NewEnglandFilm.com

Screenwriters in New England will have an opportunity to deconstruct the process of writing and marketing their work when Esther Luttrell, author of "Tools of the Screenwriting Trade" and president of Screenwriting Partners Unlimited, returns to Rhode Island in October to teach her two-day intensive Midnight Oil Screenwriting Workshop. Esther gave me a preview of the class, talking talked about the nuts and bolts of scriptwriting, formatting, and marketing from her home in Mount Dora, FL.

TP: What is the state of screenplay writing this minute, as a profession and as art?

LUTTRELL: Director Paul Schrader says, "I could be just a writer very easily. I am not a writer. I am a screenwriter, which is half a filmmaker…but it is not an art form because screenplays are not works of art. They are invitations to others to collaborate on a work of art." That sums it up pretty well.

TP: Are screenplays in general getting better, worse?

LUTTRELL: From all I hear, from friends and colleagues on the West Coast, it’s as difficult now to find a good script as it’s ever been. I think, however, studios once had people in them who cared very much about stories and who understood their audiences.

TP: Are great scripts being passed up due to limited release schedules, or is there not enough to actually produce?

LUTTRELL: I don’t know about "great scripts." What great scripts?

TP: Years ago there was a great deal of press about the lack of good scripts and roles for women. Where have we come with that?

LUTTRELL: Don’t think we came. Or went. I think the circle is still in progress.

TP: Can we assume that what gets produced is the "best" of what’s out there?

LUTTRELL: I’ve actually had distributors tell me, "Let them know that we release the best of the worst," but I don’t know who is a judge of what is best or worst. If audiences go see a movie, it’s "good"; if they don’t, it’s "bad." Does the best get produced in the first place? Isn’t that like, would your tooth hurt if you hadn’t had it pulled 20 years ago? How do we know what we don’t know?

TP: Has screenplay writing become an afterthought to genre formulas and studio competition?

LUTTRELL: Westerns, war movies, musicals–they are all formulas. Since there are only a handful of plots, it’s difficult not to follow a formula–boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl–only today we get to watch him make her pregnant and leave the girl, [and] then the child gets to look for its missing father. But that, too, has become so routine that it’s now a formula. Studio competition? I don’t think any of this is what it’s all about. It’s simply all about a writer writing and then understanding the business of the business they are attempting to crack. Most writers don’t really know the business, and that’s why life is so difficult for them. Once you understand the business, then at least you have a shot at making it.

TP: Does everyone have a story?

LUTTRELL: I don’t know everyone, but everyone I know has a story to tell. Whether or not anyone gives a fig about hearing it is another matter. There are 100 million true stories out there, a famous producer once said, and hardly a one would make an interesting movie.

TP: Are there only a few stories, really, to tell?

LUTTRELL: There are only a few "plots," but there are millions of stories, because it’s the people (the characters) who make the story unique.

TP: What are some of the biggest no-nos that studios see on a day-to-day basis from screenwriters?

LUTTRELL: Biggest problem in studios, to the best of my understanding, is pretty much what it’s always been: writers not knowing their craft and expecting to make millions on their work nonetheless. When I was in development, I heard this one comment from the "men at the top" more than any other: "If they don’t take the time to learn their craft, I’m sure as #%^&*# not taking my time to read their writing."

TP: Do you have any anecdotal material from your years in the business to underscore the lack of preparedness or understanding of the craft of screenwriting on behalf of eager writers?

LUTTRELL: I was once told not to look at any work submitted by a certain agent because everyone was mad at that agent. I countered that it wasn’t fair to the writers to penalize them for an agent’s problems. They argued; I argued. I was arguing because I’d found a script written by the client of that particular agent, and I felt the studio should look at the screenplay. They said no; I bellyached. Finally, I suspect just to shut me up, they said, "All right! Bring in the writer. We’ll meet with him if you say he’s that good." So on the day of the writer’s visit, the bigwigs were sitting in their office, and in he walks, and what does he say before he even says "Hiya, boys"? He says, "Don’t think you’re gonna pull anything over on me. I’ve been around the track a few times." Where is this writer today? Probably out jogging around some track; I’ve never seen his screen credit. Moral of the story: Attitude is as important as aptitude.

TP: What is your favorite screenplay of all time?

LUTTRELL: Probably "Ghost" and "To Kill a Mockingbird." "Mockingbird" is so beautifully written, cleanly written (meaning: clearly stated).

TP: What is the best movie from a writing perspective in your opinion?

