10 Years of Bitter Posts - Inside baseball about studio development from Eric Heisserer and a WGA arbiter on the WGA credits process

One of the later joys of this blog was when I got to deal with some inside baseball stuff. In 2014, I recruited Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Eric Heisserer (ARRIVAL, LIGHTS OUT, BIRD BOX) to peel back the curtain on the studio development process. Here's a taste of what he had to say:

You are brought in to pitch on a big studio project. It is most likely a remake, adaptation, or sequel. The studios have property and rights, and the way for them to hold onto those rights or to do something corporate-like and “leverage intellectual assets” is to dig into their own libraries. These are the jobs.

Your agent tells you this is a great opportunity to get in good with a major studio. This is where the money is. This is how you will pay rent without taking a day job. In other words, don’t screw this up.

The good news is: You’ve been brought in because someone already loves your writing. Maybe it’s the production company set to make the movie. Maybe it’s someone among the top brass at the studio. Whatever the case, you feel good—someone’s read and loved your script. Your voice is what they want.

You pitch your take on their project, and it’s one you really want to write. You’re passionate and invested. Later you’ll realize that passion and excitement will often count more than story logic and in-depth character work. You get hired, and sent off to write your first draft with a few notes from the studio based on your pitch and/or outline.

You can find the rest of it here.

And then after that, I got to demystify the WGA arbitration process with this talk with a screenwriter who has been a WGA arbiter about how screenplay credits are determined:

As an arbiter, it's your job to determine the appropriate screen credit, so does this mean you have to read every single draft ever written for that project, even drafts that were completely abandoned by their producers?

If writer A wrote 10 drafts for the project, and writer B wrote 6 drafts, the arbiter does not read 16 drafts. Each participating writer picks one draft they feel best represents their work, in terms of how much of it is reflected in the final shooting script. So, in that case, the arbiter is reading 2 drafts. But if there was a writer hired for that project, and the producer "abandoned" the draft as you say, the arbiter would still read it. All participating writers are included in the arbitration, whether the producer "used" their draft or not. It is up to the Guild to determine who gets credit, not producers, not the studio, etc.

There are some notorious examples of films with an excessive number of writers. THE FLINTSTONES, for instance, had about 60 writers. In a case like that, does it mean the arbiter had to read at least 60 drafts? How does one keep straight what came from which writer and then somehow decide which three writers deserve the credit? And what is the largest number of drafts you personally have read for an arbitration?

In that case, then the arbiter would read 60 drafts. Each writer is assigned a letter, based on the order in which they were hired for the project. Once I read 12 screenplays for an arbitration. They arrived on my doorstep in a very large box :)

You can find the rest of it here.

This blog turns six! - There's still much more work to do

Today this blog is six years old. Honestly, I'm kind of surprised it's lasted this long and that so many of you fine people still drop by to read every new post. It's funny to think that when I started it, I wondered if I'd have enough material to keep me going six months.

Some of you have possibly noticed that the blog output has slowed a bit. That's largely due to the fact that I've exhausted a lot of the common topics and questions I could cover related to screenwriting. I've been able to compensate for that over the last few months as it's Oscar Movie season and I've had a full buffet of great movies to discuss.

The other big sea change is that it's become more and more common for people to use Twitter as an output for their musings and advice. I still like the idea of a permanent archive on the blog, partly because it allows new readers to discover those nuggets long after the fact. Even so, I know I've had plenty of times where I've tossed off a good rant on twitter and found that got it enough out of my system that I didn't feel the need to come back here and flesh it out. I'm trying to be better about that.

Ah, Twitter. I really can't believe that I still have yet to plateau in terms of followers. As I write this I have over 27,700 followers and the last time I checked, only a few percent of those were deemed "fake." It's flattering to see evidence that people are still discovering me and interested in what I have to say.

I bring this up because even more than through this blog, I've made a lot of great friends and contacts through Twitter over the last six years. It's absolutely been one of the best things I could have done for my career. I've made some good friends, including fellow aspiring writers, actors, and working writers - including a showrunner or two. I definitely recommend trying to build your own social network. It takes time but if you use Twitter right, you might find a few doors opening up for you.

As it's Awards Season, it feels appropriate to conclude this look back with a few thank yous.  There's not enough space here to acknowledge everyone whom I've met and become friends with due to this blog, but there are a few in particular I want to call out.

I did my best to put this list in random order, but I have to start with Scott Myers. About five months into the life of this blog, Scott was the one who really put me on the map when he featured me and gave me a very generous plug on the only must-read screenwriting blog, Go Into The Story. For almost five years, my relationship with Scott was completely through emails and tweets. I met him just over a year ago and it was a genuine delight to find he was everything you'd expect. Scott is the screenwriting professor I wish I'd had in college, running the sort of blog I could only dream of reading when I was taking my first steps into screenwriting. As I implore you often, please visit Go Into The Story regularly.

Hollywood has a reputation for having a lot of assholes. Some of that is earned, but my first-hand experience has been that there are a significant number of sincerely giving people. Over the years, a very high percentage of the working writers I have met have been some of the kindest, most helpful people out there. There's this myth that working writers are out to screw over aspirings. I've never seen any evidence of this, and the people I'm about to name-check are the furthest from that:

Eric Heisserer was one of the first working writers whom I got to know through Twitter, following his reaction to a tweet about the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET reboot. He later consented to an interview about the film and also authored a guest post about the life of a script in the studio development process. Even today, that post stands as my third-most-popular post of all time. On a one-on-one level, Eric has also been giving enough of his time to read some of my work and offer help where he could. He didn't do it so I'd blog about it, he's just that kind of person. Publicly he's very giving in offering the occasional screenwriting knowledge drops on Twitter, and I encourage you to follow him for his regular insights.

If you just know John Gary from Twitter, you probably have this image of him as the cranky pessimist who's the first one to say why the latest screenwriting development is a half-empty glass. But you'll have to look hard to find a more passionate advocate for writers, and someone more determined to make sure that naive aspirings aren't taken advantage of by charlatans and scams. He also regularly takes on what he calls The Hope Machine - the parent of the pie-in-the-sky fantasies that writers have about how easy it'll be to gain fame and forture from their writing. John doesn't tell you want you want to hear - he says what you NEED to hear. Like me he's seen the business from the inside as both a reader and a writer, and you would ignore the wisdom from that experience at your peril.

