TOUCHDOWNS AND TRIUMPHS

This weekend the Patriots meet the Giants in the Superbowl --- again. I'm a Tim Tebow girl, a Mark Sanchez fan, and used to carry around an autographed photo of the Chiefs Lenny Dawson when I was a kid, so I have no skin in the game. I don't care about the Patriots or the Giants, but, as a writer, I'm drawn to stories. I've always been a fan of Tom Brady because, though it's hard to believe now, he was once dismissed. Eli Manning, too, has always struggled to prove himself worthy of the kind of attention and admiration afforded his brother Peyton. I love sports for the competition but also for the stories. Every player has one and when they are highlighted on and off the field and paired with a physical competition, they become great fodder for screenwriters and film makers. There are stories of triumph and tragedy, comedy and, yes terror. Below are a few football movies you should check out if you haven't. You might not agree with my list of favorites, but you also may not be a fan of the Patriots or the Giants --- but you'll still be watching the Super Bowl. Because it's football. And like a bad football game is still better than no football game at all, an average sports movie is still better than just about any other kind.

The Blind Side - Michael Lewis' book is brilliant and the movie comes closer than most to its source material. The true story of Michael Oher, pulled from poverty by a wealthy white family in Memphis and given a chance to use his athletic abilities to get into college and build a future, it is most beloved by me for portraying a lead female character who isn't a prostitute, romantic heroine, futuristic action hero, or nagging obnoxious girlfriend. Sandra Bullock portrays a strong, smart, loving woman with a nice family whose superpower is nothing more than doing the right thing.

We Are Marshall - Go ahead and start crying now. A plane crashes and most of players and coaches of Marshall University die, leaving a town in mourning and a football program in disarray. Enter Matthew McConaughey as the new coach and the outstanding Anthony Mackie as one of the surviving players and you have all you need for a great football movie that operates by the playbook but does so perfectly.

Jerry Maguire - In my worthless opinion, one of the best movies of all time. Funny, moving and real with a career defining performance from Tom Cruise and career making turns by Cuba Gooding Jr. and Renee Zellweger, the story of a sports agent trying to rebuild his career and a wide receiver trying to hang on to his, the movie went behind the scenes of the business of football while making us care deeply about a group of flawed characters.

Remember the Titans - Racism. Tragedy. Triumph. Denzel. High School football is the backdrop for the story of an African American coach trying to bring sense and victory to players, coaches and townspeople in the South. It has the requisite stoic leaders, learned lessons and bedside vigils, but does it all so well you'll be crying and cheering and moved throughout.

The Express - Ernie Davis was the first African American to win the Heisman Trophy. That's already a great story. The sad ending to his triumphant life, though, adds another dimension. It was what a young man accomplished in the short time he was given, though, that makes the story such an amazing one.

Heaven Can Wait - A great supernatural love story set against the backdrop of the Los Angeles (yes L.A.!) Rams, Warren Beatty's movie is a bit dated now and ripe for a remake. It's nostalgic and even a bit old fashioned.

The Game Plan - Because it stars the Rock and any football movie starring The Rock should be seen and appreciated.

Black Sunday - This was made in the 1970's, in the last big recession, when movie goers flocked to the cinema to escape their own problems and watch cruise ships capsize (The Poseidon Adventure, not the Costa Concordia), skyscrapers burn (The Towering Inferno) and earthquakes destroy L.A. (Earthquake). You can almost hear the studio executives: "We're running out of disasters! What can we do?" "I know, what if a group of terrorists take over a blimp and try to crash it into the Super Bowl? Terrorists, explosions, and football! We'll make thousands, if not millions, of dollars!" Sadly, terrorists have advanced in their methods, so this seems quaint now. But come on! Terrorists trying to crash a blimp into the Super Bowl? You know you have to watch that one!

Tim Tebow, Everything in Between - Okay, it's a documentary, not a feature --- but it should be one. They said he couldn't be a quarterback in high school and he took his team to a state championship. They said he couldn't compete in college and he won two National Championships and a Heisman. They said he wouldn't be drafted in the first round and...well, unless you've been dead this year you know the rest of the story. Handsome, inspirational leading man. Underdog story. Evil villain (yes, that's you John Elway, and okay, yes, I know, you're not actually in the documentary, but still...) What's not to love?

