The Death of Taboos = The Scourge of Writers?

I was thinking about Tennessee Williams the other day, probably sparked by the death of the beautiful Elizabeth Taylor. She was Maggie in "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof" and was magnificent opposite the equally beautiful Paul Newman who played her troubled husband, Brick.

The 1958 MGM movie didn't make as much sense as the play, because of the Hays Code, which from the 1930's to the 60's (replaced by the MMPA), spelled out what was acceptable and what was unacceptable content for motion pictures produced for a public audience in the United States. It limited Brick's portrayal of sexual desire for Skipper, his football teammate and best friend, and diminished the original play's critique of  homophobia and sexism. Williams was reportedly unhappy with the screenplay, which removed almost all of the homosexual themes and revised the third act section to include a lengthy scene of reconciliation between Brick and Big Daddy. Paul Newman, the film's star, has also stated his disappointment with the adaptation. It watered down the real suffering of the character set in an unforgiving world.

Much of our drama, in particular, centers on taboos - hidden secrets that drive the psychology of the characters. However, it's harder and harder to find anything hidden with our 'open' society. Do I want to return to those bad old days of secrets and lies? Not as a citizen of the world. But as a writer I find myself digging deeper and deeper to find anything that would shock or trouble an audience. And by shock I don't mean something that comes with a bucket of blood attached. I want to go for a psychological disturbance about something buried so deep it takes the gods of fate to unearth it. 

In "Chinatown" we had "She's my sister - my daughter - my sister.." reveal of incest. Is this still shocking to an audience today? If not, what does it say about our where we now draw the line at what constitutes a disturbing taboo? We're so inundated with scandals in the media that I believe we're becoming immune to it all. Back in the day, writers used the subject of taboos to reveal the truth to an audience. There's no shortage of dishonesty out there, after all, we ARE human. So I guess we have to keep vigilant and be willing to sort out the truth from the lies, and figure out a way to make an audience care.

Flawed Plots and Pretty Faces

I'm going to go against the grain here and give a raspberry to The Lincoln Lawyer (spoiler alert!). Yes, I know it has a 85% fresh rating from Rotten Tomatoes, but it has plot holes big enough to drive the movie's old Lincoln through. I think Matthew McConaughey's dazzling smile hypnotised the audience so they wouldn't notice or care. As a screenwriter who has re-written scripts into the ground because of 'inconsistencies', I stubbed my toe on every one of those glitches, and it soured me on the whole story.

Let's start with the title: not an inconsequential thing that they chose it. He drives (or has a driver drive him due to his hinted at loss of license), an old black Lincoln sedan. Is this to give him a personality quirk? Is it to plant the idea that he is a traditionalist, clings to the past, or is a rebellious but "Lincoln" honest guy?

Then we learn his ex-wife is a prosecutor...ahh...he lost all the shiny new stuff in his divorce, hence the old car. No, she's still really into him and as a matter of fact lights up every time they lay eyes on each other. This leads to the inevitable bed scene where one or both of them wake up cranky with the 'this shouldn't have happened' vibe. So why bother with this relationship in the movie if it doesn't do anything, except give our main character someone who sympathizes with his angst. This is an extremely tired device: the loyal ex-wife who we know will take him back after he redeems himself from whatever demons he lives with.

Ryan Philippe, our bad guy, is a rich kid wrongly accused of raping and beating up a girl he meets in a bar. We're supposed to believe his story that she set him up to sue him for a ton of money. Problem is....we're told that in both their statements her gay neighbours heard her screams and came in and held him down while they called the cops. But these guys disappear completely and are never called to the stand to say, "Yes, we heard her cries for help and jumped him." If they did, the story would be over. He'd be guilty and that's that. I don't know (or perhaps I missed it when I blinked), how they justified that. 

Philippe's rich status comes from what we're told: His mother is a successful Beverly Hills realtor (though nowadays one would think they would've picked a recession proof career), but we don't see him in that lifestyle. A line that mentions his Rolex watch doesn't cut it, since fakes are so abundant a person now assumes the guy who wears one is trying to pass as being loaded. His sports car is shown almost at the end of the third act, so we go "ahhh...I guess he is rich" - too late for me. There's an implication that his mother was raped in a house she was showing, and that's why he carries a gun. But the laws of Sherlock Holmes (yes, I've just decreed those laws), says that the red herring should be that his mother was attacked by a male stranger and therefore he attacks men. If they're going for the Oedipal complex, that's where it has to go. Instead, once again, it has NOTHING to do with his own evil. 

