Writing a screenplay is a little like trying to draw a portrait on a balloon while you’re blowing it up.
You need to be in a number of places at once: firmly in the hearts and minds of characters, technically attuned to the moment and the way a scene or exchange is running, and casting a constant overview across the whole thing to ensure it’s operating as a complete organism.
On top of that it’s vital to not only remain true to the present, but also open to the possibilities of where it’s going and the independent life that’s evolving, as well as keeping a keen eye on where the thing has come from in the first place.
It’s a perpetual re-evaluation process and as a result it’s essential to be certain of a number of elements right up front – some solid grounding that simply will not waver, otherwise you’re likely to be dragged into the swamp.
To that end I tend to write a very large number of short documents in advance of the draft. This is something a lot of writers hate doing, but it’s become so much a part of my process that I don’t think I could do without it. It makes a massive difference when it comes to keeping the integrity of the draft intact and I find the process invaluable.
This means a lot of beat outlines, breakdowns, synopses and treatments. Between the second and third draft when Kriv and I were huddled down together I wrote four separate treatments. It makes a world of difference.
Here’s one of the earlier breakdowns:
This is a rough sequence breakdown from first to second act, accompanied by queries. I tend to print documents out pristine clean and ordered and then fill them up with commentary until hardly anything is visible anymore, and then move on to another document.
I think I probably get this from early painting and sculpting days – a fascination with Indian sand painters and the idea of a work containing its own history as a palimpsest. It allows you to almost physically work the page, like a sculpture, layering it up and ‘filling the cup’. Then emptying the cup.
That sounds terribly esoteric when really what it boils down to is that I’m a bit daft and need to keep repeating things until it stays in my head, shunting out other irrelevant stuff like remembering how to tie shoelaces, put my pants on before I leave the house, etc.
This was back when the first act included Nat’s wife Emma, who dies in childbirth. How we eventually came to take that out is interesting, and I’ll come to that in a later post.
The document below is a series of scribbles I found on the back of a draft page taken from one of the pamphlets that described how to work a farm. Pieces of sage advice such as ‘Do not plough your land in wet weather’, ‘A horse needs fresh water’ and a recipe for ‘Bush Soup’. That’s how basic this stuff was – how little the selectors knew when they arrived on their land.
All this stuff is great for incidental detail, but also more importantly to allow myself to understand what these people were doing every day. These are the actions they’d be concerned with while they’re talking. I feel there’s much more to be gained in terms of character creation from a writing perspective by these little snippets than reading entire histories of life at the time.
I also scribbled down a few contemporary rhymes that kids would sing to each other while playing, such as ‘Captain Cook chased a chook…’
There were a number of early scenes that showed Tom and Sarah together playing and these were supposed to inform that.
There’s also a photograph of a lovely old lady cut out of a newspaper. I tend to surround myself with images and objects that I pick up while writing. I have no idea at all what the point of this one is but I must have figured it was vital at the time. The oddest things can trigger some of the most important ideas and when I’m deep in the writing process almost anything I lay my eyes on has a way of relating back to the story.
But really I haven’t a clue what this picture must have meant. It becomes even more obscure and surreal when you read the caption underneath it:
‘Whetham…elephant rides’
Answers or suggestions in the comments box please.
The following continues the basic breakdown of the sequences and the core movement of the story:
It’s interesting here that there’s a reference to an ‘upturned pail’. There were originally a number of objects like the pail and the knife that changed in value as the script progressed. Very much in keeping with David Mamet’s theory of ‘three uses of the knife’ (almost literally here), where you first see the knife as it’s used to hunt and kill the food you bring to your lover’s table. The same knife is then used to lovingly prepare the meal. And then after eating you use the same knife again to cut their cheating heart out.
Anyhoo…
The pail was going to be a hiding place for the gold, in much the same way as the trunk is used in Hitchcock’s Rope.
Rope was a big influence on the early middle sequences of the first draft. There are in fact a number of film references that some people might find surprising. The locker is certainly inspired by Ben Hur, and the dungeon scene when Judah discovers his mother and sister have leprosy. The scene of the jailer dipping a lamp into the tiny dungeon and then recoiling in horror has always stuck with me for some reason.