There are many other fine football movies. These are just a few of the ones I like. I fear that the football movie, along with other sports movies, may be losing the ultimate game at the box office. With a film industry relying more and more on foreign revenue, the very American sport of football with its limited American audience of only 307,000,000 people, is considered a risky subject matter. If only everyone could remember, though, that it's not about the sports. It's about the characters and the stories. Good stories will always be worth telling, whether they take place on a green screen or a green field.

CHANDLER MASSEY

If you want to see some of the best acting on television you need to tune into --- a soap opera. I know, I know. A soap opera? Seriously? Yes, seriously. It's "Days of Our Lives", one of the few soap operas left, and you have to tune in to watch Chandler Massey play Will Horton. Chandler stars in my new movie "16-Love" so watching DOOL (as "Days" is known to its fans) has become a habit of mine. In his two years on the show, with the help of some fine writing that elevates the entire medium of soap operas, Chandler has built a character of substance, a frightened and tortured teenager, nerves raw and anger building as he comes to grip with his sexuality. It could have been such a tired cliche, could have been handled with the usual heavy hand of soap operas, but the writers have given Chandler the material to bring a heartbreaking honesty to the story of a young man taking his first steps towards admitting his homosexuality. I'm not the only one who's watching. Even Ed Martin of The Huffington Post (Ten Noteworthy Shows From 2011 You Won't See on Other Ten-Best Lists, December 29, 2011) said:

Days of Our Lives (NBC) -- The bright note in an otherwise terrible year for soap operas (and the millions of loyal viewers who watch them and support their advertisers) was the revitalization of this 46 year old daytime drama, which like so many other soaps during the last decade had been allowed to corrode into something almost unrecognizable. Days in September briskly disposed of the sleazy storylines and frequent violence that had been rotting it from within and replaced them with relationship-driven stories about romance, family, friendship and community -- in other words, the very things soap fans crave but have been largely deprived of for entirely too long. Days also brought back a number of beloved long-absent veteran cast members, including Deidre Hall and Drake Hogestyn, and gave them all great material to play. But Alison Sweeney as scheming Sami Brady and young Chandler Massey as her tormented teenage son Will are stealing the show.

I fought the creative battle of my life to get Chandler cast as the lead in "16-Love". He was perfect for the role in every way. Not only is he a great actor and heart throb handsome, but he is also a great tennis player --- something very important in a movie about tennis players! The moment I walked onto the set, all I heard from everyone, from the Director of Photography to co-stars to grips, was "Chandler's a star". He was wonderful to work with, kind to all and the hardest worker. A dream leading man. "16-Love" is a small movie. It will have a limited release on January 20th and be on television some time after that. Lindsey Shaw, Keith Coulouris, Lindsey Black, Mark Elias, Steven Christopher Parker and Josh Blaylock star in the movie with Chandler and they are all wonderful. All stars or on their way to being stars. This was Chandler's first film, though, and I know some day I'll have the great privilege of saying "I wrote Chandler Massey's first movie".

ADAPTATION

My first ebook, "Halifax", was something I originally wrote as a film script. Well, to be even more precise, I originally wrote it as a t.v. series, then someone expressed interest for a feature film version, so I expanded my hour t.v. script into a 100 minute film script, then that financing entity disappeared (as they often do) and I decided to write it as a book. So, unless I come up with a musical version, I think I've covered all the bases!

I've been on both sides of the adaptation fence. I adapted a series of books into a feature script once and learned a lot from the experience. I had always thought books were mangled by bad screenwriters when they were turned into bad movies (and I'm sure this does happen), but there are many factors that determine how the process works. In my case, the books I was given to adapt didn't easily lend themselves to adaptation. There was very little structure and no clear plot to work with. I basically had to throw out everything from the books to come up with a script. There was no other way around it. I would have felt really awful (and probably wouldn't have even taken the job) if not for the fact that the series was written by a group of ghost writers. So it wasn't someones life and heart poured onto the page that I was messing with.

When I sat down to do the complete opposite, to reverse the process, to turn my script into a book, I learned a few new lessons.

