Creative Work and Scholarship while at RIT - 2014-2019

Though television is experiencing a golden era of creativity and profitability on network and pay channels, and while tent-pole films and cinematic universes break new records around the world, the standalone mid-budget theatrical release appears to be passing into film history.

The recent high-profile feud between director Steven Spielberg and the giant streaming service Netflix has focused attention on the future of cinema projected in movie theaters. Spielberg has asked for a new rule in the Academy that streaming service films exclusively play in theaters for 4 weeks in order to be considered for Oscar nomination. Spielberg's intent seems to be saving the collective experience of watching quality films in front of an audience. The is an experience most of us grew up with, as did our parents and grandparents. But is that experience worth saving? What is lost if films are only watched privately on in-home flat-screen televisions? Will films made for the home screen still attract the best writing, directing, and acting talent? And if the standalone feature becomes rare, if not extinct, what does it mean for teaching screenwriting at the feature-length level? Should we concentrate solely on series writing and the creation of cinematic universes?

PROLOGUE:

In February of 1992, I was doing photography at a friend’s birthday party and struck up a conversation with a Los Angeles Police Department plainclothes officer. I don’t remember his division or station, but he was very interested in posing with his gun pointed at the camera. I declined as my eye was behind the camera. But I did make polite conversation with him and asked how his department was reacting to the trial in Simi Valley of four LAPD officers for the videotaped beating of a speeding suspect, Rodney King. He mistook my interest for camaraderie and leaned close to my ear and whispered: “If you ask me, they didn’t beat the n***** hard enough.” 

I apologize right now for not head-butting him, but he had a gun and the law on his side. I backed away meekly and apologetically, pointing to my photographic responsibilities.

Later, a woman asked me what I did for a living and I told her I was a screenwriter. “Have you written anything I might have heard of?”  I asked her if she had heard of "The Principal"with Jim Belushi. Her eyes lit up. “You wrote The Principal? That’s my boyfriend’s favorite movie! He loves that movie! Oh-my-God, Oh-my-God” She calls said “boyfriend” across the crowed party. “Frank here wrote The Principal!” 

The joy on that racist cop’s face as he made his way over sickened me with the stark understanding that the Almighty had a dark and just sense of humor. When the city of Los Angeles erupted in violence 3 months later – I felt I owned a small part of it. My meticulously researched screenplay about a lousy teacher who becomes the principal of a tough inner-city school had gotten away from my intention – and become hate-porn for at least one racist cop.

At that party,I remembered the simultaneous revulsion and base pride I felt when I watched the climatic scene from my script elicit loud cheers from the packed theater as Jim Belushi beats up Michael Wright.  I felt I had polluted the stream a little. How much, I don’t know.  But it was not nothing.

This talk is a response to the notion that widely seen films and TV shows are “just entertainment” or that we should “Fear No Art.”  It is a work in progress and an ongoing exploration with an uncertain conclusion. (It is not, however, a call for censorship.)  

Below are films and TV shows that I believe had an effect on historical events. In some of these examples the effect is very clear. In some it is less certain and we can only say “It is not nothing.”

BIRTH OF A NATION (1915)

It’s supreme irony that the first ground-breaking and technically brilliant feature-length film is "Birth of a Nation" the mother-lode of racist awful. A lot of ugly racial tropes originated with this film.

The Ku-Klux Klan was founded as a joke in late 1865 in a small town in Tennessee with goofy names and rituals and costumes in order to raise the spirits of defeated confederates. It soon, however, became a terror organization against freed and newly enfranchised black citizens during Reconstruction.

It spread terror throughout the liberated south until Klan Act of 1871 allowed President Grant to pretty much wipe out the Klan with Federal forces. There were other reasons for the its disappearance – not the least being that the Klan’s objectives were achieved.  The Klan remained a distant memory until the movie that celebrated its creation: "Birth of a Nation."

The power and immense popularity of this film inspired the revival of the Klan at Stone Mountain in Georgia in 1915.  The founders copied the movie by burning crosses - a ritual that not exist with the original terrorist group.  They also took their costume designs from the movie.  

