Hollywood or NYC?
by Jaden
I want to be a screenwriter; should I move to LA or NYC?
This is a great question that was privately submitted to me on which I will expand for you.
If you have zero experience working in the entertainment industry, it might be good to move to LA or NYC, whichever is easier for you, so that you can learn and understand how things work.
Starter jobs that are plentiful and somewhat easy to acquire are background acting, production assisting, and office assisting; with these, you can get your foot in the door and observe how it all works, while getting paid.
NYC specializes in live theatrical performances and fashion. LA specializes in television and film. You can find all sorts of entertainment opportunities in both cities, of course. You can also find those opportunities in most other major cities as well.
Get involved where you currently live!
There is no reason you should not get involved in entertainment immediately wherever you currently live. There are always local commercials being made, which means writing, producing, and acting opportunities in your town.
Before I moved to Hollywood, I had already done a lot of work in several smaller cities: modeling, acting, wardrobe, filming, script supervising, and so on.
Entertainment is being made everywhere!
If you are not in the USA, you probably have a major city entertainment hub in your country that is creating your visual entertainment; you can move to that city and get involved.
From any place in the world, you can make your own movies or write stories and upload them to the Internet. You don’t have to work with anyone in particular or move to any particular city or write in any specific language. You can do it right where you are in whatever way you are most comfortable.
It is better for non-native-English speakers to go to their local sources for their careers in entertainment because there is too much competition in the U.S. amongst good qualified native English writers.
If you are not a United States citizen and English is not your first language, but you have a unique and compelling foreign story that you want to sell to Hollywood, here are two options:
1) You could hire a native English-speaking writer to ghost write your script for you.
2) If you excel in English, you can write the script yourself and then seek a native English speaker to proof read it and edit for you.
Do not submit a poorly written incomprehensible script to Hollywood; it is a waste of your time and the script will not be read.
More important than where you live is your talent as a writer and your state of mind.
For screenwriters, the most important thing is that you write a great script, right?
You should be a good story-teller, have a strong command of the English language, and understand screenwriting format.
Writing an excellent script requires a lot of time, therefore, you will need some kind of financial income, food, shelter, a social network for sanity and stability (i.e.. being near your friends and family), and most importantly, inspiration!
Join the rat race or create your own magical world right where you are?
Considering that you may find no support, comfort, or inspiration in LA or NYC, to write great scripts, you do not have to move to those cities.
Sometimes, moving to LA or NYC will actually stymie your ability to write well because you are starving and miserable. The majority of people you meet will consider themselves screenwriters or actors, whether they are actually doing it or not, and they may secretly despise you for calling yourself a screenwriter or an actor.
LA can be a soul crusher and siphon your inspiration, so once you have your connections made and understand the business, it might be good for you, as a screenwriter, to get out! Go to a happy, secure, and beautiful place where stories flow out of you like rivers to the ocean.
If you are shooting for millionaire commando status, then yes, it may be good to live in or near NYC or LA.
If getting filthy rich and making blockbuster Hollywood films is your goal, you must be able to get to NYC or LA within a few hours of flight or drive to take meetings on short notice.
Agents and producers greatly dislike drop-ins, so you are going to have to set appointments by calling and letter anyway, which gives you the time to arrange getting there. Even if you live in LA or NYC proper, it is going to take you an hour to get across town, so flying in from a neighboring city, and taking 2 to 5 hours to get there, really is not a big difference.
For the big budget films and television: working and aspiring actors, TV writers, producers, editors, cinematographers, agents, et cetera, will have daily interactions that require being available for work and meetings, therefore, living in LA or NYC for those careers is usually necessary. This is not the case for screenwriters.
Your happiness and the quality of your scripts are what is important for a successful career in screenwriting.
Screenwriters do not have to be in LA all the time. Go out into the world and be inspired!
Screenwriters can make opportunities anywhere and can go to LA or NYC on an as-needed basis.
Sunday Picture Post 40 – Open the Box !
SCREENWRITING TIP OF THE DAY: OPEN THE BOX !
