CS Daily Archive > Son of a Pitch > 08/05/04

Two Questions

By David Michael Wharton

If you've ever asked yourself "Why screenwriting?" or pondered your writing idols, then this column is for you. And if you haven't, there's no time like the present.

Warning: Mature language.

From the time I began setting up interviews for this column, I always concluded my conversations with the various writers in the same way, with two questions. The first is the same question I asked of myself and of you in the very first column, way back when: Why screenwriting? The second question was "Who are some of your writing idols?" Along the way, I've collected some great answers, and this week we're featuring them. I think the responses say a lot of about the responders, giving us a glance into both the motives and the experiences that have shaped these screenwriters. Enjoy.

JT Allen (Redemption)
Why screenwriting?
"I got a master's degree in English literature and an undergraduate degree in Art and Cinema. And sometime in my early twenties, it just dawned on me that that's what I wanted to do. Can't really tell you why. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and I just started to methodically pursue it. Part of it is because… you know, when I'm sort of beating up on myself, I say, 'You know, you could write poetry. There's nobody stopping you. Of course, you wouldn't get a check for doing so.' So, at this age, when I've got two kids, it's writing where you can actually get paid for it, which is marvelous. It's also kind of real world, in a way. We all get daunted by the market sometimes: when you go pitch a story you really love and get nothing but blank stares. You go home and you go, 'This is a brilliant story! These guys are morons, what's wrong with them?' But you are interacting with this market that has certain demands at certain times, and I like that. It's kind of real world in a weird way. You can't write about whatever you want. You've got to find a compromise between that and what the market's demanding. It's frustrating at times, but still interesting."

Who are your writing idols?
"The list is long. I love people like Dickens and George Eliot and James Joyce. The English literary canon. I still love Shakespeare. I saw A Midsummer Night's Dream last night, and I came home and was like, 'Wow! That was the perfect day. I went sailing in the day and went to see Shakespeare at night.' Screenwriters, I really like Ernest Lehman. I really like those old Hollywood guys like Ben Hecht. I think somebody called him a 'hack of genius.' I've always loved that. Balzac is another guy I've always liked, because he was the guy who if you gave him an assignment to write a tract on the death penalty, he'd write it from one side, and then the next day -- if you gave him money -- he'd write it from the other side. Because he was a writer, that was his thing. He took his skill and his craft and used it to the best way he could. It's the same way with Ben Hecht. That guy wrote all kinds of stuff, and he was unabashedly trashy at times, but he was always brilliant in so doing."

Rick Cleveland (Six Feet Under)
Why screenwriting?
"I still write plays. I do short essay-like commentaries for NPR. I'm dying to write a novel. But I love movies: independent movies, big studio popcorn movies, old classics. I grew up reading books and going to the movies. I also love writing for Six Feet Under. For me, writing for that show is more like writing a play or an indie movie than a 'regular' TV show."

Michael Cooney (Identity)
Why screenwriting?
"The truth, sadly, is that it was my revolt against my father. He wrote funny stage plays, so I had to do something else. That's what started me doing it. There's a sort of laziness -- it's a terrible thing to say -- but, whether or not I had cracked it, once I believed I cracked it (if that makes any sense)… once you believe you know what you're doing, [movies are] absolute bliss to write. I don't know if I could write a novel in six weeks. I could maybe write a play, but probably not. In that amount of time, you have to hold this whole thing in your head: the story, the characters, the genre, the feel, the flavor, the color. To spend a year writing a novel, I just don't know how anyone can do that. There's something about a screenplay, whether it is the inherent and necessary efficiency of the writing, and effectiveness and intensity of the writing, that forces you to write at that efficient, encapsulated, intense pace. You can go underwater for six weeks, and you come up with this entire story in place."

Who are your writing idols?
"Quentin Tarantino and Shane Black are two. I think Quentin Tarantino's screenplays are genius; they are the epitome of what a good read should be. They just crackle. I'll never forget, I read From Dusk Till Dawn, and I couldn't believe this line of action said something like, 'He picks up the fucking gun.' And I realized, that was exactly right. He didn't pick up the gun; he picked up the fucking gun. It came alive on the page. My advice to anyone who wants to write action is, read Tarantino and Shane Black, because those two are wonderful writers in that genre. And also, my father. For me, that was the hugest influence in my life, not only in how to live your life, but in how to write. The dedication he put in. His motto for life was, 'The harder I work, the luckier I get.'"