I could go on and on...but your eyes might glaze over like mine did watching this movie. Philippe's face is devoid of any lines, and since his character is devoid of any motivation for his crimes, it all leaves me let down. Matthew's grin and oh-so-bright smile attempts to charm us through this thin plot, and by a lot of the reviews it worked! But to me The Lincoln Lawyer feels like a TV pilot, where the important thing is to lure the audience back for more of the main star's charm. 

Why do I rant about this particular movie? Because writers in the trenches are pummeled by notes from readers that scream "plot holes!!" and we spend hours, days, and months shovelling words into those pits - only to see proof on the screen that casting is leaned on to make a story work. It seems disrespectful to the craft of story-telling when an audience is given all the smoke without the fire. I'm sure John Romano,the screenwriter, was capable of pulling it off. I suspect no one was listening once Matthew walked on the set.

Whose World Is It Anyhow?

Whenever I type FADE IN on a new screenplay I'm entering a whole universe created to serve the story I want to tell. Sometimes it feels like I'm choosing the proverbial Door #1 or Door #2, because whichever one I go through will be my character's world for 120 pages. I have to choose wisely, or it'll be like planning a vacation to Tuscany and landing in Wasilla, Alaska. It might be interesting in a 'where's da bear?' kind of way, but it ain't no Michelangelo.

I'm writing a fantasy comedy, and to paraphrase the great Steve Kaplan: Comedy shows us who we are. Drama shows us who we want to be. Comedy is the ordinary person struggling against the odds and being forced to use whatever means necessary to achieve success. Comedy is the truth about being human. So I keep that in mind whenever a scene sounds forced or phoney: is it real?

Anyway, back to page one....I want to show my protagonist in his natural environment and how he navigates that environment in the best way he can. If the audience doesn't immediately relate to him (it happens to be a guy in this story) on a gut level, it's an uphill battle to get them invested in his or her journey. The old "first impressions" rule applies.

Looking back over most of my stories, I seem to gravitate towards seeing my protagonist alone or emotionally isolated in one way or the other. Do I marginalize them so I can bring them back in? Could be. We root for the underdog because we've all felt like that at some point in our lives. And if you haven't, then you're not a human I would like to spend an evening with. Then again, you're what I call the 'delusional' character who we meet living their life like they have everything under control - but the audience knows there's a brick waiting to fall on his or her head. The metaphorical brick is the circumstance that will bring them down to Earth so we can like them...an ordinary person. Then we're cheering him or her on towards their goal like our life depends on it. That's why we leave the theatre smiling and feeling satisfied...unless it doesn't work, and then we leave feeling like we spend 2 hours on a crowded Greyhound bus next to a guy who smells like a rancid baloney sandwich.

I can only hope my first draft won't be that sandwich.

Spring Has Sprung...cleaning out my closets and my mind.

Okay, anyone who knows me knows I'm not really cleaning my closets. I save that for before I go on a trip, because I'm paranoid of dying in a fiery plane crash and having strangers going through my closets saying "Wow, what a pig!". Notice how I'm more upset about the stranger's opinion of my housekeeping than I am about the plane crash?  If it wasn't for company I'd never clean my house...sad fact.

I just finished a rewrite on one of my optioned scripts, so now I'm feeling in the mood to start on something new. Here's where the cleaning comes. I have a half dozen scripts in various stages of disrepair: unfinished, only the outline, snippets of ideas in the form of loglines etc. They're like abandoned puppies all jumping up saying "pick me! pick me!". But much like a puppy I know it'll be a long commitment when I do choose, so I better be smart about it. Should I go with the one that has the most commercial value, or the one that would be a tough sell, but emotionally satisfying to write. Comedy, drama, or thriller? A few years of experience has taught me that the "idea" is the smallest part of the process. The execution is everything. The most important question: Can I pull it off?

