One of the best movies of 2011 is Moneyball. It has been nominated for many awards including Best Screenplay [Golden Globes] and Best Adapted Screenplay [WGA]. Screenwriters Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zaillian have received the lion share of attention for their involvement in the project, but here are the exact writing credits:

Story by Stan Chervin, screenplay by Steve Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, based on the book by Michael Lewis

When I discovered that Stan Chervin was a fan of this blog, we struck up an email conversation and I asked if he would do an interview. Stan kindly agreed. First some background:

STAN CHERVIN (Writer) began his career in New York non-profit theatre where he helped develop the work of playwrights at The New Dramatists and The Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. Returning to L.A., he served as Story Editor and Director of Creative Affairs at TriStar Pictures before becoming a full-time screenwriter when he adapted the W.P. Kinsella short story, The Dixon Cornbelt League, for the studio. For Sony Pictures, in addition to Moneyball, he has written the film biographies J-Mac, the story of autistic high school basketball player Jason McElwain, and P.T. Barnum. In television, he wrote Extreme Team for ABC, and 7th Precinct for Samuel L. Jackson. He is currently working with Moneyball producer Rachael Horovitz on an adaptation of Bill Buford’s book, Heat, and writing Quantum Hoops, the story of Cal Tech’s basketball team, for producers Ben Stiller and Stuart Cornfeld.

Here is Part 1 of my interview with screenwriter Stan Chervin:

For a screenwriter, you have an interesting background. You started off working with playwrights. How did you get involved in that? What were your primary responsibilities in that area? Were you writing plays as well?

When I graduated from Berkeley, I had a double B.A. degree in English and Dramatic Art, and all I wanted to do was theatre. I moved to New York City hoping to become a theatre director with the dream of someday becoming Artistic Director of a theatre.

The non-profit theatre movement was very active back then. In addition to working at the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference one summer, I was lucky enough to get a full-time job at New Dramatists, a non-profit theatre dedicated to developing playwrights, not plays. While I was there, I worked with August Wilson and Robert Schenkkan (both of whom would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony) and also John Patrick Shanley, who won an Oscar for Moonstruck.

My title at New Dramatists was “Artist Services Director” and my primary responsibility was to try and find ways to improve the quality of life of playwrights. As the playwright Robert Anderson said, “You can make a killing in the theatre, but you can’t make a living.” So my focus was on trying to find producers who would be interested in producing the plays of our member writers, and also solutions for “daily life” problems, like health insurance, free or reduced copying, and artist residencies.

What are some lessons you learned from your playwriting experience that you have brought to your screenwriting?

The power of the written word. My first love is Shakespeare – I’ve probably seen hundreds of Shakespeare productions in my life. Like any good playwright, Shakespeare shows how words have the power to transport an audience in a far more powerful and effective way than the most expensive special effect.

I also learned the truth behind Mark Twain’s famous line, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug” when it came to dialogue. When people recall their favorite movies, more often than not they do it by quoting a line of dialogue, not describing a scene. One of my favorite examples of the power of the right word is from Francis Ford Coppola’s screenplay for Patton. Gen. Patton reads Rommel’s book on tank tactics prior to battling him in the deserts of North Africa. The next day, when Patton sees his troops are victorious over Rommel, he exclaims, “Rommel, you magnificent bastard – I read your book!” If the line had been “Rommel, you bastard – I read your book!” or “Rommel, you’re magnificent – I read your book!” it’s not nearly as good a line. Each word, and their placement, is what makes the difference between a serviceable line of dialogue and a great, memorable line. I believe that Frank Pierson’s line from Cool Hand Luke – “What we got here is failure to communicate” – would not have been as memorable, quotable, or everlasting if he had written, “What we got is a failure to communicate.” The “here” makes all the difference. [I should state the obvious: among screenwriters working today, no one writes more memorable dialogue, and is more adept at finding exactly the “right” word, than Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zaillian.]

