Episode Summary:
In this episode of The Fandom Portals Podcast, Aaron sat down with veteran screenwriter Jeremy Drysdale—whose credits span the cult film Grand Theft Parsons, the video game Battlefield 2, and the real‑time thriller In the Line of Duty. Jeremy shares his unconventional journey from ad copywriter to Hollywood, his blueprint for crafting unputdownable scripts, and why he’s pushing the boundaries of traditional screenwriting.
Topics:
- Unconventional Entry: How a pact and some inginuity became Grand Theft Parsons
- Genesis of Ideas: Moving from advertising scripts to original screenplays
- Cross‑Medium Writing: Key differences between film, TV, and non‑linear game narratives
- Structural Secrets: Jeremy’s “bastardized Save the Cat” + step‑outline method
- Real‑Time Filmmaking: Crafting tension in In the Line of Duty
- Research Habits: Relying on Google for gritty realism
- On‑Set Dynamics: Why writers are often sidelined in production
- Breaking Conventions: The daring “no scene headings” approach in Casual Violence
- Industry Insight: Navigating the middle‑budget market and the fight to sell original IP
Key Takeaways:
- Proactivity Pays: Jeremy flew to Nashville unannounced to secure life‑rights—landing his first feature
. - Foundation First: A detailed step outline ensures story beats hit before a single line of dialogue is written.
- Medium Matters: Film, TV, and games demand distinct structures—streaming TV frees writers from rigid act breaks.
- Script Reader Savvy: Scripts are first judged by readers trained in “classic” structure—know their expectations.
- Creative Experimentation: Removing scene headings can speed reading and modernize script flow—if you’ve earned the trust to try it.
- Sales Reality: “If I don’t sell it, it doesn’t exist—just on my hard drive.” Original IP remains a tough sell despite market demand.
Call to Action:
Love insider writing secrets? Subscribe to The Fandom Portals Podcast, and join our mailing list at fandomportalspodcast.com for monthly news and exclusive deep dives into your favorite fandoms!
Apple Podcast Tags:
Screenwriting, Film Writing, TV Writing, Video Game Writing, In the Line of Duty, Grand Theft Parsons, Battlefield 2, Save the Cat, Real‑Time Film, Writing Process, Hollywood, Geek Freaks Network, Fandom Portals Podcast, Script Structure, Original IP
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Welcome to the Fandom Portals podcast, the podcast
that explores how fandoms canhelp you learn and grow.
Today, I'm joined by a veryspecial guest guys.
His name is Jeremy Drysdale andhe is a screenwriter who is
responsible for such works as Inthe Line of Duty, and he's also
got some video game credits tohis name, including Battlefield
2.
Jeremy, how are you going today?
(00:36):
I'm good, thanks, lovely,lovely.
So yeah, thank you so much forjoining me today.
We were just talking about howwe kind of crossed paths on the
reddit scene and, yeah, uh,really, really appreciative of
you taking the time and comingto share with me your journey
into, uh, screenwriting.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
I'm really happy to do that.
Most writers just sit in a roomon their own and don't talk to
anybody for days.
So to have the opportunity tojust talk to somebody about
myself, kind of great.
Didn't want to turn that down.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Yeah, no, I definitely appreciate it because
you you have mentioned as wellthat you came about
screenwriting in a little bit ofan unconventional way, so did
you want to share a little bitabout how you kind of fell into
the profession of screenwritingand what your journey has been
so far?
Sure.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
I started out in advertising.
I was in advertising, I startedout as a script writer, but for
ads, wrote ads and theneventually became a creative
director of an agency in Londonwhich was really well paid and
really massively dull,stultifyingly dull.
So I decided just on kind ofthe spur of the moment, because
(01:37):
I love movies, and I went offand looked around for something
to write and there was thisamazing story that I'd heard
about when I was much younger,which I thought was perfect for
a movie, which was the truestory of a guy called Phil
Kaufman who stole GrahamParson's body and drove it
(01:57):
across the desert to the JoshuaTree to set fire to it because
of a pact the two of them hadmade much earlier in life when
they were drunk.
And I thought it was a greatstory, I thought it would make
for a really good movie.
So I found the number thetelephone number of Phil Coffman
, who was obviously still alive,and rang him in Nashville and
told him what I wanted to do.
And he hung up on me.
(02:18):
So I rang him back and, uh,eventually he said what do you
want?
And I said I want to write, Iwant the rights to write the
story, and he said um, I don'ttalk on the phone, you have to
come and talk to me face to face.
He figured that because he knewI was, that you know that would
put an end to it and I'd leavehim alone.
But I didn't do that.
(02:38):
I got on a plane.
I didn't tell him I was coming,I flew to nashville and I
booked a return ticket threedays later.
I assumed that I would juststay in a hotel somewhere and
just work on him and try andconvince him to let me have the
rights.
And it arrived in Nashville whenthere was a massive music
concert going on, uh and uh, abig business convention and
basically in a hotel room.
(02:59):
So I knocked on his door.
He was very unhappy to see meand I said I've come around to
convince you to let me have therights to the scripts.
I later discovered that about200 people over the preceding 30
years had contacted him andasked for an option or for the
rights, and he turned them alldown because he wasn't
interested in doing it.
But he was kind of stuck withme for three days, and not only
(03:22):
was I there for three days, butI didn't have anywhere to stay.
So eventually I ended up on hissofa in his house so I was able
to bore him so much, uh, thateventually he let me have it.
He said I'll let you have itfor 12 months and then I said
well, look, I haven't really gotmuch money so I can only give
you like 500.
So you know, disaster for him,for a big film companies had
(03:45):
been after the story and theywere looking to pay a lot more.
Anyway, he very kindly let mehave an auction for 12 months
and I went off and wrote thescript and the film was released
.
We were shooting the film in SanFrancisco, just outside San
Francisco, nine months after Iarrived at his front door.
(04:05):
That's how fast that allhappened and the film became
Grand Theft.
Parsons did pretty well, got alot of decent reviews, got some
bad reviews as well.
You always get bad reviews andI thought, well, this is great,
I've obviously made the rightdecision, because it's really
easy to make films.
You just write them and thensomebody makes them and nine
months later you're on the setand, of course, realized over
(04:30):
the years that followed that itwasn't quite that easy.
But that was my, uh, that wasmy entree into the business.
That was 20, uh, 20, 20, nearly25 years ago, and I've been a
full-time screenwriter eversince wow, that's.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
That's like a story of dedication as well.
Flying all that way with noguarantee, it's almost like it's
really risky for one.
But then to follow it throughand to get that screenplay
written Talking about yourwriting process in that regard
so you get the rights or you'vegot an idea for a screenplay
what does your writing processkind of look like in that regard
(04:58):
?
Do you think of the idea, likeyou had for the story of Mr
Kaufman, or does the charactercome first, or do you just have
an action scene pictured in yourmind that you'd like to write
about?
How does that process kind ofwork for you?
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Well, it differs depending on whether it's
existing IP or whether it's oneof my own ideas.
Most of the stuff that I writeis my own, comes out of my head,
but occasionally it's existing.
I've got a TV thing at theminute which comes from a book.
I read the book, I loved it, Ioptioned it and I'm trying to
sell it now.
Of course I've sort of launchedinto the tv market just at the
moment that everybody else isleaving it.
(05:33):
But if I'm writing, uh,something based on my own idea,
I start with a question really.
So I've got a, a script whichis uh out about at the minute,
called Badwater, which is so thequick picture of Badwater is an
ex-cop is in a maximum securityprison in Nevada and he's told
(05:55):
that he has 12 hours to kill hiscellmate or his family will be
murdered.
So he decides to break out ofprison, kill the people he
threatened his family and thenbreak back in again without
anyone realizing he was gone.
So he has an alibi.
So that's basically where itstarts, I think.
Initially with that one Ithought it'd be great to have
somebody break out of a maximumsecurity prison to save his
(06:17):
family.
That's the beginning of theidea, and then you sort of knock
around the idea a bit.
You realize that actually it isa great idea.
But there are other things outthere which aren't dissimilar
over the years, which havepeople.
You know it's just a prisonbreak movie, right, and that
isn't that different.
So then I thought I had to makeit different.
And obviously the way to makeit different is then to have him
(06:40):
break back in again afterwards,and so you start from that, and
then it's like a little naughtyproblem.
You try and work out how totell it in such a way that an
audience would watch the movieand think, well, yeah, I mean
that's doable, right, he couldescape that way and he could get
back in that way.
I mean I don't think anybodycould escape from a maximum
(07:00):
security prison the way thatI've written it and I don't
think they can get back in againafterwards the way I've written
it.
But I do believe that anaudience, even a cynical
audience, could watch that movieand think that it was doable.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yeah, and I think that's the main thing about
screenwriting and things likethat.
It just generates from a smallidea, or a seed that just grows
over time.
You know, having dabbled inwriting myself, that's kind of
like the process I go through,where you have that sort of that
genesis idea and it justspreads in almost concentric
circles around that untilfinally you come up with
something that's legible andpossibly a little bit creative
(07:34):
too, and maybe a little bit oflightning in a bottle.
You never really know.
But yeah, I think it's reallyinteresting to hear that you've
gone into so many differentsorts of fields of writing in
terms of TV, movies and games.
When you're writing screenplaysand a book and a book as well,
yeah, yeah, so when you'relooking at those sorts of
different writing styles,especially for TV and movies,
(07:55):
what's some of the majordifferences?
When you're approachingprojects like that for a movie
and then for a TV and then alsofor games, especially like
action-driven games likeBattlefield, well, I've only
written one game, which isBattlefield 2, and that's
different and difficult becauseit's non-linear really.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
So you know, the player can take the character in
a hundred different directionsand you have to write a script
that encapsulates every possibleroute that they may take.
Write a script thatencapsulates every possible
route that they may take.
So it's it's uh, it's it's lesscreatively satisfying because
(08:35):
it's, uh, like an algorithmrather than a story.
So you know, I'm, I'm, I'm notreally telling a story.
What I'm doing is I'm telling ahundred stories in in a way
that they logically could work.
So it's less fun, I, and that'swhy I didn't do any more.
There used to be a hugedifference between TV and film
and that's basically thestructure of the script.
(08:55):
Tv used to be.
There used to be bumpers andoutbreaks in different places,
and it's very specificstructural paradigm for
television back in the day when,you know, people used to run it
.
And it's a very specificstructural paradigm for
television back in the day whenpeople used to run ads.
So they used to need an in andan out for the ad in the same
place each time, which made itstructurally important to get
(09:16):
that stuff right.
Now, most TV is bought bystreamers and so they don't
really have ad breaks.
They don't care how long eachepisode is, they don't care what
the structure of it is, reallyas long as it is it satisfying
to the viewer, as long as thestory is told in a way that it
(09:37):
works.
I remember in the early daysvarious different people who
wrote the streamers sort ofthought really that they were
writing an eight hour movie andthen they kind of could just
chop it into.
You know, this bit's a 42minute episode and this bit's a
one hour and 12 minute episode,and you just put your breaks in
your episode breaks in where itfeels right.
(09:57):
You don't have to worry aboutthe other stuff.
