An evening with the sage of screenwriting
Screenwriting guru Richard Walter. Photo by Mischa Pfister.
Richard Walter, professor and chair of the Department of Screenwriting at UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television, has taught some of Hollywood’s top writers for more than 30 years — and he has the book blurbs to prove it.
“In his legendary lectures, and now in his book, Richard Walter kicks you in the tail, gets you laughing, and with invaluable specifics, makes that blank page seem surmountable,” wrote Dustin Lance Black, who took home an Oscar for his screenplay for “Milk.”
The book touted is Walter’s just-published “Essentials of Screenwriting: The Art, Craft, and Business of Film and Television Writing,” an update of and expansion upon Walter’s 1998 book by the same name. While book updates don’t generally draw much attention, his holds the No. 2 spot on Amazon’s bestseller list for television screenwriting just a month after publication — a testament to his dedicated following. (His long-lived earlier edition holds spot No. 3.)
Many of those followers packed the Writers Store in Westwood for a workshop and book release party on June 30, a recent stop on Walter’s California book tour. Among those in attendance were former students, including a woman who flew in all the way from Phoenix. Others had never taken a class from Walter, but welcomed the opportunity to meet him. For example, Shirley Mak, a recent UCLA graduate with a B.A. in English and a minor in film, said she was there to find out “what exactly makes a good script.”
Walter's rapt audience at the Writers Store.
“I want writers to write their own personal tales, and to let the heartache and joy show,” Walter encouraged, moving on to the nuts-and-bolts of that endeavor. “A movie [script] is an elaborate list of only two things: what you see and what you hear. If you really embrace the principle of only writing sight and sound and making sure that every sight and sound moves that story forward, then you can succeed.”
As an example, he cited work by former student Alexander Payne, who wrote and directed the Oscar-nominated film “About Schmidt.” That movie’s first scene contains no dialogue, but begins with a ticking clock — a small thing, Walter said, that tells the audience a great deal about the lead character, a man whose own clock is ticking as he approaches retirement.
“Just put the stuff that needs to be in there and that’s it,” he said. That includes limiting “parentheticals.” Sometimes known as “wrylies” — as in “He said (wryly)” — parentheticals are directions written into the script that describe how the dialogue should be spoken. “Shakespeare wrote 36 plays and never had a single parenthetical,” Walter noted. “Never does it say, ‘Hamlet (melancholy).’ ”
On what started out sounding like an important point, he asked, “I always start with ‘fade in’ — can you tell me why?” Then, teasing, he answered, “I don’t know why. I was hoping you could tell me why.” When the crowd’s laughter subsided, he added, “It’s like a ritual. I think the reason I like to start with ‘fade in’ is because I can’t wait to write ‘fade out.’ ”
He noted that script readers employed by movie studios and development companies to winnow through mountains of scripts to find new writing talent routinely weed out screenplays that don’t follow industry format. Walter advised keeping the script length between 100-105 pages. Scripts shorter or longer than this, he said, show that “the writer is unclear on the concept.”
Presentation also matters. For example, three-hole-punching the printed copy and binding it with two “brads” in the top and bottom holes is something that sets a seasoned screenwriter apart from an amateur. And although such details don’t seem to be a big deal, he said, “Cumulatively, these small things make a big difference.”
Attending the Writers Store workshop was aspiring screenwriter Rick McCormick, who has had three of his scripts reviewed by Walter over the past few years and who managed to hand him a copy of his latest script in the store’s parking lot prior to the event.
Before doing an impromptu analysis of McCormick’s script as part of his presentation, Walter told his audience that being handed a script is a familiar experience for him. Once, in fact, a cop who stopped him for a traffic ticket also handed him a script.
As straightforward as much of his advice may seem, Walter warned that it comes with a caveat: “It’s simple to understand; it’s just hard to do! It takes time to do that.”
But “time is what your life is made up of, so you have to throw your life into this,” he urged. “I can’t imagine anything more glorious to throw your life into besides trafficking your own imagination, literally swapping your daydreams for dollars.”
_____________________________________________________________________________
