Su-City Pictures East, LLC

Screenplay & Film Consulting By Susan Kouguell

Category: 2015 New York Film Festival

Director Hou Hsiao-Hsien: THE ASSASIN

October 15, 2015 / / Comments Off on Director Hou Hsiao-Hsien: THE ASSASIN
Hou Hsiao-Hsien
Director Hou Hsiao-Hsien
At the New York Film Festival press screening, Hou Hsiao-Hsien spoke with Dennis Lim about his new film “The Assassin” for which he won Best Director at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.

 

Filmed on location in Japan and on set in Taiwan, “The Assassin” centers on the story of Yinniang, who, abducted at age 10, is now a Tang Dynasty assassin dedicated to the art of killing until memory transforms her course of action.

The Story

Hou Hsiao-Hsien: “There is a lot of information from the Tang Dynasty — tales, legends and novels. I first came across this story in college. I wanted to bring this realism into the film. The story is based on historical facts and then I fleshed out the characters.

I wanted to do this film in the wuxia genre. I wanted to draw inspiration from Samurai movies from Japan as a long tradition of this martial arts practice that would be more in line of how I see the wuxia genre; it should be based onthe realistic depiction of human capacity.”

"The Assassin"
“The Assassin”

 

Working with Actors

Hou Hsiao-Hsien : “I work with actors and actresses I have worked with together before; they know my style and how I work on set. They will know the script and know the mood I want to create. There is no rehearsal. They come to the set prepared. They know what the scene is about. I have to set up the lights and camera, and I set up the dolly and tracks, and then I ask them to go onto the set I created for them. Hopefully they will be inspired by this mise-en-scène, and the location. The actors immerse themselves and embody the characters. Things happen naturally. Sometimes they do take after take, and when they get too comfortable, they get mechanical and unnatural. I want to somehow change the scene for them, to really act. The long takes go with that particular way of directing.”

Aaron Sorkin on Adapting STEVE JOBS (SCRIPT MAGAZINE)

October 14, 2015 / / Comments Off on Aaron Sorkin on Adapting STEVE JOBS (SCRIPT MAGAZINE)

Aaron Sorkin on Adapting the Film ‘Steve Jobs’

By: |

Click to tweet this article to your friends and followers!

Danny Boyle, Aaron Sorkin, Seth Rogan

 

Director Danny Boyle, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, Walter Issacson, (writer of the authorized Jobs’ biography), along with actors  Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, Jeff Daniels, and Michael Stuhlbarg took to the stage after the New York Film Festival press screening of Steve Jobs.  The conversation centered on creating the characters of this film based on the actual people and making them their own and not a caricature.  The cast spent time with their real-life counterparts to learn more about them.

Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet

Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet

Danny Boyle:  “It wasn’t about the actors being a look alike or imitating physical mannerisms of the real people. Jobs was a historical figure.  His life was really Shakespearean.”

Adapting a book into a screenplay can be challenging in and of itself, but it can be further challenging when the book is a biography. Examples of book to screen adaptations based on a real person include The Aviator, Schindler’s List, Ray,The King’s Speech, Lincoln, Raging Bull, 12 Years a Slave, American Sniper, Frida, Wild, and Straight Outa Compton.

Jeff Daniels and Walter Walter Issacson

Jeff Daniels and Walter Issacson

Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network (for which he received the Oscar® for Best Adapted Screenplay) shares similarities to the script for Steve Jobs; The Social Network is about the behind-the-scenes of the founding of Facebook and Steve Jobs is a behind the scenes look at the founder of Apple.

The structure of the Steve Jobs screenplay is literally set in three distinct acts — each taking place backstage at a major iconic product launch — the Macintosh in 1984, NeXT in 1988, and the unveiling of the iMac in 1998.

Sorkin: “It started from Walter’s book. I know what I wanted to do and what I didn’t want to do and that was a biopic. That was a cradle-to-grave structure that audiences are so familiar with and I didn’t want to land on all the greatest hits.”

“I like claustrophobic spaces. I like compressed periods of time. I like the ticking clock.  I like things that are behind the scenes, in this case literally behind the scenes. I wondered if I could take all of the work Walter had done (in his biography) and if there was a way to dramatize the points of friction in Steve’s life and dramatize it in this way.  I identified five or six conflicts in Steve’s life and have those conflicts play themselves out in these scenes backstage—in places where they didn’t take place.”

When adapting a book into a screenplay, find the shape of the story and the story arc. One major plot element in this film that drives the engine of the narrative forward is Steve Jobs’ initial denial of paternity of his daughter, Lisa. The story arc is Steve finding his way to being a father to her by the end.

