Interview: Arash Amel — Part 5

Arash Amel is one of the bright new talents among Hollywood screenwriters, having penned the 2011 Black List script Grace of Monaco which has been produced starring Nicole Kidman and will be released later this year, as well as set up several high profile projects including “Seducing Ingrid Bergman” and “The Infinity Principle”.

Recently I caught up with Arash for an extended interview in which we covered a whole host of subjects.

Today in Part 5, Arash goes into great detail about how a writer can stack multiple writing projects:

Scott: You’ve got five or six projects going over a period of 12 to 18 months, how do you manage all those? The idea of stacking projects, which is something that screenwriters do, how do you approach working on multiple projects over a period of time?

Arash: I’m notoriously neurotic when it comes to what’s in front of me. I know some writers like to do one project at a time. I like to multitask. If I have free time I end up thinking too much. [laughs] I just need to be focused, and also focused for a long period of time. So I like to double or triple book. It’s a question of discipline. When it comes to craft, and it is craft … craft is discipline. It’s knowing that me, the screenwriter, now that I’m at a point where I’m out of my bedroom, and I have an office, and I go and sit in the office, and I have an assistant, I’m a professional. This is my job.

You have a lot of hungry agents to feed and a lot of attorneys to feed. The way to see it is, you’re the center of your own private enterprise. You’re the CEO of your own company. And you make start-ups. Every screenplay is a movie, every movie is at minimum a $10 to $20 million dollar start-up enterprise. For a brief period of time, you’re the general manager. No one can move unless you’ve written. You’re managing studios. You’re managing the producers. You’re, maybe, managing talent and other cast, directors. You have to treat it like a job. And if you’re also producing it, you’re doubly a general manager.

I treat it as my passion, but if you treat it like a passion too much you can lose focus. It’s all about that conflict between passion and discipline and making yourself write when you don’t want to write. That’s the difference between the professional screenwriter and a hobbyist. That’s, really, the big leap that I made over the last couple of years. I now know, like the athlete who gets up and goes “ I don’t really feel like racing today, but I’m at the Olympics. I kind of have to race.” It’s exactly the same as a screenwriter. I’ll spend two days of the week going “I really feel like working today.” Or I’m tired. But I still write.

It’s tough, you have to write. My dad, when we moved to England, became a store owner. He had to open the store every day, and that’s what it is. It’s that discipline. Once I have the concept, I will meticulously, totally outline to a 30‐40 page treatment. I did it with Grace. I learned to, actually, on the first Fox assignment that I did.

I know now it takes four to six weeks to do that outline. You get notes on it. I know, depending on who it is, it might take them two to four weeks to turn those notes around. Then when I have those notes I know I can start the script, and because I have such a meticulous outline with all the annotations and I know where all the beats are going to go. It takes me about six to eight weeks to execute the first draft, which was…actually, Grace, took me six weeks to write that, to write the first draft, and then was a two‐week revision period, and after…so eight weeks of actual work post outline that was the script that sold.

I’ve basically managed to develop over time a very consistent structure of, OK, how do we break it down? And so how do we then execute the outline, what do I need to be able to get this down into the backbone and the structure and eventually the character beats and the turning points and everything, and you’ve got studio notes in, you’ve got the producer notes in.

Everyone feels like they have their say, and it’s great, because then it makes the studio feel very good, because you go, “This is the screenplay you’re going to get, and it’s going to be about maybe 20 percent different from this. If you have a problem with it say now.”

And I’ve actually managed to walk out of projects where they’ve said, “You know what? We’ve got a problem with this.” I said, “Well, I’m not going to write the screenplay, then, because it’s going to look exactly the same.” So, it’s that process which will probably allow me to do a project from idea to first draft with revisions probably in between four and five months. And that kind of allows me then to stack projects …it’s a bit like a puzzle, a puzzle with time and pace [laughs] . At any one time, I’ll be working on one, developing another. I won’t write two screenplays at once. I think that’s asking for trouble, but I will be writing one and developing one into an outline at the same time so that I can move from one screenplay to another without any gaps in between.

Scott: You said something interesting there. It’s not only just about expediting the process of breaking the story, but you can also present that form of the narrative to buyers and producers, and say, “Look, this is the story I’m going to write. If there’s a problem let me know about it now,” as opposed to going all the way to a first draft.

Arash: Yes. Totally. I mean one of the things that I’ve learned and I will never do again is when you have those meetings where they go, “OK, we’ve had a couple of development meetings. We kind of have an idea of the beginning. We’ve got a couple ideas about the first plot point and into the midpoint. And, OK, go write it.”

