BPS 448: Screenwriting, The BAM Method, And How To Write A Screenplay That Stands Out with Mike Bierman

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
You are listening to the IFH podcast Network. For more
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Speaker 2 (00:12):
Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number four forty eight.
Your dream doesn't have an expiration date, Take a deep
breath and try again. Kat You Whitten broadcasting from a dark, windowless.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Room in Hollywood when we really should be working on
that next draft. It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you
the craft and business of screenwriting while teaching you how
to make your screenplay bulletproof.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another
episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast.

Speaker 3 (00:44):
I am your humble host Alex Ferrari.

Speaker 4 (00:46):
Now.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof Script Coverage.

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Now.

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Unlike other script coverage services, Bulletproof Script Coverage actually focuses
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(01:34):
Enjoy today's episode with guest host Dave Bullis.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
My next guest is actually a forty five time award
winning screenwriter and he's the founder of the popular Facebook
group Screenwriters Who Could Actually write. We're gonna talk about
a lot of this stuff, including templates, and we're gonna
talk about his process of writing. We're gonna talk about
Save the Cat and all that other good stuff. What
does he think about all of it? Well, why don't
we all give it a listen with my guest Mike Bierman. Hey, Mike,

(02:03):
thanks off for coming on the podcast.

Speaker 5 (02:05):
Oh my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
Oh it's great to have you.

Speaker 4 (02:08):
Mike.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
You know, you're somebody that's been on my radar for
a while. You're you're the host of the Screenwriters Who
Can Actually write. Facebook group you're a forty five time
award winning screenwriter, so you know, obviously you're somebody that
I've wanted to talk to, and you know, just to
get started, Mike, I wanted to ask you. You're a
trial attorney, you know by day, and I wanted to
ask you, when did you get bit by the screenwriting bug.

Speaker 4 (02:31):
I'm actually not.

Speaker 5 (02:32):
I don't. I hardly ever practice anymore because between managing
my daughter and doing the group actually takes an enormous
amount of time. Given the number of posts I do,
which you've seen, I'm sure you can understand that I
rarely practice law anymore. I'm licensed, I can practice, you know,
do all the things I used to do. I just

(02:55):
don't do it anymore because what happens is I end
up with a bunch of court dates that I can't
contryle scheduled out at infinitum, you know, out into the future,
and cases can drag on for years. So rather than
commit to those types of things, I'm doing something else.
I try to avoid trial work, although I do still

(03:15):
practice some entertainment law behind the scenes, including recently I've
done some of that, but generally I don't practice that anymore.
And the way I got started in screenwriting is my daughter,
Erica Bierman. She's in Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Hunger Games,
Mocking J one. Her scene was cut from Mocking J

(03:35):
two it revealed too much too early, But she was
also in Dumb and Dumber two. She was when she started.
She was getting auditions, even very high level stuff. And
I'd read the scripts and I'd say, Wow, you know,
I just don't think this is written very well.

Speaker 4 (03:49):
I think I can do better. And so.

Speaker 5 (03:53):
I bought The Screenwriter's Bible by David Trotier, which is
one of three or four books that I recommend everybody
should have. I skimmed through it, I didn't read it.
Wrote a nineteen page short script submitted to Page Awards,
which is top three contests in the world, and took
top twenty five scripts out of something like seven thousand scripts.

(04:16):
So just self taught and started off with a bang.

Speaker 3 (04:22):
So the first screenwriting book that you ever bought was
actually David Tardier's book. Is that was that correct?

Speaker 5 (04:28):
Yes? And it's a great book.

Speaker 4 (04:30):
It's a really good overview to.

Speaker 5 (04:33):
Screenwriting. There are other books that I like for different purposes,
but that's a great first book. It's hard to imagine
a better first book to start with, and Dave Trider
is actually a member of the group, so I highly
recommend that book. And while we're on books, I also

(04:54):
highly recommend Linda Aronson's The Twenty first Century Screenplay, which
is all about different structures non three acts, all types
of different jumping time structures and very complex structures, and.

Speaker 4 (05:12):
It's a great book piece.

Speaker 5 (05:12):
You can actually figure out what structure would best suit
your story idea. If you know what you're doing when
you start writing, you can custom pick a structure that
would be the best skeleton to flesh out for your story.
So that's that's an incredible book, very very complicated. She's

(05:34):
a very high level writer, she's from Oxford University. A
very meaty book and it's one you can spend a
lot of time with for formatting. I like Your Cut.
Two is Showing by kJ Alex, which is a pen name.
I know people who know who that is. I haven't

(05:56):
bothered to ask, but that's the best book for formatting.
It goes into the most depth any given situation. There
are typically three to five professional acceptable ways you can
choose from him to do it, and that is an
essential book for screenwriters. Rick Toscan also Richard Toskin also

(06:22):
wrote Playwriting Seminars two point zero, which is mostly a
playwriting because he was dean of theater at USC for
I think about thirty years, a very long time. But
that book also crosses into screenwriting and it's an excellent
book that breaks down the analysis of story, whether it's

(06:42):
playwriting or screenwriting. And so are Those are four books
that I highly recommend.

Speaker 3 (06:48):
It's funny, Mike, because the first book I ever read
about screenwriting was also David Chardier's book about formatting. I
went into a borders and remember them when they were
still around, but I wentn't.

Speaker 5 (07:00):
I was sad when they went away.

Speaker 3 (07:02):
Yeah, because now all that's left is Barnes and Nobles
and maybe a few independent stores here and there. But
you know, it's sad to see that that part of
it go.

Speaker 5 (07:09):
You know. Yeah, the brick and mortar bookstores are deaf.
They're they're really enjoyable because you can you can browse
and there's a certain atmosphere and you can you can
kill a few hours and find things you have no
idea exist.

Speaker 4 (07:22):
The end of the internet.

Speaker 5 (07:23):
Internet squad, but there's a certain allure to a brick
and mortar bookstore, and hopefully those will come back. I
should have mentioned also that Rick Toscan that I just
spoke of, who I think recently got a Lifetime Achievment
award from the I guess National Damone of the Arts.
He's actually in the screenwriting group as well, So we

(07:44):
have some really high end gurus in there, lots of pros.
Well over one hundred produced films, films you've heard of
written by members of the group. So I thought i'd.

Speaker 3 (07:54):
Mentioned that, Yeah, the there are some you know, members
of the group that i've you know, I've seen their
hosts about, you know, different things that they've they've written
that have you know, been produced. For instance, I know
somebody just wrote a the the the screenplay for the
latest Steven Sagal movie, and I remember he was in
the group and I was talking to him briefly. I
think that's is that Charles or Chuck I think his.

Speaker 5 (08:16):
Name is Chuck Meyer this End of the End, the
End of the Gun, and he has I think he
actually has another film coming out on that same deal
with the same producer, not starring Steven Stagall. I know
more about it, but I can't. I can't say at

(08:37):
this point got infos under wraps. But what I what
I just told you is fine. He does have another
film under that deal, and I think he's either optioning
or about to fell another script imminently. So we have
a lot of activity. I have. I have two feature
films in production myself right now.

Speaker 4 (08:57):
So you know, there are a.

Speaker 5 (08:58):
Lot of There are a lot of people in the
group with a lot of things going on, some really
great stuff.

Speaker 3 (09:05):
So that's why the name fits so well. Screwrits who
can actually write it, not just not just talk about
theory right.

Speaker 5 (09:11):
Right, Well, you know there's a certain haughtiness and snottiness
to it. I'm the first to admit it, and I
actually did it on purpose because in reviewing screenwriting groups,
there's one group in particular it's just enormous. I won't
name it, but it has nearly twenty thousand members, and
the type of questions asked in that group are just

(09:32):
mind boggling.

Speaker 4 (09:33):
The lack of.

Speaker 5 (09:37):
Thought going into you know, posting a question with your
name on it before you put it up, it's just incredible.
I think when I started the group, in my in
my group description, I named it kind of sarcastically.

Speaker 2 (09:52):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.

Speaker 5 (10:01):
Because I was leaving the other group just in disgust
and wanted to try and get people who were, if
not more experienced, a little bit more thoughtful about what
they were writing and what they were saying, a little
more educated people in the in the craft.

Speaker 4 (10:16):
And so I think I posted, you.

Speaker 5 (10:19):
Know, screenwriting screenwriting forum, hopefully without questions like is water wet?

Speaker 4 (10:24):
And is it okay to kill my character?

Speaker 5 (10:28):
So the whole thing kind of started out as a
sarcastic announcement of a departure from kind of like the
Great Unwashed, with people saying, you know, I'm a screenwriter
because they you know, wrote something on a nap and
wants to try to attract people, even beginners, but people
who are more serious about learning the craft, who are

(10:49):
looking at it as a profession rather than as a hobby.

Speaker 3 (10:53):
Yeah, it's you know, I've joined other groups in the
past as well, and a lot some of these questions.
There was way too many questions about formatting, and for instance,
there was actually a group that meant physically here in
Philadelphia and these the beginners who would showup, woul always
ask about formatting.

Speaker 5 (11:10):
And when I said the book, buy a book, read
a script, buy a book, it's it's just not that.
It's not that tough. And unfortunately, sorry to cut you
off there, but you know, unfortunately that is all too
common in a lot of screenwriting groups.

Speaker 4 (11:29):
And one of the rules.

Speaker 5 (11:30):
I have a rules driven group for this purpose to
try and keep the group on focus. And you know,
no political posts, and there are a bunch of other
a bunch of other rules, but you know, one of
the one of the basic tenets of the group is
search the group itself before you ask a question, because
there've been in people been in there for over a year,

(11:53):
answering in depth almost anything you can think of.

Speaker 4 (11:55):
And also.

Speaker 5 (11:58):
Search the internet before you ask a simple formatting question.
Buy a book. It's just not that tough. And so
all you're going to do by by asking that type
of question in an open form is attract ridicule, show
you have no idea what you're doing, and get a
bunch of troll responses, so you actually never get the
right answer because even the people giving you the right

(12:19):
answer will be deluded by all the trolls. So and
that's very common as you know.

Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. You know, when when people would
ask that in the group, in the physical group, I'd
always say to the other person that was running it
with me, I'd say, why don't we take these people,
put them in their own group and we can go
over like formatting, and then the other half of the group,
you know, we'll work on actual you know, writing and
get into the structures and you and you know, we

(12:44):
kept going back and forth on this, and I said,
because every meeting, we're sacrificing our strongest for our weakest.
And what I mean by that is.

Speaker 5 (12:51):
You know, we'll know exactly.

Speaker 3 (12:52):
Yeah, just just you know, spending all this time on
formatting when you either buy fade in or final draft
the writer's duet or whatever, and it takes care of
their all for you or you know, like you said.

Speaker 5 (13:01):
No, there's a myth, a little bit of a misconception.
It takes it takes care of the Uh. There's a
difference between formatting and element placement on the page. And
this is a common uh misunderstanding or or people misstate this.
The screenwriting software. There isn't any screenwriting software that actually

(13:24):
formats per se for you. What the screenwriting software does
is it actually puts the elements in place on the
page so that you don't have to.

Speaker 4 (13:33):
Work in word counting spaces.

Speaker 5 (13:35):
For example, Uh, you know, if you're going to do
a parenthetical under dialogue, the screenwriting software will put the
position the cursor in the right place for you know,
a play format or screenwriting format for character or shot
or transition or dialogue, action note, special, whatever it is

(13:57):
that you're trying to do, it'll actually sit up on
the page for you with the right number of preceding,
following and intervening carriage space is in intervening carriage returns.
But what it actually doesn't do is format And so
that's one of the things that happens in beginning groups
a lot. And I've seen it. I've seen professional scripts

(14:19):
where people actually said when I was script doctoring or
rewriting a script, I'd say, hey, you know this is
going to be a lot.

Speaker 4 (14:29):
More work than you thought. Well, why is that is
the story? Dad?

Speaker 5 (14:32):
Well, the story's okay, the problem is the formatting. Everything's off. Well,
that's impossible. I used final draft. Well that's a very
naive comment. That shows how many screenwriting formatting errors they're
going to be because the software doesn't actually format, it
just puts things in the right place. The formatting is
the understanding of how to how to direct the camera

(14:58):
without using shot direction, for example in the specscript, and
how to properly write down the entire skeleton of a
visual film in writing using as few words as possible,
leaving as much white space on the on the page
as possible. And screenwriting software is just the beginning. It's

(15:21):
kind of like saying I have a Ferrari, so now
I'm going to be a you know, a champion driver.
There's an enormous difference between having the car and being
able to drive it.

Speaker 4 (15:33):
Does that kind of make sense?

Speaker 5 (15:34):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (15:34):
Yeah, it does well because you actually touched upon what
I was gonna was. Actually I was going to say,
was there were people who had Microsoft Word open and
they were using like four tabs for a character, three
tabs of this. That is yeah, because they would turn
in a script and I would look at this and
I'd go, it's all off, and I said, what did
you write this in? And and that's why I'm saying,
you know, the screen because they would always say, well,

(15:56):
Dave you know, how do we write this blah blah blah.
I'd say, no, no, you just use you know, drive this soft.
That's what I mean about, you know, buying final draft
or whatever and.