Along the same lines, I consider Geoff LaTulippe a must-follow. You can never accuse Geoff of not speaking his mind and while his blunt and aggressive nature sometimes gets him into trouble, he's very open to answering questions from aspiring writers on Twitter, on his podcast Broken Projector and on his personal website. If memory serves, Geoff might have been the first pro writer to reach out to me with an offer to read my script, and I know that's a courtesy he's extended to a few, perhaps many, others.

Justin Marks is a working writer who I first came to know via Twitter. We seem to approach things from a similar point of view and it's rare that there's a significant gulf in our opinions. (Justin once quipped that "we could pilot a Jaeger together.") I finally met him last year and it was a relief to learn that our rapport extended to our face-to-face interaction. Justin's got two big projects in the future: The Jon Favreau-directed Jungle Book movie coming in 2016 and the sequel to Top Gun, still unscheduled as far as I know. He's another one whose tweets can be a good insight into the business, so give him a follow.

F. Scott Frazier was one of the first writers to reach out to me to meet in person, and I'm glad I dropped the mask to do so. Scott tends to do his good deeds without advertising them, but I know he's gone out of his way to be a mentor to some writers. Like many others I know, he definitely believes in paying it forward, and frankly, he's prolific enough that it would be understandable if he didn't want to take the time to do so. I'd be remiss if I didn't plug my interview with him.

When people come to me asking for a coverage referral, I point them at Amanda Pendolino and ONLY Amanda Pendolino. Like me, Amanda's gotten a number of years as a script reader under her belt while trying to build her own career. She gives really sharp notes, and in a manner that always feels constructive. I recently gave her a script that I'm pretty sure wasn't her cup of tea, but she made a passionate, persuasive case for her opinions without making me feel like I'd been eviscerated. That's rare. On top of that, she's a great writer who deserves to be on staff somewhere. I know if I was a showrunner, she'd be one of my early draft picks.

Speaking of showrunners, Jeff Lieber is another favorite twitter-buddy. Currently one of the showrunners on NCIS: New Orleans, Jeff is one of the creators of Lost, as well as the creator of Miami Medical and was a showrunner on Necessary Roughness. He's used those assignments and others as fodder for his Showrunner Rules, which he regularly doles out on Twitter. You can find the whole archive here and his feed is always a valuable read.

The people I've named already are all great writers, but one writer whose work just knocked me on my ass was Brian Scully. I gave a spotlight post to his brilliant script MERCIFUL last year and soon after that, Brian landed management with Verve. I'm currently in the weeds on a very dark script of my own and I can honestly say that MERCIFUL has been like that rabbit they use to get the greyhounds to do laps around the track. I've read plenty of scripts that have inspired me and taught me, but MERCIFUL is one that really pushed me to be better and to not be scared to take chances.

Through my association with Go Into The Story, I also came to know Nate Winslow. Scott Myers calls him "future super producer Nate Winslow" and not without good reason. Nate is a savvy guy who's worked on a number of film projects, most recently at Defender Entertainment. If someone's smart, they'll snap him up to be their Creative Executive because he's got a great eye for projects. There are some people who you can just tell when you meet them that they have what it takes to make their own good fortune. With Nate, I know it's only a matter of time before he puts together a project and becomes one of those guys everyone is trying to get their scripts to. He's another one who keeps me motivated, if only so I don't feel like I'm standing still next to him.

And last, but certainly far from least, I consider myself fortunate to have gotten to know Black List founder Franklin Leonard. I take a very dim view of most services that ask screenwriters to pay for them. I don't typically trust coverage companies because you can't really trust who's reading those scripts, and it's rare to find such a company where the person in charge has a significant amount of credibility to put on the line. When Franklin told me he was expanding the Black List's mission to including hosting and review services for aspiring writers, I was skeptical. After he laid it out for me, I became a believer.  A few half-wits have accused my endorsement of the site of being the back-scratch that was redeemed by payola. I can assure you I have no official affiliation with the site, nor have I ever taken any sort of money, bribery or whatever you want to call it. I endorse the Black List because I believe in it and in what Franklin Leonard is trying to do.

I've been fortunate to meet many successful people. I've worked for a number of industry pros who were very good at their jobs and have been able to produce films for most of their adult lives. I want to tell you what sets Franklin Leonard apart from them. Those men and women are very adept players within the existing system. Franklin Leonard is a guy with the will and the forethought to change the system. The Black List is constantly evolving and expanding, carving out partnerships with management companies, studios and producers. More than that, Franklin is possibly one of the most above-board and intelligent people I've met out here. There's nothing phony about him, and if we had more Franklin Leonards, that wouldn't be a terrible thing for our industry.

Franklin is smart enough he could probably be very successful just playing the game as it is. Instead he's forging his own path. I'm glad that writers - both aspiring and professional - have such a driven advocate. I know he's going to continue to push to make the Black List better. I once said to him that he must be proud of everything The Black List has become and his reply was, "There's still much more work to do."

Those who succeed are often those who are rarely satisfied.

These people I have named all have a few things in common. In one way or another they have all provided support and inspiration, and I've been lucky to get to know them. And there are still plenty more whom I don't have the space to name here. I also would never have met ANY of them, had I not started this blog six years ago and stuck with it even when I was getting only 50 hits a day the first few months. I would be a poorer individual for not knowing them.

If you have good fortune, pay it forward. When you deal with others, know there's little to be gained from being a dick. When you reach a goal, start formulating the next one, pushing yourself even harder than you did before. Most of all, don't let yourself become too satisfied with whatever you accomplish.

Thank you all for six great years. There's still much more work to do.

Links: Oral history of THE GIRL NEXT DOOR and Eric Heisserer's twitter talks

Today's a day of links:

First up, THE GIRL NEXT DOOR is one of my favorite guilty pleasure films and I've long thought it's much better than it gets credit for.  (For one thing Timothy Olyphant's line reading of "How do I do it?... It's like a gift" has to be up their with one of my favorite deliveries in a film.)  I get why it didn't connect with audiences - the whole porn thing made a lot of people squemish.  (And if you think about it, the relative ages of everyone in the story means that Elisha Cuthbert's character either became a porn legend off of a VERY short career, or there's some Traci Lords-ish scandal in her past.

