An Essay on Writing the Screenplay “The West Texas Stopwatch System”
Behind the scenes starting with an idea, feeding in inspiration, seeking feedback, and creating a finished product.
Foreword
A while ago I got into an online slap-fight with the CEO of The Black List, a service that hosts screenplays for a fee, provides a reader critique service, and is a proven resource for Film Industry Professionals to source content. In short I laid into him for taking money and providing critiques that didn’t have a check-list of basic stuff to help writers grow — his claim, over and over, was all art is Subjective and to use any kind of structure to evaluate an art piece didn’t have any justification. I can appreciate Subjectivity in art, especially as a guitarist, because it’s the nuances, the flair that take an otherwise Objectively Competent player into a new realm of achievement.
That exchange has been quite inspirational to sit down and discuss my methods and process from an, ahem, Objective approach through my Subjective memory and perspective. My recent piece “She Shot Him Dead Before He Could Go Buy A Boat” seemed to resonate with a lot of audiences in the creative sector and I like to think for the right reasons. I’m still getting around to writing that short screenplay the right way (aside: I wrote a “story within a story” draft that completely failed but was good exercise).
So often in music, and apparently film as well, being a One Hit Wonder is something that Agents, Managers, and Studios are afraid of signing. A lot of times the Objective criteria of quality makes the decision for them — sub-par production and attention to detail, poor craftsmanship of structure, general slop — all of those thoughts could as easily apply to a Demo CD or a Screenplay. My distaste toward what The Black List offered was a sense of false hope that “getting out there!” takes a premium of cash outlay, claims a valid evaluation and ranking system, and minimizes the straight up reality that luck is usually the biggest factor in any financially successful art undertaking. Right place, right time, right audience.
I’m no Johnny Come Lately to writing, not by a long shot, so having a “Retirement Fund” of things to still explore in the realm of Screenwriting is quite exciting for me. Why? Because as I practice the craft, submit my works for critique or potential sale, I can improve my approach — and it doesn’t have to cost me $XX a month every month for the opportunity.
Inspiration and Story Origin Overview
There’s one name in College Football coaching that can lead to an extremely long and detailed conversation about strategy and personality: Mike Leach.
My quick and dirty portrait of the guy is also influenced by rumors and word-of-mouth regarding alcohol, which comes together as a man with intense gifts, work-ethic, drive, and an inability to shut it down when off the job. A work-hard, play-hard type of personality. It was during his run as the Texas Tech Head Coach that I became enamored with his extremely intelligent and non-traditional approach to Offense, and also the kinds of players he was able to recruit.
From what I heard he had a lot of success going to “just close enough” recruits that could probably get a scholarship to be a Longhorn or Aggie, but would have to wait behind other stud players before taking the field, and telling them he’d get them into action right away. Considering Mike Leach’s success with other programs — including a year with a powerhouse Oklahoma Sooner team under Bob Stoops — there were takers. In a few years, he built a Texas Tech Red Raiders team that lit up all sorts of bigger, faster, stronger, respected teams. And they had a chip on their shoulder.
I don’t think it’s a stretch to claim that as part of a collective of Coaches who embraced the “Air Raid Offense” Mike Leach significantly changed the way other Coaches approach the game today. Such a high-profile fingerprint has faded somewhat, with a stupid scandal brought forward by Professional-Man-Baby-In-A-Suit-Craig-James. Thankfully Mike Leach finds himself at the helm of a quite successful Washington State Cougars team.
As a kid who never could really play organized sports, I was genuinely on the sidelines during Middle and High School. From the outside I could see bonding, but also the over-arching structure of Coaches and School Pride kind of channeling the individual talent for greater glory. The Us vs. Them. The logo on the side of a helmet.
Instead I fell in with the Marching Band crowd, even though they had no need for Guitar, and I was too, uhh, having fun to want to focus on learning to read music to play in the Concert Band. Still, those kids also had very important bonding and relationship connections. Also they took pride in partying as hard — if not harder — than the jocks. In this regard my relationship with football was very Texan: Winning on the field matters, but having a great marching band is also a serious, serious point of pride.
Somewhere in between are video games, because they’re a platform that a lot of people can pick up or play to live out fantasy. Personally I like Forza driving games on Xbox, Golf on the Wii, and Half-Life Deathmatch on the PC (aside: Hey Gabe how’s Half-Life 3 coming along? Need a writer?). Or, you know, going way back and playing as Bo Jackson in Tecmo Superbowl. Whether Jock or Cripple, playing a game together in a room was a great equalizer of sorts.
Sure, things have changed online and I don’t like hearing a bunch of Neck-Beards laughing at my Herbie Beetle in Forza on XBox Live, but then again, I can’t object to their noticing that I’m driving poorly while very drunk.