Life is too short to work on something that feels like you're chewing glass - so I'm going with the one that will be a blast to write! It's going to be a high concept fantasy comedy feature - but the downside is that it's going to have a studio sized budget, and last time I looked I wasn't having lunch with Spielberg and my agent at the Ivy. But at least at the end of 6 or so months I'll have it in my back pocket in case that lunch ever happens....pass the Grey Poupon.

Getting Noticed...or "HEY I'm here!"

Years ago it became evident that my solo writing factory, churning out scripts, was useless until I found a way to get my product on the shelves. Back in the day,query letters (in real envelopes!) was NOT working. Especially when the assistants saw my return address. I couldn't waltz into an L.A. office and pitch my stories face to face.

Then I noticed a few names popping up on the Internet - names of writers who had won scholarships or screenplay competitions. It wasn't the prizes that caught my attention (and quite often the monetary prize wasn't that impressive), but the fact that in most cases producers would read the winners. Winning or placing high in these contests was also a way to validate my work. How did I compare to the thousands of other writers out there? Was I delusional thinking I could make this a career?

So which ones to enter? First I researched and found regional contests, then scrolled through screenwriter's forums (Moviebytes is a good one), for writer's comments on which of the hundreds of contests were worth entering. Then I held my breath and submitted.

Was it worth it? I won a Praxis Screenwriting Fellowship (in Canada), for a comedy that was optioned by one of the judges. Unfortunately she couldn't get it together to produce it, but it was picked up again and is presently in development with another company. A couple of shorts won or placed in the top three with contests, and in 2009 my supernatural thriller,Peripheral Vision, won a Bronze with the Page International Screenwriting Awards. It also won the top spot in the Thriller/Horror category with the StoryPros Awards Screenplay Contest. I recommend them in my "Resources" links, not just because I won and I'm a big ass braggart, but because they are two of those highly respected competitions that get good reviews from other writers. When you do query producers and/or managers and agents, it's nice to have those successes in your first paragraph. It's human nature for industry professionals to want to deal with writers who show they are serious about their craft. Until we get something produced, this is one of the ways to do that.

I think of my writing as being on the end of a looooong rubber band that has to be sprung out there in any way possible. It's a lonely business, and once in a blue moon (my moon) it's such a boost to get an acknowledgement that you're on the right track.

Oh, did I mention I lose more competitions than I win? But hey, at least I'm in the race! And something about that gives me a jolt of optimism.

A Writer Writes

How do you know you're meant to be a writer? Here's a hint: Do you keep working despite the constant rejection,self doubt,and the little to no income to show for the hundreds of hours of blood, sweat and tears poured into your pages? If you won an Oscar for your screenplay,(and the big payday to go with it)...would you stop? 

Here's a quote from Aaron Sorkin, right after he won an Oscar for the Best Adapted Screenplay for The Social Network.

“Well, I’ll be very candid with you.  Lately, and really since the movie came out and it got the kind of critical reaction that it’s got and cultural reaction that it’s gotten, I feel like I’ve been hyper aware that whatever I write next is going to be the thing I wrote after The Social Network. I’m going to spend tonight enjoying this and tomorrow starting something new.  I think that’s what I have to do.  I just have to keep writing, keep doing what I’ve always been doing which is writing, trying to write something that I like, something that I think my friends will like, something that I think my father would like and then keep my fingers crossed that enough other people will like it that I can earn a living.”

Now THAT'S a how a real writer thinks.

Tangled in the Web

Okay, so after two days of feeling as dumb as a brick (are bricks dumb? Seems like unnecessarily high expectations for an inanimate object)  I managed to get my website http://phyllisheltayscreenwriting.com/. It might not be "up" yet, but give it a try. This is where I might load up a few interesting things along the way. Right now it's just an empty shell of nothingness, really. Writers need a presence on the Internet in order to brand ourselves, especially if you're not located where you can get face time with industry professionals and/or don't have an agent or manager.


So now that I've sucked up a chunk of time wading through the 'how to' of site building, it's back to the real work of writing.

The Long and the Short of it

My short film HITMAN is wrapping up production in L.A. this month. Ricky Moore of Rosenbard Films is the filmmaker, and he's had to battle the demons of lack of funds and time to take it from my script to post production. I'm excited to see the outcome of all that hard work when it comes out this summer and *crossed fingers* we eventually get it onto the festival circuit.

