Dolphin Tale vs. Soul Surfer

Is it just me, or does anyone else find it odd that there were two films last year about amputees in aquatic settings? Both based on true stories, and both aimed at a PG/family film audience. Neither one manages to climb above sentimentality, but both did well at the BO and are still selling to the masses in the home market. There must be something about losing a limb in the water, so maybe it’s worth thinking about for a minute.

DOLPHIN TALE is a nicely structured script that weaves together the story of a boy who heals his father-loss wounds through the act of helping to heal a maimed dolphin with the secondary tale of his cousin, a champion swimmer who comes back from the war without the use of his legs. In this story, a prosthetic is ultimately designed by Morgan Freeman’s character that allows the dolphin to swim again.  I loved the casting and the gentle interplay of storylines in this movie. I laughed and cried and enjoyed the ride even though I was never really surprised.

SOUL SURFER tells the story of a teenage girl on the pro surfing circuit who loses her arm to a shark and decides that she will keep on surfing and competing anyway. She is offered a prosthetic, but decides against it, choosing instead to re-learn how to surf with only one arm. Through sheer determination and many lopsided push-ups, plus a bit of retooling of her board by dad, played by Dennis Quaid, she barrels her way to the top again.

Both of these scripts, especially Soul Surfer, tend to “water down” the subject matter and neither one presents the concept of loss in all of its true complexity. But there is still something they can teach us. And it’s more than just the healing powers of love, although both films do a nice job of getting that message across, too.

Prosthetic or no prosthetic, the situation writers can take away from these stories remains the same: crafting a great script means making our hero lose the very thing they need in order to get what they want. For true story screenwriters, this is a wake-up call. If you concentrate on true loss in your true story, taking away whatever it is they want and sometimes everything they need as well, your audience will be captivated.

For more insights into the adaptions of these true stories, click on the links for each film above.

J. Edgar Doesn’t Quite Mesh

Saw Hollywood’s latest biopic the other day: J. Edgar. Hmmm. I guess aside from the obviousness of the makeup and the slightly melodramatic performances (sorry, Clint), it was pretty well done. The structure is classic Hollywood formula, but with a twist. We are shown the rise and fall of Hoover’s career, but these scenes are framed and interspersed with glimpses of the end of his life, using the specific framing device of a manuscript being written about it all. Structurally, it worked, but I’m still not sure what the point was, other than rendering his homosexuality with grace and elegance.

One thing that impressed me was the interweaving of historical fact with personal narrative. What we can take away from this film, both as viewers and as true story screenwriters, is the importance of portraying a historical figure in the context of his society. A screen story always ultimately comes down to just one person, a main character who wants something. But the simultaneous development of historical fact in this script – the Lindberg baby, Al Capone, Nixon, et. al – not only adds texture, but also shows Hoover (Leo DiCaprio) as a product of his environment, and suggests that the societal pressures of communist threats, gangsters, and kidnappers all combined to force the creation of a crusader.

While the shape of the plot helps to infuse Hoover’s story with the history that helped shape him, the theme (the new evils of society making it necessary for a crusader) is nearly invisible. A big film like this one will often carry its message tucked between what the character wants and what they need. What Hoover wants is to stamp out the criminal element and make America safe again. As for what he needs, as the song goes, he needs to be needed. I guess the problem with this story is that what he wants and what he needs really never intersect or mesh in any way. So we are left with two separate stories, rather than one coherent whole. But then again, maybe that disconnect is a good fit for this man, whose public persona and private life were about as far apart as they could be.

Come with a Concept, Leave with a Logline

And now…let’s pause for a word from our sponsor:

Shaping True Story into Screenplay Workshop:
Come with a Concept, Leave with a Logline
4-Hour Workshop in Venice, CA
Sunday, February 19, 2012 1:00-5:00 p.m.
Only $40.00 with advance registration!

From THE KILLING FIELDS to THE SOCIAL NETWORK. From APOLLO 13 to 127 HOURS. From THE AVIATOR to THE FIGHTER. Films based on true stories have been entertaining audiences and wowing critics for decades.

Many people have a true story they think would make a great movie. But not everyone can execute the screenplay. The trick is to get beyond the facts of what happened and find the larger, emotional truth of the story. The goal is to capture the dramatic essence of reality and transform it into art.

