Somewhere in the book Syd talks about someone who says that we only have one or two stories and we keep telling them in different forms. Syd himself has been writing about 'Screenplay' and different ways to approach it. This one is about his journey through four decades of films as a child of Hollywood, a documentary film maker, a film critic, head of story department, a screenwriter, a teacher of screenplay writing and an author of screenplay writing.
One of the first things I did was to write down all the wonderful movies he refers to in the book and hope to see some of them. There are many nuggets that he mentions here and there that I wrote down. His journey in brief as I remember it - grew up in Hollywood, a family where there were people working in Hollywood, still not too inclined and wanted a college education, registered for a course in dentistry, somehow got drawn to plays and acted, got drawn to films and got into film school. His first job was in Wolper Productions thanks to his Uncle Sol who was a well established cameraman, and he worked and learned many aspects of film making. Then to screenwriting. Back to working with Cinemobile where he researched hundreds of scripts to pick the right ones, went into writing himself. Then taught a course on screenplay writing at Sherwood Oaks and fully got into the teacher (student) mode and then wrote the books on Screenplay writing which are his biggest claim to fame. He is undoubtedly the first name anyone recommends to read when learning about screenplay.
There's a quote by Renoir (the film guy) who tells him that 'a part is like going to a store and buying something that fits. But then you have to alter it a bit here, a bit there until it fits right'. - It could very well be for a book, a movie, anything creative.
Writing a screenplay is always work in progress. It never ends.
Avoid the cliche.
Bring yourself to the character.
Art should offer the viewer the chance of merging with the creator.
Art is in the doing of it (as opposed to talking about doing it).
Movies are stories told in pictures. Think in pictures, not dialogue.
Character is set up visually.
We write only one or two stories in our life.
The main genres - action, adventure, thriller, war, western, noir, love stories
A strong opening is necessary. Strong opening scene, Grab attention in the first few minutes.
Great art comes from distillation of personal experience - Renoir
There's this bit he discusses with a poet friend of his - Graves - about inspiration. Graves says he knew of a writer who would keep a rotten apple near him when he wrote for inspiration.Graves himself would fall madly in love and break up and in the aftermath would write.
From Joseph Campbell's A Hero with a Thousand Faces Syd finds the format - hero is placed in a situation, faces a series of obstacles, he fights them to get what he wants and achieves a higher state of consciousness, he changes on the inside and the outside, a symbolic transformation of death. His journey is one of acceptance of his fate, be it life or death.
From his discussions with Sam Pekinpah -
The character is obsessively driven to achieve his goal. He follows his dharma - the path of righteous action.
One thing Syd points out when observing the work of a director - that he uses the contradiction of visual image, showing what's not expected
Hang the story around a centrepiece event. Build action up to that and everything else is a result of that.
A tense moment can be followed by a humorous episode in order to break the tension.
Create an emotional weakness and then create a physical ailment that reflects that emotional weakness.
Infuse the characters with different shades of conflict. Conflict can be external or internal.
Without conflict there is no action, without action there is no character change,without character there is no story.
A film is like getting on a roller coaster, its always moving.
From Cinemobile days -
Act I sets up the story and introduces the characters.
Film is behavior.
You have 30 seconds to tell the story - Pitchman's pitch
A good idea needs good execution.
Script ratings- whammos, every ten pages.
Taking full ownership for his submissions. Did I like it? If so, why? If I didn't, why not? A good screenplay normally has a good visual style, an interesting premise, and 3 dimensional characters. One needs to know whats the story about? Who is it about? What's going on?
Syd developed his paradigm of three Acts - Acts 1 (Beginning, set up, plot point 1 at 2-30 pages),Act 2 (The Middle, Confrontation, mid point at page 60, plot point at 80-90 pages), Act II (End, resolution)
The most exciting part of the creative process is the moment that lies between confusion and clarity.
What is the character but the determination of the incident, what is the incident but the illumination fo character.
Writing - address the inner critic - So what? Feel free to write without worrying about perfection.
It does not matter how you write. Just that you write. Just tell the story.
Identify the idea, find the pictures that illustrate the ideas, build a story around them.
...
The films he mentions that I hope to see -
Ordinary people
The Big Easy
Witness
Dances with Wolves
Terminator II
Bridges of Madison County
Courage Under Fire
Groundhog Day
Usual Suspects
Sliding Doors
Magnolia
Wonder Boys
Traffic
The Perfect Storm
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Out of Sight
Boogie Bights
Hard Eight
Hustler
Body heat
An Unmarried Woman
Absence of Malice
An affair to remember
Serpico
Manhattan
Annie Hall
Body and Soul
All the King's Men
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Three Days to Condor
American Graffiti
Jeremiah Johnson
Mean Streets
Alice Don't Live Here Anymore
The Killing
Paths of Glory
His Girl Friday
The Philadelphia Story
Sullivan's Travels
Red River
The Wild Bunch
Woman of the Year
Goddess
Singin in the rain
An American in Paris
Duel in the Sun
From here to Eternity
Notorious
The Postman always rings twice
Lady from Shanghai
Star Wars
Rules of the game
...
Nice read as always. I started reading this book almost three months ago when I went to Goa and put it aside, even though it was a very interesting read. It's part of A's collection - I have no idea where she got these books from.
Now to get to the movies.
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