Unless you are writing a documentary, there are liberties to be taken.  Fictionalizing events, combining several characters into one, and reorganizing the time lines are just some of the elements that can be employed in the adapting process. Consider what makes the main character in the biography interesting to you and what elements of the story you find engaging. Use the answers to these questions as your jumping off point. Find the essence of the story you are adapting and bring your characters to their new lives in your screenplay.

From Steve Jobs:

STEVE JOBS
Musicians play their instruments. I play the orchestra.

READ MORE HERE

MICHAEL MOORE: WHERE TO INVADE NEXT (INDIEWIRE/SYDNEYSBUZZ)

October 6, 2015 / / Comments Off on MICHAEL MOORE: WHERE TO INVADE NEXT (INDIEWIRE/SYDNEYSBUZZ)

A Conversation with Oscar® winner Michael Moore at the New York Film Festival

Moore’s latest film, “Where to Invade Next” explores the current state of the nation.

 

 

Michael Moore and Susan Kouguell

Twenty-six years ago — (Michael Moore reminded me how long ago it was) — I was an acquisitions consultant for Warner Bros. and discovered a new documentary at the Independent Feature Film Market. I ran to the payphone (yes, pre-cell phone days) downstairs at the Anjelica Film Center and called my boss to tell her she must see it. The film was “Roger & Me.” Warner Bros. picked up the film.

Since then, Moore continued making provocative and impassioned films, including the Academy Award-winning “Bowling for Columbine,” “Sicko,” “Fahrenheit 9/11,” and “Capitalism: A Love Story.” Moore’s latest film, “Where to Invade Next” explores the current state of the nation.

Moore: “My film is about us. I just decided to tell a story about America without shooting a single frame of the movie in the United States.”

Former Radius Founders and Co-Presidents Tom Quinn and Jason Janego are teaming with Alamo Drafthouse Founder and CEO Tim League to form the yet-to-be-named distribution label and will distribute “Where to Invade Next.”

"Where to Invade Next"
“Where to Invade Next”

Here are highlights from the New York Film Festival press screening.

The idea for the film

“I was 19 and I just dropped out of college. I got the Eurail pass and youth hostel card and spent a couple of months going around Europe. I was in Sweden and broke a toe, and I was sent to a clinic. I went to pay the bill and there was no bill. I never heard of such a thing. And all through Europe I kept running into things like that. And I thought why can’t we do that? The idea grew organically as most of the things do in my films.”

Planning ahead

“Don’t give me too much credit for thinking this out a whole lot in advance. We don’t think it would be really cool to sit down at the lunch table with a can of Coke and see what the kids do.

The best stuff is what I don’t plan out. What my field producers do in terms of research — I have them tell me only the basics, I don’t want to know any of the research. When the Italian couple (in the film) tells me about the 15 days paid vacation, this is the first time I’ve heard it, even if the field producers know it. I don’t want to act. We don’t do a second take. If the sound guy says we didn’t get it, you can’t ask them (the subjects) to do it again. We’ve seen too many documentaries like that. It has to happen with them and me in the moment.”

No, Michael Moore is not running for office

“…to say that you have the right to regulate a woman’s uterus but not guns? It’s like, I think the only safe place for guns is in a woman’s uterus. Then
they would be regulated by our Republican congress!

I talk politically a lot, but if I really just wanted to make political speeches, I would run for office or give sermons.”

“I went to pick the flowers and not the weeds.”

A line from Moore’s film, which he further details: “Every country has a lot of problems. I didn’t go there to make a film about your countries. There are
a lot of things you’re dealing with, but that’s not my film. My film is about us, not about you. I just decided to tell a story about America without
shooting a single frame in the United States.”

About Michael Moore’s Happiness

“The difference about this film (compared to his others), some people say it’s not so angry, (that) I’m happier. I’m angrier than ever. Maybe I came up
with a more subversive way to deal with that anger with the condition of this country.”

In closing

“We’re filmmakers. We love the art of cinema and we love what it can do to move people through fiction or non-fiction.”

READ MORE HERE

 

Director Robert Zemeckis Talks ‘The Walk’ and Adaptation (SCRIPT MAGAZINE)

October 6, 2015 / / Comments Off on Director Robert Zemeckis Talks ‘The Walk’ and Adaptation (SCRIPT MAGAZINE)

Click to tweet this article to your friends and followers!

Director Robert Zemeckis Talks 'The Walk' and Adaptation by Susan Kouguell | Script MagazineDirector Robert Zemeckis at THE WALK New York Film Festival Press Screening

At the recent New York Film Festival press screening of The Walk, director Robert Zemeckis spoke about adapting his film for the screen.  Based on the book To Reach the Clouds by Philippe Petit (the tightrope walker), The Walk is written by Robert Zemeckis and Christopher Browne.

