2012 Go Into The Story Screenwriter Roundtable

My conversation with Chris Borrelli, F. Scott Frazier, Chris McCoy, Justin Rhodes, Greg Russo, and John Swetnam.

Between them, they have sold more than a dozen spec scripts and have multiple original screenplays on the Black List. Here is the 2012 conversation featuring Chris Borrelli, F. Scott Frazier, Chris McCoy, Justin Rhodes, Greg Russo, and John Swetnam.

Scott Myers: Really appreciate you all being here. I brought the virtual Wild Turkey so we can break that out any time. Now where to start…

Chris Borrelli: This whole Middle East thing, politics, best way to fix a carburetor.

[laughter]

Scott: How about something I picked up from social media. Most of you are on Twitter.

Chris Borrelli: I’m on Friendster.

[laughter]

Scott: Frazier tweeted something the other day that surprised me.

F. Scott Frazier: Wait, can I live Tweet this?

Chris McCoy: That’s sort of like a snake eating its tail, isn’t it?

[laughter]

Scott: Lately Frazier has been reading some screenwriting books, just to see what’s there, then commenting on them on Twitter. And amidst all that, you said that basically you don’t have a set approach to writing a script, it varies from project to project. Is that accurate?

F. Scott Frazier: Yeah, that is absolutely accurate. I think it actually has more to do with my personality. I get bored very easily, which turns into me writing scripts really quickly. So any time I approach a project, I want to be writing the pages as quickly as possible. Whatever I’m feeling that day is usually how my process plays out.

Sometimes I do note cards, sometimes I do a written outline, sometimes I just write the first act. While I’m figuring out the movie in my head, I already know what the first act is, so the first 20 to 30 pages usually go quickly. Whatever I’m feeling that day is usually my process.

Actually a lot of the books I’ve been reading have a line in the sand that says, this process is the way that you are going to write a million dollar script. This is the secret formula, and you have to use this formula, and here are all of my examples of other scripts that have used my formula, and if you are not using it, you are wrong. That is just a weird way to go about it. Honestly, I think you have to be able to create your own process along the way, otherwise you can get caught up trying to fit a round peg into a square hole.

Scott: Do the rest of you have a similar thing where you basically approach different stories in different ways? Or do you have a specific approach to your writing?

John Swetnam: I pretty much do whatever Frazier says to do and that’s worked out really well.

[laughter]

John Swetnam: It’s funny. I actually went about it the opposite way of Scott. The summer before I moved to Orange County for the graduate program at Chapman for screenwriting, I literally knew nothing about it. I had never written anything resembling a screenplay in my life. Chapman just kind of accepted me for whatever reason, maybe because I’m half Asian and they needed to fill up a quota, I’m not really sure. That summer I worked at a book factory where if you ordered a book on something like Amazon, I would find the books, put them in these big bins, then ship them out. Basically what I did, I took every writing book I could get my hands on.

Scott: You stole them?

John Swetnam: I was a terrible person, and I feel bad about it, but yes, I would just grab them, and take them to my car. I still have these books in my living room, it’s literally every screenwriting book you can possibly think of. I remember I was so terrified of coming to California and not knowing how to write a script that I just consumed these books. I read every single one of them. And when I look back, I feel like it hurt me so bad that first year because every time I would try to write, it was nearly impossible. There were so many fucking checklists in my mind.

I play golf. And if you think too much when you golf — thinking about your back swing, keeping your head down and all that — it can ruin your swing. That’s what happened to me in the first couple of years where I was so clogged by all these rules. On page 12 this had to happen and all that shit. Maybe that’s why it took me 20 scripts to finally actually sell one. I look back and I’m glad that I have that base of knowledge. But I wish I would have just started writing, just found myself and enjoyed the process instead of trying to be so mechanical and strategic..

I’m like Frazier now, every script I write, I come at it very organically, and depending on how I’m feeling, or what the script’s about, or the vibe of the script will normally dictate the way in which I write it. Sometimes I’ll just jump right in if I’m feeling it, or just beat sheets, notecards, whatever. It just depends on the script. I don’t really have a process.

Scott: Where do you others come down on this question of approach or process?

Chris McCoy: First of all, I want to nominate Scott Frazier as the Miles Davis of screenwriting. Hearing his free‑form approach, I kind of love it. My approach to every script is similar. I lay out the big plot points — the inciting event, the end of first act, ideas for reversals to sustain tension through the second act, and ideas for the ending. I usually don’t outline every single scene unless I’m doing a pitch. Then, once I have these big moments, I try to find the most creative way between them. I feel like if I’m surprising myself during the writing process coming up with new ideas along the way, the reader is also going to be surprised. I’ve never used many of the screenwriting books aside from “Adventures in the Screen Trade,” which I think is the best. And I try to adhere to Vonnegut’s Eight Rules for Writing a Short Story, which are incredible and apply very well to screenwriting.

F. Scott Frazier: To me, the biggest thing about anybody’s process is that they wake up and do it every day. That’s it. Whatever you want it to be, it can be, just as long as you’re writing every day. That’s the secret.

John Swetnam: Frazier, drop the mic, drop the mic. That was it. That was perfect.

Chris McCoy: And making sure to finish the script you’re working on, too.

F. Scott Frazier: Yeah, absolutely.

Greg Russo: I side with McCoy in that I always have a process, every time I crack into a new story. That process acts as my safety net. When I approach something new, a new idea, a new IP… I have a certain ritual I like to go through. First, it’s just sitting with the material, just living with it for a little bit. For a few days, I don’t really write anything if I can. I just sit with it and try to answer some questions: What do I love about it? What excites me about it? Why did I want to write this in the first place? Then when I start going into the outlining and ultimately the writing phase, I’m like a dam ready to burst… it starts to flow out… It helps me get over that initial shock of staring at a blank page.

Another little thing that I’ve changed over the past year, is that I used to start with plot. I would really worry about the big plot points. I now start with the character and build the plot around that person, tying everything into his or her journey. It’s been interesting. I really like what I’ve found.

Scott: Would that be the case, Greg, that you would… I know some writers do this. They will write scenes that they really like, they’re really excited about. Not necessarily in linear fashion, but they’ll just grab a scene that they really want to write, and they’ll write that, even if it’s Act Two, Act Three.

Greg Russo: For outlining, absolutely. Wherever my mind goes in the story, I follow.

F. Scott Frazier: When you write the script, do you write out of order, Greg?

Greg Russo: No. That would be impressive though.

F. Scott Frazier: Does anybody write out of order?

Chris Borrelli: I don’t, not really.

Chris McCoy: No.

F. Scott Frazier: I’m kind of OCD about writing in order, and I’ve met very few people who write out of order. It’s just this mythical type of writer. I don’t know.

Scott: I think John August posted something like that. I don’t know if he does it routinely, but to jumpstart the process, he will pick out his favorite scenes, or scenes that excite him. I think speaking to what Greg was talking about, doing that to try to find points of emotion connection to the content.