Finding “The Desert Madman”
I’m not sure if the following summary is the first real stab at the idea, but it’s from a notebook dated 2005 so it has to be close:
Uh that’s about 11 years and change depending on the real formulation of that one. Yeah, for the record, that’s Entry #1 and there are 8 more where that came from. One summary of an existing short story, INFAMY, already has gone through the transition to screenplay. Entered in Shore Scripts Feature and made it into Quarter Finals. Like they gave me a cool wreath ‘n shit to floss, as exhibited below:
Then I went and wrote “Do Unto Others” from a couple hard-edge short ideas, and that piece drained the life force from me pretty serious. Why? Because I have an Editor friend who is currently working through that piece so that we have enough time to revise it into game shape to be in the running for The Nicholl Fellowship. I poured all my effort into a complex, violent, vengeance driven world and at the end of 120 pages it was like coming up for air — and thinking about the “Desert Madman” was exactly the downhill joyride of writing I was looking for.
The inspiration of Mike Leach wasn’t the story I wanted to write; the last thing I had in mind was a biography. Fortunately I can flip the bird both to “journalistic integrity” and “you don’t know you’ve never been there” barbs under the name of creative liberty. A lot of what the “Desert Madman” inherently embraced was DUDE-BRO-GAMES-HACKER type of Axe-Body-Spray commercial. Nothing inherently wrong with a story for an audience…
I write the stories and films that I want to either read or view on the big screen, preferably executed with the talent of people like James Cameron or the Coen Brothers or Luc Besson or…anyway, if I’m not entertained, if I break my own suspension of disbelief by being sloppy, they’d notice, right? Work ‘effin hard.
Where’s The Date Movie Part?
Between an idea and summary like in the Notebook, there’s a Three Act Silo layout I use to break up the whole thing into bullets, then open the project file and start hammering out. After showing a local reader the Three Act Silo page, she pointed to several spots in the plot ‘s points:
If you have a relationship start here, then grow here and here and here can keep it going. Like, here where he has trouble, she can be a part of the return…then here…
Already with the Three Act Silo, I took a couple weeks to test write note cards to summarize better. The main character, Crockett, had his name early, so did his parents. His college roommate’s name changed. So did his eventual love interest, Nathalie. Her existence goes back to the input; in time her character grew to be a whole new conduit.
Crockett’s gift had to hit the dirt, eat it, nosedive, face-plant — whatever you want to pick, in the story I saw how Nathalie and the recovery could intertwine and spiral upward. He just had to, uh, basically lose all the awesome development and make the choice whether to chance a good future with a great partner or rebuild from the ashes of high-stakes high-stress.
Under the described plot, and what’s in there if you want to look, is an attempt to balance out Ego and Humility and Things In-Between. Those “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, I eventually learned I could do the same for my plot-lines. Sure, they might be clunky, but I want the pages to turn to a script reader who can envision enough, the dialog for attractive characters not a hard sell for top-tier talent…in theory, right?
The criticism of asking how the concept could benefit from a romantic relationship changed the output. Looking back on my initial approach, I can see the notebook had just 2/3s of the story. Adding depth of a different sort allowed some of the latter sections to flex more, intercut with a consistent attention to family and stuff.
Romanowski > Brady
Oh, that? Yeah, Four Rings to Four Rings. Both came close to Five Rings.
It’s blurry to pinpoint the year, but it was definitely at a DFW area mall shop, full of photos and Sports Memorabilia. Lots of autographed photos. I could recognize plenty of the featured athletes. Reminded me of walking into a comic book shop and browsing all the titles and knowing cross overs and connections and…anyway, behind the counter was a Lady about 60 who said hello and asked if there was anything in particular I was looking for.
Actually, do you have anything featuring Bill Romanowski?
Her head tilted, her index finger pointed to the sky, she turned and went into the back. A shuffling sound. She returned, smiling big and with a photo in a plastic sleeve. This is it:
When I wrote the football, video game, violence exploiting overall structure, I did it because I studied a lot of guys who threw in their everything. Mostly by way of bodily sacrifice — I got dealt a hand of crippling issues I’ve worked really hard not to keep me from normal life, or what people think of it. But these guys, they go out and allow their ligaments and brain cells and years of their lives out on the field and end up kind of sort of broken like where I started from.
It takes living ups and feeling downs that I think a narrative should work through. I picked football for a story and idea from my little black book for this project, stitched a few different threads (Darius, Yuri, Nathalie, TJ) and I’m pretty sure most stick the landing. Writing the screenplay and writing this essay, I’d like to make it well known that I had a lot of fun doing this.
“He’s the kind of guy you want on your team…but never have to play against…”
- Dan Marino, paraphrased
Post Script
Other than the things done, there’s not any more planned public screenplay or in depth writing planned for 2017. I’ve had some things connect for my inventions and will be spending more time in the garage with books and stuff than anywhere near a story idea. Okay, fine, yeah I’ll probably have a notebook for some things, but the spigot is effectively done for a while.
It really feels good to go into Sabbatical mode with a last piece I genuinely enjoyed writing.
