Inside Screenwriting: Script Gurus in 21st Century Hollywood
With popular seminars, astronomical book sales, and even software, Screenwriting Gurus like Syd Field, Chris Vogler, and John Truby are bringing script-writing systems to the fore. More than ever before, Hollywood is listening.
By Daniel Goldin
In Hollywood, taking off your shoes in a meeting signifies power. It means you are the one person in the room exempt from that fundamental Western custom of covering a part of the body known to spread odors.
On a recent afternoon, script consultant David S. Freeman visited the sleek offices of a prolific production company which would rather not be named, as they do not want it known that they seek outside help developing their stories. But in fact Freeman was being paid thousands of dollars to offer his insights at that story meeting, during which he wasted no time slipping off his Italian loafers, placing his bare-feet on the producer's cherry-wood desk and launching into his analysis. Utilizing his "twenty techniques for giving a character depth," he effortlessly took the story apart and began to plug in the gaps, almost as though he were filling in a book of Mad Libs. Freeman's impact was palpable: The producers were left awe-struck by Freeman's almost magical laying of hands on a very sick script.
Freeman isn't the only one peddling a just-add-water approach to screenwriting. In fact, he is a latecomer to a new breed of charismatic script doctors, who count studio heavyweights, producers, directors, and screenwriters (both successful and aspiring) as their devotees. In a town eager to embrace the latest Kabbala instructor or Aikido master, the gurus have no trouble gathering a flock of the wealthy and powerful. Executives from Disney and Pixar have taken notes from these savants, as have high-powered directors such as Peter Jackson. For better or worse, screenwriting self-helpers have changed the process and product of Hollywood moviemaking.
For some filmmakers, the systems offered by these gurus provide a point of departure that makes the blank page just a little less stark. "I think for people who have never had a story analyzed and broken down like it is in [McKee's] course, it's an epiphany," says writer-director Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo) of his experience with top script guru Robert McKee. "Regardless of whether you ultimately always adhere to it or agree with it." Others smell snake oil. "It's a racket, isn't it?" suggests producer Lynda Obst (Sleepless in Seattle, Contact). "It's people on the outside telling other people on the outside how to get inside."
But recently the studios have opened their gates to the gurus and routinely use their ideas to shape product. There's an old Hollywood adage: Give the audience what they want in a way they don't expect. What the gurus seem to offer is an efficient way to do just this, by providing a familiar mold the studios can endlessly refill with surprising content.
With big bucks to be made in the guru business, the field has become crowded with disappointed writers trying to turn a dime by switching to the left side of their brain. However the top tier of analysts — Syd Field, Bob McKee, Chris Vogler, John Truby and David S. Freeman — have distinguished themselves from the pack not by the number of hit screenplays they've written (collectively: none); but by creating unique and convincing arguments for having discovered the secret to a happy marriage between art and commerce. Between them, they have sold millions of books — required reading in many film schools — consulted on thousands of movies, and provided a defacto training program for creative executives.
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