends was sort of a calling card. We went to 20-25 film festivals, didn't win anything really, but Roger Ebert discovered us and Vincent Canby and Andrew Sarris and we got all these great notices.

However, it was nearly twelve years before the sequel, right?

MORRIS: We finally got enough money, in the early 80s, to do a movie called Purple Haze, and that did very well. It won Sundance, and that was our first real movie. It was 35mm, color, we had an actual shooting schedule and a budget. And that did very well. And we looked like we were on our way.  

I then, subsequently, got fired from two studio pictures and was very unhappy—we're now talking mid-80s—and I was thinking about quitting, I was thinking about getting out of the business because I was really unhappy. And I thought back to the only time I had a really good time making a movie, which was on my first film, Loose Ends. And I thought, maybe I should think about writing something for those guys and making it back in Minnesota and sort of re-creating my enthusiasm for making movies.

Hence the title in the credits, '12 years later.' A lot of people don't get that, but when it screened at Sundance they showed them both, which was nice, so that people could watch the first one and then pick up with the same two guys 12 years later.

CUMMINS (Producer, DP, Editor): When Patti Rocks came about, David had moved to Los Angeles and was working out there, doing the Hollywood thing, and he met Gwen Field. Gwen was taking her daughter to the same day care that David was taking his daughter to, and they got to know each other, and David pitched the idea of Patti Rocks to her. 

How did the script come together? I know you started with improvisations …

MORRIS: We did a lot of just riffs on sex. We had another movie in mind. And I had all these long cassette tapes filled with (Chris) Mulkey and (John) Jenkins riffing on women, and I thought, this is interesting. Somehow I got the idea of putting them in the car, driving all night to see Patti to talk her into having an abortion. I did a first draft and I'd give it to them and we'd tinker with it and do some more improvs. Jenkins lived in Chicago, so we flew there a couple times and did some more improvs, and then I'd type that up.

JOHN JENKINS (Actor, Co-Writer): It started with some general conversations about what we might do, and then we started to improv a little bit. David then took that and began to craft a plotline for this. 

Then after we had that in place, we got back together again and we spent some more time improvising the script. And so the script really came out of those improvisations that Chris and Karen (Landry) and I did. 

Then David would edit that and cut and paste and re-arrange. He might add some other dialogue on top of that, but most of it came out of those improvs. 

Where did the title come from?

MORRIS: The way I got the title was interesting. I was at the Chicago Film Festival, on a panel. I was at dinner with a group of people from the festival and this woman was sitting next to me. I said, 'What do you do?' She said, 'I sing in a band.' I said, 'What's the name of the band?' She said, 'Patti Rocks.' 

And I said, 'Oh, that's a really good title.'

How did you get the film financed?

MORRIS: I'd known Sam Grogg, because he was head of the USA Film Festival in Dallas. And he'd started a film company called Film Dallas. So I gave him the script and said, 'What do you think?' He said, 'We'll make it.' 

It was the easiest thing I've ever done. I wrote it and within a month they'd given me $400,000 to make this movie.

He had very few notes. He just said, 'They have to get out of the car midway through the movie.' I said, 'What do you want them to do? See a flying saucer?' He said, 'I don't know, you'll think of something.'

Did the script change much besides that before you shot?

MORRIS: My wife, Victoria, helped a lot on the third act. She said, 'The Patti character has got to be a strong, liberated, likeable woman.' So I took those notes and did a re-write on it, and Karen Landry brought a lot of insight into the character.

I wrote it for the summer, because Mulkey's running around in his underwear. But we couldn't get it all together, and we got the money in November, and I said, 'We're going to make the movie. We've got the money, we're going.' 

And it actually turned into a more interesting film, just because of the look of the snow and Mulkey running around in his underwear in 23 degrees below zero.

I thought, two guys in a car? How expensive can that be? But, because of the cold, it was brutal. I mean, it was just really brutal—cameras freezing and all of us crammed in, in snow parkas, in the back seat, shooting at night in the middle of the winter. It was insane.

CUMMINS: In theory, David was right, it was a very simple idea: two guys in a car. But add in the car, add in winter, add in nights …

One of the great things in the movie is how you capture just how cold a Minnesota winter can be. You can really feel it while watching the movie.

JENKINS: The weather was unbelievable, especially when we were shooting the sequence where they get out of the car. It must have been thirty below when we were shooting that scene.

CUMMINS: We shot Loose Ends in the summer, in July, and it was one of those horribly hot summers. Basically, it was heat and sweat and working really hard and rigging lights in Midway Chevy’s repair department when it was 100 degrees out.  

And then we turned to Patti Rocks and it's just the opposite. We were shooting in December, and it was the coldest December on record. We were on the camera car with 60 degree below zero wind chills.

JENKINS: We were in this trailer and we would come out; we could only shoot this stuff for four or five minutes at a time before the fear of frostbite or hypothermia would come up. Chris was in great shape and even at that it was brutal. When it came to looking cold, no sensory work was required.

CUMMINS: The camera got so cold most of the time that it was squeaking. When it dropped below 20 below, the camera ran fine but there was this high-pitched squeak every few seconds. We couldn't figure out what it was for the life of us. It would go away when we'd take the camera into the trailer, and then we'd go back to the car and it would do it again. It was just the cold.

MORRIS: The lesson from Patti Rocks was, when you get the money, make the movie, regardless of what season it is.

The film is a three-hander, but we spend so much time in the car that it also feels like a character in the story.

CUMMINS: While scouting locations, there was a car for sale. So, we stopped right there and bought the car—it was for sale on the side of the road. Without thinking about anything. How would this car rig, what does it sound like? It was the perfect car for the character, but not the perfect car to shoot in.

It was a two-door. We loaded the camera in the car, we had David and myself and the sound man all rammed in the backseat, depending on where we would rig the camera for the shot. It was long before video assist, so we had to be in the car, seeing what was going on, in order to see the performance.

Did you ever consider just using process shots, instead of shooting while driving?

CUMMINS: I didn't want to do process, I felt it would cheapen the film to do process all the time. But I don't think any of us really realized how difficult all the shots were going to be.

Before we shot the film, we knew that the car was a character in the film. The car was as important, in some ways, as Billy and Eddie. And so we planned out a myriad of placements for the camera—we could put the camera here on the front of the hood, to the right of the hood, to the left of the hood, and so on. 

And then what I did was work through that process from the beginning of the film through the end. None of the camera placements really repeat. They move and they evolve. And so the car changes with each story they tell, and it becomes more intimate. And it becomes really intimate before they arrive at Patti's apartment. 

We worked very hard to keep that part of the cinematography alive. It was very hard to do, and very confusing. We shot a lot of stuff that didn't get into the film, stories that didn't quite work as well as other stuff. Keeping track of camera placement became very complex, especially with a small crew. We had one person on continuity, who basically couldn't be in the car. How do they do their job? It's a big challenge, so continuity fell to David and myself, really.

Shooting in a car, a black car, with black upholstery, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, with minimal equipment, in the cold, was brutal. Absolutely brutal.

So not only were you shooting in the cold, in a car not designed for shooting, but you were also shooting at night …

CUMMINS: It was a road film, but when we started out, we didn't know it was going to be a nighttime road film. Which made it even more difficult.

We wanted to play it almost real time—they left in the afternoon, they got together, they had a couple of beers and they took off and night fell. In the winter, night falls around here at about 4:30 in the afternoon. And so they drove all night to get to her apartment, and they get there sometime in the middle of the night and leave the next day at dawn—it's all in one day.

Life would have been easier if they'd started with breakfast, then driven down and gotten there about four in the afternoon—that would have been wonderful.

From an acting technique point of view, how did you recreate what you had done in the improvisations while shooting?

JENKINS: It's an interesting problem, to use improv to create a script, and then to go back and play it. It's a funny thing. When you're improvising the thing, you're so involved in the problem and the words just flow out. 

But when you go back to do it again, you've forgotten a lot of that structure or the dynamic that allowed those words to flow. So you're left with a script and you know it's yours, but it's hollowed out. You've forgotten the context a little bit. 

It's almost easier to take somebody else's words and to slip on your imagination and work with that, then to go back and do your own stuff. I found that to be a little difficult.

I had to do all the actorly stuff and fill it out, sensory work and subtext to try to get back to that improv state that had been so easy. It was just odd. You would think that it would just be a piece of cake, the easiest thing to do, and I found it perplexingly difficult.

The film became somewhat controversial, due to its language. Were you aware that might be an issue while you were shooting?

CUMMINS: Oh, absolutely. We set out to do that. 

The thinking was, these are two guys and this is the way guys talk. If you put two kind of raunchy guys together, this is how they talk. There's nothing unreal about this. And essentially that's what we wanted to do: present two guys who are completely uninhibited and unobserved, talking in the way that we felt some people do. Sam Grogg felt the language was its strong point, that's what the film was about. 

MORRIS: I thought it was risky, in terms of the subject matter. I didn't know until after it was done how people would react to the language in the picture. The ratings board first gave us an X for language, and that had never happened before. I guess I was just so used to it. Not that I talk that way, but certainly I hear that. I was kind of surprised by the reaction.

JENKINS: I didn't think it would be controversial. It wasn't violent, there wasn't any hard porn. It's odd about it now, but we got in trouble for the language. You listen to HBO, and you listen to something like Deadwood, and it seems odd to me. But that was a vastly different time, in terms of what kind of language you could use in a film.

MORRIS: When I first started putting this together, I thought people are either going to love or hate this. I had no idea it was going to divide audiences. And it did. People loved the movie or hated the movie. More people loved it, thank god, than hated it.

JENKINS: That was just the way we talked, but in an exaggerated way. It seemed appropriate to these two guys and the way they would talk. It felt true to us.

MORRIS: At the very few personal appearances I made before the movie, I'd say, 'Some of you people might get uncomfortable during the first two acts of this movie. Just wait, okay?'

CUMMINS: When we screened the answer print for the first time, in California, all of a sudden Sam Grogg, who was with FilmDallas, brought five or six people into the screening room. He wanted them to see it, but we hadn't even seen the film yet. But we really couldn't turn him down, so we watched the film, and afterwards Sam says to them, 'See what you can do for a half a buck?' They were his next round of directors, and he was pressuring them to keep their budgets low.

MORRIS: We had a lot of screenings in Los Angeles before it opened up, and it was sort of a word-of-mouth hit, as far as people going to these screenings. Sean Penn, Madonna were there. I just hate watching my films with audiences. It makes me uncomfortable. So I never went to these screenings.

In addition to the language, the film also includes a sex scene. How was that handled?

JENKINS: It was difficult to do. I'm doing a love scene with my best friend's wife—my real best friend's wife. It was potentially explosive. I thought we handled that part of it well. We got to the point where both Karen and I felt comfortable to do the scene. I thought we were able to finesse it all right.

CUMMINS: There was a level of trust in the sex scene. This is Chris's wife, who's making love with John Jenkins. This is a difficult scene. It's difficult to have your wife in a nude scene, it's difficult to be in the same film with your wife in a nude scene, it's difficult to have your wife making love to your friend as a character, but he's a real-life friend. 

We created a lot of really difficult situations that we were able to get through because of that trust that we had with each other.

What did you learn while making Patti Rocks that you still use today?

JENKINS: Work with people that you know and trust. I know that's hard to do. A lot of this work is going to be like blind dates with strangers to put these things together. I was fortunate to be able to work with people I loved and trusted. If possible, for your first steps out, to do it in a way that you were protected in that way would be great. Look for that.

CUMMINS: One of the best decisions I made as producer was insisting upon getting the best people, friends who were really capable, and to stand up for them.

Film is a collaborative art, there's no question. Everybody says that. You can't really do it by yourself, you really need other people, other expertise, other views, other opinions. You need people in the process. And the closer you are to those people, the less explaining you have to do, the more intuitive working relationship you can have, the faster you're going to be able to work, the better off you're going to be.

The most important thing that I say to everybody is that you have to listen. You have to listen to other people, because they're telling you something. 

Everybody really has something to give, and it seems like too often we're not listening to those voices. 

If you can sit and hear people, and be quiet, I think you'll learn a lot. You take in a lot just by being there, rather than trying to dominate everything.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

John McNaughton on writing & directing "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer"

The phrase “not for the squeamish” may well have been invented for John McNaughton’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Although you’ll find it in the “horror” film section of the video store, it’s far more than a simple horror film. The film is a starkly realistic, almost documentary-style fictionalized look at a few days in the life of confessed serial killer Henry Lee Lucas.

McNaughton, who went on to direct in a number of different genres including the comic-drama Mad Dog and Glory starring Robert De Niro, Bill Murray, and Uma Thurman, drew on his roots producing documentaries to construct the film. But as he admits, it was co-writer Richard Fire’s keen understanding and use of the basics of dramatic construction that helped to make Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer the milestone that it has become.

What was going on in your life and career before Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer came along?

I had a long-standing dream of wanting to make a feature film, but I'd had to put that on hold because, being that I lived in Chicago and was not connected in any way to the mainstream industry, I really didn't know how I was ever going to achieve that dream.

I was working on these small documentary projects that were being distributed by a company in the South suburbs of Chicago, called MPI. I had worked in the commercial field in Chicago, but the first time I was ever on a feature film set I was the director.

Where did the idea for the story come from?

