John August

fixed

Ad-libbing

QandA, Words on the page

How much ad-libbing do you write into your scripts?

–Walter Reichert

Some very funny movies have a lot of ad-libbing, which can give the
viewer the impression that there wasn’t really a script — the actors
just showed up and decided what they were going to do and say. But it’s
just not the case. The script may have been terrible, but something about
it was good enough to attract the actors and director in the first place.

If you happened to watch the second season of HBO’s "Project Greenlight" —
and if you’re reading this column, there’s a pretty good chance you’re
enough of a film masochist to watch it — you saw directors Kyle and
Efram defend their approach to an upcoming scene by saying, "We
were just planning on letting the actors improvise." To me, this
is analogous to saying, "We were just planning to let the children
drown."

Planned ad-libbing is like hoping for a white Christmas. Maybe it will
snow, or maybe it won’t. Your sleigh better have wheels just in case.

While I would never type the words "ad-lib" into a script,
there are occasions where people need to say something, but it’s not
exactly crucial who says what. For instance, in BIG FISH, there’s a scene
where the whole town has come to send Edward Bloom off on his journey.
Important lines are singled out to individual characters, but "the
crowd" gets just this:

THE CROWD (VARIOUS)

Goodbye Edward! / See ya! / We’ll miss you!

"Various" is a good word to choose when you need to indicate that there’s a range of possible options, be they in
action or dialogue. For instance:

VARIOUS SHOTS: Contorting his body in strange positions, Joe tries to get his candy out of the vending machine, but to no avail. Finally, he’s stuck in a half-pretzel as Jenny walks up.

Whatever you do, don’t use "ad-libbing" or "improv" as
an excuse not to write the best possible version of a scene. If you really
think the actors will come up with better dialogue than you can, find
a better writer.

Nominated screenplays

Film Industry, QandA

When a Golden Globe or an Oscar is awarded to a writer, is it based on just
a viewing of the movie, or do the judges actually read the screenplays?

–Robert Baker

Not only is that a really good question, but strangely, I’ve never even stopped
to think about it until now.

While studios sometimes do send out certain screenplays to Academy or WGA
voters (as Disney did with THE ROYAL TENNENBAUMS this year), in the vast majority
of cases, voters are making their decision based only on the movie they saw,
rather than the script.

Anyone who’s been through the process of making a movie knows that a brilliant
script doesn’t necessarily translate into a brilliant movie. The screenplay
is a crucial first step, but the words get filtered through a director, actors,
editors and hundreds of other people who inevitably change the execution if
not the intention of the writer’s work.

If an actress improvises a horrible line of dialogue, the screenwriter inevitably
gets blamed. If the editor and director shuffle scenes so that logic falls
apart, it again looks like the writer’s mistake. So it’s no surprise that the
awards for screenwriting inevitably go to scripts that, for whatever reason,
turned out to be really good movies. That is, the movies where everyone else
didn’t screw up.

But should it really be that way? While I would hate to see forests decimated
just to send 30,000 unsolicited screenplays out to Academy or WGA voters, it
would be remarkably easy to post .pdf versions of nominated screenplays online
so that voters could actually read the material they’re judging. I’m calling
my WGA representative this afternoon.

Update: I called. It’s being considered. There’s some issue of possible fairness,
because some writers have "publication rights" on their scripts, and others
don’t for various reasons. But I strongly believe that making great screenplays
more widely available will boost the profile of screenwriters worldwide.

Co-producer credit

Producers, QandA

How did you get co-producer credit on GO? I know it was an original spec.
Is that enough to ask for producer credit, too? Alan Ball got it for AMERICAN
BEAUTY, another original.

I ask because I’ve acquired the rights to a comic book & I plan on writing
the script. The manager I was pitching it to said I’ll "never" get
producer credit because it’ll "set a bad precedent."

–Falzone

I got my co-producer credit on GO for three reasons. First, I asked for it.
No one is going to offer it to you out of the blue. Second, I sold my script
to a tiny company that couldn’t afford to pay me much, so they were much more
inclined to offer me something that didn’t cost them anything – and they didn’t
have any "precedents" to break. It’s extremely unlikely I could have
gotten that credit at a major studio, particularly on my first feature.

The third and most important reason I got the credit was that I did the work.
I was there for every casting session, every budget crisis and pretty much
every frame of film shot. I went through a dozen or more different cuts of
the movie, along with the trailer and the commercials. Being a co-producer
gave me enough authority to be involved in these decisions, but it came with
a load of responsibilities.

Does everyone with a co-producer credit do this much work? Unfortunately,
no. Producer credits are all too frequently handed out.

You’re right in assuming a spec script is a stronger position to be in when
negotiating for credit. As long as you have the option to walk away, a buyer
is more likely to give you what you want. (That’s also how Jessica
Bendinger got her co-producer credit for BRING IT ON.)

Big Fish Release Date Changed

Projects

Now that it’s in the trades, the BIG FISH release schedule appears to be getting closer to final. The movie will be debuting in three cities (New York, Los Angeles and Toronto) on Thursday, December 18th. Yes, it’s odd to open on a Thursday, but RETURN OF THE KING is opening on that Wednesday, and MONA LISA SMILE on that Friday. So we’ll have one day (one whole day) to ourselves.

The movie will expand to fifteen cities on January 1st, then add more screens on the 9th, and finally go wide on January 23rd.