Are there any new stories?

One of the common things my film friends and I talk about are about the lack of new, fresh stories for movies. I rarely go to a movie theater anymore, preferring to wait till the DVD release or getting a screening copy.

I should add that most of my friends are film people, directors, DP's and some writers. To balance it a bit, I have regular friends also, business people, Dan who works the newsstand near me and neighbors.

 One thing in common with all of them is this; there's not a lot of good movies out there anymore. It seems that studios are sticking to the safe method of choosing projects; that means repeating whatever has a big opening. If Fast and Furious makes a ton of money, it's guaranteed that a sequel will do reasonably okay, and a sequel on a sequel will make enough money too.

(Incidently, I could not post "Fast and Furious" in the labels box as it's not allowed)?

And repeating the same plotline for romantic comedies works sometimes but more often than not, unless it has Steve Carrell in it, who seems to always attract an audience. But Seth Rogan is beginning to wear thin on audiences. And Jennifer Aniston, who reportedly made $28 million last year for movies very few go to see, is the luckiest woman on the planet, having no talent whatsoever.

So what's the problem?

I've always thought that having lived as long as I have, and my peers, we've seen almost every storyline, plot, twist, idea, concept and treatment that exists. When you've been on the planet as long as I have, you've seen a lot of movies. And I started at 4 years old.

So it must get harder to come up with a fresh idea that we boomers haven't seen. But the odd thing is that I hear this from kids too so maybe there is a lack of good ideas out there, or at least ideas that a studio wants to take a chance on.

I watched a movie last night called Skyline, which was directed by two brothers who worked on James Cameron's Titanic and Avatar. The CGI was incredible, but there was no real story and no real ending, it just stopped. It had a group of B-level actors hired more for their looks than their acting ability who ran around a condo in the Marina being chased by world class CGI aliens.

It was just like Battle - Los Angeles. And a dozen other movies.

While the special effects were spectacular, you would have thought the two brothers who did Skyline would have asked Jim Cameron for some tips on story. Apparently not.

And guess what, Skyline 2 is already in the works.

One of the creators of the 100-plus cable/satellite channels was interviewed recently and said that their hope for the 170 or so channels was that it would create work and new ideas for niche audiences and would be a wonderful thing.

But what happened instead is that a lot of these channels filled schedules with old TV shows and anything to do with Hitler and of course, more reality TV shows, some of which last a few episodes before they're cut.

In his words, what he felt he and others created was not a new age of ideas and stories, but rather what they created was mediocrity. His words.

Then I saw Midnight in Paris. Woody Allen.

I enjoyed Woody's earlier movies, didn't mind the middle ones and passed on some of the recent ones. Until Paris.

Midnight in Paris was the kind of movie I used to see a few dozen times a year back in the 1970's and 1980's.

It entertained me. I didn't want it to end, I wanted to stay with Owen Wilson (arguably the best stand-in for Woody ever) and I wanted to go to Travelocity and book my flight to Paris immediately.

And I wasn't the only one. In fact anyone I spoke to who saw it had the same reaction. In fact it looks like it might make the most money of all Woody's movies. It was everything, fresh, inventive and charming.

And Woody's 76 years old.

And he had to get European financing because nobody in the U.S. wants to fund his movies.

The LA Times had an article that told how Sony execs "sold" Woody's movie, how they tested and tracked and did all that stuff that shows how smart they are.

But they're wrong. Midnight in Paris is successful because everyone who saw it told everyone else. Word of mouth. The oldest and cheapest promotion you can get. Real people.

And I saw another film I liked, Super 8, which was interesting because when I saw it the audience was almost all between 30 and 40. Granted it was a matinee but the theater was a third full even though the film has played for several weeks.

Then I realized why; it was the exact remake/duplicate of Spielberg's 80's movies, very similar to ET and Close Encounters. Shot for shot directed by JJ Abrams and exec produced by Spielberg.

It was a throwback to the past, thus the audience who were probably kids when ET came out. Now in their 30's and 40's they recognized the nostalgia factor as well. And it was a pretty good movie.

