SCREENWRITING EXPO 5

Where better to find out about screenwriting than the home of film itself? From 19th – 22nd October 2006, Screenwriting Expo 5 – the largest screenwriting event ever – took place in Los Angeles. Organised by Creative Screenwriting Magazine, the Expo has snowballed with such velocity that a staggering estimate of 4000+ screenwriters travelled down to the event, held this year at the Marriott and Renaissance Hotels near the Los Angeles Airport.

Stand-alone registration usually costs around £50 but this year the Expo introduced the Gold Pass, which for approximately £170 gave attendees complete and flexible access to not only every event, from over 300 seminars, panels, guest-of-honour appearances and workshops led by some of the top writers, script consultants and teachers in the business, but also all the luncheons talks and networking parties. It was also the great for beating all the massive queues!

One of the big draws of the Expo is to be within crotch-brushing distance of Hollywood’s top writers. It's not often you get the truth about the joys and the horrors of the business from those who've been slugging it out in the trenches. The Expo boasts a veritable Who’s Who of everyone who’s anyone in the world of Hollywood screenwriting.

No matter how talented you are there are things you need to know about the inner workings of the entertainment industry in order to identify the opportunities that will enable you to create and build a sustainable career as a screenwriter; so was the purpose of the Expo’s first day, ‘Taking Back Your Career’. An array of industry professionals were on hand to reinvigorate writers to take the leap into a professional screenwriting career with all the tools needed to survive in a competitive and ever-changing environment. Speakers covered many aspects, from how to carefully negotiate with executives, which many disgruntled writers deem to be the industry gatekeepers, to how even a writer needs to invent their own unique brand image.

The most inspiring speakers that day were the writers themselves. Mark Cherry (Desperate Housewives) explained his writing career began as a partnership – one form of brand image – but when it ended, in spite of his credits, including sitcom The Golden Girls, he had to start from scratch. His career remained in a dead-end for years until he came up with Desperate Housewives. Even then, numerous networks actually passed on the concept until ABC finally took it onboard and produced a hit, which goes to show that talent is not enough; a writer really has to be in it for the long haul. Shane Salerno (Armageddon) emphasised how every writer has to start on something commercial before they can play with the big boys; John Logan’s first script may have been a forgettable Horror called Bats but he went on to write Gladiator, The Last Samurai and The Aviator. And remember Francis Ford Coppola started in soft porn!

The Expo’s long weekend began for real on day two. Both hotels were jammed with eager students rushing all over to see the many screenwriting gurus on hand to teach everything about the screenwriting craft at a mere £2 per class. For beginning, advanced and professional level writers, they covered a dizzying array of subjects from Evan Smith’s 'Comedy Writing: Make It Funny From The Ground Up’ to Wendall Thomas’ ‘Writing Subtext’ to ‘The Perfect Pitch’ with pitch king Ken Rotcop.

During the lunch break from the classes, we visited the trade show where over forty vendors had set up booths to display various screenwriting books, magazines and other resources to ease the writer’s burden, including John Truby’s Blockbuster software, the non-profit organisation Screenwriters Network and even details on how to write the next Christian epic – all at discount prices!

In the afternoon, we attended a seminar on ‘How To Grab (or better rephrased as how to ‘seduce’) The Reader In The First 10 Pages’ with Michael Hauge, one of the most sought after lecturers and script consultants in the US and author of 'Writing Screenplays that Sell'. Many writers are sceptical of these so-called gurus and we asked if writing could really be taught? Hauge answered with an overwhelming yes but … that but being the hard work, courage and commitment that each writer must bring to the table. He explained, “Writers want the myth about inspiration because it’s an easy place to hang out. If it’s all about God shining on you, you don’t have to do much, you don’t have to read scripts, see movies, practice, write several drafts – you’ve either got it or you haven’t – that’s the lazy man’s way to artistry.”

Afterwards we put the same question to Pamela Jaye Smith, author of Inner Drives. She felt there is a lack of awareness that screenwriting is a serious profession, “Moviemaking is like this - you can walk in and say, ‘I’ve been watching movies all my life and I love it so I just know that I can write the next feature for your company.’ Try and do that in an airport. Go up to American Airlines and say, ‘I’ve been flying in airplanes all my life and I love them. I know that I can fly this 747 even though I’ve never been at the controls because I’ve got passion.’ Of course they’re not going to let you fly the plane. But where are the engineering standards for art?”

