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ОглавлениеCHAPTER 2 | CONTENT IS EVERYTHING
Casting and Scripting
You cannot make a great movie without a great script and a great cast. This truism is well known and well supported. Anyone who aspires to direct has probably heard it bandied about repeatedly. And yet, most aspiring directors neither understand how true this theory is, nor do they grasp the full ramifications of that truth. I certainly did not when I was starting out as a director. In fact, only recently, after 25 years as a working director, have I come to actually embrace and internalize this truth.
The reason for this is that in the last 30 years or so, pretty much since Spielberg set a new standard for how movies should look, the “look” of the film has become conspicuously more important than the content of the film. All big movies must look big. Ideally, they should unveil some technological breakthrough that the filmmakers have harnessed to give that film a whole new look. Advances in CGI graphics have paved the way. Lucas used them to give us space battles such as we had never seen before in Star Wars. Zemeckis used new graphic technology to integrate live action and two-dimensional animation in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Spielberg's dinosaurs in Jurassic Park showed us how CGI technology could produce three- dimensional animated dinosaurs and seamlessly place them in the real world. Then Zemeckis had to top that by using the same technology to seamlessly integrate the fictitious main character of Forrest Gump into actual documentary footage of three past presidents. Today when teenage boys, who are the target audience for every big Hollywood film, discuss which films are worth seeing and why, they rate “the effects” on par with and of equal importance to the story or the cast.
No big film can pull a big audience without a big look, and so only those directors who are most adept at generating the big look are big successes. Lucas, Spielberg, and Zemeckis launched this trend. Today it is carried on by John Woo, Michael Bay, David Fincher, and every director whose career is launched with a big action film produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. One never hears these directors discussed in the same breath with those directors who deal with character or plot-driven movies. In a way, the directors who do the smaller budget, independent films — the Coen brothers, Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch, John Sayles, Whit Stillman, Neil LaBute, Todd Solondz, Kevin Smith, etc. — will forever be relegated to a kind of second-string status. On a big Hollywood film, probably 90%, if not more, of the director's energy is consumed by the process of making the technology work to generate the desired big look. As a result, the biggest directors — the ones who get the big bucks and their name in big lights — are those who have been most successful at mastering the big look. The significance of this situation is not lost on aspiring young directors. To make it big, you have to be a master of the technology.
In this atmosphere, it is all too understandable why most directors today, when lightening strikes and they get their big breakthrough gig, can only think about how they can best use the peanut-sized budget for their film to make it look as much as possible like Spielberg's or Michael Bay's latest multimillion dollar extravaganza. This is clearly a big mistake. It is definitely a case of putting the cart before the horse. On his breakthrough gig, the first time director should be ready to move heaven and earth to assure that the content of his film is of the highest caliber — the content being the script and the cast.
If you equate making a movie to sculpting a statue, then the quality of the script and the cast are like the quality of the marble or whatever stone is used to make the statue. For the finished product to be of the highest quality, the marble has to be of the highest quality. If the stone is flawed or somehow inherently unattractive, no matter how skillful the sculptor, no matter how refined his technique, the end product will be similarly unattractive.
The big look costs big money. It should be left to big studio films with unlimited budgets. There are numerous examples of great films which were visually unadorned and low-tech, but which achieved critical and popular success because they had the right fundamental components: (1) a great story that was well told and (2) universally excellent performances. Most first time directors who made it to the top with a breakthrough film relied on great content to make their debut films stand out. They gave their films as good a look as they could muster on a shoestring budget. But, as a rule, these directors skyrocketed to the top because they had the script savvy to write or recognize a great script, and they had the eye and the drive to unearth movie stars at casting calls. Collectively, over the last 30 years, these directors actually initiated and carried out most of the trends of the independent film market.
The films which fall into this elite category are Easy Rider ; What's Up, Tiger Lily? ; Mean Streets ; Sisters ; and The Return of the Secaucus Seven. This initial wave of low budget successes was continued by She's Gotta Have It, Stranger Than Paradise, and Blood Simple. In the last few years, the most notable examples are probably Clerks, Welcome to the Dollhouse, In the Company of Men, and The Blair Witch Project. These films all had the desired end result of a breakthrough film: They created an ongoing directing career for their writer-directors (with the possible exception of Dennis Hopper, who wrote and directed Easy Rider and was handed a franchise which he immediately trashed by making The Last Movie).
Much of this book will be devoted to explaining how the first time director can best go about giving his breakthrough film a contemporary, hip look. If you know what you're doing, even on a peanut-sized budget, you can make your camera dance like Tinker Bell in the hyperkinetic style which has been popularized by Spielberg, Bay, Woo, et al. But the hard truth is that style alone — style slavishly adhered to — will never make your film great. Style is a necessary condition for greatness, but it is not sufficient. Good script and good casting are both necessary and sufficient.
This undeniable fact is rooted in the moviegoing experience. Most people go to the movies to be transported in space and time into the lives of Indiana Jones or Forrest Gump or Michael Corleone. They want to spend two hours in the dark experiencing everything that these mythic beings encounter in their fictional lives on screen — thrilling to all the impending dangers, tasting all the joys, enduring all the hardships. The story and the actors are the vehicle that transports the viewers out of themselves and into the drama of the film. The actors, if they are good, do not seem to be acting. They are real and compelling, if not attractive, so we identify with them. The story, if it is good, is both fascinating and believable. We are sucked into the illusion that something crucial is happening to these characters with whom we are identifying. We sit there for two hours, eagerly anticipating what is going to happen next. The extent to which this transportational effect takes hold of an audience is the extent to which a film succeeds.
The first time director must understand and take to heart the fundamental truth that, if the audience is transported into the drama of the film, they will sit there happily for the entire two hours with their eyes riveted on the screen, even if the look of the film is decidedly low-tech. The lighting can be hit or miss, the set almost bare, the focus in and out, the camera forever rooted in one place; there might be no effects, no quick cutting, no glitz, no big look, but if the story and the acting are consistently convincing and compelling, most people will enjoy the film. Stranger than Paradise, Clerks, In the Company of Men, She's Gotta Have It, and Blair Witch are five films that succeeded in this manner. They were all made for under $50,000. They have virtually no look, or at least, no big look. But they made money and were critically acclaimed, and most important, they made their writer- director's career — because when it came to the story and the acting, they hit a home run.
This immutable truth offers the first time director an extraordinary opportunity. He can count on the fact that his film, like all breakthrough films, is inevitably going to be a day late and a dollar short. But, during preproduction he has an opportunity to make his film screw-up proof. If during preproduction he takes to heart the truth that a great movie can be made from a great script and a great cast, and, accordingly, slavishly devotes himself to writing and rewriting the script until he has made it as close to perfect as is humanly possible; if he simultaneously launches himself on a never-ending quest for, not just good actors, but the very best actors which money can buy on the face of the planet for all of the key parts in his film; then, when he goes into production, he can rest assured that, no matter how budgetarily compromised his film is, no matter what disasters strike during filming, he can still make a great film. If he has a great script and a great cast, all he has to do is to get them to say the lines in the script while the camera is rolling. That's it.
A Few Examples from the World According to Bob
I developed two feature scripts with Zemeckis for studio movies that I was to direct. Neither project ever got made, but going through script development with a master like Zemeckis was enlightening. Bob used to say, “The script is never finished.” He meant that only perfection is good enough, so you have to keep on rewriting and improving the script until it is too late — because you just finished filming the scene. On every film Zemeckis has made, even after the studio had approved the script and it was being prepared for production, Bob continued to work with the writer. This may seem obsessive to some, but Zemeckis looks on it as the most productive use of preproduction.
