Write Your Life And Become A Better Storyteller - Mark W Travis [FULL INTERVIEW]

well what are the primary reasons that we tell other people stories about our lives what are the primary reasons we tell people stories about our lives uh first of all it's varied a lot of reasons but the i think the important thing you have to realize is that you do it almost every day you will tell somebody something about your life what happened to you in the morning what happened to you yesterday in other words it's a primary way of connecting with people is just to tell them what happened in our lives even if someone says how are you rather than saying finds it i'm fine except the other day this is what happened and then you have a little bit of your story so the reason getting back to your question the reason we tell people stories about our lives are multiple one is to connect one is to be seen another is to actually hide you can tell a story from your life and hide an aspect of yourself or the truth about yourself by telling another story you can tell a story in your life to avoid what the conversation is about you can tell a story in your life to get attention to feel important you can tell a story a part of the story of your life to actually feel vulnerable and to get sympathy or empathy so there's a long wide range of reasons we sometimes intuitively instinctively tell the stories from our life that tell what's going on in fact just before this interview i won't go into them but all of us the four of us here were telling stories about our lives and what we've been through and what we're doing and all of that and we did this happens all the time but then you have to look at if you are intentionally telling a story there's a story you were going to intentionally tell to one person to a group of people to 100 people a thousand people now you have to think about your question actually karen why why am i telling this story now if you want to tell a story and the story is fiction you also have to ask yourself why am i telling this story but at the same time you're also making up a story you're creating a story so there are two aspects of it why am i telling it which will affect what the story is and how i'm going to write it but in autobiographical stories that doesn't happen because there's something unique about an autobiographical stories like the ones you and i were discussing earlier they have already been written because they have already happened there's nothing to create the events you told the events i told earlier those have happened now you look at the story and there is a few big questions i want to tell this story the first thing is you have way more information than you need you have all the details of the story whatever the event was everything that happened everything that happened to you around you what other people did what other people said whatever that event was there's way more information than you probably want to tell or could include so it's more now like making a documentary film you have all this footage and you want to extract from that footage a smaller story so now you have an event what am i going to actually tell but then you have to ask yourself why am i telling this story and this is where a lot of people struggle now elsia and i when we're teaching our workshop on autobiographical storytelling called write your life one of the big things we deal with will have anywhere from six to 15 students each of them has an autobiographical story that they've already written just a three minute story and it's really interesting that a lot of them have no idea which is totally understandable why they picked that story they picked the story on their own we just say pick an event and they are not clear why and that's fine there's no problem with that that's very normal i don't know why so now part of the struggle is to explore yourself and explore your experiences and to learn while you're working on the story learn about the story learn about yourself and eventually learn why you picked that story and there are some people we've worked with when they start to realize why they really picked that story sometimes they're horrified oh i didn't want to do that i didn't want to reveal that and all i could say is well you picked the story and they realized they did that there's something inside going on and my belief is that with autobiographical storytelling there's an inner voice that's even helping you pick the story so if you're going to meet with somebody maybe for a job or a date or whatever and you want to tell them something about yourself and say oh i know what i'll do i'll tell him or her this story about what happened to me because it's really a great story do you know why you picked that story are you clear and this all comes way before the question of how do you want the listener to receive the story what do you want the listener to get from the story how do you want the listener to see you as the storyteller or even to see you as the person in the story and all of that is open and all of that is malleable even without changing the story so the question now becomes how do i tell the story so that i can project myself present myself the way i want to and how can i tell it so that the listener will receive the story the way i want them to receive it do you think people change their story and it's not by maybe just by omission by the way they're reading the room maybe they can tell either the room is welcoming or maybe it's not so welcoming so they don't feel comfortable sharing certain aspects of their lives because they can there's a there's an elephant in the room they're not sure what it is but then they leave out certain details because they don't want to offend or or maybe they realize it won't be met with the same reception as if they were in another setting yes now your question karen was about do they change it i mean in the process of telling it or now are you talking about a stage presentation like a solo show or something like that or a speech or a ted talk um it's possible it's very very very possible it's very possible with the most skilled storytellers they can change it in a heartbeat because they can tell a part of the story and get a reaction that tells them okay i need to make a shift i need to make an adjustment and go in a different direction because that's being received negatively or being misinterpreted and so i'm going to have to clear that up and i'll shift sometimes shift to another story or tell the story in a different way or reveal something different within the story than i had attended i had intended to reveal this aspect of my character or my experience in the story i'm going to shift that to something else and they can do it within the telling of the story i have one small story not an autobiographical story but i was uh working actually with val kilmer many years ago on his portrayal of um mark twain now he's not doing an autobiographical piece at all but he's doing mark twain telling mark twain stories so it's mark twain telling stories and we were talking a lot about hal holbrook who he admired a lot who has a whole career doing mark twain and one thing i didn't know that bell told me was that mark twain had 17 different shows he could do all mark twain material that he had researched and explored and so much material about mark twain that and he would get a booking he would say okay you're going to do this in we want to you perform in new york and based on the fact that it's new york he would select certain material you're going to do in new york for this organization aha he'd do research on the organization and from all the wide range of material he would have he would construct a different show specifically for them if he was doing the south it was a whole different show so i think the the whole thing of autobiographical storytelling i think by instinct when we're just having a conversation like you and i are and we're telling the story by instinct we will change if we're not getting the reaction we want we will shift i know there are times i've started to tell a story in a group and a story and it got a little interrupted at one point and this happened to me just a few weeks ago and i went that's it my story's done i know there's no point in finishing the story i could feel that the energy and the interest of the people with somewhere else and there was no point so i just stopped so you can do that so i think there is um that's very important it's a great question because we are telling our own stories we're actually revealing something about ourselves rather than someone asking me what's your screenplay about and i tell them that story well that's not an autobiographical story at all that's a fiction story and i'll stick to whatever the story is and hope that they like it but i'm telling an autobiographical story i'm actually revealing bits and pieces of me one little piece after another after another after another and i know the times that i've done some rather long stories totally improvised long autobiographical stories about my experiences in hollywood and things like that and it's been a speech that i've agreed to do i will shift and change the tone of it even based on the reactions and sometimes the reaction is i'll say something and i hear a reaction that i wasn't expecting which means they know exactly what i'm saying this is a you know it's an inside joke they got it okay then i will keep going in that direction because that is supporting what i want to reveal do you think they are regional autobiographical stories so let's say someone in la may tell an autobiographical story that's more career-based whereas in some small town in another part of the u.s it might be more about their family and how long their families had the land or something i don't know i'm just generalizing here but i was wondering is is autobiograph autobiographical storytelling more regional based in total in terms of the people who act now you're talking about who are doing it more or less professionally you mean um i guess in what we select to reveal or leave out well again i'm going to take your two example you have the la story which you said is career-based or industry-based or whatever and somewhere in the midwest it's more about family my belief is and i'm pretty sure i might the audience in la would rather hear the family story the audience in the midwest would rather hear the the industry story in other words because the the to do a story a lot of stories about the industry in l.a we go i've heard that i've heard i lived that you know that's nothing new but for someone to be telling about being raised in arkansas you know and working on a farm like i want to hear that because that is not part of my experience i want that experience i want to learn from that so again that's judging the audience assessing the audience and will what i am talking about resonate with them in some way or will it offend them in some way if you do a one-person show in l.a about the struggles of becoming a famous actress most people won't go i think we i know that we know that story we've heard that story so many times well judy the movie judy though because you're seeing another side of it which is another side the happy-go-lucky side of what most people probably want to project yeah they'll go for that one you know but i think that's because that person's revealing you know renee zellweger's character was she was revealing these demons that we don't always get yeah and she's revealing the demons within a very famous icon that we know and so we want to know more and you're right that film shows us more about who judy really was and less actually less about her career i mean her career was in there but it's more about the demons she was struggling with which is fascinating she did an excellent job yeah what makes a great story what makes a great story you know karen that question is huge that's what drives this entire industry is what makes a great story i think a couple of things for me and it has to be personal because i think different people have different opinions of what is a great story or a great film or whatever but the great story is a story about a very ordinary human being who's faced with extraordinary challenges and goes through an extraordinary transformation trying to survive or get back to where they were or to find their way to some new place so there's a journey there's a great journey that that person personally goes on to me that that's what makes a great story great story to me is a story about relationships about the struggle uh this is obviously very personal because this is my preference the struggle in relationships not just the struggle of the two individuals or three or four individuals and trying to achieve what they want to achieve but the struggle we all have as human beings just relating to each other and being open with each other being honest with each other getting what we want from each other giving what we want to each other forming some kind of relationship and how difficult that is how perilous it is how fragile it is and how quickly it can fall apart a good example of that is marriage story which is not which is like a beautiful wonderful happy marriage which is falling apart and sometimes at least my experience watching that film i'm going why why is it falling apart well because it's that fragile and i think that you know there wasn't a big violation in the middle of it that created this falling apart those kind of stories are what make for me make great stories then in the story telling the telling of the story what makes a great story is when i'm surprised i love it when i'm surprised when there's a point where the story's going on and what we all do when we see a story happening is we all in our minds consciously or unconsciously anticipate or predict where it's going to go i can see where this is going to go or this is going to happen or because he did that she's going to do oh i can see it and many times we're right but then there are those moments when it just does a total reversal and we didn't see it coming we didn't see it coming and what that does those moments those turning points that are so startling understandable but startlingly just are not expected and then they're not magical it's not science fiction or anything like that it's just not expected that moment opens up something for us and where we can see deeper into who those characters really are so we get greater insight into these characters and their struggles and their problems and that's the beauty of a well told story why do you think some people resonate with one story over another so someone could see what we sound like we both saw judy we both liked it i thought it was was excellent as tragic as it was but some other people could see it and say i'm not impressed why do you think one person thinks a story is great versus another season says nothing special i think it all comes to and else and i have had this a couple of times so i will sit side by side at a movie and elsa who's right over here elsa will love the movie and i don't or vice versa now it's only because we're two different people that it doesn't it's still the same it's still the same movie still the same story but getting back to your question why what makes why do people resonate with certain stories i think it all comes down to projection because as we're watching a story one thing i'm very keenly aware of for myself and for everybody else when we watch a story we project ourselves into the other characters in fact and we do it when we read a script or read a novel we do the same thing but when we watch a movie we do the same we project ourselves and the way we participate in the portrayal of that character we get involved with that character we care we have empathy or we have disgust we have some kind of emotional connection with each character and so we go on the journey with them now if we watch a movie like judy and someone watches that and there's no way for that individual who's watching it to project himself or herself into that character because there's no common ground there's nothing not that you have to be an actress or a singer or in hollywood but do you aspire to do anything artistic do you have you know these demons that is there anything within if there's nothing within that character that they can project themselves into and attach themselves to then they're not going to like the film because it is not speaking to them nothing wrong with the film it just doesn't speak to them and they could like another film like a transformer film which they think is brilliant and i could go i don't get it because that i can't project myself into that world so there's a world and there are characters that we have to project ourselves into and get involved and engaged with and if we can't then we'll just sit back and watch the movie and wonder what the whole fuss is all about you are now working on something called the travis technique for autobiographical storytelling the travis technique for autobiographical storytelling yes that's a long title what is it about what is it about well it's um it's about autobiographical storytelling obviously and where it comes from i have to go back and give you a little history of this because you made it sound like we're just starting this this has been going on for about 30 years and about 30 years ago through circumstance i got involved with helping develop and directing a one-person show with paul link which became time flies when you're alive that story which became a stage play was the story of paul's wife who got breast cancer and eventually died from breast cancer and it was the story of that whole journey that he went on