{"id":17997,"date":"2012-05-03T15:23:50","date_gmt":"2012-05-03T20:23:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/?p=17997"},"modified":"2012-05-03T15:23:50","modified_gmt":"2012-05-03T20:23:50","slug":"a-man-and-his-focus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/2012\/05\/03\/a-man-and-his-focus\/","title":{"rendered":"A man and his Focus"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

James Schamus on State Street, hailed by local livestock.<\/em><\/p>\n

DB here:<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish,\u201d one of my students said during a James Schamus visit to Madison back in the 1990s, \u201cI could just download his brain.\u201d Probably many have shared that wish.\u00a0James is an award-winning screenwriter who has become a successful producer and head of a studio division,\u00a0Focus Features<\/a>\u00a0(currently celebrating its tenth anniversary).\u00a0No one knows more about how the US film industry works than James does. Yet he’s also deeply versed in the history and aesthetics of cinema. He teaches in Columbia\u2019s film program, and his courses involve not filmmaking but film theory and analysis. How many people who can greenlight a picture have written an in-depth book on Dreyer\u2019s Gertrud<\/em><\/a>?<\/p>\n

James came to campus last month for our Wisconsin Film Festival. His official event, sponsored by the University Center for the Humanities<\/a>, was a talk called \u201cMy Wife Is a Terrorist: Lessons in Storytelling from the Department of Homeland Security.\u201d<\/a> That was quite an item in itself, tracing how James\u2019 wife Nancy Kricorian discovered that she had a Homeland Security file. Pursuing that led him to broader meditations on digital surveillance in modern life. If he\u2019s invited to present this in a venue near you, you\u2019ll want to catch this provocative tutorial in how to read a redacted document.<\/p>\n

While he was here, James spent a couple of hours in J. J. Murphy\u2019s screenwriting seminar, and of course I had to be there. Herewith, some information and ideas from a sparkling session.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

All battleships are gray in the dark<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Hulk.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not writing,\u201d Schamus said. By that he meant that a screenplay isn\u2019t parallel to a piece of creative writing, an autonomous work of art. Nobody ever walked out of a movie saying, \u201cBad film, but a great script.\u201d In this he echoed Jean-Claude Carri\u00e8re<\/a> at the Screenwriting Research Network<\/a> conference I visited back in September<\/a>. A screenplay is \u201ca description of the best film you can imagine.\u201d<\/p>\n

What sort of description? For certain directors, sparse indications are best. Collaborating with Ang Lee, Schamus knows he must under-write. Lee doesn\u2019t want a movie that\u2019s wholly on the page: \u201cAng wants to solve puzzles.\u201d But for a studio project, the screenplay has to be airtight, since it functions as an insurance package for any director the producers hire. \u201cA script has to be a battleship that no director can sink.\u201d<\/p>\n

James pointed out a bit of history. Back in the 1910s Thomas Ince rationalized studio production by using the script as the basis of all planning\u2014budget, schedule, locations, and deployment of resources. The same happens today, with the Assistant Director breaking down the script for different phases and tasks of production. But on a studio project not everything is tidily planned in advance. Scripts can be rewritten during shooting or even later. Sometimes there are \u201cparallel scripts\u201d: stars can hire writers who spin out \u201cproduction rewrites\u201d to be thrust on the director. James, who has prepared the screenplay for Hulk<\/em> and done his share of uncredited rewrites on other big films, speaks from experience.<\/p>\n

Independent companies rely on screenplays too; Focus is writer-friendly. But in this zone of the industry, the writer needs to create a \u201ccommunity\u201d around a script idea\u2014a director or group of actors and craft people that support it. These are as valuable as a polished screenplay in getting a film funded.<\/p>\n

What about the current conventions, like the three-act structure? James rejects the Syd Field formula. He thinks that the writer will spontaneously devise some intriguing incidents and arresting characters without recourse to beats, arcs, and plot points. \u201cYou can\u2019t have half an hour go by without giving your characters something to do, or to shoot for.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also suggests that the writer’s second draft should be an exercise in rethinking the whole thing. \u201cDon\u2019t write your second draft from the first-draft file.\u201d In your redraft, use flashbacks, play around with structure, or tell the action from a different point of view. This will engage you more deeply with the material and show you possibilities you hadn\u2019t imagined. In terms I\u2019ve floated in various places: take the same story world, but recast the plot structure or the film\u2019s moment-by-moment flow of information (that is, its narration). Or try choosing a different genre. For The Wedding Banquet<\/em>, James turned the original script, a melodrama, into a situation derived from screwball comedy.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Down in the mosh pit<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