He knows that nothing done during the preproduction process will have as great an effect on the quality of the finished product as the script. During the preproduction for a huge scene like the one in Forrest Gump at the anti-war rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial, where Forrest reunites with Jennie after a separation of many years, Zemeckis understood that everything which takes so much time and money to prepare — securing the location, hiring the hundreds of extras who will make up the crowd, working with the effects artists to prepare the CGI graphics that will add tens of thousands of additional people to the crowd, renting all the period costumes, renting all the additional camera and lighting equipment, transporting all the men and material to the location, catering, and the like — would make the movie a little bit better. But none would contribute one tenth as much to the overall quality of the film as the script and the cast. What makes the scene in front of the Lincoln Memorial moving and great is the way it was written and the way that Tom Hanks and Robin Wright played it.
You should not begin to shoot a film without the right cast. Ironically, the most concrete proof of this axiom is a Zemeckis film which made that very mistake. The film, Back to the Future, put Zemeckis over the top and made him a director of note. What most people don't know about this film is that Bob first cast Eric Stoltz over Michael J. Fox as the main character, Marty McFly. In retrospect, this seems surprising. In the years that have passed since Back to the Future came out, Eric Stoltz has gone on to deliver many fine performances, almost always playing a mercurial, quirky, slightly oddball type, and Michael J. Fox has built a successful career (cut tragically short by his illness) with the help of some respectable actor chops, but relying mostly on that which God gave him: earnest likeability, pluck, puckish charm, and deft comic timing. Twenty-five years later it's obvious — Eric Stoltz is an excellent actor, but Michael J. Fox is the definition of Marty McFly.
Back in 1984, when Zemeckis went into production on Back to the Future, Stoltz and Fox were young actors, just starting out and largely unknown. Bob shot for three weeks with Stoltz before he realized he had made a crucial mistake. Eric was a good actor, but he could never do justice to the role of Marty McFly. Because Spielberg was the executive producer, and the film was being made at Universal — where Spielberg was, de facto, the most powerful man on the lot — Zemeckis was allowed to shut down the production for several weeks, recast Marty, and finish the picture with Michael J. Fox in the lead. And the rest is history. We now can see clearly that without the perfect actor in the role of Marty — Michael J. Fox — the film would have never achieved greatness. It would have a good film. The script was great. Christopher Lloyd was perfectly cast as Doc Brown. The rest of the cast was solid down to the bit parts. But with Eric Stoltz playing Marty McFly? No one can say for sure, but it seems highly likely Back to the Future would not have been the film that launched a franchise.
Perfecting Your Script - Getting the Audience into the Movie
A first time director is wasting valuable time and energy during preproduction if he concerns himself with questions such as how many days, if any, he will get to have a steadicam. Instead, he should focus on what will yield the greatest results: perfecting the script and securing a dream cast. How does he go about doing this? It is incredibly difficult. If it were simple or easy, great first films would be a dime a dozen, instead of one in a hundred.
All first time directors, before they undertake their big breakthrough gig, should have spent a reasonable amount of time trying to understand and incorporate the wisdom of one of the great screenwriting gurus. Zemeckis swears by Lajos Egri. According to Bob, everything you need to know about screenwriting is in Egri's book, The Rules of Dramatic Writing. I personally found the approach of Frank Daniel, who ruled the USC School of Cinema when Zemeckis was a student there, to be the most enlightening. His teachings are memorialized in a book written by two of his disciples, David Howard and Edward Mabley, called The Tools of Screenwriting. Many of my colleagues at the School of Film and Television at Chapman University think the best book on screenwriting is Chris Vogler's The Writer's Journey. You are well advised to read and take to heart the teachings of one of these books (or one of comparable greatness) before you direct your breakthrough film. Your understanding of what a director must do to make his breakthrough film great will be seriously compromised if you do not.
That said, I personally think the easiest way to get a handle on how to perfect your script is to understand exactly how an imperfect script ruins the experience of watching a film. As mentioned earlier, I am adamantly convinced that people go to the movies because they want to be transported in space and time into the action of the film. They want to identify with the main character and live in his skin for the two hours they are in the theater. Again, the extent to which the film allows them to do this is the extent to which the film succeeds. This explains why different films have different audiences. Generally speaking, those under 30 get off on spending two hours being Batman or Spider-Man, while those over 30 prefer being transported in space and time to somewhere like Jane Austen's England, or present-day America courtesy of the Coen Brothers, where they witness a series of events which provides some insight into our current collective consciousness. In a movie made from a script that is flawed, the transportational effect will be weak, even for its target audience — perhaps so weak as to be nonexistent — or it will be intermittent. In either case, the audience's appreciation of the film will be diminished.
There are a number of reasons why the transportational effect of the script might be weak. Usually it is because the script fails to give the audience the basic information they need to enter the action of the film. The audience must know who the main character of the film is. They must know what the main character wants, and they must want him to get it. Often this essential component of a good script is referred to as the protagonist and objective. The audience has to know who the protagonist is and what his objective is. Sometimes the main character or the protagonist is embodied in two characters. The protagonist of The Godfather could accurately be said to be the joint character of Vito and Michael Corleone. The godfather of the Corleone family is the main character, and throughout the film this role is passed from the father, Vito, to his heir, Michael. In the case of an ensemble film, like Diner or American Graffiti, there is no single protagonist. It is easiest to think of ensemble films as being a number of shorter films woven into one longer film. Each shorter film has its individual protagonist. This is whom the audience identifies with and enters the action through, each time the film shifts to the story centered on that particular protagonist.
If somebody is going to put up the money to have a first time director direct a script, hopefully they know enough about filmmaking to have made sure that the script has a clear protagonist and objective. Where most scripts are flawed and could be improved is in the extent to which the audience wants the protagonist to realize his objective. Do they really care? If I have heard Zemeckis ask me once, I have heard him ask me a thousand times, “Who cares, Gil? Who really cares?” This is the acid test. This is the hard question every first time director should ask himself when he starts the preproduction on his breakthrough film. Will your audience have an intense desire to see your hero succeed? The more the audience cares, the more fully they enter the action of the film.
So when he reads the script that he is to direct, the first time director should put it to this acid test on every page. When the audience is watching action described on the page, will they care if the hero gets what he wants? How much will they care? The answer should be: a lot. If not, the director is advised to immediately go to work on the rewrite.
The Hero
If the answer to the acid test question is that the audience does not care a great deal, then the problem either lies in the nature of the main character or in his objective. Either the hero is not sufficiently heroic or his quest is not truly a worthy quest — one that the audience sees as valid and is eager to participate in. Or it could be a bit of both. You have to determine this and then attack the problem.
If the problem is with the hero, it is most often because he does not establish himself early on as being of truly heroic proportions. Entire books have been written on what makes a hero a true hero. The best of these are by the scholar Joseph Campbell. Every first time director would be advised to have read Campbell's definitive The Hero with a Thousand Faces before taking on the task of rewriting the script for his breakthrough film. The defining quality of a true hero is self-sacrifice and selflessness. All the heroes of all the Capra movies did the right thing at the crucial moment, in spite of the fact that by so doing they had everything to lose and nothing to gain. Somebody who does something rash or risky when the bad guy has a gun to his head is being brave, but nowhere nearly as brave or heroic as somebody who puts his life on the line in a situation where he could walk away with his head held high. This is the key to the heroism of the final moment of Saving Private Ryan.