So where I am in england thereisn't any, uh, there isn't very
much of a market now for aterrestrial TV drama, uh, so you
don't have to worry very much.
If you're going to writesomething, you're probably going
to be writing it for a stream.
You don't have to worry verymuch about that structural thing
.
With a movie, I mean, this isquite, quite interesting, I
(10:18):
think and you might want to talkabout this a bit more Uh, the,
the.
The way that movies are writtenhas has always been interesting
to me.
When I first started writingfilm, everybody read these,
these books.
You know these shitty books,mostly shitty books you know,
enormous.
They're sort of 300 pages, 350pages of people telling you how
(10:40):
to write a script right, and soyou have to have this turning
point here, and then there's thejourney here, and then there's
the call to action and look,that might work for some people.
I have never read any of thosebooks, except the only one I
read was Save the Cat, and Ionly read that right at the very
beginning because I realizedthat I needed to understand, get
(11:02):
a rough idea of structure.
I need to roughly know, becauseI knew that people who are
going to be reading the scriptswould expect me to hit certain
marks.
So I just read that Save theCat book, which is a good book
for you know it's supposed to bea primer, but it's actually the
only book.
Don't read Robert McKee or anyof those things.
Well, I mean, read them if youwant to, but it's just a way of
prevaricating.
(11:22):
It's just a way of not writing,reading a 350-page book and
then making loads of notes aboutwhat you're supposed to do.
It's just a way of not writinga script.
So my advice which most peoplewill ignore, of course, is to
read lots of scripts.
I mean, these days scripts areeasily available online.
You can download pretty muchanything, especially awards
(11:44):
season.
If you go onto the Deadlinewebsite on awards season,
they'll have links for everysingle nominated movie.
You just download them and youcan read them.
And if you read really goodscripts, you'll understand the
requirement.
You'll know what you'resupposed to do, because here is
somebody doing it.
It's a much better way.
You know, if Dan Gilroy writesa script, I can see how to write
(12:05):
the script.
If Robert McKee tells me how towrite the script, I don't think
Robert McKee has ever had amovie made.
I don't know what I mean.
I'm not, you know, beating upRobert McKee.
I've mentioned him two or threetimes.
He's just one of those people.
I don't understand why I wouldread.
And Gilroy?
So you know that's how Ilearned, just by reading
hundreds of movies, and oftenreading the script while I'm
(12:28):
watching the movie is useful aswell.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, I think that's a really good approach because a
lot of people learn by doing,learn through experience.
And if you've got that tactilething in front of you that
you're reading while you'rewatching it on the screen and
you can see, like the subtledifferences or you can see
structurally how they're writingsomething and how it portrays
on visual, I think that's reallygood advice.
If we look at like your sort ofwriting structure, you were
(12:53):
gracious enough to send me yourscript for In the Line of Duty,
the movie that you wrote thescreenplay for.
That's starring Aaron Eckhart,directed by Stephen C Miller.
Let's talk a little bit abouthow the process happened, as to
how that script was obviouslysent to market and then made
into a movie, and then I want toget into a little bit of the
structure of that one, just forsome little tidbits that you've
(13:13):
got through there that I wantedto ask you some questions about,
if that's okay?
Sure.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Well, can I very quickly add on a bit to the last
bit we talked about, which isthe way I write, which might be
of interest to people, becauseit's quite a.
I think it's a really efficientway of writing.
That it might be, uh, it mightbe helpful.
Um, everybody will have theirown system, but my system is
that basically, I start with asort of bastardization of the
save the cat uh structure.
(13:40):
So I've got 15 points andbecause of the way he he does it
in the book, it's very easy tohave at the end of each piece of
each bit of structure act,break, midpoint, whatever he
puts a page number in there 55,50 pages, midpoint, so on and so
forth.
So I start with that, I startwith those 15 beats, with the
(14:01):
page numbers where they'resupposed to be at the end of
each line, and then I write, um,an outline, a sort of a step
outline in that document.
So I add the step outline stuffwhich is basically the scenes
without any dialogue, into thatdocument and that immediately
means that I can see whether mymidpoint in my outline is at the
(14:25):
right place, whether it's inthe right place.
So I've got my 15 points, I'vewritten my step outline within
that.
And so I've got this greatdocument, which might be 15
pages long, of all of my scenesin the appropriate linked
sections with the page numberI'm trying to hit in brackets at
(14:47):
the end of each one.
So I already know even at thatpoint if I'm going to make it
work.
I already know if I've got toomuch stuff in the first half and
not enough in the second half.
I already know if my act breaksare in roughly the same,
roughly the right place, andthen I save that document and I
then write the script in thatdocument.
(15:08):
So I still have all of thosebullet points, I still have all
of those page numbers and I canstill see if I'm losing control
of the script.
I can still see if I haven'tput enough in the first section,
if my first app break is in theright or the wrong place.
It's an amazingly efficient wayto write.
So when you finish the script,you probably don't have to go
(15:30):
back and do loads and loads ofwork on it, because it's already
structurally right.
You probably will need to do adialogue pass or two or three or
four or five of those, but youknow that the story works.
You know that it hits the beatsthat it's supposed to hit, and
(15:50):
it's a really good way ofwriting a script.
The coen brothers I know, andothers.
They don't know how the scriptis going to end when they start
writing it.
I don't know how you write.
Some of your listeners willwant to write it that way, but
for me I have to know the storybecause otherwise, you know,
I've got 160 pages with noending.
So that's the structure I useand and it's pretty effective
just on that as well.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
That's a good, a really good way to like keep you
, keep you disciplined and, um,obviously right towards a, a
tailored ending in terms of thethe line of duty, the ending
that you kind of wrote throughin that one where everybody sort
of congregates around the, thecemetery scene, like that.
That's obviously the point thatyou have to get to.
But the question being, like Ireally wanted to know how that
(16:30):
sort of got off the ground fromidea to production and then also
had some little questions inregards to just some of the
things and the technical aspectsof the script in there.
I guess you could say so.
First of all, how did the Inthe Line of Duty script come
from page to production?
How did that come about?
Speaker 2 (16:49):
The story itself came from my desire to write a
real-time movie.
There have been a few, taking aPelham 1C3, the first one that's
real-time.
There are a few real-time filmsbut not very many, and most of
the ones that there have beendon't quite work.
And the reason they don't quitework is that often it looks
like you're bolting a story intoa real-time structure because
(17:12):
you want to write a real-timemovie and and most films then
look forced, uh, so there arevery few that work and you know
it's debatable whether in theline of duty work, although I
told everybody at every pointthat it was supposed to be real
time.
I think they kind of cheatedthat a bit and they didn't need
to.
But so that was where the ideacame from, so obviously quite
(17:33):
easy.
Then you think, ok, so I've gotto find an idea, a structure
that fits real time.
And you know, a verystraightforward structure is
that there's somebody in a cratethat's running out of air.
Originally it was somebodyrunning out of air that they put
water in the actual movie,which is fine, it works okay and
they got 75 minutes of air andthe only person who knows where
(17:58):
that person is, where that childis, is either dead or uh
doesn't want to test that,doesn't want to tell anybody so.
So then you think, okay, well,that's, that's how that's the
story.
I uh doesn't want to test thetest point, tell anybody so.
So then you think, okay, well,that's, that's how that's the
story.
I wanted that I want to tellthat's the the structure.
So then you think, okay, well,I've got a cop who shoots the
kidnapper because he thinksthey're gonna, uh, pull a gun,
(18:18):
but actually they're pulling outa ransom note, and uh, and then
that kind of works, that's fun,because if you shoot somebody
on it, you know that's fun,because if you shoot somebody,
even in America, if you shootsomebody, your gun and shield
are taken and you're sent backto their base and you have to
wait while there's aninvestigation to see whether
that shooting was legal, and sohe's not really a cop anymore.
He can't do any of those thingsthat cops do.
(18:39):
So you think, okay, well, thatworks, because he feels that
he's got to find this kidbecause he's killed a kidnapper
and she's going to die, but hedoesn't have any of the things
that policemen normally have.
And then you think, okay, well,is that kind of works, and then
we'll make him a shit cop.
Right, we'll make him one ofthose cops that's a bit
overweight.
I mean, aaron Eckhart is notoverweight, but in the script he
(19:02):
was a shit cop and he was, youknow, in the last months before
retirement and he wasn't verygood and he hadn't had a great
career.
So this is his moment to do theright thing, to show what he can
do.
And then you know, you think,well, okay, say the girl came
later.
You've seen that.
Have you seen the film?
Yeah, yeah.
(19:23):
There's a girl who's a sort of anews, one of these internet
news people with a little camera, and I put her in because it's
impossible to tell the story ifyou don't have a focal point, if
you don't have a perspective.
So she becomes our perspective.
She's a girl that doesn't likethe cops very much, she's new to
the job and she just followshim around and eventually
(19:45):
becomes part of his part of thechase with him.
And originally you've read thescript so you know that
originally I had a huge amountof different perspective in the
script.
I had CCTV, I had differentnews channels, there were TVs in
shops as you walked downstreets showing the chase that
(20:05):
was going on.
And that was the idea was tohave all these different
perspectives, and presumably forcost reasons they didn't do
that.
It was just really hurt, and soI think it was slightly less
effective in that way.
But you know, it kind of works,because with a real-time movie
generally, people in theaudience can get bored.
Right, I'm just following thisperson around.
That's quite boring.
I watch a normal film.
I watch a normal film.
(20:26):
I can see all this other stuffhappening.
Real time is a disciplinethat's very hard to pull off.
So the way to do it, I think,is to have these different
perspectives and to make it workthat way.
So that was the idea.
I wrote the script.
I had a manager in America atthat time who was talking to a
production company that needed aproject.
They needed something to goquite quickly and he sent them
(20:50):
the script script and they likedthe script.
It was ready to go.
They sent it out to variousdifferent actors and Aaron
Eckhart liked it.
I think that you know he haddone some action stuff.
He's done a huge amount more ofthat stuff since this film, but
I think at that time it was alittle bit more unusual for him
and he grabbed it and he ranwith it and, just as an aside, I
(21:15):
did go on the shoot for a week.
I went to Birmingham, alabama,spent some time with everybody
and he's a really lovely guy.
So, just as an aside, aaronEckhart, nice guy.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Very good.
Yeah, a very far cry from hischaracter of Harvey Dent in the
Batman, that's for sure of thedark knight, um, yeah, so, so
that's that's really interesting.
You know, talking about the,the various different sort of
perspectives that you want totell the story of the real time
time movie.
Uh, one thing I noticed thatyou do in the script as well,
and one thing that I think ispretty common in movies like
that is you really got to keepthe tension tight because you
(21:47):
know the, the stakes are there,the girl is in the crate and her
air is definitely running out.
So, from a writing perspective,knowing that those stakes are
present, knowing that thoseperspectives need to be seen,
how do you incorporate liketension in your, in your writing
to make it something that theaudience would feel well, how
does that work for for a screen?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
uh, play, well, it's really easy if you do the step
outline first, if that's the bitof the script that you do first
you write a step outline andthen you sit there with a
highlighter and you just, I mean, it's not rocket science, you
just highlight the action beatsand you can just see immediately
if there are gaps, if there areareas of the script where not
(22:25):
enough is going on.