I had done this series of documentaries for MPI, called Dealers in Death, which were about American gangsters, primarily from the Prohibition era. We had scoured the archives for a lot of public domain photographs and footage, got Broderick Crawford to narrate it for us and made a little money on that project. 

I was going to produce and direct another documentary piece, based on professional wrestling, because I'd found someone who had a collection of wrestling footage from the 1950s and 1960s with Bobo Brazil and Killer Kowalski and Dick the Bruiser and Andre the Giant, from the period of wrestling before the WWF or the WWE.

MPI was owned by two brothers, Waleed and Malik Ali. I went out to meet Waleed to talk about doing these wrestling documentaries. When I got to their offices Waleed informed me that he had contacted the person who had the footage for sale. The person with the footage had quoted a price and when the Ali brothers approached him, saying, "Okay, we'll negotiate on that price," the guy realized that the brothers had money so he increased his price. The Ali brothers were not to be dealt with in that manner, so Waleed informed me, "Listen, we're not going to do business with this guy. He's a crook."

Early on in the video business -- and the brothers got in at the beginning -- the major studios weren't interested in video rights, because there just wasn't enough money involved. So they were selling off the rights to their films. A couple of companies, like Vestron and Pyramid, became wealthy for a short period of time, until the studios saw the potential in the video market and started creating their own video divisions. And then those companies went out of business.

But in the early days of video you could buy the video rights quite cheaply for low-budget horror films and since a lot of "B" horror titles hadn't been seen widely, they were very successful on video.  A "B" schlock horror film that people may not have been interested in going to the theater to see, they were more than happy to rent because they're a lot of fun.

So what was happening at this time was that those titles were becoming so popular that the rights acquisitions were becoming more and more expensive. And so Waleed had determined that it would make sense for them to fund a horror film and thereby own all rights in perpetuity, rather than just buying the video rights for a limited period of time. So he proposed to me that we should join forces and make a horror film.

I went in thinking I was going to be doing these documentaries and instead, it was the day that my dream came true, completely unexpectedly. I was kind of in shock. 

Down the hall was the office of an old friend of mine who I had grown up with, Gus Kavooras. Gus was always a collector of the strange and the arcane and the weird. I stopped in to see him and I was kind of in shock. I said, "Gus, Waleed just offered me $100,000 to make a horror movie. I have no idea what my subject will be." And he said, "Here, look at this." 

He took a videocassette off the shelf and popped it in the machine. It was a segment from the news magazine show, 20/20, and the segment was on Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Elwood Toole, who were serial killers. The term "serial killer" was coined in 1983 by the FBI. In 1986 I had never heard the term before and this was something new to me, the idea that there were these random murderers going around. 

Most murders are committed by people previously acquainted to the victim. Husband kill wives, wives kill husbands, husbands kill wives' lovers, wives kill husbands' lovers. Most murderers are committed by people who are known by the victim. But this was a new trend in murder where there were these individuals who were just randomly murdering strangers. It was, indeed, very horrifying. There were some interviews with Henry and a lot of photographs. He was really a creepy character. And so that became the germ for the story.

Was the budget an issue while you developed the story?

The budget was written in stone. That was the mandate from Waleed, "Make me a horror film for $100,000." So the budget was always a consideration. 

How did you and co-writer Richard Fire work together?

I put together a set of 3x5 index cards delineating a scene structure, but I was not an experienced dramatist, screenwriter or otherwise. But I had the money, I had the mandate to make the picture, and we had our subject: the true story of Henry Lee Lucas. 

I had a friend, Steve Jones, and he was working as a director of animated commercials in Chicago, primarily doing Captain Crunch commercials. He was very well connected into the production community in Chicago and I was not. So I arranged with Steve to be the producer and I said to him, "I need a co-writer." 

There was a theater company in Chicago called The Organic Theater Company. The Organic was a really wild bunch of characters who had quite a bit of success in Chicago and were a really interesting theater company. One of the company members was Richard Fire, another was Tom Towles, who would play Otis. Other members of the company were Dennis Franz, Dennis Farina and Joe Mantegna. They had worked with David Mamet, they had produced Sexual Perversity in Chicago. 

They did a play called Warp that was kind of an outer space fantasy and Steve Jones had done a bunch of video projection for them and knew the group. Steve recommended Richard Fire. Richard and I met and talked about the project and I hired Richard.

What was your working process with Richard?

I would go every day to Richard's apartment and we would sit and he would type. We would knock ideas back and forth and then when we came to what we thought was something worthwhile, he would type it out.

What's so interesting about the script is that -- if you take out the violence -- it's a very traditional, well-structured story. We meet Henry, he meets his friend's sister and a romance starts and then there's a fight and then he and the sister leave together. It's almost like a classic 1950's Paddy Chayefsky television play.

I brought the exploitation elements to it and Richard brought traditional dramatic skills to it. We made a very good team, because had it been left to me it probably would have been tilted more toward pure exploitation. Whereas Richard humanized it. Paddy Chayefsky is a good example. On the DVD, Richard talks about the Aristotelian unity of time, place and action from classic dramatic writing. I think his presence certainly elevated the script.

Did you set out to make such a controversial movie?

I intended to make something very shocking. I remember, in my youth, pictures that sort of crossed the line. Back in those days there would be these incredibly lurid radio advertisements that if you listened to rock music on the radio a lot -- like most kids in my generation did -- they had these incredibly lurid campaigns for pictures like Last House on the Left and Night of the Living Dead and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Those pictures were sort of watersheds, alongside pictures like The Wild Bunch. The Wild Bunch was incredibly shocking; up until then in a Western, if somebody got shot they fell down. There was no squib work, there was no spouting blood.

So our thought was, "Okay, we've got $100,000 and a chance to do a film and it's going to have to be a horror film, so let's make a horror film that is going to horrify." Richard Fire and I set ourselves a goal, and it was if we're charged with making a horror film, then a) Let's redefine the genre, and b) Let’s totally horrify the audience.

Like many things, the words "horror film" are like "liberal and conservative." The original meanings of the words have gotten lost. One would think that conservatives would be interested in conserving the environment, because the word comes from conservation. When you think of "horror film" now, it's a set of conventions and we meant to defy those conventions. The genre often includes monsters, creatures from outer space, ghosts, the supernatural or something beyond reality. But we didn't have a budget for any of that, so we set ourselves the goal of, "How can we most completely horrify an audience without using the traditional conventions?"

Was there any downside to ignoring the traditional conventions of the genre?

 Well, when we did the home invasion scene, it was a pretty creepy feeling after finishing that scene. A lot of the stuff -- fake blood and all that stuff -- there's a certain fun factor to doing it on the set. It's kind of silly, it's fake blood and rubber heads and all that kind of thing. But when we did that scene of the slaughter of the family it left a really strange atmosphere in the room. We did two takes. It was pretty horrific stuff and we didn't know how an audience was going to react to this.

Was the use of videotape in the home invasion scene an aesthetic choice or an economic choice?

Absolutely an aesthetic choice. The video image had an immediacy that the film image did not have, so when we had them tape that home invasion we very specifically chose to use video because it does have that immediacy and that reality. It lacks that distancing and softening that film gives. Also, having grown up watching the Vietnam war on television, even though those were 16mm film cameras, there was a quality to that hand-held footage that made it more real and more shocking.

Also I had read the book Red Dragon. In Henry Lee Lucas' case, they did not photograph or videotape their crimes. But in Red Dragon, Francis Dolarhyde worked in a film processing facility and he would go out and kill these people, photograph them, then come back and process the film. That book was a couple years old and by that time you could buy a decent home video camera, you didn't need to go through a lab. 

The use and intensity of violence, from the static images that open the movie to the crimes we ultimately see Henry and Otis commit, seems very planned and measured. Was that the case?

With violence and action, you have to keep topping yourself. If you go backwards, the audience is going to be disengaged. So the violence was doled out and increased as the story went along. 

How did you come up with the idea of opening the film on a series of tableaux of Henry’s recent crimes?

Richard and I were sitting in his apartment and we had various materials -- this was before the Internet -- and we were quite limited as to what we could come up with compared to today. But we did have that 20/20 documentary and it did have images. One of the famous images was of a young woman who was allegedly murdered by Henry. She was a Jane Doe who was never identified. She was left in a culvert somewhere and she was nude but for a pair of orange socks. And she was always referred to as Orange Socks because there was no other way to identify her. 

We were thinking, "What's our opening?" And we happened to be watching the 20/20 show and there was that photograph of Orange Socks, and Richard just went, "That's our opening." 

That was indeed our opening, although we didn't have orange socks, we used pink socks. Once we established that, we decided to do a series of them.

The audience can only take so much. You'll notice that one of the bloodless ways we had them kill people was to snap their necks, which is how he kills the woman and the young boy in the home invasion. There's no overt gore.

We were borrowing from the exploitation genre but to me the movie is a character study about people who did extremely horrific things. And there's the horror. Again, not from monsters from outer space.

In the case of stabbing Otis, he's such a heinous character that he deserves it. When we stabbed him in the eye with that rat-tail comb, you can't believe how much laughter there was on the set with that silly looking head and the blood. It was kind of fun.

Each individual can create in their imagination something more horrific than the graphic expression you may be able to come up with, especially on that kind of budget. A great way to put across scenes of great mayhem is to lead the audience up, step by step, so they can see what's about to happen. It's very clear that somebody's about to get killed. If you lead the audience, shot by shot and step by step up to the deed and make it very clear what's about to happen and then give them a couple frames and then cut away to some other thing, but continue it with the graphic sound, I think it can be much more horrific. Each individual will be left to complete the horror in their own mind, from their own library of personal horror. 

Again I have to credit Richard Fire for insisting that we make a serious drama rather than just a piece of pure exploitation. 

The visuals are very clever, like the use of the guitar case to signal that Henry has killed the hitchhiker. Or Otis' sister's suitcase, which is used for comic effect when we first see it and then has a far grimmer use at the end of the film.

We had a fair amount of time to work on that script, which you don't often get. In Hollywood they say, "Okay, the money's here, you've got this actor, let's go!" I just shot a segment for Masters of Horrorand normally they give you a seven-day prep, but since one of my days was Canadian Thanksgiving, I got a six-day prep. It's hard to iron out the details in that amount of time. 

Once you lay out your story and your script, then you start to see these connections that can be made to really strengthen that through-line, so everything connects in some way or another. If you have time, you can work on those details. If you don't, you just shoot the script and hope for the best.

Did you write with any specific actors in mind?

No. We had the Chicago theater community to draw from, which is pretty rich. A lot of young actors come to Chicago to learn their chops because there's a lot of Equity theater where you can actually make a living working in theater. Unlike Los Angeles, where most of it is non-Equity so you don't really get paid.

Chicago's a cheaper place to live, so a young actor can make their way with perhaps a bartending job or waitress job, and when they're working in theater they actually make enough money to pay their rent in the Bohemian neighborhoods of Chicago.

What was the refinement process on the script before you shot it?

The refinement process was mostly with the actors. There weren't that many people in my circle who had wide knowledge of production. Most of the experience in actual film production in Chicago was in commercials. Occasionally a movie came to town, but that was not the bread and butter of Chicago, it was commercial production. At the time Chicago was the number two market, after New York, for commercial production.

Our actors came out of theater, so the script refinement was done with the actors in rehearsal. Tom Towles came from the Organic Theater, where Richard Fire was a member and they'd known each other forever. And Tracy Arnold also came from the Organic, although Tracy was more of a new arrival, she had only been with the company for a year or two. Michael Rooker was just a lucky find.

How did you use the rehearsal process?

I've worked this way almost ever since, when I'm fortunate enough to get rehearsals. If I can get two weeks or at least ten days with them, I'll work with the actors myself for the first half of the rehearsal period. And then once we get the shape of the thing I've almost always brought the writer in, because the actors will want to make changes, like, "My character wouldn't use this word," "My character wouldn't say it this way," "I can't get my mouth around this phrase, it doesn't feel right to me."  

Once the actors take on those characters, they know them in deeper way often than the creators do. But if you just open the door and say, "Sure, go ahead, change it," you're going to have a disaster on your hands because then everything will start to change. But if you bring the writer in and if the actor tells the writer the line they'd like to change and their reasoning, then if you allow the writer to tailor the line, you still have the writer's voice but you also have the actor's notes. I think when you work that way you get roles that are like custom-tailored clothing. They're tailored to the particular actor and their personality and their needs and their interpretation.

On the first day of rehearsal, Richard told the actors, "Okay, I want you to go home and write a character bio, all the backstory, all the family history." Since Tracy and Tom were both part of the Organic Theater this was common to them, but to Michael it was sort of an affront. So Michael actually went home and, truth be told, while he was sitting on the toilet he dictated his backstory into a little portable tape recorder.

They each came back to rehearsals with these backstories and a certain amount of that information then got worked into the script for each character. It was a lesson to me that I carry because it was invaluable.

How have you used this technique since then?

Well, when you're working with Bob DeNiro, Bill Murray and Uma Thurman you don't necessarily send them home to write character bios. But you work with them in readings and discussions for four or five days. Then once you've really gotten the shape and everybody's in the same movie, then you bring the writer in and you use the writer to explain to them why things are the way they are. If they want dialogue changes, then you let the writer do it for them so that a voice is maintained rather than just throwing the doors open and letting everybody re-write your dialogue. You'll regret it if you do that.

