One-trick Pony

"Overall theme leads to character and then on to plot" -- Rod Serling





There are two things that inexperienced screenwriters talk about ceaselessly--dialogue and the twist ending. The twist ending is the Holy Grail for the new or inexperienced writer.

Younger writers think a twist is the end-all be-all is because it is writing that can be seen, writing that can be noticed. Young writers don't speak of brilliantly constructed scenes that are seamlessly woven into the theme. Nor do they notice the work that well-constructed dialogue can do other than being clever. They don't comment on how well a piece of exposition was hidden in natural-sounding dialogue. Or just how efficiently an aspect of character was revealed through dialogue. No, they only see the obviously witty, smart or funny dialogue that may or may not serve any purpose beyond being attention-getting.

But it is the twist ending that almost all amateurs recognize as "good writing." I went through this phase myself as a teenager in the '70s and '80s. The twist ending was the first thing I learned to write fairly well. It was like a magic trick. And it did get me attention.

Rod Serling, the creator of The Twilight Zone, was my first big writing influence. He is in essence my artistic father--and he was the undisputed king of the twist ending. I studied his work and learned.

What did I learn? That the best episodes of his show (most, but not all, written by him) all had a point that the ending helped to prove. The twist was not random--it did come out of nowhere. It was integral to the telling of the story. The twist was really nothing more than an exclamation point at the end of the story.

Most inexperienced writers think they can just tack a twist ending on to a story. Not so. The ending must be a payoff to a set-up, and is strongest when it does more than just surprise. Think of it like this--someone can leap out from around a corner and scare you because they have surprised you. This works, but it is a cheap way to get a reaction.

Now imagine someone tells you a joke. A joke is a story with a surprise ending, but the surprise is not cheap because everything has been set up for the punch line. Everything leading to the punch line supports that punch line.

I’m one of the few people who hasn’t liked any of M. Night Shayamalan’s films--this includes the beloved The Sixth Sense (no letters, please). I told people at the time that film came out that he would never make a film that people liked as much.

How did I know that? Because his ending didn’t matter. Yes, Bruce Willis was dead the whole time and it was a surprise for most, but it didn’t really matter. The story itself would be more or less the same without it. It proved nothing. I knew then that M. Night Shayamalan was no Rod Serling. Not even close.

Let’s look at the original Planet of the Apes movie written by Rod Serling and Michael Wilson--probably one of the best-loved twist endings in film history. In a nutshell: An astronaut crash lands on an unknown planet populated by intelligent talking apes and brutish human beings. He escapes the apes only to find of that he is not on a faraway planet, but Earth.



But here’s the deal--at the opening of the film the astronaut, who thinks he is returning to his home planet after being away for hundreds of years, wonders if humanity is just as self-destructive as they were when he left. When he lands on the “foreign” planet the apes see him as an evil presence. They see him as destructive and brutish just like the other humans on the planet. The astronaut is forced to defend humanity. He is even put on trial simply for being human.

When he escapes the apes he finds the Statue of Liberty buried in the sand, apparently in the aftermath of a nuclear war.

This ending shocked audiences, because they did not see it coming. But it was the answer to the first question asked by the film--Are human beings still self-destructive creatures? The statue answered that question. It becomes a cautionary tale, warning us of our animal nature.

This is the way Rod Serling wrote--with a point. M. Night Shayamalan does not and that’s what I saw when I saw The Sixth Sense. He only writes for the twist and the concept. But neither the concept nor the endings are in service of a bigger idea. Until he figures this out it is unlikely that he will repeat the success of The Sixth Sense.



Everything you do when writing a story should be in service to that story. Know what you are trying to say and say it. Say it in the most engaging and entertaining way you can, but don’t write an entire story just because you think you have a great twist. If you do you are likely to become a one-trick pony.

Yet another movie I like—The Apartment

"The best director is the one you don't see." -- Billy Wilder

Someone asked me today why I like older movies better than new ones. This is not an easy question to answer to everyone’s satisfaction, but I will give it a try. They’re better.

This is not to say that all old films are great, but they are better on the whole. The level of storycraft in the older films is higher. It just is and as further proof I give you another example of a film I like—The Apartment.

