Screenwriters Roundtable, Part 3: Chris Borrelli, F. Scott Frazier, Chris McCoy, Justin Rhodes, Greg Russo, John Swetnam
A special treat this week as I will be posting excerpts from a screenwriter’s roundtable I did with a group of talented Hollywood screenwriters: Chris Borrelli, F. Scott Frazier, Chris McCoy, Justin Rhodes, Greg Russo, and John Swetnam. How good are they? Between them, they have sold more than a dozen spec scripts and have multiple original screenplays on the Black List.
This is the third GITS screenwriters roundtable, the first two of which you can read here and here. Hopefully this will continue as an annual event as it’s a great way to take the pulse of what’s happening in the screenwriting universe, track the careers of these talented writers, and benefit from the many insights into the craft they share.
Here is Part 3:
Scott: I remember a producer telling me once, he said it’s so hard to make a movie, it’s like a space shuttle launch. A million things can go wrong.
We’ve mentioned a few of them, directors, actors dropping out. What are some of those key elements that can happen in a scripted project that cause the project to go south?
F. Scott Frazier: I can give you an example on Numbers Station, which happened before we actually filmed. They were set to film about four months or so before. John Cusack was in the movie. He had a couple other movies coming up, and Numbers Station was going to be his movie, and then he was going to roll into those next two movies right after it.
And what happened was this was the Monday that, I can’t remember, was it I think the Federal Reserve or one of the banks downgraded the dollar. This was in the end of 2011. In that happening, in the dollar getting downgraded, the financier lost their gap financing, and the movie just completely fell apart.
And then John Cusack, they couldn’t get the movie together. John Cusack had two other movies to do, and so he went and did them. Luckily, the movie ended up getting made after those two went. It’s just like a roll of a thousand dice, and if any one of them comes up bad, you get screwed.
Greg Russo: For me, it’s definitely been competing projects. Similar concepts pop up, that can sink the project incredibly fast in development. I remember the first script that I had sold and set up was a project called “Down” that took place in an elevator.
We were budgeted at seven million, trying to shoot in Puerto Rico. We had our director and everything. But there was another elevator movie that was currently shooting when we were scouting ours. It absolutely killed everything.
You just never know.
Justin Rhodes: Something kind of strange that can happen is sometimes the creative department at a studio and the marketing department are not necessarily moving in sync. You can end up in a situation where all the creatives say we’re ready to go, and then some marketing guy suddenly will get concerned about how it’ll do in foreign or something else like that.
Certain things that were working for everybody all the way along or whatnot suddenly get revisited. Even within the same studio, there are people that are not a part of the process that get added on later.
F. Scott Frazier: This definitely didn’t happen to me earlier this year, but an actor going to rehab or something like that.
Chris McCoy: Or sometimes a director’s attached to one of your things, and then something comes out, and they end up in movie jail. It just affects every project that they’re involved with.
F. Scott Frazier: Oh, yeah, I had a pitch with a director this year. We were waiting for his movie to come out. The movie didn’t do well, and now we have this pitch that we worked on for three months, and it’s just kind of sitting there. Nobody’ll take the meeting.
Scott: I’m reminded of that quote. I think it’s Charlton Heston. He said the problem with movies as art is that they’re commerce. How much do you all think about the business of screenwriting, the business of making movies, versus the more, I guess, pure creative aspect of crafting a story?
F. Scott Frazier: I tend not to think about it. Like Borrelli said, it’s never personal. I think when that sort of thing happens, that’s the business side. As far as writing, I’m definitely thinking about writing a script for myself to direct.
I’m trying to figure out what’s a cool movie that I can do for five million dollars or even a smaller budget. I think about it in that regard, but not when things happen. You can’t take it personally.
Chris Borrelli: For me, I know of no better way to do the system. I think it’s strange we don’t have a middle class of movies. We have 20 million, 30 million and under, and then it seems 100 million and over. People are terrified, from my experience, to make the 50‑60 million dollar movie because they can really lose their shirts on that, where these giant behemoth movies, they have ways of always recouping at least some of it.
Chris McCoy: I feel like that extends to the 30s, too. I would say that there’s a class of under 15, and then over 90. It seems like that 30‑40 number, people get really freaked out about, too.
John Swetnam: Yeah.
Scott: You’ve got the six major studios, and so any of those high budget projects, that’s basically the only place those can go. Then the lower budgeted things open it up to all these financiers. Is that actually an active part of your thinking when you’re taking on projects?
