Write Your Screenplay Podcast Jacob Krueger

This episode, we are going to be continuing our discussion of The Fall Guy (check out Part 1 of The Fall Guy Podcast). Now, you're probably wondering, why does this silly blockbuster movie get a two-part podcast installment? There are a couple of reasons for that:







First, if you remember from last week, we're in a pretty interesting conversation about subtext. We talked about the three different levels of subtext and how that related to metafilm, which is a concept that we haven't discussed a lot on this podcast. So I'm excited to take a little bit of extra time to look closely at these concepts.







Second, it’s valuable to get a little deeper breaking down a light, superficial Hollywood popcorn movie like The Fall Guy because it is representative a lot of the “work for hire” projects we writers are going to be presented with in the industry. 







There’s a belief among many writers that “in order to succeed, you have to sell out.” But Drew Pearce’s writing on The Fall Guy shows us that, even within the container of a Hollywood popcorn movie, you can still bring your voice and your artistry to the writing process. 







One of the things that I appreciated about The Fall Guy was that the writer Drew Pearce is working inside a framework which is probably not a writer's dream. 







He’s adapting an 80s silly TV series. Everything's got to be light. It's a huge $150 million budget so he has to make sure that doesn’t alienate anybody and that everyone leaves feeling good. Everything's got to work out at the end. 







So how do you actually perform as an artist inside of a container like that?







Usually, the way you break into the industry is either with a really great script or a really great indie film. Usually, we're breaking in with our disruptive content- content that maybe isn't going to make a trillion dollars, but is going to move people and grab people. 







And then suddenly you’ve “made it” and you are getting these work-for-hire assignments where you start to wonder, "I can make them happy, but is it going to make me happy?"







One of the things I find interesting about Drew Pearce's script for The Fall Guy is that even though he's working inside of the framework of what the studio wants, he's also finding opportunities to show you who he is as an artist, to say something, to have some fun, and even to poke some fun in a metafilmic way at exactly the container that he's been put into.







For all of these reasons, we are going to look at part two of The Fall Guy. We're going to continue our discussion of subtext, but we're also going to get a little bit deeper into the concept of metafilm and into another really important concept related to building a marketable screenplay: how do you make things worse and worse and worse for your characters? How do you attack the character at, in this case, the action level, but also how, at the same time, do you attack them on the relational level?







Often in movies, we end up having lots of different threads, and sometimes it feels like those threads are separate from one another. But one of the things The Fall Guy does really well is bringing all of those threads together at the worst possible moment.







Today we're going to look at the “split-screen” sequence of The Fall Guy really deeply. We're going to talk about how the scene works structurally, relationally, and meta-filmicly. And we’re going to talk about how pressure is loaded and loaded and loaded onto the character. 

Hello, I'm Jacob Krueger, and this is the Write Your Screenplay Podcast.







This week, we're going to be talking about The Fall Guy by Drew Pearce. This is a remarkably silly movie based on the old, equally silly '80s TV show.







At the center of the film are two scenes that we're going to look at over the course of two podcast episodes. We’ll explore some interesting concepts you don't expect to see in an action-comedy like The Fall Guy.















By analyzing two of the most successful scenes in The Fall Guy, we will learn about metafilm – how the movie comments on itself – and subtext – how to capture the unsaid intentions of your character in your dialogue. 







We'll also explore how The Fall Guy writer Drew Pearce grounds his scenes, chooses locations, and uses other techniques that can be valuable to your writing, whether you're working on an action-comedy or something completely different.







You can feel pretty safe listening to this podcast even if you haven't seen The Fall Guy yet. There are going to be very minor spoilers, but nothing you wouldn't get from the trailer…







Let's start by grounding ourselves in what The Fall Guy is actually about.







Ryan Gosling plays Colt Seavers, a top-of-the-line stuntman or "fall guy." In many ways, the film is an homage to stuntmen – an underappreciated art form that makes so many movies possible. The film is directed by David Leitch, a former stunt performer. It's jam-packed with fresh action, including a badass garbage truck chase scene and another sequence which broke the Guinness Record for most car cannon rolls.







