From Twilight Zone to Today: Paul Chitlik on the Art of Screenwriting

A master storyteller shares decades of lessons and his newest book.

Description - : Paul Chitlik has written for all the major networks and studios in English and in Spanish.  He was story editor for MGM/UA'S "The New Twilight Zone," and staff writer for Showtime's sitcom "Brothers."  He directed episodes and was coordinating producer for “Real Stories of the Highway Patrol” and “U.S. Customs Classified.”  He wrote and produced “Alien Abduction” for UPN.  He wrote, produced, and directed “Ringling Brothers Revealed” a special for The Travel Channel.  (He had been a roustabout for Circus Vargas years earlier.)  He wrote, produced and directed “The Wedding Dress,” for Amazon Prime.  He received a Writers Guild of America award nomination for "The Twilight Zone" and a GLAAD Media Award nomination for "Los Beltrán,” for Telemundo.  He won a Genesis Award for a Showtime Family movie. 

He taught in the MFA programs of UCLA, and many prestigious universities around the world.  His book, “Rewrite,” is available in English, Chinese, and Korean.  His latest novel is “Lies, All Lies.”  His latest screenwriting book is “The Screenwriting Sensei.” And we will cover that book today.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 1:12

Teaching the craft. Paul Chitlik and the screenwriting sensei covers why screenwriting is harder than it looks and how to make it work for you.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Our very special guest today, Paul Chitlick, has written for all the major networks and studios in English and in Spanish. He was story editor for MGM USA's The New Twilight Zone and staff writer for Showtime Sitcom Brothers. He directed episodes and was coordinating producer for Real Stories of Highway Patrol and US Customs Classified. He wrote and produced Alien Abduction for UPM, UPN. He wrote, produced, and directed Wringling Brothers Revealed, a special for the Travel Channel. Paul wrote, produced, and directed The Wedding Dress for Amazon Prime. He received a Writers Guild of America Award nomination for The Twilight Zone and a Glad Media Award nomination for Los Beltran for Telemundo. He also won a Genesis Award for a Showtime Family Movie. Paul taught in the MFA programs of UCLA and many prestigious universities around the world. His book, Rewrite, is available in English, Chinese, and Korean. His latest novel is Lies All Lies. And his latest screenwriting book is The Screenwriting Sensei. And we will cover that book today. Carol Paul has the same publisher, Michael Weezy, that you have, right?

SPEAKER_02 3:09

Yes, Claire. Thank you. And Paul, we're so happy you joined us.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Thank you. It's great to be here.

SPEAKER_02 3:16

Well, we're really impressed with the details in your book on writing your screenplay. And I especially like the fact that you have three different courses in one book. That's incredible. You have Introduction to Screenwriting, that's course one. And Screenwriting Two is Works in Progress. And course three is Introduction to Screenwriting Three. So this is very unique, and it's greatly appreciated to find so much information in one book. So give us an idea of why you decided to break this into three sections.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Well, the three sections really mimic what I was teaching at the time. Well, in the extension program, I was teaching online at the time, and this was before Skype or Zoom. So we had to write everything. I had to write my lectures and post the lectures. And so the students would read the lecture, do the homework, post their homework, and I would read their homework. And other students would read and comment in their homework as well. So each course that I taught there, introduction to screenwriting, the continuing course, and then the final course, which would be finishing the screenplay, each one was a quarter length long, which was 10 weeks long, which is why the book has the three sections. They follow what the UCLA Extension Program was for writing your first screenplay.

SPEAKER_02 5:00

Wow. So this is top drawer. People paid a fortune for that class, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

Well, they paid some money. It's a lot more than what a book costs, that's for sure. But it's a very economical way to get into screenwriting. If you want to get in deeper, you can uh with other programs, but this program, the UCLA Extension Program, is a almost free uh compared to uh USC, for example, which would cost you$50,000,$60,000 a year in tuition, uh, a year's worth of tuition at the extension would be somewhere under$2,000.

SPEAKER_02 5:40

Oh, how marvelous. Well, okay. But the point is that so many people think screenwriting is easy. I hear that from my filmmakers, you know, that we support filmmakers from the heart. And uh so when they say, who wrote, I say, who wrote your script? Well, I did. Okay, who did you study? Well, I took I took a couple of classes. So then that's when then it all begins, is is your script really ready? Because they think screenwriting is so easy that and they're really in first shock when they find the amount of knowledge that's required. So that's why I love the book, because you take the reader by the hand and you clearly define the beginning decisions to make. You start with the theme of the film, then the character, then matching the character to the premise. So can you share some of this with us, please?