But if you can get past that, it's a pretty entertaining film.  That's why I was very entertained by this surprisingly comprehensive oral history of the film's making.

Also, I tweeted this out, but it occurs to me it might be a good idea to archive it on the blog. Screenwriter and director Eric Heisserer has begun to make a regular habit of tweeting out long twitter speeches of advice and insight into the writing biz.  A lot of them are in the vein of one of the most popular posts on this blog, "Screenwriter Eric Heisserer lifts the curtain on the studio film development process from a writer's perspective."

Well Tim Wainwright has taken all of Eric's twitter rants and compiled them here. You can also access them individually at the links below.

1. TV Pitches (4/8)
2. Loglines (3/28)
3. Feature Pitching (3/15)
4. Details and Continuity (3/12)
5. Screenwriting in general (3/11)
6. Challenging Yourself (3/7)
7. Screenwriting advice (Drafts, Parentheticals, Respect) (2/28)
8. Minimalism (2/18)
9. Real or fake script notes? (2/1)
10. Female Protagonists (9/5)
11. On Output (8/18)

Writer/director Eric Heisserer gets a career-defining performance from Paul Walker in HOURS

For obvious reasons, this review is suddenly a lot more complicated than it would have been two weeks ago.

Some time ago, I was lucky enough to see an early screening of HOURS, Eric Heisserer's directing debut, an emotional drama about a young father desperately trying to keep his prematurely-born baby alive in an evacuated hospital during Hurricane Katrina. Heisserer adapted the script from his own short story and it's the perfect sort of material for a director to establish himself with. There are stakes, tension, a contained location, but still great production value. It also is largely a one-man show starring that young father, who for long stretches of the film, is only able to act against either a dog, or a prop baby in an incubator.

That young father is played by Paul Walker.

I haven't seen the film since before Walker's tragic death a few weeks ago. My opinions were set in stone long before he even began production on the seventh FAST & FURIOUS sequel. But most of the audience won't have that luxury. When an actor dies, their last few films are often reviewed kindly. The death brings a baggage that encourages the audience to feel the performer might have been cut down at the height of their potential. That even actors whose work was once maligned managed to offer hints of what they were capable of, if only fate hadn't denied them the opportunity to truly fulfill that promise.

Because of that, I know that it might be tempting to cast a skeptical eye to reviews of Walker's performance in HOURS. "Of course, he's going to be praised," you might think. "What heartless monster would bash a dead man mere weeks after he was buried?" You're probably right. But that doesn't mean these reviews are wrong.

What I can tell you is that I walked into that screening many months ago largely wondering one thing, "If Paul Walker tanks it, I'm going to need to find something I can tell Eric I liked about the movie." See, Eric Heisserer's been a good friend of the blog. I don't know him terribly well. We've certainly interacted a lot on Twitter and traded some emails, but I think we've only met face-to-face perhaps three times. Still, he's been nothing but terrific to me when we have interacted and so I was really hoping HOURS was something I could praise honestly.

But it starred Paul Walker.

Oy. The fratty guy from Into the Blue, I thought. I haven't even seen those car movies he's in, but I don't think they're exactly leaning on his acting. I'm sure he's got his range but this intense drama feels like it's going to be WAY outside of his wheelhouse.

Less than two hours later I dined on crow.

The set-up is efficient. Hurricane Katrina is about to hit New Orleans as Nolan (Paul Walker)'s wife Abigail (Genesis Rodriguez) goes into premature labor and dies. While Nolan struggles to process this (there's a moment where he quite literally seems not to understand what the doctor means when he says there's nothing they could do for Abigail) the storm takes a turn for the worse, forcing an evacuation of the hospital.

There's just one problem - the newborn needs to stay in an ventilator that can't be evacuated with everyone else. The baby has to remain inside for 48 hours. Nolan is told to stay with her while everyone else leaves the hospital, promised that someone will return for them. And thus begins the one-man show portion of the film.

There's a wonderful moment where Nolan looks down at his helpless child and Walker doesn't play the expected note where this new father melts at the sight of his baby girl. Far from it. He tells the baby "I don't know you" and then says that he'd rather have his wife back than have the child. His wife was the one more excited about having a child, and Nolan is clearly angry not just over her loss, but the manner of her loss.

From here, the script turns into a master class of raising the stakes. Power fails and the ventilator only has a backup battery that can hold only a three minute charge. This means that every three minutes, Nolan needs to crank the generator in order to keep his baby alive. If he tries to get supplies, he needs to be back in three minutes. If he seeks out food, he needs to be back in three minutes. If he attempts to call for help, he must be back in three minutes. In one intense sequence, Nolan races to the roof to try to let a helicopter know there's still someone inside the hospital. Tell me, do you think it's easy to run all the way upstairs, get a chopper's attention and then make it back downstairs in time to recrank the generator.

Oh, and did I mention that three-minute time limit actually gets shorter as time pases? Nolan gets more and more sleep-deprived and hungry, but actually has to remain extra alert to keep cranking the generator constantly.

I confess, there are moments where the film does seem to cheat the three-minute limit. One moment in particular seems to stretch the disbelief that Nolan could not only get into a situation within the three-minutes, but that he would allow himself to not even attempt to return to the child until the time is up. Once his watch alarm goes off, Nolan encounters another delay that leaves the impression the baby was left off the ventilator for a perilously long time. But then, I'm not a doctor so perhaps it's entirely reasonable that the child could be revived within that window.

In any event, Heisserer knows how to generate tension far more effectively than pretty much any of the directors who've interpreted his prior scripts for the screen. However, his greatest accomplishment might be getting a performance from Walker that few would have though him capable of.  In fact, by the end of the film, Walker no longer seems an unlikely pick for this role so much as his film personae makes him the perfect person to headline this story.