with his wife and his children while she was fighting breast cancer and without going into more detail because there's a lot of detail though it's a very powerful story it's a very powerful love story it's a it's a very sad story it's a very tragic story it's a very heroic story and paul was a friend of mine and i knew francesca and when he said he wanted to write a play because he and i and another friend of ours dennis redfield had created several plays together that we had done he said he wanted to create a play about their life together and her death at home because she refused to go to hospitals and stuff like that and i remember saying to her this was only a week after she died i remember saying to him fine okay but let's talk about it later let's talk about it after the memorial service the memorial service for francesca was going to be in a few days it was actually at john ritter's home in brentwood we were all there it was a beautiful out on the back lawn you could see the mountains and a lot of white balloons you can imagine the white piano people played music people read poetry it's very sad but it's all this tribute to francesca and then paul was going to speak last and paul with their one-year-old child she had a child while she was fighting cancer which is a big part of the story but that rosie that one-year-old child in his arm he got up and started to talk and he's the first thing he says is i want to tell you about my best friend and within a few minutes he had everybody there laughing as he was telling this story and i'm watching him and i'm going oh my god this is amazing and afterwards i talked to him and i said paul we're going to do the play but not the play you thought you were going to do he said what do you mean i said we're not going to do this play of all these characters i said it has to be a one-man show it has to be just you telling your story i wanted to take what i had seen there and put that essence of paul and his vulnerability and his openness and his honesty and his transparency on stage because i said that's the only way this is going to work we worked on it for about a year we did a lot of research we even talked to spaulding gray we're doing a lot of things i've developed this is the first time i'd ever done this after that was done i said to myself and it was very successful ran for a year in los angeles sold out at the tiffany theater it was a sort of a weird situation but i said i'm done i said i i can't do this again it's exhausting working on one with one person on one show but it was it was a beautiful experience until i was at an acting class and i heard another monologue this man got up and he told a story about when his mother he did this monologue about from some play i thought about his mother picking up after school taking him 350 miles away from their hometown putting him in a motel and leaving him there at the age of 10 for the summer and he told the story and i went oh my god i said afterwards i said shane where you know where'd that story come from i mean what what's that from it's amazing because i thought it was from a script he said that's from my life and i remember that feeling at that moment going oh my god i've got another one now this kept happening i kept getting people would start coming to me and we did that that show which was called no place like home which was all about child abuse that's why she took him there to save him from her the father who was intent on killing the son she saved his life so that was a whole show about child abuse and then came a bronx tale which i developed with chaz palm and terry and that became so suddenly all these shows became big hits and people said coming to me but it wasn't the fact that people were coming to me what my tendency i have to tell you a little story when i was a young boy i was very good at fixing things taking things apart and fixing things i loved doing that and my father had an old watch a pocket watch which didn't work and i asked him if i could take it up it wasn't valuable at all and i asked him if i could take it apart he said sure so i took the whole thing apart and put because i was curious to figure out how it worked and i got it all back together again it still didn't work but it was all back together again the reason i tell you that is this is the way my mind works i'm less interested in the final product of what i create than i am and how it's created so i did a lot of research while i was developing all these one-person shows on what how does this process really work what are the techniques that work why did this work in this with this show and not with this show or why all of these things and from that long period of time which started back in the early 90s a long period of time up until to now we're still doing this exploring this whole aspect of autobiographical storytelling why is it so powerful and what are all the tools and the techniques that you can use in the telling of any story that will change and alter and enhance or mold the story in the way you want to so that has led to but again back in the 90s someone asked me to teach a workshop on what i was doing this is after i'd had several very successful shows and i said i couldn't i said i can't i said it's just one on one i work with the actor we worked together we developed the show that's it and then that person did something which is totally unforgivable offered me a lot of money to teach the workshop and i went no now maybe i can do it so i agreed to do it and i started a workshop and that's when i started to realize i can teach this there is a lot of stuff i do know and so this has become now this workshop which at that time was called the solo workshop because it was mostly for solo performers now it has morphed into being called the write your life workshop because it's not for solo i mean it's for everybody it's for solo performers for writers memoirists screenwriters any any storyteller so we have storytellers from all over the world who want to take this workshop because it's so powerful not because they want interesting not because they want to learn how to tell autobiographical stories they want to learn the basics and the sort of the core and the foundation of storytelling because when when like screenwriters take this course they suddenly their screenwriting improves so it's a foundation so when it says the travis technique for autobiographical storytelling this right to life is the foundation of everything else and i teach not just the writing but the directing and acting and working with that it all comes out of that so when people come to study with us the first thing they do is write autobiographical story and go through that process it's like learning the scales before you start to try to play classical music or something else what if someone says well i'm not a writer and i'm not i'm not planning on doing a one-woman show why would i need to to learn how to tell my own story where are opportunities that we have this in our daily lives we don't even realize it in our daily lives now i'm assuming this person that you're throwing at me uh is a writer or just just just an average maybe they're an insurance adjuster oh insurance address and and they say what do i convince me why should i take a class to learn how to tell my personal story and i would go back this is going back to some of our first questions some of your first questions i would say to that person okay um you're an insurance adjuster you're working with people and clients and all the time yeah when's the last time you told one of them a personal story when's all that and why were you telling that story and did you get the res the result that you wanted did you communicate what you really wanted to and were you even aware of what you were trying to communicate and if you were aware of what you're trying to communicate do you know there were probably several a dozen different ways you could have told that story to get the result you wanted in other words i'm just saying that in your work and your life you frequently tell a personal story you go to a family reunion and suddenly people are telling stories and you have a story to tell do you want to tell it consciously or unconsciously do you want to be aware mindful of what you're doing and how you want to impact other people how you want to be seen what you want them to think so the interesting thing about storytelling people people say well i'm a storyteller i'm a screenwriter i'm a storyteller i'm a storyteller who isn't who doesn't tell stories my serious belief with the children before they can speak all that little those little noises they're making they're telling a story in their mind they're telling a story they are communicating something eventually they get language and eventually they get words and then stories come out so even if you if you have a little three-year-olds or four-year-olds who can be very verbal two-year-olds can be very just listen to them their stories just start tumbling out of them it's a huge part of who we are in fact i think you know storytelling is right up there with breathing we do it all the time unconsciously we need it on i'm not even knowing why we don't get go through the day re reminding ourselves to breathe we just do it we don't go through say oh i think i should tell a story we just do it and then there's another part of like write your life which is very important which is do you know how to listen to a story do you know how to hear a story and so when someone's telling you a story can you listen listen for the story and listen for what's really going on can you see beyond what they're really saying to see deeper into the story so there's that that aspect of it too so that insurance sales person could benefit enormously what if someone says well how can i tell people about myself but i don't want to tell them certain things then don't tell them those certain things in fact don't pick those stories pick it pick a different story um yeah there are a lot of people who are afraid to tell stories because they were afraid of what they're going to reveal but then this is a a big aspect a part of the write your life process is we ask we don't ask for the answers to this question we ask everybody like i could ask you karen right go ahead um if you had no fear okay if there was no fear what story would you tell right now on camera you can say it on camera it's your camera if there was no fear right i know a few you know a few okay absolutely yeah even even that you know in the workshop even that even people in the workshop thinking about the important thing of that question is not the story you come up with important about that question is the realization that my fear of that story is what's stopping me the fear is the important part not the story true and then this has happened many many times in the workshops one little thing about the write your life workshop which i'm very proud i was back in 2001 i was asked to teach it in hawaii and i taught a weekend workshop there and then eventually became two weekends because it became so popular two consecutive weekends this is where i met elsa because she would she was a student back in 2002 but and that workshop went on for 16 years up until 2015. anyway i went on for 16 years and the thing is there were times when we would bring up like you know if you had no fear what story would you tell and people go oh yeah now a lot of people who took the workshop would take it every year which was great they would come back every year because they not because again getting back to your other question not because they're going to do a one one-person show not because they're going to write the stories they did it because they like the process of exploring themselves through these their stories and hearing their friends explore themselves and expose themselves through their stories and many times we would bring up that question if you had no fear what would you what story would you tell and people go yeah i know and we ask them to write it down they write it down we don't ask them to share it and many times two or three years later someone would tell a story they would say that was the story i wrote down years ago that i was afraid to tell and we go wow something happens now this is a very important part of autobiographical storytelling in one show that i did this is where it became really clear this is the one on child abuse and shane mccabe who is brilliant performer told me this story a little story within the big story and the little story was about him living in his bedroom where he was forced to sleep in the closet and because his his house was built by his father and it wasn't built that well there were a lot of openings and places and he's in the closet and this little squirrel showed up in the closet and over a long period of weeks and weeks and weeks he started to develop a relationship with this squirrel okay and it's a beautiful story and how the squirrel will adventure eat out of his hands and how the squirrel when he could get sneak out of the closet and sleep in the bed the squirrel would sleep with him wherever they would sleep together now it has a very tragic ending which i'm not going to tell you horrible ending but as shane is telling me this story he said mark i'm going to tell you a story but it's not going in the show he says i want to tell you the story about chipper because he kept mentioning chipper and i didn't know who chipper was so he tells me about chipper the squirrel this horrendous story now me being a storyteller and me being a director i hear that story go oh this is good this has to go in the show and he's going it's not going in the show i'm not going to tell that story and i could see why because he was so devastated he could barely hold himself together while he was telling it and you don't want that on stage and he doesn't want that and we kept working on the show developing and developing every once in a while chipper would come up i would mention chipper he wouldn't mention chipper and then one day he said to me maybe the chipper's story should go in the show i said really i said and i would ask him to tell me again and he would tell me the story again and then we tried we said okay let's put it in there we'll rehearse it we'll try it and we did and he kept telling it and telling it telling it the key thing was i remember on opening night we're at the tiffany theater in los angeles he's opening in front of 100 strangers and he's on stage telling that story and he's fine he's totally he has it all under control and what became clear to me was these stories that are so traumatic and so awful that we are so afraid if we tell them probably afraid that we're going to die we'll never recover we'll lose all self-esteem or whatever whatever's going to happen it's just going to be horrendous or people are going to find out about it and and i can't live with that whatever the fears are if you keep telling the story and this is my way of looking at it it's not that the fears go away but the power shifts as a ship the story is here and you're here this story has power over you and it keeps and it keeps it suppressed but if you keep telling the story what happens is it shifts and eventually you have power over the story same story same dramatic intent same trauma everything but you have power over the story and elsa and i have seen this so many times when people have suddenly found somewhere the courage or the strength to tell something that they thought they could never tell and so this process is also a healing process not intended not designed to do that but it doesn't how does knowing our own story make us a better storyteller that's a big question that's a great question because that's at the core of everything let's say karen you have an autobiographical story a story you want to tell and a couple of things a couple of things are very clear one thing i mentioned earlier is it's already written so the question is how to tell the story not what the story is but how do i tell it another thing that's very very clear getting in terms of writing and getting in terms of how this process will influence your writing of anything is the protagonist the protagonist in your story is you and let's say it's a story when you were 15 years old and a date you had or something like that whatever it is i can see you trying to remember one yeah which one which was sitting alone waiting by the phone that's what it was okay okay it's a story of you sitting home and that's fine now you but you're the protagonist of the story of any story now the question is when you think about we talk to writers about the stories that they're creating and writing how well do they know the protagonist now this is often a problem um with a lot of the people who teach screenwriting or storytelling you know how well do you know the protagonist how well do you even know your own characters but now we're back to autobiographical the protagonist is you you should know you pretty well in fact you should know the other people around you family and friends or whoever else is in that story pretty well this is good this is really good but the question is your protagonist how well let's say at 15 how well do you know the 15 year old karen how well do you know what she was really thinking really feeling really wanting really desiring really expecting really fearing at that time you know what you did you know about sitting at the phone you know that the phone didn't ring or it did ring and it wasn't wasn't for you it was for somebody else or whatever it was you know what the you know what the events of the story are but here's something that's really important the events of your story karen about