Speaker 5 (16:04):
The positions the elements correct.

Speaker 4 (16:06):
Yeah, that and then the other.

Speaker 5 (16:08):
The other thing beginners don't understand is, you know, they'll
go out and pick Helvetica or you know, I don't
even know the names of all the fonts, the crazy fonts,
swirls and you know, HP Lovecraft fonts, And Okay, that's great,
h if you're if you're writing a free verse poem
or something. But screenwriting is designed for every page to

(16:28):
be one minute of screen time. Now, obviously, depending on action, uh,
depending on on dialogue, the level of vocabulary, the the
way the script's written, each page is going to vary. Obviously,
you have an enormous amount of action, tightly written action

(16:49):
a page to go conceivably several minutes. But if you
you know, okay that if you write there's a two
mile car chase down the dirt road, that's not gonna
happen in one minute, Okay, so it the page length
for filming can vary. But the whole idea is on average,
one page is one minute of film. Now, the only

(17:12):
way you can do that, if you think about it,
is if you have a particular font style, which is
called a fixed pitch font. And the standard for that
is Courier, which is an old news font. It's I
find it fairly ugly font. But they've developed all kinds
of variant Courier fonts. There's you know, Courier Final Draft.

(17:35):
They've patented their own Courier New Courier Dark, which is
one I really like, and there there are a bunch
of other variants of Courier. And and what it comes
down to is, no matter what character you type, whether
it's a special character, dollar sign, hashtag or pound sign,
exclamation point, period, comma, capital, p small acts, it doesn't

(18:00):
matter whatever character you type, they all take up exactly
the same amount of space on the page. And that's
why you have to use a fixed pitch font. And
some people will try to cheat. Let's say you're a
novelist and you're overwriting your script and you want to
get it down from one hundred and sixty five pages
to one hundred and twenty where somebody might actually read it,

(18:23):
and you can't figure out any way to do it,
because you're overwriting everything.

Speaker 4 (18:30):
You're too green to rewrite your script properly.

Speaker 5 (18:32):
So what you do is you get the bite of
THEA to go in and change the font to some
font other than final draft. Go ahead and add a
couple of lines one top, one bottom, cheat the margins
left and right, and all of a sudden, your page
count drops down to one hundred and thirty pages and
you're within striking.

Speaker 4 (18:49):
Distance of your goal.

Speaker 5 (18:50):
The problem is, any professional looking at a single page
of your script will immediately throw in the trash. H.

Speaker 3 (18:57):
Yeah, and you know again that's something that also seen two,
especially on the cover page, like they'll use like a
different font for the title and uh, you know, like
like in all those specialized fonts and.

Speaker 5 (19:09):
Some artwork, artworks thrown down the margins and yeah, in
in spec scripts. You know.

Speaker 4 (19:15):
I have actually have a book coming out.

Speaker 5 (19:18):
Being published by dose Blant Publishing, and it's, uh, it's
gonna be called It's it's coming out fairly shortly. I'm
essentially finished with the manuscript, the body of it. I'm
working on the uh some of the pictures, clearing copyrights
things like that, but the uh, the book's going to
be called Secrets of Screenwriting, with the subtitle of uh

(19:39):
Collected Essays. I don't want anyone to think that this
is like any of the other screenwriting books. It really isn't.
It's a collection of my long essay posts from the
group over the last year.

Speaker 2 (19:54):

Speaker 5 (20:03):
And it's kind of a rambling, disordered.

Speaker 4 (20:11):
Volume full of all.

Speaker 5 (20:12):
Kinds of prolls of wisdom that just occurred to me
from a post or someone's comment or something.

Speaker 4 (20:17):
I would pull out.

Speaker 5 (20:19):
My phone and write these gigantic, sometimes five and six
page posts. They probably have a mental problem. I don't
know why I do it, but I do. And a
lot of people asked me to collect those, or they
wanted me to archive them somehow so they could reference them.
Several pros have have used my rewriting post, which is

(20:40):
very popular.

Speaker 4 (20:41):
It's about six pages long.

Speaker 5 (20:42):
They one pro actually printed it out and glued it
onto the wall above his computer messaged me to tell
me how useful it was. And I have a copyright post.
People tend to like screencraft. Publish part of that copyright post,
and I'm going to publish the whole thing in the
book with Screencraft's permission.

Speaker 4 (21:01):
They've already given me permission to republish the whole but.

Speaker 5 (21:06):
That that should be useful. I've kind of lost track
of where I was. But there's there's a plug for
the book.

Speaker 3 (21:13):
Do you know when that book's coming out?

Speaker 5 (21:14):
Like, I'm with their contract to get it out in
the next Uh. I think I've got sixty days or
so to get the manuscript and that's not a problem
because the manuscript's essentially finished and then the publisher has
to publish it within six months. So, and we're shooting
for Barnes and Noble, you know, the brick and mortar stores.

(21:37):
I guess there'll probably be a hard hard copy hardcover
version and the you know, standard.

Speaker 4 (21:46):
Paperback type version.

Speaker 5 (21:48):
We suspect it'll be oversized, probably a fight by eight
or five y nine. It is probably gonna be out
two hundred and sixty pages, and it won't be like
any other It won't be like Trottier's Guide or anything
like that. That'll be fully index where you can go
in and anthy you know, gee, I have this particular question.

Speaker 4 (22:05):
I'm gonna look this is this is more of.

Speaker 5 (22:10):
Different subjects, the philosophies behind different ways of writing story,
things like that. It's it's more s a forum rather
than subject driven like a lot of books, so it'll
be very different. It's more of the kind of the
book you sit down in a in a coffee shop

(22:32):
and and read it to get It's kind of like
a mixture of opinion and method and things like that.

Speaker 4 (22:39):
So it'll be very different.

Speaker 3 (22:40):
Oh, very cool, because you know, I have a ton
of screenwriting books and this does sound very different than
than all the rest that I have. Obviously, because this
is a podcast, you can't see it, but next to
me is is my library of screenwriting books.

Speaker 4 (22:52):
But yeah, that sound you know, that's just smart.

Speaker 5 (22:55):
I mean, this is a is a very estheteric craft.
It's a very closed industry. A lot of the really
good screenwriters either don't have the time to help or
don't want to help. And I've actually seen sabotage in
groups I've seen. I won't name any of them, but
I've seen professional or advanced writers who actually get paid

(23:17):
all the time to write giving wrong answers on purpose
to spoil off either someone they don't like or somebody
that you know, they just decided to screw with And
of course that doesn't help anybody except the pro who's
keeping down the competition. So opinions are going to vary

(23:38):
in screenwriting books, and I have my own very strong opinions.
My book is going to be full of them. It's
going to be full of cursing. It's not edited. It
will be edited, but the language won't be edited out.
Sometimes if I'm angry about something, you know, I'll flavor
the post with a sprinkling of cursing, because that's just
how it came out. To keep the book genuine, and

(24:00):
it's the posts are actually going in as the original essays.
They're not being edited down to make it politically correct
or anything like that. So the book will offend some,
it will amuse some, and it should help everyone that
reads it.

Speaker 3 (24:14):
And that's fantastic. You know, sometimes we need it. We
need a little tough love, Mike.

Speaker 5 (24:18):
And that's and that's what the book is. I'll yell
at you, I'll prop you up, I'll beat you down.
Then i'll i'll lift you up again, and and i'll
i'll inspire you to write better and to keep going.
And then I'll i'll beat on you a while for
doing something a certain way that's that's not a very

(24:39):
effective or good or or or smart way, and then
I'll build.

Speaker 4 (24:43):
You up again.

Speaker 5 (24:43):
So it's it's it's kind of a tough ride, but
enough people approached me to write it and said, geez,
you need to put all these things in a book.
These are terrific that a publisher actually approached me to
publish the book. So, you know, situation, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (25:01):
It is an amazing situation. And you know, sometimes we
need that tough love, you know, just a funny anecdote, Mike,
I think that you'll really enjoy, you know. I one
time had a beginner approached me with a script and
they came into one of our group, but one of
my groups I was running, and their script had several
pages within within the in the script with design drawings

(25:21):
on them of what they were talking about inside the script.

Speaker 5 (25:24):
It's not good and it doesn't you know, it's it
doesn't matter if they're Picasso, and it doesn't matter if
they're Hemingway. Those things are not a good combination for
a spec script. If you're if you were hired by
somebody at dream Works who's absolutely visually driven and you've
already got the job, and they see you doodle in

(25:45):
the margins and say, jeez, what a great drawing. I
short like to see some of those in your script.
By all means stores some artwork in the script, But
in a regular SPECS script you don't do that. You
don't put art work in. Every rule is made to
be broken. One of my most award winning scripts, it
doesn't have artwork in it per se, but I do

(26:07):
some interesting things with a couple of different fonts that
are cut in as JPEGs. One of the languages that
the script is written in is Galileean Aramaic, which was
the language spoken in the early Middle East which ended
not too long after Jesus' time. That's one of seven
languages in the script. Well, there's no font for that,

(26:28):
so I actually had to cut JPEGs into the script
to put in the original Galilean Aramic, which actually mattered
because at one point the language actually appears on the screen.

Speaker 4 (26:39):
As a special effect.

Speaker 5 (26:41):
So to save producers the four months it took me
to get four or five words, let me see, we
have a four words to four months to get translated
by one of the world's experts in this language, so
to say, producers to time, if anyone picked up the script,
I went ahead and had the translation already done and

(27:03):
put in a script. So you know, rules are made
to be broken, but you need to learn the rules
and get good so you can decide when you need
to break them. I've never put our work, per say,
in a script, and I'm up to I don't know,
thirteen features, with eight solely written and then others co
written with best selling authors and people like that. And

(27:27):
I had one person that wanted to put artwork in
the script, and had a very frank talk with him,
and I said, look, you came to me, you want
me to write this with you. I like the idea,
I like the story. If you insist on putting artwork
in the script, you're going to write it along. And
that was it.

Speaker 4 (27:43):
And no artwork.

Speaker 3 (27:45):
Yeah, and that's something I want to get into.

Speaker 4 (27:47):
Mike.

Speaker 3 (27:48):
Is you your screenwriting? You know your methods and you
know so when you were starting out, you know, you
had David Tardier's book and you obviously you're reading, you know,
you say to skin through that, and you were writing
down ideas, and so I wanted to ask, did you
ever adhere to any sort of like method, you know,
whether it be three acts, five acts, any of that

(28:08):
when you were writing, or did you just simply just
sort of had you had a starting point and you just.

Speaker 5 (28:13):
Went, okay, so three acts and basically didn't read the book,
just looked at the book for formatting, hadn't read any
any professional script that you like, of any movie that
I liked. Just had seen a bunch of scripts that

(28:34):
I didn't think were written well, had been sent to
my daughter. There were some that were written well. They
were you know by all means that someone researches this.
Oh she auditioned for that. Mike said, the script is crap. Now,
some of some of the scripts were crap. A lot
of them were just mediocre. So, and I'm unusual in
that I don't outline, and most writers do outline. There

(28:59):
are just a few, I would say, maybe less than
four percent. Probably closer to two percent don't outline. I
don't know if I want to call it a gift
or if it's a curse. Most writers will actually execute
a complete, fleshed out outline that maybe thirty forty to

(29:19):
fifty sixty pages before they write the screenplay and they'll
actually write it from the outline. I have never done that,
and I write natively. But I also have developed my
own trademark writing method that a lot of even pros
have commented publicly. They said that it's helped them a lot,

(29:40):
and a number of them are adopting. And I call
it BAM, which is the Beerman asynchronous method. And with BAM,
what I do is I write the almost always write
the end first, and sometimes I write the beginning first,
but it's always either the beginning or the end, and

(30:00):
then I wrote write the other.

Speaker 3 (30:03):
We'll be right.

Speaker 2 (30:04):
Back after a word from our sponsor, and now back
to the show.

Speaker 4 (30:13):
End of it, whether it's the beginning or the end.

Speaker 5 (30:15):
So I always start with the beginning and end when
I start a script, and frequently the very first thing
that I will do is write the end and write
fade out the end, and it'll be the first scene
I write.

Speaker 4 (30:29):
That's very common for me.

Speaker 5 (30:30):
Then I'll go back and write the beginning, and then
typically what I do is I will tie scenes into
the beginning and end scene the first and last by definition,
and I will work backward from the outside end, which
sounds strange until you try and see what it does.
I will tie you know, I might write the end,

(30:53):
then I'll write the beginning. Then i'll write the second
scene of the screenplay. Then i'll go write three scenes
back from the end. I'll jump back and write, you know,
the third scene at the beginning. And then I'll know
that I need a particular second act scene or a break,
and I'll go in and i'll write that, and I'll

(31:14):
just float it in the middle of final draft a
writer duet, which is what I use now.

Speaker 4 (31:20):
I'll just float it.

