Go Into The Story interview: Stan Chervin

My Q&A with one of the writers of the movie Moneyball.

One of the best movies in 2011 was Moneyball. It received 6 Oscar nominations including Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay. Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zaillian 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 was a fan of this blog, we struck up an email conversation and I asked if he would do an interview. He kindly agreed.

Scott: 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?

Stan: 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.

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

Stan: 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.

Scott: 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?

Stan: 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.

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

Stan: 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.

Scott: When and how did you realize you wanted to be a screenwriter? How did you make that transition?

Stan: When I was living in New York and working in theatre, because my focus was on directing and running a theatre, I did not write plays. I started writing almost by accident after I’d been in New York for almost four years as a result of two different random events.

The first was one year I threw a “Murder Party.” It was a party based on the parlor game “Murder”: I invited 30 people and assigned each of them a “character” to play — I wrote up long, detailed character descriptions, which were included in the invitation; they were also given the name of another guest at the party that they wanted to murder — the “murder” was done by winking at them. The trick was to “murder” your assigned victim without anyone seeing you, and to do it before you yourself got murdered.

The party was a big success and Tom Picard, a friend of mine and a stage manager I’d worked with on several shows, suggested it would make a great play. He and I collaborated on a play.

It was the first thing I ever wrote and I never looked back. I was so enamored of writing, I enjoyed it so much, and it was something I could do alone, without needing actors, a stage, a play and money, that I almost immediately gave up my goal of directing or running a theatre

I was helped along by Gail Berman, a friend of mine who was then a Broadway producer. I’d known Gail for years, and had worked for her in various capacities as a reader, when one day she said to me, “You should read this.” It was Leslie Dixon’s screenplay for Outrageous Fortune. It was the first screenplay I’d ever read and, more importantly, it was the first screenplay I read that had the same quality, inventiveness, and brilliant writing as many of the plays from the world I’d been working in for years. It opened my eyes to the possibility of screenwriting being on par with working in the theatre. Soon after that, Gail had an idea for a TV movie (back when they made them) and asked Tom and I to write a treatment for her to use to sell it. Gail never sold it, but by then the process of writing for the screen had me hooked. I began to focus all my energy on writing.

Scott: In a San Francisco magazine article about the movie Moneyball, there is this quote:

“It turns out, a true baseball story isn’t even what sold Sony Pictures, the movie’s production company, on the project; it was the personal element that writer Stan Chervin brought to the material in 2004. Chervin belongs to a literary species unique to Hollywood. (In the spirit of full disclosure: I went to school with Chervin at UC Berkeley.) A talented writer, he has made a good living penning numerous scripts over the course of two decades, and his particular knack for developing and pitching material was exactly what was needed to get Moneyball rolling. Yet the movie will be his first actual credit.”

There’s a lot to unpack, so let’s start with this: What are some of the script projects you’ve written over the years that have yet to be produced? How common is it for a screenwriter to write multiple projects over the course of many years before landing a first writing credit?

Stan: Baseball runs through a lot of my career. The first screenplay I was ever paid to write was an adaptation of the W.P. Kinsella short story, The Dixon Cornbelt League. I still feel its one of the best things I ever wrote, combining much of the American “magic realism” that made Field of Dreams, based on another Kinsella work, so successful; I’m hoping the success of Moneyball may revive interest in Dixon Cornbelt League.

The first major project I set up off a pitch was an adaptation of Around in The World in 80 Days which I wrote for Warners. Ours was not the only version in development and we eventually lost the race to the version which was made with Steve Coogan.

The first script I ever wrote for a major star was an adaptation of Nicholas Dawidoff’s book, The Catcher Was A Spy, which is the story of Moe Berg, a professional baseball player for 17 seasons who joined the O.S.S. during World War II and became the leading spy tracking the Nazi development of the nuclear bomb. I set it up at Warner Brothers with George Clooney attached to star and to produce.

Most recently, I wrote Puckface, a comedy I wrote for New Line that’s based on the life of Sean Avery, a hockey player who leads the NHL in penalty minutes, but LOVES fashion so much he took a job as an unpaid intern at Vogue magazine.

