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Go to tip # 318
317. It takes time to write a screenplay > Roland Emmerich - best known as the director of the epic blockbusters Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012 - would necessarily choose as his next project a story set in Elizabethan England. However, for nearly ten years, he has wanted to make a film with the Shakespeare authorship question as a backdrop - a yearning that is fulfilled with Anonymous. Emmerich first became fascinated with the Shakespeare authorship question after a conversation with screenwriter John Orloff, who had himself been studying the subject for a number of years and had written a draft of a screenplay, then titled Soul of the Age. Orloff says, "We actually met to talk about another project. When Roland asked me what else I was working on, I bit the bullet and told him about Soul of the Age." Orloff says he had been fascinated by the Shakespeare authorship question since first learning about the controversy as a 25-year-old graduate student 20 years ago. "My first thought was, 'Why had no one told me this?!'" he says. "My second thought was that this would make a fantastic film. It had everything - murder, sex, lies, betrayal - truly the stuff of Shakespearean drama." Read more
316. Writing about real-life events > "When my Mom passed away, there suddenly was this new person, this new Dad." That's how it was, and that's how it felt, for writer/director Mike Mills. Before there was Beginners, there were those real-life events. His recently widowed 75-year old father had an announcement to make to his son; in whatever time he had left on this earth, the elder Mills wanted to live as an out homosexual man. "He just started living this explosive new life," marvels Mills. "He became more emotionally alive than I'd ever seen him." Five months after his father's passing, Mills sat down to write, motivated at how crucial it was to capture that emotional state of "a kind of a fireworks-y exhilaration. Our time here is short. It's going to be gone fast. "You must voice it all. Whatever you're afraid of. Whatever you haven't done. Whatever you haven't been honest about. Whatever you haven't really bitten into. I felt like it was the only time to do it. I don't know if I would have been able to write Beginners if I hadn't been in mourning." Read more
315. The development process > From inception to the first day of principal photography, it would take almost five years before Tower Heist would fire on all cylinders. Grazer, Ratner and Murphy were in no rush, however, as they wanted to make sure that the project was tonally perfect. Commends Murphy of the man with whom he's worked on blockbuster hits such as The Nutty Professor and Nutty Professor II: The Klumps: "Brian has been my biggest collaborator throughout my career. We have similar sensibilities when it comes down to what a good movie is and the types of movies we're trying to make. We have a shorthand communication where I can tell him one of my ideas and he can help shape it into a screenplay." Since Murphy's pitch to Grazer and Ratner in '05, several incarnations of the project have come about. The development process has been a lengthy one, but the three men agreed that the film that they ultimately wanted to make should seamlessly blend comedy and action. Read more
314. Turn villains into heroes > In Joe Cornish debut film Attack the Block a group of teenaged youths - or, if you prefer, hoodies - who start the film as the de facto bad guys, mugging an innocent nurse (Jodie Whittaker) on her way home from work. It was exactly that intriguing dichotomy, that clash between outward menace and inward steel, that compelled Cornish to take a group often condemned and demonized by society and turn them into heroes over the course of one crazy night. "That's what excited me, starting with a kid who did something bad, like mugging somebody," says Cornish. "That was a fun thing to write, the challenge of trying to turn your empathy around over the period of the film." Read more
313. Write What You Know > 8 months after they wrapped on "Da Ali G Show", 50/50 screenwriter-producer Will Reiser told his friends he had been diagnosed with cancer. "Reiser had a long way to go before he would be ready to write the script. His doctors made a tentative diagnosis of lymphoma, but further examination indicated that this was not the case. After batteries of intrusive tests, he learned that he had a giant tumor growing along his spine. "It was big and it was not in a good place," says Reiser. "It became this unknown entity living in my body and I didn't quite know what it was. Read more