John Swetnam: Just to jump in real quick, after talking to a lot of writers, the thing I think is the only truth about process, and everyone telling you this is how you should do it… it’s like a buffet. You go and try all these different ways, and you hear how other people do it, and you’ve got to make your own plate. Nobody’s is the same. Everybody I’ve met, every single writer that I’ve met has a different process, and I just think that’s the coolest part.

There is no, do this, this, this, and this. Do whatever you need to do to write your story the best way you write it in your voice. Listen to how other people do it, and if something works for you, that’s great, but at the end of the day, do what you want to do. Do what feels right for you. There’s a lot of these aspiring writers and stuff, they’re always, “Tell me how to do it,” or “which rules do I follow?” Follow your own rules. I’m not saying you shouldn’t listen to others, you should, but it’s a process of just doing it. You’ll figure out your own way, if you just continue to do it. There’s no way one way.

Justin Rhodes: For me, the thing that’s always the most important to start out with is just to ask myself what the script is about in very clear thematic terms. I really want there to be some kind of process I adhere to, but the truth is I feel like I’m always stabbing in the dark with every project, and just kind of finding it in whatever way I do. That sense of desperately needing to know exactly what I’m trying to say is what grounds me, or at least gives me some kind of a sense of what are right answers and what are wrong answers, so you have a rubric with which to weigh things against.

Scott: When you say that, are you talking about theme, are you talking about plot, characters? What exactly are you talking about when you say, what’s the story about?

Justin Rhodes: Yeah, theme, and just the simple emotional journey. For me, writing is conceptually like a journey through complexity to get back to simplicity. Ultimately, you want to say, “It’s about a guy who experiences this, and now feels this way.” Just understanding that that’s what it’s about. Everything that follows needs to stem from this simple emotional idea. Sometimes when you’re buried in a pitch, or you’re looking at a sprawling book adaptation, or something that has some level of complexity, something that’s kind of wide and sweeping, it’s easy to get lost. For me, the secret to turning your narrative payload into something you can deliver is to ask yourself “What is the simple emotional journey that grounds everything?” That gives me a compass point, and permission to jettison what isn’t going to help me get to where I’m going.

Thematically, but I hate to use the word theme sometimes, because you don’t want to get precious. It’s like… I’m writing a script right now, and it’s a sci‑fi thing. We were going around, and around. What is this about? How are we going to tackle this? On, and on, and on, as a rewrite. Finally we had the idea, this is about a haunting, and that finally unlocked the right way for us to look at the story and understand it, even though there are no ghosts in the movie. It’s about finding a simple idea that tells you what the story is and what it isn’t.

F. Scott Frazier: It’s like that one or two word kind of, it’s not a theme, and I totally get what you’re saying. It’s a kid leaving home. It’s not really a theme, but that’s what the movie’s about, right? It’s father and son. No, I totally get that.

Justin Rhodes: If you talk to Kurtzman and Orci about “Transformers,” they finally cracked it when theyf igured out that it’s really just about a boy and his car, essentially the relationship between boy and his dog. You find a way to say “this is what it’s about” and that becomes the emotional center that everything else is going to resonate around. You know who the characters are and what the point of view is and what the tone is from that emotional idea, which is not like saying power corrupts or love conquers all. Thematically, I don’t tend to think that way.

John Swetnam: Can I just say, Justin, if you’re tweeting, you need to tweet that. That was fucking awesome. Journey through complexity back to simplicity. That’s amazing. I’m gonna tattoo that on my back.

[laughter]

Chris McCoy: One thing I find to be helpful when beginning a script is to just write down what every character wants. I think if everyone in the script has a clear idea of what they want, a lot of stuff snaps into place because every scene becomes about them trying to get what they want. It’s a simple trick that has been useful for me.

Scott: It provides a touch point for you for every scene, right?

Chris McCoy: Yeah. You know what every scene is about if you establish an overarching want.

John Swetnam: This is, again, a great thing for me. When I hear about people’s processes like that, I learn so much. Every day I learn from listening to other people and their process, but then I try to infuse that into my own process. Like right now, I’m going to take that idea, because I think what both Justin and Chris said is fantastic. That’s great. Thank you guys.

Chris Borrelli: I find screenwriters, in a way, we’re very clinical and yet we’re artistic. Screenwriting, films are art and a business. Each script is a little bit different for me. I really do try to discover some of the movie, some of the script as I go along, but I usually have a very rough framework, as rough as they’ll let me be. If I’m hired on something, the execs really want to hedge their bets as much as possible, which is their nature anyway, and control it as much as possible. But my favorite version is usually, and it can change, is three pages of very thin scenes of ideas and roughly where the midpoint is. I only started doing the midpoint even a couple years ago and I only understood what a midpoint was three or four years ago. It’s really this discovery as I go and each script is a little bit different. I just handed in something on Friday that I’m very happy how it went over and that was only a couple of pages, the actual outline. I discovered it as I went.

What Frazier said, we’re in real agreement about — you’ve got to write. I get up in the morning and I write. That script is in my head for weeks and weeks and it develops, takes life of its own, and the characters get a little fleshed out. That’s part of the discovery for me as it goes. I think a lot of people on here are saying they have maybe a touch of ADD or whatever, and I’m one of them. It helps me. I don’t enjoy putting together outlines and beat sheets and long things like that. I’ll do it, but I do enjoy being in the shower and thinking of something cool the character is going to say or some little bit that comes to me. Sometimes my scripts can honestly feel like it’s twenty callbacks and twenty moments I love and that’s almost the movie. The idea that a great film is three great scenes and a good ending. Sometimes it’s as simple and basic as that, and other times it has these levels to it and it just takes on a life as it goes.

Scott: I’m hearing a wide variety of approaches here which reinforces the whole idea there’s no right way to write. And it’s great to be able to take an organic approach, I guess you could say, but now the pragmatic reality is dealing with managers or studio execs who may want you to write about something very specific in the way of an outline or a treatment. How do you go about dealing with that if your instinct is more organic in approach?

Chris Borrelli: I just deal with it. Right now I have some cool directors attached. I have a pitch, a 24‑minute pitch roughly. It moves a minute or two each time I do it. It’s going over great. I’m very excited to take it out. That’s the deal. That’s the game I signed into here, which isn’t a saying, but I just made it sound like it was. That’s the deal. Then when I write, honestly, I’m going to do whatever’s best for the script. I will throw stuff out and that first draft is going to be something that’s going to be mine, for lack of a better word, and I’m going to absolutely. I hope none of them are reading this, but I think I’m going to go off in a crazy direction, because I’m not. It’s going to be the kind of thing where, some of these things are done to get the job, and then because you care about your job and your career and the script above all, you work on it as it goes. You give them the best possible thing, but in the beginning, it’s still making people comfortable, and that’s the deal.

Greg Russo: I’ll just add that any exec worth their weight usually will respect a writer’s process, or should. It’s in their best interest to. So if it’s getting a draft in 8 weeks, they’re not going to sit there and micromanage you. They’re going to let you find your process and deliver what you promised. Now you’re still on a deadline, you still have to turn it in. But hopefully you’ll have the freedom to go about the work utilizing your own organic process.

