Analysts

WHAT ARE THE MAIN THINGS YOU LOOK FOR WHEN YOU READ A SCRIPT?
Solid structure and a strong story are givens, but I want to see a film create a full world, whether it is a mirror of our reality or a completely fantastical world.  The joy is in the little details—specificity leads to memorability, whether it is in the surprising characteristics of the setting or aspects of the characters.  The specifics make the world of the script seem more personal to the writer and makes it more alive to the person who is reading it.  This is where the voice of the writer comes through, and that voice is going to be what makes the script fresh and original.

WHAT MAKES BELIEVABLE CHARACTERS
Believable characters are characters that behave according to the natures the writer has created for them and not according to the dictates of the plot.  People are rich and complicated, and characters should be too.  There needs to be enough to every character to get a sense of who they are and what they are like, even if it is only a minor character.  Also, nothing is more frustrating than when a character suddenly changes halfway through the script without any motivation—like in a romantic comedy when the heroine’s boyfriend conveniently turns into a total jerk just so she can easily dump him for the guy we want her to be with.  There’s nothing wrong with characters changing suddenly—people are complex, and so should characters be—but if the change is just for the convenience to the plot it makes the character unbelievable and cheapens the experience of the story.

WHAT’S THE MOST COMMON MISTAKE YOU SEE?
Screenplays, perhaps more than any other from of prose writing, need to adhere to a careful structure.  Many scripts that do not work suffer from what appears to be not enough care taken in their structure.  They bring in too much early and then rush to resolve at the end, or they introduce events or characters that are never paid off.  One of the great pleasures of a script are seeing how the elements come together to climax and resolution, but if the structure is lacking the whole script falls apart.

WHAT KIND OF SCRIPTS ARE YOU MORE LIKELY TO CONSIDER?
The script needs to have something new, that doesn’t feel like we’ve seen it before, whether it is a true story of human accomplishment or a supernatural horror picture with a monster like no other.  It also needs to have excellent structure, character, and dialogue. Finally, the script must have appeal to an audience appropriate to its subject matter. If you’re writing a script that would cost $100 million to produce, the story should have mass appeal and be capable of making that money back.

WHAT’S THE BEST SCRIPT YOU’VE EVER READ?
"Field of Dreams" is as much a pleasure to read as a screenplay as it was to watch as a film—maybe even more so.  Phil Alden Robinson not only crafts a wonderful modern fairy tale, he fills it with beautiful human dialogue and the perfect balance of screen directions.  It manages to make seemingly random and silly elements (a magic voice, random time travel, baseball ghosts) into a believable and emotional story.  It is the screenplay against which I judge all others.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE MOVIEGOING EXPERIENCE?
I love slipping into a theater by myself and watching a movie with a crowd of strangers.  When the film is great, the audience shares the ups, downs, laughs, cries, gasps, and frustrations of the characters, and by the time the lights come up we everyone in that room aren’t such strangers anymore.