Monday, January 25, 2010

The Invisible Adaptation

Whenever I decide to write a new screenplay I look through my library of ideas and I compare them to what’s currently in production on imdb- and see if any trends correspond.

This time it occurred to me that I may be fucked.


What I noticed was that everything being made was based either on a novel, a comic book, a video game, or itself.

I immediately recalled going to dinner with a friend of mine who works as an exec at a huge studio and they said their boss held a meeting for all the departments- this was to determine the new direction their studio was to be headed. And they said “The studios are making money off of adapted material so I want you to buy the rights to everything you can.” To which my friend responded to us

“Can you believe that was his big advice? Duh!”


So lets track this a bit…

The novel has been adapted almost since the beginning of narrative film-making. You take a solid story in a book- or play- and you turn it into an Oscar-winning film. Anything from The Philadelphia Story, to The Godfather, to Lord of the Rings. It makes sense, they have an inherent audience from the original work- and those people want to see how their own imagination of the story translates to film.

This trend still continues today. Some projects in development include Atlas Shrugged, Water for Elephants, Wicked, and Life of Pi.


But, c’mon, this is Hollywood, and we can take it a step further. This town’s not afraid to “dumb it down a bit” when money’s to be made. After all, there’s a whole slew of comic books out there.

Hollywood has felt that comics have been legitimate sources of adaptation material for decades. Batman and Superman have been around since the 40s and have been remade numerous times since. The last few years have been no exception.

Christopher Nolan took the Batman franchise to a whole new level with Dark Knight- one of the top-grossing films to date. For a story that had been squeezed for all its worth, Nolan found new depths for these characters and this former comic book stands on its own next to our most respected novel adaptations.

That’s the extreme example. There’s still your Iron Man, your Spiderman, your Watchmen, and all the failed adaptations like Spawn, Ghost Rider, and The Hulk. Hollywood has found that whether they do well or not, people will go see them anyway.

So now there is a mad rush to turn anything that has ever been a comic into a movie.

From Marvel Enterprises alone we not only have The Avengers, but we have Captain America… Yes… one of the members of The Avengers… his own movie.

It seems like every character is getting their own movie now- combine that with a star name and you got Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool, Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury, and Tyrese Gibson as Luke Cage.

And then you have Columbia Pictures who’s putting Marc Webb, the director of 500 Days of Summer, in charge of the “reboot” of the entire Spiderman series.


What’s the bottom line? In the words of my studio exec friend, “Duh!” Money. These films make money. The rare exceptions win Oscars. But nothing is more important to Hollywood than money. And nothing pisses off Hollywood more than other industries making more money than they are.

And that’s exactly what happened when Halo 3 came out. It made $170 million in the first 24 hours it came out- something a feature film has never touched. The Dark Knight made $65 million in its first day, but that doesn’t hold a candle to Halo 3. I guarantee your kids favorite video games will be made into a movie if it did well enough financially. A glimpse at some upcoming titles in development…

Halo, Metal Gear Solid, Bioshock, Gears of War, Mass Effect, God of War, Splinter Cell, etc, etc...


So its proven that any adapted material can be financially lucrative. But what happens when a movie is successful and there’s more juice to squeeze? Well, adapted or not, as long as it has a built-in audience, they make a sequel…!

Ghostbusters 3, The Hangover 2, Transformers 3, Kill Bill: Vol 3, Terminator 5, Paranormal Activity 2, Underworld 4, Sin City 2 & 3 (yes, 3 has already been green-lit before 2 came out), Indiana Jones 5, Mission Impossible 4, Austin Powers 4,


I don’t know about you but that list always makes me pee my pants a little bit. But as a further reminder of how narrow-minded Hollywood can be, what do they do when they run out of fresh, adapted material and they still don’t want to take risks on original work… they remake everything all over again…

Child’s Play, Robocop, Dune, The Lone Ranger, The Birds(!), Tron, Hellraiser, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Blob, The Seven Samurai(!!)

Notice that most of these movies are from the 80s. Since that was one of the most fucked up decades in the history of anything, I’m not surprised modern filmmakers think they can take those ideas and make them better.


I even had a meeting with Paramount’s online department when my show, The Bannen Way, was going into production at Sony and this guy offered to my partner and I the opportunity to adapt previous movies into Web Series. Yes, they were developing original works, but mainly they wanted to adapt from previous successes.

