This week Scriptophobic is joined by Andrew Bellware to answer some Scream Writing Questions, explore the art of screenwriting, and dig into the love of sci-fi and genre.
What first got you interested in screenwriting?
I first wrote screenplays simply because I wanted to make movies. At first I was following the advice of “You’ve got to have a great script” so I did Hamlet. On a toy video camera.
That movie did not get distribution.
But the next feature I made was based on Milton’s Paradise Lost. Again, this was not a great idea for a commercial feature.
But then I wrote, or co-wrote, or edited a bunch of features I directed which all got distribution and went into what we call “cash black.” These have all be science-fiction movies.
Do you have an example of a lesson you learned from reading a script (rather than watching the movie made from it)?
You know what’s an amazing screenplay? Actually both of the screenplays for Blade Runner (1982) are amazing. The Fancher script is fantastic. And the Peoples’ rewrite is even better. And it’s a complete rewrite of the novel. The novel is… problematic at best.
Also, dig the screenplay of The Road Warrior (1981). Especially the end sequence — there’s a whole mess of things in the screenplay where are not in the final edit. And yeah, the final edit is just story and pacing-wise vastly better not having these extra little subplots of the feral kid in the final chase that were in that screenplay you can find online.
What’s the strongest piece of advice you have for aspiring screenwriters?
Write a lot of screenplays. No really, a lot of screenplays. Like 20. People always say “So-and-so sold his first screenplay for a gazillion dollars.” No he didn’t. That was just the first screenplay he sold. There’s a whole pile of terrible screenplays at the bottom of his drawer somewhere. His first sale was for a gazillion dollars (maybe) but it ain’t their first rodeo.
What is your relationship with genre film (love, hate, indifference)? What led to that?
Genre is drama. I mean, seriously, nobody thinks of Hamlet as a ghost story. But it is. Macbeth is a gorey violent terrorstorm. And don’t get started on torture-porn Titus Andronicus.
I feel that some writers take the wrong lesson away from things. “Look, Jane Austen wrote about people’s feelings and mostly in the form of letters!” But they overlook the plot elements. I have a director friend who describes it as “You need to be worried about the characters.” You’re not worried about them if nothing is happening to them.
Altman is known for making these very huge ensemble-cast movies with all this fantastic interaction and interesting scenes. But the other thing is that many of his pictures are thrillers. They’re mysteries. You can make a story about four friends from high school and how they grow closer/further apart but it really needs to hang on something. I recommend a murder. Put a murder in your rambling story. It will make it much better.
Conversely, genre, isn’t a thing. Or it is but it’s not the thing we’re usually thinking about when we say “genre.” Zombie pictures are like this. Ever since Romero, zombie movies are not really about zombies. Zombies provide the stakes.
Look, characters can only be revealed during conflict. You need conflict or you’re not telling the right story. That summer where everyone at the family reunion got along at the lake house and there were no problems? Yeah, nobody wants to see that. Zombies give your characters some conflict. Zombies don’t solve all your problems. We still need to put conflict between characters. This is why soldiers in action movies are always yelling at one another (something they don’t do in real life normally.) But when we want to raise the stakes in that story about two brothers whose father only showed love to one of them? That story will be great if it takes place during the zombie holocaust.
What was something that surprised you in the process of writing your own screenplay?
Hearing real actors read it out loud the first time surprised me the most. Man, a good actor can make some clunky dialogue work. And they can make good dialog excellent.
More than that, hearing it read aloud tells you things. You can tell where it’s too slow, where it’s too fast, where it is confusing. Some things you thought wouldn’t work do work. And some things you thought were blessed by a benevolent god are clearly just garbage and need to be re-written.
What’s your favorite thing about screenwriting that doesn’t apply to other kinds of writing?
Screenwriting is weird in that it just isn’t the finished thing. You write a novel? That’s the thing you were doing. A screenplay is just a document from which some talking props are going to move around under lights and then get edited so it seems like a thing somebody would want to fool themselves into watching.
Is that my favorite thing about screenwriting? Maybe not, but it sure is the weirdest thing.
I almost always write with collaborators.
And I frequently put stupid jokes in the action. I’m only allowed to do that because I’m not sending scripts out, I’m creating actual shooting scripts. So no 24-year-old at a development office will throw the screenplay away because it has non-standard stuff in the text.
What are some of the films and stories that inspired you?
I remember seeing Planet of the Apes (1968) one night on television as a child. And the ending blew my mind. I remember walking around in a daze the next day, thinking about Charlton Heston on the sand and the horrifying gut-punch that he was on Earth the whole time. I’m guessing I was in 3rd or 4th grade. It really shook me.
Then Logan’s Run (1976), then Star Wars (1977), and then Alien (1979, a Scriptophobic favorite). The world they created in Alien was “all-in.” Nobody had ever seen anything like it until then.
If you could adapt any story in any medium into a screenplay, what is your dream project?
There’s a dude named Jeff Somers who wrote a series of books starting with The Electric Church. They are some of the darkest future-noir you’ve ever seen. Avery Cates is the anti-hero of the novels. The dystopia of the world is so salient and perfect. There’s robots in the streets, people roaming around with various telekinetic and mind-control powers, an oppressive police force, a brutally oppressive regime, and a nasty criminal underworld. I mean seriously, what else could you possibly want? Tell Netflix to give me millions of dollars to make it into a 12-part series. Please do that. Get on it soon. Thanks.
Where can people find you online and support your work (present or upcoming)?
The usual suspects: Netflix, Amazon Prime. We made a movie which is now called Carbon Copy (2017) but it’s only available in Japan as far as I know under the name which is something like “The Shell 3rd World War.”
We have another movie called Dragon Girl (2017) which is free on Amazon Prime. That was supposed to be a kids movie. It’s got a couple good jokes in it. Clonehunter (2012) amuses me still. Both Earthkiller (2011) and Angry Planet (2009) are pretty heavy but they’ve got a lot of groovy performances in them.
I have a very dark piece of noir I’m getting ready to shoot. It’s about a cop from the future who keeps passing through different, somewhat parallel, universes. It’s called The Cassandra Protocol.
I have an intermittent blog where I talk about movie stuff at blog.pandoramachine.com
