TIPS 175 > 199

175. Make sure that your story has an emotional core >
It was the emotional core of Penny and Secretariat's story that attracted writer-director Randall Wallace. And there was definitely a richness of emotional terrain to plumb. "Horses speak to our primal nature," says the director. "When all is said and done, this is a story about a tremendous horse. But, beyond that, I wanted to understand and experience the way this unique animal had affected people who themselves were special. All my life, I have been intrigued by the mechanism and the moment of transformation: What happens when what we call a miracle occurs? What happens when someone, in this case a horse, does something that no one else has ever done or that they themselves have never done? What happens when someone stops doubting and starts believing? And this story is full of those moments."  Specifically, he adds, Penny Chenery undergoes a remarkable transformation that is just as magnificent, bold and inspirational as her horse Secretariat's.  Go behind the scenes of Secretariat   Read an interview with Randall Wallace

176. Question your subject > The Next Three Days Writer-director Paul Haggis is well-known and admired for his psychologically rich, morally probing dramas: as the writer/director of Crash which won him Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay, and In The Valley Of Elah; and as the screenwriter of Million Dollar Baby, Letters from Iwo Jima and Flags of Our Fathers.  But Haggis is no stranger to the thriller genre, having been a screenwriter on the critical and popular James Bond film Casino Royale.  "I've always wanted to make a thriller, especially one where a love story played such a central role," Haggis comments.  "Here was Hitchcock's classic scenario, a perfectly ordinary man who, in this case, thrusts himself into extraordinary circumstances.  He can't watch his wife and son suffer so much as they drift apart from each other.   But when he finds out what it takes to break her out, he has to ask himself a very difficult question: would you save the woman you love if you knew that by doing so, you would turn into someone that she might no longer be able to love?"  That's what always draws me to a subject -- a question I cannot answer for myself. When I find the question, I know I have a film.  Go behind the scenes

177. Be ready when your script is ready > Splice is the dark vision of the world of genetic engineering co-written and directed by Vincenzo Natali  After a decade of struggling to bring Splice to the screen, Natali is at a loss to logically explain why, suddenly, it all came together so perfectly. The best he could muster was to say, "There is something in the air. Splice exists now for a reason. It did not and could not have existed 10 years ago. Its time is now and I really believe that it's more than happenstance that the movie's been made at this point." A possible answer is that while Splice synthesizes science and myth, Natali does wonder if the idea of the chimera in Greek mythology that dates back thousands of years now has the possibility of becoming, through modern bio-technology, a reality. "Did that mythological notion inspire geneticists to build it for real? Is that part of our natural evolution? Is that why it existed and it is our destiny?"   Go behind the scenes

178. Turning real life drama into reel entertainment >  A fascinating glimpse into the dark corridors of political power, Fair Game is a riveting drama based on the autobiography of real-life undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame, whose career is destroyed and her marriage strained to its limits by a White House press leak.  The Zuckers commissioned prize-winning screenwriter Jez Butterworth and his brother John-Henry Butterworth to craft a screenplay based on the Wilsons' experiences. The Butterworths, who are British, had no idea who Valerie Plame was when they were contacted. "We also knew nothing at all about the U.S. political system, except for the most general knowledge," says Jez. "But the story was so intriguing, we were eager to learn more about it."  Read more