sitting home waiting by the phone those events and what happened is not the story those are the events of the story that's the plot or that's the story line but it's not the story the story is what happens inside 15 year old karen what is going on inside this young woman sitting there by the phone what is really going on what is she hoping for what is she fearing who is she fearing that might call who is she hoping that might come that's what we need to know that's the story so the story exists inside the protagonist not around the protagonist now all the events around the protagonists that happen actually trigger what's going on inside or what's going on inside is a reaction to what's going on in the outside so we need both but the events are not the story the inner world of 15 year old karen that is the story so now in this process and now right now on camera i'm going to invite you to come take you and david to come take a right your life workshop as our guest see that's on tape so right now the process is karen you have to look at 15 year old karen as a character and go who is she what's really going on and then once you can determine i know what was going on i remember this is what was going on this was going on now and you have all of that that was going on during this event now the next question is how do i relate that to the audience how do i let the audience know that there's that one guy charlie and i'm hoping he won't call because he did threaten to call i'm hoping because if he calls and i answer the phone i'm in trouble because i don't know if i have the courage to say no to him and i don't want i'm just making this up how are you going to let the audience know that because if the audience doesn't know that if the audience in fact doesn't know what's going on inside you they don't get the story all they get is events they go fine you're sitting at home and then you're worried and you can say i was worried and all that which gets us to the two narrators in a second here but but that's so learning how to for the writers to go through the process of exploring excavating pulling apart looking at all the elements of a story that they know better than anybody else and exploring really what was going on for them and for all the people around them and then to try to understand the other parent the parents the brothers and sisters or whoever the other characters are understanding them and how can i render them true to who they are that's what makes a difference in all the other writing because we say what else and i say to people who have taken the rights your life especially writers and directors we say okay now you see how deeply you have gone into your character and all the other characters they go yeah yeah you have to do that for every character and everything you direct and everything you write that's what you have to do and now the bar is really high but now they understand i have to understand my protagonist in my fictional movie as well as i understand me but you can't do that until you've gone through a process of understanding you well you just triggered a memory and that was i wasn't 15 but the age 15 came up and that was being home and there was a knock at the apartment door my mom wasn't home i wasn't 15 i was younger and it was quote the paper boy coming to collect and i said well uh and i was stammering he goes if you're 15 i'll take you out and i remember thinking wow like like that's he doesn't even know who i am on the other side i could see him because yeah but but it was i can still see that because it was i don't think i was even 12 yet and he didn't know that i sounded older than i was but just the fact that somebody's coming to collect for the paper and he's already trying to like you know hustle up a date or something it's just kind of funny but so you reminded me of that because he mentioned if you're 15 because he said i'm 15. 15 if you're 15 i'll take you out even though i can't see you right and i'm here just to climb paper boy i'm here to collect for your for your paper but anyway but so so going into that just reminds me so there you go there's part of a story no that's a good story it's a good story and on the surface like many most stories we go oh that's cute it's kind of creepy at the time yeah no yeah but it was creepy to you right right to the rest of the world you say you know there i am and he says you're 15 i'll take it oh my god okay what we do once we start to hear what's going on inside you you know that feeling like oh it's this you know i'm feeling uncomfortable or that's what we want to hear that's what that's the richness that's the core of that's the gold of the story is what's going on inside that little 12 year old right at that moment who's home alone who's home alone and the paper boy is is coming to collect yep it's a great story thank you i can still see it what do you think most people go wrong in telling their personal stories too much information too little um too much information or too little possibly each but um getting back to what we were talking about is yeah there could be too much information which about the events and all of that which actually masks what's really going on in the character or they could be too little information about the character here's but here's the um a real key many times when we're doing these workshops or working with somebody who's doing this kind of writing um i will say quite honestly to them it's a great story but you're not in it and they'll go what do you mean no no i was there and i told you i said no no you were there you were the observer the way you told the story you were the observer more like a journalist you were the observer and you told us all the details and you gave us a little indication like oh yeah in that moment when i was really scared or something like that and i go okay but the thing is you are not really in the story you have kept yourself out of the story now this story that this person has told quite possibly could be a very traumatic story frightening one of those stories that generates a lot of fear and now what can happen as a result of telling a story like that is as you're telling the story even keeping yourself some very much out of the story all those fears will come back because there you're it's it's wired into your system those fears and everything are in your body and you are stimulating them again and so you will feel the fear or feel the joy feel the confusion whatever as you're telling the story the problem is you will think that the audience is feeling the same thing and i can tell you right now they're not they're not there's no reason for them because they're not you they will each member of the audience will be feeling whatever they feel they say oh that that's funny oh that's that's kind of sad there's a wide range of what they could be feeling i think autobiographical the goal of autobiographical storytelling is can i tell you a story can i tell you a story like about my 10th birthday in such a way that i can take you through the story and you are moment by moment feeling and experiencing exactly what i felt as the 10 year old at that moment while the story is being told without telling you oh in that moment i felt really scared then you now that's just a piece of information that will not stimulate a feeling within you my job as the storyteller is to stimulate emotion within you not just give you information so this when you ask about too much information too little information it's usually too little of the real meat that we want which is what is going on inside the character i want to know what you're thinking or feeling most people won't do that they just want by instinct they won't do that it's sort of a preservation instinct so then we will listen to the story and we'll have our own reaction to it based on our life experience that's it which we got to which we talked about with why people like certain films and certain stories now you could tell a story to a group of a dozen people without having yourself really present in the story and those dozen people will have about a dozen different reactions to the story based on their life experience as if if this had happened to them this is how they would respond but the more powerful story is they know exactly how you were feeling how you were responding and now they're not responding to just the story they're responding to your experience your emotional experience through the story and that's much more powerful was there a story that had power over you that then you were able to tell so many times and then you switched it and now you had power over that story that was your story well you know in the 30 years of doing this is that what you mean whenever yeah yes i mean i've been doing this for 30 years and one um it's a great question karen and one thing i realized very early on when i started to work either with individual performers doing solo shows or work with a group like a workshop or even a larger group what i was asking all of those writers or those artists or those human beings those people to do was dig into their past have a story and start to really explore it in a very open raw vulnerable way and in order to really ask them to take those that leap the best way i could um help them do that was to tell my own stories so i would always in every workshop tell a story or be or tell several stories to give them examples not only of how the story works or how the storytelling techniques which i was trying to teach them work but it's that simple thing and this has to do with directing don't ask an actor to do something that you're not willing to do yourself so i couldn't ask these people to write something that i wasn't willing to do so i need to do it and do it in front of them and many times during that i would [Music] purposely set myself a high challenge just in terms of the story that i would pick or the what i was going to talk about i would push myself to say can i go a little bit further can i go a lit can i get into a more dangerous area and there was one time and elsa was there that i told the story in hawaii that it happened just two weeks earlier which was devastating to me it was a devastating story and it was humiliating and brought a lot of shame to me and embarrassment and i'd only told one person about it my sister who was also in the workshop at that time and but basically i was hiding it from the rest of the world and then i decided in that workshop i was going to tell a part of that story and i did and it was a struggle it was hard but it was liberating and um so yes that's you know i've had that experience many times going wow now i've done that i can i can do it again so that my assessment that telling tough stories traumatic stories embarrassing or shameful stories again and again and again the balance will change i've also experienced that within my own storytelling have you seen or some people have they're just unabashedly open about everything i mean they're just people that i'm just shocked they would put something on twitter but that's just who they are as human beings there's no shame in anything everything's an open book maybe they came from a family that's like that and so that's how they communicated whereas there's other people that they're afraid to tell you what they had for breakfast right and they're super reserved and you feel like every question you ask even about the weather is somehow a personal intrusion do you see those people interacting at your workshop together and just just you know the ones with the arms cross where it's not even that they they don't like somebody but there's just that's who they are they're just maybe not as trusting and other people that they'll tell the cashier at the store some intimate detail from their love life yeah i mean the thing is in the workshops we get a whole range of people and it's interesting because they they just using your two examples the one who is just the ones who just will blurt out anything personal and the other ones who are much more reserved and are afraid to even tell you their birthday or whatever whatever it is we get that range definitely that range the first thing that's really interesting is at the beginning of the workshop what we do is we check in with each person in front of everybody not not privately why they're there what they what they really want and just sometimes hearing what they want is interesting and very quickly we get a sense of the personality and maybe elsa and i have talked to this person beforehand or met them online or something so we have a sense of who they are before they come into the workshop but we we check in with them to see what their goals are and we get a sense that this one is very reserved and this let's say this woman is so reserved and as you said sort of like that that's not going to talk about anything and we just say well i know why she's here and but then we have a feeling this is gonna this workshop is gonna be tough for her or a shock for her and sometimes that person will by the end of the three days because it's just a three-day workshop will explode and something will come out and sometimes my feeling is they're there unconsciously because they want to release now on the other end the ones who will expl um say everything expose everything we have to watch them carefully too because they can take over we have people who come in and want to show us how it's done and we know they're going to run into a shock but when we start talking to them about some of the things i've talked to you about they go what do you mean i don't know myself and there's another part of this which we can talk you and i can talk about today about how we use interrogation in this process but because we interrogate that person if i were to interrogate you as the 12 year old the one that answered the door for one picture of the door so this woman over here is telling a story about herself and whatever and then we interrogate her at that time now suddenly she's aware that she has she's not as free as she thought she was then there's and that person will go most likely go through a change during the three days and there's another huge part of this workshop is that it's a workshop there are maybe a dozen people there and every single person is working on an autobiographical story every single person is struggling with their own obstacles their own resistance their own self-esteem whatever it is they're struggling with this so you're in a room that is really rather unique the energy in the room is extraordinary so that shy one who won't say anything is being encouraged by the ones others that she sees who are struggling who make breakthroughs the the one who thinks she knows and everything is also going to benefit by experiencing what the other ones are going through so that's a big part of the workshop is just to be in that environment for those three days and be immersed in that world of autobiographical storytelling and struggling with your own story writing your story rewriting your story listening to other people seeing them make breakthroughs seeing them not make breakthroughs and not be able to get through an obstacle and seeing how frightening that is all of that impacts everybody so the truth is when else and i do these workshops we have no idea what's going to happen we do the workshop pretty much the same way every time but then after it's all over elsa and i sit down and discuss could we improve how can we change what new things can we try and we come up with some new things but pretty much generally it's the same thing it's the environment that the people are plunged into that causes the change interesting so the extrovert that is is a free spirit and tells everybody everything can learn from the reserved introverted arms crossed and vice versa yes yes and the extrovert may learn very graphically or just very subtly that her explosion of stories that she puts out is actually covering up the story she's not revealing anything except an ego is it a defense mechanism though right could be i'm just saying could be i don't know it depends on the person but i'm going to tell you this and i'm going to tell you that and do you remember the the the film american beauty yes remember angela the the little cheerleader oh yes who was just talking about her sexual exploits forever and ever and ever and ever and ever until the end when she said this is my first well that was a cover-up those stories the stories she was telling was a cover-up for her insecurities that she is as she said ordinary she was afraid of just being ordinary that nobody would want her so she creates this whole myth about everybody wants her right in wes bentley who is a drug dealer i guess in the uh kind of almost downplays his intelligence in a way and you don't realize how deep and like feeling he is but i don't know it's been a while since i've seen it but i love it yeah so i mean that's just an example so yeah the extrovert and the introvert will learn from other and they and the the extent of what they learn may not resonate within them until weeks or months later because of this experience they may start to see things differently they may start to tell their stories differently who knows it's very powerful and it it is a healing process and the first workshops i did in hawaii the first few years there was a married couple um i think it was mary and john i think that's that's their name anyway and they took it for several years very couple they were very unique only in one way they would each have their story they were going to tell and as we learned quickly after the first year or so that john would start telling the story and the thing was watch mary because mary has probably