Screenwriter Chris Riley Shares How Defining Moments Build Characters

Join us for a powerful show with successful screenwriters Chris Riley as they share how defining moments build characters for your screenplay. thisdefiningmoment.comTo learn more about Carole Dean and From the Heart Productions visit www.FromtheHeartProductions.com.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Love Talk Radio.

SPEAKER_03 0:14

Hi and welcome to the Art of Film Funding. I'm your co-host, Claire Papan. Along with Carol Dean, author of the best-selling book, The Art of Film Funding, Carol is also the founder and president of From the Heart Productions and the host of this show. Christopher Riley is a professional screenwriter who co-wrote with his wife Kathy Riley the award-winning German-language film After the Truth. The Rileys have written scripts for Disney's Touchstone Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Mandalay Television Pictures, Sean Connery's Fountain Bridge films, and Robert Court Productions. Christopher produced the action thriller Red Line, and executive produced the Web Series Thump. He began his career as a proofreader in the standard setting script processing department at Warner Brothers, a department he eventually rose to manage. He is the former director of the Act One Hollywood Writing Program, the author of the classic screenplay format guide, the Hollywood Standard, an instructor of screenwriting at the undergraduate and graduate levels, a founding partner of Story Masters Film Academy, and a longtime member of the Writers Guild of America West. And Carol, I see that Christopher and Kathy are published by Michael Wease, who also published your book as well, The Art of Film Funding. The Art of Filmmaking as well.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Yes, thank you, Claire. We are fortunate to have one of the best publishers in the film business. And thank you, Christopher, for joining us.

SPEAKER_05 2:10

Oh, I'm so happy to be with you today.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Yes, this is going to be fun. We really loved your book and uh and we want to share as much of it as possible with the audience. And you say in the introduction that this book is about building deep characters. So let's start with that and expand on that for us, please.

SPEAKER_05 2:34

I think that the most interesting characters are like the most interesting people. So they're they're deep and they're complicated, and in that way they're like us. We're fascinated by characters who who do interesting things for interesting reasons. And one of the great joys of life is getting to know the depths of another human being, and in the same way, one of the great joys of a movie is getting to know the depths of our favorite characters.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Yes, exactly, and that's why I love that film, The Offer, that Paramount did about the producer who works on Godfather and all of the shenanigans he had to go through to film in New York, Christopher. So you you uh get into the book and you start talking uh about the importance uh the the defining moments and the defining moment in The Godfather is something I think a lot of us are very familiar with now because of watching the offer and understanding uh understanding the film from the uh director, the writer, and the producer who highlighted. So share with us that part of The Godfather where uh the defining moment happened for Michael.

SPEAKER_05 4:03

Well, Michael Corleone begins the film as a law-abiding war hero uh just home from World War II, and we know that The Godfather is about Michael's transformation to be the crime boss of his family and really of the city and then beyond. I mean he becomes a a ruthless criminal. But Michael doesn't doesn't grow in some kind of steady, slow, even process like a cornstalk. He he grows in this cataclysmic moment that takes place uh at the restaurant when he guns down the rival crime lord who had his own father shot and the police captain who protects this rival crime boss. So Michael, for the first time in his life, murders two men, and that becomes a moment of before and after. We can talk about the Michael before the restaurant scene, we can talk about the Michael after the restaurant scene, and because we as the audience are with him in that moment of transformation, we're able to go with him. And that's a huge part of the magic of the Godfather, is that we are able to stay emotionally invested in this character who is growing into a ruthless killer, and yet we understand him and we feel that with him because we experience that moment that defines him. And the offer showed us that it wasn't just the in the writing that that moment was understood for all its significance, but the director understood it, the actor understood it, the the production designer, and what the offer shows us is the thug who was acting as location manager understood it enough that he had to lock up the owner of the restaurant in a closet so that they had time to shoot that scene. So it's really everyone on the team who appreciated the significance of that moment. Without it, the movie doesn't work.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

Exactly right. Uh but this is marvelous because you uh you just follow him through, all uh follow Michael, uh as he tries to save his father's life, and he is in his mind, he's one step ahead of the enemies. He knows what they're going to do next, and yet that's not his forte, or we think. But he has just come from war, so then we have to understand that he's learned how to uh uh plan ahead based on the enemy's uh potential moves, right?