SPEAKER_01 6:37

Sure. Well, you know, there's a lot of ways to get into writing a screenplay, and there's a lot of reasons for writing a screenplay. But one of the first reasons for writing a screenplay is writers want to change the world. Uh, they want to make the world a better place. They also want to entertain people. So if they want to make the world a better place, they want to write about something, and that's what I call the premise. Uh, sometimes people call it the theme, like love conquers all, even death, or uh greed destroys the soul. Those are themes that appear in literature throughout the ages. You've seen them in Shakespeare, you see them in the Titanic, uh, the movie The Titanic, Love Conquers All, Even Death. Um, so that's one way to get into a screenplay. You can start thinking about, well, how am I going to prove this premise? Then you might think about uh a character, somebody you know, or maybe somebody that you invent. That's another way to get into the screenplay. Uh, because you have to think about what does that character want, what does that character need, and how's that character going to help me prove my premise? Uh, the third way to get into it is you have an idea of an action or a situation. Um, maybe there's uh a big cruise ship that's gonna sink when it hits an iceberg, and you start thinking, well, how can I write a movie about that? What would that movie be about? Uh, because it's boring just to watch a big ship hit an iceberg and sink. That's that's not a movie. But if there are people on the iceberg, uh not on the iceberg, on the ship, that are in love, well, then that's interesting. So, what's going to happen to those people? So, when you combine those three, that's how you get to a film. Understanding the character and what that character wants and needs, uh, understanding what you want to write about, what that what situation you're gonna put that character in, all those three things combined, that's where you begin your screenplay. Uh, that's where you begin the big ideas for your screenplay.

SPEAKER_02 8:46

Yes, that's a great, that's great to understand. And this is where people and writers really need to think about if if it's their first film, they have to think about the budget. So because if it's the first film that they're making, they should they have the opportunity to keep the budget low through the script, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:09

Absolutely. Uh, it's important to think about, first of all, who you're writing for, uh, what your audience is, and then also um how you're gonna get this film made. So if you're gonna, if you want to be a director as well as a writer, or a producer as well as a writer, or just a producer working with writers uh and directors, then you have to understand the movie that you're making and the parameters that you're making it under. Uh, if you're starting out and you're just gonna borrow some money from friends and family, or you have a GoFundMe kind of account, uh, you need to see, well, I'm gonna have only a few characters and a few locations, and you can do it on your iPhone and shoot a movie for$10,000. You really can. Uh, however, if you're thinking about superheroes and outer space and uh lots of technological things, then you're thinking about a movie that's a hundred or two hundred million dollars. That's a whole different way to write, and it's a whole different approach. So knowing what your audience is, knowing what your parameters are, knowing what your budget is, is is an important thing to know before you start writing. Because if you're writing a small film, your first film that you want to uh produce yourself, uh and you want to use friends and relatives' money, well, you can't write the big budget uh space movie or Marvel movie. You can only write a small personal movie, it's a very different kind of a movie. Uh, those are some of the things that you have to think about when you're sitting down with your computer and you're pounding away and thinking, uh, how am I going to get this made? Because if if you're not thinking about how it's going to get made, what is the point of writing it? Now, a lot of writers write for self-therapy, and that's not a bad idea. As a matter of fact, I recommend that to my students to do. Uh, it's one of the things that you can do to kind of clear your mind and get ready to write. But uh, if you're not writing for that, if you're writing for an audience, you're writing for a particular situation, then you do have to think about the budget and where it's going to go.

SPEAKER_02 11:30

Exactly. And this is how so many filmmakers started. They uh they used to say, uh, give me a film, uh, make a film for me for 20,000, right? And then I'll give you 200,000, and you make a film there, and I'll give you two million, and that's the way it went, right? Sure.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

You each time you make a new film, you go up and up and up and up. I mean, uh James Mangold, for example, made an early film, uh Heavy, and he made that for, I don't know, it was probably under a million dollars. Now he's making anything he wants to make, and he's making films that are$200 million. Uh, you know, you have to get you have to understand how to make a film for a small amount of money so that you can make a film for a big amount of money. I was just thinking of Ryan Kugler, another example, who made um gosh, I can't remember the name. Was it something station? Fruit station, something station, I can't remember. Uh now he just made uh a film, which he made for just a few hundred thousand dollars. Now he just made a film for I think it was fifty million dollars, his last film. Well you start small, you work big. That's the way he starts.