Zemeckis:  “I came upon the children’s book The Man Who Walked Between the Towers; it had eight pages of illustrations.”

Written and illustrated by Mordicai Gerstein in 2003, the book recounts Philippe Petit’s 1974 tightrope walk between the top of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers.

Zemeckis: “I started developing this project and Philippe’s story, almost 10 years ago, way before the documentary ‘Man on Wire’ was made. It was a great documentary; it lets you in to see what all the real characters were thinking and how they did this, but the thing I always wanted to do was Philippe’s story. I wanted to present the walk itself, and of course it couldn’t be done in the documentary because there were no moving pictures of the walk ever recorded.”

In researching Petit’s true life story, Zemeckis found a passionate and driven character who performed the walk because he had to, purely for self-expression.

Zemeckis: “Petit is an anarchist who pulled off an artistic coup.”

Finding the dramatic elements of the story

There were all the elements in this real life story and in the children’s book already built-in for a compelling screenplay: a unique protagonist and his unlikely gang of international recruits to help make the actual walk a reality.  It’s a caper film, except there is no theft.  The adventurous goal that drives the narrative forward is for the protagonist and his gang, to plan, execute, and to survive the walk between the Twin Towers.

What to Keep and What to Cut

There were some elements from the actual coup that that were condensed, such as in real life, Petit made eight crossings, but in the film he does six.

Breaking the Fourth Wall

In the film, Petit’s character, speaking from a perch on the Statue of Liberty, talks directly to the screen, a choice Zemeckis says he made to keep the audience emotionally connected to Petit in order to convey how his character is feeling.

Zemeckis: “All artists are anarchists in some ways, some more extreme than others.”

Screenwriting is — and forgive the metaphor — like walking a tightrope. There are only so pages you have to convey your compelling story and characters, as you make every word count.  It is always a balancing act, deciding what to include and what to cut from the original source material, while conveying the strongest elements of the story onto the page in an engaging and unique way.

Go forth on the screenwriting tightrope and bring out your inner artistic anarchist!

More articles by Susan Kouguell

READ MORE HERE

 

World-Building & the World of ‘The Lobster’ at NY Film Festival (SCRIPT MAGAZINE)

October 2, 2015 / / Comments Off on World-Building & the World of ‘The Lobster’ at NY Film Festival (SCRIPT MAGAZINE)

World-Building and the World of The Lobster

by Susan Kouguell

Yorgos Lanthimos

Yorgos Lanthimos – writer and director THE LOBSTER

Building the world of your screenplay, brick by proverbial brick, means effectively establishing your settings, exploring the look, feel, and atmosphere, and demonstrating how your characters relate (or don’t relate) to the various environs they are in.  The reader needs to step into the world you have created with a complete understanding it. The more plausible and/or logical things are, the more real your world will be for the film executive to want to turn the page.

Most screenplays occur in some type of different world. Whether your characters exist in an altered state in the past or present, or if the other world is a metaphor, or even if your story is set in a real place or imagined, the world you are creating should be original and yes, different.

Yorgos Lanthimos: “The idea came from things we observed around us; conditions, situations. We wanted to do something about relationships and how people are under so much pressure to be successful in that, and how other people view them or make them feel.

Let’s step into the very different world of the dark comedy The Lobster directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, screenplay by Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou.

The Lobster: Set in the very near future, society demands that people live as couples. Single people are rounded up and sent to a seaside compound—part resort and part minimum-security prison where they are given a finite number of days to find a match. If they don’t succeed, they will be “altered” and turned into animals. The recently divorced David arrives at The Hotel with his brother, now a dog; in the event of failure, David has chosen to become a lobster… because they live so long. When David falls in love, he’s up against a new set of rules established by another, rebellious order: for romantics, there’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

At the recent 2015 New York Film Festival press screening, Yorgos Lanthimos talked about the inspiration and creation for building the world of his new film.

Yorgos Lanthimos: “The idea came from things we observed around us; conditions, situations. We wanted to do something about relationships and how people are under so much pressure to be successful in that, and how other people view them or make them feel. And, how much pressure we put ourselves under, doing what we’re supposed to be doing. We were not interested in representing reality; we were interested in structuring a world that has particular rules that can give us a situation we can explore.

We started with the rules, the restrictions, and the pressure of being alone. If you don’t make it what happens to you then? After we set up the premise: what would the leadership of the world do if they wanted to present, for example, what happens to the losers, how they could do it in a way that is a bit positive instead of killing them?  That’s how we arrived for them to become animals; it has a positive side. We were interested in the irony of someone who tries to escape this kind of system, and in the end, constructs another one that is slightly different but essentially somewhat similar. People in reality follow completely absurd rules, like in the film. Years go by and you just don’t question the rules.

