CS Weekly Archive > From the Trenches > 2/29/08

Back to School:
Charlie Bartlett's Gustin Nash

By jenelle riley

Charlie Bartlett scribe Gustin Nash makes a teen movie for adults.

In a market saturated with teen movies where nobody actually looks or sounds like a teenager, Gustin Nash recognized there was a place for a smart, realistic leading man who happened to be under 20. "It seems like a lot of people are relying on their understanding of '80s teen movies to write these characters," Nash notes. His solution? Charlie Bartlett, the story of a brilliant but troubled 17-year-old who begins dispensing advice and prescription drugs to his fellow students. Played by Alpha Dog's Anton Yelchin (soon to be Chekov in J.J. Abrams' revamped Star Trek), Charlie is a truly original creation in a cinematic high school: neither nerd nor cool kid, he's an upbeat optimist with the mind of an entrepreneur. Along the way, he earns the ire of the school principal (Robert Downey Jr.—who would have made a great Charlie 20 years ago) and the affection of the principal's daughter (the spectacular Kat Dennings).

Charlie Bartlett marks Nash's first produced screenplay, but the positive response for the script helped land him his next job, adapting C.D. Payne's novel, Youth in Revolt, which currently has Michael Cera attached to the lead. In short, he's come a long way from working at a camera store in the mall to becoming a sought-after screenwriter.

Where did your interest in screenwriting begin?
I went to a mishmash of public and private schools and had a theatre and photography background. I decided to go to USC Film School. I must have been 17, and someone said, "You should probably learn to write." I think they said the words, "Property is king." So, I decided to focus on the screenwriting program. I graduated in 99 and really kind of struggled. I was living up in Burbank, trying to get any job I could. Someone said, "Write 10 scripts. Just to see if you're any good at it." It seemed like a lot. I got a bunch of crappy jobs —I worked at AMC Theatres and Virgin Megastore. I ended up working at a camera store, which was the one job where I could get a lot of reading done. I was writing by morning and night, and at work I was reading everything I could, from American Cinematographer's Manual to international market numbers. Just trying to give myself a different kind of education than I got in film school.

How did you go about getting your first agent?
My freshman year in college, Alan Gasmer of William Morris came to speak. He was one of those people who everyone asked the question, "How do you get an agent?" His answer was, "Write a good script." The irony, of course, being that that is the harder question: what is a good script? I wrote his name down freshman year, and in my junior year, found a professor who knew him, and got the script to him my senior year. He was kind of the only person I went after, and I lucked out. The script was called Persona Non Gratis, and for a 20-year-old, I thought it was pretty great. It's probably more pretentious than I would do now. But he took me in based on that and managed to get me meetings. For the next four years, I was taking meetings based on that script. He was very supportive of me; he waited for me for a long time.

You finally broke through with the script for Charlie Bartlett. Where did the inspiration for the story come from?
In 2003, I was still working at the camera store, and I had just finished writing my ninth screenplay. I went to visit my dad, who's a psychiatrist, and I said, "I don't know if this is ever going to happen for me. I'm working in a mall. This is a far cry from what I thought I was going to be doing." And he said, "What you need to do is, next to every task in your schedule, write 'You can do it.'" So, I went to bed that night thinking about that mantra and of a character who has that mantra. The idea of somebody who is able to fake symptoms, that had been a concept that had been floating around somewhere in my head. It was one of those sleepless nights where you toss and turn because you're going down different roads in your head with the movie. More or less, I had the whole movie in my head by the time I flew back home. I had a 40-hour-a-week job and I still wrote it in four weeks.

You then went on to adapt Youth in Revolt. How did that lead to Charlie Bartlett getting made?
About a week after I finished [Charlie Bartlett], I was waiting for my agent and manager to read it, and I read Youth in Revolt. I was just astounded. Everyone said, "There's no way you're going to get that job. Everyone's pitched it, no one can figure out how to do it." I had a hard time believing that, because it just sort of popped out to me how to do it. So I said, "Please, just somehow get me in the door." I was thinking at this point Charlie Bartlett was a sample. It had enough comedy and drama to get me a variety of jobs. My reps sent [Youth in Revolt producer] David Permut an early look at Charlie Bartlett; they gave it to him on Friday, I was in his office on a Monday morning, and he threw his Master Card down on the table and said, "What do I have to do to be attached to this movie?" I said, "I want to do Youth in Revolt."

