IFH 773: How to Master Screenwriting in Hollywood with Mick Hurbis-Cherrier
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You can still make this year count with a new path forward. Visit ChoosePrimavera.com and enroll tuition-free in grades K to 12. You are listening to the IFH Podcast Network. For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting podcasts, just go to IFHPodcastNetwork.com. Welcome to the Indie Film Hustle Podcast, episode number 773. It's kind of fun to do the impossible. Walt Disney.

Broadcasting from the back alley in Hollywood, it's the Indie Film Hustle Podcast, where we show you how to survive and thrive as an indie filmmaker in the jungles of the film biz. And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, welcome to another episode of the Indie Film Hustle Podcast. I am your humble host, Alex Ferrari. Today's show is sponsored by Rise of the Filmtrepreneur, how to turn your independent film into a profitable business.

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If you want to order it, just head over to www.FilmBizBook.com. That's FilmBizBook.com. Well, guys, today on the show, we have filmmaker and bestselling author Mick Herbus-Sherrier.

Now, Mick is not only an award-winning screenwriter working on multiple projects currently, but he is also an instructor, a teacher, and the best-selling author of the textbook, Voice and Vision, A Creative Approach to Narrative Film Production. Now, in this conversation, Mick and I go deep into what it's like to be a screenwriter, what

truly is what the business is all about, his kind of horror stories, what mistakes he sees young screenwriters make, his ups and downs, and so much more. So without any further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Mick Herbus-Sherrier. I'd like to welcome to the show Mick Herbus-Sherrier. How are you doing?

I'm doing great and you did perfectly. I thank you. I mean, it was, we were, we were, I wanted to make sure I got that name proper and didn't massacre. So I'm glad I did. How are you doing? I'm good. I'm very happy to be on your show. You know, I've seen a number of your podcasts and I think that we have a,

Kind of a similar mission. You know, we love films. We love good films. We want to make sure that good films continue to be made. And so we're informing people how what is a good film? What makes a good film? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, exactly. And it is a mystery because they're they're becoming less and less nowadays. It's just it's not as easy to you know, when I was growing up in the 80s and the 90s,

I mean, there were so many masters at work during that time period. And many of them are still at work. And every time I'm like, oh, that was a great movie. I'm like, who made it? I'm like, oh, someone from the 80s and 90s. But not to say that they're not amazing artists doing work today. I mean, look at Chris Nolan. I mean, look at Fincher. I mean, these kind of guys who came up – well, Fincher came up in the 90s, but –

But Nolan and those kind of guys, they're newer generation. There's so many great, great filmmakers and screenwriters nowadays. But it's harder to find. But it's harder to get them made. And I think that's the biggest problem is there's a lot of great scripts out there, but there's not a lot of great scripts that are being given the opportunities that they were given in the 80s, 90s, and even in the early 2000s. Yeah, that's true. I mean, I think it's much harder –

Obviously, it's harder to sell a spec script these days. Even if you have some sort of property that's an interesting property, what I've noticed recently...

is that so much depends on the team you put together. Because that makes a producer, that makes a production company feel more comfortable and more safe, that this is a team that has a track record, they know how to put this thing together, they recognize good stuff, I like the stuff that they've done, and they don't necessarily feel like they're taking a big chance.

Because, you know, everybody's job all the way up the ladder is on the line. It's always to say no. Their job is to say no. As much as they might want to say yes, their job is to say no because the whole town is run by fear. The entire town. Although, interestingly, you know, I fairly – just before COVID hit, I went on a pitch session to a number of different production companies. Yes.

Their job is to say no. They don't like to say no. They don't. They don't. Because they don't want to be the person who said no to the thing that got made. So they're very – always very positive. And then you kind of lose them. I'm telling you –

Alex, I was at a pitch session and it went well. We pitched, there were three of us pitching. It went spectacularly. It was for a television program. And the producer jumped out of his chair and said, okay, what we need for you guys, what we need to do is get money for you guys to write the pilot and get a Bible together. And I was like, my God, is it true? The first person we went to, we sold the show in the room.

And so I walked out and I talked to the person I was writing with, who's much more experienced than I am in some of these things. I said that that was an amazing response that he just said yes right away. He said, oh, no, that's not a yes that we don't know what that is. No, I mean, I've never L.A. in Hollywood in general. It's an art form of how they say piss off.

I mean, it's really it is it really is artful in the way that they give back negative critiques. But they do it in such a way that you don't even know that you're just being told to just screw off. It's it's what because they don't want to be the person. So this is the two fears. I don't want to be fearful enough to green light this and then it bombs. I'd lose my job.

I don't want to also pass on the next big thing when they find out about it and I lose my job. So it's all about losing my job. So what's the bigger fear? And generally speaking, the bigger fear is to produce something that bombs because that's more concrete. So that's why they say no, but they don't want to say no. They want your project to be the next big thing. They want it to be like a billion dollars and to launch a franchise and

and all that kind of stuff. But that's just the way the world works. But yeah, you know, it's kind of a vice. It's kind of a squeeze for them because, you know, they need new content. They need new makers. They need fresh ideas. They need people who, um,

are good writers. They need these things. It's the lifeblood of the industry, but they are, you know, afraid of making some wrong choices. So that's sort of the thing that keeps people going is that, you know, they need, they need talent. But I would, I would argue that everything you just said really focuses mostly on television now, as opposed to features. Yeah.

Features, if you notice, are not new ideas. They're all based on existing IP, especially at the studio level. Indies are different, but indies are going the way of the dodo. They really are in many ways. It's not as robust of a business as it was in the 90s because in the 90s, I was speaking to some filmmakers from that era and they said the reason why my film got picked up was because

There was a business starting to come around, VHS, home videos, then DVDs. There was an actual industry, a business way to make money with films like Slackers and Clerks and El Mariachi. That infrastructure doesn't exist now because there's so much competition now for it. For features, I'm talking about. But for television, it's all about original ideas. It's completely about original ideas. Wow.

Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting because there's no there's no way you're going to get get it. If you're not a known writer, there's no way you're going to get a commission for a feature film. It's just not going to happen. But and and and, you know, there's no way you're going to get money for a pitch or a treatment or something like that to develop it in television. That still happens because it's the Wild West. Like which of these, you know.

streaming platforms are gonna survive. And in order to survive, they need new content, they need original content. And so they're out there looking for that stuff. And I also think, Alex, a young filmmaker these days or a young writer, somebody who wants to be a writer or a filmmaker does have to think globally in terms of cinema. Because there's still those pathways for interesting feature films happening in international co-productions.

And sometimes that's the avenue to open some doors in Los Angeles, even if you want to go there. You know, I have a very good friend, Sami Zawabi, who is a Palestinian-Israeli, fantastic filmmaker. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.

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done here. Nobody would pick it up. And then he went to France and French producers were interested. They got together with, let me see, it was like France, Israel and Luxembourg. And that was the co-production. That film did extremely well. It's a wonderful film. It's called Tel Aviv on Fire.

Fantastic film. And now, you know, he when he goes to Los Angeles, people know him. He's created his own. I'm not going to say brand, but he's sort of developed a profile that people now can recognize and feel comfortable with. So and he's on his way.

Yeah, and that's another thing. A lot of people think the only place you can make it is Hollywood, but you're absolutely – they would be wrong because there's such more of a global marketplace than it was in the 90s and the 80s and the 90s. Even in the early 2000s, it wasn't as a global place because the internet hadn't really taken hold yet.

That's right. And it really – and I know people listening like a bunch of old farts talking here. But I remember logging into Netflix and looking at what they had to stream. I'm like, oh, this is all garbage. Like it's just complete – before they had anything. It was like, oh, it's complete garbage. I remember –

to go down Google and thinking you can't trust any of this stuff. Yeah, exactly. This is all horrible. This is horrible. Yeah, so but because of the infrastructure that has been built over the years now with the streaming services, the world, look at Squid Games.

I mean, look at a show like Squid Games that showed up. I haven't seen a Korean-based television show ever in my life. And I only watched it purely because I kept hearing everybody talk. I'm like, did you see Squid Games? Did you see Squid Games? I'm like, what?

What is this? I got to watch it. And it became one of the biggest shows in Netflix history from Korea, not from America, but from Korea in Korea. This is just after what I'm, I can't remember the title off offhand at the Spanish heist film. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, yeah, I know what you're talking about. Yeah, there was that. Yeah.

Again, you know, out of nowhere, not particularly popular in Spain. Right. But a huge hit for Netflix. Another hit. So there's a lot of those kind of things. So international – and there's also opportunities internationally that they're just not here in the US because it's just everybody's here. Right.

But if you go to France and have a France-Israel-Luxembourg co-production, the amount of competition you have in Europe is a lot less than you have here to make films, especially of a certain kind of genre and so on. But I was going to ask you, how did you get started in this insane business? Yeah.

Well, get started in like I sometimes I feel like I have three full time jobs. You know, I love writing screenplays. I write screenplays. I don't relish, you know, sacrificing a lot of things for years in order to break in. You know, I also.

Since the time I was a kid, I wanted to be a college professor. That was a goal of mine. Even before films, that was a dream of mine. My father was a college professor.

My mother was a teacher. My sister's a teacher. My brother's a teacher. You know, so it's in the family. So I always wanted to be a professor and cinema. And of course, my third job are the textbooks, which I sort of stumbled in more recently. But I really love writing these books. It's really a lot of fun.

but, um, cinema kind of came into my life very early on. I was a, I'm an American citizen, but I grew up overseas. I was born in Izmir, Turkey, and I've been in, uh, Columbia. I've been in Puerto Rico, really where I grew up was Singapore. And, um, so two things. And so this is like from the age of eight to 13, and this was most of the seventies that I'm, I'm living in Singapore. And so, um,

The Shaw Brothers were all over the screens in Singapore. And I, my brother and I would just go to Shaw Brothers productions every, you know, every

Kung Fu movie that came out, we were there and we had we could not speak Chinese at all. Did not matter. You know, so I mean, you know, all those films, you know, with those great titles like Blind Swordsman, The Blind Adventure, The Sentimental Swordsman, The One Arm Swordsman, you know, Five Deadly Venoms, Five Fingers of Death, whatever. Amazing. Yeah. And of course, and of course, any.

any Bruce Lee. Sure. Of course. Of course. So that, that was like one side. And then on the other side, being an American and having never lived in America, I've never, never been to the United States. I was obsessed with like, uh, uh, absorbing any American culture I could. And so when films came and US films came, even though they were heavily censored, uh, I would have to see them, uh, you know, um,

Soylent Green, you know, was a big film. Patton was a big film. Any James Bond film. The French Connection. The Exorcist. Oh, Jesus. Even though it was like, it was practically cut in half, you know, by censors. It was a short film. It was a short film by a guy we got to use.

But and they still had the ambulance, you know, in the in the parking lot, you know, promotional thing going on. And then The Sting was one of my one of the great films. I must have seen that like, you know, 15 times. I love that film. And then at one point I saw a film called MASH, Robert Altman's MASH. And only reason I want to see it is because I knew that there was American football in

scenes in it. And I was just obsessed with American football. So I went and I remember, boy, I must have been 11. And I remember thinking, this film is making me feel funny. I don't know what it is.