SPEAKER_05 6:58

Well, yes, and I think that's uh the seeds of that change are planted earlier. We know that he's come from war, and yet this is the moment where what happened in war now comes home, and uh this is a moment that changes Michael at every possible level, and we understand it because we we understand what motivates it, which is family. He is doing what he believes he needs to do to protect his family. We understand those motivations, and so even though we haven't taken the action that Michael took, we have certainly felt the desire to protect the ones we love. And so we are able to relate to Michael, to see ourselves in him, and take this journey with him, so that we are so torn at the end of the film when Kay looks through that doorway into the office to see what her husband has become, and the door closes him off from us and from Kay, we really feel it because we have we have invested emotionally in this guy.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

Right. And this uh this was the defining moment then. What you say that's when he came up with the idea, because he's the one that said we have to do it now. Uh and and he came up with the Michael came up with the idea, uh, to kill both of them at once. So that was his defining moment. Is that what you think?

SPEAKER_05 8:41

It it was, I think, that whole process of coming up with the idea and then carrying out the idea. Um and the film spends a huge amount of time building up to and then carrying us through that moment in the restaurant because all of the storytellers together understood that that is the moment that is the making of Michael Corleone into The Godfather. Um we are stories are about character formation and transformation, and that is uh that's the moment for for Michael, but it's the moment for us, it's the moment uh for every character uh that's well drawn. Uh Egri in the art of dramatic writing talks about a well-drawn character, the character who changes because life is change. And so this isn't something that's limited to the Godfather. We see it in films as varied as Fiddler on the Roof, Finding Nemo, um Spider-Man 2. Uh we over and over again we see characters who have moments of transformation because it's true for all of us.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

Right. So um so this book then is uh really important for almost everyone on the crew, like uh you were saying, it's the from the location manager on, they need to understand what's happening in each scene and and know that, for example, when they finally found the house they wanted in the in The Godfather, and the uh owner of the house realized that it was the film that nobody wanted to get made in New York, then he said, No, you can't use my house. And uh so it became then it became part of the uh uh producer's job to make sure he got that house because it worked perfectly and then that was the yard and the they had the dark and the light, the inside and the outside, everything perfect. So had uh the uh production manager read your book, he would have known that that in that beginning that set the uh pace and the energy for the entire story, getting that right house, don't you think?

SPEAKER_05 11:13

I think that's right. I think that uh, you know, filmmaking is a group project, and we've got writers, actors, producers, directors, editors, production designers, uh location managers, it turns out, are helping tell the story. Years ago, I was on location with the movie Twister, and there were a couple of digital effects artists from uh Industrial Light and Magic, the uh they were creating the tornadoes. And they understood that while their expertise was in computer coding, they were really storytellers too. They were making the monster for the movie. And that was really where I first began to understand that everyone who works on a film or a television series is first and foremost a storyteller. And so if storytelling consists of helping us understand the inner journey of the characters that we are fascinated by, then every member of the team needs to understand the shape of that inner journey and how they contribute to it. I've done a little bit of directing and I understand that the gaffer and the DP are helping me tell the story. Even in conversations with the sound editor, I'm not just talking about technical things, I'm talking about character things and saying, you know, I need this here, I need to hear this line and understand it because it's part of setting up the characters' transformation and what's happening. And if if the audience doesn't understand that line, we're going to miss it. So all of us need to understand the deep character stories we're telling.

SPEAKER_01 13:09

Right. And that's why in the beginning of the book, I love this, you say I won't um we make women and men and children. We make robots and monsters and hobbits, singing teapots and gymneys weeks, presidents and assassins. Uh, our offspring live lives separate from our own, surprising us, defying us, and speaking lines that we didn't premeditate, making choices that dismay, delight, and shock us. In other words, you know, this this is very true. Once you start creating a character, it becomes alive, and it can be someone rather separate and unique, even though it resides inside of you, right?