So what does this mean to a young screenwriter who wants to get his film career going when everything that is being bought is based on something else? What options do I have?


a) Write a book, comic, or… video game? Hmm… as easy as that sounds, they would still have to build a huge audience first.

b) Buy the rights to whatever’s available- in any medium- and pitch it as a film. Totally viable but how expensive will that be? Maybe I’ll get lucky and find a lost gem that everyone else overlooked but, truthfully, isn’t everyone looking for that kind of shit these days? I’d be competing against massive studios with greater resources.

c) Keep pitching fresh ideas and hope one of them sticks.


So here I sit wondering what my next screenplay is going to be about. I got tons of ideas. But having written half a dozen scripts that have “missed the mark” I’m much more precious with my time and energy.

The good news is there’s hope. I call it “The Invisible Adaptation”. Its simply taking an original idea and saying its loosely based on a classic piece of material. This isn’t a new concept, but simply a way to validate your project- to make you appear more well-read and give added meaning to your, otherwise, “boringly modern” story.

This has been done since the beginning of time, and a lot of them can be traced back to Shakespeare, which can, in turn, be traced to the ancient Greeks who likely originated the 7 (or 8, or however many is debated these days) basic storylines.

Not many know that Lion King was based on the story of Hamlet, or that West Side Story was based on Romeo and Juliet, or that The Magnificent Seven was based on Seven Samurai, or even that 10 Things I Hate About You was based on The Taming of the Shrew.


For some reason, this notion excites me. I sit forward, pitched at an angle over my keyboard, hungry to see which of my ideas can be blanketed with a classic theme, so that I can sit across from an executive, and whisper with a dainty gesture of my wrist

“By the way, this is loosely based on Homer’s The Odyssey”

And I expect him to have that look of realization on his face, that the story makes clearer sense and is immediately legitimized. For some reason, now he cares about the idea.

Who am I kidding? I’ll probably end up basing my next script on my own life- a story about a frustrated artist trying to make it in Hollywood.

At least that’s original.

[sigh]

~ JW

Monday, January 18, 2010

Your Personal Genius

Have you ever had one of those inspired, “genius moments”- a total gut reaction- and someone asked you how you knew how to do it… ?

And you said to yourself…

“I don’t know- I just knew!”…?


Two things that I love about life…

a) the inter-connectedness of all things; what you find to be true in one aspect of your world magically seems to apply to another.

b) Everything I need to understand about my own existence can be exemplified from my favorite movies.

Most of us have seen The Last Samurai where Tom Cruise goes Zen and takes down all the trained swordsmen around him, albeit, in Slow Mo. He does it by letting go and trusting his inner genius, essentially freeing his intuition to react to the situation.

Star Wars is all about this concept. The Karate Kid touches on something similar. This is not a new idea but I don’t see it practiced enough and I became very interested in how to produce it so it didn’t just strike me in random moments. Whether you wanna call it “trusting your instincts”, “unlocking your inner genius”, or “using the force”- its up to you.


When I studied at the Beverly Hills Playhouse, my late great teacher, Milton Katselas, used to refer to these kinds of things as your Personal Genius. He urged us actors to use our instincts and react in the moment based on our life experiences.

He often talked about when he knew Salvidor Dali, who I always knew as an artist who painted whatever popped into his mind- dripping clocks, tall elephants with spindly legs- and analyzed the significance of these images later

That notion drove me crazy when I was younger. I was pissed that he wouldn’t intentionally use symbolism to convey his ideas. But over the years I’m finding many of my favorite artists keep coming back to Dali’s suggestion of…

“Paint to find out what the picture is”- Katselas would repeat this mantra he got from one of his favorite mentors until it stuck in our minds.

When Katselas was directing me in Hamlet that was our main area of attention. I found that task very difficult, especially since his directing style was, for lack of a better word, micro-managing. However, if I could “let go” as he wanted then I could use his well-crafted structure and instinctively react within those confines to create a freedom that cohesively told a story.

Of course, being the intellectual freak that I am- and going totally against the very nature of what he was teaching- I had to analyze how to manufacture this genius state whenever I needed it…

The way I see it, there are 3 steps. I’m going to call them the Three Rs because I got lucky and I found the correct synonyms to fit what I’m talking about.


STEP 1: Research.

In order to gain a base understanding of your craft, you need to fuel your brain with as much intellectual knowledge as you can. This is using your analytical mind- the left side- to acquire information and build a foundation.

STEP 2: Repetition

This can be synonymous with research, but there are many instances where studying it and practicing are a separate task. Its about training your mind and/or body through repetition- effectively transferring from the left brain to the right brain. (Let me be clear that I’m not a psychologist- I’m theorizing here)

STEP 3: Release

This is where you purposely let go of everything you’ve learned. Its a total reliance on the right side of your brain; trusting that your mind/body will instinctively know what to do.