As to how many writers have been in my position of working non-stop for almost 20 years without a produced credit, it’s sort of a “Are you still beating your wife?” kind of question. It was certainly not a goal I set out for myself. Part of the problem is the sort of material I’ve been attracted to as a writer has never been the broad, high-concept kind of material, but more complex, smaller, and quirkier stories. It is very hard to get a movie made these days and even harder for a studio to stick with the same writer throughout the entire process. I suspect that as fewer movies get made, and the studios feel compelled to rely on a shorter and shorter list of writers, the potential exists for the numbers of writers like myself to expand.

Scott: How did you first get involved with Moneyball?

Stan: Rachael Horovitz. After leaving her job as an executive at Revolution in 2003, Rachael had read the book Moneyball and became obsessed with making it into a movie. She happened to be talking to Jody Hotchkiss, the agent who represented the Moe Berg book that I set up at Warners and adapted, and my name came up as a writer she should talk to. Rachael called me. Fortunately, I had heard Michael Lewis interviewed on Fresh Air so I was familiar enough with the book to discuss it even though I had not read it.

I read the book and it was one of those moments you never forget as a writer: I instantly knew how to adapt it. It was like an epiphany. From the moment I read the opening line — “The first thing they always do is run you” — I had a clear, strong and viable take on how to adapt the book.

Scott: What writing did you do on the project and how did the script you wrote impact the process of getting the movie on track to be produced?

Stan: Here’s what I believe are some of my major contributions to getting the movie made:

First, I was the writer who got the project set up at a studio. Many people, even Michael Lewis, believed you could never do a film adaptation of Moneyball. What my pitch did was show studios where the movie was by reducing the book down to a single sentence which conveyed that this was essentially a human story and not a baseball movie.

Second, my draft was the first to prove what Rachael and I always believed: that the material could be a movie. I was the writer who started off just a blank page and the book and wrote a screenplay that enabled people to see the movie that the book could become. I often joke that the very first draft of Moneyball was like the proverbial dancing bear: what’s impressive is not how well he does it, but that he can do it at all. (Steve and Aaron then turned the bear into Fred Astaire.)

Third, my draft showed the project would attract A-list talent. David Frankel, the initial director of the movie, came on board as a result of reading my script and then hired me back to do a draft under his supervision.

Moneyball must have been a doubly difficult story to write because it’s not only a book adaptation, it’s also a biopic, both unique challenges for a screenwriter. Could you tell us some of the more difficult narrative choices you had to make in determining what content you chose to include, what you decided to exclude, changes you made to make the material work as a movie, etc.

Here are some of the key choices I made in adapting the material:

A major contribution I made was present in the pitch and I believed help sell it (and, eventually, helped attract talent to the project): I created the subplot between Billy and his daughter, Casey.

In the book, Casey is mentioned in only two sentences:

Early on, after his divorce, Billy is concerned that he won’t be part of Casey’s life if he takes the scouting job which required a lot of traveling; then, 300 pages later, when the A’s are going for their 20th win in a row he calls home to see if she’s watching the game and Casey is watching American Idol instead.

I took those two sentences and built up a sub-plot involving Billy’s relationship with his daughter, Casey.

I should note that I’m sure Steve or Aaron would’ve come up with this storyline as well. I just happened to do it first. Moreover, Steve and Aaron really showed how the concept of “less is more” works. In my drafts, I always had a more fully fleshed out Billy-Casey sub-plot, a whole “B” storyline centered on Casey. Steve and Aaron showed how you could convey all the emotion and challenges of an entire father-daughter relationship in just three scenes.

My other key contribution was to elevate and expand the role of Peter Brand (Paul DePodesta.)

In the book, the “Peter” character only appears a half-dozen times, primarily during the Amateur draft and in the Trading Day scene that’s in the movie. I was the writer who made Peter/Paul into Billy’s main supporter in his quest to revolutionize baseball, as well as the intellectual instigator of many of the ideas that then fell to Billy to put into practice. It was my choice to have Billy hire Peter during the movie’s time frame (in real life, by Oct. 2001, Paul had already been working for Billy for two years) and to then show onscreen the methods by which they developed their philosophy of identifying the players they wanted. In a way, Moneyball has no true “antagonist” — both Art Howe and the A’s owner partially fulfill the role, but neither is around all the time — so Peter/Paul often serves that structural purpose of providing complication or obstacles for Billy. If you only know the movie and then read the book, you’ll be surprised what a minor role Paul (Peter) plays compared to his role in the movie.