SPEAKER_02 12:50

That's the way it starts because studios respect you, they see your work, they know you are uh talented, you will keep in budget, and you deliver a film that audiences like, and you can keep uh increasing your uh budget. But so, but start small, I think, for you know for the beginners.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

That's absolutely I tell people to start even smaller than that. Uh I tell them to start, you can start with TikTok, you can start with YouTube, make a five-minute film, make a 10-minute film, uh, and keep making films, keep making five and 10-minute films, 15-minute films. Maybe they'll make a 30-minute film, and then maybe you'll make a 90-minute film. Uh, and you can do all this on an iPhone, you can do it on a cheap um video camera. It's very economical now to make a film. If you get the right talent, you have the right script, and you can use your mom's house, you know.

SPEAKER_02 13:49

Yes, yes, great. This is good advice, I'll tell you, because my part over here is to help people raise the money. And they come in, you know, with these huge budgets. Well, who do you know? And with money, no one.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Well, good luck.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

Yes. Well, I'm also impressed with the chapter assignments. You have filmmakers see films, you're encouraging us to be part of a writer's group, and you keep quoting other books that are most helpful. So, to me, this looks like years of adding and improving your teaching outline. Uh, tell me how this book evolved.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

Well, that is a good question because um this book began with uh the idea that one of my former students gave me, uh, who now was teaching at USC Film School. Uh, he said, Paul, you're all over the internet. There are a lot of video um clips of you lecturing and talking about film. Why don't you download those and transcribe them and you can put them together and make a book? And I said, you know what? That sounds like too much work for me. Yes. So I said, but you know what? I have all these uh lectures from UCLA. This is from the early 2000s. Uh so I put them all together and I looked at them and I said, Yeah, they're they're pretty good, but I've changed the way that I look at movies since the year 2000. You evolve, uh, a good screenwriter and a good teacher evolves, and you evolve your way of looking at movies, and you also uh add new movies to it, new books to your course, uh, new ideas, new ways of making films. Uh I mean, look at the changes between the year 2000 and the year 2025. Uh, we didn't have um digital video at that time. Well, we did actually, we had it in the 90s, uh, 1990s, but we didn't have uh small cameras, we didn't have the uh red, we didn't have easily accessible 4K cameras. We had a lot of different technological things, but also a lot more study of the craft of screenwriting. And so my interpretation of that craft evolved, and so I went back and rewrote most of these lectures, brought them up to date, added new films to them. Uh, I mean, Barbie is a great film to use as an example of of uh premise. Um Coda is another good example to use for the um idea of character uh situation. Uh, you could use um Oppenheimer for the situation and the person. So I use those films in my in this book so that people don't rely on the old films. A lot of um young people haven't looked at the whole canon of great films, they only look at the films from the last five or ten years, which is unfortunate because there's some great films made in the 30s and 40s, actually, even earlier than that, uh, that people don't know about but should should see. So anyway, I've done that and um just yeah, uh I've brought things up to date so that my thinking and the films that I talk about are current.

SPEAKER_02 17:27

Well, this is marvelous, and yes, uh, it's uh based on what your content is. Every time you see a film, you're adding more content to you as a writer.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 17:40

More experiences, more stories, more knowledge of how it was shot. Um Scorsese has 86 films that you need to see, and I've seen about 80 of them. I mean, it was so much fun to go down that list. And I thought I knew something about films, but not till I got through that list did I really feel I knew what I was looking at.