Speaker 5 (31:21):
In there and I will then write whatever scene occurs
to me that I'm inspired to write that I know
needs to be written at the time, and I fit
them all together like a jigsaw puzzle, and I attach
them to the anchors, which are both ends, and as
I develop scenes in the middle, I'll when I know

(31:43):
I have two scenes, sorry is a long answer. When
I know I have two scenes that are going to
stick together, I won't put any asterisks between them. I
use like three asterisks when i'm floating a scene, and
I'll pull the asterisks out when I tie two scenes
together and I know that nothing will go between them scenes,
and then they may still be floating somewhere in the

(32:04):
in the second or third act, somewhere in the middle
of the script, and I just build the whole script
that way. When I write the last scene, it's it's
almost always a second act scene somewhere in the middle
of the script, and I write it, rewrite that scene,
and I'm done, because I also rewrite as I go,
so then the whole thing only needs to be skimmed

(32:25):
for continuity and for proofing errors. That method is a
method that I developed on my own and gave a
name to because people wanted to know how it was writing.
A lot of people who said it sounds crazy tried
it and they absolutely love it. What it does is
it prevents writer's block. If you're writing from the beginning

(32:48):
of a script, scene by scene, and you know where
you're going, you may have a bunch of things you
already know you want to write, but you can't link
it up because you get stuck earlier on on. With
my method, you never get stuck if you if you
don't know what you're gonna do next for a second,
you just jump ahead and write the next thing you
know you're going to put in, even though I may

(33:10):
not be connected to what you just wrote.

Speaker 4 (33:12):
Does that make sense?

Speaker 5 (33:13):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (33:13):
Yeah, it makes sense.

Speaker 5 (33:14):
But and so I've had I've had several protos, you know,
one guy eighteen produced movies, another guy twenty produced movies,
another guy six produced movies. They've actually all used it
come back and said, my god, this this method is wonderful.
I don't know, I don't know why. I haven't, you know,

(33:35):
used this before. I never thought of it. I've never
seen it before. David Silverman, who is the creator of
the Wild Thornberrys, actually just recommended and endorsed this method
and said it was genius. So that's kind of nice that.
The interesting thing is, I haven't had anybody given an

(33:55):
honest try after understanding the method which I described in
my in my upcoming book. I haven't had anybody give
it an honest try and say that it didn't work
for them.

Speaker 4 (34:06):
I've had a number of.

Speaker 5 (34:07):
People who've refused to try it, you know, geez, that's scary.

Speaker 4 (34:11):
I can't imagine it.

Speaker 5 (34:12):
But I've never had anybody who actually sat down and
gave it a good try who didn't benefit from it.
So and that just developed again from learning to write
my own way. I didn't go to film school I
didn't go to. I wasn't a film major. I wasn't
a screenwriting major. I don't have an MFA in screenwriting.
I just did it on my own, and it works

(34:34):
for me, it works for a lot of other people,
and interestingly, it works for people who outline and for
people who don't outline, because all of the writers that
I just mentioned, with the twenty and eighteen and six
movies and the Thornberry's creater, they all outline extensively. One
of them is just an absolutely encyclopedic outliner and the

(34:59):
math that still worked for him. So just kind of
made sense to me, and I started writing that way.

Speaker 3 (35:08):
You know, you mentioned, you know, beating writer's block. You know,
I think that is. You know, that's something that I've
dealt with too, Mike Is. At first I thought it
was writer's block, and I realized, you know, what I
think it was was decision fatigue. And what I mean
by that is, you know, you start your screenplay from
the beginning, so here we are, you know, Act one,
page one, and you know, we start to sort of

(35:29):
write this.

Speaker 5 (35:30):
The dangerous and deadly scary blank white page.

Speaker 3 (35:36):
Fade in interior. But but you know it was a.

Speaker 5 (35:41):
Dark and stormy night.

Speaker 4 (35:42):
Oh damn, I'm stuck.

Speaker 3 (35:44):
It's kind of like that movie Throw Mama from the
Train and Billy Christal keeps writing that same sentence and
you can't figure out what to go next, and and
so you know, and it's basically, you know, a decision
fatigue where you realize, oh my god, this screenplay could
go in like ten thousand directions. And there was actually
a book I was reading about this, uh, the same
sort of like you know, principle of you know, decision

(36:06):
fatigue and you know, what're you know, obviously it could
go in ten thousand different directions. And his argument was,
if you actually, you know, go back to the theme
and the and the the whole you know, the main
tension and everything of your screenplay, there really probably isn't
ten thousand ways it could go. Really, it has to
all tie in together. So that way, you know, see one,

(36:28):
you know we're not you know, we're on an island,
and then seeing two, you know, all these other different
things are happening that have never been established. If you know,
if you get what I'm trying to say.

Speaker 6 (36:37):
I do, and what the the decision fatigue problem that
that you've labeled and that you've designated is a very
common problem.

Speaker 4 (36:46):
And uh, the band mess said what I just said.

Speaker 5 (36:50):
You can see immediately how that prevents it from happening.
If you know the end, you know where you're going. So,
by definition, everything scene you write is going to do
one of three things. It's either going to develop character,
or it gets thrown out, or it's going to advance

(37:11):
the plot, or it gets thrown out or the holy
grail of a scene is that it develops character, reveals character,
deepens character, and advances the plot. That's what you should
name for in every single scene. If you write a
scene that doesn't do any of those things, throw it
out your you know, kill your baby, because it's not

(37:34):
getting you to where you need to be. And because
budgets are determined by page count, and whether your screenplay
is picked up and produced or not may very well
depend on what your page count is. If you can
tell story A in ninety pages, or you can tell

(37:58):
story A in one hundred and ten, and you can't
get it down from one hundred and ten, story A
ninety pages is much more likely to get made than
one ten. Because line producers and people who determine how
much a movie's gonna cost to make. They will assign,
depending on genre, style, a bunch setting, you know, costume requirements,

(38:19):
things like that, locations, they'll figure out special effects CGI.

Speaker 4 (38:25):
Goes on and on. They'll figure out a per cost
page on average of the screenplay.

Speaker 5 (38:29):
They'll multiply that out and they'll say, Okay, your spring
to make this movie is going to cost us one
hundred and ten times whatever that page cost is. That's
gonnad up being a lot higher than what ninety times
whatever the page cost is, right, Yeah, So if you
can write the same story, tell the same story more

(38:50):
efficiently in fewer pages, even if nothing changes.

Speaker 4 (38:54):
I've rewritten scripts for people.

Speaker 5 (38:55):
I did a reway for creative Artists and untitled Entertainment
Package project, and the original script was I think, oh,
I've been looked at this in a long time.

Speaker 4 (39:07):
Was a couple of years ago. The original script.

Speaker 5 (39:09):
Was somewhere around It was one hundred and twelve pages,
and they wanted it to be one hundred pages before
it went to budgeting. They wanted one hundred. They did
one hundred and twelve. So first thing, one of the
first things I was asked to do was reduce the
page count. So when I rewrote the script, not only

(39:29):
did I I told them I said I think I
can hit one hundred pages. They said that would be great,
that's what we had in mind. We'd love that. So
I actually hit ninety nine and a half pages, which
is one hundred pages. Okay, you know ninety nine go
to the one hundredth page halfway down. So I hit
the goal. But not only did I do that, I
filled five major plot holes and I added a whole

(39:49):
new story.

Speaker 2 (39:50):
Arc we'll be right back after a word from our
sponsor and now back to the show.

Speaker 5 (40:01):
So I was able to make the story more complex,
more complete, get rid of problems, and still knock twelve
pages out of the out of the thing. And so
that's a successful rewrite, and they were. They were very
happy with it. So I kind of forgot how we
got here. But it is again why you have a

(40:24):
goal post in mind. You don't wander off and get lost.
That's the how I found I found my way again.
If you know the end, everything that you write is
going to be advancing your characters, your plot, moving all
of the things you've created toward that end. If you
know where you're going. You don't stumble and get lost.

(40:45):
You always move toward that goal tost There are going
to be a lot of choices on the way that
you're going to have to make, but those choices are
now narrowed.

Speaker 4 (40:53):
And focused by the fact that you know where you're going.

Speaker 5 (40:57):
A lot of people who overwrite I don't have an
ending in mind, and they'll wander this way and that way,
and they'll end up having, you know, five or eight
or ten scenes that don't contribute to where they eventually
end up.

Speaker 4 (41:10):
And you know, it happens all the time.

Speaker 5 (41:13):
I read somebody wrote a comment yesterday, Gee, I just
finished my screenplay. I hate it. I hate my own screenplay.
It's not what I set out to write. I don't
know how I got here. I don't like the ending,
I don't like the story, and it's not what I intended.
So now I've got to do a page one rewrite.
That's because you didn't know where you were going.

Speaker 3 (41:35):
Yeah, you know one piece of advice you're years ago
that I heard from the writer of Fight Club, Chuck
Paul Knook.

Speaker 4 (41:41):
He actually terrific writer.

Speaker 3 (41:43):
Yeah, he's phenomenal. He gave me the advice that he's like, right, right,
your beginning. He goes, literally he goes, right, you know,
whatever opening, what do you want to do? And then
he says, go to the go to your last page,
whatever that might be. And he goes, just write the end.
And he said, you're gonna do is because he's going
to feel comple if you do it this way. He said,
then what you're gonna write? So that way? Again, like

(42:04):
you just said, it was a goal, and that's what
he also, you know, told me a couple of years ago,
was it it's a goal and that way you know
at least you know what you're going towards, and that
way you correct.

Speaker 5 (42:14):
So he has a similar uh that I didn't know
he said that, but he has a similar philosophy to
to what I do. And it sounds like he starts
off writing the same way. And by the way, you
should note I do that whether my screenplay is linear
or nonlinear. Uh, it doesn't matter. I write the screenplay nonlinearly,

(42:35):
even if it's going to be a linear form.

Speaker 4 (42:37):
So let's say it's a straight three act you know.

Speaker 5 (42:42):
First the second act break, you know, page twenty three,
what you know, if it's going to be a straight
three act screenplay and it has a linear plot, without flashbacks,
without jumping around, nothing fancy, just a simple straight story.
And that could be anything from a family film to
a military film. You know, you can do anything that way.

(43:05):
The subject matter doesn't matter, it's just how you choose
to write it. Time wise, you can use my form,
and I do use the form to write linear screenplays.
I just don't write them in order. I write the
whole screenplay out of order, but when you end up
reading the screenplay, it's in order. And it also works

(43:26):
for nonlinear methods. If you're writing something like fight clubs nonlinear.
If you're writing something that jumps around, and you have
an unreliable narrator and he may or may not be crazy,
and he may may not be who you even think
he is, you can still use that method and jump
all over the place and write the screenplay that's going
to be nonlinear, and write it in a nonlinear fashion,

(43:49):
which sounds very chaotic but actually makes sense when you're
doing it.

Speaker 4 (43:53):
So, as I always say, if.

Speaker 5 (43:56):
You know where you're going, and you know where you're
coming from, a nice to find world that you're working
with in you're not going to start writing, you know,
crazy stuff about Mars in your story about you know,
the kids starting school in new school district because the
parents got divorced. You know, all of a sudden, you're
writing about Martians on Mars, right, and you're having a

(44:17):
space shootout because you had no idea where you were
going with your screenplay. And I've actually came crazy stuff
like that.

Speaker 4 (44:25):
I'm sure you have too.

Speaker 5 (44:26):
People end up with like three different stories in one screenplay.
They get horribly lost, and then they get right or
back to writer's block. Oh you know, I don't want
to write next. Yeah, because you jacked the whole thing up.
You got yourself in a jackpot. You've written yourself into
a corner and nobody would know what to write next
because none of it makes any sense. So you know,

(44:49):
learn and writing method and stick to it. Like I said,
my method works for me. It's worked for everyone I
know that's trying to who's gotten back to me on it.

Speaker 4 (44:59):
But you you need to learn to write in.

Speaker 5 (45:01):
A consistent method that works for you however you write
and stick to that, develop that method and make.

Speaker 4 (45:07):
It work for you.

Speaker 5 (45:11):
You know, Chuck has his own method that's apparently similar
to mine, and I think that's a very smart method.
It's funny. I admire that writer. Maybe that's why I
like him so much, because we write in a similar convention.
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (45:24):
Yeah, you know, great mindstick, I like.

Speaker 5 (45:26):
Right, So well that's what that's what they say.

Speaker 3 (45:30):
You know, because you know, just to continue with what
you were just saying about, you know, no no writer
could fix, you know, a screenplay that has all those
problems because you know, there's no goal, there's no sort
of central narrative to it. You know. I remember when
I read a screenplay years ago and it was this
this guy had this idea for the this like anthology,
i'm sorry, a horror movie trilogy, and I read the

(45:52):
first part of it, the first screenplay. I read all
one hundred and some odd pages, and literally it was
about these two vamp hires who live in like this
old mansion or something has all these catacombs underneath it,
and it's just about like it's almost like.

Speaker 5 (46:08):
We haven't seen that one before.

Speaker 3 (46:10):
And it's just all these different people, like groups of
people go in there and they're getting killed. There's no
there's no goal, there's nothing.

