72. Brian Price - Screenwriter, Author, Mentor

A deep and profound discussion with Brian Price, the author of "Classic Storytelling and Contemporary Screenwriting" which takes Aristotles "Poetics" and applies it to screenwriting. What a fascinating look at modern screenwriting through the glass of classical storytelling.

Order the book here ==>> Classic Storytelling and Contemporary Screenwriting by Brian Price.

Transcript

Lovinder Gill: 0:00

We are so excited that you are here to listen to the Script Cake Podcast. Go ahead, make my day. We want to help you develop your idea into a great screenplay and who knows, maybe you'll write the next big blockbuster. So you're telling me there's a chance? Yeah! There's always a chance, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. Are you ready to learn about screenwriting? All right then. Let's get started. Enjoy welcome to the ScriptCake podcast. I am your host, Lovinder Gill, and I am excited to welcome Brian Price to the podcast. Brian is an award winning screenwriter and director who has worked with major studios, independent producers, and television networks around the world. His creative work has won numerous awards, including Best Screenplay at Scriptapalooza, Toronto's Indie Spirit Award, Best Documentary at the New York Independent Film Festival, And the Frank Capra Prize at the DC Independent Film Festival. Brian teaches screenwriting at Yale University, his alma mater, and has taught at UCLA and Johns Hopkins University. He's also the author of Classic Storytelling and Contemporary Screenwriting, which is now required reading in screenwriting programs around the world. And for good reason. We'll get into that a little bit later. Welcome to the podcast, Brian.

Brian Price: 1:21

Thank you so much, Lovinder. It is a thrill to be here

Lovinder Gill: 1:24

I would love to know a little bit about your background, your origin story. How did you get into this crazy world of screenwriting?

Brian Price: 1:30

Ah, my origin story. All right. I guess I have to go back to High school field trip to a science lab when I was bit by a radioactive spider. No, I was bitten by a bug but of a different kind, I have very vivid memory of playing the scarecrow in the wizard of Oz in kindergarten. And when I think about that, I'm picturing. lip syncing to the soundtrack album and following masking tape arrows on the stage that were color coded for the different characters. And whatever it was about that theatrical experience, just as they say, I was bitten by the acting bug. So I grew up, I would say my first life was as an actor doing children's theater and regional theater. Really, that was all I could ever see myself doing all I wanted to do. I went to Yale, as you said to study theater. And when I graduated, moved to New York, started a theater company called the Gilgamesh Theater Group. And during that time I was mostly making a living. doing commercials if you were around in the 90s and you saw a commercial that featured some nerd being broken up with that was likely me and eventually made my way out to Los Angeles to see if I could break into television and film on that side of the camera. And I got to do some small roles on some TV shows. And it was one particular show. It was Beverly Hills, 90210. And I was playing the vice president of the Burt Reynolds fan club. And I found myself during all the breaks and all the lunches hanging out with the writers as opposed to the actors. And I, in retrospect, I think there were a couple of reasons for that. One is, those who know anything about television know that the writer is really. And I had a bit of a chip on my shoulders as a theater trained actor. I thought of a lot of the actors there in Los Angeles as really good looking people who can memorize their lines. And so I started to wonder, why do I need to depend on someone else's creative process in order to be able to live my own? Somebody else had to write those scenes for me to be able to audition for them, and I thought, why can't I be the one creating these worlds and these words? Really on a whim, more than anything else, I applied to the MFA screenwriting program at UCLA, which I knew at the time was the best program around. And then either by luck or happy accident, I got in. The truth is the very first thing I ever wrote was the thing that I wrote as a sample to get into that program. Wow. And then also by luck or happy accident, the first class that I took there was with Hal Ackerman, who I know is someone you've had on this program, and you consider a mentor, and I certainly consider my mentor as well. Hal is the best. He is the best, but the script I ended up writing in his class, which was the first feature I'd ever written ended up being optioned by Universal and Wow. Whatever acting bug I had was gone and suddenly I was all about the writing, and continued to work in the industry as a writer, like you said specs and adaptations and rewrites. In the world of studios and the world of independent producers for about the next 12 to 15 years, maybe. And then it was somewhere in that time my mentors and colleagues at UCLA asked me to join the teaching faculty there. And I started teaching and more and more that's where my attention has been drawn. That's what brings me here.

Lovinder Gill: 5:29

Tell me about that first script. How did you get your first script option? That's pretty exceptional. I don't know that I've heard that with most people.

Brian Price: 5:37

I'll tell you, it was amazing, but I don't think at the time I knew how amazing it was simply because. I was so green and naive. But it was a script called The Many Lives of Bobby Ivers and it was a romantic comedy and I entered it into a screenplay competition. It wasn't that initial draft that I wrote in class that I submitted. I had, about a year and several drafts before I felt it was ready to show the world. And I submitted it to that competition. And, It turns out that the judges were all industry professionals, and that's why I always advise my students that is a great route towards representation. Win or lose, the object is to get that script read. And so this was an opportunity for my script to be read by people who were in a position to maybe do something with it. And one of those judges was a fellow by the name of Dan Jinks, who was a producer. And just starting out, really, he'd go on to, to win some Academy Awards, but at the time he really responded to the writing. It wasn't a story that he himself wanted to produce. But he thought that there was something in it and being the mensch that he was, he brought me in and basically set up meetings for me with about a dozen agents and managers who over the course of about the next six months, I'd say I had a chance to go in and visit. One of them turned out to be Lucy Stilla, who was the head of the literary department at Paradigm. And we really hit it off. I ended up signing with them. She gave me some more notes, we developed the script a little bit more and then one week she said, Hey, this is ready to go out. And she sent it out. I was still a student, I think I was in my second year at this point. And over the weekend Hal Lieberman at Universal decided he wanted it. And the rest is history, as they say. That's

Lovinder Gill: 7:41

amazing. That's amazing. I've had a bunch of those stories in my life without the part where they buy the screenplay.