When a sensitive guy cries, as emotional as it is, it's also expected.  For some reason it's far more affecting when the stoic or the unflappable types break down.  The cockiness that usually defines Walker's characters is present in Nolan, but this entire ordeal is an exercise in breaking down that armor.  These are the most important 48 hours in Nolan's life and little by little, Nolan endures increasing mental and physical exhaustion.  To Walker's credit, he's not scared to go to some very vulnerable places on screen to really make us feel that along with him.

I walked out of that screening both impressed by the film and humbled that I had been arrogant enough to presume the lead actor wasn't up to the task of carrying the emotional drama in the story.  I may have also been a bit smug, knowing that I had a head start on the rest of the filmgoing public in declaring that Paul Walker was an actor whom everyone had underestimated.  I definitely felt I'd witnessed something that would later be pointed to as a turning point in that man's career.

So much potential, snuffed out right on the verge of being realized.  One lesson to take from the story of HOURS is to never take our loved ones for granted. Nolan never expected to lose his wife on the day she bore their daughter.  I'm sure it goes without saying the posthumous release of HOURS itself carries a similar message.

Hours is opening in limited release this weekend and is available on a number of VOD platforms. For a list of theatres carrying the film, click the picture below:

Check out Eric Heisserer's "150 Screenwriting Challenges" on Amazon Kindle

Feeling like you need to flex those creative muscles a bit to get them in shape for your next script?  Friend of the blog Eric Heisserer has just released a Kindle book called "150 Screenwriting Challenges."  You might remember Eric as the screenwriter of the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET reboot, FINAL DESTINATION 5 and THE THING reboot.  He also penned one of the most popular posts on my blog - an inside look at the path a screenplay takes through the development process.

These challenges began life as Twitter exercises Eric devised to sharpen writing skills.  A sample assignment:

Take a talky scene of yours and rewrite it so that no character speaks more than ten words total. If you want, you can instead borrow a talky scene from a movie or TV series. The point is to discover the bare essentials that must be said.

And then this one:

Write a monologue by a prophet whose prediction of a major event didn't come true. This is the "day after" speech.   How characters deal with shame, guilt, and betrayal through their own words is a crucial key to knowing how they will speak on more mundane topics. Are they confessional? Are they snide and vindictive, in search of a scapegoat? Are they in denial?

Eric's come up with a variety assignments that end up being a unique way to explore many of the fundamentals of screenwriting.  A lot of them actually remind me of some assignments from my screenwriting classes.

As of the time I'm writing this (10:45pm PST), 150 Screenwriting Challenges is listed as the #1 Best Seller in Screenwriting on Amazon, besting even Save the Cat!

It's only $4.99 so pick it up if you get a chance.

Screenwriter Eric Heisserer lifts the curtain on the studio film development process from a writer's perspective

Last week I pointed out a post on Geoff LaTulippe's new blog which peeled by the curtain on the studio development process, and it appears that I wasn't the only one impressed with it.  On Twitter, screenwriter Eric Heisserer made a passing comment that suggested he'd be interested in writing a similar piece.  Seeing an opportunity, I reached out to Eric and offered to host his essay here.  He responded with a piece that should be a must-read for anyone eager to understand what it's like to be a working writer on a studio film.

Eric Heisserer is the writer behind the 2010 reboot of A Nightmare on Elm Street, as well as Final Destination 5 and the 2011 prequel The Thing. Next year, he'll make his directorial debut on the Hurricane Katrina drama Hours.  Long-time readers of the blog might remember Eric from one of my earliest interviews, which can be found in two parts here and here.

Massive, massive thanks to Eric for this piece, by the way.

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My friend Geoff LaTulippe recently posted on his blog about the process of working on a studio project, in an effort to help people understand how a bad movie doesn’t equate to a bad writer at the heart of it. Geoff illustrated the evolution/devolution of a script as it went through the gauntlet from first draft to production rewrites. (Play Raymond Scott’s “Powerhouse” while you read it.) 

I want to chime in and echo some of what Geoff said, and provide a few specific examples of what it means to be a “professional writer” on a studio project and how one deals with elements beyond one’s control, while working to improve the things that are still within one’s influence. As in most parts of life, this is a hard lesson. 

You are brought in to pitch on a big studio project. It is most likely a remake, adaptation, or sequel. The studios have property and rights, and the way for them to hold onto those rights or to do something corporate-like and “leverage intellectual assets” is to dig into their own libraries. These are the jobs. 

Your agent tells you this is a great opportunity to get in good with a major studio. This is where the money is. This is how you will pay rent without taking a day job. In other words, don’t screw this up. 

The good news is: You’ve been brought in because someone already loves your writing. Maybe it’s the production company set to make the movie. Maybe it’s someone among the top brass at the studio. Whatever the case, you feel good—someone’s read and loved your script. Your voice is what they want. 

You pitch your take on their project, and it’s one you really want to write. You’re passionate and invested. Later you’ll realize that passion and excitement will often count more than story logic and in-depth character work. You get hired, and sent off to write your first draft with a few notes from the studio based on your pitch and/or outline. 

The first draft is where you prove yourself. This is one of the two drafts you will come to love most, because right now it has just your voice; your singular intended tone. 

That first notes meeting is illuminating. You learn right away who actually read your previous script and who didn’t. You also discover what the other people involved want the movie to be. NOTE: Rarely will everyone want to make the same movie. You’ll get notes like “Can we make it more like [popular movie]?” Or, “This feels like it should be more in the [obscure art film] neighborhood.” 

You are sent off to rewrite. You struggle keeping the movie together as a single organism versus a mixed-breed that may not work. (The phrase “fish with wings” is slang I learned about this problem; it’s a fish that can’t swim and a bird that can’t fly.) Hopefully you get it to a stage where it’s ready to be turned in again. 

Perhaps finally this is the stage where it goes to the top studio execs. You attend another notes session and are tasked with notes you feel you’ve already addressed. Things like, “I don’t know what the characters are feeling,” or “What is this person’s arc and why is it so hard to figure out?” Or occasionally, “This character isn’t likeable.” The notes can seem harsh if you take them as personal criticism. You must not. You must focus on the work. 

