Filmmaking 101: Life Of A Filmmaker by Jack Perez [FULL INTERVIEW]
Film Courage: What makes a great story?
Jack Perez, Filmmaker: Oh, gosh…what makes a great story? Wow. That’s a good question. I have a friend who gets on me because I don’t care a lot about plot. And I think there are two camps (maybe?). There are people who care about character and there are people who care about plot.
I think there just has to be a reality to it for me because…you know it’s funny, I was talking to my students about this, there has been thing in recent years and it’s not new but the last 5–7 years where the value of the story is related directly to whether or not the audience cannot directly anticipate what the ending is going to be. In other words the twist has suddenly become the gold standard of a great story. Because if I didn’t see it coming that’s when it’s a great story. You got me! I feel like that’s kind of cheap.
So I feel like it has to be character-based, the characters have to be real and I’ll almost forgive a plot that is not so clever if the characters are strong and real. To me that’s my standard at least.
Film Courage: So if the characters feel too much like they are acting, even though it’s a great story, you didn’t see the ending coming?
Jack: I think characters that serve the plot are less interesting than characters that motivate the plot. Like there is a certain philosophy…I’m certain you guys have talked about this…whether it’s easy for me or it’s something I happen to subscribe to. But if you can create a character first…if you can create a character in a certain number of situations, not necessarily outline the entire movie (although it depends on the movie). But if you have a full character that’s real and you put something in front of them, in a way they will begin to write the movie. You know how they are going to react to whatever they put in front of them because they are now these dimensional characters as opposed to let’s have this happen, let’s have this happen, let’s have this happen and make sure that they do these things that are pre-ordained.
And I think that’s what creates a feeling of artifice or I’ve seen it all before or boring. So to me if you create a real character whatever happens as the result of those characters interacting is bound to be more interesting than something that has just been constructed.
Like I was attached to a big studio movie not too long ago. And the script was green lit and everybody loved it and I was reading this thing and I’m like I don’t understand this…? And it’s not a complicated movie. This was a movie with dinosaurs and fighting and all that. And I’m reading this thing and I’m like Why is this guy doing this? And I went to the writer and I said This doesn’t really make much sense. In the first act you talk about how this guy was scared of heights. There was this whole dialogue about how he was scared of climbing the mountain and then later he is on a tightrope fighting a Pterodactyl. What’s going on with that?…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
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