What they created became much bigger than the previous Klan. The modern Ku Klux Klan – which was now also anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic - had significant membership in all 48 states and had a huge influence on the Democratic Party in that era.

GONE WITH THE WIND (1939)

This beautiful and engaging film is monument to the confederacy. It, and the novel on which it was based, probably did more anything else to perpetuate the Southern “Lost Cause” myth that 1) celebrates the Confederacy as a noble cause and second American revolution that only failed because the North was stronger 2) romanticizes slavery 3) decries Reconstruction – the brief moment in the south when freed blacks enjoyed the rights of citizenry – as a time of carpetbaggers and scalawags. Everyone saw this film. Its effect on the psyche of the population is not measurable, but it’s not nothing. It was a beautiful and pernicious lie.

PATTON (1970)

This film is not a lie. It’s a great film. Its only problem is that it was President Nixon’s favorite film at the height of the Vietnam War. He owned a print and screened it repeatedly in the White House, especially leading up to the days before the American invasion of Cambodia in May of 1970.

Nixon saw himself as Patton, the embattled general whose methods during World War Two would not be appreciated until a movie was made about him. There are even similarities between Patton’s speech and Nixon’s. Nixon spent the first 4 years of his presidency trying desperately not to “lose a war” leading to the deaths tens of thousands more American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese.

And, of course, Kent State.

THE CHINA SYNDROME (1979)

This was an insanely prescient movie as the accident it depicts nearly played out two weeks after its release. Is this what killed the expansion of nuclear energy in the United States? The Freakonomics authors argue that it did. Given climate change, is that good or bad? 

24  Fox TV (2001-2010)

The Fox television show 24 premiered a few weeks after 9/11 and ran for seven seasons. For those who don’t know, each season covered an intense 24-hour period and each episode was an hour in real time. It usually involved a terror plot and imminent mayhem. Full disclosure: I didn’t watch a lot of it, but what I did was insanely fun and made me want to be like Jack Bauer, it’s counter-terror lead played by Kiefer Sutherland, and torture someone to get vital information 

Suspenseful and addictive and silly.  A torture scene every other week, every other always about a ticking time bomb. Millions of people will be saved. And millions of people watched this show in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks. Extracting vital information like this, with a ticking clock, has nothing to do with actual effective interrogation technique. The truth is that is practically never the case. And torture is notoriously ineffective – besides being illegal and immoral. The victims of torture will tell you anything you want to hear to stop the torture. 

But that didn’t stop the Bush administration after 9/11. The new series was a major inspiration at brainstorming meetings at Guantanamo. Lt. Colonel Diane Beaver, a military lawyer at the detention center who approved a whole array of torture techniques including waterboarding, stress positions, and sexual humiliation, said that Jack Bauer and 24 "gave people lots of ideas.” “We saw it on cable TV. It was hugely popular.” “It encouraged us to go further than we otherwise might.” 

Tony Lagouranis, an Army interrogator in Iraq, similarly states, “people watch the shows, and then walk into the interrogation booths and do the same things they’ve just seen”

John Yoo, the former Justice Department lawyer who produced the so-called torture memos, cites Bauer in his book: "What if, as the Fox television program '24' recently portrayed, a high-level terrorist leader is caught who knows the location of a nuclear weapon?" 

Even the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said: "Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. He saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?"

The lawyers designing torture policy cited Jack Bauer more times than the Constitution.

In 2007 -  Brig. Gen. Patrick Finnegan, dean of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and three top U.S. interrogators visited the 24 set in California to talk with the show's creative team about the effect the torture scenes are having on U.S. soldiers abroad. Finnegan said the show's graphic torture sequences were encouraging U.S. military personnel in Iraq to act illegally. "They are damaging the image of the U.S. around the world," he said. "I'd like them to stop." He encouraged the show's producers to "do a show where torture backfires," adding that in real life torture techniques never work. 

MODERN FAMILY (2009)

The show premiered in 2009.  At the very same time , attitudes towards gay marriage took a turn towards acceptance and kept rising.

