Collaboration... from the screenwriter's POV

FADE IN:

INT. COMMERCIALIZED COFFEE SHOP - NIGHT

Two young artists command a table normally reserved for six. One is tall and softening from too much time away from the gym. He is in his late-20s. This is JEREMY. His cohort, sipping on a fresh latte, is the energy of the room. Focused, determined, early-20s, this is COLE.

Two LAPTOPS are opened before them. We join them in mid-conversation.

COLE
That's exactly what I was thinking.
And how about we try...

JEREMY
And then we just move this here,
take this over here... yeah... that's
gonna work.

That's one way to look at it. Jeremy here... musing on the symbiotic relationship that is the writer-director. In any film, there is a person (or people) who pen the script. The screenwriter(s). And then there's a director. The one who has to take the pages and put them onto the screen. And both sides of the coin have their own vision of what it will look like. One creates. The other interprets.

And I imagine there are varying levels of interaction between writer and director as you move through the pantheon of film. There are those that option a script, sell it, and step back as new writers come in to rewrite, reinvent, and depending on your viewpoint, destroy or improve your work. And there are those films where the screenwriter stays very, very involved. And perhaps, a few instances that fall along the in between.

Cole recently posted on this topic and brought up an idea that I'm used to seeing in theatre, and excited to see happening in film. Collaboration. As he mentioned, the script has been tightened and trimmed, and in parts, it's already evolved from its staged predecessor. As I began working with Cole and John on adapting the play, we spent hours on Skype, over email, taking up workspace at any local coffee shop that served anything worth drinking, and began to answer some of the big questions that were never fully tackled in the play. I won't give away state secrets here, but rest assured that moments of frustrating ambiguity you might have experienced if you've seen the play have been addressed to offer a more complete story arc that's more suited to film. And that was born out of many, many talks between the three of us.

Going into this new partnership, I (the writer) took a moment to think about how Cole (the director) might approach this. And then I realized two things. I'm not a mind-reader. And he just blogged about it. So, I stopped and thought about how I've directed others' writing in the past.

When I direct for theatre, I aim to realize the script as I feel the writer intended. And that choice effects how I direct actors to emote, how the pacing flows, and everything down to a costume or prop selection. And then I have to wonder if it's what the author even intended. In 2007, I directed a show called "Darkside". And it was well received. Awards were bestowed from the people in Columbus and Ohio who bestow such awards. And then, I went to see that very show, directed by the very man who wrote it, Ken Jones. We clearly had different visions for that story. Some similarities were there—mostly in the set and costumes and the number of actors on stage (actually, even there we found a way to differ).

And so I think, how great would it have been to have had Ken there to bounce ideas around with and get him to talk about why this character does what he does and all that. Make it a dialogue. The kicker? We're now connections on LinkedIn and he sent me three of his plays as a gift.

Point is, there's a want in any artist to produce the best art. Creating a conversation about a script between writer and director is one way to help ensure that happening. So, that brings us to the now, as the screenwriter (me) and the director (Cole) sit down and begin the task of polishing Separation Anxiety to the best it can be.



That's us. Being collaborators.

I was reading an interview recently featuring screenwriter Christopher Wilkinson, who co-wrote Nixon and Ali, among others. And in talking about his writing relationship with Stephen Rivele (Nixon, Ali) he made a wonderful observation about collaboration which I think is at the heart of how we are approaching the final stretch of rewrites for Separation Anxiety: "And we have absolutely no ego about the writing process; we will go with whoever has the best idea, scene to scene and line by line. If we don't agree, we go with whoever can make the most compelling or passionate case for a character, story turn, whatever."

I value Cole's artistic opinion and he value's mine, so I'm excited about the end result that sits upon the horizon. I'll be honest, Separation Anxiety is intensely personal for me, and so I won't be surprised if there are moments (as Cole mentioned) where I dig in my heels. And those heel-digging nights will be for those compelling cases that Wilkinson talks about. But in the end, I will always pen the words that serve the story in the best possible way. That is my ultimate goal with anything I write. What serves the story and the characters? And this is the one thing that any screenwriter and director need to agree on. Making the best art. Serving the story.

Thanks for reading. Coming up later in the week is a special guest posting from our Sound Designer, Jordan Fehr. Until next time...

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Answer #1... When the words aren't making sense

Jeremy here. Answer time. A few days ago, we got a question and Cole was nice enough to field it my way as it had to do with how we approach things in the script that aren't working, or maybe won't ring true at second blush. The short answer? We fix it.

(insert canned laughter here)

And that's where rewrites come into play. For example, if this post were a sitcom, I'd know that the "fix it" line bombed a little bit and I would promptly strike it out of existence. Since this answer deals with rewrites, I posted it AFTER my normal weekly blog, which dealt with creation.

Rewrites. Some writers hate them and other can't get enough. I'm of the latter variety. I want the script to be in top-form. As Cole mentioned, there was a massive rewrite about a week or so ago. Now, that sounds drastic. The story is still very much intact. It's just trimmed. It got liposuction—trimming out the fat to such a degree that it dropped nearly 30 pages. 30 pages that weren't working.