179. Have an intimate connection with your story > When it comes to the vibrant, timeless world of burlesque and its recent pop culture renaissance, writer-director Steven Antin had the kind of intimate connection impossible to ignore: his sister and Antin had recognized there was a rich story in the art form, its fans, and its performers. Encouraged by Screen Gems president Clint Culpepper, Antin used his knowledge of burlesque to chart out Ali Rose's incredible journey from a bar in Iowa to a club on the Sunset Strip.  One objective for Antin was to remain true to the spirit of the art form, noting that a popular misconception about burlesque is that it is synonymous with stripping.  Antin explains: "Burlesque only became associated with striptease in the United States in the early twentieth century, and that was inspired by the Moulin Rouge in the 1890s in Paris.  Previously, burlesque was defined by comedy shows with singing and dancing, storytelling and parodies.  It was considered risqué and funny and appealed to the mass culture.  The risqué elements of Burlesque, though, never venture beyond a cheeky suggestion or a delicious double entendre.  "Burlesque is sometimes risqué, always sexy, but never sexual," Antin continues.  "Everything we do in this movie, like with original burlesque, is intended to be something enjoyable.  It's a big, friendly, bawdy, fun romp.  Burlesque was entertainment for the masses in its original form, and it still is today in Burlesque." Read an interview with writer-director Steven Antin  Go behind the scenes

180. Explore the nature of of love and sex > Edward Zwick directs, produces and co-wrote the screenplay for this unconventional and realistic romance that explores the nature of love and sex, how sex/lust evolves into love, and the ways people try and figure it all out.   "Love and Other Drugs presents two people who are desperate not to go to a deeper, more profound place in their connection to one another," says Zwick. "But their appeal to each other and the nature of the love are so powerful they defeat the couple's impulses to resist connecting. Jamie and Maggie just can't help but fall in love no matter how much they try to avoid it. They surrender to something stronger than their intentions. And that's fun to watch because it provides comedy and emotion." Those themes certainly resonated with the film's two leads.  "Love and Other Drugs is about what it takes to let love in," says Anne Hathaway.  "Love is hard work and it's scary - and it's all totally worth it!"  Adds Jake Gyllenhaal: "It's a comedy and a love story about two people who are running away from the same things: intimacy, connection, and caring. These are some of the most difficult things you can ask of another human being.  But the movie is first and foremost a comedy; that's what we were trying to bring out in almost every scene." Go behind the scenes

181. Research what inspires you > "We all have, at some point, a feeling that everything we've depended on we can't depend on anymore.  And when that happens, the only thing we have left is love," says writer-director James L. Brooks.  "You can think your life is terrible, and then he or she walks in and it's not terrible anymore.  That's it - love is our saving grace." The title question is the most important one most of us will ever face, and as the world gets more complicated and disconnected, it's harder to answer than ever.  re he was going to take her and where she was going to end up." Brooks says that the project began simply.  "I was driving by some ball fields, soccer fields, and filled with women and girls, all ages, and I thought, it's been a while since we've seen a female jock heroine.  And I'm a research nut, so that started me on a year of talking to great female athletes."  Read more

182. Write about young women finding their way > There's a storied history of working women in sexy screwball comedies.  From Rosalind Russell's ace newswoman squaring off against Cary Grant as an underhanded editor in Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday to Melanie Griffith's working class secretary pretending to be her high-powered boss in Working Girl, women trying to get on top have turned out to be some of film comedy's smartest, wittiest and most appealing heroes.  Screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna has long been drawn to the trials, and triumphs, of young women finding their way - and themselves - in the workplace, which first came to the fore when she penned the hit comedy The Devil Wears Prada, based on the bestselling book about a young assistant who valiantly faces off with the boss from hell.  Now she brings her refreshingly contemporary POV to a portrait of a feisty young upstart who falls right into the middle of what might well be the highest high-pressure cooker in all the working world: producing morning news, a job notorious for driving the young and ambitious either to the heights of achievement… or to the madhouse.  McKenna began with the idea of a struggling, recently let-go, local news producer, whose career prospects seem about as bleak as her foundering love life until she gets her first big break at "Daybreak" in Morning Glory   Read more