SPEAKER_05 13:58

Yeah, I I think, you know, writers certainly talk about this phenomenon with each other, and we worry that we'll sound crazy uh to anyone who hasn't experienced it. But it it's true. We we work to create a character, and then we may want that character to do something uh to service the plot we have in mind, and the character may begin to tell us, that's not me. That's not what I want to do. I have something else that would most naturally flow from who I am and what I want, and maybe how I'm damaged, how I'm strong. And we do well to listen to those characters. I love it when characters start saying lines of dialogue that I did not expect them or premeditate that they would say. That's when that's when writing becomes fun, and that's when I start believing that maybe I've I've got an authentic character on my hands.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

Oh, how exciting that would be. Now you say that it's a storyteller's job to make the audience care. So um that is really the most important thing. Um and and it is it is important to tell us how the character got that way and how we some backstory we need. Uh and the films nowadays have less and less. I um I saw the film Mickey and Nicky, uh, Elaine May directed and wrote, and I loved it. But you really uh uh I got to listen to Peter Falk talk about his character, the Criterion Dussis, where you have a chance to get other information before you see the film. And Peter Falk had all of these reasons why uh the the characters were acting this way because they were very weird, uh, and strange uh actions and reactions. So once he explained everything, uh then you could the film became a different uh story to you. You had more of a foundation, and that made the film twice as interesting for me. But I don't think that we give as much time now as we did 20, 30 years ago to characters development in the script.

SPEAKER_05 16:32

You know, that that is probably true. Uh certainly films are paced much faster today than they used to be. Uh I do think that we can, even within um very modern storytelling, give attention to characters in creative ways that'll allow for um an audience with a shorter attention span to still get what they need. Uh I remember the first notes I ever got from a producer in LA, uh, and they were pretty searing. Uh the note was, I did not care about your characters. And that was about 40 years ago, and set me out on a quest to understand how to make the audience care. And I I think it's everything. And the way that we care about characters is we see ourselves in them and we relate to them, and so it ends up that it it is us in the story. It's us these things are happening to. That's why we have to know what happens. And if for some reason we don't get to see the end of the story, uh we're desperate to know how it turned out. And by understanding not only that a character somehow is lacking or wounded or broken and needs to grow, um so that there is this inner emotional journey on screen, but understanding how they got that way. Understanding, for example, the I mean that's what really connects us to them. So in the book, Kathy and I talk about the film Finding Nemo. And it's a it's a Pixar film for children, but it starts with a moment of tragedy when you have the main characters, uh the dad Marlon and Nemo himself, the title character, is just a little orange egg at that point. But a barracuda comes, eats Nemo's mother and all the other hundreds of eggs. And Marlon the dad suffers this terrible, tragic, violent loss. And it is because we see that moment that we understand the the weird behavior of Marlon. We see that he is an overprotective father in the extreme. We dismiss him as weird. We sympathize with him, we go, Oh yeah, I know why he's like that, because I saw what happened to him. And because we experience that moment at the beginning of the film, which is not a boring moment of character exposition, but an exciting, dramatic, dangerous, cinematic moment. Now, because we've experienced that with Marlin, we understand deeply why he does the things he does, how he's damaged, the way he's damaged, and how he is going to have to grow once Nemo is lost to him in order to get him back. So that's fuels emotionally everything that happens in the film. Pixar th those folks are brilliant storytellers, and so they bring us that backstory in a way that is exciting and doesn't feel expository in any way.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

Exactly. It fit and it and it really connected you to the characters. If I if I can't get connected to the characters within ten minutes, I I turn to another film uh because it's that important to me. And I didn't know what what the behind the scenes story is, I just know that it's not of interest. I can't to get emotionally involved without having some connection. But here's the good part. I mean, this is a fabulous book, I have to say. Every chapter is so interesting, and um you learn things that you've known before, but you never put them together. And in chapter three, you say, Let's discuss um before you can tell someone else's story, you have to understand your own story. So how does that work?

SPEAKER_05 21:09

So this is this is the hard work that we have to do, whether we're writers or actors or directors. We are the models for characters. The way we understand character is because we understand ourselves. We have a front row seat to the invisible inner emotional life of only one person and that's ourselves. And like characters, we also have been shaped by individual moments, maybe a half dozen moments that most profoundly shape us. And some of these moments are moments of loss. Other times they're moments of discovery or growth. And my wife and writing partner, Kathy, Is the one who really impressed this upon me that before we can tell our character story, we have to understand our own, and that entails doing the hard work of looking back so I can recognize maybe that I am wounded in some particular way. The work is to look back and say, man, when was that wound inflicted? Or I might look and say, for decades I have had this dream of connecting with other people through the telling of stories. When was that dream born? By going back and locating those moments, I come to understand my own defining moments and I see what a defining moment looks like in real life. That then gives me the raw material I can draw from as I start looking for the moments that have shaped my characters before the beginning of the movie, and also those moments like that restaurant scene from The Godfather that will redefine characters in real time before our eyes on the screen. But there's there's not a uh there's not a disconnection between those moments that define me and those that define my characters. And to the extent that writers, actors, directors, and others will delve into the moments that have defined them, and this takes them courage, uh that will equip them then to bring their own emotions, their own experience to to the characters that they're building.