1. Writing a book is nothing like writing a movie --- In screenwriting, your entire craft is built around brevity. How much information can you convey in the least amount of lines? In a scene description you have to say as much as you possibly can about characters, intent, action, and location, in the fewest possible words. It's an art unto itself. When writing a book, it's the opposite. I found myself wanting to just write a few lines of description and get on to the dialogue, but I had to remember that I was describing something to a reader --- not a viewer. The reader was going to have to envision what I was writing in their head. An actor wasn't going to be there to show them! Admittedly, I didn't always succeed in my attempts at expanding my prose, but I'm still learning and trying.

2. You find the things you missed --- As I converted my script, I discovered mistakes I had made. Some things from the script didn't make as much sense as they should have. Some things didn't play out as successfully as they could have. The script actually benefited greatly from the book. I was able to go back into the script and change things for the better. Often the process of making a movie gives you a little bit of a pass on some things. You have a hundred other people pouring over your work, from directors and producers and actors to make up artists and wardrobe and technicians. If something isn't quite right, someone else usually catches it and fixes it or somehow uses it to expand on their own ideas and add a new element to the process.

3. It IS just you --- There aren't 100 other people with their hands all over your work when you write a book. (At least not when you write an ebook and don't have the benefit of editors and marketing people, etc.) Many screenwriters complain that their scripts are ruined by all the hands that touch it (and they often are and I'm often one of the complainers), but making films is a group effort. It ISN'T writing books. If you write movies, you have to accept that it is what it is. It's a collaborative medium for better or for worse. Sometimes things ARE ruined and sometimes one of the 100 or more other people actually makes something BETTER.

So, after turning my script into a book and after having turned some books into a script, I have a better understanding of the process. I wouldn't say that I'm any better at either but I'm definitely more sympathetic to screenwriters and book authors and their very different processes.

PITCHING -- TO STUDIO EXECUTIVES, NOT BATTERS

Imagine you're in need of a driver. Someone to take your precious child to and from school every day. You're going to pay them a fortune and hand over the keys to your brand new Bugatti Veyron. So you start to interview prospective candidates. Instead of having them take you for a drive and seeing their skills for yourself, though, you chose to let them tell you what kind of driver they would be. They crack jokes, make you laugh, and command the room. So you hire them on the spot without so much as looking at their driver's license. That is exactly how pitching works in Hollywood. Want to know one of the reasons movies can be so awful? Because most writers are hired by how they talk --- not how they write.

What is pitching? Well, if a studio needs a writer for an idea they have or they are looking for new projects, they have writers come in and "pitch" their "take" on the project. It's as simple as it sounds. The writer sits (or stands or dances) in a room with some executives and tells a story. If the executives like the story, they then hire the writer to write a script.

Let's break this down. Writers, by nature, are geeks. I'm one. You're one. We were (and sometimes still are) the shy, dreamy ones sitting in the back of the classroom hoping no one calls on them and asks them to actually speak. That's why writers write. There's a big strange world in their heads that can only be adequately expressed through the written word.

So, let's take that wilting flower and put them under a sun lamp in the desert --- in a studio executives office --- and make them act out a story. Guess what? Writers aren't actors for a reason. We write. Wait, let me say it again. We're writers.

When suddenly forced to become actors, some writers do all right. They rise to the occasion and sell pitches. I've done it. It's painful and frightening and totally inorganic to the process of writing, but it can be done. Some really good writers are really good at pitching. The majority of pitches sold, however, aren't from good writers. They are from good pitchers. Believe it or not, there is a difference.

Inevitably, the studios end up with a script that is in desperate need of extensive re-writing because it was written by "pitcher", not a "writer", and then they start the process all over again by having more "writers" come in to "pitch" to re-write the script that they bought from the "pitcher" they really hoped was a "writer" but didn't know because they never read what the "writer" wrote.

Crazy, right? It really is. It's like death and taxes, though. There's no escaping it and it will never go away. Why? Because studio executives don't have time to read and reading takes a lot of time. Of course, they do read. They read projects that are already in development. But by then it's too late. Caveat emptor and all that.

