Screenwriting Success

Richard Walter, head of the UCLA's Department of Film and Television, and author of Screenwriting: The Art, Craft and Business of Film and Television Writing and The Whole Picture: A Screenwriters Handbook, believes that, while there is no formula to write a Hollywood success story, the odds for newbie writers are tremendous.

“There are so many hoaxes and myths about Hollywood and the movie business,” Walter explains. “One of them, for example, is it’s all about connections and who you know.

“I know a million well-connected people who can’t get arrested and I see people at UCLA and people who come to my seminars, first time writers, break through every day. It really is a democracy.”

Walters believes the biggest hoax of all is that a screenwriter must choose between writing an independent-film and a high-concept audience-pleaser.

“I’m going to say this very convincingly, but it’s the opposite of what I believe.

“[People say] you’ve got to choose among two potential courses when you make a movie,” he explains. “You’ve got to decide which way you want to go: You can make an entertaining, commercial movie that’s designed to make money, that’s amusing and diverting—nothing wrong with that. Or you can make art. You can make a film that deals with personal issues that’s designed really to posit profound insights to the nature of the human condition, and is not likely to be very successful commercially.

“The truth is it’s a bunch of bunk."

Walters lists the Ancient Greeks and Shakespeare as a couple examples of authors who were profound and well-received.

“It’s a hoax to say that you’ve got to be one or the other,” he continues. “The great dramatic narratives do both of those things. They really have meat on the bones, they engage an audience with profound things to say, and they also make a lot of money.

“The Sopranos was a hugely successful television series, and it had a lot to say about important human issues, including identity, ethnicity, families,” he adds. “The thing about The Sopranos is it’s not so much about a crime family as it is about a family.”

Yet, when it comes right down to it, there’s no simple recipe for success.

“Every time it’s a crap shoot,” he says. “Remember, most movies stink. But so do most paintings, so do most pieces of music, so do most books. We’re not as aware of it in those other mediums, because it’s not in our face.

“I think … if every sixth movie is worthwhile, you’ll continue to go to movies.

Walter bases that figure on studies done in the gaming industry in Nevada to discover that the maximum payoff for the house in slot machines. If a slot machine pays off every single time, people will line up to play it, but the house will lose money. If it only pays off every 150th time, the house will make a fortune, but people aren’t going to play that machine.

“They figured out, if you get paid off every sixth time, that’s enough profit for the house, and it’s enough incentive for the player to keep pouring money into the machine. It’s just enough reward.

“From that I have extrapolated that if you go to five bad movies and you finally see a good one, that’ll make you go to five bad ones again. Also, if you start a bad book, you throw the book away. You put on a CD of music and isn’t very good, you turn it off. But usually with movies you sit through the whole thing.”

Walter’s recommendation for writing a successful screenplay—be it high-concept or independent—is simple.

“If you want to succeed as a screenwriter, you have to remember two things: the first is there’s just sight and sound. A screenplay is an elaborate list of things you see and things you hear. Things you hear are the dialogue.

“And the next thing is that each and every one of those sights and sounds must move the story forward in an identifiable, palpable way. And if you do that, you will win. Everybody will love your script. You might not sell the script, but you’ll get representation out of it, you’ll get rewrite assignments and development deals, and so on. If you just make sure there’s nothing in the movie that doesn’t have to be in the movie.”

Sounds like even better odds than Vegas.

Richard Walter will be leading his next Beyond the Basics seminar on Saturday, June 7.