F. Scott Frazier: Yeah, I’ve been lucky enough to sell a couple pictures this year, and stuff that was pitched in the room ended up being a very loose guideline for what I wrote. It’s just a part of the process. I think you have to be good at coming up with that 15‑minute version of the story, but I think that everybody does realize that a 15‑minute version of the story is not a 110‑page script. So for me, after I put together a pitch and the movie has to be written at that point, I just start the process all over again. I go into it fresh, and I’m like, “OK, this is the basic idea of the movie that we have to write, but how are we going to write it?”

Chris Borrelli: It’s a new animal. You’ve got the job. Now you’re alone. You’re going to write it. They all helped you and everything like that, but now it’s your turn, and you’re alone with it, and the story and the blank page, however you refer to it, and at that point it has to become something a little different. Pitching is kind of an art on its own.

F. Scott Frazier: It’s totally a separate side of the career. It’s like, you have to be able to write some scripts, and that’s step one, and then there’s 15 other steps after it, and one of those steps is figuring out how to write a good pitch and present a good pitch. It’s tough. I sucked at it for a very, very long time, and I still think that I’m not great at it, but I’ve gotten better, and it’s just because I’ve done it, because I’ve practiced at it.

Chris McCoy: I forget where I saw it, but I once read that before David Bowie used to go on stage he would sit on the wings and tell himself that he was David Bowie, the rock star. Then he would go on stage and act like David Bowie the rock star and everyone would believe him. There are times when I feel like pitching is kind of like that, where outside the room, you go, “All right. I’m a successful screenwriter. I’m doing this.” Then you go in and that attitude carries through. It is a totally different skill set than writing. There’s a difference between being in your room in front of your computer at three in the morning, and facing down six people in suits. So I find it’s better to have fun with it.

Scott: Let’s talk some more about pitching. What are some of the lessons you all have learned in the process of learning how to pitch?

F. Scott Frazier: For me the successes I’ve had in pitching have always been based around a single character. My palms kind of get clammy when I start thinking about, “OK, I’ve got to introduce this guy and this guy and this other guy and what they’re doing and their plots and everything like that.” For me, the success I’ve had has been entirely focused on the main character, like “What is the main character’s story, and how is he relating to all of the other people in the movie? How is he relating to the themes of the movie, and how is he relating to the themes in the movie? How is he relating to the plot of the movie?” Just focusing on his journey through the movie, and then everything else, as you come to it, they get, but you don’t have to be like, “And then there’s this guy and then there’s this guy and then this happens.” That to me, I’ve done a couple pitches like that, and they just were awful.

Scott: So zeroing in on the protagonist’s journey?

F. Scott Frazier: Yeah.

Chris Borrelli: Chris mentioned David Bowie, and I watched this other thing years ago with a musician who suddenly had to be in music videos, and he’d enjoyed just making music in his studio or whatever, and now people were like “Act.” He’s like, “That’s not really what I do.” I kind of feel as screenwriters, we suddenly have to put on a performance, and it depends how comfortable we are or aren’t with that. The very basic grounded things I’d say is, the better prepared you are, the better off you’re going to be. The more confident you are, the better you’re going to be. Building momentum in the story. So for me when I pitch Act One, it might only be a quarter of the actual film but almost half of my pitch. Act Two is shorter than Act One in the pitch, and Act Three I do very basic, because I just want to get this feeling that momentum is building. Then I’d just say to anybody who’s reading this that is a little nervous about pitching, don’t be, because you’re the boss. For those however many reasons in the room, you are telling them, and think of it aggressively, you are telling them what the movie is, and honestly, fuck ‘em.

[laughter]

Where it gets tough is going after jobs you don’t really believe in anyway because they might see that when you pitch.

F. Scott Frazier: Absolutely, that’s 100 percent.

Greg Russo: Yeah. I agree with that, too.

John Swetnam: You’re all fucking rock stars, I love that.

Chris McCoy: I will give one important piece of advice to people getting into pitching — Never bring a prop.

[laughter]

Chris McCoy: On my first pitch, I brought a biography of Tom Selleck to a meeting, and that didn’t go over well.

Chris Borrelli: Was he in the movie? Or did you just want to show off some pictures of Tom Selleck?

Chris McCoy: No, no, I wanted it to be like a Sellecky character, and that just did not work.

Justin Rhodes: I think one thing about pitching, when I first started doing it I would get bogged down by all the menu of things I had to deliver. You almost get stretched out about, “I’ve got to hit character, I’ve got to hit plot, and I’ve do this, and I’ve got to do this.” As I’ve gotten better at it, I just relax and I write out the pitch verbally on a piece of paper as if I was telling it to somebody, but not necessarily to an executive. Like if I was telling it to my wife, or a friend. Then I’ll go in the next morning, and I won’t bring anything, and I’ll do it from memory. Just talking to somebody, looking them in the eye, telling them the story, and being engaging in that way makes so much more sense to me than whatever pitching means. I used to get really hung up on the idea of what the presentation of it was. Just coming in and telling somebody what it is about, I’ve actually had a whole lot more success with.

F. Scott Frazier: I do this weird thing where I spend all this time typing up a huge 15 to 20 page document of the whole story of the movie and then the day of the pitch, I’ll just write down in my notebook two pages. After having read my outline over and over and over again, I’ll write down from memory the important plot points. Honestly, that’s the pitch. What you can remember as being the most important usually gets you through the 15 minutes of the pitch.

John Swetnam: Another thing to think about, and I don’t know if you guys go through this, but for me, there’s a lot of different circumstances to when you’re pitching. Depending also on who I’m pitching or what actually the pitch is will also be different. Obviously television’s a whole other animal. If the pitch is teed up with somebody and they already know a lot about it and I know that person’s personality, I may go in and just be really passionate and have more of a conversation and get them involved. If it’s another set of executives where there’s five or six of them in a room and there’s a bunch of people pitching, I know I have to go in and be more prepared and organized. I do think there are different kinds of pitches and I tailor them depending on what kind of pitching I’m doing.

F. Scott Frazier: I agree.

Chris Borrelli: Absolutely.

Greg Russo: For me, energy and excitement are probably the biggest factors. I’ve been told I’m good in a room. Whether that’s true or not, I know it comes down to this. The people you’re pitching to have a hundred things they’re trying to do that day. You’ve got to go in there believing no matter what you’re pitching, whether it’s a big action movie, drama, whatever it is, that it is the absolute, all-encompassing, most exciting use of their time that they could possibly imagine, and they’re going to love every second of it. If you go in believing that, and honestly convince yourself of it, then you’ll make them believe it too. They’ll see why this story is something they should invest in. But it’s all about that energy and excitement for me. The one promise I make to myself and anyone I pitch to is that they won’t be bored.

John Swetnam: For me, it’s really easy. I just think about all the money that I could make if I sold the pitch, and I get really fucking amped up, and I become super passionate.

[laughter]

Justin Rhodes: One other thing I’ll say is that when you do the pitch, you do want to make it where it’s simple enough that whoever you’re talking to can go take it to the guy that signs the check and redeliver it. Sometimes you’re pitching to the guy that can sign the check, but oftentimes you’re not. Your pitch actually will sometimes live and die not based upon how well you do in the room, but how well the person you talked to does relaying it to their boss. If you can get something that’s memorable and simple that can be restated by somebody else, sometimes a day or two later, that can put you over the edge.

