Tag: screenwriter

It’s showtime!

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Ah, confinement life in times of Corona. People have to stay home, work from home and watch Netflix in substitution of a social life. Or as a screenwriter calls it: Business as usual. Well… minus the severe anxiety of getting sick or loved ones getting sick. Minus that.

When people ask me, if I am not concerned about film making and the future of film making and cinemas, I reply that yes, I am very concerned and my personal funds are low and I don’t know if and when we can shoot, but that  is not the most important right now.

The most important thing now is to stay healthy. Since there are so many people, who normally arduously work and whose days are filled with so many activities that they didn’t have time to watch TV all day, I put together a list. I am aware, that there is an endless number of lists out there, but this list is different (as would every professional list-seller say). I categorized the productions in “what you want to feel when you watch them”, because that is how I chose. We’ll start with series.

“If you want to get to know new friends and spend some time with their nuttiness”

-Obviously: Friends

-New girls

-It’s always sunny in Philadelphia

-Modern family

-Santa Clarita Diet

-Derry girls

“If you like fantasy, where people wear normal clothes and their super powers are used in a clever way to tell an exciting story and of course they save the world”

-The umbrella academy

-Misfits

-the Boys

-Stranger things

-Sabrina (okay they don’t wear normal clothes)

-Locke and Key

-Watchmen

“If you want to be aware how our life is already horror, technology-wise”

-Black mirror

“If you want to feel uplifted by super quirky people who make you believe in the good of humanity”

-Queer eye

“If you bought a sewing machine and can’t sew for shit, but you’d like to see what you could do with it, if you could sew”

-Next in fashion

“If you like a tied-knit gritty story and want to dwell in awe of fine acting”

-The killing

-Top of the Lake

-Handmaid’s Tale

“If you want to see the most bewildering human interactions, who also committed a crime”

-Tiger King

-Wild wild Country

-Don’t fuck with cats

“ if you like to feel all warm and fuzzy, as you’d lived in the village where Belle from ‘the Beauty and the Beast’ lives”

-Gilmore girls

-Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

“ If you want to see a series where there is romance, but also some serious shit is going down, but it always ends good-well kinda”

-good girls

“If you want to watch a harmless rom-com, where she is a nurse and moves into a small village and is courted by a very sweet bartender”

-Virgin River

“If you want to watch girly stuff and dress up fabulously after”

-Sex and the city

-the Bold Type

“If you want to maybe pursue a career in stand-up, when this is all over”

-Trevor Noah

-Sarah Silvermann

-John Mulaney

-Ali Wong

-Wanda Sykes

“If you like to watch at food and either enjoy your food therefore more or because you’re hungry and this looks really good”

-Chef’s table

-the Final table

“If you are terrible at baking and want to meet fellow artists or if you are really good at it and want to laugh at people who aren’t”

-Nailed it

“If you want to be excited because some serious shit hits the fan in fictitious lives”

-the stranger

-the bodyguard

“If you’re in the mood to consider how just the justice system is“

-unbelievable

-5 park guys

“ If you feel a bit lost and fucked-up and weird and think you are alone and also see the most romantic plot in recent tv-history”:

Fleabag

“If you like to revisit your youth in a much more excessive version that it really was”

-Skins ( Only season 1-4 and then 7)

“If you like political scandals and also a bit of romance”

-The good wife

“If you miss Hollywood or would like to experience it”

Entourage

I left out some classics on purpose, since I am mad at them, mostly because they messed up the ending. Did I forget a favorite series of yours? You can tell me in the comments.

‘Don’t start to write, it’s a trap!’ Baudelaire, 1867

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Writing about writing is probably the lamest thing a writer does. It seems very important to us to explain to people how hard writing is, comparable to drunk people who have to communicate that they are drunk (and worked hard for it). So, to defeat that cliché once and for all: Here is a piece about (screen)-writing.

You can find an endless stream of screenwriter tips, screenwriter books, screenwriter tutorials, screenwriter mugs and T-Shirts, but it always seems to me like this meme ‘how to draw an owl”. First you carefully start to outline the eye shape, the pupils, the eyelashes and then- you draw the rest until it looks like an owl.