Speaker 5 (46:17):
Literally, there's no story exactly. And unfortunately, I'm hearing a
lot of reports of this from screenplay contest screenwriting contest
judges that they're seeing a lot of screenplays that have
essentially no purpose. There's no story being told. You know, Okay,
I get it. It's slash or genre, and we're going

(46:40):
to see a whole bunch of blood, a whole bunch
of people killed, and then all of a sudden we
decide that's enough and we stop the movie. But it
never tells a story. That's that's not uh, that's not screenwriting.
That's just dribbling out garbage. And this is what happens
when you have an unfocused person writing that doesn't know

(47:01):
why they're writing or where they're going. You end up
with something like that. You know, a lot of writer's block. Also,
jumping quickly back to that as it ties in here,
is if you have problems in your in your opening,
in your first act, and the first act is unfocused,
not set upright, not structured right, you really don't have

(47:23):
any idea why you're writing. And that'll be very apparent
to the reader very quickly. By the way, you don't
know why you're sitting down and writing to tell this
story that is going to cause you massive writer's block,
because if the first act is poorly structured and poorly
set up everything that comes after. It's like Domino's, It's

(47:43):
like Jenga or Jackstraws or any of these things. If
you if you've set the foundation badly, there's no way
the house will stand. I even have a post written
on this, so right about making an analogy to you know,
building a house. You know, don't build a a house
on sand, Okay, building on rock. I have a whole

(48:04):
essay on this, and that's it's all about first act
structure and knowing what you're doing in the first act
because that sets up the entire story, doesn't it.

Speaker 3 (48:15):
Yeah, it really does. Like they say, if you have
the second or third act problems, you have first act problems.

Speaker 5 (48:20):
Really correct, and again, most of those problems can be
solved by knowing the beginning and the ending right when
you start. But David Silverman I just mentioned that while
Thornberry's creator wrote a it was very gracious and he
wrote a recommendation for my book that'll be on the

(48:40):
you know, fronting.

Speaker 4 (48:41):
Side or back cover.

Speaker 5 (48:42):
I don't know where it's going there are a bunch
of recommendations to fit. And he said that using this
particular method, you end up with a much twistier, surprising plot,
with all kinds of fresh takes on things that isn't
stale that may even surprise the writer. By writing using

(49:07):
a different method, you end up with something that may
even surprise you.

Speaker 4 (49:12):
It doesn't surprise you.

Speaker 5 (49:13):
In that you at the beginning in the end, but
how you get there can vary, as I said, and
so you may discover some ingenious twists and things along
the way, but you always know where you're going. So
there are a bunch of different ways to tell the story,
and the details may vary of what is going in
the story, the different moral lessons, and the different challenges

(49:34):
that characters face, the internal and external challenges. You know,
no stories, no story works if the protagonist is perfect. Okay,
we work with flawed characters, and some of the best
stories are told from the most damaged flawed characters.

Speaker 2 (49:54):

Speaker 4 (50:03):
And the story.

Speaker 5 (50:05):
As they get the external challenges, you look at how
their character, their internal character reacts to that, and you
see the character's character arc, which can be you know,
learning improvement, change changes the mechanism that drives the character arc,

(50:26):
or you can have you know, some characters will go
through some things in as sociopathic characters, other damaged characters,
and they may actually not have a character arc. The secario,
which I really like, evokes strong reactions. Some people don't
like the film because they think Emily Blunt's character, the Agent,

(50:49):
the FBI agent she plays, doesn't have a character arc.
I argue that she does have a character arc without
getting too far into spoiler. She's completely by the the
book and incorruptible at first, and then at the end
when faced with her own death, because she's going to
go forward and reveal by the book, reveal all the

(51:12):
criminal and sketchy things that were done that Josh Bolan's
character very much, the CIA guy wants her to say
everything went by the book, to cover up all the
things they did.

Speaker 4 (51:25):
In the end, to save.

Speaker 5 (51:26):
Herself, she falsifies the document to save her own life.
So my argument has always been she does have a
character arc. She changes from the incorruptible you know, perfect
if you will agent, the idealized agent, and she changes
to somebody who to save.

Speaker 4 (51:47):
Herself, falsifies the report of what happened.

Speaker 5 (51:50):
So but anyway, you know, you start with with damaged
characters and you move them through the story, and that's
that's the story arc. That's why we're entertained, is because
we get to see change.

Speaker 4 (52:03):
In a character.

Speaker 5 (52:04):
If you have a character that you know is waterproof
and bulletproof and you know, nothing ever happens to them,
which I've always felt was a big danger with Superman,
by the way, you know, that's why there's Kryptonite, right, yeah,
because if he has no fault, he has no weakness.
What are we going to do for a story?

Speaker 4 (52:27):
You developed the the.

Speaker 5 (52:28):
Ultimate badass Marvel superhero that can't be touched, that nothing
can ever happen to them, Like the Silver Surfer. There's
there's really not a whole lot you can do with
that character. And that's why The Surfer had limited appearances
and things. You look at somebody like Deadpool, who's in
a very very damaged character who may or may not

(52:49):
even be sane and Marvel finally, you know, Ryan Reynolds
fought ten years to make Deadpool, and they insisted on
you know, the script being genuine to the source material,
and Marvel is very worried because you know, totally not
PC and it's dirty and filthy, and he curses and

(53:11):
he has sex, and he does all kinds of bad
things that heroes shouldn't do, and that makes him fascinating.
And that's why Deadpool killed it at the box office.
I honestly believe it was. It was probably my favorite
movie of the year. So probably not gonna win any Oscars,
maybe special effects, who knows, but entertainment wise, you know.

Speaker 4 (53:34):
I thought it was.

Speaker 5 (53:36):
I thought it was a terrific film because you had
such a flawed character and it was just so entertaining
to watch him go through all that.

Speaker 3 (53:43):
So yeah, and I also agree with that. The reason
I liked it was because it was so different than
all the other superhero movies that are coming out. Obviously,
you know, it didn't take itself too seriously. It was
completely different. It was a complete one eighty from all
the other superhero movies that were coming out, and it's
I think that's why I enjoyed it so much.

Speaker 5 (54:02):
Yeah, he break they break the fourth wall the time,
you know, he turns and looks at the camera and
goes you know, you know, gee would a superhero really
do this, and you know, there's a fourth wall break
within a fourth wall break.

Speaker 4 (54:13):
And they they constantly pull the audience in. And those
are things.

Speaker 5 (54:18):
Those are things that were pretty much although you know,
even in Greek theater and Roman theater, those are things
the aside where the actor turns and talks to the audience. Okay,
those are things that have always been in storytelling. In
modern screenwriting, they were pioneered by Shane Black, of course,
with the with the Shane blackisms, you know, one of

(54:41):
the most famous being and he's describing a mansion and
I'm paraphrasing, I don't remember exactly, but he'll say, you
know that he's describing the place, and he stops and
he says, you know, look guys, basically, and he's writing
like this in the script. Look, guys, basically, this is
exactly the kind of place that you would buy if
you hit the lottery and you had millions and millions

(55:02):
of dollars and you wanted two great parties for all
your friends. This is this is the shit you would buy.
And he puts that in the script. So Deadpool did
much the same kind of thing. You know, when I
set through the opening of dead Pool by the time
they finished writing the credits, you know, calling the director
an overpaid tool and the writers.

Speaker 4 (55:22):
You know, the real heroes. General, I was fully.

Speaker 5 (55:24):
Satisfied with the price that paid for the movie, just
getting through the opening credits. You know.

Speaker 3 (55:31):
Also, like you mentioned Shane Black, I saw that you
actually were able to meet Shane Black. Was that a
writer's conference.

Speaker 5 (55:37):
That was at Austin Film Festival. So I script called Needles,
which is an allegorical diabolical, diabolical thriller that I found
myself talking about a lot because people are curious about it,
and that's how I went to Austin. I wasn't going
to go, and the director of Austin, Matt Matt Dee
called me, I think, a couple times, convincing me to

(55:59):
go because apparently my script was going to finish pretty high.
Frank Airbahn, director Showshank Redemption, Walking Dead creator, and you know,
a bunch of other stuff. He'd picked Needles top ten.
Of course I didn't know this at the time, but
he'd picked it top ten scripts for the Science Fiction

(56:20):
Award and top ten scripts for the Horror Prize out
of eighty six hundred and twenty seven scripts. So when
you do really well at some of these film festivals
like Austin, I made the top group where I got
to have, you know, secret meetings in special places with
great people that nobody else could go to. And those

(56:44):
meetings often had you know, twenty thirty forty people that's
it from the whole film festival, whereas people who wrote
scripts that did decently but finished lower, they'd be in
a room full of you know, hundreds of people. And
so I ended up in a room, a very small room,
you know, size of a small dining room, maybe a

(57:06):
little bigger, with Shane Black and a whole bunch of
high finishers, and he was taking questions. So everybody was
kind of shy, and I think I asked the first question.
I'm not shy. I jumped up and I asked him
about It was something about working with Robert Downey Junior
and Val Kilmer. Their methods are very different, and what

(57:29):
was going on in Robert Downey Junior's life, which I
won't rehash here at the time, and you know, got
to ask him one on one questions right there, which
I think they actually put on a podcaster on the radio,
which is kind of cool. But he had actually auditioned
my daughter for a film, and her audition went straight

(57:50):
to him, and he really liked her. And we went
back and forth in a couple roles on that. Ultimately
we didn't we didn't finish one of the auditions. We
chose not to do. But I was a terrific guy,
very very generous guy with his with his time, and
just extremely gracious to other writers. So you know, I

(58:13):
got some great pictures with him. I can prove it happened.

Speaker 3 (58:18):
Well, that's how I actually saw it too. I saw
you met him because when you were on John Fallon's podcast,
I actually saw That's one of the photos he added
was you and Shane Black. And I wanted to make
sure I asked you that, Mike, because Shane Black is uh.
I don't think there's a screenwriter alive right now who
hasn't who doesn't envy or you know, look at Shane

(58:40):
Black as sort of like a guide in one way
or another.

Speaker 5 (58:43):
Well, I mean he's you know, he's he's a pioneer.
He's the guy that did something that you know, in
modern times in screenwriting, nobody had done, and he did
it with he did it with dash and and and bravado,
and he nailed it. So he he's a guy much
to be admired.

Speaker 4 (59:02):
You know.

Speaker 5 (59:02):
I also met Terry Rossio, who was just absolutely incredible guy,
and he was very, very funny, and we were standing
outside in front of the hotel and I asked him
for I asked him if I could get a picture,
and you know, a lot of people are walking by him.
Had no idea who he was, and so he went
walking by me, and my you know, ears pricked up,
and I said, holy.

Speaker 4 (59:22):
Smokes, there he goes.

Speaker 5 (59:23):
And so I went out politely introduced myself and he said,
he said to I don't know if it was his
driver or somebody that was hanging out with him. He said,
he said, I like this guy. Let's take about a
dozen pictures. And he turns to me and he starts
to direct to see. He says, Okay, we're just a
couple guys hanging out talking here. There's a there's a
strange accident or happening in the distance, and all kinds

(59:46):
of weird stuff is going on, so we start acting
like we're watching this. Of course, he was much better
at it than I was.

Speaker 2 (59:52):

Speaker 5 (01:00:01):
And I got like a dozen pictures of us making
stupid faces and kind of grabbing onto each other and
going ooh, went on, He's just hilarious, just a terrific guy.
And I met uh uh uh John Lee Hincock, and
I met uh with the blind sigh, I wrote, I

(01:00:23):
met Andrew Kevin Walker, who that was great to meet him.
Yes in the game, and yeah, I those there are
a couple of my favorite movies. So uh, you know,
the Evolution of Seven. Any anyone who aspires to be
a screenwriter really needs to read the story of Seven.
And what he went through, you know, is a towered

(01:00:44):
record tower, records clerk.

Speaker 4 (01:00:47):
Trying to get anybody interested in this thing.

Speaker 5 (01:00:49):
He finally gets an agent on the phone, starts talking
as fast as he can and spitting stuff out, and
the agent doesn't hang up on him, actually is interested,
starts asking qui lessians, agrees to read the script, and
then boom, all of a sudden, it takes off from there.
But you know, all the time to get to that
lucky break, and then you know, director after director had

(01:01:11):
him rewrite the script. The original script had the Head
in the Box ending, which was, you know, shocking.

Speaker 4 (01:01:20):
To the studios.

Speaker 5 (01:01:21):
There's absolutely amazing ending, and you know, oh that's too much,
we need to rewrite it. So they kept having him
rewrite the script, and then that director would go off
the project. The next guy would come in, Oh, I
love this project, Let's rewrite the script. So he kept
doing that, and then finally David Fincher came in and

(01:01:42):
apparently I read an interview recently, I wasn't clear on
how to tappened. Apparently Andrew Kevin Walker sent him the
wrong script. He sent him the earliest, the first version
with the head in the box, and Fincher loved it,
and they went together and fought with the producers in

(01:02:04):
the studio to get it made. And my understanding, if
I recall, is Morgan Freeman is actually the reason why
the movie got made the way it did, because at
some point Morgan Freeman came forward and said, look, if
you don't make it with that ending with the head
in the box, I'm gone, I'm walking. And so that
did it. But I got to meet him, I got
to meet his brother. They were very nice, and I

(01:02:28):
just heard him talk and I waited around, and you know,
these people are normal people. I mean, they're not gods,
and people idealize them and oh, I know who that
guy is.

