Today we continue my interview with screenwriter Marc Maurino, who wrote and sold the spec script ?Inside the Machine? to CBS Films in May 2011:
SM: Amazingly enough ?Inside the Machine? is your first feature length screenplay and yet it?s a really clean, professional read. How did you manage to pull that off? What did you do before you wrote the script that enabled you to grasp the subtleties of writing a professional quality script?
MM: I think the reference to reading a lot of contemporary professional scripts that have attracted some heat served as a great way for me to set the bar as to what is a professional script. Though INSIDE THE MACHINE is the first feature length script I finished, its clarity and professionalism also owe a lot to the fact that I had written hundreds of pages in screenplay format before, which I had gotten feedback on in the form of staged readings, having industry professionals read, and having directed.
But I can?t stress enough how important it was to know exactly what was selling and getting read and had been made before was to my style and professionalism. Not for the content, but for the professionalism.
I go to sports metaphors a lot for writing (which is funny, because I?m not a jock at all.) But if you wanted to play pro basketball, besides practicing hundreds of layups and three pointers and scrimmaging, and cross training and working out at the gym, you?d watch hundreds of hours of the NBA?heck, pros watch hours of tape of their opponents before the game.
One of the many blessings for an aspiring writer is the absolute immediate availability of scripts all over the Internet. Not reading screenplays regularly while trying to break in is like an aspiring baller not turning on the TV to watch the NBA.
Likewise, there?s a ton of advice in magazines like Script and the now-departed Creative Screenwriting. I have years worth of issues of both of those magazines, as I?ve been getting them and reading them religiously for a long time. When articles in those magazines encourage that shorter is better, to use descriptive language, to strengthen your characters emotional needs, to find conflict in every scene, etc., etc?.they?re right.
So years of reading scripts, and instructional articles in magazines, sort of seeped into my subconscious, so when it came time to determine that my script was done, it was professional quality.
Finally, there?s a question behind your question, i.e., when did I know that my script was a ?clean, professional read? and ready to go out? One of the first people I sent it to is a friend who is also a former development executive and is married to a top-tier screenwriter. She loved it and wrote me a note that she would have hired me off of it when she was at her production company. I will never forget the moment of getting that e-mail; I was in the business center of the Tijuana Marriott (long story for another time), and I looked around the empty room and said to myself, wow, this thing might have legs?
The reason I share this is to emphasize the importance of sharing one?s work with as high-grade professionals as you can find, and listening to their feedback. Again, in the age of the Internet, a resourceful writer can find a supportive community with a little bit of work. In a few years of seriously trying, in rural Massachusetts, between the Internet and film festivals, I?ve met several screenwriters, producers, TV producers, etc.
SM: You spent 15 years working a day job, then pursuing your passion for filmmaking at night and during your spare hours. What kept you going all those years of what must have been lots of work and not much sleep?
MM: I love it. I love it, I love it, I love it. You will see by now that I ?write long?, and I?m not being vicious with editing my answers here for length. But there isn?t much more to say than this: I love writing. I love directing. I love working with actors. And I have known in my heart and soul for over twenty years that all I really want to do is to write and direct.
I hate the not sleeping part, but it?s the cost of doing business. I?m blessed to have a day job that I love, which is compelling and challenging and totally outside the film world. Now I get to have a second job doing the only thing in the world I could want to do more than my day job. I?ve got two great jobs that I love in a down economy, so whenever I?m exhausted or stressed or have to read another IP to consider for an assignment, you will not hear me complain. Being tired from doing what you love and get paid well for is a first class problem.
Also, one of the other things that kept/keeps me going is my wife. I have the world?s most supportive wife, who from the night we met has known that my passion and goal was to write and direct.
In the early 00s, I ordered a Macintosh G4, which had iMovie, so that I could make short films and start down the road of filmmaking. Literally within days of the order we learned that my wife was pregnant, and I panicked, and wanted to cancel the order?I couldn?t afford a child on the way and a new expensive computer! And she put her foot down, and said something to the effect of ?Absolutely not! You will not allow the first example that you set for our child to be you giving up on or running away from your dream.?
And that?s the computer I edited my first shorts on, and which I used for nine years until it couldn?t handle the requirements of Skype for the UCLA program.
So if a writer has the opportunity to find an incredibly supportive, nurturing, loving, and all around incredible partner?romantic, artistic, or both?that?s important. It?s a long road with a lot of late nights, and someone needs to get up with the kids in the morning. I?m not writing this just to go on about how great I think my wife is, but to really acknowledge that being an artist is a long, lonely, and vulnerable road, and having a stalwart constant that thinks you are great and tells you so is invaluable. (Also helps if they can tell you when the work isn?t hitting all the right notes, in a gentle way.)
To that end, it also helps that she?s an actor, and I can always count on her for an honest read. She?s also with a theatre company that I?ve drawn from for shorts and table reads (which I do for all my specs.) For writers, knowing actors is vitally important.
SM: In an email to me, you said, ?However, in those fifteen years I did develop a voice; I do have life experience and a worldview and compassion and intelligence about human nature that I did not at 25. In my early 20s, I had neither the discipline, experience, or talent to write what I can and do write now.? Now that you are interacting with industry insiders in Hollywood and seeing what it is they respond to, how important do you think it is for a writer to develop a ?voice??
I think voice is huge. Listen, I know on every general and every call, every writer hears that the executive really liked his or her script (which is what compelled him/her to reach out to your agent to set up the call or the meeting.) But rather than bask in the undeniable warm glow of hearing someone tell me that they loved INSIDE THE MACHINE, I listen to why.
And the same thing I?ve heard over and over is that the authenticity and visceral nature of the script really grabbed people. I?ve heard a little about the plot, but mostly, it seems that gritty realism with which I infused the writing (and the characters, plot, etc.) really appealed to people.
And the authenticity that I think people are responding to is across a variety of elements of the script?not just the police and bad guys elements, which are ultra-realistic, but also?if not more importantly?the emotional lives, inner and outer, of the characters; their struggles and conflicts, the moral ambiguities, and the complexity of their situations.
And that is not something I could have written at 25; being able to convincingly write a married couple in love but struggling with his career and their child?s situation; or a scared ex-con trying to make a new life; or a vulnerable, damaged girl looking for a man to take care of her?all of these characters come from me having a lot of life experience, especially in terms of my exposure to a wide range of people at every strata of society (thanks to my day job.)
I took to calling INSIDE THE MACHINE a ?character-driven? crime drama very early; it certainly in some ways could have been marketed as a thriller, but for me, what is important is that these flawed, struggling, complex characters are driving the plot even more than the next step in the investigation, so in terms of marketing myself and knowing what I excel at, ?character driven? has become my buzzword.
And so that?s what I think of as my voice, and that?s what, in takes and pitches, I promise I?ll deliver in future work.
What is great about Marc?s answers is they really speak to the process of going from aspiring screenwriter to professional screenwriter. Are there practices and techniques you see in Marc?s comments you use? Are there some you don?t currently use, but think you should take on?
Tomorrow: Part 3 of my interview with screenwriter Marc Maurino.
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