With our Writing for the Screen class coming up — as well as the Academy Awards! — we wanted to get Metro screenwriting instructor Garrett Chaffin-Quiray’s take on a few things about film and film writing…
Q: What are your picks this year for Best Film/Best Adapted Screenplay?
A: “Little Miss Sunshine” will likely win best original screenplay, both because it’s the “deserving little picture that could” and because it’s often a consolation prize for best picture. On the adapted screenplay front, the field is wide open with every nomination worthy of recognition. Even so, I have particular fondness for “Borat,” which is as insightful and offensive as has been noted, and “Children of Men,” a film we’re likely to continue watching for years to come while many of the showier, more commercially successful awards front runners will be forgotten. Naturally, this has to do with the P. D. James source novel, but the screenwriters did their homework and created a world equal to that of the original.
Q: What is the first thing a screenwriter should know about writing a script?
A: Writing for the screen is concerned only with what an audience can see and hear, and nothing else. We must be able to see characters behave and take action, as a way of describing internal states like emotion, memory, and symbol, but we shouldn’t rely on being told things the way we would if reading a novel. This simple point isn’t the way we’re generally taught to write or tell stories, though, and it requires training, along with a good eye for what an audience most wants to see and hear in a dramatic story.
Q: What’s your favorite film?
A: I have trouble answering “best of” questions, but a few standout titles always bubble to the surface: widely respected, “serious” titles like “Once Were Warriors” (Lee Tamahori, 1994), “Unforgiven” (Clint Eastwood, 1992), “Blade Runner” (Ridley Scott, 1982), “All About Eve” (Joseph Mankiewicz, 1950), “Rear Window” (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954), “Nashville” (Robert Altman, 1975), “The Piano” (Jane Campion, 1993), “Lone Star” (John Sayles, 1996), “Taxi Driver” (Martin Scorsese, 1976), and “Reservoir Dogs” (Quentin Tarantino, 1992), versus “pop” titles like “Cocktail” (Roger Donaldson, 1988), “Dumb and Dumber” (Farrelly Brothers, 1994), and “The Matrix” (Wachowski Brothers, 1999). I’ll watch any of these titles right now.
Q: Nora Ephron once said that for her, the best preparation for becoming a screenwriter was being a reporter — this background, for example, helped her write some of the scenes in “Silkwood.” What sort of background do you think would be useful for screenwriters (i.e., acting, directing, journalism)?
A: Any career that forces a person to interact with lots of other people is a good start for screenwriting. Much of what we do when we write scripts is raid our memory. We then fit anecdotes inside our plots that take life when peopled by idiosyncratic flesh-and-blood characters. You can’t possibly fill in those plots with ordinary people if all you’re ever in contact with are a few incurious types with monotonous lives and no ambition. So it makes sense to read books and periodicals of all sorts; to employ techniques of journalism when meeting people (inquiring as to their background, what they do, where they live, what they like to eat, etc.); to keenly observe the world and fill in gaps of knowledge with imaginative leaps of creativity (I may not know much money is in that guy’s bank account, but he’s probably a millionaire, which is why he’s not buying a Coke at McDonald’s but drinking water to save $1.59); to see as many movies as materially possible; to take note of why you think particular screen stories work and emulate that success in your own projects.
Q: What books and scripts would you recommend to writers as good references and examples of the genre?
A: The old joke says that the only screenplay most Hollywood executives have ever read, cover to cover, is “Chinatown.” Update that to include “Pulp Fiction,” and you might be on to something. I try and make a loose habit of familiarizing myself with all best original screenplay winners (both on screen and, if available, in print), along with seeking out titles I like to listen to while sitting in a theater. For professional guidance, I’ve been recently reading “The Understructure of Writing for Film and Television,” “Story Sense,” Robert McKee’s “Story,” and “The Screenwriter’s Bible.”
Q: There are software applications that help with screenplay formatting. Do you use these and/or recommend them?
A: I recommend any software that helps a writer remain productive. But since software is great at automating formats, and since most software is relatively easy to learn, I prefer focusing on fundamentals. For me, this means I tend toward low-tech writing tools: often a spiral-bound notebook with a ballpoint pen will do, but as a laptop user I am partial to using Microsoft Word for just about everything.
Q: What’s the most common mistake beginning screenwriters make?
A: In order of frequency, and this isn’t just true of new screenwriters: describing how a character feels or what a character remembers without figuring out how to put those intangibles into behavior, action, setting, costume, or dialogue; using script pages to describe, in great detail, exactly how an environment looks when simple remarks will do; not remembering that a script is a blueprint that requires a tremendous number of collaborators to transform the story into a finished TV show or movie; writing dialogue no breathing person would actually say.
Q: With Hollywood making fewer films these days, are students better off writing scripts that they can produce themselves?
A: Yes, but … it’s important to recognize that writing and producing your own work is often only going to be a brilliant education without much commercial upside or a very big audience. Still, becoming better at the craft of storytelling is always a good idea. In the end, though, most all of us aspire to big bucks, fame, popularity, and great success — and this isn’t likely to come from producing one’s own work. Knowing how to translate a script into a winning screen story is important, but the mass media are not presently set up to help unknown parties succeed, aside from the web, which is a good way to present work but not to make money or enter the system.
Q: As a film professor and workshop leader, what is the most important thing you hope your students learn?
A: Screen storytelling is a craft, like plumbing or cooking. Everyone can learn the basic components of good storytelling and that sensitivity makes for better audiences, consumers, writers, and people. The catch is screen storytelling isn’t natural, and not everyone has an aptitude for its conventions and requirements.
Q: How has being a writer/film reviewer changed the way you view films?
A: I discovered an industry and art form strongly suited to my needs and sensitivities when I went to film school. Fortunately, that form requires stories, which I’m accustomed to building through my “other” career as a novelist. Being familiar with the craft of movies is therefore a lens I frequently employ when writing fiction of any sort.
Garrett Chaffin-Quiray’s screenwriting class begins on March 7, 2007. Click here for complete information, including registration.