Screenwriting Masterclass with Paul Schrader | @FDI_MasterClass

swallow this is a description of a class and screenwriting that I have taught periodically over the years interning at UCLA and I've taught at Columbia University I haven't taught it that much recently because I'm trying to discourage people from making movies it consists of ten classes and this will just walk through those ten weeks the this is a summary of those classes so it's sort of a prospectus for a class I'm not giving in the first week I ask everyone in the film school who is interested in possibly taking the class to come for a lecture and I get a usually a pretty good room at least a hundred people not this big and in that class I talk about my philosophy of screenwriting and the class what I'm going to teach is really about philosophy plus technique is something that I have learned if not an overview it's not anybody else's method there won't be any textbooks and and I really don't think there are any textbooks about screenwriting that make much sense because it is something you have to learn for yourself and I think more damage has been done but books like Robert by Robert McKee then have helped people because screenwriting is not or any for writing is not that predictable what works for one person doesn't work for the next it's I'm only going to teach my way this is what has worked for me this is what I've taught myself is how I began on my very first script and how I worked 50 years later last fall and my most recent script so the method has not changed over the 50 years even though I become more proficient at it and it and it's really best suited for first-time writers suited for people I have a certain kind of story usually a narrative story a linear story may not work so well for a comedy it certainly doesn't work so well for a deconstructed story because it's kind of linear it's thank you you could theoretically make it work for a deconstructed story but it's a little harder I did in fact use it once or deconstructed stories but the only way to teach anything about art just teach what works for you and mean me or works for me and it may not work for you you probably won't I'm the only work for a handful of you but what you learn about artists you learn from people who've figured it out you don't learn about it from people who are trying to tell you how to do it you learn what they know and this is what has worked for me and if there's anything in it but you can steal or use and do so if not it will be and hopefully an interesting use of your time you know is it really valuable to learn a method that maybe excludes 50% of scripts that's a yes because there's something in here that works that certainly has worked for me so the opening class begins with sort of my philosophy which is that are dysfunctional that art works it's very practical it's like a tool belt as a hammer on it and it has appliers and you can use these instruments to get things done and that is how I came into screenwriting I didn't come into it out of any desire to be in the movies or be a donor make money I wrote a screenplay because I was a film critic that the screenplays were the format I knew 10 years earlier novel and 10 years later or 50 years later it would have been computer code well it was the thing I knew so I came into it and I was of a period in my life where things were not working this and I was becoming something that frightened me I was becoming increasingly isolated from creasing the angry increasingly alcoholic and increasingly depressed in my car for several weeks and I had a pain in my stomach it was a bleeding ulcer I was 25 I went in the hospital and I realized the hospital that I had 2 spoke it to anyone in a number of weeks and in the hospital they gave me a room and this metaphor came to me and there was the metaphor of a big yellow taxicab and this taxicab was floating through the sewers of the city I was in Los Angeles and there was a young man president side and he couldn't get out and everybody thought he was surrounded by people but he was absolutely alone and he was trapped in this floating yellow confident I said that's why I'm and that was the first time I had connected a personal problem to a functional metaphor talk about metaphors in a second but a metaphor is something that expands upon the problem and makes you understand it better so I got out of the hospital or I wrote that script I swore I would never have peanuts before talking I I wrote that script and and then I just travel around the country for a while got my mental health back so I didn't write it to sell it I wrote it to I didn't want to become this kid this kid who I called Travis Berthold and I felt that the only way not to become him was to externalize them and therefore exercise it the same way you would do with a voodoo doll and stick them with all your venomous pins and so that's what I did with the story and so that if you believe that what I believe then you here are your own material your material is not elsewhere your material is not in the newspapers or the TV shows and the books and the manga your material is essentially yourself you have to study yourself and not movies although of course you will study movies but you have to study what it is that is making you think you might need to write or tell a story or paint or sing a song and so that in terms of this class we're going to take I need some partners to share this exploration and I'm not interested in ten good writers there's always 10 good writers I don't want to spend the next 10 weeks with 10 good writers I want to spend the next 10 weeks with 10 interesting people and then we'll find out our thinking right so if you want to take this class I want you to write down in two sentences your most pressing personal problem at this moment also right your age or sex or race etc so I get a heterogeneous group of people all don't want to be the same and I will go through those responses I will go through actually quite quickly I'll just go them to the extent that I'm interested I'm not interested I'm interested and I will find ten interesting people and you will be asked to come back next week the other submissions will be thrown away discarded never be seen or remembered again if you in fact are chosen your answer then becomes the public property of the class this is no longer your own and you have to be prepared for that because when you talk about storytelling we're in the dirty laundry business nobody particularly is interested in our freshly washed laundry and if you have a problem hoe lead up your dirty laundry and your soiled thong to the public then maybe you shouldn't be in this class and if you can handle that you know I'd love to have you and so what you have to look for is something that is yours now it won't be uniquely yours because there aren't that many unique problems in the world but it will have to be the sand in your particularly stir I have to be that thing that is agitating you that you would like to find a way to represent and so that usually clears out a good part of the audience because about half the students you know just don't feel that they're up for that kind of class because that's really not a screen lighting kind of thing can feel it already this is group therapy and and you know is this a commercial approach to movies it probably is in a way particularly