Interview [Part 5]: Brian Duffield
In Hollywood development circles, Brian Duffield is a popular figure. As evidence, two of his original screenplays have made the Black List: Your Bridesmaid is a Bitch and Jane Got a Gun, putting him on the 10 Screenwriters to Watch in 2013 list. In addition, he sold his spec script Monster Problems to Paramount in 2012 and has written on a big budget franchise movie: Insurgent. And if that’s not enough, Duffield is slated to make his debut as a director on his own script Vivien Hasn’t Been Herself Lately.
Brian is an active presence on Twitter (you should definitely follow him: @BrianDuffield) and we’ve gotten to know each other over the years, so I was pleased to have the chance to interview him.
In Part 5, Brian shares some thoughts about key aspects of the screenwriting craft:
Scott: Some craft questions for you. How do you come up with story ideas?
Brian: Ouija Boards. No, but honestly, I usually know what I want to write about first, and take it from there. Every now and again I’ll have a unique character or world that I’ll pocket and save them until I have the right theme to plant them into. I think world-building and character-quirking for the sake of it is like a flashy trailer for a crappy movie.
Scott: How important do you think the story concept is to the overall strength and commercial viability of a screenplay, specifically a spec script?
Brian: If it’s a spec script and you’re not thinking about how it fits into the market, then you’re not doing a huge chunk of your job. If it’s something you think will have a hard (if not impossible) time selling, you have to figure you’re spending however many months designing a really pretty business card, while the guy beside you is working on designing a really pretty movie. Now that doesn’t mean everything you write has to be a summer blockbuster, but you should be aware of what type of thing studios seem to drift towards.
Think of it like you’ve been dating this great girl, and she wants you to meet her dad. Some people can probably dress really strangely and talk about how they went to clown school for college and if they’re lucky one dad in a hundred will really click with that dude and see that beyond all that crazy shit, he’s actually a good boyfriend. But smart guys probably dress nice, don’t talk about stupid shit (even if it’s true), and try to convince that dad that they’re not an idiot and worthy of their daughter’s affection. You want to be impressive to studios because you’re a good writer, not because you wrote a really weird, attention-grabbing thing that no one will ever be able to make.
And I know there are dozens of exceptions to the rule every year. Those are almost always exceptions because those writers are just that good (and almost all of the time are built around really strong actor-baity characters, for what it’s worth). But as a former script reader, I can tell you it’s a very small percentage of “sample” scripts that go out and make that kind of splash, and as a reader, you stop reading the scripts that are clearly not commercially viable and not written by a genius much faster than you would a terribly written but very commercial spec.
I think if you’re writing something that’s not necessarily commercial, then don’t refer to it as a spec. That’s probably for you to direct, or your agents to bust their balls trying to package on the fringes of the industry. And of course those are often the best movies lately. I happily write both, and we would send that more easily commercial scripts out around the town, and try to package the others. It’s an increasingly tricky needle to thread.
Scott: How much time do you spend in prep-writing and which of the aspects of prep do you tend to devote the most time and focus to?
Brian: If it was a spec, or now just ideas that I hope to get a chance to direct, I’ll sit on them for as long as I can until they feel cooked. I loathe outlining and like to find my way once I start writing, but by the time I start writing I usually will have had a good six months plus of just thinking about these characters, where I assume they’ll end up and what obstacles they’ll find along the way. It’s really just an internal thought process. I almost never even mention something out loud to anyone until I actually start writing it after all that time.
Scott: How do you go about developing your characters?
Brian: I find that by starting with theme, you instantly gravitate towards a character who is almost at an opposite place to deal with that theme, and then throw them into the movie and see what happens. Just by doing that, you have an interesting character who has a big obstacle to overcome, and it becomes really fun fleshing them out and figuring out the nuts and bolts of why they’d be the way they are. Lately I’ve been really drawn towards pushing character as far as it can go, to the point where they’re barely recognizable as human, and figuring out how to relate and understand that character. I think I’m just hungrier as a writer to see what I can do, especially with character.
Scott: What about dialogue? How do you go about finding your characters’ voices?
Brian: I had a teacher in college that really hated my dialogue, and I think all my classmates did too, and I think they all did because it was crap. I can’t remember learning any tricks to writing better dialogue aside from just writing a lot of scripts and getting better at it. Besides structure, dialogue is probably the writing muscle that you can work out the most by writing as much as possible. Eventually you should understand, “would this character say that? And if they would, would they ever say it like that?” It doesn’t ever have to be flashy dialogue, but it does need to be truthful.
Scott: How would you define theme? How important is it? Do you start with themes or do they arise in the context of developing and writing the story?
Brian: I almost always start with the theme. I can’t even really think of a situation where I didn’t (if it was an original). Usually it’s a theme I want to explore because it’s really locked into my head as a person, as something I’m going through or struggling or interested with, so even if I throw out the characters or genre surrounding that theme a dozen times, the theme stays intact because it’s an itch I need to scratch. I think theme is deathly important. I read a lot of scripts and watch a lot of movies where I couldn’t tell you what it was really saying beyond a couple of interesting characters doing something interesting. Which is fine sometimes, but it always feels a little surface level to me. I just saw a movie that I’m sure is going to get nominated for a buttload of Oscars that I’m almost positive isn’t about anything thematically, so I’m probably definitely wrong.
Scott: What do you think about when writing a scene? What are your goals?
Brian: Not to be too blunt about it, but just that it’s not boring. If “Save the Cat” is a religion, then I’m an atheist. I don’t really believe that certain scenes need to be in certain places or last a certain amount of time. I think there are general areas where your acts should break down, and I think most of my scripts naturally have three distinct acts, be they location or event based. So for the scenes, I’ll let them last for as long or as short as I need based on really the boredom factor. If I’m getting bored writing it, it’s either not working or I’m over-doing and trying to be clever and impressive. Following my main character through the scene almost always helps, figuring out what he/she is either doing or what is being done to them and how they can get out of it, and then moving on.
Tomorrow in Part 6, Brian shares some thoughts about breaking into the business as a writer.
For Part 1 of the interview, go here.
Part 2, here.
Part 3, here.
Part 4, here.
Brian is repped by Gersh and Circle of Confusion.
Twitter: @BrianDuffield.
Instagram: http://instagram.com/briancduffield.
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