I also defined the “present day” of the story. The book jumps around in time — it opens with Billy being drafted, then goes to the June 2002 amateur draft, then back to Billy’s career as a player, followed by Bill James writing the Baseball Abstract. I determined that the story should take place during a very specific one-year time period from October, 2001, when the A’s lose to the Yankees in the playoffs, and then lose Jason Giambi, Johnny Damon and relief pitcher Isringhausen to free agency, until November, 2002 when Billy turns down the job as G.M. of the Boston Red Sox. The other aspects of Billy’s life — his being drafted, his failure as a player, and his career as a scout — were all shown as flashbacks within the context of that time period.

It took me two drafts to clearly define that time period. In my first two drafts, I showed Billy’s life prior to becoming A’s G.M. in a quick preamble, maybe 7–10 pages to take him from high school draft to failed player to scout. It wasn’t until my third draft that I realized what a HUGE mistake that preamble was: I was giving away all of Billy’s secrets. I think Aaron Spelling said, “Characters are all about their secrets.” Billy’s “secret” was that he had failed spectacularly as a player and it affected all his actions as a G.M. — basically, Billy was determined to never draft a “Billy Beane,” a player who looked good, but couldn’t hit. I was telling the audience all his secrets in the opening minutes of the movie. It left with them with very little to “discover” on their own as the movie unfolded.

The single most important contribution I made to Moneyball was this: I reduced the entire emotional/thematic content of the book down to a single sentence. It was a sentence I used when we were pitching the project, and would later quote in almost every notes session I had with the studio or with the director. I am particularly proud that a version of the sentence was used as a tag line on the first one-sheet the studio put out for the movie. Basically, the sentence that summed up the “take away experience” of Moneyball, as well as the essence of Billy’s character arc, was this:

“It is the story of a man who learns it is more important to know his value rather than his price.”

Scott: How long did you work on Moneyball? How many drafts did you write?

Stan: I sold the movie off a pitch. I then had to submit a written version of the pitch.

I then wrote three drafts over a 16 month period.

The studio began looking for directors. David Frankel, fresh off his success of The Devil Wears Prada, attached himself as director.

I wrote another draft under David’s supervision which I submitted in July, 2007. That was the last writing I did on Moneyball.

Scott: The path Moneyball took from your first draft to finally getting released as a movie was a circuitous one. How closely did you follow all of its ups and downs including director Steven Soderbergh leaving the project within mere weeks of the movie’s start date? Were there times you felt the movie would never get made?

Stan: To be honest, I really had no more access than anyone else and only knew what I read in the papers. Rachael Horovitz kept me up to date on what was happening during that time period as best she could but she had far more important and pressing issues to attend than keeping me informed.

When Sony pulled the plug in June 2009, I did not think the movie would ever get made. I think it had $10 million against it and I just assumed it was dead. It is a real testament to Brad, as well as the producers, Rachael and Mike and Scott Rudin, and Aaron and Steve and, most importantly, Bennett, that they pulled off the truly miraculous feat of raising the movie from the dead and not only getting it made, but making it in a way that it was a critical and commercial success.

Scott: Moving on to some projects you’re currently working on, you are adapting the book “Heat” by Bill Buford which is described as a “story of one man’s journey from journalist to kitchen slave to culinary apprentice.” How did you get involved in this project? What about the story attracted you to it from a creative standpoint?

Stan: Bill Buford and I were at Berkeley at the same time. He was a senior when I was a freshman but we met in a Shakespeare seminar taught by Prof. Stephen Booth who both Bill and I consider to be a mentor. (Bill’s first book, Among the Thugs, is dedicated to Professor Booth.) I had followed Bill’s career, first at Granta, then at The New Yorker, where he was the Fiction editor, and had been a fan of his first book so I read Heat as soon as it came out.