Are there new stories out there. I'm sure there are, but they're harder to get made. InkTip is a website where producers hunt for new material but from what I've seen they want cheap copies of whatever is big now. One producer posted a line that read "Idea must sell us in one sentence and if you can't do that, don't bother". 

Do they really think they'll get that great idea with that posting? You don't get the new Midnight in Paris by demanding that it has to sell in one sentence.

All I want is to be thrilled and excited again, to walk out of a movie with the feeling that I had a good time, and that it made me feel better.

More Transformers doesn't do it for me.

Finding a story that works

I'm gonna go a little further on this topic of ideas, as someone asked for a better idea of what makes a good story.

I find stories everywhere, every day, but 90% of them are gone by the end of the day. Once while traveling in Utah I stopped at a truckstop and as I was looking around I noticed an older man, maybe 70's, working class, putting up a poster for a missing girl. I figured he may have been her grandfather and I was struck by his humbleness, he had that pain of loss that nothing could cure.

I still think about that moment, and I know that someday it will become a story.

On the other hand, I had a chance to go to France on an exchange program thru the WGA and spend a month or so in a lovely villa somewhere north of Paris. But I had to have a screenplay that had a French location. I came up with a half-baked idea of a baseball player who is banned and has to go to a French town to teach French kids how to play baseball.

It was a bad story. No moment like the old man.

Now, I can rattle off bad stories with the best of them, I would say that most of my 34 specs aren't great, but greatness happens maybe once in a writer's life, and if the writer is exceptional, maybe a few more times. My specs are all "makeable" in that they are well written and can be made with real actors and crew.

But the stories to half of them aren't really that good. I don't feel bad because there are a lot of bad scripts that get made anyways, without mine.

In short I, and I don't attempt to say all writers, or even half the writers in WGA, need a story that has a heart to it, it has to have truth in some way. And I don't always get that. Emperor of Mars  has that truth, if you've been reading the blog, you know how many people read it, mostly major studios and producers.

Funny thing is; when I try to write a huge blockbuster, the executives will read it, but then they usually say "that's not the real Jim". And they're right, as much as I hate to admit it, it's the Jim who wants to sell a script that isn't what he does well. They want the truth and even though many execs don't really have an idea of what that is, they know when it's not there.

But truth doesn't always get made either.

My sources of stories are as follows:

Newspapers or magazines
True life stories (including episodes from my life)
Remakes of old movies

Things I see in everyday life or travels

And less common, stories I hear from friends. 

I tend to write down notes in several notebooks, little things that, if they begin to add up I create a file for them and then forget they're there. The reason I don't begin on them is that heart thing, I need to find the heart to it.  

Coming up with a plot is easy; boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl again. A classic formula. Can you name one movie that has that plot; how about The 40-year Old Virgin.

How about The Graduate.

But those are easy to define. How about another one that's a little bigger. 

Avatar.

Sure there's spectacular 3D effects and huge battles but ultimately, it's the boy meets girl formula. 

Dances with Wolves is another favorite of mine, and it's not so much about boy meets girl, although that's also a strong plot gimmick, but it's also about loneliness, best seen in the scene where Kevin dances around the fire by himself, because it takes his loneliness of being all by himself at the little outpost.


These plots can be argued, but for me, that's when I know I have written something good. When it's' got a heart and soul and breathes real life. I've done it a few times, not many, one of which is a script called Side by Side, which is about an Irish hitman sent to bump off a gay union leader in the 1950's and falls in love with one half of a pair of Siamese Twins.

To be honest, that script is so not me in so many ways that people don't believe I wrote it. I don't even know where it came from, maybe from all the things I've seen and heard. And it wasn't my idea, it was a director I know, Paul Lynch, who planted the seeds. But once I began to write it I found the heart of it in the Irish hitman, he was a loner out of touch with the world and was not long for it.

In a way, he was John Wayne in The Searchers, a man who doesn't know how to live in society and is doomed for emptiness.

