Ask a screenwriter!

As always, these are fake questions from actual readers. All comments and questions for publication can be directed to dearscriptguy@gmail.com.


Dear Script Guy,

I have an amazing screenplay idea. It's about a world in turmoil where everyone is dyslexic and named Beatrice. There's this sadistic, fascist dictator and he's after this one dissident who used to be his lover, a fifty-year old woman who lost her sons in the last big war, but it turns out that their relationship was only an experimental drug-induced hallucination, and the midpoint is when the two of them realize the drug manufacturer is the real villain and they have to join forces in order to save the world.

I'm halfway through my first rough outline and I'm hoping you can help me.  Since all the characters in the script are dyslexic, I want to misspell all the dialogue, you know, give it a sense of realism. My question to you - will my artistic integrity keep my screenplay from selling?

Sincerely,
Grammar and Punctuation Emergency


Dear GAPE,

Ecxelent qeustoin. Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch procejt at Cmabrigde I raed abuot, it deosnt mttaer waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pclae. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter.

So rest easy, GAPE, when your script fails to sell, spell check will be the last thing to blame. Instead, I'd look inward at your decision to make a woman over the age of forty central to your movie. This is cutting off your legs before taking your first step. Save yourself the grief and make every female character a late 20's/early 30's knockout with enormous breasts. Screenplays aren't meant to be read, and Hollywood is not about to stop coercing women into elective plastic surgery to assuage your vision of a learning disability filled world of Beatrices.

Try not to be too upset. Nations have risen and fallen over beauty. The sad truth is your artistic integrity is no match for boobs and never was.





About the Author:

Stapleton J. Marleybone III, aka Script Guy, is a thirty-year screenwriting vet who has written the 'Ask a Screenwriter!' column since 2009. Born during a freak thunderstorm on a fishing boat not far from Bayou La Batre, Stapleton dropped out of high school to pursue a career in Hollywood. He cut his teeth as a production assistant on the never released Roger Corman classic She Rides to Hell at Midnight. His largely biographical debut feature grew from the experience and would go on to be nominated for two CableACE awards in 1978. He currently resides in Sherman Oaks with his third wife and her five unpleasant stepchildren.

Ask a Screenwriter!

As always, these are fake questions from actual readers. Please direct all comments and questions for publication to dearscriptguy@gmail.com.

Dear Script Guy,

Long-time reader, first-time advice seeker. After years of research and struggle, I've completed an amazing screenplay about my hometown of Lubbock, Texas. It's a powerful story of love and loss that reveals the power of the human spirit. Spanning decades and continents, filled with emotion, breathtaking spectacle and even a dash of humor, I'm 100% sure it's ready for the big screen. If only I could get it into the right hands! Unfortunately, I have no connections and all the agencies I called politely declined and quickly hung up. My question to you - how do I get people to read it?

Sincerely, 
Waiting On My Big Break

Dear WOMBB,

You must have called the agencies on a Monday to get such warm sentiment. By Friday the receptionists can barely bring themselves to answer the phone after a week of indignities both petty and soul crushing. This is to be expected when people have to go to an office dressed up as if they're going out on Valentine's Day with their boyfriend of two months and validate third-rate celebrities parking/sense of entitlement at the same time. All this and student loans is enough to bring anyone to a less than chipper phone demeanor.

On to your question, WOMBB. You can't get anyone to read your script. Stop trying immediately. But good news! This is not your fault. Nobody reads scripts. Hell, I'm not even convinced anyone writes them anymore.

If you do beat the odds and get someone to read your script, there is a 99.9% chance they hold no actual power and are therefore useless in your search to have your script produced. This is because important people do not have time to weigh themselves down with the written word, they only have time for coverage, and rarely even for that. Agents only ever read contracts and their own press clippings, actors only skim scripts to see how many lines they have and producers aren't looking for screenplays as much as searching for that impossibly perfect puzzle piece to fit into the zeitgeist that will ultimately get them invited to the good Golden Globe parties. Directors are too busy having sex and enjoying accolades, though rarely at the same time.

The only people who will read your script are assistants who haven't held their job for more than three months and friends who lack quality drugs to distract them from more fruitful pursuits. These are desperately unhappy people and you would be doing a great kindness not to burden them with your own dreams. They've suffered enough in this life.

My advice would be to quit now and write long-form hentai erotica for the internet. It will likely be more rewarding and will certainly be read by more people. And take heart. If your screenplay was read, produced and given theatrical release, you'd have to suffer through the horror of watching everything you loved about it falling by the wayside in order to please the Chinese financiers and the studio head's twenty-year old mistress, none of whom can spare even the tiniest of fucks for the power of the human spirit.