You must also know you’re likely at a crossroads. You can work hard to address these notes for the chance to continue being the writer, or you can push against them and walk away from the project (or be fired). This second full pass is where you’re tested. The biggest problem is realizing that some readers on the studio level don’t understand subtext. Or rather, they get it when they’re seeing a finished film, but with all the scripts they read (or coverage thereof) they have no subtext radar. It all blows by them. (Not every exec is like this, but it’s a common problem, and can sometimes extend to producers and other people in the process.) 

About this time, your agent calls again and says: Don’t screw this up. For both of you. 

Your new job: Spell out all the things you so artfully seeded through innuendo and subtle suggestion. Now you’re writing things in ALL CAPS and talking about how this is THE TURNING POINT FOR YOUR CHARACTER because she realizes SHE MUST BETRAY HER FRIEND to SAVE HER FAMILY. If you learned how to write from a certain LOST writer, you’ll be doing this already, along with statements like HOLY SHIT, this is the MOST HEARTBREAKING MOMENT WE’VE EVER SEEN. 

Reading the draft back to yourself makes your teeth hurt. This isn’t representative of your writing, it’s more like a transcript of some frat boy describing your script to his buddies. And yet this draft goes over like gangbusters at the studio. You are called and thanked by the studio, and then the producer. Once a director/movie star/both get on board, it’s all systems go for this project. 

Maybe that work has already been done, in which case, you’re getting notes from those people as well. If an actor is involved, the draft the studio loves to death will rankle the movie star. Why? Because in this draft you’ve written out all the subtext and given the actor no room for them to do their job. Actors hate drafts like this. It’s like a photograph of a starving child in some third-world country holding up a flag that reads “FEEL SAD.” Actors don’t want to be told how to play the role any more than directors want you to tell them how to direct. Your job is to do so as quietly and subtly as possible. HINT at where the camera will be versus saying “WE DOLLY IN for a tight MCU on our hero…” And so on. 

You luck out and are triggered for an optional rewrite step in your contract, and now have notes from various branches. The director wants the movie to feel more like it was in the first draft. The studio sees potential of this movie being more like some blockbuster and pushes you to make it quite different from that first draft. The actor has all sorts of thoughts, some of which are absolutely crazy, one or two which are brilliant but completely different from what either the studio or director wants. 

Now you’re feeling burnout, you’ve gone through dozens of drafts no one has seen, all in an attempt to keep this movie together. And you can’t crack it. You can’t make everyone happy, it just won’t work out. So you hedge your bets and go with whatever makes the best movie in your mind. If you have a halfway decent relationship with your director, here is where you have a private dinner meeting with them and discuss the elephant in the room and why you made the choices you did. With luck, the director understands and will fight the good fight. 

All the while, you may see several studio execs come and go, and other people involved are likely fighting their own battles. During the life cycle of THE THING (2011), we had five different execs assigned to us, one of whom lasted for only a month. Each of them had a different opinion of what the movie should be. Science fiction. Horror. Creature feature. One of them pushed hard to make the movie 3D. Every part of the movie is at risk of being abandoned or altered; nothing is ever guaranteed. 

The studio may ultimately like your latest draft but you aren’t seen as a “closer” in the business or your name isn’t big enough to be seen as “story insurance,” so they bring in someone else to tackle a few elements in the script. That writer lasts for two weeks and is replaced with another, to appease some new notes from the new studio exec / the big-name supporting actor / the director’s latest idea during prep. 

The last time you see your script, a frightening amount of your dialogue has been rewritten, scene locations have been moved around, there may be one or two new characters or a couple fewer characters, which subtly imbalance something you’d kept in harmony for the last ten months and three studio drafts. Most heartbreaking may be the clever setups/callbacks you’d written in that are now orphaned or widowed. And of course, all over the place you still see the SUBTEXT HAMMER describing action BLUNTLY so the speed-reader will NOT MISS THE IMPORTANCE OF THE SCENE. 

There is some great new stuff in there, too, you have to admit. Another writer had a clever idea with a subplot. Or a better ear for comedic dialogue. But you’ll realize that sometimes changes happen because people are just too used to the story after reading the script over and over. There’s no mystery anymore. Changes don’t always happen to make things better. Sometimes it’s just to make them different; new. 

This is typically your least favorite draft. In your eyes, it’s a wreck. And you fear it will get worse during production or reshoots, trying to find its new form. The movie at this point needs to shed its wings or its fish scales and commit to being one thing. 

Invariably, this is the draft that is leaked to the Internet. With just your name on it. Your writing is excoriated online by fans. They point out everything you already know is problematic with this draft, plus a few other problems. One or two clever commenters will wonder aloud why you didn’t do this or that with the characters… choices you made in your first draft. Still others will discuss why the script isn’t more like the source material, or why it should be very different from it, or why any of a thousand decisions were made. 

You can’t tell them anything. You can’t point to the twelve hundred script pages and notes where you explored all of these ideas and discovered why using them was a Bad Plan. Your significant other tells you you shouldn’t be reading comments online in the first place, what are you, crazy? 

The movie is released. Maybe it gets a good Rotten Tomatoes score but a low audience CinemaScore. Maybe it’s the other way around. Your name is on the poster either way. 

Your agent calls and says, Congratulations. You’re a professional writer. Someone wants to meet with you to talk about your next movie. 

And you go. Because your agent is right.

Friday Free-For-All: Final Destination 5

Some of you may remember that last year I interviewed screenwriter Eric Heisserer soon after his first film, the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street, hit theatres. In the second part of that interview he offered a few teases about his next assignment, Final Destination 5:

There was so much cool suspense, character development, and sense of mystery in the first Final Destination. Then you look at the fourth movie and it’s almost a porn version of the first—just one death sequence after another. And you know, it was still fun, I can’t lie, but for me it lacked a lot of what made the first movie so good. What I’m trying to do with this fifth film is make it work on its own; make it a supernatural thriller first, and a Final Destination movie second. It will have all the trademark elements fans love from the series, but hopefully it will surprise them, too. At least, that’s my hope…

I rather liked the first Final Destination film. In all honesty I can't recall seeing the second - or even if I saw the second film. I'm pretty sure I liked the third film too, but I readily confess that might be my Mary Elizabeth Winstead crush talking.

With regards to the fourth film, I think Eric said all that needs to be said.

In any event, the few tidbits we got from Eric gave me the hope that he wrote the kind of Final Destination movie I want to see. Better still, the trailer has me intrigued.



