William Greaves on “Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take

How did you get your start in filmmaking?

WILLIAM: I taught acting for quite a while in Canada, from the Actors Studio in New York. I went up to Canada and worked on the National Film Board of Canada, on the production staff. I also, concurrently, opened up a studio that was modeled on the New York Actor's Studio, and taught acting. 

One of my actors became very wealthy in the real estate business in Miami, Florida. He said, “Listen, you're a very talented fellow and you have a lot of ideas. You're just as good a director as anyone coming out of Hollywood. Why don't you do a feature?”

And I said, “These things cost money.” And he said, “What does it cost?” And I told him and he said, “Do it. I'll back it.” 

So I asked him what sort of subject he wanted me to concentrate on -- a whodunit or a romance, or what?

And he said, “Anything you like. Whatever you want to do, Bill, you do.”

So, with that blank check I reflected on a lot of things that that I had been thinking about over the years. One of them is the creative process, as it relates to the actor and the director. Having been a product of the Actor's Studio and Lee Strasberg, Kazan, Stanislavsky and those people, as well as having been involved in psycho drama, by way of J.L. Moreno, who was the pioneer of psycho drama, it came to me that it would be interesting to shoot a film that had some of these elements. 

I thought it would be interesting to do several screen tests and to look at the creative process that actors undergo, in conjunction with the director, to show their talents at the highest level.

So that was the beginning of Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One?

WILLIAM: That's how it all got started, initially, but then other elements came into play. For example, the Heisenberg Principal of Uncertainty, for which the analog to the electron microscope is the motion picture camera, which is looking down into the psyche and soul of the actor while the actor is performing, and often times it tends to stiffen and destroy the spontaneity and truthful feelings of the actor as the character they're trying to portray. I thought that would be an interesting element to think about, artistically, creatively.

One of the hallmarks of the Stanislavsky system is to try to be as honest in what you're doing, in performance, as possible. One of the things that kept bothering me about a lot of Hollywood movies was that the acting was very stiff and lacking in spontaneity. Having challenged myself as an actor to be more realistic in my acting -- and having looked at the work of people like Marlon Brando and Julie Harris -- people at the Actor's Studio whose work was very spontaneous. 

It came to me that this was a wonderful opportunity to test the limits of my credibility as a person in front of a camera, pursuing this particular screen test with these actors, but trying to not act for the camera.

Talk about your character, the director of the screen tests.

WILLIAM: One of the elements of my characterization was my inscrutability. Try and try as much as they could, they couldn't decode my motives. That was calculated to elicit a degree of tension and anger and anxiety in the crew. They couldn't decode my motives, and I didn't want them to decode my motives, because I wanted to see if it would be possible to generate as much conflict in front of the camera as possible.  Conflict being the hallmark of a really good drama.

I come from a wonderful high school here in New York, called Stuyvesant High School. That learning experience was very focused on science and the scientific method, and I've fallen in love with a lot of scientific principles, one of them was the Heisenberg Principal of Uncertainty. It seemed interesting to see how I could mix all of this.

I put all these ideas into a big pot and stirred these all of these diverse, disparate elements together and heated it up with conflict and served it up to the audience.

How much was the movie a product of its time?

WILLIAM: The sixties were a period of tremendous rebellion on the part of the youth of America, and I was in harmony with that kind of thinking. When one works at a place like the Actor's Studio, one becomes very critical of the work that is being done in front of the camera or on the stage. So I felt that it would be wonderful to apply Cinema Verité techniques to the spontaneity that the Stanislavskysystem encourages in the actor's work.

I was hoping to have any conflict to what I was doing played out in front of the camera by the crew challenging me in what I was doing or criticize me or whatever. But this did not happen until the last scene in the movie, of the crew on the grass, screaming and shouting and shrieking at me because I was doing a lot of what they considered to be bizarre and unorthodox things that were not in lock step with traditional Hollywood feature filmmaking.

You must have been surprised to learn that the crew shot footage of their own, of them talking about you and the way you were working.

WILLIAM: I didn't think that they were challenging me enough during the course of the shooting, but then they gave me the footage that they shot on their own. I didn't know that they had done this palace revolt, it was something that they surreptitiously stole away and did at the end of a day of shooting after I went home. 