The other thing I learned from plays is structure. In his book, Adventures in the Screen Trade, William Goldman talks about the importance of structure. He even says “Screenplays are structure.” A lot of people have different words and catch phrases, but almost all plays and movies can be reduced down to a simple structure:

- Exposition: Who is the story about? What do they need to do?                                                     - Escalation: The tension and dramatic through line of the story needs to escalate into order to maintain the interest and emotional involvement of the audience.                                                   - Resolution: The characters either succeed or fail to achieve what they set out to do at the beginning of the story.

Clearly, these three basics structural components correlate to the three-act structure of movies.

You shifted from plays to developing movies as a Story Editor then Director of Creative Affairs for TriStar Pictures. How did that transition come about? What was the focus of your job?

In 1987, my wife and I were anxious to start a family. We were living in a tiny two-bedroom apartment on 44th street between 9th and 10th Avenues. It was a rent-controlled apartment and we were paying, as I recall, $375 a month. If we stayed in New York, we would be in that apartment for the rest of our lives. It was a sixth-floor walk-up. If you’ve never lived in a sixth-floor walkup, it’s difficult to understand the burden it puts on you, but it is particularly inhospitable for raising children. So we decided to move back to L.A.

Soon after I moved back to Los Angeles (I was born and raised in Covina) where I fairly quickly managed to cobble together enough jobs as a free-lance script reader to support us. That meant reading about 25-40 scripts or books a week because you were paid piecemeal – the more you read, the more you made. I read for everyone who used free lance readers – HBO, Viacom, Disney Channel, Tri-Star Pictures. I did that for about a year until the day after the 1988 WGA strike when I was offered the job of being a full time staff reader at TriStar pictures, at the time a non-union position. About six months after I started, the Story Editor left to work at Amblin and I took over her job.

My job as Story Editor was half-administrative/half-creative. The Story Department at TriStar, which was non-union, probably received about 5,000 submissions a year and I supervised a staff that made sure every submission was covered. Fortunately, they were all so good at their jobs that it freed me up to do notes for production executives on the projects the studio owned.

Similarly were there lessons your learned from your time as a development executive that you have applied to your work as a screenwriter?

Anyone who has read hundreds of scripts, as I had to do as a free-lance reader, staff reader, and studio executive, will tell you that the single biggest problem with most scripts is a passive protagonist. The protagonist is put into situations where he or she reacts rather than acts. As a result, I try to very aware to not make the same mistake in my own scripts. I don’t always succeed, but I do try to keep in mind that the protagonist needs to control the action of the story by taking action, and not become a character in the story by reacting to events or situations initiated by others.

The other thing I learned from working in development is the importance of a strong antagonist. Most books about screenwriting talk about the importance of creating a strong protagonist, and don’t understand the important structural role the antagonist plays in defining the protagonist. As someone said, “You want to see Muhammad Ali fight Joe Frazier, not Pee Wee Herman.” Too often scripts make the mistake of making things too easy for the protagonist by giving him or her an antagonist who is not their equal, who is not as clever, resourceful, witty, and determined. It is absolutely imperative to have the antagonist be as strongly defined, and as strong, as the protagonist.

Toward that end, I learned from theatre the importance of climax in structure. Generally defined, the “climax” is the last moment when the protagonist and antagonist are equal. The climax is the event which tips the scales irrevocably in favor of one or the other, the event which determines if the protagonist will succeed or fail. What I learned from development is how easy it is to lose sight of the structure necessity so that the story ends rather than climaxes. It’s a subtle difference, but an important one.

The main advantage of being a studio executive was that when I made the switch to writing I had relationships with, and access to, agents, producers and other studio executives. I did not have to enter at the ground floor, as it were, and build those relationships as I built my writing career. Many of the people I contacted when I first started as writer I am still working with today.

Playwright, studio executive, screenwriter. That’s a rare combination and over the next few days, we will see how Stan’s background and experience has influenced his work as a screenwriter.