A couple things I learned as a first time director...
...and how they're going to influence my scripts going forward
The last time I posted to this substack, I was quarantined in Albuquerque, New Mexico gearing up for my first week as a movie director. I’m now in Los Angeles, several months into post-production on National Anthem, fine-tuning the studio cut in hopes of locking picture within a month or so.
As I work on polishing my directorial debut, my screenwriting career keeps chugging along. In addition to working in the cutting room, for most weekends and some evenings since production wrapped I’ve been writing and revising a pilot script that I signed on to do before National Anthem got greenlit. I also have another pilot script that needs some tweaking before the producers circulate it to talent reps in search of a lead actress.
Whatever remaining creative energy I have left in the tank these days has been devoted to a small handful of feature scripts/ideas that I’m hoping to be my second directorial effort.
I’ve talked about scripts as bridges in this substack. The National Anthem script was the bridge that took me from being a working screenwriter to becoming a writer-director. But as I don’t know how National Anthem will be received — or even distributed — I don’t yet know if I’m going to stay on this side of that particular bridge.
In my ideal world, this is the period of my career where I’d now stop being a screenwriter-for-hire and would start being a full-fledged writer-director in both features and TV. I love directing, and think I have a facility for it, and I think my writing functions best when I can control the tonality of performance and edit.
So even though I’m fairly exhausted, I also know that this period after wrapping my first directing effort is going to be hugely crucial in determining whether or not this was a one-time fluke, or if it’s the first of many such directorial efforts. Thus my hyper-focus in my writing at this moment is that it lead to my next directing opportunity.
But — what did I learn directing one of my scripts for the first time? Nothing earth shattering. But here’s how I think my scripts will be changing going forward.
Is this an exploratory scene? Or more of an establishing one?
Oddly enough, I think this was the biggest takeaway for me. Functionally, on the page, just about any scene is dramatically interesting if the characters and writing are strong enough. That is, from scene one, on the page you can explore dynamics and motivations and find unexpected grace notes — just as long as the writing is strong.
But a scene’s functionality shifts once it’s filmed and placed in an edit. If I’m an artist, I consider myself a popcorn artist. I’m not making museum pieces. My intention is to entertain. So, I like my stuff to keep moving.
This is rarely a problem for me on the page. People seem to like to read my shit. God knows I do. But one thing I learned in the making of National Anthem is that even a well-written, well-acted, well-shot scene will drag if it’s doing the wrong thing at the wrong moment.
National Anthem is told a bit non-linearly. Yes, like Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, but also like Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train, or Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru, or Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote.
Basically, my movie is an ensemble neo-western crime film told in five chapters. The opening two chapters focus on different characters, while the next two chapters weave their storylines together (violently), and the last chapter sends them all off in different directions.
In the script, one chapter culminates in a nice, quiet, hopefully touching scene between two characters as they try to figure out what their relationship really entails. The two actors performed the scene wonderfully, and I think we shot it well. It was the last scene we shot during the first week of filming and felt special. Afterwards, a producer noted that they felt like filming this scene was when the crew got really invested in the picture and the whole dynamic on set really solidified.
And yet, in the edit, the scene kind of dragged. And for awhile, I couldn’t pin down why. It was a well-written scene. The actors were great. And it was the culmination of this character-driven chapter, so it felt like a good time for a quiet, nuanced scene.
But then I realized — this scene may’ve been the culmination of this character-driven chapter, but within the structure of the entire picture itself, it was still fairly early in the game. And ultimately, the dramatic purpose of the scene wasn’t to further explore these two characters’ dynamic, but rather to solidify their connection, and launch them into the more plot-driven portion of the film.
So I basically cut the scene in half. I took out the subtle push-pull of the two characters trying to figure out how to interact, which was basically the entire first half of the written scene. In the edit, I condensed the opening 2-3 minutes of the scene into fifteen seconds. This functionally made the second half of the scene — their deepening connection and comfort with each other — the entirety of the scene. And it worked much, much better.
The lesson here for me wasn’t to avoid nuance. The lesson was to recognize the functionality of each particular scene. The optimal function of this scene — at this point of the story — wasn’t actually to dramatize and explore these two characters’ dynamic. The optimal function of the scene was actually to solidify their connection so we could jump into the next portion of the story.