Anyone who talks to me for about 30 seconds finds out that Billy Wilder is my favorite filmmaker. He understood how to tell a story as well as anyone in cinema ever has.

What makes him so good? No fat. Everything matters. He writes with the steady hand of a master surgeon. He is always advancing, plot, character, or theme. Sometimes all three.

He once boasted that there was never a phony shot in any of his movies. What he meant is that he never put his camera anywhere where it didn’t help to tell the story. He was not a show-off—he was a craftsman and a storyteller.

Just as with his camera shot choices he also never had a phony scene, sequence, character, or line. Everything matters. Every choice is made in the service of the story. No fat. Nothing phony.

So many modern-day filmmakers are trying so hard to be noticed. The shots are there to be noticed. The characters are there to be noticed. The editing is there to be noticed. It all has the effect of pulling us out if the story rather than pulling us in. All phony. All fat.



Wilder had a highly successful screenwriter career where he honed his storycraft before becoming a director. The story was always paramount with him. I tell my students that you are not the master of your story, but a slave to it. You must do what it needs, not what you want.

On the surface The Apartment is about a man who lets the higher-ups in his office use his apartment to have adulterous affairs, and how he falls in love with one of the women. But there is a deeper story about two people who learn to value themselves enough to stop prostituting themselves.

It is a marvel of construction and the more you learn about story construction, the more you will marvel.

The film is a film made by a man at the top of his craft. In the 100-plus years that people have been making movies few have made one as good as The Apartment.

Do yourself a favor and see this film.

By the way, here are some screenwriting tips from Billy Wilder* himself:
1. The audience is fickle.
2. Grab ‘em by the throat and never let ‘em go.
3. Develop a clean line of action for your leading character.
4. Know where you’re going.
5. The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
6. If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
7. A tip from Lubitsch: Let the audience add up two plus two. They’ll love you forever.
8. In doing voice-overs, be careful not to describe what the audience already sees. Add to what they’re seeing.
9. The event that occurs at the second act curtain triggers the end of the movie.
10. The third act must build, build, build in tempo and action until the last event, and then—that’s it. Don’t hang around.
* Via Conversations with Wilder by Cameron Crowe

My bad play and what it taught me

“Never bore people.”--Billy Wilder

When I was in the 8th grade I was a big Star Trek fan. At that time there was no movie and no Next Generation–just the original Trek in reruns, and the cartoon series that got me hooked in the first place. Anyway, the show was, and continues to be, a big influence on my writing.

Back then I was in a drama class and we had to write a short play and perform it for parents.

I decided to write a Star Trek episode. I had so much fun writing the episode: Here I was, able to put words in the mouths of characters I loved so much. The script just spilled out of me, it was so easy to write. And like I said, it was fun, really fun, to do.

I turned in my script and parts were assigned to my fellow thespians. I, of course, played the captain, which was also fun.

We rehearsed it. It was even more fun to see the thing come to life.

So the big night came when it was time to put on the show for the parents. We had our lines memorized and our cool, retro-1960s costumes on as we waited in the wings to go out there and share all this fun with the people in the audience.

It was time. The curtain rose and we started to put on what I thought was the best episode of Start Trek ever.

We were putting our all into it. And, yes, we were having lots of fun. How could you not have fun playing Kirk–out there on the stage “Kirking” it up.



Then it happened–I looked out in the crowd and saw someone’s dad nodding off. He was trying to stay awake, but it was a Herculean task for the poor man. His head would fall slowly until his chin was on his chest, and then he would jerk it up again with his wide open. But in a few moments his head would fall again.

All I could think is, “How can he be bored?” The show had been so much fun to write and perform, how could it not be just as much fun to watch?

I learned a very important lesson that night–just because it was fun for you to create doesn’t mean that it will be fun for your audience to watch.

I was lucky to learn this lesson young. Some people never learn it. They get so caught up in their creative world that the audience is an afterthought. They may also have a tendency to blame the audience in a very sour grapes way. They say things like, “They're not smart enough to get it,” or “I’m ahead of my time.”

This thinking does nothing to help you master your craft. It is not selling out to attempt to communicate with your audience. It has become an artistic crime to strive to communicate clearly with all of one’s audience. People will say that it is pandering. They will say that it is appealing to the lowest common denominator. They tend to think that a boring, confusing movie is better than one where the audience is moved and engaged emotionally. For them, it is the highest form of art to have people scratching their heads when they walk away.

