Day 05 – Where Do Good Script Ideas Come From?

Welcome to Day #5!  Where do good script ideas come from?

You want the short answer?  Anywhere and everywhere.  Anything from plastic grocery bags to LSD trips have inspired films.

Many times someone will come up to me and tell me they’ve got a movie idea of epic awesome-sauce.  At times like that I wish I’d taken that Ninjutsu class with the smoke-bomb vanishing Ninja Turtle strategery.  It would come in handy.

Them: “Hey, David, I accidentally overfed my pet Komodo dragon and suddenly had this movie idea of epic awesome-sauce!”

Me: “Ninja!  Vanish!” Bamf!

Them: “…”

The reality is most of these movie ideas of epic awesome-sauce rarely add up to more than maybe decent movie scene mediocre-gravy.  The idea might sustain a scene.  Maybe.  Perhaps a short film.  But it will NOT fuel an entire movie.  Not saying that those movies would never get made.  I’m 96% positive that some MGM and United Artist executives and directors were chilling in their hot tubs after a liquid power lunch and one of them says:

Them: “Hey, dudes, what if this Hot tub…(pause for effect)….were a Time Machine to the 80s!”

Robert Redford: “Ninja! Vanish!” Bamf!

Them: “…”

Have you ever stopped to think about where Hollywood gets their movie ideas?  Well here’s a non-exhaustive list of some of their more regular mental fishing ponds:

01) Books – “Harry Potter”, “The Passion”, “Hunt for Red October”, “Mean Girls”, “Twilight”, “Mars Needs Moms”, “The Lincoln Lawyer”, “Water for Elephants”, “Mr. Popper’s Penguins”, “Winnie-the-Pooh”, “Sherlock Holmes” etc. etc. etc.

02) Urban Legends – “Ghost in the Darkness” – William Goldman was inspired to write the screenplay after a trip to Kenya where the Tsavo Maneater story was told to him at a camp in the Masai Mara.  Intrigued, Goldman wrote that it was one of only two outstanding true stories he has come upon in his 40+ years of writing.  The other was “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”.  It can also be argued that “The Blair Witch” film stemmed from Urban legends as well.

03) Family History – “Braveheart” – Randall Wallace was researching his own family history when he came across this amazing hero…great great great great great great grand-pappy, William Wallace.

04) Comic books – “Superman”, “Spiderman”, “Sin City”, “Thor”, “Dark Knight”, “Suckerpunch”, “300″, “Garfield”, “Kickass”, etc etc.

05) Video games – “Resident Evil”, “Final Fantasy”, “Doom”, “Hitman”, “Max Payne”, “Street Fighter”, “Prince of Persia”, etc. etc.

06) Spitballing ideas like ‘What if…”? For example, what if Indian Jones were a woman = “Tomb Raider”; or what if the earth were directly in the path of a killer comet = “Armaggedon”; what if robots took over the earth = Matrix or Terminator or iRobot etc etc etc

07)  Personal history with a twist – “Napolean Dynamite” or “Almost Famous” were similar but different to the screenwriters’ actual stories growing up…only embellished for the big screen.

08) Fantasies & Daydreams – “Agent Cody Banks” – a teen boy’s fantasy of being a super spy in high school

09) Current trends – “Dodgeball” (a middle school P.E. game is reborn in sports clubs/gyms across the U.S.), “Duet” (Karoake fanatics), “Fast and the Furious” (street racing), “Wedding Crashers” (self-explanatory), “Step Up” (underground street dance-offs)

10)  Bedtime stories  – “The Princess Bride” – William Goldman made up this story as a bedtime tale for his daughters which later got expanded into a Screenplay…and arguably one of the Top Most Quotable films of all time!