Transitions are everything.
In his terrific book Cut to the Chase, legendary editor Sam O’Steen (The Graduate, Chinatown, Cool Hand Luke) discusses why he thought Mike Nichols’ Catch-22 was going to make a great movie. “Every scene had a great transition,” O’Steen wrote. “And that’s what makes good movies.”
Of course, this is a very editor-centric claim to make. But after a few months chiseling away in post, I’m not sure O’Steen is all that wrong. Great transitions won’t make up for uninteresting characters, a boring story, or flat performances or bad dialogue. But what they can cultivate is an actively engaging unfolding within the medium of film itself.
A film with strong transitions is like a band with a strong rhythm section, or a football team with a strong offensive line. You shouldn’t necessarily notice them, but you’ll feel their absence if they aren’t clicking effectively.
O’Steen gives examples from Buck Henry’s Catch-22 script. “For example, a character walked into a room and said ‘There’s nobody here.’ Then you cut to Yossarian looking out the window in another room saying, ‘Where?’”
Elsewhere, Henry’s script links otherwise disparate scenes via sound transitions: “Yossarian ripped the nurse’s dress, then we cut to the rip of Yossarian tearing away the uniform of a wounded crewmate.”
Very few films call for such a fever-dream logic of transition. And yet, I think any good script does need to be actively pursuing its own manner of cutting between scenes. It doesn’t necessarily have to be clever, or dialogue based. It can be as simple as cutting from a wide shot at the tail of one scene to an extreme close-up or insert at the head of the next scene. Or as simple as cutting from loudness to silence, or from stillness to action.
It can be a logic of juxtaposition, or continuation, or association. But I do think it’s key that there be a cinematic idea at play in each scene transition.
I managed this a fair amount of time in National Anthem, even if it’s as simple as a dissolve that goes from a wide a shot of a bloody crime scene to a close-up of one of the guilt-ridden perps dealing with the emotional fallout afterwards. Or intercutting between a small time thug loudly blaring heavy metal as he drives home after a bloody heist and the tense silence of the woman and child who are awaiting his arrival at the single-wide trailer they live in.
These aren’t hey-look-at-me transitions, but they are emotionally-grounded storytelling transitions. The ones I just listed were relatively easier to accomplish filmmaking wise because they aren’t dialogue scenes and the storytelling logic at play is already primarily nonverbal. When the imagery is stronger and more focused, the opportunities for stronger and more focused transitions is already kinda baked in, even as you move scenes around in the edit, or trim away the heads and tails of scenes that you filmed.
Where my transitions are less strong are when I’m cutting from one dialogue scene to another one. If every scene establishes a master shot at the start and then cuts to individual coverage of the characters as they talk, things get very boring very quickly for a viewer, even if that viewer can’t pinpoint why.
It doesn’t look like National Anthem is going to require reshoots or pickup shots. But if I could spend say two days with a skeleton crew getting shots, they’d pretty much all be inserts. Some little details here and there that could serve as heads or tails of scenes, or as pivots within scenes themselves. A characters’ tattooed hands as he waits for his partner to show up at a diner. A woman’s hands as she cleans a bloody floor. A man’s hands as he grips a compound bow. A traditional dress hanging on a hook from a wall.
Not only would these focused shots redirect the viewer’s attention and shape the scale of their attentiveness, they’d also nicely work as potential transition shots at the heads or tails of scenes, that way one scene doesn’t end on a wide master shot of people leaving a room, then the next scene start with a wide master shot of people entering a room.
Since my days as a staff writer on Longmire, I’ve always been aware of the importance of transitions in my scripts. (Thank you Greer Shepard.) But going forward, I think I’m going to be more obsessive about it. Because if a cinematically-interesting transition isn’t in the script, by the time the million-and-one problems of prep and filming arise up, I know I’ll be too deep in the fog of war again to make sure every scene has one or two interesting potential opening and closing images to play with once I get to the edit.
Every character needs a lens.