John Swetnam: For me, it’s just my business model. I think a lot about the business. I mean, a lot. With my company, the guy that is my vice president comes from foreign sales. This whole year has been about learning that process.
To me, the business side of it, thinking about demographics and foreign co-productions and tax incentives and all that stuff, is what you have to do. I won’t even take a pitch out unless I’ve got every answer in my head about all of those questions.
For me, the way I’ve always been, and again, this might just be me own thing, but even when I wrote Evidence, it was all about putting myself in a box. I built a box that I thought was a very sound business box. I thought about it as if it was my own money, and how am I going to make money.
At the end of the line, everything we’re talking about, it always comes down to that. Whether we like it or not, that’s what it comes down to. Every project gets derailed, at its core, because of money. Whether they think they’ll make money or they won’t make money or they can’t get the money.
So I tend to really think about that stuff up front because somebody else is going to think about it along the line. Some marketing guy, some bank, some financier, they’re going to ask all those questions anyway, so I try to ask them first and have the answers, put myself in this box, and then once I feel really comfortable with that box in terms of concept, budget, all that kind of stuff, then I take it all off, and I get to play as a writer. For me, it’s actually more fun because it’s almost like a puzzle, so that I like to get be really, really creative within the box that I’ve built.
I guess especially from my production company, again, you have to think about the money and how can you get the money, and how can you make money for the people that are giving you the money. It’s just, in my mind, sort of how it works, and I’m not going to fight it.
Again, I don’t take any of it personally. It’s about trying to be really, really smart in my decision-making. I don’t want to spend two years developing something that will never get made. I’ve done that. I spent eight years doing that. That’s my philosophy, but maybe that’s just me.
Chris McCoy: I had coffee with Frazier about a year ago. I haven’t seen him in a while. I remember talking about this with you, Scott, where I feel like because the foreign element is so significant, I feel like from now on, every one of my scripts is going to be titled “Istanbul” or “Berlin”.
[laughter]
If you’re doing anything that’s going to require these foreign sales, they really want to know very clearly. They want to have that foreign element delineated for them clearly up front it seems.
Chris Borrelli: Even though we’re at the beginning of it, we’ve seen the business change with so many films aimed at foreign and how it’s, in some ways, perhaps affected comedy and other parts of film.
I’m very encouraged that we may be getting to the point where more and more people around the world see our movies. I want to add to it, I don’t think we can always blame people here in this country. Fewer and fewer people that I know are seeing movies in theaters.
I’m glad there’s this huge foreign outreach, and maybe we’ll get to the point where six or seven billion people have the potential to see something we write. In some ways, I’m encouraged by the way the business is heading, although I think there’s some growing pains.
F. Scott Frazier: I always, I’ll read comments on movie review sites and that sort of thing of people complaining that all the movies that are coming out are all the same. It wasn’t that long ago that the studios were releasing 60 million dollar adult thrillers and adult romances and adult dramas, and we as a collective audience just stopped seeing them in the theater.
I don’t necessarily know it’s a studio’s fault that they only want to release The Avengers or they only want to release these big tentpole movies, because that’s what we’re going and seeing in the theater. It’s reactionary, it’s not like a specific, let’s just stop making movies for grown‑ups. We just stopped going and seeing them.
Greg Russo: If I could translate just a bit of advice for anybody that might be reading this, I would say if you’re going to write something to break in, you probably want to target that under 15 million range, something that has the potential to be read by as many buyers as possible.
You want The Purge, you know? I was so impressed with that movie, both conceptually and how well it performed. It’s just the perfect high concept, delivered at a price point that people want to make movies at right now. So that would be the target range that I would say to go for.
Scott: About this foreign audience angle, before we jump off that, Greg for “It Takes a Thief,” was there much awareness of that, consciously saying OK, we want to target a foreign audience?
Greg Russo: I think it’s just practical moviemaking. When you’re talking about films that will incur large budgets, you want to make sure that you open up your audience as much as possible. “Thief” will no doubt be a higher budgeted film, and action and espionage tend to travel well so that always helps. But it’s not an accident that the movie features locations around the globe, especially upswing movie markets. (BRIC) — Brazil, Russia, India, China.
All of the bigger movies I’ve worked on, almost every one of them has a set piece that’s international or some kind of major international component. As a writer, you always want to be aware of your marketplace and write accordingly.
Scott: Justin, “The Breach,” that’s set in Alaska, is that right?
Justin Rhodes: It’s Alaska, Zurich, Wyoming. It’s kind of a global movie.