11) Previous Film Remakes – “Sabrina”, “Ocean’s 11”, “The Thomas Crown Affair”, “The Great Gatsby”, “Cleopatra”, “Excalibur”, “Three Musketeers”

12) TV Shows – “The Dukes of Hazzard”, “Mission Impossible”, “Charlie’s Angels”, “Smurfs”, “Serenity”, “Brady Bunch”, “Scooby Doo”, any of the SNL films like “Waynes World”, “Blues Brothers”, “Coneheads”, etc)

13) Jokes/Standup Comedy – “Mr. Saturday Night”, “Funny People”, any early Woody Allen film

14) Sports – “Dreamer”, “Bagger Vance”, “Coach Carter”, “Angels in the Outfield”, “Secretariat”, “Hoosiers”, “Remember the Titans”, “Blades of Glory”, “Balls of Fury”, etc etc etc

15) Toys & Games – “Transformers”, “Battleship”, “Clue”, “Viewmaster” (not kidding…it’s coming!)

16) Cross-Pollenation of two existing ideas – “Fast & Furious” meets James Bond = “XXX” with Vin Diesel; “Die Hard” on a Bus = “Speed”

17) Movie ideas sparked by drug use – “The Doors”, the last 1/3 of “Apocalypse Now”, “Friday”, “Fantasia”, “Inception”, and most films by Charlie Kauffman

And on and on and on and on.  It takes some time to develop the movie muscle in your mind which can help you sort through the decent movie ideas from the garbage ideas that won’t get anywhere.  With time and practice and education, you can hopefully learn to discount a bad idea long before you’ve written an entire script and 4 drafts of it.  That comes with experience though.

One day you’ll be overfeeding your Komodo dragon and think:

SELF: “This would make a hilarious movie of epic awesome-sauce…”

OTHER SELF: “Ninja!  Vanish!” Bamf!

SELF: “…”

Trust me, it may lead to some self-existential drama, but it’ll save a lot of time wasted at the keyboard.

You’re welcome!

###

Disney-ABC Writing Fellowship Seeks Talent

Okay, Writerly-Person…Disney/ABC is gearing up for their annual contest to find some Talented Writing Fellows for their program.  The doors open the first of June and will seal tightly shut July 1.  So save the date!

Created in 1990 in partnership with the Writers Guild of America West (WGAW), the Disney|ABC Television Writing Fellowship is based in Los Angeles and is widely recognized as one of the entertainment industry’s most coveted writing programs.

A Fellow actually becomes an employee of Disney/ABC TV and paid a weekly salary totally $50K/year.  Not too shabby.  Plus applicable benefits, etc.

The program is designed to expose aspiring writers to key executives, producers and literary representatives – all essential in the pursuit of a writing career. Additionally, while in the program, fellows have the opportunity to work one-on-one with a current programming or development executive to create spec scripts of series from the current broadcast season.  The ultimate goal is to prepare and nurture the fellows for a writing career.

What’s not to love?  Click HERE to go their site and learn more about it.  Also, below, from that same site is a list of writing resources they lumped into the “Recommended Reading” category if you’re interested in upping your game while you wait to hear back.  This is no time for procrastination so go apply NOW!

RECOMMENDED READING

	Aristotles Poetics for Screenwriters By Michael Tierno Hyperion
	Creating Unforgettable Characters By Linda Seger Henry Holt and Company, Inc.
	Hello, Lied the Agent By Ian Gurvitz Phoenix Books
	Making a Good Script Great By Linda Seger Samuel French Trade
	Successful Sitcom Writing By Jurgen Wolff St. Martin’s Press
	The Art of Dramatic Writing By Lajos Egri Simon & Schuster, Inc.
	The One-Hour Drama Series: Producing Episodic Television By Robert Del Valle Silman-James Press
	The Power of Myth By Joseph Campbell Doubleday
	The Script is Finished, Now What Do I Do? By K. Callen Sweden Press
	The Sitcom Career Book By Mary Lou Belli & Phil Ramuno Back Stage Books
	The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers By Christopher Vogler Michael Weise Productions
	Story By Robert McKee Harper Collins
	Wake Me When It’s Funny By Garry Marshall Newmarket Press
	Writing Down the Bones By Natalie Goldberg Shambhala Publications, Inc. ###

« Previous Page