About the Author:

Stapleton J. Marleybone III, aka Script Guy, is a thirty-year screenwriting vet who has written the 'Ask a Screenwriter!' column since 2009. Born during a freak thunderstorm on a fishing boat not far from Bayou La Batre, Stapleton dropped out of high school to pursue a career in Hollywood. He cut his teeth as a production assistant on the never released Roger Corman classic She Rides to Hell at Midnight. His largely biographical debut feature grew from the experience and would go on to be nominated for two CableACE awards in 1978. He currently resides in Sherman Oaks with his third wife and her five unpleasant stepchildren.

B Movie Dialogue

Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them.

- Pauline Kael

As a child barely seven years of age, I saw this delightful and highly influential piece of trash in the theater when it was released out into the world in 1983. It's one of my earliest movie memories and gives proof to the notion that there is no film so awe-inspiringly awful that it will not still beat the pants off the outdoors during an Indiana summer. Attendance wasn't by design, mind you. My mom was out running errands and had made the classic mistake of taking her young children with her instead of leaving them alone in the house to fend off potential burglars, and she was desperate to get out of the heat. The timing was fortunate, in a way, I'm not even sure air conditioning had been invented before the 80's.

The plot is one of those predictable Hollywood formulas we've seen time and again. There's a caveman type with an amulet named Yor, who kills dinosaurs and swoops around on a giant dead bat, which he killed with his bare hands, and which he uses to save one of only two attractive women on the entire planet. Soon they encounter the other lovely young woman, differentiated by being blonde and without a perm, who has an amulet exactly like Yor's and arouses much antipathy from the brunette. One slut-shames the other, some cruel jabs about body dysmorphia are thrown out and the two scantily clad vixens quickly come to blows over their man. This seemingly sexist drivel is clearly a scathing post-modernist critique of gender roles and representations in film, an early shout out to the purveyors of the Bechdel test.

And then the spaceships show up and start blasting everything with giant lasers. Yor and company learn the not completely original truth to the world and then it's on to overthrow the overlord of the heretofore unmentioned android army. Our bad guy's name is Overlord, just as a FYI. Running, fighting, gymnastics, triumph and then Yor is off in a spaceship to protect the primitive peoples from whence he came. I myself would have taken the opportunity to see battles on the shoulder of Orion or learn what c-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate look like, but whatever, to each their own, it all turns into tears in rain eventually anyway.

There's a line of dialogue early in the film that has stayed with me, for reasons that escape me and defy logic. It comes early, during a furious battle with a dinosaur and can be heard at the very end of this clip.

It is pretty clear to me we're dealing with a triceratops and it's a well-known fact passed down through the ages from father to son that the best cut is in the rump of the great beast, but what of the rest? Where will Yor and his ill-fated followers slice into in order to harvest all that sweet, sweet dinosaur meat? I assume there was a butchering scene that fell victim to the cutting room floor, though I can't seem to find an early version of the script to corroborate my theory. It took some doing, but I finally tracked down an expert who could give me the answers I so desperately needed so I might finally have some peace and a decent night's sleep.

A bit of a self-proclaimed recluse, she was initially skeptical of my sincerity, but a combination of relentless enthusiasm and half a turkey sandwich eventually won her over. She was kind enough to share her findings and even let me photograph this diagram she had drawn following years of painstaking research into the subject.

Here we can plainly see not only why Yor was so excited, but also why he needs some assistance. Too much good stuff. It's hard to know where to begin and you'd hate for any to go to waste. Ham, bacon, tenderloin, flank, loin chops, foie gras, hot dog parts. Who could ever be a vegetarian in the Mesozoic Era?

 

Six-Line Scenes

Guyses,

I always feel Midwestern when I address anyone as "guys." But it is a habit that makes me nostalgic, so I probably won't stop. Hope that's all right.

Adam Simon can tell you that when we were in prestigious playwrighting school, we often had to do this exercise that was "Six-Line Scenes." It was pretty awesome, low-pressure and high-fun! And it forces you to tell a story, however elaborate, in just six lines. You can have any number of characters, any setting, any circumstance, as long as it's in six lines.

I had a blog a few years ago that explored the six-line phenomenon, if you want a few examples. Also, to throw myself on the sword in hopes of reading better (or simply, other, though I'm sure they'll be better, too) scenes from yall, here's this:

(JEB and MAEVE in a bank, waiting in line. MAEVE has on a designer dress, her hair is just so, and her makeup is perfect.)

JEB
Looks like we gon' ta hav' us a rain t'day.

MAEVE
(Blink, blink)
Yes.
(Look away)

JEB
Them shoes ain't gon' like it.

MAEVE
They'll be fine.

JEB
I'm worried. One time when I was a baby, momma wen' out with shoes on and her shoes never came back. Neither did momma.

BANK TELLER
Next!

fin.

Is this thing on?

Welcome, everyone. Feel free to post willy-nilly.

The layout's pretty simple but it can be easily changed.

My hope with this blog is that we upload pieces if we need feedback between readings, if we want to share links, etc. I'd be happy to upload bios if anyone wanted to have their bio up, too.

It'll be a work in progress.

Oh yeah and, how about that title? Pretty spot-on.