Did you make any choices in the writing that you knew would save you money in shooting?

Well, a major one was setting it in Chicago. So far as anyone really knew, Henry Lee Lucas had never been near the city of Chicago. But there was no way we were going to go out on the road with a crew and house them and feed them.

What's the best advice you've ever received about screenwriting?

Probably, strangely enough, it was in Syd Fields' book. I had read other books on screenwriting and filmmaking that tended to take a more academic, ivory tower appraoch to the artistic principles involved. Syd Fields' book was just the nuts and bolts. 

"Know your ending" was one thing I got out of that book. I live back and forth between Chicago and Los Angeles and I love road trips. When I come out to do a project I'll drive out  and when the project is over I've drive home. It's a three-day drive and I think a lot and clear my head. It's like a chapter in my life is beginning and a chapter is ending. But I always know my destination. I know where I'm going, so I can plan my route. It's the same thing with a script. You need to know where the story's going. 

One of the principles that he laid out in his second book was the midpoint. The dramatic arc goes up and it comes down. It starts at the beginning, goes up to a peak, comes down to the ending. And the midpoint is the peak.

But most movies get in trouble in the middle. Establishing a midpoint for me was like knowing that I was going to drive from Los Angeles to Chicago, but I'm going to stop in Omaha. That was really an incredibly helpful idea, because after you leave the first act you're driving to the midpoint. You're going up. Now when I'm working on a script, once I've read it, I'll go to the last page and take the page number – let's say it's 120 pages – and I'll go look at what happened on page 60. I want to see if there's a key event that sort of divides the story in half.

In good screenplays, it may not be exactly on page 60. It may be between 58 and 63. But almost always in a good story you'll go back and find a key event that takes place that divides the story in half.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

Henry Jaglom on “Someone To Love"

What was the inspiration for “Someone To Love”?

HENRY: I was alone, and I didn't understand why I was alone. And I looked around at my friends and I realized that I was part of a whole generation of people that were alone and that it wasn't just a generation but that it was a function of something that was happening at that period in the 80s and the 90s. People who always assumed that they would be married and have families found themselves somehow in the middle of their lives on their own. 

So, I thought I would try to make a movie about it, but what I would do is go through my phone book and actually pick out people I knew who were alone and put them together in some central location. 

And then I was talking to Orson about it at lunch one day. He and I had lunch once or twice a week for the last eight or nine years of his life. He was very interested in it. 

And during that time, I was editing my film Always, about the end of my first marriage (which was the reason I was alone at the time of Someone to Love). Orson came one day and sat behind me in my editing room and watched the entire film of Always and smoked his big, Monte Cristo cigar. 

At the end of it he did an extraordinary thing. He was silent for a while, and I thought, 'Oh, Christ, he hates my movie.' And then he said something very quietly, so I couldn't hear him, which was not like him. So I said 'What? What?' And he said, 'I'm jealous.' 

For a crazy moment I thought he meant he was jealous because the film was so wonderful; he didn't mean that at all. 

But I tried to reassure him, I said, 'My God, you're Orson Welles, you've made a dozen of the greatest films of all time.' He said, 'No, no, Henry, I'm not jealous about that. It's a very good film, I like the film very much. I actually love the film. But I'm not jealous because of the film. I'm jealous because you, as a filmmaker, in Always reveal yourself completely, nakedly, without any masks on. You don't make yourself attractive, you show yourself warts and all. As a matter of fact, you're going to get criticized for some of the whining and the baby talk and all of that. You really allow us to see you without a mask on.' 

And Orson said, 'All my life I've hidden behind a mask. I've never been on screen without a mask. I'd like just once before I die to do that.' 

So I said, 'Well, Orson, you just heard about my film Someone to Love. I think we've got a solution here.' He said, 'What do you mean?' I said, 'It's all about my generation of people and all of us trying to figure out why we're alone in life. If I had somebody from your generation -- you -- sitting in the back of the theater as a sort of Greek chorus and telling us just as you have at lunch over these years, talking to me about life and death and love and loss and men and women and movies and theater. If you'll do that, we'll do it without masks. You'll get to appear without a mask.' 

And Orson said, 'Great.'

Then he showed up three months later, when we started shooting, with a big make-up box in his lap and was made-up like a Greek. He had a funny, weird accent and he had a big nose on. I said, 'What are you doing? Remember, the whole point of this was no masks.' He said, 'Oh, you don't like the Greek? Come back in a half hour.'

I came back and he'd put on some Arabic make-up and had an Arab accent. I said, 'Orson, you're missing the whole point. The whole point was, no masks, remember like in Always, we want to see you.' He said, 'Oh, nobody wants to see me just with this little nose.' 

I don't know how to explain it. He was goading me into tricking him (though of course you couldn't trick Orson, so it was his manipulation) into tricking him into doing the film the way he really wanted to but couldn't admit it finally. He allowed me to say, 'No Orson, no make-up, no accents, I don't want you to memorize speeches, I want you to really be you and just help me solve my dilemma but also help me solve the movie, because I don't know how to end this movie, there's no way to end it.' 

So he said, 'Oh, I'll give you an ending!'

I had a plan, a super structure, but I left it up to the individuals as to what they would say, and I certainly left it up to Orson as to what he would say and depending on that was what I would say. 

I knew what I wanted to talk about in terms of loneliness and relationships, but I was actually seeking the movie as I was in the movie. I decided I would just do it that way and then when I got back to my editing room, I would look at what I got and what everybody gave me and find a way to put it together into a narrative.

How much of your plan did you reveal to your cast?

HENRY: No one knew anything. I just told them I wanted them to be in a movie, and I wanted to be able to deal freely with the facts about their own single situation in their romantic life at this moment. I confirmed with some of them that they were in fact still single, that they weren't involved, that I didn't miss anything, and that's all I asked them to do.

And only one person ended up leaving. Kathryn Harrod left, she didn't realize it would be that personal. The truth was, she was uncomfortable, and I thought more people would be uncomfortable, but actually everybody likes to talk about themselves.

How much did you find that movie in the editing?

HENRY: One hundred percent. Actually, fifty percent in the shooting and fifty percent in the editing. But nothing in preparation. It's the kind of movie where you absolutely cannot prepare, because you don't know what people are going to say. 

Several of my movies have a mixture of a storyline -- which is a narrative, which is created by me -- and an interview structure, which is spontaneous and real and comes from the people. So, I can prepare one half of that, but I can't possibly prepare the interviews without interfering with the reality of it.

Like in Eating or in my movie coming up next, Going Shopping, or Venice/Venice, anyone one of those movies which have an interview threaded throughout. 

But in the case of Someone to Love, because the entire thing was about somebody making a film, there could be no preparation. It would be absolutely wrong for me, from my point of view, to have anybody know anything in advance of what anybody was going to say, including Orson. All I told Orson was to go over in his mind all the things he'd talked to me about over the last couple of years when we'd talked about relationships and men and women. And then he just came up with all this stuff.

It really captures Orson the way if you had had lunch with him. Everybody had this image of him as this intimidating ogre. If he had a chance to, he might put on a little bit of scary persona, but in fact he was a sweet, sweet man, and I think that's what shows in the film.

The narrative is created in the editing rather than written beforehand, and that's true of many of my movies. Orson said to me once, 'Everybody else makes movies, but first they decide what the narrative is, and out of the narrative they try to find their theme. The difference with you, Henry, is that you choose your theme first, and then you try to discover, out of your theme, the narrative.' And that's very true of my process.

I didn't set out to work this way. It's the way I like finding stories.

During the making of Someone to Love, Orson looked at me suddenly and said, 'I know what's going on. You remind me of this old Eskimo I say in a documentary about Eskimos. There was this old Eskimo, who was sitting and carving this gigantic walrus tusk. And the filmmaker goes up to the Eskimo and says, "What are you making?" And the Eskimo looks at the filmmaker, totally bewildered, and says, "I don't know; I'm just carving and trying to find out what's inside."' 

And Orson said, 'That's the way you make movies, Henry, you carve away at yourself, at me, at your friends, at the whole culture, trying to find out what's inside of all of us.' And that was as good a description of my process as I've ever heard.

I understand that you don’t like rehearsals.

HENRY: I hate rehearsal. 

What’s the benefit of not rehearsing before you shoot?

HENRY: The magic of reality. The honest surprise of what happens the first time when somebody thinks of something or you see them thinking and discovering it and saying it. And then they have to re-create it and try to pretend to be thinking and discovering it. 

You can't do this on stage, where you have to repeat everything at 7:45 at night the exact same way, but on film you just have to get it once. 

And the most truthful moments, it seems to me, are the moments that just happen and even surprise the person themselves as they're saying something, because they don't know they're going to be saying it. If you rehearse, no matter how good you are, you know you're going to be saying it. And unless you've got a Brando or a Meryl Streep or the handful of actors who are better each time, you've got human behavior which is better and truest the first time. 

God, I would die if I rehearsed and someone in rehearsal gave me a great moment, because a great moment is what you look for in film. It's all about the moment.

I was complaining about not having more time, not having more money to do something I wanted to do, and Orson said this line that I now have over my editing machine. He said, 'The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.' 

That was just about the most important thing that has ever been said to me, because if you don't have limitations you start throwing technology or money at a problem. But if you have a limitation, you have to find a creative solution, and therefore you create art. 

For me the most valuable lesson from Orson, and it happened during that movie, was make whatever happens work. It's good to have limitations, because you have to find an artistic or creative way to surmount them. And it's more fun.

Did I tell you why I started improvising in movies?

To make my first movie, A Safe Place, I had to write a script to get the money from Columbia Pictures. I had written a play called A Safe Place, so I adapted it into a very funny screenplay. It was a more hip version of a Neil Simon thing. The studio loved it, everybody loved it.

My two friends, Jack Nicolson and Tuesday Weld, two of my very closest friends, I knew them extremely well and I'd written this wonderful scene and it was really good and I'd done it on the stage and it worked beautifully. 

So I had them do the scene, and they're tremendous actors, but there was something missing and I didn't know what. So I said, 'Okay, let's do it again.' And I did about five takes, and I said, 'This is really strange. This isn't as interesting to me as Tuesday actually is or as Jack actually is in life.' 

So I said to them, 'Look, just forget what I wrote. You know what has to be accomplished in this scene. Just get through that, but don't worry about my words.' And it was magical. And I didn’t look at the script for the entire rest of that movie, to the horror of Columbia pictures, because I can't it into a poetic and abstract film from what was a very simple narrative. 

The bigger lesson that I got was that actors are to be encouraged to delve into their own lives and into their own expression and their own language and their own memory, because they will come up with fresh and extraordinary things that you could never in a million years create. 

And all you have to do is get that to happen once on film and have that moment and then figure out how to put it together with the next moment. For me, that was it. I never looked at my script again. I drove the crew crazy, but I made the movie I wanted to make.

How do you edit?

HENRY: I edit on film, on a KEM, on a flatbed. 

You’re a good candidate for non-linear editing. 

HENRY: Everybody tells me that. But what I like to do is splice myself, go back and forth over a piece of film, find things, find things that I otherwise would have missed. I don't know, maybe I've become a reactionary in this area; it seems hard to believe. 

I was the first person to have a KEM. It was because of Orson, once again, telling me on A Safe Place, after I shot the movie. Everybody was still cutting on movieolas. And he said ' There's this great thing, a flatbed KEM,' and all the editors didn't want to get it because they realized that they could be dispensable then, because you could learn how to do it yourself. 

Which is in fact what happened, and halfway through A Safe Place I let the editor go and I ended up editing it myself. And I've edited all my movies since. So maybe it's just the familiarity of that to me, and if I had the other I would need a technician, that I don't want to work with.

I guess, it's old dogs and new tricks.

You have very strong critics. Some people just seem to hate your movies.

HENRY: My movies violate a lot of the conventional rules of filmmaking, which people really resent. They really resent that, I don't know why, I didn't expect that, but I found that out starting with my first films. They see film as a narrative medium, and they don't see it as an art. They're willing to accept in music or in painting, even to some extent in theater--a sort of surrealist thing, where lights are used and sets are used, but they're not naturalistic. 

But on film, they want to know where they are. It's become such an entertainment rather than art medium, that when you defy that and make people explore certain things emotionally or violate some of the rules. 

I found, on A Safe Place, because I violated all of those rules on my first movie, because I didn't know people were going to resist it, the anger started right there. 

I remember Time magazine saying 'this movie looks like he threw the pieces of the film up in the air and it landed totally at random in a mix master.'  

But I think that those people who don't like that really hate it. They feel violated. Then they translate that as I am either amateurish or self-indulgent or all those kind of words, because I don't think they like to be taken out of their narrative convenience, out of the safety of the narrative.

We deal so much with people revealing themselves, people really expose themselves in my movies, these wonderful, brave actors. I had about 53 of them in Going Shopping, I had 38 of them in Eating. These aren’t just actors who are good actors; they're revealing and opening up very personal and frequently painful parts of themselves and exposing it. 

And a lot of people don't want to see that. It's understandable. I'm always surprised by how many do (want to see it). I'm never surprised by the negative reactions; I'm always surprised and delighted by the degree of openness with which so many people are willing to receive and accept the films. 

