Screenwriter’s Roundtable, Part 2: Chris Borrelli, F. Scott Frazier, Jeremiah Friedman, Nick Palmer, Justin Rhodes, Greg Russo, John Swetnam
A special treat this week on GITS as each day I will be posting excerpts from a screenwriter’s roundtable I did with some of the best and hottest young screenwriters in Hollywood: Chris Borrelli, F. Scott Frazier, Justin Rhodes, Greg Russo, John Swetnam and the writing duo Jeremiah Friedman & Nick Palmer. How good are they? Over the last 2 years, they have combined to sell 12 spec scripts, and that doesn’t include the numerous writing assignments they have landed or original pitches they have set up.
Here are the 12 spec scripts they have sold:
Chris Borrelli: “The Vatican Tapes” [Black List 2009], “Wake”, “Sad Jack”.
F. Scott Frazier: “The Numbers Station”, “Line of Sight” [Black List 2011], “Autobahn”, and a fourth project as yet unannounced.
Jeremiah Friedman & Nick Palmer: “Family Getaway” [Black List 2010].
Justin Rhodes: “Second Sun”.
Greg Russo: “Down”, “Autobahn”.
John Swetnam: “Evidence”, “Category Six”.
Our conversation covered many topics and is a unique opportunity to learn what it’s like to go from aspiring to professional screenwriter. Beyond their insights into the craft, I’m sure you will be inspired by their passion for what they do, their love of movies, and just in general how much fun they are.
Screenwriter’s Roundtable: Part 2
SM: How do you know when you have one of those great story concepts? Somebody like Justin, you wrote “Second Sun”, sold that to Warner Brothers. Did you know, immediately when you hit on that idea, it was a great concept, had the potential to be a movie?
Justin: My idea drawer is filled with hundreds of half thought out things that are terrible and suck and should never be made into anything. The ideas that end up being good are the ones that I keep looking at and they stay in my list of candidates for “Maybe this is a good idea.” If after six months of looking at my list of what I think are my best ideas and it’s still on the list? That’s kind of when it starts to survive. So for me the litmus test is just that it still sounds good after a long period of time. Because most of the ideas that I get really excited about, two weeks later I see why it shouldn’t be a film.
John: I think the first spec that you sell, that idea is probably the hardest one to judge, but once you get that one out of the way and you’re really entrenched in the town, taking meetings, and you start to get a real pulse of what people respond to, what people are looking for, that’s when it becomes a little easier. I’ll pitch a few little things to people and I can tell now a lot better what makes a movie, just because I’ve sat in rooms with so many people and have taken their pulse.
SM: John, is that an intuitive thing at this point or are there actual schematics or elements that you’ve learned over time where you feel like, oh, that makes this a good idea, that makes this a bad idea.
John: I’ve learned a lot of stuff. I worked in film marketing, so there are those kinds of things that I think about. I try to think as a producer and a studio executive in those ways, but at a certain point it does become instinct. And I think what I told you that one time… and this is my litmus test… can you honestly see your movie opening this weekend on three thousand screens? If you can answer that completely honestly and then be able to flesh that out into, what does that mean in terms of a poster, a trailer, an actor, if you can honestly believe that and see it in your head, at a certain point you just have to trust yourself. If you really can see that, then I feel like that’s when I have something. When I can just imagine it going to play at the Arclight on Friday and seeing my poster, and being there when the movie starts. That’s sort of how I test my own ideas, anyway.
Scott: For me, the idea of self-honesty is really interesting and it’s one of these things that no one really talks about. You learn how to compose a scene and you learn how to write dialogue and put together character arcs, but this idea of being actually honest with ourselves about what works and what doesn’t from the macro all the way down to the micro I think is one of those tools that separates the people who sell stuff versus the people who don’t. You have to be honest with yourself, you have to maintain that objectivity. Not in the middle of writing the script, but definitely before and afterwards, like John’s saying, you have to be able to honestly say to yourself, can I see this up on a big screen. Do I see this playing in a movie theater in Los Angeles and Arkansas and New York?
SM: Chris, you have an interesting background because you actually worked in development and so this idea of whether a concept is good or not, whether it feels like a movie… does that fit with your approach of assessing story concepts as well?
Chris: When I was a buyer for four years, or a DOD or whatever, I read two scripts a day or more and it definitely helped to do that much reading. Now, I am hopefully very self-honest as well. I think Frazier made a really good point just then. When you hand something to someone to read, a friend of yours, you’re getting feedback, or even when a spec is sent out, if someone doesn’t respond to it, it’s not that you’re not a good writer, it’s that they didn’t respond to the emotion of it. It’s nothing personal. And the best thing you can do beforehand is to try and be that hard on yourself. I think the same way as these guys do. The one word for me is emotion. What’s the emotional reaction I’m going for, what do I want the audience to feel? I’ve done horror, I’ve done action, and there are plenty of genres I stay away from, but whatever that genre is, does it deliver within that genre? Does it give people what they want, maybe not in the most expected way, which is the sign of a really good film I feel, but it’s been helpful just to see it from different angles.
SM: I recently did an interview with Mary Coleman, who is the head of the story department at Pixar. And she said something, Chris, very much like what you’re saying. She said they literally will go in and pitch three ideas to John Lasseter [Chief Creative Officer, Pixar]. Everybody on the creative team is expected to deliver three ideas to John on a semi-regular basis and he’ll piece out whether they work or not, but that’s one of the first criteria: What is the point of emotional connection that the audience is going to find with this story? Do the rest of you feel that’s as important when you’re sourcing through your ideas that you’re either going to work an assignment or you’re going to pitch or you’re going to spec?