Brian Price: 7:50

This is how naive I was. And yeah, it was an amazing story, but bittersweet in a number of ways that I often like to use as a cautionary tale again for folks that I'm mentoring. I remember getting the call from my agent who said, Brian, are you sitting down? And, we've got great news. You're on speakerphone with all the agents. And so I wasn't sitting down. I was just standing there with my phone in my ear. And she said Universal's going to option your script. And I kept waiting for the next sentence because It never had occurred to me that it wasn't going to sell, as far as I know, a script goes out, somebody buys it, I didn't know anything different, so I was wondering what the good news part of this was gonna be, and then when there was silence on the other end, I was like oh, that's the good news, so quickly I manufactured a gasp and a scream and and then got all the details of it but yeah, that's lightning striking and something that happens so rarely. If it happens to you or anybody out there who's listening put it in perspective. It's miraculous and treat it as such. One of the things that Hal Lieberman, who bought the script, said to me when we chatted on the phone that same day, was he said, I've got one piece of advice for you, Brian. Don't change your lifestyle. And that was a great piece of advice. I didn't. I went out and bought myself one prize. It turned out to be a laser disc player of all things. Something that was probably obsolete a week later. But I think it is important to, reward yourself in some way for every accomplishment that you have. But here's the lesson that I tell people. While working on the rewrite and the polish and all the steps that were guaranteed me from the option deal I was getting sent out to meet with everyone in town because it was a bit of a story in the trades. First time screenwriters still in school sell Script Universal. So I was meeting everybody and, They all said the same thing to me when I would sit down in their office, which was, we love the script. We wish we had gotten a chance at it. What else do you have? And I didn't have anything else. I hadn't written anything else. And had I written something else, I probably could have taken much fuller advantage. Of the heat that I was feeling, so now I always tell my students, you do not go out with the script until you have at least two or three to back it up. And I love it when I get a call from a student saying, we set something up at Sony and then, a week later, we got something set up at Warner Brothers. That's the way you do it. That's the way you start a career. So in many ways. Because it was my first script and I hadn't written anything else I really couldn't take advantage of that heat. And it was really a question of, I don't want to say starting over again but it was several years before I had a product that I could then bring out to the market again.

Lovinder Gill: 10:55

It takes time, there's no two ways about it. Before we get into your book, I want to talk about your process a little bit. About how Aristotle looks at stuff. I'm assuming you look at things very similarly to that process. But, when you're starting out with a new idea for a screenplay. Like what happens first? What's the first thing that goes, okay, I have something I can start working on and developing that will become a screenplay. What's the first thing? Is it a, a nugget for a concept? Is it an emotional story thing? Is it a character thing? What is it that, that you feel inspires you to develop and dig deeper?

Brian Price: 11:31

I believe strongly, not that I don't have a fondness for high concept most of the things I've written, I think could fall under that category. But to me the essential spark is more the personal truth. Students come to me all the time and they're saying, I've got these five or six, incredible ideas which one should I write professor? And my response is always the same. I have no clue. Nobody does because it's going to take you a year plus to write that script, and then a year plus to get it in any kind of shape. To show someone, and you have no way of knowing what somebody's going to be interested in reading two or three years down the road. If there was a formula to figure out what's going to be in the zeitgeist two or three years from now, everybody would be writing that story. And I think it's essential that you write a story that only you can write. Which is why I tell my students. Don't waste one brain cell thinking about what someone else is going to want to read. Spend your time thinking about what it is that you want to say. And to me, that comes with some kind of personal truth. Whether it's something that's happened to you, or you've seen or that you care about, that you feel passionate about. It takes so long to write a screenplay that you've got to be as devoted to that story idea. Two years, three years down the road, as you are when that inspiration strikes. And I think the only way to maintain that interest is to have some kind of personal stake in what it is that you're writing. But at the same time, if you write something, if I write something that is solely personal, it's not going to have the universal appeal that's going to make it a successful screenplay. Which is where imagination enters into it. So to me the equation is always personal truth plus imagination. And that's what makes for a brilliant screenplay.

Lovinder Gill: 13:37

I love it. With the exception of the terms you use, I feel like I'm talking to myself.

Brian Price: 13:45

That's because you're

Lovinder Gill: 13:45

both right. I, I cannot disagree with you stopping at all now, the script cake whole thought process for me is the script, I'm sorry the cake that you bake in the oven is actually your story, which is the emotional part of your idea. And the icing is your conceptual idea of what world you put it in? Is it in space? Is it a horror movie? Is it a whatever? And. Most people do it the other way around where they come up with this conceptual idea and try to fit in a little modicum of story, but it doesn't work that way. You can't perfectly fit in a story into a shell of a, of icing. You have to have the story first and then ice it. And that's why I call my podcast script cake. And that's why the script cake and because you got to bake the story before you actually do all the fancy icing and whatnot. On top of it.

Brian Price: 14:36

It's all about story. I have a similar metaphor in my book, although I use a slightly different analogy there because one of the problems I think a lot of beginning screenwriters have is that they want to start with the message, with the theme, I want to write a screenplay that's going to make people realize X, Y, and Z. And to me, if you start with a premise based on some kind of a thematic argument it's going to become a polemic. It's going to turn into a soapbox and nobody wants to go see a movie that is the equivalent of spinach. We go to the movies to have an emotional experience. So I always tell my students concentrate on the story and That theme, that deeper universal resonance is going to emerge, it's going to come out of that process, but don't put the cart before the horse. I think the metaphor I use is the story is the cake, so I'm with you there, and the thematic relevance is the icing on the cake.

Lovinder Gill: 15:46

No, absolutely. I think there's definitely an alignment there. So when you're coming up with your story and you're saying it's an emotional element, is it an experience you had? Is it something you read about? Like, where do you find these things and how do you develop them?