In a future post I'll tell you about how to pitch. Or at least I'll tell you what everyone else says because I wouldn't say I'm an expert. I'm a writer after all.

SO YOU WANT TO WRITE MOVIES...

I wrote the film "A Cinderella Story" (and was re-written by about fifty other writers --- so if you loved the film, I take responsibility for the good parts and if you hated it you can blame the other writers). I also wrote a new movie coming out called "16-Love" which I will write more about another time. Believe it or not, having ONE movie made is a Herculean accomplishment. Having TWO made is an act of the God. I'd love to say there will be a third, but that is crazy, put me in an asylum, talk. Why? Because writing movies is an art, selling scripts is an impossible dream and having them filmed is a one is million convergence of lucky breaks that often has absolutely nothing to do with the talents and merits or the screenwriter. It's a happy (sometimes) accident.

If it's so hard to do, why do it? I ask myself that every day. If you're reading this, you probably know the answer. Because you think making movies is fun. And it is. It really is. It's intoxicating and, like a drug dealer, calls you back again and again. You want that hit. That high. You'll do anything to get it. You'll work with frazzled studio executives who have so little time they have to listen to shy, awkward writers tell their stories rather than read what writers write. (That's called pitching, something else I'll talk about another time). You'll work with producers and directors who can't stand each other, crew members both wonderful and awful, managers and agents who swear their undying devotion to you then don't return your calls when you hit a rough patch, and your own persistent self-doubts and feelings of desperation. You do this all so one day you can sit in a movie theater and watch a version of your movie that bears absolutely no resemblance to anything you wrote. But you'll do it all again. Happily. In fact, you'd pay someone to let you do it.

I get sent scripts all the time by new writers. Inevitably they ask for advice and notes and then take neither. My producing partner and I both realized that when someone sends a script, they don't really want your advice or notes. They want you to get their movie made. Fair enough. But, really, trust me --- take the advice and notes. Almost everyone who has made a movie has done the time. They've been an assistant to some jerk, worked long hours for no pay, wrote a dozen scripts no one wanted. It's hard work. You hear about someone selling their first script to some mega-producer they bumped into just as they were getting off the bus from Nebraska. I'm sure it's happened, but those are fairy tales. They resemble reality, but they aren't real. Just like there could have once been a put upon waif of a stepdaughter who snuck into the ball and met the handsome Prince, but we all know glass slippers don't exist for a reason. They would be really uncomfortable. Sounds good but it's just not true! So, if you want to write movies, most likely, you're going to have to do it the good old fashioned way. You're going to have to work for it.

So, here is what I usually tell new writers to do. These are the steps that can give you a better chance and these are the things no one ever follows. But they should.

1. Go to film school. I went to USC. When I went the screenwriting program was new and it sucked. I didn't learn a darn thing. But things are different now. You will learn something. But more importantly, you'll start to get plugged into the system. You'll see how it all works. You'll begin to make contacts. You'll work well with others. (And some day you'll see that it's all about working well with others.)

2. Intern at a talent agency. I worked at the Gersh Agency for a great guy (not all agents are stereotypical monsters) named Bob Gersh. This is really where I learned about the industry. Because it's called the film business for a reason. You may call it "art" but if it doesn't make money it will cease to exist. At an agency you'll learn who the players are in town, who is buying, what they're buying, why they're buying. Why are actors important? Who does what?How do they do it? You'll make your all-important contacts. And you'll have access to the number one most important thing you'll need to learn about screenwriting --- scripts.

3. Which brings me to the big one. If you want to write scripts --- you need to read scripts. You need to read scripts for film and t.v. that are being made. Not only will you start to get an idea of what the marketplace is looking for, you'll also start to pick up on the rhythm of screenwriting. I'm amazed at how many writers send scripts and they don't even have the formatting right. At the very least, your script should look like a script. Pacing and structure and all the other hard stuff comes through practice and through reading. Really. It really does.

Those are my top tips. You will come closer to doing the impossible by making contacts, knowing the marketplace, working anywhere in the industry, and praying for a lot of luck. But as Thomas Jefferson (or Arnold Palmer or Miley Cyrus) said "the harder I work the luckier I get."

Good luck.