SPEAKER_01 18:05

Well, that's the university of film. I mean, you watch a more any Martin's Corsese film will teach you about filmmaking. Uh, but if you see 80 of his films, you really have a great way to look at films and then to think about your own way. And I I do things that some people call formulas, but they're really formats for writing screenplays. Um and I want people that are starting out writing to use these formats that we know work, the three-act structure, the seven-point structure, the twelve-point structure, even, uh, to use any of those structures and and the methods that I teach to write a screenplay. And then once they've dominated that form, they can go out and experiment and do what they want to do because now they have the knowledge behind them, they have the craft and they're able to express themselves any way they want to do. So this is uh this is the way to start. I mean, Picasso did not start writing, did not start painting Cubism, he started making sketches as a teenager, as even younger than that, he made real life looking sketches, and it wasn't until he started seeing things from a different point of view and felt free to experiment because he controlled the medium, he could do what he wanted, and he did, and he created some new things.

SPEAKER_02 19:32

Control the media, that's it. You've got your it's your craft, you have to keep expanding on your craft, developing yourself just like you do your film.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

Exactly. Um every writer should do that throughout their their lifetime. I mean, the films that I wrote uh 20 years ago are different from the films that I write now.

SPEAKER_02 19:55

Definitely, right. Well, um, I found the seven main plot point to be an excellent way to outline your script. Would you share some of that with us?

SPEAKER_01 20:07

Sure. Um I found that when I looked at movies, and I've probably seen I don't know how many, but certainly several thousand movies. Uh and I've read uh upwards of 3,000 scripts, including my student scripts. So uh I viewed them, the ones that work the best had seven points. And those were like kind of like the supports in a bridge. There's a lot of bridge between the points, but you have to have the structure holding up the bridge. And those seven points are these. The first point is the ordinary life of your central character. So we need to understand who this person is, what their issues are, and why we should be spending an hour and a half to two hours or even three hours with them in a dark room. Uh, and it has to be worthy of the audience's time. So we have to meet this person and we have to like this person or at least be fascinated by this person. Doesn't have to be likable, it could be fascinating. And then we have to find out what that person's flaw is, because that that internal flaw is something that is going to drive your character, and then something happens to them. So the first point is the ordinary life of the character. The second point uh is the inciting incident. So that comes from the outside, something that happens to your character that forces them to confront their life and forces them to confront the situation. It could be uh they get fired, it could be they get divorced, it could be they meet somebody, it could be they have an accident, it could be they lose their job, uh, whatever it is that comes from the outside. It's not that they wake up in the morning and think, I've got to change, because nobody does that. Um but our character has to have something come from the outside to force them to think about what they need to do, what they want to do. And so they kind of stumble around at the end, near the end of the first act, trying to figure out what it is that they need to do in response to the inciting incident, and then they decide something happens to them again, and they are forced to decide on a goal and a plan, and that is the end of act one. So that's the third point. Um, and then the fourth point the during the first part of the second act, your character is trying to fulfill their want. They're they're going after what it is they want. Let's say they're they're following, uh, they're trying to get a treasure someplace. So they're they're looking at the maps, they're they're going to different countries, they're gr getting a crew, whatever it is they're doing, they're not achieving their want. They're not reaching their goal yet. Uh, because if they did, that'd be the end of the movie. So they're they're working on And then something happens to them at the midpoint. That's point number four. That causes them to change their goal from a want to a need. In other words, they they discover in themselves that they don't really need the treasure. They want it, but they don't really need it. What they really need is to reorganize or reunite their family, let's say, in some sort of a uh family movie. Uh so they'll and they also learn something about themselves. So they learn what they understand what their flaw was and how that flaw is standing in the way of them achieving their goals. And so they now change their approach to what their uh goal seeking is, and they're trying to seek what it is that they really need, with the understanding that they have to overcome something in themselves to achieve that. But then something comes from the outside again at the end of Act One, uh, Act Two, excuse me, to the end of Act Two, that's the low point. Uh, when it looks like they're never gonna achieve their goal, whatever their goal is. And there are multiple goals, and I can go into that if we have the time, but um their main goal, the plot goal, it doesn't look like they're ever gonna achieve that. So that's the end of Act Two, that's the low point. And then something happens to them again from the outside, and it could be somebody uh says, Hey, Joe, you really have to do this or we're gonna lose the school, or hey, you really have to do this, or you're gonna lose the girl, or hey, uh, they see a picture of their mother and they remember remember that their mother told them that they really need to do this to save the world. Whatever it is, something happens from the outside that reminds them of their goal, and they they gather their strength again and they work towards what is sometimes called the climax. I like to call it the final challenge. It's the biggest scene of the movie where your central character is trying to achieve their need, not their goal, but they could achieve their goal at the same time, but they're trying to achieve their need and they work at that and they do achieve their need, whatever that need is. And then uh the seventh point, that was the sixth point, the seventh point is the return to the now change forever normal life. And that's a short thing, that's only maybe a page or two or three, sometimes even four or five, but it's your character returning to the now change forever situation that they were in. Uh, they're happier, they've achieved their goal, uh, they get to appreciate their goal, they get to live a little bit, and the audience gets to uh heave a sigh of relief. Oh, okay, everything's gonna be okay for this character. Now I'm okay, and they can talk about what happened in the climax and what happened in the final challenge as they leave the theater because everything's okay now. So those are the seven points. Wow, and that's how you structure most films, and scenes between those points are the glue that holds the story together, but these are the supports of the bridge that and they hold the roadway together, and that's the way I like to structure a film. Most films are structured this way. Uh, there are other ways to structure films, uh, but most of them uh can be seen in this way, and that's a good thing to do, especially when you're starting out, uh, to be able to use this format to build your film.