What I mean: a movie isn’t life and a character’s value and importance isn’t self-evident. A viewer needs some kind of hook or tether for them to understand each substantial character, that way when each new event unfolds, the viewer has a clear character-specific lens through which to interpret that event.
Let’s say you have a character walk into a bar and someone orders them a drink. If that character is established as a shy, isolated young woman with a stutter, that’s one lens through which to interpret this small event. She’s not used to such a gesture and isn’t sure how to respond. You can see the event through her eyes and interpret it in a way that’s specific to her.
If that character is established as a recovering alcoholic, and is an undercover cop who needs to befriend a heavy drinking criminal, then that’s a different lens through which to interpret this small event. You can see the event through his eyes and interpret it in a way that’s specific to him.
It doesn’t matter what exact lens through which a character views an event. What matters is: 1) that each character has a lens, 2) that the events each character is involved in are specifically designed to be viewed through their lens.
If a character is just a hard-working fella and goes to a bar and a buddy orders him a drink, then it’s all just activity and behavior. There isn’t a lens through which to view this event. And there isn’t a sense of a story being told. Or if a character is addicted to, I don’t know, licking peoples’ pets, and walks into a bar and someone orders him a drink, you might have a character-specific lens, but the event isn’t particularly well-designed for that lens, unless there’s say a plump-looking bulldog sleeping behind the bar.
A happy, normal person driving through 1970s NYC and seeing crime and prostitution is a very different thing from Travis Bickle seeing those exact same images. In the first case, it’s a person seeing the same city that most any other person would see in that situation. The imagery is specific, but the lens isn’t. In the second case, it’s Travis Bickle seeing images seemingly customized as externalizations of his profound inner alienation. Bickle has a specific lens. And the imagery is well-customized to that lens. (Travis Bickle staring at a tree wouldn’t have the same resonance because the tree doesn’t relate very strongly to his specific lens.)
Because I’m a popcorn artist who aims to entertain, my ideal would be for every shot of every scene to be a storytelling shot, where every second of what you see and hear feels customized for each of that film’s characters.
I’m actually fairly pleased by how National Anthem creates character-specific lenses, and how it designs events that interact well with those lenses. But as I trim more and more moments in the cutting room to get to the core of the story, I’m realizing that just about everything that falls outside these lenses and that isn’t essential to the plot itself wants to be cut.
Set up your big scenes.
Howard Hawks is supposed to have said that a good movie has three great scenes and no bad ones. That works for me.
But I would add: it’s not enough for a movie to have three great scenes. Rather, a movie needs to construct itself around those three great scenes. And I don’t mean that the plot simply needs to logically lead to each of those three scenes in a way wherein smug assholes on youtube or twitter can’t poke holes in it.
What I mean is, the picture should build itself in terms of rhythm and pace around those three big scenes. If one of your big scenes is an extended dialogue scene where two lonely characters unexpectedly finds their potential soulmate in the other, and if you (rightly) want that scene to be patient and to have room to breathe so a viewer can read each pause and glance, then the scenes leading up to that big scene probably need to be as brief and precise and truncated as possible. Likewise, the scenes that come immediately after it.
First of all, these shorter, tighter scenes will subliminally build up some patience for your bigger scene, since the longer big scene offers up a different rhythm and is therefore a kind of relief from the prior rhythm. Also, the briefer scenes leading up to, and leading out of, the bigger scene will help make that bigger scene feel bigger and more consequential by sheer contrast.
Likewise, if one of your big scenes is a suddenly-kinetic action set-piece, perhaps the best way of building around that set-piece is to have the scenes just before and just after it unfold more slowly and quietly. It will make the action feel bigger and more considerable, and will allow the importance of the kinetic action to resonate in the quieter character-based coda to it.
And…that’s about all that’s coming to mind right now in terms of practical screenwriting lessons I’ve taken away from my first time directing. Happily, I think the experience has largely reinforced quite a few of the screenwriting ideas I had going into it. Who knows if anyone else will agree. I suppose I’ll find out soon enough.
Dude this was sensational. Many many thanks for the time and effort that went into sharing that. A true king.
Really fascinating and thoughtful insights! Thanks for sharing, and hope all goes well with editing and release!