writing a truth movie

[writingmadman]

i have read a lot of books that say that for a writer to establish true total control in the filmmaking process that he/she should write it as a novel first, but is there still a need to do this if the script is based from real life stories and happenings. Second of all, why is it so far fetched that the writer have some controls of his/her script in the movie making process when it is the writer who sees the action in their head first while they are writing it. And are their any writers turned producers who are interested in films that are the writers' true passion, that know what it is like to have a work turned into something totally different that what it was meant to be, and as a producers use their powers to change things for screenwriters? if not isn't it time for that type of change?

[Mike The Mover]

When they make film often times they create a storyboard. A storyboard is a series of images representing scenes. I believe the writer should be involved in the storyboard process. I hear that writers are not involved at all. Apparently writers don't have much to do with the film after they sell their screenplay. Although having never been involved in a film I don't really know.

[scripter1]

I am understanding you.

You are saying that you've heard that a best selling, world reknowned novelist can have total control over the film that comes from the book?

Like J.K Rowlings "has" with Harry Potter?

Yes, she gets every thing run by her and has to sign it off, okay it, and she has tons of power.

I still don't believe she has TOTAL control.
There are likely points where the people in charge sit down with her and say "Look, this HAS to be changed or it won't work as a film. Things HAVE to be trimmed down. Now, you can either let us do our job, making a film, or we stop."
And so she gives in.

So, if you want control over your story you have to write a novel?
Not just any novel. A best seller.
A phenomenon.

Most people who write novels cannot write scripts. Things have to be condensed WAY down to almost bare bones, and the writing style is different. You've got to be willing to break loads of grammer rules.
(I mean specifications. Happy GWG?)
A screenwriter has to think in PICTURES not words.

IF the story is good and has a natural set up that lends it to film format then a writer with decent abilities could script it.
Whether it would sell or not, that is a different matter.

If you write your OWN story and it's interesting enough to market then maybe you'll be confrenced in from time to time.
But TOTAL control? Doesn't happen.
You're in the WAY WRONG side of the business if you want to control your work.

Once you sell it, it's THEIRS.
And they will (add in what ever super nasty expletives and actions you want) to it.

Face it, as writers we all WISH we were given more respect. Given the respect we DESERVE. BUT film is a collaborative medium. And the hiearchy is all ready set.

Only way to have TOTAL control is to go independant.
Then who cares, do what ever you want.

[dpaterso]

It happens to the best of 'em:

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Methinks the aspiring screenwriter's goal is a simple one -- to write a screenplay good enough to be read, noticed, and sold. Which ought not to involve worrying about what will happen to said screenplay after it's sold. That's for the future... 'way in the future.

-Derek

[Celia Cyanide]

If you see the action in your head as you are writing it, and you feel strongly that you don't want someone to interpret it any differently, would you ever consider making it yourself? Some people just don't want to, but if you want to, it might be worth a try. I once was only interested in writing. I wrote a screenplay. I didn't want anyone to interpret the material any differently, so I started taking acting classes. I didn't think I've ever get very good at acting. Just good enough to do this one role. To my surprise, I started getting roles all over the place. Now, I'm writing another screenplay, and I'm going to try to direct it myself. I never would have thought it possible until I tried it.

[Goodwriterguy]

i have read a lot of books that say that for a writer to establish true total control in the filmmaking process that he/she should write it as a novel first, but is there still a need to do this if the script is based from real life stories and happenings. Second of all, why is it so far fetched that the writer have some controls of his/her script in the movie making process when it is the writer who sees the action in their head first while they are writing it.
Nobody ever has "total control" of a movie production. Moviemaking is a collaborative effort and control is collaborative; however, that said, if anyone has "total control" it will be the director, and he or she will be answerable to a producer, and he or she in turn is answerable to an executive producer.

It's the guy who puts up the $millions required to produce a picture who has ultimate control. They are, afterall, risking a load of moolah and hence they both want and get ultimate control. If as a writer you want "total control" or "ultimate control" go out and earn yourself those $millions, then you too can be a producer and enjoy the control that attends being the guy who ponies up the dough.

Secondly, producers both rely upon and trust a director to deliver a good product, one that can succeed in the marketplace. Directors have varying degrees of reputation for this, the one's who enjoy good reps get the choice gigs, the ones who don't get fewer gigs and the dreck gigs.

There are few screenwriters who are good enough to pen scripts that get shot verbatim; most amateurs are simply insufficiently theatrical and haven't studied film enough to know about and use the classic treatments of given moments that have worked since time immemorial, and just have't developed the chops yet to write a script that can be filmed verbatim.

Thus, most scripts that are produced are changed once they leave their writer's hands. Often this is for the better but sometimes it isn't, it depends on the quality and skills of the people involved and whether they've truly apprehended the writer's vision or have one of their own.

Turn the question around and ask why so few writers trust directors to do justice to their work? This depends on the quality, the clarity, the skill of your script and the power of its story. Most directors I know would kill to get a great script to shoot. Unfortunately, they don't see many of them.

The writer's control is on the page, and believe me if you write a dynamite script few will want to change it, they'll know the moment they read it that is is way ahead of them and they'll be loathe to touch it. All they'll wanna do is get it made. Write a "Chinatown" or a "A Few Good Men" or an "LA Confidential" or a "Fight Club" or a "Shawshank Redemption" and you'll learn exactly what I mean very quickly.


