Write.
Rewrite. Rewrite. Rewrite. Rewrite. Rewrite.
That’s what the life of a screenwriter is all about.
I’m rewriting one of my scripts these days. I was able to put it away for a few weeks, work on something else and then come back to the screenplay. Now that I’ve got some distance from it, it doesn’t quite feel like « my work » anymore, which makes it easier to be objective about what needs to be changed. And of course now I want to change everything!
I am very much looking forward to working on a new project that is not based on a true story. It’s a tough balance between staying true to the root of the story – the reason why it was interesting in the first place – and creating enough drama and tension to make a compelling movie. I was told that the most interesting characters in my screenplay are the ones that I have completely made up. I guess it’s because I have felt more freedom while creating them.
It’s a strange situation to have to do a lot of research for a movie only to realize that you need to forget most of it in order to get to the heart of the story. The more factual I get, the farther away I stray for the main theme and core emotions. The problem is that the story is centered around technology, a subject where facts matter and I know that the main audience for this film (young men into tech stuff) will look for every single little mistake, every event that veered from the truth.
It’s a bit silly how the movie industry develops interest for « based on a true story » subjects, only to radically change most of the real events and characters in order to create a more marketable product. Do we truly care, as an audience, if a movie we watch is based on a true story or not, when we know that film, by nature, will not show us what « really » happened? Does it make us want to see a movie more if the initial story was true?
I guess we do care. I can think of quite a few films that I watched because I was interested in the true stories behind them. Hotel Rwanda was one. Shattered Glass was another film I enjoyed, and knowing that the filmmaker was very concerned about staying close to the true events was a big part of my appreciation of the movie.
I have to forget about all of these concerns, shut off the voices of the critics (mostly in my head) and make the story as strong and as compelling as it can be. It’s exciting. Exhausting. It’s been hard to focus on anything else.
Synchronicit� dis-tu?
Hier soir, au moment o� tu pensais � ce billet peut-�tre, j’avais exactement la m�me r�flexion!
Moi qui suis francophone je me suis m�me pass� la r�flexion suivante en anglais : »Based on a true story… there is no such thing as a true story anyway ». D’ailleurs, pour dire � quel point ce sujet me chicotte voici une belle citation de Malraux qui orne mon blog: « Ce n’�tait ni vrai, ni faux, mais v�cu. »
M�me les livres d’histoire et les documentaires ne peuvent donner qu’une vue partielle de faits v�cus. Alors j’appuie ta d�marche de censure de tes critiques int�rieures! Laisse-toi aller. :)
Salut! Merci pour la link! Le Linque? Je ne sais pas – I only took three years of high school French. Thanks for the link, though. You have such a nice, cleanly-designed site. I’ll check in often. My wife speaks French, so she can translate your French posts.
All the best,
Warren Leonard
Hugo: synchronicit�, en effet! Merci pour les encouragements.
Warren: The link is « le lien » or « l’hyperlien » in French. Hope you’ll stop by again!
I find that, very often, the most « interesting » characters in real life fall flat on the page/screen.
I’ll never understand.