As with Moneyball, I immediately thought Heat could make a movie. Around that time, I was talking to Rachael about random Moneyball matters when I mentioned to her that I had read this great book and I was thinking about adapting it. “It’s called Heat by Bill Buford.” There was an eerie pause and then Rachael said, “Stan — I’ve been trying to set that book up as a movie for a month now.” Despite our closeness, and our desire to work together again on another project, both Rachael and I had discovered Heat on our own and were pursuing it independently, without having told the other. We immediately teamed up at that moment.

As in the case of Moneyball, Heat is really about one thing. Bill sets out on a search, in a way, to find out the answer to the question — “What makes the best cooking?” Ultimately, the answer he discovers is surprisingly simple, but can apply to so many different aspects of life: “The best cooking is done with love.”

Scott: You are also working on Quantum Hoops, the story of Cal Tech’s basketball team. What is that story about? How did you get involved with it? I understand this was a project you pitched around town in Hollywood. How did it end up with Ben Stiller and Stuart Cornfeld attached as producers? Where is the project currently in the development process?

Stan: Jeremy Platt and Brian Truman had the rights to a documentary on the Cal Tech Men’s basketball team and their 300 game/25 year losing streak and were looking for a writer to dramatize it. My agent recommended me.

I believed that the only “star” part was the coach’s part. I then created a fictionalized story about a Division I basketball coach who, through various reasons, finds himself stuck coaching at Cal Tech, but desperately wanting to be somewhere else. The analogy I always used was To Sir, With Love where Sidney Poitier’s character sees teaching as a temporary way to earn the rent until he gets his “real” job as an engineer. With this fictional lead character, I created a kind of Hoosiers meets Revenge of the Nerds storyline.

It’s very hard to sell anything of a pitch these days, but particularly a sports movie which I feel has an unfair and inaccurate reputation for “not doing well overseas.” The pitch employed all sorts of audio-visual bells and whistles: we started with a five-minute ‘recap’ of the documentary which my daughter had edited for us; I also had a board covered with photos of famous Cal Tech pranks and traditions which I had incorporated into the pitch, and on another board I had cards with all of the major beats of the story.

It’s always easier to sell a pitch with a piece of talent attached. Ben Stiller was an obvious choice to star and/or direct. We pitched to was Erica Steinberg who loved it and had us pitch to Stuart. All of them are very intelligent, very perceptive and very, very good at story. Their input greatly improved the pitch. Although Ben is still our first choice to star and direct, he is officially attached only as a producer. This provides a great incentive for me as a writer. I need to write a script that is good enough to get Ben to attach himself as star and/or director.

I am currently writing the first draft which I hope to turn in soon.

Scott: It seems like you have written a number of book adaptations. Do you have a particular interest in writing adaptations or is it something that just played out organically based on opportunities that arose for you?

Stan: When it comes to books I’m attracted to, it’s like jazz: I can’t describe it, but I know it when I hear it.

Beyond that, it has played out organically only in that when I do find a property that I want to adapt I tend to pursue it with dogged determination and persistence. The Moe Berg project took me almost six years of pitching to everyone who would listen before I was able to set it up at Warners with George Clooney. Moneyball took seven years to get made.

Scott: You have also written for TV (“Extreme Team” for ABC, “7th Precinct” for Samuel L. Jackson). What are some of the key differences you discovered writing TV as compared to writing movies.

Stan: The main difference is time. Features unfold in an odd, other-world reality in which time has no value because there’s so much of it. Until you actually get a movie green lit and a production start date set, there are no real deadlines in features. Television is all about deadlines. They have very specific calendars of when you can sell something, and even more clearly defined dates of when it has to be turned in by.

Similarly, the power and relative importance of the writer is inverted in television and features. In features, for the most part, the writer is considered an easily replaceable, rather powerless cog in a larger machine. That’s why writers are so easily replaced on features. In Television, the writer, and particularly the writer-producer or showrunner, has all the power and importance.

Scott: A few craft questions. First how do you decide which writing projects you choose to pursue?

Stan: It’s like falling in love or believing in a religion: you can’t fake it. If there’s a passion within you to tell that story, you will do whatever it takes, put up with any abuse, overcome any obstacle to write that script. If it’s simply a job-for-hire, I feel it can often be reflected in your wrok.

Scott: Do you look for a project that you feel has the best chance to get produced or is your choice guided less by commercial considerations and more by your emotional connection to the material?

