2014 Screenwriters Roundtable (Part 8): Chris Borrelli, Brian Duffield, F. Scott Frazier, Chris McCoy, Justin Rhodes, Greg Russo
A special treat this week and next as I will be posting excerpts from an extensive screenwriter’s roundtable I did in December 2014 with a group of talented Hollywood screenwriters: Chris Borrelli, Brian Duffield, F. Scott Frazier, Chris McCoy, Justin Rhodes, and Greg Russo. How good are they? Between them, they have sold more than a dozen spec scripts and have multiple original screenplays on the Black List.
This is the fourth GITS screenwriters roundtable with this group of writers, the first three of which you can read here, here and here. This has become something of an annual event as it’s a great way to take the pulse of what’s happening in the screenwriting universe, track the careers of these talented writers, and benefit from the many insights into the craft they share.
Here is Part 8:
Scott Myers: That dovetails precisely into the next question I have, which is from a reader. They said, “Everybody’s always talking about how Hollywood is looking for writers with unique voices. How do you go about finding your voice?”
Chris Borrelli: You have it. It’s part of you. You develop it and you get better, but you have hopefully something to say. All the screenwriters on this call, we could all be given the exact same plot and would write something very, very different from one another.
So I feel you have it and you develop it and you get better at it, but you don’t actually, if this makes any sense, learn that. I couldn’t teach that to someone who didn’t have it.
Scott Frazier: A long time ago, I got into a gigantic… I don’t even know if I participated in it. On an old screenwriting message board, there was a 25‑page thread about what voice means. Everybody had a different definition of it and everybody argued about what it really meant.
It was just one of those go‑nowhere circular things that never had a resolution to it. Chris, I think you’re totally right. It’s innate to who you are, and when somebody gives you a story, it’s how you would write it.
Scott Myers: It seems like Duffield is a walking example of that. I mean, he’s written Westerns, a modern romantic comedy, now a horror thing, monster‑dinosaurs. Yet, I think he would say that people in around town, when they read a script by Brian Duffield, feel like that’s a Brian Duffield script.
Is that fair, since for the rest of you when you read over your scripts?
Scott Frazier: Oh yeah. If you looked at one script page from each of us without our names on it, you can tell that they were all written by different people.
Justin: I was going to say, I think voice is just taste. Like, “This is what I like.” Whether you’re writing a movie or directing a movie, you’re making a thousand little decisions. And knowing when to stop and say the joke is funny enough or the scene’s exciting enough or the line is clever enough or the moment’s cool enough, cool to who and funny to who?
You’re making all those decisions based on your taste. So, to me, your voice is just the thing that can’t help but express itself, because you thought these things were funny, you thought these things were cool and you thought this was good.
If people disagree on that, what comes out is knowing when to stop.
Scott Myers: That’s like what Borrelli’s saying. It’s just an extension of who you are, right?
Justin: Your voice is the same as the way you decorate your living room, it’s just, “This is what I think looks cool.” You happen to have a taste that other people like to look at.
Chris McCoy: The advantage to what we do is that we are not actors. We don’t have to wait around for someone to hand us material that inspires something within us. We can sit down and write the kind of movie we want to see.
In general, people can smell the bullshit if you are writing something that just goes with the market, that goes with the trend, what’s selling that month.
The more you step away from that mindset, and the more you go, “Okay, I am going to write things that I care about at this moment,” the less that bullshit smell is going to be there. Unless you care about your work, no one else is going to care about it. That’s what voice is: this is what I care about at this time.
Scott Frazier: To almost answer the question in a roundabout way, or in a not helpful way at all, I feel like, the more that I wrote the more I understood how I wanted to write things — does that make sense?
My early scripts, they all felt a little different from one another, but they still all had the same style, tone, and sensibility to them. Now, with my scripts, I know how I want to write, based of off having done this for as long as I have. Now, all of my scripts feel the same and look the same, and it’s based off entirely spending time doing it.
Brian: Yeah, I agree with that.
Scott Myers: Brian, I’d be curious to hear a little bit more from you. Have you ever thought about, “What is my voice?” Is it a conscious thing? Or is it more like what Borrelli and McCoy were talking about… an expression of who you are.
Brian: My voice changes from script to script. I try to write the actual script, not in the first person, but at least in the tone of who are the main characters.
For something like The Babysitter, it was about a 12-year-old that basically loses his mind. By the end of that script, the writing is super-hyper and all over the place. I am always a little humored when people think that, “Well, Brian’s voice is crazy.” It’s a deliberate choice that I am making to make the script that voice.
I’m sure there’s definitely things that are similar in everything that I’ve written, and that’s just unavoidable. The actual voice of the script I try to make it in the protagonist’s voice, in his camera. I don’t remember where I picked that up, but it was a while ago. It stuck.
For Part 1 of the Roundtable conversation, go here.
Part 2, here.
Part 3, here.
Part 4, here.
Part 5, here.
Part 6, here.
Part 7, here.
On Twitter:
Brian Duffield: @BrianDuffield
F. Scott Frazier: @ScreenWritten
Chris McCoy: @thatthere
Justin Rhodes: @twopointfour
Many thanks to Wendy Cohen for logistical help with the roundtable.
Tomorrow: Part 8 of this exclusive screenwriter’s roundtable.