SPEAKER_01 23:53

Right. And in in um chapter two, you talked about how writers and actors build uh characters and you share information on how loss can shape a character, right? Major losses in people's lives can often be turning points.

SPEAKER_05 24:12

They often can be, and uh those are moments that hurt, and we do everything we can to avoid them. I think we also do we work pretty hard to avoid thinking about them uh and delving back into them in our own lives. But that it's rich material for us to explore because those moments of loss change us. In uh as I think about moments of loss in film, I think of, for example, in Fiddler on the Roof, the climactic moment of loss is when the villagers lose Anatefka. And that's a moment that is going to change all of their lives. In Lord of the Rings, the moment that Sauron loses the ring to Isildur, that's the opening scene of the whole trilogy. Uh Raisin in the Sun builds on Walter's loss of the insurance money. And those moments of loss can motivate us and motivate characters to act. We have to do something because of this loss. They can shape our behavior as they do Marlin's uh behavior in finding Nemo. He's lost almost all of his family, and now he behaves as an overprotective parent, but also as uh he he does audacious, bold things to get Nemo back when Nemo is lost to him. Uh there are many stories where a moment of loss, uh for example, the gladiator, a moment of loss fuels a quest for justice and maybe revenge. Moments of loss can also lead to growth. And so when I think of my own defining moments, uh my greatest losses have led to my greatest growth. Um I am a um if I can say about myself, I think I'm a much better, more compassionate person because of the losses uh that I've suffered. So we we really want to touch these these moments that are tender in the sense that it can still hurt to touch them, even in our own histories, so that we can bring that into our writing, directing, and our performances.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

Exactly. Um and um you also say how a moral or a spiritual change takes place and how your life is changed by what choice you make after that. So uh can you expand on that?

SPEAKER_05 26:59

I think in this regard of Walter White in the television series Breaking Bad. So Walter is a high school chemistry teacher who's really sleepwalking through life. Uh his students don't care about what he teaches. He's been emasculated. And now at the beginning of the series, he's diagnosed uh with cancer and told that uh he will not live too much longer. And then Walter has the opportunity to change his life when he sees a former student of his uh as a drug dealer, and he comes to understand that there's a lot of money to be made. And Walter knows he's got, as a chemist, he's got the skills to make math, and he can work with this former student to make a lot of money, and so this formerly law-abiding high school teacher makes the decision to become a criminal in order to get money for his family, and later we discover it really is uh even about more than that. It's about Walter wanting to feel powerful. Uh that that results in a deep moral change in Walter. And for uh for watchers of the series, they know where that moral change leads, and it leads to very dark places and very dark consequences that all trace back to that moment of decision when Walter White decided to go into the meth business. So you get both a decision that is a defining moment in Walter White's life, and that decision requires a weighing of moral values, but once that decision is made, it fundamentally changes the kind of person that Walter White is, in the same way that Michael Corleone's choice to resort to violence and to murder creates a moral change in him that leads to the spiral into ruthlessness.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

Right. And you bring up something in the in your book that I wasn't aware of when you were talking about uh when Bruce Wayne witnessed the murder of his parents, he undergoes this sort of a lasting emotional change in the pilot script for the series Gotham. Uh Bruno Heller introduces the boy Bruce and his parents walking through an alley, and then there um that see I never saw that scene, and I have I love that man in the series, but I didn't know about that. So tell us more about that change where a deep and lasting emotional change occurs.

SPEAKER_05 30:07

It's yeah, reading the script in particular, it becomes so clear that Bruno Heller, the writer, um understood the importance of that moment for young Bruce when he's with his parents. They've just seen a movie. Um this is the boy who will become the dark knight. And the script says that he and his family are laughing together and they're talking lightly. And it's so interesting to me that uh in this defining moment for the dark knight, uh Heller uses the word lightly in contrast to that. So that's the before. And then a gunman confronts them. The script says, and we he we get all these words of now about fear. He's the script says that Bruce is terrified. It later talks about Bruce being frozen in terror. And then after the killing, it says Bruce lets out an unearthly wail. And then moments later, by the time Detective Gordon gets to young Bruce, the script says that Bruce's face is a mask of tragedy. Young Bruce Wayne has gone from lightness into fear and tragedy, and then an additional thing happens. Gordon says to Bruce, and here's the line, grief can make you strong. Be strong, and one day maybe you can stop this from happening to somebody else.