Want to start a new script, but not sure where to start? Open the box!
What is inside your box? Why is it there? How did it get there? What memories do the inside items spark?
For today’s writing exercise, open your box and come up with a movie idea complete with characters, motivations, and a story structure. You can either use the image I have provided to create your story, or come up with your own real or imaginary box.
You have a week to be done with it by Sunday. It can be just one paragraph or a whole script, whatever you want, but start writing! No excuses. You came here for inspiration; you got it, now write!
HOW TO PARTICIPATE IN THE SUNDAY PICTURE POST
For The Sunday Picture Post, we flip upside-down the saying: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Thousands of words are great if you are writing a novel, but if you are writing a screenplay, you need to do the opposite and be as concise as possible.
For your screenwriting practice in brevity, in the comments section, using the image above, please post one or all of the following:
- A title for this movie
- 1 word describing the theme, mood, or scene
- 1 sentence to describe the scene
- A pitch to sell the entire movie
The more colorful and creative you are, the better! Use any genre.
A good screenwriter is laconic, using a few words to say a lot.
South Park Motorcycles Episode and Writing Humor
South Park: The F Word, Episode 1312 (2009)
The TV show South Park is continually and always bizarre — I love it. The topics that Trey Parker and Matt Stone put out are shocking and hilarious, so wrong and wonderful with their spot-on social commentaries about the ridiculousness of society.
The F Word episode caught my eye for two reasons: 1) I have written a TV sit-com pilot episode called The F Word, totally different topic, and 2) this episode makes fun of motorcycle bikers, a near and dear part of my life.
In this episode, the South Park boys want to officially change the dictionary meaning of the derogatory word “fag” to not refer to homosexual people, but rather to motorcycle riders for their loud and obnoxious behavior.
If you like dark humor, sardonic wit, and cultural satire, you can learn to cultivate your humor for screenwriting from the very best and watch years worth of South Park episodes for free at SouthParkStudios.com!
Writing the Antihero
Making Your Audience Love the Bad Guy
by Jaden
What is an antihero?
An antihero is a villainous main character of your story, a protagonist who is not quite as nice or good or perfect as the archetypical hero. An antihero has serious personality flaws and often may be the stereotypical bad guy, a downright villain, but for some reason, we like him or her. Antiheroes are often criminals and we see the story from their perspective, which causes us to relate.
An archetypical hero may be beautiful, strong, noble, rich, blessed, intelligent, lucky, or have super powers; an antihero will try to get those things in corrupt ways.
The envy and hate a person may feel towards the hero may create an antihero, a less fortunate person driven by sin, basic instinct, or need to ignoble actions.
The antihero can be the underdog who becomes top dog by unscrupulous methods.
A most famous example of an antihero is the character Tony Montana played by Al Pacino in Scarface (1983), a poor Cuban guy with a crazy temper who climbs up to great wealth as a drug dealer, pictured above with his foxy wife played by Michelle Pfeiffer.
Why do you have to make your audience love your antihero?
Your audience has to love your antihero or your script won’t sell. Movies with fully detestable lead characters do not sell.
People do not want to be angered or depressed by a movie, they want to feel charged and rejuvenated. When people go to see a movie, they want relief in some sort of way. If your lead character only makes people feel uncomfortable and frustrated, or they do not relate to him or her at all, you will have a flop of a movie.
The antihero serves the common people by taking action where the rest of us don’t because our good morals and laws prevent us. The antihero reacts to his anger about perceived injustices that may have to do with money, crime, war, bad manners, or relationships, whereas the average person will do nothing. We want this bad guy to succeed because we are secretly angry too, but we can’t do anything about it.
The antihero serves a very important part of society, filling a void in our lives, the void where we feel powerless. The antihero makes us feel like something right is being done to equalize things, even if it is wrong.
The antihero is our hero because he is doing what no one else wants to do and he takes all the heat for it.
How do you write your antihero into your script so that your audience will love him or her?