Now lets take a couple examples…

I study Jeet Kune Do, this is Bruce Lee’s invented martial arts system that he felt was the most practical form of street-fighting; ultimately, it’s a combination of Wing Chung Kung Fu, American Boxing and French Fencing.

STEP 1 involves intellectually understanding the concepts Bruce Lee laid out. You can read his book, The Tao of Jeet Kune Do, or you can have a teacher demonstrate these conceptually. Without knowing these you wouldn’t understand what to do physically.

STEP 2 is the repetition of these movements. Lets say you punch a thousand times, carving out the motion Bruce Lee suggested, and you replicate this over and over and over again, until it becomes second nature. This process acts as transference from your intellectual mind to your body.

STEP 3 is about letting it all go. If you understood the concepts intellectually to begin with and repetition sank them into your body then your inner genius should know what to do for you. This is how Tom Cruise went Zen in The Last Samurai and Luke Skywalker was able to use the force in Star Wars. And that’s how Daniel Larusso was able to… execute a well-timed crane kick.

Then the question becomes, how do you let go…?

That’s where the money is. I’m not sure what the definitive answer is. That may be more particular to the discipline.

For Jeet Kune Do, I found that it helps to just focus on “making the hit”. And if an impulse comes to me, I go with it. If I judge the impulse, and I intellectualize “Well, is that really the best way to attack? What if—“

SMACK!! I’ll probably get hit first.

I have had about 2 instances in Jeet Kune Do where I was able to achieve this to an effective degree. I was sparring with a friend of mine from class. Every time I felt an opening I hit him. Every time he attacked me I was able to deflect and/or send one back first. After a couple minutes straight of him not being able to touch me my friend and opponent backed away, put down his dukes and smiled. “Jesus, Jess- how did you do that?!” Dumbfounded, I snapped out of it for a second,

“I don’t know. I just knew.” My Sifu was standing right next to us. We had a Karate Kid moment and my Mister Miyagi simply nodded at me:

“That’s how its done” and he walked off.

(Yes, it was very dramatic.)

I only came close to replicating this state one other time. That Zen experience made me love the martial arts and wonder how else it could apply to other aspects of my life. In art, in relationships, does it have to have a limitation? Can we ultimately live in a constant state of genius?


By the way, don't take this shameless self-promotion as my thinking I'm somehow more superior to my fellow artists. Quite the contrary. I believe this is something everyone has at their disposal but most people don't know- or don't care- enough to talk about.

But not me. I was so excited that I wanted to practice in other areas of my life…


I host a weekly home poker game and I constantly practice letting go and relying on my instincts. I try to remain open to whatever signals I get from my opponents.

If I’ve followed Step 1, then I understand the principles of “tells” that other players give off, unknowingly revealing what is under their cards. After researching a few books and professional articles, I should know about what starting hands are optimal to play in which situations. I should understand things like pot odds, etc. Through recognizing these concepts I should know how to play in a general poker game.

If I follow Step 2, then I’ve played enough hands to know that players do particular things in particular situations. I should be able to pick up on the rhythms that are established and use them to my advantage. Combining what I know about the game with trends I see over and over again, there will be times when patterns are broken and moments of inspiration may come to me.

Then if I’m fully operating on the level of Step 3, I should be able to stop analyzing and pick up instinctually on the unspoken game of poker. I sense what I often refer to as a “void of energy”. When I feel it I’ll look at the opponent from where I feel it coming from; and usually he’ll give it away with his apparent behavior. This can mean he’s bluffing’ or he’s got “the nuts”. Depending on the situation, it can become obvious which one it is. And looking back at the way the hand unfolded I’ve been able to call out someone’s exact hole cards. To which they flip them over, mouth agape, and ask how I knew what their cards were...

“I don’t know… I just knew.”


But how does this apply to film-making…?

In every way…!

Whether it’s acting- the obvious parallel- or the writing process, or even directing where you’re expected to operate on many different levels, this concept applies. I don’t see why it shouldn’t affect every discipline of filmmaking where any amount of creativity is involved: costume, cinematography, set design, editing, fluffing, etc.

As a budding screenwriter, I’ve read as many books as I could get my hands on over the years. I know how to structure a story. I know how to make a character more sympathetic to the audience if I so desire. I can say that I have a fairly solid, if not, ever-evolving craft. I trust that I always have these tools in my back pocket.

Knowing that I ultimately want to get myself into an intuitive state, I do this free-association exercise that a friend of mine introduced to me…

When I sit down to work on a scene I first write for 15 minutes on anything that comes to my mind. I don’t judge. I don’t edit. I don’t stop…

I just write…

When I’ve done that I have (hopefully) entered a state of intuitive freedom. There are times when I’ll work on a scene: I know the characters. I have an understanding of how they speak. I have a general structure to how I want the scene to play out. And I just go…

I write...