Scott: Do you think that was part of the appeal from that project, was the foreign component?
Justin Rhodes: Maybe. If so, it’s all above my pay grade. In terms of conscious foreign concerns I know about, there were a couple spots in the book that positioned some off-screen violence happening between the US and China, and we had to change it to Russia to avoid the risk of potentially upsetting Chinese markets.
Scott: This point Greg made, this actually jumps to a question that a reader had. I want to get your reactions to it. Do you see any value in an unknown writer writing a big budget, high-concept spec, or should one stick with a lower-budget picture?
Greg was suggesting that, as a piece of advice, aim for that high-concept 15 million and under budget. Would anybody disagree with that?
F. Scott Frazier: I think there’s always going to be market for those big spec scripts, even if it’s a matter of the movie never getting made, but it’s your calling card script. There are so many writers that are getting their foot in the door with really, really big scripts.
I don’t think that it’s ever a waste, I just think that you have to be realistic, that it’s the kind of script that leads to more jobs than necessarily ever gets made.
Chris McCoy: Yeah, and I think that that first thing is your calling card, like everyone was saying. It should show your voice to the town in a way that you want to be perceived. That first thing is basically going to be your debut album.
It’s going to be you saying to the world, this is what I sound like, this is what I can do. Even if that’s something that’s weird or personal or not necessarily a targeted kind of thing, where it’s a big budget kind of thing, it should just be a story that’s really important to you.
On your first thing, what they’re looking at is the uniqueness of your voice and not necessarily an 80 million dollar movie. Chances are that first thing won’t get made, but if people like it, it’ll get you a ton of meetings. Then things roll from there.
But I don’t think that you should really say ‘I’m going to write a big monster movie’ or something like that because that’s what the studios are buying. I think that that first thing should be something that you care about a lot, that sounds a lot like your brain and is the way that you want your reputation in town to be established.
Chris Borrelli: I would add ‑‑ I think that’s a lot of good advice ‑‑ there’s nothing, nothing like getting a movie made, as far as a calling card, or…and I know that sounds like I’m getting ahead of myself, but that idea of putting a script out there that a lot of people could potentially make and aren’t reading as a sample.
Reading a sample is sort of like a favor to you, some of these producers see it as. I think it is good advice, when possible, to lean toward that 15 and under.
On top of that, I’d say if you’re someone who wants to write giant, giant big movies, I would say to a writer, on a one-on-one level, I would say can you do your giant, giant movie in another way, where I can tell you can do great action?
Can you find a way to do it in that small way? People will read it and know they’re reading somebody who can do giant set pieces, but look, this guy or this girl did it in an apartment or an apartment building, whatever. I think that’s really good advice, and whenever possible, I think your first script, I definitely agree it should be personal, but it would be smart, it’d be a little smarter to do 15 million and under. Keep that in mind.
Scott: Do you think that extends, too, to representatives and to particular managers, that they’re looking for that type of material?
Chris Borrelli: They can blast it out. They can blast it out to a lot more places because there’s a lot more people that can make those movies.
Greg Russo: They’re looking for something they can sell. More buyers equals a better chance at a sale, so it helps you quite a bit.
For Part 1 of the interview, go here.
Part 2, here.
Each day for this series, I’m going to highlight one of the writers. Today: Chris McCoy:
Chris McCoy has had three scripts on the Black List — GET BACK, GOOD KIDS and GOOD LOOKING (Dreamworks). Other projects include R.A. (Dreamworks), LITTLE WHITE LIE (Laika Entertainment), YEAR ABROAD (Strange Weather Films) and GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY (Marvel). His first book SCURVY GOONDA (Knopf) was published in 2009, and his next book THE PROM-GOER’S INTERSTELLAR EXCURSION (Knopf) will be published in 2015. He co-directed the short film THE BICYCLE (Austin Film Festival, Mecal Barcelona, InterFilm Berlin) and is currently directing his debut feature GOOD KIDS (Depth of Field/Voltage Pictures) from his 2011 Black List script, to be released in 2015.
Please take time to leave a reply with your observations and follow-up questions, 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.
On Twitter:
F. Scott Frazier: @ScreenWritten
Chris McCoy: @thatthere
Justin Rhodes: @twopointfour
John Swetnam: @JohnSwetnam
Many thanks to Wendy Cohen for logistical help with the roundtable.
Tomorrow: Part 4 of this exclusive screenwriter’s roundtable.
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