The script is finished. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's finished.

Oh shit, now I'm not so sure...

Last summer, I was in the cutting room working on my director’s cut of Americana, working with editor Peter McNulty, chiseling away at our footage until we found the best movie possible lurking inside it. I feel like we eventually did. And hopefully quite soon I should be able to announce how & when Americana will be more widely available.

A couple of months ago — after some last minute trims and tweaks — the film had its premiere at SXSW. The days leading up to it were — to put it mildly — a pants-shitting terrifying experience. I was pacing in my hotel room the night before, coming to terms with the possibility that no one would like my weird throwback neo-western country crime film, that I had completely misled myself, and that there was a non-zero chance that if the movie really really bombed, my career could be over.

At the SXSW premiere. Not pictured: my soiled drawers.

I wrote down some little journal thoughts to capture what I was feeling:

Night before in Austin. Tomorrow is premiere. I'm more scared than excited, but I'm trying to get into the mindset so I can appreciate what I've done and where I've gotten to. In my heart, I know it's a good movie. It's just different, out of step…

I just have to have the courage of my aesthetic. I believe in the film. It will either land well or it won't. But a film’s reception upon release always ends up just being a footnote to the work itself, which has to stand up to time. Mine's not a masterpiece, but it is a good, interesting first movie with an actual personality and an actual point of view. How it’s received, though, will determine how hard it'll be to do my next one. But I can't control that. The thing is, I just really don't like being out of control. Regardless of how tomorrow goes, I know I'll be fine afterwards. It's just the anticipation that kills me.

Almost involuntarily, I actually find myself focusing tonight on my mortality and my family’s health and happiness to put this all in perspective. It’s just a movie. And there are literally thousands released every year. So, it isn’t actual life or death. But the emotions and psychological pressure are still incredibly intense…

Thankfully, the big, generous crowd at the Paramount Theater in Austin seemed super engaged with our movie from the opening frames, getting the vibes and laughing at the dark absurd tone that runs through the film and literally clapping and cheering at key moments. So, that was a dreamlike experience, especially after coming into it with so much uncertainty and anxiety. And thankfully, the initial reviews have been really kind.

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So, yay! Happy humbled excited etc. But now to the purpose of the post: while I was editing my first cut of Americana, I also had two TV pilots I was contracted to write, one of which had a significant bonus attached if I turned in my first draft by a certain date, which just happened to be right in the middle of my second month of post-production.

So in addition to editing my first film, I also jumped into some heavy duty writing at the same time. This whole time-period was a blur. I wrapped filming in New Mexico on a Saturday morning after filming all night. Drove to my rental home in ABQ, slept for 12 or so hours. Then loaded up my truck and drove straight back to Los Angeles on Monday. My editor asked for the rest of the week to finish his assembly. So I reintroduced myself to my family and tried to rest up a little.

But starting that next Monday, my process the next few months would pretty much be: spend all day in the cutting room during the week, then spend my evenings and weekends writing this new material. This actually was a pretty enjoyable blur. My family is patient with my work patterns when they get intense, and I’m an obsessive personality, so I enjoyed being all-in. In a way, I think this work overload helped keep me from emotionally-crashing from the letdown of the filming itself being suddenly over. I didn’t have the time to crash.

Also, writing while also cutting a movie is pretty great in terms of understanding at a physical level what does or doesn’t work on screen. Last summer, I found myself more attentive than usual in my writing to pacing, transitions, and moments of emotional clarity: key elements of screenwriting and storytelling that become acutely important in the cutting process.

So, I wrote and turned in my two pilot scripts while still working on my director’s cut of Americana. I also been hired to adapt a short story into a feature, but at this point I had to ask the producers to let me back away because I truly was nearing a point of psychological and emotional exhaustion.

(I think if the producers on that project had simply waited two more weeks before inquiring with my reps about when I was going to start writing the feature, I would’ve had time to finish the two pilots, rest up a few days, and then jump into the feature as well. But as it was, they reached out just as I was trying to finish the other two scripts while also editing my film, and I couldn’t wrap my head around an additional project. So, it was just bad timing, as they had no idea what workload I was under.)