183. Combine Eastern and Western cultures > With The Warrior's Way, writer and director Sngmoo Lee has created a film that reflects his own unique background--a balance of Eastern and Western cultures and cinematic traditions. Raised in Korea and educated at the prestigious New York University film program, Lee easily references a wide range of film genres, from timeless cowboy adventures and martial arts extravaganzas to "spaghetti Westerns" and classic gangster films, when speaking about his English language film debut.  "My goal was to make an extremely cool action movie with some emotion and brain attached to it," he says. "This is not a typical, formulaic film," says Lee. "It's unique and fresh, with some never-before-seen elements that are combined in the right way and at the right time to make a really great film." The unexpected twists that Lee built into his script elevate the film beyond a traditional action adventure, says Peyser. "It's an epic warrior story," he says. "It's a love story. It's a story that has great depth and texture. But the best thing about it is that it seems to be headed exactly where a Western or a Samurai movie would normally go and then it doesn't go there.  The characters don't act the way we expect them to. They act on something deeper, something they've just discovered. Read more

184. Turning a radio serial into a film > For their part, screenwriters Seth Rogen and Even Goldberg "were looking for a new movie to write," explains Rogen.  "We had always been comic book fans, superhero fans.  For a long time we had been trying to write a movie about a hero and his sidekick.  But nothing was quite right for us until we looked at the Green Hornet.  Here was this famous character with a real legacy, but still a property that would allow us to put our own interpretation into the characters.  It was like this project was tailor made for what Evan and I wanted to do - we could explore the relationship between Britt and Kato around the framework of this kickass action-comedy.  It was perfect." Perfect, Rogen says, because from their point of view, over time, the characters have become true equals.  "Kato started out as a sidekick role, and like a lot of sidekicks, he was just a sidekick.  But then came the TV show, with Bruce Lee as Kato.  He became an icon, and because of that, there's a great love out there for the sidekick as well as the Green Hornet himself.  People who come to see the movie want to see what happens to Kato, not just 'the hero' the Green Hornet."  Go behind the scenes

185. Explore themes of bodily extremes and souls in turmoil >  Although he started thinking about this story fifteen years ago, Darren Aronofsky notes that Black Swan is intentionally a companion piece to his most recent film, The Wrestler.  While wrestling and ballet might seem like they couldn't possibly be more disparate worlds, Black Swan dips into moments of sheer psychological horror unlike anything Aronofsky has done before.  The two films are tied together by themes of bodily extremes, souls in turmoil and by a filmmaking style that pulls the audience inside the characters' fascinating inner worlds.   "Some people call wrestling the lowest of art forms, and some call ballet the highest of art forms, yet there is something elementally the same.  Mickey Rourke as a wrestler was going through something very similar to Natalie Portman as a ballerina," Aronofsky explains.  "They're both artists who use their bodies to express themselves and they're both threatened by physical injury, because their bodies are the only tool they have for expression. What was interesting for me was to find these two connected stories in what might appear to be unconnected worlds. Read more   Read an interview with Darren Aronofsky

186. Adapting a classic without remaking it > "We'd read Charles Portis' books but this one seemed especially amenable to have a movie made from it," says Ethan Coen of their decision to adapt True Grit.  The brothers were drawn to Portis' daring decision to place an irrepressible young girl at the center of a novel rife with brutality, irony and harsh realities, which appealed to their sense of the unusual.  Mattie's story is certainly full of the raw humanity and ink black wit that have often characterized the Coens' cinematic vision, but at the same time, True Grit is a departure for them, featuring their most unabashedly literary, emotional and direct storytelling.  "The story is definitely in that weird genre of young persons' adventures," says Joel. "It's told by this very self assured 14 year-old girl," adds Ethan, "which is probably what makes the book so strange and funny. But it's also like Alice in Wonderland because this 14 year-old girl finds herself in an environment that's really, now-a-days, exotic."   Read more