By telling the story from your villainous antihero’s perspective, the audience is forced to relate with him or her on some level. You must show why your antihero became the way he did, why he does what he does, and give the audience a reasonable answer to which we can all relate.
The antihero must have traits to which the audience can relate. The antihero may have a family he is trying to save, protect, or support. The antihero may have basic needs that everyone has, trying to make money to eat and support himself. The antihero may have a love interest who is his weakness — we can all relate to being in love.
No matter how bad you make your antihero, as long as he or she has personality traits and life circumstances to which the audience can relate, you can write a successful antihero.
The motivations of your antihero have to be something to which your audience can relate. Wanting money, power, living comforts, and love are some of the most common motivations with which we can empathize.
As the antihero is doing bad things, he must be punished, so don’t forget to punish your antihero. If he doesn’t get punished, then he is just another bad guy, an antagonist, and your audience will hate (and envy) him for getting away with it, which is not good if you want to make money as a screenwriter.
The audience must sympathize with your antihero.
When you write your story for your antihero, imagine that the audience is a court jury and you are the antihero’s defense attorney. It is your duty to convince the jury, that despite all the bad things your client has done, he doesn’t deserve to be punished. And why he doesn’t deserve to be punished (even though he will get punished) is because your jury audience can relate to the motivations of why he did what he did. If you can’t make the jury understand his perspective, you have just another loser creep on the stand that everyone wants to give the death penalty, and that my friend, is not a good antihero and not a financially successful movie either, and you have failed as a defense attorney and as a writer because your client is just so bad and inhuman that no one can relate to him, nobody likes him.
Ultimately, your lead character, whether good or bad, has to win a popularity contest. The majority of people must like him. That’s what movie sales are, they are the public saying, yeah, we love that one, we love that guy. Blockbuster hits are the winners of popularity contests. Love it or hate it, that’s just the way it is. The most popular guy or gal is not necessarily a good person, but it is the person who is most liked.
A well-written antihero will evoke thoughts from the audience like these :
That’s a bad guy, but I can understand why he does what he does. I wouldn’t want to be on his bad side, but I would sure like him on my team. I secretly love him and sometimes wish I was him, but I probably wouldn’t admit that to anyone.
Who are your favorite antiheroes?
Please share in the comments section.
Like this article? Other ScreenwritingforHollywood articles you may like are:
Turning Bad Guys into Good Characters
15 New Script Reviews About 15 Old Movies
A Discussion of Unusual Movie Scripts and Marketability
by Jaden
When you write, it is good to keep in mind what is the most important outcome for you: a unique exciting groundbreaking script or a mass appeal marketable movie? True originality and marketability often do not cross paths.
The movies listed here are examples of good scripts that are hard sells because they don’t fit into the blockbuster movie box.
Bubba Ho-tep (2002)
Really cool and weird movie Bubba Ho-tep was made by writer-director Don Coscarelli, derived from a short story by Joe R. Lansdale. A friend wanted to watch this movie and showed me the cover that looked like some silly zombie movie (not my favorite genre), but since all of his other recommendations were great, I agreed to watch it. 
Pleasantly surprised, this movie was bizarre and awesome.
There is an old guy who thinks he is Elvis (maybe he is, maybe he isn’t, we never really know, the story is plausible). He is in a rest home where old people are, of course, dying. The movie shows us Elvis’s world from his demented old man perspective, which therefore makes things mysteriously fantastic, yet believable.
The mystery to Elvis is: how are all these old people dying? The answer he finds is that this cursed mummy who was accidentally dumped into a nearby river comes to feed on them, sucking out their soul. What better place to eat souls than a place with helpless dying old people, right?
Although it sounds strange, the clever script does a great job of taking us into the mind of looney old lonely people in retirement homes, and for that it is actually a beautiful moving story about getting old, being ignored by loved ones, and dying. The senior citizen issues are explored in an unusual and fun way for young or old people.
Why is Bubba Ho-tep not a blockbuster?
- Genre distortion.