And those people who do like them, they really do become a part of their lives. I get these incredible letters, thousands of letters from all over the place, with very touching things about terribly sad and painful moments in these people's lives when the films were really helpful. They feel less alone, they feel less isolated, which is really the goal for me of making films like this.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

Jim McBride on “David Holzman’s Diary

Do you think David Holzman’s Diary was the first fake documentary?

JIM: There was a film by Stanton Kaye. It was just a year or two before mine. It was called Georg. It wasn't a very famous film. It was a guy, standing in front of the camera, and it was very political. I don't remember too much about it. He blew himself up at the end, in front of the camera.

What was your inspiration for David Holzman’s Diary?

JIM: It was a combination of things. Michael Powel's Peeping Tom had a big impression on me. I saw it when it was banned in the United States; maybe it was banned everywhere, I don't know. On my first visit to California, a guy I knew got a hold of a print of it and showed it at midnight at a movie theater that no longer exists here. I was just knocked out by it. The whole idea of self-examination. 

Then, in addition to that, I was very interested in Cinema Verite. Kit Carson and I were going to write something for the Museum of Modern Art about Cinema Verite, and we interviewed all these filmmakers--like the Maysles brothers, Ricky Leacock, Pennebaker, even Andy Warhol--who were making films that purportedly were for the first time entering into real life and finding out the truth. 

People were really passionate about this idea that you could find the truth with this new, light-weight equipment and faster film stocks and synch sound--all the stuff that was very new in the sixties. So at that time I was very passionately interested in all of that, and at the same time I felt there was something wrong here. 

Did you set out with the goal of fooling the audience?

JIM: That certainly wasn't the idea. One wanted to make a movie that would be believable. Yes, on one level you wanted people to believe that it was real and to affected by it, but on the other hand, I didn't set out with the intention of fooling people. But just as with any film you make, you want people to suspend their disbelief, you want people to believe it.

I know that this film is an important film to a lot of people, and always, constantly surprised when people come up to me and say, 'I saw your film when I was in college.'  My own experience with the film is that it's never had any kind of commercial release, it's never shown in theater. It really only has a life at film festivals and colleges. So I'm always surprised that more than seven people have seen it.

I know that at a lot of early showings people walked out, but I think that was more from being bored than being fooled.

I guess a lot of people did believe it, but I think the more common reaction is to be caught up in it as it's going along, and then maybe be surprised when you see the credits at the end, but then feel that, 'Oh, that makes sense. It was worth the trip that it took me on.'

What was the process for making the movie?

JIM: This was actually the second go-round. In 1966 I was working at a company that sold land in Florida. And it did it through films. I was serving an apprenticeship there, learning to shoot, learning to edit, stuff like that. I got this idea for what was later to become David Holzman's Diary, and they let me borrow their equipment on weekends. 

We shot a bunch of stuff, all most all of it improvised--and not very well, I should add--and then as we were shooting, I got fired. So I packed it all up into a box and put it in the trunk of my car, and I went around looking for a cutting room that someone would lend me so I could put these pieces together. And when I finally did locate a cutting room a couple of weeks later, I went to the car and opened it up and discovered that someone had stolen the film. 

In those days, 16mm was associated with porn, so my guess is that's why somebody took it. They must have been terribly disappointed. And I was terribly disappointed myself, but as time went by, I was kind of relieved, because it really sucked. 

But somehow the experience of doing it made me realize how I should have done it differently.

Then, about a year later, I hooked up with these two guys, quite separately: Kit Carson and Michael Wadleigh, who was a cinematographer. It was actually Michael who encouraged me to try it again. 

I had been working with him as a soundman; he was a Verite cameraman and we did a lot of work and went to some interesting places. He was a very talented cinematographer. He sort of organized it all in a way: We'd do a job during the week, and then we'd keep the equipment over the weekend and turn it in on Monday morning. But over the weekend we would shoot stuff for David Holzman's Diary. We used short ends from jobs we'd been working on, and we'd actually send the stuff through the lab with stuff from the companies we were working for. So really it didn't cost anything and we did it in a gradual way, accumulated footage.

For those parts of the film that took place in his apartment--we really did it all in one long weekend, I think--we spent several days beforehand with just a tape recorder in a room. I would give him a sense of what I wanted to have happen in a given scene, and then he would put it into his own words, and then we'd listen to the tape and I'd say 'I like this, I don't like that, change this.' 

Later on in life we became collaborators on various screenplays, but this was our first collaboration.

It's a lot simpler when it's just one person talking into a microphone than two or three actors trying to do something dramatic together. It was very much controlled improvisation, and by the time we actually went to shoot the scene--although it wasn't written down--we all knew exactly what was going to happen. Because we didn't have a lot of film to fuck around with, so we had to get it on the first or second take. So it was pretty carefully rehearsed.

What’s the story behind the woman in the Thunderbird?

JIM: That pretty much happened, just as you see it on the screen, except that Kit choked and it was Michael Wadleigh who was asking most of the questions.  

We never bothered to get a release from her, of course. I didn't have any equipment of my own, but I had a friend who had a movie projector, so we would often go over to his house to screen dailies, without sound. 

A few weeks later, this friend who owned the projector called me up and said, 'I had this amazing experience last night. I met the woman, who was in your movie. I was walking along Broadway at two o'clock in the morning, and she pulled up in that Thunderbird and she threw open the passenger side door and patted on the seat. I recognized her and I hopped in.' So he went home with her and slept with her. And he said to me, 'I don't know if I slept with a man or a woman.'

Now cut to a couple years later than that, and we actually have a legitimate company that's interested in distributing the film. But, of course, they want releases on everything. So some guy from the company went out and found her and got a release from her. It turned out she was a transsexual who lived in the neighborhood, and she was happy to be on film and happy to sign a release.

Because we had no commercial ambitions for the film, we never worried about releases. So we felt quite comfortable filming on the streets. And I think some of the best material in the film, such as people sitting on benches and other kind of neighborhood stuff, that if we were making a film that we imaged would be released in theaters, we could never have shot that stuff, because there would be no way to get everybody's permission.

What was the best decision you made on the film?

JIM: It's hard to think of everything being intentional. Stuff kind of evolves. I guess having the idea was the best thing I ever did. The actual enacting of it I have to share blame or the credit with my collaborators, Michael and Kit. It really was a group effort in many ways.

I've actually written a script for a sequel to David Holzman's Diary, that I've been trying to raise money for. One of the producers was telling me recently that she felt there wasn't enough of David in the story. I was trying to take Pepe's advice and keep him off the screen. And she said, 'No, no, he's so charming, you have to get more of him on the screen.'

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

Richard Glatzer on writing/directing “Grief”

There’s a well-worn adage that says you should “write what you know.” That’s what the late Richard Glatzer did when he decided to make his first feature film. He took his experiences as a writer/producer of the TV show Divorce Court, and combined it with the loss he had recently suffered after the death of his partner.

The subsequent film – filled with such indie stalwarts as Craig Chester, Illeana Douglas, Alexis Arquette, Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov – is really a quintessential independent film: Funny, sad, personal and in its own way, universal. 

What was going on in your career before you wrote Grief?

RICHARD: I had sold some scripts to Disney and had written afternoon specials for ABC -- one of which actually got produced -- but mostly I found that I was making some money as a writer and getting very frustrated at never seeing any of my words come to life.  I basically had given up on the idea of doing anything in Hollywood; I was doing a nightclub one night a week and just goofing off, after having produced Divorce Court for a couple years.

Producer Ruth Charney suggested that we work on a movie together. I said I had no interest in doing anything unless it was a movie that we could make on as little money as anyone could make a movie. Otherwise it wasn’t going to get done. I had enough experience trying to get things done through more conventional channels. So, I thought if I conceive of a movie that’s basically one location, and think of it as an independent, independent, independent film, then maybe we can actually do it.

She suggested that I do something inspired by my experiences working on Divorce Court. I thought about it and thought I didn’t want to do some Soap Dish-y thing; that I wanted it to have other stuff going on. A lot of the film is autobiographical, and I had been dealing with my lover dying at the time I was working on that show. And I thought that would make it more interesting then if it were just some sort of satire of Divorce Court.

So then the idea of it began to take shape. To me, that became more interesting, if you limited it to one location. To conceive of a film from the outset as ultra-low budget is the way to do it.  You don’t start with a bigger idea and then whittle it down.

Let’s back up. How did you get into producing Divorce Court?

RICHARD: I sold these two scripts to Disney, when there was a different group of people in charge there. And then one of them ended up as the producer-story editor for Divorce Court. I was still living in New York at the time and thinking about going to LA. I spoke to the guy who had been the head of the studio and he said I should talk to this woman who’s over at Divorce Court and see if she can get me some work there.  And I thought, “Oh my god -- Divorce Court.” 

But it ended up being more regular employment and more fun than anything else I ever worked on. I thought I’d be there for a week and it ended up being five years. I ended up producing the thing.

Once you had the idea, how long did it take to write Grief?

RICHARD: I wrote it quickly; it was the easiest script I’ve written. I usually don’t keep journals, but I happened to write down in a little notebook the day that Ruth suggested thinking about this. It was the end of October in ‘91, and I had a draft of the script by early January ‘92; and I hadn’t even started thinking about it at the end of October, ‘91. So it was pretty fast.

How did you go about funding the movie?

RICHARD: I had about $20,000 saved and we raised another $20,000 from people who were willing to put up $5,000 investments -- none of which was easy. 

I think the gay content helped a little bit, that people felt that it was some sort of community function or something. But it also, obviously, limited the film in terms of people thinking they were ever going to see a lot of money coming back. Ruth put up $5,000. It was mostly little bits and pieces, mostly from friends.

We raised $40,000, and at the same time we were doing that, I put together my cast just by going to Sundance and seeing Craig Chester in Swoon and meeting people at parties or wherever.  

That’s where I met Illeana Douglas. Just as I was leaving -- I hadn’t even spoken to her, really -- and I got my coat and was on the way out the door, it suddenly clicked that she was perfect for Leslie. I just went up to her and said, “Hey, you wouldn’t by any chance do some low-budget, independent fag film, would you?”

And she said, “I bet you’re the kind of guy who loves Edgar Ulmer movies.” And I was a big Edgar Ulmer fan, so within a day or two she said, “I’ll do your movie,” as soon as I got her the script.

So I assembled the cast and felt like I had this really great group of people. We’d all been hoping to get more money than $40,000, but there was nothing coming. 

Did you write the script with particular actors in mind? 

RICHARD: No. Alexis Arquette and Jackie Beat I knew from this club I was doing; they both performed there. I was thinking of them as I was writing the script; not from the outset, but as I was writing it, I started to realize that I was hearing Jackie Beat saying these lines. 

So by the time I finished the script I definitely had them in mind for those two roles. But it wasn’t like from the beginning I was going to write a role for Jackie Beat or write a role for Alexis.  

How long did you shoot?

RICHARD: We shot for ten days. It was ten days for the bulk of the shooting and then we did an extra half day in the courtroom.  That was our big production value, which of course we made look like shit by deteriorating it. We shot it on film and it looked really good and then we went and shot it off a monitor.

At the time we didn’t know how it was going to work. And I thought if I shoot it on film, I have the option to use it on film and if I shoot it on video, then I’m stuck with video. It was basically a half day; we were out of there at three, three thirty. 

Did the script change much during shooting?

RICHARD: It was an ongoing process; I was always scrutinizing it and always fiddling with it. Then working with the actors was really helpful. 

We did have a week of rehearsal and that was really great and crucial, especially for doing a movie that fast -- and one like this, which was so character and performance oriented. I felt that was the highest value of the film, the quality group of people I put together and I wanted to make sure that the parts really came alive.

Did you change the script after the week of rehearsal?

RICHARD: There was a lot of re-writing in rehearsal and throughout the whole process -- in the editing room as well. The finished movie is maybe 75% of what was in the original script, but there are little things tweaked here and there.  

This was especially true of emotional stuff; you’d see it and think, "Wait a minute, there’s not enough here, it’s not sounding right." So I would scribble things down on slips of paper and hand them to them. Later I had to get a continuity script together for TV stations and I was like, “Oh my God, where did I put that scene?”

It’s not really like I threw the script out, it’s not that. It’s basically about three-fourths of what was in the script. It’s trying to make all of it right. It was just constantly fiddling with it.  

And I felt really good about that, because I think everyone’s hesitation about a writer-director is that you’re going to think that every word is sacrosanct. I felt like I was very able to put the writing behind me and just listen to it and watch it and see if it was working or not.

My actors were a really smart group of people, so I could trust them, if they said “Wait a minute” about their character.  Most of the time they were right and that was really good, because it was a great sounding board. Actors are always like that, but I think some actors are better able to see what’s missing or know when something’s not sounding right than other actors are. I credit them with a lot of that.

Then also, in the editing room, I thought, “Oh, everything’s fine,” and then you’d put it together and realize, “Wait a minute, there’s a beat missing here,” or you’ve got to move this thing before that thing or it doesn’t pay off. Just all that kind of stuff.   

So you were re-writing even while you were editing?

RICHARD: I shot the bulk of the movie in ten and a half days, but six months down the line -- after I had a rough cut of the movie -- I realized that there were some important emotional beats that were missing. So we went back and shot an extra day’s worth of stuff. 

