Q. If I write a screenplay with an actor in mind, can I put down what actor I want to play the part?No.
First of all, the actor you're writing for may be ungettable. If you say "Brad Pitt," then a reader is likely to say, "Well, you won't get him, so why am I reading this?" It comes off a bit amateurish.
Second, what if you've actually written a pretty good part for Johnny Depp? Someone might read your script and think "Johnny Depp!" But not if you've written "Brad Pitt."
It's even more dangerous when you're in the land of great deadpan stars like Harrison Ford or Clint Eastwood. If you were actually writing for Clint Eastwood, you would underwrite the dialogue a lot, knowing how much he can do with a few words. But if it's not Clint Eastwood -- say you have a standard-issue B-movie tough guy actor -- the lines may just come off as flat.
It's a bit of a cheat. You're expecting the reader to imbue your lines with Brad Pitt's quirky star delivery. But your job is to imbue the lines with star quality yourself. Ideally, you should create a character so compelling and fun that someone reads the script and thinks, "You know who'd be great in this? Brad Pitt."
It's better to overwrite the character a bit until you have a star, knowing that you can take it back down later if a star comes on board. In a selling script, you have to do all the work. In a shooting script, you can leave more air for the star to fill in.
That said, it's not a bad idea to consider a star when you're writing. I just rewrote a movie for a director. We agreed that the main character should be written for a certain quirky actress / ukelele player. Not that we're likely to get her. But keeping her in mind defines the sort of things that character would and would not do -- a sort of "strike zone." This character is not written for Milla Jovovich. There will be no cartwheels while wielding dual machine pistols.
But then my job is to write each line of dialog so that it is practically a star vehicle for this actress. It's the old criterion that competent dialog is writing only things the character would say, but great dialog is writing things that only that character would say.
Then, when we go to cast, another actor with similar qualities will bring her own charisma and stardom to the lines, and make the character unforgettably hers.
We watched the utterly preposterous and mostly adorable heist movie OCEAN'S TWELVE. The plot is borderline incoherent. Basically it's an excuse to watch big, big stars do their thing.
And they do, adorably. There are scenes between Brad Pitt and George Clooney that you just want to loop over and over because they're so much fun to watch, even when they're barely doing anything -- especially when they're barely doing anything, because any actor can do something and look interesting, but it takes a star to do nothing and make it interesting.
(I did a couple of seasons of Meisner Technique acting training in order to learn to direct and write better, and I got to watch some actors with star quality. There were actors who came in with the right interpretation of the scene. But two actors in particular, Mariska Hargitay and Clare Carey, could come in with completely the wrong interpretation of the scene and yet you couldn't take your eyes off them. They both went on to leads on TV shows)
OCEAN'S TWELVE made $125 million bucks domestic. Not huge, considering the cast, but they made another one, so I doubt they lost any money. I suspect it did bigger numbers overseas. It's a spectacle movie. You're not really watching for a story. The story is there to support set pieces -- dramatic or comic scenes where the stars are on fire, and action sequences that are just huge fun to watch.
I care a lot about story; I'm a writer after all. I have to remind myself from time to time that it's not just story that the audience is paying for. They will also gladly pay for spectacle. In fact, forced to choose between a great story and an amazing spectacle, a big chunk of the audience will choose spectacle. (See TRANSFORMERS and the STAR WARS prequels.)
The spectacle movies will date themselves really fast, as the tech improves. Movies with great stories will last. But if you get a chance to write the next Transformers movie, you can watch the next Martin Scorsese on the 3D screen in your giant Hollywood mansion.
Fortunately, you can write spectacle too. You don't have to wait for the director to add it. You can imagine the action sequences so they're spectacular. And I believe there is a way to write big parts for stars. I think it has something to do with letting the scenes breathe a little bit -- give the characters room to be stars.
Just signed a deal that should be CRAFTY SCREENWRITING into the Kindle store shortly. Thanks for all your support -- I've been forwarding all your letters to my publisher. Seems to have worked!
Faithful Readers Claude and Kimshum tip me off to this excellent post by John Rogers:
Those types of shows are essentially shows about emotions. People in conflict, or breaking down. End of day -- as Wells et al have nimbly shown -- you can drop a conflicted group of humans into any high-stakes setting and reap the entertainment crop of angst. Breaking Bad is about temptation and sin -- Walter didn't have to make Meth. But the drug world is a great, high-conflict/high-risk crucible for an amazing staff of writers to use to show what happens, how a man breaks bad. Joss Whedon's shows are about identity, responsibility, family and failure -- it doesn't matter what setting he's in, it's just that sci-fi allows one to create extreme circumstances so to best draw out extreme choices and extreme consequences.Interesting, huh? Also, this:
And then there are shows about systems. Specifically, systems in conflict, or breaking down. Law & Order is the platonic example, although most mainstream crime procedurals live somewhere in here. Disorder has come, sickness has come, corruption has come, and we crave the system to be set right. We are there for the riddle, the puzzle, the "click" of the solve. "Ahh, that's the solution." "Ah, clever."
All criticisms are products of unmet expectations.Go and learn...
I'm looking for a Korean copy of CRAFTY SCREENWRITING; my publisher neglected to send me one. If you're a reader in South Korea, would you be kind enough to tell me how I could buy one?
Well, what do you know? Apparently CRAFTY SCREENWRITING was translated into Korean.
Pretty cool!
And in other news, I got an offer for Chinese rights!
