Are script gurus good writers?

Let me restate my position if I may. I think the "...those who can't, teach" bumper sticker saying is horseshit as well. But there are some specified exceptions, in which this refrigerator magnet quip does hold some wisdom. Writing is one of them. Cooking is another.

Lookit, I'm not saying that a guru has to have written a Godfather or a Sunset Blvd...but something (anything) that was bloody produced would kind of be a minimum requirement, no? I get the feeling that these cats didn't, in many cases, want to continue schlepping/paying their dues/cutting their teeth; and saw writing a "how to" book/seminar as a shortcut or failsafe plan.

And yes, David, there are exceptions to every rule...the only absolute in the universe is that there are no absolutes...
 
All I'm saying is that these famous script gurus who have apparently never had anything (much) produced are those exceptions, just as they are in the sports world.
 
David Jimerson said:
All I'm saying is that these famous script gurus who have apparently never had anything (much) produced are those exceptions, just as they are in the sports world.
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Fair enough. I guess I'm talking about these "main" ones in the limelight that keep getting cited as gospel. Sure, there are still good old fashioned scribe master/apprentice dynamics out there (they just don't have as good a publicist).
 
Pietro Impagliazzo said:
I think that's missing the point...

The question should be: Can the knowledge that they offer me make me a better screenwriter?
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If the criticism of 'from the heart' writing is 'lack of structure'... sure... a book, a speaker, or parish the thought... reading tons of literature... will impart to a student the concept of 'structure', and with a set of rules, 'improve' such writing...

But it's sort of like Chess... it is not a lack of 'knowing the rules'... it is the ability to see the 'right move now' consistently... that differentiates the Paul Morphy(*) or a Bobby Fischer(**) from 'the rated 1000 player at the local chess club...(* it also helps to have a closet full of women's shoes... **it also helps to be a virtual recluse, only engaging in public discourse by being arrested, or by ignoring international embargos ... but I digress...).
 
Nuno Dias said:
Please explain how can you find a story written for the heart and at the same time be terrible, what is terrible, the structure? The story? What makes you say it was written from the heart?
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"Terrible" was probably not my best choice in words. Their ideas are good - it's their structure and format that need work. They contain an abundance of grammar issues, typos, jumpy transitions, and scenes that run on forever. In my estimation, the numerous mistakes indicate that it's written from the heart.

Nuno Dias said:
And if you're a beginner, what kind of authority are you to judge on the quality of a story from other writers? Just asking...
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Authority? Do I get a badge? :cheesy:

I peer review short scripts for free contests. Reading scripts and reviewing them are invaluable learning tools.

Nuno Dias said:
What do you think a studio will buy, a mediocre story perfectly written or a perfect story with mediocre execution. Don't think too much about the answer... that's why studios contract writers to 'fix' a poorly executed story, (as they can do that in a matter of days, FACT!) but there are no writers and no money to fix a poor story or idea!
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If the perfect story can get pitched it probably has a very good chance.

But I'm guessing that a perfect story with less than excellent execution will not get past a screener. There are always exception though.

Nuno Dias said:
If you can't tell the difference from a good story to a bad one. You'll never be a writer. And this, no book can teach you, you're on your own...

So, if everyone spent as much time struggling to find a good idea for a film as they do reading these gurus, maybe our industry would have had a new generation of writers already on board, but no, everyone wants to go the easy way: Tell-Me-How-its-Done-Because-I'm-Too-Lazy-To-Do-It-By-Myself-And-I-Need-Specifics-That-Guarantees-Me-Overnight-Success!

Everything you need to know about writing a good film, its in the movie theatres, or, more importantly, its in a blank white page!
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I see your point, but disagree. It's equivalent to saying you can learn to play professional baseball just by watching the game. At some point you need a coach or "guru".

Nuno Dias said:
Have you actually tried to develop a story in your head? Have you tried to then seat down and start the gruelling process of putting the pieces together? Have you actually felt how depressing it is to hit a brick wall and start over? Have you actually felt how exhilarating it is to get hit by an idea? And work on it? have you ever felt good and confident about your story?

This is how you'll learn.
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Yes, and then it was ripped apart by my peers for not having any structure.

I once thought like you. I saw "Jason X" in a theatre and said to myself "somebody got paid to write this piece of s**t". I wrote some screenplays that my friends loved and filmed them on a trusty camcorder. It was only when I received honest feedback from those more learned than I that I sought "gurus" and their knowledge.
 
I think knowledge and talent on a subject can be, in some causes two seperate things. You don't need to have a great voice yourself to be a music teacher.
 