Neither Captain John Miller (Tom Hanks) nor Private James Ryan (Matt Damon) has to defend that bridge. In fact, by defending it, they are both disobeying orders. Likewise, at the end of Casablanca, Rick, the Humphrey Bogart character, could use the letters of transit and fly off with lisa, the Ingrid Bergman character, and we know that they would be happily in love for the rest of their days on this earth. Rick has spent the entire movie obsessed about having lost lisa, and desiring nothing but to get her back. But when he has the chance, he walks away from it, surrendering lisa to Victor Laszlo for the good of mankind. Described in those terms it seems implausible and corny. True cynics would say it is. But 99 % of the human populace who have seen that film are moved to tears (or have to fight them back) when they witness Rick's act of selflessness.
These examples of heroic action are taken from the conclusion of two classic films. It is best if, early on in the film, the hero performs such a selfless act. This will initiate the process by which the audience identifies with the main character. The more selfless this initial act of heroism, the better. If the audience themselves wants everything that the hero is giving up, then they will know in their heart of hearts that they would never be so selfless, so strong, and so heroic to sacrifice what he is sacrificing. This intensifies their admiration for the main character. The more intense their admiration, the more complete their identification. This is the process by which the audience is transported out of themselves and into the action of the film.
One of best the examples of such a defining moment early on in a film can be found in The Godfather. It comes after the Tattaglia family has tried, unsuccessfully, to assassinate Vito Corleone. Vito lies mortally wounded in the hospital. Sonny, played by James Caan, and the capos of the Corleone family are plotting how best to strike back at the Tattaglias. They want to stage a hit on two key players: Captain McCluskey and Sollozzo, known as the Turk. McCluskey is the crooked NYPD captain protecting the Tattaglias. Sollozzo, a heroin importer, is pushing the Tattaglias into a turf war with the Corleones. He obviously put out the hit on Vito Corleone. Sonny and his capos are trying to figure out who in their family is so trusted by the Tattaglias that he could get close enough to Sollozzo and McCluskey to put a bullet in their heads.
Michael Corleone, played by Al Pacino, volunteers to do the hit. Nobody can believe it. Sonny even starts baiting Michael, asking him, “Whaddya gonna do, nice college boy, huh?….You think this is the army where you shoot them from a mile away? You gotta get ‘em up close. BUDDABING! You blow their brains all over your nice Ivy League suit..”
No one in the family would ever think of Michael as a candidate to do this hit. Why? Because Michael is the only Corleone who is clean. He has never sullied himself in the family business. He has an Ivy League education. He is a war hero. He has lovely Diane Keaton waiting to marry him, move to New Hampshire, raise a family, and lead the clean version of the American dream. But he turns his back on it all. He volunteers to give it all up and commit a murder. Why? Out of loyalty and love. He is a member of the Corleone family first, and an individual second. The extent of this selfless act makes him a gigantic hero. This is his peak. It is one of the defining moments of the Godfather trilogy. When ordered in a linear chronology, unlike the films themselves, everything from this moment on until the end of The Godfather: Part III is about the fall of this hero.
I would advise every first time director to compare the main character of his breakthrough film to Michael Corleone. Ask yourself if your protagonist does something early on in the script that proves that he has the strength to make such a sacrifice. If not, your script needs a rewrite. Your main character does not have what it takes to get the audience rooting for him to the extent that they can enter the action of the film.
You must bear in mind that there are heroes, like Michael Corleone, who act out their heroism, and there are anti-heroes, like Rick in Casablanca, who are as strong and self-sacrificing as a Michael Corleone, but either deny it, like Rick, or are unaware of it, like Marty McFly. Rick claims that he “sticks his neck out for no one.” But the script makes it clear that this is a pose. The audience can tell from early on in the film that underneath Rick's cynical, alcoholic, Euro-trash façade beats the heart of a lion. In the opening scenes we learn that Rick ran guns to the Ethiopians defending their country from the Axis invasion. Then Rick hides Ugarte, played by Peter Lorre, from the Gestapo. It would seem he has an ulterior motive for doing so: This is how he gets his hands on precious letters of transit out of Casablanca, which become the MacGuffin of the film. But when he tells the bandleader to play La Marseillaise so as to drown out the Nazi's beer hall anthem, we know that he has the heroic capacity for self-sacrifice of a Michael Corleone…he just has to get back in touch with it.
At the beginning of Back to the Future, Marty is on the verge of being screwed up by his screwed-up parents. Like all teenagers, he knows that his parents are geeks. His purpose in life is to somehow become the antithesis of everything they are. Everything in Marty's existence seems to be conspiring against him and working to turn him into as big a loser as his Dad. Everything except Doc Brown. So Marty sneaks out in the middle of the night to the Twin Pines Mall to bear witness to the unveiling of Doc Brown's time machine. Then, by a series of freak accidents, Marty ends up getting sent back into the past in the time machine.
There is little self-sacrifice in hanging out with Doc Brown. At this stage, Marty is not very heroic. But the target under-30 audience, and for that matter, anyone who can remember being a teenager, can clearly see the outlines of a true hero in the making underneath Marty's slightly callow, wise-cracking, self-deprecating exterior. For Marty to have both the good sense to recognize his parents' deficiencies and the intense need (it could even be called courage) to defy them, makes him extremely sympathetic — if not heroic — in the eyes of the target audience.
When putting his main character to the acid test of heroism, the first time director must keep in mind the size and the scope of the target audience for his breakthrough film. Some audiences will never be able to care intensely about the fate of a specific main character because that character is from a world that is completely alien to them. The hero of Trainspotting, Retten, is a heroin addict. The hero of Boys Don't Cry, Brandon Teena, is a lesbian who crossdresses as a man. These movies are not for everyone. They were made for a younger, urban audience that is acquainted with, if not accepting of, heroin addiction and/or gender bending.
The studios prefer to make movies aimed at a wide audience because there is a greater risk involved in making an edgy movie with a morally ambiguous hero. For that reason, such movies are usually made by independent companies who are looking for their audience outside of the boundaries proscribed by studio films. This audience, along with the critics, will embrace a film that takes these chances. So if, as a first time director, you are hired to make an edgy film about a character like Retten or Teena, then allow your main character to be as much of an outsider, as weird, as flawed as possible. Do not pull your punches. Go for the limit. The films of Pedro Almodóvar have proved that, in the new millennium, educated urban audiences will gladly identify with characters whose lifestyles are totally divorced from all societal norms. And, it could be argued, that the more bizarre, the more sexually deviant and morally ambiguous they are, the better. It would seem that, for an educated urban audience, there is a certain radical chic in embracing films like Almodóvar's that feature societal outcasts in the main roles. It takes guts to live as they do, in defiance of societal norms. In almost all Almodóvar films, these outcasts/heroes invariably undertake a daunting quest early on — a quest which is made that much more difficult, because, in trying to reach their goals, Almodóvar's heroes must overcome the additional obstacles thrown in their way by those who are prejudiced against them and intent on denying their fundamental humanity. Rebels always make good heroes and Almodóvar's rebels are usually rebels burning with a cause.
The Heroic Quest
Yet a main character of truly heroic proportions alone does not a great script make. If the audience is going to enter the action of the film, they have to have an intense admiration for the main character and an equally intense desire for him to achieve his objective. What the main character wants has to be something they see as worth wanting very much.
A good rule of thumb to make sure that the audience will very much want the main character to achieve his objective is to simply require that the objective is either one of two things: (1) love, because we never get enough love or the right kind of love and so we see love as supremely desirable, or (2) a matter of life and death — something the hero is willing to give up his life to get. It can be a matter of life and death even if it isn't an action movie. The hero's life doesn't have to actually be on the line. If it is clear that he will die either physically or spiritually if he doesn't achieve his objective at the climax of the film, like Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) in American Beauty, then the audience, given that they admire the hero, will find reason enough to root for him with enough passion to transport themselves into the action of the film.
