And the Winner is...
An Interview With Greg Beal
By Michael Gill
Those are the words aspiring screenwriters long for, dream of, and desire to hear - with their own name attached - and with the appropriate amount of delay to heighten the intensity. And aspiring writers have that opportunity thanks to the Don and Gee Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting and the man who, each year, gathers together all the screenplays from all the screenwriters who submit their work.
His name is Greg Beal.
You've been coordinating the Nicholl Fellowships since 1989 and if you ask most spec writers, they will tell you that the Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting is the crown jewel of contests. Why do you think that's so?
For one, it's sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization that presents the Oscars®, and that's a nice entity to be connected to. And we give away a lot of money every year. This year, each winner receives $30,000, up from $25,000 in previous years, and with five winners, which is the case in most years, we're awarding $150,000, which puts it near the top for money distributed by a contest. Only Disney gives away more money in fellowships every year. Those are two clear reasons and then the results that our winners have had over the years -- Susannah Grant with her Oscar nomination for ERIN BROCKOVICH, Allison Anders, Raymond De Felitta, Ehren Kruger, Andrew Marlowe, Randy McCormick, Mike Rich, to name only a few.
If you win, there's a pretty good chance that your career will be jump-started. At the least, doors will be opened.
Do you see much original material anymore or is there a lot of derivative work coming in?
Depending on your definition of originality, but, sure, there are original scripts entered every year. There are autobiographical scripts that clearly come from someone's experience, whether from their youth or a more contemporary period. These may tell a story similar to other coming of age scripts, but there often is originality in the characters, locations, and the events described.
Is that also the case with genre scripts?
It's hard in a given year after looking at thousands of scripts or over the years, tens of thousands of scripts. Then it's more difficult to talk about the original action script, the original detective story, or the original romantic comedy. Stories in a specific genre are formulaic. They have to be.
That's what makes them fit that genre. So, there is going to be a degree of similarity. For example, in detective scripts, there is going to be a detective and a murder. And there's probably going to be a femme fatale - a woman of some sort who hires the detective or becomes involved in the mystery unfolding and probably is connected in some direct way with the murder - as a suspect perhaps. By the end, the detective probably solves the crime. And
he'll have to deal with the woman. Either she's bad and gets sent away or dies, or she turns out to be good and he falls in love with her.
Chinatown fits that description. So do hundreds of other movies and scripts. Is it possible to have original characters and original incidents within a generic formula? Sure, and those will turn up in any given year.
Do you find gems in the midst of all these scripts?
There are scripts that catch you by surprise and you find yourself saying, this is really interesting. I've never seen this. In fact, there's a techno-action script in the finals this year. And there is a technology I've never seen before in a script. The story I've seen variations of, but not the technology and not how it's used - how it unfolds plot-wise. I've never seen anything work the way this particular technology does. The technology isn't original with the writer, of course, but the way he describes it - he's done a good job of using it in his action script.
You had a record year for script submissions this year?
That's true. We were just under 5,500 scripts.
How many scripts do you actually read out of that?
(He laughs.) Very few. I used to read many more but my situation here has changed over the last few years. I used to read hundreds and hundreds of scripts each year and I read dozens and dozens of scripts now. However, I hear from every reader about every single script, and I read or hear all of the loglines, and usually a little bit more.
Do you spend most of your time in meetings and discussing the scripts that are out there during the course of the Fellowship reading period? Or do you go through the coverage sheets to find out which ones are making the grade and which ones aren't?
A typical day from late April through early July when the bulk of the reading for the first round is taking place goes something like this. Readers come and go throughout the day. They take a stack of scripts and they bring back a stack of scripts. Each reader comes into my office and hands me the scripts one by one and are given an opportunity to say something about those scripts. Some of them say quite a bit about each script and some of them say very little about the scripts. And there certainly are days when they don't say anything and let their scores do the talking. But I handle each script individually and I put them into the appropriate stack, for additional reads, waiting for scoring, etc. That takes up the bulk of each day during that time period. It's much worse on Mondays and Fridays but there are a considerable number of people in and out of my office all week long. And then dealing with the aftermath with the score sheets, entering scores into the computer, and dealing with the scripts. It's a pretty serious process. First going through the individual reads for the scripts, then the multiple reads for those that receive them.