And so the step outlinestarting with a step outline,
for me at least is is a reallygood way of making sure that I'm
hitting my beats all the waythrough, that I haven't got gaps
in action, and it's reallysimple, it's really easy to do
that.
People get carried away withdialogue, I think, especially
when they're starting out, andcharacter and dialogue and
(22:46):
character are vital, I meanreally important.
But if you start with the rightstructure, if you know your
story works, then you've gotlatitude to do all of that other
stuff and it's it's much easier, it's really straightforward to
do it that way.
It's it just it's on wheels.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
You can't really go wrong because the action really
does move in the in this moviein the line of duty.
Um, there are a lot of elementsthat you were talking about,
especially from from readingyour screenplay.
There's a lot of like call-outsand various different sort of
terminology from police andaction sort of movies like that.
What's the research processlike for you in terms of knowing
(23:21):
the kinds of realism to insertinto a script like that?
Is there a research process foryou or do you have any sort of
contact or what's that sort oflook like process for you or do
you have any sort of contact orwhat's that sort of?
Speaker 2 (23:31):
look like no, I don't , I just do it, I just write
when I'm doing, when I'm writingthe script, I just Google it.
I mean, my Google searchhistory is, you know, appalling.
I'm amazed that I haven't had aknock at the door.
You know how do I pop someone'seye out with a thumb?
What's the easiest way, what'sthe quietest way to kill someone
(23:51):
?
There are terrible thingsavailable on the internet, so
it's just Google.
I mean, I've written scriptsset all over the world and I've
never been to.
I wrote a whole script set inMalmo.
I've never been to that country.
The internet is an amazingresource and it's as simple as
(24:12):
that.
I guess you know, being a writerand having a degree of ADHD,
it's quite easy to get caught upin that stuff and not actually
doing the writing itself.
But you know, as long as youhave a bit of discipline, you
can do it.
I mean, I tend to do most of mywriting in the afternoons.
In the mornings I answer emailsand do if mean I tend to do
most of my writing in theafternoons and the mornings.
I answer emails and do.
If I've got research to do, I dothe research and read over what
(24:34):
I did the day before and andthen I write from about half
past one to about five.
It's, you know, it's, it'squite easy to.
Everybody will have their own.
I'm a bit, I'm a bit nervousabout telling people that stuff
because it might not work foryour listeners.
Right, they might have theirown way of going to do things.
(24:55):
So for me that works.
The only thing that I would beprescriptive about is the step
outline at the beginning.
That's really important.
But other than that, you knowit's all viable, it's all
flexible yeah, and I thinkthat's good for for creativity
purposes as well.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
You know you've got your, your guidelines that you
sort of stick to in terms ofstructure, but, um, when you're
actually talking about thecreative process of writing
something or writing somethingthat you enjoy, um, if it's
prescribed too much or if it's,you know, something that's
really feeling oppressive, thenit can like fizzle out before
you you finish something.
So I think the excitement comesfrom that creative juice that
is allowing a little bit offreedom, but also that structure
(25:29):
.
So it's almost like a safetynet.
So I definitely like that aswell With In the Line of Duty as
well.
You mentioned, and I alsonoticed, that some changes had
occurred between the filmversion and your screenplay
version.
How much of that is talked toyou about in terms of whether
the director or the productiontalked to you?
None of it, none of it?
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Yep, none of it.
They never have a conversationwith me, I'm never told.
So if you've read the scriptand you've seen the film which I
know you've done both of thosethings you'll see that there is
a twist in the script towardsthe end of the script, which
isn't in the film, and I neverfound out why that was dropped.
It didn't cost anything to putit in.
(26:09):
It was, you know, there were nocost, uh implications.
So I suspect that at some pointsomebody who was marking up the
script deleted that scenewithout knowing, yeah, and so,
um, you know, if you watch thefilm, there's a it works, it
still works the ending, but butit there was another twist
before the finale which made itwork better, which isn't in
(26:33):
there, and I I asked why itwasn't in there and nobody
seemed to know.
It drives me crazy not specificto my work, but in general that
uh screenwriters are notwelcomed onto sets for their
movies because what?
What tends to happen is thatthe director generally finds one
of two things happen Eitherthey find a different way of
(26:54):
telling the story that they likeoh, it would be nice to do this
, or something happens and theycan't shoot it exactly the way
it's written.
So they have to find aworkaround, and in both of those
instances the screenwritershould be on set, because the
screenwriter is able to do thatwork and make it fit.
And nothing is really worsethan watching a movie that
(27:18):
you've written that has beenfucked up because they haven't
asked you what to do.
So when you're writing dialogue, for instance, you should be
able to put your hand over thename of each character in the
script and to know who'sspeaking by the way they speak.
Everybody obviously has adifferent cadence.
They all speak differently.
Some of them are very staccato,some of them are very poetic.
(27:41):
Everybody is different and I,like most screenwriters, spend a
lot of time making sure thateverybody's dialogue is
congruent, that it fits thatcharacter.
Nervous people speakdifferently to confident people,
right.
So you write the dialogue inthat way and then when they
shoot the movie, they justchange.
(28:02):
Quite often the actor just doesit a different way.
They just change the dialoguebecause they want to change it
right, because they want to addsomething to the process, and
what that generally means is thecharacter ends up sounding like
the actor instead of thecharacter, yeah, or it all sort
of melds into everything, meldsinto everything else.
(28:24):
So all of that work that you'vedone I'm not trying to sound
precious about it, it's just forthe benefit of the script All
of that work that you've doneI'm not trying to sound precious
about it, it's just for thebenefit of the script all of
that work that you've done iswasted because they've allowed
the actor to change the dialogue, or the director has added
stuff and the writer isn't there, and so it just changes the
script.
And if you talk to people likeMartin with Donna, they
(28:45):
obviously has the advantage ofdirecting their own script,
right?
So it's slightly different.
They don't let anybody changeanything ever.
The script is the script andthat should be always the case.
And if it isn't always the case, if there needs to be a change
for a certain reason, the writershould be the one that changes
the script, because the writeris the one who knows characters,
(29:06):
right, nobody else.
The director knows the story,the actors know their character,
but nobody has that sort ofhelicopter view, which is awful
expression, but nobody has thatvision other than the writer.
So that drives me crazyactually.
I mean not we're not beingspecific to my own stuff, but
just in general that the momenta script is bought, the writer
(29:28):
is often mostly sort of shuntedoff and then it becomes the
director's vision.
And that's fine, because it isat that point that that it
becomes what the director wantsit to be.
But the writer should beinvolved in that bit of the
process I think it's also alittle bit silly.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
You know, having someone of that um like
knowledge base in terms of thestory as a whole, not utilizing
them as a resource on aproduction, is just.
I think that's just like a bitof an oversight, because
obviously no one knows thecharacters better than the
person that write it.
No one knows the nuances of thecharacter and the arc that
they're intended to go throughthrough the movie better than
(30:07):
the screenwriter intended to gothrough through the movie better
than the screenwriter like, forexample, off the officer penny
we're talking about in in thismovie in the line of duty.
You obviously started him offin the screenplay as being a cop
that you know.
He's four minutes away from his, his end of shift before all of
this happened.
So he's really sort of like apolice officer that really is
just counting down the minutesuntil the end of his shift and
has no real care about it in theworld until when the script
(30:29):
eventually, like, progresses andhe gets involved in the case.
He is then counting down theminutes to the time when he's
supposed to save this girl andeventually it comes to the point
where an entire community ofpeople based on the um, like the
, the, the media coverage thathe's gotten through this
investigation, they all come tosort of help him out.
(30:49):
So there's that journey that hegoes through from being just
this sort of deadbeat end of hiscareer kind of police officer
to somebody who's really justtrying to prove his worth is
what I took out of it at least.
And then he's got things likeyou've written here, you know,
like there's financial planners,dental hygienists, postal
workers, electricians,skateboarders, hobos, teachers,
all those kinds of people comein to try and help dig out this
(31:12):
young girl and it says as well,you know, they're all trying to
help him out.
And I think that that sort ofcharacter arc and also like that
there's something that'smissing there if you don't
consult on, like thescreenwriter's process or
character.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
That's not in the film, right?
I mean, there is a bit of thatin the film.
There's a little bit at the endand that's it.
Yeah, yep, so the changes thatwere made, I had no idea what
they were doing.
They didn't speak to me at all.
I mean, basically, the momentthey bought the script I was
kind of, you know, I was kind ofgone and I understand that.
I fully buy that.
(31:47):
The director, not this director, I'm not talking about this
script in particular.
I think Stephen C Miller is areally good director and he did
a good job with the movie.
But directors in general they'rea bit nervous at the writer
because they don't really theywant to make it theirs and the
writer is irritating in thatrespect.
So it's kind of like, okay, youhave a kid and then somebody
(32:09):
adopts your kid or your wiferemarries and the kid has a new
dad, the director being the newdad.
He's going to be irritated withyou if you start getting
involved in his way of bringingup the child, right, so he's not
interested in asking youradvice on how little Johnny
should be treated.
So I think it's kind of a bitlike that.
And often they don't invite youon the set at all.
(32:33):
I mean, I've never been invitedon the set.
I was gone but I had to pay myown way and on that film.
Really generally it became, youknow, I think even often actors
don't really like screenwriterson the set because they want to
also make their character,their own, and they think that
this weird guy standing overhere is going to be judging them
(32:55):
if they make changes.
And probably they are judgingthem because the characters
mostly come out of the head ofthe person that's standing and
that person is either notstanding there because they've
not been made welcome on the onthe set or they're not.
They're standing there butthey're not being asked, and I
just think everything I do isfor the benefit of the script.
(33:16):
So I don't know if we're goingto talk about notes at any point
, but if we talk about notes, Ijust my only job, once I've
written the script, is toprotect the script, and so if
I'm getting notes from people,from producers, from directors,
I'm very open to that, but onlyif they make the script better.
If they don't make the scriptbetter, my job then becomes to
(33:38):
protect the script, and I've hadnumerous times conversations
with people who never made amovie before, never written a
film, which are wrong.
I've had also notes that aregreat, but the ones ones that
are wrong, your job is to pushback on these in a polite way,
in a firm way, and explain whythey don't work and say look,
(33:59):
you want me to do this?
I have a script I wrote with afrench company and it there were
four producers on it and theyall had separate notes and some
of those notes contradicted thenotes from the other people in
the group.
And you know you have to beresponsible for the script.
You have to say I don't think Ican do that because if I do
(34:21):
that the story doesn't work forthis reason.
So it's a really difficultthing.
Everybody always wants to getinvolved and oftentimes it
damages the script.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Sometimes it does, I think in terms of a script, I
think a clear vision isdefinitely important when it
comes to presenting the messageof the movie that was intended,
at least Just going on notes andthings like that.
And structure of yourscreenplays.
I know you said before it's abit unconventional, but, um, I
noticed throughout thescreenplay that you have here
for in the line of duty, you doum, like, you use capitals at
(34:57):
times and you also underline, uh, various different things, for
example, penny moves, and thenthere's another underline that's
like silently parts the flowerstall, ava arrives.