for a beginning writer because if you're thinking I can become a successful writer by copy the movie I just saw why would they want you to do that they've got hundreds of people who copy that book they're all copying it right now why would they hire you why would they fool around trying to teach you how to do what everybody else knows how to do already so the only thing that you have is an entree is something that is relatively unique to you now as I just said the problem won't be unique to you but your metaphorical approach will probably be unique to you and so that's what I'm interested in and I'm interested in ten people so then I collect the papers and I select ten students and after you've done it a while they fall into certain boxes there will always be the overweight girl there will always be the kids who can't come out of the closet yet although fewer and fewer each year now I suppose there's gonna be a kid that can't go back in the closet and be always the you know kid who wants to kill a parent there will be the minority student who wants to kill the majority student and and then there'll be a few other interesting ones and you pick ten people and you come back the second week and everyone has to read their problem publicly and then they are discussed so the poor overweight girl has to read the problem about being overweight or not being attractive or whatever and then it's actually discussed humiliated and but if you're not comfortable with humiliation then you know I don't watch me class and I don't know if I'm gonna watch her film to watch her film either and so that is a little rocky the first week because people can be cruel and when they're not cool enough I can incite them to be cruel and so that you get an an atmosphere exposure which then of course results in a certain degree of bonding and then the next task is to come up with a metaphor or multiple metaphors and the next week we will do a metaphor I'm just gonna put these steps up here so the next class is let's come up with a metaphor so each of you have your problem now you got to come up with your metaphors now what is a metaphor well a metaphor is not a simile it's something else simile is like or as you know my heart is like a dying star that's a simile a metaphor is something that stands apart from the problem yet is somehow linked to its secret so that yellow taxicab is a metaphor for loneliness at least it is for me and then turned out over the decades to be for other people too and Scorsese and I realized that we had successfully used the metaphor when the editing of the film we there was a more talk in the narration about loneliness and I said to Marty I said you don't we don't really need all that talk about loneliness he does mention that that's enough because every time we see that big yellow cab we see it and that yellow camera is so much more effective as a visual representation than is the narrative words so know we knew the metaphor was good and the many great films are inherently strong because the metaphor is simply so strong you know Frankenstein the metaphor for Buckhannon mechanical progress now they don't have to actually talk about the machine age while making the Frankenstein film but everybody you know that's the anxiety that is driving that story we are making machines that are doing human things and great films often have great metaphors the golem and if you look at back that history you'll see the great metaphors you know the goal for the the unknown evil Rosemary's Baby Jaws once you get rock-solid metaphor boy with tasks it's much easier I remember someone told me about the idea for world what was the film called where the horror film where you couldn't make noise what a quiet place and I heard and I said wow that's it that's a stone metaphor flipy dead so that everything you associate with fear it goes the other way so if you associate scary sounds with fear create a story where you associate no sound with fear and and everything gets born again so and over the years I found different metaphors we showed a light sleeper the other day and I was at that point there a problem was a midlife crisis I turned 40 and I was trying to think of a midlife movie and I went through all the midlife cliches and quitting the college and dropping out with a student and getting a sports car and traveling across South America and joining the Foreign Legion and what not just cliche after cliche they were bad metaphors they were weak bet of course they didn't enrich the problem they just diminished the problem if you have a guy with a midlife crisis and he takes off with this co-ed in a red sports car you are learning nothing you're just reinforcing the shallowness of your idea so you have to have something that makes it and I spent maybe six months looking for the metaphor I spend more time looking for metaphors that I do for looking for stories because once you have a metaphor a story will come and and then one night about 4:00 in the morning I had a dream and in this dream a drug dealer that I once knew came very vividly to my face and they was John and he was so close to me that I woke up in a start and I said wow that was there but I haven't seen him in a year why was that so vivid what were we talking about and I said he was asking me about the movies what movies he should see I said that's it that's my midlife metaphor this 40-year old drug delivery boy whose boss is quitting to start a cosmetics company and he has no skills that's interesting there is really exploration inside that idea and now we're later is that my desk making notes later that day I tracked down the real type prototypes and later that night I met with them I told them I wanted to do their story my story through them and and Cynthia who students surrounded ended up playing and the movie said I'll call you tomorrow she called me tomorrow she said well I spoke to bertolucci and Michael white and they say you're okay so that's how it came about and so and sometimes a metaphor it works that way or sometimes you go into material and find the metaphor in the material it may be a novel it may be a historical situation you know is there a metaphor inside what the Battle of Waterloo for you so Susan you asked me to do The Last Temptation of Christ now there are probably five or six different movies in that book a 600 page book and I needed to find the metaphor in that book that that was right for me and in fact I'll be handing out all these outlines but I wrote it right on the outline I was quote from the author nikos kazantzakis it is not God who will save us it is we who will save God by battling by creating and transmitting matter into spirit and I said that's it that's not that's the problem I'm interested in and it's inside this book and I'm gonna find it I'm gonna find the plot that works so now all the students come back the next week with their metaphors and as is predictable they're quite weak because they're not really thinking metaphorically they're thinking comparatively you know what is my problem like not what is the standard for my problem and therefore as a class we can address that to start to come up with things so you know you have the student who can't tell his parents that he's homosexual and he has this great metaphor it's about a student who can't tell his parents who's homosexual and he's not gonna learn much about his