How do I know it's not working? I read it. Over and over and over. And then I have John and Cole read it. Over and over and over. And everyone makes suggestions.

Each time we read the script, we look for the best and the worst of everything. I need to make sure I keep the good stuff, but I also want to continually rid the script of flaws... connect the dots... and make it, you know... boss. So we look for dialogue that's klunky. Or perhaps some scene doesn't work because we moved it or rewrote its lead-in. And any number of things might work in draft 4 but not in draft 31.

The movie script has been changed in numerous ways from its staged counterpart. The screenplay went through several drafts to get itself adapted. And there are scenes we couldn't do on stage that we're free to do now.

So we keep rewriting and polishing. And then there's more reading. And it keeps getting better.

Thanks for the question!

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Topic #1: 'From Stage to Screen'

Before I begin, I realized in the wake of Cole and Jeremy's introductions that I didn't formally introduce myself. What a travesty!

In brief: my name is John Klein, and I'm the producer and director of photography for Separation Anxiety. I work in Chicago mostly as a freelance cinematographer and all-purpose crew member, and have written a few screenplays here and there as well, namely our flagship effort Glass City, on which I also served as cinematographer under director Cole Simon. I am, in all ways, a nerd, a geek, a lover of film and filmmaking in all its forms. I love the melding of the art and the science of movies, and I am blessed beyond words to have been able to do this for a living for close to three years now. It's better than a real job, and it's better than a hobby. It's my life.


Now, a brief word about what is to follow on our blog. Cole, Jeremy and I are avid bloggers, but Glass City Films' first attempt at a blog for Glass City was a bit of a failure. In its wake, we decided that the reasons were (a) a lack of scheduling and upkeep, and (b) a lack of an overarching goal for the blog. What were we trying to achieve with it?

So, with that said, our goal for this blog is not just to give you an insider's perspective on the process of making Separation Anxiety or to offer the usual newsfeeds and needs of this film production, but to give you the chance to see what makes this production unique and to learn about the craft of filmmaking at all levels from people who are, for all intensive purposes, both very professional about our craft and yet still relatively new to several elements of the process.

And, to facilitate more of a regiment about blogging, we're going to have a different topic each week, which the three of us will tackle on a weekly basis - me as a DP and producer, Jeremy as a writer and director, and Cole as an actor and an artist.

Thus, this entry's title...


"From Stage To Screen"

Separation Anxiety began as a script for the stage. Jeremy will talk a great deal about the experience of watching his work being performed, much as Cole will talk about the joy of acting as Bailey in the theatrical production prior to his work in the film version. My only experience with the play itself is in my initial reading of the script, when Cole first sent me Separation Anxiety and said it might make a good movie, something on our low-budget scale that we could pull off in the wake of Glass City's successful production.

I fell in love with the script instantly. As a play, the three "plotlines" of Jess/Mr. Palmer, Quinn/Lily, and the flashbacks were written to take place on three areas of the stage, the latter being center stage to separate Jess and Mr. Palmer's dialogue in Bailey's house from Quinn and Lily's dialogue in the airport. It's a clever conceit - had I seen it, I'd probably talk more about it - but what drew me in was the endlessly quotable lines and the strong attention to character. And, in spite of its dialogue-heavy format, it felt visually exciting. Shots and scenes formed in my head simply from the play script, and in the transition to a screenplay, my first edict to Jeremy was that he find a way to merge the strengths of the stage with the potential of the screen.

The first draft of the screenplay had its flaws - far too much dialogue and a tendency to veer into inaccessible prose - but the opening six pages became a stellar montage of character development and imagery that hooked me from the get-go. So many ideas emerged in that first draft which Jeremy had already thought out from concept to completion - constantly cutting back to Bailey readying himself (for his death? for something else?) in his room, having Bailey's "ghost" interject into flashbacks now and again, sound bridges and images and cross-cutting - that I was overwhelmed with excitement for the next version.

New drafts are on the way, and I'm already giddy with anticipation. But the challenge of bringing this script to the screen is a monumental one, and I've seen so many terrific plays turned into boring and humdrum movies. For example, The History Boys is a wondrous script marred in the film version by an inability to let close-ups and visuals speak for themselves. I hear similar criticisms about Doubt and Frost/Nixon, both Oscar contenders this year. Even book translations (i.e. the first two Harry Potter films, Atonement, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and countless other adaptations) suffer in the same light: Don't use a paragraph where a sentence will do. In film, visuals sometimes speak volumes where words would have to suffice on the stage. There are greater options for scenery, mise en scene, and even blocking. To wit, the advent of sound in filmmaking made silence all the more effective. Use it.

I've already rambled more than you will probably read for an initial blog entry on any topic, but I look forward to hearing thoughts in the comments below and with Cole and Jeremy's subsequent entries on the subject. Until next week for me, friends!

Regards,
John Klein
Producer/DP, "Separation Anxiety"
www.windycitycamera.com

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