Speaker 4 (01:02:36):
I know his name.

Speaker 5 (01:02:37):
I've seen that actor on TV. Well when you really
need him, they're just regular people. Some of them act
like they're not regular people. Some of them act like
regular people. Most of them want to be treated like
anybody else. They don't want to be you know, they've
had enough of that. Some of them aren't that way,
you know, some of them have viewed egos. A lot
of them just want to be left alone and treated

(01:02:57):
like anybody else. So I waited in a very short
line because people were afraid to approach them, and went
up and got to talk with him for you know,
it wasn't long, maybe five minutes. But I've got pictures
with them too. So, so is there what's the what's
the saying the essay fortune favors the bowls?

Speaker 3 (01:03:15):
Right, yeah, it's yeah, there's also, uh, what's the essays saying?

Speaker 5 (01:03:22):
Yeah, that's what I was going for.

Speaker 4 (01:03:24):
The essays?

Speaker 5 (01:03:25):
I don't remember if it's Fortune favors the Bold it's
something like that.

Speaker 3 (01:03:28):
Yeah, it's I forget what that actually is. But I think,
but it's very similar to that. I think. But is
there any screenwriters you haven't met yet, Mike that you
really wanted to meet?

Speaker 5 (01:03:39):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (01:03:40):
I mean, I suppose there are a lot of there.

Speaker 5 (01:03:41):
There are a lot of great There are a lot
of great writers and a lot of great screenplays out there.
I mean, my my favorites just you know, like you,
Shane Black and and Andrew, Kevin Walker, Terry Ross you.
I mean, it's just amazing to meet them all in
one trip. Just just amazing. But you know, I don't

(01:04:03):
know if I really have an answer to that. One
the one of the shocking movies for me of the
year that didn't get a lot of press and play expensive.
I don't know if you've seen it, yes, Yeah, the
acting is terrific, that the dialogue is wonderful. It's just
it's a beautifully made film. It's a very simple film,

(01:04:24):
but the acting, the quality of the acting and the
writing the dialogue will just draw you in. I couldn't
turn the damn thing off. I sat down and started
watching it. I had places to go, people to see,
had things to do. I had no intention of watching
the movie. And I mean, I've fat there with my
jaw dropped. Found that I've been standing there fifteen minutes

(01:04:44):
with the remote my hand watching this thing. You know,
my daughter got it as a sag screener and came in.
And that's probably I would say that's probably acting wise
and script wise, probably the best film I've seen this year.
I don't know what it's going to do with the Oscars.
I suspect Denzel Washington will probably win a Best Actor.

(01:05:07):
Biola Davis certainly should be in the running for Best Actors.
I know that she had enough screen time for it,
but Denzel certainly should went.

Speaker 4 (01:05:17):
And you know, that.

Speaker 5 (01:05:18):
Movie, as they said with Deadpool, with the opening, that
movie is worth the price of admission if you only
watch the first scene where Denzel Washington is talking about death.
The scene is so mind blowingly great that the whole
movie is worth watching just for that one scene. And

(01:05:40):
you know, it doesn't stop there. So I can't really say,
you know, any one particular writer, A number of the
writers that I'd like to meet her dead, So you know,
that's kind of a kind of a bummer.

Speaker 3 (01:05:53):
But as you're talking about, you know, Defences, I thought
it was phenomenal as well. I think you know, Denzel
Sole the show in that movie. You know, he just
plays that charismatic, tragic hero obviously because there's a lot
of regret in him in that man's life, in that
character's life. And you know, as he's sort of talking

(01:06:15):
to everybody, everybody in one way or another, sees him
at his best, sees him at his worst, and it's
sort of you know, one way or another also at
the butt end of his worst. And you know, his son,
he talks to his one son the one way his
other son. You know, he constantly wants more from him,
and he's he doesn't go about it the right way.
And you know, it's just a phenomenal movie.

Speaker 5 (01:06:37):
Yeah, because he wants to, you know, he wants to
make the changes he couldn't make himself in his own
life in his have his son live those and and
also you know, excel as he did the way he did,
because he's getting older and he sees you know, his
own mortality, which we we know from telling you about that,

(01:07:00):
so he he you know, wants to live vicariously through
his son. Also, it's just an absolutely phenomenal movie. I'll
probably watch it again when we get off the phone. Wonderful,
wonderful film. I don't know if it if it kind
enough circulation buzz the box office to uh to win Oscars.
You know, the what the Oscars people pick frequently isn't

(01:07:21):
anything near what I think is the best.

Speaker 4 (01:07:22):
And other people agree with that. But that's terrific writing.

Speaker 5 (01:07:27):
The dialogue is phenomenal. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:07:29):
So, And it's almost a self contained movie because a
lot of it happens in that one house. And you know,
I wanted to ask you too about about you know,
your screenplay for The Grocer, because that's completely containing self
you know, self contained screenplay. And that won third place
in the London Film Awards.

Speaker 5 (01:07:45):
Correct, Yeah, it won, it won third. It's won a
bunch of awards. It just took third at London. It's uh,
it's in the running in in another contest. That just
made another cut. The Grocer is completely contained, if one
hundred percent contained. It is one location the entire screenplay.

Speaker 4 (01:08:06):
There there are some movies that try to do that.

Speaker 5 (01:08:09):
It's very difficult to do it and carry it off
with a with a very entertaining movie, because a one
location screenplay is going to be very dialogue heavy.

Speaker 4 (01:08:20):
It has to be.

Speaker 5 (01:08:23):
Unless you know, you do something completely avant garde and
have a bunch of people sitting in a room watching
paint dryer ants crawl around, you know, some experimental thing.
You know, I'll eraserhead meet Salvador Dali or something like that.

Speaker 4 (01:08:37):
You're you're gonna tend to be dialogue heavy.

Speaker 5 (01:08:40):
Needles is ninety seven percent one location, which is a
desert saloon, which may or may not be in Needles, California,
in the Mojave Desert. It's it's actually purgatory, but appears otherwise.

Speaker 4 (01:08:56):
And it is.

Speaker 5 (01:08:59):
Only two other locations that occur as flashbacks. One is
a very brief flashback to gold Gotha and it's I
think a quarter page. And the other flashback is is
like a Pacific Northwest, rainy mountain, rainy mountain, winding road.

Speaker 4 (01:09:20):
And that's it.

Speaker 5 (01:09:21):
So you know, ninety seven percent contained grocers, one hundred
percent contained The entire story happens at a grocery store
in its parking lot.

Speaker 4 (01:09:32):
That's it. The one location for the whole thing.

Speaker 5 (01:09:36):
And of course, you know, you hear all the time,
that's what everybody's looking for, is one location. You bring
the you bring the cats and crew in, you set
the date, you get everything set up and you never
have to move anywhere.

Speaker 4 (01:09:47):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:09:48):
You look at a movie like Spy Game, for example,
which I love, they have, you know, Hong Kong, they
have you know, settings in Vietnam.

Speaker 3 (01:10:00):
We'll be right.

Speaker 2 (01:10:00):
Back after a word from our sponsor, and now back
to the show.

Speaker 5 (01:10:09):
Langley, Virginia, China, Coastal China. You know it to Tony Scott,
you know, big, big bang, big budget, big stars, and
it goes all over the world.

Speaker 4 (01:10:25):
The Born films do that too. Those are very expensive
to make.

Speaker 5 (01:10:30):
And a lot of the places where films like that
want a film, like the Middle East, these are not
stable places where you can just go set up a
camera crew.

Speaker 4 (01:10:39):
This is covered in Argo. You know, it's no secret.

Speaker 5 (01:10:43):
There are a lot of places you can't film and
you have to try and mimic, you.

Speaker 4 (01:10:49):
Know, find an other location that works.

Speaker 5 (01:10:51):
Then you have to you know, if you're not filming
where they are, you have to build sets that make
it look like you're really there, and.

Speaker 4 (01:10:58):
Things like that, you know, bridges, buys, they had to
had to.

Speaker 5 (01:11:02):
Uh, they're showing Berlin being divided east and West, the
communists and the and the democracy and they've got the
they've got the wall being built right down the middle
of the city. I mean, that fall an incredibly expensive
scene to film. I turned to my wife. You know,
I've seen it many times. She hadn't. I turned to her.
Last night, we watched again. I watched it again. She

(01:11:25):
watched it, and I said, I said, imagine the cost
of the scene. How many people are there, all the
soldiers in uniforms, you know, as far as the eye
can see, and it's just very, very expensive. Well, it
contained screenplay does the exact opposite of that. It minimizes
your your actors. It minimizes your locations to minimalist as

(01:11:47):
low as you can get one location. Now that there's
even an extreme un contained screenplays. If you look at
Ryan Reynolds buried, essentially the whole movie happens with him
in a coffin. H That's that's as contained as you
can get. You're in a coffin. Okay. So but anyway,
that that's considered a very desirable thing these days. Hopefully

(01:12:11):
somebody will hear this and ask to read the script
and buy one of those those scripts.

Speaker 4 (01:12:15):
I keep having people rave, man, this need to get made. Well,
I agree, with you.

Speaker 5 (01:12:20):
Let's let's sell the screen, you know, contact my manager,
we can make a deal. But that's that's also a
smart way to start off for writers that want to
learn to develop character and get kind of be fuddled
or thrown off by changing locations.

Speaker 4 (01:12:40):
They'll always posting my group.

Speaker 5 (01:12:41):
You know, what do I do?

Speaker 4 (01:12:43):
You know, how do I move the camera?

Speaker 5 (01:12:45):
I have a camera, you know, in a bedroom shooting
out the window at stuff happening outside.

Speaker 4 (01:12:49):
How do I write that?

Speaker 5 (01:12:51):
You know, a lot of people get hung up on
all that, And that's all formatting. A lot of people
get hung up on that stuff. If you have a
single location, you can concentrate much more character, can't you.

Speaker 3 (01:13:02):
Yeah, that's very true. And then with like.

Speaker 5 (01:13:05):
Fences, you mentioned Fences was a play, okay, and the
movie the movie feels like a play when you watch
it very much. You know, Samuel Beckett Theater of the Absurd,
he has he had a play that was I think
half a page or a quarter of a page.

Speaker 4 (01:13:23):
He has plays.

Speaker 5 (01:13:23):
Where the entire play there are two people in trash
cans talking to each other. You talk about dialogue heavy,
you talk about illusions. You need to get encyclopedia out
and people said this about Needles. You need to get
an encyclopedia to understand everything going on because it's so
deep with illusions, because you know, they've got a talk,

(01:13:47):
or it's gonna just be two people with their heads
sticking out of trash cans. The whole thing. You know,
Beckett has somebody buried up to their neck and fans.
The whole play is one character buried up to their
neck and fan.

Speaker 4 (01:14:00):
All you see is their head.

Speaker 5 (01:14:03):
That's minimalist. Okay, well, that's what you shoot for. Maybe
not that extreme, because it's very hard for something like
that to be entertaining.

Speaker 4 (01:14:11):
You have to be a master to pull that off.

Speaker 5 (01:14:13):
But what you want to do if you're starting out
is pick a setting that you don't move from. Work
on developing and deepening and broadening your characters and examining
the moral challenges, the philosophical ideals they have as they
deal with whatever situation you're creating, and go ahead and

(01:14:35):
develop the characters and worry more about that than jumping
all around in like a borne. There's nothing wrong with
the born fields, but you know, jumping around, you know,
elevators and trams and planes and going all over the
place concentrated on the character and building develop the character.
There was a there's a play on Broadway called Blackbird

(01:14:56):
and Sandasty subject matters, say Cha, Mall Station and stuff
like that, but it basically has a Erica was up
for a role in that. I was playing I think
one hundred and fifty five shows at the Belasco Theaterre
with Michelle Williams and Jeff Daniels, and they were gonna
make it three Erica Bierman, and she actually got the
preliminary offer on that. We were waiting for the final

(01:15:19):
contract to come through, and the director wrote the little
tiny part out at the end, so they went with
a cast of two. The whole play is a cast
of two for whatever the length of a full length
Broadway play is. And it is a woman grown too.

(01:15:41):
I don't need to go into this too much, but
basically it's a woman grown to womanhood who was basically
a child, young adolescent when she was entered into a
sexual relationship with a guy. It's not like forcible rape,
but it's statutory rape. And he and up, you know,
living his life and having a family and the business,

(01:16:03):
and she actually shows up at his business years later
and confronts him. Oh wow, yeah, and so very very intense,
very dialogue driven, character driven, and very contained.

Speaker 4 (01:16:17):
You've got something that is more than one location.

Speaker 5 (01:16:20):
It does have more than one location, but the vast
majority of it is one location. And so that's the
kind of thing that for a play or for a film,
cuts your costs down dramatically. And that is what has
has recently of.

Speaker 4 (01:16:37):
Late been in demand.

Speaker 5 (01:16:39):
And you hear people screaming all the time, I want
contained screenplays.

Speaker 4 (01:16:42):
So that's what they're talking about.