187. Turning real life into reel drama > From the moment he first began reading Aron Ralston's best-selling memoir, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, director Danny Boyle knew exactly what kind of film he wanted to convey from this real-life story, one that would use a highly subjective camera to penetrate the lead character's personal journey, to get under Aron's skin and into his head during the most urgent life-or-death circumstance, in a way no other medium could.  "I knew I wanted to bring the audience into the canyon with Aron and to not let them go until he himself is released," the director explains.  "Of course, I saw this as an extraordinary story of outdoor survival, but I also think there is a whole other layer to this story that will be surprising for people.  It's not simply about how Aron survived, incredible as that is.  There is a life force that Aron tapped into that goes way beyond his remarkable courage as an individual, and that's what we hoped to capture on screen.  It's something that binds us all together and when Aron, who seems all alone in this canyon, is pulled back to the idea of community, there is something very powerful that happens."  Read more

188. Capture the spirit of real life events > Of Gods and Men is loosely based on the Tibhirine tragedy. It explores the last few months in the life of this small community of Christian monks in a "Muslim land." The film is more interested in capturing the spirit of the events and what was at stake in the community than in recounting the exact details of a historic reality. The story begins several weeks before the terrorists issued an ultimatum ordering all foreigners to leave the country. An armed terrorist group even broke into the monastery on Christmas Eve. The film bears witness to the reality of the monks' commitment and the strength of the message of peace they wish to share by staying among their Muslim brothers: the possibility of a fraternal and spiritual common ground between Christianity and Islam. Xavier Beauvois' film adopts the point of view of the monks and the rhythm of life in a Cistercian monastery. 43 year-old writer-director Xavier Beauvois was raised in a working class family in the North of France. He started his film career as an assistant director on André Téchiné's Les Innocents and Manoel de Oliveira's Mon cas.  Read more

189. Explore technology > Director Patrick Lussier and writer Todd Farmer began talking about their second project together even before their first collaboration, My Bloody Valentine 3-D, became a blockbuster success. The experience of making the horror film, which earned more than $100 million worldwide, inspired them to dig even deeper into the burgeoning 3-D format and see how far the developing technology would allow them to go. When talk turned to the adrenaline-fueled action movies both of them grew up loving, the idea for Drive Angry was born. "Todd and I were brainstorming what we wanted to do next," says Lussier. "We started talking about the vibe of action movies made from about 1967 until the mid-'70s, the kinds of movies that starred Steve McQueen and Charles Bronson. They all had great car chases that were metal on metal. They couldn't do any CGI back then, so you knew these were guys in cars driving as fast as humanly possible. We decided that's what we wanted to capture, but in 3-D."   Read more

190. The journey begins with the screenplay > The King's Speech started life as a screenplay, when writer David Seidler decided to plunge himself into creative work after being diagnosed with cancer. After completing the script and finding himself in remission, he showed it to his wife. She liked the script, but thought it was too caught up in the technical language of film, and suggested he re-write it as a play, in order to force him to focus on the characters. Seidler scrapped his original screenplay and wrote a play from scratch based on his research. After he had completed it, he decided he quite liked it and sent it to a few people for feedback. In early 2006, one of the people Seidler sent his play to asked if they could forward it to producer Joan Lane, at the London based production company Wild Thyme. Lane saw the script as a potential screen drama as well as stage play, showed it to film colleague Simon Egan at Bedlam Productions and Egan recorded the first rehearsed read-through. Go behind the scenes of The King's Speech.   Read an interview with Tom Hooper

191. Research the facts > Directed by Tony Goldwyn and written by Pamela Gray, Conviction is the incredible true story of Betty Anne Waters, a seemingly ordinary, working-class woman who embarked on an extraordinary 18-year quest to achieve the impossible when her brother Kenny was accused of a heinous murder he swore he didn't commit.  Director Tony Goldwyn saw the story on TV and urged him to investigate the incredible tale further.   Then Goldwyn dove into research, travelling to the Waters' home town in Rhode Island, researching who Betty Anne and Kenny really were and how they forged the bond that held them together through such an epic struggle.  Although they were often separated in different foster homes as children, they always held onto their love for one another.  Read  more