And the scene unfolds before me. I actually experience it as an audience member. In my ideal writing state, I will laugh, cry, or get angry as the scene un-folds. The characters say things that oftentimes surprise even me but I never judge it. Sometimes people ask me why a character would say something so obtuse in certain circumstances. I usually respond

“I just write what the demons tell me to write.” In some cases the line may be totally inappropriate and ultimately, useless (damn demons!); but in other cases, the lines just aren’t direct- but rather, very human because people don’t always speak so on the nose.

The legitimate fear with writing based on “things that just come to you” is they can be derivative of other ideas. That’s the beauty of the writing process though. When you’re done you can switch back to your analytical mind and judge from that perspective. Ideally, you’ll craft your story over a good period of time, constantly switching back and forth between these states.


It wasn’t until I started writing like this, combined with my Jeet Kune Do experience, and my home poker game, and other random instances that I was able to understand the potential genius in all of us that Dali spoke so fondly about, and that Katselas tried to ingrain in my life-style.

Nowadays, in whatever I do, I aim to let my instincts work their course. The analytical left brain is highly overrated- useless without the creative right brain. The same is true in reverse if the foundation isn’t there. I’m finding that this is one of the secrets to creating on a higher artistic level.

Ask me how I know.


~ JW

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

The Complacent Smile- Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Imperfect Film

“You kill your film several times, mostly by talking about it. A film is a dream. You kill it writing it down, you kill it with a camera; the film might come back to life for a moment or two when your actors breathe life into it- but then it dies again, buried in the film cans. Mysteriously, sometimes, in the editing room, a miracle happens when you place one image next to another so that when, finally, an audience sits in the dark, if you’re lucky… the dream flickers back to life again. That’s why I’m secretive.”

This was a quote from Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis) in Nine, which I saw a short while ago. While he was referring to why he doesn’t like to discuss his films publicly, its also a powerful comment on the tragic process of having a perfect image in your mind painfully destroyed before you for all the world to judge as your original vision.

It reminded me of when I went to see a SAG screening years ago of Shadow of the Vampire, directed by E Elias Merhige, who had this look on his face when he sat on the stage answering questions that could only be described as a complacent smile, covering extreme disappointment at what his film could have been. I’ve seen that look in different forms on many different directors. Merhige had it, Daniel Day-Lewis had it in his character in Nine, and all of my favorite directors seem to wear it as a permanent mask. They seem so wise, deeply disturbed, and simultaneously grateful to be in their current position. I wanted to know what was behind that façade of complacency.

I had the privilege of directing my first feature/web-series, The Bannen Way, for Sony this past year. I was proud of the script I created with my partner, Mark Gantt (along with the invisible force of producer, Bailey Williams). The original visions in my head were glorious. And we had a plan of execution. I affectionately referred to this project as “my baby”, knowing full-well the theoretical sacrifices that are made by directors on their “first-born” and how it affects them; that notion started as a naïve smile on my bright-eyed face as I set out to prove you can get everything you want as an artist and still make everyone happy…

And then I witnessed each day, throughout pre-production, production, and post-production, as the harsh realities of film-making on a budget set in, and tore my baby limb from limb…

It was at the culmination of these moments when I couldn’t watch my project any more that I fled to the theatre to watch something else- anything else- and I stumbled upon Nine. This opening monologue touched me to my very core; I started to shake. It was the epitome of what I had been feeling for the past several months.

It brought me back to another quote I had heard earlier on in the process (that’s what happens when you have A.D.D., by the way, you are constantly brought back to previous moments. Welcome to my world)…

“You have to sacrifice certain moments so that others may live.” Stated by my extremely talented DP, Roger Chingirian, he delivered it with such feigned importance- as if pretending the phrase was being created for the first time, though we mutually laughed at how tired that saying is. It was his attempt, without being too significant, to get us to cut down the script to make the shoot more manageable. But at that point I was done making sacrifices…

After all, in pre-production, I had already given up the parkour sequence…

Oh, the parkour sequence. If you don’t know what parkour (or parcour) is then rent Casino Royale and watch the opening action sequence. Or watch any portion of District 13. For now, just know that it that centers around the concept of getting from Point A to Point B as quickly and efficiently as possible. Its fun, its energetic, and its amazing to watch.

I had been taking classes on this new-ish craze as I fully planned on integrating it into The Bannen Way. The box that our hero, Neal Bannen, is desperately trying to recover is stolen by a group of these parkour thugs late in Act 2, headed by their French leader, Marcel. In Act 3, Bannen is to outwit them and run away with the box, only to be chased by twenty of these athletic geniuses.