If you're not following Eric on Twitter, you need to remedy that immediately. (I have never figured out if his Twitter name means "Writers Pry" or "Writer Spry" though.) He has regular Writing Challenges that a lot of aspiring scribes can learn from. On top of that, he's a cool guy and has been a great friend to the blog, so I genuinely hope the film does well when it hits theatres on August 12.

Interview with NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET remake writer Eric Heisserer - Part II

Go here for Part I of this interview, where screenwriter Eric Heisserer discusses how he broke in and goes into detail about a number of the creative decisions made in his script for the recent remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Today, Eric talks a little about his plans for The Thing remake and Final Destination 5.

I saw an interesting quote from you regarding your thoughts on using CGI in The Thing: “I don’t know what kind of authority I had as the writer, but I came in wanting them to make this a practical effect movie. I wasn’t going to write something that was going to be a CGI-fest. I held their feet to the fire on that. That may be what got me the job, or it may be that I wanted to protect the original as much as possible and to create a companion piece that we felt would work seamlessly as a double feature with Carpenter’s The Thing.”

You don’t often hear about writers dictating those sorts of terms to the studio, particularly in a system where the writer seems to be the most replaceable person on the production. Did it take a lot of guts to make that statement? Did your agent know you were going to take such a hard line, and was he discouraging you from putting yourself out there? And be honest, were you surprised when the studio said, “Okay?”


Well, let me clarify here: I came in making those demands, and the producers smiled and said basically “You’re hired.” They didn’t say “Okay” in the sense that they were heeding my demands. I felt they were already thinking the same thing, so it was a matter of meeting a kindred spirit when I showed up at their door. But the studio never makes a decision like that based on what the writer demanded. The studio decides what is the least expensive or the strategically wisest move, and does that thing. Our responsibility was to present a story with effects that could be achieved conventionally as often as possible.

I understand that on The Thing, they threw out the entire previous draft by Ron Moore and had you start from scratch. Can you discuss the advantages and disadvantages of working like this as opposed to rewriting an existing draft, as I assume you did on Nightmare?

It’s like being the first writer on, except odds are good you’ll still share credit with the first writer. I tried not to think about the politics of that scenario and just focused on building the best story I could. Ron Moore is an amazing writer who is a master at writing drama framed in a science fiction setting or concept. Just because the studio chose to start over—that doesn’t mean anything, really. My job was still to give them a movie that worked. Something they could go shoot.

How did you end up with this assignment? After Nightmare were you tagged as “the horror reboot guy?”

I don’t know if I was seen as the reboot guy, but my Nightmare script work did get me in the room for The Thing. At that point it was up to me. And what did I do? Make demands! In hindsight it was downright foolish, but I have such a love for Carpenter’s movie, and I didn’t want to see this prequel done wrong.

Do you see yourself working in other genres, or is horror your passion?

I would love to expand. Oddly enough, the work I did at Bruckheimer before I got the Elm Street gig—those jobs were all big-budget science fiction action/adventure movies. Big summer fare. Alien Wars and The Host (not the Korean monster movie, but a sci-fi novel by Peter Emschwiller) were about as far from creepy horror as you can get. I’d love to get back to that kind of epic storytelling soon.

Tripp Stryker very much approved of Mary Elizabeth Winstead as your leading lady. I can’t print his exact words, but they roughly translated to the fact that he’s excited by the casting and he hopes to see a lot of her in the movie.

I imagine Tripp will be going to see Scott Pilgrim a lot.

I might have to make him do a review of that.

I know that Final Destination 5 is still in the very early stages, but you told Twitter that you got the job with a two-word pitch: “Lasik Surgery.” I’m coming up on 10 years since I had my lasik surgery and I still had a very visceral reaction just hearing the premise of that death. May I assume you have been in that very nerve-wracking procedure?

Me? No. Oh no. Not at all. That eye procedure terrifies me. That’s why I pitched it. I try to write what scares me first and foremost.

Are there any real-life experiences you plan on drawing from for the elaborate death scenes the franchise is known for?

Yes. More things in everyday life that creep me out. I can’t spoil any more or else I will invoke the wrath of (producer) Craig Perry, but suffice it to say I don’t think the Lasik surgery sequence will be the most cringe-worthy.

Is there anything you feel was missing from the last few FD films that you’re hoping to revive in yours?

Yes! There was so much cool suspense, character development, and sense of mystery in the first Final Destination. Then you look at the fourth movie and it’s almost a porn version of the first—just one death sequence after another. And you know, it was still fun, I can’t lie, but for me it lacked a lot of what made the first movie so good. What I’m trying to do with this fifth film is make it work on its own; make it a supernatural thriller first, and a Final Destination movie second. It will have all the trademark elements fans love from the series, but hopefully it will surprise them, too. At least, that’s my hope…

Thanks again to Eric Heisserer for all his time!

Interview with NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET remake writer Eric Heisserer - Part I

It's not often that I get to interview a writer while his first produced film is sitting at number one on the box office charts. Last weekend, the remake of Wes Craven's A Nightmare on Elm Street opened with $32.2 million at the box office, and today and tomorrow, we're hosting an exclusive interview with screenwriter Eric Heisserer about his background, rebooting Freddy and his future work on two other horror franchises - The Thing and Final Destination 5.

Be warned - this interview is RIFE with spoilers for A Nightmare on Elm Street!

Tell me a little about your writing background. What was your writing “education,” formal or informal?

Informal. No college. I’m more of an experiential learner. I started writing short fiction after high school, and eventually migrated to screenplays. I wrote my first feature script in 1997. That spec, plus the next three features, was the equivalent of a formal education. That is to say, the scripts were awful. Just terrible. But I learned a lot from them.

The million dollar question that ever reader wants to know – how did you get your agent?

I got my agent after I got my manager, which is probably the more important question. A writer friend referred me to Julie Bloom, who read one of my specs and liked it, then demanded to read another. She doesn’t sign new clients based on just one good sample. Thankfully she liked my second spec as well.

I had to network with fellow writers and people on the edge of the industry for five years before I got to the point where a peer was both willing and able to refer me to Julie.