The message came over loud and clear: screenwriting is a craft requiring dedication: at least five pages a day, six days a week. Not that these eager Expoers were slacking off; lectures ran from 8am every two hours until 8pm, with exhausted pupils struggling to stay awake, even for the nightly networking parties at the Marriott’s poolside.

The vast majority of attendees had only one agenda at the Expo: to sell their scripts. Held at the Renaissance, the Pitching Meetings gave screenwriters the chance to pitch to over 60 A-list Hollywood producers and agents (for £13 per pitch). This was not just a publicity stunt; these industry insiders were seeking features of all budgets. At a previous Expo, one lucky pitcher from Texas sold his reality television concept to Chameleon Entertainment.

On day three even more people flooded the Marriott for the Expo’s biggest event: Pixar Storytelling. From 10am until 7.30pm, these fully packed seminars (no problem for the Gold Pass holder!) featured the key writing staff of Pixar Animation Studios, behind groundbreaking wonders like Toy Story, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles, glad to bestow their experience and advice on cinematic storytelling. Academy Award-winning writer Andrew Stanton, who has been at Pixar since Toy Story, admitted that the team’s work environment is unlike any other studio in that there are no financial pressures to impose on their creative freedom (“We live in make-believe land”) but Pixar Storytelling is not restricted to animation writing, for the principles remain the same for any screenwriter seeking to craft the Four-Quadrant masterpiece.

Stanton’s keynote address, titled ‘Understanding Story (Or ‘My Journey of Pain’)’, was undoubtedly a great comfort to aspiring screenwriters to know that even the most experienced and successful writers can still get things wrong. He revealed numerous naïve pitfalls and confusions the Pixar team encountered on many of their projects, all very hilarious in hindsight, which included their original conception of Woody in Toy Story (assuming his arc would go from selfishness to selflessness, Woody was depicted as a spoilt bully, devoid of any sympathetic attributes) and Billy Crystal the original first-choice to play the voice of Buzz Lightyear. Ultimately, Stanton urged the writers in the room to “Dare to be stupid”; It’s certainly a good reason for writers to pitch any idea they have no matter how flawed it may be – how else can a person learn if not from their mistakes?

After a disappointing boxed lunch, Mike Arndt, writer of the Sundance success Little Miss Sunshine and recently hired by Pixar, took to the stage. Again, he was an inspiration to every writer in the room, as someone who struggled for almost seven years to get his film made, whilst making a living as a reader. It is crucial for screenwriters to read and analyse screenplays, both successful and terrible ones, in order to learn the craft. The analytical skills Arndt’s managed to attain from all his reading formed the basis of his lecture, ‘Endings: The Good, The Bad, And The Insanely Great’. With a close look at the climaxes of Star Wars, The Graduate, and his own Little Miss Sunshine, he showed that when all three stakes of conflict – external, internal and, most importantly, philosophical – are presented at their most negative it is the sudden reversal of all three that makes the ending so insanely great. Arndt was modest about whether Little Miss Sunshine has an insanely great ending but the audience more or less gave that answer with their wild applause at the end of the presentation, certainly the highlight of the Expo.

Besides Pixar Storytelling, other seminars continued to run, as well as the free industry panels headed by executives and producers, including a panel on ‘Writing The Low-Budget Independent Film’. Most writers, frustrated by the big studio system, turn to writing low-budget, where Horror has always been the most sustainable business, which has worked for Roger Corman all these decades, and evidently so for the writer-producers on the panel.

With so many screenwriting hopefuls at the Expo alone, it is clear that only a few will be fortunate to break through. Peter Dekom, entertainment attorney and author of ‘Not On My Watch: Hollywood Vs The Future’, was only too keen to stress how incessantly difficult it is for a filmmaker to realize their dream of acquiring a theatrical distribution deal, let alone making the money back from the release. But as new forms of media garner public attention, especially a recent phenomenon of the ‘webisode’, so will there be a demand for content; the writer has other avenues to pursue in their career, if not the big screen.

