Nothing To Live For: Say What You Need To Say

It's 2.43am, Saturday morning, and I'm listening to 'Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay' by Otis Redding. And I'm thinking - how the fuck did he do this? Why is it SO perfect? Is it his voice? Is it the guy who co-wrote the song? Is it a fluke?

Film Director's tell people the one they're currently filming will be their best ever, and they mean it. But you never know. There's a scene in one of my films that makes me cringe, because me and the actor fucked it up. But no-one notices, they love the scene. Meanwhile other scenes I think I got close to perfect, and they mean nothing to people.

When you create a body of work, you look back to some pieces with affection, and some make you cringe. But when you're creating them, you never know.

Why is the Otis Redding song so good? And why does Elton John's "Your Song" resonate with EVERYBODY? Elton wrote the music for that track in thirty minutes. People spend five years writing crap.

I guess the only thing to do is create.

The rest is out of our control.Anne Frank didn't realise the context her diary would be in. Otis didn't plan to represent an era, and Elton didn't know It'd still be a concert favourite all those years later. 

Some pieces of art are just heartbreakingly perfect. Make your best friend put down the Blackberry and watch "The Apartment", get the DJ at the party to play "Build Me Up Buttercup", and lay down in your bed when the world is sleeping and listen to "Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay".

Most of what we make is drivel. Our best attempts make everyone snore. But something else is possible.

If we just create.

Anne Frank knew her time was up. So did Warren Zevon. So did Tupac. And in a different way, so do Woody Allen and Clint Eastwood. Maybe being reminded of what lurks around the corner gives us the drive we need.

Otis died at TWENTY SIX. Fuck. Maybe he knew too.

"Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay" wasn't even released yet. Otis didn't get to see the impact he'd have on the world. I mean, some guy is writing about him at 3am on a Friday, 44 years later, that's pretty special.

Anne Frank's diary is still a big seller. The world needed it. The world needs it. And Tupac still has hit records, people need the message.

Art truly lives forever.

This stuff is so important that I want to wake everyone up and scream it at them.

Simplicity is best. Be truthful. Anne said "I'm Jewish and I'm trapped." Tupac said "I'm black and we're being mistreated and we're mistreating ourselves." Elton said "This is your song," and Otis said "This loneliness won't leave me alone."

Think about that for a minute. Saying "I'm trapped because of who I am" is hard, even in a modern, non life-threatening situation. And when you say "This song is for you," you're vulnerable like crazy. And nobody ever admits "this loneliness won't leave me alone".

They dared to make their art about who they were as human beings. The things we struggle to say.

Come to think of it, when Elton made that masterpiece, he was trapped too. Wow, that's a 3.15am revelation if ever there was one. "I'm trapped because of who I am" precisely explains a huge part of Elton John's life back then. It's not just a love song, it's him singing a song that society didn't want him singing to the person he loved.

We can't obstruct ourselves or rule anything out if we want to make great art. We have to lay it all out on the table -- show people who we really are.

It's not a masterpiece, but I'm now listening to a John Mayer song now. The lyrics are fitting:

"You'd better know that in the end,
It's better to say too much,
Than never to say what you need to say again.

Even if your hands are shaking,
And your faith is broken,
Even as the eyes are closing,
Do it with a heart wide open.
Say what you need to say."

SAY WHAT YOU NEED TO SAY. You might die at 26. Leave a legacy. Don't guess at what a legacy is, or what's cool. Just create.

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Follow The Process And Win An Oscar, SIMPLE!

I really love it when I get taken away by a moment in a film. It's quite rare, but sometimes you'll watch something that really catches something human, and truthful - and it usually turns out to be something you really need, something you can relate to. If you're lucky, it'll make you feel a bit better about the world, about people, about the human condition.

'Once' was a film shot in Ireland for £100,000 - a tiny independent film that was not meant to take the world by surprise. But it did. It won the Best Original Song Academy Award 2008; and goes down as one of the more inspiring and unexpected surprises in the history of the Oscars.

But to look a little closer - here is what the script called for.

Exciting eh? Not really. In fact, you can imagine this script doing the round in Hollywood and everyone saying "Two people sitting and playing a song? boring!" or "You can't film 'like a form of courtship' - how can you direct that?"

Anyways. That's the scene as written. You might think it's good, you might think it's bad. Either way - it's very simple, it's a blueprint, an opportunity.

And then magic happened.

The film up until this scene had been very simple. A guy (Glen Hansard) is busking, a foreign girl (Markéta Irglová) is watching him. They talk. The Next day, she brings her vacuum cleaner to him (as well as busking, he repairs vacuum cleaners) -- he stops singing for lunch, they walk for a while, go to a cafe; talk about music and she takes him to a piano shop.

She sits at the piano, plays around for a bit.. and the the guy gets out his guitar to play one of his own songs. He quickly talks her through it - and then they try playing it together; in the piano place.

What transpires is not anything that could have been written. The perfect blend of the musical performance, the lyrics, the chemistry between the actors, the natural flow of the scene, the camerawork (which is handheld, and would probably be criticised if you handed it in at a film school).

The mixed emotions of the song; its sadness, its loneliness, its hopefulness, it's romance - it's in the song, it's in the performance, it's in their eyes. And this is where John Carney really proves himself as a Writer/Director - he has let the scene unravel and take on a direction that was not in the script. Often, that's the hardest thing for a Director - letting the scene develop as a natural, living process. But in this case, and throughout the movie - Carney was an expert at that, at allowing for an improvisational style and for the scenes and its characters to be more natural and honest.

Below is a video of the song - it's not the actual scene (although much of it is), but it's a montage that gives you a good feel for it. The magic is still there to see.