Brian Price: 16:02

I don't know if I can necessarily generalize a process. I think it, it's by project. If it's something that I'm coming up with as a spec, as opposed to something I've been assigned to write then it's probably going to come from some kind of a personal experience with the injection of what if. So if I want to tell a story about a friendship that I had while in college to me what turns that into an interesting story is what if me and my roommates who love to sit around on the couch all day, watching music videos decided to rob a bank, the. Robbing a bank didn't happen, but it is a vehicle in which I can explore friendship, the collegiate life, the personal truths that I want to experience. I always, when we're talking about premise in class, I tell the story of this writer from Marin County. Who grew up primarily in the 60s in a town where his friends used to cruise the drive in and the malt shop and knew they were never going to leave. But he dreamed of a bigger, more exciting life. And he also had a rather contentious relationship with his father who owned a, an office supply store and expected his son to work there and never really understood his son's. Wanderlust to do something more. And he went to USC and he wrote a treatment and ultimately a screenplay. About that story. And I asked the students, what is that screenplay? And every once in a while, somebody will say Star Wars. And it's because he's taking the truth of his adolescence, his experiences, his relationships, and filtering them through that. Prism of science fiction. And that to me are, is, those are the ingredients that go to making not only something worthwhile, but something personal and universal.

Lovinder Gill: 18:01

I, once again, I can't argue with you. Let's work our way through some elements in your book and let me find some places I can argue with. Oh, good. Let's do it. Early on in chapter one, you start talking about mimesis and catharsis. So tell me what Aristotle meant by that and how you, what you extrapolate from there.

Brian Price: 18:20

All right. I should probably preface this by saying one of my favorites. books on screenwriting which you had a wonderful podcast with the author Christopher Vogler the writer's journey to me is particularly meaningful because his process was to really take the works. Of Joseph Campbell and to a lesser extent Carl Jung about archetypal character, about the power of myth, and applying them to screenwriting. And in a similar way, I had set out to do something like that with Aristotle. So Aristotle, when he wrote Poetics, was talking about the imaginative narrative fiction of his time, the tragedies and comedies and epic poems and the like, and looking at the characteristics and the qualities and the principles that the successful works of his time had in common, and that were absent In the plays that didn't succeed and that we no longer know about because they disappeared in history. And his observations really are still applicable to the imaginative narrative fiction of today, which is our screenplays. So that's really the premise that I started out with. How can we apply those principles? To the contemporary version of the material that he was looking at then and so one of the things that he starts with is really the observation that we all tell stories, that is something universal, that all people participate in regardless of culture or geography or history. And more to the point, that when you look at the stories that are successful, that we start to see certain observable patterns in the way that those stories are told. Which, which leads us to maybe surmise that there must be something built into our DNA as a species that requires us not just to tell stories, but to tell them in this particular way. He's really getting at the heart of why do we tell stories? What is the function that storytelling provides us as human beings, as individuals and as a species? And so he comes up with these two concepts, mimesis and catharsis. Mimesis he defines as representation or imitation. And the idea behind that is That human beings are separate from the other animals on this planet in that we ask questions. We seek answers about ourselves. We look up at the stars and we say, Why are we here? What is my purpose? What is my role? And we get pleasure from finding those answers. As Aristotle says, nature has blessed us with a love of learning. We love to learn. And the way that we learn, the best way that we learn, is through representation, through seeing our world and ourselves reflected back to us. Now there may be many reasons for that. Rather than learning through direct experience, there is something maybe safer about watching and observing. Maybe there is something more, comforting in the communal nature of experiencing some kind of a representation. But he makes the point that from an earliest age, like when we play Cowboys and Indians, or we play, Indiana Jones and Wonder Woman, we're learning through representation. So the second term that you asked about catharsis is really about the purging or the experiencing of emotion. And for Aristotle, these two things are really essential to good writing, which is ultimately the way I describe it. Is as writers, our responsibility is to provide the pleasure of learning through the experience of feeling. So the idea that a good story is something that we can simultaneously observe, which is where mimesis comes in, and identify with, which is where the catharsis, the feeling comes in. We're watching a character, but we're also living and walking in their shoes, at least in the best.

Lovinder Gill: 23:05

There's a part of the book where you talk about the safety of going through these emotions through watching them and not for example, if there's a horror movie and someone gets attacked. Real life. That's a whole different emotion than watching someone get attacked when you're sitting in the safety of your own house or theater and talk about the difference between those two that allow the viewer to experience it in a different way.

Brian Price: 23:29

Yeah I think I'm certainly not the first one to say this. This is probably from Howard Suber, one of my mentors at UCLA who likened going to a movie with going to dinner in the sense that You know, when you're trying to figure out what you want to eat, you decide, do I feel like Mexican food or Chinese food or Indian food? Similar when you're going to a movie, what emotional experience do I want to have? Do I want to laugh? Do I want to cry? Do I want to scream? That's going to determine where we go. And as I said, our responsibility as writers. and filmmakers is to provide some kind of an emotional experience. But the truth of it is, just like with mimesis, what we're observing is really an imitation or facsimile of an actual experience. Same with what we're feeling. When we go see Alien, for instance, we're following Ripley as she's walking through the Nostromo and something's going to jump out and we're going to scream and then we're going to laugh because we know that we're safe and that we're protected from our objective vantage point. But Imagine that same scenario where you're walking down a dark alley and something may or may not be up ahead to jump out at you. The terror that we feel there is much more real, much more palpable because there is that element of risk that we know doesn't exist in the movie theater. So for all the emotion or catharsis that we might feel, there is a certain level of safety and security when we're experiencing an emotion in a movie because we know it's a facsimile. And I think that's another one of the needs that we have as human beings to have that experience, to be able to feel those emotions in that safe and communal environment.

