TOUGH LOVE SCREENWRITING -- PART ONE 

"WHAT'S THE MOVIE?"

by John Jarrell

When it comes to craft, I'm continually amazed at how many writers -- bright, hard-working, some with real talent -- overlook the primary questions centering the core of any good screenplay.

Problems with non-starter, D.O.A. scripts can often be C.S.I.'d straight back to ground zero, where the writer failed to install a bulletproof foundation and begin building from a place of real strength.  I'm not talking about story structure here.  I'm addressing the birth of your concept or premise itself.

From the moment of inception, that first, glorious instant when you cook up a fantastic idea for a film, resolving with every ounce of determination to go the distance and write the hell out of it, you need to address certain fundamentals.  Some of what follows may seem self-evident and rudimentary as hell, but like the rest of my advice in Tough Love Screenwriting, I urge you to consider it from a fresh perspective, as if hearing it for the first time.  

Trust me when I say you ignore their impact at your own peril.  Ignorance in these departments is assuredly not bliss, and some serious consideration here could save you months, even years, of inevitable rejection down the line.

"What's the Movie"? 

This is perhaps the most common question posed to writers in Hollywood.  More than just "what's it about", this asks you to specify what's new, different or wholly unique about your story or concept?  What separates and elevates it above the millions of other films and scripts already out there?  Further, who's the potential audience for your film?  Kids under 20?  Adults over 45?  This line of questioning is a direct invitation to make it easy for Industry folks by identifying the awesome key concept or premise that will sell your film.

Why is this of such paramount importance?  Because it points directly at the heart of a project's marketability; and if the Powers That Be can't figure out how to successfully market it, they sure as hell aren't going to buy the fucker in the first place. 

Sorry if this is a brutal awakening, but the movie business is precisely that -- a business, first and foremost.  Everything else is secondary, especially how profound or Tarantino-cool you think your screenplay is.  The money people expect to see profit potential in your project or they simply won't waste their time.  Money Talks, Bullshit Walks, bottom line.  

Go ahead and get mad, rant, blog and text about how unjust and unfair this is, how it cripples "cinematic art" -- but it won't make the slightest damned difference.  You're going to "come to Jesus" on this point sooner or later if you want to participate as a professional screenwriter.  My advice?  Might as well take your diapers off and enter the acceptance phase now.  Don't waste a good six years huffing and puffing like I did as a baby writer.  Begin thinking and creating like a professional now.

Does this mean there isn't room for true creativity, passion, meaning, etc. in contemporary screenwriting?  Don't be dim.  But what it does say is all that wonderful, contemplative, top-drawer stuff needs to be encapsulated within an entertaining, marketable movie or nobody's going to give it a shot.  I like to call this the "aspirin in applesauce" approach, based on the old-school practice of fooling babies into swallowing their medicine by stashing it inside a spoonful of Gerber's.

Cases in point -- American Beauty and Fight Club.  Both supremely entertaining while also making more profound statements than perhaps any other films of their era.  So clearly, it can be done.  But first and foremost, to the people who both pay to make them and pay to see them, movies are entertainment.  Any lasting messages or deeper subtexts are on you, a bonus made possible by your superior writing and storytelling within those fairly broad constraints.

So, again... What makes your story fresh and different from all the other scripts out there?  Exactly whom is the potential buyer/audience for the movie you've written?

What's fresh and different about Christopher Nolan's Inception? 

Christ, what isn't fresh about Inception?  A unique blending of both sci-fi and heist genres, it introduces a killer new concept -- that of corporate espionage taking place inside an individual's subconscious.  The story plays out within multi-tiered, interconnected "dream spaces" -- somewhat like 3-D chess -- with actions on any given level having an immediate trickle-down effect on the others.  Brilliant concept and brilliant storytelling which also insured brilliant visuals. 

Who's the potential audience?  Pretty much everyone -- plenty of action for the 15-to-25 demographic, plenty of brain-power for the 25-and-over crowd.

What about 28 Days Later?  Alex Garland and Danny Boyle's take singlehandedly reinvented and resuscitated the zombie flick.  First, by introducing "turbo zombies" -- new creatures far more terrifying than any turtle-slow, blue-faced version having come before.  Next, by visually examining the sheer physical scope of a society's collapse (utilizing the actual streets of London) and then more deeply personalizing it via an insane level of human detail (think the "missing persons" board filled with all those tragic handwritten notes).

This stunning new take tracked how you would experience a post-apocalyptic world emotionally and gave you the sickest, most fucked-up zombies you'd ever seen.  Classic cake-and-eat-it-too scenario.  The audience?  Any genre horror or action lover from ages 15 to 50.

My friends, you need to be able to verbalize these same specifics as they apply to your own project without hesitation, the instant anyone asks.  If you haven't come up with slam dunk answers (or don't actually know yet) you'd best get busy and puzzle 'em out.  You will be quizzed on this -- by agents, managers, execs, producers; basically anyone along the food chain in a position to help get your script where you want it to go.  

Not to sound all Liam Neeson/Taken extreme about it (whoops, too late), but either start thinking and strategizing like a professional at the beginning or risk writing and pushing a stillborn screenplay with zero chance of survival.  

This excerpt from Tough Love Screenwriting Copyright © 2014 used by permission. 

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John Jarrell is a produced screenwriter (Romeo Must Die, The Man With The Iron Fists II) with twenty-plus years in the Industry.  He's written films for most the major studios and worked with many of Hollywood's best producers and directors, including Jeffrey Katzenberg, Joel Silver, John Woo & Terence Chang, Neil Moritz, Mike Medavoy, Carl Beverly and Warren Littlefield.  

John is a member of the WGA Screen Credits  Committee.