I have never understood why people think it takes great craftsmanship to confuse and/or bore the audience. If this is the case, I mastered script writing my first time out. If that dad in the audience is any indication, I was an 8th grade genius.

The truth is that it is very hard to make yourself understood. I was at a book reading at a bookstore a while ago, and someone asked the author why she didn’t write more books. She said, “It takes a long time to write something that is easy to read."

Every time I sit down to write something I think of that dad jerking his head up as he fought off sleep. It keeps me honest. It keeps me from being self-indulgent. It keeps the audience in my head. I try to view the piece through their eyes instead of just my own.

I’m not saying that I never bored anybody, I’m just saying I try hard not to.

All writers should be so lucky as to stand before an audience and bore them to sleep with their precious words. It was painful and embarrassing, but I sure am glad it happened.

Another Movie I Like: 12 Angry Men

“I happen to think that the singular evil of our time is prejudice. It is from this evil that all other evils grow and multiply. In almost everything I've written there is a thread of this: a man's seemingly palpable need to dislike someone other than himself.”--ROD SERLING, Los Angeles Times, 1967

I had a student once who would always ask me what films I liked. He was confused as to why I almost never liked anything new. I did what I always do and I talked about craft and the lack of craft of those writers and director making films today.

So the student asked me to name films that I liked and why I think they were so much better. I listed a few and asked him if he had ever seen 12 Angry Men. He hadn’t. I told him that is was well-written and well-directed, entertaining, engaging and smart. It is a combination that is almost never seen any more. I said to this student, “I just want to go to the theater and see 12 Angry Men.”

I meant of course that I want to see its equivalent a movie that is both meaningful and entertaining. Both emotional and important.

This student, unlike most, took it upon himself to watch 12 Angry Men and the next time I saw him he said, “I just want to go to the theater and see 12 Angry Men.”

This, like Paper Moon, is one of those films that I wished I’d made. One of these days if I study really hard maybe I can write something as well as Reginald Rose wrote this piece.

I’ve said it before but those guys knew what they were doing back then. They felt both a social responsibility to tell stories that were relevant as well as feeling a responsibility to engage an audience.

My pet theory, which I cannot back up in any way, is that the writers who fought in World War II felt a real responsibility to their friends who had died on the field. They saw just how inhumane human beings could be to one another and they wanted to remind us to be as good as we could be. To be as fair and compassionate as we could be.

It is all over my hero Rod Serling’s work.

But at the same time they strove to teach, not preach. Drama is a way of getting an intellectual idea across on an emotional level.

12 Angry Men is a story that says that each of our voices matters--that because of our personalities and experiences we can all bring something to the table. It is a story that says we all have value.

It also shows how our prejudices can blind us and how foolish it is to stick to them despite all evidence to the contrary.

12 Angry Men is a masterpiece, plan and simple. It is a lean drama stripped to its essence, all the fat trimmed off.

Do yourself a favor and look past your own prejudices of style, or what you think of black and white film, or old acting styles and see what’s underneath all of that. Treat yourself to the rare experience of both feeling and thinking as you watch a film.

See 12 Angry Men.

Movies I like

"I know a woman who looks like a bullfrog but that don't mean she's the damn thing's mother." -- Moses Pray (Paper Moon)

Anyone who speaks to me for more than five minutes knows that I think that this time we are living in is the worst time in the history of American film. In fact, I did write about it in two other posts. So if you’d like more details you should look at those.

I will say that I am not alone in my assessment: legendary screenwriter William Goldman says the very same thing. And so does filmmaker Alexander Payne. In fact, Payne dates the demise of American film around the same time I do—around 1982.
This does not mean that there have not been good films since 1982, but it was the last great film year:

• E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
• Tootsie
• The Verdict
• Gandhi

These films were all released in 1982. If just two films of that quality came out this year I’d be amazed. These movies were all huge hits and all very different—there was also more diversity of subject matter back then.

Anyway, whenever I get on my soapbox about this someone always asks me what films I like. I answer with a few names of classic films and they will (always!) interrupt and say, “Yeah, but what have you liked lately?” The answer is not much. Some years it’s nothing. There was a level of story craftsmanship in older films that is almost nonexistent today—outside of Pixar.