If you're a director interested in how to craft incredible action, it's worth watching for that alone.







But we're not going to talk about The Fall Guy just to discuss the action movie elements. We're going to talk about something deeper.







One of the things that makes the script for The Fall Guy so successful is the relationship and the chemistry between Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt’s characters: Colt Seavers and Jody Moreno.







Jody is a director longing for her shot at the big time when we first meet her. Colt is a top-shelf stuntman for the nastiest, most successful action movie star in the world: Tom Ryder, played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson.







Tom, of course, is an idiot, and Colt, of course, is a great guy. Jody and Colt, of course, are madly in love with each other.







But during the opening sequence, Colt suffers an injury that he blames on himself, shattering his self-confidence. During his recovery, he not only gives up on his career but also on Jody.







She wanted to show up for him and he wouldn't allow her.







None of this is played for drama. It's all played for comedy. This is not a movie designed to make you cry (or even feel). This is not a film designed to go deep. We're not talking about Lars and the Real Girl here. It’s not a film that uses comedy to go deep into human emotion. 







The Fall Guy is designed to make you laugh and be entertained by visual spectacle, some light self-criticism, and satire of the film industry. But that’s not really what allows us to connect to the film.







We're not actually connecting to The Fall Guy because of the stunts, even though they're a big part of the genre elements we came for. We're connecting to The Fall Guy because we’re connecting to the characters.







We’re connecting to characters in The Fall Guy on two different levels: the way the characters are changing through the choices they're making,

This week, we're going to be talking about Baby Reindeer, the hit limited series on Netflix, written, created by and starring Richard Gadd. 







We're going to use Baby Reindeer to talk about how to adapt a true story into a limited series, into a feature film, or into a TV show. 















You would think that we fully understand our own stories better than anybody else’s. But the truth is you are the hardest person to write because you are the hardest person to see. 







You can see everybody else. But your own life is processed mostly internally. And that's the opposite of the way that screenplays work. Screenplays externalize those internal feelings. 







So we're going to be talking about how to get yourself on the page: how to tell your true story in whatever form you want to. And we're going to be looking at the structure of Baby Reindeer and how Richard Gadd does it in this fantastic little limited series.







Before we get started, I do want to warn you there are going to be some spoilers of Baby Reindeer ahead. I can't talk about it in an effective way without sharing some of the details of the script. So if you have not yet seen the show, I will warn you before we get to the big stuff.







If you've listened to my podcast on Beef, you've probably recognized that the structure of Baby Reindeer and the structure of Beef are basically the same. 







Baby Reindeer and Beef are both essentially “two-handers.” 







“Two-hander” is a term from playwriting, where the story is almost exclusively driven by two main characters. I’m using that term a little loosely when it comes to Baby Reindeer and Beef, but nevertheless, both limited series focus almost entirely on the escalation between these two main characters. 







Baby Reindeer and Beef are about two characters who at any point could end the escalation that's happening between them, but who keep making choices that drive the escalation forward. In this way, the game of both the Baby Reindeer and Beef is basically the same: 







You keep giving the main character a way out, and you keep watching them not take it. 







Now why would the writers of Baby Reindeer and Beef construct a show this way? Well, it's one of the profound ways to deal with the lies that your character is telling themselves.







Every character lies to themselves. Every person lies to themselves. 







We don't lie to ourselves on purpose. We lie to ourselves because we have identities. 







We lie to ourselves because there are things that we don't want to look at. 







We lie to ourselves because we want to see ourselves in certain ways. 







We lie to ourselves because there are mythologies that have been foisted upon us since we were children, that we've internalized, and that change the way that we see ourselves in the world. 







There are all kinds of reasons that we lie to ourselves, but some characters' primary problem is that they are not being honest with themselves.







If we look at Walter White in Breaking Bad, for example, his primary problem is he's telling himself a story that he's created a crystal meth empire just because he wants to leave something to his family, to protect them. 