I find ideas in the LA Times now and then. I found a story on the editorial page years ago about Number 6, who was one of the wolves introduced from Canada to Yellowstone. Apparently he was found dead after several years and it appeared he was probably killed by other wolves. Survival of the Fittest.

But the editorial went on to acknowledge the bravery and strength of Number 6, that he was the major factor in the wolves surviving the first few years. Even rangers acknowledged that he was something special, smarter, quicker and more adept than even some of the humans who tracked him.

I wanted to make that movie. But here's where my ideas begin to wobble.

I lost interest after a few weeks. This is always a bad sign, usually I lose interest in most of my ideas in a day or a few days. But the fact that I created a file was a major step. This would be my Black Stallion.

I knew opponents of the wolves would probably complain about some "Hollywood writer" making up stories about how good wolves are. But I didn't really care, and it wasn't about that, it was about a singular beast on this earth, who for reasons we didn't know, was special.

Over the past 4 years I come across the file and take it out and put it into the "Active" folders and then after a few weeks file it back in the cabinet.

But the fact that it is still there tells me it's still trying to lure me in, to tell Number 6's story to the world.

In fact I might just go open it again this week. I just talked myself into it.


(Monday - more on this subject)

The man with a gold statuette

So far, three failed attempts at making Emperor of Mars. About a year or so later after the ABC Family channel dumped the project, I got a call from an agent friend, Jack Scott that someone had read my script and loved it. People in LA always love things; scripts, films, lunch at the Ivy and many other things. 

By this time, having spent 10 years in LA, I learned what love means; it means they think your script is good but want to meet you first to see if you're a normal person or insane. And it also means they don't necessarily want to buy it, but want to assure you they're in your corner.

At least until a studio or company passes on your script. 

Then they can say they still love it even as they stop showing it around.

Okay, not always, but at least half the time.

Scott said someone named Xavier Koller was interested. More importantly Xavier had won an Academy Award for Best Director for a foreign film. The film was called Journey of Hope and was made in 1990. I quickly checked his credentials on imdb.com and sure enough he was the real thing.

And he wanted to make Emperor.

We all met at the agent's office in Beverly Hills which was once the office for ICM, a major agency and where I lasted 6 months before my agent left to go on his own. But that's another story.

At the meeting was Scott and the agency head, myself, Xavier and a man I shall call Wendall. Xavier was a very modest and engaging person, no real ego and very much a straight shooter. We got along instantly as his idea of Emperor was similar to mine.

Scott took over the meeting first saying I would be paid $100,000 and that the budget would be at least $5 million. Not a huge movie, not even catering on Avatar, but for me, it was the best offer since I wrote Emperor way back in 1989.

1989?

Yes, for the record, Emperor is my one of my oldest screenplays, and now 21 years old. Old enough to get a dry Martini in California.

And it's not uncommon for movies to take this long to get made. Titanic took 12 years, Where the Wild Things Are took 36 years. Yes, 36! Avatar took 15 years, On the Road, the famous 1955 novel byJack Kerouac book is just starting preproduction and has gone through dozens of people over a span of over 50 years.

If you don't have passion for your project, then you're in the wrong business. Because only passion can help overcome those years of waiting.

Our meeting was short and to the point, money would come from the U.S., and from Canadian tax incentives and straight-out, no nonsense real INVESTORS. When the subject came to the investors I asked who they were.

Wendall smiled and said they were from Montreal. Canadian Investors.

My radar went up.

I asked if they would be investing real cash or were they expecting to include the tax incentives that we already had coming from the US investment. Wendell smiled again and said "No", they were not asking for the tax credits.

For a moment, consider this; the tax credit is basically life to Canadian investors. Depending on which province they film in, the return on their investment can be, at that time a few years ago, around 50% of labor or approximately 20% of the total budget. And no Canadian investor will put a dime in unless they get back that credit.