I don't quite understand what's going on, but it's not like the sting at all. Sure, sure, sure. And I think that sort of started my whole love affair with films and films that does kind of push the envelope was right there. All right. Now, I've been teaching for many, many years. What is the biggest mistake you see screenwriters make, young screenwriters make? Young screenwriters...

Well, you know, struggling with the language and struggling with formatting and stuff like that, I don't consider that mistakes. That's just the way it goes. And, you know, young writers, you know, I teach at Hunter College, and so not all of my students are young. So when I say young writer, I mean an emerging writer. Yeah, exactly. A starting writer. Yeah.

I think one thing is the lack of patience to develop their craft. You know, they watch movies. They feel movies deeply. And they know how to write. Therefore, they feel ready to write a magnum opus immediately.

And, you know, you wouldn't feel that way listening to music, thinking I'm going to sit at the piano and write a great song, though I don't know how to play the piano. Right. But with Phil, because we know language and we use words and we can write, somehow they feel like what comes out right away has to be great. And I tell them to, you know,

And it's because they're fueled by passion. And so I tell them, relax a little bit, write a lot, write, you know, your first few scripts are not going to be that great. I guarantee you. But you will learn from those scripts and you will get better and better. It's like it's like anything. It's like.

playing a guitar. It's like, it's, it's, it's like, um, it's like Stephen Curry shooting three pointers. It looks absolutely easy and effortless. When I watched Stephen Curry shoot three points, I think I can do that. That's easy. It looks so easy. It looks so easy, but the amount of drilling and training and practicing that he's put in to those shots in his life, um,

them look so easy. So, you know, I, so that's the thing. I, I, I give them the opportunity to, I allow them to be patient with their own progress. Um, yeah,

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I feel too that a lot of, and this is definitely my, it was definitely me when I was starting out, is there is that little thing called ego that also creeps you, it creeps in and everyone's like, wait, I've just written my opus. Why hasn't Hollywood seen my genius? And the trucks of money are just dumped in my front yard. Like, I don't understand. And that ego, like many, many filmmakers and screenwriters walk into the business for the wrong reasons, meaning I want to be rich and famous.

Or I want my ego stroked. I want to be on the red carpet and all that kind of stuff. And I always tell people, because I've been around the block a little bit and I got some shrapnel, I just go, what are we going to do about Bobby? I'm like, don't you worry. The business is going to take care of Bobby. It's not a problem at all. Bobby's going to be just fine. The other hammer is going to come down any minute now. And if it doesn't come down any minute, it's going to come down in five years.

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when he's still hustling and going, wait a minute, maybe what I'm doing is not working. And I always try to warn people about that, that pitfall, because I was, I mean, when you're young, you do things like that. You just like, obviously it's like you, you know, you watch reservoir dogs and you're like, I can do that. And then you sit down and go, why, why is my dialogue not as snappy? Or even worse, you start doing that again.

It's already been done. But you're not even doing it again well. You're doing it again. It's derivative. So in other words, and by the way, how many, I mean, for us at a certain age, you know, when Pulp Fiction came out,

Yeah.

you can't emulate them. And you shouldn't because it's like me trying to emulate it anyway. Right. And also, you know, Sorkin wouldn't make a Scorsese film, though he might. Dorf goes Scorsese. Correct. He does better than to try and make a Scorsese film because only Scorsese makes a Scorsese film. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I've been teaching long enough that I see it in waves. You know, I remember when everybody wanted to be David Lynch and then I remembered when everybody wanted to be

Oh, his first name is escaping me. Kaufman. Charlie Kaufman. Charlie Kaufman. That was another wave. You try to write like Charlie. You write like Charlie Kaufman. Are you kidding me? Exactly. Are you kidding me? That was the era when I couldn't sell three act structure to save my life. Right. Exactly. Tarantino and Kaufman just screwed everything up.

Anyway, and I think, you know, there have been others, of course, but, you know, I actually think that that's going away significantly these days because, and it's a very interesting challenge for teachers because there isn't any more that I can see a common, like, lexicon, a common grouping of films that most of the students in the class have watched.

I'm seeing students breaking apart into much smaller niches. Some of them love the long form limited series television. Some of them are into Asian film. Some of them are into animated films, really in a big way. Some of them are into the narratives that go into video games.

And they inhabit those niches with great passion. So you mentioned, you know, you mentioned Chinatown. Nobody's seen Chinatown. No. You know, you mentioned there's a few films that have stuck around that you can still... Godfather. Yeah, Godfather, maybe. Godfather, The Fight Club. Yeah. Interestingly, The Graduate. Yeah, that's interesting. Once I asked my class, like, why do you all know The Graduate if you don't know...

Chinatown. And they say, oh, because it's placed all the time on television. So eventually they catch it. So anyway. You're absolutely right because, you know, I mean, coming up, there's a group of films. You know, there's like 100 or 200 films that everyone's seen. And it's very comfortably everybody understands. You know, you've seen Goodfellas. You've seen most of Scorsese's work.

You know, you might have not seen After Hours, but you definitely saw Goodfellas. You might have not seen Last Temptation of Christ, but you probably saw Casino. You know, like there's a handful of movies from directors and of writers that – but in today's world, you know, when we were coming up, there were less films to watch. You know, we would get maybe 20 movies a year. That's right. 25 movies a year. Now we get 20 movies an hour. Right.

Released. Everybody knew what the Oscar nominees were. Everybody had seen them and the winners. And so I could go into a class and say, all right, here's an example. And everybody would understand that example. These days I say, here's an example, and I see blank faces. That's the challenging part of teaching. The good part is you can show them a film like –

Ed Wood and blow their minds. You know what I mean? Because nobody's seen it before. And they think, oh, my God, how do you know about this stuff? You know, you can you can show them Raging Bull, you know, and they're like, oh, my God, I never imagined. I had this experience the other day. I was talking to these three students who are working together and their film has some resonance with Wings of Desire. And I said, of course, you guys have seen Wings of Desire. Never saw it. Never heard of inventors. They see City of Angels at least.