Phil the Alien (2004)
Rob Stefaniuk writes, directs, and stars in the lead role as Phil the Alien. You know what? He does such a good job of writing for and being an alien that I think Mr.Stefaniuk actually is an alien.
I won’t spoil any of this strange story by telling you too much. It involves a local bar, a drunk band that goes nowhere, government secret ops, an alien of course, some local hicks, and certain hilarious inspirations by C.S. Lewis’s book that was made into the movie: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), as well as other famous books and movie references. That’s all I am going to tell you.
This script is really weird. People on IMDB have rated it rather low, 5 out of 10… boring people! Probably not the kind of people with whom you want to go out and have a raging good time, because that is what this movie is: absolute silliness. The movie appears to be low budget: please don’t let that turn you off; it is a goofy entertaining good movie script!
Why is Phil the Alien not a blockbuster?
- Low budget and very specific humor style that does not appeal to everyone.
The Dead Girl (2006)
The Dead Girl, a relatively unknown movie, stars none-other than the very well known actor Brittany Murphy who recently passed away at 32 years old due to cardiac arrest on December 20, 2009. It is always eerie the irony of what actors play in their movies and what happens to them in their real lives.
I think Christopher Reeves playing Superman and then becoming quadriplegic is one of the worst Hollywood ironies of all time. Click here for an interesting article about the Superman Curse. I watched Superman as a very little girl and just loved him.
Totally getting derailed on movie roles irony… sorry.
You don’t know that Brittany plays the dead girl until the very last sequence of the movie. You don’t even see her until the end due to the script’s unique story structure.
The story opens with the story of the very odd homebody girl who finds the dead girl and dates some creepy local guy who is intrigued by what she found. Then we cut to various other people who have something to do with the dead girl: the coroner who thinks it is her long lost missing sister, the murderer’s wife, the prostitute friend of the dead girl, the long lost mother, the dead girl’s daughter, the murderer, and so on. Each person has his or her own personal relationship with the dead girl that takes place within their own tale.
It is a fantastic script, twisted, and dark.
I don’t think you can have a runaway blockbuster movie hit with this type of writing structure because it is too disjointed for most people to enjoy, but it is a good study for you to open your mind to other possible story structures.
The Dead Girl is written and directed by Karen Moncrieff and has an all star cast: Giovanni Ribisi, Rose Byrne, James Franco, Mary Steenburgen, Toni Collette, Marcia Gay Harden, Josh Brolin, Kerry Washington and more.
The Dead Girl is not a horror movie, as the title may suggest, it is a murder mystery drama that takes you on a psychological journey through the emotions and effects of death and murder on people.
Why is The Dead Girl not a blockbuster?
- There is no singular hero to follow and the story structure is broken up into fragmented vignettes.
What all of these movies have in common is that they are not classic Hollywood writing styles and they do not immediately jump off the shelves to most people. It is hard to market them because they are different from the norm and what you expect; they don’t easily fit into one genre category.
My movie examples above are not “high concept” films.
High concept films, you can sum up in one word or one sentence, like: Titanic or Snakes on a Plane or Armageddon, the title says it all. With blockbusters like these, you know what you are going to get, you can expect to have a hero, some background history, and closure at the end of the film.
With the films I have highlighted in this post, the titles are just one portion of the unexpected things you will experience.
It is good to watch movies like these to understand and recognize the difference between blockbusters and the financially less successful films. Pay attention to story structure, topics, and dialog; how you choose to tell your story determines the financial success of it.
The further away you get from basic story-telling structure, one genre, and appeasing the masses with a widely accepted humor, the less money you can expect to make.
Every now and then, there is someone who breaks the mold, like Tarantino, but Tarantino is extremely well studied in movies, he purposefully and intelligently plays with genres, humor, and he always has a hero.
Like this topic?
You might like these Screenwriting for Hollywood articles:
When Science Fiction Becomes Reality
If You Like Mexican Emo Wars, You Will Also Like…
Spank David Lynch, That Naughty Boy
Subscribe
-
-
Content RSS