never heard this story before they would each tell stories in the workshop that they had never told each other before and by the end of several years the last time i saw them they said that workshop made such a difference in their marriage you know because it gave them a safe place to be more open and more available and more transparent how does someone decide where to start their story wow that's how does where to start the story now i'm assuming we have this little three or four or five minute story right so a little i'm staying with us you mean where to start that story well if they're going to tell people their life what if they don't want to say well at all you know i was raised in such and such a town what if they want to start it from the time that they left college okay because they feel like that's when they're real self-beginners okay we need we need to talk about two things then now i understand more we need to un talk about uh sequencing okay sequencing of information which i can talk about which has to do with the events in a story and do you really want to start with the beginning of the story do you want to start with something in the middle in other words playing with the sequence the chronology of events as you tell the story so that's one thing the the other thing we can talk about when you say tell the story of my life there's another topic and which i'm willing to forget what we're shooting now but another topic which is about how an autobiographical story is put together because it's put together differently than a screenplay it's put together differently than novels put that together differently than fiction and how we the process i use to explore what the story is really about through the writing and don't make a determination at the beginning so those are two types that make sense so sequencing and then sequencing and then structuring the autobiographical story okay which are two different things the structuring is which story comes first and the sequence of stories and then there's the sequencing within a story so is that something you would determine if someone presents you i'm sorry i'm not it presents me what so when you work with someone how do they decide where to begin okay let's talk about how to where to begin with just one little story someone has told a story and i'm not i'm just going to go back to your you know can we my life is very dull yeah i'm not really interested in talking about me sorry why don't we do a hypothetical uh version of karen who's much more exciting a hypothetical that's fiction that's fiction okay karen who's had an amazing wild incredible life okay i'm going to tell you a quick story right now one of my stories and we'll use that we will use that as an example okay and i'll tell you just just give you an overview of the story this is when i was uh nine years old about to become 10 years old and so i was about to have my 10th birthday i have an older brother an older sister and i have younger siblings too but my parents always made the 10th birthday a special birthday special gift extraordinary so as i'm approaching as i was approaching my 10th birthday i was very excited about what's my gift going to be i had seen what my older brother peter got it was great at least he thought it was great but it was great and it was very expensive and i saw what my sister got she thought it was great they were very happy and so i wanted something that was equally as great or actually better i thought mine should be better and so i was waiting for that moment and then comes the morning of my birthday and i'm waking up i can barely sleep i'm waking up i can't wait until the we get to the the time of the day when i'm going to open the presents and all of that and my father is saying happy birthday and i'm thinking that well it's a special gift i think it might be it could be a bike i'm hoping it's going to be a bike or i'm i was hoping that it could be maybe something like skates ice skating because i was into ice skating and i also wanted maybe some new skis something like that bicycle skate skis that would have been great and i was just sitting there wondering what it's going to be and then the time came when we're opening the gifts and the whole family is around my older brother and sister and the younger ones are there and when they were there and when i opened the gift i don't even know if you'll know what this is when i tell you when i opened the gift what was inside was a wooden press to keep a tennis racket from warping now i played tennis i knew what this was i had a tennis racket in fact a new tennis racket might have been nice but why did i need a new press because there were wooden tennis racquets back then and i was just devastated and disappointed and my father seemed very pleased and my mother seemed very pleased but my brother seemed smug peter right peter yeah and faith seemed not terribly interested so i didn't get what i wanted why do you think they gave you that because they i don't know is it what it represented to you that you weren't what my yeah i think what that story is really about karen is um as the third child in a family of six children i really felt less than most of the other children except maybe my youngest sister but anyway the last the sixth one and at that time at 10 years old i think what i really wanted to feel i wanted to feel is that i was as special if not more special than my older brother and sister and this 10th birthday gift would do it and only once would you get to do this and i know what they got and i know and then i saw what i got and it just didn't do it so my expectation is that after that i get the gift my self-esteem would be super high i would feel proud of myself i would feel important but i didn't okay now getting back to sequencing a story right the question is with that story where do you start now the story and you know this from filmmaking to the story could start at the moment of opening the gift say what would happen i could this is what i'll we'll do with students a lot of time what would happen if you start with the opening of the gift well then i said yeah but no but you don't reveal what the gift is you you start at the moment of the opening again the moment when the adrenaline is so high and the anticipation is so huge and you start then and then you go back to the beg to the beginning and start that way what happens if you tell the story out of order the important thing is that by the time the story is told completely the audience has all the information that you're going to give them that's it but it doesn't mean they need it in chronological order in fact it could start after the opening after as i'm walking back to my room and i could start with the story talking about me walking back to my room with my gifts devastated destroyed feeling despondent i feel like i want to cry it could start there and now if you think about it if you start there the audience is going what happened what happened to you that was so awful and you're carrying birthday gifts and you want to cry the audience has no frame of reference to make sense out of that which is great because it makes the audience curious then i can go back to the excitement about what i'm going to get now the audience knows the end and they're trying to figure they're not trying to figure out where it's going to go but they're telling me how did it get from this to that i could even throw in the middle of it how much i love tennis throughout the middle of the story so that the tennis the the press for the tennis racket the audience will think well that's great but they realize it's not great because it's not greater than what peter and faith got and where do i get that information in so it's it's it's not so that's a that's the sequencing where are you going to start where do you want to finish that's the sequencing of a story now this is actually a lot of the um storytelling techniques that we teach in write your life with autobiographical stories come from film film editing now you've seen films that start in the middle you've seen events that start there you've seen flashbacks you go what is that and all of that process mark can you share with us your use of two narrators yes um these the story i just told you about my uh 10th birthday was told mostly in the past tense now what we will do when someone says asks you something and you're about to tell an autobiographical story or you want to tell a story or you want to tell someone about what you just witnessed or you saw a week or two ago you will by instinct there's a lot of reasons for this tell it in the past tense you will say okay it was last wednesday and i was driving my car on the freeway and then i saw and it's in the past tense now as soon as you are telling the story in the past tense the listener automatically knows several things they know that you know the ending of the story now that sounds silly or maybe a little confusing why wouldn't you of course you do know the ending but when you tell it in the past tense that narrator talking to past tense knows the end of the story that narrator also knows everything that's happened since that story until the present moment that's why we call it the omniscient narrator the narrator who knows everything i know the story i'm going to tell you i know how it ends i know everything that's happened since then i know the repercussions of that story i know everything so it actually means that in the telling of the story the story is like here and the storyteller is here telling about this thing and you the listener are there and there's the story so the story is separate from me the storyteller and separate from you it's this entity that exists by itself here then there's another narrator the other narrator is is called the naive narrator and this is the tricky one and very very powerful the naive narrator tells the story in the present tense tells the story not only just in the present tense but is telling the story from the point that the character is in at the moment not knowing even what's going to happen in the next few seconds so rather than in the past tense okay it was last wednesday i was driving my car on the 405. that's the omniscient narrator the naive narrator i'm driving my car i'm on the 405. now it's in the present tense now right then just the fact that you hear it in the present tense shifts the whole story because it sounds like i don't know what's going to happen i'm driving on the 405 and i see this little yellow car and it's zooming it's zooming up behind me i can see it in my rear view mirror now i can tell you all that you still get the feeling that i don't know what's going to happen although of course if you're smart enough you'll say well mark is telling me this story he's here in front of me he must know how it's going to end but my feeling is he doesn't he doesn't because he's put himself in the middle of the story telling the story as it happens he is totally totally naive now karen the story is not here with me here the story is around me and it's actually around you too you are in the middle of the story i'm in the middle of the story and quite honestly that's where you want to be now think about this every screenplay that you've ever read i'm assuming you've read a lot of them they're all in the present tense they're all in the present tense jim does this he does that he does this he does that do you know why they're in the present tense because when it's up on the screen we want to believe it's happening as we watch it now we as an audience of film are smart enough to know that we go to see a movie we know they spent how many years writing it how many months shooting it how you know all the work they've done it's done it's finished but we go and we watch it suspending disbelief and i'll believing that that what we are watching right now on the screen is happening in the moment because that's where we want to be so the naive narrator can take us into the center of the story so as you're telling a story it's not which narrator you use it's when you use each narrator that gives you control over the story in other words i could be telling you the story i'm making up this story about the 405. it's just as good as anything else i'm driving on the 405. i'm a 405 and i'm feeling nervous because behind me i see in this rearview mirror this yellow car is coming at me and he he or she or whatever is going way too fast and i'm really scared now that's all the naive narrator and you are probably in the point of going what's going to happen what's going to happen now i as the storyteller and this is the beauty of being a storyteller i am in total control of this story and i at any time i want can pop you out of the story right now you're in the middle of the story i can pop you out at any time i want and i can say the car is coming at me it's coming faster and faster now you got to understand something about me and yellow cars you know the first car i ever bought was a yellow station wagon it was really an ugly car now what i just did is i jumped to the other narrator i jumped out of the story i jumped to the other narrator i'm giving you some information that i think you need to have which will help inform the story but i've left you hanging about what's going on in the story and there's a part of you go okay great information but what's happening there okay i got it i got it now i have you curious about two things why am i getting this new information and what's happening there and then any moment i can see and then i look in the rear view mirror and it's coming closer and closer and closer and i can see there's nobody driving it there's nobody so i can switch back and forth now as i switch back and forth between those two narrators i'm actually manipulating you i'm bringing you into the story pulling you out of the story bring you into the story pull you out of the story that's all part of the structure of the story that i want to tell that's how i want to tell it when playing with you and playing with your relationship to the story do we like being manipulated does the audience i mean i realize that's a weird way to say it but does that something we like do you like roller coasters i don't you don't but i like movies but you like movies but i don't like roller coasters okay but you did that so that's why um but i i think there's sort of a wonderful love-hate relationship with being manipulated i don't want to be manipulated and then we go through a movie oh that's so scary wasn't that great and i'm thinking well you were just manipulated i think we find our forms of entertainment that manipulate us whether it's roller coaster rides or a movie that take us into danger take us into a zone of danger where we feel that we're at risk roller coaster ride we could die you feel that way sometimes in a movie it's an emotional danger and i'm going to feel sad i'm going to feel hurt i'm going to feel scared but then you can we come out going wow that was great i want to see that again but i said you were scared you were screaming out of fear so there's this curious relationship we have my feeling is when we go to see a movie or we read a book or we or hear a story being told is please please manipulate me thrill me scare me dazzle me my only caveat is don't bore me don't be boring i don't mind movies that i hate because i felt hate i hate this then i hate these i don't mind characters that i hate people say wasn't that one i hated her whatever it is it doesn't matter and all these characters and all these stories they do manipulate us but the worst thing is to go there's no point to watching this there's nothing going on this is just boring that's the worst how do most people use the naive narrator incorrectly and then the omniscient narrator incorrectly several things about the two narratives you need to understand and how they can be if they're used incorrectly they just won't be effective at all one thing about the omniscient narrator the omniscient narrator does know everything the omniscient narrator since the omniscient narrator is talking about an event there and is actually that narrator is not involved in the event that narrator is only telling about the event the mistake you can do is say okay i'm going to tell this story and then i'm going to get really emotional so that the audience will know how emotionally i was affected at that time but you're still telling it in the past tense and when she looked at me i was when i wanted to cry and then she did this and then she did that and you know what we have now therapy why am i telling the story am i telling the story because i want to go through those emotions again because we can feel the audience can feel that emotion is not connected with the story that that emotion is connected with the memory of the story so the emotional journey of the character does not belong in that narrator it belongs in the naive narrator now the naive narrator just say you know and she's looking at me and i'm really scared now i'm in the present tense and i go that's totally acceptable because you're telling me what's going on and how you're feeling which is also what's going on in the moment but if the naive narrator tries to put this into some larger perspective i'm looking at her you got to understand you know i i've really had a lot of trouble with relationships for a long time you go where are you going why are you thinking about that in the middle of this this moment with this woman why that's the job of the omniscient narrator they each have separate jobs and they have to you have to be purely in one or the other all the time you also have an interrogation process for writers with the travis technique right and it's entitled meet your characters