Are those intended for like adirector's note or a
cinematographic, like acinematography sort of note in
terms of that's what you wantshown on camera at that time?
That's what's important.
Is that what that's all aboutwith the, the screen structure
(35:19):
there?
Speaker 2 (35:19):
like most things, this is a kind of debate in the
screenwriting community, right?
So the idea is you're notsupposed to do that, you're not
supposed to put anything on thescript that could be regarded as
a director note, becausedirectors don't like it.
Basically, I think when youwrite a script, two things.
First thing is, when you writea script, you're writing it for
the reader.
You're writing it for theperson that you might buy it.
(35:41):
So anything that makes iteasier to tell that story is is
beneficial to you.
Secondly, I think you shouldjust do what you think is right
for you, for your telling of it,of the story, and if they tell
you, don't put direct.
You know I always put stuff inabout action beats.
I always, you know, do thatcapital thing, although I don't
(36:03):
always do it.
Actually, we can go on tocasual violence, which I sent
you a bit of, in which I don'tdo that, but I do do something
else that you're not supposed todo.
I just think there are too manyrules, there are too many
restrictions put into ourwriters.
I saw a massive thing onTwitter recently screenwriting
Twitter where there was thissort of huge debate as to
whether you can put a quote onthe front cover to sell what
(36:27):
kind of a story you're about totell.
I mean, people are crazy, right, just write the script.
You have to be careful nowbecause oftentimes and this is
really important, actually thesedays producers often don't read
scripts.
Buyers don't read scripts.
The scripts are read by scriptreaders who they pay $50 to do a
(36:49):
little report.
Is it good, is it sellable,does the story work?
And it might be actually thatyour script is never actually
read by anybody who's put moneyinto it, that they just read
these one-page things.
So you have to have in the backof your mind that you have to
write the script in such a waythat the script reader is going
(37:11):
to feel okay about that.
Then they're going to like whatyou've done.
That's your market when youfirst write the script.
And the script reader hasnearly always been to film
school, and if they've been tofilm school they have a firm.
These film schools are a wasteof time, but but they teach
structure right.
So if you do anything thatdoesn't fit the structure that
they're expecting, they'll saynot structured right, okay.
(37:34):
So that's why films are not asgood as they were before.
It's one reason why they're notas good as they were before, I
think is that things are muchmore conventional in the way
that they're done, unlessthey're small movies like a Nora
, where he could just do ithowever he wants to because he's
going to direct it.
But in general terms, becauseyou want to get past the script
(37:55):
reader at the beginning and thescript reader has been taught
that the script should look in acertain way.
That makes it tough to dosomething different.
So obviously Quentin Tarantinodoesn't get anything made now,
if he isn't already QuentinTarantino, because he doesn't
write the way that you'resupposed to write.
You've got a few pages of ascript of mine, which is the
(38:17):
last thing I wrote, calledCasual Violence.
Yeah, that doesn't have anyscene headings.
I have no scene headings inthere, not a single one.
And the reason I don't havescene headings in that story is
because they slow the readerdown, so I just remove them.
I know I've had to work quitehard to move the action on in a
certain way that you know whereyou are, you know when you're
there, but I don't have a sceneheading.
(38:37):
I don't have interior loungehouse day.
I don't have that.
They've all gone.
There's not a single one and itworks really well.
It's gone down a storm and it'sa really easy read because you
don't have to keep going throughthose scene headings but you
still know all the informationyou need is there.
And at some point, if they makeit, somebody will have to put in
(38:58):
scene headings because thatthen fits in with the budgeting
software that they're going tobe using, so they know where
everything is.
But it's easy to do that Nowbecause I've had movies made.
I think I can do that and itcan go to people.
And it can either go to peoplebecause the producer will read
it now because I've had moviesmade, so that they're a bit more
(39:19):
interested, or the um scriptreader.
If it's still going through ascript reader, he's gonna think,
oh, actually he hasn't got anyscene headings in there, but he
has had movies made, so it'sprobably okay, right.
But if I'm completely unknownand I do that or I send it off,
the script reader is going tothink where are the screen
earnings?
(39:39):
And he's just going to say it'snot structured properly and you
won't sell it.
So they say don't put anythingthat could be a director's note
in there, because they don'twant to piss the director off
when the director reads thescript.
They don't want the directorthinking why is this bloke?
Trying to direct it on the pageMakes it an easier read.
Remember the script that you'rewriting, that you're sending
(40:03):
out to people, is never going tobe the script that goes to cast
when they're shooting it.
Because the markets aredifferent.
The viewer is different In thefirst place.
I'm writing script just to sell, so I'm writing it for the
reader.
Later on I'm writing the scriptfor the viewer or for the
director or for the actor, so itlooks different.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
No, no, that makes sense.
And I did find when I wasreading Casual Violence that it
was a very like it flowed verywell in terms of when I read it.
There was like, for example,you've got you know inside the
pub, so we know where we are,and then it goes down into your
descriptions of the scene andthen there's some dialogue in
there as well, and I think thatthat was a really
(40:46):
well-structured and flowing readfor the casual violence script
there, so that came from thatway of writing came from an
interview I read with dan gilroywhen he was talking about
writing, uh, nightcrawler, andI'm going to paraphrase he just
said you know, I just didn'twant to put scene headings in
there because they slowed downthe read and it's, it's a
(41:06):
kinetic story.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
I didn't want to do that, so I just didn't do it.
I just didn't put him in thereand, uh, it's great, and now I
don't do it.
And he said and of coursewilliam goldman often didn't use
them.
And I thought really that'sinteresting.
So, uh, I looked at some oldwilliam goldman scripts and he's
right, uh, although goldmansort of sometimes uses them and
sometimes doesn't, in the samescripts.
And I think you're either goingto use the way you're not going
(41:28):
to use, but you can get your.
Your viewers can download freea copy of the nightcrawler
script by dan gilroy and theycan see how well it works.
But again, you shouldn'tprobably do it right at the
beginning of your career,because the people who are
reading your scripts probablyaren't going to like it because
it doesn't conform and they'relooking for a reason to say no,
(41:50):
to pass on it, and so anythingthat gives them that opportunity
to say no should be avoided, sobut it's a really useful
exercise I was just wondering aswell when you're, when you're
writing a script like this withno scene headings, does it help
your writing process in terms ofthe flow of when you're writing
?
Speaker 1 (42:09):
is it a quicker sort of process?
Is it more free when you'rewriting it that way, instead of
having to stop every couple ofbeats to put in that scene
heading?
Well, I've only written.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
I'm writing all my stuff that way now, but that's
the first one I've written thatway and it wasn't faster because
I constantly had to think aboutnot putting scene headings in,
because that's what I've donefor 20 years.
But I now I'm writing a newscript now that has no scene
headings.
I suspect that it'll getquicker.
I also thought that I would getmore pushback from people that
(42:41):
my agents would say you know,this is not good, you need to do
it the right way.
I never had that.
I never had.
Anybody has nobody's ever saidwhy are there no scene headings?
But you have to make it work.
It has to be right, but if youcan make it work, then you know
that's great, it's better.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
So this screenplay that you've got here for Casual
Violence you said that thatone's out to market as like at
the moment what are your like,what does that sort of mean and
what's your expectations forthis one?
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Well, what it means is sort of mean, and what's your
expectations for this one?
Well, what it means is you justdon't hear anything for a while
while your agent's trying tosell it.
It's a very dark script.
It's quite brutal, it's verydark.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
You don't have the whole script.
No, I only got the first sixpages.
It kind of ends with theinterview in the police station.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
Yeah, it's not the easiest thing to sell, but I
love the script.
I really like it.
It could work for TV, it couldwork as a movie.
My expectations are you shouldnever expect a script to sell.
It's brutally hard to sell ascript these days that isn't
based on existing IP and for themost part, I've got a couple of
(43:54):
TV things that are based onexisting IP and for the most
part, I've got a couple of TVthings that are based on
existing IP that I'm trying tosell, that my scripts, generally
speaking, are my scripts thatcome out of my head, and so
there's no existing IP there andbuyers are quite risk averse.
They've always been risk averse,but now more so, and they're
sort of confused.
I think at the minute many ofthem.
(44:15):
So up until for the last 10years, they liked graphic novel
stuff, they liked Marvelcharacters, adaptations, they
liked that, and now suddenly thewheels are actually coming off
of that stuff, and not all of it, but a lot of it is
underperforming, because peoplewant something different, and I
(44:36):
think that what they want that'sdifferent is original stories.
Yeah, I think so too.
Like we talked about bad orderearlier, right, break out of the
prison without anyone knowingbreak back in again original
stories, but the buyers arestill very resistant to that
because they don't want to takea risk on something that doesn't
(44:57):
have an existing market, and Ican see why that would be the
case, but eventually they're notgoing to have much choice.
This is coupled with the factthat that middle part of the
market, the bit you've got themarvel stuff up here, which is
200 million dollars, and you'vegot the micro stuff down here
which is less than a milliondollars, and then you've got
this chunk in the middle whichwas sort of 30 million dollar
(45:20):
movie, which is kind of thething that I write um and and
that's not getting made verymuch now and I don't know quite
why.
I've read lots of articles aboutwhy it's not getting made, but
there doesn't really seem to bemuch logic to it.
It seems to me that if you makea $20 million movie, you can
make 10 of those to fit your$200 million movie that you're
(45:42):
making up here that actuallypeople don't really want anymore
, and you only got to have twoof those things do well and
you've covered your cost.
So logically, it seems to mepeople should be making those
movies now, but they're notreally very much and so it's
very tough.
I mean, I've been doing this along time and it's as tough as
it's ever been.
There was that little bubblewhen everybody was getting TV
(46:03):
shows made, and that's gone aswell now.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
Even from someone like myself who consumes movies
on a sort of casual basis as apodcast, I can see that the
business of movies is now sortof changed.
When I was growing up in the90s and the early 2000s, there
was a lot of those standaloneaction movies that were really
enjoyable and original IP andbrought stars to your home like
(46:28):
your Schwarzeneggers and yourStallones and your Bruce Willis
and things like that.
Those are the sorts of moviesthat we're kind of missing now.
So can definitely see whatyou're saying, where there's
that sort of middle ground wherewe really need to reply.
I really believe we need toreturn back to that, because
that was some entertainingcinema as well.
And yeah, they're definitelygoing with the higher tier
Marvel or the lower tier sort ofindie, a24 sort of stuff that
definitely gets sort of awardnominated, but there's space for
(46:50):
more in the middle.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
The market wants that .
You're right, the market wantsit.
But the producers aren'tproducing it.
They're nervous of it becausethey've got to justify the spend
, and they can justify it.
If it's a best-selling graphicnovel or if it's a best-selling
book, they can justify it.
Well, those are people whoalready took a risk on this
(47:12):
stuff and it's paid off.
But the stuff that comes out ofsomeone's head, they're worried
about that.
Their job is on the line right?
Speaker 1 (47:22):
Yeah, I definitely agree.
All right, thanks for joiningme, jeremy.
Before I let you go, I do wantto ask a last question what's
exciting you currently aboutscreenwriting, and where do you
want to move yourself andexperiment with in the genre in
the future?