Greg: For me, it really comes down to being a fan of these kinds of films. I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m a fan of the genre I write in. I try to watch everything, have been for years, so I know what’s out there and I kind of have a taste for what excites me. So I rely on my own knowledge and enthusiasm for the genre that I write in. And hope that when I come up with an idea or someone brings me an idea that I can honestly say, you know what, that’s something I haven’t seen before, which would hopefully be something that you — the collective you, the audience you — hasn’t seen before either. And that excites me.
SM: So it’s like you’re making a translation. If I get excited about this, I’m passionate about this, then there’s a good chance the audience, they’ll be excited about it.
Greg: Absolutely. Hopefully they can see it from the page to the screen. Again, there are so many targets you have to hit. It’s not just will it play in a movie or can you see your poster, it’s also would I want to buy a ticket if I was going. At the end of the day, I need to be excited about the idea enough to sit there and write the script, to spend weeks with these characters and their story. I think that’s one of the biggest tricks. You’ve got to be excited or else you’re wasting your time. And it’s going to affect everything, including the finished film.
Justin: Going back to this idea of emotion, I might even break concept down as something that has two component parts: the idea, or the conceptual… oh, it’s a bus, it gets attacked or something, the plot side… then the emotional POV or the emotional window into it. And those can be different and divorced and sometimes remarried and you can find different points of view back into it. Do you want to do War of the Worlds from the point of view of the soldiers, or is it War of the Worlds from the point of view of the guy on the ground? You have the concept and the emotional window into it, which to me are discrete entities, but usually it’s the second one that invigorates the first one because the first one is generally more generic.
Scott: I would agree. I’m in the middle of working on a spec and I got the first draft done and the plot and the emotion, they were not tying together very well. And it was one of these things where I knew what was going on, so much so that while I have the plot, the throughlines, for my rewrite, it’s completely changing up the entire core concept of who the main character is and what he’s going through. And it’s not like you can suddenly mash the two together, it’s that in the first draft I was literally missing the whole point of the movie myself, and in going back and rewriting it, I’ve been able to find it again.
Justin: I might jump in to say that your particular emotional attachment to it actually is your point of view on the script. The reason this draft is going to be different because you wrote it is because of what part of it interested you specifically. So that emotional reaction in a lot of ways, I would say is everything.
Scott: I’m doing a lot of nodding my head.
John: Yeah, where’s the thumbs-up button, the like button?
Jeremiah: We agree!
[Laughter]
John: I will chime in with this, and this is just something that the more I hang out with writers and talk with writers, I think the one absolute truth is that all of us go about it in a completely different way. We probably all think about the same things at the end, but our sequencing of how we think about things is different, the way we approach story is different — is it concept first, character first — and that’s what makes it fascinating and why I think there’s always going to be room for so many different writers. I’ve sat down with some of you guys and we’re so different in the way we approach it, and that’s what will give us room to have careers because everyone has their own voice or their own sort of thing that they do well. That’s a good thing. I struggle with character a lot, I struggle with really trying to find that emotion. But then I can have Justin rewrite me and that’d be fine, and just sell the concept.
[Laughter]
There are so many lessons to take away from this part of the discussion, but let me offer something in the macro: Notice how self-aware these writers are? About the craft? Their connection to it? They know their strengths and their weaknesses. They know as soon as they hear a story concept to start working it from different angles. They know enough about themselves as writers to make really tough choices… like when to quit a project.
This is an important consideration because when you break into the business and your day-to-day ritual is sorting through a variety of options in terms of writing projects, whether an original spec, working with a producer to crack and pitch a story, or a possible writing assignment, you need to be aware of who you are as a writer. Yes, you want that money, but can you deliver the goods? Is it really a strong story idea or are you putting a sheen on it because of your overriding desire to make it a project you want to write?
Don’t get me wrong: Sometimes you just have to say “yes”, even to crap projects. But if you do, perhaps especially then, you must be aware of what you can bring to the table because focusing on those strengths are going to be what enables you to get through that project and bring something unique to it.
Each day for this series, I’m going to highlight one of the writers. Today: F. Scott Frazier.
Scott Frazier’s first movie The Numbers Station just finished filming with John Cusack and Malin Ackerman starring, Kasper Barfoed directing, and the Furst Brothers producing. His spec script “Autobahn” sold to Between the Eyes Productions, and is set to go into production later this year. He sold his spec script “Line Of Sight” to Warner Bros. with Ben Affleck attached to star, direct, and produce along with Joel Silver. He recently sold a pitch for an Untitled Alien Invasion to Universal, with Chris Morgan and Strike Entertainment producing. He lives with his wife as far north as you can possibly get while still remaining within the Los Angeles county limit.
You may follow Scott on Twitter: @ScreenWritten.
For Part 1 of the roundtable discussion, go here.
Tomorrow: Part 3 of this exclusive screenwriter’s roundtable.
Please take time to leave a reply with your thoughts and observations, and while you’re there thank these writers for taking time out of their busy schedules to do this roundtable for GITS readers and the wider online screenwriting community.
Special thanks to Nate Winslow: Future Super Producer for his creative support with this project. Follow Nate on Twitter: @nate_winslow.
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