Greg Russo: The higher up the chain you go, the less interested they tend to be about what you’re pitching and the busier they are. That’s why you really have to nail it cleanly and concisely the first time you walk into the room.

Chris McCoy: I feel like when you engage with them, if they start talking, that’s good. The pitches I’ve sold have typically happened when I’m balancing joking around with the executives with the pitch itself.

Justin Rhodes: Along those lines, what I will say when I sit down is, “Hi, I’d rather think of this as a conversation than a pitch. Please interrupt me at any point.” If they interrupt you, the more that happens, the more it becomes just talking to somebody, the better.

F. Scott Frazier: Another quick trick that I came up with is that the very first thing I say in the pitch is always, “This movie is about blank.” Just a very short sentence up front. This movie is about father and son reconciliation, like what we were talking about earlier, and then it’s just everything you say in a pitch is coming back to that one sentence, so that they know what kind of movie they’re getting into, and they’re not having to try and figure it out as it goes along. You tell them right up front this is an action movie about “X”.

Scott: What about this idea that less is more when it comes to pitching? Leave them hanging. I find this with a lot of younger writers where they tend to overstay their welcome, overstate things.

F. Scott Frazier: Like Borrelli was saying earlier, my third acts in pitches are usually one sentence long. I think if you’ve done your job, most people understand what the third act of most movies are, and if you’ve set up who the characters are, and what the stakes are, and the tone of the movie, and everything you don’t need to pitch the third act. People understand what third acts are.

John Swetnam: I think Borrelli was right, 50 percent or more of the pitch is the first act. It’s really setting everything up and then you hit a few points in the second act, and then third act is boy, girl, 360 slow-motion camera, they’re kissing, the end. At least that’s what I do.

Scott: It sounds like that first act is important to do that way because you really want them to understand the story universe and get them connected to the characters.

Chris Borrelli: Yeah, and not lose them. Again, if your whole movie’s about an incredible third act action set piece I think that’s almost harder to do in a pitch because you just want to have them with you the whole time and without adding stress. Any younger screenwriters out there might get stressed out by this. To me, once you lose them you lose them in a pitch. The whole idea is to make act one make sense to them, gets them excited, they see all the connections. Hopefully, there’s very few connections you need to do in a pitch. Then you move forward. That’s why, to me, so much is in that first act.

Just one more thing. I don’t know if you guys all agree with me, but phone pitches are the absolute worst. They sound easier, I think, when you first start out as a screenwriter, like, “Oh, I can read it,” or something, but you can’t get any sense of feedback. We’re all talking about the same sort of idea, of having a conversation with that exec, or talking to them in the same tone of voice I’m talking to you guys, or better, and over the phone, you just can’t tell what’s coming back at you.

Greg Russo: Did you ever have a pitch over the phone drop out? I had a high-level exec drop out halfway through a phone pitch, and I just kept going for like ten minutes.

John Swetnam: Did you sell it?

Greg Russo: Hell, no.

[laughter]

Chris McCoy: Have you ever had a meeting where you’re in the room with a couple executives, and another one of the other executives is on the phone?

Chris Borrelli: Yes, you think he’s a phone. Like, hopefully, that’s who he is.

Chris McCoy: You’ll say something, and then the executives in the room will turn to the phone like it’s HAL from “2001.”

John Swetnam: A simple way to think about it for me is just to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. If you’re pitching the head of a studio, think to yourself, like if you sitting there, if you were the guy that had to commit $50 million to some guy across the table who’s pitching you a story. What would you want to hear? If you were on the other side of the table, how would you want to be presented? What would get you passionate? What would get you to sign over and say, “OK, yeah, let’s go make a $50 million movie”? In that simple way, I think that helps.

Justin Rhodes: My agent actually has a saying along these lines, that “You have to think of an executive like an animal, and you have to build a cage,” because he really desperately wants to escape, because saying no is the way out and he doesn’t have to pay his money and doesn’t have to take a risk, doesn’t have to do any of those things. So you have to build a cage around him precisely constructed so that there’s no way out.

Chris McCoy: Did you say what kind of animal to picture him as?

Justin Rhodes: Something timid and slow.

[laughter]

Scott: Another topic. Obviously writing is rewriting, probably nowhere more pertinent than to screenwriting. How do you go about rewriting your scripts?

Greg Russo: Rewriting yourself or rewriting others?

Scott: Let’s start with rewriting yourself. You’ve finished a draft. Now what?

F. Scott Frazier: For me, I’ve always said that I’m a decent writer, but a really good rewriter. I actually spend most of my time rewriting instead of not writing. I think it just comes down to I have the whole script in front of me, from my really fast draft that I put together. My process is usually, I wake up in the morning and I just start reading the script from the beginning. Anything that I want to change, I change. I stop writing six hours later.

Wherever I am in the script, the first couple of days it’s like, 10 pages, 15 pages, 20 pages, and then I just do that over and over again until I end up at the point where I’m getting to the end of the script. If I can read through the script a couple times, without making major changes, I think I’m pretty close to done.

John Swetnam: I used to be nervous about getting notes, and having to rewrite, but all rewriting is, is trying to make your script better. It’s a good process. I like to rewrite if I’m making the script better. If I get a bunch of notes, and I’m like, “Holy shit, that makes the script better,” then you do more rewrites.

The hardest part is trying to figure out how to know when you’ve done enough, or when you think it’s as good as it’s going to get. I think that’s the hardest thing I deal with. I always get to a point where I think it’s really, really good and then someone will give me a note. I’ll go, “Shit, that would make it way better.” Then I get excited to rewrite it because I know that the script’s going to be better.

At the end of the day, that’s the whole point.

Chris McCoy: When it comes to rewriting, the most valuable thing I’ve found is to have three people you really trust read it, as opposed to throwing the script out to 15 people. Pick three smart friends who you want to impress and listen to their notes.

F. Scott Frazier: Yeah, I’m totally the same way. My scripts usually only go to one or two people. If I’m still in the middle of them, very few people read them. I know their tastes explicitly, I know exactly how they think and why they like things.

Justin Rhodes: I’ll tell you something that I do whenever I’m doing a rewrite and it’s a substantial rewrite or it’s something that you would actually call a new draft, not just tweaks. I start a new file and I print the old draft out, and I only put back what I feel like physically putting back again.

Scott: You literally retype it in.

Justin Rhodes: I literally retype it in to a new file, and I print a hard copy of the old one. I write all the notes and things on the hard copy version and I type the new one in, and that forces me back into that fresh approach to writing. I don’t know what you call it, that mental posture or that frame of mind, so that you’re engaging those formative muscles again, rather than just moving words around.

I find I get better work done faster that way than the other way, because it’s too easy to sometimes leave things there that you like because they’re there, because they’re in the document. If you force yourself to put it back, every single word of the script goes back through your filter again.

Scott: It’s almost like you create these little thresholds all along the way. You’ve got to make a commitment to say do I really want to type that in?