Anyway, I finished the two TV scripts. And I rested up a bit on the writing front while still editing. But then another week or two passed in the cutting room. And by this point, the film seemed to be really coming together, so the psychological pressures and creative exertions in the cutting room lessened a great deal.

For Americana, I had settled on a structure (the scripted one, btw) by now, after trying out a couple of alternatives. And we had winnowed away the parts of scenes that weren’t working for me and — thankfully — the story still seemed to work with those moments excised. So, big phew.

So I found myself oddly restless. This was around last June or so, in the summer of 2022. With this restless energy, I started writing a redneck crime feature script set in Fort Smith, Arkansas as a possible future directing project for myself. I was writing it for free on spec, developing it with no one, writing it just to satisfy my own tastes and desires.

Right now, it’s June, summer of 2023. One year later. And at this point, I’ve written this script three different times, starting over twice with a comprehensive, self-assigned, page one rewrite.

Only two characters from my first version of the script have survived to the this third version of it, and even those two characters are almost unrecognizable now.

So, it’s been more or less a year, and here I am, mister self-appointed practical screenwriting guru, still wondering if I’ve finally nailed this story that’s grown to be an obsession.

And since I’m right now once again trying to figure out whether or not the script is actually, finally, truly ready to share, I thought I’d share some of the ways I determine that.

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MY FIRST PASS

In my first draft, I’m not necessarily trying to schematically plot out a story. It’s more like I’m trying to generate an energy field. I’m trying to make it so as many characters as possible create heat on the page.

A character can create heat by pulling other characters towards them or by conflicting with them. They can create heat by the intensity of their desire, fear, or neuroses. Or they can create heat by interacting with genre expectations in an unexpected or powerful way.

So, when I write a script on my own, I rarely outline. Instead, I usually try to daydream as much of the movie I can. I try to put off writing until my brain is absolutely overflowing with heat-generating ideas and images and details, and only then do I start formally writing down story beats.

And even then, I try to keep things minimal. I usually only write down beats up to about the halfway point of the script, leaving the second half of the story wide-open (though I usually have an ending in mind). Sometimes, I don’t even write them down as a linear progression of events, but as a constellation of sorts. As in, here are the combustible intersections I have in mind. Let’s see if I can let my characters organically lead me to them.

My theory is this: a writer pre-determining too much of a script ahead of time before writing it is like an actor pre-determining too much of a scene ahead of time before performing it. Yes, you may execute your preconceived gameplan, but it’s likely to be lifeless and inattentive to the unintended surprises that inevitably show up along the way.

So, anyway, unless I’m paid ahead of time, I don’t like to outline. And my first pass isn’t what some writers call a vomit draft. Because I don’t think you can vomit out energy and heat. You gotta design and discover it by staging and searching for conflicting drives, complementary desires, odd-couple dynamics, definitive fixations, unexpected actions, compelling images, and so forth.

If I have a good first pass, I have a bundle of heat and energy that I can then consciously shape into a narrative story that hopefully also makes logical sense.

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REVISIONS

So in my revisions, I try to clarify the plot logistics and fortify motivations and pull out personality traits and so forth, hopefully without losing that initial heat and spark.

In a way, my first pass is just trying to get to know the characters and their voices and to understand the tonality of the piece. Subsequent passes are focused on strengthening the narrative and plot elements — building up anticipation, suspense, surprise, etc — while figuring out what facets of each character’s story I want to focus on.

After the first draft, I know most of the dramatic answers in the script. In my revisions, I get to go back in and better establish the dramatic questions. But because I like to work in genre, it’s not like my first pass is completely plotless.

When I wrote Americana on my own, I knew I wanted to do my modern spin on the Western, and that I wanted the story to culminate in an old-fashioned Spaghetti western/Sam Peckinpah showdown between the myriad parties. Once I realized that, I could write scenes and voice characters with that eventual showdown lurking in mind, even if I didn’t know how that showdown would play out until I actually started writing it.

The goal: a grimy modern crime version of this.