Lovinder Gill: 25:28

I had never heard it phrased that way, just the the entire concept of having that need to go through that it was mind boggling to me a little bit actually to process it in that regard. One of the things that you say in the book that I love the way it was phrased There's a dual purpose of storytelling to provide the joy of learning through the experience of feeling and the way that is phrased is so clear, so compelling, but so many books and teachers of screenwriting don't talk about it that way. But it couldn't be any more clear to me that to provide the joy of learning through the experience of feeling by making your audience feel something, maybe it opens their heart up, maybe it opens it up in a way to be able to accept information and to evolve. And that's just magical the way that's stated.

Brian Price: 26:23

I think it's important really for any endeavor, but certainly for writing to really understand the purpose, the function, because so many of the conventions and like I say, observable patterns, I don't want to say rules, because there really are no rules but so many of the I don't know the clues and the hints that successful writers can pass on to their mentees and students really are about fulfilling that purpose. So if we know that we're trying to, provide the joy of learning through the experience of feeling that then colors. Our choice of characters, it colors our ability to form the structure, to create our word choice on the page, everything should be directed toward that particular aim. And yes, entertaining is a huge part of it, but I believe really strongly that there's a lot more to a good movie than entertainment. And in many ways, entertainment is the Trojan horse that we use to, really deliver something much deeper and much more meaningful for our audience.

Lovinder Gill: 27:38

I always talk about movies as Advil I believe that art is medicine for our souls. Yes. Movies are Advil. They're sugar coated on the outside and they got a bunch of medicine on the inside. And that's how, that's how we get people to experience them. They don't know they're getting the medicine. They just think they're getting the sugar. And and so it seems very similar. There's another phrasing that I really liked here talking about the observing and identifying that the audience does in a character. Let me see the way it's phrased here. Effective drama creates an emotional experience by having us objectively observe the actions and the characters experiencing them. Pity, in quotes. While at the same time having us directly identify with what they are going through. Fear. As a result we experience these two emotions. We're simultaneously watching and participating in the action. Can you expand on that?

Brian Price: 28:29

Sure. Poetics is Defining dramatic narrative. The end of that definition ends with. For the purgation of pity and fear. That's really where he's talking about catharsis. And I've often wondered why does he choose those two emotions to illustrate his point? Pity and fear. And I think what it comes down to is simply the fact that pity is something you objectively feel for someone who exists outside of yourself. You watch somebody and you can pity them because you feel sorry for their fate, which is not your own. Fear, on the other hand, is something that does involve you. That's something in which you realize that fate could befall me. And so the fact that he uses those two words, pity and fear, it really gets to the heart of this duality of both observing and experiencing because that goes back to mimesis and catharsis again. We want to both learn, which we get through observing the representation, and we want to feel, which is what we get through the identification with those characters that we see on the screen. Both experiences are essential.

Lovinder Gill: 29:54

I think that so many people, especially young writers, just write a story from A to Z about this killer, or this sci fi thing, or this whatever, and there's these layers of information that are missing, and what results is just kind of stuff happening for no reason. Hell yeah. And it's so painful to get them to understand that no, this is like Just a little thin layer. There's 10 more levels of stuff that you've got to work on to get this thing to, to function and get your audience to engage and react in a way that will be meaningful for them, which will result in them telling all their friends to go see it. I just last week I went and saw the new Godzilla minus one. Have you ever, I'm dying to see that. How'd you like it? I watched it again yesterday. Okay, good. It was magnificent. It was everything a monster movie should be. But, Godzilla's in it like 30 minutes, maybe? Really? You know what I mean? It's not just following the monster around and it's destroying things. They're trying to fight it. It's an emotional story about this character and what they're dealing with and what's going on and the visuals that happen beginning in the end all come back and it's just so beautifully done. Yeah, I've not seen the movie. Go see the movie right away to learn about screenwriting.

Brian Price: 31:15

I'm going as soon as we're done here.

Lovinder Gill: 31:17

Yeah, it was magical on so many layers. I'm talking to the audience not to use because It was such an emotional story told so beautifully within this world of this kaiju,

Brian Price: 31:26

totally. And to me, that's the beauty of genre films in general. Oftentimes they're maligned as popcorn, and frivolous. But going back to your Advil analogy and my Trojan horse analogy, that's what brings in an audience, the monster, the destruction of the city. But what makes it a worthwhile experience is all those layers that you're talking about that exist in terms of not just the character development, but really the universal truths that are being depicted on that screen that are going to have some kind of resonance with an audience long after they've left that.

Lovinder Gill: 32:04

That's exactly right. Concept is butts in seats. Yep. That emotion is that resonance that makes them leave and tell everyone else to go see the movie. I see. Connected to them and I had an experience many years ago. I was dragged kicking and screaming to watch a movie called The Help. Okay? I had no desire to go see my wife wanted to see it, and I left that theater telling everyone, you have to go see the Help You have to go see the help. You have to go see the help because the emotional story is universal. I don't know anything about, being a servant in the fifties, to a white family, but it just. Felt like it was my story, which is magical.

Brian Price: 32:40

I had a really similar experience. I remember having to be dragged to see the movie blood diamond with Leonardo DiCaprio. Cause I had heard it's this movie about the horrors of the diamond industry in Africa. And again, I don't want to see a soapbox. I don't want to see a spinach movie. I don't want to see something that's going to make me a better person. But I went to see that movie and it wasn't about the horrors of the diamond industry. It was about a man trying to find his son, and in the course of that very universal, identifiable West. We learn about the horrors of the diamond industry. So there's a lot of meaning and a lot of purpose in there. There's ultimately in an agenda, but it, we become much more receptive to it as an audience. If there's something emotional and entertaining that we can sink our teeth into. Absolutely. You can't have

Lovinder Gill: 33:32

one without the other. I always tell my students that the brain will defend itself, the heart is defenseless. So go after that sucker when you're writing your screenplay. I love that. That's a great phrase. All right. Let's get to some bones I got to pick with you here. Do it. The most important element of a screenplay is the story.

Brian Price: 33:52

You're not buying it?