Justin Rhodes: Right. It also allows me to feel like I’m writing it again, as opposed to I’m changing this thing that’s already there, which for me, was a mental hang-up for a long time, because it’s like how do I change it, it’s already there? Can’t you see it? Whereas if it’s a plain document, it’s only there if I put it there, for some reason, that trick helps me.

F. Scott Frazier: I always like to start new documents for every draft. It’s helpful.

Scott: Do other people do that, too? Start a fresh new document for a rewrite?

John Swetnam: I also do that in the beginning. The first three or four rewrites will be new documents. I like that idea of printing it out. That’s kind of cool. Justin, you should write a book.

[laughter]

Greg Russo: I may be alone, but am I the only one who rewrites as they go?

Justin Rhodes: No, I do that too.

Greg Russo: I stole it from Eric Roth. It’s the idea where you write five pages one day, next day go back and rewrite what you wrote, add five more, next day you go back, rewrite ten, and continue until you’re done. I find I have a much more solid “first” draft — albeit it’s really a “7th” or “8th” draft by that point. The Judd Apatow idea of the vomit draft absolutely terrifies me. I could never just blast out a draft like that…

Chris Borrelli: I do a version of that. I do the vomit draft, but it takes months. I just like to get it on paper, and I’d write it probably in a month or two. I’ll reread it, and usually I know of that self‑hating thing as I reread them, I’m like, some of this is pretty good. I’m going to keep probably 60 percent of this. I go through and go through.

When I finish a draft, and it sounds like we’re all this way or a version of this way, when I finish a draft, I’m never like, “OK, that’s done.” It’s sort of this big game hunter, I’m happy to have the script in front of me.

Then from there, I feel more and more confident about removing scenes, cutting lines, and by the end, I like to think just about every line, and not just the dialogue, even descriptions in my scripts, I can explain there’s a reason for virtually every sentence there. There is a very definite reason that I didn’t cut it, by the time I’m proud of it, I’ve considered cutting every single word many times.

John Swetnam: Borrelli, in your vomit draft, when you’re doing that really fast first draft, do you not read the day’s before pages when you start the next day?

Chris Borrelli: This is interesting because we had talked about this at the beginning, we all have different processes, and even different scripts, but I often don’t. At the same time, I’m making notes as I go. I’ll have more notes than pages of script sometimes. I mean a ridiculous amount of notes, some written at three in the morning when I wake up. Some scribbled on pieces of paper around my place. Some on grocery lists, which looks really bizarre. But it just gets there. I’m always hopping back and forth.

It all comes back to the script being in your head. That’s when I think the magic happens. It’s in your head and you’re working on it. I don’t rewrite like you guys do, that way. But I’m going through and I’m pretty good about not being precious at the end. I want to cut everything. I want to cut everything out, cut it way lean and way down.

F. Scott Frazier: Yeah. The easiest changes I ever make are just cutting stuff.

Chris Borrelli: It feels good.

F. Scott Frazier: If I cut stuff, I don’t have to rewrite it.

Chris McCoy: I might be the only one that does this, but if I’m 30 or 40 pages in, I’ll print it out and go back through it by hand and make my corrections on the page, because I always feel like visually, that’s the way it’s going to be hitting the reader. Just to feel it out and make sure it looks right, I find correcting it by hand is more intimate.

F. Scott Frazier: I’m obsessive about the look of the script, the physical look of reading the script. I’m obsessive about that.

Scott: You mean on the page, white space versus black ink?

F. Scott Frazier: Yeah. Just the way it looks. Almost to a degree that I really shouldn’t be obsessed with it, but I will cut and change entire paragraphs just because I don’t like the physical way the paragraph looks on the page.

Chris McCoy: Yeah. I feel like all my characters are always named like Ted and Ben, because it saves space.

[laughing]

Scott: How many of you do that, are fighting for space? Fighting for lines?

Chris McCoy: My general rule is I try to never have a block of text more than three lines.

F. Scott Frazier: Yeah.

Chris Borrelli: Me, too.

Chris McCoy: At least in terms of action paragraphs.

Scott: How much of this is just personal aesthetics and how much of this is thinking, “A script reader’s got to read this on the other end?” And make it more comfortable and more readable for them.

Chris McCoy: I was a reader for two years before I sold anything. If I looked at page after page with a huge blocks of text, a feeling of dread would overcome me so powerfully that it would color my opinion of the script. It doesn’t feel like a script.

F. Scott Frazier: For me, the way that I think about it is that whenever I’m writing action, I always think of each paragraph as a different shot. The breaks in between each paragraph are a new edit in the movie. Sometimes there are shots that are longer than others. Sometimes I do four or five lines, but most of the time, I’m a three‑line action guy, all the way. It just feels like it has the cadence of a movie, if that makes sense. That you’re reading it, and it feels like that’s where the edits are coming in.

Scott: That actually provides a segue to a question from one of the blog readers. They asked, “I’ve been curious what the writers think of the visual impact of the script should be, what writing techniques they know to make a script more visually interesting?” I think that’s a really critical thing for a lot of aspiring writers, they don’t necessarily grasp that movies are primarily a visual medium, and tend to rely on dialogue more.

In terms of writing those paragraphs, Scott, like that, each is a shot. Are there other things you do to heighten the visual impact? What are the ways that you think about your scripts visually?

John Swetnam: What I do is, since I’m a hack, is I read people’s scripts that are really awesome, and I’ve read so many of these scripts, where I read them and I go, “God, that’s such a cool shot,” or, “I love the way he wrote that.” Then I’ll find myself kind of mimicking that, in a weird way, when I start writing my script. Then it’ll become my own thing, but I think by reading scripts, that when you read them, you saw visuals in your head.

Keep those scripts near you. Those are the ones that, certain writers that I look at, and I go, “Jesus, I wish I could write like that. I wish I could explain my visuals the way he does.” Normally it’s a Scott Frazier script, but then I’m like, “How does he do it?” I just find a way to take from a lot of different people I respect, and make it my own.

Chris Borrelli: We all have our own style, and so will that writer. You can teach, and learn, all these rules, and things like that. It’s important to learn them, but everybody approaches the art of it in their own way.

Greg Russo: Yeah, if you read a script from every one of us, each would read differently.

Chris Borrelli: Yeah, same scene. Give us all the same scene to write, and it would read differently.

John Swetnam: It’s like learning anything though. You go through life, and you consume, like we’ve all watched a shitload of movies. We’ve all read a shitload of scripts, and we’ve all written a shitload of scripts, and at a certain point, you just kind of pull from all of that knowledge. As you continue to practice it yourself, it becomes your own. It’s hard to explain it, it just becomes you.

F. Scott Frazier: I mean to me, that’s what people are always talking about when they say voice, honestly. Like that one paragraph equals one‑shot thing, that’s just something that, whatever it was, a year and a half ago, two years ago, I thought to myself, that’s how I write. Every paragraph is a shot. If you go back and read my scripts, basically every single paragraph is its own shot, and its own thing. I have five or six other rules like that, of how I write a script.