Speaker 3 (01:16:44):
Yeah, you know that, that's something that I try to
do as well, Mike. And what the way I tried
to do it was, I wrote I wrote three films,
three screenplays out of Summer Camp. I called him my
Camp trilogy, and in great and so that way, you know,
it's kind of sort of like Finding the Thirteenth in
a way, you know, because always gonna be at this camp,
We're not really there's no big set pieces.

Speaker 4 (01:17:05):
You know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:17:05):
And it can be done, you know, where horror is
the sort of the main character, and you don't have
to you know, go out and get you know, a
list actors. You could just you know.

Speaker 5 (01:17:12):
Happen that horror is very profitable. They can be made
for not a lot of money. And if you're getting
into contained horror where you got very few locations, that
should be very desirable material.

Speaker 4 (01:17:21):
If it's written well, should be very marketable.

Speaker 3 (01:17:23):
Yeah. So I've actually pitched a few of them, and
well that's a whole nother story del Thegether. But but
you know, but, you know, just going back to Buried,
you know, I agree. You know, I actually knew what
the whole concept was going in and I always wondered,
how are they going to carry this for the whole movie.
I was pleasantly surprised at how they carried that throughout
the whole movie and adding different things.

Speaker 5 (01:17:43):
Well, he's acting, you know, in Deadpool, it's full of
all kinds of self deprecating humor, of course, and Ryan
Reynolds says at one point, Oh, Ryan Reynolds made it
this far, and it's superior acting method. You know I'm
talking about he's a good looking guy. Okay, Well, in
in Barry, he acted the hell out of it.

Speaker 4 (01:18:02):
You know, you're not. You're not the best looking guy
in the world.

Speaker 5 (01:18:05):
With a blue light, a little you know, low wattage
blue light in a coffin the whole screenplay that was
carried by his acting. He killed it. He did a
beautiful job acting, so you know he needed a strong
actor to pull off. You you put somebody who's just

(01:18:26):
a pretty faith in the box who can't act, and
you got a flop.

Speaker 3 (01:18:29):
Right, Yeah, it's very true.

Speaker 5 (01:18:31):
But you know, Ryan Reynolds happens to be a pretty
face and he also can't act, and he ended up
nailing that.

Speaker 4 (01:18:39):
And yes, it was.

Speaker 5 (01:18:40):
Engrossing from beginning to end, another film that I expected.
I watched it for the novelty, which I suspect you
did too, knowing what it was going in saying you know,
there's there's no way they can pull this off, and
then found myself via very entertained in watching the whole movie.
And that's that's a great example of a successful contained

(01:19:04):
almost completely contained. There are some other locations, but not much.
I think maybe three locations the whole thing.

Speaker 3 (01:19:11):
Yeah, it's just Also, I made sure to go out
and get the screenplay because you know Scott Myers from
Goldenstory dot com, he was always mentioning it, and I
made sure to coach you got his posts about it
where he dissected the whole movie. I was, you know,
I was blown away again. You know how they were
able to do that, and they always The way they
did it obviously is they raised the stakes, you know,
constantly adding in new twists and turns. Okay, you know

(01:19:33):
he has you know, well, I probably shouldn't go into
it because in case, everybody hasn't seen it yet. But
but you know, it always reason.

Speaker 5 (01:19:41):
It's kind of old to worry about spoilers now, but
I mean, yeah, you know, the one thing goes wrong
and then the next thing goes wrong. You know, his
light starts running out. I mean, you know, it just
goes from one thing to the next.

Speaker 2 (01:19:57):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor

Speaker 5 (01:20:08):
And that's what you have to do in a screenplay.

Speaker 4 (01:20:11):
You need to keep raising the tension. You know.

Speaker 5 (01:20:14):
One of my criticisms of Manchester by the Sea is
I just never felt the stakes were that high, and
I never it just didn't feel like it was increasing tension.
It's a very stately paced piece. Yeah, Case the Afflet
did a fine job acting, so did the others, but

(01:20:38):
it's not a short movie and it just moves along
at a very very stately pace. I like the film.
It wasn't my favorite film of the year by far.
I suspect the Academy'll like it as kind of a
downer ending for them, but it's a film that's a

(01:20:58):
good example of one I didn't feel that they kept
raising the days they didn't have sufficient stakes.

Speaker 4 (01:21:05):
Now to give you an idea of what the effect.

Speaker 5 (01:21:07):
Of that is, my wife fell asleep four or five
times trying to watch the movie. We got a huge
fight because I said, I said, now's the time, let's
watch man Chester.

Speaker 4 (01:21:18):
I said, no, I'm not watching that thing. You know,
I can't stay awake.

Speaker 5 (01:21:21):
I said, no, No, like you, you really will get
in it.

Speaker 4 (01:21:24):
You know, it'll have an interesting emotional.

Speaker 5 (01:21:28):
Impact on you and you'll you'll get, you know, very
particular feeling, and I want to talk to you about it.
So you know, let's, you know, drink some coffee and
let's let's set up and watch this thing. And I've
watched it four times. I like it more each time
I watch it. And you know, let's tell one of
the ways that I learned to write well is by
watching movies. Okay, I don't it'll probably surprise you, and

(01:21:51):
I do not recommend this for most people. I read
very few screenplays by other writers. I don't go read
all the Oscar winning screenplays that are depending. I don't
do it. I watched the movies and I absorb it
that way. Is there a reason to read the screenplayce
Absolutely most screenwriters do, and I strongly recommend that people

(01:22:14):
start out that way. I don't think I've read more
than five pro scripts on produced movies. I just don't.
I just don't read them. I'll watch the movie. There
is a reason, if only to see the differences in
execution and planning, there's a great reason, you know, looking
at the spec or the shooting script and then what

(01:22:35):
they actually got can be a very rewarding and instructive experience.

Speaker 4 (01:22:41):
It's just not something I do.

Speaker 5 (01:22:42):
That's me personally, which again shows you that you know
there are different ways to do things and still do
well and get to the endpoint where you want to be.
There are pro writers I know that read every single
script for Academy Word scripts. They read every single script
for every blockbuster that comes out. I don't do that.

(01:23:06):
I would rather write natively without I'm not gonna say copying,
but you know, just my own way. Does that make sense?

Speaker 3 (01:23:14):
Yeah, it makes perfect sense, Mike. I. You know, I
like to I have a whole collection of screenplays, and
you know, I always find that my favorite person to
write screenplays and my favorite author is Quentin Tarantino. I
just love the way he writes. I think it's entertaining.
And I also feel though that I also can pull
from the movie so if I like, for instance, I

(01:23:35):
have the screenplay for Hell or High Water, but I
actually saw the movie about three days ago before I
actually heard the screenplay, and I like the movie, you know,
just as well. And I will probably probably end up
reading the screenplay as well, just to see what the
differences are. But I really enjoyed the Hell or High Water?
Have you seen that yet?

Speaker 5 (01:23:55):
Yes? And for you know, I don't want to say
anything bad about Quentin.

Speaker 4 (01:24:00):
He has movies that I.

Speaker 5 (01:24:01):
Absolutely love that are wonderful films, and he's a groundbreaking guy.
I will say, he overwrites. And you know, if you
look at the screenplay for Hateful eight, is I don't
like the film, And you know, the screenplay's one hundred
and eighty nine pages or somewhere thereabouts, and a lot

(01:24:27):
of people I talk with think he could have cut
an hour out of that movie. But he's also written
some just you know, some phenomenal stuff, you know in
Glorious Bastard's Reservoir Dogs, pulp fiction. I mean, he's great stuff.
He's another one though he's an outlier. He's he's very

(01:24:49):
very smart, he's very gifted. He you know, he still
likes screenplays out long handed, a square deal notebook. Okay,
So he's a different kind a guy, and he's made
his own path. He's not somebody that I would emulate writing,
because there aren't. There are a lot of people that
try and they just don't get.

Speaker 4 (01:25:10):
Away with it. They can't pull it off.

Speaker 5 (01:25:12):
He's a very difficult guy to try and copy, not
copy like rip off, but to try and emulate his style.
He's a he's a really difficult guy to do that
on you know there are it'd be like it'd be
like trying to write poetry like E.

Speaker 4 (01:25:27):
Cummings.

Speaker 5 (01:25:27):
You know me up it does out of the floor quietly,
stare a poisoned mouse, And now I lose it?

Speaker 4 (01:25:33):
Who asks, you know, what have I done? You wouldn't have?

Speaker 5 (01:25:36):
Okay, all in lowercase, no punctuation. You know, Cormack McCarthy,
same thing. Go read James Joyce, you know, go read
one of the Cormack McCarthy books. Where's the punctuation? Did
the printer lose all the period that gavas that you know,
there isn't any So why can he do that?

Speaker 4 (01:25:55):
Well, he blazed his own way and he's phenomenal.

Speaker 5 (01:26:00):
Okay, so you know, do you want to go be
the next corner at McCarthy and go turn a book
into your publisher that has no punctuation marks? Probably not
a good idea. It's just like copying Shane Black. There's
a conversation in my screenwriting group brought up by a
pro today this morning about how a producer wanted him

(01:26:21):
to add back a bunch of unshootable commentary into the
script that didn't have any well, traditional wisdom says, And
I wrote a post going to my book, you know,
on Sally Bigfoot. I wate this big scenario about Sally
Bigfoot and her family, okay, about unshootable garbage in somebody's
head that you can read on the page, and then

(01:26:43):
when ends up there, so I write this big, long
thing about Sally Bigfoot and it's like a page and
a half long, and then what somebody could actually shoot
from that script is like five words one line long,
because none of the rest is shootable.

Speaker 4 (01:26:58):
Okay, Well, there was just a.

Speaker 5 (01:27:00):
Conversation that strangely, a producer was asking this professional, multi
produced guy, novelist. I'm not going to name him here
now for certain reasons, but this guy has multiple films
out and he turned in a nice titleing script. He's
an action writer. And the producer said, you know, this

(01:27:20):
is crap. What are you giving me? I'm not saying
he said, it's crap. Okay, he said, I'm not happy
with this. What are you doing here? I want a
bunch of commentary and other stuff you know built around here.
And he said, you know why you can't film any
of that.

Speaker 4 (01:27:33):
He said, yeah, that's great. It's the exact opposite of
traditional wisdom.

Speaker 5 (01:27:38):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (01:27:40):
He think he asked to write.

Speaker 5 (01:27:41):
Stuff into the script to make it longer, to entertain
the reader, and to try and get a particular a
list actor. I can't mention who they think they can
lure in with this particular technique by writing a bunch
of stuff that they will never be able to film.
They will not change the film script one bit, but
that they want in there. Now. The producer's the boss.

(01:28:04):
If your producer tells you to do that, then you
do it. And that's the right answer for that project.
This is why you know rules are made to be broken.
Quentin Tarantino broke the rule. Shane Black broke the rules.
Cormac McCarthy broke the rules. He Cummings broke the rules.
James Joyce broke the rules. Uh, there's a guy. There's
a guy I can't remember his name, which is sad name,

(01:28:25):
who wrote a novel.

Speaker 4 (01:28:26):
It's also in my book called Gadsby.

Speaker 5 (01:28:30):
I think it's called and this writer Sadly again, I
can't remember his name, but he wrote an entire novel
fifty thousand words without using the letter E.

Speaker 4 (01:28:41):
In the whole book.

Speaker 3 (01:28:44):
So it's not the Great gas it's just Gatsby.

Speaker 5 (01:28:47):
No, it's Gadsby. Oh Gadsby, It's like Gadsby.

Speaker 4 (01:28:52):
So he managed to write.

Speaker 5 (01:28:54):
He managed to write an entire novel without using the
letter E in any word inside the covers. It appears
on the cover as they describe what he's done. Because
if you use the word novel, it is an e obviously,
So no, when they say, oh, this guy wrote a
novel without the letter E. Well, then you've used several
e's avenue on the cover. But if you go to
the actual story itself inside, nowhere does the letter HE appear.

(01:29:18):
Now you talk about writer's block, and that's that's what
my essay was about. Next time you think you have
writer's block. I've written a number of these. You know,
look at what Lucretius wrote.

Speaker 4 (01:29:30):
They rare.

Speaker 5 (01:29:30):
I'm not sure on the nature of things, this epic
poem that this guy wrote, you know, in a toga
in a cave with a candle, using squid ink in
a feather pen, and the type of Einsteiny and physics
and philosophy. You know, the incredible deep thinking this guy
did under these conditions. Abraham Lincoln studied law by candle. Okay,

(01:29:52):
that's that's that's tough. Okay. Uh, this guy did it,
you know, in like fifty four BC.

Speaker 2 (01:30:00):

Speaker 5 (01:30:09):
Writing in squid ink and he's talking about where the
universe ends. I mean, really, so you want to you
want to talk about writer's block, Uh, do something that's
that's a remarkable achievement, but certainly less than than that.
Look at at this Gad Gadspy book and again it's
going to be in my book.

Speaker 4 (01:30:27):
But the guy writes the whole novel without the letter.

Speaker 5 (01:30:31):
Next time you think you have writer's block, imagine writing
a novel without using one of the letters of the
alphabet a vowel.