problem and and it's gonna be pretty predictable and boring unless he happens to be Proust or some kind of genius and so what can a metaphor be in the case like I throw out metaphors you know what about a ban of the spy there was literally undercover and he wants to come in from the cold and no one in his immediate family knows that he has been a spy against his own country for a baby a decade and he's trying to figure out how to finesse this so he doesn't lose his family yet he doesn't have to be a spy anymore well now we're talking about coming out of the closet now you've got a spy there you got spy craft you got a good spy pop stuff and you got intrigue and you got people running from each other in the dark and all you're really talking about is telling your dad you're gay and you learn a lot about what you're trying to tell by putting it in that other world I had a student once who has a niece a first generation Japanese was in Los Angeles and he wanted to do a film about his family and his attempted assimilation into Los Angeles culture and of course that's what he was writing about and and there was an article in the paper that's morning and I'm worried in the Los Angeles Times and it was about the lowriders in LA the Chicano gangs and I said to him you know you should go down their street basis down there and just go down there and say you're a student from UCLA and you won't write about their culture can you hang with it so you know do what's gonna happen they're gonna tell you to piss off sir go throw a rock at you big deal you know just try it see what happens and so he did and they said hey you know I'm sure homie come and join so he hung with him for a while and then he wrote his story about his assimilation and at that time it was called a movie it was a movie called Boulevard nights got made and it was about Chicano street racing gags but it was a film about his family it was the film he couldn't write because he was too close to it and so that is you know the things that metaphors can do so that the so you know moving on to you know let's say we take the unattractive girl you know what is the metaphor for that is it maybe a movie star is that how far you have to twist it you know can you find a metaphor for your worthlessness in a woman I was so beautiful that no one thinks they're real maybe you can maybe that is the metaphor you're looking for maybe it's not but don't be afraid to reach out to an uncomfortable place because anybody who knows you and knows that you have zero self-worth and you said writing scripts about the most glamorous movie star of the decade they're gonna laugh at you well maybe that's what you need to hear maybe that's gonna do it for you a few good laughs and so then they come back with better the ones that have better for is that are reasonably functional I said now come back with plot the ones that don't have metaphors out there he and I said come back with some more metaphors no plot you know most people would they think of screenwriting they think a plot first what happens in the movie I think plot probably comes about you know third first it was what happens is what is they what is the core problem that is agitating the need for the story what is the thing that stands in for the problem and then how does the problem move through the faith what happens when loneliness gets inside the cab and starts driving around the city now that's plot and part is relatively simple and basic certain things happen you know if you just imagine that you know you take a you take a aspire you know our spy friend who almost gets caught you know how becomes the opening signal that something happens and then you realize if you don't realize he's a spy and he doesn't get caught and then you rise in fact he is a spy and he's talked his way out of it now what's the next devil it's the next what can happen next does he have a friend does he have a wife where does he live you'll just start imagining and so the the fourth class and you know this just starts the tradition of surmise what happens okay you have a movie star with zero self-worth how does that manifest itself you know does she cut herself she does how does she hide that does she pay people to humiliate her on the sly you know like Belle de Jour I'm literally coming up with this stuff off the top of my head now this is not written down I'm just doing what what writers do just imagining you know you're riding along the street you think of something and so the the plots begin and you get some rudimentary idea of a plot somebody I had a one student once whose problem was that as a teenager he had killed a girl in an auto accident and just couldn't get it off his mind he wasn't guilty of anything but just the image it was a pedestrian school kid and just the idea of hitting that girl was no post post traumatic stress he couldn't get over it I took up into the class immediately that's interesting problem like all PSD problems and you know and we started to find you know a metaphor for him and when we came up with was a woman who thinks who sees a child well woman who had uh and unwanted abortion but she doesn't think she did she thinks the child was stolen from him and so but she's been told all her life that miscarried or aborted or whatever and then she's going down the street and she sees that girl that's my child there she is well that's interesting thing to happen it's a good expression of the problem of this kid who's obsessing on this girl he killed then what comes next well maybe you flip the story maybe you tell it from the viewpoint of the 13 year old who this older woman is now pestering and she doesn't understand why the older woman is pestering in the older woman is pestering her because she thinks she's her mother so that is the simple business of rock exploration and that leads to the next step screenwriting is not a form of literature this is not a form of writing your words do not appear on the screen it is a form of storytelling and it has a lot more to do with that time your uncle came home and said that that the bird dog wouldn't bring the bird back if they had to shoot the dog because he was the dog was no good to hunt anymore that's a story that's oral tradition that's the story she raised up with you know the time your grandfather fell down the stairs and thought he was married to another woman that's a good story and take my word for it I'm making this stuff as I go ha ha and so tell a story tell me a story oral tradition so now let's imagine story no so now the in the class you gotta you've got your problem and you're a metaphor 90 start telling a story so let's just say is - okay these two stoner kids skip school to get stoned and play video games and their friend shows up they have this ratty old video game set that doesn't really work and they're complaining about it and their friend shows up with a brand-new state-of-the-art playstation and the brand-new monitor and they're all so jacked and and they're all excited about doing that okay what happens next well you got to think of a something to happen next because otherwise you're just gonna get stuck with these three stoners sitting there playing video games and you know Raymond Chandler once said that if you're stuck with a story have someone walk in the room with a gun because the reader will be so glad he's there they won't ask how he got