that's part of it uh because you start out saying interrogation process for writers which there are a lot of techniques within that and the interrogation process just to be clear about what it is is actually interrogating um a character who lives inside an actor or an individual so this interrogation process which can ignite characters inside the actors we use this with writers and we show writers how to do this to actually meet their characters either while after they've written the screenplay while they're writing the screenplay often we've done it they even have an idea for a screenplay and they say we get a call say i'd like to do meet your characters can you help me meet the characters that i have and so the writer will then describe to us to elsa and i here here's the story here are the characters we say fine we'll gather together some actors who are very skilled actors who we've worked with before and what we will do with these actors is we will give them um along with the writer's understanding of what we're doing a certain amount of information about these characters sometimes it's very little information sometimes it's a lot of information all depends on how developed the writer has gone how far they've gone in the development of the characters and we will interrogate these actors as these characters so we will turn these actors into these characters that's the interior and then we will put actually put these characters together we'll have them interact we will have the show the writer how not only how to do the interrogation but allow the writer to actually engage with the characters so let's say there's three or four characters that we've interrogated and they're all the characters now all these actors have become the characters and now the writer can engage with the characters and ask them questions and interrogate them and start to learn to he will actually meet his characters sometimes the writer says will say to us i have this idea for a scene i want between the husband and wife i say great great we'll do that during the interrogation we'll interrogate the husband and wife and we'll put them into that scene now there is no scene there's nothing written but it's a scene maybe when he comes home and he discovers that she bought the red dress that he told her she couldn't buy or something like that and he discovered that she bought it and that's they have little very little information but enough information for a scene this is important for a scene to get started that's all there's no more information beyond that there's no information about what the father the husband or the wife say or do and there's no information about how the scene ends it's just enough to get them into the scene because the important thing about interrogation is once we interrogate an actor as the character that character knows nothing about the script or the story nothing now the actor may know a lot but the character knows nothing the character is totally naive so we can send those characters into a scene just enough to get the scene started and see what happens and now the writer is sitting there watching an interaction between two of his characters happen something he hasn't even written yet can we try that now with something we can we can and keep in mind i'm not a professional writer here so this is going to be a very very light story um so my character that i've come with up with is her name is jill she's 26 years old she's unmarried and she has a seven month old baby with a man named jack so because of some life issues jill and jack have lost their right to stay at jill's grandmother's home where they were all living and then after being kicked out of there they move into jack's brother's home and jack's brother is kind of several steps up he has a stable job and a family life but before you know it jill and jack are then again asked to leave and they have with their baby baby maya and so now they've been asked to leave two places um so before jill fell into this situation she um planned on going to chef school and she was always artistic the situation you mean pregnancy uh and meeting jack i think jack came before the pregnancy that's true it wasn't an immaculate conception yeah no no but you said this situation before she got into this relationship this relationship right yeah and and then this baby and then being bounced around from these different she wanted to go she wanted to be a chef yeah she wanted to be a chef and she was very artistic and um unfortunately some of her demons got the better of her and she met jack while attending night school for this this chef sort of career and they both fell into the world of partying and it got the better of them so now here they are they've been kicked out of their second place with a seventh month old baby and uh i want to get to know jill better okay and this uh karen is your creation is this this character is your creation yeah just for the sake of this interview yeah i'm not it's not like i'm writing something no but it's your creation it didn't come from something else no no just jack and jill or you know those are those are used elsewhere but yeah so now you want to meet that character yeah the character okay that's fine so i need to talk to jill okay okay do you want me to be am i jill or this is where jill lives inside you okay so i need to talk to jill okay okay jill yes i work how old are you i'm 26 26 and you wanted to be a chef i do you still want to be a chef i do i love the cooking channel um i love making things yeah making food into pastries or cakes or casseroles or salad what what kind of what kind of chef do you want to be an assortment maybe less with meat more vegetarian more vegetarian vegan yeah but you love cooking mm-hmm so do you but but you're you're married now are you oh you're not married but you have a child correct okay and but you're still pursuing being a chef um i don't know how i'm gonna balance i don't know i want him to watch her but he you want him to watch you want jack to watch your child but he won't i mean he's not what is it what is he doing he's not reliable what is he doing is he working not right now he was or he's not working he was and are you working now not right now and in order to pursue being a chef what do you have to do well i need to go back and finish these other credits there's a couple classes i didn't finish oh you've got a couple classes you have to finish and then you get a certificate or a degree or something right and then i want to be accepted into this other like more professional chef school okay and then to move on to a more professional school so you got a plan this is this i mean this is a plan i maya wasn't planned i didn't say that it doesn't mean i don't love it in terms of chefing being a chef you have a plan right the gut that sort of got interrupted a little bit a little bit but you know that happens yeah so it happens to a lot of people so when are you going to start you know working on these credits well i need like my grandmother was paying for it and then does jack love you in his own way what does that mean he has a weird his his own way of loving what what is it he has like trust issues trust trustee we both do it's not just him i have trust issues can you trust him not with money no not with money i mean he you want to marry him if he if he stops drinking i do if he stops oh he's got a drinking problem yeah he's got a drinking problem he doesn't have a job you can't trust him why would he he's a good guy he's a good guy for what does he watch after mia does he want you to go back to chef school i think he gets jealous he wants you to go back to chef school he's jealous i'm going to meet someone there oh no he's jealous you're going to meet someone so he wants to keep you at home because he saw my instructor and i were working and he just said like i don't like the way you stare at him and he stares at you is that why he was so excited when you got pregnant don't know how excited he was is that his way of keeping you at home jill why does he want to keep you at home he's not doing anything when you're at home with me where's jack he's watching tv he's watching tv he needs his time to watch sports and drink and and just be like is that what he says or is that what you say well i want to respect him and his wishes do you respect him and his wishes to stay home and watch tv and drink beer with his friends is that what he does no i mean i i mean yeah that's what he does but i don't why were you kicked out of the house um we got some fights with who uh well he got mad at my grandmother and my grandmother said that he took some money from from her i don't think he did i think it was somebody else but she blames do you think he could have maybe do you think he was capable of that yeah but i i don't she doesn't like him and so anything he does like she just automatically wants to blame them yeah and who during that argument between your grandmother and jack right what did you say why did you defend jill i guess you defend jack i asked him to keep his voice that he yells at her and i don't like that keeping his voice down that's not the issue the issue is she accused him of stealing some money and she's going to kick him out of the house who were you defending i was defending him why he's just had it rough and so he oh so you have to take care of him you have to protect him now you have two children jill you have two children one's only a few months old the other one's in his 20s or something is this the way the rest of your life is going to go do you love your grandmother i know do you love your grandmother yes i do she's believed in me when she's always good to you yes she took you in when you needed help when you got pregnant and you didn't know where to go she protected you and then you protected him against her if you left jack with mia could you go back to live with your grandmother she says she won't give me any more money i didn't ask you that could you live with her maybe would she watch mia she loves me yeah she's been she's been willing to watch her but she doesn't like his drinking so she's no no i didn't say him he's not going back you're going back with mia would she let you live with her you and mia but then he'll just be gone i know he'll be gone would it's not an answer would she let you live with her would she watch mia for you would she let you go back to school would she support you the way jack doesn't [Music] what do you want jill i just want us all to be happy the three of us well that's great everybody wants that what are you going to do but i think that with the right time he can be better right time for what just if he just needs someone to believe in him no one believed in him and so he needs people to believe in him no one believes in him so i believe in him it's your job to believe in him and do you believe in him if he could just no do you believe in him it's easy to say you believe in someone if they stop all the horrible things they're doing anybody can say that do you believe in him now have he not stopped anything he's still drinking he still doesn't trust you he's horrible with money he's not going to support you he's not going to watch the child for you to go back to school he's not doing any of that do you believe in him he's do you want to be a place what's that he's in a negative place right now he certainly is do you believe in him do you want to be with him jill i believe in you do you want to be with me i do want to be with him why because we you know things were better before like you know his current behavior and he just had more he was just fun and and [Music] i think that he just needs some time to to become a better person you know he didn't have a lot of role models growing up and i know that's i can't like use that as an excuse but i just think that if someone believes in him he will turn it around if someone and that someone happens to be you but you don't believe in him some days it's clear that you don't believe in some days i do or some days oh that's great how about 100 believe in him 100 percent love him 100 support him he changes when he drinks so he says he just wants to have a beer every now and then and watch if you could wave a magic wand what would you ask for that we would get married and that he would stop drinking and that we would both get jobs and we wouldn't have to rely on my grandmother that you would get married yeah does he want to get married he says one day what's up one day i mean his parents weren't married so what so and it doesn't mean anything so he doesn't believe in the institution of marriage i see so he really doesn't want to get married but you want to get married yeah does he want to get a job that was part of the magic wand thing is that he got a job does he want to get a job have you ever heard him talk about a job that he really wants and that he's willing to go for it what does he want to do besides sit home and drink and watch tv like i said he's just in a bad place right now and then if you could just get him in a better place then jill you're living with a parasite you know that he's going to suck everything out of you everything all your energy all your joy all your talent all your hopes all your dreams until you're sucked dry and then he'll probably leave you but i don't want mia to grow up without a father i want her to have him there i mean i i know he's not perfect i'm not perfect i'm not perfect so i can't expect him to be perfect you can expect him to be better than he is you can expect him to respect you you can expect him to love you you can expect him to support you you can expect him to sacrifice things that are important to him to help you if it's a marriage just being married won't make it any better you know that it'll be just the same as it is now well he says he loves mia and i'm sure he does i'm sure he does do you love mia absolutely do you want her to grow up with a father like that just because he's the biological father he's the only choice i just don't want to do that to her do what do what i don't want her to not know who raised her i mean like who who her dad was i don't want her she doesn't know it she can know him like question mark she can know him how are you going to protect me i know one day she'll be strong and she'll see that he does love her he's just going through some he just he's not perfect he has issues but i'm not perfect either so i can't totally just expect him to be perfect you know he says that i nag him all the time and that i'm always on this case okay so so you're so you're going to um hang in there yeah i thought about maybe moving back to my grandmother's with me and then but i don't know where he's going to go so but do it you can do that move back with your grandmother you're a beautiful strong vibrant young woman who wants to be a chef you have everything in front of you you can make any choice you want to make just make it there's nothing stopping you but what's going to happen to him he doesn't have anywhere to go who knows that's his problem i just don't want him to become more self-destructive than he already is it may happen but it won't be your fault he's a great father isn't he like i said when he's in a good place he's a good place he's a great father he seems like it i mean and you're happy when he's a great father right when he's a good place yeah so stay with him just stay with him maybe it'll work out who knows he just he doesn't like it when i like not that i'm not telling him where i'm going and he wants to like know like where i am all the time and so it's just hard for me to like have a life and then he's there and i you know if you could tell jack anything you wanted without fear of what would happen anything what would you tell him i just want to see him be better and believe in himself and just he doesn't need to always have like a beer it seems like every hour with that's what you want to tell him i just i want to see him like be the person i know he can be what do you really think of him i think that he just never had anyone believe in him but i see a difference what do you think of him what do you jill think of jack i don't know he's become so negative i'm gonna ask you one last question if you had to do headed to do all over again would you have gotten involved with jack no no i would have stayed at the school and just okay kept going okay now we're gonna stop okay so what was that like painful painful yeah i feel bad for jill okay she's stuck you know and um you know she doesn't have any resources and she's relying on his grandmother and um [Music] you know maybe jack's a good guy but she's not that's not her fault it's not she can't fix him but um she's like stuck in this pit and you're right she's taking care of two children and um i guess i want her to have a backbone you want her to have a backbone yeah but the since since we did this because of meet your characters right and this is not about you karen playing jill this is about you meeting the jill that's existing inside you sure um were there any surprises how much maybe she made excuses for all these things or like you brought them out to light and she just kept like making excuses for them like if only if only if only sure in a perfect world but a perfect world and if it just needs time i mean all the all the excuses that she makes for him which i don't think she would make if it wasn't for mia um that's interesting yeah that's true because the child changed everything not getting together with jack it was the child right changed everything and it changed her perspective that's true and protecting him protecting him because you're really protecting her and the whole thing you want her to have a father i said well you