Though the scripts of almost all successful films conform to this rule of thumb, many bad movies have been made from scripts that fulfilled the basic requirements of having a main character of heroic proportions who launched himself on a quest for love or something which was a matter of life and death — because the devil is in the details. Once the (admirable) main character has launched himself on his (worthwhile) quest, what keeps the audience plugged into the film and transported into the action is suspense. And suspense is created when the hero comes up against obstacles that prevent him from attaining his objective. When the hero encounters an obstacle, the audience find themselves going back and forth between hoping that the hero can overcome the obstacle and fearing that he cannot. This vacillation between hope and fear creates suspense. To create great suspense, the audience must alternately fear with great dread that the hero will fail, or perhaps even be killed, and then hope passionately, with an intensity bordering on elation, that he will succeed. The more intensely the audience hopes, the more intensely they fear, the greater the suspense will be. The more powerful the suspense, the more complete the hold of the transportational effect on the audience. Suspense is what sucks them into the story and makes them forget about themselves. Suspense is ultimately what makes all great films great. This is true not just of action films, but love stories and art films as well. No matter if they are watching Romeo and Juliet or Casablanca or Chasing Amy, the audience is constantly being driven back and forth between passionately hoping that the boy will get the girl and not merely fearing, but dreading, that he will not. No matter if it is The Rules of the Game or Citizen Kane or The Piano, throughout the film the audience vacillates between elation and despair as, one moment, it seems as if the main character will attain his noble objective and fulfill his humanity, and then, at the next moment, it seems certain that he will fail, in which case, he might as well be dead.
Suspense is where most scripts fall down — because in order for the transportational effect to keep its hold on the audience, the film has to become increasingly more suspenseful. One pivotal moment has to be followed by another of greater consequence. If not, the audience's interest will flag. To do this the scriptwriter must constantly top himself. Each obstacle the hero encounters has to be increasingly daunting. And if he fails to overcome that obstacle, the consequences have to become increasingly more disastrous. Otherwise, even though the hero may be confronting great obstacles and performing heroic acts to overcome them, the audience, in the back of their minds, is going to start to think, “Okay, that's pretty cool. But what else can you show me?”
And I am not just referring to Gen-X and Gen-Y audiences who, because they have grown up on video games and MTV demand that their thrills be spiked right into the vein and amped to the max. Any audience of any age can become jaded very quickly. This is simply a function of the laws of perception and human nature. The more frequently we repeat an experience, the less impact it has on us. If you go down the same street every day, eventually the buildings on the street become the visual equivalent of white noise. They are there, but habit has conditioned your brain to the fact of their existence, so you don't notice them. In the same fashion, if the stakes do not go up throughout the middle of a film, the audience starts to become habituated to the level of suspense and, accordingly, the all-important transportational effect starts to weaken.
Rare is the moviegoer who has not sat through more films that suffer from this weakness than he would like to recall. It is so common, screenwriters have coined a term to describe it: second-act sag. A film with second-act sag invariably starts out well. It has a hero we care about and some sort of hook that captures our interest. (Very few films get made without a good hook because the hook is what the studios rely on to sell the picture.) But about halfway through the film, our interest starts to wane because, even though the hero is getting closer to his objective, in doing so, he seems to be going over old ground. We start to tune out.
One of the most important duties of the first time director during the preproduction period is to read and reread his script to make sure that throughout the second act the stakes continually go up. If they do not, then his film will suffer from second act sag, and all of the Herculean labors he performs during the actual production of the film will be for naught. To make sure that the script of his breakthrough film does not suffer from second act sag, the first time director must hold each scene up to this acid test: He must ask himself if in each scene, as the hero approaches his objective, (1) do the obstacles become more daunting, and (2) does the hero have more and more to lose if he fails?
One of the most significant factors contributing to the success of the film Crimson Tide was the consummate skill with which the writer, Michael Schiffer, continually jacked up the stakes and made the obstacles more formidable as the film progressed. At the outset of the movie, the main character, Commander Hunter (Denzel Washington), wants only to have a successful cruise on the nuclear sub, SS Arizona, so that he will get promoted to captain and be rewarded with a nuclear submarine of his own to command. His fate is in the hands of the commanding officer of the Arizona, Captain Ramsey (Gene Hackman). As the sub sets out on a dangerous mission, Ramsey flat out tells Hunter that all the wannabe captain has to do is make him happy and then Hunter will be virtually guaranteed of being promoted and getting his own sub. This moment comes about 15 minutes into the film. From this point on, disaster strikes about every 15 or 20 minutes. Things get worse and worse for Hunter. He seems to be driven further and further from his objective, while the forces arrayed against him become more and more awesome. Ramsey instantly distrusts Hunter and casts him in an adversarial role, humiliating him in front of the crew. (So much for Hunter's hope of getting his own sub on the strength of Ramsey's recommendation.) Next, they are attacked by a Russian sub. The Arizona is severely damaged and starts to sink. Now on top of his personal battle with his mistrustful, bull-headed captain, Hunter has to battle the Russians in order to save his own skin and the lives of all his crew. Hunter (granted, with Ramsey's help) saves the sub. But then the Arizona gets a message to launch their nukes at the Russians. Right after the first message, it gets a second launch message, but, by accident, the second message is cut off. So, the exact intent of the second message is unclear. Ramsey says they have to launch, because orders are orders, and, in nuclear war, first strike is everything. Hunter disagrees, arguing that the second message might have been a message not to launch, and with World War III and the fate of mankind in the balance they cannot precede until they are certain of the contents of the incomplete message. They get into a violent argument. In order to prevent the captain from launching, Hunter stages a mutiny and takes over command of the ship. But the charismatic Ramsey, to whom all the officers onboard remain loyal, quickly stages a counter-mutiny and retakes control of the boat. Now, Hunter has to force Ramsey and all of his fellow officers to forsake the time-honored Navy rules governing chain of command and listen to him instead of the captain. If they do not, all of humanity goes up in a mushroom cloud. It's no longer Hunter against the captain, or Hunter against the captain and the Russians. It is now Hunter against the captain, the Russians, and almost the entire crew — with the future of all mankind on the line.
That's the kind of escalation of stakes and obstacles you need to keep your audience transported into the action of the film. The first time director is advised to make certain that the script of his breakthrough film embodies an equally dramatic escalation. If it does not, he must go to work with the writer to make sure that it does. If the writer will not, or cannot, assist him, he should do the rewrite himself. Otherwise, all of his subsequent labors as a director are for naught. If the script does not pass this acid test, the film made from the script will never hold the audience as it could or should.
Again, these standards are met by great films of all genres, not just films that deal in overt forms of suspense. At the beginning of Romeo and Juliet, Romeo and Juliet enjoy the love and support of their separate, powerful families. All that's at stake is their intense, adolescent infatuation. By the end of the second act, they have sacrificed the love of their families, they are alone in the world, and their lives are on the line for their love. In the beginning of Breathless, the film that launched Jean-Luc Godard's career, all that the hero, played by Jean-Paul Belmondo, has to lose is his tenuous and light-heated attachment to a pretty American tourist, played by Jean Seberg. By the end of the second act, his infatuation has grown into love and he ends up sacrificing his life in the pursuit of that love. If you were to chart on a graph the escalation of stakes and obstacles in each Frank Capra film, from It Happened One Night through It's a Wonderful Life, they would all follow an almost identical, ever mounting, hyperbolic curve. The same could be said of every hit children's' film, from The Wizard of Oz through Finding Nemo. The examples are endless. The simple fact remains: A director cannot make a commercially successful movie in which the stakes and obstacles do not continually increase. The first time director must do everything in his power to make sure that the script of his breakthrough movie comes up to this standard.
