“Qu'est-ce que le cinéma? What is film?”
“What is film?” Is it art? Literature?
That was the question my mentor Jean Renoir, the great French film director, often presented to us during the year he was Artist in Residence at the University of California, Berkeley. I met him after a performance of Woyzeck, the Georg Buchner expressionist drama, in which I was playing the lead role. I was told that Renoir was going to present the world premiere of his play Carola, and I was being asked to audition for the part.
A few days later, I read for Renoir, got the third lead in the play, playing the role of Campan, the French stage manager, and so began my mentorship with a man who would ultimately shape my attitude toward movies and my life. For the next year, I had a direct, close, and personal relationship with the great director. Not knowing much about film, what it was or what it could be, it was Renoir who opened up a treasure chest of knowledge and insight. He shared his personal view that movies “are a new form of printing— another form of the total transformation of the world through knowledge.” He would refer to Lumière, inventor of the early French motion picture camera called the Cinématographe, as “another Gutenberg.”
Renoir insisted that movies had the potential to be literature, but they should never be considered art. When I asked what he meant, he replied that art is the sole vision of one person, which in the scheme of the filmmaking process, is a contradiction. He explained that one person can't do everything that's required to make a movie. One person can write the screenplay, direct the film, photograph it, edit it, and score it—like Charlie Chaplin did—but, Renoir continued, the filmmaker cannot act all the parts, or record all the sound, or handle all the lighting requirements amid the myriad other details that are required to make a movie. “Art,” he said, “should offer the viewer the chance of merging with the creator.”
As young college students learning from the master, we would literally sit at his feet and ask questions, share our ideas, or discuss our opinions of life and art. He would answer everything. Every question, even the dumbest one, was received with interest and respect. When someone asked, “how can we be true to our art?” he shared his personal philosophy that “art is in the doing of it.”
A simple answer, yet profound, relevant, and true. It's only during the process of working, he explained, whether directing a film, writing a song, writing a script, painting a picture, or whatever it may be, that one “creates art.” Art, he proclaimed, is the process of actually sitting down and doing it. Not talking about doing it, not thinking or fantasizing about doing it, just doing it. Only after the work has been completed and exposed to public view will it be considered a work of “art” or not. If you think you're “an artist” just waiting for that one moment of inspiration to sit down and write, you'll be waiting forever.
Over the past twenty-five years, I've thought about Renoir's words as I've traveled the world conducting screenwriting seminars for professional and aspiring screenwriters. As I look back over the footprints of my life from the time I wrote the first edition of this book, some twenty-five years ago, to now, I see that screenwriting, both as an art and a craft, has evolved into an international language of engaging visual expression.
We're currently standing on the threshold of a new frontier in film, and there are no rules as to what we can or cannot do. It is a time of evolution/revolution, a time of transformation in which the theater of technology has embraced a new era of digital technology. What we see and how we see it have changed.
Story exposition is shown rather than told; characters are revealed through behavior, not dialogue; time present and past have merged into a compelling storytelling device. As said in Eastern philosophy, the inside and outside are one; the thoughts, feelings, and emotions that are inside our head are what creates the fabric of our experience. Basically, you are the baker of the bread you eat.
A screenplay is a special form; it is a story told in pictures, expressed in dialogue and description. The technological impact has facilitated a change in our classic traditional narrative; linear story lines like Casablanca and The Godfather, expressed in long expository scenes, have become more visually stylized presentations such as Sideways, Magnolia, and Brokeback Mountain. Nonlinear storytelling, almost a rarity during the last few decades, has now become part of a film lexicon that seems taken for granted: The Bourne Su premacy, Memento, and The Constant Gardener, are structured in bits and pieces from the shards and broken fragments of memory and have become part of the screenwriter's language.
The question Renoir posed so many years before, “Qu'est-ce que le cinéma?” is as relevant today as when I first heard it. How do we define the art of film? How do we analyze it? How do we craft our movies so they are more than mere flashing images on the screen, but become what Renoir referred to as “an art form that is larger than life.”
We are now living in a time of visual storytelling. Whether you want to tell a story on the big screen or write a television show that can be downloaded onto an iPod, cell phone, or PDA; whether you want to create a video game or short film; a business plan or a Power-Point presentation for any future delivery system, you have to know the tools and rules of visual storytelling. That's what The Screen-writer's Workbook is all about.