know she can have a father there's more than one out there that's true that could be the father but that's you know because lots of times when we do this um this process with the writer treating you as the writer of this story is that the writer will discover things about their protagonist or any character in their story that they never imagined just because it's done through the interrogation process where the character is actually speaking now it's coming from within the writer but it's because of the way the process works of the very intense probing questions that's why it's called interrogation probing questions about who you are and there's something unique that i've been experiencing for years now for both writers and actors when they go through this process because they're under the pressure of the character having to answer immediately not under the pressure of oh let me think about that i'll journal about that let me think about let me think about what jill would do in that circumstance that that can't play at all what plays is jill is being asked and you're playing and you are being jill and jill has to answer and so jill i'm sure you experienced that like i have yeah i karen can't stay oh excuse me i don't know the answer to that can we go on to no there's no there's no room for that jill has to answer and so many times you're surprised by what the what comes out of the character or the character's perspective or point of view or something and we've done this many times where writers have said my god i didn't know he or she thought that it's amazing no it's not because of something i do in other words i'm not injecting information into the character at all i'm just questioning the character and the character has to answer and you're in and you're free to say anything you want and the answer you want so that a lot of times they're surprised but the character does exist inside you because you created that character and you know that character better than anybody and all we're doing is moving you the writer out of the way so you i'm i'm not allowing you karen the writer to control the character you just have to sit on the side and watch the character emerge and be questioned and be interrogated and be herself then you go wow that's a different person than i thought i was scared you're interrogating because i i saw that my life was like backed into this corner and that there were no solutions to it and [Music] you know it's loose i had thought of a story like this years ago i never really did much with it but it was kind of based on people that i would see um that were like young families that kind of like lived in trailers and different things and i always wondered like how did they get there i'm sure that's not something they planned and um you know how do we know that couldn't have been any of us right there with the with the certain set of circumstances and so you know you'll just see someone on the street and you just like start wondering about their life and um just just yeah i felt like i think i felt more like jill than i ever had i actually had a different name for the character before but um we changed it because it was so it was a different name it was like very unusual but i did i felt very scared and like i had no choices and no no say no agency in my own life and so you were showing me as jill that like you know there's not many places to go with this you know so yeah and a lot of what we do with jill too is and this happens a lot of interrogation is push the character up against their obstacles and it's um the obstacles that are inside them the fears i mean jill's fear of not having jack around which is really irrational but understandable understandable because that's what happens but like how because even when i said move back with the grandmother and all that you and mia but you say yeah but what's going to happen to jack i go excuse me i'm giving you an opportunity to get out of a bad situation and all you want to do is get back in it but just to run into that so we you know it's it's a matter of pushing the character up against even their fears or their denial or their rationalization or justification and question it not saying it's wrong but just can you explain to me why you think that way that's all i was doing explain that to me and i could see you you're going oh yeah i can't i can't well then we have a problem that's it great that's what and that's what we do with and now there's one other thing that process is similar to what we do with writers with the write your life too except we're interrogating them as themselves at a different time but it's the same process and the same many times the same thing will happen even you go oh wow i didn't know that that's what i was thinking back then and what happens when it's with write your life or autobiographical is and i'm very much aware of this and i have to be a little more delicate sometimes because i'm actually interrogating you as you so i have to be much more careful i can't be as aggressive sometimes because but many times what i'm triggering is the truth that has been buried and the people are surprised that this came out and they they can feel that it's true they can feel that this is what was really going on they could feel that this was really the fears that they were dealing with and now they go back to look at the story and they see it in a whole different way because they see their protagonist in a different way yeah and i see this character in a different way now good we just finished the meet your character interrogation process mark where hypothetical character i came up with i'm wondering when you do this with other writers what's the most common reaction afterwards that they have after meeting their character okay um if it's meeting the characters like we did with you where the character comes from within you as opposed to meeting the characters when they come out of actors right i'm going back to what we did with you the reaction is usually surprised by what they learned that they didn't know they're surprised by what the character says or what the character does or what the character believes in or doesn't believe in and a lot of that of course i have no idea what's going to come up because i don't know the characters that well as well as the writer does and i don't know how they perceive the character and many times the writer will perceive the character in a very precious way this is who she is and this is what i want her to be which is a very controlling way so then what will happen during the interrogation is something to come out that is outside of that or or different from that perception that they have or that creation that they have in their mind that the character will start talking in a way or behaving in a way or responding in a way that they that they never would have allowed the character to do as the writer but there's the character doing it there's the character saying that there's a character expressing those feelings those ideas and they're surprised so normally then it would be a group of actors or an actor as this character jill or jack these two characters or maybe even the grandmother who knows yeah and the writer would be watching you interrogate those people as those characters well yes i mean when when we get into the write your life with a writer and we have a group of actors who are going to become their characters um it's it's a a little more complicated process because simult depending on who the writer is simultaneously i have to besides interrogating all the actors to become those characters i have i'm simultaneously training the writer how to do this how to to the very sort of the very beginning steps of interrogation process and how it can work and then even then once i've interrogated the actors to be those characters i will bring the writer in to start talking to the characters it won't be just me and to even get involved in the interrogation so that's the part of the meeting i can be interrogating i can be interrogated and an actor says jill the character we just did and i could have the writer right next to me i could have you right next to me if we're doing this and you're the writer and i could just tap you like go talk to her and keep keep up the interrogation just keep it going and explore and you may have other questions you want to ask and and other other things points of view you want to express to her to see what's happening so there's it's a process of not only just working with the actors but bringing the writer into the process and then eventually engaging them with all the characters and something that elsia mentioned um that just for the sake of the camera i guess we couldn't do is that i'm sitting in karen's seat referring to myself in the third person yeah so the lines between jill and karen are going to be sort of they'd be if i was standing up and outside of this seat then it would be more that i'm jill i guess yeah you feel you feel more of a separation right exactly interesting great do you find that writers become quite emotional because they've met their characters um sometimes yeah sometimes they um sometimes emotional because they are responding to the characters i guess in a way that they hope that the audience will that they're actually meeting them and realizing how vulnerable they are or how scared they are or how magnificent they are and going wow this is really um moved by the characters and sometimes they'll become very emotional when something will happen between two of the characters [Music] that they hadn't imagined but actually is um working into the story that they want to tell let's say it's just between two characters who have never met before and suddenly there's a connection and one character says he feels that way about the other characters they'll talk about how they feel in the interrogation how they feel about each other and how they see each other and sometimes the writer will oh my god i never imagined that that could happen there could be that connection between the two and they'll become emotional because of that because it's a richness of the characters and the character relationship that they hadn't really conceived of yet and then do you find conversely that they don't like their character they don't have any empathy toward them and they go you know what i need to go back to the drawing board this isn't the character that i thought they were yeah and yeah sometimes they're going oh okay that character didn't turn out the way i had hoped then it would be going back to okay what were you looking for because we're basing it on what you told me or you told us and maybe you need to alter something along those lines and we could do it again quite honestly we could do it again almost immediately if they say i want to i want to approach this character in a different way say okay let's do it talk about it and the actor can be sitting there listening to it and say okay we're going to approach the character or i'll go to another actor so i'm going to do another actor for that character and start interrogating them and interrogate them into the character again and we'll have a different version of the character man i would love to that i mean that just sounds so exciting even though i'm not really invested in this character that i have this hypothetical story but um just it sounds like really really fascinating to see this thing that was in your imagination just like very powerful good you talk about something called the bully and the butterfly your committee as it relates to meeting characters yes another big topic and i think karen i think we talked about this in the last interview many many years ago okay my memories no no no no that's no that's okay this this has to do with the committee now the committee i'll explain in fact in the interrogation that we just did there was the committee but i'll explain how that works the um the term committee the way we use it stan represents all the voices in your head so all the voices in your head karen or david head david's head houses there's many voices in there and as you know these voices in our heads that we all have we talk to them they talk to us they criticize us they praise us they advise us or whatever they get in the way sometimes and there are a lot of them that's why i call it the committee because i feel like there's a lot in my head i feel like there's a lot of these voices and they are sometimes in session discussing something so the voices in the head of us as humans are very important because i feel like my committee your committee david's or else's committee or i'll go back to your committee for karen your committee knows everything about you everything even stuff that nobody else knows it's in there somewhere so when you think about the fact that we have all these voices in our head and these voices know everything about us and each voice in our head has different opinions about that subject or that topic or any subject or any topic this is a very rich territory inside any human being but then think about a character a character in a movie a character like jill jill has a committee and if you could get into her committee if you could visit her committee you would know more about jill but the problem is in screenplays and most stories that were plays however they were written we are given no information at all about the committee inside a character nothing we know what the character does we know what the character says we know what the character expels she expresses herself what she wants what her needs are we get a little idea of what she's afraid of and all that but we really don't know what's going on inside her head okay because inside her head inside jill's head are all of these voices right now what is it the butt butterfly and the and the bully the bully the bully and the butterfly yeah colin you're committing yeah the bully now what i just did with you with jill and that was mostly the bully the bully that there's a voice inside jill's head which is saying get out get out get out get out get out what you ex kept trying to hold on to was another voice this will work this will work if i give him time you're trying that's the butterfly if you're trying to hold on sometimes there were a couple of times when i was talking to you i would support the butterfly but then i would go back to the bully so the thing is there's a war going on inside the committee there's a war going on inside every one of our committees it's ju it's it's chaos in there so the interrogation is giving voice to all of those voices so every time i i can attack you about something i can praise you about something those are two different voices of the committee inside jill's head and jill by jill you as voicing jill responding to those voices of her committee every time you respond jill gets formed a little bit more a little bit more a little bit more so jill is getting formed by forming the committee not by telling the actress or the writer who jill is but by forming jill through the interrogation process and then are they also forming who jack is same thing because they're confronting her on these different things well i mean by confronting well we're forming yes we're forming jill's point of view of jack now if i interrogate jack or if i interrogate you as jack or interrogate somebody else as jack it won't be the same as jill jack has his point of view jack has his jack has his committee his committees that says you know she should take care of me this is what the you know she's the wife i'm just making it up i don't know but he will have his committee that justifies his behavior or questions his behavior he's got a different committee but it's also in chaos so these committees are in chaos and it's building a character from deep deep inside the character where quite respectfully to writers and actors writers and actors will create the character from outside writers will design a character you design this character actors will look at a script and go okay oh no i i can design a character that will do those things that are in the script but that's not really developing the character at all that's really creating sort of like a puppet that will do the things that are demanded in the script the thing is what's going on inside that character that causes him or her to do those things in the script that's what you have to build and that has to be built from way deep inside not on the outside so when someone's writing a script and we're not connecting to the character is that because it's almost a puppet it could be it could be a two-dimensional character yep a puppet who's just doing i mean we've all seen films or plays or whatever where our television where we go the only reason that characters doing that is because the writer needs them to do that right so it's not the character it's the writer pulling strings to get the character to do that so that the story will work out that happens too often and why do you think this this meeting their characters and the interrogation why do you think it just puts you in a different mindset because i'm already in a different mindset about a character that i just kind of like came up with and i've been thinking about for years but never really did anything with so i'm not totally invested but now like i feel like that person is real from just sitting here with you for that 10 to 15 minute span why do you think it works what is it that happens i think part of the reason it's a great question i think part of the reason it works for both writers and actors but we'll talk about writers for a second is because that's sort of the situation you're in with jill is suddenly there's a respect for another human being you feel like