Speaker 3 (01:30:40):
Yeah, And I want to link to that in the
show notes as well. Actually, uh, I'm gonna about that
about that novel too, Mike, because that is uh.

Speaker 4 (01:30:49):
I don't know if I don't get you the info
on him.

Speaker 3 (01:30:52):
Well, I was gonna look it up to when I
put it in the show notes because I you know,
I I don't know if that if that's an exercise
in bravery or or it just admit complete madness. Maybe
maybe both, right, but uh.

Speaker 5 (01:31:04):
I think it's the next It's brave and it's also stubborn.

Speaker 4 (01:31:07):
I mean, you've got to be let me see something
fine for you.

Speaker 5 (01:31:12):
You've got to be mentally tough.

Speaker 4 (01:31:16):
Too. It's gadsby G. A.

Speaker 5 (01:31:21):
Dsb Y nineteen thirty nine by Ernest Vincent Wright with
W R I G H T.

Speaker 4 (01:31:28):
Now.

Speaker 5 (01:31:30):
The sad thing is, you know nobody remembers this guy's name,
Ernest Vincent Wright.

Speaker 4 (01:31:34):
So did he take a gamble?

Speaker 5 (01:31:35):
You bet he did. He turned a novel into his
publisher with no ease in it. That's a gamble, okay.
And did his gamble payoff? I don't know what's the payoff?
His book got published. You can still read the book today,
you can. It's it's a novelty item. You can go
look it up and say, holy smokes, how does this

(01:31:56):
guy do this? And go skim the text? And he
doesn't read like a tradition book because he can't use
the word e He's got to write very strange, you know,
circuitous roots to avoid using ease.

Speaker 4 (01:32:10):
Was he a success? I don't know.

Speaker 5 (01:32:11):
I couldn't remember his name and I'm a writer. His
family didn't renew his copyright really, so yeah, I mean,
none of his heirs after he died, none of his
copyright ran. None of his heirs cared enough to pay
the copyright feast to recopyright re up the novel.

Speaker 3 (01:32:35):
Jesus, I know. So that's amazing. You know, you know,
we were talking about copyright stuff, and you know one
of the things that you mentioned too in the group,
you know, as you talked about copyrighting was about you know,
about the WGA and also about you know, the US
Patent Office, the Copyright Office, and I mean, you know,
all of that is is really good stuff. And when

(01:32:57):
I hear stuff like this happening, because I when I
hear stuff like this happened, or where I hear stuff
like you know what happened with Georgia Merrow and and
and the original Living Dead, I mean, you realize just
how important all this stuff is.

Speaker 5 (01:33:11):
Yeah, and that's another thing most uh, you know my
book will help with that. Shamelessly plugging the book yet again,
but I mean the I I'm I'm involved in the
project where they had they had some issues because somebody
tried to steal the project. There are other in my
in a year or so in my group, there have

(01:33:31):
been I used to have them written down something like
between nine and a dozen stolen scripts where people have
actually come in and said, you know, my script got
stolen and actually had some kind of substantial evidence in
and significant data and.

Speaker 4 (01:33:48):
Story behind it.

Speaker 5 (01:33:49):
Not just like oh I wrote a script and don't
damn that Star Wars they stole my script. No, nothing
like that, like actual matching dialogue. And I've had a happened.
I've had happen to me. I won't say who.

Speaker 4 (01:34:03):
I had another writer take some stuff from one of
my scripts.

Speaker 5 (01:34:07):
And there are, you know, in a group of less
than three thousand people. And it wasn't three thousand the
whole time the group started at one. Me, it's not advertising.
I reject about ninety percent of applicants. But in that
small group, in one year, we've got somewhere approaching a

(01:34:30):
dozen stolen scripts where people someone ripped off somebody else's work.
And there are trolls that go in these groups. That's
why I've got people very careful about this. They're trolls
that go in groups and they'll say, you know, producer,
looking for someone to write our story, and you know,
we need you to submit ten pages. Well what they

(01:34:50):
do is, you know, and then we'll judge and we'll
pick who's going to get the writing assignment. Well, Dave,
who gets the writing assignment? Tell me, guests they're running assignment.
They they assigned the ten pages that say it's the
one hundred page screenplay, so that's ten ten page divisions.
They assign it to twenty writers, so they have they

(01:35:13):
put up an ad in the group for you know,
no money. This is year you have to prove to
us who you are. You're gonna write ten pages. We'll
tell you what to write, and then we'll get back
if if we like it. Well, keep holding your breath.
We'll call you blue boy. You'll be in the corner
turning blue because they're never gonna call you no matter
how good you were, because what's gonna happen. They don't
have any money, and what's gonna happen is they're not

(01:35:35):
really looking to hire a writer. They're looking to steal writing.
So they give each they give ten ten scenes they
want written ten pages. Kind of a simplistic example, but
I'm making it easy for the math. One hundred page script,
they divide it into ten segments, however many scenes each.
You know, script's typically sixty eighty scenes. But let's stick

(01:35:57):
with this example. So you know, you're gonna write these
ten pages for us, and they give that same pages
to the same ten pages to two writers. Then they
take the next you know, eleven to twenty, and they
give that to two more writers, and they do the
same thing all the way down the line, so they
have twenty writers writing their one hundred page script twice,

(01:36:22):
so they What they then do is they then.

Speaker 4 (01:36:24):
Pick through it all. They pick what they like, what
they don't like.

Speaker 5 (01:36:29):
They throw it all together and they have maybe even
that guy rewrite the whole thing, the whole script sitting
they're written for him. They just rewrite it, pick what
they like, pick well that was the guy had a
great idea. Well, you know we'll keep that. We're screwing him,
so why not keep it. And then they get the
whole script written for him that only need to rewrite,

(01:36:50):
and they pay nothing. And you know, these people aren't scrupulous.
This happens all the time in writing groups. You know,
send me a writing sample, send me, send me, you know,
ten pages of my original script. Here's the story. You
give me the first ten pages, so you know those
are those are all pitfalls, not copywriting. You want to

(01:37:13):
register with w g A you got an extra twenty bucks. Sure,
register with WGA. Is your script copyright protected? Absolutely not.
WGA serves a lot of good functions. The script Registry
is uh does not take the place of copyright. It's
it's it's the It works as some evidence of when

(01:37:36):
something was created, not a copyright. Don't even get into
federal court with a WJA registration on a copyright case. So,
you know, beginning writers need to learn that kind of stuff.
And a lot of it's counterintuitive, a lot of it.
You know, people aren't going to tell you. They don't know.

Speaker 4 (01:37:54):
There's a lot of terrible information.

Speaker 5 (01:37:56):
I'll do it here. I'll kill the poor man's copyright
for you. Tell me it's copyright, write your script, fold
it up, seal it up really well in an envelope,
and mail it to yourself and there now your a
year protected right. No, absolutely not does nothing. It's never
protected anybody in any court that I can I can name,
or that anyone I know can name. It's absolutely worthless.

(01:38:18):
And yet this myth of the poor man's copyright persists.
These are things that you need to learn, and and
books like you know, David Trottier, Dave Trottier's Screenwriter's Bible
and others will address some of this stuff for you.
So you think you're going to be a screenwriter, spend
twenty bucks by a book, read it or's something. Yeah,

(01:38:38):
And I get into arguments. I get an arguments to
people in my group. I'm a I'm a lawyer and
they want to argue with me about the law. Hey,
tell me I'm wrong. I had somebody do it a
couple of days ago. She was, she was somebody asked
a question that ran into legal territory and didn't ask
it to me, just threw it up in the group.
And I'm not this person's lawyer, but you know, I
can give you throughout general advice to writers and stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:39:02):
So I answered the question and she's like.

Speaker 5 (01:39:05):
Contradicting my answer with the complete wrong answer. So I
tried to gently guide her back and now, no, no,
look at it, it's really this way right, And she
told me I was wrong. So you know, you really
writers need to have a basic understanding of certain things
just to survive and be viable. The writing is a
strange occupation. You have to be able to actually write stuff.

(01:39:28):
But then there's the business end of writing, which is
completely different from the creation end of writing. And again,
like David Trottier's book, and you know other books, they
actually will talk about both, and you Linda Ayrinson's book
talks talks about you know, completely story story theory and

(01:39:52):
structure and plotting the whole book.

Speaker 4 (01:39:54):
Genius genius book.

Speaker 5 (01:39:56):
Rick Toskin's book talks about playwriting seminars too.

Speaker 4 (01:40:00):
He talks a lot about the business.

Speaker 2 (01:40:02):

Speaker 5 (01:40:12):
And his very practical guide. He analyzes plays, he bridges
the gap between playwriting and screenwriting. And then he talks
about the business of you know, Okay, you're sitting in
your in your room over your garage in Kenesaw, Georgia,
churning out this stuff. Isn't it great? Oh? You love it?
And what are you gonna do with it? No one's

(01:40:33):
ever gonna read it if it doesn't leave the garage, right, Yeah,
very true. So there's a business set. And if you're
let's say you're an idiot savat, let's say you're you know,
a beautiful mind, you're this gifted mathematician, or you know,
if this guy was in a cave in Afghanistan scribbling
the most brilliant mathematics anyone had ever seen, all over
the cave walls, using you know, burnt bone and uh,

(01:40:58):
scratching with a and you know, highlighting with a with
a piece of u ashed out stick and a little
blood dot here and there.

Speaker 4 (01:41:09):
No one's ever going to see it.

Speaker 5 (01:41:10):
Right, So the most brilliant mathematician in the world, no
one knows who he is, he ends up, you know,
he he demises, and then you know, three thousand years later,
someone finds his cave art and recognizes at his high
level mathematics, which is wonderful. And you know everyone else,
all the uninformed, think it's cave art. You know, look

(01:41:33):
at this, Let that some let add some fags to this.

Speaker 4 (01:41:36):
Right, and modifying the formulas.

Speaker 5 (01:41:38):
Okay, so you know there's a business send to this too,
unless you're going to be a pure hobbyist and just
write this stuff for your wife or your spouse, your grandma,
your dad, your mom. Oh look how great this is.
Give it to your kids. There there needs to be
a goal, and that's the business end. And so like

(01:42:00):
the books like I said, Playwriting Seminars to two point
zero and the Screenwriter's Guide, a Screenwriter's Bible, those are
books that discuss the business end as well. Okay, books
like Aaronson's is, you know, focused all on structure and
plot and story function, character function and all those things

(01:42:23):
to an extreme depth, like biblical depth. It's that in depth,
but it really doesn't. There's some in there, but it
really doesn't approach the business as much. Your cut too
is showing by T.

Speaker 4 (01:42:34):
TJ.

Speaker 5 (01:42:35):
Alex I recommend. I think there's a little business in
there too, but that's not why I go to that book.
So you know, you need to learn you need to
learn the business stuff too. And that bridge is a
knife gap to contest, which you mentioned earlier.

Speaker 4 (01:42:48):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:42:49):
Yeah, And one thing I want to ask Mike is
have you ever I mean I wanted to obviously ask
this because you know we're talking about books again. Have
you ever read any of the like the Big three
or four books that sort of come across you know,
everyone sort of comes across them, and those books obviously
screenplay by sid Field, Uh, save the Save the Cat Story?

(01:43:10):
Have you read any of those books?

Speaker 5 (01:43:14):
Let me be as fair as I can be. I
I read Save the Cat. Save the Cat is an approach.
It's extremely formulaic. You need to know it because a
lot of studio execs will be expecting, you know, Save
the Cat story beats and they'll go to, you know,
page sixty seven of your script, page twelve of your script,

(01:43:37):
page you know twenty four of your script, page five
of your script, and they're going to be looking for story.
Save the cat, story beats that. Blake Snyder, by all,
by all reports a wonderful guy who died young. It's
a shame. Supposed to be a great.

Speaker 4 (01:43:56):
Guy, and he wrote two of the worst movies ever written.

Speaker 5 (01:43:59):
You know, blank check or shoot a Stop or my
Mom Will Shoot, which could have torpedoes of uster. Stallone's
career dodged a bullet on that one. So you know.
That book was an analysis done by Snyder over a
great deal of time looking at looking for a formula
common theme as thread running through the most successful and

(01:44:21):
admired movies, and he distilled it down into a formula,
just like a log line formula distills everything down and
you start plugging your stuff in to get a good
log line. Well, at some point, not every film has
a log line. You can write with a standard log
line formula. Once you understand what you're trying to accomplish,
you may want to vary from the formula for a

(01:44:43):
particular project because you may not be able to capture
the log line well in twenty five words written, you
know so and so must do this, or you know
and beat such and such villain or this will happen,
you know, blah blah. Okay, so that may not be
the best approach for a movie that that you're working on.

(01:45:05):
And so yeah, I've read Save the Cat. I think
Save the Cat tends to put writers in a box
and it makes you stick to story beats that people
pull their hair out. Oh my god, I added a
scene in my Save the Cat moment, my dark Night

(01:45:26):
of the Soul moment moved and now it's you know,
for pages past.

Speaker 4 (01:45:30):
Where it's supposed to be.

