Q&A: Franklin Leonard
One year ago, Go Into The Story became the official Screenwriting Blog of the Black List. As part of the celebration this week, Franklin Leonard kindly offered to answer some questions, many provided by GITS readers. Today more questions:
What are the most important things that you find draw you into a script? Is it the idea? The writing? Commercial viability? Or is it a combination of all of the above.
This largely depends on why I’m reading the script. If it’s a sample (a script I’m reading to familiarize myself with a new author or a new direction in an author’s work), the most important thing is the writing. If I’m considering it as something for my employer to produce, then I’m reading to find out whether this screenplay represents a blueprint for a movie consistent with my employer’s brand that can be made and marketed at a price where the best version of it can reasonably expect to turn a profit.
What’s your advice to a writer with some modest success in film/TV in their home country, looking to parlay that into a Hollywood career? Is it better to wait for something I’m involved with in the UK to get some attention in the US (which, of course, might never happen) — or just turn up with a couple of good scripts and some stuff under my belt that the execs probably won’t have seen?
I think “both” is a legitimate answer. If you’ve got modest success in your home country, keep doing what you’re doing, especially if it’s keeping the lights on and allowing you to continue to write other scripts in your spare time. And continue to write other scripts. Have your local agent do their best to get your work to the States (there’s always a ton of interest here in UK screenwriters.) Oh, and upload your work to the new Black List… I’m getting ahead of myself. Keep watching this space.
What makes a Romantic Comedy really stand out from the rest that you read?
I love this question, because I have a soft spot for the genre, and it’s one that seems to be wilting over time. Romantic comedies are best when they do at least one of these three things:
1. Do something different with the girl meets boy, girl and boy get together, girl and boy fall apart, girl and boy get getogether dynamic than has ever been done before. Think Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Charlie Kaufman might bristle its inclusion in the genre, but, oh well.)
2. Illuminate some major truth about love and human courting that we either take for granted or have never really considered. No small task.
3. Write compelling, interesting characters who the audience will want to find love with each other, even before the characters realize it. Write realistic obstacles to that love that seem insurmountable. Have them overcome those obstacles in a manner that makes us believe that they’ve earned the happiness they will find in that relationship and that that happiness will last forever. Romantic comedies are, after all, adult fairy tales about love.
What is the one thing you wish more writers knew about Hollywood and/or the business of making movies?
I think most writers know it, but I’m not sure it’s enough of a focus: it is a business. Making movies — at least in Hollywood — is probably the most capital intensive art form there is. If you want to make a movie, someone has to put up the money to make it, and whoever that is, unless they’re incredibly generous, is going to want to see that money at some point down the road, ideally with some extra thrown in. If you’re going to write a script that you want to see turned into a movie, you have to believe that it’s a good script and a good investment.
Thanks to Franklin for taking time this week to answer some of your questions!
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