The Business of Screenwriting: Going From Suck to Non-Suck
Screenwriters experience persistent suckitude. The key: Go to non-suck.
As many of you know, I am just this side of being obsessed with Pixar. I thought it was primarily for three reasons: (1) They spend an enormous amount of time in the script development phase which speaks to their absolute and unyielding commitment to the primacy of story. (2) 16 of their 17 movies has been a #1-hit film, an unprecedented run by a production company. (3) They make great movies including three of my all-time favorites Toy Story, Finding Nemo and Up.
But when GITS follower Gabe Gomes sent me this Fast Company article, I realized there is another point of resonance with the magic-makers from Emeryville, CA:
In a world that is obsessed with preventing errors and perfection, perhaps it’s ironic that despite 11 straight blockbuster movies, Pixar cofounder and President Ed Catmull describes Pixar’s creative process as “going from suck to nonsuck.”
That’s because Catmull and Pixar’s directors think it’s better to fix problems than to prevent errors. “My strategy has always been: be wrong as fast as we can,” says Andrew Stanton, Director of Finding Nemo and WALL-E, “Which basically means, we’re gonna screw up, let’s just admit that. Let’s not be afraid of that.” We can all work this way more often.
Add another reason to the list: They think like a screenwriter. Or at least like a screenwriter should.
The first draft of whatever we put down on paper sucks. A screenwriter knows this. We feel it. Deep in our souls. In our very marrow.
How could I have thought this was any good?
It’s a total piece of crap!
What was I thinking?
I could not have been more wrong with my instincts.
It sucks.
I suck.
Actually you will notice a subtle distinction between this sentiment and the Pixar approach. Here is their philosophy:
It sucks. Let’s make it not suck.
Here is a more typical screenwriter instinct:
It sucks. I suck.
Note the difference. The latter veers off into self-loathing, self-doubt, and self-medication, days spent avoiding rewrites and nights devoted to carousing dark places to occupy our wounded spirit, leading to an astronomical pharmaceutical bill and an eventual stay at the Passages Rehabilitation Clinic in Malibu.
The former is value neutral. The script sucks because it sucks. Period. No judgment on the creative types involved. It’s simply a stage in the process of becoming non-sucky.
That’s a big difference.
In fact, it’s even more important for a screenwriter to adopt an intensive version of the Pixar attitude because whereas they can take years to crack their scripts, we may have only about 8 weeks to hand in a final draft to the studio.
In other words, we need to go from suck to non-suck at a supersonic speed.
The Fast Company article actually gets into some interesting psychology regarding all this:
Depending on the form it takes, perfectionism is not necessarily a block to creativity. A growing body of research in psychology has revealed that there are two forms of perfectionism: healthy or unhealthy. Characteristics of what psychologists view as healthy perfectionism include striving for excellence and holding others to similar standards, planning ahead, and strong organizational skills. Healthy perfectionism is internally driven in the sense that it’s motivated by strong personal values. Conversely, unhealthy perfectionism is externally driven. External concerns show up over perceived parental pressures, needing approval, a tendency to ruminate over past performances, or an intense worry about making mistakes. Healthy perfectionists exhibit a low concern for these outside factors.
Pixar’s culture is defined by a pursuit of excellence and quality. Being able to go from suck to nonsuck when developing a new film is a process of ongoing prototyping, a process that facilitates experimentation by the animators as it allows for a rigorous and continual scrutiny of the work in progress, enabling Pixar to practice healthy perfectionism.
So now we even have perfectly legitimate sounding name for our Pixar-inspired approach to screenwriting: healthy perfectionism. Write something, then fix it. No externally driven basis of judgment, rather an internally oriented commitment to excellence.
In a world of writing assignments and fixed deadlines, a professional screenwriter simply doesn’t have room for “I suck.” We only have time for “Make it not suck.”
For further inspiration, some of you may remember this video I posted awhile back. It’s one of my favorites. And I’ll bet it’s made the rounds at Pixar:
HT to Gabe for the link to the article.
The Business of Screenwriting is a weekly series of GITS posts based upon my experiences as a complete Hollywood outsider who sold a spec script for a lot of money, parlayed that into a screenwriting career during which time I’ve made some good choices, some okay decisions, and some really stupid ones. Hopefully you’ll be the wiser for what you learn here.