Shaping True Story into Screenplay Workshop:
Come with a Concept, Leave with a Logline

We all know that a crisp and catchy logline can be a significant boon to pitching and shopping your screenplay to agents, actors, directors and producers. But a well-thought out logline can also help you write a great screenplay.

Whether you’ve written just one page or 120, this workshop will show you how to focus your autobiographical or biographical idea into its own unique dramatic structure. You’ll take home the tools to keep you on track as you write, revise and market the screenplay.

The workshop will cover:

• Finding the metaphor of your personal journey

• Translating real life into dramatic action

• Developing engaging characters from real people

• Shaping the plot along a story spine

• Choosing what to leave out in the interest of story

Join us to discover new ways to shape the nebulous clay that is real life into cinematic pages. Start with an idea and end with a solid logline and a vision for your story.

SPACE IS LIMITED! REGISTER NOW TO RESERVE YOURS

Sunday, February 19, 1:00-5:00 p.m.
Electric Lodge, 1416 Electric Ave, Venice, CA 90291

http://www.electriclodge.org/

“Shaping True Story into Screenplay is a clear and accessible guide that turns the basics of screenwriting toward the task of telling one’s true story.”

– Mitchell Levin, Senior Story Analyst, DreamWorks
“The book offers how to plot, build characters, pace conflicts of real life, invent a frame to propel the story, and create scenes that are metaphors for real events. Her gift of simplicity and personal humility is given to all who wish to share a true story. The book is easy to process, inspiring and encouraging. It is like having a personal coach along the way.”

- City and Mountain Views, Denver, Colorado

“Candace Kearns Read has a knack for whipping a weak script into shape. She is tough, but in the kindest way. This book will be an invaluable resource to all writers and directors.”

- Jeff Woolnough (Director, OUTER LIMITS, THE DON CHERRY STORY and CELINE)

“Having relied on Candace’s instincts, judgment, and clarity, I can testify that she is the absolute best, and consider Shaping True Story Into Screenplay a great gift. So will anyone who reads it.”

- Robert Palmer (Manager of Anthony Hopkins, Faye Dunaway, and Dick Van Dyke)

“Candace Kearns Read is an extremely talented screenwriter and story analyst. Anyone intending to develop material based on ‘real life’ will benefit from the wisdom and experience found within these pages.”

- Ben Press (Buchwald/Fortitude Agency)

“Candace is a highly regarded script analyst and writer. Top agents in Hollywood wouldn’t let their A-list clients make a move on a script until Candace signed off on it with her insightful, smart and savvy analysis. In this book, Candace impeccably shares her great skill and creativity to help screenwriters, and expertly enables you to develop your greatest possession into a compelling screenplay, by guiding you to write what you know best: Yourself.”

- Tony Greco, Screenwriters Online

Cost: $40.00 in advance, $45.00 at the door
** Workshop fee includes a copy of the book Shaping True Story into Screenplay

To Register: Click Here

If you know someone who might benefit from this workshop, please forward this e-mail.

Shaping True Story into Screenplay
Candace Kearns Read, MFA
www.shapingtruestory.com

Extreme Screenplay Scenes

Over the weekend, I had the chance to watch the illustrious documentary filmmaker Alexandre Philippe (THE PEOPLE VS. GEORGE LUCAS) deconstruct a scene from a classic must-see film THE PUMPKIN EATER. In the beauty parlor scene, Anne Bancroft’s character is accosted by the woman sitting under the dryer next to her in a riveting and revealing liturgy of worship and loathing.

The scene, which is more of a monologue actually, is a prime example of the power of extremes within scenes. Robert McKee in Story discusses this in his approach to Story Values. He says, “binary qualities of experience that can reverse their charge at any moment are Story Values.” For example, love/hate, justice/injustice, life/death are all story values. Similarly, Aristotle in his Poetics asserts that “the proper magnitude is comprised within such limits that the sequence of events, according to the law of probability or necessity, will admit of a change from bad fortune to good, or from good fortune to bad.

Simply put, a well-crafted story takes us to emotional extremes, and most often from one extreme end of an emotional spectrum to the other.