No, I know. So, you know, they watched it and they called back and they said, Professor, you just changed our lives. I thought, well, that was easy.

It's, yeah, because you're right. You're right. And I've even seen that when I talk to filmmakers sometimes. Like, you know, that movie that this, like I was, when I was color grading back in the day, I was working with one of the biggest music video directors in the world at the time. And I'm color grading one of his music videos. I'm like, oh, so do you want me to do this like very like Blade Runner-esque? And he's like, what's that?

And I'm like, you're a music video director? You've never seen Blade Runner? Are you kidding me? I felt like slapping the guy. Don't you know you wouldn't even exist as a music video director without Blade Runner? Without Ridley? Without Ridley in general?

Let alone all that jazz. Bob Fosse is all that jazz. Exactly. Anyway, I think I only got to one of the main mistakes. I think you asked me for three. No, no. Just one of the biggest mistakes. But can you discuss a little bit about how – I think one of the biggest things I see when I read screenplays from younger or newer writers is their use of description. Yeah.

And they don't – the concept of a sea of white is seeing as much white as possible and what that experience is as far screen. Because honestly, it was – I think it was Shane Black. I think when Shane Black showed up –

He made the screenwriting, reading a screenplay experience like reading a book, like reading a novel. His descriptions were so tight, so small, but so descriptive. It was an enjoyable read. And that's when I think we began to think about as this industry, like the script needs to be enjoyable to read and also not have blocks of description that are for like, it's not a novel. So can you talk a little bit about that?

Well, you know, a screenplay is a very complicated type of manuscript, dramatic manuscript, because it has a technical function as a blueprint for production. Correct. It also has to present to the reader as a movie-going experience. Right.

But it also has to be a good read in terms of its language. And it has to contain some of the attitude of the movie, the tone of the movie, the genre of the movie in its language. And this is kind of the more advanced sort of level of screenwriting. And we're seeing...

people more and more understanding that you can push rules of screenwriting. You can push some of the things in order to have a dramatic effect or in order to develop a voice. I mean, I was just reading the screenplay for Booksmart, which I have to say was a great, fun read. They break the rules all over the place because they really want to communicate the attitude of the movie, and they really do. So, you know,

I tell my students and I try and do this, you know, to be vivid and pithy at the same time. And part of that means you have to know language. You can't use lazy language and be right in a vivid way and in a visual way, which means that writers need to read. And that's one of the that's like number two problem with with with beginning screenwriters is that they want to write, but they don't read.

And you're not going to get what you need by watching the film if you read the scripts for that. And there are a lot of great scripts out there that they can read and they can see exactly how this writer presented the material so that the reader and the director sees it in a visual way.

You know, I go back to, you know, I go back to people like Lawrence Kasdan, who I had a workshop with when I was a student, was one of the first people who really talked about this in any way. And, of course, Paul Schrader was another one who was a phenomenal writer. Yeah.

You know, it's funny, I helped with the republication of a bunch of books by Edward Dmitrich. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.

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And now back to the show. And I worked on the on screen writing and I read some of his screenplays and it's just not interesting to read. It's kind of like, okay, here are the shots and it genuinely was a blueprint for a film and rather than a good read on the page.

So, you know, I think that and in fact, this is the book that I'm currently writing. I'm writing a screenwriting book. And, you know, you think, oh, man, not another freaking screenwriting book. What? There's like three of those out there. There's not that many. All right. So this actually has nothing to do.

This actually has nothing to do... I don't talk about structure. I don't talk about building character. I don't talk about subplots. I don't talk about any of that stuff. This is kind of a style manual. The first half of it is...

the proper way of writing a screenplay. It's kind of like learning a language. You know, you learn French, you got to learn the proper way of speaking French in French 101 and French 102. Then you go to France and people are taught saying something else. Of course. It's the same experience as screenwriters. They're taught in a class, you know, this is how you write. These are the rules of screenwriting. Then they go and they, you know, they read Uncut Gems and they say, wait a minute. I,

I was told that that wasn't allowed. Oh, no. When I started reading Lethal Weapon and all of Shane Black's stuff, I'm like, this is not. This is not. Or Quentin. God forbid you read a Quentin script. Jesus. Yeah, but Tantino's scripts leap right off the page. Oh, Jesus. Do they ever. They are in your lap.

slapping you around as you're reading it no there's no question no question no question um so so so the book i'm writing that's what that's what it's dedicated to the first half is like here's the proper way here are like if you're a jazz musicians here are the scales this is what you need to practice now here's how we improvise here's how professional writers write here's how professional writers um

allow the reader as they're reading to see a movie come off the page. And the one thing that young writers get mixed, sort of mix up is that they think, okay, I want to give them that cinematic experience. Therefore, I'm going to describe everything that's in the scene. And that becomes overload, right? 'Cause a writer, a reader who's reading a screenplay doesn't know your world, doesn't know your story.

they're reading and they're finding the clues to what that story is about. What is important? What's not important? So if you have a character walk into an office and you describe absolutely everything in the office, it's a flat scene. You may be describing a lot, but it's flat and it's confusing because there's too much visual detail. If you

expend less language on the environment and more language on though, and more flamboyant language on those things that are really important. Then the reader gets, gets that and holds that as an important thing, the envelope on the desk, right? Which is, which is, which is, yeah, because if you're putting the envelope on the desk is on an ornate environment,

wooden desk that's a scene it looks like the one from the godfather and its weight is this and it just starts going and going and going you're just like what am i supposed to focus my energies on here precisely you know and young writers love to write about like the light is streaming in through the window do we need to know that who cares you know the dp will take care of that don't worry and actually that's another thing now that you're now that you've got me talking um

I think young writers are resistant to the idea of film being a collaborative art form. They want to control everything, and you simply can't control everything. They want to tell you how everybody is dressed, what their hair looks like, where the light is coming from, the color of the wall. Camera moves. The camera moves. The camera moves. It's like, you know, take it easy. Take all that stuff off your shoulders.