Lovinder Gill: 33:53

I'm not saying you're not, partially correct. I think that's important. But for me, I start with character. And then you have this argument later on where you say. You stubbornly disagree? Then play this game in your mind where you swap out the character for one another in a popular movie. Does it remain the same movie, more or less? And then you wrote, you replaced Dorothy with Scarlett O'Hara and the Wizard of Oz, keeping the story the same, and it's still essentially the Wizard of Oz. Yeah, if you're keeping the story the same, it's gonna be Wizard of Oz.

Brian Price: 34:25

No surprise. This is a debate that not only happens in all of my classes, but I think has been going on since Aristotle, because that is his central thesis, and because I am contemporizing his observations that comes early and often in my book as well. The idea that story is the Alpha and Omega. That's also the basis of the UCLA MFA screenwriting program. And then they'll tell students that on day one. And of course, as you become more adept, It becomes a little bit more nuanced. And yes, I take your argument and I do agree. There's certainly movies in which the opposite is true, but I think you get a good story. You then have the opportunity to find the character that is best going to serve that story. When one is constructing, for instance, Jaws, I don't think it best to start with, Okay, I'm going to tell a story about a sheriff who is afraid of the water and yet finds himself Working on an island one summer. I think you say, I'm going to tell the story about a shark that's terrorizing a beach community and the perfect protagonist will be a sheriff who is terrified of the water because that's the character who has the most at stake. The most opportunity for conflict, the most opportunity to change. And the same, I would say for, the Wizard of Oz. Who is the best character to have to go through this particular story?

Lovinder Gill: 36:14

Before you jump into that, let me say, couldn't you go with, that's a, this is a story about a sheriff who's afraid of the water, and what's the perfect antagonist for that? Is a shark who's terrorizing everyone? Does that make sense? No, I think your argument is great because as you and I know,

Brian Price: 36:31

having been in this business as long as we have, the truth is those two things go hand in hand. I actually argue against those who say character is supreme. As often as I argue against those who say story is supreme. I do think in terms of development, what I find most especially working with studios in Hollywood is that conceptually, a story with a clear beginning, middle and an end gets fleshed out first. Then characters get developed who are going to serve that particular story. As I said, in terms of which is going to give us the most conflict and be the most dramatic choice. And from there we start shaping that story in terms of the acts. But in terms of the, the through lines the head story and the heart story or however you want to call it. Those two things are going hand in hand. A character is pursuing an objective. That's really what's propelling the plot of the story. At the same time, that character is changing and is going to be somebody different at the end of the story than they were at the beginning as a result of the pursuit of that objective. One of the points that, that Aristotle makes that I do think is worth contemplating, even if one doesn't digest it wholly, is he makes the point that The Odyssey Homer's The Odyssey is not an epic poem about Odysseus. It's an epic poem about Odysseus trying to get home. It talks about action being the driving force. Yeah. And so the distinction that I think is important there is that a movie really is not about a character in isolation because a character contains. stories. A character contains infinite stories. What was the one with Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line. A great biopic about Johnny Cash. I bristle and someone says, did you see that movie about Johnny Cash? It's not a movie about Johnny Cash. It's a movie about Johnny. cast trying to win the heart of June Carter. So it's not really about the character as much as it is that character's pursuit of their heart's desire. And really what I'm arguing when I say story comes first is that heart's desire, that objective is the plot, or at least is defining the plot. And that's why I put it. First and predominant over character because now I have an opportunity to kind of chisel and nuance and develop that character to serve that particular quest or that particular journey, is how Ackerman when he defines story in his wonderful book also deserves to be on every bookshelf. He calls it footprints in the sand left by a hero in pursuit of their heart's desire against impossible odds. So what's essential to that definition and Aristotle's definition and my own definition is really none of these elements can exist in isolation. They're all there to serve each other.

Lovinder Gill: 39:52

It's funny how you said when you figure out all the stories, you can design the perfect character to go with that. And in my mind, when you figure out the character, you can design the perfect story to go with that. So I don't think there's necessarily a wrong answer. I think we're just talking about the opposite sides. And I know when I'm given an assignment, I'm writing a Christmas movie to be filmed. It's coming up in 2024 right now. And I didn't give me any character information. They gave me the concept and so I've got to create the stuff that works with that. And I think when you get to a certain level of experience, it's semantic, you can make the characters fit the story, or you can make the story fit the characters, but I totally agree. But you so vehemently stated at the book.

Brian Price: 40:35

Again, I'm bringing a relevance to these observations that there were made 2, 500 years ago. And, a lot of them have certainly evolved and changed over time back in Aristotle's day. One of his essential definitions of a good story involves characters that are what he calls admirable, which back in his day were gods and kings and I think to a large extent the evolution of this particular narrative form has been the democratization of what we consider admirable, to the point that You know, we can have Jeff Lebowski be our protagonist not necessarily Oedipus Rex. Because we've decided, as culture has evolved, that the common man is worth telling stories about. So things have definitely changed from his time. So whenever possible, in my book, I try to update them to keep those tenets relevant.

Lovinder Gill: 41:33

All right. I have four more arguments about this, but we'll do that offline. You talk about all stories are about identity or more specifically, they're about a character who starts off one way and ends up another. Which, alright, that's a win for me, were you saying that? The king who becomes a blind exile, the moisture farmer who becomes a Jedi. Actually, let's pause there. Okay. I love that you talk about your favorite story. I can't remember where it is in the book, but you talk about, your favorite story is about this farmer who becomes a warrior. And then you go on to describe that story. Can you talk about that for a few minutes? Because I think it's very interesting.