192. From simple question to film > Director Ron Howard recalls the night that became the genesis for The Dilemma.  "We were at a dinner party in Rome during Angels & Demons, and Brian [Grazer] started talking about these crazy scenarios.  One of them was 'What would you do if there was somebody you cared a lot about, say, your best friend, and you spotted his spouse cheating?  He said that this idea popped in his head: 'What if I saw Ron's wife kissing a guy somewhere?  What would I do, and what would be my process in figuring out when and how to tell him?'"   It not only received a laugh at the dinner table, it also kicked off a lively conversation among the attendees.  After the party was over, Grazer told Howard that his simple question was actually an idea he was considering for a movie.   Once they returned stateside, Grazer offered the same query during a meeting with Vince Vaughn.  The actor/producer immediately became interested in the premise and put his twist on the water cooler subject.  Explains Vaughn.  "For me, it wasn't about whether I should I tell him or not.  It was about watching someone burdened with the knowledge of what's going on and the struggle to figure out how and when to tell him."   Read more

193. Turning real life into drama > The story would take three years and a fighting spirit on the part of the filmmakers to get The Fighter to the screen.  Mark Wahlberg had long wanted to make a movie about Micky Ward and Dicky Eklund.  Hoberman and Lieberman were thrilled to team up with Wahlberg and director David O. Russell spurred the production into a rough-and-ready, fast-paced production schedule that immersed the cast full bore into their characters and the crew into the world of blue-collar boxing in America.  Having worked with Wahlberg twice before, including on the critically acclaimed Iraq War thriller, Three Kings, everyone was excited to see what Russell's notably creative perspective could bring to The Fighter's mix of visceral sports drama and emotionally exposed family portrait.  Russell saw The Fighter as a love story.  He approached it not only as Micky and Dicky's story as brothers, but also as the story of Micky's quest to reconcile his tight-knit family to the woman he loves, and he put the collision course between Charlene and the family at the center of the narrative.   "The Fighter is about people who are really human, all too human, like every one of us," he says.  "I wanted to tell the story of these people and their world.  They are in some ways heartbreaking, in some ways hilarious, yet always very, very real." To write the first drafts of the script, screenwriters Paul Tamasy, who produced the film as well, and Eric Johnson, who also serve as executive producers, spent lots of time in Lowell, interviewing everyone connected with the story, which turned out to be a good portion of the community.  Read more

194. Let comedy support the tragic> "I make tragicomic films, and the comic basically supports the tragic," says writer-director Mike Leigh about.Another Year. I make films that have got their roots not in documentary naturalism, but as much as anything in vaudeville and the theater and the absurd and strip cartoon humor and stuff. And my films are much more heightened and much more in a way what I would call symphonic, because you get great passages, you get highs and lows and all of that. And when I hear my films talked about as social realist, naturalism, or social naturalism, it's nonsense really. Of course there's a dimension in which they are real, and I want to believe in them just as much as they would believe in something that was actually was a documentary, but they work through a whole lot of other more sophisticated tragicomic visual and literary devices." Read more

195. Write what fascinates you > Writer-director Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo's own personal journey to get After.Life made is compelling enough to be its very own movie. Wojtowicz-Vosloo wrote the script for After.Life alongside her husband, Paul Vosloo, and third writing partner Jakub Korolczuk. The script process took the trio about three years to complete, and for the director the idea for After.Life started with a single scene she envisioned. Wojtowicz-Vosloo said, "Before we started After.Life, I always had this scene in my head of a woman on a slab and a mortician standing over her. The woman who should be dead speaks, and the mortician responds to her. It was a powerful idea to me." "I've always been both fascinated and terrified by the idea of death. My father died when I was 10 years old, and it left a huge impact on my life and made me wonder what really happens to us after we die," said Wojtowicz-Vosloo.However, After.Life is much more than the exploration of death; for the first-time director it's also about what it means to be alive. "I thought a lot about what happens to the body after death, what happens to your soul, or even what stages your consciousness goes through," explained Wojtowicz-Vosloo. "I wanted to go beyond this idea of death and look at the human experience as a whole. If someone is physically alive but moves along like an empty vessel, is that person truly alive?"  Read more