They’re just in the back of my head, and I think that I would assume that we all have those rules. I think it’s really about coming up with your own rules. What does a paragraph equal in your script? What does dialogue look like and sound like in your kind of movie? I think it’s coming up with your rules, and how you define the script for yourself that’s important.

Justin Rhodes: I think this is kind of an unanswerable question. How do you write visually? That would be sort of like saying, “How do you tell a joke that’s funny?” It’s funny or it’s not, or it’s visual or it’s not. It’s kind of like an intuitive thing, kind of like some of the guys were saying earlier, from absorbing it again, and again, and again, in terms of how to convey what you’re saying.

Scott: I think Swetnam’s right. That’s what I would tell people. Just read these scripts. You read scripts by great action writers, or writers who write visually, and you do. You absorb those things, you pick up on those patterns, and it gets you thinking like that. That’s a good suggestion.

Here’s another question for you. “If you had to pick one route for an aspiring screenwriter, is it better to be skilled at multiple diverse genres, or be a master of only one genre?”

F. Scott Frazier: Master of one genre.

Justin Rhodes: One genre.

Chris McCoy: One.

Chris Borrelli: One genre that you love, that you can have love for. That love comes out in the script. It becomes special, and it’s different. You’re not just imitating other people. No, I don’t think you should, even career wise, I think managers and such would tell you, be specifically in one genre. I like to think I have maybe two or three genres I really like to write in, but they’re all things I love.

F. Scott Frazier: But your genre is still very much definable, right? Your movies tend from horror to action, but they all have the same kind of tone, and special sauce to them, right?

Chris Borrelli: Right.

F. Scott Frazier: Your kind of action movies are not, it’s not Taken, right? It’s very much your own kind of action movie. For me, I always come at it; I always say I can come at things from any direction, as long as there’s a heartbeat of action or adventure to it. I’d never try my hand at horror, I’d never try my hand at comedy. It’s just the big set pieces and the fun characters are what gets me up in the morning.

Chris McCoy: For a young writer or someone just breaking in, if you’re sending stuff to reps its best not to confuse them. One way or another, you’re going to end up on a list. Maybe eventually you can move from comedy, to dramedy and then make a graceful transition to drama, or vice-versa, but at least at the beginning have a couple of samples in one genre.

John Swetnam: Also, if we’re talking about somebody who’s trying to break in, and have that first bit of success, it just makes sense to practice that one thing, to become really good at that thing, so you can sell that thing.

If you want to be a basketball player, you don’t spend 10 years practicing volleyball, and tennis, and all these other fucking things, you spent all your time learning how to play basketball.

As long as you get that first one off, if you want to try your hand at other genres later on, that’s fantastic. But you’re already in the system. You have a defined genre because whatever your first script sells, that’s your genre. You can have a living, and you can continue to do those. If you want to go off and try something different, do it then. Don’t do it at the very beginning.

Find the one thing that you like to do the most, and that you think you’re the best at, and become really, really good at that so you can have that bit of success. When you have success you can diversify. Try whatever the hell you want to because you’ve got money in the bank.

Scott: Even on a pragmatic level, John, they’re competing against the top, top pros in the world and so they’ve got to know their stuff in that genre. They’ve got to know the scripts, they’ve got to know the writers, they’ve got to know the tropes, the memes. How could they expect to necessarily excel in one genre if they’re focusing on multiple genres?

John Swetnam: Absolutely. For me, I’ve told this story before, but I wrote 20 scripts before I sold the first one. But in the very beginning, I was always chasing the market, chasing the money.

When I started, everyone was selling these big, high‑concept comedies, it was like, OK, it’s fucking, it’s, “Mini Golf with Jack Black.” OK, sold. Or it’s, “Bass Fishing with Will Ferrell.” You could sell anything with a big‑comedy concept. So, I chased that for years and I wrote these big‑concept comedies.

Then I tried some romantic comedies. I did all these things. I look back at that, and the reason it took me 20 scripts is because the first 10 of them I was just all over the place.

Until I found the one genre I liked, which was sort of the thriller‑action‑horror kind of thing, that’s when things started taking off for me because I really focused in and tried to learn from the people that do that really, really well and really focused my studies.

Because you’re right, Scott, you’re going up against people that have spent 10 years studying that specific genre. So, if you want to better than them, or as good as them, you’d better put in the work.

Unless you’ve got 20 years and you can study everything, you have to sort of focus yourself and be the best at that one thing.

I would like to one day when I learn how to be funny try to write comedy. But, not right now. Not until a few more years. But, I’m going to try and do something else if I feel like it, but not at the beginning. I think that really kind of slowed me down when I look back.

Scott: Borrelli I think made a really good point. It’s got to be a genre that you’re really interested in, that you’ve got a lot of passion for. Not only to help drive you through the process of learning it and writing it, but also too, because you’re going to be put on these lists, like Chris said.

So, your agents and managers are going to be putting you out for assignments in that genre. You’d better damn well love that genre because that’s what you’re going to be seeing for five, six, seven years.

Greg Russo: The establishment of a brand as a screenwriter is the easiest way to go out and get jobs. The ability for someone to categorize you is not a negative. That’s actually a big positive, in terms of getting work.

John Swetnam: That’s such a great point. I always hear this. This might just be me, but people always say to me, “Aren’t you afraid of being pigeonholed?” I’m like, “Fuck you. I want to be pigeonholed.” Put me in a pigeonhole because that means I’m getting those jobs. I’m up for that specific thing.

I think it’s an amazing problem to have. I want to have a brand. I want to have a certain thing that I do really, really well.

Again, if I can expand that over the course of my career, that’s fantastic, but having a pigeonhole in the beginning, people talk about it so negatively. For me, personally, I think that’s like you hope for that. You hope to be pigeonholed.

Scott: Because then the execs and the producers will default, like Found Footage, for example. You’ve had two projects with Found Footage. They have something come up, they need a rewrite. It’s Found Footage. They would probably default to you. You’d be on that list.

John Swetnam: Absolutely. I sold two Found Footage things and I get a lot of Found Footage stuff. Because of that pigeonhole, I use that to expand the pigeonhole. I was doing Found Footage stuff, and then I did a Found Footage movie, but I made it bigger. I added more action and more adventure.

So, then it was, “Oh, well maybe he can do action as well.” Then I would get a job doing action and adventure. Then it’s, “Oh, well he might be able to do this next thing.”

At first it was the pigeonhole, it was Found Footage. I’m so grateful for that every single day because that got me in the door, and I could expand that pigeonhole because I was already in there. For me it was fantastic, I’m so glad that happened.

Scott: That’s very helpful because I think for those writers out there who are afraid to commit to a certain genre, to know that there is some freedom, and that in fact you’re building a brand, that does open up a lot of opportunities for work, but that you always can expand that. You can expand it out either through certain assignments that may be a little bit different, but like what Frazier was saying, play to your strengths. But then you also could just run a spec script of whatever genre you want, down the road, and have the freedom to do that.

John Swetnam: Absolutely.

Scott: OK, here’s another one for you from a blog reader: “Any tricks that you’ve developed to keep moving when you’ve hit a wall? Do Cool Ranch Doritos do the job?” Do you ever hit walls or do you just get up and write no matter what, boom, there are no walls?