As I understand it, your first sale was a spec called The Manifestant, all the way back in 2000. How many scripts did you write before The Manifestant?

The Manifestant, about someone who could conjure things out of thin air, was the fourth feature spec I’d written.

Was The Manifestant the first spec your agent went out with?

This predated my time with Julie Bloom. I was basically hip-pocketed by a manager for that option to Artisan Entertainment. That manager later retired from the business.

Unless IMDB is completely wrong, A Nightmare on Elm Street is your first feature credit, so what were you doing the last ten years? Were you getting rewrite work? Assignment work?

My real break happened with the sale of The Dionaea House, based on the online epistolary story I wrote in 2004. That got me in the door more than any other work I’d done prior. In the years between that sale and Elm Street, I worked on a number of assignments, rewrites, and I sold a few pitches as well, both features and TV. A few times I got dangerously close to a produced credit. In one case, the film was two weeks from shooting when the studio pulled the plug due to casting problems. Elm Street is my first produced credit after clawing my way up for the past ten years. Which is pretty much everyone’s “overnight success” story in this town.

If I’m interpreting the writing credits correctly, you came onto A Nightmare on Elm Street to rewrite a draft by Wesley Strick. What brought the producers to you?

Either the producers or the studio wanted a fresh approach to the script after Strick had done a pass, and I was the right guy at the right time. My old spec of The Dionaea House got me in the door, and my passion for the franchise got me the rest of the way.

What’s it like to get the call “They want to see if you can write the Nightmare on Elm Street reboot?” Is it exciting? Terrifying? Is it hard to take on this kind of remake knowing that a certain segment of fandom is going to oppose it on principle?

It’s all those things. In my first meeting, producer Brad Fuller pointed at me and said “You fuck this up, you fuck us all.” I had to prove I was worthy of being hired, since with no credits to my name I was obviously a huge risk. I would’ve worked my hardest anyway, but those words kept me up at night more than my fear of nightmares.

I knew there would be no way to appease every fan out there while welcoming in new fans. The original is near and dear to me, marking one of the few movies I snuck into the theater to see, so it was a daunting task.

Is it a challenge to get some measure of creative freedom when working on one of these franchise films? With something like this, surely there are plenty of people above you either weighing in or flat out dictating terms. Is there a risk of becoming little more than a stenographer?

It could have been a real problem if we hadn’t all gotten together early on and discussed the kind of movie this was supposed to be; the tone and the feel of it. Once we figured that out, I was given some elbow room to play in that sandbox.

Did you end up pitching them on how you saw the character and the story first, and then they said “Yeah, that works for us?”

Mostly. They started by saying: “This is what we want kept from Strick’s draft. These elements are important to us.” Then we discussed what elements from Craven’s original were crucial. And then I was let loose to figure out a story and characters to meet those guidelines. Even then, it was like: “Here is a hammer and a dozen planks of wood. Go build us a house.”

Were you a fan of the original films and how did that inform your take? What were the important elements for you to retain?

I liked the original and the third film, Dream Warriors. I enjoyed bits and pieces of the other films quite a lot, but those two were my favorites. The problem: The longer I dwelled on the original, the more I felt paralyzed in front of the computer. I eventually had to set that movie aside and create a story from the inside out. It was a long and frustrating process that I now feel was a no-win situation.

One thing that stuck out to me is that it took at least 45 minutes before Nancy really became the protagonist. The first 35-40 minutes it’s really Kris’s (Katie Cassidy) story. Then she hands off to the character played by Thomas Dekkar, and he’s center stage for about ten minutes until Nancy really starts to have significant screentime. Why structure the story like this? Was it a deliberate attempt to pull a Psycho-like bait-and-switch, or were there simply other Nancy scenes that got removed in editing?

This was an element from Craven’s original the producers wanted to retain. In the 1984 film, Craven leads you to believe the bubbly blonde Tina (played by Amanda Wyss) is our protagonist and that Nancy is just a friend in her social circle. It’s not until Tina is thrown around and killed in her bedroom half an hour into the film that we discover Nancy is our heroine. So I can’t claim that concept; that’s all Wes Craven (and, as you mention, Psycho, to some extent).

How do you balance the classic moments retained from the original with the entirely new elements? Does it feel like a catch-22 where you find yourself saying, “Well, we CAN’T cut out the claw coming out of the bathtub, or the girl being pulled up the wall!” as well as “But we have to do something different with this – otherwise the audience will see no point to the remake!”

In most cases director Sam Bayer just picked his favorites, like Krueger coming out of the wall, and those ended up in the movie. I tried my hardest not to focus too much on homage and more on character and whatever ideas or fresh updates I could contribute to the story. I knew that if I focused too much on the original I’d get paralyzed again by the task of re-imagining Freddy Krueger.

What “pure Eric Heisserer” elements survived all the way into the final film?

I had a laundry list of horror clichés I wanted to subvert, like the beat where Kris washes up at the bathroom mirror and we all expect Freddy to appear in the reflection, but nothing happens. Some of those moments made it all the way to the end. Others were altered, usually due to budget or production problems. For instance, I tried to avoid the “Freddy standing in the middle of the road” moment since horror fans have seen variations of that a thousand times. Instead I had Freddy appear in the car with Quentin and Nancy, and we see a second after Nancy is gored that Quentin is the one having a micronap. He wakes from it just as he crashes the car into a tree. But for a number of reasons that scene was changed during production. And some changes caused other scenes to change with them.

Microsleep was another one of my ideas. But honestly it’s hard to recall all the ones of mine that survived. You tend to remember the ones that never made it off the page.

From what I’ve seen in the reviews, one of the more controversial points was making Freddy a child molester rather than a child killer. Were you a part of that decision, and what was the thinking behind the change?

That was something Strick introduced in his draft, based on his research into Craven’s early work on the 1984 film and his inspiration at the time. But a controversial case emerged at the time that caused the studio to flinch at the child molestation backstory, so Craven changed Krueger to a serial killer.

That was an impossible element for us to sell to audiences today. You can’t have a man kill 20-30 children in your hometown without everyone knowing about him for decades afterward. That sort of thing is a blight on a town’s history. Strick went back to Craven’s original idea of Krueger as a child molester, and I did my best to work with that idea and have it track.