Speaker 2 (47:38):
Yeah well, so I'm happy writing.
I mainly write thrillers andaction movies and they're good
for me.
I'm going to stick with that.
I've got a couple of horrormovies as well, which are fun
probably slightly less fun, ifI'm honest.
But the thing that excites meis trying the no scene headings
thing and trying to fuck withthe paradigm a bit and do
(47:58):
something in a slightlydifferent way.
I'm excited by selling films.
That's the thing that excitesme.
If I don't sell it, it doesn'texist, just on my hard drive.
So you know I want to sellstuff, I want to see it made,
and it's a really tough journey.
It's really hard but veryrewarding when it happens.
Speaker 1 (48:18):
Yeah, and I can definitely see your passion in
it too.
Yeah, I really, really thankyou for coming in and sharing
your insights with me, and yourprocess and and and yeah, just
taking the time to really justhave a chat with me today,
jeremy.
It's been a pleasure with metoday, jeremy, it's been a
pleasure Really.
Appreciate you, my pleasure,aaron.
Have a good day you too.
Thank you very much.
Welcome to the Fandom Portals podcast, the podcast
that explores how fandoms canhelp you learn and grow.
Today, I'm joined by a veryspecial guest guys.
His name is Jeremy Drysdale andhe is a screenwriter who is
responsible for such works as Inthe Line of Duty, and he's also
got some video game credits tohis name, including Battlefield
2.
Jeremy, how are you going today?
(00:36):
I'm good, thanks, lovely,lovely.
So yeah, thank you so much forjoining me today.
We were just talking about howwe kind of crossed paths on the
reddit scene and, yeah, uh,really, really appreciative of
you taking the time and comingto share with me your journey
into, uh, screenwriting.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
I'm really happy to do that.
Most writers just sit in a roomon their own and don't talk to
anybody for days.
So to have the opportunity tojust talk to somebody about
myself, kind of great.
Didn't want to turn that down.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
Yeah, no, I definitely appreciate it because
you you have mentioned as wellthat you came about
screenwriting in a little bit ofan unconventional way, so did
you want to share a little bitabout how you kind of fell into
the profession of screenwritingand what your journey has been
so far?
Sure.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
I started out in advertising.
I was in advertising, I startedout as a script writer, but for
ads, wrote ads and theneventually became a creative
director of an agency in Londonwhich was really well paid and
really massively dull,stultifyingly dull.
So I decided just on kind ofthe spur of the moment, because
(01:37):
I love movies, and I went offand looked around for something
to write and there was thisamazing story that I'd heard
about when I was much younger,which I thought was perfect for
a movie, which was the truestory of a guy called Phil
Kaufman who stole GrahamParson's body and drove it
(01:57):
across the desert to the JoshuaTree to set fire to it because
of a pact the two of them hadmade much earlier in life when
they were drunk.
And I thought it was a greatstory, I thought it would make
for a really good movie.
So I found the number thetelephone number of Phil Coffman
, who was obviously still alive,and rang him in Nashville and
told him what I wanted to do.
And he hung up on me.
(02:18):
So I rang him back and, uh,eventually he said what do you
want?
And I said I want to write, Iwant the rights to write the
story, and he said um, I don'ttalk on the phone, you have to
come and talk to me face to face.
He figured that because he knewI was, that you know that would
put an end to it and I'd leavehim alone.
But I didn't do that.
(02:38):
I got on a plane.
I didn't tell him I was coming,I flew to nashville and I
booked a return ticket threedays later.
I assumed that I would juststay in a hotel somewhere and
just work on him and try andconvince him to let me have the
rights.
And it arrived in Nashville whenthere was a massive music
concert going on, uh and uh, abig business convention and
basically in a hotel room.
(02:59):
So I knocked on his door.
He was very unhappy to see meand I said I've come around to
convince you to let me have therights to the scripts.
I later discovered that about200 people over the preceding 30
years had contacted him andasked for an option or for the
rights, and he turned them alldown because he wasn't
interested in doing it.
But he was kind of stuck withme for three days, and not only
(03:22):
was I there for three days, butI didn't have anywhere to stay.
So eventually I ended up on hissofa in his house so I was able
to bore him so much, uh, thateventually he let me have it.
He said I'll let you have itfor 12 months and then I said
well, look, I haven't really gotmuch money so I can only give
you like 500.
So you know, disaster for him,for a big film companies had
(03:45):
been after the story and theywere looking to pay a lot more.
Anyway, he very kindly let mehave an auction for 12 months
and I went off and wrote thescript and the film was released
.
We were shooting the film in SanFrancisco, just outside San
Francisco, nine months after Iarrived at his front door.
(04:05):
That's how fast that allhappened and the film became
Grand Theft.
Parsons did pretty well, got alot of decent reviews, got some
bad reviews as well.
You always get bad reviews andI thought, well, this is great,
I've obviously made the rightdecision, because it's really
easy to make films.
You just write them and thensomebody makes them and nine
months later you're on the setand, of course, realized over
(04:30):
the years that followed that itwasn't quite that easy.
But that was my, uh, that wasmy entree into the business.
That was 20, uh, 20, 20, nearly25 years ago, and I've been a
full-time screenwriter eversince wow, that's.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
That's like a story of dedication as well.
Flying all that way with noguarantee, it's almost like it's
really risky for one.
But then to follow it throughand to get that screenplay
written Talking about yourwriting process in that regard
so you get the rights or you'vegot an idea for a screenplay
what does your writing processkind of look like in that regard
(04:58):
?
Do you think of the idea, likeyou had for the story of Mr
Kaufman, or does the charactercome first, or do you just have
an action scene pictured in yourmind that you'd like to write
about?
How does that process kind ofwork for you?
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Well, it differs depending on whether it's
existing IP or whether it's oneof my own ideas.
Most of the stuff that I writeis my own, comes out of my head,
but occasionally it's existing.
I've got a TV thing at theminute which comes from a book.
I read the book, I loved it, Ioptioned it and I'm trying to
sell it now.
Of course I've sort of launchedinto the tv market just at the
moment that everybody else isleaving it.
(05:33):
But if I'm writing, uh,something based on my own idea,
I start with a question really.
So I've got a, a script whichis uh out about at the minute,
called Badwater, which is so thequick picture of Badwater is an
ex-cop is in a maximum securityprison in Nevada and he's told
(05:55):
that he has 12 hours to kill hiscellmate or his family will be
murdered.
So he decides to break out ofprison, kill the people he
threatened his family and thenbreak back in again without
anyone realizing he was gone.
So he has an alibi.
So that's basically where itstarts, I think.
Initially with that one Ithought it'd be great to have
somebody break out of a maximumsecurity prison to save his
(06:17):
family.
That's the beginning of theidea, and then you sort of knock
around the idea a bit.
You realize that actually it isa great idea.
But there are other things outthere which aren't dissimilar
over the years, which havepeople.
You know it's just a prisonbreak movie, right, and that
isn't that different.
So then I thought I had to makeit different.
And obviously the way to makeit different is then to have him
(06:40):
break back in again afterwards,and so you start from that, and
then it's like a little naughtyproblem.
You try and work out how totell it in such a way that an
audience would watch the movieand think, well, yeah, I mean
that's doable, right, he couldescape that way and he could get
back in that way.
I mean I don't think anybodycould escape from a maximum
(07:00):
security prison the way thatI've written it and I don't
think they can get back in againafterwards the way I've written
it.
But I do believe that anaudience, even a cynical
audience, could watch that movieand think that it was doable.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yeah, and I think that's the main thing about
screenwriting and things likethat.
It just generates from a smallidea, or a seed that just grows
over time.
You know, having dabbled inwriting myself, that's kind of
like the process I go through,where you have that sort of that
genesis idea and it justspreads in almost concentric
circles around that untilfinally you come up with
something that's legible andpossibly a little bit creative
(07:34):
too, and maybe a little bit oflightning in a bottle.
You never really know.
But yeah, I think it's reallyinteresting to hear that you've
gone into so many differentsorts of fields of writing in
terms of TV, movies and games.
When you're writing screenplaysand a book and a book as well,
yeah, yeah, so when you'relooking at those sorts of
different writing styles,especially for TV and movies,
(07:55):
what's some of the majordifferences?
When you're approachingprojects like that for a movie
and then for a TV and then alsofor games, especially like
action-driven games likeBattlefield, well, I've only
written one game, which isBattlefield 2, and that's
different and difficult becauseit's non-linear really.
Speaker 2 (08:14):
So you know, the player can take the character in
a hundred different directionsand you have to write a script
that encapsulates every possibleroute that they may take.
Write a script thatencapsulates every possible
route that they may take.
So it's it's uh, it's it's lesscreatively satisfying because
(08:35):
it's, uh, like an algorithmrather than a story.
So you know, I'm, I'm, I'm notreally telling a story.
What I'm doing is I'm telling ahundred stories in in a way
that they logically could work.
So it's less fun, I, and that'swhy I didn't do any more.
There used to be a hugedifference between TV and film
and that's basically thestructure of the script.
(08:55):
Tv used to be.
There used to be bumpers andoutbreaks in different places,
and it's very specificstructural paradigm for
television back in the day when,you know, people used to run it
.
And it's a very specificstructural paradigm for
television back in the day whenpeople used to run ads.
So they used to need an in andan out for the ad in the same
place each time, which made itstructurally important to get
(09:16):
that stuff right.
Now, most TV is bought bystreamers and so they don't
really have ad breaks.
They don't care how long eachepisode is, they don't care what
the structure of it is, reallyas long as it is it satisfying
to the viewer, as long as thestory is told in a way that it
(09:37):
works.
I remember in the early daysvarious different people who
wrote the streamers sort ofthought really that they were
writing an eight hour movie andthen they kind of could just
chop it into.
You know, this bit's a 42minute episode and this bit's a
one hour and 12 minute episode,and you just put your breaks in
your episode breaks in where itfeels right.
(09:57):
You don't have to worry aboutthe other stuff.
So where I am in england thereisn't any, uh, there isn't very
much of a market now for aterrestrial TV drama, uh, so you
don't have to worry very much.
If you're going to writesomething, you're probably going
to be writing it for a stream.
You don't have to worry verymuch about that structural thing
.
With a movie, I mean, this isquite, quite interesting, I
(10:18):
think and you might want to talkabout this a bit more Uh, the,
the.
The way that movies are writtenhas has always been interesting
to me.
When I first started writingfilm, everybody read these,
these books.
You know these shitty books,mostly shitty books you know,
enormous.
They're sort of 300 pages, 350pages of people telling you how
(10:40):
to write a script right, and soyou have to have this turning
point here, and then there's thejourney here, and then there's
the call to action and look,that might work for some people.
I have never read any of thosebooks, except the only one I
read was Save the Cat, and Ionly read that right at the very
beginning because I realizedthat I needed to understand, get
(11:02):
a rough idea of structure.
I need to roughly know, becauseI knew that people who are
going to be reading the scriptswould expect me to hit certain
marks.
So I just read that Save theCat book, which is a good book
for you know it's supposed to bea primer, but it's actually the
only book.