196. Challenge perceptions > The story of "The Rite" began as a book proposal by Matt Baglio, a reporter living in Rome, who was struck by the Vatican's 2007 announcement of its initiative to reinstruct the clergy on the rite of exorcism with the goal of installing an exorcist in every diocese worldwide.  Director Mikael Håfström was intrigued by the notion of exploring the subject of exorcism with such a solid basis in fact.  "It's not a straightforward horror movie," he notes.  "It's a fictional film but within a very real and factual framework.  When I read the script, I felt it approached the whole idea of demonic possession from an angle we haven't really seen before, and it draws you into this world in such a suspenseful, powerful and entertaining way.. I think doing a film about this subject matter and these questions definitely triggers you to ask yourself things, without a doubt.  I think you can see this is not just a story about faith or believing in God or a god.  This is also very much a coming-of-age story, if you want.  It's about finding your way in life, whatever your beliefs or non-beliefs.  So, it's about a lot of important questions that you ask yourself, young and old.  But it is a special subject matter, yes.  So, it definitely triggers you; you have to ask yourself once in a while what your take is."  Read more
197. Write about what makes you curious > "The original inspiration for Brotherhood came when I was in film school at NYU," says writer-director Will Canon. "I had a number of friends who were at other schools and had gone through the process of joining a fraternity and since I hadn't done it, I was very curious about what it was like. Anthropologists who have looked at fraternities talk a lot about the idea that the brothers who are doing the hazing are acting out the aggression that were acted out on them. They are now scapegoating the new pledges for the frustrations and humiliations that they felt when they were the ones who were being hazed and humiliated and so it becomes this cycle that repeats itself and I thought that was really interesting. I thought it was a part of human behavior worth exploring and is, by no means, only found in a hazing context. I also want to add, I've been asked a number of questions recently about what I personally think about fraternities and my take is that fraternities aren't good or bad the same way other institutions aren't good or bad. It's about the people in fraternities and sororities that determine the type of institution that it is going to be." Read more
198. Creating a fictional reality > In addition, the script calls for all of the characters to approach the pool and dive in.  "But the water was much too shallow," says Just Go With It production designer Perry Andelin Blake.  The solution was to bring in fake rocks to dress a deeper part of the pool."  Brooklyn Decker's character also lounges on foam rocks after her dive into the pool. The screenplay also requires the characters to cross a rope bridge.  The filmmakers didn't find what they were looking for, and so, a bridge had to be built.  Blake explains, "It seemed like the best solution - we could build it at the exact height we wanted, we could make it look rickety, and we could make it safe.  So we found a great, huge mango tree, and on the other side, we anchored the bridge up into the rocks.  We wanted it to look like it's been here forever, so once we built it, we aged it and threw plants all over it.  It looks dilapidated, it looks dangerous, it looks scary, but it's completely safe." Read more
199. Have a personal connection to the story > Like many other films, Life, Above All came about by coincidence, because two complete strangers happened to be at the same place at the same time. It was in April 2005 that producer Oliver Stoltz attended the renowned hotDOCS-Festivals in Toronto to present his documentary Lost Children about child soldiers in Uganda. Allan Stratton, a Canadian writer based in Toronto who also happens to be a film enthusiast, had read about the film in the paper and contacted Stoltz by email. He told him that he was writing a book about the tragic fate of child soldiers in Africa and would be interested in meeting him.  It didn't take Oliver Stoltz long to make up his mind to turn Chandra's Secrets into a film. His decision was influenced by the fact that he himself had lived in the southern part of Africa and that he had toyed with the idea to produce a film that was set there for quite some time. Now he had found more than just a subject matter that inspired him.  Read more

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