Brian Price: 42:10

Sure. When I'm talking to students, About premise usually provoked by somebody asking me I had this great idea for a story, but I think it's already been made and I'll respond to them by saying, that reminds me of that movie. I love about that farmer. And then people come and they kill his family and they destroy his farm. And so he. He gets a group together and they rise up and they topple that government. I can't remember the name of it and somebody will shout out Braveheart and I'll say yes, Braveheart. No, not Braveheart, but it is Mel Gibson. It takes place during the American Revolution. The Patriot. Yeah no, not Patriot. It's in Roman times. It won the Academy Award. Gladiator. No, not, yeah, not Gladiator, but he's on A moisture farm and the storm troopers come in to kill his family and he has to rise up and join the rebe Star Wars. And then I say, it's all of these movies. They all have the same premise. They all have the same general. outline, but nobody's going to confuse one of those movies with another because it's really not about the idea at the end of the day. It's about the execution of that idea. There are thousands of paintings of a rose, but there's only one that looks like Salvador Dali's. So using that painting metaphor, it's your plot and your structure and your characters and your dialogue. It's the execution. That makes it meaningful. And that makes it unique. And then I'll go on to say, so don't worry if the idea has been done before. It will be new because it's your version of it. And the truth is Every story is essentially the same idea. It's about identity. It's about a character who starts off thinking that they're one thing and in the pursuit of their objective discovers that there's something else entirely. It's how you tell that story that makes it unique and meaningful.

Lovinder Gill: 44:13

Absolutely. I could not agree more than that. I always tell the story about it's always horrible to be an aunt or uncle in a superhero movie.

Brian Price: 44:21

Because you're going to die.

Lovinder Gill: 44:22

The first time I break, you're going to die. You know what I mean? And Star Wars, Uncle Owen dies and Iron Man's parents are dead. Spider Man's parents are dead. Aunt May gets kidnapped. Like all this stuff goes on and on. And it's those are all devices and tools that we need to be able to use over and say, yeah, don't be afraid that these things are going to be taken. It's your take. It's your version of that. You know what I mean?

Brian Price: 44:47

Whenever I'm bringing home a Pixar or Disney film for my kids to watch, before we turn it on, the first question they always ask me is the mom or the dad going to die at the beginning?

Lovinder Gill: 45:02

There was a movie about the pets they've been captured by the dog catcher and they're in there and they all escape. And they have superpowers, I forget. Oh, I think it's Dog, and yeah. And there's a line in there where the pig gets superpowers. It says, My parents didn't even have to die for me to get these powers. And I'm like, what a great comment. I think I mentioned it in my book too. It's yeah, that's exactly, it's a device. It's a tool that you have to use that gets used in every movie but you don't notice it, if you're not into story as much as we are, but if you're writing these stories, you'll start seeing these patterns develop and go, okay, someone's got to die here for this character to go where I need them to go. Yeah. That's

Brian Price: 45:46

That's, that to me, what you just said. It is really profound because going again back to Aristotle, you know what he's doing when he's writing this treatise is essentially looking for patterns. What are the observable patterns that we see over and over again? And so What I tell writers is there's no formula, there's no template to plug your ideas into. Whenever I read a screenplay book that says, this happens on page 3, and this happens on page 17, and this happens on page 30, I just want to toss it in the trash. Because a story needs to be told the way it needs to be told, but At the same time, I think you are doing yourself a disservice if you don't recognize that there are certain observable patterns in movies that we do deem successful, whether artistically or commercially. And I think part of the education of being a screenwriter is really Looking at those patterns, absorbing those patterns, and trying to find a way to utilize them in some fresh way. When you say, your average viewer, maybe is not so aware of these conventions and tropes as we, the writer, are. But to me, that's really the secret of good screenplay structure as well. I think that structure is something that is inherent in our unconscious understanding when we're viewing something. Your average audience doesn't know first act, second act, third act, but they certainly know when something feels off, when things aren't happening with the proper emphasis. And I think when I talk about structure to people, we usually there's two families of response. They're the people who immediately want to glom onto it as a life preserver. Thank God, here's the formula. Tell me structure so I can plug my ideas into it. And to them I say no, that's not going to work. If you're having to plug these ideas into this constriction your story's not going to be told organically. And the other Camp of people are those who just completely rejected who think my story is so fresh and so unique. It can't possibly be programmed into any kind of template or formula. And to them, I say your story is going to suck too. And the metaphor I like to use is You know, you look out the window at the parking lot and there's a Range Rover and there's an electric scooter and there's a smart car and there's a Lamborghini. I wish I saw those things out my window. No one's going to confuse one of those vehicles with another, but they all have round tires because round tires work. They make the vehicles go. Structure works. It's the way to Tell a story in a way that has the right rhythm and harmony that we expect, even if we're not aware of it, but it's how you make it fresh and how you use that structure to tell your story. That makes it work.

Lovinder Gill: 49:08

I, again, I've said this a couple times, could not agree more. The analogy I use is the human body. My hip bone connects to my thigh bone. Does your hip bone connect to your thigh bone? Yes, it does. We have the exact same structure, and yet we are completely unique individuals, and therein lies the goal of what we want to do. No, I couldn't agree more. Aristotle's guiding precept number seven. In a well constructed plot, every event is caused or affected by what precedes it and causes or affect what follows according to the laws of necessity and probability. There's a whole section where you talk about where people write episodic Screenplays where this happens to the person that happens to the person that happens, but they're not really connected and two questions I have for you. The 1st, 1 would be, is this happen as you're writing organically for you or afterwards? Or does this happen in your outlining phase where you're connecting all these pieces together?