And are their any writers turned producers who are interested in films that are the writers' true passion, that know what it is like to have a work turned into something totally different that what it was meant to be, and as a producers use their powers to change things for screenwriters? if not isn't it time for that type of change?
A writer has to exercise some caution about to whom they'll sell their work. There are some good and decent producers around who won't trash your work and there are thousands of producers who will, without so much as a second thought. I've said "no" at least a dozen times to producers who plainly had a different agenda when it came to my script. I've yet to encounter one who didn't, but hope springs eternal and I'm a patient man.

Control? It's all right there on the page.

[whistlelock]

film is a collaborative medium. That's it right there. you're dealing with a bunch of specialized professionals that want to have input into the process.

Your job is to write the story. After that? You're done.



And my unsolacited advice- if you're writing "true" stories. stop. Fictionalize it. Make it a real story. You'll be less inclinded to say, "but that's not how it happened" when changes are made.

[Goodwriterguy]

That's it right there. you're dealing with a bunch of specialized professionals that want to have input into the process.

Your job is to write the story. After that? You're done.
Well, true enough; but I'd say "movie" as opposed to "story," with "movie" embracing story. We write screenplays, which are movies on the page, with the story part inferred by the "play" part of screenplay.

A screenplay is a play written for the screen, commonly known as a movie.

If all we did was write stories we could write and submit treatments.


And my unsolacited advice- if you're writing "true" stories. stop. Fictionalize it. Make it a real story. You'll be less inclinded to say, "but that's not how it happened" when changes are made.
It's almost impossible to write a "true" story without dramatizing it to one extent or another, without perhaps compressing its timeline, conflating two or three of is characters into one, idealizing its setting, and the like.

Truly true stories are usually boring as hell and ill-suited for the screen. They may be intersting but are they compelling? Do they knock your socks off?

Cheers!

[whistlelock]

It's almost impossible to write a "true" story without dramatizing it to one extent or another, without perhaps compressing its timeline, conflating two or three of is characters into one, idealizing its setting, and the like.

Truly true stories are usually boring as hell and ill-suited for the screen. They may be intersting but are they compelling? Do they knock your socks off?

Cheers! yes, which I mentioned to fictionalize it. when I've run across writers writing a "true" story they have always had the same response to criticism; "but that's not how it happened."

Which leads me to mention to not get too attached to the "truth" of the story and just tell a good story.

[Goodwriterguy]

yes, which I mentioned to fictionalize it. when I've run across writers writing a "true" story they have always had the same response to criticism; "but that's not how it happened."

Which leads me to mention to not get too attached to the "truth" of the story and just tell a good story.
I think attachment to the "truth" of a true story is fine, just not an attachment to the finite details of how the story went down. A true story isn't worth telling if it doesn't convey some notion of "truth," as in insight into the human condition or the human heart.

A couple of years ago I wrote a "true" story and grappled with this a lot. My subject was LT Commander Michael Scott "Spike" Speicher, a Navy A/F-18 pilot who was shot down over Iraq on the first night of the Gulf War, in January 1991. He was written off almost immediately and officially declared KIA by the Navy in March. A memorial service was conducted for him and a marker erected at Arlington. His wife was paid out. End of story.

Except ... many of Spike's colleagues did not believe he hadn't survived and kept working to uncover the truth. There had been no SAR conducted for him, and why not? Lo and behold in 1994 some Bedouins found his airplane in the desert boondocks of al Anbar Province in Western Iraq, information which made its way to the CIA in Doha and thence to the Navy, including a part that had been retrieved, a part with a serial number on it that proved it came from Spike's airplane. And, there was no sign of human remains at the crash site.

In 1995 at the urging of Spike's friends, the International Red Cross convinced Saddam to let them go to the site and investigate. Dubbed "Operation Promise Kept," this mission was comprised mostly of Americans who were experienced accident investigators and forensic types. They found the canopy and ejection seat from the airplane 2,500 meters from the impact site, clear evidence Spike had ejected at altitude.

The Navy and DPMO at the Pentagon were very reluctant to accept this new information, it was Dick Cheney afterall who had announced that Spike had not survived (he was SECDEF at the time) and they didn't wanna embarass him. But Clinton finally did the unthinkable and changed Spike's status from KIA to MIA in 2000, the first time that had been done in the history of the armed forces. Then in 2002 Bush changed Spike's status again, from MIA to POW, after information had been gathered about the distinct possibility that Spike was being held by Saddam.

A special search team went into Iraq with the invasion in March of 03, tasked to look for and find Spike. They were not successful, despite offering a $1 million reward for information. All they found were the letters "MSS" scrawled on a cell in Abu Ghraib prison, Spike's initials. Many leads were chased down, hundreds of people were interviewed, thousands of records searched, every prison and detention center in Iraq gone through.

I wrote the movie. It was hell but after a year of work I managed to get it whipped into fairly good shape. Producers, including those who do television MOW's, all passed ... because the ending was so dissatisfying.

Had Spike been recovered, the movie would surely have been made.

But telling this true story on the screen and sticking entirely to its facts was impossible. I had to conflate some of the characters involved, alter timing in some respects, and I was forced by threat of legal action to leave Spike's wife completely out (she remarried by the way and almost as soon as the memorial service for Spike was completed).

So I've been there and done that. Challenging? To the max! Fun? Oh you betcha! Rewarding? Well, no movie so much less so than would have otherwise been the case. But it felt good to tell Spike's story for him, a man who was, in many respects, left behind by his own country. Now I'm thinking of publishing the script in book form.

Most of us involved in this story believe Spike was shot down by friendly fire.

Ahh, the foibles! :Shrug: