It's Not All 50-50

Q. Recently, a friend of mine came to me with a draft of her indie feature screenplay. I told her I was gonna rewrite it and she agreed to it. I basically had to re-type the entire thing into final draft because she only had a pdf copy of the screenplay and it was a picture image. Anyway, I retyped the screenplay, edited action lines, and changed a bit of the dialogue to give the characters a better sense of who they are. I basically rewrote the screenplay.

Originally, I was thinking this would be a co-writing 50/50 endeavor. But she's now thinking more like her 70 and me 30. I know we should've laid out a contract before we started. Grant it, she came up with the story, the characters and the concept. But I came in and rewrote it, edited it and punched up dialogue quite a bit.

Basically I just need help in understanding what is the correct percentage on ownership for this sorta situation.

What you've done isn't considered a "rewrite" under WGA or WGC rules. What you've done would be considered a "polish." "Rewrite" and "polish" are both terms of art under the Guild agreements. To do a "rewrite" would entail introducing new characters and new plot elements. You'd have to write completely new scenes or at least move scenes around a lot. Under WGA rules, I believe you could replace every single bit of dialog and not be entitled to an onscreen credit.

I think 70-30 might be appropriate where you're actually doing a rewrite. 50-50 might apply where you're talking about a page one rewrite -- throwing out virtually everything and starting from scratch. But if you're only doing a polish, I think you ought to be happy with 10%. Maybe, maybe 12.5%.

It takes me about a month to come up with a coherent beat sheet for a script and another month to come up with a first draft from that. I can do it a lot faster if I have to, but that's how long I spend on a typical spec. If you brought me a feature and all you wanted was snappier dialog and action lines, I would probably spend about a week on that. (More and it wouldn't be a polish any more.) Suggesting about 10%.

Basically, there is a strong presumption in favor of the original writer. It's easy to come in and tweak dialog and edit action lines. It's hard to come up with something out of nothing. Just ask God.

But next time, definitely specify who's getting what before anyone does any work.

Rereading Sandman

Teresa Nielsen Hayden is rereading SANDMAN, Neil Gaiman's epic graphic novel about the lord of all things that are not real. This bookmark is for me -- SANDMAN is the kind of storytelling I aspire to -- but you may want to follow her blog, too.

Make Sure We Know What Story We're In

Casting about for good TV to watch, I borrowed DAMAGES from the Bibliothèque Nationale, and we watched the pilot.

It's an interesting beast, this pilot. A young woman lawyer, Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne) is hired by Patty Hewes (Glenn Close), a hotshot lawyer with a reputation for abusing her staff. And we think we're in the vein of stories about a neophyte hired by a tyrant, who either has to man up or get shredded, e.g. THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA.

We had a tough time watching the pilot because the pilot did a lot of things that didn't make sense -- at least, at first.

/* spoilers */

For examples, when Ellen is asked to interview for the job on the Saturday of her sister's wedding, she refuses. Hewes shows up at the wedding, and decides she likes her. Hewes says "you remind me of me" and hires her anyway. Since Ellen is a bit of a drip who never says anything smart or tough, we weren't convinced.

Then Ellen's sister in law turns out to -- surprise! -- have, as an investor in her restaurant, the very same rich man, Frobisher (Ted Danson) whom Hewes is suing. And Ellen finds out that the case against Frobisher hinges on something her sister-in-law may have seen. That seemed terribly convenient for the writers.

Then Ellen's sister in law is being stalked by Frobisher's private detective. Her dog turns up murdered, to leave a warning to keep quiet. The threat backfires, because Sister-in-law decides to turn witness. I always hate seeing pets murdered -- it's usually a cheesy way to shock the audience -- but it also seemed unlikely, since if Frobisher wants to threaten Sister-in-law, he merely has to threaten to withdraw his investment in her restaurant.

Well, it turns out all the things we were bumping on were clues. Hewes, it turns out, only hired Ellen because of the connection to her sister-in-law, which she knew about all along. And she's the one who had the dog murdered, to provoke Sister-in-law to testify. Clever clever.

That's why Ellen didn't need to say anything particularly clever to Hewes at the wedding, or blow off her sister's wedding to have an interview -- because Hewes wants her for other reasons. Ahhh, it all makes sense now.

This is dangerous territory for a screenwriter. Having characters do things that are seeingly out of character, or don't make sense, can be a lovely misdirect for the audience, or it can lose the audience's trust entirely, if they decide you're a crappy writer.

It's also dangerous because we don't know what story we're being told. If we think we're in a story about a neophyte lawyer put in the grinder at a law firm run by a bitch queen, then all the inconsistencies keep derailing the story we think we're watching, instead of those same inconsistencies driving the story.

What you want to do is make sure the audience knows what story it's watching by throwing out little hints that, yes, there is something odd about what's happening, pay attention.

So, for example, we never find out how good a lawyer Ellen is. We first meet her professionally when she's getting a job offer from a fancy law firm. They've offered her a whack of money, but when they find out that Patty Hewes has called her, they give up -- they know Patty Hewes gets what she wants.

But what if it's not quite such a fancy law firm? What if it's clear that Ellen is not the best young law school graduate in town? And what if the other law firm calls attention to that: "Really? Patty Hewes? Is she friends with your family, or what?" And maybe even Ellen asks her: "Why me? I'm not the top of my class." And then Hewes can bust out her "You remind me of me," but we start to suspect there's something else going on. And we can follow the story.

I love a good mystery. But the first requirement for a mystery is that you know it's a mystery. If your main character's brother has been found dead of an overdose, and it's going to turn out he was actually murdered, then make sure we know he wasn't a junkie. If he crashed his car, then tell us he was an epileptic and never drove. Otherwise we just take the facts at face value: if he died of an overdose, well, junkies do that. If he crashed his car, well, lots of people die in car crashes. It's sad but it's not a story.

To be fair, the series starts will Ellen, bloody and half-dressed, wandering the streets. So we know something is going to go horribly wrong. But that's a fairly broad hint.

And the show further muddies the waters by lost opportunities elsewhere in the pilot. When Frobisher suborns one of the plaintiffs, who turns the whole body of plaintiffs around to accept a lowball settlement, Hewes just lets it slide. Yet at the meeting between the plaintiffs and Hewes, the corrupted plaintiff has so obviously been coached that it is shocking that Hewes never busts him on it. Surely a top litigator knows what a coached witness sounds like. In fact we never see Hewes being a particularly smart lawyer -- just a ballsy negotiator. So when Ellen fails to show any sign of being a clever lawyer, it does not come across as a clue for the audience; we figure the writers just don't know how to show that someone's smart.

(And incidentally, it's so easy and fun to show that someone's smart. Just have a character pick up on a few small details and put them together. For example, if you had wanted to show that Ellen was supersmart, then when Hewes shows up at the wedding, Ellen twigs that when she was asked to interview during her sister's wedding, Hewes must have already known her sister was getting married, and set the interview at that time in order to test her. And then Ellen busts Hewes for her moral failings -- and it's the spunk combined with observation and intuition that makes Hewes want to hire her.)

I've heard very good things about DAMAGES, and Glenn Close does a fantastic job playing Hewes. I'm sure the show gets better. Certainly once you're past the pilot you'd know exactly what story you're watching. One of my flaws as a viewer is I'm horribly impatient -- I want them to be good right away, while it seems to me that a lot of y'all will give a show two or three episodes to get going. And I've come back to shows later and enjoyed them once I got past the pilot. I didn't love the TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES pilot, but now I'm waiting anxiously for the Season Two disks to come out.

But it did seem to me that a few hints up front about what story we're watching would have given me a much more enjoyable pilot experience.

Track your audience. What do they know? What do they suspect? A great storyteller doesn't leave things to chance. You let the audience figure things out for themselves, yes, but you do it by waving clues in front of them. Depending on how sophisticated the audience is, you may have to hang a lantern on the clues, or you may go subtle. But you have to calibrate things so they do in fact pick it up. Otherwise you're not telling the story.

Imagine you're telling the story at a campfire. The audience should be stopping you to say, "But why did she hire Ellen anyway?" If they're not asking that question, you haven't done your job. If they do ask that question, you're on the right track. You don't answer it, of course. You smile and say, "Why indeed?"

Elizabethtown

We watched ELIZABETHTOWN, mostly because we enjoyed re-watching ALMOST FAMOUS so much.

ELIZABETHTOWN is a weird movie. It's a romantic comedy, but it doesn't follow the traditional formula. For example, the guy doesn't lose the girl at the end of Act Two, and there is only the most perfunctory possible "run to the airport."

It's another movie with tremendous casting: Susan Sarandon, Kirsten Dunst, and a slew of lovely character actors in the minor roles. It's a movie with great observation of detail and lots of moving scenes.

It does not, fundamentally work, because the story has two broken elements. The romantic obstacle is unconvincing. And the jeopardy is unconvincing.

/* spoilers, probably */

In the movie, Orlando Bloom is a wunderkind shoe company whose brilliant shoe design has, for unnamed reasons, lost his company $972 billion dollars. His reaction to being fired is to go home and try to kill himself. He's saved by the death of his father, which requires a trip to Elizabethtown, Kentucky, where his dad's people are.

On the way he meets perky, adorable stewardess Kirsten Dunst. They bond over the phone the night after the flight, and for the rest of the movie she chases after him. Repeatedly.

And he does not do much to shoo her away. The most he does is not say, "I love you, come back to Oregon with me."

So, first of all, neither Lisa nor I ever really felt that Orlando Bloom was going to kill himself, in spite of his setting up an exercycle to stab him to death. Part of this is Orlando Bloom: he just doesn't seem deep enough to kill himself. His range in this movie isn't much more than his range whilst playing Legolas: he goes from somewhat-smiley to frowny. But he never really loses it. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Cameron Crowe had wanted someone else for the role. It needs someone you can believe is on the verge of cracking.

It is also hard, fundamentally, to believe that a shoe designer would kill himself over a failed shoe. A man who's lost the company he built all his life might kill himself over losing his company. (Though he might well not.) But a designer who made a bad shoe? In real life he'd blame the marketing, or the product testing people, or the corporate decision not to roll it out slowly. Who kills themselves over a shoe?

Meanwhile, he's behaving in every way like a responsible son, taking care of his mother and sister, whom he obviously loves, and being considerate of his father's legacy, and kind to the people around him. None of which convinces me that he's planning on checking out soon -- an act which would devastate all the people he obviously has fondness for.

So the jeopardy was never working for me.

Unfortunately the jeopardy is also the obstacle. "I can't be with you, adorable Kirsten Dunst, because I plan to kill myself as soon as I get back to Oregon." Even though he is in the bosom of his dad's family, among Southerners who would be tickled pink that he wrecked some West Coast high-tech company to the tune of a billion dollars; even though a girl he obviously likes is repeatedly throwing herself at him. (I'd say "loves" but he never felt swept away by her. Oh well.)

With no jeopardy and no obstacle, the story never worked. All Bloom has to do in order to "win" is make the decision not to kill himself and accept the love that the utterly charming and loving and lovable Kirsten Dunst is pressing on him for all she's worth.

The performances kept me watching. The scenes were lovely and real. Kirsten Dunst is adorable. Susan Sarandon does a fine bit of standup comedy and tap dancing towards the end. There's as fine a performance of "Freebird" as you could ask for. Small town Kentucky comes through as a place where people care about each other in spite of each other's quirks; it almost seems like a place you might want to live. The cinematography is sweet. Production design, hair, makeup, all primo. I could have lived with a few fewer songs on the soundtrack, and they could have been less loud, but this is a Cameron Crowe movie, and he is a man who believes in the redeeming power of mix tapes.

But the story just did not work. Because two of the story elements were broken.

Screenwriting 101 and 200 Cigarettes

Screenwriters sometimes toss around the term "Screenwriting 101." Lisa was getting a little miffed every time I brought it up in an argument about a script, as in, "Screenwriting 101 says you want that to be more of an argument." But it's not a put-down. It means, "Unless there's a good reason to violate the rule, here's the rule." Scenes should be conflicts. It's better to have someone realize something onscreen than offscreen. Etc.

Sometimes people break the Screenwriting 101 rules because they think they're being clever. Usually, they're wrong. (That's why they're called "rules.")