Attaining Perfection in Casting
You have got to come close to perfection in casting if you are going to make a great film. How do you achieve perfection? Never settle. You must keep on casting with the same single-minded maniacal determination with which Captain Ahab sought Moby Dick, right up until you kill the casting director or the casting director kills you. Whether you are doing it yourself, or you have a top-tier casting director aided by a battalion of associates, assistants, and secretaries, you have to keep working the phones and keep the door open until the actor who is perfect for the part walks in. You may never find the perfect actor. But if you adopt this attitude, if you remain convinced that as good as the best choice you have already discovered may be, you can always do better, you will be rewarded.
Adopting such an uncompromising attitude is difficult. You are certain to take a lot of flack for being unreasonable and impossible. Obviously, if by holding to such astronomical standards you start to seriously jeopardize your relationship with your producer or the money people, then you are going to have to back down. But only back down far enough or long enough to re-ingratiate yourself with the key players. If they have a clue about filmmaking, they will be on your side all the way. Before they come down on you for holding the casting director to an impossibly high standard, they should be ready to fire the casting director or to let the casting director quit. They should understand that all you are trying to do is everything in your power to enable them to achieve their own ends.
The guiding principle of being tireless and uncompromising in casting is valid in all films, from the most humble student productions to the most exalted, mega-budget studio films. How much money you can pay your actors determines what pond you can fish in, but no matter the pond, you still must cast your net again and again, as widely as possible, in order to land the biggest fish. In the case of Back to the Future, Zemeckis made the mistake of casting Eric Stoltz because the studio insisted that he meet a certain deadline for the start of production. They made him pack up his net and go home before he was ready. Sure, they had met their deadline for the start of principal photography, but they had not found one of the essential components for their film: the perfect Marty McFly. The studio would have saved a lot of money if they had not rushed Zemeckis into production.
I have seen this same scenario repeated hundreds of times while I have overseen the production of student films as a professor. Most of my student directors must go into hock just to scrape together the cash to pay for film, processing, and telecine. Paid actors are beyond their grasp. So they are fishing in a different, but not necessarily smaller, pond than Zemeckis or Spielberg. In almost any American city there are thousands of amateur thespians who will work for nothing more than a copy of the finished product with which to build their portfolios. No matter the situation, from out of those thousands, you can find the handful you need to make up your perfect cast, provided that you throw your net wide enough and often enough.
I tell my student directors to tape their casting auditions and, when they are done casting, to make me a tape of their picks. Then, no matter what, I tell them they can do better. Those that have the determination and the vision to do as I advise are always rewarded. They look longer and harder, and they always find a better cast. The longer they look, the harder they look, the better the cast gets. The very best films are always those that, besides having a great script, go through a long, exhaustive casting process.
As a first time director casting his breakthrough film, you are going to be casting in a more exalted pond than the pond of my student directors, and a less sacred pond than the one in which Zemeckis was casting for Back to the Future. Which pond that is will be determined by your casting budget. But the key to success in all ponds is the same: You must never compromise. The laws of statistics dictate that the more people you read for a part, the more likely you are to cast an actor who will win an Oscar for his performance. Hopefully your producer has the good sense to see the logic in that maxim. If he doesn't, you've got bigger problems than casting.
How Do You Define Perfection? Casting Your Leads
It is not easy to define perfection. But I think it would be unconscionable for me to tell you to find it without giving you some idea of how to identify it. There are as many different kinds of perfection as there are roles. For the sake of simplification, I advise homing in on two qualities that an actor can exhibit: like- ability and richness. Generally speaking, your protagonist and leading roles are likeable in the extreme and not so rich, whereas your supporting parts are very rich, but frequently not so thoroughly likeable. The reason is obvious. The more likeable the protagonist, the more completely and intensely the audience will be able to identify with him. The more intensely the audience identifies with the main character, the more fully they can enter the action of the film (provided that the script is also great).
So what exactly is likeability? How do you identify it? The easiest way to clarify this complex question is to simply look at our greatest actors in some of their greatest roles. Likeability is what makes the audience identify with and care about Dustin Hoffman as Enrico “Ratso” Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy, even though Ratso is angry, ugly, filthy, ignorant, and manipulative. Likeability is what makes the audience identify with and care about Robert DeNiro as Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull, even though LaMotta borders on paranoid schizophrenia. Likeability is what makes Marlon Brando lovable, heroic, and so beneficent as to be almost godlike as Don Corleone in The Godfather, even though Don Corleone is the kind of guy who, if you cross him, is going to cut your favorite horse's head off and put it in your bed. Likeability is what makes the audience watching American Beauty root for Kevin Spacey as Lester Burnham, even though he is driven to destroy his connection to the American dream and commit an act of pedophilia in the process.
Because they are complex characters and embody both positive and negative characteristics, Ratso Rizzo, Jake LaMotta, Don Corleone, and Lester Burnham are not only likeable, but rich. They are almost all, at different times, mean and kind, weak and strong, ugly and beautiful, righteous and debased. Since they embody both positive and negative attributes, they are not going to please all of the people all of the time. Some segments of some audiences will not be able to identify with them, in spite of their likeability. But each of these leading actors is blessed with a powerful inherent humanity that will touch almost all members of all audiences and lead them to forgive these characters for their failings.
When the main character of a film is as rich as those mentioned above, it puts an extra burden on the likeability of the actor who must portray that character. If the likeability quotient is not high enough, the film will not draw wide audiences. If it is a big budget film, it will fail. This is why the studios prefer to make movies that feature main characters that are not so complex. It is easier for all members of all audiences to identify with such characters. The films they are featured in are more palatable, and so, more likely profitable. In Titanic, the main character, Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio) proves himself to be in all ways wonderful. His only shortcoming is that he is poor. In Batman, Bruce Wayne (as portrayed by Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, or George Clooney) is incredibly brave, smart, and idealistic; his only shortcoming is that he feels a little burdened having to save the world on a regular basis. In The Graduate, Benjamin Braddock, the role played by Dustin Hoffman, is a sweet, idealistic young man who is trying very hard to be true to himself. His only problem is that he is naïve and too easily led astray.
The first time director on his breakthrough project must do everything in his power to make sure that his protagonist and the actors in his leading roles are blessed with as much likeability as possible — the more, the better. Admittedly, by claiming that a director can successfully cast his film by homing in on likeability and richness in his actors, I have oversimplified the process to make my point. Still, likeability is absolutely crucial in your protagonist. Without it, your movie will never succeed.