F. Scott Frazier: I have to tell you, that’s actually the secret to getting past the walls. I’m currently in the weeds on a script I’m writing. The only thing that makes it better is sitting down and writing every morning. It’s the only thing that helps.

Chris McCoy: I think a lot of days you hit a wall but you just keep going. You can throw away that whole day’s worth of work, but there’s still some value to it because you’ve been figuring something out during that day.

F. Scott Frazier: Absolutely.

John Swetnam: At the end of the day, We are now professional writers. This is our job. We have to show up. Even if you don’t feel like it, you have to show up. And I think as an aspiring writer, and I tried to do this, was to take that mentality. It’s a job, and you must always show up and work.

There are all these people out there that are working at this like a job. If they don’t feel like writing, and they hit a wall. They break through it.

And before I ever sold my first script. I kept thinking to myself, I can’t just stop if I hit a wall. I’m not going to fucking quit. Like these other guys, these professionals, and hard-working dreamers, they aren’t quitting, so I can’t

And I love that mentality of like no matter what, just keep working. Because there are 10,000 people out there and more and more every day that want to do this. So, for me it was like, I’m not the most talented guy, but I’ll outwork them. And I don’t care if I hit a wall. I’ll fucking bust through it. I have to.

Chris McCoy: Just treat it like a job. There’s a great Stephen King book called “On Writing” which is a fantastic book.

F. Scott Frazier: Best book on writing ever.

Chris McCoy: It’s great. King essentially goes to his office and writes for eight hours a day, and that’s the reason that man is so prolific. Regular people are at their jobs for eight or ten hours a day, and so is he.

Greg Russo: If I get stuck, it’s usually in the outlining process. My simple trick is, I try to always have three or four other things actively going. So if I get stuck, I go on to something else for a few hours. If that fails, I go out for a run.

F. Scott Frazier: Absolutely.

Greg Russo: And when you come back to it, it’s like, “Shit. There’s the answer right in front of my face” or I’ll think of it while running down Franklin or something. So instead of sitting there twiddling my thumbs, I now have two things moving forward.

F. Scott Frazier: I think there’s like a Patton quote or something about “if you find yourself in the middle of hell guess what, you’re only half way there” which is very apropos. I think it’s, you just have to do it. You just have to go.

Justin Rhodes: For me, the thing that’s kind of funny about blocks or, you know, when you don’t know where to go next, is that story problems don’t seem get solved by throwing yourself into the wall harder or something. Smashing your head into concrete doesn’t seem to work very well. It’s more about being relaxed. Take a shower. Take a walk. It will be there tomorrow.

And the answers normally come when you finally quit beating yourself up about the fact that they’re not coming. And then you relax and then your brain just kind of delivers you the answer. And you go, “Oh. There it is” and it’s always something really simple that you feel dumb you haven’t thought of.

Greg Russo: Isn’t it Sorkin that takes showers? Dude takes like seven showers a day or something like that. Every time he gets stuck, he takes a shower.

F. Scott Frazier: I love the shower. Shower’s great. Driving too. But, yeah if I get stuck I put my time in the office. I’ll write something else. I’ll punch up another scene or like Greg was saying, just do something else. But I’m not like, if I come up to a wall and I had no idea where to go it’s not like I’m going to go out of my office and screw around for a couple of hours. That’s definitely not the way through.

John Swetnam: If it’s an aspiring writer who’s working on one script and they hit a wall, like the great thing about what we do is watching movies is part of the job. Reading other scripts is part of the job. So if you’re working on one script and you hit a block, like go watch some movies. Like that might help you. Go read some other scripts that might help you. As long as you’re putting in the work.

Chris Borrelli: Very little of what do is actual writing. Most of it is just thinking, research. When I say researching I don’t mean you have to be looking up science or facts or anything like that. It’s just getting a feel for those scenes and ideas. And it really isn’t one thing. It’s not sitting at a typewriter or a laptop and typing away all the time.

But at the same time, I get up and I have work hours. I’m in that room, I’m thinking and then I’m walking or lying on the bed and staring at the ceiling and all that stuff, but I’m still in the script. So I agree, you work through it.

The only times I will give up is if it’s very early stages where it’s like an outline. There are a lot of movies that are … especially with younger writers I think… There are a lot of movie ideas that are actually just Twilight Zone episodes I always call them. Meaning like, OK that’s a cool 30‑minute bit, you know. But it isn’t a sustainable movie.

There are times where you will hit that and there’s a reason you hit it. And maybe there’s a way to make a movie out of anything. I don’t feel that way. I won’t pursue it if it’s so hard. There’s a time when it’s too hard in the early process. And then after that, if you know what movie you’re making, if you have just a general idea where the movie’s going, then those other things I think can all be worked through.

Scott: Speaking of movies, I think we’d all agree that 2012 was a really good year for films. We had the usual slate of sequels and remakes and tent-pole titles, some of them were better than others. But also a lot of good original movies, Ted, Wreck-It Ralph, Magic Mike, Looper, some great adult dramas like Lincoln, Argo, independent films like Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Moonrise Kingdom, Beasts of the Southern Wild.

So you look at the movies that came out this year, were there any one in particular that you said, “Wow. I wish I’d written that” or one that you just really super admired?

Justin Rhodes: Zero Dark Thirty.

Chris Borrelli: Looper. I loved Looper.

Scott: OK. Let’s start with Looper.

Chris Borrelli: Yeah. I just was so impressed, I honestly, I didn’t really know what it was going to be going in. The post treatment trailer hadn’t really drawn me in. I was told word‑of‑mouth that it was really good.

I went in and I loved the darkness of it. I loved that it went somewhere different that surprised me in several ways. That it had everything from genre moments, where the guy in the future, his digits are disappearing, the old stuff. You’ve seen the movie, this makes sense.

Everything like genre moments to something deeper, more interesting and yet great character work. That was a big surprise for me. That was a movie that, even though I was told it was good, I didn’t know where it was going every moment.

John Swetnam: Yeah, I loved that movie. I saw it with Frazier and some other people. A lot of the people I saw it with had read the script before they went and saw the movie and I had not read the script.

All I remember thinking when I was watching the movie, was that I never knew what was going to happen next.

That doesn’t happen a lot for me anymore. I was like, “I have no fucking clue what’s about to happen,” and I loved it. That’s such a refreshing thing for a screenwriter because most of the time, you kind of can figure it out. With that movie, I had no clue what was going to happen next. I loved the hell out of it.

Scott: Justin, you mentioned Zero Dark Thirty? What about that movie worked for you?

Justin Rhodes: One, it’s very much in the genre space I’ve been working these days. What I really liked about that film, and maybe this is something you could only get away with given what it was based upon, is that the movie doesn’t need to go into explicit character arcs or explicit motivations or explain anything. It allows everybody to do what they do, and that’s engaging in that level.

It’s really a movie for grownups and there are not a lot of those that come out that way. To me, it’s an amazingly tense film that for most of the two hours, its people standing around computers and talking, and everybody already knows the outcome.

John Swetnam: Justin, did you go to the screening with Mark Boal?