But since he keeps getting a way out, we realize this is not about his family. It’s not until the final episode that Walter's actually going to be truthful...

This week we're going to be studying Monkey Man, the new Dev Patel movie. With a screenplay by Paul Angunawela and John Collee, story by Dev Patel. 







This is a special film for me because one of our students, Joseph J.U. Taylor, has a wonderful small role in the piece. We're really proud of you, Joseph.







I do want to warn you that there will be some moderate spoilers in the first half of the movie. We're definitely going to spoil the sea change (the midpoint of the film), but I'll give you a heads up before we get into where it all goes.







Our focus today is on the epic scope of Monkey Man and how it uses the power of action movies to deliver something much more profound than your typical popcorn movie. We’ll be discussing the difference between naturalism and expressionism in all kinds of movies. We’ll be discussing a profoundly important element of 7 Act Structure called The Sea Change and how it functions in Monkey Man And we'll also be examining a small but significant moment that demonstrates how to create a sense of reality and fully realized characters, even within such a heightened, action-packed, expressionistic piece.















Many people have described Monkey Man as essentially John Wick in India. It's a giant, bloody, revenge fantasy told through almost non-stop action sequences. 







In many ways, that is what Monkey Man is.







It’s like so many Quentin Tarantino movies. It's like Kill Bill, with its larger than life action sequences that are almost expressionistic in their nature.







So, what exactly is expressionism? And how does it differ from realism and naturalism in film?







Realism means that the film is playing out almost exactly the way things do in real-time.







A weird thing happens if you actually hang out in realism in films, which is that realism doesn't feel real. 







Movies move faster than real life. They have to because they only have an hour and a half, maybe two hours, to tell a story that, if you were just gonna retell it beat by beat, would feel like forever.







Most movies actually don't take place in realism. They take place in naturalism. 







In other words, they take place in a heightened, faster, more extreme reality that feels like it's real, but it's actually happening at a high-pitched pace. 







In reality, half of our language is:







 "Hey, how you doing?” 







“Good, good. How you doing?" 







Half of our language is not even connected. 







Half of our language isn't doing anything. 







There's no want, there's no need. Half the time we're not even making choices. 







"I really should… but I don't want to… but I'm not ready to… but I want to…  I should..." 







That's realism. 







We're in these states of limbo most of our lives, in which every now and then we have those punctuating moments like, "bang, this matters."







So if we really were to write in the world of realism, we would have all those boring moments and end up with a diffuse storytelling in which it's hard to actually capture the journey in the short period of time we have.







Of course, in TV we have even less time. Even though we have more episodes, the episodes are even shorter. So both movies and TV tend to happen in the world of naturalism. 







What naturalism means is that the volume is turned up.

Hello, I'm Jacob Krueger, and this is the Write Your Screenplay podcast. This week, we are going to be looking at Alex Garland's new film, Civil War.







Civil War explores what happens when we become polarized, stop looking at each other as human beings and instead view one another as enemies.















Structurally, Alex Garland’s Civil War is essentially built like Apocalypse Now, with a touch of The Last of Us. 







But in the case of Civil War, the characters’ journey into the “heart of darkness” takes place in an America on the brink of collapse, rather than the Vietnam War. The zombie-like tones of Civil War won’t come as a surprise to those who know Alex Garland's work. He wrote 28 Days Later. 







We're going to be talking a bit about the structure of Civil War and it’s similarities to the structure of Apocalypse Now and The Last of Us. We’ll also look at key differences in the socio-political implications of building a war movie by contrasting Civil War with Top Gun: Maverick. (Check out my Top Gun: Maverick Podcast).







One of the interesting choices that Alex Garland makes in the writing of Civil War is not to tell you what the hell is going on. We only have snippets of what's happened. 







We know that a president has stayed in office for three terms against the will of the American people, or at least against the Constitution. 







We don't know exactly how or why that happened. There's virtually zero exposition but we know that has happened.