Stuart Hazeldine (Riverworld)
Who are your writing idols?
"Well, it's a weird thing, actually, because I grew up as a real movie kid. For instance, I'm a real Blade Runner fan. Even though I'm a fan of Phillip K. Dick's novel, I've always been more of a fan of Ridley Scott. I always planned to be a writer-director, and I know I'm going to spend most of my career being known as that. Even though I consider myself more of a writer than a director, because I personally value the idea and the genesis of the story more than I do the directing. For me, directing is just about being there to make sure your vision is realized. I will always consider myself a writer who directs. For some reason, I think my heroes have always been either directors or writer-directors. Probably my number one hero in that respect is Peter Weir; I've always been a huge fan of his. I always grew up as a reader, but I didn't plow through hundreds of novels as a kid, because I was such a movie freak. And even though I'm a compulsive reader, I tend to read stuff that will fuel my story writing, rather than reading other people's stories. I'm an information freak. I'm always on the Internet or watching documentaries, stuff like that. Even when I'm reading books, I tend to read books that are potential raw material for what I'm doing. I remember Ridley Scott saying that he's not a big sci-fi fan, and yet he made Blade Runner. Even though I was a big sci-fi head as a kid, it was always sci-fi movies: Star Wars, Blade Runner, that sort of stuff."

Adam Herz (American Wedding)
Why screenwriting?
"I wanted to make movies; that's the only reason. I'd love to write a novel; it seems pretty easy -- write whatever you want. There's really no constraints on you, other than [hoping that] somebody besides you likes your story. But screenwriting is so rigid, and you have to work with such economy of words. It drives me nuts. I hate screenwriting. It's really hard! It's incredibly difficult. I keep notes on my wall, and one of them is Thomas Mann: 'A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.'"

Who are your writing idols?
"Well, I read a shitload of Stephen King. In second grade, I read Cujo, and starting there, I read all his books until I burned out somewhere in high school. People call him a populist writer, shit like that, but he writes with such clarity and ease. His voice is just colloquial in a way, not folksy. As a young writer, I went after anything he wrote. Anything by Zemeckis, Spielberg, Jim Cameron. Back to the Future, Indiana Jones. Lately, I've been going back to Good Will Hunting, to see how they did what they did. I think all writers are good 50 percent of the time. You have your good days and bad days, and I don't think there's a great writer out there who hasn't written some sort of shit. When I'm stuck, what I do a lot of the time to get myself unstuck is think, 'What would Bill Goldman do here?' What would Bob Gale do? And what would the executives ask them to do? I really like Jim Cameron's stuff. He's criticized so often for not having well-rounded characters, which is true some of the time. But The Abyss -- with the exception of the last half-hour, when it turns into E.T. -- is so… he somehow finds a way to keep all this tension. I'm in awe of how he holds it together. In Back to the Future, there isn't a moment of screen time wasted; everything serves a purpose. It just depends on what you're trying to do. When I was writing the first American Pie, what kept going through my head was, 'What would Bachelor Party do?'"

Robert Nelson Jacobs (The Shipping News)
Why screenwriting?
"I love movies. I think it's pretty simple. It's that jazzy feeling you got when you were a kid and they turned off the lights and the movie came on. I also like the dramatic form. I like moving a story forward with dialogue. I really enjoy writing dialogue. When I was writing short stories, that was probably my favorite part. And I still love fiction. I still love to read it when I have time, and I don't rule out that I won't write short stories from time to time. But I really love the screenplay form, for all its frustrations. And I enjoy collaborating. It can be frustrating as hell, but it can also be really exhilarating to work with a good actor or director who can bring something to that script that you didn't know was there, or find something in that character that was only half-glimpsed."

Who are your writing idols?
"Probably the writers that I read as a kid: John Updike, John Cheever, Philip Roth. Some of the short stories of Raymond Carver. Vonnegut. One of the most wonderful experiences I ever had was when I was at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, and John Updike came to do a workshop. He selected two stories, and one of them was mine. Having your story workshopped by Updike is really pretty thrilling."

David Michael Wharton is a freelance writer and journalist from Texas, and is assistant editor of CS Daily. When not slaving away in the editorial salt mines, he somehow finds the time to write his column Son of a Pitch, as well as occasional movie and DVD reviews. He is, of course, working on a screenplay.

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