312. A unique premise > 30 Minutes or Less began the road to the screen when the original action-comedy screenplay landed on the prestigious Black List, an inside-Hollywood tally of the best unproduced screenplays. Ruben Fleischer, who directs the screenplay into the new feature film, says that everyone involved with the project was first lured by the inventive spark of the screenplay and story. "It had a really original voice," says the director. "I was excited to read a movie that wasn't a straightforward, predictable comedy - it was hard to know where this movie was going when I was reading it." Part of what made the screenplay stand out was its outrageous premise: two lowlifes with more ambition than brains kidnap a pizza delivery guy, and force him to rob a bank - putting a bomb around his chest as incentive. With no one else to turn to, Nick is forced back to his ex-best friend. As the precious seconds tick away and Nick and Chet bicker about their present trouble and their troubled relationship, they wonder - will the bomb get them, or will they kill each other first? Read more
311. Write from your own experience > Writer/Director/Producer Michael Pavone was inspired to write The Reunion from his experiences growing up with brothers of his own. Writing the script gave him a chance to reflect on the complications, conflicts and competitiveness that have made brotherly rivalries a staple of literature since the Bible. "My brother and I had kind of a crazy relationship growing up," Pavone recalls. "We didn't get along at all as kids. We fought daily and drew blood on a regular basis. Looking back on it, I pity my parents for having to try to manage that situation. My brother and I are now great friends, but it was tough going growing up." "This movie taps into a lot of things about brothers who didn't get along as kids but have to come together as adults to achieve a greater good. It's a heroic action movie that uses family dynamics to launch the action." Read more
310. Setting up the world of the story > Science edges ever closer to finding the solution to combating the complex process, but in the meantime, one man may have found a way to keep human beings young forever…on paper, at least: future-realist filmmaker Andrew Niccol.Producer Eric Newman notes the speed with which Niccol introduces this world in his script for In Time. "The biggest challenge in a movie like this is how do we sell the world?" Newman explains. "Andrew did it in the first three pages of the script. Will Salas wakes up, walks into a room, and there is a beautiful 25-year-old woman and he says, 'Hi, Mom.' And he's got this counter on his wrist, and it's counting down. And his mother gives him 30 minutes for lunch. You understand immediately that Will has 22 hours to live [unless he can obtain more time]. And that's his mother, even though they appear the same age, and she just gave him time to buy a decent lunch. That's brilliance in economy, which is difficult to accomplish in a script." Read more
309. Adapting non-fiction > The shadowy and complex nature of Killer Elite, a story based on the events in Fiennes' book led director Gary McKendry and writer Matt Sherring to begin their rethinking of the book with, of all things, the ending. Sherring explains: "When you read the book, Fiennes doesn't tell you what happened to Danny or to Spike in the end. Where they went, what they did just wasn't finalized. We felt you couldn't get to the end of the film and say 'Well, we don't know what happened to these people we've been following for two hours.'" Adapting such a complex storyline for the screen brought its own difficulties. Sherring says: "It's quite a long, complex book, with a time-span of seventeen years, so we really had to condense it." McKendry adds that it was a matter of "trimming down the number of characters, the number of locations, the number of victims, and the number of incidents. It really was about simplification while keeping the excitement of a very complicated story." Read more
308. A good story attracts good writers > A good story will always attract writers who are eager to use their creative imaginations to bring an idea from thought to form. Producer Rosenzweig says, "'Fright Night' is one of those titles that has so much awareness among people who love these kinds of movies that we received many calls from very good writers who wanted to be part of this project." Among the pool of exceptional talent was screenwriter Marti Noxon,who is perhaps most widely known for her enormous success as a writer and producer on the hit television series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," among other series and feature films. As Producer De Luca recalls, "Marti Noxon's agent suggested her as a candidate for screenwriter,and we thought, great, but she's already done the vampire thing with 'Buffy,' so she probably wouldn't be interested. Happily, she ended up being very interested. Marti came in and pitched usbasically the story that we're shooting. She had a very fully developed pitch." Noxon understands that in real life, there are situations that can quickly evolve from very dark to very funny. That was the concept for "Fright Night" that she and the director and producers were striving for. As Executive Producer Gaeta says, "I think that when audiences see the product of Marti's imagination, they'll find a lot of scary dark things but also beautiful and wonderful things too. She had a really great fix on exactly what the tone of the story should be and the importance of the relationships among the characters. She gave the script that extra emotional depththat she's so good at dramatizing. It was really a lot of fun all the way through her interpretation of 'Fright Night.'" Read more