We are precise what we are showing, but beyond that, you can ask questions and go either way, and that’s what excites me.  You can imagine a bigger world and how it works.”

Writing a savvy screenplay requires a complete understanding of the reality of the fictional world you are creating. Readers need to suspend disbelief and jump into your screenplay with full understanding and awesome wonder. Original and unique worlds will set your script apart from the other screenplays, vying for attention from film executives.

READ MORE HERE

Marcel Ophüls – The Memory of Justice

September 27, 2015 / / Comments Off on Marcel Ophüls – The Memory of Justice

A Conversation with
Academy Award-Winning Director
Marcel Ophüls

Professor Regina Longo, Cinema Studies faculty at Purchase College, SUNY, moderated a discussion with Oscar-winning director Marcel Ophüls.

"The Memory of Justice"

Several days prior to the “The Memory of Justice” (1976) screening of the newly restored film at the New York Film Festival, on September 27, Professor Regina Longo, Cinema Studies faculty at Purchase College, SUNY, moderated a discussion with Oscar-winning director Marcel Ophüls.

From the New York Film Festival: “The third of Marcel Ophüls’ monumental inquiries into the questions of individual and collective guilt following the calamities of war and genocide, ‘The Memory of Justice’ examines three of the defining tragedies of the Western world in the second half of the 20th century, from the Nuremberg trials through the French-Algerian war to the disaster of Vietnam, building from a vast range of interviews, from Telford Taylor (Counsel for the Prosecution at Nuremberg, later a harsh critic of our escalating involvement in Vietnam) to Nazi architect Albert Speer to Daniel Ellsberg and Joan Baez.”

Marcel Ophüls

Conversation Highlights

On  “The Memory of Justice”

Making the film — it was not sense of mission. I didn’t think I had to teach other people what the Holocaust was about or what other aspects of World War II were about. It was my job to make an audio visual form of storytelling of contemporary events. I don’t want to change the world. I think that’s much too big a job.

READ MORE HERE

“THE WALK” NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL

September 27, 2015 / / Comments Off on “THE WALK” NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL

PHOTOS FROM TODAY’S
NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL’S
PRESS SCREENING OF

THE WALK

 

THE WALK 4

Director Robert Zemeckis

2015 SEP 26 THE WALK JOSEPH GL

JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Joseph Gordon-Levitt & Charlotte Le Bon

THE WALK 3

James Badge Dale (L) Ben Schwartz (R)

THE WALK 2 Joseph Gordon-Levitt 3

JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT

DE PALMA documentary at the New York Film Festival

September 22, 2015 / / Comments Off on DE PALMA documentary at the New York Film Festival

A Conversation with Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow 
on Brian De Palma and their New Documentary De Palma 
at the New York Film Festival

By Susan Kouguell

“I lived in a family of egotists” – Brian De Palma in De Palma
Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow 

at the New York Film Festival
Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow 

at the New York Film Festival

In the documentary “De Palma” directed by Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow, iconoclast American director Brian De Palma talks directly to the camera, in an honest recounting of the highlights and low points of his movie-making career. Only De Palma is seen interviewed on camera; no other talking heads, no other voice-over interviews from either Baumbach or Paltrow are seen or heard.

Paltrow: “The film was shot with one camera and one angle on Brian. There are no other people talking about Brian. It was our direct approach to him.”

Intercut with clips from De Palma’s body of work from the 1960s to the present, as well as from other directors, most notably Alfred Hitchcock, the film moves at a rapid pace with honesty and a sense of humor, as it explores how movies get made (and often not the way intended) and how they don’t get made.

Directors Baumbach and Paltrow describe their documentary as an extension of their friendship, having spent time with Brian De Palma over the last ten years.

Paltrow: “We kept it in the same spirit as having coffee with him.”

Noah Baumbach
Noah Baumbach

Baumbach: “Brian was totally open and available. We wanted to talk about filmmaking. We weren’t going to go in areas that were uncomfortable for him. We’d let him guide, knowing that we would let him lead the way.”

Paltrow: “The most surprising for us about Brian was how electric he was on camera; how he told these stories the same as he did with us at dinner. He was so good on camera. So direct. So made for cinema.”

From the success of his films “Carrie,” “Dressed to Kill,” “Blow Out,” and “Carlito’s Way” to the box-office failures, including “The Bonfire of the Vanities” and “Mission to Mars,” De Palma is candid about his successes and failures.

 

READ MORE HERE

Recent Posts

Search

Categories

© 2024 Su-City Pictures East, LLC

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