Here's the thing about screenplay writing...

...the stuff you have to research can be kind of ridiculous. I just Googled "blizzards in Japan." How often do you find yourself doing that? But it’s merely an avoidance strategy….what can I do to avoid falling flat on my face? You find out things you never thought you wanted to know…still, it beats the research I had to do on oyster shots...those were some rough mornings.

Screenwriting is such a strange process, and I’m sure it’s the first time you never really forget. Equate that to whatever you want, but it will never be less odd, unknown or forbidden than it is the first time you do it. I'm just getting sp #1 out the door, but it's taken almost three years of my life, sent me off to Alaska twice, and in an odd way, even dictated my actual life in ways I would never have guessed. I'm not really a blog person, but people are always curious about the process, so maybe I should start explaining it a bit better.

It's a formula...Hollywood is not about a great idea that is simply transitioned from creativity to art. At the end of the day, it’s still a job. It was a little sad to me to realize there is an actual "arc" to how most movies are written and even produced. The way I watch films will never be the same...y'all could watch The Dark Knight and think, "Man that was a great movie and Heath Ledger was amazing." Yeah, that's kinda died for me....I just see structure, character and plot now.

But it's also a good thing...it teaches you consistency, and how to best evolve a storyline through the eyes of your characters. And the greatest process of all is the personal transformation you go through while writing

Most writers start with an ending, and write backwards...then they rewrite ‘til their hands hurt and end up with a story that is probably nothing like what they started with, and more than likely has a completely different ending.

I'm on the sixth major rewrite of this sucker, and while that may sound wasteful...it has been the biggest learning process of my life. Despite whether I have guided the story, or whether it's guided me...I didn't really know who I was before this process started. I like to equate that to what Van Gogh must have felt like before/after the loss of his ear*…Starry Night came later, so you do the math. And although I never gave my newspaper-wrapped ear to a prostitute, I have found that when you are writing this kind of thing, you definitely give more of yourself than you originally expect….and ironically, to people you will mostly never even meet. You tend to think when starting off that is going to be an abstraction...something you can easily separate from your innermost thoughts and vulnerabilities. Then someone asks you if they can read your work and you question whether your soul is quite ready for prime time….

But then you consider why it is that you started writing in the first place. There was something to share, something that, to you., may have began as mere commentary, but become transformational. And that’s all that life really is. There is a process here…but it’s a broadening one. If you keep your eyes open, life changes as your manuscript changes, and vice versa. And what you are left with is infinitely deeper than what you started with.


*P.S. I really feel Gauguin was the superior artist….but how much did Van Gogh’s ear have to do with that? An odd sacrifice, one born of dependency, and Hell…that probably sums up the whole of artistic impulse in any context. But who knows what would have been without that detached ear?

If you want another great artist comparison, Google Picasso/Matisse…Salieri/Mozart…seems we all need an infidel to drive us to peak performance.