We watched 200 CIGARETTES last night, a rambling ensemble movie from 1999 about a bunch of people running around the Village on New Year's Eve 1981.

An amazing casting job by Deborah Aquila, bringing in Ben Affleck, Christina Ricci, Paul Rudd, Dave Chapelle, Janeane Garofalo, Jay Mohr, Kate Hudson and Elvis Costello. And Courtney love, who absolutely lit up the screen. Hell, I did not know she can act, though I suppose the Golden Globe should have given me a heads-up. She was the most watchable person there.

So, first of all: awesome set decoration. Fabulous and dead-on clothes. They really recreated the feel of New York in 1981. And you know when I mention that first, the story didn't work.

Actually, there were barely stories. A couple of girls from Ronkonkoma are looking for a party. Paul Rudd and Courtney Love fight because he thinks she's his best friend and she's really in love with him. Adorable, sweet Kate Hudson is in love with self-centered Jay Mohr who's not really interested now that they've slept together. A bunch of hipsters are looking for dates. That kind of movie. It all winds up at a New Year's Eve party where everyone who's been running around with the wrong person winds up with the right person...

... offscreen. That's right. All the stories are resolved offscreen. As if the screenplay ran out of gas. Or the production ran out of budget. Or the screenwriter thought, "I have no real idea how to get myself out of the corner I've painted myeslf into, let's just cut to the aftermath and let the audience fill in the blanks."

No no no. Cut to the chase. Not the aftermath.

Screenwriting 101 says you do not resolve the story off screen.

Sure, you can flashforward, provided the rest of the story is the mystery of "what happened in there," and that is resolved at the end, onscreen. But you can't resolve the whole thing with, say, a series of polaroids and Dave Chapelle narrating what happened. We've been waiting all movie to see it.

Sometimes directors and writers don't give you a real resolution, because "I wanted the audience to decide for themselves." My feeling is: no, buddy. You are the story teller. If I wanted to tell myself a story, I could do that. I hired you to tell me a story. The ending is the whole payoff to the story.

I'm sure you can come up with examples of really cool, unresolved-jazz-chord endings. The Lady or the Tiger? But I ask you: wouldn't it be more interesting to pursue the hero in the consequences of his choice than to stop at the point where he has to make a choice. (E.g. SOPHIE'S CHOICE.)

But, you know, harder to write.

Anyway, those costumes sure were great. And what a great job casting.

Tune In, Turn On, or be Dropped Out

From the WGC:

Tomorrow, Thursday the 6th of August, the Canadian Television Fund will host a virtual Town Hall to release and discuss initial key policy issues concerning the creation of the Canada Media Fund (CMF). This is the launch of the consultation process that will inform the policies and guidelines of the new program.

From there, stakeholders – that’s you – are invited to write and share their perspectives on the issues. We encourage you to take this opening and run with it – the more Canadian screenwriters voice their perspectives, the more we ensure Canadian voices are represented on our screens.

We’ll know the parameters of the discussion after the 6th, and we’ll tell you more then. We encourage everyone to tune in though and find out first hand. To do so, pre-register at http://www.ctf-fct.ca/ctf_home_en.html. [Important Note: when last we tried, there was some difficulty using Firefox and Safari to register – you may have to be on IE to register and watch the proceedings – so try early to debug and please persevere].

There is scary talk of reducing the restrictions on American writers on Canadian shows. If you think that Canadian culture dollars should go to support Canadian shows, rather than American shows shot on Canadian soil, you might want to participate.

Sprint for Your Shorts

Just a reminder that the Sprint for Your Script / Cours Écrire Ton Court program deadline is August 17. Check out the SODEC site if you're a Quebec writer between 18 and 35.

Cheep Script Notes

Tommy Gushue has been working for me since December reading and doing notes on all my new material. He's the guy who reads my stuff before producers do. I've found his notes to be dead on. The kind of notes where you go, Oh, damn, he's right.

He just got into the CFC, so to raise dough, he's offering the same service to you at the following ridiculously low prices for the next month: $50 for half-hour scripts, $75 for hours, and $120 for features. You can PayPal him and email a script.

That's a hell of a lot cheaper than what I charge!

Email him before he gets too busy getting paid to write.