Casting the Supporting Roles
In casting the supporting roles for his film, the first time director should home in on richness of character. The audience should be intrigued by and interested in the characters playing in support of the leads. They do not have to find them likeable, because they do not have to identify with them. Richness of character enables an actor to be mercurial. If he brings this mercurial quality to the role he is playing, the audience will never be able to anticipate his next move. They will remain fascinated with him; every time he appears on screen will be a treat. If you look down the list of the actors who have won the Oscar for best supporting role, you will find that they all are quintessentially mercurial and rich in character. James Coburn in Affliction, Cuba Gooding Jr. in jerry Maguire, Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects, Martin Landau in Ed Wood, Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive, Gene Hackman in Unforgiven, Jack Palance in City Slickers, Joe Pesci in GoodFellas — all of these actors relied on their inherent richness of character because the roles demanded that they convincingly embody both positive and negative human attributes. In Jerry Maguire, Cuba Gooding is believably flawed. As Jerry tells him, he lacks heart and commitment. He is too focused on money and success. But, at the same time, he is a fighter and a loyal friend. Martin Landau in Ed Wood is self-destructive, self-indulgent, facile, and nasty, but he is professional and dignified, as well as a warm, if inconstant, friend to Ed Wood. Gene Hackman in Unforgiven and Joe Pesci in GoodFellas are both vicious and homicidal, but in addition to being a believable killer, Hackman manages to come off somehow dignified, and Pesci, when his role demanded it, seems believably childlike and light-hearted. Kevin Spacey's role in The Usual Suspects literally turns on his ability to seem harmless and yet latently lethal.
Generally speaking, with supporting actors, a first time director should focus on their range of emotion. The greater their range of emotion, the richer their character. The richer their character, the more unexpected their behavior. This complexity will drive up the audience's interest level in them and thereby intensify the all-important transportational effect of the film on its viewers. Rich supporting characters enhance the audience's overall viewing pleasure and put the first time director that much closer to his objective of making a film which will launch his career.
Content and the Producer - Sometimes They Come from Different Planets
Content is everything for the first time director. His first professional gig will not become his breakthrough gig, it will not propel him into the top tier of working directors if — when it comes to content — his film is not flawless. Unfortunately, the first time director rarely has complete control over the content of his film. Inevitably, until a director has a track record of having either directed several moderately successful films or one thoroughly successful film, he will have to share control over the content of his film with those who are putting up the money for his breakthrough gig: the producer, the studio, the backers, or some sort of combination of the three. Therefore, to some extent, the first time director's fate is not in his own hands.
As talented and capable as he may be, the first time director cannot make a breakthrough film unless his producer and the other parties he has to defer to have good judgment in script and casting. The director may know exactly how to rewrite the script so that it goes to a higher level and becomes incredibly compelling and suspenseful from beginning to end, but if the producer doesn't like those script changes, the chances are they will never get made, and the film will never become a breakthrough film. The director may have discovered the next Kevin Spacey and want to cast him in the lead for his film. But if the producer doesn't have the insight to realize that someone who looks like Kevin Spacey can be just as compelling and likeable as someone who looks like Tom Cruise; if the producer refuses to hire the next Kevin Spacey and insists instead on hiring an actor who is as handsome as Tom Cruise, but cannot act as well and lacks the humanity of the actor that the director has discovered — then the first time director's film will not become his breakthrough film.
The first time director has no choice but to defer to his producer and the financial backers of the film because he cannot fire them. However, they will not hesitate to fire him, if he pushes them too far when they disagree over script and casting. Content is everything, but the content of the film — good, bad, or indifferent — will be meaningless if the director succeeds in getting himself replaced. It has happened many, many times to many talented, even brilliant, first time directors.
This is all too understandable. After all, script and casting are everything. A first time director, no matter how brilliant, can make only a mediocre movie if he is saddled with a mediocre script and a weak cast. If the movie is mediocre, he will be held responsible and will be deemed mediocre, no matter how brilliant he actually is. He may be tempted to direct the film because he is impatient to launch his directing career or because he needs the paycheck. But he would be well advised not to give into these short-term concerns and to wait until he is given a script and a cast that will do justice to his talent. Otherwise, his talent may go forever unnoticed and unappreciated.
One big reason why so many bad movies are made, year in and year out, is because producers in general and low budget producers in particular do not really know what it takes to make a good movie. As studio executives are so fond of reminding those of us who think of ourselves as artists, it is called show business or the film business, not show art or the film art. The skills and talents needed to raise the money to make and sell films are very different from the skills and the talents required to actually turn out the product.
Most of the low budget producers whom I have met or worked with were brilliant salesmen. They could all sell ice to the Eskimos. But they understood the product that they sold in the same way that a shoe salesman understands shoes. They knew the trends. If that year, square toes were in, they knew that. “You want square toes? We got the best square toes in the world!” That was their line. They could use it to raise the money to make and sell the product. But when it came to understanding the process by which the product that they sold was made, they were about as clueless as a shoe salesman when it comes to making shoes. This is why during the years when I was directing low budget films there was one Fatal Attraction and at least a thousand knock-offs. It took one producer who actually knows good content when he sees it to establish the trend: Michael Douglas. He read the script and had the guts and the brains to get the script made into a film, because it was a great script, not because erotic thrillers were “in” that year.
What the first time director has to try to figure out is whether he is working with a real producer, like Michael Douglas, or a shoe salesman. This is a very hard call to make, especially during the early stages of preproduction. At this stage, the first time director has known the producer for all of a couple of weeks…a month at the most. It is hard to get a solid fix on anyone's true capabilities that fast. And then, since the producer is a human being, he is going to be a jumble of contradictions.
I explained earlier how the script for Crystal Heart was fatally flawed, and how I did serious damage to my relationship with Pedro trying to get him to understand that it was pointless to shoot a love story in which the audience never gets to see exactly how the boy and the girl fall in love. I also knew that another project I directed, Never Too Young to Die, about the son of James Bond which was going to be made on a $3 million budget — when real Bond films were running about $40 or $50 million a pop — would never fly and just look like a cheap rip-off. Its only chance was if it acknowledged what it was, made fun of itself, and came off campier than the campiest moment in any Bond film. I could not admit any of this to the producer, Matt. It was clear that Matt adored the script (almost as much as he loved himself) and had absolutely no intention of making Never Too Young to Die any campier than any Bond film. This was because Matt was completely clueless when it came to anticipating how an audience would react to his film. Like most low budget producers, he underestimated the audience and assumed that they would not see his movie for what it was. When I told him, a week or two into preproduction, that as much as I loved and adored the script I still thought it could be improved, and suggested that I take a pass at it, he looked at me a little suspiciously and told me, “Come in on Saturday and we'll do it together.” Then, he held up his pen and informed me imperiously, “Any changes in the script are going to have come through this pen.”
That should have been my signal to bail out on Never Too Young to Die. But I came in that Saturday and the Saturday after that and the Saturday after that, thinking if I persisted, I could bring Matt around to seeing it my way. And, in fact, I brought him around some. In the version of Never Too Young to Die that went before the cameras, the villain, very ably played by Gene Simmons, was a hermaphrodite. He dressed in drag, did a live stage show, and like a sort of anthropomorphized killer frog, stuck his monster tongue down the throat of any female who came within range. So I got Matt to camp up a few scenes, but with camp, half measures are not effective. The Rocky Picture Horror Show does not flicker in and out of camp. It goes all the way. Matt, like an overgrown 10-year-old, was in love with most of the Bond genre clichés. He insisted that many of them be played straight. At many moments, the final film takes itself completely seriously, which prevents it from sailing into the realm of the absurd, where it properly belongs.
It would be unwise to try to dictate any hard and fast rules on when the first time director should hold his nose and jump and go ahead and make his first film with a shoe-salesman-cum-producer, even though the film is inherently flawed, and when he should bail out and quit the project. Every case will be different, depending on the producer and the scope of the crucial changes with regard to content that he is forbidding the director to make. I would advise every first time director who is at loggerheads with his producer over script changes or casting decisions to have a very sober conversation with himself about whether his ultimate goals as a director are going to be met by directing a film that is inherently flawed.