there and the same thing is sort of true when you're telling a story oral tradition you're telling story and you realize that you're stuck so you say okay then this red convertible pulls up and these two huge black guys like football line players linebackers in in in purple suits pull up to this house and they get up and they go inside okay I've got you back again yeah what do I have you back I've also got these two black linebackers a purple suit sir I don't know what they have to do with it I'm gonna very quickly figure out how I can get that story the black thugs into the stoner story okay well how can they be related to this donors you know baby they think they stole something maybe come up with something and that is the heart ingenious of the oral tradition because you are now creating in live time stories should not be written they should be told and if you have to learn to tell your story so you tell it you know maybe it's only ten minutes long you know you say to your friend let me buy you a beer let me buy you a coffee I got a story I'm just thinking about it I wonder if you and you tell the story and you see if it catches their interest but of course while you're telling it you're expounding on it so if you came you sat down and you had a story with four or five items you tell it to them and now you're getting interested in it and you realize by the time you finished it or now six or seven items to be added a couple seeds so you're into the next phase already and maybe her first outline it's just a few items long but when you come back from that coffee or that beer Yury outline it because you know you've just thought of some other things so maybe that you had a little story with ten ten scenes in it but now it's 15 sings oh don't tell it again and each time you tell it you're not really interested in whether the person likes your idea or what they think of your idea you're interested in their body language the reaction do you own them and you can tell if you own them you can tell it in their eyes you can tell it in their restlessness and if you own them you own them and if you don't you have to come up with something you have to find those two guys in the purple suits you have to find that comic relief guy you have to be going down the street and the beautiful woman falls out of the window and dies in front of you anything to get them back and then you say well that kind of work that the girl the red dress and the yellow hair falls down and cracked her skull open they really brought that I don't know how you can work that in the story and so it built now by the time if you can tell a story for 45 minutes and hold somebody you have a movie and if you can't you should not write it you should be able to at some point be telling somebody a story get to a certain Junction get up go to the bathroom and come back and start another conversation if they don't ask you what happened to that story you know you're in trouble so the so every time you outline every time you tell the story you I would like it and it gets better or it starts to things happen as you repeatedly outline and relay the story and they're both very good things to happen one is the story dies it just gets sick you get sick of it it gets sick of you now that is a very good day because that means you have just saved yourself three months of writing a script that nobody wants to read that is a happy day there's nothing more debilitating for a writer to write script after script then nobody likes you do that three four times and you're done as a writer if you can avoid writing scripts that nobody's gonna want to read or make that's a good day for you the other thing that can happen is the script gets sick of being told if finally you're finally telling it some parts of scripts are talking to you and says okay enough for this I got it now okay let's go back to the typewriter no let's go to the board processor it's time to go to work and then of course that's awesome a very great day because now the script wants to be ready and you have outlined it in length and I have a whole series of outlines here the see I have Last Temptation light sleeper Mosquito Coast gigolo I think I have yeah on gigolo I have two outlines here so this is a long time ago the first one is 44 scenes and 85 pages and the second one is 48 scenes and 114 pages so in between those two outlines it expanded about 15 pages now how did I know how to expand it I simply did by telling historians and figuring out and in that case when I was beginning to learn to write I used to even color code these outlines by exposition action and humor romance so I can actually look at the our outlines in different color and say wait a second you got three exposition scenes in a row here and then you got a comedy and action the comedy Swissvale around and then and you'll figure that out when you tell it in person so as I get into what I actually think an outline is I have about 20 copies here of various outlines and I'm not going to ask for them back so you know you can just look at them among yourselves and refer to them and maybe someone from Forum can help me just pass them out there will be a there'll be a test afterwards and what you will see in these outlines and here's some more is a meticulous preparation I there are writers I know of who figure out what they're writing while they write I don't I can't write the first seat till I know the last seat I can't write the first seat until I know the first sentence and the title and and if you look at these outlines some of them in particularly if you look at laughs temptation of christ or Mosquito Coast they will have several columns on them left temptation of christ forty-six scenes 106 pages now so I'm looking at it right here and it says you know Jesus awakes first see I clock it in at a half page now you're sort of operating a page a minute so I'm saying that first see Jesus awakes I'll be good for a half page the next scene makes cross I put that down as a page so dodd going through my whole outline i havn't rid of words yet and I'm telling myself that I'm seeing 32 he discusses the betrayal with Judas and the page last and last I'm one and a half pages it begins on page 73 and it ends on page 74 and a half and I haven't written a single words yet and I still I'm already clocking where these scenes will come out what I do in an outline like that is you see I have the the estimated page count and then when I finish the scene I've scratched it out and then I have the real page count so if I start deviating if I'm writing a scene on page 75 that I predicted I would write on page 81 of 2 things have happened one is the previous material has just gotten better and I'm in the right place on page 80 the other is I'm fat and I get on five pages that because movies occur in continuous time you can't shut down the book and pick it up again tomorrow you can't walk the art gallery and return to the painting there for scene which is good on page 35 the very same scene is not necessarily good on page 45 because it exists in a time continuum and the scene can be the same but if it's late it's lame so that's why I do these page comments and you know that's if you're looking at the one from Mosquito Coast that's almost indecipherable but it's all little notes to myself and I'd like to do it on a single page so I can carry the page around