They had this closet revolt and it was terribly exciting to me, because I was afraid that the film was not going to work out well, because it didn't have enough conflict. 

But when I saw this material I was just elated and I knew that we had a very good film on our hands -- something that would be very fresh and delight audiences, particularly those who were reasonably conversant with the filmmaking process.

Tell me about the title and what it means to you.

WILLIAM:  The title is, for me, a very attractive title. I tend to be in love with scientific thinking of one kind or another, and I came across a book called Inquiry Into Inquiries;: Essays In Social Theory, which was written by a very knowledgeable social scientist named Arthur Bentley. 

He conceived of the milieu that human beings find themselves as the symbiotaxiplasm. And this symbiotaxiplasm represents those events that transpire in the course of anyone's life that have an impact on the consciousness and the psyche of the average human being, and how that human being also controls or effects changes or has an impact on the environment. 

So there's a dialectic or a dialogue that goes on between the action and behavior and thinking of human beings as they move through the events in their lives. 

I had the arrogance, the temerity, to introduce the term 'psycho' in the middle of symbiotaxiplasm, making symbiopsychotaxiplasm.

Symbio represents the existence of similarities of one kind or another. Psycho is the mind. Taxi is how the mind reacts and responds to arrangement of reality. And Plasm being the human being. I'm over-simplifying it; you'll have to read the book yourself.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

When Fast, Cheap & Under Control first hit shelves in 2006, it became the underground handbook for a generation of indie filmmakers. Now, two decades on, this 20th Anniversary Special Edition proves the lessons inside aren't just timeless—they're more essential than ever.

What's changed? Technology. Platforms. Distribution.
What hasn't? The grit, ingenuity, and sheer determination it takes to make a great film with nothing but vision and hustle.

Inside, you'll find:

• Exclusive interviews with legends like Steven Soderbergh, Roger Corman, Jon Favreau, Henry Jaglom, Kasi Lemons, Dan O'Bannon, Bob Odenkirk and more

• Over 100 images bringing the stories to life

• 40+ links to trailers, scenes, and supplementary material—turning this book into an interactive master class

• Real-world case studies from 33 groundbreaking low-budget films—from Clerks and El Mariachi to The Blair Witch Project and sex, lies, and videotape

• Field-tested lessons from the author's own four features—proof that these principles work in the real world, on set, in the edit room, and on screen

Whether you're shooting on your phone or scraping together a micro-budget, this is your master class in turning limitations into strengths.

No film school required. Just this book. 

Roger Corman called it the textbook for his legendary filmmaking school. Now it's your turn to learn from the best.

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! 

"Grand Theft Auto" — Roger Corman, Rance Howard and Nancy Morgan on the making of this low-budget classi]

Like many of the other top directors of his generation, Ron Howard’s directorial debut came via Roger Corman. Not only did Howard direct Grand Theft Auto, but he also starred in the film and co-wrote the script with his father, actor Rance Howard.

RANCE HOWARD: Ron had acted in (Corman’s) Eat My Dust, and it had been a huge success for Roger. He wanted to do another car chase/car crash film. Ron said, “I will do another movie for you, with one additional job added.” And Roger said, “What is that?” And Ron said, “I want to direct.” And Roger said, “Well, Ron, you always looked like a director to me.” 

How did you and Ron come up with the idea?

RANCE HOWARD: Roger already had the title. He had tested it. It was going to be called Grand Theft Auto, and it was about young people on the run. He said, “If you and your dad could come up with a story like that, we'd have a deal.” So, we sat down and put our heads together and started kicking ideas around. We did a treatment first; Roger read the treatment and loved it and we went right to script.

NANCY MORGAN: I was told that Roger had a certain formula that was applied to this type of picture.  There were a certain number of explosions that had to happen, there a certain number of recognizable names that had to be worked in.  There were elements that were almost like Julia Child's recipe for making money.  The bases were covered methodically.

RANCE HOWARD: I was fascinated with the demolition derby. At one time, Ron, Clint and I went to see a demolition derby, and it was just fascinating. At that time, I had considered writing a script about a demolition derby. Then with Grand Theft Auto, it just seemed perfect for the car to end up in a demolition derby.