Equally the line from American Werewolf in London where one of the pub locals says ‘I’ll just check on the dogs’, to Brian Glover’s response ‘The dogs are fine’. No idea why that’s stuck with me. Something about the tension and the suggestion of unspoken history between the characters.
Movement and rhythm are really a fundamental matter for me. It has to be musical. I spend many months writing these breakdowns and trying my best to get into the rhythm of the story and a feel for how it’s moving. I do a lot of these and it’s basically a little like muscle memory – you keep repeating something until it’s ingrained. It means that when it comes to writing the draft it tends to move quite quickly and there’s a definite instinctive understanding of when to put the foot on the accelerator or brake. It allows the engine to run smoothly without having to worry about it.
This is actually a sequence outline from the third draft, trying to keep my eye on Tom and evaluating what kind of emotional changes he’s going through at each stage. It’s very easy to lose track of this and is really the core of how a story works – making sense of the characters’ changing emotional states.
I seem to have scribbled a suggestion for ‘comedy’ in there too. Ha.
Oddly, when Kriv and I were working through this draft we were mostly in hysterics. That does of course make us sound a little deranged given the subject matter. But more often than not you’d find us at a table outside one of the many cafes in Surry Hills with tears of laughter rolling down our faces. Hoo ha! Who we gonna kill today!?
Working with Kriv at this stage was an absolute pleasure. I’ve been incredibly privileged to work on the development of this script with people who have such a deep and astute knowledge of story. Kriv, Kristian, John and Rob at every stage were bang on the money when casting an objective eye over the narrative.
Kriv essentially worked like a dream script editor, pushing me to places I perhaps wouldn’t have gone on my own, pointing to places in the story where things weren’t coming up to the mark for him dramatically. I’d go away after these meetings and play around with solutions and then we’d regroup and discuss further and it got to the stage where we were so attuned that we’d often pick up the phone with a suggestion at exactly the same time as the other thought the same thing.
It’s really been a wonderful, organic, respectful process, which is an incredibly rare thing.
Here’s a couple of pages from the completed first draft, going back in again and taking it to task so I could pull out a second:
This was the stage I decided to show it to somebody. It seemed surprisingly intact. The shape was there, even it was all a bit rough.
I gave Pat Lovell a call and asked her if she knew anyone who’d be interested in a thriller-western. She said go and have a word with John Maynard. I guess if it weren’t for Pat introducing me to John this would never have happened.
John’s been the angel who has overseen this entire project, the man who first decided to take a punt and who eventually threw Kriv, Kristian and myself together. John and I chatted around just about everything except the script for a couple of hours one afternoon at the Arenafilm offices, before he finally said, let’s have a look at this thing then. I left feeling that I’d just had a great conversation with a fabulous bloke but didn’t hold out too much hope.
He called a week or so later and said we should talk further.
And that’s what we did, over a period of around four or five months in which I pulled out another draft. As I mentioned in an earlier post, a sizeable chunk of this project’s time has been taken up just talking around things, feeling things out, working on trust and mutual respect. It’s paid huge dividends. I think it’s far too easy to rush into a project before this primary foundation is solid first.
I remember I got through the second draft and thought to myself, this is as far as I can go without a director coming on board. It needed to go outside of myself and become real and malleable in order to move forward.
I do think the timing of bringing a draft to a director is essential. A director needs to take creative ownership of a project because it will ultimately be the director’s film. But if that happens too early and the story is still too embryonic it can get really messy. Equally if it happens too late the writer can be too hunkered down and intransigent. You need to do it a time when you’re perversely at your most confident and yet most insecure.
John asked if I’d ever met this fella Kriv. I said no.
Kriv completely nailed the thing from the very first meeting. He just understood it on every level and we found we spoke the same cinematic language, were influenced by the same films and visualised story in a remarkably similar way. It was like fresh air had been suddenly let into a musty room.
And once again we sat around and talked it over, the three of us now, John, Kriv and myself. Kriv then introduced John to Kristian and it all started to seem eminently workable.
Then one afternoon at the Book Kitchen in Surry Hills we were having one of our ambling chats and John turned to Kriv and I and after a pause said, ‘Right, shall we do it then?’
And that, as they say, was that.