with me and look at it so here's a light sleeper here's Mosquito Coast so there's Mosquito Coast and I can just look at it and huh and I have it always with me you know some people have this idea about putting three by five cards out of board but you can't look at a three by five card board and see the whole movie I can see this and I have on occasion stopped Andrey outlined because my page count was wrong and I wanted to fix my page count I have had a couple cases where I realized the outline was wrong and I abandoned the project and that I think I did that a couple years ago and I think I failed because I didn't do I didn't obey my lesson to do overall tradition long enough I think I got about twenty thirty pages from the right ending and I said I started taking it and I just jumped into writing well then I hit that spot where I was taking it and I was dead and so you know you try to be careful to make sure you for me you don't start writing a script until you know how it's gonna end because what's gonna happen is you're just gonna keep postponing all your your inability to end the story and the more you postpone it the more out of sync you get with this with the oral tradition in the screenwriting story so I am I'm going to start directing a film in about four or five weeks and I'm not passing it around because they told me that that wasn't a wise thing to do and but here it is you know the same thing and I worked off this outline to write the script and that's the method that works for me so now you have students doing outlines when they're outline gets to a certain point they start telling their stories and they have to tell them to each other out of class and also sometimes tell them in class sometimes it's not enough time in class to hear all the stories so they get a sign to tell them to each other and then certainly get told a class when they there outline gets to a point where it has strengths for them and where they feel confident in it and where other people are interested in it then that that I am along that I allow them to write now that's the seventh class it's a 10-week class no one's gonna face the script on time it's impossible because you spent seven weeks not allowing them to write so all the scripts will turn up you know three four six months later and they'll get their grades but that's you know just the particular way I choose to do it and and I think of those page counts the way a marathoner might think of running a marathon he looks at his watch you know when I pass the red house with the blue awning if I'm in the right place I should be an hour and 13 minutes for our thirty minutes and a half along if I'm faster than that I should calibrate why I'm faster and if I'm below that I've got some other problems going on so as you're running your marathon you're looking at your milestone within your Road marks telling you how much in the groove you are so that is essentially the class itself you have a few more weeks and so I devote them to more practical things like scripts for bat and so forth to me that really is no script format although final draft tries to mandate the how a script looks i I wrote my first script as chapters without seeing numbers you know Travis buys a garden Travis meets Betsy Travis drives and just a little chapters I wrote first before this chapters without without numbers I wrote the new one in chapters without numbers then of course the the the line producer has to go through all the work of dumber either because how do you prepare a budget and a board without number but for me it works better without numbers I've written scripted the past tense I've written a script in Zoe like comic book language you know bing-bang-boom all that each story sort of tells you how it wants to be written and so don't get so hung up on what they tell you a script is supposed to look like if a script reads well that's all that matters and it's the same thing with asks how many acts are there a movie well mostly in a three because we live in the past and the president the future we like to think in triads but in fact some movies have five acts from movies have a one-act some movies have two hours you know I don't let anybody any school or any textbook tell you you have to be three acts doesn't have to be and don't let anybody tell you you can't have a scene that's ten minutes long where nothing happens I don't know how many of you have seen First Reformed but six seven minutes into the movie there's this 12 minute scene where two people just talk now if I had a screenwriting teacher he'd make me change that but I knew that it was right and I knew that that scene didn't work I shouldn't write the script have to seen good work the script would work so you know be careful about all these you know there's a reason why people teach screenwriting and don't make a living at it just to think about it so I so then I also do some exercises for them because two of the most difficult things to do in scripts is exposition certainly the most ever acquisition is the bane of of writers and you need it no you need lesson you used to because audiences are more savage but so I give you an exercise exposition exercise a man is in a town he has lived here before he meets somebody in the supermarket who he recognizes but he doesn't indicate that and then she recognize and then her daughter comes and recognizes him and he is let's say making yourself he's the brother of that girl's dead sister okay and he used to be a cop and he lost his job because he got drunk and beat up a suspect and he left town and then his wife died the sister won't talk to anymore okay not a lot of exposition so I say this - okay that's the exposition exercise two and a half pages come back next weekend I want that into that page yourself well they can't do it it's just too much damn exposition but it's sure fun to see how about some try because they're gonna come up with all kinds of devices you know and some of them are going to be very lame you know and didn't that wasn't that person used to being the and the policeman with you know boom-boom-boom exposition and so that student sort of understand how devious and crafty you have to be about exposition because you can tell them really poorly written scripts by inexperienced writers cuz they just put the exposition right on the table you know I didn't know what to do my sister got hit by a car and boom so that's a good class to have they learn about exposition and then they do it another class on dialogue which is always tricky because people don't talk the way they think or they don't talk the way you want them to talk on the other hand oddness in a scripted dialogue it's not as hard as it is in daily dialogue so you have to find a kind of a cadence where people are talking but they're always slightly out of sync or they're in sync and then they burst out of sync and they come back in and you create a rhythm of dialogue so I give them yet another exercise another one of these horrendous exercise mother and a daughter sitting on a subway bench talking and here's what they talk about the girl then wants to drop out of college the mother doesn't want her to drop out of college because she dropped out of college that she always regretted it but the girl says but you became successful anyway but that doesn't mean you're gonna become successful anyway I say okay run through