Speaker 5 (01:45:31):
Oh my god, I'm gonna jump off the roof. No,
tell your story, Tell your story and learn what Save
the Cat is. In case you have somebody that really
wants the beats to line up and you're writing for them,
well then maybe you've got to break out Save the Cat.
As far as the other ones, you know, did Field
and all, I've started to read some of them. I

(01:45:52):
find a lot of their stuff. Yes they're acknowledged the experts.
Yes they're much better known than I am. Of course,
I'm just a guy. You know, they're famous. Well, a
lot of their stuff is very philosophical and kind of
hard to put your finger on exactly what they're saying,
and how do I apply this to my script? So
you know, I look at some of the stuff and
didn't find it immediately helpful, so I ignored it. I

(01:46:16):
taught myself, and you know that's you know, there are conventions,
there are rules, and once you learn them, you can
also learn to break them and get away with it
if you know what you're doing.

Speaker 4 (01:46:29):
And as far as.

Speaker 5 (01:46:30):
Those guys go, some of the most most well read writers,
screenwriters I know that have read every single one of
those books. They can quote you from the books and
tell you what page number is on They've never written
a good script. There was there was one guy in
my group who's no longer a member, who's any social guy.

(01:46:50):
Threw him out, But that's an aside, and he just
incredible knowledge on all these all these writers theories, and
you know all you know McKee and Fidfield and you
know every other uh, every other theoretical uh theoretician on storytelling.

Speaker 4 (01:47:15):
And by the way, Aaronson also.

Speaker 5 (01:47:18):
Is big on that, except she wrote a book that's
a very practical nuts and bolts guide.

Speaker 4 (01:47:21):
That is is it's not all just theory. It's loaded
with theory, but it gives you.

Speaker 5 (01:47:28):
Guidelines to actually fix the engine. Okay, they tell you
how to build the engine, tell you what the engine is,
and then it'll let you put the engine together.

Speaker 4 (01:47:36):
A lot of these guys will say, let's talk about.

Speaker 5 (01:47:39):
An engine, and you know, before long you're sitting there
in a yoga position, staring out at a little plant
growing by itself in the desert. Okay, like then in
the art of motorcycle maintenance, right, yeah, So you know,
there's practical and there's impractical, and there's there are people
that write all kinds of great stuff and I can't
I'm not knocking these these great you know, well known

(01:48:01):
philosophical guys like the Key and Field. I haven't read them.
I've skinned little bits of him and said, you know what,
this isn't answering my question, or this isn't for me,
and maybe for you. I'm not saying it isn't for you.
It could well be for you. My book isn't going
to be for everybody. That's for damn sure. So you know,

(01:48:23):
find your approach that works and stick to it. But
the guy that I was talking about a minute ago,
he bloviated endlessly in the group and everything. Oh this
guy knows everything. Oh my god, he's the best expert anywhere,
and he really didn't know a lot.

Speaker 4 (01:48:38):
It was incredibly impressive.

Speaker 5 (01:48:39):
And then one day he came into the group and
he said, I've been doing this twenty years and I've
never finished a script. Can you guys help me. I'm
not kidding. I could show you the post. I mean,
so this guy, this guy could quit you chapter and

(01:49:00):
verse from Sidfield McKee, from any any but you know,
the the hero's journey.

Speaker 4 (01:49:07):
You know all the different.

Speaker 5 (01:49:10):
Theories and story methods of writing, and there are a
lot of different people that have you know, the two
hundred and thirty seven steps of the Hero and all
these other approaches. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong
with those. They may be the best thing ever for you,
but they may not work for me.

Speaker 4 (01:49:26):
You got to find what works for you.

Speaker 5 (01:49:28):
And so this guy could tell you what anybody wrote
about anything, very convincingly. And you know, six months later
you find out the guy has never finished the script.

Speaker 3 (01:49:41):
I mean, yeah, that's I wonder. You know, it's almost
like a fear of failure to start or something. I mean,
but then again, twenty years I mean, wow, I mean
that is just maybe he just maybe he's got a
ton of screenplays started but never actually finished.

Speaker 2 (01:49:58):
We'll be right back. A word from our sponsor, and
now back to the show.

Speaker 3 (01:50:07):
Really, you've never owned sort.

Speaker 5 (01:50:08):
Of one that's well on, one screenplay worked on over
ten years, never finished it. You know, I knocked out.
I knocked out a rewrite in five days that was accepted.
Ninety nine out of one hundred pages were accepted. First pass.
I got some notes. They said, we want to change
a couple of things on this one page that may

(01:50:29):
cascadeness something else. Can you do that for us? I
said sure. I rewrote it in about ten minutes. I
spent about twelve hours rereading the script, thinking about everything,
making sure that I wasn't setting myself up for a jackpot,
a story hoole, a continuity. Ear couldn't figure out anything
that was affected by this in any way. And when

(01:50:50):
ahead and turned it in and they said, oh my god,
we love it. You're done.

Speaker 3 (01:50:54):
Yeah, you know, I want to do a guy Mike
he couldn't write ten pages in three months, and uh yeah,
I and he wanted to be a screenwriter, And I said,
you got it. Turn in three or ten pages at
least ten pages, and I give him three months to
do it, and because each month I would check back in,
because that's what you had to do to join the
one writer's group, was that you had to actually have

(01:51:16):
written something. And I said, just show us something. I said,
write ten pages. And the first month I didn't do it.
My wife, my wife, and.

Speaker 5 (01:51:24):
I told you got it.

Speaker 3 (01:51:26):
And in a second month, another excuse, third month, and
finally I said, you know, I don't think your heart
is into this. I think your brain is. I think
you want that, that notoriety. And then when we want
that exactly, And I have a whole post on this.

Speaker 5 (01:51:41):
I have a whole post on you know, staring at
the blank page and being able to put anything fucking
commit write something. You're not a writer if you don't write.
So I have a whole essay on this that people
found very useful, and with seven or eight different bullet
points about what what is really going to happen in
your life? What is going to go wrong if you

(01:52:02):
write a piece of shit? What is really going to
happen to you? If you sit there and you hack
away at your keyboard and you write just a piece
of roadkill, a dog wouldn't eat. Guess what, nothing happened.
You can rewrite it. You could start over three years later,

(01:52:25):
after you've written two good ones. You'll laugh at your
first one, and maybe you'll have ideas to go back
and fix it. But that fear of writing, Like I said,
I wrote a whole essay on this. It was very
well received. If you be in the book fear of writing,
if you don't put it down on the page. The
one thing I guarantee you is you will never get anywhere.

(01:52:45):
If you don't actually commit to write, You will never
accomplish anything. Mike.

Speaker 3 (01:52:51):
That is so true. And you know, Mike, we've been
talking for about an hour and forty five minutes now, Wow,
I haven't even Yeah, well I have a timer writing
to me. How long everything? But but so that's the
other reason, I know, you know, Mike, I don't want to,
you know, take up any more of your time. I
know you know. You know you've got a million things

(01:53:11):
going on as well. So you know, Mike. Inclosed, and
I just want to ask you one one final question.
Is there anything that we didn't sort of talk about
that you wanted to get a chance to or is
there anything that you wanted to say to sort of
put a period at the end of this whole conversation.

Speaker 5 (01:53:26):
Yeah, every writer is different.

Speaker 4 (01:53:27):
What works for me works for me.

Speaker 5 (01:53:29):
That's a good place to start to look at, but
it doesn't mean it's going to work for you. If
you find a method that works for you, no matter
how many people tell you it's wrong. If your work
product is good, it doesn't matter how you get there,
as long as you're not stealing it. Do whatever works
for you. Learn the rules, the conventions of the trade.

(01:53:52):
Some of them people can't even say why it's done
that way. It's just done that way. Some of the
rules you're gonna not be able to break, and some
of the rules you will be able to break. When
anyone tells you absolutely, oh this is wrong, that's wrong,
absolutes usually don't work. Learn a way to write that
works for you, and use that method. It probably won't

(01:54:16):
work for me. Mine may not work for you. But
there isn't necessarily a right way or wrong way you
need to get a high quality finished product out. If
you stand on your head and gibber and shriek and
write upside down left handed, and that gets it done.

Speaker 4 (01:54:33):
Go for it.

Speaker 5 (01:54:34):
That's what you need to do, and you need to write.
A lot of people say, right, every day, you know,
write three pages every day.

Speaker 4 (01:54:43):
You have to where you're not a writer, Well, I'm
not a writer. I don't write every day.

Speaker 5 (01:54:47):
I write every day in my group, but as far
as writing content, I don't.

Speaker 4 (01:54:51):
So that's another rule.

Speaker 5 (01:54:53):
You know writers write every day, Well, thumb writers write
every day. There are plenty of writers that don't. I
write when i'm inspired, when I have great ideas, when
I'm on an assignment, if I don't have anything going on,
I don't feel like writing, and I sit down to write,
I'm going to write crap. Right, I'm not inspired, I'm
not motivated, I have no direction. Then without a goal,

(01:55:13):
I'm just going to meander along and write a bunch
of forgettable stuff that will end up in a folder
that I just wasted a day. Instead, focus before you
start to write. Common writer's errors. A new writer has
no idea what they have to say, what their voice is,
why they're writing. You need to try and discover your
own voice and figure out what you want to say.
You need to have something to say when you sit

(01:55:34):
down to write. I'll close on.

Speaker 3 (01:55:36):
That I couldn't agree more. Mike, Mike, where people find
you out online? Sorry, I know I said that was
the last question, but this is the last question where
people find you out online?

Speaker 5 (01:55:46):
No, my information's up on IMDb under Micha Lee Bierman.
Most of my projects are in development, which means unless
you have a pro you can't see them. But there's
plenty there my contact information. I'm also I can also
be reached through the Facebook group screenwriters who can actually
write if you're going to apply.

Speaker 4 (01:56:08):
I do vet people. I do not let people.

Speaker 5 (01:56:10):
Unless there's celebrities and they contact me separately, which has
happened a few times.

Speaker 4 (01:56:14):
I don't let people in using false.

Speaker 5 (01:56:16):
Names because deals are made in the group contracts form.
You need to use your real name, and you need
to show interest in writing. If I pull up your profile,
it's got a bunch of stuff about playing on the
Xbox and what's your favorite whiskey and what's your favorite
color Ferbie, You're probably not getting into the group. So

(01:56:38):
those are a couple of ways to find me in
my emails online at IMDb and everyone.

Speaker 3 (01:56:43):
I will link to all of that in the show notes.
And again, I just want to say that Mike's group
is phenomenal. It is the best screenwriting group that I'm
aware of on Facebook, and it is just everybody in
there is always doing awesome things. And that's sort of
what I want to always want from a a screenwriters group,
you know, is people actually doing things. There's actually like

(01:57:03):
three screenwriting groups I'm a part of on Facebook and
and finally you know, they're they're great. They're yours. Mike
Screenwriting You has one, and Scott Myer's going to Stories
another and those three.

Speaker 5 (01:57:14):
Sure, he's great. He's a Facebook friend of mine. I
don't really know him very well, but he's great, no
question about it. Yeah, what one, go ahead.

Speaker 3 (01:57:22):
I'm sorry. I was just gonna say those three are
what actually keep me on Facebook, because otherwise I'd just
be like, there's nothing really keeping me here.

Speaker 5 (01:57:30):
Hey, one finals thought, shameless plug. You can look for
my daughter and uh look for me. I'm I'm finishing
with co writer co producer Ramsey Stoneburner, exec producer Guy
Francisco Poland and associate producer Craig Talis. We're working on
a feature film called The Shoes, which we've finished, uh

(01:57:52):
shooting about two thirds of it. We've just added nay
list person and uh we're going to be finishing that
up in the next couple of months. So got a
couple of films in development, but that one is one
that is directly at least partially under my control.

Speaker 3 (01:58:09):
Oh awesome, fantastic, Mike. And you know, I looked forward
to seeing you know everything you're up to, and I
know we'll be talking in the group. Michael e Berman. There,
I finally got it out. I have a head cold,
by the way, that's why I sound so terrible.

Speaker 5 (01:58:20):
But uh, oh you actually sound great and no idea.

Speaker 3 (01:58:23):
Oh good. Yeah, that's why I'm having some trouble talking.
I can't really breathe my nose too well. But it's
been a pleasure having you on, Mike, and I want
to say thank you so much, and again I will
be talking to you very very soon.

Speaker 5 (01:58:35):
Thank you so much for the opportunity.

Speaker 4 (01:58:36):
I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 3 (01:58:37):
I'm glad you did. My friend take care.

Speaker 5 (01:58:40):
Okay, bye bye.

Speaker 2 (01:58:41):
I want to thank Dave so much for doing such
a great job on this episode. If you want to
get links to anything we spoke about in this episode,
head over to the show notes at Bulletproof screenwriting dot
tv for it Slash for forty eight. Thank you so
much for listening. Guys, as always, keep on writing no
matter what. I'll talk to you soon.

Speaker 1 (01:58:58):
Thanks for listening to the bullet Proofs Screenwriting podcast at
Fullip Group screenwriting dot tv

Speaker 5 (01:59:08):
MHM

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