Screenwriters Roundtable (Part 7): Jessica Bendinger, Lindsay Devlin, Stephany Folsom, Liz W. Garcia, Julia Hart, and Lisa Joy
A special treat this week and next as I will be posting excerpts from an extensive screenwriter’s roundtable I did in December 2015 with a group of talented Hollywood screenwriters: Jessica Bendinger, Lindsay Devlin, Stephany Folsom, Liz W. Garcia, Julia Hart, and Lisa Joy.
Here is Part 7:
Scott: I want to be cognizant of time. Wendy, you had a question.
Wendy: Is there a mistake that you may have made early on in your career, or something you’ve learned the hard way, which you could share with aspiring writers to help them avoid a similar challenge?
Jessica: All my ex‑boyfriends dot com.
[laughter]
Scott: OK, avoid bad boyfriends.
Jessica: No, you should have bad relationships. As many as possible, they’re very instructive.
Stephany: A mistake that I made is being polite, nice, or anything like that. Often, it was seen as a lack of confidence or a sense of weakness.
When I was really starting out, I would go into a pitch and I would do everything that I do now but I didn’t go with it with as much as “I’m the only person that can do this. I can do this job, it’ll be great.” I feel like, once again, we live in a fear‑based business and so, you have to make everyone around you feel comfortable and like they’re going to be taken care of and everything’s going to turn out great.
It’s a skill set. A large part of what we do is going into a room and communicating with people.
You have to instill them with a confidence and comfort, and I think that younger me, I would have liked to have been like…lead with confidence, which I do now.
Scott: Yeah, hitting their comfort level. It’s huge.
Stephany: Completely, I feel like mothering, being a mother. I don’t have children yet, but I feel like being a mother is a screenwriter’s job whether you’re a male or a female.
The movie hasn’t been made yet, and it’s in this format where no one is quite sure exactly what it looks like yet and you have to make sure that nobody kills the baby, the script baby, and everybody takes care of the script baby.
Jessica: The diplomacy thing is a big point. Look, not everybody carries the archetype of mediator, or psychologist or diplomat. That’s a learned thing. If you can figure out where you are, that’s a good start. Meaning if you’re not naturally diplomatic, figure out what you’re good at. Maybe you’re a better listener. Or maybe you’re a better at acting like a reporter and asking questions. Maybe you’re a better investigator than empath. Use that completely. Lean in to your investigative skills. That’s better than trying to pretend to be something you’re not. Because you’ll get found out.
I heard an agent say once that if you are a liar, Hollywood will allow you to be a liar if that’s who you are. If you’re not a liar? And you’re faking it? You’ll get found out because everybody hates a faker. It’s really weird.
It’s true that people want you to lean in to your strengths. I’d say find out where you can learn to communicate and connect. Figure out what’s naturally your strength in the room. That’s the hardest thing for writers, that communication and negotiation piece.
We’re worried about writing, delivering and synthesizing different opinions into something coherent. So it’s not like a Frankenstein, or a monster. So it has a smooth finish.
It’s such a narcissistic culture. People need to feel heard and seen and sometimes coddled. I hate to use that verb but let’s be honest. This is a business where Q4 and Q1 are all about self-congratulation. That’s what this business is built around. All the awards!
[laughter]
Jessica: Keep that in mind and learn your diplomacy skills. Writers who become successful producers are master diplomats and relationship nurturers. They can make you feel they are respecting you and implementing notes at the same time.
I’m not that. I’m more direct, Midwestern, “What do you want, let’s do it, this is blunt.” People who like that, like me, but, man, I wish I’d learned how to mediate.
[laughter]
Stephany: Nobody told me that a large part of being a screenwriter, other than all the craft you have to be amazing at, you have to be a little bit of a politician. That was a learning curve for me.
Jessica: Huge.
Lisa: On the subject of diplomacy — there are alas some specific situations where all the diplomacy in the world won’t help… especially when you’re starting off as a screenwriter and as woman and as a minority, you want to be liked. Everybody always agonizes over their own work and over, “Is it good enough? Am I good enough?”
There’s an echo chamber of self doubt and it’s inevitably enhanced by a lot of people out there who are happy to echo that echo chamber…
[laughter]
Lisa: One of the things that can be really dangerous, especially initially when you’re starting out ‑‑ because, frankly, there is sexism in this town and there is all sorts of prejudice and discrimination ‑‑ is that if you start off in the wrong place with the kind of people who will never take you seriously because of who you are, what sex you are, what race you are… you’ll hit a wall.
And the danger is the part of you that wants to make sure that you’re doing a good enough job will try to keep banging against that wall, thinking, “Let me prove to you that I’m good enough… You’ll see, you’ll see.” You start to engage in a debate that, frankly, with certain people, you will never ever win.
You can’t win from within when you’re dealing with people who are inherently biased or sexist or fucked up. You have to find your people. And it’s definitely not me saying, “Give up.” It’s me saying, “Don’t attack that way.”
There are certain times when the battle isn’t lost. It’s just never going to start. They’re just not going to do it. Certain people will never give you the chance. And that’s not your loss. It’s theirs.
For me, one of the greatest parts of this career has been finding my people over the years, finding women and men that I adore, whose talent I admire, and having these relationships with them both professionally and personally where I’m, “Oh, those are my people — my creative community.”
If I go to this meeting and some guy is telling me something totally crazy, I don’t have to worry about where my next meal is coming from because I got these other people — decent, talented people — whom I’d rather work with anyway. It gives you a strength to focus on the real question which is, “Hey, is my script any damn good?” Cuz satisfying your own echo chamber of self doubt is hard enough!
Liz: You’re lucky. That’s a hard thing to find.
Stephany: It’s extremely hard to find. Liz is absolutely right. Finding your type is absolutely important. It’s just finding the right people that will say yes and will help you and will work together to make this visual work of art, which takes a whole team of people to get a TV or a film done.
What Tina Fey said, which I thought was so brilliant, is that someone always has to work for someone else. If that first person says no, maybe the person above them will say yes. Everyone has to answer to somebody else, and it’s just about finding that one person that will say yes to you. I thought that was just fantastic advice.
Liz: All sorts of mistakes. I already talked about my mistake of not concentrating on my craft as much and using screenwriting exclusively as my therapy. The other thing I would say is do not put all your eggs in one basket. A lot of people do this where they’ve got that one script.
They keep rewriting it, and they keep rewriting it or they’ve got the one movie that they’re going to get made, they’re going to get made, they’re going to get made. Don’t stop putting new work out there.
You might love and treasure that one script, but you cannot control when that one script is going to get made or when it’s going to get you an agent or when it’s going to get you a job. You have to keep working on your craft and keep writing and keep writing and keep writing new stuff.
Lindsay: Yes, I totally agree with that.
Jessica: I so agree. As somebody with five pieces of spec material that I’ve worked on over the last few years, this is critical. You have to write stuff for yourself. Especially with all this diplomatic shit we’re talking about.
Stephany: Totally.
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:
Jessica Bendinger: @JBendinger
Lindsay Devlin: @DevlinLindsay
Stephany Folsom: @StephanyFolsom
Liz W. Garcia: @lizwgarcia
Julia Hart: @juliahartowitz
Lisa Joy: @lisajoynolan
For Part 1 of the series, go here.
Part 2, here.
Part 3, here.
Part 4, here.
Part 5, here.
Part 6, here.
Tomorrow: Part 8 of this exclusive screenwriter’s roundtable.