These were pretty crucial scenes. There are other scenes they replaced. All the stuff that was taking place near the stage -- because we couldn’t have access to our original location again.  

The big scene where Jackie Beat talks about being fat and the scene where Illeana asks Craig to marry her, that was done somewhere else and we just made it look like it was part of the sound stage in that same building. 

There were things that were replaced by those scenes, but those new scenes were really crucial.

The Love Judge scenes were very funny. Did you ever intend to include more of them?

RICHARD: I wish I’d had money to really do the whole shooting of The Love Judge, rather than just do scenes from the episodes -- to actually see the judge carrying on, to see the actors have the scripts re-written under their noses, and all that kind of stuff. I thought that could have really been fun. 

But it just seemed like then we’d have to rent real video cameras and real lights and all that stuff that we didn’t have a budget for. That was the closest we could get to it.  

Since you lost your original set for the re-shoots, how did you come up with the idea to set the scenes backstage at the show?

RICHARD: It was just a way for us to make up for not being able to re-shoot in the original location. I don’t know if I would have even tried that if we’d had access to the original location. So it turned out to be a blessing that we didn’t have access to it, because it let us fake it. And all that set was, was a stage at this place called Lace, which is a performance art theater/gallery downtown. There was nothing there, it was this black, empty space. So we made it work.

Do you think there were any advantages to not having a larger budget?

RICHARD: I set out to make a movie in one location for financial reasons. I think the whole idea of grieving and the fact that Mark’s dealing with the death of his boyfriend, to me is so much more interesting indirectly and seen only in the office. 

I think if we’d had money to go shoot Mark crying at home, or something -- just because we maybe had the money, and you’d think, “Oh, we have to cover that” -- to me the movie gained its identity and meaning from giving him that sense of privacy and from being limited to the office. That was a budgetary limitation that ended up working in the movie’s favor.

Of course, it probably would have been distributed wider and seen as a more mainstream movie if we’d had more locations -- a lot of running around and all that stuff.

Did you write the scenes from The Love Judge for an existing set?

RICHARD: No. My producer, Yoram Mandel, made phone calls to see what he could get cheap. The people liked him over the phone; he explained how there was no money in this film, and they said “We’ll let you have the set for $500,” which by LA standards for a day is great. The only thing they said was that we had to go with their schedule and I never knew from one day to the next when it would be available.  

So we only had two days notice to get up there. I had Tim Roth and a couple other people who were going to do cameos in those scenes and they couldn’t because of the last-minute scheduling.  But I was thrilled that Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov were willing to do it.

How long did it take to finish the movie?

RICHARD: It took forever to post it. We didn’t have enough money; the $40,000 was to shoot it, but we didn’t have anything left to do any of the post. We were trying to raise money and trying to find freebie stuff. There was this UCLA student who had this KEM deck at home and she was synching dailies for us. She let us in there to cut some stuff.  

It’s so frustrating when you’ve got this in the can and you want to work on it and you can’t. It took us about a year to edit the thing, getting a few bucks here, a few bucks there and begging favors everywhere.  There was a post house near me, an editing facility that would let us go in there for free. They were sympathetic and trying to help us out.

And really the only reason it ever got finished was because Mark Finch, who was the head of the Gay & Lesbian Film Festival in San Francisco, saw a rough cut of the film and loved it and said he would give us the closing night if we could finish. So then it was this panic to finish it.

I put up more money -- fool that I was -- in order to finish it. No one was coming up with any money. I made him a personal guarantee that I was going to get the film done and we had two or three months and there was no money and so I finally just put the money up.

Did that festival help?

RICHARD: It was a partial success story.  It was a huge hit there and it was like a dream come true to be there. It’s a 1,500 seat theater and that town’s just insane. These people go there and they have these wild opinions -- they either love it or they hate it -- and luckily with me they loved it. They just decided very early on that they loved this movie and they were screaming and carrying on throughout the whole movie.  

Then we got a great review in Variety and all of a sudden all these festivals wanted the film and there was this big Hollywood producer who had to meet with me and who loved the film. It just felt like, oh, now everything’s happening.  

Festival-wise, the film did really, really well. It played everywhere. St. Petersburg, New Zealand, Jerusalem, just every corner of the globe I could think of, it’s been.

Most of the time I went with it; a lot of these people can’t afford to fly you all around. But I went to Australia with it and I went to Berlin with it and I went to Italy and London a whole bunch of times. I could have gone to Hong Kong if I wanted to pay half my airfare, but I said no. I also could have gone to Jerusalem and I stupidly didn’t. It was right when it was with all these Italian festivals and I would have had a day here and a day there and it just seemed like, what’s the point?

I traveled with the film for about a year and a half, which was fun.

How was your Sundance experience?

RICHARD: Not very good. The film had been to Toronto and to Vancouver and to the Gay & Lesbian Festival in San Francisco and in Los Angeles. Most Sundance films are pretty new to the public, so by the time the film got there, it was sort of considered old news. I heard that in the first half audiences were pretty good, but by the time the second half happened, it was all these Hollywoody people. And they’d literally walk out during the opening credits.  

I’ve talked to a lot of people who have had similar experiences. And then we didn’t win any prizes and however stupid that is, you still want it. And you have to keep reminding yourself that Sundance prizes don’t really mean a hell of a lot. It’s usually the audience award that seems to indicate something about any commercial success. But nothing else seems to indicate anything.

I guess for my film, Sundance wasn’t that important. I’ve seen my film with audiences, like in Germany where the film was not subtitled, where they loved the film. Or in Toronto, where the film went over really, really well. 

And then I was there at Sundance and it felt like a total bomb. The audience, those Hollywood people, were completely inattentive and didn’t get it and didn’t give a shit and it just felt really bad. 

That’s not the festival’s fault, but that’s who’s going there these days. And they go there wanting the new Tarantino or something. My film is very quiet and you have to pay some attention and stick with it. And I definitely don’t think Sundance is the place for a film where you have to stick with it. Because they just don’t; they get up and they leave after five minutes. So that wasn’t fun.

What have been the positive effects of writing and shooting Grief?

RICHARD: Creatively, it’s the most gratifying thing I’ve ever done. No question. And financially, not. If I had it to over again, I would absolutely do it.  

It’s been an amazing thing to me, just really amazing to think how many thousands of people have seen this thing around the world and that it’s really moved some people and really gotten to some people and that I’ve gotten to meet so many people, filmmakers, through this. 

I really feel that there’s this great community of independent filmmakers, which is so unlike the Hollywood community and which has a real integrity to it. I’m just amazed how open filmmakers are. I’ve met so many people -- and I hope I’m this way, too -- who really are encouraging with other independent filmmakers. There’s no sense of competition, there’s only support. That’s been fantastic.

What were the downsides?

RICHARD: The financial, really.  Because of the financial thing, at times I’ll get down. I’ll see a film like Go Fish, which I really enjoyed, but which to me was like, that film, there was such a hoopla over it, such a huge amount of money given to them and such huge distribution for it. And I would think, “Is my movie not as good as Go Fish and why can’t my movie get that kind of release?”  

And I get resentful -- not toward Rose, who’s great, and not because of the film, because I really enjoyed the film -- but because of that sense that the marketing thing, that this is the first hip lesbian movie and so it’s going to get this big send-off and my movie’s just not.  

I’ve always fought with myself not to be resentful over -- especially over films I like -- but still there is such a freaky quality to what’s hot and what’s not. It doesn’t have anything to do with the reviews, because my film was really well reviewed. It doesn’t have anything to do with anything but how we can market this film and we can’t market that film or somebody at one of the distribution companies suddenly gets really worked up over something or whatever.

It’s hard to be satisfied. At one point I would have been satisfied just to finish the film, because I thought we’d never get the money to finish the film and I thought, “Oh, if I can only finish it -- it doesn’t matter if it’s distributed, if only I can finish it.”  

Then you get it finished and then you see it received well, and then you’re like, “Oh, well now I want more and I want more and I want more.” And then you think of all the films, independent films, that never get finished or never get out there or get to two festivals and then they disappear. I was so much luckier than that. 

Mostly, I’m really grateful for the whole thing and feel like -- absolutely -- if I had it to do over again, I would do it over again, because it was a really great experience.

One last question: Am I nuts, or is the actor who plays The Love Judge doing an impression of Lionel Barrymore?

RICHARD: Yes, the Love Judge is doing Lionel Barrymore. You’re the only person who’s ever figured that out. 

The actor, Mickey Cottrell (the clean freak in My Own Private Idaho) loves to do shtick. That morning, when we were at the location of the courtroom scene and he’s getting dressed, he said, “You know, I do a really mean Lionel Barrymore.” I said, “Let me hear it.” And he did his Lionel Barrymore. And I said, “That’s perfect, just do that.”  

It was perfect, it was just what I wanted -- a curmudgeonly character. But no one else has picked up on it. That’s so funny. 

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

Dylan Kidd on writing & directing "Roger Dodger"

Roger Dodger is an example of how – sometimes – all the pieces just fall into place. Writer-Director Dylan Kidd recognized that he’d created a great character when he came up with Roger Swanson. 

Actor Campbell Scott obviously agreed and stepped up to the challenge, bringing an amazing cast – Isabella Rossellini, Jennifer Beals, Ben Shenkman, and Elizabeth Berkley – along with him. Roger Dodger proves that it’s always a good idea to carry your best script with you wherever you go, because you just never know who you’re going to run into.

Where were you in your career before Roger Dodger happened?

Nowhere, really. I had gone to NYU film school and graduated in 1991 and then most of the 90s was spent struggling to get any kind of entry into the industry. I loaded cameras for a couple of years; I worked in real estate for a couple of years. I made a short film in 1996, which was the first directing I had done since school, and that was a nice little thing to get my confidence up a little bit. I spent a couple years doing training videos for hair salons, industrial films, you name it. So really Roger Dodger was a very dramatic beginning to my career.

What the value of all those jobs when it came time to do your first feature?

At the time I was absolutely thrilled to have the work, and I still feel that any time you are -- and this is more from a directing standpoint than from a screenwriting standpoint -- any time I was on a set, calling "action" and "cut," it was an opportunity to learn. And it's always good to shoot and go into the editing room and slap your forehead and think, "I should have gotten that!" It's all part of the training.

And in terms of screenwriting, it's all just fuel for the fire. In the case of helping the script for Roger Dodger, I was just getting more angry and frustrated at not being able to break in, so I ended up putting all that anger into the mouth of the main character. 

In my case, it was a long struggle, but absolutely worth it. I don't know how to do anything else, so for me there was no option. 

How many scripts had you written before Roger Dodger?

I had written two other feature scripts and then one that had been sort of abandoned. So I guess, two and a half. 

One screenplay was based on my experiences in real estate. Although it was nice to get it out of my system, I think I was aware when it was done that the script really wasn't good enough to show anybody. 

The other one was a horror movie, an attempt to do something in a genre. It was fine, but wasn't anything that I was that excited about. Roger Dodger was the first time that when I finished a script, I was like, "Okay, I want to make this movie." 

What was it about the script that made you feel that this was the one?

Probably the quality of the writing, but also the fact that this was the first time that I felt like I had a character that an actor would want to play. For me, a big thing about writing something that could be done for no money was trying to write a role that was so good that we could attract a name actor to work for what turned out to be peanuts. 

That was a big part of my strategy: write something that somebody would walk through broken glass to play. Most of your expense in a movie is the above-the-line costs. It's difficult but possible to make a movie for a low-budget. What's really hard is getting someone that anyone's ever heard of into that movie.

Every time an actor wins an award for stepping outside of their comfort zone, like Halle Berry for Monster's Ball or Charlize Theron for Monster, I think it sends a message to other actors that sometimes you need to take a chance. If you're making $12 million a picture, you don't need the money. So why not take two weeks, go shoot a little indie, and maybe you'll get a statue? That was my theory, anyway.

Where did the idea for the story come from?

The real estate script I had written was big in scope and so, apart from the fact that I didn't think it was that strong, even if someone did fall in love with it, it was still a big movie. So the idea of Roger Dodger was to give myself the assignment of writing something that could be done for no money. That lent itself to a series of conversations and monologues. 

It started with the idea of a guy who feels like he can tell everyone else what they're thinking. It was based on a friend of mine, who in college had this strange ability to go up to strangers and take their psychology apart in minute detail. It struck me as disturbing but also very compelling.

I started with Roger. It ended up being a buddy movie, but his nephew didn't come in until later drafts. You go through a certain amount of time thinking, "Well, maybe this guy is compelling enough, maybe people will sit and watch a train wreck for an hour and a half." 

And then there was a point where I realized there has to be some foil, a character who we want to protect has to enter the movie. There has to be a reason for people to hang on and keep watching.

Did you have a theme in mind when you started?

I was interested in how somebody's work could bleed into their personal life. I feel that New York is very much a place where you can be so ambitious in your career that you end up translating those techniques into your personal life. 

I liked the idea of a guy who works in advertising and actually ends up bringing that kind of rhetoric into the singles arena. The idea that he's literally trying to sell himself as a product, by creating insecurity in other people.

But the nephew didn't show up in early drafts?

I think I had one breakthrough draft, which was the first time when the nephew, Nick, came in, where it felt like this was the structure of the movie. After that there were endless tweakings.