But because people always want to know what I like and why I like it I’ve decided to recommend a film every now and then.

Some of you who read this blog are younger and have a problem with older films. The acting styles are different, the color may appear strange or, god forbid, is nonexistent. The music cues may seem over the top by today’s standards. The special effects may be corny because your eye is used to CGI.

I’m going to ask you to try to look beyond all of that to see the craft underneath. I want you to see the craft that transcends style and taste. I want you to see the quantifiable quality of these films.

I will start with a film I wish I had made—Paper Moon.

Released in 1973 and directed by Peter Bogdanovich, this film is one of my all-time favorites. Nothing like it is made today. It was written by Alvin Sargent, who wrote Spider-Man 2. And actress Tatum O'Neal became the youngest person ever to win an Oscar. She still is. When you see the film you’ll know why.

What does the film do well? Everything. The big question is what makes a father: biology, or loving and taking responsibility for a child? You will see that right away the question of parentage comes up in the very first scene and it never stops. The film never forgets what it’s about. Listen to see how often it comes up blatantly or in more subtle ways, like how alike the “father” and child are. Also look for great visual storytelling. See how much is told with pictures and not words—first class screenwriting.

In this film you care about the characters and what happens to them. Films today don’t make you feel as much as they make you think. We seem to have made a collective decision that thinking is better than feeling. But sometimes the emotion of a situation is the truth of a situation.

Nowadays when I ask people if they liked a current film they say, “Yeah? It was good? I liked it.” They are tentative when they speak. The film may have made them think, but they felt nothing. They are afraid that they may say the wrong thing and say they liked a film that is not “smart” enough.

When Paper Moon came out people liked it. Period. And they weren’t afraid to say it. They said, “It’s great, you should see it!”—the same way they were later with Jaws and The Godfather.

Unlike many, many films today Paper Moon does not rely on a gimmick that pulls you out of the film. You will not have to have read the book. You will not have to have to go to a website to find information on something you didn’t understand. You will not have to know that there is a special shot in the film that no one had ever done before. You will simply have a great time and you will be moved.

Today, they may make hits, but they almost never make classics.

Enjoy Paper Moon.

Two Questions That Drive Me Crazy

First some backstory:

When I was a kid there were no VCRs. Only rich people had them; they were still rare for the rest of us. I desperately wanted to see my favorite television shows over and over again, but there was no way to do it. So I used a cassette recorder to record the shows’ audio. I would listen to them in bed when I was supposed to be asleep. This was during the ages of ten, eleven and twelve.

I was a kid obsessed with movies and television and how stories were put together. I needed to know what made a story work. After listening to my recordings of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, and reruns of The Twilight Zone and others, I began to see patterns. I didn’t yet know the terms for three-act structure and had never heard of Aristotle, but I knew that the first part of a story was a set-up for what was going to come later. And that there needed to be some kind of conclusion where it all paid off.

When I was a little older I found out where I could get screenplays. I got them and read them until I could see the patterns there as well. By the time I started to read books on screenwriting they were just confirming, and putting labels on, things I had already observed on my own.

Later, when there were VCRs, I watched movies and studied them over and over again so that I would understand the visual language of film. I checked out a 16mm projector from the public library along with old silent movies, and projected them from my room onto the side of a white house next door.

I made my first film when I was ten; I met a kid who had a Super 8 camera. All I remember thinking at the time was, “Finally, I’m getting to make a film!” This was something I had wanted to do since I was five, and found out you could do such a thing.

When I was thirteen I saw that there was a listing for motion pictures in my local phone book so I started calling people and asking questions. That got me my first after-school job as an assistant animation camera operator for a man named Bruce Walters, who taught me things I use to this day.

Why this trip down memory lane? Because I have two pet peeves.

I am often asked by beginners which screenwriting software I use. All I can think is that this is the last thing they need to worry about. They never ask if they have the skill or talent to write a screenplay. Writing screenplays is a lot of work and the more you understand how to do it the harder it gets.

But software is always the first question people ask nowadays. They will not put in the time and effort to hone their craft, but they will plop down a couple hundred bucks on a program that makes their jumble of ideas look like a screenplay.