Don't read Robert McKee or anyof those things.
Well, I mean, read them if youwant to, but it's just a way of
prevaricating.
(11:22):
It's just a way of not writing,reading a 350-page book and
then making loads of notes aboutwhat you're supposed to do.
It's just a way of not writinga script.
So my advice which most peoplewill ignore, of course, is to
read lots of scripts.
I mean, these days scripts areeasily available online.
You can download pretty muchanything, especially awards
(11:44):
season.
If you go onto the Deadlinewebsite on awards season,
they'll have links for everysingle nominated movie.
You just download them and youcan read them.
And if you read really goodscripts, you'll understand the
requirement.
You'll know what you'resupposed to do, because here is
somebody doing it.
It's a much better way.
You know, if Dan Gilroy writesa script, I can see how to write
(12:05):
the script.
If Robert McKee tells me how towrite the script, I don't think
Robert McKee has ever had amovie made.
I don't know what I mean.
I'm not, you know, beating upRobert McKee.
I've mentioned him two or threetimes.
He's just one of those people.
I don't understand why I wouldread.
And Gilroy?
So you know that's how Ilearned, just by reading
hundreds of movies, and oftenreading the script while I'm
(12:28):
watching the movie is useful aswell.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, I think that's a really good approach because a
lot of people learn by doing,learn through experience.
And if you've got that tactilething in front of you that
you're reading while you'rewatching it on the screen and
you can see, like the subtledifferences or you can see
structurally how they're writingsomething and how it portrays
on visual, I think that's reallygood advice.
If we look at like your sort ofwriting structure, you were
(12:53):
gracious enough to send me yourscript for In the Line of Duty,
the movie that you wrote thescreenplay for.
That's starring Aaron Eckhart,directed by Stephen C Miller.
Let's talk a little bit abouthow the process happened, as to
how that script was obviouslysent to market and then made
into a movie, and then I want toget into a little bit of the
structure of that one, just forsome little tidbits that you've
(13:13):
got through there that I wantedto ask you some questions about,
if that's okay?
Sure.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Well, can I very quickly add on a bit to the last
bit we talked about, which isthe way I write, which might be
of interest to people, becauseit's quite a.
I think it's a really efficientway of writing.
That it might be, uh, it mightbe helpful.
Um, everybody will have theirown system, but my system is
that basically, I start with asort of bastardization of the
save the cat uh structure.
(13:40):
So I've got 15 points andbecause of the way he he does it
in the book, it's very easy tohave at the end of each piece of
each bit of structure act,break, midpoint, whatever he
puts a page number in there 55,50 pages, midpoint, so on and so
forth.
So I start with that, I startwith those 15 beats, with the
(14:01):
page numbers where they'resupposed to be at the end of
each line, and then I write, um,an outline, a sort of a step
outline in that document.
So I add the step outline stuffwhich is basically the scenes
without any dialogue, into thatdocument and that immediately
means that I can see whether mymidpoint in my outline is at the
(14:25):
right place, whether it's inthe right place.
So I've got my 15 points, I'vewritten my step outline within
that.
And so I've got this greatdocument, which might be 15
pages long, of all of my scenesin the appropriate linked
sections with the page numberI'm trying to hit in brackets at
(14:47):
the end of each one.
So I already know even at thatpoint if I'm going to make it
work.
I already know if I've got toomuch stuff in the first half and
not enough in the second half.
I already know if my act breaksare in roughly the same,
roughly the right place, andthen I save that document and I
then write the script in thatdocument.
(15:08):
So I still have all of thosebullet points, I still have all
of those page numbers and I canstill see if I'm losing control
of the script.
I can still see if I haven'tput enough in the first section,
if my first app break is in theright or the wrong place.
It's an amazingly efficient wayto write.
So when you finish the script,you probably don't have to go
(15:30):
back and do loads and loads ofwork on it, because it's already
structurally right.
You probably will need to do adialogue pass or two or three or
four or five of those, but youknow that the story works.
You know that it hits the beatsthat it's supposed to hit, and
(15:50):
it's a really good way ofwriting a script.
The coen brothers I know, andothers.
They don't know how the scriptis going to end when they start
writing it.
I don't know how you write.
Some of your listeners willwant to write it that way, but
for me I have to know the storybecause otherwise, you know,
I've got 160 pages with noending.
So that's the structure I useand and it's pretty effective
just on that as well.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
That's a good, a really good way to like keep you
, keep you disciplined and, um,obviously right towards a, a
tailored ending in terms of thethe line of duty, the ending
that you kind of wrote throughin that one where everybody sort
of congregates around the, thecemetery scene, like that.
That's obviously the point thatyou have to get to.
But the question being, like Ireally wanted to know how that
(16:30):
sort of got off the ground fromidea to production and then also
had some little questions inregards to just some of the
things and the technical aspectsof the script in there.
I guess you could say so.
First of all, how did the Inthe Line of Duty script come
from page to production?
How did that come about?
Speaker 2 (16:49):
The story itself came from my desire to write a
real-time movie.
There have been a few, taking aPelham 1C3, the first one that's
real-time.
There are a few real-time filmsbut not very many, and most of
the ones that there have beendon't quite work.
And the reason they don't quitework is that often it looks
like you're bolting a story intoa real-time structure because
(17:12):
you want to write a real-timemovie and and most films then
look forced, uh, so there arevery few that work and you know
it's debatable whether in theline of duty work, although I
told everybody at every pointthat it was supposed to be real
time.
I think they kind of cheatedthat a bit and they didn't need
to.
But so that was where the ideacame from, so obviously quite
(17:33):
easy.
Then you think, ok, so I've gotto find an idea, a structure
that fits real time.
And you know, a verystraightforward structure is
that there's somebody in a cratethat's running out of air.
Originally it was somebodyrunning out of air that they put
water in the actual movie,which is fine, it works okay and
they got 75 minutes of air andthe only person who knows where
(17:58):
that person is, where that childis, is either dead or uh
doesn't want to test that,doesn't want to tell anybody so.
So then you think, okay, well,that's, that's how that's the
story.
I uh doesn't want to test thetest point, tell anybody so.
So then you think, okay, well,that's, that's how that's the
story.
I wanted that I want to tellthat's the the structure.
So then you think, okay, well,I've got a cop who shoots the
kidnapper because he thinksthey're gonna, uh, pull a gun,
(18:18):
but actually they're pulling outa ransom note, and uh, and then
that kind of works, that's fun,because if you shoot somebody
on it, you know that's fun,because if you shoot somebody,
even in America, if you shootsomebody, your gun and shield
are taken and you're sent backto their base and you have to
wait while there's aninvestigation to see whether
that shooting was legal, and sohe's not really a cop anymore.
He can't do any of those thingsthat cops do.
(18:39):
So you think, okay, well, thatworks, because he feels that
he's got to find this kidbecause he's killed a kidnapper
and she's going to die, but hedoesn't have any of the things
that policemen normally have.
And then you think, okay, well,is that kind of works, and then
we'll make him a shit cop.
Right, we'll make him one ofthose cops that's a bit
overweight.
I mean, aaron Eckhart is notoverweight, but in the script he
(19:02):
was a shit cop and he was, youknow, in the last months before
retirement and he wasn't verygood and he hadn't had a great
career.
So this is his moment to do theright thing, to show what he can
do.
And then you know, you think,well, okay, say the girl came
later.
You've seen that.
Have you seen the film?
Yeah, yeah.
(19:23):
There's a girl who's a sort of anews, one of these internet
news people with a little camera, and I put her in because it's
impossible to tell the story ifyou don't have a focal point, if
you don't have a perspective.
So she becomes our perspective.
She's a girl that doesn't likethe cops very much, she's new to
the job and she just followshim around and eventually
(19:45):
becomes part of his part of thechase with him.
And originally you've read thescript so you know that
originally I had a huge amountof different perspective in the
script.
I had CCTV, I had differentnews channels, there were TVs in
shops as you walked downstreets showing the chase that
(20:05):
was going on.
And that was the idea was tohave all these different
perspectives, and presumably forcost reasons they didn't do
that.
It was just really hurt, and soI think it was slightly less
effective in that way.
But you know, it kind of works,because with a real-time movie
generally, people in theaudience can get bored.
Right, I'm just following thisperson around.
That's quite boring.
I watch a normal film.
I watch a normal film.
(20:26):
I can see all this other stuffhappening.
Real time is a disciplinethat's very hard to pull off.
So the way to do it, I think,is to have these different
perspectives and to make it workthat way.
So that was the idea.
I wrote the script.
I had a manager in America atthat time who was talking to a
production company that needed aproject.
They needed something to goquite quickly and he sent them
(20:50):
the script script and they likedthe script.
It was ready to go.
They sent it out to variousdifferent actors and Aaron
Eckhart liked it.
I think that you know he haddone some action stuff.
He's done a huge amount more ofthat stuff since this film, but
I think at that time it was alittle bit more unusual for him
and he grabbed it and he ranwith it and, just as an aside, I
(21:15):
did go on the shoot for a week.
I went to Birmingham, alabama,spent some time with everybody
and he's a really lovely guy.
So, just as an aside, aaronEckhart, nice guy.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Very good.
Yeah, a very far cry from hischaracter of Harvey Dent in the
Batman, that's for sure of thedark knight, um, yeah, so, so
that's that's really interesting.
You know, talking about the,the various different sort of
perspectives that you want totell the story of the real time
time movie.
Uh, one thing I noticed thatyou do in the script as well,
and one thing that I think ispretty common in movies like
that is you really got to keepthe tension tight because you
(21:47):
know the, the stakes are there,the girl is in the crate and her
air is definitely running out.
So, from a writing perspective,knowing that those stakes are
present, knowing that thoseperspectives need to be seen,
how do you incorporate liketension in your, in your writing
to make it something that theaudience would feel well, how
does that work for for a screen?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
uh, play, well, it's really easy if you do the step
outline first, if that's the bitof the script that you do first
you write a step outline andthen you sit there with a
highlighter and you just, I mean, it's not rocket science, you
just highlight the action beatsand you can just see immediately
if there are gaps, if there areareas of the script where not
(22:25):
enough is going on.
And so the step outlinestarting with a step outline,
for me at least is is a reallygood way of making sure that I'm
hitting my beats all the waythrough, that I haven't got gaps
in action, and it's reallysimple, it's really easy to do
that.
People get carried away withdialogue, I think, especially
when they're starting out, andcharacter and dialogue and
(22:46):
character are vital, I meanreally important.
But if you start with the rightstructure, if you know your
story works, then you've gotlatitude to do all of that other
stuff and it's it's much easier, it's really straightforward to
do it that way.
It's it just it's on wheels.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
You can't really go wrong because the action really
does move in the in this moviein the line of duty.
Um, there are a lot of elementsthat you were talking about,
especially from from readingyour screenplay.
There's a lot of like call-outsand various different sort of
terminology from police andaction sort of movies like that.
What's the research processlike for you in terms of knowing
(23:21):
the kinds of realism to insertinto a script like that?
Is there a research process foryou or do you have any sort of
contact or what's that sort oflook like process for you or do
you have any sort of contact orwhat's that sort of?
