Content for Jason
We are all carbonated drinks, all of us shaken up, our thumbs pressed down.
My old friend Monte Williams has been a reporter, a television writer for ABC, NBC and DreamWorks, a campaign press secretary for former Texas Gov. Ann Richards, a sports radio talk show host, a steel mill chemist, a substitute teacher, a cook, a tennis instructor, and a failed PhD candidate. He has very little cartilage in either knee, and can play most valved brass instruments. Williams grew up on the Mississippi River near Army Corp of Engineers Lock & Dam #21. Every school, park, mall and subdivision in his hometown was named after Mark Twain, Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer or Becky Thatcher. That’s Monte below, looking flummoxed sitting between Mayor Ivy Taylor of San Antonio and Mayor Steve Adler of Austin during a tense moment in the armistice talks to end the Great Breakfast Taco War of 2016. Thanks to Monte’s steady hand and renewed vigor, the mayors signed the I-35 Accords without firing a single shot or breaking a single egg.
by Monte Williams
It’s not every day that the respected writer Jason Stanford invites someone to contribute to his newsletter, and it certainly didn’t happen in my case. No, I had to beg to scrape together a scant few words, desperate to address a topic quite familiar to me although, and I didn’t tell Jason this at the time, I was fine with any familiar topic, or in a pinch an unfamiliar topic. Because amid this pandemic, I find I have succumbed to the communal pent-up need for self-expression, hopefully with a wide audience to drink it in, maybe even monetize it. I can’t spend another day passively reviewing marginal online facts. I don’t care what the internet says, vinegar and cast iron skillets and planking can’t be the answer to everything. I now see that we are all carbonated drinks, all of us shaken up, our thumbs pressed down, waiting for the right moment to spray.
I hope the topic I’ve chosen hits a chord. In fact, I’ve programmed bots to send me countless emails which allow me to claim I’ve received countless emails which are variations of the same basic question: With all this time, where do I begin if I want to write a screenplay about all of it? A screenplay from my own point of view, whether I appear as a character or not, a script steeped in my own unique experience, a script that allows me to answer questions and share the essential, universal truths I hold within me. I feel I must shout, must scream that vinegar and cast iron skillets and planking can’t be the answer to everything.
A few words of warning before we start: distribution models and streaming services, network stagnation, the rise of apps and algorithms, brick-and-mortar theater seats, how projects are filmed and performed remotely and at a safe social distance, all these components are moving targets because of the pandemic. What the industry needs this week may entirely change in the blink of an eye.
Not to brag, but let me show you how industry pros deal with it. My writing partner Fred Ellis and I have two projects under consideration, and given current pandemic conditions neither script as written would be lensable. But look at the subtle changes we’ve made to keep these potential Emmy®-winning projects on the rails.
First is an example of a simple change in the scene’s description. The original scene is described as:
INT. DAY – AUSTIN – COURTROOM
The raucous, packed courtroom...
Now, see if you can spot our elegant adjustment
INT. DAY – AUSTIN – COURTROOM
Odd as it seems, the courtroom is nearly empty…
From our other project, here is an example of changing dialogue to make it more filmable
EXT. DAY – 1477 A.D. – FRENCH COUNTRYSIDE
The vast Frankish army approaches the castle, then deploys into battle formation.
CASTLE ARCHER #1
My God! What manner of trickery?
CASTLE ARCHER #2
The new Frankish array. King Lothair’s personal design.
See how each man stands three armlengths apart?
It takes years of practice to pull off these ingenious screenwriting maneuvers. But don’t fret--give me five minutes, right now, and I’ll have you backspacing and deleting with the best of ‘em!
STEP ONE—have an odd number of main characters. There are nine Supreme Court justices for a simple reason: No tie votes. Ties are really boring. Two people are in a house during the pandemic. They agree? They disagree? They agree on some things and disagree on others? This is no reflection on interesting twosomes like John and Abigail Adams but generally two people locked up in a house for the whole script is like two-and-a-half stars tops unless some supernatural element is bolted on and I’d avoid that because no one wants one-and-a-half stars. And no dual/multiple personalities or suddenly-found diaries, either. I’m telling you, don’t under any circumstances have only two people! Make it three, which opens up the world of alliances, back-channels, the cold betrayal, the sniveling suck-up and all the rest. And maybe consider writing it so two of the characters are direct competitors coming from the same place somehow, from the same profession, or they have some shared familial meltdown, maybe some common criminal expertise like forgery or running a super PAC. Anything but that bolted-on supernatural bullshit. There, that advice alone is worth nearly enough to get you WGA health insurance for a couple of consecutive fiscal quarters.
STEP TWO—When you reach the inevitable point in your script where things have irreparably broken down, when timelines have become snarled and expository flashbacks make up eighty percent of your page count, then promptly bundle up your index cards and emotional plotting charts and universal truths and witty asides and consider the fact that your story might work really well on a cattle drive or the International Space Station.
STEP THREE—Learn to draw, or even better, let software do it for you. Animation is the future, at least until there’s a vaccine. Take that, you spikey viral debris! The cells in animation are different, they’re not the kind of bat and pangolin and tiger and human cells you’re used to fooling, you corona bitches!! You can have one animated character cough like hell on the other, no masks or Purell, your characters can kiss and grope and twerk and dutch-rub and wipe each other’s noses, everything. And if you learn to animate on your own, you’ll avoid those pesky notes from the studio or network telling you that 1) your script will be animated and 2) here are the lovable housepets/mythical vertebrates/intergalactic aliens that we’ve assigned to each of your characters. What? My stuck-at-home main characters are a crime-fiction novelist, a U.S. Forest Service smokejumper, and a Michelin-Star executive chef humiliated upon discovering that the rating comes from a tire company. But no longer, hisses the studio. Your characters are now a moose and a squirrel and a dog. Or an owl and a pussycat and a dog. Don’t let that happen! Don’t let NBC Universal or Netflix or HBO push you around, rob you of your soul because they don’t care, heartless corporate MBA automatons aren’t capable of reading let alone caring, they have no souls, instead they devour the crushed souls of writers with the same relish that stab-you-in-the-back actors gobble mind-altering supplements! Well anyway, my point is take control of your own story. Plus, animation can really help if you decide that your story needs to be on a cattle drive or the International Space Station.
The final advice I can give is to make sure the script has hope. Plenty of hope, enough hope to rub off on the audience. You can write hope, act hope, animate hope, but whatever you do, don’t be hopeless.
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