Campbell Scott was very helpful, too. We were lucky enough to be able to rehearse quite a bit before we shot and Campbell helped me cut a lot of dialog. Because as wordy as the film is, the script was even more so. 

Usually actors are begging for more lines, so if an actor is saying, "I think we can cut the scene here," their instincts are usually pretty right on. They're not going to tell you to cut a line unless there's a real reason for it. And Campbell is also a writer and a director, so he had a really strong sense.

Probably the most important draft of the script was created two weeks before shooting, going into rehearsal and realizing that a ten-page monologue was finished at page seven; that we didn't need to keep ranting for another three pages. We probably would have figured that out in editing, but it was great to not actually have to go shoot all that.

How did you come up with the title?

I honestly can't remember. I think I remembered hearing that as a nickname for Roger Staubach and I like titles that have an alliterative quality and stick in your head a little bit. 

I also thought of this character as somebody who is dodging a bit. This is a guy that the audience is sort of chasing through the movie. And so our visual approach was that this was a guy who always had a cloud of cigarette smoke or something obscuring him. You could never really get this guy to sit still. 

What is your writing process?

I used to hate writing, because I didn't feel I was any good at it. It was so hard, and it takes you a while to realize that it's hard for everybody. If you spend the first two weeks of a project staring at a page, you learn to forgive yourself a little bit and realize that that's part of the process. 

I seem to work best in the morning. Roger Dodger was written while I had a job, so I was mainly writing at night. But now, I feel like my best hours are probably 8:30 to noon. I have a really hard time being at the keyboard for more than three hours, at least in the beginning. 

To me, the hardest part by far is the beginning. That's the easiest time to get discouraged and give up. But I have an almost religious faith, based on the scripts I've written, where there is some point where you break through. 

So for me, the first couple of months is a lot of not writing: thinking, obsessing, thinking this is a disaster that is never going to happen. Then something clicks and you start to write and you realize that all that worrying was really part of the process.

But I've never been somebody who can get up and put in a nine-to-five day writing. I just can't do it. At the very end, when you're racing to the finish line, then I probably could. But up until that point, if I put in three to four hours, I consider that a good day.

You're the first person I've talked to who has used the words "faith" and "forgive" to describe the process of writing.

And I'm an atheist! 

I remember reading a great quote that Stephen Gaghan said about writing Syriana. He was describing what he goes through when he writes a script and at the end he talked about self-loathing and not being able to get out of bed. 

The beginning is hard. You're trying to make order out of chaos, and chaos doesn't want to be ordered. If you can just get through that hard part, the first draft, then I think you'll be rewarded for your perseverance.

Do you follow a three-act structure in your scripts?

I guess so, but without really thinking about it. I read the Syd Field book when I was at NYU, but I think, for me, things work internally. I can't even remember thinking about the act breaks when I wrote Roger Dodger. I just had the sense that we were at this stage of the story and this is what should happen. 

If you go to 5,000 movies in your life, then without even knowing it that structure is going to be in there when you're writing. I don't think it's a front brain thing; it just ends up being in there.

I feel like the last thing you want to do in a first draft is to be thinking about what page is the act break. I'm the exact opposite of someone who knows the ending before they begin. For me, the first draft is the “spill it” draft. And after that you can look at it and think, "Well, I have a 70-page first act, that probably can't work. 

But your first time through is when your unconscious is really trying to tell you what the movie wants to be. For me it's important to follow your bliss in that first draft, even if it ends up at 180 pages or you hate everything but ten percent of it. At least you've got that ten percent, which is ten more than a lot of people have.

So you don't subscribe to the "the first act needs to end on page 30" philosophy?

The first draft, because there was no Nick character, I think there was a point where I read a draft and I literally started to get fatigued around page 25.

Once I realized that we needed Nick, the original plan was to introduce him very early in the movie so you had some sense that it wasn't just going to be about Roger. Campbell's performance was so great that we decided to roll the dice and I said "I think we can hang with this guy for about 20 minutes." Then we have the kid show up in the office, and a few minutes to get to know the kid and see how they relate, and then the movie can kick in.

There's something to be said for trying to fit it into a structure that people who read scripts for a living recognize. But for me it's always been a little more organic than having file cards and saying, "By page 40 I need to be here." But everyone's different.

Although it's a buddy movie, it is all from Roger's point of view. Do you think that's a function of the character of Nick essentially being a late addition in the scripting process?

Part of what we discovered was that Roger is controlling the tempo of the movie and the subject matter of what's being talked about, but in some weird way, Nick comes in at a moment when we're really starting to figure out something about Roger. 

Even if the movie isn't told through Nick's point of view, there's some way that we're linked to Nick, in that we're sitting there listening to this guy go on and on, and there's an interesting split that happens. We're aware that, as responsible people watching the movie, we feel that this kid should get away from this guy, but he doesn't. 

So the more that Nick buys into everything that's being told to him and the more we realize that, "Wait, this is the last guy you want to be asking for advice," there's something interesting that happens. 

It's the classic Hitchcock situation, where you've told the audience that there's a bomb under the table -- you told the audience, "here's who Roger is." And then you introduce someone who doesn't know what we know. It creates suspense, because you want him to get away but you also want him to somehow redeem Roger.

That's absolutely right. And somehow we thought that would work better if you were introduced to Nick early, because we thought if you set up that collision course, people are really going to be on the edge of their seats. And then we discovered that it was actually better to have the first 20 minutes be all about Roger and then you have the kid show up. 

Under the guise of a talky, chamber piece, we're actually using every trick in the book to keep people in their seats -- it's a buddy movie, it's a Hitchcock movie, it's a sex movie. We were shameless in what we were doing. It's hard to have people just sitting and talking without there being serious subtext.

Were you writing to a particular budget?

No, but having a background in production was definitely a help. I had the understanding that if you could tell the movie in one night there would be only one wardrobe change. 

There are basic rules that are pretty commonsensical, like don't have a car chase, don't make it a period piece, keep your locations to a minimum. 

Also, a big thing for us was that we knew we were going to shoot with two cameras and that allows you to really burn through scenes more quickly. Basically, the whole second act of the movie is four people sitting at a banquette, having this extended conversation. We were able to shoot that entire thing in a day and a half because we were rolling two cameras.

There's a scene where Roger takes the kid out into the street; it's the first time where he's instructing the kid. It's a long, extended scene and even when it was written it was intended to be shot in one take. That was a 12-page scene that we shot in half a day. If you have two sequences like that, that's twenty percent of your movie that's shot in three days. 

Did knowing that you were writing for a small budget cramp your creativity in any way?

Not really. This was one of those movies that felt like it wanted to be tighter. There were earlier drafts that took place over a longer span of time and it just felt like it wanted to be as tight as possible. 

So there's nothing in the movie that I feel we would have done differently if we'd had more money, except for the luxury of being able to shoot more. But if somebody had said, "We love it, here's 2 million dollars," I wouldn't have written in some dream sequence of Roger when he was young. It just felt like it is what it is, that we were dropped into the middle of this guy's meltdown, and we hang on just to make sure that the kid's going to get out of there okay.

Did you write with specific actors in mind?

I didn't and I still don't. I have a hard time doing that, because I don't want to get too attached. I didn't have anybody in mind, so when we stumbled upon Campbell in this really crazy way, it was nice not to have some presupposed notion of it has to be this guy or that guy.

How did you get Campbell Scott?

My producer partner and I got to a stage where we realized, "we're not going to get this movie made in the standard fashion." It's like that New York thing, where nobody ever finds an apartment by actually going through the real estate listings. It's always somebody you know; there's always some backdoor.

So, really in a fit of insanity, thinking if I don't make this movie I'm going to go crazy, I started carrying the script with me every day. I thought, "Well, I live in New York, maybe I'll run into somebody." And that's how it happened -- two weeks after starting that routine of not leaving the house without the script, I walked into a café and there was Campbell.

I didn't realize that most people will not accept an unsolicited screenplay, because it opens you up to all kinds of potential litigation. But I was so clueless at that point.

Any advice to someone who wants to try the same thing when they spot the perfect actor or actress for their script?

The only advice that I have is to be really polite and make sure that you really do have a killer part to offer.

I'm not necessarily somebody who stalks people or is really aggressive or goes up to people, but I was so sure that this was a great role for somebody, I really believed. I might not have believed that the movie was going to work, but I knew this was a lot of meaty dialog for someone to perform. So I really believed that I wasn't wasting his time. If I wasn't sure, I would not have gone up to him. 

If you get to the stage where you feel like you have this great gift that you can give somebody, then it allows you to feel like you're not just disturbing this guy's lunch.

Did you do any re-writing to fit the cast?

Nothing to fit the cast. We were lucky. Basically every actor in the movie was our first choice, so there wasn't a whole lot of "Oh, this person can't handle this type of thing," or "This person is really good at this – we should add more." 

Fairly late in the game we added the epilogue where Roger goes back and sees Nick in Ohio. That was something that came from doing a reading. We did a reading where we found Jesse Eisenberg, who played Nick, and he was so good at the reading that we got really excited because we thought, okay, we actually have someone who can play this role. 

That reading was a huge epiphany, because we realized there was an actor who exists on planet Earth who could play this role. It really lit a fire under us, because we thought Jesse would grow a beard in a year and his voice is going to drop, or whatever, so we've got to move. 

It was sort of our "That's our Hitler!" moment from The Producers.

The other thing we learned from the reading was this huge sense of when the movie ended. The original ending had Roger putting Nick into a cab to the airport and you could just feel the air go out of the room, because the audience cared so much about Nick, because Jesse was so good. They wanted to know if he was going to be okay.

So it was combining that sense of wanting the narrative pleasure of following through and also, just for me, I really wanted to stick Roger in a cafeteria full of kids. I don't know why, it's such a guilty pleasure for me. The movie starts with Roger having lunch in this restaurant with all these adults and then by the end of the movie he's actually found his peer group.

So I think it was a combination of sensing that the audience would feel ripped off if the movie cut to black at that point and also having this visual of Campbell Scott bopping above all these other heads in the cafeteria.

Do you show drafts to friends or use readings to gauge how you're progressing?

I like readings. I'm not a fan of too much feedback. I'm stubborn that way. I like feedback, but for me the whole point of a reading is to sit in the room and you just know -- you just know if something's dead or if something's working. 

I do have people that I turn to and that I care about what they think. But my feeling is that, unless the comments match something I already felt in my gut anyway, or if every person has the same comment, then I know I have an issue. I generally have found that putting too much stock in feedback can get confusing, because people are going to have a hundred different opinions.

Is there anything in the movie that people tried to talk you out of that you're glad you stuck to your guns on?

I tend to be the opposite. I tend to be the guy that cuts too quickly. I loved when the Coen brothers released their Director's Cut of Blood Simple, and it was like eight minutes shorter or whatever. That would be me.

My experience has been that if I have a gut feeling, if I know something isn't working, I don't need to be told to take it out. And someone says it isn't working for them, but some gut things says I want to keep it in, I guess the reward I get for writing the script and putting myself through this is that I get to say, "No, I don't want to lose that." 

There has to be something in the script that gets you juiced, otherwise it's dead on arrival. I think you have to fight for that, even if you're not going to be the one directing it.

Did knowing that you were going to direct it change the way you wrote the script?

I don't think so. But I think that's probably why I say I don't enjoy writing. It's mainly because I love directing and I think of myself as a director. 

So the writing is this very necessary part, but it's not the fun part. For me it's less about hating writing and more about getting impatient, because I want to get to the point where I can go and start collaborating with others.

What is the most fun part?

I really like editing, which is very much like writing. It's just more fun, because you get very tangible results very quickly. 

For me, I enjoy the entire process, but I probably add the most value in the editing room. I think I'm fine as a director on the set, but I'm not some Ridley Scott genius who always knows where to put the camera, and I'm not John Cassavetes, where I would say the right thing to the actors. 

But the editing room is a place where my tenacity pays off, because I just keep working the footage and refuse to stop tweaking. I just find it really enjoyable, not walking away until a scene is as absolutely good as it can be.

There's a shot right near the end of the movie where Roger is sitting alone on his couch, smoking and thinking, and the smoke disappears in front of him, like a cloud of fog lifting. Was that in the script or a happy accident?

That's the one effect that was completely scripted. 

There was a deliberate structure, where the first image of Roger was of him expelling a plume of smoke. Then, we really labored over that last shot of him smoking. It's the only dolly shot in the film. Our poor cinematographer had to light it in a certain way, so that the smoke would read. 

I don't know if anybody even gets it, but I still get a kick out of it when I see it. "Oh, look, he's coming out of the fog." It was even written in the script that way, something like, "Roger exhales and then the smoke lifts … 

Although you created Roger, I'm sure there was a point where Campbell took him over and knew him better than you did. Do you remember when that point was?

Probably by lunch on the first day. 

I had a really interesting thing happen with Campbell. I think good film actors work really small. There's a great interview with John Travolta where he says he always has to remind directors that they might not see what he's doing on the set, but they'll see it on the screen. These guys are working at a level where the camera can almost read their minds.