307. Inspiration from conversation > The inspiration for Contagion was sparked by a conversation, he believes, "anyone can relate to." While working together on their previous project, "The Informant!," Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns did a fair amount of traveling. Burns recalls, "Steven and I spent a lot of time on planes, and we talked about how often it seems people get sick when they travel. So the idea began as an exploration of the vulnerability of human beings in public places. I think all of us, when we come down with something, tend to think back over the past few days and who we spoke to, sat next to, or touched. It's human nature." Read more
306. How research informs everything > Before Scott Z. Burns began work on the screenplay for Contagion, he met with world-class experts in the field of infectious diseases and committed himself to months of research to ensure the veracity of the story he and Soderbergh wanted to tell. "These people," he marvels, "get excited at the point most of us would be terrified." Among those who contributed their time and expertise were W. Ian Lipkin, MD, director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University and a professor of epidemiology, neurology and pathology; Larry Brilliant, MD, MPH, board-certified in preventive medicine and president of the Skoll Global Threats Fund; CDC-trained epidemiologist Mark Smolinski, MD, MPH, also of Skoll Global Threats; Nathan Wolfe, MA, DSc, director of The Global Viral Forecasting Initiative and a member of the team that discovered the Hantavirus; and science writer Laurie Garrett, Senior Fellow for Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of The Coming Plague. Not only did they share their own knowledge as technical advisors, they opened doors for the filmmakers and cast to sources of additional research that would inform their work both in front of and behind the camera. Lipkin was also a regular presence on the set. Says Shamberg, "When you invite audiences into a high-level lab in a film like this, you want the equipment to look right, you want the procedures and the language to be credible and the actors to be fully in control of that environment." Read more
305. Research > South African screenwriter Gregg Latter, who was swept away by the boldness of Jonker's poetry, recalls going through Cope's diaries when researching Black Butterflies. " I couldn't have had a better insight into her even if she had told me about herself. Here was a man trying to fathom her out, giving me complete access to the incredibly complicated wild spirit of Ingrid Jonker." Latter found out about the principal characters in her life many of whom had passed away, then he wrote up a chronology of events and what he calls "a bland biographical narrative" as he strived to get into the hearts and minds of the characters in the story of Jonker's life. "The more I investigated her I realised this was the story of a woman who was at odds with the male forces in her life. Primarily because of her father who was a big presence - he too was an author in his own right. Although she claimed he wrote books and not novels. He was a journeyman when it came to writing as opposed to an artist." Read more
304. It's all about a fascinating character > Aside from the commercial reasons for making a sequel to the comedy/spy thriller, the team saw an opportunity to make a film that was different in tone from the first. "Johnny English did extremely well," sums producer Chris Clark. "We always thought English was a fascinating character, and we saw an opportunity to put Johnny in a more real world and more exciting situations. " British comedian, writer and actor Hamish McColl, who had previously collaborated with Atkinson and Working Title Films on Mr. Bean's Holiday, was enlisted to take on the screenplay based on executive producer William Davies' story. "Since Johnny English," says McColl "we've had the Bourne and the new Bond movies that have changed the look of the genre. We wanted the second film to move on from the first and be more contemporary and exciting." Comedy remained just as important to the writer. "My ambition is that the audience is caught up in the film in the fullest sense. If they're not on the edge of their seats in terms of the story, I want them rocking back in them because of the comedy." Read more