all these things they talk about they say you know you've got to be and page and a half two pages and they come back and the read their dialogue and you know most often is kind of trite and I do something that works quite often which is I'll have the two students read the scene but I'll have them read it in Reverse which is last line first second to last line second third to last line third so now they're reading it backwards and you know what more interesting because there are connections that are being made people are answering questions that haven't been asked yet and there are asking questions that have already been answered well that's a kind of oddness that invigorates the listener now a little of this goes a long way you can't do a whole movie in Reverse although I guess or no way tried the and so then now they have an exercise in dialogue we have one class left and I then bring in another screenwriter who who disagrees with virtually everything I've said there's a few more the maybe just take him up there I don't know if any of these outlines got toward the top of the room get up there at all okay and so I you know I used to be a night writer I would start about 11 or 12 right till 5:00 or 6:00 on a kind of regimen of caffeine and nicotine and alcohol cocaine and when I was young enough to pull that off you could get a lot of work done there were a fair amount of spelling errors but other than that it was really kind of good because you know I've just had this image of all these little people hiding inside my typewriter who wouldn't come out for free and it had to be bribed and they had kinds of little addictions and but you could get them to come out and once they came out there to run around the dance can play and say all kinds of interesting things and and that was sort of how I wrote it until I got married and had a child and didn't realize I couldn't write at night anymore thankfully I be dead and that became a daily writer but I had another friend who was a comedy writer a very good comedy writer and he would get up about 6:00 in the morning in smoke Jay he writes about 9:00 or 10:00 I think or bet and that was his regimen so I would get someone like him to come and be a guest in the class just make the point that everything I've been telling you the last 10 weeks may not apply to you you know and don't be intimidated by saying that was an interesting class but it's irrelevant to my work process and that is the end of my lecture on screen [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] almost everyone put the top passivity on poor to scavenge and you have multiple yes you have to put this consumption per ask as many precise question as you want it can be either in French or in English but you have to wave so that Paul can see you it's always more pleasant to see the face of the person who's talking to you my first question just shows a chart I think you once said that when you're writing when you're writing a script you should never give any information in terms of reason or directing as a script writer you're not supposed to stand for a director who do you still think that and when you are just a director and you haven't written the script with do you also choose the same method or you just leave them as they are a script no I I write screenplay as a screenwriter not as a director so your writing problem metaphor plot dialogue exposition character you're not describing you know the sunset and and you're doing the stuff that you know a script has to do and if it works than that and then occasionally obviously physical descriptions and stuff will come to play but you're using the tools language and oral storytelling then should you be so fortunate you have to rethink the entire thing into business ideas and you have to look at that poor script you wrote or to say how can I save this with the images I know and then you rethink at all and you transmogrified into what you can make images do so you know and the image is an idea which is something it took require a while to learn and so you can say a glass of water well this is not a glass of water a glass water is for words or no words at 3:00 in fridge anyway it's it's for words this is not for words this is an object it is what it is and when it's over here it's a different object a different idea of course some water out of it it's another idea so you have to think okay these these words what do they really mean visually and when I wrote that they were in a restaurant and now I'm thinking about it when does me more interested if they were in a video arcade no it wouldn't know what would we want us is never to pay the bank more I'm so dying rethinking everything visually you know you know but if you know what if he sure is on button and they keep trying to button them and it doesn't quite fun you start clicking little visual things where you're gonna do a little close-up on the button but you didn't put in a little script but you realize now visually it might be interesting and and if you get too hung up I mad at the script level particularly if you double direct it you're trying to jump to the next stage I'm visually reimagining the story and they're gonna hurt yourself as a storyteller you should jump ahead and think of it visually at least I found that and I'll prove it nepali power thank you okay so we have a first question from the audience well good night thank you for sharing your method with us I wanted to ask unless it is escape for me where I wasn't paying enough attention I don't remember you put or you spoke about characters or as the protagonists or the hero as your main elements I know there's kind of always this battle between plot and character what comes first so I wanted to know like what what it's your approach to to character and also as a second maybe small question if you're if you know a little about John troubie and his method I know he's more on a script doctor but John troubie and you don't know about you know okay well I guess we can skip that question we stay only with the character and plot thank you yeah no I mean it's pretty clear to me the character comes before plot so if the problem coming first then the metaphor comes second for me the metaphor is usually the occupation so so then you have a character who the power of the problem is inability to express love you've chosen the metaphor of a gigolo now you start cleaning about plot what can happen helping this express itself and so for me plot comes out character and character view the essence of character is contradiction I love my wife so much I hit it that's character I loved her so much I adore his gift I see the more character and so out of these characters start from plots and the really interesting characters people who do things against their own best interest and don't understand why so Travis Bickle says I have to get healthy while he's drinking and taking pills that's you could call that plot but that's character and the fact that okay so you have a taxi driver you have a I'm only guy in a cab there we are what can happen well he sees a girl he wants who he cannot have he sees a girl who he can have who he doesn't want he tries to kill the father figure over one and fails he kills the father figure or the other and succeeds and becomes a hero by mistake that's all about that's the I just told you the entire problem and it all