How to Be Almost Producer-Proof: Write the Script
Because I am not a great writer, I had to launch my directing career as a hired gun — a director for hire, as opposed to a writer-director who generally shops a script he has written along with himself as the director of the proposed project. When it comes to low budget breakthrough filmmaking, the hired gun is always at a certain disadvantage. My experience was a testament to this. Since I was a hired gun, my producers first acquired the script and then hired me. Therefore, I was dependent on the taste and judgment of my shoe-salesman-cum-knock-off-artist low budget producers. If you are a writer-director, several other scenarios are open to you by which you, the producer, and the script can come together. They are all vastly superior to those that that one must face as a hired gun.
Please do not delude yourself into thinking that you are a writer-director rather than a hired gun, and that you can further your directing career by directing from your own material, unless everyone you show your scripts to tells you that you are a great writer. When your friends give you feedback on your scripts, and it is mixed — some positive, some negative — hear them! They're your friends. They are bending over backwards to be kind. If the best they can do is to give you a mixed review, forget it. You aren't a writer-director. Not yet. You are not going to be doing yourself any favors trying to break through directing from a script that you have written.
Putting it simply, you are wasting your time unless you know that you are at least as good as the following writer-directors and their breakthrough scripts: Woody Allen ¡What's Up, Tiger Lily ?, Francis Coppola /The Godfather, Brian D e Palm a/Sisters, Martin Scorses t/Mean Streets, Oliver Stone Platoon, Bob Zemeckis/Back to the Future, James Cameron/Terminator, Spike Lee/She's Gotta Have It, Jim Jarmusch/Stranger Than Paradise, John Styles/The Return of the Secaucus Seven, Gregory Nava/El Norte, Joel Schumacher/The Incredible Shrinking Woman, Michael Mann/Thief Christopher Columbus/Heartbreak Hotel, Cameron Crowt/Say Anything, John Yiughts/Sixteen Candles, Joel Cotn/Blood Simple, Kevin Reynolds/Fandango, Quentin Tarentino/Reservoir Dogs, Kevin Smith/Clerks, John Singleton/Boyz in the Hood, Neil LaBute/In the Company of Men, Paul Anàttson/Boogie Nights, Alexander Payn t/Citizen Ruth, Wes Anderson/Bottle Rocket, Kimberly Pier et/The Boy Next Door.
The advantage of shopping yourself as a director with a script under your arm is that if it attracts the attention of a producer and he tells you he wants to make it into a movie, then your worries are over. Because, assuming that your script is breakthrough material, then your producer is not a shoe salesman but the real thing. To single out your script from the many that cross his desk, he has to be a producer with brains, guts, and taste. If this is the case, he will actually help you make all the hard choices that you will have to make in the course of rendering your script into a finished film.
Two other scenarios for success: Number one, he is a shoe salesman who wants to make your script because you have included enough mainstream elements that even a shoe salesman can spot it as a saleable product. Or, number two, the quality of the script has attracted other bankable elements, like a known star, so that the shoe salesman can rest assured that the film made from the script will make money on the star's name alone. Amazingly, sometimes film art and the film business just, by chance, overlap in this ironic fashion. If this is the case, your worries are almost over. Your knock-off-artist-producer has unwittingly handed you a great script to direct from: your own. You won't have to endure the maddening ordeal which every hired gun has to face when he gets hired by a shoe-salesman producer — to talk or trick the producer into doing a rewrite so you can make a movie that is truly worth the effort. You've dodged that bullet. Now, all you have to do is find a good, if not a great, cast and then pray that the producer actually manages to come up with the bucks needed to get the script shot. In any case, you are way ahead of the game.
At one point my career brushed up against Quentin Tarentino's in a way that led me to believe that the people who ran the company that put up the money to make Tarentino's breakthrough film, Reservoir Dogs, were really just shoe salesmen who were funding the film — not so much because they were able to perceive that a great movie could be made from Tarentino's script, but rather because they could see that there were enough bankable elements attached to the script so that, no matter what, they would make money on the project. This same producing team, I will call them Sheila and Simon, had volunteered to put up $1.5 million to produce a film from a script called Car Crazy that I had co-authored for Universal Studios, but which Universal had decided not to green light and had put into turnaround. This meant that any company could produce the script, provided they compensated Universal for the fees that they had paid to me and my writing partner — a mere pittance, since my writing partner and I were unknowns and had written the script for Writer's Guild scale. Sheila and Simon said their company, Sheman Productions, was interested in doing this, so my partner and I met with them. At the meeting they told us how much they loved the script to Car Crazy, which was the story of how a small-town, ail-American teenage boy comes of age and gets the respect he hungers for by building the fastest hot rod in town — sort of Karate Kid meets American Graffiti. They told us they loved it so much they would give us $1.5 million to make it ! Furthermore, they had so much faith in me as a director they would let me direct ! All we had to do was get Keanu Reeves, Christian Slater, or River Phoenix to agree to star in it. Little mind that, at that time, Reeves, Slater, and Phoenix all had at least a $2 million asking price for their services on any picture. As to how we would pay the star and have any money left over to make the picture, neither Sheila nor Simon had any advice. That was our problem.
Later on, at a party, Sheila told me, in so many words, that they had made the same generous offer to Tarentino, provided he could get Harvey Keitel to work in his movie. This is why I tend to doubt that Sheila and Simon had any understanding of the artistic merits of Reservoir Dogs. Their commitment to that film, like their commitment to Car Crazy, was based on simple math. Sheman Productions made its money selling to foreign distributors. Sheila and Simon knew that could easily make $1.5 million on the foreign sales of any film starring Harvey Keitel, Keanu Reeves, Christian Slater, or River Phoenix — provided it had a story that made sense and enough sex, violence, or action to satisfy the tastes of foreign viewers. This is how Sheila and Simon discovered Quentin Tarentino. If anyone deserves to claim that they gave Tarentino his break, it has got to be Keitel. He obviously read the script, saw the artistic merit in it, and then, as he is wont to do for deserving little groundbreaking films, got it made by simply agreeing to defer his paycheck or work for scale.
The story of Reservoir Dogs shows that a writer-director has an advantage over a hired gun when it comes to making sure that when he goes to launch his career, he'll be working from a script that can do the job — even when a shoe salesman is producing it. Bottom line, the writer-director comes with the script, so the producer is removed from the process of selecting the script. This makes it more likely that the film will be an artistic success. You might even end up having the sort of dream relationship with your producer that a fellow director once described to me this way: “A good producer gets the money, gets the script, and gets out of the way !”
How to Be Producer-Proof: Write the Script and Raise the Money
In some cases, the secret weapon of the script gives the writer-director the advantage of being able to make his breakthrough film by completely dispensing with any producer to whom he has to answer. Many a writer-director of note has launched his career by being able to scrape together enough money to make his breakthrough film on the strength of the script alone. When this is the case, the writer-director, in effect, acts as his own producer. The money comes from those who back the project, either because of the artistic merit of the script or because they are friends or relatives. If this is the case, the writer-director, when it comes to all creative decisions, has only himself to answer to. Generally, the producer on this sort of project functions as a line producer who tells the writer-director how much money he does or doesn't have to spend. But exactly how he spends it is pretty much the director's own decision. A partial list of the writer-directors of note who fall into this group, and the projects they authored to launch their careers would consist of: Martin Scorsese/Mean Streets, Spike 'Let/She's Gotta Have It, Jim Jarmusch/Stranger Than Paradise, John Sayles/The Return of the Secaucus Seven, Gregory Nava/El Norte, Joel Coen/Blood Simple, Kevin Smith/Clerks, and Neil LaBute/7/2 the Company of Men.