Brian Price: 50:06

All right. So this particular precept to me resonates with something that a teacher, maybe Hal at UCLA had said to me. He was talking about the difference between life and the movies. And he said, in life, one thing happens after another. And in movies, one thing happens because of another. And the idea is that it's that causal connection between scenes, between beats, between events that create a story. That an inciting incident is going to start a ball rolling down a hill that's going to lead inevitably and hopefully surprisingly to that dramatic conclusion. Aristotle himself says the worst kind of structure is an episodic structure because that's no structure at all. It's just a collection of chronological vignettes. To me, an episodic Story, which is an oxymoron, is really the equivalent of watching the slideshow of somebody's family vacation. This day we did this, and this day we did this, and this day we did this. There's no story, because there's no connection between those events other than a chronology. What makes it a story is this happened, which led to this happening, which led to this happening, which ultimately led to this like I said inevitable but surprising conclusion. That's why you can't simply verbatim retell an event of your life. The amazing story of my grandmother's funeral. The wacky thing that happened at my bar mitzvah. There, there are people who feel like something so interesting and unique happened to them that if they get it down on paper exactly the way it happened, it's gonna be a great story. But it's not gonna be a great story. Because it doesn't have That essential storytelling principle of consequence. For me, that comes in the outline. My story is crafted in the beat sheet. I'm not inventing the story when I'm writing my screenplay pages. I am translating a story I'm already satisfied with. Into description and dialogue into scenes. And of course, I'm discovering things along the way when you're writing a beat sheet there's no way for you to account for everything when you're writing pages. It's inevitable that you're going to discover things that never occurred to you when you're writing the album and things that you would plan to do are just going to go out the window because you realize now that you're in the scenes with these characters that it just doesn't feel right. It just doesn't work. So an outline's got to be treated as a living, breathing, organic document that's constantly changing and evolving even while you're writing the pages. I always advise if you find yourself in the writing of your screenplay diverging, Dramatically from the plan that you made. Just stop and go back into the outline and make the changes based upon the discoveries that you've made so that you can see what the consequences are going to be because that's going to have a ripple effect and change things all the way down the road. And how much easier is it to understand and analyze those changes? And a five or six page outline document as opposed to 50 or 60 pages of screenplay scenes. So I make sure, whether I've got it as index cards on the wall or a beat sheet printed out that I am following that particular dictum, that every beat is in some way caused by what preceded it, or at least bears the consequence. of what came before it. The, to me the general rule is if you can remove something from your story without the whole thing collapsing, like a house of cards, you need to remove it because it's not part of the story. It's not part of that whole.

Lovinder Gill: 54:02

Going back into the outline thought process, when you're outlining, is it physical action that you're writing out? Is it emotional subtext? What are you putting in the outline as you're building it?

Brian Price: 54:12

All right. So my, my process in many ways, and again, going back to Aristotle who talked about first sketching in its general outline and then filling in. The episodes in greater detail so I always start with refining that logline to me, which, which really defines the essential elements of my story. Whose story is it? Character. There you go. What do they want? Objective plot. What's keeping them from getting it? Conflict. Once I have something that sounds to me like there If I saw that description on Netflix or, on, on the back of a DVD, do they even make DVDs anymore? I'm going to want to watch that movie. Then I'm going to start to flesh it out. And then my process is always going from the general to the specific. So I'll take that basic story premise and start to flesh out what are the big, major events that are necessary in terms of. Telling that story things I call the anchor points. So how does it begin? What's the inciting incident that disrupts that equilibrium and starts the story into motion? What's the first act break that launches the hero now into the new world and into the plot of the movie? What's the second act break where they're usually furthest from accomplishing that objective? what's the climax my highest point of a physical and emotional action and then what's The resolution. What's the new equilibrium at the end of the story? So I take those six elements and I work and refine and just try to get that general sketch of the story. And then I do what I consider my Okay. My stepping stones, which is start to fill in the major events that get me from one of those structural elements to the next. And I tend to work from how talks about a scenogram. I have something similar. It's it's a diamond. Diagram that's made up of certain beats that I see repeated in good movies, things like the scene of adaptation and the scene of achievement and the midpoint, things like that.

Lovinder Gill: 56:20

You have a great example to that, like the 2nd half of the book deals with more with the outlining and the laying it out and you give a lot of detail with these triangular, I forget what the term is for them and then you build them all together at the end, and you do I don't know how many movies, but it's a great way to just go boom. Okay boom. And you can just, as a writer, see the patterns that work across all genres. It's beautiful.

Brian Price: 56:43

Oh thank you. Yeah, that, that's one of the things I'm most proud of, is having this series of movies that are meaningful to me and that have been successful and showing how they do reveal certain narrative patterns, especially in the second act, which I think for most writers is such a bear because that's the meat of your story. There's an infinite number of things you can do. In your second act and it can be overwhelming. So really the purpose of those diagrams is just to provide some Potential choices that a writer might consider, you know That doesn't necessarily mean your movie's going to have a scene of adaptation or a scene of achievement But if it did what would it look like given these characters and given this story? So I map out those Particular stepping stone events, dramatizable events, and then usually from there I go into my beat sheet, which is really a question of filling in the details in between everything that's going to happen from the beginning to the end. And that could be anywhere from 30 to 60 beats. often very dependent on genre. But my first pass through that beat sheet is very sketchy. I call it a sketchy beat sheet. I'll give a title to each beat just so that I know what its principal focus or writer's intention is. And then maybe two or three sentences to describe. what I think needs to happen in that beat just to move the story forward. From there, I'll make a more in depth, detailed beat sheet in which I will include things like physical action, subtext, bits and pieces of dialogue. If I'm sticking to the process that I teach, which sometimes I do diverge from it, that ultimate beat sheet probably goes from about a five to six page document. To about a 50 page document because I'm devoting, at least a page to each of those beats. But I have found in time that I like to keep a little mystery. I like to not be too detailed because so much of the fun of that first draft is the discovery. If it was really just a matter of writing pages that were. Transforming the formatting from the outline to a screenplay format. It would be a pretty dull process. So I really use the beat sheet as a jumping off point. But I want to make sure that my story works before I start writing the pages. Because I'm not inventing the story when I'm writing the script. I'm just Finding the best way to dramatize a story that I'm already happy with,

