“Screenwriters Talk Up, The Hurt Locker, Precious, Up in the Air, Star Trek”

Anne Thompson with this feature:

Every writer on this year’s annual Santa Barbara Film Festival “It Starts with a Script” panel wrote a screenplay that was personal, on some level — even Up writer-director Pete Docter and Star Trek‘s Alex Kurtzman. And they all mixed up their genres, too.

Docter and his Pixar co-writers Bob Petersen and Tom McCarthy wrote “a coming-of-old story,” or “an action adventure starring an old man.”

Kurtzman and co-writer Roberto Orci wrote “a sci-fi brother story.”

It’s Complicated writer-director Nancy Meyers wrote a “relationship comedy.”

(500) Days of Summer‘s Scott Neustadter and co-writer Michael H. Weber wrote “a coming-of-age story masquerading as a romantic comedy.”

Precious‘s Geoffrey Fletcher wrote a “coming-of-age story” that “transcends” that genre, he said.

The Hurt Locker‘s Mark Boal wrote “a war film. My brother described it as a cowboy rock-and-roll movie. I’ll take that. It fits the description.”

For Up in the Air, Jason Reitman doesn’t accept romantic comedy. “It’s about a guy who fires people for a living. Romance is a technique, and it’s one of the techniques we each have in our bag. I think of genre as one of the techniques that you use, and if you use multiple techniques in your film, you’re bound to make something more original rather than just following the genre curve.”

This is a great time of year to be a student of screenwriting because you get remarkable forums like this one, writers talking about their on movies, but also offering opinions on each other’s work. Articles like this carry gems — how about Reitman’s quote about not following the “genre curve” — so it pays to pay attention. 

Speaking of Reitman, here’s a sound bite from him at the SBIFF:

http://www.youtube.com/v/GXkPc3RIExo&hl=en_US&fs=1&