Dispatch from “The Quest”: Concepts (Part 3)
Last week, our focus in “The Quest” was concept. The Questers had some great reflections on the subject in their script journals which I will share with you over the next three days. Today: Rob Pilkington and Ben Odgren.
Rob Pilkington
It was a weird week to want to be a screenwriter.
Monday, the WGA released their most recent survey of working screenwriters and confirmed rumbles of what we’ve been hearing for the better part of a few years: On the list of viable vocations you can choose for a career, screenwriting ranks somewhere just below the likes of “blacksmith” but right ABOVE “cobbler (type: footwear).”
The timing is weird because week 2 of The Quest is focused on the studio angle — which is the stuff I really love. How major studios can come to select projects, breakdowns of studio releases based on genre and concept, and so forth. CONCEPT. Concept is so important. And it’s always made me wonder about this pretty common question I see in the screenwriting community:
“When you’re coming up with spec ideas, what comes to you first, character or concept?”
Let’s be real here: as anyone ever answered “character?”
Have you ever had a writer friend of yours come to you and pitch: “Hey I got this really great idea for a screenplay, no dilemma or conflict yet, but it’s about a guy, handsome, mid-30s, HOARDER… but obsessed with Gladys Knight and Pips. What do you think?”
I think that’s not a movie.
I’ve always operated on the fact that a good concept will breed a good character. That seems to be what Scott thinks, too — or at least they exist symbiotically. Oh, and also Gavin Palone.
Polone is former Hollywood rep turn producer. This week, just after the WGA survey results were released, he posted an article on Vulture called “Why Stars Don’t Matter — and Never Have.” The article is self-explanatory, but my favorite part with when Polone talks to a Hollywood marketer about ideal, sellable conditions:
“People pay money for concepts. Having a star doesn’t matter. There are a couple of stars who work within a concept. Daniel Craig is the best example; he hasn’t worked outside Bond. There is a legitimacy in Liam Neeson. I feel that Brad Pitt legitimized Inglourious Basterds. It made it mainstream. But if you have to take a leap with the concept, like on [Johnny Depp’s] Rum Diary, then it doesn’t matter. I’d rather have a $6 million actor and a good concept than someone else for $15 million and hope that the concept works.”
This sounds about right to me. When you’re trying to decide what ideas you want to write, I don’t think vivid protagonist is always part of the immediate equation. It’s hard to imagine anyone shutting a meeting down with “Wait — now WHO are you saying are running from the dinosaurs in this dinosaur park?” Or, perhaps better put: “Wait, lemme stop you there and say I need to know who exactly bought tickets to this flight with snakes on it.”
For the record, this is basically what Week 2 of the Quest was like — but hearing it echo elsewhere made days 8–14 so much more satisfying.
So yeah — a weird week to want to be a screenwriter. Apparently, it’s a rough game. But it’s at least nice to feel like you’re doing a good job learning about such a tough gig.
Ben Odgren
We all saw Inception, right? There’s that scene right in the beginning when Cobb is talking about ideas like they’re parasites. They burrow straight into your subconscious when they’re strong and they don’t go away. I think there must be a deleted portion of that scene lying around where Cobb talks about how most ideas are actually more like houseflies. Annoyingly elusive and yet everywhere. We think we have one in our sights, the rolled up newspaper comes down…and they’re gone. They just disappear.
For a moment we might think, “Did I just hit a fly so hard it vaporized?” But then the buzzing starts up again and the one-sided metaphorical game of spider and fly continues.
That probably would have been too much of a tangent for that movie. Anyway…
Concepts and ideas have been the big theme for the second week of The Quest. How do we know when an idea is good? How do we know if that idea can sustain an entire movie? Do we even like the idea enough to write 100–120 pages of it?
Questions like those will always be hard to answer because there doesn’t seem to be a set way of doing any of this. An idea that seems great at the time doesn’t look so good one week later, or even the next day. I know whenever that happens to me it forces me to second-guess whatever process I was going through that brought me to that idea. We have to “trust the process”, though. It’s frustrating, but we do.
On Saturday I went for a run, and about a mile in I think I figured out the end of the script I’m working on for The Quest. I debated on turning around right then, knowing I needed to write it down as soon as possible. I also figured that if it’s a strong enough idea it would stick and I wouldn’t forget it. Luckily the idea was still there when I got home. So now the idea sits there in a notebook, and it’s still the ending I’m working toward.
If the ending changes I won’t be surprised. Maybe a little annoyed I thought it was good to begin with, but not surprised. I’ll just put on my running shorts, roll up a newspaper, and run until it shakes the next idea loose.
Rob is right: Screenwriting is a tough gig. That’s why in “The Quest,” we spend so much time talking about the business. The motto is: “It’s not just about writing a screenplay. It’s learning to think like a screenwriter.” And Ben taps into part of that: A screenwriter has to hold up their story ideas to the most demanding level of scrutiny. We all have to push ourselves harder.
There was a great Screenwriting 101 this week from Terry Elliott:
“When I hear aspiring screenwriters who talk about, ‘Yeah, I saw Godzilla and it was terrible. I can write better than that.’ My feeling about that is, no, go watch The Godfather or Casablanca or Ghostbusters, and say, ‘Holy crap! That was great, I want to write something that good!’ If you look at a movie and say, ‘That’s crap, I can do better,’ then basically all you’re trying to do is write crap plus one. It’s far better to try to write the best thing you’ve ever seen, because at least you’re aspiring to a higher level.”
Yes, we can read crap scripts and learn something from them. But we stand a much better chance of success when we write something inspired by great movies and great scripts.
How about you? Have you learned anything recently in thinking about concepts? If so, please share your insights in comments.
Next week: More dispatches from “The Quest”.
About Rob: Boston writer headed for LA. Lover of Kubrick, Nolan, McDonagh, and the Coens. Okay, good talk. Back to writing. Twitter: @HeroesAreBoring
About Ben: Maine writer with a love for pulpy genre movies, keeping library books out for a little too long, and strong coffee. Twitter: @benodgren
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