there's another human being existing who's jill and i've met her or there's these other human beings of these characters that i thought i created i've met them in person and i now i have an obligation to them as the writer to honor them not i have a task of creating them i have a task of honoring them and who they are and what that relationship is so i think there's a there's a um a different respect and i think the same thing happens for actors when they've been interrogated they feel they've had this experience of this character that lives inside them and still it's like i need to honor this this person there is there is another person it's not just me acting so acting sort of goes away yeah i don't know if you saw joker but yeah if you saw the way joaquin phoenix approached the character of arthur fleck i mean whether you want to say it was a terrible human being but you there were just so many moments where you had at least for me as a viewer i had so much empathy yeah for that character and i think that's through joaquin's you know treating him it's just he was a real yeah it's his total immersion yeah i mean it's an extraordinary performance absolutely and his total immersion into that tortured human being and it's interesting because he ends up becoming he ends up doing horrible things evil things killing people and yet i have empathy for him because he's so tortured he's so you know it's i mean that's an extraordinary achievement absolutely and the same with renee zellweger as uh judy yeah garland yep same thing you know especially from just the opening scene just showing up the hotel with the kids and then not knowing if she could stay or not and just yeah this like fragility but then this like you know on stage persona it was just seeing characters like that like you just all time goes away yeah you know and in that moment when you were asking about my character time went away and i felt like i was hurt good we talked about compression and expansion of time when it comes to a writer meeting their character okay um that that's that's really not with the writers meeting the characters oh okay but that's okay but compression and expansion it has a lot to do with the write your life autobiographical storytelling the thing is that we have a tendency by instinct or whatever to not only tell things in a chronological order but to tell them pretty much in real time and we will tell this happened then this happened then this happened in other words time will feel as we're telling the story that time is moving at its normal pace compression and expansion are two techniques of playing with time and storytelling one is compressing time and the other is expanding it compressing time is i could move you through i could be telling you a story and i can move you through a part of the story much faster much faster than real time very very very very fast and what a couple things that happens and i'll try to give you an example i'm going back to my driving on the 405 which is a story i just made up um see if i can do it with that and let's say that that's the story of me having a tough day and i'm racing i'm on the 405 racing to get to an appointment or something like that that's when i see the yellow car but i want to tell you what the rest let's say i want to tell you what the rest rest of the day has been like up till that point but it's been a long day and there's been a lot of things that have happened so many that if i start listing them all you go fine fine fine fine and emotionally it won't do much of it you're just gonna you'll just get a lot of information like if i told you that my alarm clock didn't go off when i wanted to so i got up late and then i had problems with the shower because i promised myself i'd fix it and it was it wasn't fixed and i had to hold it with one hand and then as i was getting dressed i spilled something on my favorite shirt and then i went on and on and on and then i did this and then as i was going to get to the appointment i'm going outside and my neighbor who was really annoying wanted to talk and she won't start talking and then like i talked to her for a while and then i'm going on then trying to get to the car now the car is fine except i should have washed it i should have realized that i'm going to meet this person he's going to see my car and the car is dirty now i could tell you know say all these things are going on but i say i don't want to even take as much time as i just took to tell that and also after a while it goes yeah got it yes got it got it it's been a bad day got it got it got it if i compress it i can tell it very much faster much faster and still take you on an emotional journey let me say i'm up up up in the morning alarm clock didn't work didn't work didn't work supposed to be 6 30. got to get there on time take a shower shower's broken always been broken my fault should have fixed it got to get there on time where's that shirt there's the shirt beautiful shirt put on the shirt spill the spill the oatmeal on it oh damn oatmeal change the shirt don't like the shirt gotta go gotta go outside there's rhonda she wants to talk can't talk hot gotta go gotta go get in the car get in bye rhonda does she's still talking about i wanna get in the car should've washed the car why didn't i wash the car this is an important thing i should have washed the car he's gonna see the car got to get going now that i just covered the same amount of time same amount of events but faster and it becomes more poetic and becomes more fractured time that's compressing time now we do the this is built on what we can do in film with jump cutting and fast cutting and we've all seen that when it goes we start moving moving through time faster and it puts us in a different rhythm and it puts us in a different energy and it creates an urgency just by the construction of it of those fast cuts just by the construction of jumping jumping jumping jumping through all with all of that and actually in the piece that i just did i wove through one phrase that i kept repeating which you may not recall it doesn't matter the rep the phrase was gotta get there on time gotta get there on time and i can weave that through and you may or may not notice it you may not be that's sort of like a little mantra that keeps repeating which is really what the whole compression is about so that's compression so many times when we're doing these large stories and someone says well you have to understand everything that was happening up until then say i got it but we'll have to compress it it takes a lot of work to do that it takes a lot of work to explore that amount of time what really happened and then to write it and then compress it the other one which is much more powerful is the expansion of time the expansion of time we use when you hit a point in the story you're telling a story and it's usually the point the key moment in the story it's the key moment if it's a love story it's a key moment of the first kiss or maybe if it's a frightening traumatic story it's when you witness something that just changed your life something maybe horrible or maybe it was a car accident or something or something happened in the story which just riveted you and it's one of those moments when you know something happens and your whole body seems to change what ripples through you the embarrassment the fear the shame the horror the disgust the joy whatever is going it's just rippling through you then you say okay how do i tell that and you don't want to go along and say then i you know i looked at her looked in her eyes and then and then i'm kissing her and it really felt great and because that's all and i'm moving on you go that's it the expansion of time is what we do is we stop time we literally stop the story so if it is the kiss and if it's you're talking about that moment of that first kiss and you say i'm looking at her eyes and her eyes are looking up at me and i can see the sparkle in her eyes and i i can feel that yes this is the moment i reach in and i start to kiss her and my lips touch her lips and lips touching lips warm soft smooth joy oh tears my tears her tears oh touching touching wanting needing needing feeling breathe breathe breathe and then i can pull myself out of it now that's an expansion an expansion of time stops the story and what it does is it we keep telling the story but we drop down inside the character to really explore what's going on in that moment of time and time is not moving forward at all or if it is it's just inching forward maybe a little bit it's almost like slow motion now in cinema we use slow motion and things like to get that same feeling here we do it because we're not getting dealing with anything visual we're doing it just with words just with words and the main things that expansion needs it needs a trigger something to send you into that this moment the trigger was the lips touching something that visually or essentially that send you in and it needs a release something to bring you out something to snap you out of it so that you can go back into real time so that's that's expansion the the release i didn't put in yet because i wanted to explain it first because you have to plan the release and if so if i'm in the middle of that kiss and i'm talking about soft touching kitchen now my planned release i'm not going to bring myself out of that feeling because it's such a delicious feeling even if it's a horrible traumatic feeling you may want to bring yourself out but you can't something else has to bring you out of it somebody saying my name would bring me out of it so if it's touching the lips touch warm smooth touching lips more want more and more mark yeah something like that pam so then it brings me out of it so that's what expansion expansion allows you to just immerse yourself in the the joy or the horror or the trauma or the exhilarates whatever it is of the moment of that key moment and usually this is what the whole story is aiming for at this moment anyway and you want to take time with it that's expansion do you think that people should follow their dreams and along those lines if they should follow their dreams when should an artist leave their day job boy that's that's a tricky one it's a really tricky question because there's a part of me i'll give you this is my committee giving several answers okay there's a part of me that says don't leave your don't leave your day job until it becomes absolutely impossible to stay in it because of the dream you're following see how long you can stay in the day job and i'm just thinking about security and all that then there's another part that says i'll leave it just go at any time now i'm in some in some ways i'm not a great person to ask this because um when i started in this business i've had very few quote day jobs i've been i've just been able to create a lot of jobs or create a lot of work or do a lot of things that i wanted to do and then there were times years and years and years ago 30 40 years ago i had day jobs while i was still pursuing this but as soon as i got a job directing or job something in the business day job was gone immediately so i was one of those that would just quit immediately but then sometimes months later i would find myself in deep trouble because that job was over the job i did it was fine that done but there was no job following it and then i was found myself scrambling again to put something together at least to support myself so i don't you know but the following of the dreams i think the the big question is do you have a plan do you have a vision of how you're going to uh pursue uh what you want and this is also from personal experience i've at times unfortunately relied too heavily on jobs showing up or someone helping me out and not taking care of it myself then i've swung the other way and created a whole business on my own to support myself which is and still in my business which i'm doing now to support myself so i've gone both both ways i think it's looking at what is what is my plan what is my plan for today or let's put it this way this has something to do with what else and i are looking into now is what your dream where do you imagine you would be five years from now following your dream can you imagine where you would be and what and just write about what that is and describe what that is okay now come back where would you be five months from now in that dream describe that okay then you come back where would you be five days from now following your dream and can you describe that now you described goals and pinpoints and then the last thing is what can you do in the next hour to fulfill that dream doing that you'll start to see possibly a plan a goal a map of some sort i think too many people are following dreams i want to be a great actress i want to be a great writer but there's no map there's no i'm going to i'm going to write a screenplay three screenplays this year three different genres that's a plan can you do that while you have your day job sure you can so i think it's a matter of really being realistic about not just what the dream is but what how you envision you might get there chances are it won't work exactly that way but chances are if you have that vision you're going to come somewhat close or at least be moving in that direction are you almost relieved that you didn't take a day job you know you said you would work at one directing thing or something then as many industry jobs another one um but if you had had something more cush or that it was just more stable then you wouldn't have created what you've created more push or stable like what well if if you just had like this steady job after job you said sometimes you you waited and you relied too much on a job being there for you and and maybe it wasn't at times maybe that was a painful lesson um do you think that in some ways that was a good painful lesson because then it ignited in you to start you know what you started and write and do these classes and and the travis institute and all these different things yeah it's i mean it did the everything i'm doing now that elsa and i are doing now together which started many many years ago was generated was started out of that desperation out of that desperation i have to do something and because of who i am or whatever my personality what i did not pursue was a typical day job whether it's waiting on tables or working for a company or something like that my fallback has always been create something so i would create a job and that was creating workshops that i was teaching first for actors and then for directors i would keep creating something that didn't exist that i could do which would keep me close to what i was doing anyway i didn't want to go and work in you know nine to five in some you know office building i just that would be just too devastating to me too demoralizing for me so that's what i would do but i would wait a long time before doing that until it was desperate and then i would have to put something together rather quickly to keep everything going then ironically with the teaching that i was doing it became more than just a day job it became an entire business became an entire business that you know resulted in what i'm doing now which is traveling around the world and teaching and many times i go what what happened to my other job the directing thing all the other stuff i was doing because this has become um so you know massive of what i'm doing and now with elsa what else and i are doing together that it has taken over and sometimes i i think what would happen what would happen now if i was offered a directing thing like well we'd have to make some big shifts and changes so but that and that's okay but that that's the way my life has always been it's always been um a bit chaotic and under my control which means sometimes out of control but at the end of the day you're still working with story still doing this that's something you love yeah yeah i if well if you're going to create something you might as well create something you enjoy doing so i wouldn't create something i enjoy doing or that i knew i was good at and that i could survive at if i could just construct something [Music] um along the lines so the teaching and the coaching and the consulting and all of that falls right in that although it's not directing but you know it's all around it is and all my directing skills and my writing skills you know um supply that support that that process so i'm not that far away from what i was doing in fact i've moved way beyond what i was doing so again going back to when should an artist create uh when should an artist quit their day job it's when it becomes unbearable at that day john unbearable or their other thing becomes undeniable in terms of supporting them unbearable undeniable yeah um yeah it's it's sort of in that zone the reason i'm hesitating is because i just remembered something um that happened to me they were again doing a lot of the teaching stuff there was a time this was back in the early 90s and i was teaching a lot of workshops and um doing you know doing what i was doing teaching workshops and and trying to get directing jobs and through a series of circumstances which are not important right at the moment i got a job directing a feature film for warner brothers okay and there was a long story on how that all happened that's not important and i the important part is okay now i'm directing this film it's a low budget film but it's for a major studio and i'm getting all the studio support and everything's going fine and i'm still doing in my other i'm still running workshops i'm doing everything else i was and i'm used to doing 12 things at the same time anyway and that's what my life