NANCY MORGAN: Ron told me, during the shoot, that Roger had told him when he made this deal, "If you do a good job for me, you'll never have to work for me again."

One thing I’ve heard from many directors who’ve worked with you on their first films is that, before getting started, you take them out for what is called The Lunch. This is where you distill all the best advice about how to successfully execute a low-budget Corman film. What are the elements of that conversation?

ROGER CORMAN: It's too involved to get into here. But the most important thing that I point out over and over is preparation. On a ten-day shoot, or a 20-day shoot, you don't have time to create from scratch on the set. As a matter of fact, I don't think you should do that anyway. My number one rule is to work with your actors in advance, so you and the actors are agreed on at least the broad outline of the performance. Then to have sketched out, if not all of your shots, most of your shots, so you have a shot plan in advance.

How did you first hear about Grand Theft Auto?

NANCY MORGAN: My agents were contacted by Ron!  Can you imagine?  When he was casting for this role, he was looking for someone who, first and foremost, he didn't have to pay a lot.  It couldn't be a star—it had to be an unknown.  At the time, one of my first movie that I'd ever acted in—in fact, one of my first acting jobs ever, because I came to Hollywood untrained and unprepared—was a movie called Fraternity Row, with Paul Newman's son, Scott Newman, in his first and only picture.  And it was out in the theaters when Ron was casting, and he liked my performance in it and found my agent.

What was the audition process like?

NANCY MORGAN: Back then I used to say to myself, “There are a lot of people here who know a lot about acting, but all I really know is that you just have to pretend that it's happening.” And so, during the audition process, I did as close to what I felt a human being would do under the circumstances, and that was to say the lines like I meant them, and then when Ron was talking to me, react to what he was saying.  And that was about as much acting as I knew. Ron later said to me, “You know, I interviewed a couple hundred girls.  Did you ever wonder why you got it?  Because you were the only one who, when you weren't speaking, was still listening.” That was something that forever stuck with me as one of the things that was important and not everyone's top tool.

Once you had the script and cast in place, what was the next step?

RANCE HOWARD: I always knew that preparation and rehearsal are extremely important. But this experience drove that fact home and really solidified that. Preparation is really, really important. Pre-production, really being prepared.

ROGER CORMAN: I'm a strong believer in rehearsals and in pre-production and preparation. I want to be able to come onto the set and shoot. Ideally, everything is worked out in advance; practically, it never quite works that way. You always are faced with new problems, or maybe you get a better idea. But at least you have your framework before you shoot. If you don't have time for a full rehearsal, I like to have at least a reading with the actors, in which we read and maybe do some improvisations and do some loose rehearsals—not on the set—taking at least one day before shooting for that.

NANCY MORGAN: The cars rehearsed.  The stunts rehearsed.  And the explosions rehearsed.  We basically just had to know our lines and pretty much bring it to life.  We would run through the scene once or twice, but really rarely for the acting of it.  Ron knew what he was doing, so he didn't really need it.  

ROGER CORMAN: What I do, and what I tell my directors working with me, is that you waste a lot of time after you get a shot, where you're congratulating everybody, discussing the shot, and so forth. And that shot is already yesterday's news. You've got it. So, what I do is I say, “Cut, print, thank you.” Then maybe one sentence saying how good it was to the actors. And then, “The next shot is over here.” And we're on to the next shot.

With Ron’s focus on directing the movie, what was it like to act with him? 

NANCY MORGAN: Looking at the script, there appeared to be a thousand interchangeable scenes of Ron and me in the car, talking about this and that.  I understood enough about story to know that it had to build and climax and resolve.  And so the first thing I did with my script was to break it down into an outline and had an understanding of where Ron and I were in our relationship, from the first scene to the last. Ron, on several occasions—since he was in charge of the whole picture, directing everything—he realized that I had done this and that I was aware of where we were in the script at any given point in terms of his and my relationship.  He would sometimes say, “Where are we?” And I would say, “Well, this has happened, and this has happened, and this has happened, but this hasn't happened yet, so we do know about this, but we don't know about that.”  And he'd say, “Okay. Got it thanks.” My breaking it down was something that I could do that was helpful to him and that would orient him as to where we were in the scene, and then Ron just acts—he doesn't even to have to worry.