303. Making a film in 3D > For these filmmakers, the decision to shoot The Three Musketeers in 3D was an easy one. "We are shooting in 3D because Paul W.S. Anderson does not want to shoot in any other format", laughs producer Bolt. "Having shot Resident Evil: Afterlife in 3D, he is complete convert. For him it is the same as when they introduced sound to the movies in the early part of the last century. I cannot pitch projects to Paul unless he can film them in 3D. Paul has such a visual style; he loves the symmetry, the foreground, mid-ground and background objects. 3D wouldn't work with a director who is much more about the written word - it is a tremendously visually challenging medium, and the director has to be visually brilliant to make the most of it." Anderson says, "3D for me is a major paradigm shift in cinema and that's what makes making movies especially now very exciting. Just as when cinema went from silent movies to talkies, or went from black and white to color photography, I think going from two dimensions to three is just the next natural progression in cinema. I'm very excited to be kind of working on the cutting edge of that." ""I approach 3D filmmaking not as an add-on but as a very holistic approach. Everything about the movie has to be 3D. We start by writing a script that is a 3D script. That has action set pieces in it and descriptions of places that think about the depth that 3D likes and loves. Then we design sets that emphasize the 3D. I choose locations that work well in 3D. We choose to shoot fight scenes in the rain, because rain looks great in 3D." Read more
302. Plausibilty in writing > Gavin O'Connor's original, enduring story idea for Warrior was one about two brothers who haven't seen each other in fourteen years and end up fighting for the world championship, both coming up as extreme underdogs. Although on paper the story might sound farfetched, the door to the room where Anthony Tambakis and Gavin wrote bore a sign with the Aristotle quote "A convincing impossibility is better than an unconvincing possibility." To them, this meant that in the world of fiction, anything is possible if it's told truthfully. Despite starting in two extraordinary sets of circumstances and meeting in an against-all-odds scenario at the film's climax, the brothers' journey has a deep-seated veracity. Tambakis drew inspiration from the real life examples of the Williams sisters facing off at Wimbledon, the likely eventuality of the Manning brothers playing against one another in the Super Bowl, and the Ukraine's Heavyweight Champion Klitschko brothers. "It seems impossible, yet it isn't impossible. That was our job," he explains, of making the seemingly unlikely feel absolutely authentic. Read more
301. Show the world your world > Says Congolese director Djo Tunda Wa Munga: "In making Viva Riva! I wanted to find a new way to talk about life in Kinshasa today - to describe how my hometown works and how it doesn't work. I also felt the time was right to depict aspects of life in the capital that everyone knows exist but no one has ever talked about publicly. Riva returns home after a ten-year absence with pockets full of cash to do what every young Kinshasan man dreams of. He is king for one rollicking good night - and keeps that night going on and on, scoffing at the plain truth that in the light of day he is nobody. Where is he headed? The devil may care. Over the past twenty years, Kinshasans have lived in bedlam, through every kind of spiritcrushing experience imaginable - war, crime, corruption, food and energy shortages, poverty and the breakup of the family structure - yet life goes on." Read more
300. The challenges of adapting a bestseller > After taking five years to write the novel The Help, which Kathryn Stockett started right after 9/11 when she was in New York, and facing over 60 rejections from literary agents, Stockett was close to giving up when she gave it to Taylor for a read. As Taylor recalls, "I started reading the manuscript and was blown away. Read more
299. Explore the body-switching genre > For The Change Up director/producer David Dobkin, the premise of two best friends who are in desperate need of a big change was one that he found fertile ground for comedy. When he was given the new script from Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, the writing team who created 2009's record-breaking R-rated blockbuster The Hangover, the Wedding Crashers director was quickly drawn into their engaging story. Read more
298. Write about High School >For his first feature film, The Art of Getting By, writer and director Gavin Wiesen has returned to a moment he believes is the first life-changing crossroads in many people's lives. "At 17 or 18, most of us are at a critical point," he says. "We are about to graduate from high school and enter a scary unknown--the adult world. You have to shed childhood very quickly." With that in mind, Wiesen hit upon the idea for a movie about a high school student who feels out of step, not just with his peers, but also with the world at large, and protests the futility of senior year by doing as little as he can. "For George, high school is a useless task," he says. "But homework in this case is a metaphor for life. It's the thing that we don't want to do, but we have to do if we are going to have any life at all including love, sports, art, family, growing up." Read more