Jumping off from that, at one point in the film, it’s suggested that Freddy might have wrongly accused of molesting. It would have been very gutsy to outright state that the kids lied or the parents reacted based on bad information. Was there ever a point where you considered following through on those hints? Do you think the audience would have accepted that kind of twist?

I don’t think anyone ever wanted Krueger to be innocent. We liked it as a false assumption or a red herring, but we never entertained the idea for Krueger. Because if he were innocent, then it’s a revenge tale, and that creates two problems. One: The movie’s hero would be Fred Krueger, and two: Once Krueger had his revenge against those who wronged him, the story would be complete.

I didn’t want to write a movie where you’re rooting for the monster. There are plenty of other horror franchises where you can get that. Friday the 13th, I’m looking at you. No, we needed Krueger to be a sick son of a bitch.

That said, the idea that the kids lied was based on a real incident of a day care center where the children began spinning tales because it got them attention from the parents and faculty, and before they knew it they had invented enough lies that they were terrified of being disciplined if they admitted it was made up, and one of the teachers was arrested on molestation charges. So it’s not like we were trying to stretch the truth. We were borrowing from the headlines.

It seemed like the movie might have done with a little more closure for the character of Quentin’s father, considering he’s the one who’s really responsible for Freddy’s death. Was there anything else with that character that ended up being eliminated in either the rewrites or the post-production process?

Oh certainly. I had a second confrontation with him and Quentin in one draft. My favorite version of that backstory actually had Nancy’s mother Gwen as the one who burns Freddy, because of all the kids tortured by him, Nancy got it the worst, and I could see Gwen snapping. Also it felt more interesting to see a mother being the main antagonistic force against Fred Krueger instead of angry-dad Clancy Brown (whom I love as an actor; he’s a great guy).

We lost a few scenes with the kids and their parents due to pacing concerns.

Have you already started thinking about what you’d like to do in the sequel, if asked?

I have a binder full of ideas for a sequel. I don’t know if I’ll have the chance to work on it, but I hope this time around I could learn from the pitfalls of this first movie and better shepherd the story from script to screen.

But wait! There's more!

Part II - Eric talks about his upcoming work on The Thing remake and Final Destination 5.

You can find Eric on Twitter: @writerspry. He's a stand-up guy and was great about giving his time for this interview, so tweet him some thanks if you get a chance.

Compete archive of my interviews with pro writers

It seemed like a good idea to put together a post that links to all the interviews I've done with professional writers over the life of this blog. This will be updated with further links as each new interview is added.

Interview with Dan Callahan, writer of COLLEGE and DEMOTED:
Part I - The Writing Process
Part II - Getting an Agent and Selling the Script
Part III - Notes, Rewriting, Casting and SUPERBAD
Part IV - More Rewrites
Part V - Release and Reaction


Interview with Jericho and Human Target's Robert Levine:
Part I - Climbing the ladder as a writer's assistant
Part II - Working on Jericho's first season
Part III - Writing season two of Jericho
Part IV - Writing the Jericho comic book and getting an agent
Part V - Writing for Human Target


Interview with screenwriter Eric Heisserer - A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET remake:
Part I - Breaking in and writing the ELM STREET remake
Part II - Details on THE THING and FINAL DESTINATION 5

Interview with Privileged writer/"This is Your Pilot Speaking" blogger Margaux Froley:
Part I - School, internships and assistant jobs
Part II - The Warner Brothers Television Fellowship and working on the staff of Privileged
Part III - Staffing season, getting representation and spec pilots

Interview with Shrek Forever After and Date Night writer Josh Klausner:
Part I - Breaking in and SHREK
Part II - DATE NIGHT

Interview with web comedy filmmakers Chad, Matt & Rob:
Part I - Breaking out on the web
Part II - The Interactive Adventures
Part III - Producing web shorts

Interview with Amy Baack, Assistant to "V" showrunner Scott Rosenbaum

Interview with director Gregg Bishop:
Part I - Making a $15,000 film
Part II - Making DANCE OF THE DEAD

Interview with Scott Towler, writer's assistant to Michelle Nader (100 Questions, Kath & Kim)
Part I
Part II

Interview with SCREAM 4 Co-Producer Carly Feingold
Part I - The path to being Wes Craven's Creative Exec
Part II - What does a Creative Executive do and what do they look for?
Part III - Making Scream 4

Video interview with TV writer Liz Tigelaar, creator Life Unexpected.
Part 1 - Breaking in as an assistant
Part 2 - First Staff Writer Job on "American Dreams"
Part 3 - How Do I Get an Agent?
Part 4 - Selling a Pilot
Part 5 - Personal Themes in Writing
Part 6 - Genesis of "Life Unexpected"
Part 7 - First-Time Showrunner
Part 8 - Developing the second year of LUX
Part 9 - Dealing with network notes
Part 10 - Controversial LUX storylines
Part 11 - LUX lives on
Part 12 - Network overall deal, working on Once Upon a Time and Revenge
Part 13 - The Bitter Questions

Video interview with Franklin Leonard about Black List 3.0:

Video interview with screenwriter F.Scott Frazier:
Part 1 - His stats and process
Part 2 - "How do you get an agent?"
Part 3 - The Working Writer.
Part 4 - The Bitter Questions

Video interview with Franklin Leonard about The Black List:
Part 1 - The Origin of the Black List
Part 2 - Criticisms of the Black List
Part 3 - The Black List Statistics

Video interview with film and TV writer Jeffrey Lieber (Lost, Miami Medical, Necessary Roughness):
Part 1 - "How did you get an agent?"
Part 2 - First sales and going into TV
Part 3 - The early genesis of Lost
Part 4 - The process of developing a show
Part 5 - Cable TV vs. Network TV
Part 6 -  The Bitter Questions

Interview with Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, co-director of Radio Silence's DEVIL'S DUE:
Part I
Part II

An interview with Victoria Aveyard, writer of RED QUEEN and ETERNAL


Writer/director Riley Stearns and actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead on FAULTS:
Part I - Origins of the story
Part II - Complex Characters and roles for women.
Part III- Making your first movie.
Part IV - Having confidence as a storyteller.
.