Lovinder Gill: 59:27

right? You're connecting the bones to each other so that it looks like an actual film screenplay And then you can flesh it in with is it a tall person a short person a chubby person a skinny person? What are they wearing? What color are their eyes and all that kind of stuff? That was one of the questions I wanted to ask you touched on it is like what about the discovery phase? Because oftentimes, I had this experience last year where I got asked to write a movie in a week By this production company. And they had, had other drafts written and they weren't happy with it, but it was green lit and they were, scheduled and they're like, they need this working. And so I didn't get to do my normal process, which is way more outlining and way more late, like I'll write, multiple layers per scene of stuff that I need to have, and this results in that, and this leads to that. I didn't have any space for that. And so it was just like. Type, and I think I took, I had 10 note cards. I'm like, okay, this character is this, that character is that, this character is this, but I got to discover it as I was writing it. It was an enjoyable experience. I ended up making it and I was very happy with it, but it's interesting how it just completely diverges against this process. I've spent 20 years developing for myself and figuring out. So in the discovery process, what do you leave room for? What kind of things do you get to discover as you're writing?

Brian Price: 1:00:39

We talked earlier, I think one of the things that definitely emerges when I'm writing that first draft is a sense of theme, what is the deeper meaning the bigger universal questions that are being debated in this story I mentioned earlier I don't begin with that because then I find it, it limits my choices because now I'm just Making decisions based upon what will support my argument. If anything, thematically, I think you may want to have an open theme in the sense of, I want to tell a story about fidelity in a relationship, as opposed to truth means this, that or the other thing. So that's one of the things that will emerge. I think one of the other things that always emerges is tone. I might go at a story. Thinking that it's going to be a broad comedy, and discover as I'm doing it that it's much, much more serious than I thought or vice versa. And then character, I don't think character really emerges. Until they're living and breathing on the page. We can make all kinds of decisions about a character's backstory or their physical attributes or their personality traits. Again, as I was saying, whether or not we begun with that bio or whether it's something that we develop after we have a story. But I find that once you're having that character act. And speak they really start to emerge in that draft. And I discover more things about character in the writing than I can possibly anticipate ahead of time.

Lovinder Gill: 1:02:17

Yeah, there's a, I think on the page, my characters are one dimensional, which initially when I'm writing notes, then when I start outlining, they become two dimensional. And then when I start writing them, they become three dimensional. Exactly. Oh, I love that. It's step up process that goes on for them. One of the most interesting things I saw in your book, which I was actually surprised by was you don't think about theme until the end, as opposed to at the beginning. And can you talk about that thought process?

Brian Price: 1:02:45

Sure. Like we were talking earlier when a student comes to me and says, I want to write a movie about. X, Y, and Z, and instead of giving me a character or a story, they're giving me some kind of thematic message. I get very wary, because in my experience, if you're starting with a message, you're gonna write something that feels like a soapbox. It is written to prove a point. And, To me, that's putting the cart before the horse. And as I said, it's limiting your choices because you're only going to make character and story choices that support that particular premise as opposed to telling a story that has a universal resonance because of The story, the events, the characters, in which some kind of a universal truth emerges through the process. I usually don't even think about theme when I'm writing a first draft. In fact, I would say more often than not, I'll give a script, to a colleague for notes. And they'll tell me what the movie is really about. And it's often something I never even thought of. I remember I, I once wrote a script with a partner called Whale Farts. This is the script that won Scriptapalooza. And it was essentially Moby Dick if Adam Sandler was Ishmael. Moby Dick with fart jokes was basically it. And we just really went for the comedy. We already had a story structure because we just based it on Melville. And it was just a lot of fun. It had a lot of big adventure set pieces and just a lot of great broad humor in it. And I remember giving it to my writer's group for notes at one point. And one of them. Responded by saying, I just love what this movie says about the nature of a father son relationship and how you need to see your father as flawed before you can mature yourself. And I remember looking at them like, what the hell are you talking about? This is Moby Dick with fart jokes. But once I had That in my head, it now was able to color all the subsequent drafts of that script, into something that did exist on a deeper, more meaningful level. But that particular aspect of it had emerged unconsciously. It wasn't an agenda that I had started out with. And I think because it wasn't an agenda, it was much more organic. To the story and to my own interests and concerns. I think at the end of the day, there are really three threads that go through every story. There's that plot thread that we defined as a character in pursuit of that objective. There is that character thread, which is about the character and how they ultimately overcome whatever that primary flaw was that they had at the beginning of the story. And then there's the thematic thread, the idea that some kind of universal truth or question is introduced at the beginning, and then debated and then resolved one way or the other at the end. And the truth of it is Neither of those threads is ultimately more important than the other. They're all intricately intertwined into the rope that, that makes that solid story.

Lovinder Gill: 1:06:12

I could not agree with that more. I think one of the things I do mention to my story, to my students, is to make sure they leave enough room for the audience to bring their emotional baggage into the movie. It's one story being told to everybody, but each person is processing it separately. And, And I think that what you just said there is allowing the story to do that, but there is so much more I want to discuss with you about this, but sadly, we are at our, at the end of our podcast here. The book is called classic storytelling and contemporary screenwriting. I will put a link to it and below this podcast. So make sure you check it out. It is. Really an amazing piece of work. Brian, you did a great job with it. I learned, which is one of the reasons I love doing this podcast. And of course, all these books and there's all these little golden nuggets that I'm like, okay, I'm still going to argue with you about character first, but off offline, but thank you so much for taking the time and imparting your knowledge with us.

Brian Price: 1:07:18

Thank you so much. It's an honor to be here talking with you. Thank you so much.

Lovinder Gill: 1:07:22

All righty until next time Thank you for listening to the script cake podcast. I am your host. If you have a screenwriting question, please feel free to forward it to info at script cake. com. And we may feature your question on the future podcast. If you'd like to know more about me, please check out my website, lavender. com L O V I N D E R. com. See where I'll be speaking, presenting, and to get more information on my book, Script Cake Secrets, the top 10 mistakes novice screenwriters make and how to fix them. Until next time.