A Screenwriter's Life in Pictures

Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?

Paul Gauguin, 1897, Oil on Canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA. USA.

A Screenwriter's Life in Words

"In my opinion, modern writers have lost the sense of what a play should be. A drama is not meant to tell us a man's whole life, but to place him in a situation and tie up his destiny in such a way that his entire being will be clear from the manner in which he unties the knot! Yes, I have critiziced Shakespeare. But at least, in his plays, every character acts, and it is clear why he acts as he does...."

-Leo Tolstoy in a heated conversation with Anton Chekhov on his idea of the theater.

Henry Chinaski Up On The Big Screen

It isn't often one gets to see the late, great Charles Bukowski up on the big screen. Even counting Mickey Rourke in Barfly. But, Matt Dillon is taking his turn in the film version of Factotum. Here is the original book it was based on although you may want to take a look at Post Office or a few of his poems or even Women before you delve into this one. Or maybe even Hollywood (you know for you Hollywood types).

This all-encompassing Bukowski site is worth a moment of your time. And, if you can get your hands on this DVD, I highly recommend the documentary Bukowski: Born Into This.

John Fante's Ask The Dust is in theaters, now more Bukowski! What is the world coming to? Who is next? Knut Hamsun? Rainer Maria Rilke? Jens Peter Jacobsen?

As for casting in the next Bukowski pic, you couldn't go wrong with Geoffrey Rush.

The Incomplete Zach Helm Manifesto

Look out for Zach Helm. The buzz train is full steam ahead. A tale of a DePaul graduate who gave up the dull life of re-writing the work of other scribes in order to stick to his guns and write from the heart. As a result, Helm penned the spec Stranger Than Fiction, a romantic comedy that now stars Will Ferrell as the IRS agent hearing voices in his head seemingly authoring his own life (one of the hottest scripts in town last year).

Helm now finds himself directing his first feature from his script entitled Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium. The film is currently shooting in Toronto with Natalie Portman and Dustin Hoffman about a magical toy-store owner in search of a successor. He is also reportedly working on an adaptation of Matthew Collin's 2001 book, This Is Serbia Calling, a nonfiction account of the Belgrade radio station that helped run Slobodan Milosevic out of power.

The following is an incomplete list of his manifesto that got him out of the re-write business and onto the big screen.

Rule No. 1, Section One: "I will no longer allow financial need or career ambition to determine the direction of my work. I will not put myself in any position in which my work is owed to another party."

No. 2: "I won't take re-write jobs, I won't script-doctor. There's a lot of money to be had, lots of money for spending two weeks of work on a script, but I can't do it. I have a slight ethical …It would be very hypocritical of me to try to reserve all this creative power and try to hold on to my scripts as much as I can and then go take some first-time writer's script and bang it up."

No. 3: "I will not sell my work simply to the highest bidder, but instead to those parties that I feel will best represent and develop my work."

No. 5: "Any deal struck in regards to my work will forgo any immediate financial gain if it may mean the surrender of creative control or participation in the work's development."

No. 6: "I will not write for writing's sake. I will write only when inspired to write"

On the subject of his scripts, Helm states: "[t]here's this sort of sincerity to it. There's a lot of emotion to it. It's honest without being cynical, necessarily."

Read how The Manifesto changed his life in Vanity Fair.

The WNEP Theater in Chicago once described him in this way: "Zach Helm is a writer from Los Angeles, California. His plays include Chapters on American Artistry, Last Chance For A Slow Dance, Harold, and his two new works Polonius and The Darkness. His screenplays include The DisAssociate which will be directed by Chris Noonan at Dreamworks and the adaptation of the Caldecott winning Sector 7 for Paramount. He is a merit scholar graduate of DePaul University, former performer at the Lollapalooza music festival, the protege of acclaimed literary theorist Joe Wells, and retired spelling champion."

Aristotle's Poetics for the Cineaste

Every screenwriter should be familiar with Aristotle the Great's Poetics, but in this day and age you don't have to slog through the original. Lucky for you, a couple screen enthusiasts have gone through, highlighted, and interpreted the relevant material so you don't have to read the 2,356 year old Greek. Cus, you know it is...well, all Greek to you. Bet you never heard that one before. Anyway, even though I recommend you read the original, a glance at a Cliff Notes version can't hurt either.

Lance Lee, a poet and a playwright, has written A Poetics for Screenwriters. A very detailed work for those with an academic bent. By the way, just so you know, his mother, Lucile Wilds, was a renowned model of her day— her legs insured for $150,000 and her smile everywhere.