Like the great William Goldman said, beginners obsess with technique. That's why studios are filled with perfectly written scripts, with rotten stories!
 
The Successful Producers and Writers I know in town scoff at the so-called "gurus".
I pitched a logline at Hauge and he said it sucked-- but that logline got me read and noticed and now working.
 
Here is something to contemplate, regarding teachers versus doers: If you had just one week to learn all you could about writing a screenplay that would sell, would you rather spend that week with McKee/Hauge/Field, or Terry Rossio/David Goyer/Stuart Beattie?
-randall
 
geckopelli said:
The Successful Producers and Writers I know in town scoff at the so-called "gurus".
I pitched a logline at Hauge and he said it sucked-- but that logline got me read and noticed and now working.
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True facts:

1) In the mid-1970's George Lucas couldn't get *anyone* in Hollywood to back "Star Wars" despite his huge success with "American Graffiti", his first studio feature (5 Oscar Noms, $115M gross on a $177K budget). So he financed it *himself*.

2) That first Star Wars film is to this day the second highest grossing movie of all time (in inflation-adjusted dollars) after "Gone With The Wind". Then there's the other five se/prequels, and all the ancillary stuff like DVDs, toys, games, books, TV shows, etc. which have earned billions and billions more.

Thus:

3) The best and brightest business minds in Hollywood - *all of them* - collectively blew the call on what may very well remain forever the most profitable franchise in the history of cinema.

So...your point about Hauge was...?
 
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BTW I neglected to congratulate you (geckopelli) on your success, in spite of my difference of opinion regarding Gurus. Great to hear you've made some real headway in Hollywood as a writer. Go get 'em!
 
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Randall_Oelerich said:
Here is something to contemplate, regarding teachers versus doers: If you had just one week to learn all you could about writing a screenplay that would sell, would you rather spend that week with McKee/Hauge/Field, or Terry Rossio/David Goyer/Stuart Beattie?
-randall
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As has been brought up a number of times, there's no way to answer that question without knowing if Rossio, Goyer, or Beattie can explain themselves worth spit.
 
Nuno Dias said:
Like the great William Goldman said, beginners obsess with technique. That's why studios are filled with perfectly written scripts, with rotten stories!
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The Goldman reference is an interesting one. I recently read his "Adventures In The Screen Trade", which was very enjoyable and informative, if not altogether 'educational' if that makes any sense. And certainly no one can take away "Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid", "Marathon Man" or any of his other great scripts/novels. Massive props where such are due...

But in the end section of the book, he did something I that found to be quite intriguingly at odds with the above. He sets up a hypothetical: a movie production scenario involving an adaptation of one of his short stories into a film. First he provides a transcript of the story, then the script he adapted from it. While I liked the story, as I read it I was thinking "uh oh...this thing is almost entirely told from inside the head of the protagonist" (the son of the local barber). That's right off the bat a very difficult story to adapt - a kind that...ahem...script gurus...often warn against attempting because it almost *requires* narration or other unwieldy means of translating inner thoughts into a visually-based medium to do so. Movies are stories told *in pictures*, they all like to say.

So in Goldman's script, well...there it was, big-time. Tons and tons of narration, and emotion-loaded, 'inner-thought' descriptions, instead of a more straightforward dialog/visual approach. Had I not read as many 'guru' books as I have, I might not have picked up on quite what the problem was. But I have, and I did; I found myself pretty well appalled by the time I finished reading it, thinking "this thing is *not* going to fly well at all as a film - it's loaded with narrative that doesn't justify itself (as it might in the Detective/Noir genre, for example), and thought-images that will be tough to translate in a concrete way". So I read on, curious to see where it would all go.

Goldman then recounts, step by step, though interview transcripts, the suggestions, comments, and workflow ideas of several very notable folks who would help make the (hypothetical) film: the cinematographer, editor, production designer, composer, and so on, ending with George Roy Hill, director of "Butch Cassidy", not to mention "The Sting" and several other classics. The first group (cinematographer, editor etc.), all had very interesting insights and perspectives on the making of the film, and to a person, had nothing but constructive things to offer: how they'd go about making the best movie out of Goldman's script through each of their areas of expertise. Then he interviewed Hill...

...who pretty much took him 'out behind the woodshed for a sound thrashing' over it. While he didn't specifically emphasize narration being as much of a problem as I felt it was, and he had some major objections to certain characters and other issues, much of the thrust of his objections had to do with things being 'unshootable', to put it simply; things that were described visually in the story that pretty much couldn't be translated. For example, there's a need to show a kid with a haircut that's simply unbelievably magnificent (mainly from the point of view of another kid, and in several different cases). Simple to do in a book...just have the kid *describe it* as an "unbelievably magnificent haircut" (or what-have-you)...and there you go. But how do you do that in a film, Hill asks: put "a glowing nimbus" around it? Not gonna fly, the esteemed Mr. Hill concludes. And so on he goes, ripping to shreds almost every aspect of the script, mostly for reasons like this.