The production really was a family affair, wasn’t it?

RANCE HOWARD: I think any director likes to use people that he is familiar with and that he can trust and has confidence in. Both Clint and I fit nicely into those categories. And his mother, at that time, had been working quite a lot coordinating extras for other filmmakers. And so, she coordinated a lot of the extras for that film, in particular the senior citizens on the bus. Involving his mother, and his brother Clint—an excellent actor, and who was at that time, almost as big a name as Ron—in the film just made good sense.

NANCY MORGAN: The other thing I learned on that movie is that there's nothing like family to pull this together.  On this film, Cheryl did a lot of the cooking.  His mom was in it.  His brother was in it.  And Rance, of course, co-wrote it with Ron.  There was no partying for them.  You never found them in the bar, sitting around, schmoozing with people.  At night they were in their room, looking at dailies.  They were looking over every single moment of this and discussing it like you would discuss an art project.  They wanted it to be the best car picture it could be.  

Was there any improvisation on the film?

NANCY MORGAN: The only improvisation was our kiss.  Although it was written in the script, we didn't have a clue how to go about it.  And that was the time where the whole, entire family got involved. Cheryl was standing by the side, with lip gloss and breath spray. And Rance was coming up and whispering in my ear, “Just go for!  Go for it!”  Which was his only direction to me in the entire film.  So, it became my responsibility to just lunge for Ron and just, like, smack him.  With everyone in the whole family standing around.  That was probably the most improvised moment.

ROGER CORMAN: Be flexible. Even though you've done all your preparation, don't stick absolutely to the preparation if it doesn't seem to be working. Know that you've got the preparation, but situations change, so be prepared to change with the situations. 

RANCE HOWARD: You need to be tenacious; you need to stick to your guns, but at the same time, you have to be prepared to compromise and negotiate. That was really driven home to me, the importance of compromise. There are a lot of aspects of making a film where you can compromise. In some places, you can't. You need to know what compromises can be made and what compromises can't be made. Coming to that realization is important: understanding that you're not going to get everything you want, you're going to get part of what you want.

What was the preview process like?

ROGER CORMAN: I'm a firm believer in putting the film, at least one time, before an audience.

RANCE HOWARD: We had the film assembled as a rough cut. Roger started going through and taking all the humor out of it; he didn't realize that Ron and I had designed a comedy. So, we rented a screening room over at Warner Brothers and invited some people to come and see it, along with Roger. The crowd saw the humor and they absolutely roared. When it was over, he came over to us and said, “You guys have a funny movie here.” After that screening, when we proved that we had a comedy, we had one or two more test screenings before we locked it up. 

What was one of your biggest take-aways from the experience?

RANCE HOWARD: Stand up for what you believe in. For example, if we had allowed ourselves to be easily talked out of it being a comedy and cut it as a straight action picture. And filmmaking is a team effort, it's really teamwork. We happened to have a great team.

Dying to make a feature? Learn from the pros!

When Fast, Cheap & Under Control first hit shelves in 2006, it became the underground handbook for a generation of indie filmmakers. Now, two decades on, this 20th Anniversary Special Edition proves the lessons inside aren't just timeless—they're more essential than ever.

What's changed? Technology. Platforms. Distribution.
What hasn't? The grit, ingenuity, and sheer determination it takes to make a great film with nothing but vision and hustle.

Inside, you'll find:

• Exclusive interviews with legends like Steven Soderbergh, Roger Corman, Jon Favreau, Henry Jaglom, Kasi Lemons, Dan O'Bannon, Bob Odenkirk and more

• Over 100 images bringing the stories to life

• 40+ links to trailers, scenes, and supplementary material—turning this book into an interactive master class

• Real-world case studies from 33 groundbreaking low-budget films—from Clerks and El Mariachi to The Blair Witch Project and sex, lies, and videotape

• Field-tested lessons from the author's own four features—proof that these principles work in the real world, on set, in the edit room, and on screen

Whether you're shooting on your phone or scraping together a micro-budget, this is your master class in turning limitations into strengths.

No film school required. Just this book. 

Roger Corman called it the textbook for his legendary filmmaking school. Now it's your turn to learn from the best.

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! 

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

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

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!