SPEAKER_02 27:00

It makes a lot of sense. And once that they teach, once you learn that, once you share that with them, then they should be watching films with that uh in mind, looking for each of those points, because good films, you will find them there.

SPEAKER_01 27:15

You will, exactly. And even films that look like they don't have those points have those points. For example, if you've seen Memento, which is told backwards, yes, if you if you flip it over, it's got the seven points all in the right places. Really? Yeah, and that's in the in color. And you know, the black and white scenes in Memento are told straightforward, and those also have the seven points. And by the way, while we're talking seven points, seven points are in this, are in uh sequences, and they're also in scenes. So every scene has seven points, even though we don't we don't always see those seven points. Sometimes the points are understood to have happened. We don't have to see the first point, we understand what the ordinary life of this character is in that scene, or we don't have to see the last point because we we're jumping to the next scene. We don't need to see how that ordinary life of that scene has changed. Um, sometimes even you can cut out the middle of it, uh, but you have to have hints as to what happened at the midpoint. So uh I use some scenes from Shakespeare and Love, for example, to show those seven points, or I use uh scenes from um uh film and Louise to show sequences. Uh perfectly constructed film. I mean, it's amazing how if you lay down the format that I've been talking about on the whole film, on the sequences, on each major point on the inciting incident, for example, there's a sequence there that has seven points on each scene in that. She was she perfectly constructed that film. And of course, when you do that, uh it gives you the opportunity to play with the characters in a in a more free way, and you can do things that are unusual. Uh, the return to normal life in Them and Louise, for example, you wouldn't expect that they would be flying off a cliff to their certain death, but they are they have achieved their goal, which is to be free of men and to do what they want to do, and so the return to normal life is just that, and it's also the audience's return to normal life. The audience can now say, you know, I don't have to rely on a man for my life, I can do what I want to do with my life, and so it's a it's it frees the audience as well as the characters, and that's the sign of good writing.

SPEAKER_02 29:51

Oh, so well written, you're right. And so, and I love the way you get into creating characters that the audience likes because um this is really connected to the key to and part of the key to success. And in the book, you ask the question are your characters characters? Yeah, so share multi multidimensional characters that keep us glued to the screen. That's what we want to hear.

SPEAKER_01 30:21

How do you thank you? That's a great idea. Um we want to see people that we can identify with, and we want to see people that are complex because we consider ourselves complex. Everybody thinks that we have more to offer than most people see. And the more we can show of a character in a film, the more we're gonna be able to identify with that character. Uh, even if that character is a negative character, like I'm thinking of uh the Alpuccino character in um now I can't remember the name of that film, where he played a uh cocaine gangster.