For Emperor that's almost $1 million in a check handed to the Canadian producers after an audit after the film is completed. That's not a bad return. And I couldn't imagine those Montreal guys not wanting that. I would.

But everyone seemed positive and I didn't want to rain on the parade. Seeing as they were mostly Americans except for myself and Xavier who is Swiss, they really didn't know the Canadian system as well as I did.

We all left feeling good, I wanted to believe Wendall so went with him on his promise to deliver clean investors. In the weeks that followed, a budget was made, Xavier and I had story meetings and it all looked good.

Then, just before I was supposed to sign the deal for the script, the deal fell apart. And for the reasons I thought. The Montreal investors wanted and needed the tax incentives as part of their deal. Otherwise no deal.

That left us with a big hole in the budget, mainly depending on the U.S. funding. In the weeks that followed all parties attempted to find the missing  part of the budget with little success. Then I noticed the parties taking longer and longer to return my calls.

It was over.

Xavier called me and we met a few times,  he was ready to bring in German and Swiss money and I do believe he honestly tried. But by now, it was late summer and too late to shoot a film before winter came.

We put it off until spring and spoke to each other now and then. Once in a while Xavier thought he had a good lead but it would fade but our calls continued and now we keep in touch from time to time. He has offered to find financing but I wasn't sure even though I felt  Xavier is a good man and I believed he would do an excellent job of directing.

After all the years I spent with other directors, I decided that, if it's this hard, I might as well be the director. Who better?  And I have directed; 3 movies and a few hundred TV commercials.

Then, just when I least expected it, after another year I got a call from someone else. A former student in the classes I taught at UCLA extension in Screenwriting.

He wanted to make Emperor and was ready to start.

Did I mention he was a commercial airline pilot too?


(Mon: Emperor flies)

There ain't money till there's money

One of my favorite possessions is Robert Bateman's Snow Leopard above. That poor guy standing out on the ledge in a raging snowstorm inspires me everytime I look at it. Because I am like him, alone and on a ledge with nobody to help. Okay, it's not that bad, but when you're trying to make a movie, it's sure close to it.

First lesson about producing is producer does not get money until they get money. Second lesson about producing is that nobody wants to see the producer on set and coincidentally same as the writer. Why? Because in their mind, the writer and the producer's work has already been done. One wrote the script and the other found the money. So why would they want to hang around.


My answer is simple; without me none of them would have a job. And there is much work to do, as a writer script changes and as a producer, making sure the movie runs smoothly and within the budget.

So how do you survive in the meantime? I'm talking bills; food, gas, phone bills, wine, beer, printing costs, travel, all that stuff. Remember one thing; I am not getting paid for one damn thing in my search for money. It all comes from my bank account.

And remember, some producers take years (yes, years) to get their movie going. And they must support themselves by whatever means they can. Sure, the big guys like Scott Rudin and Todd Black and others manage; they're the ones that get offices and staff on the studio lots, all covered by the studios. Of course when they make their movies, and they can do several a year, the studio gets back the rent and staff salaries from the budget.

Then there's the indie producers who, if they've had a reasonably successful film, have managed to save some bucks to carry them over until they get another film.

So how do producers make money?

Your average producer can start off by taking a salary which often is nothing until the budget is raised. Or they can get "seed money" which is basically development money. This can come from a studio or investor to allow the producer to begin setting up the potential movie. The costs covered would be for budgets, artwork, casting director, contacting potential crew, maybe some money for the director to get on board, production offices, secretary, lunch money and a modest sum for the producer to exist on. 

So where do I fall in? 

At the bottom. No seed money, no "housekeeping deal", a term that refers to producers who are given an office on the studio lot and for which they will pay from the budget when they get the budget.

If you're wondering how a studio can loan an office to a producer and then charge it off on the budget, it is a somewhat complicated thing since the studio usually gives the producer the money. So aren't they just charging themselves? 

Yes they are. It's just another way for the studio to make money from themselves and has to do with write-offs and accounting.

I started this project with Shirley last June and still haven't earned a penny from anything on this. You might ask; "how long can Jim do this?"