LUTTRELL: "Ghost" (to make an audience accept such a premise! Not only accept it, but love it!), and "All The President’s Men." "President" was a challenge for any writer, but William Goldman did the impossible: he took the dullest subject in the world (politics), a convoluted plot filled with dozens of people, and made it into a riveting screenplay which, in turn, was made into one of the finest films ever.

TP: Why is it so easy to come up with an idea or a vignette, and so difficult to extend that idea, say of a person or situation or event, into a full-blown story for a screenplay?

LUTTRELL: Because the writer feels compelled to say everything at once, like trying to cram a pizza into the toaster–it globs out and runneth over. If they would take it one scene at a time and simply write it in narrative, then write the next scene in a narrative form and the next and so on, they could build an entire film in a few days. Once that’s done, then to go in and create the dialogue, and to trim or fatten, is a simple task. A complete first draft can be done in around two weeks that way. Then the real work begins: the rewriting and polishing and rewriting and tweaking some more. That can take months–years, if you aren’t careful. In fact, it’s a well-known fact that a screenplay is never finished. You simply one day decide to let it go and to move on to something else.

TP: Tell me a bit about the principles of technique, perhaps its importance in relation to the story itself. There is technique, and there is story.

LUTTRELL: By technique I’m actually referring to what I just said, about writing the story scene by scene in a narrative form, then polishing it when you’re through. That is the technique for writing your story.

TP: Why is format important?

LUTTRELL: Screenwriting is a business. A surgeon shouldn’t be in the operating room asking for a notepad when he means a sponge. And formatting isn’t just a matter of formatting. Formatting means that the screenwriter understands what he’s asking for and why, and if asked to turn a screenplay originally budgeted at $40 million into a $6 million screenplay, he can do it, because he understands his craft.

TP: Why do you say a screenplay is a set of production notes? Please explain.

LUTTRELL: My husband is a location manager. When he gets a script, the first thing he does is go through it and mark the third piece of information in a slug line, because he knows that’s exactly where he’s going to find the information he needs in order to do his job. Set decorator looks where he or she needs to look, etc. There’s no time to teach a writer a craft he should already know if he’s submitting work for purchase. A screenplay is nothing but a set of production notes to a film crew. Period. Your "treatment" is your creative story. A screenplay is not creative. It is a set of professional notes written to other professionals so that they can take their equipment and/or expertise and translate your written word to the screen.

TP: In your workshop you talk about how to get treatments and scripts read. What is the lesson here?

LUTTRELL: If I tell you here, will [your readers] still feel they need to take the class?

TP: Is it format?

LUTTRELL: The woman who runs the Writers Guild of America’s new writers’ program once said to me, "Tell writers that we open their script to any page at random. If we can see at a glance they don’t know the craft, we close the script."

TP: Is it pitching?

LUTTRELL: That will come after someone has taken enough interest to read something you’ve written. So first things first. Can you blow a deal by not knowing how to pitch? Absolutely. I can personally vouch for that. I blew enough of my own before I understood what it was all about.

TP: Is it story?

LUTTRELL: That’s so subjective it’s hardly worth talking about. If you can put a script in the proper form, and in a way that shows them you know your business, and if you get a phone call after that and make it through the possible pitch phase, then you begin looking for that needle-in-a-haystack producer who wants to spend the next year or so producing your story out of the hundreds of submissions, and using their few millions to do it. Who knows a good story? Hardly anyone. If they knew, they wouldn’t make flops. Get it read. That’s the first step in the right direction.

TP: What is the difference between writing for television and writing for film?

LUTTRELL: That takes a day in class–don’t know how to sum it up here. If people aren’t bright enough to see the difference between "Spin City" and "All the President’s Men," they probably shouldn’t think too strongly about writing for film or TV.

TP: What do producers look for in a script?

LUTTRELL: They don’t have a clue except it should be something like things they are used to seeing so they’ll recognize it. If it’s too unique, it will take a very long time to get accepted, probably. ("Fried Green Tomatoes," seven years; "Driving Miss Daisy," five years; "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest," 12 years, etc.) Someone to convince them they should make the film (not the writer! and not an agent!).

TP: What phrases get one branded an outsider?

LUTTRELL: This is an hour or more in class, but things like a query letter that tells the entire plot, or includes the line, "You’re going to love this" (they’ll hate it every time, even if they like it); "I believe this will outsell the ‘Titanic’" (obviously–why else would you have spent this long to write it?!); cockiness, lack of confidence. ("I know how busy you are, but…" Hey! it’s their job to find great material!)

TP: Thank you so much, Esther, for your time.

LUTTRELL: We’re just grateful you care enough to ask the questions. Hope I was helpful.