SPEAKER_02 31:01

Um you might remember with the chainsaw? Was he the um okay? Uh I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_01 31:09

I'm not sure either. But uh uh he was a negative character and we hated him, but we could relate to him and we could understand why he did what he did, and he was an unusual character. So the more layered a character is, the more interesting, the more things that we learn about the character, uh the better off we're gonna be. And certainly when you're writing, you don't have to write everything about the character, but you need to know everything about the character. So when you're creating the character, I like to use uh Laios Egri's format for creating character. Lyos Egri wrote a book called The Art of Dramatic Writing in the 40s, and it was about playwriting, but the play characters in plays are uh comparable to characters in movies. And he said that to create a character, you must know three things about the character. You must know the physiology of the character, the race of the character, the height of the character, the gender of the character, uh, the age of the character, uh, the physiognomy of the character, if the character is fat or thin or tall or short, all those things affect the way a character goes through life. Then you must know the sociology of the character, and that is where the character was born, uh, what kind of family the character comes from? Does it come from a family of uh a mother and a father and two kids, or a father and a father and two kids, or a mother and a mother and two kids, or a mother and a father and two kids, a mother and father and a mother and two kids. I mean, uh, and what place in the family does the character have? Were they the firstborn or the middleborn or the lastborn? All those things affect the character. So knowing that sociology, plus where they went to school, where they grew up, what kind of accent they have, what did they study in school, when did they leave school? Were they a coal minor at the age of 15? Uh or were they a PhD in physics? Those are two different kinds of characters. Just those those two things will tell you two very different kinds of characters. The more you know, the better you're going to write that character. And then the third thing is the psychology of the character. And that is, are they a happy person? Are they a sad person? Are they introverted? Are they extroverted? Uh, do they have um PTSD? Are they suffering from uh postnatal depression? Whatever it is that their psychology is determined. So now we have the physiology, the sociology, and the psychology of the character. Now we can write that character's voice. And the more you know about that character, the more you know what that character is going to say, the less you have to think about it when you're writing, because you know what that character is going to say, because you know that character's background. So making your character's character uh is very important, even for small uh parts in your movie. Maybe you have somebody that's a nurse in your movie, and your central character goes into a hospital, and the nurse gives him some flippant answers to his questions. Well, that's more of a more interesting character than a character uh that would just say yes and no and yeah, go over there and and sit down and wait for the doctor. If the character says something like, uh, well, you look like you uh got beaten up on the road or you dragged by a wagon, uh, what happened to you, bud? Well, that's a character, so that's more interesting. So the more interesting you can write characters, the more people will be uh uh drawn to your films.

SPEAKER_02 34:56

And you know what happens, I find you get to know the character so much that I sit there sometimes and I'll answer for the character, and I'm right, you know, I know the guy or the gal. And um and this is how a script can fall apart when the character says something that is out of character or does something out of character.

SPEAKER_01 35:20

And it's something, yeah. And it's something that sometimes happens. Uh something else to keep in mind is that each character is going to have a different voice, especially your major characters. And if they don't have a different voice, then you haven't made your characters well. So you have to make sure that your characters speak like the physiology, sociology, and psychology that they grew up with, so that they're authentic. And we want to write authentic characters.

SPEAKER_02 35:48

You yes, that's very important to me and to all of us. I think that you know, sometimes you know I didn't like that film, but you don't know why. And that's part of it right there is the characters. To go into the importance of layering and how this enriches the story. So could you share a few points about that?

SPEAKER_01 36:09

Well, that's yeah, that's a complex question because layering is a complex thing to do. Uh, we were just talking about how to layer a character. We want to layer situations, we want to make them more complex. We want to have somebody walk into an office uh looking for a job and get hit by somebody that runs out of the office carrying a hot cup of coffee. That will change that scene, that will layer that scene, that will make that scene more interesting. Uh, to see what happens to your character, how he deals or how she deals with that situation. All those things are very interesting and more important. So we want to make as many things happening in a scene that improve our understanding of what's going on there and improve our understanding of the character. And that's what I mean by Laring. Uh we make it more complex.

SPEAKER_02 37:05

More complex. Okay. So everybody tells you to read scripts. I hear that all the time. But what I love about your book is that you give us the name of the scripts. Go read this and you'll find that. So um I want you to share a bit of information on screenwriting to works in progress.

SPEAKER_01 37:27

What about that?

SPEAKER_02 37:28

Uh anything you want to share, because I loved it.

SPEAKER_01 37:33

Okay, thank you. Uh well, I recommend that students watch a movie every week. And I think that's an important thing to do, especially uh like you were saying, you can see the seven points in a movie, you can understand how they build tension, you can understand how they uh have rising action, meaning it gets harder and harder for your central character to move through the world that he has or she has to move through. Uh, watching movies every week, and especially early on, it's a good idea to write the seven points of the movie you just saw. And so I ask people to do that. Uh yeah. You know, if they watch a movie and they write the seven points, then they see, oh, I see where it happens. This should happen around 15 minutes, this should happen around 30 minutes, this should happen around uh 50 minutes. It's around those, they don't have to happen exactly at those times, but they do tend to happen uh 15 or 20 minutes through a film or 30 minutes for a film uh at uh the third point. If you watch a lot of films, you begin to see there's a pattern, and you'd be able to understand how to use that pattern in your own script.