And then tell your story. And then we'll get to exactly what you were talking about, Alex. It's clean. It's got energy. It's got the energy of a movie that's unfolding before your eyes. You know, so it's clean. It's got energy. And the story jumps off the page and the actions reveal.

Right. It needs to be revealed. I was reading the other day the script for Bound by the Wasarskis. This is the movie right before The Matrix. And in the script, they actually wrote – there was a very big love scene there.

And this is also early, late 90s when this is being made. So it's not as open as it is today in regards to that kind of stuff. And they go at the end of it, they go, and we're not going to cut this scene.

in the script and like and we're not cutting the scene that's radical that's a radical thing to do right you're reminding me of i just read the script for first man uh okay yeah chazelle okay yeah now he takes a lot of liberties in that script which is fun but you know um

When you have a track record and people know what you can do, you can take more liberties than when you're a beginning writer, for sure. But anyway, there's a scene in there where Neil Armstrong goes into the capsule for some Gemini liftoff. I can't remember the number of the Gemini liftoff. And it's a beautiful scene in the film where everything is shown through Neil Armstrong's point of view. And what he hears and what he sees, which is nothing, it's just like a little

little triangle of a window. The entire liftoff, which is super dangerous, is told through the image through this little triangle window. And he says in that scene, he says, we see what Neil sees, we hear what he sees, and we're not fucking cutting away. Yeah.

It's literally said that. He literally says that in the, I don't know if I can say that on your, it's fine. It's fine. Okay. Anyway, he literally writes that we're not fucking cutting away to an external shot or something anyway. So it's just very funny. He's like, he, because he knew what was going to happen. He's going to go, Oh, well, when can we get a wide shot on this? And like, no, that's, that's it. But he's also right. A director and he knows how he's going to execute it and so on, but he just wanted to make that clear as a fun, as a fun thing to do. Um,

What was the script I was reading the other day? Oh, I was reading, I think it was Shane Black or Tarantino. And, you know, you start seeing some spelling errors in it. And some even grammatical errors. And I always love young screenwriters who are like, well, I was reading a Shane Black script and, you know, he had a couple of punctuation. And I'm like, he's Shane Black. That's right. Yeah.

If he wants to misspell something, no one cares because he's Shane Black or he's Quentin Tarantino or he's Chris Nolan. They are at a whole other place that you are not. They've established themselves. And when you're coming up, I promise you that True Romance and Natural Born Killers, which were the first two scripts that Tarantino sold, were immaculate. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And, you know, the reason that you, if you're a young writer, the reason why you can't afford to make any mistakes in your script is because you lose the faith of the reader who doesn't know who you are. And so if they can't trust that your writing is in order, then when you do something in the script that is funky or whatever, or really super interesting, they're like, was that a mistake? Or is this person in control of their language? So you have to...

You know, I have a very good friend who's an A-list writer, and he was a former student of mine. And he would rather die than submit something with a mistake, even though he... I mean, he just sold a script for like $4 million, you know, or $5 million, one of the biggest deals in the last 10 years. And we worked on a project, and we sold...

We wanted to write the scripts, but the people who bought it from us only wanted our treatments. And they wanted to write their own scripts because it was television. They have their writer's room already. Sure, sure, sure, sure. They don't want to integrate new people. So we were happy. Like, okay, wow, okay, bye. Pay us for not writing the script. Fine. And...

So they wrote the pilot and they sent it to us just so we could give them some feedback on it. And there were like five typos in like the first two pages. And my friend Bill said, can you believe that? I said, well, yeah, I can believe that. They have over 600 hours of television produced already. So what does it matter? Exactly.

Exactly. At that point, it doesn't matter. I think that comparison to established people or even legends or masters as young screenwriters is rampant. I mean, like you said earlier, they're like, oh, Carantino or – and we keep using the same name – or Kaufman or any of these screenwriters and they compare themselves to it and you can't. You need to find your own voice. You need to find your own path. Whatever they did, you can't follow that path.

Yeah. It's so interesting. When I was starting out in the business, I would analyze every, I would read every autobiography I could get my hands on on filmmakers. I would try to study the way they got into the business. So you're like, okay, so Robert Rodriguez made a $7,000 action movie. And all right, Clerks. Okay. So he did this and he did that. Okay, great. Ed Burns. Okay. He did this, this, and this, you know, Spike Lee did this, this, and this. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.

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you can still make this year count with a new path forward. Visit chooseprimavera.com and enroll tuition free in grades K to 12. And now back to the show. And you would start, and I'm like, okay, maybe I can get this way. And I was always trying to hack my way in. Yeah. And it took me years to realize you're like,

That's their path that can never be replicated ever because of the timing of who they are and what they are. When I had Richard Linkletter on the show, I asked, do you think Slacker's going to – if Slacker shows up today, do you think it finds an audience? And Rick's – straight up, does it find an audience? And Rick's like, probably not.

And I said the same thing to Ed Burns. I go, if Brothers McMullin shows up today, do you think you get it? A theatrical and it makes $30 million off of a $30,000? Do you think that is going to happen? He's like, absolutely not. They were a product of their time where in today's world, they would probably be just thrown into the soup like everybody else. Not that they don't have any talent and not that the movies aren't great. It's just a different environment and a different audience as well.