But it still took a couple of years to get Charlie Bartlett made?
In 2006, [director] Jon [Poll] came onboard. We met, and it wasn't just that he said all the right things. He embodied the character as a human being. Insanely so. He is kind of that optimistic, very straightforward person. On the one hand, you might be able to fault him for being naïve, but it doesn't seem to get in his way at all. Much like Charlie Bartlett, despite all obstacles, his optimism kind of converts people. It was a very easy call to make after that meeting, to say, "I feel really safe in this guy's hands." And he also had some great ideas. One of the first things he said was, "I'd like there to be more comedy in the movie." It was such a relief to hear it, because I thought I was going to have to be the first to say it. After being it away from it for so long and coming back to look at it again, I was ready to take myself a little less seriously.

But it takes a certain amount of chutzpah to make a teen movie that's going to cost $10 million—or whatever it ended up costing. Everyone around town said there's no way to do this. Jon and I were going around and had everyone saying, "This is not just a teen movie. It's a movie with teenagers in it, but it's really for adults." Nobody could really wrap their heads around that until Sidney Kimmel Entertainment did. But we all knew going in that it was going to be an R rating. To their credit, they didn't bat an eye.

Was it difficult for you to essentially let go of your script while the film was being made?
I think it's a mistake to get into this business as a writer and not be prepared for an egoless process. It creates more heartache than need be. In a weird way, even in development, your development person is your writing partner. Certainly, when you're working as a director and everyone else, it's not your movie. It's the movie. It got to the point where Jon and I honestly didn't know where the ideas had come from at the end of the day. I look at the movie and I can't tell you what was in the script and what was ad-libbed. And I'm kind of glad I don't remember.

In general, how long does it take you to go from an idea to a completed first draft of a script?
To go from zero to hero? If I really take my time and have nothing else to do, it's probably a four- to six-week process. A great deal of that is devoted to brainstorming and research. Then I start organizing the ideas. I make a point, usually because there's a studio or other people involved, of doing a 10-page treatment. Then, between treatment and script, I do all the dialogue. I take each scene down in a note card and type up as much dialogue as I can, knowing that the next layer I work in is the mise en scene of the whole thing. Everyone calls it a scriptment now, that's the word that floats around. Before the script, I usually have a 45-page document that almost has everything in there. From there, the actual drafting phase is maybe two and a half weeks max. So, it really is kind of written before it's written. After years of writing all these things, I've got a lot of tricks in my bag at this point. The biggest fear I would ever have is being blocked on something, so it's my way of avoiding that. I don't know how someone sits down and just starts on page one and goes to the end. It just doesn't make sense. The seeds of the end are in the beginning. Every scene is tied together and tied to a spine, and the minute you make a change in one scene, the context in the next scene changes. I just don't understand how you go from start to finish.

You mentioned working with note cards. Can you elaborate on that process?
At some point in my career, I've used everything from cocktail napkins to note cards. I start with note cards where I cut up the 10-page treatment and paste the scenes on the note cards. Then I take the scriptment and put the pages in an envelope and post the envelopes on a wall. It's really fun; I can grab an envelope and look at what I get to work on that day. Then I draw a big X over the envelope and you can visually track your progress. It's good for my morale to do that.

What's harder for you, the dialogue or the prose?
Dialogue tends to be easy for me once I get their voices in my head. To be honest, the hardest part of the thing is the story. It's not the description of the scenes or anything that falls under writing—the hardest part is the story and crafting it. So many movies fail in the third act because if you don't know where you want to end up or what you're trying to say, I don't know how you can sit down to write. It's probably geometric thinking. I feel like a movie or story is an argument that's being made with narrative instead of logic. Instead of having an intellectual response, it's using an emotional response. And at the end, you have to have a point.

Jenelle Riley lives in Los Angeles and is abnormally obsessed with The Simpsons and playing Scrabble.

Charlie Bartlett courtesy MGM

From the Trenches
Working screenwriters discuss in their own words a particular aspect of screenwriting, from the mechanics of writing to the personal and professional impact that writing has had on their lives. > VIEW ARCHIVE

The Big Picture

Features that cover all aspects of screenwriting, from our "Seven Best" lists to analysis of old favorites and new classics. > VIEW ARCHIVE

Weekend Read
Film, book, web site and technology reviews from a writer’s perspective. How can these items help a writer on his or her journey, or make that journey more enjoyable? > VIEW ARCHIVE

DVD Review of the Day
DVD reviews from a writer’s point of view. What aspects of this script and features of this DVD illuminate the writing, development, and storytelling process? > VIEW ARCHIVE