SPEAKER_02 38:52

Yes, I've noticed that uh at at halftime when the let's say the film is um yeah 90 minutes, around 45 minutes, it's like a new film. It's like it changes.

SPEAKER_01 39:07

It's a whole exactly right. Yeah, that's the midpoint of the film.

SPEAKER_02 39:11

That's the midpoint I see.

SPEAKER_01 39:13

Yeah, that's when your central character realizes something about himself or herself, and that's when something happens to them that forces them to change direction of the film, and that's when it it changes from the want to the need, when your character wanted something, but now they realize they really need something else, and they have to pursue that, and that's what the second part of the film is about. So the film does change in the middle. You're you're exactly right. It's like two different films.

SPEAKER_02 39:41

Two different films, right? Okay, the midpoint. Thank you. Well, then you go into course three, where you have a script status report that I think is excellent. Uh, everything in this is just what you need to sell your script. If you're in a meeting with an acquisitions person or discussing with a potential director, this script status outline would be a most important way to communicate with them, is what I think. What do you think?

SPEAKER_01 40:10

Well, I I used it to help my students review their own scripts. Did it have all these elements that it needed to have? But I never thought about using that as a pitch uh deck or as a as a pitch cheat note. Um, but that is a good idea because that summarizes your script. It tells you what's important, what are the important parts of your script, and it tells you how to present them. Uh I have a different approach to pitching, and that is what I usually do is a log line at the beginning of the pitch, and I ask a question at the end of the log line. Is that something that you're interested in? And if they say yes, I continue. If they say no, I do I pitch another idea. Um then if they said yes, then I give a paragraph about the story. I beg I give the beginning, the middle, and the end of the story. And again, I ask at the end of that, is that something that you're interested in? And they'll say yes or no. And if they say yes, I go on, and if they say no, I change and pitch something else. But if they say yes, then I pitch the seven points, and I pitch those very specifically. And while I'm pitching those, I'm pitching the character of the story, and people relate to the character, and that's what sells scripts if people relate to the characters. And so using the uh script status reports is an interesting way to go about that. You can summarize the script status report and use that as your pitch document. Good idea.

SPEAKER_02 41:54

Wow, that is so smart, yes, because that's the one thing that I work with filmmakers on the most is getting your pitch right because that's your money. You know, if you can't pitch it, you won't sell it. And so um that's the key. Thank you. That's fabulous. Well, I think this is one of the best screenwriting books that I've read. Uh you are sharing the wealth with us when you are introducing us to other writers and teaching us script writing from films that we saw, but we didn't get it. We didn't get the full internet. Now we can go back and watch the film, knowing the story, find the seven places that are the important ones, and grow in our craft. So thank you so much for this uh book you've written. And and if you want to share something with filmmakers about script writing to encourage them, because I think a lot of people get in the midst of it and then fall apart. So um, how do you keep going?

SPEAKER_01 43:02

Well, writers write. That's the first thing to remember. And this the second thing to remember is they write every day if they can. You have to choose a place and time to write where you have the opportunity to not be disturbed. And it's important to write. So uh, and also the the word of advice that I usually give writers, new writers, write what you want to write, what you want to see. And you'll be happy with your writing, you'll be happier with your writing, and you'll be able to sell it better. If you're writing something that you want to see, other people will want to see it too. Maybe not half the world, maybe not four billion people, but maybe 200,000 people will pay$10 a ticket to see your film. That doesn't matter. But write what you want to see and write what you want to write, and you'll be happier as a writer.

SPEAKER_02 43:59

Thank you so much, Paul. Thank you for the interview and thank you very much for the book. We all appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 44:06

Thank you very much, Kira. I appreciate your your questions and your time.

SPEAKER_02 44:11

Okay. Best of luck. Thank you. Claire, thank you for the show.

SPEAKER_00 44:15

As always, a great pleasure.