Q&A: Tom Benedek, Part 4
We continue our Q&A with screenwriter Tom Benedek, a co-founding partner of Screenwriting Master Class:
Your interests go beyond screenwriting. Could you talk about some of the TV projects you’ve written?
I have written a pair of one hour pilots for CBS. And one show for Nickelodeon. Late last year, as I was starting to write a spec feature script, I finally began watching The Wire. It had its impact. I decided to put aside the feature and develop series ideas in 2010. Obviously there is a lot of energy and excitement in TV these days.
I have been approaching my pilot projects very thoroughly. It is interesting to try to track out the long terms journeys of all the characters, instead of writing to a third act resolution. It forces a deeper character exploration. For me, working in a different format has invigorated me creatively.
I also decided to develop everything more thoroughly before I went to any meetings. There will always be unanswered questions in a pitch. But I have been trying to anticipate most of them. That doesn’t mean I have all the answers or tell them everything I have written. It just means that I have chosen to do all that extra work for myself, to justify the merit of the project as a long term episodic series in my own mind. It also makes me write and plan the story further. It’s hard work. But I have been enjoying this process.
Could you tell us about your art project “Shot by the Writer?” How do words and paper photographic essays like that interface with your screenwriting?
After twenty years of writing and rewriting screenplays professionally, the question became “how would I break out of the movie industry?” I had this storage system in my garage — 3–4 file boxes of drafts, research materials for each project.
34 jobs later — all the storage shelves were filled, with many more boxes piled in front of those original shelves. I felt a need for a reorganization literally and figuratively.
I wanted to commemorate all those jobs, all the projects I had worked on that hadn’t gotten made into films, scripts that I no longer controlled in anyway and would never have the chance to work on again if by some chance they ever saw the light of day.
I decided I would take a draft of the most hopeless writing assignment I had worked on and bronze it like a baby show for the shelf in my office. Then I had this vision of the bronzed script draft riddled with bullet holes. And for some reason, I began trying to figure out how to actually make one of those.
This art project became a way to recover, to rechannel, to reform the creative energy that I had placed with great dedication in all these jobs in the studio system. I was never going to get that energy back. All those creative works were locked inside the system. would never have the opportunity to work on those projects again. and no one would ever see this work. So by shooting these scripts myself — with a gun — and photographing them with complete control and great care. As a result, I was able to recover this energy, to fix this work under my auspices again in a different form. And this journey of discovery of the artistic process invigorated me creatively, given me a new path in the arts, and enabled me to begin writing with a much fresher perspective. This turned into SHOT BY THE WRITER, a conceptual art project consisting of one script from each of the 21 jobs I had worked on that I know longer owned or controlled that were not my original work.
(NOTE: Visit TOMBENEDEK.COM to take a look at this work and other photography projects of mine.)
I wanted to cast a bronze of each of the scripts, but eventually began working with a large format camera to photograph each of the scripts. And I only made bronze sculptures of 5. The appearance of the words on paper shot with bullets was so compelling to look at, that it was suggested that I photograph them. And I really enjoyed getting back into photography, working on the technical aspects I had studied earlier in cinematography to create that project. I never knew whether I would get to show the project anywhere, but I ended up having a gallery show in LA. Then a second one. And it has been a very successful project for me — very fulfilling.
It led to another series of words and paper photographs, HEATED WORDS. Pen USA, the writers rights organization, asked me to take photographs of a set of novels on fire, making a statement against the banning of books, for a reading from banned books that they were doing. That project became another gallery show eventually. I completed a third words and paper series — HALF THE STORY.
And now I am working on a new project –
TORTURED NARRATIVE — manipulating volumes of my own writing again — my novel, PELOPENESIA — about a producer, a screenwriter and a script — which is being published next year.
Having this creative practice which I work on at my own pace and completely control — has enabled me to return to the collaborative work of screenwriting with a fresh perspective.
Here is a photo of Tom with one of his “Shot By The Writer” scripts:
Tomorrow more from Tom including how he looks at teaching the craft of screenwriting.
Tom Benedek has written screenplays for Robert Zemeckis, Lawerence Kasdan, Lili Fini Zanuck and Richard Zanuck, David Brown, Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese, Sydney Pollack, Richard Rush, Harold Ramis, Lauren Schuler Donner and Richard Donner, Ray Stark, Brian Grazer, Working Title, Jersey Title, Jersey Film, Chris Blackwell and many others. He wrote the screenplay for Cocoon, Free Willy and other films.
He is a member of the Writers’ Guild of America, West and the Writers’ Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He teaches screenwriting at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts and at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor where he is a James Gindin Visiting Artist. Tom is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst where he received a Bachelor’s Degree with Individual Concentration in Film.
Comment Archive