Fast talking pen smith William Martell notched up his writing record, 40 scripts, of which 18 have been made, by writing straight for video and cable. Brad Schreiber, VP of Christopher Vogler’s consultancy company Storytech and author of 'What Are You Laughing At?', says that some writers, tired of life as a cog in the studio’s machine, have gone to write for the independents, the cut in pay compensated by the gain in artistic satisfaction. “The good thing about the independents is that they can’t afford to rewrite you. They say, ‘Go back and do it again’. As a screenwriter you help to support them, it’s like a family.”

If the classes and panels were not enough, the Expo also had their ‘Guests of Honour’, including Oliver Stone, David Ayer (Training Day) and Tony Gilroy (The Bourne films). But the one everyone was waiting for was on day four: screenwriting legend William Goldman, creator of classics Butch Cassidy and Marathon Man. A man with nothing left to fear, Goldman, who famously declared that in Hollywood “Nobody knows anything”, continued his trademark cynicism by cautioning new screenwriters, “You have to give the stars everything”, and joked with his long-time friend Gilroy, who shared the stage with him, about how the current studio system might treat his work: “Michael Bay’s Marathon Man! … This time with five Nazis!”

Goldman feels the phenomenon of the big opening weekend has killed the quality of movies. In his heyday, films opened in fewer theatres but for longer so they could build up by word of mouth and find their audience. Nowadays, films open to mass publicity on a huge number of screens at once; as long as it opens big, the quality essentially doesn’t matter.

The experiences at the Expo had a mixture of enlightening attendees with invaluable tools but also depressing them with the harsh realities of the industry. Like Hollywood, we wanted a happy ending, something to re-inspire us, and so it came down to Gilroy to give the final word: “When you come to these seminars, learning the craft is a way of demystifying the screenwriting process so you can see how everything works mechanically. But then you have to in a sense ‘remystify’ everything to keep the magic in the writing – it’s the ghost in the machine.” To an extent, he was echoing Stanton’s mantra, “Dare to be stupid”. Ultimately, learning all of the theory will count for nothing if the writer doesn’t have the discipline to put it down on the page.

Fortunately, the Expo was not just all theory; it also gave attendees the chance to put all that learning into practice in the ‘Creative Screenwriting Open’, the biggest on-site, timed screenwriting competition in history. 1000 contestants were given just 90 minutes to write a scene with a predetermined plot. The scenes were then judged on structure, originality, dialogue and style to decide who would advance to the next round. The two finalists’ scripts were performed live by actors at the Expo’s closing ceremony and the winners were selected by an audience vote, netting a $5000 cash prize and exclusive representation with the Hollywood View Agency.

For all the tough talk of the competitive nature of the film business, we felt a tremendous sense of community amongst the writers in LA. The Expo fulfils an important function in bringing us comrades together. As Bauer said, ‘The goal was to inspire screenwriters and get them away from their computers.’ Several teachers said they love the Expo because they catch up with so many friends and colleagues.

For all those who didn’t get to the Expo, DVDs of some of the lectures are available at the CS website. Ultimately, though, you had to be there. A visit to LA is an essential part of any screenwriter’s education. We may not like it but Hollywood is the centre of the world’s mainstream film industry and must be understood. If you made cars you would go to Detroit; if you’re in the business of screenwriting you need to be at the centre of the screenwriting business.

In the US, the films made by the studios and independents total around 500 per year. Not that all of these are good. We’re talking quantity here, not quality, but it means work for the writer with the resilience to see it through.

Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio, the writers of Shrek and Pirates of the Caribbean (and its billion-dollar grossing sequel), described the five stages in the screenwriter’s life: The Apprentice, in which one needs to study the craft and can live anywhere; The Big Break, the first time you must come to LA; The Journeyman Writer, when you need to visit Hollywood for regular meetings; The Master, you should now live there so you can go on to the set and have some control over your movies and finally, The Reclusive Genius, when you can live wherever the hell you want (apparently Zemeckis spends a great deal of time on his estate in Jamaica).

They compare being a screenwriter and not living in LA to having a long distance relationship: it may be workable, even exciting, at first but ultimately you will want to be part of your loved one’s everyday life for better and for worse.

So whether you go for a week or forever, you must see LA and the Screenwriting Expo next year will be an excellent place to start. Get your pitches ready, stock up on notebooks and prepare to have experiences and make friends who will stay with you for years to come.

Information about the Expo, including DVDs and podcasts with audio interviews can be found at:
http://www.creativescreenwriting.com