Goldman's reaction to all of that? "Withering..." And quite interestingly I thought, he never quite cops to those issues being all that significant, noting that none of the other experts said the same stuff. But none of the other experts were screenwriters. Or multi-best-director-Oscar winners...

So, if I may be forgiven for being so presumptuous as to say so, I spotted many if not most of these problems as *I*, a somewhat experienced, but still largely amateur screenwriter, read it. Mainly because of specific things I learned through studying from...dare I say it again...script gurus...

IMHO Hill was absolutely right: it would be a huge problem to shoot this film as written. Problems big enough that it almost certainly *shouldn't* be made.

So in light of Goldman's disparagement of beginners' overconcern with technique (while not saying that has no merit), I couldn't help thinking that if *he* had read a couple of the guru-books I have, he almost certainly would have known better than to write a script that would get immediately eaten for breakfast by his old pal George Roy Hill.

Again - presumptuous of me to claim the goods on the esteemed Mr. Goldman? Fine. Sue me...

But I called it before I read the Hill interview. I thought the script was highly problematic, and like I said, was pretty appalled as I read it, especially considering the source.

And I spotted those problems because I was *well-trained to avoid just those very things*.

By...well...you know... : )
 
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David Jimerson said:
As has been brought up a number of times, there's no way to answer that question without knowing if Rossio, Goyer, or Beattie can explain themselves worth spit.
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Good point.
I do have to say I have enjoyed Terry Rossio's extensive blog entries sharing his wisdom,
http://www.wordplayer.com/columns/welcome.html
and The Dialogues interviews with Goyer or Beattie, though I have not seen any how-tos on the web from Goyer/Beattie which would be nice.
 
Okay, how's this for an analogy? Learning to be a pro writer from a "guru" is like learning to be a pro linebacker from an NFL referee.

Sure they know the "rules", but couldn't cut it as a "player".
 
...I say "rules" in quotations because just because something is against the rules doesn't make it wrong for a certain circumstance. Just like something being against the law, but not necessarily wrong (IE marijuana).


Edit:

This new "one step rule" regarding roughing the passer...wrong by most accounts.

In writing on the other hand, I would say the "VO being the great Satan" rule is rubbish.

Ted, you say that voice over is only acceptable (per the guru's holy canon) for noir/detective genres, but I would hardly call

Sunset Blvd.
Forrest Gump
Goodfellas
Shawshank Redemption
A Christmas Story
Full Metal Jacket
Barry Lyndon
Raising Arizona
Interview with the Vampire
Kind Hearts And Coronets
Trainspotting
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Stand By Me
The Hudsucker Proxy
Little Big Man
Paris, Je T'aime
Annie Hall
The Jerk
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Million Dollar Baby
The Princess Bride
Zombieland
Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
The New World
Jules and Jim
etc, etc, etc...

Hard-Boiled.
 
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Similar for flashbacks; I see so many how-tos and gurus screaming not to use flashbacks, but we see them used all the time in good and great movies. Yet another rule that can and should be broken if it fits the story, if used at a moment when the reader/viewer wants or needs to see the flashback. imho.
 
Interesting question. I tend to think not. Most "gurus" I've come in contact with are not much more than glorified proof readers. They offer critique, but to what use, really? You give a script to five consultants and you'll get back five different critiques. Script doctoring is a nice mom and pop business that requires nothing more than a good marketing touch. Qualifications they offer include, "I optioned a screenplay, therefore I am a screen writing doctor." Wannabe writers spend tends of thousands of dollars on folks like this, to no good end. All the crap about script form and all the rules about do this and don't do that, an make sure you have three brads, or was it two is to no avail. A screenplay is nothing more than a sales pitch for a great story idea--if you even come close in the presentation some director will recognize the nugget, buy it, rewrite it, and maybe or maybe not make a movie out of it. Ohhh, I've been optioned three times and made to budget once -- I must be a flaming Oscar winner.
 
CallaghanFilms said:
Okay, how's this for an analogy? Learning to be a pro writer from a "guru" is like learning to be a pro linebacker from an NFL referee.

Sure they know the "rules", but couldn't cut it as a "player".
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I dunno, man; quite a few NFL coaches never played pro ball. :) Maybe even most.
 
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