Notes (Part 1 of ... a lot)
A little short this week, as I'm typing this while on lunch in day 3 of voire dire in a Courtroom in LA.
There are two things I wish I'd learned earlier in my career. First: Never mistake a warning for a challenge. Second: Every note is the tragic result of an unmet need.
As we'll be talking about CATWOMAN below, this is a the perfect example of Never mistake a warning for a challenge. When I was brought on, the project had been wading through a decade of development. Daniel Waters, the original writer of BATMAN RETURNS and so the natural writer for a spinoff of the incredibly popular Michelle Pfieffer character, quit 8 years or so earlier. He had declared, so I was told, "this is an impossible movie."
Now, Older John knows a warning when he hears one. Younger John looked at that trackless swamp, marked by a post with a skull atop it, squared his shoulders and chuckled "Impossible? Maybe for YOU!" I may have given a cocky pulp hero "Ha-HA!" laugh. I don't know, I was drinking a lot back then.
As to the second idea, about notes ... When I was younger, I was, ah, not so great at taking notes on my script. Sometimes there was a collision between my vision of the work and the exec's vision of the work. Or both the exec and I agreed there should be a change -- an idea, a tone, or even a specific sequence -- but we just couldn't line the execution up.
You can train on how to handle these notes, and that's what we'll talk about below.
But to cover all the bases, there are other kinds of notes. There were more than a few times that the execs were assigned to developing properties or even whole genres they didn't care for, so their notes came from a place of disdain or unfamiliarity. During the two odd years that I was the fourth (fifth?) writer (credited writer?) on CATWOMAN, we repeatedly hit the problem that the execs in charge absolutely despised making superhero movies. Not only did they not like those films, they looked down on action movies in general. The only exec at WB at the time who got what we were supposed to be doing was Dan Lin, who of course went on to leave and become a rock star producer. That's often what good execs do. They leave and go make stuff. It's quite frustrating.
In one of the dozens of interminable meetings -- for a few months we were meeting every week -- I asked "Who here has actually paid to watch an action movie in the last year? Just to see it?" I raised my hand. Nobody else in the meeting raised their hand. To my young mind, I believed that I had just made my point. What I had actually done was move up the timetable of me being fired by three months.
More recently, I was discussing a fantasy project with an older male exec at a streamer, and he said "We just want to make sure this appeals to more than the nerd fringe." At which point I snapped, "AVENGERS ENDGAME grossed a half a billion dollars in one week, what in the name of Christ are you talking about?"
Okay, maybe I'm not that much better than I used to be. But the exec had cut his teeth on moody male antihero dramas of the golden age of cable. This guy trying to wrap his head around sci fi/fantasy streaming was like a dog staring at a ceiling fan.
A few years earlier I was consulting on someone else's fantasy pitch for a broadcast network. This show was based on very famous and worldwide best-selling IP. It was from a writer so good, so far out of my league that if he exploded, the sound would not reach me for five minutes. The network note, given in a hesitant voice after a banger of a pitch, was: "We just don't want it to be goofy. We don't want people to make fun of us." As if it would jeopardize their chance to get a date for prom.
By the way, "goofy" and "cool" are right next to each other. Like flavors in one of those old school cartons of neopolitan ice cream. They are inextricably linked, and if you're not willing to risk goofy, you'll never hit cool.
Then, sometimes the note is just a stupid note from an exec who, if they hadn't somehow finagled a way into a studio suite, would instead be a moderately successful Brentwood real estate salesperson. Not much you can do about this one, other than wall your emotions off and try to survive the process. If you're lucky they're clueless, unlucky if they're petty, and doomed if they're vindictive. But we make our pretend-y stories with other people's money, and sometimes that money comes with unpleasant people attached.
As to that first set of notes, though, when you're struggling with genuine partners, I like to shorten that great quote from psychologist Marshall Rosenberg: "Every criticism, judgment, diagnosis, and expression of anger is the tragic expression of an unmet need." Or the useful bit for us: "Every criticism ... is the tragic expression of an unmet need."
If we start from here, we're instantly more sympathetic, This mismatch is a tragedy! It is not an assault on our artistic genius! But to address a need, we need to identify a need.
The big thing here is to remember -- they want to enjoy reading the script. They want to be the hero who got a good thing made, they want to make good stuff for their own artistic satisfaction. Our readers do not go into this process (usually) wanting to not like the script. We are in theory solving a problem for them. Nobody stands over their plumber and thinks "I can't wait for this guy to fuck up."
