Writer’s Panel at SBIFF 2009

Reviewed by Chloe Seaman at The Santa Barbara Film Festival. 

At The Lobero Theatre, four talented writers, all with very different scripts in their hands, came together to discuss topics in the panel labeled “It Starts With The Script”. There was Robert Knott (Appaloosa), Tom McCarthy (The Visitor), Andrew Stanton (Wall-E), and Dustin Lance Black (Milk) and was moderated by Anne Thomson. It was an insightful and inspiring discussion that was also very enjoyable and entertaining. There were a couple topics that were talked about a lot that I found very interesting; one being the role of character – how important it is to have well-developed and believable characters to tell the story; and the other is the process of writing in general. 

Characters are everything. The audience must believe the characters in order for the plot to seem believable. It is the element of “emotional reality” that every film must have to be successful. Even if you have never experienced the things the characters experience, you believe it and feel what they feel because they are well developed and the decisions they make and the actions they do are plausible.

Andrew Stanton (Wall-E) took three years writing the script for Toy Story because he had to dig down and find out who the characters actually are. When it came time to write the sequel (Toy Story 2) it only took three months because he already knew the characters. Dustin Lance Black (Milk) knew the story he wanted to tell but took a lot of time to research and analyze the characters so they would be realistic and convey the actual people they portray. He also decided to focus on just the politics aspect of Harvey Milk’s life instead of his whole life. In doing so, it makes the story more personal instead of jumping from one milestone to the next and skimming the surface. Robert Knott (Appaloosa) made an interesting point in that you must always be thinking about what they characters are thinking, even when that’s not what you are putting on the page. There is a difference between text and subtext, but you must know both equally well. Knowing the characters is what moves the plot along, not vise versa. 

All the writers had different approaches to writing yet still had one thing in common. The key is to just sit down and start writing; just get through that first draft. But just because you wrote a full script, does not mean it’s finished. I was amazed at how much they all said they had to re-write. Tom McCarthy (The Visitor) said he would guess that he did about twenty-four drafts of The Visitor. It was funny to hear them all agree that when they are writing that first draft, they are thinking they have it all figured out and that it’s perfect, but in the back of their minds they know that it’s not and that there is going to be many re-writes. But it is the re-writing that makes the script better each time. If you want to be a good writer, you must re-write over and over.

One of the things that I loved about this film festival was the involvement of the actual filmmakers and hearing what they have to say. Listening to these writers just gives any film I see more appreciation and room to analyze. The more you know what goes into a film, the more you can get out of it.