Are there some scripts that come through that shouldn't be there simply because it's obvious that the writer doesn't know how to write a
screenplay?
Oh sure, but I should say that none of the scripts get tossed in the trashcan. We read every script. That said, in the twelve years that I've been here, the percentage of really bad scripts has decreased and I would suggest that the rise of the internet, the number of books that have been published about screenwriting and the sheer volume of information available, the number of seminars and conferences that are out there - all of that makes it easier for people to find out about formatting and the basics - how to put stories on paper, what you're supposed to do, how long a script should be. Some people had no clue twelve years ago, when I first started. There were scripts, where you just knew on page one that this was really a bad script and that there was no chance of it not being a really bad script. There are far fewer of those now.
Of the thousands of entries that come in every year, which ones do you personally handle?
I handle every single script that is entered. I look at at least a page of many of those scripts. I flip it open for a quick glance. The percentage of scripts that don't look like scripts has gone down considerably. When I first started, there were hundreds of scripts each year where you could look at one page and know - this is not going to be a good script. And later I handed it to someone else for a read and it turned out not to be a good script, every single time. It happens far less now. People aren't sending in terrible scripts. They're learning enough so that they can write mediocre scripts and there are thousands of mediocre scripts entered every year. There is no question about that. They look like scripts. They read like scripts but they're really just a start. If these people are willing to put some time in and spend a number of years learning the craft they are going to get better. If they have some ability hiding within themselves, some storytelling ability, and some understanding of how film works, they can improve. But most of the entries aren't good and they aren't much fun to read, but it's a starting point and people do get better.
When you're going through all these submissions, reading a page or two at a time, have any of them really jumped out at you demanding to be read?
When you're reading a script, it's nice when you're on page one and you think, Ah...a writer. This person knows how to use the language, everything on the page looks right, the description, the dialogue - I'm in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing.
Some times that promise is fulfilled and the script turns out to be special. Other times, that initial reaction turns out to be misleading as the writer just doesn't tell his story well over the entire length of the script.
There are probably what you consider to be the cardinal rules of
screenwriting; obviously formatting, storytelling, structure, that kind of thing. What can you tell screenwriters that might improve their chances in the hunt?
You mentioned formatting, so let me begin there. The basics are so simple you should just get them down. Or spend some money and get a program like Final Draft or Scriptware, or Moviemagic 2000. In a similar vein, a lot of screenwriters don't read scripts. They watch a lot of movies, but they haven't read scripts. If you ask a group of screenwriters how many novels or short stories they've read, they'll say thousands. Ask the same group how many scripts and the answer is usually something like ten - or fewer.
I'm always surprised that people aspire to be screenwriters, but they haven't read any scripts. If you read pro scripts, you're going to see how people handle situations. You're going to learn from what they've done. If you can build up a library, go to the
Internet and download scripts, you can look up certain scenes - how did they handle flashbacks - character introductions - a particular craft element. The more you've read, the better you'll understand how pros have done it and your scripts will be better for it. It can truly come in handy to join a writer's group and read every script you can get your hands on. Read mediocre scripts from all sorts of people.
One of the things I learned when I was writing myself and reading hundreds of scripts is I would see mistakes over and over again and realize that I made those mistakes in my own scripts. Read all sorts of scripts - good ones - bad ones - because you will learn from both. Writers who watch movies or television know how it looks and sounds and feels on the screen, but too often they have no idea how it looks when
it's put down on paper. There is a considerable difference.
Michael Gill is a screenwriter, freelance writer, and designer. His articles and artwork have appeared in Hollywood Scriptwriter, American Accolades, Scuttlebuzz.com, Absolutewrite.com. and Screenwriters Utopia. If you wish to contact him, send e-mails to
inkfrog@hotmail.com.