That's true. That's true. But, you know, I always do a few exercises with my students to help them, I guess, determine, you know, to use the term of Michael Rabiger, with whom I co-wrote a book, to find their own themes. Like, who are you? What are you interested in? What obsesses you? Yeah, what are the genres of film that you like, that you can be inspired by? But how do you make it yours? What are the things...

Like I said, what are the things that obsessed you? What are the things, who are the people you know who are fascinating characters? Where are the places you've gone that you think this would be an awesome place for a film? Yeah.

So, you know, a writer, you know, like any other artist has to find out what their unique contribution is. But getting back to reading scripts, I do when I finish my screenwriting one class, which is a about all about the shorts, I give my students a list of like five.

five scripts that will take the language to the next level, not to copy them. And they're always quite different genres. And then they are also as contemporary as I can find. So do they change or can you give those five scripts out now, the names?

Sure. I mean, I find these online. I just say, you know, I just Google download PDF title and you find it. As you know, I'm sure you know that when award season comes around, you know, they all pop out. They're all available on bulletproofscreenwriting.tv.

Yeah. Well, like Jeff Nichols' film Loving. That was a beautiful movie. And the script is the same. It's a very elegant, a very quiet, very powerful script. The language is super precise and there's no flamboyance to it, but it just tells its story in very subtle,

simple language, methodically, but really accumulates power over time. The screenplays for Chernobyl are phenomenal. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, Craig. Yeah. They're just perfectly written, you know. Yeah.

Jordan Peele's Get Out is another great script to read. D. Reese's Mudbound is a little bit more flamboyant. It's a little bit more really indicating shots and cuts, but it's powerful. You see the movie. You feel the movie.

Like I said, book smart. I like to give students all is lost, which has no dialogue. And that's like, what is it? How long is all is lost is, uh, I think it's like 40 pages or something like that. Right. Um,

Oh, another beautiful script. Yeah. Great script. Debra Granik's Leave No Trace is the simple script, elegant script, beautifully written, beautiful film, kind of a overlooked film, but I think it's a phenomenal film. So that's the kind of stuff I will give them. Now, what advice would you give on writing great dialogue? Because dialogue is such a

difficult thing to get the tone to get the the energy of of a character and also how not to write on the nose which is so like it's like i love watching great television or great movies and i'll just go oh i see where they just dropped off that she's been divorced for five years without saying hey hey dad how does it feel being divorced for five years

I don't know, son. It's pretty hard as opposed to a look on the letter, like a look at the paperwork of, oh, I have to sign the divorce papers. No one ever says anything. Something subtle like that to get that information across. But how do you write great dialogue? Well, you know, there's a first – the first thing you have to –

Think about it. And I'm going back to beginning writers. The first thing that beginning writers, big mistake that beginning writers make with dialogue is that they think they have to tell the story in dialogue because they don't trust that. They don't trust yet that an audience will see an action and understand the inner life of a character who performs that action. They won't. They understand the motivation of somebody who.

does a particular action. They don't trust that yet. So they'll do the action and then they'll do exactly what you just said. We'll see the divorce papers and they'll write the dialogue. Oh, I've got to sign the divorce papers. You don't need this to say it. We're seeing it, right? So that's the first thing. Show, don't tell. Show, don't tell. Exactly. Dialogue that's redundant kills your movie. Absolutely. It just stops the momentum. It stops the momentum completely.

The second thing is that there's – again, it's just that people who don't trust that their movie can – that they're already telling their story is that there are many times when a look, a gesture, a glance will say exactly what dialogue needs to say. So the first –

In terms of dialogue, the first step is to strip away all the unnecessary dialogue and then strip away a little bit more dialogue than that. And then, you know, you need to

Dig deeply into your character and you have to say so what what is the purpose of this dialogue? What does it reveal about my character not what it does it tell about the story? But what is it going to reveal about the character? What kind of language with this person use how many words with this person use? I mean, I think that loving is a very interesting thing

script in that sense because he has two characters, especially the male lead, who's super taciturn, not particularly articulate, and doesn't talk about things much. Right?

Or a first man. We were just talking about first man. You know, he Neil Armstrong is not somebody who talks about his feelings. He never would have been an astronaut. So you have to understand the the

the language your character uses and how much language your character uses and the fact that you have to really understand that they inhabit that story as in life. And so they wouldn't go explaining things for people who don't know what's going on. - Right, and I always find it so irritating when writers add backstory

In a very brutal way where they're just explaining it. I think the best example of writing backstory or – what's the word? It's completely escaping me when you have to tell the story. Exposition. Exposition. Thank you very much. Okay. Is James Cameron. James Cameron, when he wrote Terminator, I think he's still one of the most underrated writers of his generation. He's not – as a filmmaker, but as a writer, you read alien script and you're just like –

Oh my god. One of the most perfect action scripts ever written. But if you read Terminator, there's so much exposition that has to be laid out for – because we all know what the Terminator mythology is now. But in 1984, nobody understood what the hell was going on.

Yeah. And he's like, if you've got exposition, write it in an action sequence, write it in something. So he's literally explaining Reese is explaining to Sarah Connor what's going on as they're being chased by the Terminator writing, shooting. Boom. I'm from this. Boom. And this is what happens. Boom. He's a machine. Boom. He has flesh over his body. Boom. Boom.

But it's done like this as opposed to them sitting down at coffee like, well, you know, I'm from the past. It's a beautiful technique. It really is. Yeah. Well, you know, with exposition, exposition is tough because – okay, what we do is we do narrative. Right. Narrative is the act of telling a story.

So exposition is not the act of telling a story. Exposition is the act of explaining something. Right. So that's why if you don't handle your exposition well, it puts the brakes on your story and it becomes uncomfortable. The first thing is you ask yourself, do I need this exposition? You know, think of Thelma and Louise. We never know what happens, what happened to Louise in Texas. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.

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And now back to the show. We never know what is in Chinatown. Right. Do we need it? We don't need it. Maybe it's better in the minds of the audience. They can imagine what happened. So do I need it? Do I need all of it?

Cause sometimes you can pare it down a lot. Do I need all of it in a chunk or can I pepper it throughout the script? And then, and then like you say, put it in, put it in a scene of, of action and tension or comedy that comedy, you know, it's not work soon. Full of sugar that lets anything go down. Um,

And, of course, motivated. You know, you can't have a scene with two lawyers. One lawyer says to the other, my client's going to plead the fifth. You know what that means? That means he doesn't have to testify against himself. Of course, he knows what that means. So,

Find a scene guy. I didn't the lawyer goes to the to the defendant's mother and says, I don't want you to worry. I'm going to have him plead the fifth. She's like, what's that? Is that dangerous? What does that mean? But it's OK. It's OK. Take it easy. It just means he doesn't have to testify against himself. And now there's a reason for exchanging that information. Right. Exactly. As opposed to it being the other way around. You know what that means? Yeah. It's like, do we know what John Wick did?

prior to John Wick going crazy because they stole his car and killed his dog? Like, do we, do all we know is that when they say his name, it's like the boogeyman walking into the baddest, baddest MF guys in the world, the criminals of the world. They're like, wait a minute, John Wick. Like I just watched the movie. Did you watch Nobody?

Not yet, no. It is wonderful. It was written by Derek. Derek, I forgot his last name, but he wrote John Wick. And you can sense the John Wick-esque-ness of him in there. And they have scenes like that where someone's doing research on Saul. I can't remember his name. Better call Saul. Yeah.

him, the main actor. Bob Odenkirk. Bob Odenkirk. Thank you. And when the person sees it, they're like, yeah, don't pay me. I'm out of here. And that's how much of a badass he is. I was like, oh, that's so brilliant. But no one knows. And he says it, I think, at one moment. He has one sentence to explain who he was. And that's it. In the entire movie, he explains one sentence of who he was. And you're like, that's all you need. You don't need flashbacks. You don't need to see a scene of him being a badass.

One thing, but like even I don't even think it's been explained yet what John Wick has done in the past. They just know he – in three movies, you still don't know what John Wick did or why he's just renowned. I mean everyone just knows he's a badass. Something's against the table. I don't know what. No, he did something and there's been some little things of like how he left.

But the reason of how his legend became who he is has really never been explored very often, very much. So it's sometimes better to leave it. That's true. And I think that that's really interesting. I haven't really thought about John Wick that much, but it would be what would be interesting to look at John Wick is where do we get the sympathy for him? Where do we get like we like him?

You know, we want him. We don't want him to die. You know, and where is that located? Oh, I'll tell you why. We'll just go back to the first movie because now the second and third movie, we already love John. John seems like he's trying to do the right thing. So he's trying to be a good guy. Secondly...

They stole his car, which is a badass car, and that gets a certain demographic of the audience. Like, you don't scratch a man's car. I mean, it's in Pulp Fiction. You don't do that. You don't mess with another man's vehicle. So there's that. And third, the oldest trick in the book, they killed his dog. What do you want to do to establish a villain? Have him kick a dog. Yeah.

Of course. It's the oldest trick in the book for writers. So what do they do? They killed his dog. And of course, the villain is just such a dumbass. He's not even a badass. He's a dumb – but it's a perfect example. The guy who does all of this – and sorry for all the spoilers if you haven't seen John Wick, but this all happens in the first 15 minutes. Yeah.

The idiot who – he doesn't know what he's doing, first of all. Secondly, if that character would have been an absolute badass, it wouldn't have worked as well. It needed to be a complete buffoon who he was, a complete –

just egocentric, over-the-top buffoon who did all of this. It makes it all the sweeter of what's going. And then the dad is the real badass. You see, you filled it in for me because I did not see the first John Wick. I missed the first John Wick. I picked it up because I watched the one where he fights Boban Marjanovic because I'm a basketball fan. So I was like, oh, I've got to catch that. I don't know how many of you...

John Wick 1, John Wick 1, honestly, is, as far as action is concerned, it is such a well-written script. I mean, Keanu is Keanu. You know, he is, he is, uh, he is obviously Jesus. But, uh, no, but all seriousness though, that, um, that first film, there's a reason why there's so much love for that character that it spawned two and three, and now they're going to do four and five back to back. Uh,

And the thing is also that we feel for the character because he lost his wife. He's trying to turn a new leaf. He's trying to reinvent himself. All things that check little boxes inside, pull on certain strings of our heart that you normally don't see in an action hero. And that he's quiet. Yeah.

That's the other thing. He doesn't talk. He's a man of action. He has a little bit of dialogue. One of the best scenes in the first John Wick is after someone sent a hit squad for John Wick and burnt his house down or about to burn his house down or something like that. And he dispatches all of them. And then the cops show up. The cops. This is what's so beautiful about this movie. The cops show up, knock on the door, and the cop is there and goes, hey, John.

How's the night going? And then he looks inside. Without blinking, he looks inside. He sees a dead body. He goes, you working again, John? He's like, no, man. It's just an accident. Okay. Just checking. And walks back. Just walks backwards. It's like, have a good night, John. Like that mythology that they've created for that character is so wonderful. Yeah.

Now there's a show. I know the show runner of the show and he's writing a show about the world that they created, that Derek was able to create. So it's just beautifully written. Look, we see action movies come and go and we see action heroes come and go. And this is not a Jean-Claude Van Damme film or a Seamus LeGault film. This is a well-written, well-performed, well-directed action. But at the end of the day, it's about emotion.

It's about emotionally connecting to that character. And it's not just about the spectacle. Spectacle's fun, but we've seen action before. It's his character that moves everything. Yeah. But what's interesting is how little one needs to actually, because we're so used to genres and watching films, how little one needs to...

to actually use for all of that to come in for the audience. And then they get to the other stuff. You know, we, we feel like we fill in a lot of stuff and this is one of the other things about writing. And this is one of the things about using genre. Well,

you know, audiences have seen so much. They understand film noir. They understand Westerns. They understand the tropes that are used. They understand the melodrama that nowadays writers can use these genres as shorthands. Just a little hint of noir brings the whole genre and many of the issues or the themes of the genre into your movie. So we don't use them all.

We just like a little shorthand and it accents our films. And like you watch movies like from the 70s, they had to do things so differently than now because there's been so much content from the moment of the 70s up until now. We're talking about 50 years now.

There's generations that have been raised on watching movies again. And also in the 80s is when we got VHS. That changed the game. Now we could watch things a thousand times again and again. So we're so much more – the audience is so much more educated, which is good and bad. Good because –

Like you said, you can use shorthand, but bad because now you're like, well, I got to come up with something that they haven't seen before. The other thing too is that you have that generation of filmmakers that you're talking about, the Finches and the Tarantinos and these people who are so film literate. Oh, yeah.

who, you know, are so profoundly knowledgeable that and they're incorporating all this stuff. And so it almost is like little, what can I say? Little masterclasses in every film, you know, every scene, every scene is a master. You watch the opening scene of Social Network and that's a masterclass.

In dialogue, in direction. That's another script I give my students to read. I mean, that's probably Sorkin's best script, in my opinion. And he's written some doozies. But it's just such a tight, tight, tight, tight film. And the way that Fincher, and it's probably Fincher's best. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.

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you can still make this year count with a new path forward. Visit ChoosePrimavera.com and enroll tuition free in grades K to 12. And now back to the show. And I love Fight Club. I absolutely adore Fight Club and Seven. Seven is a masterpiece in this genre as well. But we could just geek out forever. But let me ask you, so what's up next for you? What is the book you're writing?

Well, yeah, the book I'm writing is, I was mentioning it before, it's a screenwriting book. Really, it's like I said, it's not about drama. It's not about structure. It's not about character. Really, it's a style manual. Here's the proper way of writing screenplay. And then here's the way professionals...

break the rules to, you know, for dramatic effects. And here's what you can get away with. That's a good angle. Yeah. It's a mastering screenplay form and style is what it's called. Okay. So yeah, that's, that's next up. And I'm also working on a couple of screenplays. Like I told you, I just, we just, me and a friend of mine just sold something to Sony. It was just, we just sold,

for a series. Now they got it. So that sort of freed me up to work on some other projects. That's awesome. Yeah, I have two scripts, screenplay projects I'm working on. Very, very cool, man. And I'm going to ask you a couple questions I ask all my guests. What advice would you give a screenwriter wanting to break into the business today? Oh, wow. I would say for a screenwriter, I would say write a lot.

But I would find ways to get your work made, even if it's just, you know, pulling together friends who are directors and crew and get your stuff. See your see your writing finished, even if you're just posting it on the Web and also be flexible.

with the form that you are interested in because writers these days, you know, writing for television, if you're in a writing room, it's a different skill than if you are creating a television show or writing a feature film. It's a very different skill. Um, be prepared to write shorts, uh, small shorts for YouTube, be prepared to write for TV. Um,

We have to be a little bit more writers need to be a little bit more sort of polymaths. You know, they need to know a broader range of skill. And I would say just keep knocking on doors, you know, just keep knocking on doors. It takes, you know, it's always been like this. It takes tenacity. It really takes tenacity and always maintain tenacity.

and energy and passion for your own work because it can be tough and you can start to lose that and

No producer wants to hear somebody pitching a script that they're not that a writer is not particularly interested in. It's about skill, experience and luck. And luck has from speaking to the people I've had the pleasure of speaking to. They always tell me I was lucky. It's the right place, right time, right script. And but the point is, you can't put yourself in that position unless you're knocking on doors. Yeah, but there's a quote in the world of chess, which is the people who work the hardest are the luckiest.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. If you keep knocking on those doors, it's like one day someone's going to open and go, where have you been? Here's a million dollars.

Knock on doors, meet people, don't drop people. Seek out other talented people and stick to them. - Yep, absolutely, no question at all. - And you know, the other thing about, I mean, I'm not somebody who thinks that you have to go to film school, although film school offers a broad range of experiences in a more compressed form. And you know, my first book I wrote basically

You know, I had a friend who said, you're writing us all out of a job. It's all there. Why do they need teachers? And that was exactly my my goal with that book. But students, when they're in school, that's where you form the peer group that is going to be your first professional and first professional relationships out of school. And so you need to find those people you can work with and and and start collaborating with them as soon as possible. And don't don't let them go.

I agree with you 100%, Nick. Thank you so much for being on the show, my friend. I truly appreciate it. And continue the great work you're doing, brother. All right. All right. Take care. And it was a pleasure.

I want to thank Mick so much for coming on the show and dropping his knowledge bombs. If you want to get links to anything we spoke about in this episode, including how to get his new screenwriting book, head over to the show notes at IndieFilmMuscle.com forward slash 773. And if you haven't already, please head over to FilmmakingPodcast.com, subscribe, and leave a good review for the show.

It really helps us out a lot, guys. Thank you again so much for listening, guys. As always, keep that hustle going. Keep that dream alive. Stay safe out there, and I'll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the Indie Film Hustle Podcast at IndieFilmHustle.com. That's I-N-D-I-E-F-I-L-M-H-U-S-T-L-E.com.

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