TOUGH LOVE SCREENWRITING -- PART THREE

"WHAT'S THE WORLD?"

By John Jarrell

Back in Part One, we began creating a bulletproof foundation for your script from the moment of inception.  Now we address the second primary question all good screenwriters must ask themselves -- 

"What's The World?" 

All great movies take us into unique, uncommon worlds -- which is one of the many reasons we enjoy them so much.  They give us fascinating glimpses of awesome new vistas, from strange alien planets (Pitch Black), ancient civilizations (Apocalypto) and Dark Ages dungeons (Black Death), to the smaller, more intimate universes like retirement homes (Cocoon), Chinese restaurants (Eat Drink Man Woman), the inside of a coffin (Buried) or an ecstasy dealer's crib (Layer Cake)-- not to mention the racist statutory rapist neighbors' house right next door (Alan Ball's superb Towelhead).

Choosing your world is one of the few arenas in life where size really isn't everything, just as writing something with commercial appeal doesn't necessarily handcuff you to big-budget eye-candy and CG up the wazoo. 

Far from it.  John Sayles' coal mining camp in Matewan is far more fascinating to this writer than S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters in The Avengers.  The claustrophobic apartment of an unstable, supercomputing math genius in Darren Aronofsky's Pi contains more compelling questions than all three (or is it four now?) Iron Man pictures -- and the Transformers series -- put together.  Turning everything up to "11" will not make a crappy script better.  Somnolescent slackers Man of Steel and Pacific Rim (among a myriad of others) offer abundant forensic evidence on this point.

You'll find that familiar worlds are endlessly re-presented in both film and television, for obvious reasons -- day-to-day life on Planet Earth is generally centered around commonplace occupations shared by everyday people.  For folks living in, say, Los Angeles, these would include struggling actors, DMV workers, hair stylists, U.S. Postal Employees, power yoga instructors and massage therapists, etc.  But just because these worlds are ordinary doesn't exempt them from needing unique portrayals.

Make sure you come up with a fresh take guaranteed to intrigue the reader - no matter what the size or scope of the universe you're scripting, from startlingly broad and complex, to the small and sublime.  Help your audience experience your setting through curious, newborn eyes.  Make your choice captivating, even for the die-hard film-fanatic that's seen tens of thousands of movies by now.

Take cop shows and movies.  Millions have been made over the past hundred years, the gangster/crime genre itself one of very first ever committed to celluloid.  We're all so well-acquainted with these stock, paint-by-number worlds we're actually numb to them now.  We blindly accept everything from police routines and procedures to the accuracy of the art direction in cinematic station houses based solely on faith -- even though most of us have never visited our local police station.  Point being, the cinematic cop world is very familiar terrain for 21st Century audiences, however realistic or unrealistic its portrayal may actually be.

But we're not looking for familiar, are we?  Fresh and intriguing is the gold standard for aspiring writers.

Given that, what sets a film like Training Day apart in the world department?   What makes it so much more bewitching and compelling than any of its police thriller peers?

For starters, much of it plays out within Alonzo's (Denzel Washington) "GRide"   -- a pimped-out, late-model Monte Carlo.  With a maximum of imagination, writer David Ayer fashions Zo's wheels as a perfect point of entry into his script's world -- that of a corrupt, mobile, undercover L.A.P.D. street Narc.   

Quite literally, the G-Ride itself becomes Hoyt's (Ethan Hawke) world for the length of his training day, and the vehicle by which he's ferried across a figurative River Styx, deep into the ugly and obscene inner-workings of Rampart-style L.A. street policing he'd never imagined.

To my knowledge, we've never seen this particular take presented from quite this perspective before.  Sure, partners riding in cruisers are shown in every dime-a-dozen cop film and TV show, especially those set in So Cal.  But none of them so boldly refashioned the cruiser itself into the emotional epicenter for an epic battle of wills and worldviews between its two protagonists and an observational flashpoint through whose windshield we -- the audience, right alongside Hoyt -- process the brass-knuckles, no quarter/no condom, industrial-strength sights, sounds and throwdowns of L.A.'s street-level drug pushing.  

Totally bad-assed, right?  I mean, for all intents and purposes, Alonzo's GRide could be a flying saucer skimming Hoyt across the surface of an alien moon with all its bizarre lifeforms and hostile, unknown possibilities.  It's that colorful and our experience that unexpected.

Now that's the shit I'm talking about, brothers and sisters.  The kind of story choice that gives me massive screenwriter wood.  Taking a familiar world we assumed we already knew inside out/upside down and completely re-imagining and remaking it into something undeniably intriguing, special and unique.  Deep shit for film geeks like myself.  

The big question becomes what choice you'll make for your new script's world.  When cooking up your latest creation, what'll elevate and extend its reach far beyond what a jaded audience and the cynical reader are already expecting?

One of the best studio execs I ever worked with said something profound enough to stick with me through dozens of projects over the years -- 

"You've got to surprise people."

That's really the nut of it, short and sweet.  Hell, yeah, it means more work.  But if there's a time to expend that extra energy it's now, on the front end, while things can still be reworked organically -- not after you've wallpapered the town with your script only to come up goose eggs.

Let me strongly urge you to consider this wise exec's words when choosing your script's world... or prepare to pay the ultimate price for half-assing it and flying blind. 

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.