FRIDAY'S SCRIPT TIP:
PERSONAL AND COMMERCIAL
Here's the problem: For a script to be good, it needs to be something personal and
emotional... but for a script to sell it needs to be something commercial that a couple
hundred million people will pay to see. How do you find an idea that's both? What if all
of the commercial ideas you come up with you aren't passionate about, and all of the
personal ideas you come up with aren't commercial? How can you turn that personal
and emotional idea into something with commercial potential?
Let me use an example from my life and my films as an illustration. A few years ago I
was in a long-term relationship that ended - she dumped me unexpectedly. About the
same time, my most trusted friend screwed me over in a business deal; and because
he ended up with the deal that I should have had, a couple of other friends of mine
decided to join him instead of stick with me. He eventually screwed over those other
guys, too, but for a while it seemed as if everyone I knew betrayed me. I ended up
hardening my heart and withholding my trust. I closed myself off from the world. After a
couple of years living like this I realized I was miserable. Those walls that prevented me
from having my heart broken again or my trust betrayed also prevented me from having
any friends or any real relationships. I had to tear down those walls - even if it meant
getting hurt again.
This was perfect material for a screenplay - very emotional, and something that most
people can identify with on some level. But there were three problems with writing this
as a script:
1) Not interesting enough. Gee, my heart got broken and a friend screwed me over - big
deal! Who cares? This stuff happens to everyone, so why would six hundred million
people worldwide pay to see my version? How would this be entertaining? Let's face it,
this story is like listening to some friend tell you about the bad day they had at work...
boring!
2) Even though I was over the broken heart and the friend's betrayal, it's still painful
subject matter. Would I really want to relive all of that stuff in a script? Would I
subconsciously tone it down in order to make it easier (emotionally) for me to write?
3) When all was said and done, the girl who dumped me and the friend who stole my
deal weren't the real problem, I was. Hey - people get dumped every day, but how
many completely cut themselves off emotionally afterwards? How many people go out
of their way *not* to fall in love again, and go out of their way *not* to form friendships?
The real story was that I had stopped trusting people... was I brave enough to tell that
story? Would I try to sugar coat it, or maybe make it look like my ex-girlfriend was a
monster so that my reaction would make more sense? Could I really be honest about
my emotions?
Which is why I believe that fiction is the lie we use to tell the truth.
I was going to wear a disguise... find a way to explore all of these painful emotions in a
safe environment. So I used the tool of magnification - I took my basic story and blew it
up. Magnified it. Imagine a guy who really couldn't trust anyone. A world where your
best friend could be a monster who wanted to kill you. Where any woman you fall in
love with may suddenly turn into a creature who wants to destroy you. A hero who lives
outside of society because he can't trust *anyone* - not even puppies and kids! What
kind of story has a hero surrounded by people who look normal, but may really be
monsters under their skin?
How about vampires? What if our hero was the last of the vampire hunters? Every one
he meets could be a potential vampire... or may be human when he meets them, then
gets bitten and changes into a vampire. So our hero has learned not to trust anyone.
He's closed himself off, just as I did. And he has no allies, no one to help him. He's
miserable (as I was) and is just as dead as the vampires he hunts. He has to learn to
trust again, and to open his heart. He has to learn to love again, and to trust again.
In my script NIGHT HUNTER, my vampire hunter goes through all of the emotional
problems that I went through, making it a very personal story... yet still a very
commercial story. There's a big audience for horror, and NIGHT HUNTER was an
action-horror hybrid - similar to BLADE (but made three years before the big budget
version). Because I've never been a vampire hunter, never known any vampires, I could
write honestly about situations that would have been too painful to deal with in a more
realistic world. I could deal with *my* faults, because they weren't my faults, they were
this vampire hunter's. You'd be surprised how many actual incidents from my life ended
up in that script in an exaggerated version that was *emotionally safe* for me to write
(because it was about vampires).
A scene that was really autobiographical ended up being exciting and commercial,
because it wasn't me being dumped by my girlfriend, it was a vampire hunter
discovering that the woman he loves has become a blood sucker.
I was able to write something very personal and emotional, that was bought and made
by a producer for Orion Pictures and ended up a CineMax Premiere Movie. It wasn't
just cheap therapy - they *paid me*! All I did was take an event from my personal life
and raise the stakes, intensify the emotions, and change the back stabbers into
bloodsuckers. That's how magnification can be used to turn your personal story into a
big commercial story. Find the basic emotional conflict in that personal story and
magnify everything around it . The emotions stay the same, but the story becomes
something big enough to fill the screen - exciting enough that millions of people will pay
to see it.
Take a closer look at IRON MAN - what's going on underneath the superhero story?
What's the emotional core? See how a big summer event film can *also* be a personal film?
RECESSION SALE - All Classed on CD - $5 Off!
The 2001 London Class on 8 CDs! Recorded *live* the morning after the Raindance Film Festival
wrapped. The two day class on 8 CDs, plus a workbook, plus a bonus CD with over 450 screenplay PDFs - all 3 BOURNE movies, all 3 MATRIX movies, all 4
Indiana Jones movies, plus all kinds of action and thriller and scripts from Hitchcock films. Most of the 2008 Black List scripts.
Yeah, I threw in some Charlie Kauffman and rom-com scripts and some National Lampoon Vacation movie scripts,
too. Plus, an orginal brochure for the class. All for one reasonable price: $99.95.
(If you had taken the class in London it would have cost you $450... plus airfare, plus hotel, plus you'd have to eat "mushy peas" for dinner.)