Stan: My emotional connection to, and passion for the material, is the only thing that guides me. If I was guided by commercial considerations, I like to think I would’ve been more successful.

Scott: How much time do you typically spend doing research on a project? Are there some guides you have on how you approach research?

Stan: I’d say I usually do 3–4 weeks of research before I start writing (or to prepare the pitch) and then continue to research as I work. Even with Moneyball, where all the research was done for me by Michael Lewis, I still did my own research into Billy and the other characters in the book and often found useful tidbits that illuminate character or scenes.

Scott: What are some of the keys to how you develop characters for your writing projects? Do you use tools such as character biographies and interviews to flesh out your characters?

Stan: I do a character biography only in terms of contrasting characters with each other. I will often make a chart and write down each characters attitude, reaction, quality, etc. so I can make sure there are many different points of view being presented and that each point of view has a consistency.

Scott: How do you go about plotting a story? Is there a specific screenplay paradigm you prefer to use or do you find the story’s structure more organically?

Stan: I probably spend more time plotting the structure of the story than any other prep I do. When you get down to it, almost all every paradigm for screenplay writing — Syd Field, Save the Cat, etc. — follow the same fundamental guidelines, rules and key points of execution. Usually, the only difference is what they call them. I think I tend to synthesize all of these approaches, and then superimpose it onto the classic five-part structure of theatrical plays (Inciting Incident, Exposition, Escalation, Climax, Denoument)

Scott: As part of your story development process, do you write treatments or outlines before you type FADE IN? If so, how extensive do those tend to be?

Stan: I never write a treatment unless I’m contractually required to. For me, a treatment falls under the “neither fish nor fowl” — it’s not quite a short story, and it’s not a screenplay. It’s a strange hybrid animal that doesn’t accomplish the goals of either one.

Scott: Once you start the first draft, what is your writing process like? Do you have set hours every day for writing or do you write when you feel like it? Daytime writer or night owl?

Stan: I always try to bang out a first, rough draft as fast as I can. There’s a story of George Abbott, the theatre director, coming into the theatre of a musical he was rehearsing and seeing the choreographer with all of the dancers on stage, but none of them were dancing. Abbott asked why. The choreographer said he was trying to figure out how to choreograph the number. Abbot told him, “Well, do something! That way, we can change it.” I think it’s always easier to revise a script, even a truly awful one, than face the tyranny of the blank page.

I almost always write from 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 or 2:00 pm, take a lunch break, and then work on non-script writing chores in the afternoon. I find I’m really only good for about 5 hours of actual scriptwriting a day. Unless I’m under a deadline at which point I tend to work long, long days — 10–14 hours of writing.

Scott: Sometimes the single greatest challenge for a writer is actually to sit down and start a writing session. Are there times when you resist writing and how do you overcome that impulse not to write?

Stan: To me, that’s the biggest challenge of writing: finding the discipline to sit down and do it every day. Like any good writer, I don’t need much excuse to procrastinate. I tend to overcome by “doubling down” the next day and trying to really increase my output.

There’s a software called Freedom which blocks your access to the Internet for how ever many hours you set it for. I find that HIGHLY productive because you can’t be distracted by checking your e-mail or surfing the web. It forces you to work only on the script.

Scott: What do you like to read? Which authors inspire you?

Stan: I’m afraid my tastes run heavily toward “the usual suspects.” Besides Shakespeare, I’ve always been a big fan of Steinbeck, Mark Twain, and Charles Dickens. No one writes better characters than Dickens — he can often define someone with a single line or phrase. (Consider Mr. Micawber’s “Something will turn up.”) One of my all time favorite books is Moby Dick. I do read every Michael Lewis book because he’s such a great writer.

Scott: How about your personal favorite top five movie list.

Stan: Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, Breaker Morant, Casablanca, Groundhog Day, It’s A Wonderful Life.

Scott: Finally do you have any words of advice for aspiring screenwriters.

Stan: If your goal as a screenwriter is to make a lot of money, you’re doomed to fail.

If your goal as a screenwriter is to produce the best possible writing you are personally able to write, writing that celebrates the sheer beauty of the craft, you cannot hope but to succeed.

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.

A trailer for Moneyball.

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