SPEAKER_01 31:39

Oh, there you go. Wow.

SPEAKER_05 31:41

And that's it. And then so that's the the planting of the idea of the seed of uh the avenging angel that is Batman. The direction in the scripts of Bruce nods. Gordon has no idea how deep his words think in. So this is a before and after moment. It's a moment of death for Bruce Wayne's parents, it's also a moment of birth for the Dark Knight, and Bruce Wayne will never be the same because of that moment. It's it's one of the clearest ways that we can identify our own defining moments and those of characters if we can see that they've created this threshold of before and after. And we talk about that moments in our lives. We'll say, oh, that was before the diagnosis, that was after. That was before the house burned down, that was after the house burned down, uh, that was before we met. So maybe a little happier moment. Uh that was after we met. And um, you know, that was before I won the lottery, or after I won the lottery. So we have maybe a handful of these moments we can look at that have that before and after quality. When we find that, we know we've located a moment that really has made a difference and that I would call a defining moment.

SPEAKER_01 33:08

Wow, that's so easy to uh use that and go back in your life to just for each of us to find that defining moment. Well, let's go to Robert McKee because um I've been listening, uh not only uh have I read his book, but I also I'm listening now to his um audio about well he's broken it down into story, characters, and dialogue. So you say in his book Story, uh points to the significant choices that characters make under pressure. And then with these choices, he argues, reveal true characters. Is it possible that choice can also redefine that is change that inner nature? And then he goes on to talk about, or you go on to talk about Titanic and Rose, the character in there. So tell us about that.

SPEAKER_05 34:09

So uh for me it's a fascinating question. Um uh are we um are we revealing who a character is, or do those choices that characters make under extreme pressure actually provide an opportunity for change? When we meet Rose at the beginning of Titanic, she's making her way to the back of the ship ready to end her life. And that's also the moment when she meets Jack. That moment becomes a defining moment, and we even we see the choice that she makes when Jack reasons with her, negotiates, sort of coerces her by saying, if you jump, I have to jump in after you. Uh and he extends a hand to her as she hangs off the back of the ship, and Rose has to make a decision. Either her life ends there, or she reaches back toward Jack and back toward life. So we could say that the choice she makes, which is the choice to grab Jack's hand, is revealing who she really was all along, uh or maybe uh this is a pivot point where she does a U-turn. And I think it um I think you certainly can believe that this is a U-turn because if not for Jack, that decision wouldn't have been made and Rose's life would have ended right then. But now she chooses to live, and the rest of the movie is about her trying to trying to live in the face of really, really uh tough obstacles that just grow and grow and grow. Uh but Rose, even then at the end of the film, when is when she's in that water with Jack, makes that promise to him that she'll never let go, meaning she is going to live. And so she does for decades and decades.

SPEAKER_01 36:24

Yes. Once oh, that that is so well written. That um and your book just keeps uh adding more and more information uh and going deeper, deeper in discovering your character's defining moments, and uh chapter five is discovering a nonfiction character's defining moments, enriching your storyteller with defining moments. I mean, uh this continues through uh the whole book. The information you're sharing is um educational, it's enlightening, and most of us have great memories of our favorite films, and we can go back and think about them. And sometimes you need to see a film over to get that defining moment, and when you do, it's a whole new perspective. Uh, and I know that Sidney Pollock often uh had the writers with him from day one when he started rehearsal because he felt that what the writer had to say was so important that he didn't want to miss it. He wanted to have the man there or woman on the set so that he could constantly be um assured that he was getting all the information from the page to the screen. But that's rare, don't don't you think?