Justin Rhodes: Yeah, I did.

John Swetnam: That was so cool to me when he was doing a Q and A at the end. He kept talking about that, with the characters, how there’s no backstory. He just comes in and you have no idea who this person is and you’re intrigued.

When I watch movies like that, I look at them and I admire the shit out of them because I know I’ll never be able to write like that. I love watching that stuff, but I wouldn’t even attempt to think about attempting to write something like that. I loved it.

Greg Russo: Of the stuff I’ve seen this year, my vote goes to Argo. It’s the kind of nuanced, entertaining, and mature thriller that I aspire to write one day.

It’s everything I want out of a film. It taught me something that I didn’t know about, so the entire time I was absolutely riveted. It was entertaining. Every single one of those characters, I could have watching in their own movie. Competition’s tough this year, but I think Terrio will be celebrating on Oscar night.

F. Scott Frazier: I just watched Zero Dark Thirty last night and I’m still trying to process it. And I also just watched Lincoln, and that was fantastic. But for me, my pick of the year, and I don’t think anything is going to eclipse it is Flight.

I don’t know. Denzel is just like… I don’t think we’ve ever seen an actor as good as Denzel. Just the raw nature of the movie, it’s just this unflinching look at this guy, it’s just so well defined. His character is basically perfect, and he acts it so well. I was just blown away by that entire movie.

Chris Borrelli: I didn’t know where it was going. And I know it’s a drama, it seems simple. I went in purposely knowing very little about Flight, but I was really impressed with it. And even though in retrospect it’s a very simple structure, while I was watching it, I didn’t always know where it was going to go, and as we were talking about earlier, that’s a real thrill for me, because as we know, all of us studying film and being so structure‑heavy and disciplined in our work, it’s just exciting when that happens nowadays.

F. Scott Frazier: I think, you’re absolutely right, Scott. This was a crazy good year for movies. We got Cloud Atlas. How the hell did that even get made? It blows my mind how good movies were this year.

Chris McCoy: The one that I came out and it just blew me away, and I laughed from start to finish, and I loved it, but it was Magic Mike. I just thought it was such a great take on the death of the American Dream. I thought it was terrific.

Scott: Every single one of these movies, just outstanding. Did anybody like “Moonrise Kingdom” or was it just me?

Chris McCoy: I loved that too. I’m a massive fan of Wes Anderson. Every one of those movies is interesting to me even if some of them aren’t considered structurally perfect, though a lot of them are.

John Swetnam: Did you guys see Perks of Being A Wallflower?

F. Scott Frazier: I haven’t watched it yet.

John: I really liked that. I was watching it and, as a screenwriter, I was sitting there picking it apart structurally. There were just things about it that seemed very rough. I don’t know. I was just tearing it apart and then by the end of it I’m crying. I don’t know. There was something about it that just hit a chord and I thought it just snuck up on me and I thought that was a really good movie. You guys should check that out.

F. Scott Frazier: Even our big blockbusters this year, The Avengers was awesome. I think it was a rare year for movies. But I’m the only one holding my hand up in the air saying I liked John Carter. That scratches a very specific itch for me.

John Swetnam: I know what itch that is.

Greg Russo: I don’t have that itch.

F. Scott Frazier: As it turned out, few people do.

Scott: How about this to end: What did you learn this year? Did you learn something about writing or being a writer that really made sense to you, that really impacted you, something that you feel is worth sharing with people?

John Swetnam: For me, and I don’t know everybody’s timeline, this is only my second year of being a professional writer, of really being in the trenches. For 10 years, for me, I spent so much time trying to figure out how to break in, how to sell the first script. I always thought when you sold that one script, somehow everything was just going to be easy.

What I learned is making it is one thing. Staying here is another. Having a career that actually lasts a long time is something that I’m just trying to figure out. I think the one thing that I learned the most this year was that this business is a personality business. A lot of the jobs that I’ve gotten came from getting to meet people or going in to pitch people and really trying to have a good personality, and be passionate, respectful, humble, and energetic.

That person would remember me three months later and then they would say something to somebody else like, “He seems like a pretty good dude,” and they would call me in for something. This is a very small town and at the end of the day, we all want to work with people we like. I never thought about it like that, but it’s very true. So don’t be a douche, unless you’re really, really talented, which I’m not. So I try to be a hard worker, who collaborates with an open mind, and can deliver on time, in a professional, yet fun way..

Because this job is so much fun. It is a grind, but it’s a fun one. I like to go out, and I don’t like to call it networking, because I’m just at bars getting drunk, but you end up hanging out with cool people, and opportunities present themselves. There could be a way for you to help someone, or them to help you. It’s not devious, or subversive, it’s hanging with friends, helping each other, while making movies, and money. I mean, how can you not love this fucking town?

Scott: Anybody else?

Chris McCoy: Every year I realize there are so many talented writers in this town, and that I have to push myself harder than the year before. Look at the crop of movies this year. There was such good stuff out there. You take it as an inspiration.

Scott: Laura, you have a question for these fine folks?

Laura: Mine was the genre question. I want to write everything. I think it’s good to know that you need to set out in one particular genre and then maybe fuck ’em in 10 years and then go off on your own.

F. Scott Frazier: The nice thing is, if you have that urge to write everything, I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with finding two genres that you really like and mashing them together.

I don’t think anybody had thought of doing a comedy zombie movie before. Then they wrote Zombieland and now they’re two of the biggest writers in Hollywood.

You could actually see that as strength, as fuck it, I’m going to write a musical comedy about 19th century oligarchs.

Chris Borrelli: Gave away my idea again, Frasier.

[laughter]

F. Scott Frazier: I don’t think you should necessarily see that as being stuck in a box, but is there a way that you can leverage your love of multiple genres to write something completely new?

Scott: Isn’t it true too that depending upon how old the writer is and how far they are along in their writing experience, that it’s important for them to test out different genres to find what they’re interested in, or where their talents lie.

Chris Borrelli: Absolutely. I would say we started to stop talking from screenwriting books that seem to give these hard and fast rules. I don’t mean in any way to say that you should find one genre, pick it and go on that one and you’re stuck on that one until you try.

I think if you start now and you want to write everything, write everything, but actually do it, as opposed to starting seven scripts and not finishing any of them, etc. etc.

As you go, find, again, what you love. That’s it. You find what you love. You have your own voice come out of it. It’s honest. Your writing is honest. People reading it know that you believe in the words on the page. They can see it visually because it’s a real thing to you. It’s a real movie in your mind. And that’s communicated to the reader, so, by no means, don’t limit yourself.

You can spend some time finding what that genre is and then at that point, when you find your love or a couple genres you love, then you can be more targeted.

Remember, you have to write scripts anyway to learn how to really write. I don’t have one thing I learned this year I could just put into a couple of sentences, I feel, but I learned a lot and I honed things down. I feel I made some good progress in my actual craft.

Greg Russo: “Never stop learning.” If every day I’m learning something new as a writer… If every day I’m getting a little bit better at this… that’s all I can ask for from myself. Never stop learning. It’s as simple as that.

Scott: That’s a good note to end it on.

For more Go Into The Story interviews, go here.