297. Write about women's struggle in society > Says director Wayne Wang: "After the producers and I read the novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, we all felt that the story of women's struggle in society and families still exist in contemporary societies today. It's a topic that is not limited to an era or any particular location; it's a story that can be universally understood. The two characters also represent two very distinctive personalities which modern women today embody. For the story to be more relatable to modern audience, the writer and I developed a contemporary part of the film. In the contemporary story, Nina and Sophia represent and reflect Lily and Snow Flower from the original story." Read more
296. The importance of wit > "The wit of David Nicholls' writing appealed to me," says One Day director Lone Scherfig. "But what compelled me was just how much of a real love story the piece is - and at a level you rarely come across." "It is a love story," affirms David Nicholls, the author of the internationally praised bestselling 2009 novel One Day and also the screenwriter of the 2011 movie adaptation One Day. "It's also about friendship and family, nostalgia and regret, and the way that our hopes and dreams don't quite come true - at least, not in the way that we're expecting them to. There is a bittersweet quality to it. "I wanted to write an old-fashioned - I suppose it is that - romance showing the ups and downs of a relationship over a long period of time." Nicholls spent two years working on the novel. "I was writing other things alongside it," he notes. "Also, it required a lot of planning beforehand, like a jigsaw puzzle; planting seeds in one year of the story that turned into plot points in another. I had to work out what was going to happen on the many July 15ths. I didn't write One Day as a screenplay in disguise but I love writing dialogue and fiction, so perhaps inevitably there was a filmic quality. "Writing One Day was a real pleasure. I wrote the first half and then took a break from it for about six months; then went back to revise the first half and carried on to the second half." Read more
295. Start with a simple but inspiring germ of a story > Abduction began as a simple but inspiring germ of a story idea that Gotham Group Executive Producer Jeremy Bell brought to Vertigo's Roy Lee and Doug Davison four years ago. But it really took off after a subsequent meeting between screenwriter Shawn Christensen and the producers at The Gotham Group. "At the very end of that meeting," recounts Christensen, "Lee Stollman mentions, 'And then there's this idea about this kid who sees himself as a child on a missing persons website.' I thought it was a really good idea. Read more
294. Let history inform the charcater > The First Grader is an enchanting true-life story, made more so by the fact Maruge would later address the United Nations about the need for education in Africa. South African-born screenwriter Ann Peacock was hooked the moment she read the article, "I just picked up the phone and called my agent and said, 'I have to do this story'," she says. "I was just totally blown away by his courage. This is a man who is illiterate and poor and has nothing, but he just wants to learn to read. To be prepared to humble himself in such a way, to go to a primary school…I thought that was the most amazing thing. But, what really excited me was his Mau Mau background. It informed the character. He stood up and made his voice heard once before and now he was doing it again." Read more
293. Revisit a classic > As the tenth anniversary was nearing, Rodriguez began to consider revisiting the classic series with a fresh, innovative take for Spy Kids 4. He explains, "Over the years, I've been approached by families who say the films were some of their children's favorites and they watch them over and over again." The concept began to take shape in 2009 during the filming of Rodriguez's "Machete" with his frequent collaborator and friend, actress Jessica Alba. Rodriguez explains, "I saw Jessica changing her baby's exploding diaper and got the idea to cast her as a spy mom. I got excited about it and started writing the part for her and coming up with the idea to revitalize the series with a new set of kids." Another theme present in Rodriguez's mind was time and how there never seems to be enough hours in the day to spend with his family. "As I watch my kids, I want to stop and freeze time so I can enjoy them longer before they grow up and move out of the house. I had this idea for a villain who is trying to take other people's time away so he can use it to go back in time," he explains. Read more
292. Write romance in the style of Hollywood's golden past > Director Will Gluck was looking for another project, having just finished editing Easy A for Screen Gems, when the script for Friends with Benefits came to his attention. "I've always wanted to do a movie that was an update of the old Hepburn and Tracy movies," Gluck explains, citing his love for the sexy, banter-filled comedies of Hollywood's golden past. So with its pointed dialogue, enticingly adult comic situations and charming yet flawed characters, Friends with Benefits certainly hit the nail on the head conceptually,. Dylan and Jamie are the Hepburn/Tracy characters of our time, with our sensibilities, aspirations, and most of all this generation's views on family, friendship, love, and sex. Read more