The Screenwriter's Workbook explores the process of writing a screenplay, which is visual storytelling. I call it a “what-to book,” meaning that if you have an idea for a screenplay, but don't exactly know what to do to write it, this book will guide you through the screenwriting process. No matter whether it's a feature, a short film, a commercial, or other form of visual presentation, the book works. Read a chapter, do the exercise at the end of the chapter, and by the end of the book you will have written a screenplay. The screenwriting process can be applied to any form of visual storytelling.
The Screenwriter's Workbook is based on the screenwriting workshops I have conducted around the world. I design and structure these seven-week workshops so students spend the first four weeks preparing to write, and the second three weeks writing. The goal of the class (and I'm very big on goals) is to write and complete the First Act, (anywhere from twenty to thirty pages) of the screenplay.
People come into a workshop with a short idea of their story. For example: “My story is about a woman executive on vacation in Hawaii, who meets and has an affair with a young man, then returns home only to learn the relationship doesn't work.”
That simple.
In the first class we talk about the subject of the screenplay, the action and character—basically what happens and whom it happens to—and discuss the nature of dramatic structure. Their first assignment when they leave the class is to structure their idea, then write a four-page treatment focusing on the ending, the beginning, Plot Point I, and Plot Point II. I call this the “kick in the ass” exercise because the student is taking an unformed idea and trying to give it form; it very well may be the most difficult pages the participant writes.
The second week we talk about character, and how to give the main character a history by writing a character biography, the character's life from birth up until the time the story begins. They also outline the character's professional life, personal life, and private life. Their assignment for the next week is to write character biographies of their main character and one or two other major characters. The third week we structure the story line of Act I on 3 × 5 cards, and write up a back story, that is, what happens either a day, a week, or an hour before the story begins. The fourth week we write the first ten pages and the rest of the workshop is devoted to writing approximately ten pages a week. At the end of this seven-week session, the student will have completed the First Act of their screenplay, anywhere from twenty to thirty pages.
We take a short break and then continue into the Second Act Workshop. The goal of this seven-week course is to write and complete Act II of the screenplay. In the third seven-week workshop they complete Act III and rewrite the material.
By the end of the three sessions, almost 80 percent of my students complete their screenplays. Many have had tremendous success: Anna Hamilton Phelan wrote Mask in class, followed soon after with Gorillas in the Mist; John Singleton worked on Boyz n the Hood, followed by Poetic Justice; Michael Kane wrote The Color of Money, João Emanuel Carneiro worked on Central Station in the workshop I conducted in Rio de Janeiro; Janus Cercone wrote Leap of Faith in class; Randi Mayem Singer did Mrs. Doubtfire; Carmen Culver, The Thorn Birds; Laura Esquivel adapted her novel Like Water for Chocolate during my course in Mexico City; and in the same class Carlos Cuarón started exploring the idea of what would later become Y Tu Mamá También. There are others as well: Todd Graff (Used People, Angie), Kevin Williamson (Scream), Todd Robinson (White Squall), Humanitas Award winner Linda Elstad (Divorce Wars), and many others.
Several students have had their screenplays and teleplays optioned by producers and a few of my students have become production executives at film studios and production companies.
This book is designed and structured like my screenwriting workshops. Read a chapter, do the exercise at the end of the chapter, and by the end of the book you will have written a screenplay—at least in theory. The Screenwriter's Workbook is a step-by-step work plan for you to follow from the inception of the idea through completion; it is a map, a navigational guidance system to steer you through the screenwriting process. What's important to know is that the material works.
The exercises following each chapter are the tools that offer you the opportunity to expand and sharpen your understanding of the screenwriting process. I hope you view your journey through the screenwriting experience in this light. You won't learn anything unless you give yourself permission to make some mistakes, to try things that don't work, and do some plain old shitty writing.
Are you willing to do that? Are you willing to try something that doesn't work? Are you willing to write terrible pages? Are you willing to be lost in doubt and confusion, angry and concerned, not knowing whether your material is working or not?
This book is a learning experience. It is experiential. The more you do, the better you get, just like swimming or riding a bicycle.
Read the book, and when you're ready to start working on your screenplay, go through the book a chapter at a time. It is a step-by-step process; you may spend a week or a month on a single chapter, it really doesn't matter. Take as much time as you need to complete the material in each exercise.
The purpose of The Screenwriter's Workbook is to clarify, expand, and enlarge your knowledge, comprehension, and technique of the screenplay and the art and craft of screenwriting. The Workbook enables you to teach yourself the skills and craft required to write a professional screenplay.
Don't look for perfection.“Perfection,” as Jean Renoir constantly pointed out, “exists only in the mind, not in reality.”
Just tell your story.