My initial concept for Roger had been much more manic. But Campbell brought this total James Bond sophistication to it, where he's saying these horrible things but it's going down so smoothly. That was a total surprise to me and I had a panicked reaction. We talked and he said it's going to be fine. And I thought, I've cast this guy and he's great. Maybe this is not what I had in mind, but maybe that's the whole point. 

Since then I've learned that that moment of surprise is the very best feeling you can experience on the set. If you don't feel surprised, you're in trouble. The whole point is that you write a script and then the actors turn it into something so much better and richer and different than you ever thought. 

It wasn't until the end of the shoot that I realized how right Campbell's choice had been. The only way people would stand this guy was if he was kind of suave about it. If he had done what I had pictured in my head, the movie would have been a disaster. So that was a great lesson. 

I think I imagined the character as constantly pushing people away and what Campbell was doing was more of a push/pull thing, where he reels you in and then pushes you away. That's so much more interesting than what I had in mind. 

I don't think I'll ever make a movie that turned out so much better than I imagined. I thought the script was good, but the actors added so much. 

You were quoted once as saying you wanted every character in this movie, even if they only had one line, to be so well-drawn that they were worthy of their own movie. How do you go about doing that?

I think that's something that's easy to say, but in the end it comes down to the actors. It's very easy to say that you want people to feel that you could go off with any character, but unless it's Jennifer Beals who's riding off in that cab, maybe you're not really going to give a shit and you'll say, "I'll let her ride away."

I think it was more about just wanting to instill in the actors some sense that everyone is important, that there are no supporting characters. But I do believe that it's the responsibility of the writer to love every character equally. Once you start writing a character who is only there in order to fulfill some piece of plot machinery, then nobody is going to care about that person. 

I have this clear memory of being about twelve years old and going to a James Bond movie. There was a scene in the movie where the main henchman gets in a fight with an extra character in the movie -- some Secret Service guy we'd never seen. And it ends up being a really long fight. I remembered being so thrilled that this guy, who you'd think would be dispatched immediately, gets a nice scene. 

I always enjoy it when characters come in and you make a snap judgment about them and then they surprise you, either by claiming more of your attention than you thought or just being richer than you thought. 

It's our job to remind audiences that every character has something going on and everyone has a story to tell. It sound pretentious, but that's where our heads were at when we made the movie.

What did you learn writing Roger Dodger that you still use today on higher-budget projects?

The main thing that I learned from that script was that it was the first time ever when I was writing something that I thought, "This is good, this is working." 

My other scripts had been okay, competent, but the hair on the back of my neck didn't stand up. For me, the most important thing now is trying to make sure that I get as close as I can to that feeling. I never want to settle for, "Oh, this is okay." You want people to read it and get genuinely excited about it and want to shoot it.

You’ve got to get to a place where you are genuinely pumped with what you're doing. As hard as it is, you can't give up on a script until you've gotten to that place.

What's the best advice you've ever gotten about writing?

I have to say it was that Stephen Gaghan quote I mentioned earlier. That was the first time that it really hit home for me that it's hard for everybody and that 90 percent of writing might just be staring into space or reading a book and feeling like you're procrastinating.

Writing is so hard that I only want to do it if I'm absolutely dying to tell that story. My advice would be, particularly in the beginning, the only thing that is going to make your script jump off the page for a reader who's read a hundred scripts that day – the only thing that's going to make a difference – is that there's something about it that's getting you up each morning. Even if it's the least commercial idea in the world, I have to believe that somehow that passion translates to the page.

My experience with Roger Dodger was that I had written two other scripts that I thought were good, and then it wasn't until I wrote Roger Dodger that I realized that there's a difference between just "good" and "holy shit this is good." The industry is tough enough and competitive enough that if you're going to go out to somebody, whether it's an agent or an actor or you're going to submit it to a studio, it has to have that holy shit feeling.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

Susan Seidelman on “Desperately Seeking Susan”

How did you get started in filmmaking?

SUSAN: When I started out, I thought I wanted to be a fashion designer. When I originally went to college, I went to a school in Philadelphia for design. Just on a whim I took a film appreciation course; this was in the mid-70s, and film schools were not nearly as popular as they are today. I liked watching movies and I got hooked on watching movies. 

And then I kept taking more and more film appreciation classes. They didn't have film equipment, and it was certainly before digital, so it wasn't like you could take your home video camera and make a movie. So I started to make radio plays, because they had a radio studio at the school. 

Little by little I realized that one of the things that I liked about film was that it combined a lot of the things I was interested in, like design, storytelling, music. And then on a whim I decided to apply to NYU film school. It was not that hard to get into film school back then, and so without ever having made a film (I sent them a design portfolio with the radio drama tapes I'd made), somehow I got accepted.

But once I started film school and got the chance to make my own little films and work on crews and play with the equipment, I realized that was not only something that I loved, but it was something that I found I was kind of good at, on the student level. I was nominated for a student Academy Award, so I was getting positive feedback from the little student films I was making and I was able to win some grants to continue to make longer and longer short films.

But I never really thought how I was going to have a career as a filmmaker. I wasn't very pragmatic in terms of having a long-term plan; I just was making these little films and they were winning some awards and I was getting money to make a longer film. So basically what happened was, after I graduated from film school, I stayed in touch with the people who I had worked with in film school. As my films were getting longer (from a twenty-minute film to a thirty-minute film to my last short film, which was forty-five-minutes), I figured, why not try to make an eighty or ninety-minute film?

So, using the same crew I had been working with earlier, we just did that. I don't even know how. It was just very naive; it was kind of like one of those Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney musicals: 'Hey, let's put on a show!'

My grandmother had passed away and I had a little bit of money, about $20,000. So I was going to make a feature film for $20,000. All the people who worked on it did it for a little bit of rent money and some food and deferred salaries that they thought they would never get. But that film turned out to be Smithereens, which was invited to the Cannes Film Festival, and that put me on a professional path.

But I never really planned it and I certainly didn't have any role models to speak of. I had heard of Ida Lupino but I didn't really know of her films. The only role models I did have were some European women, like Agnes Varda and Lina Wertmüller.

But in terms of American women, every once in a while I'd hear about one woman who made a film, but they were more one-off kind of things. But except for Ida Lupino and Dorthy Arzner from the very early days, I didn't know of any women who had a career as a film director and a body of work.

So instead of planning it, with one thing leading into the next, I sort of stumbled into making this feature film that got some attention and got picked up for distribution by New Line Cinema. It made some money and I was able to pay back the deferments to the cast and crew, who had never expected to make any money from this. The film got some good reviews and the next thing I knew I had an agent in Los Angeles who was sending me some scripts.

It sounds like your transition from making shorts to making a feature was pretty seamless and painless.

SUSAN: It really was, because the short films just kept getting longer. And I realized, after the forty-five-minute short, that it just seemed stupid to do a sixty-minute short; I just figured, why not make it eighty or whatever. And that became a feature.

Today young filmmakers are very savvy. They know how to get an agent, what's going on at the box office at any given moment. But back then it was pre-Internet and on TV there was no Entertainment Tonight, so people didn't really know -- or at least, I didn't really know -- that much about the business. And to some extent that was a blessing, because my efforts were totally uncalculated. I never thought, 'I'm going to make this film to get an agent.' I just made the film because it was a story I wanted to tell.

I never thought about how to get a distributor. My ignorance was, in a way, an asset, because I was just doing it for the passion of wanting to make this movie. Which is the best way to do it.

One of the problems I notice now, teaching at a pretty high-profile film school, is that the kids, because they are not naive, are already calculating to some extent how to make the movie that's going to get them the agent. Or what did what at the box office. Or this kind of movie does well and if I get this actor than I can do this. As opposed to just focusing on this is a story that I really want to tell and I think I'm going to tell it in a unique way.

How did you make the often treacherous transition from self-generating your material to looking at scripts submitted by studios?

SUSAN:  Smithereens went to the Cannes Film Festival in 1982. There were a few women who had made a one-off movie that had gotten some attention and then they made their next movie, a studio movie, that didn't work and then I never heard of them again. So I was aware of the fact that if your first movie is the movie you've been waiting your whole life to make, and you're doing it your way, that you want to make sure that the next movie you make -- when you suddenly have people looking over your shoulder and you have an outside producer who isn't your best friend from film school -- that you better make the right choices. Because it's so easy to get overwhelmed by the process. You better choose your material wisely.

So between 1982 and 1984 I had this agent and I was getting sent some scripts; a lot of them were dumb and some of them were things I just couldn't relate to. And then I read this script called Desperately Seeking Susan and it just spoke to me. 

The subject matter was a little bit about a world I knew, because it was set in downtown New York and that's where Smithereens was set. But it also had a bigger component, because it combined two worlds: it had this suburban housewife character and it had this downtown street character that was very similar to the kind of world I had dealt with in Smithereens. 

So it felt like the right organic step -- like going from longer shorts to a feature -- and I wasn't going far outside of the world I was interested in, but yet it was expanding that world a little bit. It was telling a more complicated story and it was a bigger budget, but it wasn't such a big budget that I didn't think I could handle it. 

And the other interesting thing about it was that the two producers who had sent me the script -- Midge Sanford and Sarah Pillsbury -- were first-time producers. So it was like I was the experienced one, because I had made a low-budget feature already. So I didn't feel like I was getting this big, heavy Hollywood producer looking over my shoulder who was going to intimidate me. It was two women that I liked and for who it was their first time, too.

Can you remember any of the scripts you were sent that you said "no" to?

SUSAN: I remember one script that I was sent that I think got made into a movie. I think a woman ended up directing and it's a movie that you probably would never remember. I think it was called The Joy of Sex. It was like a book title that they tried to turn into a movie but didn't. It didn't take off.

As a female director, the kinds of things I was sent were teen girl movies. There's nothing wrong with teen girl movies if they're interesting -- certainly Amy Heckerling did a very interesting one, Fast Times at Ridgemont High -- but the one I was getting sent weren't that good.

How involved were you in the casting of Desperately Seeking Susan?

SUSAN: I was pretty involved in the casting, but I wasn't involved in Rosanna Arquette. When Midge and Sarah brought me the script, Rosanna was already attached. She was a given. 

It took some time to get the movie financed, so we worked together on script revisions and meetings at studios trying to get it made for several months.

When we knew that the film was going to be green lit, at Orion, it was due to a woman who was in a senior position at Orion Pictures, Barbara Boyle. When she green lit the project, with Mike Medavoy, we started the casting. 

We had a casting office here in New York and because I'm a New Yorker I was somewhat familiar with the New York talent pool. I had heard of Madonna -- she actually lived a couple blocks from me in downtown Manhattan -- her career hadn't quite taken off yet, she had one single out that was getting some attention. So I knew of her as the up-and-coming singer who was a downtown New York personality.

Did you face any resistance to casting her?

SUSAN: No, because I was the one that brought them Madonna, they didn't bring me Madonna. They were the ones saying, 'I don't know if we can go with this person because I've never heard of her.' And I was the one saying, 'I think she's right for this character. Let me do a screen test.' And she was right for the character.

Did you feel intimidated at all once it became a studio picture?

SUSAN: No so much, because I really felt that this was the right movie for me. I've made movies that I'd say probably weren't the best movie for me. But in this film I just knew that world. I waited until I got the right subject matter. I grew up in the suburbs; I was a suburban girl. I could have been the Rosanna Arquette character. I had chosen to move to New York and live a different kind of life and so I related to the Madonna character. So for me it was the perfect blend of these two worlds I knew and I had a unique way of wanting to tell this story. And I think when you feel that you're in control of your vision, people can't really intimidate you that much, because it's your vision.

Somebody else could have made the film differently, but I felt like I knew how to make that version of the film.

There are probably many movies that I couldn't have made and I probably would have felt intimidated trying to direct because I was crossing into territory that other people might have been able to do much better or had done better. But because I think this movie was the right one for me, and I think because it was also characters that I knew and a studio executive couldn't tell be how to direct that character better, it gave me a certain amount of confidence.

Of course, technically, I had never worked with that size of a crew and those kinds of gaffers and grips and lighting and all that. But it was a fortuitous experience. I was surrounded by people who were artistically simpatico. I had supportive producers, Midge and Sarah who weren't heavy-handed. And I had a great DP, Ed Lachman, who was a New Yorker who had also come from an independent, European style of cinematography. He wasn't like a heavy, union guy. So we worked really well together; the way we thought about cinema was simpatico.

And the other department heads were first-timers. Like Santo Loquasto, who was the production designer and costume designer, had worked as a costume designer on Woody Allen's films, but this was the first time he was going to be doing both. 

It was a wonderful growing experience for a lot of people. The casting directors had cast theater stuff, but this was their first film.

What did you learn doing Desperately Seeking Susan that you were able to take to future projects?

SUSAN: Learning how to work with a crew. One of the things I realized is that it's a collaborative art form, so you're dealing with so many different people, all of whom have their own artistic vision. The director's job is to maintain a single, artistic vision by coordinating everyone else's. Everyone wants to give as much as they can, but it can become a real hodgepodge if there's not one, unifying way of looking at the film -- one unifying vision.

I watched movies where I felt that things were out of control because all the actors were doing something different and all trying to do something to the max and it really needed someone to say, 'No, don't do that. Yes, do that.' Learning how to modulate things, whether it's the performances or learning when to be flashy with the camera and when to be subtle. When to not move the camera and when to move it.

