Readers Write In #672: A teenager’s screenwriting pursuit in the guidance of critics and Paul Schrader’s youtube masterclasses

By Sahal Thaju

Since the days , the Desire for filmmaking germinated in me , I have been doing research.  Finding  screenplays to be  the foundation of a film , I wanted to watch movies  which were well written and understand the anatomy and emotional beats and structure of it. I found that all the well respected writers and directors dismissed  the three act structure and advised young writers to write without adhering to formulas and patterns. We hear a lot of indie /art house movies best movies list, but I never find them in best screenplay lists. Mainstream screenplays are entitled with those tags. So is it mainly about calculations and engagements

 A name that I saw in all these screenwriting tutorial videos on youtube was Aaron Sorkin. Writers Guild of America ranked his screenplay of Fincher’s ‘SOCIAL NETWORK’ to be the 3rd best screenplay of the 21st century.  I saw the Social Network  after acquiring this information.  2 hours went by like a quick breeze. I found it to be well structured and scenes flowed, cutting back to present  and past and it was engaging. But none of the characters  made me feel for them nor could I care about the consequences waiting for them. Maybe I found it engaging while watching because it was going too fast to register these things. But isn’t it supposed to stay with you after watching. I could understand their motivations, but none of the conversations or conflicts stayed with me . Was the wind too swift to sprinkle some dust on me?  Roger Ebert calls “cinema” an empathy making machine. I kind of agree with it ,even though it is a crime to generalize the purpose of the form. But what did these people see in this film to call it  a good screenplay?  Three act structure and save the cat ? 

My second SORKIN adventure was a few good men . When I watched it for the first time, I was emotionally engaged  and entertained by the conflicts of perspectives till the last portion . I was not feeling the dramatic high, the last convo between Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson  was supposed to deliver . I didn’t know why this happened , I couldn’t understand what went wrong. Maybe I was too dumb and lazy to see it . I went to the  roger ebert review as usual. He gave 2 ½ stars, and I understood that he felt it too.So I could understand the reason from his review which was as stated by him

“What happens is that the movie brings us to the brink of a courtroom breakthrough, and then we get the scene that undermines everything, as Cruise explains to his friends what he hopes to do, how he hopes to do it, and how he thinks it will work. When Nicholson’s big courtroom scene develops, we realize with sinking heart that it is following the movie’s scenario. That robs us of pleasure two ways: (1) We are not allowed the pleasure of discovering Cruise’s strategy for ourselves, and (2) Nicholson’s behavior seems scripted and inevitable, and is robbed of shock value.”

Moving away, a few days later…

Then I saw a video on youtube titled “Screenwriting masterclass by ‘PAUL Schrader’.

The video was 1 hr long and it consisted of Paul Schrader explaining  his process of writing using Beat sheets stuck Upon A White board . He’s the Writer of my believed movie “ Taxi Driver and last temptation of Jesus Christ and first reformed”, of course I watched it .  He introduced the method of ‘METAPHOR’.

It followed the following route : 

Problem in life -》 metaphor -》 plot -》 oral telling-》 outline-》 script

He explains:  if a gay  person finds it hard to disclose his sexuality to the society and family due to the fear of being an outcast . – is the problem you want to write about. It is boring to tell the literal problem. Translate into a metaphor.

Here sexuality is a secret , that is a part of him which he is ashamed to tell . We can turn this problem into a metaphorical plot: a schizophrenic person finds many events happening in his life like spies, agents etc , which he only is aware of  . But he fears telling it to the outside world because he fears if they will understand him or if he will be considered an outcast  .

Taxi driver was a metaphor for his thoughts during a depressive phase keeping a gun around to shoot himself

I found this metaphor method  quite interesting with which I am experimenting these days.

Even if I find these methods, patterns  interesting, the subjectivity of  screenplay  writing and the unpredictability of its success  and reception makes me more and more interested in it, however research I do. Perfect screenplay is  something I Desire for to write and its criteria change with my experiences in the exploration of cinema. But I am never sure of it. I don’t know if I am even enough cinema literate to identify a screenwriting decision and an editing decision.  

Plot, inciting incident, pace, exposition, climax, acts, characteristics, depth and layers of themes, undercurrents, character arcs, dialogues, it’s a lot of fun.But  it is hard.

A  famous Malayalam Writer,  V.K.N said “ Screenwriting is the midway between poetry and writing deeds/real documents”. Idk. Is it?