A Philosophy For Teaching Screenwriting

I have a BFA in theater and playwriting from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. I wrote stage plays at the beginning of my career as a writer. A few of them got done and one of them was a first-prize winner at the first annual New Play Festival at the Actors Theater of Louisville, Kentucky in 1977. That has become a festival of new writing that is known around the world since then.

So I studied playwriting in school, but never screenwriting. From my experience in theater, I learned character and dialogue. Back when I was getting educated in the late 1960s, there weren't many film schools. The film school at SMU was just getting under way. And there were no books at all on the craft of writing for the screen.

After spending several years in New York City working in off Broadway theater and a couple of years in Oklahoma City managing a nonprofit stage company, I arrived in Los Angeles in 1976 to try my hand in the movie business.

I got my first job in L.A. from Roger Corman in 1982, doing an un-credited dialogue polish on a science-fiction movie called Android starring Klaus Kinski. Not long after, Roger gave me an assignment to write my first full-length screenplay — and get paid for it and get the screen credit! The movie was subsequently produced and released. In some markets it was called Wheels of Fire, while in others it was Desert Warrior, and it was shot right here in the Philippines under the direction of Cirio H. Santiago.

From that assignment, I started learning plot structure, and I concentrated on that almost exclusively for several years.

As time went on, I learned to combine the two approaches as I reflected on the relationship in storytelling between character and dialogue on the one hand and plot structure on the other.

And after that synthesis, I discovered focus, shape, and clarity — all of this while writing to pre-existing production specifications.

Throughout my career, I've worked on 22 screenplays that have made it through production and onto the screen, all of them made on moderate budgets between USD 500,000 on the low end and USD 4,000,000 tops. Two of them were done in foreign languages. I've worked on countless other scripts, more than 20 actually, that were never filmed (at least not yet). I've also written scripts for numerous documentaries.

When I think about the difference between the first screenplay I wrote back in the early 1980s and the most recent one I did, it strikes me that I've learned a lot about screenwriting.

The difference is this: my first script didn't much resemble the finished movie, whereas my most recent movie pretty much matched the script I wrote.

And the main reason for that: Rewriting. Reworking. Rethinking.

I was lucky I got to L.A. in 1976. There were still a handful of independent producers like Roger Corman who would hire first-timers.

The landscape has changed dramatically since then. If I were starting out now, I wouldn't know where to begin. The independent, low-budget arena is all but gone. There's no place where a new writer can go to learn by doing.

Because that's how I learned screenwriting: by doing it. And along the way I picked up a lot of essential information and insights, things I'd like to pass along to people who might be just starting out.

I've spent more than 25 years in the movie business — and not just as a writer, but also director, associate producer, post coordinator, ADR coordinator, and sometime actor. I figure now it's time to give something back. That's sort of a typical feeling among people my age, but that doesn't make it any less real. So now here I am at the IAFT.

It's not possible to produce a first-timer's fledgling full-length screenplay in an educational institution. So we have to fall back on the next best thing — the actual writing of a script, starting out with short scripts.

My philosophy of teaching is still "learn by doing."

But adding into the mix the element of mentoring. That means reading the students' scripts, both privately and out loud in class, and giving feedback by analyzing both overall structure and underlying detail, and doing this through several drafts of a particular script.

Additionally, there are a number of books about screenwriting in the marketplace today. Having waded through many, I've found Robert McKee's Story, which wasn't published until the late 1990s, to be the best by far.

As I've told my students, if I'd been lucky enough to have the McKee book when I was starting out, I believe I might've gotten further in my career. It is undeniably valuable and inspiring.

I've designed an entire Intermediate Screenwriting course around the McKee book, which includes weekly tests on specific chapters. The tests are then graded in class, which provides an opportunity for wide-ranging discussions on the material covered.

Students are furnished at the start of the course with a detailed, five-page syllabus, including a course description, course objectives with a listing of Student Learning Outcomes, course requirements, and a point-by-point course schedule so that they possess a roadmap of where we're going and the sign posts along the way.

All of which then feeds in, pragmatically, to the Advanced course — learning by doing. Analyzing. Rethinking. Redesigning. And rewriting.

All with a mentor providing constructive comments and guidance. With the intent of defining the difference between what happens on the page and what ends up on the screen.

Because when you're a storyteller and your medium is visual and kinetic, that difference between page and screen, that's a combustible transition.

As the old saying goes, "there's many a slip between the cup and the lip." Things do get spilled.

I believe in imparting as much practical advice as possible, not only about the craft but also with the business. I have a lot of experience in the trenches and on the front lines, and I like to translate that into something useful for others.