Mike Tierno, a writer/director, titled his book on the same subject Aristotle's Poetics for Screenwriters. You can read an interview with Tierno that covers a lot of what is in the book here.

I should say that I am in no way affiliated with these works nor do I receive any compensation for mentioning them. I am just a fool for toga-wearing dramedy enthusiasts. Hopefully, someone will dig up his treatise on comedy someday soon. Maybe we will then learn to laugh again. At least at things that are really funny.

Since I have included Plato (left) in the photo above I don't want to leave you hanging without mentioning any of his theories on art. But, I wouldn't put much stock in his ideas on politics. Suffice it to say that Plato held that oral communication is superior to the written word. In his Phaedrus he pointed to the accuracy of talking over reading. And, in his Seventh Epistle he said that nothing of importance should ever be written down, but transmitted orally in its stead. So Plato preferred movies over books. Who knew?

Managers Vs. Agents

Claude Brodesser of KCRW's The Business has an interesting 10 minute chat at the end of his show this week with an agent and a manager discussing their relative value to the industry. A pending Marathon Entertainment lawsuit could change the rules once again.

Check The Not So Secret Lives of Hollywood Managers for some background info.

A Short Retrospective

It all started when I became enamored of the big blockbuster films coming out of Hollywood in the late 70's and early 80's. Nothing was ever so vast and entertaining. And yet, I must say, I also owe a great debt to the foreign films of long ago that illustrated that it was not all about blood, guts, and glory. Yet, it took me a while to discover Vigo, Bresson, Godard, Antonioni, and Fellini. But, I am forever in their debt. In the beginning though, it was all Star Wars birthday cakes then Rambo and later Ramones/Sex Pistols/The Clash style birthday parties. A little later on I was exposed to my first live set at Victorine Studios on the Cote d'Azur in a role on a little picture with some big stars. It opened up a whole new world I knew nothing about. Oddly enough, I then modeled in front of the Eiffel Tower at the Trocadero in Paris at a skateboarding competition. And, shot a few photos for an automobile commercial on the Croisette during the Cannes Film Festival. Not a bad way to live, I thought to myself. Mind you, this was all before the age of thirteen.

I returned to the States to continue my education, yet not before seeing the effects of war up close and personal (a whole different story). Once I returned, I shied away from the limelight. I saw America from a new set of eyes, even ultimately checking out what the People's Republic of Cambridge, Massachusetts had to offer. And, in the end winding up with a degree in hand (or at least filed away somewhere). I had always been quick to write down words on a page in almost every form. Poems, short stories, the first glimpse of a novel, etc. At first, I was paid a dollar a word for an article I wrote on the state of the technology sector (not too shabby!). Then I received multiple thousands of dollars for a few white papers I wrote about the intricacies of specific technology companies. I left that all behind to discover the theater of economics and political philosophy. I wrote about what I considered to be the truth of the market process in a world of scarce resources and individual actors.

Yet, this left me with a creative void which I tried to fill by studying painting and the arts in general. I have now returned to my first love. Film. The cinema. Movies. 24 frames per second of a 120 page script up on the silver screen. A member of the audience escaping from their daily life to be entertained, enlightened, inspired, and/or provoked to action. This audience member was now lifting the veil behind the screen. It was a world I never really left, but placed, knowingly, on the back burner until a later, more suitable date. I now continue on the journey with several projects up in the air and only time will tell where it all takes me.

Freedom on Film

A few great lines of liberty from popular movies:

"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room."

- Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

"A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti."

- The Silence of the Lambs

"My father once told me that artists use lies to tell the truth, while politicians use lies to cover the truth up."

- V for Vendetta

"Screw'm! Screw'm all! Screw the gov'm'nt!"

- Legends of the Fall

"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people."

- V for Vendetta

“The mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as a collective brain. Every great achievement came from an individual mind. Every horror was the result of forcing humans to be conformists.”

- The Fountainhead

Ten Bears: These things you say we will have, we already have.
Josey Wales: That's true. I ain't promising you nothing extra. I'm just giving you life and you're giving me life. And I'm saying that men can live together without butchering one another.
Ten Bears: It's sad that governments are chiefed by the double tongues. There is iron in your words of death for all Comanche to see, and so there is iron in your words of life. No signed paper can hold the iron. It must come from men. The words of Ten Bears carries the same iron of life and death. It is good that warriors such as we meet in the struggle of life... or death. It shall be life.

- The Outlaw Josey Wales

Via The Austrian Economists