My goal was to be on the cutting edge of anything like this before it became a well-known concept by the masses. And it was perfect trailer fodder…

Alas, we couldn’t afford it for our film and the ship has officially passed on any ingenuity it may have brought as there’s a big-budget movie called Parkour coming out and they’re doing the sequel to District 13; the market’s already becoming as over-saturated with parkour as vampires are these days.

This was the first time I experienced the mourning process over something that was in my head that would never end up on screen. My vision of how the story flowed, and the type of movement it would elicit had to be compromised because we simply couldn’t afford it.

Let me be clear that Sony was right to eliminate that first as we all had another goal to keep in mind: to make high-quality programming on the web that could actually make money. And if they funded every idea that came to Mark and me then they’d be broke. Our initial job was to dream up the best possible story and it was then, collectively, all our jobs to cut out what wasn’t cost-effective.

Our script got cut down to a point where we felt that the story would seriously be sacrificed if we got rid of any more. All car chases were gone. Many characters were eliminated. It was a real challenge keeping the integrity of the core of our story together. We were all finally convinced that what we had was doable, though extremely challenging to execute.

But there were many more sacrifices to be made in Production. Time was always a factor. And many of my “specialty” shots had to go. There were times we had to do the bare minimum to tell the story, Roger and I eking out as much style as we could within those constraints. We always had to consider how long it would take to light in a different direction so a lot of my “stylistic angles” were shelved in order to get through the day. It was heart-breaking, but totally necessary.

Granted, these kinds of constraints are not uncommon, though I was told on numerous occasions that if one could get through this then they could get through anything. And it didn’t stop there…

In post, dialogue that I thought was essential in defining a character was left on the virtual cutting floor so that we could keep the film at 90 minutes in order to sell it easier on DVD. I’m really into shows like Mad Men and I’m making my way through The Wire right now. They’re both examples where characters are given space to breathe and live in the space. Nothing feels rushed. It sets a tone. It positions the audience in such a way that creates a tension that can’t be attained by hastening through moments.

In our case, we simply needed the movie to be shorter. That meant chopping dialogue that everyone seemed to like; that meant cutting out space between lines that could have informed the audience about character; that surprisingly didn’t mean cutting out any scenes, although we did stylistically combine three scenes at one point to move the story along- which is an interesting by-product of creating ideas within constraints that wouldn’t have come about otherwise; Necessity being the mother of invention and all that…

As much as I pleaded with our development guys to keep the film longer, their hands were tied as well. As much as they wanted to give the movie everything it deserved, the reality of making a movie was rearing its ugly head. I was to be no exception to this rule. Thankfully my brilliant editor, Zack Arnold, was prepared for such limitations and helped me make compromises that appeased all parties.

Every element of filmmaking was affected by these constraints: Sound, lighting, time with actors, you name it…

But in a way that’s the beauty of it- the fleeting nature of filmmaking. Its about creating as many moments as possible. When those moments actually occur on screen it makes them all the more sweet because of the difficult spirit of this craft. Its not reserved for artistic endeavors though.

Athletes can train their entire lives for their big shot and have it taken away from them at the last second. As a former professional runner (when I used to go by my given name, Jess Strutzel) I wanted nothing more than to make the Olympic Team in the 800 meters. In 2000, I was in the lead in the final round with 100 meters to go only to physically fall apart and get passed by the field, missing the Olympic Team by 1 second…

Trying again in 2004, my first race of the season marked the fastest time in America that year; there was nothing that could stand in my way… Until I proceeded to fall in a local 5K, skinning up my knee, which I trained through. Then I got a virus, which slowed me down- but I continued to train through it. And finally I got a stress fracture in my foot due to over-training, which I couldn’t overcome and my Olympic Dreams were shelved forever.

That’s when I finally turned my full attention to filmmaking. Thankfully in this craft, its not all-or-nothing. You just try to create as many of those magical moments as possible- and strive to fulfill that original vision to the best of your ability.

While watching the rest of Nine, I realized that this happens to every director. For the most part, the audience never sees the imperfections but the director inevitably cringes at painfully obvious flaws, missed opportunities, and miniscule details that could have improved less-than-perfect moments.

This tragic, yet beautiful, reality sank in; and, in retrospect, as much as I like to keep that “divine dissatisfaction” in everything I do- that innate desire that keeps me striving for something better, I took a calming breath… And I whispered quietly to myself…

“I’m proud of my first feature film.” And a gentle, complacent smile settled on my somewhat-wiser face.


~ JW