THE GODFATHER (1972)

Saddam Hussein was a ruthless dictator who invaded Iran, swallowed up Kuwait, gassed his Kurdish population and, by many accounts, took a lot of his inspiration from Michael Corleone.

CONCLUSION

I would not change a frame of "The Godfather" or "Patton."  Those are great works and you can’t control how individuals interpret them. The same goes for “The Catcher in the Rye” which inspired the murder of John Lennon and the song “Helter Skelter” which inspired the Manson Family. I’m not advocating censorship or a return to the paternalism of the production code. I am advocating an appreciation that Movies and TV are widely seen and can have a big effect. I am advocating a kind of artistic environmentalism especially in a world with receding cultural borders where the reach of films and TV is ever increasing.

This presentation was inspired by three events that affected my life: 1) the change in the entertainment industry that began in the late 1990s that made it increasingly difficult to make a living solely as a feature film screenwriter; 2) the skyrocketing cost of a college education; and 3) my own transition from a professional screenwriter to a full-time college professor.

My MFA in screenwriting from UCLA, which cost me only about two thousand dollars total in tuition, pretty much trained me to do one thing: write feature-length screenplays. The UCLA program did it well and did well for me as I entered the industry at time when the demand for feature-length scripts was rising due to the expansion of cable outlets and the arrival of videocassette film viewing. I, and several of my classmates, found script sales and writing assignments right after school.  

This is not the marketplace now. This is not how much college costs anymore. To teach the way I learned would be very irresponsible. There are many more opportunities in entertainment writing, as well as a lot more competition, but feature-length screenplays are an increasingly smaller percentage of those opportunities: series television, web-based series, video games, virtual reality, documentary films, plays, and novels.

How could I best prepare my students to succeed in these new and re-surging media, and whatever else may be coming around the corner? What basics of storytelling are eternal and useful to all forms? My answer came from fairy tales and the oral tradition which always begin with a character who has some specific trait, an easily understood desire, and a clear obstacle to achieving that desire. There are very few narratives that fall outside that dynamic. In my model this forms the nucleus of basic storytelling.

Around that nucleus is a “Circle of Complexity” which allows a story to be unique, interesting, and even challenging. My model includes “Character Contradictions” – the qualities in all of us that are in opposition to each other (as described by Lajos Egri in “The Art of Dramatic Writing”) as well as character arc (or evolution) and the dynamics of building a scene where a character interacts with other characters in varying types of conflict.

The next circle is that of meaning, what makes a story resonate beyond simple engagement.  In this circle I include theme, tone, mood, style, core emotional story, symbolic motif, and genre. 

The outer circle is that of structure – the particular forms of storytelling to which all of the above apply.

This is just a model, but I believe it is an effective to way to teach narrative writing that is flexible to all forms. Additionally, one of the most important assets for any writer, and any citizen for that matter, is a broad base of knowledge. I find that many students are devoting their undergraduate years to learning a specific skillset and not immersing themselves in literature, history, the arts, and even the broader sciences. A writer needs to know about a lot things and, perhaps more importantly, fully appreciate what they don’t know. I would love my students to graduate firmly believing they have only scratched the surface in what there is to know and understand that they have many years of continuous learning ahead of them.

I was invited onto this panel by Kristiina Hackel and Jule Selbo as it pertained to story and screenwriting. Their original abstract for the panel stated: “As demonstrated by Selbo in her highly successful Film Genre for the Screenwriter (Routledge, 2014), using film genre as a constructive component in screenwriting practice is hot right now. This panel will demonstrate that for great characters and strong character arcs in film and television, there are two genres that are used every time. We will use contemporary film and television examples to show how the coming-of-age and fish-out-of-water genres are essential for successful screenwriting. Additionally, we will demonstrate how, with deft use of craft, screenwriters use these genres to form film genre hybrids that can surprise and engage audiences.” 