Likewise, I knew pretty early on that I wanted this Fort Smith, Arkansas crime script to culminate in an Indian Casino heist. Since this story — like Americana — is an ensemble piece, a casino heist felt right: it’s very much of the Fort Smith character, it would hopefully satisfy crime film genre fans, and it’s a believable way for my 16 or so main characters to all come together in a dramatic climax. (Robert Altman’s Nashville is the ur-text lurking behind my writing on this script.)

Briefly, how I currently revise: after I finish a first pass, I reread the whole script from page one. And I imagine myself once again in the Paramount theater in Austin, once again surrounded by a generous audience looking to have a good time at the movies. And I imagine watching this Arkansas crime movie from the same seat I was sitting in at SXSW watching Americana.

So as I read the script with this scenario in mind, I jot down my honest impressions: scenes I may not actually need, scenes that are only functional but not interesting, moments that don’t really have an emotional payoff, dialogue that’s too expositional or functional, scenes that go on too long, etc.

You may notice that there’s a lot of emphasis on scene-work here. Which probably seems obvious — a script is made up of scenes. But I think a lot of scripts get bogged down in necessary, obligatory scenes that forget to be interesting.

When I was editing Americana, and especially when we test-screened an earlier cut, I developed a simple little question for myself: is this a scene to establish a story element, or is this a scene to explore it?

My own simple guide: if it’s an establishing type of scene, it probably should be done as efficiently and swiftly as possible. If it’s exploring or altering a story element, then it can probably go on for longer.

Anyway, things like this are what I focus on in the first revision passes.

So, if I figure out while writing the climactic shootout or heist sequence that one key character should have a confrontation with another key character, then in revisions I can go back in and better motivate and set-up this eventual confrontation so it resonates more. And I try to do so as efficiently as possible.

My Platonic ideal for this would be how Akira Kurosawa establishes that his wandering ronin has stepped into a bad town in Yojimbo. No dialogue. No exposition. Just this singular, unforgettable image lets us immediately know that trouble is up ahead:

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FINE TUNING

I repeat this page-one “rewatch” of my movie over and over again. Ideally always in one sitting, ideally always with my Spotify playlist of scripted needle drops playing on my headphones to help me feel the entire emotional whole of the movie.

And basically, I keep doing this until I can read/watch the whole script without wanting to change a thing. For a complicated ensemble film, this can take weeks, as each tweak to each character’s mini-story has ripple effects on the other characters.

I’ll sometimes take a break and take hour-long walks just listening to the script’s playlist, running the movie through my head that way. And I’ll almost always pick-up some new detail or wrinkle to give a more lived-in texture to the story.

At this point of the process, I also start getting very ruthless in terms of cutting lines and moments and scenes that don’t contribute to the emotional whole.

Because I’m thinking of this Arkansas crime script as a sort of fabric-of-America-as-momentarily-glimpsed-through-a-slightly-provincial-locale type of ensemble story — hopefully akin to Robert Altman’s Nashville or Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show or Michael Ritchie’s Smile — I think about the script in terms of what I’ll call emotional pointillism.

The emotional version of this.

By this, I mean I try to take the energetic mass of the script and winnow it down to as many memorable, isolated little moments of observation, emotion, insight, surprise as possible. In this way, revising resembles the process of fine-tuning that takes place in the cutting room in assembling filmed footage, where the goal is to tell a story by stringing together one interesting moment of observed truth after another.

I want the script to function similarly. So, I try to excise anything in the script that doesn’t feel like an observed, interesting moment of truth. Then I try to juxtapose these little moments of truth and emotion against each other to make a larger whole. But to do that, each of these points needs to be distinct enough to stand on their own, otherwise it’s all just a blob. This is why I excise tons of dialogue: I want to isolate the key pieces that contribute to the overall emotion.

I dabbled (poorly) in painting in my 20s. And this stage of revision reminds me of how I’d work on a big abstract canvas. I’d usually start with some big intuitive brushstrokes. Then I’d try to recognize what patterns and shapes were lurking in those subconscious strokes and start to consciously build upon some of them, while painting over to hide the less interesting parts.

Likewise in my revisions, if I note some kind of one-off funny line or interesting image early or late in the script, I’ll now go back through the whole thing to try to find a place to either prefigure or mirror or counter it. It’s that energy field thing. Having an image or line repeat or alter itself creates a kind of charge between them that doesn’t usually exist with a one-time isolated line or image.