When we first meet the President, played by Nick Offerman, we suspect he’s making a “disinformation” speech about a victory tha doesn’t reflect what is really going on. 







We know that in this world, in Washington, D.C., the press are shot on sight. We know that the press are seen as enemy combatants by the President. 







That is all we know.







We don't know the President's politics. We don't know if he is left or if he is right or if he’s somewhere in between. We don't know if he is a fascist. We don't know if he is a communist. We don't know anything about his point of view except that he has violated the constitution and he is against journalism. He is against the truth coming out.







We know that America has fractured and that some kind of alliance called the Western Forces (WF) has been created in opposition to The President.







In our society this seems like an impossible alliance. It's between California and Texas. And quite frankly, we don't know what that alliance is about. We don't know their politics. We don't know what they believe in. 







We don't know if they're liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, communist or fascist. But we know that they are fighting against the President, trying to retake the country.







Alex Garland has come under some fire for his depiction of the Western Forces– the fictional alliance of California and Texas– in Civil War.







Some critics have essentially said “This is crazy. This is just ridiculous whitewashing. California and Texas- they're so far apart politically. This choice to imagine them as a combined force is just Alex Garland obscuring of the actual political message to avoid offending anyone.” 







And if you've listened to my Top Gun: Maverick podcast, you know that that's something that I criticized that film for.







In Top Gun: Maverick, like in Civil War, the nature of the political conflict,

As many of you know, every Thursday Night, we host a free screenwriting class called Thursday Night Writes. A recent installment with Steve Molton was so groundbreaking that we decided to release it as a podcast for our whole community. Enjoy!







Jake: Hello, everybody, welcome to Thursday Night Writes! Our guest tonight is Steve Molton. 







Steve is a former HBO and Showtime executive, Columbia film school professor, and Pulitzer nominee. He wrote a movie with Frank Pugliese of House of Cards. He wrote limited series for Showtime. He has worked in television, novels, nonfiction, and film. He’s even penned an opera! 







He's also just one of the great human beings in the world and a good friend. We're so lucky to have him back on our team, mentoring students in our ProTrack program and offering a new TV Drama Writers Room.







Steve and I are going to be exploring the concept of internal antagonists in screenwriting and the role they play in your character’s journey. 







Often, when we're thinking about the “antagonist” or the opposing forces in our script, we think about the “bad guy” or the “obstacle.”







But today, we're going to focus on internal obstacles, things that get in the way of our characters on the inside, and the things that get in the way of us as writers on the inside. 







Steve: Part of the reason I wanted to do this subject tonight is that, having walked the picket line in the last year, we were besieged by the notion that somehow machines will be able to replicate what we do.







But as some great person had written on his sign while picketing, "Computers can't have childhood trauma." 







We are still human beings. The fact that we live and die, that we are shaping the world and must still shape the world, sometimes in ways to protect ourselves, requires us to go really deep. So that's what we’ll do today, working from the inside out.







I've been teaching at the French National Film School, doing a masterclass there for producers. These weren't people who were naturally thinking like writers, although they were storytellers of a kind. 







I pulled together notes from a series of talks I did there on the seven forms of conflict. 















There are seven forms of conflict that drive just about every great story.







Writers have probably heard about the seven forms of conflict. We forget them because they're so common and ubiquitous. They are: 







1) The self versus the self







2) Self versus another 







3) Self versus society 







4) Self versus technology 







5) Self versus nature 







6) Self versus the supernatural 







7) Self versus God, fate, or destiny







The first three of these are present in almost all strong movies and stories. The last four are genres unto themselves, but they often include those three forms as well.







For example, you might find the self versus the self, the self versus the other, and versus society within a movie about the self versus technology. These conflicts are ubiquitous and they flow into each other.







Jake: A question popped up in the chat. What's the difference between supernatural and God?







Steve: That is a fantastic question. 







Self versus the supernatural involves conflicts with inexplicable, otherworldly phenomena that defy scientific explanation.