And you’re like, “Well, I don’t even know who these characters are. I don’t know what happens. I kind of know what happens. I’ve got a little card that has one sentence on it that tells me what happens at minute 10, but I don’t really know.”

And when you leave too much gray area for discovery like that, for me I’ve found that it’s created too many questions, and I try to second guess myself and also second guess what I think the buyer wants, or what the producer wants, or what the studio wants, and the worst is they never want the same thing.

So you may write the most brilliant opening sequence, but if you don’t have both parties who are invested in your script saying, “That’s it. That’s what we’re going to get when we sign off on it,” then you’re kind of rolling the dice while you’re writing the screenplay.

And what I’m doing is saying you need to take the chance out of the picture …you need to make as much of the creative decisions before you start the screenplay and have everybody sign off on it so that when you start the screenplay you’re starting with solid concrete, and you’re going, “This is a detailed outline that everybody has signed off on. If I deviate from this, then I’m in trouble, but invariably, if I’ve signed off on it, it means I believe I can make this work,” and then it’s your job to make that outline work.

And if you haven’t got everybody signed off on it then you’re leaving yourself open to basically building a house without having somebody signed off on the architectural plans, and they might not like it, and then it’s always easier to actually cross out something on a piece of paper then it is to rip down a whole wing of a house because someone doesn’t like it.

Scott: How do you go about developing your characters in that prep process?

Arash: I think story is character, and I think story in movies is internal struggles externalized. And so everything has to start with the character …I’m not the guy who writes sort of outside in kind of going, “OK, what happens to the character, and then what kind of character do I need to fit that?” I will always start with on every screenplay with maybe two pages on the lead character, who they are, where they came from, what they want…what are their goals and what are their aspirations, what do they excel in, and really looking at what are their internal obstacles and their ghosts, and what are the things holding them back, and looking at them on a very conceptual level.

And then I’ll go in and flesh them out and then do that also with some of the other characters …at least the main ones. And once I have strong sort of grasp of those, at the very least my lead character, my villain ‐ and, Grace actually does have a villain. De Gaulle was designed as your classic fairy tale ogre…

Before this process actually, I would have just the log line of the movie or the three sentences of what the movie would be, and then I’ll go and I’ll just insert them into that story and start to play in the sandbox.

Scott: Sounds like a key for you is curiosity, just asking a lot of questions about the characters.

Arash: Yes, as writers we’re naturally curious people, and we want to ask questions … anyone who’s studied music will tell you that a certain part of writing musical composition is about questions and answers and counter melodies and juxtaposition and so on. And really I think writing a movie is exactly the same. It’s curiosity of…well, the curiosity the character, fascination with the human condition. Why we are the way we are, and why do we make these decisions the way we do, how can we aspire to make the decisions better or cope better, and really trying then to hone that out into specific people and their challenges, and I think that’s what makes characters universal. What elevates them to mythical levels. We’re all searching for that universal truth, and I think it all begins with those universal questions.

Scott: Speaking of curiosity, I’m curious. How do you come up with your story ideas?

Arash: [laughs] I wish I knew. Do you mean like the concept of a movie or the actual story?

Scott: Say for example, the last spec script you sold to the studio, which you can’t talk about, how did you come up with that idea?

Arash: I start with a feeling. I try to listen to sort of the voice in my head that kind of goes, “What kind of a movie do I feel like writing now? What haven’t I done?” I believe as a writer you should always challenge yourself and not get pigeonholed. I know there’s a lot of views like whether pigeonholing is a good thing because it’s branding.

Pigeonholing is a bad thing because it limits you and stops you exploring or growing as an artist. I fall in the camp that says there’s another pigeonhole which is the pigeonhole guys like John Logan, David Koepp and Bill Goldman fit into, which is the versatile writer able to span genres comfortably. There’s no reason why directors can do that but writers can’t. Absolutely no reason. I’ve had people try to argue with me and say, “Oh, but it’s different for directors because you’re interpreting.” I said, “Well, as writers you’re not making stories out of nothing. You’re interpreting all your influences and all your experiences, all the cultural influences and observations, and you’re also responding to your creative needs.”

My favorite movie is Lawrence but my second favorite movies is Back to the Future, but at the same time, what else? I love a movie I saw yesterday for like the third time. It was on HBO, and it just suddenly came on. I kept watching it. The Help. Very different movie. And I would equally loved to have been able to write all three.

Tomorrow in Part 6, Arash drills down into some of the key aspects of the screenwriting craft.

For Part 1, go here.

For Part 2, go here.

For Part 3, go here.

For Part 4, go here.

Please stop by comments to thank Arash and ask any questions you may have.

Arash is repped by CAA.

Twitter: @arashamel.

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