SPEAKER_05 37:53

In my experience, that uh that has been uh all too rare. Often the writer and the director um meet at the premiere and never have a conversation. The writers guild, I must say, um has advocated very strongly that writers and directors talk to each other and they've sought to formalize that. I recently had a wonderful experience working with a director on a film that I wrote on, and she included me all the way through production in all the creative conversations. And so we were able then, uh, when there are changes, as there always are through production, we can't get this location, or for budget reasons, we can't do this thing you wrote. How are we going to make changes that won't harm the story and then protect the things that are essential? Those, I think, are conversations that um ought to be had among the team. And when you understand these are the pivot points, these are the moments uh that define a character and that are the moments of transformation, those are the ones that we protect above all others. And when the studio says, ah, we need to cut uh that scene from the opening of um, let's say, Gotham with you know little Bruce Wayne, we don't need that scene. Uh everybody wants to see Batman in the costume, you can fight for that and say, no, without that, we don't have a character, without that, we don't have the audience emotional investment in the character, and you damage the entire series if if we begin stripping those things out.

SPEAKER_01 39:50

Right. Well, um let's go back to chapter four, where you talk about discovering a character's defining moments, and you say when a new character stands in the wings an instant before stepping on the stage, the audience knows nothing. The characters arrive cloaked in complete mystery. So how let's discuss how you discover the moments that define your characters as a writer. How do you do that?

SPEAKER_05 40:24

I I really start at the understanding that characters start at zero. Before they step onto the stage or onto the screen, we don't know anything about them. And I like to ask myself lots of questions. Uh I ask myself, what does this character want? And I think that's a question that is familiar not only to writers, but uh certainly to actors who think about what is my objective, and it's all about desire. Um why am I doing what I'm doing? And so I ask myself that. I also ask myself, how does this character need to grow and change? That starts giving me a beginning point where I can say, well, if I know that this character wants this thing, um we could go to the beginning of Titanic. Rose wants to end her life. Well, I immediately can ask myself, why? What happened? And that requires me to search into her history. How did you get to be this way? Uh I see in myself um certain uh quirks and weaknesses and fears, and I can ask where did that come from? What what happened? Uh there's a certain compassion when we can ask that about ourselves, about one another, about our characters. What happened to you? And when I see a character who needs to grow and change, or a character well, that leads me to the question of what happened to you? When did you suffer that wound? How did you get that scar? Why do you have that limp metaphorically? And I I start then to find those moments. I think that often those moments are going to be informed by my own life experiences, by the life experiences I've observed and the people I know best. And so I bring uh I draw on real life to um to bring those moments to my characters. Um C.S. Lewis would begin his books um usually with an apology that they weren't very good, that they weren't better than they were. But in one of his introductions, he said, People often ask me how I can be as creative as I am, and I tell them I just try to tell the truth, and nine times out of ten, no one has tried that. And I've really applied that in my my own storytelling. So instead of looking to movies for examples of uh to draw on uh for defining moments, I really try to look to life because everyone's seen the stuff that's already been on screen, but each of us has this unique life experience. And look, w like why not take our worst moments as well as our best moments and use them for something good, like creating these really rich, fascinating characters who do things for real reasons so that we can relate to them. Uh that is for me the process of searching. For those moments and finding them. And I I I got to interview the actor Tony Hale when Kathy and I were writing The Defining Moment. And he talked about this process for him. And he he said he doesn't dig into his own past as often as he should. And he thinks it's because it's hard and it's painful. And yet he said to us when he does it, everyone around him notices that suddenly there is a a life and an energy and an emotion that enriches even a single line reading because he has connected back to something real in his own life. And for all of us those things can be uncomfortable. But they are also, I think, the source of the gift that we have to give to the audience. So it is it is well worth uh doing this work, and I right now I'm speaking to myself because I I like to rush ahead. Like I know all the exciting things this character's going to do in in the movie. And to pause and say, Oh, you've got a superpower? Where'd that come from? When did you first discover it? And um when did you make the decision to use it the way that you're using it? Well, that takes time, that's extra work, but oh my gosh. Even with superhero movies, we can recognize how much better are the ones where the writer has done that, where the actor is doing that, where the director is doing that. Those are the ones that touch us and move us and stay with us and that aren't simply another disposable copy of something we've seen before.

SPEAKER_01 46:01

Right. Well, thank you so much for writing the book, The Defining Moment, How Writers and Actors Build Characters. Because you have really added a lot of information and guidance to all of us who love movies, as well as those who write and work on them. Thank you, Chris. It's a wonderful book.

SPEAKER_05 46:24

That's very kind of you to say.