Speaker 2 (23:31):
look like no, I don't , I just do it, I just write
when I'm doing, when I'm writingthe script, I just Google it.
I mean, my Google searchhistory is, you know, appalling.
I'm amazed that I haven't had aknock at the door.
You know how do I pop someone'seye out with a thumb?
What's the easiest way, what'sthe quietest way to kill someone
(23:51):
?
There are terrible thingsavailable on the internet, so
it's just Google.
I mean, I've written scriptsset all over the world and I've
never been to.
I wrote a whole script set inMalmo.
I've never been to that country.
The internet is an amazingresource and it's as simple as
(24:12):
that.
I guess you know, being a writerand having a degree of ADHD,
it's quite easy to get caught upin that stuff and not actually
doing the writing itself.
But you know, as long as youhave a bit of discipline, you
can do it.
I mean, I tend to do most of mywriting in the afternoons.
In the mornings I answer emailsand do if mean I tend to do
most of my writing in theafternoons and the mornings.
I answer emails and do.
If I've got research to do, I dothe research and read over what
(24:34):
I did the day before and andthen I write from about half
past one to about five.
It's, you know, it's, it'squite easy to.
Everybody will have their own.
I'm a bit, I'm a bit nervousabout telling people that stuff
because it might not work foryour listeners.
Right, they might have theirown way of going to do things.
(24:55):
So for me that works.
The only thing that I would beprescriptive about is the step
outline at the beginning.
That's really important.
But other than that, you knowit's all viable, it's all
flexible yeah, and I thinkthat's good for for creativity
purposes as well.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
You know you've got your, your guidelines that you
sort of stick to in terms ofstructure, but, um, when you're
actually talking about thecreative process of writing
something or writing somethingthat you enjoy, um, if it's
prescribed too much or if it's,you know, something that's
really feeling oppressive, thenit can like fizzle out before
you you finish something.
So I think the excitement comesfrom that creative juice that
is allowing a little bit offreedom, but also that structure
(25:29):
.
So it's almost like a safetynet.
So I definitely like that aswell With In the Line of Duty as
well.
You mentioned, and I alsonoticed, that some changes had
occurred between the filmversion and your screenplay
version.
How much of that is talked toyou about in terms of whether
the director or the productiontalked to you?
None of it, none of it?
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Yep, none of it.
They never have a conversationwith me, I'm never told.
So if you've read the scriptand you've seen the film which I
know you've done both of thosethings you'll see that there is
a twist in the script towardsthe end of the script, which
isn't in the film, and I neverfound out why that was dropped.
It didn't cost anything to putit in.
(26:09):
It was, you know, there were nocost, uh implications.
So I suspect that at some pointsomebody who was marking up the
script deleted that scenewithout knowing, yeah, and so,
um, you know, if you watch thefilm, there's a it works, it
still works the ending, but butit there was another twist
before the finale which made itwork better, which isn't in
(26:33):
there, and I I asked why itwasn't in there and nobody
seemed to know.
It drives me crazy not specificto my work, but in general that
uh screenwriters are notwelcomed onto sets for their
movies because what?
What tends to happen is thatthe director generally finds one
of two things happen Eitherthey find a different way of
(26:54):
telling the story that they likeoh, it would be nice to do this
, or something happens and theycan't shoot it exactly the way
it's written.
So they have to find aworkaround, and in both of those
instances the screenwritershould be on set, because the
screenwriter is able to do thatwork and make it fit.
And nothing is really worsethan watching a movie that
(27:18):
you've written that has beenfucked up because they haven't
asked you what to do.
So when you're writing dialogue, for instance, you should be
able to put your hand over thename of each character in the
script and to know who'sspeaking by the way they speak.
Everybody obviously has adifferent cadence.
They all speak differently.
Some of them are very staccato,some of them are very poetic.
(27:41):
Everybody is different and I,like most screenwriters, spend a
lot of time making sure thateverybody's dialogue is
congruent, that it fits thatcharacter.
Nervous people speakdifferently to confident people,
right.
So you write the dialogue inthat way and then when they
shoot the movie, they justchange.
(28:02):
Quite often the actor just doesit a different way.
They just change the dialoguebecause they want to change it
right, because they want to addsomething to the process, and
what that generally means is thecharacter ends up sounding like
the actor instead of thecharacter, yeah, or it all sort
of melds into everything, meldsinto everything else.
(28:24):
So all of that work that you'vedone I'm not trying to sound
precious about it, it's just forthe benefit of the script All
of that work that you've doneI'm not trying to sound precious
about it, it's just for thebenefit of the script all of
that work that you've done iswasted because they've allowed
the actor to change the dialogue, or the director has added
stuff and the writer isn't there, and so it just changes the
script.
And if you talk to people likeMartin with Donna, they
(28:45):
obviously has the advantage ofdirecting their own script,
right?
So it's slightly different.
They don't let anybody changeanything ever.
The script is the script andthat should be always the case.
And if it isn't always the case, if there needs to be a change
for a certain reason, the writershould be the one that changes
the script, because the writeris the one who knows characters,
(29:06):
right, nobody else.
The director knows the story,the actors know their character,
but nobody has that sort ofhelicopter view, which is awful
expression, but nobody has thatvision other than the writer.
So that drives me crazyactually.
I mean not we're not beingspecific to my own stuff, but
just in general that the momenta script is bought, the writer
(29:28):
is often mostly sort of shuntedoff and then it becomes the
director's vision.
And that's fine, because it isat that point that that it
becomes what the director wantsit to be.
But the writer should beinvolved in that bit of the
process I think it's also alittle bit silly.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
You know, having someone of that um like
knowledge base in terms of thestory as a whole, not utilizing
them as a resource on aproduction, is just.
I think that's just like a bitof an oversight, because
obviously no one knows thecharacters better than the
person that write it.
No one knows the nuances of thecharacter and the arc that
they're intended to go throughthrough the movie better than
(30:07):
the screenwriter intended to gothrough through the movie better
than the screenwriter like, forexample, off the officer penny
we're talking about in in thismovie in the line of duty.
You obviously started him offin the screenplay as being a cop
that you know.
He's four minutes away from his, his end of shift before all of
this happened.
So he's really sort of like apolice officer that really is
just counting down the minutesuntil the end of his shift and
has no real care about it in theworld until when the script
(30:29):
eventually, like, progresses andhe gets involved in the case.
He is then counting down theminutes to the time when he's
supposed to save this girl andeventually it comes to the point
where an entire community ofpeople based on the um, like the
, the, the media coverage thathe's gotten through this
investigation, they all come tosort of help him out.
(30:49):
So there's that journey that hegoes through from being just
this sort of deadbeat end of hiscareer kind of police officer
to somebody who's really justtrying to prove his worth is
what I took out of it at least.
And then he's got things likeyou've written here, you know,
like there's financial planners,dental hygienists, postal
workers, electricians,skateboarders, hobos, teachers,
all those kinds of people comein to try and help dig out this
(31:12):
young girl and it says as well,you know, they're all trying to
help him out.
And I think that that sort ofcharacter arc and also like that
there's something that'smissing there if you don't
consult on, like thescreenwriter's process or
character.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
That's not in the film, right?
I mean, there is a bit of thatin the film.
There's a little bit at the endand that's it.
Yeah, yep, so the changes thatwere made, I had no idea what
they were doing.
They didn't speak to me at all.
I mean, basically, the momentthey bought the script I was
kind of, you know, I was kind ofgone and I understand that.
I fully buy that.
(31:47):
The director, not this director, I'm not talking about this
script in particular.
I think Stephen C Miller is areally good director and he did
a good job with the movie.
But directors in general they'rea bit nervous at the writer
because they don't really theywant to make it theirs and the
writer is irritating in thatrespect.
So it's kind of like, okay, youhave a kid and then somebody
(32:09):
adopts your kid or your wiferemarries and the kid has a new
dad, the director being the newdad.
He's going to be irritated withyou if you start getting
involved in his way of bringingup the child, right, so he's not
interested in asking youradvice on how little Johnny
should be treated.
So I think it's kind of a bitlike that.
And often they don't invite youon the set at all.
(32:33):
I mean, I've never been invitedon the set.
I was gone but I had to pay myown way and on that film.
Really generally it became, youknow, I think even often actors
don't really like screenwriterson the set because they want to
also make their character,their own, and they think that
this weird guy standing overhere is going to be judging them
(32:55):
if they make changes.
And probably they are judgingthem because the characters
mostly come out of the head ofthe person that's standing and
that person is either notstanding there because they've
not been made welcome on the onthe set or they're not.
They're standing there butthey're not being asked, and I
just think everything I do isfor the benefit of the script.
(33:16):
So I don't know if we're goingto talk about notes at any point
, but if we talk about notes, Ijust my only job, once I've
written the script, is toprotect the script, and so if
I'm getting notes from people,from producers, from directors,
I'm very open to that, but onlyif they make the script better.
If they don't make the scriptbetter, my job then becomes to
(33:38):
protect the script, and I've hadnumerous times conversations
with people who never made amovie before, never written a
film, which are wrong.
I've had also notes that aregreat, but the ones ones that
are wrong, your job is to pushback on these in a polite way,
in a firm way, and explain whythey don't work and say look,
(33:59):
you want me to do this?
I have a script I wrote with afrench company and it there were
four producers on it and theyall had separate notes and some
of those notes contradicted thenotes from the other people in
the group.
And you know you have to beresponsible for the script.
You have to say I don't think Ican do that because if I do
(34:21):
that the story doesn't work forthis reason.
So it's a really difficultthing.
Everybody always wants to getinvolved and oftentimes it
damages the script.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Sometimes it does, I think in terms of a script, I
think a clear vision isdefinitely important when it
comes to presenting the messageof the movie that was intended,
at least Just going on notes andthings like that.
And structure of yourscreenplays.
I know you said before it's abit unconventional, but, um, I
noticed throughout thescreenplay that you have here
for in the line of duty, you doum, like, you use capitals at
(34:57):
times and you also underline, uh, various different things, for
example, penny moves, and thenthere's another underline that's
like silently parts the flowerstall, ava arrives.
Are those intended for like adirector's note or a
cinematographic, like acinematography sort of note in
terms of that's what you wantshown on camera at that time?
That's what's important.
Is that what that's all aboutwith the, the screen structure
(35:19):
there?
Speaker 2 (35:19):
like most things, this is a kind of debate in the
screenwriting community, right?
So the idea is you're notsupposed to do that, you're not
supposed to put anything on thescript that could be regarded as
a director note, becausedirectors don't like it.
Basically, I think when youwrite a script, two things.
First thing is, when you writea script, you're writing it for
the reader.
You're writing it for theperson that you might buy it.
(35:41):
So anything that makes iteasier to tell that story is is
beneficial to you.
Secondly, I think you shouldjust do what you think is right
for you, for your telling of it,of the story, and if they tell
you, don't put direct.
You know I always put stuff inabout action beats.
I always, you know, do thatcapital thing, although I don't
(36:03):
always do it.
Actually, we can go on tocasual violence, which I sent
you a bit of, in which I don'tdo that, but I do do something
else that you're not supposed todo.
I just think there are too manyrules, there are too many
restrictions put into ourwriters.
I saw a massive thing onTwitter recently screenwriting
Twitter where there was thissort of huge debate as to
whether you can put a quote onthe front cover to sell what
(36:27):
kind of a story you're about totell.
I mean, people are crazy, right, just write the script.
You have to be careful nowbecause oftentimes and this is
really important, actually thesedays producers often don't read
scripts.
Buyers don't read scripts.
The scripts are read by scriptreaders who they pay $50 to do a
(36:49):
little report.
Is it good, is it sellable,does the story work?
And it might be actually thatyour script is never actually
read by anybody who's put moneyinto it, that they just read
these one-page things.
So you have to have in the backof your mind that you have to
write the script in such a waythat the script reader is going
(37:11):
to feel okay about that.
Then they're going to like whatyou've done.
That's your market when youfirst write the script.
And the script reader hasnearly always been to film
school, and if they've been tofilm school they have a firm.
These film schools are a wasteof time, but but they teach
structure right.
So if you do anything thatdoesn't fit the structure that
they're expecting, they'll saynot structured right, okay.
(37:34):
So that's why films are not asgood as they were before.
It's one reason why they're notas good as they were before, I
think is that things are muchmore conventional in the way
that they're done, unlessthey're small movies like a Nora
, where he could just do ithowever he wants to because he's
going to direct it.
But in general terms, becauseyou want to get past the script
(37:55):
reader at the beginning and thescript reader has been taught
that the script should look in acertain way.
That makes it tough to dosomething different.
So obviously Quentin Tarantinodoesn't get anything made now,
if he isn't already QuentinTarantino, because he doesn't
write the way that you'resupposed to write.
You've got a few pages of ascript of mine, which is the
(38:17):
last thing I wrote, calledCasual Violence.
Yeah, that doesn't have anyscene headings.
I have no scene headings inthere, not a single one.
And the reason I don't havescene headings in that story is
because they slow the readerdown, so I just remove them.
I know I've had to work quitehard to move the action on in a
certain way that you know whereyou are, you know when you're
there, but I don't have a sceneheading.
(38:37):
I don't have interior loungehouse day.
I don't have that.
They've all gone.
There's not a single one and itworks really well.
It's gone down a storm and it'sa really easy read because you
don't have to keep going throughthose scene headings but you
still know all the informationyou need is there.
And at some point, if they makeit, somebody will have to put in
(38:58):
scene headings because thatthen fits in with the budgeting
software that they're going tobe using, so they know where
everything is.
But it's easy to do that Nowbecause I've had movies made.
I think I can do that and itcan go to people.
And it can either go to peoplebecause the producer will read
it now because I've had moviesmade, so that they're a bit more
(39:19):
interested, or the um scriptreader.
If it's still going through ascript reader, he's gonna think,
oh, actually he hasn't got anyscene headings in there, but he
has had movies made, so it'sprobably okay, right.
But if I'm completely unknownand I do that or I send it off,
the script reader is going tothink where are the screen
earnings?
(39:39):
And he's just going to say it'snot structured properly and you
won't sell it.
So they say don't put anythingthat could be a director's note
in there, because they don'twant to piss the director off
when the director reads thescript.
They don't want the directorthinking why is this bloke?
Trying to direct it on the pageMakes it an easier read.
Remember the script that you'rewriting, that you're sending
(40:03):
out to people, is never going tobe the script that goes to cast
when they're shooting it.
Because the markets aredifferent.
The viewer is different In thefirst place.
I'm writing script just to sell, so I'm writing it for the
reader.
Later on I'm writing the scriptfor the viewer or for the
director or for the actor, so itlooks different.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
No, no, that makes sense.
And I did find when I wasreading Casual Violence that it
was a very like it flowed verywell in terms of when I read it.
There was like, for example,you've got you know inside the
pub, so we know where we are,and then it goes down into your
descriptions of the scene andthen there's some dialogue in
there as well, and I think thatthat was a really
(40:46):
well-structured and flowing readfor the casual violence script
there, so that came from thatway of writing came from an
interview I read with dan gilroywhen he was talking about
writing, uh, nightcrawler, andI'm going to paraphrase he just
said you know, I just didn'twant to put scene headings in
there because they slowed downthe read and it's, it's a
(41:06):
kinetic story.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
I didn't want to do that, so I just didn't do it.
I just didn't put him in thereand, uh, it's great, and now I
don't do it.
And he said and of coursewilliam goldman often didn't use
them.
And I thought really that'sinteresting.
So, uh, I looked at some oldwilliam goldman scripts and he's
right, uh, although goldmansort of sometimes uses them and
sometimes doesn't, in the samescripts.
And I think you're either goingto use the way you're not going
(41:28):
to use, but you can get your.
Your viewers can download freea copy of the nightcrawler
script by dan gilroy and theycan see how well it works.
But again, you shouldn'tprobably do it right at the
beginning of your career,because the people who are
reading your scripts probablyaren't going to like it because
it doesn't conform and they'relooking for a reason to say no,
(41:50):
to pass on it, and so anythingthat gives them that opportunity
to say no should be avoided, sobut it's a really useful
exercise I was just wondering aswell when you're, when you're
writing a script like this withno scene headings, does it help
your writing process in terms ofthe flow of when you're writing
?
Speaker 1 (42:09):
is it a quicker sort of process?
Is it more free when you'rewriting it that way, instead of
having to stop every couple ofbeats to put in that scene
heading?
Well, I've only written.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
I'm writing all my stuff that way now, but that's
the first one I've written thatway and it wasn't faster because
I constantly had to think aboutnot putting scene headings in,
because that's what I've donefor 20 years.
But I now I'm writing a newscript now that has no scene
headings.
I suspect that it'll getquicker.
I also thought that I would getmore pushback from people that
(42:41):
my agents would say you know,this is not good, you need to do
it the right way.
I never had that.
I never had.
Anybody has nobody's ever saidwhy are there no scene headings?
But you have to make it work.
It has to be right, but if youcan make it work, then you know
that's great, it's better.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
So this screenplay that you've got here for Casual
Violence you said that thatone's out to market as like at
the moment what are your like,what does that sort of mean and
what's your expectations forthis one?
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Well, what it means is sort of mean, and what's your
expectations for this one?
Well, what it means is you justdon't hear anything for a while
while your agent's trying tosell it.
It's a very dark script.
It's quite brutal, it's verydark.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
You don't have the whole script.
No, I only got the first sixpages.
It kind of ends with theinterview in the police station.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
Yeah, it's not the easiest thing to sell, but I
love the script.
I really like it.
It could work for TV, it couldwork as a movie.
My expectations are you shouldnever expect a script to sell.
It's brutally hard to sell ascript these days that isn't
based on existing IP and for themost part, I've got a couple of
(43:54):
TV things that are based onexisting IP and for the most
part, I've got a couple of TVthings that are based on
existing IP that I'm trying tosell, that my scripts, generally
speaking, are my scripts thatcome out of my head, and so
there's no existing IP there andbuyers are quite risk averse.
They've always been risk averse,but now more so, and they're
sort of confused.
I think at the minute many ofthem.
(44:15):
So up until for the last 10years, they liked graphic novel
stuff, they liked Marvelcharacters, adaptations, they
liked that, and now suddenly thewheels are actually coming off
of that stuff, and not all of it, but a lot of it is
underperforming, because peoplewant something different, and I
(44:36):
think that what they want that'sdifferent is original stories.
Yeah, I think so too.
Like we talked about bad orderearlier, right, break out of the
prison without anyone knowingbreak back in again original
stories, but the buyers arestill very resistant to that
because they don't want to takea risk on something that doesn't
(44:57):
have an existing market, and Ican see why that would be the
case, but eventually they're notgoing to have much choice.
This is coupled with the factthat that middle part of the
market, the bit you've got themarvel stuff up here, which is
200 million dollars, and you'vegot the micro stuff down here
which is less than a milliondollars, and then you've got
this chunk in the middle whichwas sort of 30 million dollar
(45:20):
movie, which is kind of thething that I write um and and
that's not getting made verymuch now and I don't know quite
why.
I've read lots of articles aboutwhy it's not getting made, but
there doesn't really seem to bemuch logic to it.
It seems to me that if you makea $20 million movie, you can
make 10 of those to fit your$200 million movie that you're
(45:42):
making up here that actuallypeople don't really want anymore
, and you only got to have twoof those things do well and
you've covered your cost.
So logically, it seems to mepeople should be making those
movies now, but they're notreally very much and so it's
very tough.
I mean, I've been doing this along time and it's as tough as
it's ever been.
There was that little bubblewhen everybody was getting TV
(46:03):
shows made, and that's gone aswell now.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
Even from someone like myself who consumes movies
on a sort of casual basis as apodcast, I can see that the
business of movies is now sortof changed.
When I was growing up in the90s and the early 2000s, there
was a lot of those standaloneaction movies that were really
enjoyable and original IP andbrought stars to your home like
(46:28):
your Schwarzeneggers and yourStallones and your Bruce Willis
and things like that.
Those are the sorts of moviesthat we're kind of missing now.
So can definitely see whatyou're saying, where there's
that sort of middle ground wherewe really need to reply.
I really believe we need toreturn back to that, because
that was some entertainingcinema as well.
And yeah, they're definitelygoing with the higher tier
Marvel or the lower tier sort ofindie, a24 sort of stuff that
definitely gets sort of awardnominated, but there's space for
(46:50):
more in the middle.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
The market wants that .
You're right, the market wantsit.
But the producers aren'tproducing it.
They're nervous of it becausethey've got to justify the spend
, and they can justify it.
If it's a best-selling graphicnovel or if it's a best-selling
book, they can justify it.
Well, those are people whoalready took a risk on this
(47:12):
stuff and it's paid off.
But the stuff that comes out ofsomeone's head, they're worried
about that.
Their job is on the line right?
Speaker 1 (47:22):
Yeah, I definitely agree.
All right, thanks for joiningme, jeremy.
Before I let you go, I do wantto ask a last question what's
exciting you currently aboutscreenwriting, and where do you
want to move yourself andexperiment with in the genre in
the future?
Speaker 2 (47:38):
Yeah well, so I'm happy writing.
I mainly write thrillers andaction movies and they're good
for me.
I'm going to stick with that.
I've got a couple of horrormovies as well, which are fun
probably slightly less fun, ifI'm honest.
But the thing that excites meis trying the no scene headings
thing and trying to fuck withthe paradigm a bit and do
(47:58):
something in a slightlydifferent way.
I'm excited by selling films.
That's the thing that excitesme.
If I don't sell it, it doesn'texist, just on my hard drive.
So you know I want to sellstuff, I want to see it made,
and it's a really tough journey.
It's really hard but veryrewarding when it happens.
Speaker 1 (48:18):
Yeah, and I can definitely see your passion in
it too.
Yeah, I really, really thankyou for coming in and sharing
your insights with me, and yourprocess and and and yeah, just
taking the time to really justhave a chat with me today,
jeremy.
It's been a pleasure with metoday, jeremy, it's been a
pleasure Really.
Appreciate you, my pleasure,aaron.
Have a good day you too.
Thank you very much.
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