It's all about trying to maintain this one vision and that's what I started to see in Desperately Seeking Susan. I'm still learning, it's an ongoing process. But that's the skill that I realized that good directors have, being able to get what they need and incorporate other people's ideas; knowing how to use the best and politely (without hurting people's feelings) not use the stuff that you don't think works. 

Sometimes different directors find different ways of doing that. I've heard about or seen examples of male directors who seem to feel that they have to be like drill sergeants and Nazis to show that they're the boss. Scream and get into fistfights and do that macho tough thing.

Now, as a woman, that isn't a style that particularly works for me, and as a woman who's just a little over five feet, I knew that no one was going to be physically intimidated by me. So I had to find my own way and have found my own way over the years of getting what I needed in a different way.

As I get older, I change the way I get what I need. But certainly, for me, it had to be different than my impression of what a typical, Erich Von Stroheim or John Ford kind of macho male director is like on the set.

Do you think that some scripts were never sent to you, just because you're a woman?

SUSAN:  I don't know. The fact of the matter is, there aren't tons of great scripts out there. I think all directors, men and women, will say the same thing. There's not a lot of great scripts out there. You've really got to struggle to find the good ones. And sometimes you do the good ones, and sometimes you do the ones you hope will be good -- they're kind of okay and you hope you can turn it into something fantastic. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

Do you think it's easier for women today than when you started back with Smithereens?

SUSAN: Honestly, I don't. I want to be encouraging, but I want to be honest, too.

There are opportunities, but I think the opportunities are in new media. I think that, right now, the movie industry is going through a major change. The studios are all owned by huge, multi-national corporations. There are fewer studios. A lot of the studios from fifteen or even ten years ago have been gobbled up and turned into one big corporate thing. There's no longer a New Line, there's no longer an Orion, there's no longer a Tri-Star, there's no longer a Warner Independent. There are just a lot of companies that don't exist anymore. The big studios are making fewer movies, but they're trying to make movies that are bigger budgeted and have the potential to make hundreds of millions of dollars, not just a hundred million.

But where there are more opportunities, I think, is in the independent sector, but in that case it's women making their own opportunities. They're writing their own script, and then they're trying to get a cast attached, and then they're trying to go out and find the financing.

So what still excites you about making movies?

SUSAN: Telling stories, that's what excites me. Telling stories. And that's what excited me in the beginning. To me, characters and stories are the heart of what makes a movie great. And although I'm always impressed when I see movies that have amazing technology and amazing special effects, it's the more human aspect of it that really grabs me.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced! 

Tom Noonan on “What Happened Was…”

Where did the idea for What Happened Was… come from?

TOM: I had never written a play. I'd written a lot of movies. So, when I originally wrote What Happened Was…, I was going to do it at the theater, but the intention was to do it as a film. I always thought of it as a screenplay, and because I'd never acted in something I'd directed, I thought, 'Well, if I do it on stage for a while, in front of an audience, I'll find out what the thing's about.' And, because I was acting in it, I wanted to make sure that we'd worked out all the acting parts before we shot it.

We did it for six weeks as a play. We rehearsed for a month and a half. And then, on the last night of performance in the theater, we took out all the chairs, and we shot the script in the theater -- I'd made the theater look like an apartment. Then, for the next six months after that, before we shot the film, we rehearsed pretty regularly. We rehearsed for eight or nine months before we shot, a couple times a week.

Most of the people on the crew, and the producers and everybody involved, had seen the play at least once, maybe sometimes more. And they were all involved in the shooting of the video of the play, and then involved in the rehearsals as we went along, so that by the time we shot, everybody in the crew knew the whole story. They knew what the scenes were about, where the camera moves were. We pre-shot the thing two or three times before we actually shot it on film.

That’s a lot of rehearsal.

TOM: My general rule is that either you rehearse a lot or you don't rehearse at all. If you rehearse the middle, you end up not being authentic and kind of looking like you are. 

When I finally shot the film, they would say, 'It's your close-up, Tom,' and I'd say, 'Okay,' and I'd just sit there and just talk. It wasn't like I was acting; I'd done it so often and what was going on seemed so real to me. I didn't have to worry about learning the words or learning the blocking or doing any of those things that you have to worry about when you're doing a film. It completely went away. It was just me, just being there. So it felt very real to me.

So not only did you come to the film well-rehearsed, you also were pretty well-versed in filmmaking as well by that point, right?

TOM: I'd made movies for 20 years before I made that film. I'd written scores for films, I'd produced films, I had directed TV, I'd directed plays, I'd been in -- at that point -- probably 30 movies and I'd edited a lot. I knew exactly where the cut points were.

I think I have some small amount of talent and I worked really hard for a very long time getting ready to make that movie. When I shot it, I knew exactly what it was going to look like and how it was going to feel, because we'd shot it already on video. So I was not too surprised when I cut it.

The movie is relatively simple when you first look at it, but it's actually got a lot of sophisticated stuff. The camera moves are all perfectly timed to counts. By the time we shot the film, everybody in the crew knew the count on every dolly move, on everything. It was very choreographed.

I took sounds from later in the film and placed them earlier in the film, underneath things. A lot of her story you've already heard by the time she tells it.

What was your budget?

TOM: The budget was $131,000. 

We shot it for $47,000, and then the processing and the editing and all the equipment and music rights and answer prints and inter-negative came to about $130,000. Of which I've never recovered a dime. I don't even get residuals. I made a bad deal. But it's okay; I loved making the movie and I never thought anybody would ever see.

What was bad about the deal?

TOM: When you sell a film to a distributor, there's a certain aspect of the agreement that's called the assumption agreement. It's where the distributor agrees to assume certain costs involved in the distribution of the film, one of which is the residuals for the actors. Otherwise, if I sell you the film for $75,000 and I pay the crew and I pay everybody back, and then you go out and sell the film everywhere, the more money you make selling the film, the more money the actors have to get paid as residuals. And, unless the distributor assumes that expense, I end up losing money in the end making the film. 

And when we made the agreement, I didn't know that and it was left out of the agreement, or somehow it didn't get signed, so I was left with the bill for the residuals. So besides not making any money, I lost some money on the film, paying myself.

I'd done this for a long time and I'd dealt with producers for a long time, and read contracts for a long time. But distribution's the creepiest part of making a movie, and there are so many ways you can get fucked in distribution. I had someone representing me, it wasn't just me, I had somebody who'd sold a lot of movies and they screwed up a little.

When it came time to distribute, I know you weren’t happy with the original video box cover.

TOM:  I had nothing to do with that. (Karen Sillas) took those pictures without letting me know that she had taken them, and I was not thrilled, to say the least. Because anybody buying the movie based on that picture is not going to like the movie; and all the people who would like the movie wouldn't get it because of that picture. It's stupid marketing.

Would you have made the movie differently if you’d had a larger budget?

TOM: You make the movie because you want to make the movie and make it as best you can with what you have. I'm cool making movies for whatever I have. 

I mean, if I had money, I'd use a crane shot, but if I don't, I don't. That part of moviemaking doesn't interest me a whole lot, the toys and doing fancy stuff. I'm a very visual person, but it's all related to the drama and not to showing off. The things that interest me are very simple human interactions.

There’s one moment in the film that really jumps out at you: a couple of cuts when your character, apparently, accidentally touches her in passing. It’s a striking moment, because suddenly this very languid movie does several cuts right in a row.

TOM: There are very few cuts in the film, so when you put a cut in like that, it's very powerful. I knew that was the case and I shot it with that intention of possibly cutting it in.

There's a moment when you're sitting down in a chair, from standing, at which point it's impossible for you to stand back up again. And I find that kind of moment very dramatic. 

What happened in that moment was I reached out to her with the intention to reassure her, because she seemed really nervous. And at that moment, she turned and I inadvertently touched her, not on her butt, but close, without meaning to, because I'd already started the motion and by the time she turned, it was too late to stop. When we did the play, we rehearsed that moment over and over and over again, for days, the timing of it. Because if I touch her too soon, there's no way that she can bend over; and if she bends over, and then I touch her butt, it looks stupid. It has to be perfect.

Have you ever locked your keys in the car and as you slammed the car door you see the keys on the dashboard but your arm keeps going because the signal hasn't gotten there yet? That's the moment I was trying to create. It happens all the time in life. 

I knew the wide shot wouldn't get it, and if I covered the whole thing close you wouldn't get it, so I decided to do this wide shot into an insert, to create this jarring, embarrassing moment. It took a lot, a lot of work, rehearsing for months to get it to seem real. And we would do that for hours on end, I'd reach and she'd turn, trying to make it seem believable. It's very difficult to do that and not make it look phony.

Tell me about the process of casting the movie and finding Karen Sillas.

TOM: Most people who read the script and who are friends of mine, well-known actors who will remain unmentioned, thought the script was stupid. Most of the people I really wanted to do it wouldn't do it and she was the only person who was any good who wanted to do it, basically. I'd written it for my wife who was busy and unavailable, and then I gave it to all these other people who said, 'I like you, but this script is about nothing.'

I'd written scripts for many years before I wrote that script, and I've sold a number of scripts to Hollywood, and I wrote for TV and I was a relatively skilled screenwriter, but I never felt I was really writing a reality that was familiar to me, that I felt was fun or interesting to look at. 

So when I wrote it, I really tried to not worry about what people traditionally worry about when they write a script. And when I gave it to people, if they didn't like it, fuck 'em, I don't care. I just liked it so much and thought it was so funny and had so much fun writing it, that I thought that eventually someone is going to get this. And if they don't, I don't care.

Almost not a word of it changed after our first rehearsal. I mean, even typographical errors that were in the script that I felt obliged to continue to say. Because that's just the way I am.

How did audiences react to it when you did it as a play?

TOM: People were very uncomfortable, because we were pretty good at acting it. Part of the problem, during the play, was that people got so uncomfortable -- because it was like being on a first date that was not going well -- that people really didn't want to be there. And part of what I would try to do during the play, and in the movie, was to not make people so uncomfortable that they didn't want to watch. I wanted it to be funny and make the characters engaging enough and compelling enough that you'd stay with the story even though it was painfully awkward.

There were times when I was doing the play when I could tell that the audience couldn't wait for it to be over, because they couldn't stand how awkward it was for the two of us. They just wanted me to leave and let this poor woman go to bed.

One of the great lessons I learned doing it was that the story of a movie does not have to depend on the story of the script.  What I mean is, there were nights when we would do the play when I could tell that the audience hated me. And there were other nights when I did the play when I could tell that the audience thought, 'Oh, this poor guy. He's being manipulated by this woman, who has invited him into her apartment on her birthday and is setting him up to be disappointed.' 

And other nights, again, people would go, 'This smarmy, condescending, asshole guy is just playing with her like a bug.' And it would change, night to night, and the story would be very different. I learned a lot doing the play in front of people, because that's something I wanted to have in the movie. At times you think, 'God, this guy is such a jerk,' and other times you think, 'God, why doesn't she give him a break?'

The narrative of that script can hold a lot of different interpretations and different stories, without giving away that he's the bad guy and she's good. It's really both all the time, which is what life's like.

What did you take away from making What Happened Was…?

TOM: The thing I learned making the film is that you have a huge advantage when you have no money, because when you have no money you have all the time in the world. The more money you have, the less time you have to make a film, because you've got to move or you're wasting money. 

So, if you're smart and you're talented and skillful and you manage your time well, you can actually do a whole lot better movie with very little money than you can with tons. Because once tons of money gets involved, you have millions of people trying to put their finger in the pie and tell you what to do and rush you along. And I never had that. 

I wrote this at the pace I wanted to, I shot it when I felt like it, and I edited it for as long as I wanted.

Movies don't have to cost a lot.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

"We never put out an actual textbook for the Corman School of Filmmaking, but if we did, it would be Fast, Cheap and Under Control." 
Roger Corman, Producer

★★★★★

It’s like taking a Master Class in moviemaking…all in one book!

• Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos

• John Sayles: Writing to your resources

• Peter Bogdanovich: Long, continuous takes

• John Cassavetes: Re-Shoots

• Steven Soderbergh: Rehearsals

• George Romero: Casting

• Kevin Smith: Skipping film school

• Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection

• Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity

• David Lynch: Kill your darlings

• Ron Howard: Pre-production planning

• John Carpenter: Going low-tech

• Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking

And more!

Write Your Screenplay with the Help of Top Screenwriters!

It’s like taking a Master Class in screenwriting … all in one book!

Discover the pitfalls of writing to fit a budget from screenwriters who have successfully navigated these waters already. Learn from their mistakes and improve your script with their expert advice.

"I wish I'd read this book before I made Re-Animator."
Stuart Gordon, Director, Re-Animator, Castle Freak, From Beyond

John Gaspard has directed half a dozen low-budget features, as well as written for TV, movies, novels and the stage.

The book covers (among other topics):

• Academy-Award Winner Dan Futterman (“Capote”) on writing real stories

• Tom DiCillio (“Living In Oblivion”) on turning a short into a feature

• Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou”) on writing for a different time period

• George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget

• Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories

• Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations

• Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive

• Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous

• Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget

• Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget

• Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror

• Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget

• Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting

• L.M. Kit Carson (“Paris, Texas”) on re-writing while shooting

• Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing

• Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres

This is the book for anyone who’s serious about writing a screenplay that can get produced!