SPEAKER_01 46:27

And we can find this uh on Michael WeC Productions, which is MWP.com, as well as Amazon, right?

SPEAKER_05 46:38

That's right. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 46:41

Okay. And what what is it you're working on now? Can you share any any films you're working on?

SPEAKER_05 46:48

Well, I uh I'm just finishing up actually the first short film I ever directed. Um I decided that I should try my hand at directing, and that has been a pure joy. Um and then there's a feature uh that I uh I served as one of two writers on uh called O'Brawling Love that shot in June. Uh Maggie Mart directed that, and so I'm looking forward to seeing um a cut of that soon. Um and then I'm uh actually developing a few new things. I just finished a uh screenplay called Xenophilia, which is an uh an interesting word I just came across, um, which is a thriller set at the US-Mexico border. Um I I tend to write dramas and thrillers and action films. Uh I'm not particularly funny, sadly. So I I generally don't write write comedy, though. Um Brawling Love, the film we just shot, is a high school romantic comedy. And that was that was so much fun uh for me to to work in that genre and really be pushed uh uh to do things I had never done before. I at this point in my life I'm finding a lot of excitement in doing things where I'm not an expert. Uh I tend to get asked to do a lot of things um in areas uh where I've developed some expertise. But I love being a student. I love not knowing. And uh even though it makes me uneasy, I I really like being in that position where I need to learn a lot and be dependent on the people around me.

SPEAKER_01 48:37

How wonderful. This sounds great, and then congratulations on directing that film. Good for you. That's must have been quite a leap.

SPEAKER_05 48:48

It was it w it was a leap. Uh my producer George Simon, uh who's a skilled director himself, told me first and foremost that I should have fun. And I wasn't expecting him to say that. I was expecting I should ha be white knuckled and um uh and so I entered into the process with that attitude. Uh I had a lot of former students who came back to help me shoot this film, uh and it was it was uh so gratifying to have students I had invested in come back then with their really well-developed skills uh to support me. And uh as a writer I spent so much time in a room alone. Uh I discovered that on set there's this whole party going on that I had not been invited to. So it was really great to be to to be there and to create um to create together. It's just so fantastic when people bring the gifts they have. Um I think of actors, I even think of the vocalist who sang on the soundtrack for my film. Um I just I love the the incredible gifts people have. We put them all together to create a single film. Um it's w it's one of the most magical, wonderful things about this art form.

SPEAKER_01 50:15

Yes. It is magical. Well, thank you very much, Chris. We uh really appreciate the time and the information you've shared. And we wish you lots of luck in the future. I hope that directing appeals and you continue to go back and forth between writing and directing.

SPEAKER_05 50:35

I I hope that that's the case. And um it's been just been a r a pure joy to talk with you today, Carol.

SPEAKER_01 50:44

Thank you. Thank you. We've learned so much. Claire and I really appreciate your time. And we hope that uh you'll come back in a year or so and tell us what's new.

SPEAKER_05 50:54

Well, I would love to have um lots of new things to tell you a year from now.

SPEAKER_01 50:59

Okay. All right, thank you very much, Claire. Thank you for being hosting the show and thank you, Chris, for your brilliant book, The Defining Moment. All right, thank you.

SPEAKER_03 51:15

And okay.

SPEAKER_01 51:18

Take care, everybody. Thank you, Claire. Bye.

SPEAKER_03 51:21

Bye bye. Now, in its second edition, Carol Dean's popular book, The Art of Film Funding, has 12 new chapters to cover all areas of film financing and how to avoid expensive pitfalls. Learn how to start with an idea and end with a trailer, how to make an ask for money, create your story structure and your trailer, legal advice, fair use, successful crowdfunding, how to ask for music rights, and what insurance you can't shoot without. Available on Amazon under Carol Dean and at FromTheHeartProductions.com. I want to remind our listeners that David Rakelin is a brilliant and talented award-winning musician who scores films and can compose music for a trio or for a full orchestra. David is a very good friend to the independent filmmaker and comes highly recommended by From the Heart Productions. If you need music to help tell your story, please contact him at davidrakeln.com. That's david R-A-I-K-L-E-N.com. And Carol and I want to thank you for tuning in to the Art of Film Funding. Please visit our website at FromTheHeart Productions.com. You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter. Good luck with your films, everyone.

SPEAKER_02 53:07

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SPEAKER_00 53:35

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