Now if we go back to our previous newsletter about a script having a job, we'll remember that we talk a lot about feelings. This is the secret sauce right here, because it's the way in. When we get a note, it's often phrased as a pitch or a correction, deletion, an alt, etc. This is because good execs are usually taught to not just say "I don't like it." But most execs aren't writers, so the solve they're pitching sometimes isn't even addressing their own note, never mind the actual fix. Even pretty good, general notes like "Can we have more of X?" or "Can we cut down on Y" are one step removed from the actual note.
We discover the actual note with a very simple question: "What do you want to feel that you're not feeling?"
Because that's the real note. Our reader was tooling along, wanting to feel something, and they're not feeling it. The criticism, the unmet need, is parsed through technique and experience and all these craft phrases we use, but that's the real, primal deal.
Often we flail at solutions because the note was phrased as a craft note, around a particular bit of writing. And even when it's not pitched that way, that's often our goto solve. "I'll just adjust the dialogue, or bring another character in, I'll make it clearer" -- clarity won't matter if it's the wrong feeling.
I've lost count of the number of times in the last ten years I've unlocked a stalled script with that question. "I just want to feel this marriage still has a future" is a much better note to be working with than "How about they argue less and it's about smaller stakes and then they have sex?" which is not the same thing, not at all. The second note, we're chasing some version of the scene which exists in their head, and sometimes it doesn't even exist there, and so we're instead blindly aiming for a moving target.
Something as simple as "I want to be scared here and I'm not scared" is useful.
In short, whenever possible we want to get our notes expressed through feelings so we can execute them through craft.
I'm talking about exec notes here. Directors and actors come at the script from a different direction, specifically one of execution through their own lens. Those are much more complicated questions that we'll address later.
This framing works for our own rewrites, too. So often I've come across a scene that's hard to write, and it's not because of technique or exposition but because I, unconsciously, am not feeling what I want to feel. Often the preconceptions of the outline, or even earlier, our brainstorming sessions, locked in a version of the scene that just, in context of this verison of the script, does not work. The script is the script in front of us, not the script we had in our head back when our blood ran hot. If we don't want to write it, they're not gonna want to watch it.
This concept applies to cuts of the actual footage, too. Back all the way up. Start with feeling, cut to fix.
Reviews and Recommendations
RE:WRITING by Ben Blacker
For years now Ben Blacker's been running what I consider one of the top three podcasts for screenwriters, THE WRITERS PANEL. I only say "one of the top three" instead of "the best" out of an abundance of caution and respect for taste. Ben's a great writer, I've developed with him, he's got a giant archive of writers talking nuts and bolts about their craft. It's not one or two people speaking through their limited experience with the craft. No matter how talented the writers of that sort of podcast are, they come with their own blinders. That caution applies to this very newsletter, by the way.
But THE WRITERS PANEL is a general survey, including episodes devoted to the viewpoints from members of traditionally under-represented writer groups. If you're a young script monkey looking to get maximum value for your valuable time, then I bid you a fond farewell, and urge you to spend your time instead at Ben's joint. The best way to option it in its present form is through Ben's Substack, Re:Writing.
DIRECTING ACTORS by Judith Weston
I strongly recommend this book to every writer I work with, and I consider it a must-read before going on to your own directing career. Remember, the script has a job, and this book is one of the clearest windows into how your partners, the director and actors, see it fitting into their jobs. You've got to know what an actor's trying to do with the words when they ask you a question about a script, so you can give them a relevant answer.
ENDINGS: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE INSANELY GREAT by Micheal Arndt
Recommended by fellow LEVERAGE:REDEMPTION writer Josh Schaer, a 90 minute video essay on endings. Screenwriter Michael Arndt put this together when he started working on TOY STORY 3. For those of you who I may work with in the future: you will not be receiving perspicacious video essays about our craft from me. You will be receiving a first step in the contractually obligated 12 weeks. Just setting expectations properly.
But look folks, this is just another example that sure, YouTube and social media are chock full o'Nazis, but hey, you've also got geniuses sharing their hard won expertise.
https://youtu.be/gWHfsEJ5JJo?si=nZutbjInQRWOkNJP
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Newsletter may be delayed next week because of the holidays -- or maybe not! Let's see if I wind up on a jury.