When we are developing our own story into a screenplay, we need to take it to extremes. We need to keep asking, how far can I go with this action? How deeply can my character sink into this emotion? Of course, we have to be mindful of melodrama, (avoiding it at all costs), but that’s not really what I’m talking about. I’m talking about justified drama, “according to the law of probability or necessity” that presents realistic reactions to pressures that are extraordinary.

One way to work on this in your development process is to graph the emotions, conflicts and plot points out on an Opposite Chart. Take each emotion your characters are going through and ask yourself what the opposite of that would be – this will help you find the arc your character needs to ride throughout their story.

For instance, if the aspiring rock band feels full of hope and promise at one point in the story, and the opposite of hope is a sense of defeat and despair, you’ll need to ask yourself how, in the plot, you can take your characters there, to the extremes of those emotional states.

Why is any of this important? Because it’s the highs and lows of a story that produce catharsis, and which, in the end make your story worth seeing.

Want more ideas on how to write a great screenplay based on a true story? Grab a copy of my book Shaping True Story Into Screenplay from Amazon.com.

Brighton Beach Memoirs in Colorado

Saw this Neil Simon classic over the weekend at Evergreen Players @ Center/Stage, and what a great show. A triple-Tony Award winner who has also written over fifty produced screenplays, Neil Simon is iconic, and known for his autobiographical work, including the play and screenplay for Chapter Two, and the trilogy of his youth, which consists of Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, and Broadway Bound. This play was also adapted into a screenplay, and the 1986 film starred Jonathan Silverman.

The Evergreen, Colorado production of Brighton Beach Memoirs

It’s playing now through November 6, and is definitely worth the trip from Denver, Boulder, Wyoming, or wherever. The cast deftly captures the tensions of Pre-War II Jewish ghetto life in an angst-filled, tangled web of siblings and cousins, kids and parents. The play smoothly imprints upon us the importance of enduring family, no matter what. Tony Cantanese has laid an artful hand on the play as its director. The scenes flow beautifully from moment to moment and level to level, in a presentation that is as physically layered as it is emotionally complex. The casting of Ken Paul as the father Jack is dead on, as he carries a heaviness like lead in his chest that emanates the worries of the world. This is not far from the truth, since beyond his immediate concerns of feeding the seven mouths under his own roof, he anxiously awaits the outbreak of WWII, knowing that dozens more relatives might arrive from Europe any day, fleeing Hitler.

Brighton Beach Memoirs is About Family

The meaning of tight-knit family is redefined in the course of the play, which takes place over two evenings around dinnertime and transforms a disparate collection of souls searching for fulfillment: two teenage brothers and their two female cousins of similar age, the boys’ father, mother and her sister, a widow. Cramped into a dining room too small for them all, they are inescapably wrought into a band of true kin, and recommit to standing by one another through whatever adversity may come.

The Cast of Brighton Beach Memoirs at Evergreen Players@Center/Stage

All of this hilarious and heartbreaking drama is tied together by the blazingly brilliant performance of Jackson Garske as the pre-pubescent, constantly fantasizing, Yankees rooting, downright horny 14-year-old Eugene, whose worship of his 18-year old brother Stanley is tested but not damaged by vice, desertion, and deceit. Michelle Wright, as the boys’ mother, is a fiery, beautifully illogical, sadly tough and poignantly funny martyr. While Garkse keeps us giggling with his endearing asides to the audience (writing his memoirs and letting us in on it), Wright delivers the resonance and depth to the action with her seriously neurotic but unwavering devotion to every member of her family, like it or not. Rounding out the cast with admirable performances all are Joe LaFollette as Stanley, Pele Capparo as Blanche, Jacqueline Archdeacon as Nora, and Arianna Sutton as Laurie.

The set design by Peggy Morgan Stenmark offers seamless placement and details, drawing us in to first the period and the place, then the mindsets of these people and their world. This is a production that resonates with its theme, “The world doesn’t survive without families,” and I think Neil Simon, who actually lived in Denver from 1945 to 1946, would be proud.

How do you Slice it? Using Theme as a Guide for Screenplays Based on True Stories

Had a great time in Boulder this weekend at the Moondance International Film Festival. It’s always gratifying to meet talented screenwriters who are working on making their stories as compelling as they can be.  During our workshop on Shaping True Story, I once again asked writers to think about the moral or message of their story. It was interesting to see what people came up with. One writer discovered that his story’s theme was that sometimes it’s tough to tell the difference between what’s true and what’s not. I’d have to agree with that! The process got me thinking, though, why is it that I’m so stuck on this idea that when you’re writing something based on a true story you need to get clear on the theme first? I mean, why not develop the character first, or hammer out a plotline?