just came out of character you know how does it how does a man construct the world that defeats him and I thought that script when I wrote it was about loneliness by the time I finish the script I realized it was about self created loneliness which is a different thing not a question hi Paul Casey ovipositor this aikidoka what do you think of Campbell writings Joseph Campbell and theory of the monomial is the influence for you and if you have any steam for it's basically true but again you know he's talking from Mount Olympus and George Lucas is reacting from Mount Olympus and I don't work at Mount Olympus and occasionally I create characters that have Olympian features but I started ground levels and sometimes they don't get to the top of the bottom and so for me to take the point of view of the mythological cosmic overview would intimidate my own truthfulness and it would be wonderful sort of done wonder if if Homer and those cats of you're actually created this thing from a limiter they created it from experience another question we see Zach Lavine is tois when you write a script do you sometimes start from the end rather than from the beginning or the self in the middle no no III think I just made it clear I don't write tell I know every single scene and what pages huh these things here these exist before I write so how can I start writing at the middle when I know every single page in the film so no I have no idea we'll say it's just a wonderful way to fail if you because you're just guessing what you're doing what you're doing there by writing in the middle of the end is you're just out like you're not really writing yet you're just be seeing seeds together you haven't really got that down yet and you can do that for months at a time and end up nowhere you know when a student says to me you know I've got this script I've been working out in three years my heart sinks because you know there's something wrong and when they say this isn't really much I just did it the last couple of months but maybe there's something there I said give it to me now because if it comes fast it means it wants to happen and it doesn't come fast if you don't if you're not ready for it to come fast it won't come fast if you're starting in the middle WV dick is strong you know sweetie you see we go swell good evening YouTube of the translation into pictures of the of the the scripts of the film is over do you consider that during editing you should go back to the script or just be completely cut off from the script when you're editing well the editor obviously has the script he needs working from that and if you've all done your jobs right it will fall in place of course there's many cases where that doesn't happen and films films have often been restructured and during post-production I work at a certain budget level that I don't like to shoot scenes that aren't going to end up in the movie because I could use that money to shoot things that are so I try to be very very rigorous and if I'm shooting a scene and I got it let's do something else I'm not gonna spend another two hours on this I want to find of spending let's find some exterior tissue because I already got this scene and when you have the courage to walk away from the scene that it ties your hands in the editing room and so it's not something I advise to a young director because everybody you know is gonna say shoot as much as you can always shoot a master I don't want you bastards anymore I don't know how to hardly even shoot overs anymore but here is one interesting exercise that I think works in editing is particularly if your film is too long which it often is because you and the editor you fall in love with all the stuff you did and a good exercise is to say let's just put in the scenes that we really love we got an hour and 30 minute cap here how many of these scenes are fabulous and really worked right gangbusters okay let's cut them together how many are there so now you maybe got 45 minutes left the rest is all sort of mediocre or predictable or something table well we got 45 three minutes how many more minutes do we have to add how much of this other stuff do we have to put in to make it make sense and because when you're in an additive mode rather than a subtractive mode you are much more creative so if you're thinking I've got a script that's 70 pages long and it works then you're thinking well I'll have to be 85 or 90 pages oh what can I do well I can they had a new character I could have had a new little bit of action I could bring in a comic relief person and now you're thinking of making it better more interesting if you ever skip this 135 pages that have to be 95 pages are you thinking how could I make it less what can I take out how can that what characters can I lose where lives can I lose or locations same is true of energy if you put yourself in the frame amount of energy though okay now I got a 50 minute movie that I really love how much longer can I make it and make it still good and and then you'll start to realize that some of those scenes they used to offer so indispensable really meant no no so mister good evening thank you so much for the master class have several questions about the canyons did you go write or rewrite the script because in France 90% of scripts are touched up rather than just done by script script writers by themselves and wondered whether you could talk to us about the the metaphor in the canyons I've seen a while ago well it's not my not my script it was brettly's analysis and I've essentially rewritten every script are done with exception of two and that was a Harold Pinter and read Alice because I really liked their unique voice and I wanted to capture that voice and the only thing I've changed in Fred script is he had he had done the same scene twice by mistake and you know making a film on a low budget and I thought I'm going to cut the scene out he said there was a great scene I have it but you already did that sir I'm not I can't afford to shoot it to myself you know which one would you rather have me cut out but I'm gonna cut whatever god but other than that I kept his voice and his you know his theme is really about you know the Millennials and people who who want to be in the movie business who don't like movies you know these people they all want to be in the movie business but do they actually like movies do they actually go to movies oh that's very Brett there with avid GK let me tell father non-metallic you said that the the metaphor is a driving force for writing what are the similarities for you or the similarities and differences between what is metaphorical and what is allegorical the v20 you have to write a paper I think the metaphor is is a proto allegory I guess I mean allegories come out of metaphors so if you get a good enough one and hello I could you talk a little bit about your am process of that collaboration both with directors and then maybe with producers which director or well any director I mean your basically your process and how'd that work I'm not a very good collaborator and even with Scorsese you know we never sat in a room together I would write something and give me some feedback and I write it again and and I realized that during our fourth turn when we did bringing out the dead that we would not work together again because we're still friends I heard for him today