Interviews: Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon
Screenwriters Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon were on NPR this AM, promoting their new book “Writing Movies for Fun and Profit: How We Made a Billion Dollars at the Box Office and You Can, Too!” Their movie credits include The Pacifier and Night at the Museum. Here is an excerpt of their conversation with Renee Montagne:
Screenwriters and comedians Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon are out with a new guide for hopeful screenwriters: “Writing Movies for Fun and Profit: How We Made a Billion Dollars at the Box Office and You Can, Too!” They talk to Renee Montagne about their book.
Mr. GARANT: What people need to embrace and accept, if you’re going to be a writer in Hollywood, is that every single movie has the exact same structure, exactly, whether it’s “Die Hard” or “Night at the Museum.” “Die Hard,” the first 10 pages you’re introducing all of the facts. You’re meeting the guy, you’re getting him to the building, you get them stuck in the building. He stuck in the building by terrorist.
“Night at the Museum,” you meet a guy, he’s having trouble with his marriage.
Mr. LENNON: He’s down on his luck.
Mr. GARANT: And you get him stuck in a museum and by the fact that he can’t leave his kid and let his kid down and be unemployed again.
Mr. LENNON: Ah, it puts the good guys in over his head in a situation exactly like “Die Hard.”
Mr. GARANT: It’s a dinosaur instead of a terrorist, but the structure is exactly the same. And at the end, Larry Daley of “Night at the Museum” punches Dick Van Dyke off of a stagecoach, instead of “Die Hard” John McClane punching Hans Gruber off of the building.
They’re not similar. They’re exactly the same. And if you pick “Casablanca” or the “Matrix” and turn to page 10, that’s when he either gets the letters of transit from Peter Lorre. Or that’s when he’s: You must help me. You must help me, Rick.
Mr. GARANT: That’s when Trinity tells him there is a matrix and you’re inside it, and you need to come with us or you’re going to die.
But the problem that a lot of young screenwriters have — and by that, I mean the baristas at Starbucks — is that they are struggling because they think formula is a bad word…
Mr. LENNON: Is a bad thing.
Mr. GARANT: Formula is really not. I think, like the other is the writer is God is something of a kind of imply when they teach you screenwriting. And that’s the…
Mr. LENNON: Oh dear, Lord. No.
Mr. GARANT: …the opposite of the truth: the writer is a doormat. Like and I would say that, for me, a very inspirational way to learn that is if you buy the Blu-Ray of “Casablanca,” there’s a behind the scenes where they interview the teams of writers. And there are teams of writers who wrote “Casablanca.” And so that movie was theoretically a hot mess. They were rewriting it while they were shooting. Jack Warner fired tons and tons of people, and it’s brilliant.
It’s — movies are a team effort. Like that’s movies. It’s not — it’s — we’re not gazing out the window at the moor, writing poetry. You’re working for a living.
For the entire audio interview, go here.
There’s also an interview with the writers in Vanity Fair. An excerpt:
Screenwriting books are like blind dates — whenever you get bored and decide to give one a try, you immediately wish you had your money back. Successful screenwriters are generally too busy writing movies to provide the insider’s view of Tinseltown that you, the would-be screenwriter, need.
Enter comedians Tom Lennon and Ben Garant of Reno 911 and The State, two ridiculously well-paid screenwriters who, for their own reasons, are willing to indulge you. Lennon and Garant, who sell pitches, “punch up” studio scripts, and engage in the endless musical chairs of rewriting, recently published a book, Writing Movies for Fun and Profit, that is both informative and funny. It’s a tonic for anyone who’s ever bemoaned the failings of the studio system, or wanted a place at its table. We sat down in Beverly Hills to talk about the book, the craft of screenwriting, and the joys of entertaining idiots.
John Lopez: Your book may be the first of its kind that’s actually worth reading. It’s not only insightful — it’s hilarious.
Tom Lennon: After 12 years in movie-writing, the only thing we’ve ever written that got even one good review is this book about all the movies we write that everyone hates. I’m trying to think of a way that we can sell the film rights to this book. Then we can turn this into something that will get terrible reviews.
Why are most screenwriting books so bad?
Ben Garant: I think they try to teach you what you can’t learn from a book, which is how to write. You have to learn that by practice and learning and living. The knowledge in here is: “How do you start?”; “What do you do in a room with an executive?”
Tom: “What will a successful pitch look like?” Most of the guys who write those other books have never been in the president of a studio’s office. At first people ask, “Why has no busy, working screenwriter ever written a book like this?” The answer is: “Why would you take time off screenwriting to do this?”
Why did you?
Tom: We actually started it during the writers’ strike. We were like, We can’t write, so why don’t we start jotting notes about these things? Next thing we know, our agent called us and said, “Bidding war!”
Ben: Then they told us the numbers; our next thought was: Should we still do this?
Tom: Short version: if your options are write books or write movies — Oh, my God, write movies! Unless you’re writing The DaVinci Code.
— —
You do seem to enjoy taking other screenwriting books to task. One of your chapters is called “Structure, or Robert McKee Can Suck It.”
Ben: He does a three-day seminar that’s 900 bucks. We do it in two pages.
Tom: He really does charge in the ballpark of $875. Then he yells at you for a couple of days down by the airport. Here’s my question to Robert McKee: if you can write screenplays, why on Earth are you at the airport Marriott? Once you’ve sold a bunch of movies, you never have to go to an airport Marriott again.
For the rest of the interview, go here.
HT to @writerjoshjames for the link.