Simple. Until I get the money.

In the meantime I pay the bills on the homefront and any other expenses that come with developing Travel Day. I manage with a small home office which is comfortable and from where I plan the day. This mostly includes printing, although email has made sending proposals out a lot easier. Then there's lunches with Shirley and other people who might provide needed information and leads to other money.


And as I've said in a past blog, Travel Day is not my only project. The person who works on only one project at a time is steering towards a disaster if the project goes down.

And most indie films go down.


The odds against Travel Day getting made are too big to even mention, not that I'm superstitious. It's just the reality of this  business.

So why do I think we can make it?

Because I've done it before, and I have enough contacts to keep going, and I have a talented director and at least two Academy nominated actors and still the potential of getting Canadian tax shelters from people who also want to make it.

Combine that with a stubbornness to prove detractors wrong (and some of my best friends are) and a shake of the fist at that great God of Film whose job it is to constantly throw obstacles in my way.

Sort of like the Greek gods, they loved to mess up guys like Ulysses.

And again, rewarding myself is vital, it helps to make me feel like I deserve success in spite of what my id thinks, what does it know, it surrenders to any passing hypnotist. One such reward was having my friend Nicole visit and show her southern California in a way few people get to see.

Rewarding is a basic law of writers, you work in a lonely room by yourself for weeks sometime with little human contact except your close family and a friend or two. After a day or two of writing I am ready to get rewarded, even if it's myself who determines that.

It keeps us going.


Producing, like writing, is a lonely job in that you have to do it before anyone else is attached, when the movie is still 100 pages of paper and when nobody gives a damn if you get to make your movie or not.

The old producers from the beginning of movies until the late 70's were marvelous characters who would essentially beat up the studio heads, demand that their movies be made and often lie through their teeth to get a movie set up.

Of course they didn't have market testing and consultants and more co-executives than you can shake a stick at. They went by gut instincts. Put Bogart in a good script and it'll make a few bucks.

Last year, James Cameron showed the movie theater convention in Las Vegas a short 3D version of Avatar. The theater owners smiled and said it was nice, but nobody cares about 3D.

Today they're rushing as fast as they can to build and/or adapt theaters to house 3D equipment.

Once again, screenwriter William Goldman's quote comes up; "nobody knows anything".

Another note; producers don't have a union like writers, directors and actors. If you're in any of the their guilds, WGA, DGA, SAG, then you can't work for free. Producers have an organization but it's not a union. And that means you work for free until such time that you get money for the production and then you take your fee.

Sometimes.

I have seen producers lose some if not all their pay due to cost overruns. After spending months or years trying to raise the funds, a producer can get a bite taken from his or her fee if the production goes overbudget. This happens... I have seen two producers walk away at the end of production without a dime.

It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. And it won't happen to me, because I am getting paid for the screeenplay as per WGA rules. And I'm not taking a producer fee at this level of budget, rather a "deferred" fee which means I get paid some of the profit.

It's known as "monkey points". Translated, it means you have a snowball's chance of surviving hell in getting even one dollar from the distributor or studio. Big stars get gross points and everyone else gets monkey points.

And what if the studio or investor stiffs the producer? He has recourse in court but that can cost money, lots of it if it's a big studio. Hundreds of thousands of dollars. Writers, directors and actors have their guilds (really unions but they like the softer term) wherein the guild goes after the money. And they really go after it with their own lawyers, all of whom are paid by guild dues.

One WGA contract specialist I talked to said they go after producers or studios with a vengeance to which he added "like it was my own money". They are so powerful that they can virtually shut down a company if it has to lead to that.

I know what you're thinking.

Why the hell would I want this job, if you even want to call it a job. It sounds more like punishment.

It's kind of like why I once witnessed a man have a seizure while a handful of people either walked away or just stared and I raced to him, called 911 and followed instructions as to how to keep him from choking until the paramedics arrived.

Somebody's gotta do it.


(Coming next: A new direction)