Real ProTip: Before you start writing, do clean your house, re-arrange your books by colors and/or genre, ask the dog if he is a good boy and has to go outside (both times: Yes!), catch up with seven to twelve Netflix-series, bath in the blood of 12 virgins by moonlight, then but only then, you can start to write.  Maybe the dog has to go out again. But then.

I think, everybody has this terrible fear of the white page. This fear, let’s call it Earl, feeds from the following:

*fear of not being able to write down the idea you have in mind

*fear of not being able to write at all

*fear that the idea/characters/storyline turns out to be complete bs

*fear of you’ve written your shitty idea out, give it to a trustee (friend, producer, fellow screenwriter-producer-friend) and he/she/they say it is complete bs and why do you call yourself a screenwriter and that maybe you should look for a different job, maybe hand-model?

*fear of not being able to finish

Earl is an a-hole. A big one. Don’t listen to Earl. Tell Earl to fearl off. The trick I’ve found very useful to get rid of Earl is the following: You don’t have to write a whole script, or story line, character development or even scene. Just write for 15 minutes.

15 minutes is not that scary.  15 minutes you can fit in between anything: between meetings, between dog-walks, between a hot-dog-bun, between your ears. 15 minutes is do-able. Often I the write more than 15 minutes, sometimes I just set it aside and continue to stare at goats. I then look at it the next day. Sometimes I am relieved, because it turned out pretty okay and sometimes it is complete shite. But hey, no one saw it, except you (and maybe Earl) and you can just erase it and write another 15 minutes. You can not always write, but you can always work. And word after word after word, your treatment becomes alive. And you can join the writers’ ranks by chanting (in D):

“I hate writing, I love having written. (So fuck off, Earl.)”

                                                                          Dorothy Parker

Deus Ex Machina

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Deus ex machina (Latin: [ˈdeʊs ɛks ˈmaː.kʰɪ.naː]: /ˈdeɪ.əs ɛks ˈmɑːkiːnə/ or /ˈdiːəs ɛks ˈmækɪnə/; plural: dei ex machina; English ‘god from the machine’) is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and seemingly unlikely occurrence, typically so much as to seem contrived. Its function can be to resolve an otherwise irresolvable plot situation, to surprise the audience, to bring the tale to a happy ending, or act as a comedic device.

When I first started working in the film industry, I was quite at a loss for what I say when at a party and people would ask what I do for a living. It seemed so boastful to me to tell people I work in film. The reactions always were a tad too enthusiastic for me to handle. People would ensure me that my job is so much cooler (spoiler alert: it’s not), more exciting (if one would call backstabbing and non-existing tax returns exciting…yeah!) and more adventurous (standing in the middle of nowhere at minus 19 C° trying to write down script notes could be called that, indeed) than their office/lawyer/teacher job. They won’t listen when I try to tell them that, on the contrary, their jobs seem cool and exciting and adventurous and most of all: stable and hence comforting to me, but maybe that is a romanticized view of mine and nobody listens to no one, so fair is fair.

The perception that working in film is not only deeply fulfilling but also fills your pockets, is a common one, I recently learned. The tax office lady called and after a very harsh and quick monologue of hers, I dimly started to understand that they think I would misappropriate taxes. After a desperate try to make the lady understand, that I the salary on the tax declaration is indeed correct, she panted: ‘But Miss Gregory, it says here that you work in film.’ I shouted back: ‘Precisely!’

Apart from the money issues and the anxieties, the job can be fun and fulfilling and enriching and so much more. Standing on a set, creating a film and observing all these talented people do what they do best is one of the most beautiful feelings one can have as a filmmaker. People working in film are not in it for the money (at least not where I live), but because they share the same passion and they believe in the art of film making. That is why they work 14-hours-shifts and eat shitty food of the crafty table, just to do it all over again the next day.

For people who want to work in film, getting into the industry seems like a kind of “deus ex machina”, all the plots come together and the dream comes true-the end! In reality this is where the plot thickens and Murphy’s law kicks in. Join us, we have the stale cookies from crafty.