Ahh, that sweet sweet “Screenplay by” credit

In the Cinema Directing program, we almost always write our own scripts. But not every director wants to pull a double load of writing and directing a script. Some of them prefer to focus on directing and building a vision and characters off of an initial story arc and screenplay that someone else wrote. In a world where we idolize Paul Thomas Anderson, Edgar Wright, Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson and all the great auteurs who write their own screenplays, it’s easy to forget that some of the best directors didn’t write. David Fincher, Alfred Hitchcock, William Wyler, Mike Nichols, and even Steven Spielberg directed hugely famous films without a screenwriter credit. But how do you go about writing a screenplay for a movie someone else wants to make?

I recently got offered the opportunity to write a screenplay for a fellow Director’s thesis film. He knew he wanted a movie about two friends navigating the waters of whether or not to date each other. He knew he wanted a surrealist spin on the way the world around them idolizes the idea of being in a relationship. And he knew he wanted the tone and mood of the music video for The National’s “Apartment Story”. There’s only one problem: Left to my own devices, for my own work I write big ridiculous genre pieces not small, intimate, sweet romances.

The first step was to keep in mind, this is not my movie. There can be no weird genre elements like turning an argument into a kung fu fight. The dialogue can’t be heightened and over the top in its strangeness. The subtext can’t be brought to the forefront as a joke and made into the text. If I did these things, I’d be writing an Alex movie, and I wasn’t writing an Alex movie; I was writing a Dan movie.

You’re Dan right, you are.

With those things in mind, I talked to Dan about all those things above, about the sweetness, and the subtle strangeness of the world around our protagonists being obsessed with relationships, and we hit on the idea that the whole world obsesses over this band called “The Romantics”. Some people think their show is the only thing worth doing, some people staunchly reject them as an obligation society has put on us. And in the middle are Sarah and Johnathan, wondering if they should go to the show or do their own thing, and trying to form their own opinions in the face of everyone else throwing opinions at them. We talked about how they, too, want to go to the show, but only because they think it’s what they should do, not necessarily what they want to do. And in the end, they decide they don’t want to go to the show, but they don’t want to lose each other either.

So I wrote a small sweet script with two characters engaging in intimate moments. But the journey isn’t over: the script needs editing, and the story needs tweaking. Will it work out perfectly? Only time will tell. But through the magic of collaboration, we can work out how Sarah and Johnathan need to go on their journey and find themselves. And in the end, if I do my job correctly, we can make a Dan movie.