James has been both an independent producer, in partnership with Ted Hope at Good Machine during the 1990s, and a specialty-division producer with Universal for Focus. The moment of passage for him came when, rewriting Ang Lee\u2019s first feature, Pushing Hands<\/em>, James realized that he had to get the whole project in shape for filming. After that, and The Wedding Banquet<\/em> and Eat Drink Man Woman<\/em>, producing followed naturally.<\/p>\n

When James started, a single person could cover most producer duties on an indie film, but now it\u2019s very difficult. Finding material, gathering money, signing talent, checking on principal photography and post-production, planning marketing and distribution across many platforms, tracking payments after release\u2014it\u2019s all a daunting task for one individual. Today an indie movie may list seven to twenty producers. Some probably helped by finding money, some worked especially hard to get material, and a few just slept with somebody.<\/p>\n

A traditional producer\u2019s job is to keep the budget under control. Today, with digital filming making special effects cheaper, screenwriters and directors think naturally of more elaborate visuals. This can work with something like Take Shelter<\/em>, James suggested, but on the whole he thinks that directors shouldn\u2019t jump to extremes. He recalled that using \u201chandcrafted effects\u201d cut the original budget of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind<\/em> by a third, and \u00a0that led to more unusual creative results, like outsize sets and in-camera trickery.<\/p>\n

The \u201cindependent cinema\u201d scene has always been quite varied. Again James had recourse to history: in the 1960s both United Artists and Roger Corman were labeled independents. The artier independent side developed through the infusion of foreign money and new technology. From the 1970s onward, overseas public-television channels invested in US films by Jarmusch and others, while cable and home video needed product and so financed or bought indie projects. The video distributor Vestron, for instance, could not acquire studio films, so, armed with half a billion dollars, the company began generating its own content. In the same era, pornography was shot on 35mm, and many crafts people learned in that venue and transferred their skills to independent cinema.<\/p>\n

Today, however, the indie market is both more fragmented and more fluid. The spectrum space between tentpole Hollywood and DIY indies is being filled by net platforms and cable television. James pointed to the ease with which Lena Dunham moved from Tiny Furniture<\/em> to the HBO series Girls<\/em>. Downloading and streaming add to the churn. IFC and Magnolia distribute films, but these companies are owned by cable channels and hold theatrical venues as well. They acquire scores of new films a year, using theatrical releases to get reviews that can support VOD and DVD. Focus can tier its marketing in similar ways, using DVD and VOD outlets to lead viewers to content online under the rubric Focus World<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These new \u201cparamarkets,\u201d James suggests, are porous, overlapping, and still evolving. Traditional windows, he says, have become a mosh pit.<\/p>\n

James had a lot more to say, and I expect to be referencing more of his ideas on VOD in a blog to come. But this gives you a taste of the energy and breadth of his thinking. He\u2019s constantly busy but never less than enthusiastic and generous. He always has time to share ideas about anything, from politics to cinephilia. The most exhilarating thing about talking with him is that you know more excellent work lies ahead.<\/p>\n

\n

Apart from titles I\u2019ve already mentioned, James Schamus\u2019 screenplays include The Ice Storm<\/em>, <\/em>Ride with the Devil<\/em>,\u00a0Taking Woodstock, <\/em>Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Lust, Caution<\/em>,\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0Films that he produced and\/or distributed include Poison, The Brothers McMullen, Safe, Walking and Talking, Happiness, The Pianist, 21 Grams, Lost in Translation, Shaun of the Dead, A Serious Man, Coraline, Brokeback Mountain, The Motorcycle Diaries, Eastern Promises, Atonement, Reservation Road, In Bruges, Milk, Sin Nombre, Greenberg, The Kids Are All Right, The Debt, Pariah<\/em>, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy<\/em>\u2026and plenty more<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Schamus provides a video review<\/a> of the top ten Focus titles chosen by viewers for the company’s anniversary.<\/p>\n

J. J. Murphy blogs about screenwriting, the avant-garde, and independent film here<\/a>. His most recent book is The Black Hole of the Camera: The Films of Andy Warhol<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

More on the concepts of story world, plot structure, and narration can be found in “Three Dimensions of Film Narrative,” in my book\u00a0Poetics of Cinema<\/em>. A brief account is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

James Schamus lecturing, University of Wisconsin–Madison Center for the Humanities, 19 April 2012.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Schamus on State Street, hailed by local livestock. DB here: \u201cI wish,\u201d one of my students said during a James Schamus visit to Madison back in the 1990s, \u201cI could just download his brain.\u201d Probably many have shared that wish.\u00a0James is an award-winning screenwriter who has become a successful producer and head of a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,14,57,41,34,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film-industry","category-film-scholarship","category-hollywood-aesthetic-traditions","category-independent-american-film","category-people-we-like","category-screenwriting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17997"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17997\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18019,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17997\/revisions\/18019"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidbordwell.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}