was like and i would have clients i would work with and i remember one meeting and we're going into pre-production where the producers from warner brothers sat me down and said ah mark you have to stop doing these other things i go why you know one workshop was on wednesday evening i'll be free on wednesday evenings the other ones i could do on weekends i'm free on weekends no no no mark you have to you're directing this film yeah you had that has to be your sole focus and i remember resenting that going why i don't want to do that i want to do these other things too and ironically i did shut down all the other things but the irony is now we're deep into pre-production and i'm we're working monday through friday and i have a stu at the studio and i have my office and we're setting everything up and i remember hitting the first weekend and everybody said okay it's friday okay see you on monday i go monday well what are we doing saturday and sunday nothing well what am i gonna do saturday and sunday i was so used to working seven days a week doing something every single day now i'd shut down all the other stuff and now i didn't have that other thing so i had to make a whole shift in my way of approaching the work i mean it was absolutely right you know i needed to totally focus on the film and i and i did and all that but that was a shift so i think for anybody considering making that kind of change think about what you're used to and what your patterns are and what you can handle and what you can't handle and what the day job is and my feeling is if you get to the point you say i better quit the day job because this other stuff that i'm doing which is my dream is demanding so much of my time and attention and i say well then it's time to quit it's time to quit what did you end up doing for the first few saturdays and sundays of that directing job it was it was hard it was it was really hard because there was nobody in the office nobody i could talk to you know i'd go back and i'd read the script again and i'd make notes and i would do do my own research or planning but i'm the type of artist who loves to collaborate i love other people being around so i love being at the studio i love working with the designers i love working with the casting director i loved working with all these people and suddenly you leave me for two days and nobody to talk to and i felt lost and i was like we could be home with my family that's fine but i wanted to do i wanted to i really literally i think at that time wanted to why can't we work through the weekend too why do we have to stop for the weekend but that's just my personality it's a great story yeah oh i like that so then when that job was over you knew was that was that your your test well when when ironically when that job was over and now i had a terrific agency not an agent but an agency working for me and i was reading a lot of scripts because i was directing of a studio picture and um scripts were being sent to me to see if i was interested in it and all of this the other thing and i was trying the the goal now is to set up the next project because this project is coming near an end set up the next project and i r without i can't mention the agencies and all that right um my agent big agency said you know i said let's set up the next project and they said to me the agency said to me uh well let's see how this movie does first and i'll never forget this and i was sitting there and there were inquiries from other studios about things and i said well can we set something let's see how this film does first and i knew at that moment because we're near we're near the end of post-production that the film was not going to do well for a lot of reasons i knew that it's not it's not going to be like wow let's hire this guy even though the reactions to the footage and the reactions to the performances all were great and everything i said this is not going to do well and i knew why and i said to the agent i said listen if the film does really well i don't need you if it doesn't do well you can't help me i said we have to do it now and they said no and i knew that that was the end of my relationship with that agency and it was i switched agents but the film did not do well i did not get another job set up and i was doing fine because the film paid well but then that's only going to last so long and it was months later still trying to set up the next job that i realized i have to do something to generate income i can't go back and do theater now because it'll take me too long to set up a play that i'm going to direct at a local theater i can't go back to television because i've been out of television for too long and it's going to take time i need in other words i need income now and so i started teaching and that's when that was the beginning of the whole teaching thing that has led to where i am now and then in between you've written two books written two books and there's another one in the works which will be done someday yep that's a great story i'm sure it's a painful one at that time yeah oh yeah that's a great story it's very painful to be um i'll tell you one thing it's very painful at that studio which is a big studio and we were shooting on a lot that was not at that studio so the times i would go to that studio and people would see me while we were shooting come on i love you phil love your deal i go to your dailies every day and this is these are people who are not working on the film they're just at the studio they would just go to see the stuff that we shot so you have all that that um that build up that sort of support and feeling like wow i'm i'm doing well i'm doing well here all of that and then during post-production which is i could tell you this whole story of post-production and how it all slowly fell apart um sometimes because of distrust sometimes because of sabotage by other people and sometimes because of infighting inside the studio because there were studio executives who wanted the film to fail and i ran into it and at the very end of that whole journey with that studio i was asked to meet with the head of the studio he was a sweet guy nice guy we had a long talk about and he said mark you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time i go well that doesn't help me at all so it was very it was very painful when you think okay now the career is starting to move now i'm moving and now i'm doing well and now they like the work they like me and all that but what is the truth behind the lie the truth behind the lie okay in um autobiographical storytelling one thing we're very strict about to a point is we are telling the true story we're sticking to the truth we're sticking to the truth of characters sticking to the truth of events we're not making up stuff and but there are times when we actually fictionalize the truth fictionalize the truth in other words lie to get closer to a deeper truth in other words um i'll give you an example when i was developing um a bronx tale and a bronx tale is about yonkologio and his father and the gangster uh sonny and i said to chaz i need a story about your father you know and we need some kind of story or event with your father that actually shows how he is dealing with the conflict between you that you have with this gangster and how he's dealing with the gangster and he says well there isn't any story there isn't any story like that there isn't any event he said you know when they got together or there where he confronted the boy about it i said well then we have to create one and what we did is we created a story so we could get closer to the truth of how the father felt about this chaz knew how he felt about it but by creating a story that really didn't happen any scene that didn't happen and in the film and in the play there these scenes are still there these scenes are still there that didn't actually happen because they're there to serve a purpose and the purpose of these these fictional scenes are these fictional exchanges and sometimes it even comes down to we will put words in a character's mouth that they never said but those words reveal the truth of the character we will that's when we will fictionalize to get closer to a truth and that's allowed how do writers feel about that about the way well you talk about the autobiographical part now sure first of all the writer is the character who lived through this uh usually they feel fine about it because many times i'll say okay in this situation if your father said this um let's say it's the little boy this is not from the bronx deal little boy the father and the mother and let's say there's an argument going on between the little boy and the father i said okay what what happens if if the mother was in that scene or heard that scene what would she have said oh it would have been awful really what would she have said and he would tell me that she would said something like that um give me an idea what she would said she would have been horrified and furious say fine let's put her in the scene but she wasn't in the scene i know she wasn't in the scene but we're trying to get closer to what the dynamics are in this relationship and if we put her in the scene some so many times we'll try we'll experiment we'll rehearse put her in the scene and have her say that many times the writer getting back to your question will go that's no that's good that's good that's what would have happened that's who they are and if i can if i can get to that point where the writers say that's really who they are that's the truth of who they are then i feel fine and they feel fine they feel good because they've been they've honored the truth of the characters maybe not the truth of the events what is the gap the gap the gap the gap not the store and not like not a gas store but i like the t-shirt i like the not only the tea i used to have a t-shirt but i like in london you know at the tube mind the gap oh when i when i started to realize something very important this is a long time ago when i was doing these autobiographical pieces and i was working on one or two of them i forget which one doesn't matter when i realized that i knew what the events were i knew what happened they told me this is what happened what happened and what happened but then i realized that something was missing in the telling of the story and what was missing was from the protagonist the main character the autobiographical character i wasn't hearing what they really wanted to have happen were hoping would happen and expecting to happen in other words if it's if it's a confrontation let's make it very simple it's a guy telling the story and it's a story about him asking um a beautiful young woman to go to the prom with him and he tells me what happens and what she said and i realized what is missing in that story is what he thought was going to happen what he hoped would happen what he fantasized would happen now in other words his pursuit is to ask her to the prom and want and he wants her to say yes okay prior to telling the whole story he need we need to know what he thinks is going to happen how he's going to pursue that so that we are riding with that character inside his belief inside his expectation inside his desire so we are writing with him if we if he leaves that out he just says i'm going to ask her out and we don't know how important this is we don't know what's riding on it we don't know what he's expecting if she says yes we don't know what he's expecting if he says no if we don't know that half of the scene is gone half of the energy is gone so what will happen what i realized when i started exploring this is this is the way we all go through life we all go through life no different than this interview all of us in this room the four of us in this room had an expectation of how this interview would turn out and i can tell you right now we are all wrong it has turned out differently that's all just different it's just different so if we look at life as we move through life we move through life we have a pursuit this is what we're going to do we talk about going to lunch i'm going to have this meal immediately i'll have ideas about what i think it's going to be like and then i have to deal with life as it happens which means it's going to be different the thing you want to order will not be on the menu the restaurant will not look like you want to want to you have to serve yourself well yeah there's no way to whatever things are different so the gap put it in the simplest of terms is expectation versus result what does the character expect and then what is the result and how is that different and the truth is we all live with the gap every single day every single day as part of our daily experience this this is what's going to happen all of us in this room now because we're in the middle of the afternoon have an expectation of what is going to happen the rest of the day i can tell you right now it won't work out the way you think it's going to something different will happen and that's life so i realized in constructing these stories these autobiographical stories i needed to expose to the audience through the storyteller what the character wants and needs and why it's so important and what they are expecting very specifically with that naive narrator talking to the audience saying i'm going to go ask her for the date it's going to be great it's going to be great because she's not going to expect that i'm going to ask her at all and she's going to be so thrilled because she i know she likes me now i'm just giving you a lot of information as what this character is imagining and dreaming will happen and then as that story goes along and it gets to the point of asking her and he gets to the point of saying i do you want to go to the are you going to go to the prom she says oh yes i am oh great um you want to go with me now we're at that point where he thinks she's going to be thrilled and what does she say why would i do that now big gap right there why would now if we don't know how much he's invested in this that response will mean less we have to be we have to be carrying his investment into the scene with him and so that we are hit by those obstacles as he navigates through that scene it reminds me i had a college professor that wrote on the chalkboard expectations equals disappointments now that sounds a little negative but i think in some ways if you yeah if you approach it like that then maybe you wouldn't get your hopes dashed yeah i thought that was really interesting i know i i worked somewhere and i put that up and so i said oh that's so negative and i thought well actually it's more of a realist yeah or think of it this way flip it around imagine karen that you have expectations for something what's what's going on something you want something you're going to do a pursuit and maybe it's the simplest thing of um i'll make it very simple your ex you're going to cook a meal for you and david you're going to cook this okay that's a meal you've never cooked before you have the recipe you have all the ingredients your expectations is going to be fantastic it's going to be gourmet yeah it's going to be gourmet right okay and you make the whole thing and it's all and it looks good and it smells good and you serve it and it is gourmet and it's exactly what you wanted is that interesting now the thing is if the if we always get the expectations or if our characters always get what they expect it's not an interesting story because it has no relationship to life that's true it's too perfect it's too planned it probably wouldn't happen but the thing is if you're fixing this gourmet meal and it looks good and smells good you know and david's coming home and he comes home with kentucky fried chicken hey i got dinner now there's a gap there is right now there's a gap and he goes oh now disappointment right see in other words i think that disappointment thing is very accurate and that's what we live with every day it's not a negative it's a reality things do not turn out and it doesn't mean things are worse it just means they're different it could be better a gap as things turn out even better very true if you were making that gourmet meal and you're going this why am i doing this and this now your expectation is going to be a disaster because you've never made it before and you don't have quite the right ingredients and you're using olives instead of grapes or something and and it turns out wonderful well there's a gap that's true a good good uh different yeah expectations yeah those disappointments so that's the gap it's very important in not just autobiographical but i think in any to me as i look at screenplays and stuff like that every scene there's a gap right sometimes line to line there's a gap someone asks a question do you want to go out tonight the answer is where did you put the cheese there's a gap do you want to go out tonight i'm expecting an answer i didn't get an answer i got a question about where's the cheese in fact i never get to ask that question so those are little gaps life goes like that we keep sort of navigating and working our way finding our way through a world that won't give us exactly what we want because that's just the way it works

Channel: Film Courage

Views: 39,491

Rating: 4.9723949 out of 5

Keywords: Writing tips, writing advice, writing 101, writing autobiography, writing a story, Story 101, screenwriting advice, screenwriting tips, mark travis, mark w. travis, travis technique, the travis technique, directors, filmmaking, interview, film courage, filmcourage, screenplay, directing, the director’s journey

Id: xFK5Ih3CPFc

Length: 166min 9sec (9969 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 28 2020