Kristiina took the Fish-Out-of-Water” genre, Jule took the “Coming of Age” (although I remember she had to cancel at the last minute and did not present), and I took the hybrid by default. In spite of the title, I did not include TV but discussed the films “Sunset Boulevard” by Billy Wilder and “No Country for Old Men” by the Coen Brothers based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy. The idea of growing up or gaining wisdom at an older age has always intrigued me, and both these films depict that kind of maturation.

In “Sunset Boulevard,” the Fish-Out-of-Water aspect is obvious. Anyone,except one of its permanent denizens, would be a “Fish-Out-of-Water”in Norma Desmond’s twisted and insular world. That is a major appeal of the film. We see that world through an outsider’s eyes, with all its perversions and oddities. It is Joe Gillis’s maturation that provides the narrative arc and irony as his "growing up" costs him his life.

Joe Gillis arrives at her home personally desperate and dismissive of Norma. He is glib, rude, and childish. He shows her no respect and lacks empathy for the recent death of her pet chimpanzee. The only thing that interests him about her is her money; and that he is willing to be “kept” by her to get at it underscores his childishness. 

But Joe gradually exhibits growth by becoming disgusted with what he is becoming. On New Year’s Eve, he runs out on Norma’s expression of love for him, but then returns upon hearing she has slit her wrists. At this time he becomes an actual writer again, doing the hard work at night with co-writer Betty Schaefer who falls in love with him. He loves her, too, but she is his best friend’s fiancé - and his personal growth has made betrayal of his friend impossible. Instead of running away with Betty, he reveals to her in graphic detail what kind of man he is, a kept man, thereby making himself unlovable to her. His final act of maturity is leaving Norma Desmond and all the niceties of wealth. He is fully grown now, and he pays for it with a bullet in his back.

In “No Country for Old Men,” the maturing man is already in his late 60s and near retirement as the Sheriff of Terrell County in a West Texas. He is a “Fish-Out-of-Water” in that he perceives the world has changed around him: it has becomes senselessly violent, and he fears what it will mean for himself if he accepts that. In the opening narration, he states: “The crime you see now, it’s hard to even take its measure. It’s not that I’m afraid of it. I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job – not to be glorious. But I don’t want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don’t understand. You can say it’s my job to fight it but I don’t know what it is anymore. More than that, I don’t want to know. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He would have to say, okay, I’ll be part of this world.”

Sheriff Bell at least has to act in this world as Sheriff as he witnesses and responds to the carnage and damage wreaked by the relentless assassin Anton Chigurh. Bell comforts and counsels the wife of Llewelyn Moss, a man who has gotten in over his head having stolen drug money from a Mexican cartel, in an attempts to save her husband by having him turn himself in. But the Sheriff’s attempts don’t save Llewelyn Moss and  Sheriff Bell has to tell Carla Jean Moss that her husband has been murdered.

He has put himself “in this world” but it seems to have no positive effect, except maybe to give Carla Jean Moss moral courage when she faces the assassin Chigurh alone in her home. He offers her a fifty-fifty chance of survival, but she refuses to play the coin-toss game on moral principle and is killed for it. Ironically, Carla Jean Moss’s  courage seems to have temporarily undermined the assassin’s confidence and he is seriously injured in a freak car accident, perhaps caused by his inattention.

At the end, Sheriff Bell comes to realize this world he thought had become something awful that it never was before, was actually always this way - for his father, and his father's father. He is just one man understanding that very late in life.

 To engage and hold audience interest, the dramatic writer adapting history needs to meticulously structure events to tell a true story economically and efficiently. That will invariably make the adaptation, to some degree, stray from strict historical accuracy. Sometimes that factual manipulation is minimal and preserves an overall historical truth. Other times it does not - or is an outright lie.

Four of the eight Best Picture nominees for the 2015 Oscars are adaptations of history or biography. True and historical films and television shows have enjoyed a resurgence of popularity quite possibly because film technology has allowed for increasingly real-looking depictions of past eras. More and more films are able to take audiences convincingly to another time at a lower and lower cost of production; and there’s a lot of appeal in the idea that the dramatic events engaging the audience’s interest actually happened.