What's great about this film is its simplicity. It's about two people connecting, it's about music. It was filmed on two cameras, in only 17 days - for around £100,000. It's a perfect example of what can be achieved by independent writers and directors, if only we try.

The film didn't try and cater to a demographic, it wasn't shot in some fashionable 'indie-style' (whatever that is). It was what it was, a lovely little handheld, low-budget modern day musical shot in Ireland. It was truthful, honest, moving---- and cheap to make.

But it did well - REALLY well. For one reason... because people connected to it. It captured something real, something people needed. Especially that song, 'Falling Slowly' - it went on to win the academy award in 2008. When you watch the acceptance speech, make sure you watch it to the end, when Markéta Irglová comes back out and offers up some inspirational words..

Video: Falling Slowly Winning Best Original Song Oscar Benzer: best

I post this as a way of reminding us all, as we enter a new year - that whatever your creative ideas, even if you have an idea like 'Musical set in Ireland, lots of singing around pianos, shaky camera-work' then GO FOR IT. If you follow your vision, believe in it, and do it, who knows.. you might just end up with an academy award, and if you don't - at least you'll have been among the very few who had the tenacity to try.

"A little movie called Once gave me enough inspiration to last the rest of the year."

-Steven Spielberg

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Yet more screenwriting tips and advice - On Writing From The Heart

There is a lot of writing advice out there. And it's all really great. You can learn how to structure properly, you can learn the ten things script readers are looking for, you can learn about how many explosions you need to put in to impress studio execs, you can read up on the common mistakes new writers make and you can read articles on how to choose character names. You can read the books on 'How To' and you can take the courses on 'What Producers Want.' You can do all of these things.

But instead, you could write what you want.

Because, yes, it's true - Producer's do want safe pictures. They do want stuff to guarantee them money. But that doesn't mean they actually know what they're looking for. And if you go chasing what people want to read, it's unlikely you'll give it to them. I mean, they might say 'all scripts must have scenes about Elephants who enter beauty contests' and you'll write them into your story-- but it's not going to have truth, it's not going to be organic. Whereas if you just write what you want, write what you feel, write what you have to say - then believe it or not, someone is going to feel your voice.

Remember when you FIRST started writing---- do you remember? You'd write a little story, or a scene; then you'd read it back and be amazingly excited. These characters and these words are magically SPEAKING YOUR WORLD VIEW! They say everything you need to say. It's amazing how quickly we lose that.

Or the first time you found a writer who REALLY inspired you. Who made you bounce around with excitement. The first time you picked up Roald Dahl, or the first time you watched a film and had the realization that somebody had written those beautiful words. Well, when you think back to what those words were; they were probably written by someone who wrote what was in their heart. They spoke what was bursting to come out. That's what made you want to write.

It breaks my heart to see new, enthusiastic young writers, giving in so easily to this notion that they should be writing by committee. That they're okay with some slick guy in a business suit with a mobile phone stuck to his ear saying "yeah, scrap that scene. Scrap that character. Put in some breasts on page 5 and and a death on page 42." That is not what great writing is.

"Well, that is not what inspires people. That's not what inspires people. Shut up. Play the game. Play it from your heart"

-Jerry, in Jerry Maguire.

This industry is tough. We need all the advice we can get. You need to know what a screenplay is like and you need to have an idea of what works-- but here's the thing. There are thousands of people out there writing spec screenplays that suit a predetermined 'market' or some notion picked up about how screenplays are meant to be. You can do that-- or you can be one of the few people out there who is writing WHAT THEY WANT, saying WHAT THEY NEED TO SAY. I guess it just comes down to what kind of writer you want to be. Do you want to inspire people? Do you want to say something REAL? Do you want to have HEART?

It's no easier to do that. To write who you truly are and say what you really need to say is even harder than writing a studio-executive-friendly-action flick. But I dare you, I double dare you-- write what you really want to write, say what you really need to say. "Hollywood sucks," "films aren't what they used to be" -- you've heard these things a million times. They're true. If we are going to find exciting, dynamic, truly gripping films-- they need to come from us, the new generation of writers. And we need to get out of this mindset that somebody knows what's the right thing for us to be writing.

Narrative feature films are less than a hundred years old. How to make a great film is not set in stone. Until the 1970's, nobody knew that disaster films would rake in the millions. Until 'The Blair Witch Project' nobody knew that an amateur looking handheld flick could be one of the most profitable films of all time.

"Nobody knows anything."

-William Goldman

If you follow all the advice, instructions and rules-- you might write a good screenplay. It might be exactly what someone wants and it may well get made. In that case, I salute you. You've achieved what you set out to do.

But, if you write what is truly you--- even if you have this idea about two people who are locked in a toilet at a Diana Ross convention......... if that is truly what you are excited and passionate about. WRITE IT. When we are passionate, truthful and writing from who and what we really are, that's when the nuggets of wisdom come out. That's when we truly comment on the human condition. That's when we inspire people.

So it's time to decide. Do you want to write 'Transformers' or do you want to write 'Shawshank Redemption'? The choice is yours. Right now you have enough time to decide-- realistically; with enough dedication, hard work and soul-selling; you could conceivably write a major popcorn-Hollywood blockbuster. But you could also use that same dedication to your craft to write something personal, moving and truthful. And, like 'Shawshank Redemption' - you might flop at the cinema. But, eventually-- justice would be served, as it always is by moving and honest material, such as Shawshank. If it's good, it'll find an audience. Even if that audience is seven people. If you move them enough, they'll tell seven of their friends. Seven by seven, the world will get to see your movie. It's up to you, decide who you want to be. Decide what you want to write. Write what you want. Or write what they want.

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