291. Film allows for big emotions to transport and audience > Film lets us show the big emotions and engage the audience," says Wasted on the Young writer/director Ben C. Lucas. "Film is the greatest art form because it is the best format for the big emotions and allows us to transport an audience." "Though these are real world situations, the film was always envisaged as a morality tale, a parable about justice, and the team very particularly chose to make a film that was hyper-real. By doing so creating a film where the underlying themes have even more impact than the action and the story is told in a context that constantly suggests 'this is not your world, but this is very like your world'Read more
290. Write a fable > Writer Jaco Botha who co-wrote the screenplay with Diony Kempen says the idea for 'n Saak van Geloof came to him shortly after Christmas in 2009, when he wondered how a community would react if another virgin birth took place two thousand years after the birth of Jesus Christ. Like any fable or fairy tale the movie has an extravagant setup which lends itself to the dramatic, inspiring and at times comic examination of the human emotions and foibles involved in belief and prejudice. When the film was in production, rumours circulated that it was blasphemous; the script is certainly not. In fact the movie is an uplifting endorsement of the power of love. Dominee Briers and his NGK congregation in Prince Albert where fully supportive. The film is just a story, one that hopefully entertains and inspires. Read more
289. Establish own identity when adapating > Snowed in at his Vermont home, Academy Award-winning screenwriter William Monahan was reading his way through the noir crime novels of Ken Bruen, when one particular title captured his imagination: London Boulevard, a dark and disturbing fable set in the contrasting worlds of South London's seamy criminal underground and the up-market West London celebrity stratosphere. Monahan's screenplay is faithful to the original in terms of tone and theme, while establishing its own identity. "Ken is a beloved thriller writer with a very distinctive style, but he knew from the very beginning that I was going to do my own thing," says Monahan. "I liked the premise. I liked certain of the characters and the situations. I saw other things that I could do. I was springing off the great British New Wave films of the '60s and '70s as much as I was off the novel." Read more
288. Write about the affect of lies > "Chameleon explores the subject of compulsive lying", says director Krisztina Goda. Those who suffer from it feel an irrepressible desire to become something more than what they are. Gábor, a bright, talented young man, was brought up in an orphanage. By lying, he invents a better past for himself in order to create a better future. He longs for a privileged life with all its luxuries: fancy clothes, good cars, expensive homes and most of all, the feeling of belonging to a different class. Is he responsible or is society to blame? Read more
287. Add a twist to the sequel > In "Final Destination 5," the fifth installment of the successful horror franchise, Death once again proves to be the ultimate stalker as it systematically hunts down a group of friends struggling to escape its relentless pursuit. Director Steven Quale says, "In the previous 'Final Destination' films, it's inevitable that they're going to die, and the question is when and how--that's the adrenaline rush. But in this movie, we've added a twist: a few may have found a way to survive." Read more
286. Write a script for funny women > When the idea for the movie Bad Teacher came to the screenwriting team of Gene Stupnitsky & Lee Eisenberg, they knew they'd hit on something incredibly rare and special. "It seemed like there weren't a lot of comedy roles for women," says Eisenberg. "We would see so many funny women on 'Saturday Night Live' and on talk shows, and they'd be hysterical and charming, and then we'd go to the movies and they'd be props to get two guys to become friends or whatever. We really wanted to write a project for a comedienne." Read more
285. The art of documentary filmmaking > Pina is a 2011 German 3D dance film directed by Wim Wenders.The film premiered Out of Competition at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival. The trailer features the song "Lilies in the Valley" by Jun Miyake.During the preparation of the documentary about Pina Bausch she died unexpectedly. Wim Wenders cancelled the film production, but the other dancers of Tanztheater Wuppertal convinced him to make the film anyway. It now shows these other dancers, talking about her and dancing in her honor, not just in the theater, but most of the time at various outdoor locations. Read more
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