At least three of the Oscar-nominated films (“Selma,” “The Imitation Game,” and “American Sniper”), however, have sparked controversy over their perceived manipulation of history. Scores of articles on all sides of the controversies have generated fierce debate on comment threads and social media posts. Some criticisms have been trivial and nit-picky. Others are more legitimate and consequential.  The one comment that stood out to me as just plain wrong was from Maureen Dowd who said in her February 18th, 2013 New York Times column “The truth is dramatic and fascinating enough. Why twist it?”

This criticism of historical adaptation arises from a lack of understanding of what it takes to construct a successfully engaging motion picture or TV series, i.e. the factual compromises that are necessary because real life is random, repetitive, and chaotic where dramatic work needs to be structurally tight and economical. In my presentation, I use venerated 19th Century historical painting where visual and historical facts are manipulated to present larger truths that few take issue with. (Goya’s “The Third of May 1808” and Emanuel Leutze’s “Washington Crossing the Delaware” both use factual errors to truthfully illuminate a crucial historical moment.)  

Ava DuVernay’s uncredited screenplay for “Selma” manipulates a few facts regarding President Lyndon Johnson’s resistance to voting rights legislation before he eventually comes around to supporting it. DuVernay needed a dramatic adversary to Dr. King and Johnson was the perfect choice even if it was not completely factual to Johnson’s support of King’s goals.  DuVernay says correctly: “This is art; this is a movie; this is a film. I’m not a historian.”  The movie character of Johnson ultimately comes around to support the legislation in 1965, as did the actual Johnson. This bit of manipulation is ultimately harmless and entirely justified. What DuVernay gets actually correct is Johnson's patronizing attitude toward King.

What is not justified are the factual manipulations in “Mississippi Burning,” (1988), “The Deer Hunter,” (1978 ), and “Apocalypse Now,” (1979) that undermine the historical truth of very important subjects. “Mississippi Burning” depicts two white FBI agents as the heroes of the 1964 Freedom Summer without giving any agency or importance to the black civil rights workers who were the pivotal actors in that dramatic moment in history. “The Deer Hunter” invents a forced Russian roulette sequence that has no basis in fact and therefore distorts a crucial aspect of the Vietnam War. It is not a trivial detail.  “Apocalypse Now” invents a messiah-like Colonel Kurtz (based on the more historically accurate “Heart of Darkness” character) who gains a following of tribes’ people that seem to have no actual reason to follow this man. They are like set dressing in this hellish world.

Not all historical adaptations are about important subjects. The ones that are, however, need to be especially careful in exercising dramatic license so as not to create and perpetuate pernicious and enduring lies.

In May of 2014, my colleague Peter Kiwitt approached me about writing a short film for him to direct the following spring. I suggested a comedy idea I had about a has-been actor who could no longer get parts because he never bothered to learn to act and now needs the help of an ex-lover who has become the miracle acting coach. I immediately started writing the outline and script and while summering in Los Angeles and had scenes from the screenplay performed by my writers/actors group SAFEHOUSE.  Upon returning to Rochester I refined and shortened the script and performed it again in Los Angeles over the winter break.  I then helped Peter with the pre-production, casting,  and the assembly of a students on a crew who were earning course credit by working on the film. My script was filmed over the course of several consecutive weekends in the spring of 2015. I was on set most all the days and even had a small part in the film.  

Peter and I disagreed on the casting of the lead, but it was his final decision. He took charge of the editing and took my advice a few times on what to cut. He did not take my advice on the musical score which I still think is too sentimental for the tone of the film. 

In the summer of 2018, Susan Lakin and I began research on a promotional Virtual Reality film to promote the Society for the Protection and Care of Children which has operated in Rochester since the 1870s. 

Formerly the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the organization grew out of animal protection society whose founder saved Mary Ellen Wilson from her abuse and helped get her to a new family on a farm outside Rochester, NY. She lived there until the age 92, survived by many children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.

The SPCC continues to do crucial work in the Rochester area. Susan and I interviewed several young women who were severely abused and who found new lives through the SPCC. Their testimony will be part of the immersive film experience were are currently working on.