At this stage, I also start really focusing on transitions between scenes. Opening and closing images, or pre-lapping dialogue, or some kind of cinematic transitional element. I’ll try to find something to make the transitions click, even if it’s as simple as having a character talk about someone in one scene, and then having the next scene starting on the character who was previously the topic of discussion.

Like a rhyme scheme in a poem, I feel like these little miniature connective pieces help make a script gather a feeling of inevitability that I think aides its immersive quality.

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FINAL TOUCHES

Once I find myself not wanting to change the script, I still have another pass or two in mind. Primarily, it’s this: maximizing the script’s initial readability.

As I’ve written previously, at this early stage of a script’s life I don’t think of it as a blueprint for a movie.

I believe a script is only really a blueprint while you’re in actual physical prep.

At its earliest stages, a script functions more as a fundraising letter and an invitation to collaboration. With this in mind, I go back through and take out most (but not all) of the camera moves and details that I wrote out while actually writing my way into the movie.

So if I get to make this Arkansas crime movie, I will probably go back in and put detailed shots and location descriptions into the script. But in my opinion, at this stage, these things only slow down the reading experience and mute the script’s excitement-generating potential.

Right now, I’m trying to make for the most interesting, compelling, exciting reading experience possible. So I’ll give just enough color — a key piece of clothing or location detail — for the story to have the specificity I have in mind for it. But I try to be very strategic about it.

I also like to keep my action lines as tight and brief as possible. My general rule of thumb: each sentence equals a shot. And at this stage, I only include sentences/shots that I feel are necessary for the emotional experience of reading the script.

From my Arkansas crime script:

Now, this isn’t aiming to be impressive or even all that noticeable. The intent is simple: establish where the scene is, and establish that Lilly (my script’s lead character) is an outsider here in terms of class.

The other goal is to create a propulsive readable rhythm. Previous versions of the script had longer, more discursive action lines and more details. But in revising, I trimmed things down to the above bite-sized units, each leading to the next, hopefully in an interesting rhythm. The goal being to establish key elements of a scene almost subliminally and to get into the heart of the scene as quickly as possible.

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MARINATING

And that takes us to pretty much where I am now on this script. My next step: I’m gonna let it sit for a week or so before I look at it again. Since this is a spec script — and since the WGA is on strike — I’m not in a big rush anyway.

So in a week or two, I plan on printing out the script and going to a bar. There, I’ll have a couple of beers and read it again with pretty fresh eyes — and with pencil in hand — all in a new milieu, on paper instead of a screen, and see what happens.

Inevitably, I’ll make a few notes and tweaks in this reading. Once I do that, I’ll probably wait a few more days and read it again. At this point, if I don’t find myself wanting to change anything, I’ll finally share the script with my wife. If she has an emotional response to the story, I’ll know I’ve got something. And once the strike is over, I’ll send this version to my reps.

If she doesn’t have an emotional response, then it’s back to revisions. Or more likely, I’ll just shelve the script and come back to it another time down the road, maybe in a year or two. This isn’t unprecedented for me. I’ll fully shelve a script if it doesn’t get an emotional reaction or rave from my wife. In fact, I have several completed scripts that I’ve never sent to my agents or managers that I plan on revisiting. Sometimes, the timing just isn’t right and it isn’t the right time for me to be writing a particular story.

This may seem like an excessively drawn-out process, but I’ve found that it works for me. Which is all that really matters. Generally, I don’t want to share anything with my reps or industry people that 1) I don’t think has rocket fuel, and 2) I don’t think is in shape to immediately circulate to talent, agents, etc.

That is, I don’t send my scripts to my reps and potential collaborators for them to give me feedback or even approval. I send my scripts to them so they can read it and think “I can sell this” and/or “I can package this” and/or “I want to produce this.” I don’t always get it, but that’s the specific, practical response this whole drawn-out process is aiming to generate.

Because I don’t think screenwriting careers take off when industry people simply like a script. I think screenwriting careers take off when industry people see their own careers taking off while reading it.