Here’s why: When you are writing from real life, you already have a character and a plot. In fact, you probably have too much of both– you have a whole person and their whole life. What we need is the slice, the angle, the poetic moment found within a frame. The tough part is choosing that frame, that small portion of the truth that you will convey in a dramatic and cinematic screen or teleplay. So, my suggestion is to get clear on why you are telling this story, really spell out the message for yourself, and then use that as a guide to develop a unique main character and storyline which emulates that controlling idea.

Often when we’re writing, the toughest part is knowing which direction to take. With real life, it can be overwhelming.  But if you know your theme, you’ll have a focus and it will give you direction. You’ll know where you want the story to go, and your writing process just might have a lot more flow.

Screenwriting as Catharsis

Webster defines catharsis as “purification or purgation of the emotions (as pity and fear) primarily through art.”

Those of us who have a burning desire to write a screenplay based on something that happened to us sometimes feel like the experience was just too important NOT to write. We’ve lived through something that has meaning and which others might be affected and moved by. What we sometimes forget is that the process of writing that story will also add meaning to our lives.

In the process of writing and rewriting this screenplay based on real events, I always find that I am transported to a place where I can see my own life objectively, and as I re-experience the ups and downs of living through it in retrospect, I gain much needed perspective. I am also able to let go of hard feelings, achieve some distance, make sense of it, see the plan, and move on.

It’s not that we write these things as a therapeutic exercise, no, we write them because we truly believe in their entertainment value. If we are going to write a great screenplay, we have to take our audience on a journey which culminates in a catharsis, right around that climactic turning point. So, the act of writing it means we have to “go there.”  In the process, the unexpected bonus we end up receiving is the great gift of our own growth. We get wiser and stronger in the course of crafting and honing this story into screenplay form.

Sure, a writer of purely fictionalized material also experiences catharsis and grows and learns and changes through the course of each script that he or she writes. But as writers of true story, we immerse ourselves in a sea of overwhelming personal experience, and by navigating the choppy waters of shaping that experience into dramatic and cinematic form, we just might experience a catharsis that can change our lives.

Based on a True Story: THE HELP

The Help

The film THE HELP, based on the novel by Kathryn Stockett, is coming out next month. (They’ve bumped the release date up from 8/12 to 8/10). This is a great book, and promises to be a good film as well. It may surprise you to learn that although this is a fictional work, it’s all based on true story.

What’s really interesting about this project for the true story screenwriter is that this is a work of fiction based on a true story AND it’s about a work of fiction based on a true story. In the story, the heroine is writing a book about real women, but she has to fictionalize it just enough to protect the innocent and the guilty. This storyline itself is invented, but the characters are all based on real people from the author’s childhood.

In my opinion, this is a story worth reading and seeing. It’s about people of different races and classes coming together in a spirit of unity and love. It’s about how we help each other as human beings. Cool.

Stockett discusses the intersection between her own personal journey and the work of art she created in

this Q & A

Tate Taylor (Winter’s Bone) wrote the screenplay and directs. He is a childhood friend of Stockett’s, and they were in close collaboration on the screenplay. Check out the LAT article about the politics behind the process.

What it all comes down to is that even though real life makes bad drama, our true stories can be shaped, developed, reinvented and re-imagined to create stories that move and affect others. What version of your truth will you come up with? Just imagine.

Writing True Story

In the last chapter of my book, Shaping True Story into Screenplay, I talk about the importance of taking your time in revisions. Whereas the first draft can be, and often should be, written quickly in order to access your subconscious, the rewrite happens in stages and layers and sometimes takes an excruciatingly long time.

This is what I’m experiencing this week, as I tweak and polish, hone and refine. I am putting the final touches on the book, which will cover such topics as:

• Clarifying the theme of your true story
• Finding a metaphor to use as a springboard for the development of plot and character
• Shaping the plot along a story spine
• Inventing a frame to contain and propel the plot

We all have something unique and important to share and contribute with the world. At the moment, this is my contribution, and I’m happy to report that it really, truly, is almost done!