but there were now two directors of the room discussing their script Murray doesn't want to directors in the room he only wants one direction in a room and I realized I said you know this collaboration is over because I can't just be his writer anymore and so less and less I more boring just do my own stuff occasionally you have an odd situation where the thing with Brett comes by and you say you know what that'd be fun to do but usually by the time a script gets financed by a major entity it's been the soul that has been kicked around the room so long that it's not very interesting whereas in brest case we were paying for it ourselves we do it do whatever you want mas la Gazzetta ballad good evening you talked of metaphors that you found either arriving at the hospital or with alcohol with drugs or sleeping do you think you can find a good metaphor if you're in a non modified State what about the new one I was thinking about punishment and what happens to someone who doesn't feel they have been punished sufficiently serves their time in prison and still feels they should be punished that's the interesting thing yeah and has it harks back to by counter they stopped bringing and then I was watching some cable television I was watching the world so there's a poker I said that's it these guys they play poker 1012 hours a day seven days a week they're not alive they're just little calculating machines they've created a new prison for themselves because they don't believe they should be free and that's my metaphor professional card player and the problem is the need for punishment now where do I go with it you know and how do I take it somewhere else and so I think it's a little too assumed that you have to be in an altered state to come up with a metaphor and in fact the first reform I always resisted doing a film about the spiritual life and then the tunes I decided to do it of course the spiritual crisis is quite simple you know loss of faith and the metaphor is a man who professes to have faith and how does that express itself or expresses itself is a larger metaphor of the loss in faith in the planet so now you're lining up loss of personal faith and a lot of faith in our species well that's a nice line of us it makes metaphor and when your theme and your metaphor are lined up right sparks will go back and forth now they can't be too close together because there won't be any sparks can't be too far apart but you you you get them like this tip them a little bit you feel the spark make it off just feel the spark and that's when you know your idea is alive because it's particles start going back and forth between the cab driver and the lonely man bon soir with affliction good evening I have a question on affliction that I saw again last night you decided to show the scene of the funeral of the mother before showing the the discovery of the body of the of the death I was Renoir you have done this in this order while the film is quite chronological on the whole from you was it in the book if what you say is true it was a decision by the projectionist who mixed up the real because it's not that way in the film or the book and but I didn't see the films I don't know you know it wouldn't be the first time they got the reels wrong I know they got the Rachel wrong they started projecting that it at 166 when in fact was shot at 185 they told me at the second reel they would adjust and I don't know if they did but no unless they got the reels wrong that didn't happen and if I miss remember movies all the time don't be embarrassed like it's Joe thanks for the question Botha on this vaunted evening people often say that a film is written three times and you write it down on paper in the shooting at when you edit it you're you're a director and a scriptwriter are you able to follow when you shoot what you've written on paper or is there rewriting on the set done four times the four times will you sell it which is another movie altogether well you know hopefully what you have on paper and has gone through the rehearsal process which is where it really is tested with actual human beings start playing these characters rather than imaginary ones and you should have a pretty good handle process if something goes wrong on the set that's not good that means you didn't do the work you should have done in rehearsals now there may be changes and on the sentence major people one of those days where somebody is off or the plan you had to shoot it you realize it's not good and they get a better idea but those should be the exceptions to the rule if you live in a world where every day you're making it up as you go you know that's called Heaven's Gate mosa Juventus no soresina hidden Irukandji guru loosen up your compound is it I had a question on American Gigolo in the film is crime elements of crimes toy in the in this case knowledge is not strictly a contour is not a portrait of whether the crime story was a Levite tool for the metaphor because the metaphor needs to be well oiled or does it need to be where or to satisfy the audience or can you do with that it's just a gimmick to keep the story going I'll tell you don't need it anymore we were just talking about afflictions shooting and it's called the hunting accident our main character is confessed that it was a killing and he's going to solve this killing now we have a murder mystery and he's going around playing he's a sheriff doing his job he's gonna solve the murder mystery and then at some point you realize there was no murder this man is going crazy and you don't you just forget about the berean ever happened it wasn't the murder but it took you all the way into the third act and by the time the third act the company said ok let's get rid of that damn murder plot now we're doing something much more interesting so often you use a kind of spur of a plot to get you through a section of the film to hold the audience in place I'm telling you don't need that part because often if you tell the audience this is an examination of a soul crisis from the get-go we may lose them so you say this is not about a soul of crisis this is not a murder mystery and we're gonna solve it there are halfway through no I guess it wasn't a murder in the deaf case no matter was more cool just one last question because Mishima will be screened and hopefully the wheels will be in the right order for Mishima good evening thank you so much for being here had a question if you'd seen the Joker I thought it's a film that's been compared to taxi driver and its treatment and the plot and was really whether you thought that was possible to make films today that reach a large audience but our subversive like this from like joke and like taxi driver was well Joker certainly reached a large audience how not quite sure how subversive it actually is and I've stayed away from that question because it's you know that lose-lose answer because if I say taxi driver is better the Joker people say he's resentful and if I say Joker is better than taxi driver I'd be lying thank you [Music] you

Channel: Le Forum des images

Views: 62,081

Keywords: forum des images, fdi, paris, rencontre, festival, forum images, masterclass, cinema, cinéma, film, serie, acteur, realisateur, evenement, avant premiere, culture

Id: 0358lJ7Zhbo

Length: 93min 34sec (5614 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 16 2020