So what if you are just a hired gun director? Do you have a chance? Yes, but less of a chance. If you and your producer have irreconcilable differences over the script, there is a very real chance that the movie you make with that producer will not launch your career. Even worse, it may end it. Everything else — given a super abundance of talent, ingenuity, charm, and persistence — can be overcome. But, if it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage. That's a timeworn cliché because it happens to be so true. There are two other sayings that apply here. They are not as well known, but they are equally valid. The first is “You only get a couple of chits in this business, so you have got to make every one of them count.” The second is an original Bob Zemeckis aphorism: “You don't work your way up in this business. You are discovered and go straight to the top.” To which he added, “It's a club. They invite you into the club, and once you're in, you're in for good, unless you really screw up.” The first time director will have only one chance in his entire life to make his first feature film. He should make that one chance count. If he hits a home run his first time at bat, like Spielberg, Cameron, Tarentino, or Michael Cimino, then he is in the club for life — unless he screws up royally, like Cimino did.
The list of first time directors whose first films bombed and were never heard from again is very, very long. There are no well-known names to bandy about here to prove my point, because these individuals disappeared beneath the waves without a trace. Lance Young, a very successful, highly respected, hip studio executive at Paramount in the early ‘90s under Gary Luchese always wanted to direct. He got his chance and made a film from a script he wrote called Bliss. On many levels it was an excellent film, but it was not a hit. Lance left the business for a couple of years and is now a studio executive at DreamWorks. Because of that initial defeat, Lance is probably going to have to wait much longer than he would like before he gets a second chance to launch his directing career.
Zemeckis' first two films, I Wanna Hold Your Hand and Used Cars, were both big disappointments at the box office in their initial release. After he made those films, Bob got a lot of consolation from a lot of powerful people, like Spielberg, Lucas, John Milius, Lew Wasserman, and Frank Price (at the time, the studio boss at Columbia). They all lined up to tell him not to worry, that he had made two excellent films, and that he was undeniably an excellent director. But none of them offered him any real jobs. Bob's directing career was very much on hold for almost five years. When he finally got his next break it did not come courtesy of his powerful friends, and it was not on a studio picture. It was to direct a movie for an independent production company in Vera Cruz, Mexico. It was an action- adventure comedy that was to be shot on a shoestring $7 million budget. The film was Romancing the Stone, and the rest, as we all know, is history. Bob was very fortunate that Michael Douglas, the film's producer, had enough vision and filmmaking savvy to look at Bob's first two films and recognize that, despite the fact that they had not made money, they had been made by a incredibly talented director — who would happily travel to the steaming jungles of Mexico and work his ass off for peanuts in order to get his directing career out of the deep freeze.
Bob was extremely fortunate. That other crucial element that every first time director needs on his side if he is going to breakthrough into the club — luck — had played right into his hands. All wannabe directors reading this book should not count on being so lucky. They should not tempt fate. If your producer faces you across the desk, as Pedro did with me, puts his beefy, ham hock of a hand on the script as if it were the Bible, and tells you “Dees eez dee script! We shoot dees!” you had best think twice about continuing with the project. If to your mind the script is very much in need of a rewrite, it might just be time to say, “Sayonara, Pedro!”
Remember that the script is not the sole component of the content of a film. The cast also figures as a part of the raw clay that the director has to shape. You cannot make a great film without a great cast but you can probably make a very good one. Sisters, The Return of the Secaucus Seven, She's Gotta Have It, Stranger than Paradise, Blood Simple, Salvador, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, El Norte, Say Anything, Clerks, Boy ? in the Hood, Hard Eight, Swingers, Bottle Rocket, In the Company of Men, and even Spielberg's Sugarland Express, were all made from great scripts. They all became breakthrough films for their first time directors. But, with the exception of Goldie Hawn in Sugarland and John Cusack in Say Anything, most of the casts of these films have not been heard from since. On the other hand, you could argue that Mean Streets would not have been Scorsese's breakthrough film without Harvey Keitel and Robert DeNiro; Terminator would not have been the launching pad for Cameron's spectacular career without Schwarzenegger; and Reservoir Dogs would not have put Tarentino in the club for life without Keitel. So don't destroy your relationship with your producer over casting decisions. Argue forcefully for your choices right up the point where you feel you might do permanent damage to whatever good will exists between you and your producer, and then back off.
As always, there are exceptions to this rule. It is hard to imagine Woody Allen breaking through as a director without Woody Allen to star in his films. A film that is character driven and hinges on one central character, as Allen's early films do, could be fatally handicapped if the right actor is not cast in the pivotal role. So, in certain rare instances, it is conceivable that a first time director would be well advised to walk off such a film if the producer keeps him from casting the right actor in the pivotal role.
As for making a film with only a competent cast, you will have to be a talented director of actors. You had best understand Method acting. If you don't, you've got to be smart enough and instinctive enough to come up with instructions for your actors that will enable them to take their performances to a higher level. You will have to know just what to say to get them unstuck when they get stuck, to make their mediocre moments good, and their good moments great. But it can be done. I'll show you how in Chapters 6 and 7.
CHAPTER 2 | SUMMARY POINTS
• On his breakthrough gig, the first time director should be ready to move heaven and earth to assure that the content of his film is of the highest caliber — the content being the script and the cast. If the script is solid, then you're protected, even if the cast is only competent.
• Before they undertake their big breakthrough gig, all first time directors should have spent a reasonable amount of time trying to understand and incorporate the wisdom of one of the great screenwriting gurus.
• The first time director must understand and take to heart the fundamental truth that, if the audience is transported into the drama of the film, they will sit there happily for the entire two hours with their eyes riveted on the screen, even if the look of the film is decidedly low-tech.
• The audience must know who the main character of the film is and what that character wants — and they must want him to get it. If the audience does not care a great deal, then either the hero is not sufficiently heroic or his quest is not truly a worthy quest.
• The defining quality of a true hero is self-sacrifice and selflessness. It is best if, early on in the film, the hero performs a selfless act.
• A good rule of thumb to make sure that the audience will very much want the main character to achieve his objective is to simply require that the objective is either one of two things: love, or something the hero must be willing to give up his life to get.
• Once the (admirable) main character has launched himself on his (worthwhile) quest, then what keeps the audience transported into the action is suspense. The film has to become increasingly more suspenseful. The stakes must continually go up as the hero nears his objective.
• To make sure that the script of his breakthrough film does not suffer from second-act sag, the first time director must ask himself if in each scene, as the hero approaches his objective, (1) do the obstacles become more daunting, and (2) does the hero have more and more to lose if he fails?
• You have got to come close to perfection in casting if you are going to make a great film. The rule of thumb on how to achieve this is to never settle.
• Don't destroy your relationship with your producer over casting decisions. Argue forcefully for your choices right up the point where you feel you might do permanent damage to whatever good will exists between you and your producer, and then back off.
• In the day-late-dollar-short world of low budget filmmaking, there are many producers who are shockingly lacking in the ability to discern a good script from a mediocre one. Furthermore, most low budget producers cannot distinguish a truly likeable and compelling actor from one who is merely attractive and competent.
• I would advise every first time director who is at loggerheads with his producer over script changes or casting decisions to have a very sober conversation with himself about whether his ultimate goals as a director are going to be met by directing a film that is inherently flawed.
• Many a writer-director of note has launched his career by being able to scrape together enough money to make his breakthrough film on the strength of the script alone. When this is the case, the writer-director, in effect, acts as his own producer.
• Do not delude yourself into thinking that you are a writer-director rather than a hired gun, and that you can further your directing career by directing from your own material — unless everyone you show your scripts to tells you that you are a great writer.