Sure, every now and then an ex-stripper decides to write a movie and hits the big time. But more often then not I’m guessing that someone starts off wanting to be a screenwriter and ends up a stripper–not the other way around. This is a tough business and it helps to study the craft.

The other question has to do with passion.

I often find myself speaking or teaching a class where I tell people that if they want to write screenplays they should read screenplays. I am surprised how few people bother to read things written in the form they profess they want to work in. So I say, “Read screenplays.” The response that always comes back, “Where do you get screenplays?”

I got my hands screenplays in the ‘70s and early ‘80s when they were much harder, not to say impossible, to find. Back then not everyone wanted to write movies, so not many people sold screenplays. Now you can get them everywhere.

“Where do we get screenplays?” may sound like an innocent question, but what it really says that the person is unwilling to put any effort into learning their craft. Not even the effort it takes to type “screenplay” into a search engine. C’mon, people.

I once asked a group if they would like to sell a script for a million dollars. They did. “Well,” I told them, “if you want to sell something for a million dollars you have to do a million dollars worth of work.”

No program will help you write better and a “good idea” is not just proper formatting away from being a hit screenplay. If you want to write screenplays you have to read screenplays. If you feel you have nothing to learn, then you have no idea how much you really don’t know. (If you feel you just have a few things to learn, you also have no idea how much you need to learn.)

But when you sit down to write a screenplay and are gripped with fear and insecurity, when you feel you know nothing, when you know what you don’t know, and you can see there is a mountain you must climb ahead of you—then you are on your way to becoming a screenwriter.

There is only one way to scale this mountain — study your craft. Be a ravenous consumer of information. You can start right now by typing “screenplays” into Google.

And please never ask me those questions again.

The Perfect Solution

I would like to take back the word “perfectionist.” Let’s start by assuming that perfection is something we can actually attain. For instance, some people say that people there is no such thing as a perfect circle, but, for all practical purposes, there is. Let’s call this perfect. Near perfect is perfect.

Why am I defining perfection? Because I have seen many screenwriters and others use unattainable perfection as a false goal that allows them to procrastinate. How many of you have been working on “that project” for years? Chances are you are afraid to move forward because when the project is done it will not be “perfect.”

Ultimately you’re afraid of judgment—your own or someone else’s. Someone may see your mistakes and you will be confronted with your shortcomings. As long as the project exists only in your head, it is an uncompromised ideal.

Perfection is a way not to finish. It is a way not to make decisions, because you might make the wrong decision. It is a way not to be judged. But being judged is a part of being an artist. If you are unwilling to take this risk, you are not an artist.

If you do the best job you possibly can, then by definition you can do no better. This is when you stop, because this is as close as any of us get to perfection.

I have a friend, Pat Hazell, who is a writer. He talks about it like this. He says that people will start a script, and maybe get ten pages in before they go back to perfect those pages, then back again to perfect those pages. And as he puts it, “They think they’re writing.”

This quest for the unattainable creates the illusion of progression without the results. In his novel The Plague, Albert Camus created a would-be novelist, Joseph Grand, who ceaselessly revised his first sentence, never getting beyond it.





The thing to remember is that all artists share this fear that they will produce crap that everyone hates. Usually, only the worst artists do not have this fear.

Years ago I was at Comic-con in San Diego with my friend Brian O’Connell. Brian is an illustrator and director over at Lucasfilm working on the Star Wars’ Clone Wars television show. But at the time he was just a guy trying to break into comics who was being passed over by no-nothing comic book editors who could not see his talent.

One person who could see his talent was comic artist Mike Mignola. Mike saw Brian’s work and was so impressed that he showed us some pages for his new comic book called Hellboy, which no one had heard of yet. Mike had not even finished the first book. Brian and I were blown away. These were truly beautiful pages.

Brian thought he’d make a joke and said with a straight face, “You need to work on your proportions.”
Mike got a sheepish look on his face and said, “Yeah, I know.” Brian had to explain that he was just joking and that the pages were amazing.

Even Mike Mignola, who is very, very good, has his doubts about his work. But this doubt does not stop him from creating. Don’t let it stop you. Understand that the imperfect work you produce is far better than the perfect work that lives only in your head. Sit down and get it done.

If you work hard the next thing will be better and the next thing will be better still. Which is perfect.