I also have a short MUSTANG optioned with Lucas Krost, an award winner director in Richmond, Virginia who is a champion of regional filmmakers.

If you write feature length screenplays, it's a good idea to consider writing shorts too. Is it because they're easier? No! It takes just as much energy and creativity to craft a 10 page short that has impact and character development as a 120 page script. Story is story, and all the rules apply. Short films are often a calling card for writers, directors and film students to garner notice of their talents. Filmmakers usually have to fight tooth and nail to scrape together enough personnel, time, and money to get these films completed. We're talking serious commitment. And that bodes well for producers looking for professionals to work with on feature projects.

I'll keep you posted on the progress of these films and tell you where you can see them when they're launched into the world!

Rewrite...rewind...rewrite

The best thing, and the worst thing, about coming to the FADE OUT on a script, is the realization that I only have a few short moments of exultation before the real work begins. After the first rough draft it's almost a luxury to crawl back over the words to clean out the flotsam and jetsam (where the hell did these words come from and do they ever stand on their own? "Cyril, did you take out the jetsam?")- it gives me the satisfaction of straightening out a neglected closet. I know there will be those painful moments where a certain piece of dialogue I thought was brilliant turns out to be a pile of embarrassing crap, but the challenge to make it better kicks me in the butt and gives me the energy to get back into the game of characters and story. This is what it's like when I'm rewriting my spec scripts...alone...no time restraints or notes.

Rewriting from notes given by readers or a producer brings another type of challenge: it means satisfying somebody else's opinion about a certain element (or entire acts) of a script. Sometimes I disagree with those notes, but try to understand why they're saying what they're saying. My writer's ego can get in the way and often does. Being a professional means understanding the nature of the business - it's collaborative dummy! It takes a whole lotta folks and money to make a film, and everyone wants - and needs - it to be the best it can be.

When the process gets too heavy (the script seems to be getting worse with every pass, or I feel like every original idea has abandoned me for good)I press the rewind button and try to remember why I wrote the damn thing in the first place! We all have tricks to stop us from abandoning the sinking ship - I cook, ramble around the web, walk my dog, and phone a friend who's up for a 2 hour blab fest. Oh yeah, and sometimes a shot of Irish whisky does wonders to quiet the nagging doubt.

Some Inside Help

Here's two websites that are invaluable in getting exposure for your completed screenplays. Inktip will post your logline, synopsis, and script for a reasonable fee. Producers and managers who join can fill in a search with specific requirements and voila! your project will pop up. Only industry subscribers can see your listings. I have optioned a feature and two shorts through Inktip (and you can list as many loglines for shorts as you want in the free public listing part of the site). A preferred newsletter gives you direct access to companies looking for specific projects.

Another great site is Virtual Pitchfest where you can send queries to producers and managers that subscribe to the site and have listed their preferences re: genre etc. Now this is a little pricey unless your really do your homework and target the right company. Your query will be sent, then notice of their response will be emailed to you. You have to be on your toes and have your screenplay in polished condition if it's requested, and work on your query letter to get the biggest bang for the buck. The site shows a sample query letter. My odds have been 3 out of 10 pitches result in a request to send the script. They'll never know you're sending it from Tasmania! 

Outside the Loop

If you're reading this it's a good bet you have Final Draft or Movie Magic minimized on your other screen and you're wondering: What moon is she writing from, and am I on a similar revolving satellite? If you've ever asked the question "Is it possible (or even advisable) to be in the business of screenwriting when I don't live in Los Angeles?" Then you, my friend, have landed on the right rock.

Since "blog" is the combo of "blather" and "log" (I'm guessing), that is what I'll be doing. Rambling about writing screenplays and trying to get them read by industry professionals, sold, and on the screen. And since of this date you won't find me on IMDB ... you know I'm still in the trenches. There's no one way to break in, and I can only talk about my attempts and perhaps help you avoid my mistakes to save valuable time. I've taught a few screenwriting classes, and there's always a great interest in what tools or resources are the best in the scrum of websites devoted to the art. Hopefully along the way I can impart some wisdom in that regard. Or this blog just might be my way of steering away from my Final Draft screen whenever I get stuck...we'll see.